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 Klowny wrote:
They have absolutely devastating firepower, will out shoot you in a firefight. They can bring knights, so your going to need some good AT, a pylon would bode well here, because they also have onager dunecrawlers, which are some of the best imperium tanks available, quietly underrated by most.

The big robots are absolutely disgusting, scary to fight, can bounce back shots onto you and put out serious dakka. They can be tied up in combat which completely negated their damage, unless they have chosen the CC route, but the CC route is the weaker option.

They have the best sniper rifles in the game, so dont bring characters, S7 ap-4 D6 damage or something like that, on 60" range weapons.

Good luck mah frand

Thanks. It's going to be a friendly game and I think he has max 1500 points. So I don't expect any knights. I am very scared of those kastellan robots though.
I have some ideas about what to bring which I'll post in a spoilers since I can ramble on sometimes.

Hey guys, another long time reader first time writer.
After near 15 years away (hey Untitled!), I decided to get back into 40k, and since I loved Tomb Kings when they still existed, my army choice was obvious.
First I want to thank you all for sharing your knowledge here, this thread was/is a tremendous help for me.

I played my 2nd game last Friday, and wanted to share my experience:

We played 1500pt and my opponent brought a rather nasty list of Rave Guard.



I did not know what I was up against beforehand, so my hopes of winning where low after seeing him unpacking his Stormravens. I heard a lot about that unit so I knew that they are bad news, especially since I didn't bring much AT firepower, and my opponent was way more experienced than me (ok, almost everybody is).

Well, to make things short:
I won after turn 5, and almost tabled him.
By then he had only one Stormraven left, and I lost my DDA, the scarabs and the NB.

Here is what I found:

Overlord: Took him mostly for buffing my Immortals, which worked great. I gave him the staff for more versatility, but wished i'd gone with the WS instead after my opponent dropped some bikes on his head. The staffs short range and damage output didn't do much, but the WS really would have helped even tough its situational. So no more staff in the future.

Immortals: The cornerstone of my army. They stayed in cover the whole game an electrocuted everything that came too close. The RP and 2+ sv on these guys made them super tough, and after a while my opponent just gave up and stayed away.

Deathmarks: I tried to kill Shrike with them, since his aura was really annoying, giving his Stormravens and Scouts infinite rerolls. But I lost 5 the moment they arrived due to a stratagem which gave my opponent the ability to shoot them in my turn. After that they only (still) put two wounds on Shrike, and then got wiped the following turn. Well, not their fault really, so I'll give them another chance.

TB: Wow! I read here that they are good, but they exceeded all my expectations! I flew them from cover to cover, giving them 2+ saves, and they kept getting back up like champs. They downed all the Scouts, courtesy of the scopes (6+ sv instead of 4+ sv helped a lot), and took an insane amount of firepower in return. After I killed Shrike (he got cocky and tried to kill the TBs in melee, but failed miserably and then got shot in the face the next turn) my opponent got so frustrated that he used one Stormraven to shoot every weapon it had on them which killed three, but saw them getting back up in the following turns. To be fair, my opponent said that he never faced them before and seriously underestimated them. Still they are an auto-include from now on.

Nightbringer: Didn't do much, but there were no valuable targets for him. I was afraid of his scouts and their 36” sniper rifles with all the rerolls from Shrike and the lieutenant, so he stayed in cover the whole game and then got blasted to bits after trying to down the Blackstar in melee. Will exchange him for something more shooty, since I think that thats where our strengths are. To his defence, in my first game he rocked with his Gaze of Death (kind of proving my point).

Scarabs: Not much to say. They're good at what they do. Fast and tough. After the NB was killed I used them to hold an objective, and they did until the end, even with being focus fired from the Blackstar.

Triarch Stalker: Did quite well. His buff was handy, and he managed to shoot down one of the Stormravens with some lucky rolls. He endured an immense amount of firepower, with hot rolls for QS. Such a great ability! Drove my Opponent to the point that he begged his dice to roll low on damage.

DDA: I knew that the genreal consensus here is that they are too unreliable to be useful, but I like the model and the fact that it can possibly attack everything on the board as long as it can see it. However, I rolled two 1s for the shots and missed, and then got destroyed turn 3. My Opponent was somehow afraid of it and he dedicated a lot of firepower to bring it down, so it was kind of useful after all. I bring two in the next game, and see how it goes with the TS buff. But yeah, it definitely needs a change. More shots would be the way to go IMO.

