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It seems to me-perhaps incorrectly-that whenever someone asks for Necron tactics, they often get told to get either a Monolith (or two, or three!!) and/or a C'Tan (usually Nightbringer)

Now, far be it from me to cast aspersions on this, but to what extent is this actually true?

Lets assume a Necron player has a balanced metagam. At what point-if at all- do Monoliths become essential for being competative? Are there alternatives to using Monoliths that are similarly effective at ,lets say, 1500-2000 points?

Similarly, can we get away without a C'Tan??

Just asking..

Thanks in advance..

C'tan don't have EW.

And the Deciever is probably better than the Nightbringer (Although the nightbringer is a cc beast)

Monoliths are the toughest tank in the game hands down and allow a squad to enter through it's portal and attempt it's wbb rolls again.

VikingScott wrote:C'tan don't have EW.

And the Deciever is probably better than the Nightbringer (Although the nightbringer is a cc beast)

Monoliths are the toughest tank in the game hands down and allow a squad to enter through it's portal and attempt it's wbb rolls again.

Did I mention EW?? Sorry :/

I know Monoliths are good, but are they essential?? Could a player use the points spent on a monolith to get somethiing of similar value? Or do they just have to stump up da Teef ??

Necrons are going to be an uphill battle at this stage no matter what you bring. That being said, I have seen (but not witnessed in action) some very good Necron lists that feature neither C'Tan nor Monoliths, focusing instead on a mix of Immortals, Heavy Destroyers, Destroyers, Scarab Swarms, and a couple Tomb Spyders working basically as a gunline. It was interesting and seemed feasible enough, aside from the very limited and potentially vulnerable troops.

As an opponent, the C'tan is a big mistake. Sure it is a big bull on the field but it doesn't do much for your army unless you can somehow force me to focus on it and thus save your army.

Monoliths and destroyers are the key to the army. Magically, a full squadron or the monolith costs about the same!

Phase out is the one consideration in taking a monolith. It is beast and almost impervious but you take it at the risk of lowering your phase out number too low. You have to use it to prolong your army's stay on the battlefield or quicken the pace of the battle by porting your units around.

If I were to build crons, personnally I would shoot for 1 monolith for every 800 to 1000 points of other stuff. You get too much below that and your opponent will just ignore your monoliths and concentrate on dropping anything else to force the phase out.

Played with them once using someones army and the 3 monolith wall of protection was pretty disgusting though.
Present a 24+ inch wall of monoliths to your opponent with the other crons following behind. Finally use porting to bring your intact squads into rapid fire range.

I played a game last weekend 4000pts of 'Cron vs. 2000pts of Marines and 2000pts of 'Nid. Now, they could attack each other, but I was the prime target. The 'Nid commander decided he was going to ignore any kind of victory point win and just went after me (he was sore after my Tomb Stalker took out 2 groups of gaunts all by himself). He popped my Monolith 1st turn (can't remember what he shot it with). On the other side of the board I had a Nightbringer, 2 squads of Wraiths, 10 flayed ones, 5 Destroyers and 36 warriors. Now, the Nightbringer did pop one of the transports 1st turn, but if he had been a squad of Heavy Destoryers, they could have done the same. The Wraiths thrashed a unit of 10 Termies, and eventually a Tac Squad with a Chaplain. The flayed ones did okay (helped by the Wraiths eventually), even though they lost four almost immediately.
I eventually lost, but that is without Spyders for res or scarabs running any kind of interference. You want a monolith to get you the WWB rolls, but more importantly to port your warriors out of assault, where they are not as effective.
Bottom line, if you have a "troop" battle, you can hang without a Monolith or a C'tan, but if your opponent is running lots of tanks, you need heavy hitters.

Most of the Necron players I know will run either a single or no monolith at 1500 points...1850 you see a 2nd Mono and 2k usually 2 but sometimes no Monoliths. One of my Necron friends never uses a C'Tan and uses wraiths, immortals, pariahs, flayed ones and Lord's to get what he wants done. Another guy I know runs dual Monos and a large squad of Immortals with a Lord that has Veil...teleports around and if they take decent damage us the mono to teleport them and reroll WBB then teleports the next turn. A third guy I knows swears by his single monolith and deceiver list. He claims he has no idea how anyone can play Necrons without at least one Mono and C'tan. Just like any other army you find what works for you and your meta and stick with it.

Monoliths are great, but the main reason to take them is for walling purposes. I have played a lot of games with Necrons, and for most lists in 5th edition, you lose if you get into close combat. Monoliths, just by the fact they are huge and hard to kill, do a very good job of screening your army from assault. This is how I use to run my crons before I took a break from them. For the most part, this worked really well. If your opponent can kill the monoliths easily, then you are in trouble. If he can't, then things look good for you.

