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Hey,

recently came up against a Necron player and boy oh boy did i come to hate his monolith. No Matter what i did it just never seemed to want to die. I'm not sure of the rules but even after being immobilised and weapon destroyed a few times it could still pump out a blast marker and just sit there, silently mocking me.

I'm hoping you guys could help me with some ideas to tackle it.

Cheers

Garviel

How to 'tackle it' depends on the army you play.

For most armies, just ignore it. Focus on phaseout of the Necron army.

Unless you are Tau with Broadsides lacking other good targets best to focus on phase out.

labmouse42 wrote:How to 'tackle it' depends on the army you play.

For most armies, just ignore it. Focus on phaseout of the Necron army.

+1. With my Tau I just dump a round of broadside fire (unit of 3) into it and hope to destroy or immobilize it then just ignore it the rest of the game and focus on warriors and other "necron" models. With Ultrasmurfs I ignore it completely or just take the occasional shot at it.

thanks for the replies.

is there some rule i'm missing about them? do they really ignore consecutive 'weapon destroyed' & 'Immobolised' results? Its hard to ignore when in a single shot it can land a large blast and you've lost most of a squad.

plus the guy used his to retreat his necrons out of combat which wasn't fun.

Weapon destroyed results just take out hits from their secondary gun, which is pretty useless.

And yes, the monolith can drag a squad out of hand-to-hand.

There are two approaches... stay more than 2' away from it, or stay so close to it (or his troops) that the pie-plate has a decent chance of taking out his own stuff.

Last game I just kept backing away my las/plas Razorbacks and plinked at it with LC fire while the rest of my army went to the flanks to fight the battle (i.e. made him come to the flanks to fight me). Never did anything to it save knock off secondary gun hits... but I drew the game anyway and might have won had the game gone a turn longer to move my second troop into scoring position.

good advice but still a draw. its probably the only army i seem to have trouble beating. Saying that the guy has very sound tactics by keeping his units centred round his lord thus hardly anyone dies properly no matter what you hit them with.

i've tried to assault and hit them hard in combat but with mixed results. seems like to much of a gamble for the points i could lose if i don't win the combat and end up surrounded.

Necrons are the "draw" army of 40k. They are hard to permantly kill, but lack powerful offense. The big blast from the monolith does in fact suck to get hit by, but the risks can be managed. Unless you have S9+ AP1, don't bother doing anything to it. Its unlikely you will do something to do it, and a good portion of what you do manage to do to it is ignored or negated. Go for phase out.

Still wondering what army you play....

I know that Monoliths hate Dark Eldar, simply because a unit of 10 wyches.Warriors with Haywire Grenades can usually destroy it in a round or two at most, if your that worried about it. But usually we are fast enough to avoid a single monolith making any distinct impact on a game.

For his Tactics of stayinf around his lord, Power Weapons are the key, along with a Higher initiative than the Necrons. Put something nasty in B2B with the lord and concentrate what you can on him till he dies, then everything that falls to a power weapon after that cannot use his Res Orb. Should help you out a bit.

As others have said, unless you've got something like a Manticore (high S, but bad AP), ignore it and focus on killing his necron models for phase out. The Lord with a resurrection Orb should be much higher on your targeting list than the Monolith. Monoliths are 90% there to just wave a gian 'shoot me' sign, in hopes that you waste your firepower on them.

Keep in mind that the troops don't come back unless there's something to come back to... so if you can wipe out all of one type of troop in a round (say, all of his destroyers) they can't come back. In my game for example, I focused my army on taking out all of his destroyers until they were gone & could not come back, then did the same to his wraiths, then chased a warrior squad off the table (they can't come back from that) etc.

I have gotten lucky and taken a monolith out on turn 2 with a lucky LC shot from a razorback... but you can't bank on it happening every game. Going for phase-out is your bet bet, but assuming that will will get replaced by feel no pain in the next dex, working on other strategies for coping with the Necrons is probably a good idea.

Monoliths are the ultimate gambler's fallacy unit in 40k too.

You have a lascannon and you think 'I could get lucky and take that thing down first turn', so you fire at it and do nothing. Then you think, 'Well I already fired at it, so I should keep firing a bit to take it out.' and before you know it you end up drunk and penniless in a ditch outside Atlantic City.

Happens to me everytime I play my buddy who runs Necrons.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Seriously though, you're better served shooting at something else.

Couple of notes.

1. As previously noted, ignore the monolith and phase him out - IE, killing 75% of his models. Necron players should tell you at the start of the game what their phase out number is - for example, my 2,000 point Necron army has 32 Necrons in it, so my phase out number is 8. Killing 24 Necrons means my army disappears off the table.

2. Since he only has a SINGLE monolith - this is expecially true. Go for the juicy stuff. Warriors have 1 attack and are initiative 2; even Tau should get them into close combat. Beat em up.