Closing thoughts:
Stormravens are ridiculous. Is there anything they cant do?
Our resilience is amazing! Staying in cover and RP = your opponent having a bad time.
Living metal is not that powerful, but helps our vehicles getting back to be fully operational.
I definitely need more AT firepower, so I ordered a Tomb Sentinel and a Tesseract Ark at the nearest Tomb World.

The best part of the match was when I killed Shrike T4 and he had no troops on the ground left, thus loosing the game due to the errata. But I let him continue since he told me that he totally forgot about that rule.

With two games and two wins under my belt (not much, I know), with an army that is not in a particularly good spot right now, I am really optimistic for the future.

Sadly Nightbringer is the only 'shooty' ctan unless you count the tesseract arc..

Granted the other two still have their powers to use in the shooting phase, but NB has that too in addition to a ranged attack and rocks melee so he's the superior C'tan to take for combat if you dont need grand illusion for shenanigans. Though I enjoy running them together as a god squad tbh, nothing quite like mowing through enemies leadership wrap and then having leaders charge and destroy your ctans and then doing 6 mortal wounds with some lucky rolls when you explode. *chuckle*

Didn't hear you mention the powers, how did those turn out for you? Or did you forget to pick and use one of the three?

Lothmar wrote:
Sadly Nightbringer is the only 'shooty' ctan unless you count the tesseract arc..

Granted the other two still have their powers to use in the shooting phase, but NB has that too in addition to a ranged attack and rocks melee so he's the superior C'tan to take for combat if you dont need grand illusion for shenanigans. Though I enjoy running them together as a god squad tbh, nothing quite like mowing through enemies leadership wrap and then having leaders charge and destroy your ctans and then doing 6 mortal wounds with some lucky rolls when you explode. *chuckle*

Didn't hear you mention the powers, how did those turn out for you? Or did you forget to pick and use one of the three?

Ah, thanks for reminding me Lothmar!
I gave him Antimatter Meteor, since I knew that in an SM army there wouldn't be that many targets for the other two powers.
AMM worked all right, but nothing spectacular. I chipped a couple of wounds off the Blackstar before charging it, managing to bring it down to 5 or so wounds. But after that it flew away and killed the NB from range. That was actually my mistake (one of many this game) since i forgot to wrap him back up with the scarabs. But at least my Immortals avenged him a turn later zapping the Blackstar out of the sky.
Don't get me wrong, I like the NB, he is the most useful C'tan atm imo. I will definitely field him again in the future, but against a vehicle heavy list he is not the optimal choice.

I also played against Raven Guard this weekend.
Chapter tactics for one army really gives an huge advantage. The -1 to hit at >12" is amazing. Imagine having that on a Necron army.

We are trying out some lists for a team tournament with the highlander restriction. So no duplicate units unless you have picked everything else from the same slot. No FW and no unique models are allowed.

We played relic.

My list was:
Overlord, WS
Cryptek
10 Immortals, gauss
10 Deathmarks
Stalker, THGC
6 Wraiths
5 Scarabs
1 DDA
3 Heavy Destroyers

Raven guard:
Captain on bike
2 Tech marines on bikes
6 Dreadnoughts (with lots of dakka)
3 Centurions with hurricane bolters and grav

Turn 1:
I got to start.
MWBD the Heavy Destroyers.
Focused almost everything into one dread, did 5 wounds!
Dropped down Deathmarks, shot at Techmarine, nothing.

In his turn he killed three Wraiths, the Heavy Destroyers (who where in cover) and a few Deathmarks.

I had some awful die rolls.

Turn 2:
Deathmarks killed a Techmarine.
Everything else wiffed and I only managed to kill a single Centurion.

The Wraiths charged a couple of Dreads. One was shot down in overwatch the remaining two where killed in CC where the Captain intervened.

In his turn he shot some Immortals, Deathmarks and put a few wounds on the Stalker. He managed a long charge in the Deathmarks with a Dread. Deathmarks held.

Turn 3:
Once again my shooting did diddley squat.
Scarabs have been moving around grabbing objectives. The relic is in the middle of a shooting lane so my Infantry don't have a chance to grab it.

