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Tell me your stories. Tell me your successes and your failures. I feel my options are becoming more and more limited with my bugs... Too many fast vehicles, too many S8 weapons, too many force weapons, etc etc etc. Tell me what has worked for you.

gargoyles, lots of gargoyles, will either assault everything on turn 2, or force a majority of firepower on them for the first 2 turns.
If you can feel-no-pain them and get a venomthrope out of LOS nearby, youre looking at terminator-levels of armor saves against anything S5 or lower, very dfficult to deal with.

genestealers, yargarbls stealers, and gargoyles are your friend, stealers effectively limit your opponents deployment from 18" on either side of the board or it will get eaten, yargarbles force him to move away from his deployment, gargoyles are fast enough to make him not want to, its a lose/lose.

Tyranids aren't as straightforward as most armies, you can't play reactionary, you come at him with everything that you've got and ram it down his armies throat, be merciless, make him react to you.

yes you'll want some hive guard or close combat mc's, and if you miscalculate you will lose a ton of little bugs, but if you do it right he's either shooting at your FNP'd + possibly cover saved troops, or shooting at your MC's and getting devoured by said troops.

Better than the venomthrope is throwing 3 rippers in front of the Gargoyles, you can give then better cover for 25 points. It will piss off opponents having to waste shots at rippers.

Overall I agree with the above. Though I have not played against the new necrons, we can beat then in combat, just like every other army. They will shoot us if we just sit there, just like every army. I still think crons will be easier for us then most armies. Their shenanigans like night fight and scarbs don't hurt us nearly as much as it hurts the typical meta. Think about how much a termagant can wreck most necrons when a tervigon is nearby (and if a tervigon is not nearby then you might need to explain what your gants are doing). You have a higher initiative, more attacks, are fearless, and get to reroll failed 4+ wounds.

Sounds like necrons should be asking how to deal with tyranids.

L'Etat C'Est Moi wrote:
Sounds like necrons should be asking how to deal with tyranids.

No Vehicles for scarabs to eat.

If the Necron player pulls Orikan + C'tan shenanigans full reserve the entire army.

Night fight doesn't hurt the bugs much.

Outflanking genestealers are a big problem for necrons.

schadenfreude wrote:
Outflanking genestealers are a big problem for necrons.

Word. However, if the Necron plays Phalanx style (e.g. in order to use the ark repair function of 3 arks) and has his units huddle around the middle of the playing field this can end badly. I had one game where a Nid player spammed genestealers which all got wasted by my Necron warriors and the particle whip cause they had a lot of ground to cover until they were in range.

L'Etat C'Est Moi wrote:Better than the venomthrope is throwing 3 rippers in front of the Gargoyles, you can give then better cover for 25 points. It will piss off opponents having to waste shots at rippers.

... How does throwing Rippers in front of Gargs give the Gargs cover? TLOS means the Rippers aren't going to provide cover to pretty much anything.

rigeld2 wrote:

L'Etat C'Est Moi wrote:Better than the venomthrope is throwing 3 rippers in front of the Gargoyles, you can give then better cover for 25 points. It will piss off opponents having to waste shots at rippers.

... How does throwing Rippers in front of Gargs give the Gargs cover? TLOS means the Rippers aren't going to provide cover to pretty much anything.

you are correct, rippers don't provide cover for much of anything.

Grundz wrote:

rigeld2 wrote:

L'Etat C'Est Moi wrote:Better than the venomthrope is throwing 3 rippers in front of the Gargoyles, you can give then better cover for 25 points. It will piss off opponents having to waste shots at rippers.

... How does throwing Rippers in front of Gargs give the Gargs cover? TLOS means the Rippers aren't going to provide cover to pretty much anything.

you are correct, rippers don't provide cover for much of anything.

They're swarms as well and their rules state specifically they don't provide cover

Zid wrote:They're swarms as well and their rules state specifically they don't provide cover

I always forget that, mostly because with TLOS they basically never will anyway.
(Yes, I'm aware that in contrived situations it could happen.)

I remember from previous experience with necrons against other editions of 'nids, it was incredibly frustrating to have your expensive troop units become liabilities against losing combat to cheaper quick assault units.

180 point minimum and vanishing from the table are problems of the past, but if you think about it, necrons still suffer from similar problems. If your expensive shooty troop units get locking into combat, quick, they are really not being effective for their points cost. On top of that, their transport shelters don't come cheap.

Losing your troop units in 5th edition is also an awful lot like phase out was to the necrons. Going MSU is tough for necrons because of how expensive the benefits of having many units are (lords/crypteks, transports) and the downside is getting wiped out too easily and losing the effectiveness of your RP roll.

