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So, the new Necron book came out, and I have to admit I'm fairly frightened by those metallic monstrosities. And just when I started my Imperial Guard army This doesn't help me at all when my friend breaks out his shiny new plastic Nec's and adds them to our tournament pool. Any tactical advice?

Blast Weapons and sacrificial squads.

Apart from that if you just play normally you should be fine. With a good list anyway.

You need to winn charges. Try Ogryns. :-)

Assuming your opponent for some reason doesn't take solar pulse (forced night fighting) stay at range greater than 24 and blast him. Necrons don't have much shooting past 24. If hes does have pulse, he will likely be able to close to his preferred range. In this case you will want to find ways to protect your important units. Sadly necrons have units that can do real damage to guard in CC (not saying much).

Meching up is probably a good idea, but watch out for the tricks that necrons have against tanks (limited in number, but powerful). Template weapons with AP3 and 4 is a good idea, kills any unit that necrons have in the open. Having shots that can pen AV 13 en mass is also important due to the quantum shields that necron vehicles.

edgeboy13 wrote:So, the new Necron book came out, and I have to admit I'm fairly frightened by those metallic monstrosities. And just when I started my Imperial Guard army This doesn't help me at all when my friend breaks out his shiny new plastic Nec's and adds them to our tournament pool. Any tactical advice?

Guard? You can field like 59 scoring units and have points left over. They're not going to be able to shoot through all of your meltaguns. Eventually you'll get some in and blow up their arks.

What is the viability of combat? I haven't done much research on the new codex, Ive been pretty busy. Ive heard their shooting is strong, so how will GK do in melee?

Jaon wrote:What is the viability of combat? I haven't done much research on the new codex, Ive been pretty busy. Ive heard their shooting is strong, so how will GK do in melee?

Against 'crons? You'll tear right through us.

As a guard player, I'm not super concerned.

small psyker battle squads can assure a unit will fall back, meaning you can pretty much at-will deny we'll be back rolls

Scarabs are kind of nasty, and with a 12" charge I can't really flamer them down like i'd prefer to. I'm going to have to invest in sentinals to help instant-death kick them down. Really if ran a few lemans its a non-issue with each blast wound causing 2 bases to be removed.

There are a few other things you really have to watch out for, but they are all on autocannon-bait platforms so they shouldn't be too hard to deal with.

I'm not sure what people mean by things that will "really hurt guard" in cc, as foot guard I need to stay the heck away from big units of scarabs and c'tan, thats about it.

How do you kill tyranids/orks? Shoot them!

How do you kill GEQ/Tau/Necrons? .....

Assault.

If you are afraid of the new book bring an army list that handles close combat exceedingly well. Our heaviest hitters in CC really equate to nothing but expensive tarpits to dedicated CC units from other codices. C'tan (expensive, monstrous creatures, bait for missile spam etc) and lychguard (expensive, low model count, slow on foot) are probably the best CC in the book (aside from Obyron). Other than those winning in combat should be a cinch vs all our units. Use terrain to your advantage, make night fighting a liability for us rather than a boon by getting close, and quickly. Lock up in assault, sweeping advance, rinse, repeat.

The new necron codex is not OP. It is however, competitive, and should be able to finally give players facing it a run for their money.

These modifications seem doable! However, I have the problem of a C'tan lurking in the Necron ranks. Any good way to down those effectively?

Pretty sure you don't get to double down with 6+ str blasts on scarabs. Each unsaved wound is counted as 2, and as the wounds would have already been assigned to models when saves are taken, the model just seems to be double dead.

Unless I am missing something.

Edit: Welp, reread the rules, and I guess I am too used to complex wound allocation. Seems I was probably wrong. You don't actually assign wounds to individual models in that case.

I got the Necron codex not because I'm going to play Necrons, but because I just usually buy every codex. So while I haven't played any games with them, I don't see anything in the codex yet, that makes me think that it will be a huge threat to the top armies right now, IG included. Seems like a pretty good, balanced codex. I'm sure that there will be a few good builds that come out of it and hold their own in tournaments. Your typical mech guard army should be able to deal with necrons without too much trouble I think.

Honestly I think the 'Cron dex is well-balanced with regards to the other dexes.

Don't worry too much - they have a lot of high-tech power, but you've got a lot of brute-force power as Guard.

Just shoot him down in a hail of lasbolts and projectiles.

notabot187 wrote:Assuming your opponent for some reason doesn't take solar pulse (forced night fighting) stay at range greater than 24 and blast him. Necrons don't have much shooting past 24. If hes does have pulse, he will likely be able to close to his preferred range. In this case you will want to find ways to protect your important units. Sadly necrons have units that can do real damage to guard in CC (not saying much).

Meching up is probably a good idea, but watch out for the tricks that necrons have against tanks (limited in number, but powerful). Template weapons with AP3 and 4 is a good idea, kills any unit that necrons have in the open. Having shots that can pen AV 13 en mass is also important due to the quantum shields that necron vehicles.

The last point causes some headaches for my mech Eldar army as its based on S6 spam. It appears that I have to take eml's on some of my Serpents.

The good news for your mech eldar, on the other hand, is that the mass s6 is perfect for killing scarab bases... so I wouldnt change to eml just yet if I were you.

As for getting pens on av13, fire dragons and fire prisms will still be the kings, and with a single pen you can then use your s6 to light them up. Massed s6 versus av11 open topped will be great, trust me. Its not like those av13 transports the crons get are cheap, heh. I imagine eldar will quite comfortably OUT MECH a mech cron list, which might be a first for eldar to out mech another mech army.

DevianID wrote:The good news for your mech eldar, on the other hand, is that the mass s6 is perfect for killing scarab bases... so I wouldnt change to eml just yet if I were you.

As for getting pens on av13, fire dragons and fire prisms will still be the kings, and with a single pen you can then use your s6 to light them up. Massed s6 versus av11 open topped will be great, trust me. Its not like those av13 transports the crons get are cheap, heh. I imagine eldar will quite comfortably OUT MECH a mech cron list, which might be a first for eldar to out mech another mech army.

Okay, I'll give my current mech list a try. Fire Dragons need to get close and personal to do some damage. Not sure what gimmicks Necrons have to stop transports and tanks. It appears that they have some AP 1 weapons which is always bad news to an army.

shoot the choppy ones and chop the shooty ones!

90% of the Necron dex is shooty... so just outshoot them! Plus I think Russes are going to be an essential part in a lot of lists now (battlecannons will be good again!)

How about their AP 1 guns? Seem scary, right?

as scary as AP 1 or 2...or as far as DE are concerned anything with an AP value at all. AP 1 dosent really do much diffrent. it still ganks our armor if we arent in cover or embarked... even spezz mehrines have the same deal...AP 1 is the same as pretty much any plasma/melta etc they face. it still screws thier armor over unless as above. the only real diffrence is when shooting said AP 1 at vehicles and getting that extra +1 on damage.

Charge with equal points in guardsman, you should win.

Add in any amount of assault weapons fire before that charge (laspistol, flamer etc) & its almost certain. Wow, never thought I'd say that with Guard!