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The name of the game has always been target priority and eliminating whole units, as far back as when i got into it during 3rd edition because the most dangerous models in a unit are its special weapons and its sergeant. No one is being taken off guard or forced to jump through extra hoops to deny reanimation protocols, it's their plan A. We're being charged a premium in points for an ability that gets denied by the opponent simply pointing at the same unit twice instead of 2 units once.

 Grimgold wrote:

Necron offense is weak in comparison to the armies we fight, not because our weapons suck (some do but I’ll get to that) but because we have very limited access to heavy weapons, and no access to special weapons. We also pay a premium for our heavier weapons, which often cost half again as much as imperial equivalents.
...

Necrons have fixed weapon loadouts for the majority of our units, and with one exception they are all mono weapon units. So to change the target profile you are going after, you have to change your entire army composition. You can’t just load out on heavy bolters or lascannons, you literally have to take different units. This makes a necron TAC list hard to pull off, because each type of unit has it’s own support, for example destroyers need a destroyer lord, but destroyer lords are useless for for our troop choices. I’ll get more into my concerns about necron buffs in a later post though.

I'm 110% with 90 plus percent of what you're saying. This makes me pause though, because necrons should, by design, be mostly mono-build at just about everything but the HQ level. Specialist weapons is as (or more) thematically inappropriate to Necrons as a boost to overall army speed.

Intuitively, this requires that mono build be better at everything than the general baseline without pushing over into the range of specialization. However, what this actually does is put the entire army into a wasteland where everything is capable at doing a task its put to but the entire army becomes incapable of dealing with an army of specialists. And, of course, all of this is done with slow movement and short range. One of the sets of handcuffs needs to come off.
The most thematically appropriate boost to necrons is always surviveability but, in a game with a max number of turns, you can't survive someone to death. Which brings us back to those mono/minimal-builds. Each needs to push past the power of "generalist weapons" and into "low-end specialist weapons" while staying out of the premium costs that many of our "multitools" (monolith) have gotten hit with and staying in manageable costs.

 Klowny wrote:
What confuses me is that when you watch FLG talk about playtesting and all that they were saying that they were super scared necrons were going to be super OP. I wonder if they were seeing stuff we didnt, or that they had a different meta.

They're biased liars. Have you never met or observed them?

 Actinium wrote:
The name of the game has always been target priority and eliminating whole units, as far back as when i got into it during 3rd edition because the most dangerous models in a unit are its special weapons and its sergeant. No one is being taken off guard or forced to jump through extra hoops to deny reanimation protocols, it's their plan A. We're being charged a premium in points for an ability that gets denied by the opponent simply pointing at the same unit twice instead of 2 units once.

I'm also curious as to whether RP is actually significant for most units.

From what I've seen, most units just don't get much benefit out of it. It's usually only a 1/3 chance and only Warriors exceed 10 models - so most other squads, when maxed out, need to lose all but one guy in order to get back a measly 3 models (and the odds of being left with 1 guy in the first place are pretty damn low). In essence, aside from Warriors with a ton of support, you rarely ever get back enough models for it to have a meaningful impact on the game.

I think RP might be more useful for other units if there was a way of coming back from getting wiped. Things like that existed in the 3rd ed codex; if you had a spyder and another squad of the same type, you can make WWB rolls for a unit even if they are all dead, iirc.
They could do something similar, where if a squad is wiped, but if there's another squad of the same type nearby, you can still attempt RP rolls. If no models come back then they stay dead.

 DarknessEternal wrote:

 Klowny wrote:
What confuses me is that when you watch FLG talk about playtesting and all that they were saying that they were super scared necrons were going to be super OP. I wonder if they were seeing stuff we didnt, or that they had a different meta.

They're biased liars. Have you never met or observed them?

