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Units in this element:
Warriors x20 with a Lord with Orb
A full Ghost Ark (loaded out as you care)
I estimate that this group should cost about 400 points and give you 2 scoring units


Tactic: (Inspired by DashofPepper)
Place one of your objectives 24" into the playing field
Place your large units of warriors about 12" in and place your Ark Units right behind them to keep up by adding up to d3 warriors per turn back to the unit.
Make your enemy come to you... other elements of your army should handle the long-range threats. When your opponent decided to take the objective they have a bad choice to make... either they can stay on the objective (eating 40 gauss shots a turn) or they can move off the objective and assault your warriors. If they do that, move your large unit of warriors to the side, and they'll get hit with up to 60 Gauss shots a turn!

Depending on that attack goes, you will be able to claim/contest at least one objective at the end of the game. You may be able to use the Ghost Ark unit to claim a second objective.

Lance down the arc, then splinter cannon the warriors. Or charge them with wyches and archon. And I have effective 42" range on my guns with night shields, and a 21-27" charge range depending on fleet rolls. For less points then what those units cost. (125 for a ravager, 210 for a 10 man wych unit on raider with an agonizer and some special weapons. )

I made up a list that did this, except I added an Overlord with Pheron and Rez orb to it. Hope to test it out tomorrow. But I added some Immortals, Destroyers and other goodies to back it up.

Sure, the DE Venom Spam (also one of my favorites) will do a lot of damage to this list. But the DE seem to have everything needed to take advantage of the weaknesses of the Necron army. Lots of Vehicles at range, mobility and great CC. The only thing that Necrons have is staying power and their main weaknesses are AV at range, CC, and mobility.

Still, I like that list because of the staying power of the main units. Sure, you have a unit of troops worth 400 points, and a second unit of troops worth 245, but they have a lot of staying power, and it looks to me that it makes a nice sterdy core that you can build around.

Just my opinion though. Haven't been able to play it yet. But in my opinion larger Necron units has an advantage over small Necron units.

The weakness of the warrior phalanx, as it is, is that a dedicated charge can cause them to lose combat, and with init 2 they can get swept. 20 models + lord + overlord + counter attack even, your still looking at 10 s4 wounds on MEQ and 3 s7 powerweapon wounds. If the thing charging you is a blood angel assault squad, then the s7 pw wounds all go on melta guys, and if the sarge survives (with his FnP and 3+ armor save) then you are looking at 3 dead assault marines. This assumes all your crons swing, you pass your LD for counter attack, and the 27 s5 init 5 attacks kill none of your warriors.

Anyway, as that example hopefully shows, the cron phalanx does almost no damage to FnP troops or termie assault units, while the casualties you will take will be staggering. (The 27 attacks above would kill 4.5 warriors and win combat, for example, without factoring pistol shots or the powerfist, or character support for the assault marines)

For what its worth, though, standard venom spam lists will have a very tough time with this cron phalanx, despite what those above said. 4 wounds/turn from a venom, times 8 venoms, is 32 wounds. 16 save, leaving enough for RP, which then allows another 8 to stand back up. Meaning only 8 /turn die. Less when you factor that the first 2 wounds from each venom can go on a 2+ save model, AND if you like you can get rerolls for some of your saves. The warrior phalanx stand up very very well to traditional anti infantry shooting. I would be more concerned that the venoms demolish c'tan or spyders, and that venoms have acute senses IIRC, meaning the stormlord is of less usefulness.

DarthSpader wrote:Lance down the arc, then splinter cannon the warriors. Or charge them with wyches and archon. And I have effective 42" range on my guns with night shields, and a 21-27" charge range depending on fleet rolls. For less points then what those units cost. (125 for a ravager, 210 for a 10 man wych unit on raider with an agonizer and some special weapons. )

I don't think you can Lance the Ark... it's behind the warriors. I'd support my unit with a C'Tan that makes all terrain difficult. I smack someone in your unit with a Tremorstave so that it slows your whole unit... etc... etc... etc.

This is about a single part of the army... your tactics are definitely something that we'd have to worry about, but it falls into the 'Other Parts of the Army deal with Long Range Threats" part of my post....

yup for sure. and ive also got other elements to deal with those elements. as for the ark "behind the warriors" i can can still lance it, because the warriors dont look like they obscure 50% of the vehicle. and even if they do, ok it gets obscured saves.... but 3 ravagers dropping 9 lances... that ark WILL go down. plus there are trueborn with blasters flying around, venoms with splinter cannons all over the place, and so on. as far as the c'tan thing a MC will go down to splinter fire PDQ. but its all heresay to factor in "other elements of my army". i was just pointing out how DE would deal with your objective hold/grab.

So, DarthSpader:

What you are really saying is that every unit in the game has a counter unit and every strategy in the game has a counter strategy?

I can deal with that.

I think the larger point about the weakness in the plan is that the ghost ark isn't that hard to shoot down. Every army has abundant shooting weapons that can take out a ghost ark from all kinds of ranges--I wouldn't expect it to last against a competitive list for more than a turn or two. So depending on it to be there to raise D3 warriors per turn isn't realistic.

I plan on using tarrain to my advantage when it comes to the ghost ark. But yes, it can get gotten. As everything can. It doesn't seem like that big of a point sink to me as opposed to some others that I have seen. It looks to me like a great objective holder and taker. Close Combat will always be the Necron's weakness, and their short range also hurts that because you can't kill them fast enough before the assault. Meaning that you will have to defend against that in other ways. For example, I am hoping to use larger vehicles to help spread out the hurt. Sure you have 3 Ravengers, but I have 4 targets. Maybe that Ghost Ark isn't that important.

Like I said, the DE seem like a weakness to the Necrons because they have advantages where the Necrons have disadvantages. But it seems to me that the Necron codex isn't overpowered. Just different. I like it. I am not a big fan of the fluff, but I like the codex as far as other stuff.