Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Titans, super heavies are easy to beat if you know you will be playing them, just play guard, eldar for vendettas and/or crimson hunters, titans and super heavy tanks can't touch them.

3 x3 squadrons of vendettas costs about the same as that titan money wise and point wise and in the end vendettas win.

 Arbiter wrote:
Titans, super heavies are easy to beat if you know you will be playing them, just play guard, eldar for vendettas and/or crimson hunters, titans and super heavy tanks can't touch them.

3 x3 squadrons of vendettas costs about the same as that titan money wise and point wise and in the end vendettas win.

Not everyone plays guard, nor do they wish to include guard in their army. Saying "just use army X" is horrible tactical advice.

But yes, fliers are a solid counter against most SHV, and guard and eldar do indeed have the best fliers. The former has firepower; the latter has mobility.

Actually, Titans are not super easy to kill, haha, but I like your confidence!

Stick a Rev on a Skyshield and you have 2, 4+ saves. Get Fortune also? 3.

Good luck getting through that.

Some of the others are crazy too, the Stompa with meks inside it fixing it, etc.

And, as I have been saying since Escalation dropped, anyone that wants to actually prove that then can beat a Titan, not just say they can, is welcome to come down to FLG and try So far no one has succeeded. We're actually talking about letting a 12 year old kid use the Rev and take on a tournament gamer just to show how pants-on-head stupid it is.

So far no one has succeeded

Do you play 1.75K?

Try this:

-Anrakyr the Traveller
-4 Stormteks
-5 Company Command, 4 Meltaguns
-5 Warriors, Night Scythe
-5 Warriors, Night Scythe
-5 Warriors, Night Scythe
-5 Warriors, Night Scythe
-5 Warriors, Night Scythe
-10 Veterans, 4 Meltaguns
-3 Vendettas
-Aegis Defence Line, Comms Relay

If you can't beat that Revenant list in a best of 3 with that list (or anything that plays like it) then I don't think the list is at fault When Necrons (and air in general) counter titans this hard, if an escalation tournament scene even existed, the meta would quickly develop into something very different than "heyyy let's kill random ground units with our Revenant!". You can squirm and you can squeal about moving 36" and trying to avoid stuff every turn but your problem is you can't kill anything except the stuff that was left on the ground to die and that in itself is a starting point that makes you an underdog of massive proportions. If you ever leave your other units in LOS of your Revenant, your own Revenant will obliterate your own units. The common alternative to the list type above is the one that uses the suicidal 420 point Pylon that deep strikes inside any possible void shields and kills you or atleast hurts you, while everything else flies. Like this, with 5 points to spare:

-Anrakyr the Traveller
-4 Stormteks
-5 Warriors, Night Scythe
-5 Warriors, Night Scythe
-5 Warriors, Night Scythe
-5 Warriors, Night Scythe
-5 Warriors, Night Scythe
-5 Warriors, Night Scythe
-Gauss Pylon
-Aegis Defence Line, Comms Relay

 Therion wrote:

So far no one has succeeded

Do you play 1.75K?

Try this:

-Anrakyr the Traveller
-4 Stormteks
-5 Company Command, 4 Meltaguns
-5 Warriors, Night Scythe
-5 Warriors, Night Scythe
-5 Warriors, Night Scythe
-5 Warriors, Night Scythe
-5 Warriors, Night Scythe
-10 Veterans, 4 Meltaguns
-3 Vendettas
-Aegis Defence Line, Comms Relay

If you can't beat that Revenant list in a best of 3 with that list (or anything that plays like it) then I don't think the list is at fault When Necrons (and air in general) counter titans this hard, if an escalation tournament scene even existed, the meta would quickly develop into something very different than "heyyy let's kill random ground units with our Revenant!". You can squirm and you can squeal about moving 36" and trying to avoid stuff every turn but your problem is you can't kill anything except the stuff that was left on the ground to die and that in itself is a starting point that makes you an underdog of massive proportions. If you ever leave your other units in LOS of your Revenant, your own Revenant will obliterate your own units. The common alternative to the list type above is the one that uses the suicidal 420 point Pylon that deep strikes inside any possible void shields and kills you or atleast hurts you, while everything else flies. Like this, with 5 points to spare:

-Anrakyr the Traveller
-4 Stormteks
-5 Warriors, Night Scythe
-5 Warriors, Night Scythe
-5 Warriors, Night Scythe
-5 Warriors, Night Scythe
-5 Warriors, Night Scythe
-5 Warriors, Night Scythe
-Gauss Pylon
-Aegis Defence Line, Comms Relay

Good lord, sign me up for that game, that looks like a blast.....

