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i am not sure what Fluff means, first of all. I have a vague idea however. Anywho, how does Necron weaponry work and how does armor, both body armor, imperium, and xenos, and armored vehicles fair against it? Since the imperial guard can defeat necrons in a pitched battle, I am assuming they have something that can even the odds, (and massive numbers aren't the answer I'm looking for.) It would seem both in "the fluff" and in table top, that space marines would be severely disadvantaged against a necron armor due to their small numbers. I haven't played table top in nearly a decade. Comments are welcome.

Right now Necrons have a large disadvantage due to an outdated codex.
In the fluff (Background) their weaponry is very powerful and can defeat most armour comparatively easily.
AFAIK it works by flaying a target on a molecular level and incredibly quickly at that.
Body armour doesn't really fare against it at all...
I haven't read anything about IG beating Necrons in a pitched battle but if they did numbers would be a significant factor. Another factor may be that the Tomb world the Necrons were from was either damaged or non-functional in some way.

Necron Guass Cannons have been shown to go through one side of a Landraider and then out the other side of it without a trajectory change so their technology is in fact quite good. In books the Guass Flayers, standard Necron gun, are shown to atomize Iguard soldiers and anything on their person. As the guns get bigger they obviously get even more and more deadly, to the Guass Cannon, mounted on the Destroyers which is the equivalent of a light skimmer, and from there on even higher to Heavy Guass Cannons and Particle Whips.

As for their CC weapons, let's say the Warscythe, there is nothing it will not shear. Sicarius was near-fatally wounded on Damnos after taking a hit from one and in the codex one sliced off the barrel of the large Iguard tank, Stormlord I think, all of this showing it to be a hyper deadly combat weapon. It is, however, fashioned from Necrodermis like the C'tan so it is presumed that not many exist. Other CC stuff does exist but mainly in the form of claws like on the Flayed Ones and the Wraiths... I hope I didn't go on a tangent there and I answered your question '>..>

I'm reading that novel, fall of damnos. You spoiled the story >_>.

Anywho, so basically tanks are useless against the necrons? it seems like the only way to beat them is to use massive amounts of infantry armed with plasma weapons and some fast light vehicles.

Tanks aren't useless, you'd (fluff wise) need them in large amounts to pour forth volley after volley of suppressive fire from a distance.

The big downside to Gauss is that it's a great short to med range weapon. However long range weapons can deal out damage without fear of immediate retaliation because Gauss weapons are only good for shooting only so far. However, Necrons know this and have a nasty tendency to stay hidden until you're close enough for them to proceed to flay you with their gauss and particle weaponry or with their blades and claws.

A good novel with Necrons is Hellforged. It's a Soul Drinkers novel (If you don't know already the Soul Drinkers are a renegade chapter to the Imperium though still loyal to the emperor) and they have one hell of a battle against the Necrons.

Fluff is sort of the backround and history of that race/area

new necron revision should just have all standard necrons cost a ton, be T5, 3W with WBB, with the Guass Gun be S8/9/10 AP1, Heavy 3/4. And 3+ save of course.

I won’t risk feeling the wrath of the ban-hammer by directly quoting the codex, but I'll paraphrase:

Gauss weapons use a projected energy beam which reverses the polarity of every molecule in its target and pull it towards the gun vaporising the target.

The difference between the different variants of gauss based weaponry is the strength of the beam. If I understand the fluff (I could be wrong), theoretically, if a warrior lasted long enough, it could punch a hole through a LR with it's standard infantry variant - But it would be LC'd or HB'd to death before that ever happened.

Necron’s have a fair few advantages over the IOM:
Numbers – It still isn’t know how many Necrons there are, but if you have read about how big some of the tombs worlds are and how many they have found so far, it’s more than a few evil robots to worry about – There are still many, many tomb worlds in stasis.

Just think about what it took to ‘stop’ the Necrons the first time.

Fearless – Only the most powerful lords retained any essence of their being when they were Necron’d so their troops can’t be scared if they have not emotions or thoughts. Add to this that a decent proportion of the Necron army are robotic creatures rather than once human living metal constructs.

