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Hi there unfeeling machines of eons old and strange! I have a friend who's interested in your bewildering kind for some reason. He doesn't know a lot about 40k in general so I thought I'd ask on his behalf, what are Necrons like? What are their strengths and weaknesses?

We will be playing friendly games against each other but my group still plays pretty hard lists even if we're chill about how we play. We've got Eldar, DE, SWs, BA, GK, IG and Chaos for my buddy to battle against if that helps in answering our question.

Thank you for having a look at this!

Hello Dnanoodle.

Its hard to say at the moment as Necrons are RUMOURED[u] to be receiving a new codex in August of this year.

Of course this could be delayed but It won't be here any earlier. Due to that realease your friend can expecrt a fair bit of change.

Necrons at the moment are a scary bunch of robots who dislike dying. They have the ability to repair their robot bodies and return to life.

As for their play style I'm sure a vetern can share this with you. I have not played against them. Ever.

The die due to the amount of power weapon spammage. They die to pieplates (s8 ones anyway!)

They are so-so but lack a lot of anti-tank which the current game tends to have a lot of.

Essentially their strengths have been weakened and their weaknesses are easily exploited.

The only time I played them their rules were in an issue or White Dwarf.

All I ever hear is that they're bad and so on, but every once in a while someone stands up and says they do great with their Necrons. That is terribly confusing.

Why do Necrons have such a bad reputation? What do successful Necrons look like and why do they work?


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Phototoxin wrote:The die due to the amount of power weapon spammage. They die to pieplates (s8 ones anyway!)

They are so-so but lack a lot of anti-tank which the current game tends to have a lot of.

Essentially their strengths have been weakened and their weaknesses are easily exploited.

That doesn't sound so bad if your local meta isn't all mech spam.
(As a side note, everything dies to power weapons and powerful pie plates.)

What kills them is a terrible rule called Phase Out, which occurs when 3/4ths of the army dies, then everything on the board leaves and you auto-lose. They're guns are short range and they're supposed to rely on them to be competitive as they die to SA in CC due to low I. Some argue they may be over priced, but the real issue is the squad size that you take certain units in, which is far to small

dnanoodle wrote:The only time I played them their rules were in an issue or White Dwarf.

All I ever hear is that they're bad and so on, but every once in a while someone stands up and says they do great with their Necrons. That is terribly confusing.

Why do Necrons have such a bad reputation? What do successful Necrons look like and why do they work?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Phototoxin wrote:The die due to the amount of power weapon spammage. They die to pieplates (s8 ones anyway!)

They are so-so but lack a lot of anti-tank which the current game tends to have a lot of.

Essentially their strengths have been weakened and their weaknesses are easily exploited.

That doesn't sound so bad if your local meta isn't all mech spam.
(As a side note, everything dies to power weapons and powerful pie plates.)

Well this is it - against tau they do pretty well as they are resistant to small arms fire. They only need to worry about plasma rifles. However powerweapons hurt necrons more than marines if that makes sense - both are T4 and 3+ but the necrons also have WBB which they pay for even though a large majority of weapons ignore it.
That said, a large part of 40k has always been dominated by power weapons since 3rd edition. With the buffs to cover we're seeing it again. Mech was king but essentially once you crack transports its power weapons all the way.

If I allowed my friend to play without the phase-out rule, would it make his army noob-friendly and competitive enough to take on the armies I lists above?

If your friend is an experienced 40k player, and is looking for a challenge, then necrons are the way to go!

He's not at all experienced. Like 10 years ago he played chaos against a friend who kept him in the dark as to the real core rules and what he needed to learn to be able to win. He's never won. He does like fluff and modeling but I want him to play and kill enemy units too.

I warned him against Necrons because I know they're a challenge, but he seemed interested in them. I thought I'd try and collect what knowledge I can on how they can be used well.

If he is really interested, then let him get Necrons. They are currently uncompetitive, but they are fun to play and with the right builds can provide an enjoyable friendly game.

He will have to play with them a while before he gets decent with them, but they are really simple to get a handle on as there are so few choices to be made.

I have a small force of them myself and while I for the most part lose or draw a majority of the games I play them in, they always cause havoc on my enemies.

Top it off, they might be getting an update very soon, so cross fingers, he might end up with one of the best armies out there in the near future.

#1 rule when picking an army: Pick the army that you like! Then you will never be disappointed in them.