Scarabs are also waaaay less exciting against enemies without tanks, though they can make for a really awesome regenerating speed bump.

Given the similar mid range of tyranid weapons to necrons optimal firing, the night fighting tricks are an awful lot less useful. Not to mention the fact that now that gaus weapons cant wound everything, necrons big units of troops without much special weapon support become a lot less threatening to big monsters. Hidden mind control and warscythes are pretty helpful, but lords are just so incredibly expensive to upgrade for their benefits.

Tervigons. His guys get back up, your guys just keep,breeding and running forward. Pretty soon he will be simply swarmed in gaunts. Add some bigger TMC for heavy ranged support, like devourers, venom cannons etc (crons have open topped vehicles yay!) and go from there

GENESTEALERS! Genestealers are one of the coolest units in the game, IMO. I love them. They're turning out to be a fantastic unit against some of these new armies, too bad the rest of the codex is pretty meh.

Zoanthropes, Venomthropes, gargoyles and trygons seem to be popular "tactical" units as well as genestealers.

Just one question before I ask individuals about their suggestions... How many of you have actually tried the things you've listed? I feel like some of the comments are coming from theory-land rather than reality-land.

Grunt_For_Christ wrote:Just one question before I ask individuals about their suggestions... How many of you have actually tried the things you've listed? I feel like some of the comments are coming from theory-land rather than reality-land.

I've turn 3 wipeout'd a non meched up necron army multiple times with a gargoyles/stealers/yargarbl lists running vehicles its a bit tougher because of the 6's in close combat but as long as you are running enough bugs to survive the inevitible wave of 12" firepower for one turn, it isn't too bad of a fight.
but yeah some of these "ideas" are terrible

Grundz wrote:

Grunt_For_Christ wrote:Just one question before I ask individuals about their suggestions... How many of you have actually tried the things you've listed? I feel like some of the comments are coming from theory-land rather than reality-land.

I've turn 3 wipeout'd a non meched up necron army multiple times with a gargoyles/stealers/yargarbl lists running vehicles its a bit tougher because of the 6's in close combat but as long as you are running enough bugs to survive the inevitible wave of 12" firepower for one turn, it isn't too bad of a fight.
but yeah some of these "ideas" are terrible

I was hoping you in particular had real success with a 'shock' type list. In several of my lists I run 4 10 man stealer units and a gaunt/tervigon choice to round out troops. Mix in lots of pods/a trygon/etc and for elites I have hive guard, zoans, etc. My other list is focused around a hammer & anvil type theme: Lots of hormagaunts and a bulked out unit of termagants with tervigon and the same 4 units of genestealers outflanking to severely limit the deployment possiblities. I bring hive guard and and tyrants with big guns and anything that has S6 guns to help mitigate fast enemies that have lots of fragile transports. If only carnifexes with dual devourers weren't 200 points a model... I used to love those guys for death-by-glancing.

Do you think either of these this would have some viability against necrons?

Considering most Necron tanks are armor 10 open topped, str 6 works well. I like venom cannons here. The hev version even better. The only thing to worry. About really is that shielding. But one pen or glance and it's gone, and it doesn't remove open topped. So IMHO Harpys with the twin linked venom cannon can do well. You'll need gargoyles for screening, and solid ground troops, the tervigon is a good one, and I like stealers as well. MAYBE a small team of warriors with deathspitters and a venom cannon for some more high str shooting. Otherwise I would try to avoid a firefight inside 24" since he will probally massacre you. Shoot him while. Closing for the charge, since necrons are decidedly weaker in cc, barring a few tricks or dedicated units like wraiths.

They are AV 11 open topped. Unless you are somehow getting rear armour shots on the back they are AV 13 until you pen. The str 6 shots will do nothing to the AV 13.

This is exactly why I ask whether people have actually TRIED anything they suggest. Theory means nothing to me. I can theorize better than most. I'm looking for real world knowledge because as we all know: The best laid plans go to waste the moment before they're implemented.

This is the problem I'm really having: AV13 until a pen seems daunting as I don't have much at range that is accurate enough to do much. And giving lots of MC's big guns is just a waste so much of the time.

Take a look at the necron lists being posted.

A lot of Catacomb command barges with a Warscythe toting lord to deliver str 7 power weapons that will get cover from turboboosting, hit your MC's on 4 + and buzz the hell out of you.

Annihilation barges will stack wounds on mobs, yes you get your armour save but no FNP on Gaunts, or gargs.