Undead - WBB

Technology – Transportation, repair, weaponry, armour

Leadership – Infinitely old and knowing ‘gods’


On the board, SM have the advantage of close combat abilities and weaponry such as plasma and melta.

IG can sit on their side of the table and destroy a Necron force before it becomes a threat with their arty.

Necrons have their fancy tricks and massed gauss weaponry.

I haven't read the soul drinkers series. I'll put it on my list to purchase though. I've only read two 40k novels, 15 hours and Cadian Blood. I have the first space wolves omnibus, but I haven't cracked it open yet.

Tanks are only used for infantry support in table top instead of being used in divisions, or so It seems. I've never seen any real maneuvering in table top. It always seems to boil down to attrition.

Grab Dead Men Walking as well.
Good novel and features Necrons as the baddies

Hezekiah-IV wrote:I haven't read the soul drinkers series. I'll put it on my list to purchase though. I've only read two 40k novels, 15 hours and Cadian Blood. I have the first space wolves omnibus, but I haven't cracked it open yet.

Tanks are only used for infantry support in table top instead of being used in divisions, or so It seems. I've never seen any real maneuvering in table top. It always seems to boil down to attrition.

And no maneuvering is why I have a good tendency (6-0-1) of killing IG. The one loss I did have was a combination of A) I had just started 40k, and B) the guy I played against doesn't believe in just sit and shoot, he does that maybe once in a battle, and then moves. Sure he may not be able to fire his primary weapon system, but he was able unleash volleys of weaker shots which did plenty.

Fluffwise Necron guns are absolutely vicious. They flay you to dust over the space of a second or so, messily. They are supposely very powerful, to the point that the IOM would have to use titan/starship generators to replicate the power needed to fire a heavy gauss cannon.

Gamewise gauss flayers are fancy bolters that glance vehicles on a 6 even if they shouldn't.

Ascalam wrote:Fluffwise Necron guns are absolutely vicious. They flay you to dust over the space of a second or so, messily. They are supposely very powerful, to the point that the IOM would have to use titan/starship generators to replicate the power needed to fire a heavy gauss cannon.

Nope, don't know where you got that, but it's wrong. The problem the Mechanicus had was in studying and trying to replicate the gauss weaponry is that the weapons themselves has no discernible trigger, and any sort of irregularity or burr in the firing surfaces at even the molecular level (such as caused by the contact of a physical trigger) causes so much resistance that the weapon overloads.

Bookwrack wrote:

Ascalam wrote:Fluffwise Necron guns are absolutely vicious. They flay you to dust over the space of a second or so, messily. They are supposely very powerful, to the point that the IOM would have to use titan/starship generators to replicate the power needed to fire a heavy gauss cannon.

Nope, don't know where you got that, but it's wrong. The problem the Mechanicus had was in studying and trying to replicate the gauss weaponry is that the weapons themselves has no discernible trigger, and any sort of irregularity or burr in the firing surfaces at even the molecular level (such as caused by the contact of a physical trigger) causes so much resistance that the weapon overloads.

It mentions in the Codex how they have problems replicating the energy source to fire the weapon in the first place.

purplefood wrote:

Bookwrack wrote:

Ascalam wrote:Fluffwise Necron guns are absolutely vicious. They flay you to dust over the space of a second or so, messily. They are supposely very powerful, to the point that the IOM would have to use titan/starship generators to replicate the power needed to fire a heavy gauss cannon.

Nope, don't know where you got that, but it's wrong. The problem the Mechanicus had was in studying and trying to replicate the gauss weaponry is that the weapons themselves has no discernible trigger, and any sort of irregularity or burr in the firing surfaces at even the molecular level (such as caused by the contact of a physical trigger) causes so much resistance that the weapon overloads.

It mentions in the Codex how they have problems replicating the energy source to fire the weapon in the first place.

They do specifically reference a titan and a starship in the necron dex "...would require an energy source so powerful it is unlkely that we could replicate it on any weapon system save that employed by a Titan or Starship." this is in reference to the image of a heavy destroyer punching a hole through a LR in the image at the bottom of that page (pg55).