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 luke1705 wrote:


Markerlights can modify snapshots. D ignores the tanking character and if you're close enough to assault on the next turn, you're close enough to be flanked such that I can bypass your tanking character. The markerlights have greater range than the tomb blades (who themselves are fragile) and I also put a iridium suit commander in a squad of markerlights with drone controller. I'm ok with the tomb blades plinking off his 2+ save.

By no means is it an auto-win, but every army has weaknesses.

I have more than one tanking character. Zandrekh, Obyron, and IC with Nightmare Shroud (in my case the D Lord) all have 2+ armor. If you move your Riptides or Stormsurge to get an angle around them then you are not double shooting. That's dropping 50% of your shooting.

So you are shooting at BS 2? Cool, you now have Ork accuracy. You planning on shooting those Destroyer missiles at BS 2? Missing 66% of your shots seems pretty bad to me.

My Wraithstar also tends to hug cover. So it looks like your markerlights are going to get stretched real thin just trying to return to a shoddy BS 3 across the board.

You are the first person I have heard call a T5, 3+, 4+++ model with jink fragile.

Also the Tomb blades can easily flank the markerlights and bypass the commander. The commander cannot look out sir for the drones. Jet bike movement + ignores cover is silly good.

It has always been an auto-win matchup for me when I go up against Tau. I have yet to lose.

Tau generally have difficulty with assaults, but tell me that a couple lucky stomps wouldn't ruin that deathstar's day and I think you're wrong.

You're right that the star itself is difficult to cut through, but the old adage of "kill everything but the deathstar" is always a good rule to follow.

well I mean the big thing about that is that any kind of deathstar is called that for a reason and is generally going t odo some damage by its very nature. it also means they have that much less, numerically, facing you. So you can win the exhcange game on units.

The Tau Empire is a good army to take on the Necron scourge, especially if they are doing the Decurion thing. sooo many little scoring units that are fast and mobile. Its a good matchup.

col_impact wrote:

 luke1705 wrote:


Markerlights can modify snapshots. D ignores the tanking character and if you're close enough to assault on the next turn, you're close enough to be flanked such that I can bypass your tanking character. The markerlights have greater range than the tomb blades (who themselves are fragile) and I also put a iridium suit commander in a squad of markerlights with drone controller. I'm ok with the tomb blades plinking off his 2+ save.

By no means is it an auto-win, but every army has weaknesses.

I have more than one tanking character. Zandrekh, Obyron, and IC with Nightmare Shroud (in my case the D Lord) all have 2+ armor. If you move your Riptides or Stormsurge to get an angle around them then you are not double shooting. That's dropping 50% of your shooting.

So you are shooting at BS 2? Cool, you now have Ork accuracy. You planning on shooting those Destroyer missiles at BS 2? Missing 66% of your shots seems pretty bad to me.

My Wraithstar also tends to hug cover. So it looks like your markerlights are going to get stretched real thin just trying to return to a shoddy BS 3 across the board.

You are the first person I have heard call a T5, 3+, 4+++ model with jink fragile.

Also the Tomb blades can easily flank the markerlights and bypass the commander. The commander cannot look out sir for the drones. Jet bike movement + ignores cover is silly good.

It has always been an auto-win matchup for me when I go up against Tau. I have yet to lose.

Thanks for the tip on the solar staff, when you go against a tau player do you normally use it right away on Turn 1? How have you seen a tau player best play around this? if I had the first turn and you activated this I would just focus on other units while trying to make sure I had an escape route / bubble wrapping. Any tips are greatly appreciated!

I play against Tau pretty regularly, and here is what I have found:

Network drone marker lights are excellent units. My opponent tends to bring a ton of drones and spreads them out in a thin line in front of his fire team (within 6") and broadside. When my wraiths get in range I have to charge the drones, which means I eat a full payload of markerlight overwatch fireteam at close range. Also I have never killed his riptide, I typically just tarpit with scarabs (they are swarm, so blasts and flamers).

The other thing I usually see is a deep strike melta crisis suit that drops down and 1 shots my stalker from behind.

I generally win just because I have more mobility and I rack up more objective points, huge Tau weakness there. I found the key to beating Tau is just to ignore most of their units completely and hope the game ends before they kill everything you have.

When my wraiths get in range I have to charge the drones,

Why? Wraiths have wraithflight and nothing in the rules says you have to charge the nearest enemy. As long as you can see the suits and have range its good.