/sarcasm.

 Therion wrote:

So far no one has succeeded

Do you play 1.75K?

Try this:

-Anrakyr the Traveller
-4 Stormteks
-5 Company Command, 4 Meltaguns
-5 Warriors, Night Scythe
-5 Warriors, Night Scythe
-5 Warriors, Night Scythe
-5 Warriors, Night Scythe
-5 Warriors, Night Scythe
-10 Veterans, 4 Meltaguns
-3 Vendettas
-Aegis Defence Line, Comms Relay

If you can't beat that Revenant list in a best of 3 with that list (or anything that plays like it) then I don't think the list is at fault When Necrons (and air in general) counter titans this hard, if an escalation tournament scene even existed, the meta would quickly develop into something very different than "heyyy let's kill random ground units with our Revenant!". You can squirm and you can squeal about moving 36" and trying to avoid stuff every turn but your problem is you can't kill anything except the stuff that was left on the ground to die and that in itself is a starting point that makes you an underdog of massive proportions. If you ever leave your other units in LOS of your Revenant, your own Revenant will obliterate your own units. The common alternative to the list type above is the one that uses the suicidal 420 point Pylon that deep strikes inside any possible void shields and kills you or atleast hurts you, while everything else flies. Like this, with 5 points to spare:

-Anrakyr the Traveller
-4 Stormteks
-5 Warriors, Night Scythe
-5 Warriors, Night Scythe
-5 Warriors, Night Scythe
-5 Warriors, Night Scythe
-5 Warriors, Night Scythe
-5 Warriors, Night Scythe
-Gauss Pylon
-Aegis Defence Line, Comms Relay

Interesting, but what is going to be on the board turn 1?

CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Interesting, but what is going to be on the board turn 1?

What do you think? I'm looking at the video battle report and I assume they play on a board like that. It seems to have terrain that completely hides atleast 2 squads so they can't be shot by anyone. So you deploy as many Warrior squads as you need, depending on terrain, and fully space them all out and just go to ground against anything. If you feel like a first turn wipeout is in any way shape or form possible (which it 100% isn't) then you can swap something for just more chaff troops or single models that can hide somewhere. It doesn't change the function of the list, or the end result of the battle.

Very interesting counter list. Maybe Reecius can do a video batrep... I'd love to see this match.

 Therion wrote:

CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Interesting, but what is going to be on the board turn 1?

What do you think? I'm looking at the video battle report and I assume they play on a board like that. It seems to have terrain that completely hides atleast 2 squads so they can't be shot by anyone. So you deploy as many Warrior squads as you need, depending on terrain, and fully space them all out and just go to ground against anything. If you feel like a first turn wipeout is in any way shape or form possible (which it 100% isn't) then you can swap something for just more chaff troops or single models that can hide somewhere. It doesn't change the function of the list, or the end result of the battle.

I dunno that seems like youre just asking to be tabeled even though you can spread out and hide many small units. All it takes would be to nuke off anything on the comms relay and a terrible roll for reserves on turn 2 then he can pounce on you turn 2 and it would be pretty much over from there. I would like to see a report against this though.

 y0disisray wrote:

 Therion wrote:

CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Interesting, but what is going to be on the board turn 1?

What do you think? I'm looking at the video battle report and I assume they play on a board like that. It seems to have terrain that completely hides atleast 2 squads so they can't be shot by anyone. So you deploy as many Warrior squads as you need, depending on terrain, and fully space them all out and just go to ground against anything. If you feel like a first turn wipeout is in any way shape or form possible (which it 100% isn't) then you can swap something for just more chaff troops or single models that can hide somewhere. It doesn't change the function of the list, or the end result of the battle.

I dunno that seems like youre just asking to be tabeled even though you can spread out and hide many small units. All it takes would be to nuke off anything on the comms relay and a terrible roll for reserves on turn 2 then he can pounce on you turn 2 and it would be pretty much over from there. I would like to see a report against this though.

You put the comms relay behind one of the large los-blocking terrain pieces, meaning that anything that hides there will be using it.

All these what if arguments are stupid. "What if a strength D pie plate scatters on top of your models hiding at the comms relay and kills them all and you roll awful for reserves and get nothing on and then get tabled?" Yeah. What if the Pylon deep strikes in and one shots the Revenant? What if the flyers come in and blow the Revenant skyhigh because everything seems to penetrate and the dude keeps failing his cover and holo-fields? The Necron army is fully prepared for wiping out every non-superheavy on the table first and finishing off the Revenant during turn 6, it it comes to that. Is the solo Crimson Hunter going to drop 6-8 flyers? I don't think I'm stretching the imagination a lot if I say that you have a better than decent chance of winning when most of your army simply can't be killed or even targeted.