In his turn he shot most of the Immortals and put a few more wounds on the Stalker. His Captain charged the Deathmarks and together with the Dread they killed them.

Turn 4:
We shaked hands and agreed that I would have a very hard time winning.


Conclusion:
The relic mission made me focus a lot of my forces on one place.

My shooting was terrible ineffective. A part of it was terrible dice rolling. It's very noticeable that point for point Necrons have a fraction of the firepower of Marines.
Gauss Immortals have a bad range, will switch to tesla.
I flanked with the Scarabs and Wraiths. I should have used them as screens for the relic instead.

A Raven guard Dreadnought list is strong. -1 to hit, Captain gives reroll 1's to hit and a Warlord trait gives an additional -1 AP on sixes (which is amazingly good if units can put out 20-30 dice of shooting each).

It's also difficult to lock down dreads in CC since they just kills the units.

 skoffs wrote:
Would it ever be worth it to bring TWO G-Pylons?
That would be half your list at 950 points, and you'd be seriously hurting for CP... but fill out the rest of your ranks with Stalkers and Scarabs and you might actually have something, there.

In for a penny, in for a pound. You might consider running a third Lord of War since that Battle forged list doesn't require a leader at all and it gives 3CP.

Perhaps the Tesseract Vault and place it so it's bases tips can be in either GP's 6" invul field since it doesn't have QS or invul itself so it's not too tanky. This gives you some decent anti horde with str 7 tesla and 20 shots of it, not to mention the up to 3 ctan powers.

If you have initiative place one of the GP's on the field at the start in case they seize, if you dont have the initiative then keep both GP's in TP matrix and bring onto the field.

If you run Toholk for Eternal engines place on your favorite LoW of whatevers on the field at the start of T1. If you're running him you might as well bring an infantry unit~ so either 20 man warrior squad and a ghost ark for max survivability and shots coming at whomever is forced to march against your LoW's (just hold them back so Ghost ark can get invul too and still provide secondary reprot. Granted it's got a decent move so even if you move your infantry away since they have mobile invul you can always catch them after 1-2 turns of marching and advancing with one move and still be in range for the end of move phase Re prot..

So~ 485+485+495
240+165+175 == hmmm, 2045. Yeah you'd probably need 2500 to 3k to finish this up... What alternatives...

For 2k, you'd probably need to run immortals as your infantry choice and then you'd have 200 points left... You could buy a triarch since that's always good especially with such powerful weapons shooting. If you run Heavy Gauss you'll have some wasted points but the best range... If you think you can live with the 24" range you can run Particle and still fit in 3 scarabs as well.

...

Alternatively you could probably tack on a spearhead detachment with Toholk and 1 dedicated spyder repair per. But if you dont have good concealment etc expect your repair bots to get picked off before they continue focusing down your stuff. 165+84+84+84 - You'll then have 118 left, at which point you can run 9 more scarabs as a single squad or 2 squads split how you like... Toholk is losing out on quite a few of his abilities (increasing re prot, giving invuls, etc), but honestly there's few leaders who have any effect whatsoever in this kind of a build so~ meh? At least toholk is giving one of your mains more healing and if you are seizing a second chance for free.

---

Or also alternatively, just running a 4th LoW and taking either another TV or GP. At that point you're almost 2k.

How can he field 6 dreads with highlander? That seems like a very nasty list to come up against.

 Nagerash wrote:
How can he field 6 dreads with highlander? That seems like a very nasty list to come up against.

There's several variations of Dreads, but it isn't like any of them are broken. At best, a Dread is pretty darn good. That's at best.

So

2x G-Pylons
2x T.Vaults

Includes anti tank and anti horde.

Leaves just enough points to include 4x Scarab bases (but that would mean losing a CP to add the auxiliary unit)

Would fail miserably, but would probably be fun to play.

If he had one flyer left doesn't that count as tabled?

 skoffs wrote:
So

2x G-Pylons
2x T.Vaults

Includes anti tank and anti horde.

Leaves just enough points to include 4x Scarab bases (but that would mean losing a CP to add the auxiliary unit)

Would fail miserably, but would probably be fun to play.