Ive been thinking about running a list with just 86 Necron warrior with disruption fields and 2 lords w/ orbs at 2000 pts for a while now, does anyone think this could work?

So, in general, the answer to my enquirey was "yes, yes they are...".

Son_Of _Deddog wrote:So, in general, the answer to my enquirey was "yes, yes they are...".

Monoliths are almost a definate as has been demonstrated above. C'tan are far from essential, and in some cases taking one is shooting yourself in the foot with points expenditure. They can be a great assset in the right army and situation, but they can also be a tremendous waste of points that never performs any real redeeming function.

rivers64 wrote:Ive been thinking about running a list with just 86 Necron warrior with disruption fields and 2 lords w/ orbs at 2000 pts for a while now, does anyone think this could work?

No. i don't say this because i think that warriors are bad (I actually usually bring 3 or four squads per game), but because Dfields are algmost worthless on warriors. you can't assalt after you deepstrike and you opponent will try to move his tanks out of double tap range. this being said, drop the D fields and mabey add scarabs to tarpit and distract. i have found that monoliths and scarabs work well with porting warriors, it creates a sandwich effect essentially.

As far as the monolith being essential... i have NEVER taken less than 2 in any game and my necrons remain undefeated so i will say that they are awsome, but i have no experience in games without them.

C'tan... never used them, i felt that lords with res orb and veils were the way to go

Monoliths are honestly the center of my strategy in games of 1500 points or more. Necrons may only have one tank, but its honestly the most versatile and useful tanks in the entire game of 40k.

Every single move I make, the Monolith is in the back of my mind. It is so much more than just a pie plate.

These are examples of how I use my monolith.

-The Mountain. This thing is movable terrain. In city fight terrain, this thing can block roads as if the board was a moving labyrinth. Its also just a huge los blocker for your warriors. I often will have a squad of warriors follow the monolith behind it until when I'm in a strategic placement, I will move the Monolith left or right slightly, giving my warrior squad visibility to a single enemy unit and then take some shots at it without making my warriors too vulnerable.

-Unpredictable & Relentless. Its power matrix. Don't think you need to put down a pie plate every turn so it can eventually rack up enough points to pay off its worth. This is a really amateurish and one dimensional way of thinking. I use the Monolith with a Wraith Wing, I'll assume you all know what that is. The Wraiths, they are very good at killing things like a Carnifex or Terminators, Heavy Infantry etc. They won't often die if used properly, but in the case that you fail some WBB rolls in CC then make good use of this power matrix. Pull those Wraiths and possibly D-Lord out of combat, re-roll those WBB rolls and send them right back into CC. Even if I don't need WBB rolls, sometimes I will pull Wraiths out of CC only so that they may charge again for extra attacks in CC. Be careful though, its almost always best for a CC encounter to end on your opponents assault phase.

-Last Minute Flip The Power Matrix again. This thing is how you capture objectives. Send the Monolith up to a well chosen objective. Then near the end of the game get a healthy squad of warriors with a Res-Orb to teleport onto that objective. Get cover, and go to ground. Then block los or incoming enemy cc units with your Monolith. That's how you do it.

-Sharing is caring. The Flux arc is very handy. Often near the end of games units friend and foe will be cluttered around the Monolith. You always shoot this thing first if you're going to use it, half dead units will get peppered with Str5 Gauss before you start making target priority decisions with your remaining fire power. Spread it out, FF isn't always the best way to go. I usually use this later in games, for strategy and for more obvious reasons.

-Anti-Tank. Don't forget the center of the pie plate is AP1. So when you hit a Vehicle, you roll 2D6 and pick the highest result for armor pen, then roll the result without short changing yourself. Even when inflicting wounds on 2+ armor save models, don't forget to check if one of those wounds is AP1. I know their are some of you out there forgetting this. Also I feel extremely sorry for those of you who rely solely on glancing hits to destroy vehicles.

-Discouragement. The Monolith itself discourages your opponent. Lots of people will bring out the MM for their Anti-Tank. And don't worry, these people are going to use it on your Monolith. Lets be honest, they need a 6 to glance and a 6 to destroy. Chances are they will spend a lot of time looking at the thing, shooting at it, and having no luck at all. It's going to mess with some peoples strategy. Others will ignore it letting you work your magic. If they ignore it, pull out every Monolith trick in the book, make sure it discourages your opponent, craftiness is key. The only downside, is if they do destroy it then it can discourage you and really put your opponent in a good mood.

-Ants in its Pants. Move this thing like it needs to piss. You rarely will have a reason not to move the Monolith. And if you do, I'll bet that it is because its Immobilized. It may be slow, but it can always move and use its Power Matrix. Even if you want it where it is, move it forward 3" then backwards 3" just so it counts as moving for CC purposes. Besides like I said in my first point, its movable terrain. New opportunities may arise from rearranging your Mountain.