Ghost arks with warriors will be a pain to take out with anything less than hive guard and significantly increase the survivability of nearby warrior squads.

Large numbers of HoD crypteks with lances will shred TMCs. Add in a triarch stalker to twin link then and your going to take wounds and by turn two at least starting to lose tervigons.

Watch our for a group of these crypteks to focus on tervigons and anything else that give synapse. As a necron player Im going to be taking these lances and directing attention at these spawners. Im going to try to reduce the number of gaunts with the death of the tervigon and leave holes in your synapse.

You shouldn't worry about scarabs as much they are nothing more than tarpits. Though beware that on your 3+ TMC's a lucky hit will reduce your armor save for the rest of the game.

Get close to them, and wipe them in assault. Beware of a Destroyer lord with a group of wraiths. If the lord has Mind shackle scarabs and assaults a TMC on it's lonesome there is a good chance it will die THAT turn. Mind shackle scarabs force a random model in the unit to attack that model's own unit. Your TMC is going to attack itself and then have to deal with 24 str 6 rending hits, and 4 str 7 reroll misses power weapon.

Know what the necrons can do well and be prepared for it. Get in their face on turn two, and neglect as much of their shooting as possible

(edit for clarification: the MSS's only work if you fail a lrd test on 3d6)

Grunt_For_Christ wrote:
I was hoping you in particular had real success with a 'shock' type list. In several of my lists I run 4 10 man stealer units and a gaunt/tervigon choice to round out troops. Mix in lots of pods/a trygon/etc and for elites I have hive guard, zoans, etc. My other list is focused around a hammer & anvil type theme: Lots of hormagaunts and a bulked out unit of termagants with tervigon and the same 4 units of genestealers outflanking to severely limit the deployment possiblities. I bring hive guard and and tyrants with big guns and anything that has S6 guns to help mitigate fast enemies that have lots of fragile transports. If only carnifexes with dual devourers weren't 200 points a model... I used to love those guys for death-by-glancing.
Do you think either of these this would have some viability against necrons?

For my bugs, I rely on dictating the game
Outflanking stealers really dissuade players from spreading out and using range to their advantage, corraling them largely near the middle of the board

Termigaunts and hormigaunts are good, but gargoyles are just plain better, you are presenting a threat right from turn 1, if he doesn't focus fire on all those gargoyles, you are going to shred his army on turn 2 Termi-hormi's lack the mobility to really threaten the enemy on the first/2nd turn so he's going to get 2, maybe 3 solid shooting phases on them if you roll poorly on runs Even though they may be cheaper, you are now facing 2-3 times as much firepower as gargoyles for no reason. If you get the first turn, gargoyles are only going to give him 1 shooting phase, /very/ few armies can drop 60-90 T3 models in one phase A necon players real only hope is to engage them with scarabs to tie them up (and you can count on this happening) If it does, assault in for the extra movement with any trygons or footsloggers to help finish them off, dont the necron player begin target priority games, everything on the board at this point is deadily, all your bugs have feed, they are all going to eat his face even without snapse

You /are/ going to lose all those gargoyles, eventually, but if you run enough and fnp/venomthrope/whatever to weather the storm, all your foot troops are now 3/4 of the way there, and largely or totally unscathed, the gargoyles have done their job, by preventing him from moving up and/or spreading out Turn 2 arrives and a majority of your bugs from reserves come on, genestealers from opposing sides, and if you are me, yargarbles will pop out of a terrain peice near his lines, and multi assault as much as they can the yargarbles will probably die too, they just need to survive that one shooting phase where most of his army is tied up, you are breaking through scarabs, and outflanking stealers are on the way

it is now turn 3, your outflanking stealers assualt in on anything they can reach, mc's should be starting to arrive and wrecking everything they touch, and it should be mopup at this point

tyranid armor is crap, fnp is nice but it isn't armor, your best defence is shredding things in CC or tying them up, even a single bug is deadly to necrons with sweeping advance, speed is your only ally, you need to get in his face and ripping things up while providing only crappy shooting targets for the most part, bugs on foot can't do this right.


//edit for the record i generally run stealers in 8's with toxin sacs, I may drop a few gargoyles and give them adrenals with all the T5 nec's have, those rend rerolls are killer

Well with my necrons list i plan Lords with Mindshackled + Rezorbs with a cryptek and an ark (8 warrios). Took out a Carnafex squad like that.

Wraiths with beamers can be deadly to TMC. Say i have a squad with 3 of them and hit you twice (3+ tohit). You have to make 2 Initiative checks or just die. Your good units will have a 50% chance your cranfix has a 1/3 chance and anything other then them is a waste.