I have an Eldar army myself in addition to the Necrons. I'm only replying to this since I'm somewhat annoyed by the claims that the Revenant is the be all and end all of escalation. Not a single GT has been played anywhere in the world where escalation would be allowed. The metagame will develop a lot if people indeed start playing the new supplements. Has anyone even tried playing with Eldar Vampires yet (can't be killed by the Revenant nor the army that supports the Revenant, but will kill the Revenant eventually if it wants to)? How about Reaver titans? If you're Imperial and just want to fight the Revenant, in 1850p you can take Grey Knights with Coteaz, 6 squads of warrior acolytes in reserve, a Reaver Titan with 8 strength D and a void shield generator (for 7 void shields total).

To be truthful it's just the same two or three guys pumping the Revenant's tires nonstop so I guess I'm overreacting. It's not a bad superheavy by any means, but it's just the beginning.

 Arbiter wrote:
Titans, super heavies are easy to beat if you know you will be playing them, just play guard, eldar for vendettas and/or crimson hunters, titans and super heavy tanks can't touch them.

3 x3 squadrons of vendettas costs about the same as that titan money wise and point wise and in the end vendettas win.

I wouldn't say "easy to beat". You really are under-estimating a "balanced" titan build if you think you can win with just vendettas. Sure, they can win, but it will be far from easy.

BTW, I don't believe my opponent's army here is a "balanced" titan build. It is more of a fun build. A balanced titan build is more like the one found in my tactica: JY2’S ESCALATION TACTICA, PART I – ELDAR.

 Therion wrote:

So far no one has succeeded

Do you play 1.75K?

Try this:

-Anrakyr the Traveller
-4 Stormteks
-5 Company Command, 4 Meltaguns
-5 Warriors, Night Scythe
-5 Warriors, Night Scythe
-5 Warriors, Night Scythe
-5 Warriors, Night Scythe
-5 Warriors, Night Scythe
-10 Veterans, 4 Meltaguns
-3 Vendettas
-Aegis Defence Line, Comms Relay

If you can't beat that Revenant list in a best of 3 with that list (or anything that plays like it) then I don't think the list is at fault When Necrons (and air in general) counter titans this hard, if an escalation tournament scene even existed, the meta would quickly develop into something very different than "heyyy let's kill random ground units with our Revenant!". You can squirm and you can squeal about moving 36" and trying to avoid stuff every turn but your problem is you can't kill anything except the stuff that was left on the ground to die and that in itself is a starting point that makes you an underdog of massive proportions. If you ever leave your other units in LOS of your Revenant, your own Revenant will obliterate your own units. The common alternative to the list type above is the one that uses the suicidal 420 point Pylon that deep strikes inside any possible void shields and kills you or atleast hurts you, while everything else flies. Like this, with 5 points to spare:

-Anrakyr the Traveller
-4 Stormteks
-5 Warriors, Night Scythe
-5 Warriors, Night Scythe
-5 Warriors, Night Scythe
-5 Warriors, Night Scythe
-5 Warriors, Night Scythe
-5 Warriors, Night Scythe
-Gauss Pylon
-Aegis Defence Line, Comms Relay

Those are some decent lists, but they are not what I would run. As a TAC army, it really isn't balanced out for Escalation. This type of list is relying on LOS-blocking terrain. The problem is if it encounters a table with little to hardly any BLOS terrain. That is a recipe for disaster, especially against a Revdar build.

But play on a heavy terrain board and it has a decent chance to take out the Revenant in any deployment other than Hammer&Anvil.

As a TAC army, it really isn't balanced out for Escalation.

Considering your list has a Revenant it's by the very definition not a TAC army. You get build losses against many lists, some of which have been mentioned in this thread.

But play on a heavy terrain board and it has a decent chance to take out the Revenant

Yeah, and by decent you mean just about every game with the occasional fluke thrown in between.

What I'm curious about is why you'd run the Revenant to begin with since your balanced builds are far from the strongest lists you could play. A Reaver will table both of your lists, and the only lists you hard counter are those that haven't been designed for escalation. I understood you want to play rock, paper, scissors, but when you call the Necron flyer army not a TAC army in escalation I think I might've been mistaken.

 Therion wrote:

As a TAC army, it really isn't balanced out for Escalation.

Considering your list has a Revenant it's by the very definition not a TAC army. You get build losses against many lists, some of which have been mentioned in this thread.