I don't know if that's fair, Reece and crew have a pretty obvious love for the hobby, and FLG has done great work in popularizing it. I disagree with Reece on a lot of things (like keeping the faction scores from 7th ed instead of doing a soft reset), but he has a good head for game balance. So I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

There are also a few things to keep in mind, FLG was probably playing with a bunch of finished or mostly finished codexes, so the balance as we see it now is not how they played the game during the testing phase. They might have switched over to the current meta before launch, but by then it was too late to do anything about it. Also Reece was not on board with at least some of the changes they made, like determining who goes first by who has the fewest drops as an example. So it's a bit unfair to beat up on Reece and the other TOs that were involved in testing, when they didn't have final sign off on anything, and obviously had some of their suggestions rejected out of hand.

There is also a sample size problem, I'd be impressed if there was 1,000 test games played during the final six months of prep. The community probably blew past that number within days of launch, so of course the community spotted things the testers didn't. A thousand isn't that many games per faction either, 100 or so, and you can bet certain factions got more test than others. Those games were also spread out through multiple TOs and their staff, so it's unlikely that any one player got the kind of experience with a faction that regular players have gotten since release. The 1,000 theoretical games played to test were probably done in an iterative design process, so the first games were probably very different than the last ones, which also makes getting balance right as well. I'm willing to give GW and their testers some slack, what they are trying to do is hard, and it was made much harder by the small size of their test group.

The final point is that even with the problems with 8th ed, it's still more balanced than 7th ed was at any point. Don't get me wrong I'm annoyed that Necrons got hosed, and that there seem to be lots of obvious issues that slipped through. However the difference between necrons and the current top armies is a fraction of the gulf between Gladius lists and Orks in 7th ed.

 vipoid wrote:

I'm also curious as to whether RP is actually significant for most units.

From what I've seen, most units just don't get much benefit out of it. It's usually only a 1/3 chance and only Warriors exceed 10 models - so most other squads, when maxed out, need to lose all but one guy in order to get back a measly 3 models (and the odds of being left with 1 guy in the first place are pretty damn low). In essence, aside from Warriors with a ton of support, you rarely ever get back enough models for it to have a meaningful impact on the game.

I've found that it's significant for Warriors, Lychguard, Praetorians, and Tomb Blades. The other three are limited to 9 or 10 models, but they have two wounds each, so your opponent still has to chew through 18 or 20 wounds to wipe the squad. You get fewer RP rolls, but each one you make brings back two wounds instead of one. Most armies in pick-up games are going to struggle to take out a whole squad in a turn if you can give them an invulnerable save.

 vipoid wrote:

 Actinium wrote:
The name of the game has always been target priority and eliminating whole units, as far back as when i got into it during 3rd edition because the most dangerous models in a unit are its special weapons and its sergeant. No one is being taken off guard or forced to jump through extra hoops to deny reanimation protocols, it's their plan A. We're being charged a premium in points for an ability that gets denied by the opponent simply pointing at the same unit twice instead of 2 units once.

I'm also curious as to whether RP is actually significant for most units.

From what I've seen, most units just don't get much benefit out of it. It's usually only a 1/3 chance and only Warriors exceed 10 models - so most other squads, when maxed out, need to lose all but one guy in order to get back a measly 3 models (and the odds of being left with 1 guy in the first place are pretty damn low). In essence, aside from Warriors with a ton of support, you rarely ever get back enough models for it to have a meaningful impact on the game.

With units like destroyers getting T5 and 3 wounds, getting everyone but that last guy blown off the board happens more than you might think.

Necrons also have a huge advantage over units like an Marine Apothicary because when a model comes back, it comes back at full wounds. So if you have a unit of 5 destroyers, you lose 4 and the last guy has 1 wound left, making 3/4 RP means that unit just got +9 wounds.

The unit that probably benefits the least from RP is Immortals. 10/unit max @ 1W per model, and all they get over warriors for +6 ppm is +1 sv and +1S/-1AP on their gun unless they replace them with Tesla. They're great from a "punch you in the face" context, but they don't take incoming fire very well. IMO, they were way better when they had T5 like destroyers.

Part of the issue is...your units pay for the "survivability" of your units via stats and/or rules.

Though you have nothing to throw aside morale issues, you also aren't running masses of leadership 7 or lower units.