 Ratius wrote:

When my wraiths get in range I have to charge the drones,

Why? Wraiths have wraithflight and nothing in the rules says you have to charge the nearest enemy. As long as you can see the suits and have range its good.

Sounds like the suits are decently wrapped and there is no place for the wraiths to be placed.

y3r0k wrote:


Thanks for the tip on the solar staff, when you go against a tau player do you normally use it right away on Turn 1? How have you seen a tau player best play around this? if I had the first turn and you activated this I would just focus on other units while trying to make sure I had an escape route / bubble wrapping. Any tips are greatly appreciated!

It's really situation dependent. In the best of circumstances you will have enough BLOS terrain to completely hide from the Tau turn one volley. In the worst of circumstances you will have no BLOS terrain.

If you are playing to any semblance of a tournament standard (ITC, Nova) then there will be plenty of BLOS terrain (6 pieces). I play precisely to tourney standards so that the Tau player and myself have a reasonable expectation of what the battlefield will be like.

Tomb Blades are easily placed in remote parts of the battlefield wherever they can get the turn 1 BLOS. Similarly scarabs are low enough to find BLOS in just about any ruin. Destroyers are a jump unit so they want to find a BLOS piece of terrain that they can go JSJ all game with.

You will often put the 2 units of warriors and the 1 unit of immortals in Reserves rather than have them be exposed to shooting. In fact, you should put anything in Reserves that would otherwise be nakedly exposed to the Tau shooting. Zandrekh can switch is warlord trait to Strategic Genius to manipulate when Reserves arrive and you want them coming on when the Riptides, the Stormsurges, and/or the markerlights are tied up.

Wraiths and the Spyder are a little more challenging to hide. I almost always find that I can completely hide the Spyder. Wraiths will often be lined up on the advanced edge of my deployment zone to minimize the distance to the Tau units.

Also you want to of course keep a close eye on the range, maneuverability, and threat potential of the Tau markerlight sourcess. Setting up your units to avoid the markerlights, deny any Scout moves, be hidden from the markerlights, and/or quickly dispatch them will be critical to your overall success.


So . . .

Ideally on turn one the only thing in your army that is exposed/targetable will be your Wraithstar unit. That Wraithstar unit should be well protected by 2-3 ICs with re-rollable 2+ armour saves. You have 2 things that you can 'pop' to provide uber protection for your Wraithstar, a Res Orb and a Solar Staff. If the Wraiths don't have RP yet then you save that for turn 2 and pop the Solar Staff on turn one. If the Tau player is going to double fire his Riptides and/or Stormsurges you might wait to pop both on turn 2. The decision of which to do depends on the actual situation, a quick mathhammer of the variables, the expected counter-moves of your opponent, and your expected follow-up moves.

For example, if Tau has turn one and its Hammer of Anvil I can often set my Wraithstar as far away as possible from the markerlight shooting and Tau shooting in general (ie by lining up on my table edge) to force the Tau player to shoot at me with no markerlights and only long range stuff on their turn one and use my turn one to Veil into the Tau backfield and pop solar staff on turn two. EWO doesn't get triggered by Veil.

A well-made Wraithstar has a lot of "tricks". Zandrekh, Solar Staff, Veil deep strike out of combat, Res Orb, Nightmare Shroud morale attack are all tricks.

You look for juicy targets for the Blinding effect of your Solar Staff's shooting attack (Tau have low Initiative and are very succeptible to Blind) and your Nightmare Shroud's forced morale check (Riptides are not fearless).

Zandrekh will often be giving you free Special Rules in the Tau match-up (Hit & Run, Tank Hunter, Stealth).

Nightmare Shroud can be comboed with Zandrekh selecting Intimidating Presence. Suddenly that Commander attached to those ld 7 Markerlight Drones doesn't look so hot when you have a 42% chance of insta-breaking their morale,running them off the board, scoring First blood and Warlord, and removing all the markerlights. Even if you don't insta-break them, you still have the back-up 50% chance of blinding them (based on the Commander's Initiative 3) which amounts to a huge reduction in markerlights.

I think your tau friend may have been playing his units wrong. Unless he is running all infantry. Every suit except the storm surge has a black sun filter making them immune to blind. The drones can still be blinded I believe but if they are with a drone controller commander they still get bs5.

