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im running a vulkan/lysander list for ard boyz this year and there will be at least one necron player at the prelims at my FLGS; he runs 3 monoliths. How can i effectivly kill them?(I dont have a vindicator and it seems like lysander would be the best bet)

CC with dreadnoughts usually kills them quickly but lascannons work well to.

Plan A: go for the phase out.

Plan B: Ironclads with a hammer for +1 on the pen chart. Hit on a 4+, glance on a 4+, wreck it on a 4+. If it gets immobolized the mono is good as dead as next rounds cc will auto hit.

I agree with schadenfreude.... Phase Out definitely should your number 1 priority. I bet if the Necron player brings 3 monoliths, he won't bring as much bots'. Gun them or cut them all down and gg for him.

Phase out would work unless he ueses his monoliths like a wall. I would stick to taking them out in cc unless he gives you an oppening to blow up his dudes.

Your best bets are a LOT of lascannons, dreadnought CCW (particularly seismic hammers), or Lysander. S10 +1 damage table is going to be the absolute best you can get. Sicarius can give you a S9+1 lascannon tac squad, but....

Ordinance is your answer. Specifically vindicators.

Vindicators will do an OK job...but Lysander will do it at least as well in CC, and while he does have Lysander...

I dont have a vindicator

Now, IMO you will be better served by carefully avoiding his C`tan and monoliths and going for the sweeping advance CC awesome on his warrior squads, sometimes this will not be an option...or indeed, not even the best option...so the above anti-monolith devices are going to be your best bets. You want S9-10, and if you can get ordnance pen or +1 damage table bonuses, so much the better.

Vindicators would stop him from hugging the backside of a monolith, but are likely to get torn up as a high priority target. If a necron player wants a vindicator silenced it's not hard to wreck, weapon destroy, or shake it.

3monos +C'tan=low phasw out+1 res orb max. The C'tan will also drop like a bag of kittens into a woodchipper if the sm player hits it with sternguard+null zone.

Don't dump lascannons into a monolith. They at best have a 1/18 chance per hit of wrecking it. Focus 1st of completely murdering destroyers, heavy destroyers, tomb spiders, and most importantly res orbs.

Above all else know the rules for wbb, and how to completely deny it to a necron unit.

as has been said before, ignore/avoid it, and go for phase out...

Don't take lascannons at all... And DO NOT fight them with vehicles of any sort... Although Vindicators can do a bit of damage, Gauss weapons will kill it really easily. Don't rely too much on your vehicles against Necrons: take out the high priority targets with good CCs.

Best option is Dreadnoughts (in which case I would highly recommend a DP) or Lysander, as said before. Again, vehicles are not a good idea.

Shaken/stunned is fine - that stops a lot of the shenanigans. Phase out is always how Necrons lose - if you can shoot a Cron unit say warriors or destroyers go for them every time.

If it's not S10 or ignores armor values somehow, don't bother shooting Monoliths. In vanilla SM, that means Dreads and Vindis. Neither is a terrible choice, considering how hard it is for Necrons to actually kill a vehicle, but it's likely to turn into those unit(s) soaking fire for several turns until either they get lucky with weapon destroyed or Whip hits or you kill them.

Shooting AV12 or higher with Destroyers is remarkably ineffective.

If you hurt him enough he will have to use the power matrix of the lith for porting, so he gets the WBB reroll. If he uses it for porting he can't shoot with it, meaning you can really ignore the monolith without fearing the big ordnance template too much. Bonus, you're already working on the phase out, too.

In an 'ard boys, you can expect to see 3 monoliths and 1 c'tan. That's going to be close to 1k points invested in those 4 models. When you include the required destroyers/heavy destroyers to run an effective necron list, he will not have many points left over for regular warriors.
Focus all your MGs on the warriors. With 2500 points, you should be able to force a phase out.

Strategy
Why it is better to go for a phase out? Well, most of your weapons have a very low chance to destroy AV 14 and most of them are fairly short range. This means that the destroyers will be hard to target, and the monoliths/c'tan will be nearly invlunerable to them. The next best target are the necron warriors.

It will take you dozens of MM/MG shots to destory the monolith. Its better to invest those shots into killing warriors. As he will likely only have 20-30 warriors, you can kill enough to force a phase our for the same amount of firepower that will kill ~1 monolith.

Your biggest concerns will be to insure that he does not get WBB saves, and that he will teleport his warriors away from you.
The first can be accomplished through MG/MM and TH/SS termies. In regards to the other concern, if he is teleporting his troops out of a monolith, he is not shooting the ordanance weapon on it.

There are many lists at the 'ard boys that will give you lots of problems -- but a necron player should not be one of them.

Because somehow the warriors won't be hiding behind a 3 Monolith wall. It's a decent idea, but you have to realize that in most games the warriors will be in reserves or behind the 'lith wall and thus not trivial to get to.

Dev squad and Lascannons is my method of choice. The thing is big and annoying, I lascannon it to death. I have plenty of other things for the warriors, Monoliths need to die ASAP. They just make the Necrons defeat that much longer.

Target priority would vary slightly depending on what your opponent's monolith proportion is...