Both of these are things other factions do have to accommodate to one effect or the other.

Taking what I've seen in this thread one thing I would see is why not take Arks, remove the transport completely but allow them to RP wiped units (taking ideas stated from Vi and Spy) if within a certain radius.

Portals I believe need to allow (as the TC stated) units to be deployed like other armies if all portals are closed off as well as allowing them to re-embark and then disembark at any other portal.

I.e. come out of a Nightscythe, once done there hop in and pop out a Monolith on the other side of the board with the same unit. Different enough without it being the same as a normal transport.

I do hope Crypteks get something unique to them and not jus "Psykers but not psykers"...always felt they (and Dark Eldar) considering their factions would cater more towards heavy negative psyker toys (along with Nids not being able to suffer perils).

I know Crons have expanded a lot over the years but they really hurt for unit variety compared to say Eldar or Space Marines. Outside of adding new units I feel your destroyers should become your go to anti-air platforms (though able to be kitted for vehicles or infantry for flavor).

Hopefully your book fixes or addresses some of these. You've been knocked down quite a few pegs from last edition but now that their are not the Decurion's as a crutch its even more obvious crons hurt for variety as you have a lot of redundancy in your faction.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Necrons don't need transports, they need to teleport. They are the masters of time and space. Riding around in a metal bawks is for primitives.
Remember the veil of darkness? That was a good item.
But yeah, our mobility options are terrible now. Hopefully we'll get our traditional stuff back in the codex.

This is so true. I don't have my Necron army any more, but I played them in 4th and they were the fastest army in the game with all their teleporting. It would be great to see that again.

Necrons seem to be better at low point level armies. Maybe 1000 points or less. Once you hit 2000 points, where other armies can bring in super heavies, multiple heavy support and such, then Necrons disadvantage as per what OP posted will start to show up more and more.

At 1000 points, at most you are beaming in one or two units.

cavebear56 wrote:
Part of the issue is...your units pay for the "survivability" of your units via stats and/or rules.

Though you have nothing to throw aside morale issues, you also aren't running masses of leadership 7 or lower units.

Both of these are things other factions do have to accommodate to one effect or the other.

Taking what I've seen in this thread one thing I would see is why not take Arks, remove the transport completely but allow them to RP wiped units (taking ideas stated from Vi and Spy) if within a certain radius.

Portals I believe need to allow (as the TC stated) units to be deployed like other armies if all portals are closed off as well as allowing them to re-embark and then disembark at any other portal.

I.e. come out of a Nightscythe, once done there hop in and pop out a Monolith on the other side of the board with the same unit. Different enough without it being the same as a normal transport.

I do hope Crypteks get something unique to them and not jus "Psykers but not psykers"...always felt they (and Dark Eldar) considering their factions would cater more towards heavy negative psyker toys (along with Nids not being able to suffer perils).

I know Crons have expanded a lot over the years but they really hurt for unit variety compared to say Eldar or Space Marines. Outside of adding new units I feel your destroyers should become your go to anti-air platforms (though able to be kitted for vehicles or infantry for flavor).

Hopefully your book fixes or addresses some of these. You've been knocked down quite a few pegs from last edition but now that their are not the Decurion's as a crutch its even more obvious crons hurt for variety as you have a lot of redundancy in your faction.

Thanks for the feedback, as for paying for toughness I agree that's the goal, but currently I don't think we are getting our money's worth out of it. Necron strategy has always revolved around turtling and grinding our opponent down through attrition while we limited our own attrition via RP. However with repair protocols being able to be bypassed we are at a disadvantage in high levels of play. Before RP we are no tougher than space marines for most of our units, and even our tougher units are in the realm of space marine bikes. So if someone knows how to fight us, they will find us no more difficult to kill than space marines.

My concern is that the current RP rule is beyond salvage, you could make it a 2+ and it would change very little against good opponents. So we can't buff it out, and instead have to supplement or replace the rule. I'm hesitant to go back to the days of RP being a FnP style save, one because deathguard are already camping on that particular niche, and two because it was dreadfully boring. We could go back to fifth ed style RP where you just had to be close to another unit, but only get one chance to come back, however that had it's own challenges. If anyone has a good idea I'm all ears.