But play on a heavy terrain board and it has a decent chance to take out the Revenant

Yeah, and by decent you mean just about every game with the occasional fluke thrown in between.

What I'm curious about is why you'd run the Revenant to begin with since your balanced builds are far from the strongest lists you could play. A Reaver will table both of your lists, and the only lists you hard counter are those that haven't been designed for escalation. I understood you want to play rock, paper, scissors, but when you call the Necron flyer army not a TAC army in escalation I think I might've been mistaken.

With Escalation and Stronghold out, the meta has changed. The majority of "normal" TAC lists of old just cannot handle Escalation armies anymore, at least not the ones with D-weapons. It really has become a game of titans vs anti-titans if you allow Escalation in your games.

Yes, a titan in your army is very similar to a deathstar build, with the titan itself being the deathstar. However, there are balanced deathstar builds and their are unbalanced ones as well. It all depend on the supporting units. In the case of Reece's Revdar army here, it isn't a balanced titan build. It's still strong because it has the Revenant and 9 void shields to protect him, but it's also got some BIG exploitable weaknesses, namely to flying MC builds.

A Reaver is NOT a good Escalation build, at least not at 2K or less. It cannot include enough supporting units and has almost no ability whatsoever to handle flyer builds. It will dominate the majority of the armies out there, but is practically an auto-lose against FMC builds.

The problem with the necron list is that, while it may be able to handle a Revenant build, it also stands a good chance of losing the game before it even begins. You are gambling on the chance that all tables will have enough adequate terrain to hide all of your ground units. That is a gamble that I am not comfortable taking for a TAC army. I would prefer to have more units on the ground instead.

I would not dismiss the Necron list solely on the issue of terrain. There are plenty of tournaments that have lots of it.

The necron flyer list isn't a bad one at all. It's actually a very good list.

However, there's a reason why the Necron Airforce doesn't dominate in tournaments.

Why is that? It used to.

Because it had problems against armies with a large, resilient ground presence, such as the ones that included IG blob squads, AV13-spam, massed 2+ save models, zombies and finally, Tau with lots of Interceptor and Skyfire units on 2+ models. That, combined with missions going with Table Quarters claimed by scoring units as well.

Plus, it didn't help that flyer-spam armies were getting a bad rep and were not very fun to play against.

I think Necrons are stronger than eldar in general for tables with a good amount of terrain - not taking into consideration specific mission rules. Necrons are very resilient and can hit hard. Tau in general has better counters as you've noted - I think it just comes down to the generals.

I think that they are both top-notch. It really depends on terrain and who is going 2nd in a matchup between eldar and necrons. Usually, the one going 2nd has a slight advantage, especially in objectives-based games.

However, I think the best necron build isn't a pure Airforce. Rather, it's got to have both a strong air presence as well as a strong ground presence. That is why I think Necron Wraithwing builds are probably the best necron TAC army build because of its balance between both strong ground and air forces.

Tau is very, very strong also. However, Tau need allies to solve their mobility problem. That's why either Taudar or Tau/Tau are probably their best builds.

Of course, all these tournament builds are not taking into account Escalation & Stronghold.

If you want 'TAC' escalation lists I think the Necrons have fewer hard counters than the Eldar do. You discard the Reaver right away by calling it a one sided list -- Yes, it's a one sided list that doesn't deal with flyers, but you and your Revenant lose to it and you can bet your ass that someone will always run a Reaver at an escalation tournament or GT because all you need is the Titan, some void generators and a couple dozen unruly acolytes in reserve. However, if you truly want a balanced 'TAC' army that deploys on the field, kills titans, deathstars, flyers and superheavy flyers, you should be looking at something like this. Double foc, double superheavies. It has better than average odds of going first, so most commonly the Warhound tanks for one turn with 8 void shields, and on turn 2 together with the Thunderhawk they have already burnt the house down.

(or you could just run Necrons with double Pylons and the rest in flyers)

2K GREY KNIGHTS

Coteaz
Inquisitor, 1 Servo Skull

3 Warrior Acolytes, 3 Meltaguns
3 Warrior Acolytes
3 Warrior Acolytes
3 Warrior Acolytes
3 Warrior Acolytes
3 Warrior Acolytes

GK Thunderhawk, Turbo-Laser, 4 TL Psycannons, 6 Hellstrikes, 2 Lascannons

Warhound Titan, 2 Turbo-Lasers

Void Relay Network:
-Promethium Relay Pipes
-Void Shield Generator, 2 Extra Void Shields
-Void Shield Generator, 2 Extra Void Shields

Anyone that wants to come out and give it a shot is welcome to try!