We use the standard NOVA layout that's in their primer when practicing of two los blocking pieces in the middle of the board four ruins, one in each table quarter, and two Forrest/ 5+ cover area terrain towards board edge halfway in on the long side.

It seems like long range AP 2 weapons are key here.

y3r0k wrote:
I think your tau friend may have been playing his units wrong. Unless he is running all infantry. Every suit except the storm surge has a black sun filter making them immune to blind. The drones can still be blinded I believe but if they are with a drone controller commander they still get bs5.

Thanks for the clarification. The Drone Controller rule circumvents the Blind rule affecting Markerlight drones. I am used to dealing with Pathfinders as markerlight sources and Blind affects them on a model by model basis. But, a Stormsurge unit is an incredibly juicy target for Solar Staff to Blind as well as Tau infantry.

It is one of those things where whenever I see a landspeeder storm I make sure to kill them dead. If only they put a hatch on that suit then those pilots wouldn't have to worry about it!

Okay, so have we settled it, then?
We can boil it down to-

WHAT TO DO IF PLAYING AGAINST A
NECRON DECURION

Do:

Spoiler:

- Focus on capturing objectives. (Decurions have zero ObSec. Most games won against Decuri'Crons are done so by out scoring them this way).
- Tie up their shooters in combat. (Your goal is not necessarily to kill them, so much as prevent them from being able to shoot. Necrons are usually most effective when shooting, so if you neuter them that way there's not much they can do. Note: the majority of their shooters are garbage in CC so you don't even really have to worry about your own stuff getting wiped out. Just sic something fast, disposable, and mildly survivable on them and you should be able to effectively remove that unit from the game. Bonus if your own unit is ObSec).
- Load up on AP3. (All their best stuff is 3+. Anything that's good against Marines is usually good against them).
- Take out the Spyder ASAP. (Tomb Blades being next on the target priority list. Then Stalkers. Then Destroyers and Praetorians. Anything else isn't as big a worry).
- Avoid the Deathstar. (It'll probably be combat based and very hard to kill. Luckily it'll probably also be slow. Less so if it has Wraiths. However, if it has Pylons, rush towards it and engage immediately to prevent it from firing a second time... I'm sorry, but I don't think you'll be able to stop that one's first/alpha strike).
- Beware their choppy guys. (Some of them are deceptively lethal, ie. Flayed Ones and Scarabs. Avoid getting caught by anything CC related for as long as you can).

Do not:

Spoiler:

- Aim to table them. (They're tough as nails, it's just going to end in frustration).
- Count on them being slow. (Some of them are. Many of them are not. Don't be surprised if you suddenly have a bunch of guys in your face turn two... or some times even turn one!).
- Expect to steamroll them in combat. (As mentioned above, a lot of their choppy things are actually quite effective in assault, and even their troops are hard to put enough wounds on to reliably lower their leadership to sweep).
- Fall for Wraith bait. (They're not as scary as you think, their primary role is tarpit. They're incredibly hard to kill, especially in a Harvest, so shooting at them may result in a lot of wasted shots. Best bet is to hope to engage them with your own speedy tarpit before they have a chance to catch your best unit and hold it there for the remainder of the game).
- Worry about how to kill Warriors. (Focus on killing the better stuff, they're going to be the ones really putting the hurt on you, and obviously anything that can kill T5 3+ can kill T4 4+ as well).
- Be too concerned with anti-AV. (Necron vehicles aren't that great anymore so many competitive players don't even bother bringing them. Why bother when the real star of the show is your infantry? A couple Meltas in your list should be fine, just in case).
- Stress about Gauss. (Yes, it has the potential to wound/glance anything in the game. The thing is, that only happens on a to-wound/to-pen roll of 6. So they have to be able to hit what they're aiming at, roll a 6 to wound/pen, then hope the target fails its save. Statistically not wonderful odds at doing a lot of damage. Most Necrons players are better off taking things that can do the job more effectively. Note: obviously those measly odds can be helped if you increase their number, so be aware that Warrior spam is a somewhat valid tactic. The good thing is, for it to work well they need to bring a LOT of Warriors, meaning they won't have points left for much of the scarier stuff).

...
Did I miss anything?

Now try planning for them without tailoring.

Martel732 wrote:
Now try planning for them without tailoring.