Additionally, our infantry guns have lost their oomph. 20 warriors dont scare much anymore, sure the -1 rend is okay but I cant put my finger on it, our lethality across the board just isnt what is was in 7th. I know comparing the two editions is frivolous, and we were very strong in 7th. But now, we dont have the durability we once had *and that was meant to be our whole army identity* and we dont pack the offensive firepower we used to have, meaning were a slow, weak, and fragile army.

My cron's are undefeated atm but in no part due to my armies strength, I just have been lucky to avoid tablings/outscored/played the game better than my opponents.

My most cherished unit in 7th was Tomb Blades, and while they still are good this edition, even they have lost some of their damage, while also costing around 500 points for a squad of 9.

We got the better end of the stick in the FW index, but our main index is very far down the ladder.

Currently we are paying a heavy premium for literally nothing. We have a damage output akin to a horde army, yet we have the body count of an elite army. Either they want us to be a more silver tide army (very boring IMO) and have a substantial points decrease across the board, or they keep the identity they've always had of an elite army and give us our damage back. Giving us a -1 increase on our rend to compensate for us losing gauss isn't enough. If str, rend and damage were all increased I can see it being more viable, but again I dont know how far over the edge that would push us.

Added final sections to the OP, I hope the right people see this and we can get some QoL changes, but I'm almost as happy if someone walks away from this thread with a better understanding of where the necrons are at. Good night Dakkadakka.

So what would Gauss be? On a wound of 6, you instead deal 1 mortal wound?

Let's see...
vs MEQ
Current 10 * 2/3 * 1/2 * 1/2 = 1.66
Gauss (10 * 2/3 * 1/3 * 1/3) + (10 * 2/3 * 1/6) = 1.85
Modest increase... What about something with more Horde?

vs GEQ
Current 10 * 2/3 * 2/3 * 5/6 = 3.70
Gauss (10 * 2/3 * 1/2 * 2/3) + (10 * 2/3 * 1/6) = 3.33
Woah, it's weaker?

vs Boy
Current 10 * 2/3 * 1/2 = 3.33
Gauss (10 * 2/3 * 1/3 * 5/6) + (10 * 2/3 * 1/6) = 2.96

vs Tau
Current 10 * 2/3 * 2/3 * 2/3 = 2.96
Gauss (10 * 2/3 * 1/2 * 1/2) + (10 * 2/3 * 1/6) = 2.77

Let's try a standard T7 3+ Tank
Current 10 * 2/3 * 1/3 * 1/2 = 1.11
Gauss (10 * 2/3 * 1/6 * 1/3) + (10 * 2/3 * 1/6) = 1.48

LETS GO CRAZY
vs LR
Current 10 * 2/3 * 1/6 * 1/2 = 0.55
Gauss 10 * 2/3 * 1/6 = 1.11

So, the general idea would be that vs Low Toughness and/or Poor Armor the Current is better
vs Better Armor, the Gauss rule would be better.

It would make Necron worse against Conscripts but better vs Tanks.

Edit - It would also basically be a strictly better version of Eldar Shuriken rule

What about resurrection orbs? Could make them bring any RP eligible unit back to full strength, wiped or not. And have it be slightly more expensive and available to lords and overlords. It adds a tactical element in that the bearer can chose when and for whom to use it, so it's not a boring, given dice roll.

It would be very thematic.

This is kind of a radical 4AM change to RP but I figured I'd put it down anyways:

When a unit of Necrons is completely destroyed, roll a d6. On a 4+ (3+ with cryptek) some of the Necrons reanimate. Roll a d3 for every 5 models in the unit and return that many Necron models to the unit.

I like this because it scales with unit size, making MSU Necrons not completely useless. The concept of infinitely reanimating Necron models might be too ridiculous though.