Just my .02

dnanoodle wrote:If I allowed my friend to play without the phase-out rule, would it make his army noob-friendly and competitive enough to take on the armies I lists above?

I wouldn't drop the phase-out rule. If he ever plays anyone else, he'll need to respect phase-out. As a consequence, it would be better he learns his Necrons with this rule.

If you want to make it easy on him for a start, give him extra points for a given match (e.g. 10% or more for a start, 5% after a while, 0% once he feels comfortable and/or the army is updated).

Make sure that you pick an appropriate points range for your games. Necrons really struggle at < 1k, because their mandatory choices are expensive. Have him pick up or proxy a Monolith, as they are pretty much a staple.

Azure wrote:What kills them is a terrible rule called Phase Out, which occurs when 3/4ths of the army dies, then everything on the board leaves and you auto-lose. They're guns are short range and they're supposed to rely on them to be competitive as they die to SA in CC due to low I. Some argue they may be over priced, but the real issue is the squad size that you take certain units in, which is far to small

Phototoxin wrote:The die due to the amount of power weapon spammage. They die to pieplates (s8 ones anyway!)

They are so-so but lack a lot of anti-tank which the current game tends to have a lot of.

Essentially their strengths have been weakened and their weaknesses are easily exploited.

Xarian wrote:Make sure that you pick an appropriate points range for your games. Necrons really struggle at < 1k, because their mandatory choices are expensive. Have him pick up or proxy a Monolith, as they are pretty much a staple.

All of these. I play with two Necron players fairly frequently, and their biggest hurdles are:

Lack of variety of army lists. If you play other armies, you won't have experienced standardization like this before. This could be a good thing for a new player, because he won't be confronted with a dizzying amount of options to try and will quickly move up the learning curve of list-building. The downside is that he may get bored quickly as he moves up the curve because of the same lack of options. Building necron lists is essentially asking whether someone would like hot fudge, sprinkles and/or nuts on their vanilla ice cream sundae; at low point values, they can only pick one of those. Before anyone buys the old codex (although I'm sure it's cheap on eBay), look in the back of your rulebook at the Necron stat tables and you'll see how few choices they have compared to other factions. Accepting that some of these choices are so bad they are virtually never taken, and you can see the problem quite clearly.

Terrible CC capabilities. They will seriously be shredded in CC. Not every army needs to be good at CC, but most of the ones that are bad at least have some long range firepower to soften up enemy ranks before they get into knife-range. The 'crons really don't. And not only are you marginally better than Tau in CC, but as previously mentioned, you'll almost always be swept because of the low Init.

Lack of reliable anti-mech. When the codex was published, the 'crons were scary because any of their troops posed a threat to enemy vehicles. Under 5th edition rules, this is no longer the case, and the 'crons will struggle against any mech-heavy list. The only vehicle they field is the Monolith - terrifying in its own right, but doesn't really give them the option to field a "mech" list to help fit into the current metagame, either.

Phase Out. Again, when they were published, 'crons were really good, so the phase out rule was included to give opponents a better chance to beat what was designed to be these terrifying death robots. Several editions later, the codex has held up amicably (in the sense that it is not entirely useless), but the phase out rule is decisively unnecessary because 'crons just aren't a scary list to go up against. To make things worse (and expand on Azure's point), not every unit in their army counts towards the "3/4", so a savvy opponent can try a surgical strike on the ones that do and win by phase out. It creates a tough hurdle.

The models. Pretty uniform posing, if you care about that thing and don't intend to do a lot of conversions. Painting them, from what I've heard, is a real drudgery as well.

Understand that I'm not a necron-hater or anything like that, I think the concept is pretty awesome and can't wait if the rumors of the new codex are true. I do think it's important that you understand the hurdles your friend will face using this army against more competitive lists.

Paint them is stupid easy. And you don't even have to paint that many.

Prime black, drybrush silver. Gold on symbols and weapons ridges. Done. You can do a necron in 5 minutes.

Lonecoon wrote:Paint them is stupid easy. And you don't even have to paint that many.

Prime black, drybrush silver. Gold on symbols and weapons ridges. Done. You can do a necron in 5 minutes.

Simple, sure. My point was more that my friends found it to be very monotonous.

Ah....greetings.

OP, a few points to make for you.

1. Necrons are due for a new codex now. Investing in the army now would be a mistake; by the time he has a force worth playing, gets to know it - there will be a new codex out to invalidate everything that he has learned. Additionally, potentially much of the funds he invested in acquiring the models may be wasted if the units and abilities in the new codex no longer line up with what he thought he was acquiring.