As for C'tan. I Don't use them. I don't care too much for special characters, but I like the Deceiver more.


-Edit, yeah lots of edits here and there. Mainly below.

Sorry to answer the topic of the post. No Monoliths and C'tan aren't essential to victory. In smaller games, under 1000 points, Necrons generally suck. You can't take much after you get your compulsory HQ and 2 Troops. In games of 1000-1500 points a Monolith is not necessary to victory, I have made some pretty crafty lists that have no Monolith. 1500-200 point games, well if you aren't going to take a Monolith or C'tan then you really better bring out the big guns. To put some specificity into it, you need to choose some core units for your list and make a point of using them. "Some warriors, some destroyers, a foot lord, a d lord, some sacarabs... some..", "NO". That isn't going to cut it. You need to chose something, say Destroyers and bring like 15 of them with two Destroyer Lords. Then like 45 warriors on foot. That kind of thinking is how you can make effective lists in the 2000 point bracket without using special characters or Monoliths.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

rivers64 wrote:Ive been thinking about running a list with just 86 Necron warrior with disruption fields and 2 lords w/ orbs at 2000 pts for a while now, does anyone think this could work?

Some people swear by warriors. They like them so much that they do field lots of them. To me, they are superfluous. The are just a compulsory slot that can give some extra weak fire power, and have some often resilient standing power for objectives. Handy little minions, but they aren't work horses.

Lots of people stress about phase out. Well if you do actually phase out, chances are its because you got owned anyway. I honestly can't remember the last time I phased out. Years ago. I don't win every game, but I never phase out and I never worry about it.

If you have the warriors, by all means give it a go just for some laughs. It would look cool to see a sea of Terminators walking relentlessly towards the enemy but in terms of effectiveness. Well lets be honest, your strategy is going to be madly predictable, the only thing that will predict the outcome of the game is your opponent. If he is half competent and made a well balanced list that he knows how to use, then its not going to work.

From my experience playing the Necrons (they're one of the three armies that I play) the Monolith has always factored into the equation. I'm iffy on the C'tan, they're huge bullet magnets but they rarely take enough fire to be worthwhile for me. Of the two, I advocate the Deceiver because he's more tactical and costs significantly less points for only slightly less CC ability.

The Monolith, however, can fill a multitude of roles (which were covered fantastically by Lordofsteel so I won't bother reciting anything further) so I find it essential to utilize at least 1 at 1500+ points. I tend to run two at 1850-2000 points because it unnerves people to have two mountains coming slowly but surely down the table at them and their typical anti-tank methodology just won't work against them.

Pheralan wrote:From my experience playing the Necrons (they're one of the three armies that I play) the Monolith has always factored into the equation. I'm iffy on the C'tan, they're huge bullet magnets but they rarely take enough fire to be worthwhile for me. Of the two, I advocate the Deceiver because he's more tactical and costs significantly less points for only slightly less CC ability.

The Monolith, however, can fill a multitude of roles (which were covered fantastically by Lordofsteel so I won't bother reciting anything further) so I find it essential to utilize at least 1 at 1500+ points. I tend to run two at 1850-2000 points because it unnerves people to have two mountains coming slowly but surely down the table at them and their typical anti-tank methodology just won't work against them.

Also helps that you cant immobilize/ weapon destroyed them to death

The c'tan (night bringer) can chew through an army if you can let them get close enough and it has happened to me. The board had a high tree line and I couldn't get it in time. It was only when it got through I realised i'd made a parking lot with my vehicles in order to spew out my firepower into a choke point. It took out 2 chimera's and 2 LRBT's before I could react and then chewed into a blobbed platoon I had to redirect to deal with it. Out of the 50 guard and a hand full of commissars, only around 8 were left.

If you must take a C'tan the Deceiver works well once you figure out how his effects can work for you and incorporate them into your overall strategy. If you must take the Bringer only do it at higher point limits. About 2500.

'liths can be a real pain too. That multi shot weapon it has (forgot the name) is nasty against hordes. The anti tank pie plate can do damage too and most people havn't got anything to stop it. (or not enough to stop it)

Summary, C'tan arn't essential but the Deceiver's pretty good if you can build the force around him. 'liths, I would reccomend at least one. When you send it forward or deepstrike it, it will eventually become a threat to the enemy. They then have a dilema. Either concentrate on the warriors for a phase out and get grounded to pulp by the 'lith or divert the heavy guns to the 'lith which will cut down on your infantry casualties massively.

LordofSteel wrote: Even if you want it where it is, move it forward 3" then backwards 3" just so it counts as moving for CC purposes. Besides like I said in my first point, its movable terrain. New opportunities may arise from rearranging your Mountain.

This is not true. movement has to be a measurable amount; a unit cannot have "moved" and still be in the same place as it started the movement phase. the distance you move is the distance from where the unit started that turn.