My original question revolved around sharing my tournament list, (which wouldnt change / tailor to fighting necrons) and ask how to best use it / what I need to be aware of!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 skoffs wrote:
Okay, so have we settled it, then?
We can boil it down to-

WHAT TO DO IF PLAYING AGAINST A
NECRON DECURION

Do:

Spoiler:

- Focus on capturing objectives. (Decurions have zero ObSec. Most games won against Decuri'Crons are done so by out scoring them this way).
- Tie up their shooters in combat. (Your goal is not necessarily to kill them, so much as prevent them from being able to shoot. Necrons are usually most effective when shooting, so if you neuter them that way there's not much they can do. Note: the majority of their shooters are garbage in CC so you don't even really have to worry about your own stuff getting wiped out. Just sic something fast, disposable, and mildly survivable on them and you should be able to effectively remove that unit from the game. Bonus if your own unit is ObSec).
- Load up on AP3. (All their best stuff is 3+. Anything that's good against Marines is usually good against them).
- Take out the Spyder ASAP. (Tomb Blades being next on the target priority list. Then Stalkers. Then Destroyers and Praetorians. Anything else isn't as big a worry).
- Avoid the Deathstar. (It'll probably be combat based and very hard to kill. Luckily it'll probably also be slow. Less so if it has Wraiths. However, if it has Pylons, rush towards it and engage immediately to prevent it from firing a second time... I'm sorry, but I don't think you'll be able to stop that one's first/alpha strike).
- Beware their choppy guys. (Some of them are deceptively lethal, ie. Flayed Ones and Scarabs. Avoid getting caught by anything CC related for as long as you can).

Do not:

Spoiler:

- Aim to table them. (They're tough as nails, it's just going to end in frustration).
- Count on them being slow. (Some of them are. Many of them are not. Don't be surprised if you suddenly have a bunch of guys in your face turn two... or some times even turn one!).
- Expect to steamroll them in combat. (As mentioned above, a lot of their choppy things are actually quite effective in assault, and even their troops are hard to put enough wounds on to reliably lower their leadership to sweep).
- Fall for Wraith bait. (They're not as scary as you think, their primary role is tarpit. They're incredibly hard to kill, especially in a Harvest, so shooting at them may result in a lot of wasted shots. Best bet is to hope to engage them with your own speedy tarpit before they have a chance to catch your best unit and hold it there for the remainder of the game).
- Worry about how to kill Warriors. (Focus on killing the better stuff, they're going to be the ones really putting the hurt on you, and obviously anything that can kill T5 3+ can kill T4 4+ as well).
- Be too concerned with anti-AV. (Necron vehicles aren't that great anymore so many competitive players don't even bother bringing them. Why bother when the real star of the show is your infantry? A couple Meltas in your list should be fine, just in case).
- Stress about Gauss. (Yes, it has the potential to wound/glance anything in the game. The thing is, that only happens on a to-wound/to-pen roll of 6. So they have to be able to hit what they're aiming at, roll a 6 to wound/pen, then hope the target fails its save. Statistically not wonderful odds at doing a lot of damage. Most Necrons players are better off taking things that can do the job more effectively. Note: obviously those measly odds can be helped if you increase their number, so be aware that Warrior spam is a somewhat valid tactic. The good thing is, for it to work well they need to bring a LOT of Warriors, meaning they won't have points left for much of the scarier stuff).

...
Did I miss anything?

What is the deal with the Pylons?

Sentry Pylons (from Forge World) are artillery units that have a weapon option that lets them fire a 24" 3d6" long "beam" like the old Doom Scythes had, with everything under the line getting 2x S10 AP1 hits per model the line draws over (so if the line touches 4 guys, the unit gets 8 S10 AP1 hits. (It gets dicey when multiple units are touched, but it's usually played as "Beam fires once, touches 5 guys in two separate units. 3 guys touched from unit A, that unit get 6 hits. 2 guys touched from unit B, that unit gets 4 hits").
Anyway, there is a Deathstar that uses three of these, combined with HQ (usually Obyron + someone with a Veil + someone to grant Relentless, possibly with a Destroyer Lord to give Preferred Enemy) to teleport the unit across the table and fire turn one for an absolutely devastating alpha strike.
Aside from spreading out so as to limit the Sentry-star's controller's potential teleport landing spots, there's not much that can be done to prevent the first volley. Best course of action is to tie them up... but even then, if they've got two Veil-able HQs in the unit they can just teleport away and do it again.
Very nasty, would probably only see it in super competitive environments that would allow it.

The Pylonstar is one of the hardest lists I've used and I have a blast every time I use it.