And i find that Ci'tans with the Dangerous Terrain will be a problem. May not seem so bad until you lose 1/2 a horde in a round of just moving. Even done decent wounds on MCs who at least dont get a save. Ignoreing terrain means you have to watchout for Blasts (The two that necrons can ever get).

The beamer is a str test btw. It wont be effective against a str 9 carnifex.

Characteristic tests always fail on a 6, so it can effect anyone.

There is a difference between having it go off 2/3 times with int test against a carnifex and a 1/6 chance. Relying on the enemy maybe rolling 6's isn't optimal.

DarthSpader wrote:Considering most Necron tanks are armor 10 open topped, str 6 works well. I like venom cannons here. The hev version even better. The only thing to worry. About really is that shielding. But one pen or glance and it's gone, and it doesn't remove open topped. So IMHO Harpys with the twin linked venom cannon can do well. You'll need gargoyles for screening, and solid ground troops, the tervigon is a good one, and I like stealers as well. MAYBE a small team of warriors with deathspitters and a venom cannon for some more high str shooting. Otherwise I would try to avoid a firefight inside 24" since he will probally massacre you. Shoot him while. Closing for the charge, since necrons are decidedly weaker in cc, barring a few tricks or dedicated units like wraiths.

As was said before most of our vehicles are 11 all around and open topped so str 6 doesnt work quite as well (though it can still work in a pinch). If you plan on taking our shields down youd better pen us then...glance and the shields remain up.

Looking forward to seeing how well some of this advice works for ya in our next match up GFC!

The Unforgiven Saint wrote:There is a difference between having it go off 2/3 times with int test against a carnifex and a 1/6 chance. Relying on the enemy maybe rolling 6's isn't optimal.

Sorry I misread your post, you are quite right, I was thinking you had said it could not effect them at all. My mistake.

So after a few dummy games with my nid roomate and a final "okay lets see how this goes" real game, I think I can pretty safely state the following.

Genestealers will ruin your necron opponents day. Plain and simple, they either force him to stay centered, or they WILL eat something when they come out.

That said, you need to be careful with them, you want them to STAY locked with whatever they hit for a turn (you want to finish the unit off in the necron players assault phase, not your own). This is mostly because of the major counter strategy to them. Pump an ungodly number of shots into them. Long story short, the second the genestealers are out of combat one of two things will happen depending on the crons army list. 1. An ark'd unit of warriors will lay 30 rapid-fire gauss shots into the unit and eat it, or 2. a squad of immortals with tesla weapons will lay waste to it.

This was how it went in every game I played against him (both practice and full-on). He'd charge a squad of immortals, eat them, one of my two crypteks would get back up, and then another one of my immortal squads would absolutely obliterate the genestealers.

Second suggestion: Tervigons w/ a LARGE (think max) pack of gaunts. This is a very scary thing for crons until the tervigon is down. 4+ poison with FNP? And there's 30 of them booking it right for my gun line? Oh god.

This will cause the cron player to PUMP shots into the tervigon in order to remove the issue. While this can be done, it will force a lot of fire into it rather than your other MCs.

Something you NEED to watch out for is mindshackle scarabs on overlords. I was able to completely obliterate a swarm lord with its own attacks simply by him failing a few leadership tests on 3d6. Similarly, wreck any command barges as soon as possible... like turn 1 if you can. Flat out sweep attacks with an OL w/ scythe will ruin your day.

Long story short, it boils down to thinking about it and handling the biggest issues. Firstly, you need to deal with the gun line. This is done through volume of troops, ideally 1-2 large gaunt squads w/ tervigon support. Secondly, you need to deal with any mech that may be present. My roommate was fond of deep striking spore podded zoenthropes right in front of my gun line for this. Lastly, you need to deal with our overlords. Do it from shooting if you can.

Lastly, a bit of advice, never EVER charge anything important into a unit of lychguard. Even a 5man squad of LG with a lord w/ scythe & orb will hold multiple units of things ALL DAMN GAME. I had: a 10 model genestalker unit, a 30 model gaunt unit, a 5 model warrior unit, and a swarm lord tied up for 4 turns of the game simply because he could not get them all down at once. He'd kill 3, the other 2 would drop enough gaunts to tie combat, then 1-2 would get back up. Best to just stay away from them. Lychguard are slow as all hell.

WanderingFox wrote:So after a few dummy games with my nid roomate and a final "okay lets see how this goes" real game, I think I can pretty safely state the following.