2. Necrons are the least competitive codex in 40k. They are generally easy to beat, and while the rules are fairly simple to learn (something that is noob-friendly) their inability to stand toe-to-toe with other armies is enough to make them a very bad investment for new players.

3. People who occassionally stand up and say, "Necrons are awesome!" Don't listen to them. While I sometimes get on the Necron soapbox, it is never to say that Necrons are awesome, it is in response to things like, "Necrons are auto-lose" or when people are presenting an army as a TAC army when it doesn't have the ability to deal with Necrons.

4. Necrons in their current form exist to please people who like to play "Hardcore" mode in video games on Nightmare mode. IE, the hardest mode, where dying ends the game permanently. I personally acquired them BECAUSE they are the worst codex. The group of people I was playing with had unending cries of cheese because my third edition Dark Eldar and my Orks were tabling them, and rather than believing that their tactics were at fault, decided that the better explanation was that my lists were full of overpowered cheese. So I got Necrons. Not only that, but I got 9 Tomb Spyders, 9 wraiths, 39 scarabs....I play CLOSE COMBAT necrons. The worst variation of the worst army in 40k. I play them because they are difficult to win with, and because anyone who cries cheese to Necrons doesn't deserve to be part of this hobby. Short of that....your friend should not get them. If he were at a point in his gaming career where he coasted through games to win...they'd be a good choice to give him a challenge. But he's not. So don't let him.

This has been an incredibly valuable and informative discussion. I sent him the URL to this thread and recommended that he register so he can ask questions of his own.

Thank you all for giving such a detailed description of how this codex fits into the scheme of things in 5th edition.

@Dash: I listened to your views on running a Wraithwing and almost beat a FAQ updated DA army (all terminators w/ storm shield/assault cannon spam) and absolutely TABLED a Tau army (lost one squad of wraiths)-both armies were set to beat the Wraithwing-my friends knew what I was bringing. After listening to what you've said about it, I think it's a fun army and I thought I'd give credit to you for influencing me to try them. i'm planning on picking up the army myself, so on to dnanoodle: tell your friend it's a fun army to play as. Hard? Yes. But the look on your opponents face when you turn an army that is intended to only be shooting based into a close combat monster is amazing. Tell him to try them-they're fun and a challenge.

tavoittamaton wrote:

Lonecoon wrote:Paint them is stupid easy. And you don't even have to paint that many.

Prime black, drybrush silver. Gold on symbols and weapons ridges. Done. You can do a necron in 5 minutes.

Simple, sure. My point was more that my friends found it to be very monotonous.

Okay, that's actually true. I'm having a hard time motivating myself to finish the 500 points of Nercons I have, not because it would take me 2 hours, but because painting and modeling other things are so much more interesting. Necrons are Easy mode for painting and learning the rules but Nightmare mode for winning.

There is precedent in the codex for non applying the Phase Out rule in certain missions, so you could let him get the hang of his army rules in a couple of games before applying it.

The Monolith is arguably the best tank in the game. Personally I'd put it at about 3 ot 4th, but still pretty hot stuff.

Necrons are a challenge to play, it's true, but not that viciously bad against a balanced army that isn't spamming the cheesiest units in their codex (tournament play). I've won the odd tournament with them, and unlike some folk on here i'm not claiming to be the ultimate general

People don't run into Necrons much these days, so they often don't know how to deal with them. I've had plenty of folk drop-pod in a melta dread next to a Monolith, for example, to multi-melta it to death, only to find that their weapon does jack vs a Monolith, or discount the scarab swarms as cc anklebiters, only to have their landraider savaged by them

Yes Ascalam, a good Necron army can perform well against an opponent's bad list, especially when they are unfamiliar with Necron rules.

However, most of my gaming is either tournament play or practicing for tournament play - and since money is involved, I don't often run into people who don't know the rules or are running terrible lists.

Dash-
My advice was for the OP, not for you? I don't see anything in my post that directs my advice at you specifically?

I have won at tournaments against cheesefest armies and good strong (but non-cheesy) armies both. I've also had my metal ass handed to me multiple times at the same tournaments.

Far be it from me to advise you on the effectiveness of necrons, Dash. Allow me, however, to advise those not so accustomed to their capabilities

The greatest threat to life in the fluff, the least on the table.