Would have to pay attention so those TVs don't block line of sight for those GPs.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Nagerash wrote:
How can he field 6 dreads with highlander? That seems like a very nasty list to come up against.

There's several variations of Dreads, but it isn't like any of them are broken. At best, a Dread is pretty darn good. That's at best.

Haven't looked in the Space marine codex in detail, but I guess they have 6 dread datasheets.
The thing with dreads is that they benefit from the Raven Guard chapter tactics and are not easily locked in CC since they can fight back. They are also surprisingly mobile and a few of them hit on 2+ with reroll of ones thanks to the Captain.

It's a very difficult list to fight with Necrons with highlander and no FW. Basically the only heavy weapons I can field are Stalker, DDA, Heavy destroyers, Monolith and Doom scythe. The problem with these are (except the Monolith) is that you get so few dice to shoot with and with -1 to hit they do almost no damage at all.

Highlander is literally the worst format created and has no way to balance. Necrons would be so bad off in Highlander it's funny.

I'm going to run this list next game



1. Immortals will be deployed / run to cover and with 2+ save and MWBD from Barge will shoot around to protect Pylon and deployment zone.
2. Stalkers will give rerolls and will destroy small vehicles / terminators etc
3. Pylon will focus on big stuff
4. Scarabs will protect pylon and grab objectives
5. Barges will grab objectives and work against horde

I'd drop a barge and add 10 warriors since you bring the ghost ark anyway (unless you mean to transport them, which is hardly worth it)

10 warriors bring roughly the same anti horde power as an Anni barge

torblind wrote:
I'd drop a barge and add 10 warriors since you bring the ghost ark anyway (unless you mean to transport them, which is hardly worth it)

10 warriors bring roughly the same anti horde power as an Anni barge

What i see almost every game is that warriors really do not do much due to slowness.
Annihilation Barge with Tesla shots brings more firepower that 10 warriors for same price AND most important has much greater mobility.
Every game warriors go forward really slow or just stand protecting objective and do nothing.

The good option is bringing Deceiver and teleporting warriors closer but Deceiver has it's own issue - 225pts tax for teleport and if you're not going first your teleported units can be killed due to closer to enemy deployment.

Anyone have any ideas for a cool functional double-Monolith list? 2k? Recently reacquired my old ones.

Just for friendly games, not tournaments, so it doesn't have to be tournament competitive - I doubt a double Monolith list could be be in any way...

So im curious how to resolve a comand point reroll of a charge against a tesseract ark? Does the reroll happen before or after the discard? Or does he leave 1 die and reroll 2. 1 being his reroll and 1 being the extra dice for gravitational flux?

Roll all relevant dice. Then, your opponent can spend a command point to reroll any one.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Roll all relevant dice. Then, your opponent can spend a command point to reroll any one.

This still doesnt tell me if its before or after the discard.

He would CP before you throw away the highest. I've forced opponents to spend them in the past to make charges against it. A CP reroll only allows to reroll one dice, so he would choose his lowest dice and reroll it. For example, I've had a TH/SS termie squad 6" away from my ark, he rolled a 6 and two 1's, so he had to CP one of his 1's as he had to throw away his 6 anyway. Got a 3, and failed the charge as he had a 1, 3 and 6, throwing away the 6 meant he got 4", not enough to make it.

 Klowny wrote:
He would CP before you throw away the highest. I've forced opponents to spend them in the past to make charges against it. A CP reroll only allows to reroll one dice, so he would choose his lowest dice and reroll it. For example, I've had a TH/SS termie squad 6" away from my ark, he rolled a 6 and two 1's, so he had to CP one of his 1's as he had to throw away his 6 anyway. Got a 3, and failed the charge as he had a 1, 3 and 6, throwing away the 6 meant he got 4", not enough to make it.

Thank you. That clears that up nicely.

 ArtyomTrityak wrote:

torblind wrote:
I'd drop a barge and add 10 warriors since you bring the ghost ark anyway (unless you mean to transport them, which is hardly worth it)

10 warriors bring roughly the same anti horde power as an Anni barge

What i see almost every game is that warriors really do not do much due to slowness.
Annihilation Barge with Tesla shots brings more firepower that 10 warriors for same price AND most important has much greater mobility.
Every game warriors go forward really slow or just stand protecting objective and do nothing.