I've read the updated OP.
RP are fine. You don't pay any points for one of the strongest faction abilities. I'd like to trade Death to the False emperor with you. Or ATSKNF.
Of course, Focus fire is sth. everybody does. However, against other factions you don't necessarily HAVE to. Against Necrons you have to wipe out every single model of every unit (once they run out of CP you might be lucky with a bad morale roll, but at that time usually not enough is left to bring a Necron unit down to roll in the first place). If you don't, your shots are wasted. If you kill one hellblaster, it's dead. If you kill one Plasma-chosen, it's dead. If you kill one one lychguard - haha, I'm back again.

I agree on the weapons. Necrons lack heavy weapons. They kill infantry better than anyone else, but they struggle against multiwound models and vehicles. I'd guess they'll update destroyers with a new codex eventually, as these are very old (yet expensive) models. Lychguard are one of the best CC units in the game but they are rather slow to catch vehicles.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
You don't pay any points for one of the strongest faction abilities.

Citation needed.

torblind wrote:
What about resurrection orbs? Could make them bring any RP eligible unit back to full strength, wiped or not. And have it be slightly more expensive and available to lords and overlords. It adds a tactical element in that the bearer can chose when and for whom to use it, so it's not a boring, given dice roll.

It would be very thematic.

Spoiler:

Exactly as depicted in 'Dead man walking' where the Krieg army succeeded in holding back the necron forces only to have the necron warlord walk on to the battlefield with a mysterious green orb and suddenly every slain necron started rising, molten metal poring together to reshape fallen warriors.

Heh, sounds like they read the 3rd ed necron codex. That is exactly what happened there; a bunch of necrons got liquefied by some IG tanks, and just when they thought it was over a lord just walked up, activated the orb and all the necrons just came back.
The newer orbs are boring. The ones in 3rd and 5th ed were more interesting.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
I've read the updated OP.
RP are fine. You don't pay any points for one of the strongest faction abilities.

You do, actually. Its built into the model's cost, same as every other special rule.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

Heh, sounds like they read the 3rd ed necron codex. That is exactly what happened there; a bunch of necrons got liquefied by some IG tanks, and just when they thought it was over a lord just walked up, activated the orb and all the necrons just came back.
The newer orbs are boring. The ones in 3rd and 5th ed were more interesting.

Agreed. I'm really not a fan of them being one-use-only. It was always supposed to be a constant aura (not just a single pulse). What's more, I dislike how they've become progressively worse:
- First they affected all units in a 6" bubble.
- Then they only affected a singe unit.
- Then It could only be used once per game (but could be used retroactively after failing a lot of RP saves and protected you and the unit for the remainder of that turn).
- Now it's just a once per game item.


I think part of the problem is Crypteks - which have basically replaced Resurrection Orbs and forced them to change. Whereas, in fact, Resurrection Orbs should have stayed the same and Cyypteks should have a role that doesn't muscle in on preexisting artefacts.

Otherwise, if Resurrection Orbs have to be once-per-game items, could their effect perhaps be a little more impressive? Something more than getting a few extra dudes back?

Bringing back wiped squads seems fluffy and justifies the one use only caveat.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Bringing back wiped squads seems fluffy and justifies the one use only caveat.

That would be fun.

How would you cost it though?

Also, would you put any limits on either the number of models or the type of models it can resurrect?

I'm not a Necron player but there are a few I play against and have watched in other matches - this is what I've noticed.

Necrons are really solid until the Imperial Knights hit the table.
Necrons simply don't have what it takes to cut down an Imperial Knight, if the dice don't roll their way a Necron force can unload six turns of shooting on a Knight and not manage to even scratch it, nor can they afford to ignore it.
While a good Necron player can stand strong against the meanest Daemon, Tyrannid and SoB cheese as soon as the first IK hits the table the best Necron player is up the proverbial creek against all but the most incompetent opponent. I'm not sure how they fare against other Apoc level stuff but I know one Knight will stomp even the most specialised to fight a Knight Necron army into the ground.

I do have to say that I hope some of this is fixed with things that are pretty much automatically going to happen with a Codex (whatever year that happens, being not-imperium.)