Genestealers will ruin your necron opponents day. Plain and simple, they either force him to stay centered, or they WILL eat something when they come out.

That said, you need to be careful with them, you want them to STAY locked with whatever they hit for a turn (you want to finish the unit off in the necron players assault phase, not your own). This is mostly because of the major counter strategy to them. Pump an ungodly number of shots into them. Long story short, the second the genestealers are out of combat one of two things will happen depending on the crons army list. 1. An ark'd unit of warriors will lay 30 rapid-fire gauss shots into the unit and eat it, or 2. a squad of immortals with tesla weapons will lay waste to it.

This was how it went in every game I played against him (both practice and full-on). He'd charge a squad of immortals, eat them, one of my two crypteks would get back up, and then another one of my immortal squads would absolutely obliterate the genestealers.

Second suggestion: Tervigons w/ a LARGE (think max) pack of gaunts. This is a very scary thing for crons until the tervigon is down. 4+ poison with FNP? And there's 30 of them booking it right for my gun line? Oh god.

This will cause the cron player to PUMP shots into the tervigon in order to remove the issue. While this can be done, it will force a lot of fire into it rather than your other MCs.

Something you NEED to watch out for is mindshackle scarabs on overlords. I was able to completely obliterate a swarm lord with its own attacks simply by him failing a few leadership tests on 3d6. Similarly, wreck any command barges as soon as possible... like turn 1 if you can. Flat out sweep attacks with an OL w/ scythe will ruin your day.

Long story short, it boils down to thinking about it and handling the biggest issues. Firstly, you need to deal with the gun line. This is done through volume of troops, ideally 1-2 large gaunt squads w/ tervigon support. Secondly, you need to deal with any mech that may be present. My roommate was fond of deep striking spore podded zoenthropes right in front of my gun line for this. Lastly, you need to deal with our overlords. Do it from shooting if you can.

Lastly, a bit of advice, never EVER charge anything important into a unit of lychguard. Even a 5man squad of LG with a lord w/ scythe & orb will hold multiple units of things ALL DAMN GAME. I had: a 10 model genestalker unit, a 30 model gaunt unit, a 5 model warrior unit, and a swarm lord tied up for 4 turns of the game simply because he could not get them all down at once. He'd kill 3, the other 2 would drop enough gaunts to tie combat, then 1-2 would get back up. Best to just stay away from them. Lychguard are slow as all hell.

An equal amount of points worth of warriors or genestealers can take lychguard + a lord (over 250 points). Win by combat resolution and run them down. The problem you had was guants were giving away combat resolution. It's a 300 point unit so 140 points of stealers won't cut it. 20 decked out stealers would curb stomp them, or 9 rending claws/toxin sac warriors as long as the gaunts stay out of the way.

Podding Doom can also be a problem for necrons. Leadership 10 is good news for the necrons, but they tend to cluster infantry units together. The necrons also have a lack of mass S8 firepower to instant kill it.

oh I agree. What I was getting at is don't expect anything short of 20 genestealers or something of equal CC prowess to overpower lychguard. The example above was just the most daunting one we had occur in practice games. I've also had them tie up a swarm lord and tervigon all game, as well as 8 zoeps. They won't win anytime soon, but damn are they hard to actually take down (T5 3+/4++/4+++).

I also agree entirely about pods being an issue for crons, in our final game I had basically resolved myself into 4 units of immortals each with 2 harbingers of destruction and a pair of cc lords on barges. It was about the only way I could deal with his MCs AND the pods that were hitting my front line with s6 attacks every turn after second.

That said, next time we play i think i'll be dropping an immortal squad for a triarch stalker and a second tachyon arrow. All goes well the arrow pops a venomthrope T1, the stalker connects with the tervigon, and then 6 s8 shots + 4 s5 shots at twinlink all rape it.

So it seems that my genestealer list is fast becoming the most desirable. I've always outflanked multiple squads and relied on fast attack and deep striking to make sure the enemy is all bunched together.

If I'm reading the posts correctly, getting stuck in hard & fast is still the best option. Kill, don't overkill, and have several waves all staged to play off of each other.

In other words, do what I always do. I am seeing a large problem with the AV13 however. With the current build, I typically only have 1-2 heavy venoms in the entire army. Charging MC's in is always nice, but I started downplaying MC's when 5th came out because of how many S8 weapons there are out there. Now with all the force weapons and "Haha, I passed my psychic test, you're dead now", they don't seem all that viable in many situations.

I still like and will always use trygons and tyrants, but that's about it. Sounds like I should go ahead and build that 2nd tervigon as well...

Thoughts?