The good option is bringing Deceiver and teleporting warriors closer but Deceiver has it's own issue - 225pts tax for teleport and if you're not going first your teleported units can be killed due to closer to enemy deployment.

I agree, I would drop the warriors and ghost ark altogether, to me it seemed you were committed to bringing warriors since you also had an ark, hence my suggestion.

I want to make the anni barge viable, becuase its such a cool model (one of my highpoints from 7th was the one game I got to put the ABarge on a skyfire nexus so that what is modeled like a big a** AA gun actually got to fill the role, blasting flyrants out of the sky)

Its speed, combined with assault weaponry should make it ideal for jumping around on objectives, blasting off final wounds off of models. Just need to bring more threatening targets for your enemy so he will focus his fire elsewhere.

Unfortunately against hordes tesla immortals is that much better; more wounds, RP, wounds on 3+ anyway, but most importantly, can take MWBD. If you go to the tool I link to in my signature, and punch the numbers, hit Tesla and the "+1" checkbox, and see damage output increase by almost 50% against hordes with T-shirt saves. The ABarge doesnt come near. Even without MWBD.

So once again, for everyone keeping score,

The current most effective units we have available to us (for the time being) are:
- Immortals (max sized. Tesla. Buffed with MWBD. Keep in cover if possible)
- Scarabs (any sized. Used for anti-drop screening and Smite absorption. Also good for running around and capping objectives)
- Tesseract Arks (good guns, better mobility, more survivable)
- G-Pylons (amazing guns, not easy to remove)

Honorable mention goes to:
- Tomb Blades (units of 5+ best. Gauss because you can get in close quickly)
- Triarch Stalkers (valuable rerolls for heavy weaponry)
- Deceiver (redeployment mindf*ckery)

For the lols Skoffs, what are our worst units? (Definitely not trying to stir-up any gak amongst the thread, obviously )

I feel like Deathmarks should be "honorable" tbh, not everyone uses them but ever since I tested them out and saw someone destroy a Flying Tzeentch Circus with them iv always fielded them and had good success with them.

Halfpast_Yellow wrote:
Anyone have any ideas for a cool functional double-Monolith list? 2k? Recently reacquired my old ones.

Just for friendly games, not tournaments, so it doesn't have to be tournament competitive - I doubt a double Monolith list could be be in any way...

Hmm... Maybe 2 monliths 381+381
Deciever +225
Gauss pylon +485

---------
1472

Ok, if you can figure out two infantry choices you like for the remaining 530 (HQ's also doable since technically Infantry) here's what you'd do.

Beginning of game, Monoliths deployed on the board with deceiver.
Before Turn 1, Grand illusion the two monoliths to either 24" for max weapons range on them, or slightly closer for your coming infantry. Feel free to deploy the deceiver where you find approps.
Turn 1, Drop the GP behind the monolith shields and have them corner touching the invul field for invul.
Start of movement, have infantry walk out of monoliths. Then you can either keep monolith there or have it move as needed but the invul saves are good to have if your enemy has decent ap since mono's dont have QS.


With 1 more heavy and a leader you can make this a Vanguard for 1CP and to battleforge...

If you dont need the invul sticking power and massive AP fire support the GP provides, you can still do this with the idea of get in their face fast and hard with deploying squads into max effect range and possibly charging.

Lothmar wrote:

Hmm... Maybe 2 monliths 381+381
Deciever +225
Gauss pylon +485

There is one HUGE Grand Illusion issue. If you're not going first you're f**ked.
You're redeploying your units very close to the enemy so they'll be in range for all opponent shooting attacks.
I've tried couple of times play Grand Illusion and it did work only when i went first.

Grand Illusion when going first is Brutal, but its use as second turn player is more limited.

You have to fake a deploy and then deny a flank to your opponent, concentrating on one side of the board vs the other.

You can also use it to advance screens up the board, but its not a good strategy to build your entire list based on going first as that happens only 50% of the time.

What is the plan if you fo second?

You redeploy after deciding on going first, so you won't be unnecessarily exposed

For my last games Deceiver did nothing so i feel it is like "tax" to pay for Grand Illusion.

What i'm thinking that 2x10 Immortals with Tesla teleported by GI in cover to capture some objectives might be very nice. 24' range, 2+ save.