3. The monolith is INCREDIBLY expensive, and has a few special rules. It ignores lances, melta weapons, and rending attacks, along with messing with things that assault it. The Power Matrix powers both the Particle Whip (the large blast you so fear) and the teleport, which lets any unit within 18" be pulled to it and deployed out of its door. Just an FYI, it can only do one or the other each turn - so make sure that your opponent isn't teleporting AND particle whipping you.

4. It also has two sets of weaponry; the aforementioned Particle whip, and the Gauss flux arcs, which do D6 hits to any enemy units within 12" of the monolith; and since it (like the rest of the Necron arsenal) is Gauss, it will automatically glance any vehicle on the roll of a 6, despite being STR5.

Monoliths aren't much to worry about until there are three of them on the board, and they're being used to castle the rest of the army so that you can't see/shoot/get to/assault anything else in the army.

Until the monolith ordnance becomes a full ap 1 blast, theres no point paying any attention. It tank shocks a long jump of 6", and sure it can deep strike but rememeber it can only teleport necrons or fire ordnance not both. Necrons need some serious rebuilding, most things you should worry about are the phase out models and that stress will go away fast.

Whoops, just read the post above mine, all answers the same.

I think the basic solution for all "how do I beat this necron thingus" questions is simple. KILL ALL THE NECRON MODELS. Ignore anything that does not help them phase the heck out. I know they tend to get back up a lot but that just means that you cant afford to use your firepower anywhere else but bagging necron mdels untl they leave.

pretre wrote:Monoliths are the ultimate gambler's fallacy unit in 40k too.

You have a lascannon and you think 'I could get lucky and take that thing down first turn', so you fire at it and do nothing. Then you think, 'Well I already fired at it, so I should keep firing a bit to take it out.' and before you know it you end up drunk and penniless in a ditch outside Atlantic City.

A LC has ~3.66% chance of destroying a monolith. If you took those same shots and instead pumped them into plain warriors, you would phase out the army before the LC (on average rolls) would destroy the monolith.

Be sure not to clump together, or the Monolith will destroy you. I played a 40K game a long time ago on a tragically small table, and the Monolith wiped out half my army in 1 turn. It was embarrassing (I was a huge noob back then).

Ignore it. Keep units fairly close to it so when he blasts at you it could rebound onto him. spread your models 2" apart from eachother so not as easily affected by blasts. Get a vehichle to block his Monolith's entance so his Necrons can't come out of there.

A few tips.

Where exactly IS the door on a monolith??? Is there only one or several?

No door, just a teleporting portal on the front.

Got it. But in essence it works like a door (i.e. if you block it then troops can't "deploy" (i.e. through teleporting) out of it?

It's been a long time since I read the codex but I believe you're correct....if you really want to get that close to the monolith and considering that it can just move and then plop them down (not sure about that last part).

Well, you never know what circumstances in a game may allow. As least it's something to keep in mind.

Demolisher cannons can cripple or kill monoliths pretty easy. Very easy to hit with the template, and you roll 2 dice and pick the highest for penetration. The demolishers also will hurt most necron units too and is available to all Imperial factions. Railguns also work very well if you play Tau. Tyrannofex rupture cannon for Nids, Manticore for IG, ect.

Monoliths are very weak to str 10 close combat units, because of the ponderous rule it can't move past 6". Dreadnought close combat weapons, Lysander, Mephiston all work, Haywire grenades I think would work too IIRC.

If you don't have anything to reliably kill the monolith, then avoid it and go for a phase out.

Str 10 weapons make my monolith cry. Really though, when I play my necrons I am worried about getting into close combat since I get torn apart there. Get into combat and phase him out.

Combat is the way forward in most armies, Dreads, Wraithlords etc are all good, it moves slow so easy to approach, also allows it to be hit easier.

Medusa's seem like they would work very well at anti-monolith work.

Strength 10, AP 1, 2D6 Penetration, 48" range. Small blast.

Although Manticores are better in all-comer lists. I've been thinking about dropping them TBH. They're just a little too narrow.

Sorry for getting off topic at the end there...

The Foot wrote:Str 10 weapons make my monolith cry. Really though, when I play my necrons I am worried about getting into close combat since I get torn apart there. Get into combat and phase him out.

Bwah ha ha....that's why I have THREE monoliths and play close combat Necrons. =D

Defeatmyarmy wrote:Until the monolith ordnance becomes a full ap 1 blast, theres no point paying any attention. It tank shocks a long jump of 6", and sure it can deep strike but rememeber it can only teleport necrons or fire ordnance not both. Necrons need some serious rebuilding, most things you should worry about are the phase out models and that stress will go away fast.

Whoops, just read the post above mine, all answers the same.

Can they even tank shock? I thought you had to move MORE than 6".

You have to declare how far you are moving for a tank shock, other than that, it can be any distance the vehicle can move.

Ramming is the exception, you must move the maximum distance possible, but for a Monolith this would be only 6" anyway.