Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

So i play necrons, and for the past 4 months my strategy for my warriors has been the same: reserve, and when they walk on, make them hide in the back and let the destroyers go to work. But recently, i started to question that tactic when they wound up killing more grey knights then my immortals could in a game recently against my friend. I know they have their uses, the most hilarious one i found was at a tournament last year which involved the Gauss rule, a land raider, some rapid fire, and a very pissed off veteran space marine player . Anyway, i want dakka's opinion here, should i put more warriors on the offensive? (keep in my mind my destroyer wing usually has only about 20) and rapid fire all day? or defensive, and just keep em' hiding in the back to avoid phase out and get in the way of any out-flankers trying to get at my destroyers? Sadly, i know whatever decision i make wont last with the new codex around the corner but still, i want to hear it.

All comments are read and appreciated
-E

I make good use of them. Let's face it, you have to take at least 20 due to FOC. That is 360+ points. If you do not use them, you are already at a 20% handicap in standard games.

What I do with them is the following tricks:

1) They are my moppers. If there is some squad weakened and isolated, I teleport them with the nearby monolith and have them rapid-fire the survivors to death. It is frighteningly effective. Obviously, that also pulls them out of whatever predicament they themselves are, e.g. CC, and it allows them to reroll WBB. So, very nice use. The only downside is the monolith cannot fire the particle whip then, but it is usually better to save the warriors from CC than dropping the whip on some unit. Besides, the monolith can still fire the arc projectors after the teleportation and help finish up the survivors without worries of scatter.

2) They are my sneaky objective claimers. Most people forget about them, especially if they are in reserve. Moving the weight of your army can make a opponent shift his as well, exposing forgotten objectives for the warriors to walk to. By the time they show up, the destroyers have deprived the enemy from most of his mobility, so often there is little that is fast enough to catch my running warriors. I also find it useful to position monoliths close to the middle of the map, so they can catapult the warriors by teleportation.

3) They can be used as the rapid-firing ball being passed between two monoliths. Each turn, teleport them to the farther monolith, rapid-fire something there, then teleport them back the next turn with the first monolith. Each time, they reroll WBB and leave the enemy stunned and bunched up for particle whipping.

4) They hide an orbed lord nicely. They shield him from being picked off while he helps them in CC and with the orb.

I would not take more than perhaps 13 per squad, in two squads. The problem is if there is more than that, you may have trouble putting all models within 2 inches of the monolith portal. Also, you do not want to put too many points in them, because after all, there are better choices, e.g. more destroyers. I take a squad of 11 and a squad of 12 on 1850 pt level.

Take no more than 20. The previous poster gives decent suggestions as to what to do with those 20, but you have to be careful. They are the primary target for the enemies' melee units and have a hard time hurting much of anything.

I agree to Necrontyr40k, last night I had a small friendly game of Necron against Eldar. I expected to lose, cause I had no Monolith fielded, but instead 2*10 Warriors, a Lord with Orb and Destroyers. They did pretty well, drawing fire from the destroyers, performing well with their WBB rolls and wiped out a unit of Dire Avengers while not suffering too many casualties. Not bad Looking even more forward to the new codex now.

I have made the brave (read foolish) discision to now feild my warriros on the table rather than in reserve. I have only played one game but it was OK. I had the same reasoning as Defiler37 and was handy capping myself ever game.

They were in cover which makes a big help. Grab cover and go to ground if nothing is shotting range next turn.

It's worth noting. At 24" range 10 warriors are more effective as 3 regular destoyers at glancing AV12+ mech. An average of just over one per volley. Don't count on it but remember it.

I hope they keep the Gauss rule in the new codex. Rumor is they are losing it.

The Grog wrote:Take no more than 20. The previous poster gives decent suggestions as to what to do with those 20, but you have to be careful. They are the primary target for the enemies' melee units and have a hard time hurting much of anything.

Actually, their being a magnet for CC is something I use to my advantage. It is like a laser pointer and a cat. The enemy is trying to get to them, and they almost make it, but then I teleport them out of the way. Remember that the teleport works so long as even just one model of the unit is within 18 inches from the monolith. I also help it by pivoting the monolith so that the gate faces where it is most beneficial. Also, the warriors cannot move before teleportation but the monolith can, which helps with range if necessary, and with staying further away.

The combination of an orbed lord and 2 monoliths makes the warriors much more resilient. The only thing that can really hurt them then is being wiped out in sweeping advance. But, to lose the combat by that much, you need to lose a lot of warriors, which are entitled to WBB because their casualties are sustained before the sweeping advance. So, even if the rest of the squad gets wiped out, so long as there is a second warrior squad within 6 inches, the initial casualties get their WBB and whichever make it join that squad. If too many fail, recycle the second squad through one of the monoliths. On average, you will get 75% of the initial casualties back, which will really beef up the second squad, which now will rapid-fire the gauss out of somebody. The look on the opponent's face: priceless.

Yet another great thing about the cat&laser game is that if the enemy is trying to catch the warriors, they may not be paying enough attention to the destroyers which are the real slayers in the list. I'd rather have them chase my warriors around my monoliths, while my destroyers drop 45 shots of S6 gauss from up to 36 inches away every turn!

Conversely, if the enemy wisens up and targets the destroyers, then the warriors can provide cover saves for the destroyers and generally have a lot of fun just rapid-firing, teleporting, glancing vehicles, grabbing objectives, murdering weakened squads etc.

Also, I do not agree the warriors cannot hurt much of anything. Although they are not as murderous as the destroyers (very few things are), they pack gauss tech that glances vehicles and it is still a B4 S4 AP5 shot or two against troops.

This week I played a game against BA. One of the squads teleported through one of the monoliths, surrounded a SRG carrying a librarian dread and a squad of terminators. The SRG was boxed between the second monolith and the warrior squad. The warriors rapid-fired into the SRG which had flatted, scored a few glances, one of which punched through the cover save, and immobilized the SRG. The SRG immediately wrecked, and the passengers were in danger of being wiped out for failure to disembark. The only thing that saved them was that our league moderator said the FAQ allowed the emergency disembarkation to be off the edge of the wings (total cheese, GW!!). The librarian dread disembarked out of formation and got hosed down by a second warrior squad, losing his DCCW. The terminators charged the warriors, but the scythed lord (I4) and warriors (I2) struck first. The lord killed two of them with the scythe, the return attacks killed one warrior (the lord made most of his invulnerable saves). The termis lost the combat but held. The dread attacked a second squad, helped by a second group of termis. They killed 9 warriors, which however were put aside due to the orb on the lord. The remaining 3 warriors from the second squad ran but the dread caught them in sweeping advance, so they died without WBB. However, the 9 got their WBB, 3 came back and joined the first squad in CC. The first squad got recycled through the first monolith, at which point 3 more came back, as well as the one killed by the SRG termis. So, I got a unit of 18 warriors and a wounded lord emerging from the monolith and hosing down the SRG termis killing 2 more of them. On the next turn, the surviving one SRG termi charged the warriors again and got cut down by the lord before doing anything. Then the warriors marched across the board and claimed the BA objective, while the monoliths and surviving destroyers wiped out the scoring jumpers with the sanguine priest guarding my objective. Thus the warriors won me the game (obviously with a lot of help from the rest of the army).