I would recommend phase out is he's using three monoliths as an attack wing. Obviously

if you absolutly MUST kill the monolith, Ironclads and Lysander are your only real options. you need Str10 to kill monoliths, which Marines don't have in the shooting department aside from Vindicators.



and BTW, Dick's crons are the least of your worries Worry about Jackies mech guard.

yeah the leafblower scares the crap out of me :O

its hardly leafblower.

I'll PM you his list just to be sneaky

This may not apply to the OP, but in general I would think Necrons wouldn't be much of a threat at 'Ard Boyz, for one simple reason: The Necron army doesn't scale well to 2500. The real scarce thing at 2500 points is FOC slots, and the Necrons have really crappy Troops and Elites. So taking 3 Monoliths means that they either mass Destroyers, in which case they are uniformly terrible in CC, or go with Wraiths, in which case they have close to 1000 points to spend on Warriors, Immortals, Flayed Ones and Pariahs.

and 3 monoliths means no heavy destroyers, which means no long ranged anti-tank.

That said, the Necron list in question will likely consist of 3 Monoliths, Nightbringer, either lord on foot with Orb and Warscythe or Lord with Destroyer body Orb and Warscythe, a bunch of Destroyers, possably some Wraiths, maybe some Pariahs even(they really screw my GKs up)

yeah i played Dick on wednesday and 4 pariahs charged lysander and 5 shoty termies, and killed three outright, although i made up for it by sniping the nightbringer with a scout! xD

Thats pretty epic.

I sniped the Nightbringer with Crowe, just as planned

Grey Templar wrote:and 3 monoliths means no heavy destroyers, which means no long ranged anti-tank.

That said, the Necron list in question will likely consist of 3 Monoliths, Nightbringer, either lord on foot with Orb and Warscythe or Lord with Destroyer body Orb and Warscythe, a bunch of Destroyers, possably some Wraiths, maybe some Pariahs even(they really screw my GKs up)

Heavy Ds aren't exactly good anti-tank for the same reason lascannons aren't anymore. Particle Whips are quite a bit better, but the rest is true. The 'strong' Necron builds top out around 2k, that extra 500 tends to end up buying another Lord/Immortals/Pariahs or more Warriors since the FA and HS money slots are full. Needless to say, neither of those options really scare anybody much.

I would be interested to see how a 15 Destroyer 30 Immortal army would do, but who has that many Immortals?

The Grog wrote:

Grey Templar wrote:and 3 monoliths means no heavy destroyers, which means no long ranged anti-tank.

That said, the Necron list in question will likely consist of 3 Monoliths, Nightbringer, either lord on foot with Orb and Warscythe or Lord with Destroyer body Orb and Warscythe, a bunch of Destroyers, possably some Wraiths, maybe some Pariahs even(they really screw my GKs up)

Heavy Ds aren't exactly good anti-tank for the same reason lascannons aren't anymore. Particle Whips are quite a bit better, but the rest is true. The 'strong' Necron builds top out around 2k, that extra 500 tends to end up buying another Lord/Immortals/Pariahs or more Warriors since the FA and HS money slots are full. Needless to say, neither of those options really scare anybody much.

I would be interested to see how a 15 Destroyer 30 Immortal army would do, but who has that many Immortals?

Someone with a $30 casting kit

"Ignore them" and "go for the phase out" is actually not very good advice, since as has already pointed out:

The Grog wrote:Because somehow the warriors won't be hiding behind a 3 Monolith wall. It's a decent idea, but you have to realize that in most games the warriors will be in reserves or behind the 'lith wall and thus not trivial to get to.

I'd also tag that with the fact that if the Necron player is effectively using the Veil of Darkness you are never going to catch at least one of his squads in assault. Ever.

The question is "How to kill a Monolith."

A dreadnought isn't a bad idea, though how you'll get him close enough without losing weapons to gauss cannons and whatnot or getting blown to smithereens by the Particle Whips. And you've already stated that you don't have a Vindicator (get one! ). My advice is, if you can't get to his warriors in CC, just pack in as many lascannons as you can fit and focus on the Monoliths one at a time until they're dead or damaged enough to not be the moving wall for the warriors to hide behind. Also, bear in mind that the range on the Particle Whip is 24" and that not every mission requires absolute destruction of your enemy! On objective missions, properly dispersed Space Marines in cover can hold out for a while even against those big guns, and they'll of course be able to shoot back with their Lascannon!

Part of the deal is not being intimidated by them. Consider the mission and terrain and decide what you really need to accomplish. Vanilla Marines aren't the killiest army; you have to pay close attention to the objectives and play for those.

Maybe if we see the whole list it will help with tactics?

S10 AP1 weapons are your best chance to take out a Monolith. For Space Marines these come in:
-Conversion Beamer at 42-72" range (if your opponent likes to Deep Strike their Monoliths, this is a no-no).
-Orbital Bombardment on the Chapter Master, but it will likely scatter and personally I'd rather use it on any Warriors nearby.

Other good options are:
-Vindicator
-Any Dreadnought in CC with a Dreadnought Close Combat Weapon
-If you have any, lascannons might be able to kill it but the chances are low.