Some things I've kicked around that would make some of this interesting and useful;

Stratagems


Of course, that last requires making the Tomb World a transport capacity rather than a reserves thing, which would fix a whole list of problems including the round 3 reserves cap and the super-slow disembarkment.

This edition gauss weapons took a big nerf due to mechanics changes.

A roll to wound of 6 use to always wound or always cause a hull point damage. The change to the wounding mechanic gave the auto wound of 6 to everyone else making that part of their special rule meaningless, and vehicles changed to wounds removing auto removing hull points as well as getting far tougher.
I would like to see the gauss rule become a wound roll of 6 becomes a mortal wound. It will increase all gauss weapons by a modest amount, is fluffy and addresses another weakness with necrons in their ability to apply mortal wounds.

I would also like to see an addition to rp that if the entire unit is destroyed rather than no rp they get an unmodifiable rp of 6. Before anyone scream they would never die, no but they would only get 1-3 back on average (1 if any for destroyers, 1-2 for 10 model units and upto 3 for warriors. Not a huge hassle to keep contained but addresses the issue of ignoring our rp. This could also be applied to characters (rp on a 6) to remove the illogical un fluffiness of having no rp while all lesser infantry do

For our mobility i would like to see the veil of darkness re added, its use to be able to remove the overlord and a unit within x inches at the start of the movement phase and place more than 9" from an enemy unit. Sill able to move ideally. But as an item that is multiuse, not a 1 use relic.

6+ after wipe might be OP (should still award kill points even if they come back), but it's nice in the way that it doesn't force the hand anymore, of both players.

Necron players bring maxed units to get value of RP, and enemies are forced to kill all to negate it. If they are allowed to reappear on 6+ (perhaps only once?) that would still be a worry for enemies but they would be less forced to wipe every last unit and we'd be less forced to maximize every unit

 Grimgold wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
Can someone please share a link to the results which show them ranked 46th? It's not that I doubt that, I just want to see where Grey Knights, Blood Angels, and other factions measured up.

I linked it six posts ago, but I guess I should probably put it in the OP:

https://www.bestcoastpairings.com/r/79exy3cp

Exalted, thank you.

And WOOT! Grey Knights had someone at 49! We got one in the top 50!!!! Yeah he was running conscripts in a GK list, but who cares, top 50 is so much better than i expected.

49, 72, 114 = Grey Knights placings
46, 85, 98 = Necrons placings

Grey Knights, overall, did worse than Necrons.

 Marmatag wrote:

 Grimgold wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
Can someone please share a link to the results which show them ranked 46th? It's not that I doubt that, I just want to see where Grey Knights, Blood Angels, and other factions measured up.

I linked it six posts ago, but I guess I should probably put it in the OP:

https://www.bestcoastpairings.com/r/79exy3cp

Exalted, thank you.

And WOOT! Grey Knights had someone at 49! We got one in the top 50!!!! Yeah he was running conscripts in a GK list, but who cares, top 50 is so much better than i expected.

49, 72, 114 = Grey Knights placings
46, 85, 98 = Necrons placings

Grey Knights, overall, did worse than Necrons.

True but grey knights get the next codex after chaos, so things are probably looking up. As for the necron codex, I'm sure it won't be as long as the necrons were asleep for, but it might feel longer.

I think our offense is actually pretty okay as is, but the entire theme of the army is its durability and it's less durable than conscripts or horrors.
Reanimation is pretty clean and fun and thematic as it is (well except that whole fleeing faq thing) but if the army has to rely on it so much there needs to be ways to interact with it from the necron player's side. There's currently nothing you can do aside from taking maximum squad sizes to play to your strengths, so the entire efficacy of rp is up to the opponent and not yourself.
If we could proactively do something in game to stop the last models from being wiped out like if lychguard could block attacks for anyone or if rez orbs were a thing you could use in response to losing a model during the opponent's turn or something, if you could do anything to CHOOSE to live as opposed to sometimes getting lucky and having the opponent roll cold and leave 1 guy alive maybe it would feel much better.