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Hi, as this is my first post here (and honestly the first time I've EVER used a forum) I apologize ahead of time if I did something wrong. I've lurked around this site for a long time now and decided I should ask this question here:
The new codex makes Ghost Arks sound pretty useful, but alot of people have told me otherwise. Having quantum shielding and being open topped really seems to do a squad of 10 warriors justice, especially with that D3 roll revive to boot. The gauss flayer arrays basically help with my army structure (I'm new to necrons, but I've been wanting to start an army even before the 5th edition) since I like the idea of a medium ranged shooty army. However, people have told me to stick with the Night Scythe (but it has no shield and is not open topped... those were my two main draws to the ark). Originally I wanted two squads of 10 warriors, with two Arks carrying a squad each. However, the cost of the model is pretty high for a rather fragile transport (Im talking cash here haha). Has anyone had experience with a Ghost Ark enough to say that its worth the investment? How about using only one, but having three squads of 10 warriors instead, and keeping them all close enough to it where it can essentially "fly" over and repair a few models? Are they good with keeping the opposing army a good 12 inches away to negate CC but stay in rapidfire range? Sorry for all the questions, reading this site for years and not being able to post has really bottled up questions haha.

I am not convinced yet they are worth the points. if you are keeping them in the background regenerating units, then you are not using your flayers for the most Part therefore relying on the regeneration rule, which at minimum you would need to roll a 3 on a d3 three turns in a row just to make up for the points cost of the ark.

The ghost ark is a extremely cool model that I really wish I could use but I think I'm in a limit myself to 1, I feel like they are about 40 points more than they should be.

Well, you're off to a better start than 99% of new users.

I think Necrons are strongest in blocks of 20, and I've toyed with the idea of a Ghost Ark or two to support. It would be easy enough to have sufficient target saturation for both infantry and tanks, using a Command Barge and cheap Annihilation barges. That doesn't leave you with room for Scarabs, however. All the S6 and 7 has to go somewhere, and if it isn't to the Warriors and tanks...

I suspect Heavy Destroyers would be the best anti-tank for a mixed list like that. Heavy Destroyers and a Monolith.

Overlord, Command Barge
Assorted Court
20 Warriors
20 Warriors
10 Warriors, Ark
3 Heavy Destroyers
3 Heavy Destroyers
Annihilation Barge
1500

20 Warriors get swept way too easily.

If sweeping wasn't a rule in 6 ed then 20 warriors + phaeron overlord + tremor stave cryptek + ghost ark = shooty unit of death that you can't get close to, or kill easily.

I do like the idea of 20 warriors per squad in a shooting perspective, but it limits whether or not they can be scooped by an Ark or even Scythe until late into the game when the vehicle will most likely have been taken out. I think the strong point of an Ark is that it could possibly be a single unit firing 20 Gauss shots if both arrays are in line of sight and its packed full of warriors AND act as a skimmer in a subsequent turn. If you're within rapid fire range, that could do some serious damage to most units. The armor value when that shield is up makes it no push over either; stronger then most tanks. Plus it revives... but its almost a 250pt unit when used like this so its a sinker

darkslife wrote:20 Warriors get swept way too easily.

You'd be right, except it is so damn hard to get into CC with Necrons. Harbingers of Transmogrification and Despair can keep entire blocks out of close combat almost indefinitely.

The Ghost Ark, like many units, is considered overpriced because you pay for all of its tools yet can't apply them all at once. Case in point, the ability to add D3 Warriors is nearly useless for squads of 10 because they're so easily killed. It is tremendously useful for blocks of 20, but at that point they can't take it. To really get your money's worth, you'll need to do both.

So with that in mind, two 20 man squads moving with an ark full of 10 warriors behind them repairing any fallen from any three of the squads could be a meaty troop base. But if the heavy destroyers were replaced with full scarab swarm units they could be kept outta sight/mind until they have an opportunity to weaken down enemy armor with entropic strike until its exceptionally vulnerable to the 60 Gauss flayers marching towards them. What do you guys think? Cause with all the warriors I'll be buying that's 15 free scarabs that will be made, and I'm personally not a fan of the destroyer models (that useless left arm seems kinda strange for such an advanced alien race).

It isn't a matter of simply destroying vehicles. You need to be able to do so quickly. It will take the Scarabs a few turns to get into CC, and a few more to demechanize an army. Destroyers (and long ranged anti-tank in general) can start hitting things from turn 1 and can't be negated by maneuvering.

If you don't like Heavy Destroyers, Scarabs are certainly viable, you just disadvantage yourself against ranged powerhouses like IG, or faster armies like Eldar.

But how likely are Destroyers/Heavy to disable a vehicle? How does it compare to scarabs?

Well heavy destroyers' heavy gauss cannon are essentially lascannons that sacrifice 12 inches of range to be able to move and shoot with, so they are very effective. Compared to scarabs, they are FAR more likely to take out a vehicle by themselves cause S3 for the scarabs is laughable. But scarabs gradually softens enemy armor by one value 50% of the time it lands a hit. After roughly 10 hits are landed by the scarabs, even a regular Necron Warrior is able to take down a landraider as effectively as a lascannon could previously (unless im missing something). With A4 and a unit size of max 10, that is very easily accomplished if you can get close enough... and 20+ lascannons to a landraider is funny to watch.

Against AV12, you'll cause damage 1.3 damage results a turn and get a destroyed result a third of the time. That means Heavy Destroyers can kill about 2 vehicles per game. More importantly, they can shut down armored hunters that would kill them.

On the other hand, 10 Scarabs will hit remove 3.75 points of armor from a vehicle moving flat out. Each base you lose drops that number by a quarter. It'll take the Scarabs about 2 turns to get into the fight, after which point they'll be too diminished to continue killing vehicles. I expect 1 kill tops, and a total of 6 points of armor reduction over the course of the game.

DarkHound wrote:It isn't a matter of simply destroying vehicles. You need to be able to do so quickly. It will take the Scarabs a few turns to get into CC, and a few more to demechanize an army. Destroyers (and long ranged anti-tank in general) can start hitting things from turn 1 and can't be negated by maneuvering.

If you don't like Heavy Destroyers, Scarabs are certainly viable, you just disadvantage yourself against ranged powerhouses like IG, or faster armies like Eldar.

re: underlined.

Umm... no it won't. They are almost, at least in my experience, in range T1. Barring that they are on something T2.

Scarabs are beasts... 6" move, d6" fleet, 12" assault... On a good roll you can cover the entire dead zone in a turn. Also, in a single assault even a 5 model scarab squad will obliterate a land raider if it didn't move... 25 attacks on the charge, 12 of which will land entropic. This leaves the land raider at AV2 which means the 25 attacks all auto-pen, and you need new dice if you roll 25 times without a 5 or 6...

If you want to take this seriously, a squad of 10 scarabs backed up by 3 spyders move 6", the spyders spawn 3 scarabs in front of the swarm in a line buying you another 3". The scarabs then d6" fleet. Finally they 12" assault. That's a max movement of 27" on 13 bases. If your opponenet deployed reasonably close to the front line, you might even be able to get a multi-assault off on some tanks. 13 bases even on land raider that moved cruising will stand a fair chance of ruining it. 13x5 = 65 attacks -> ~11 hits -> ~5 entropics = AV9. s3 glances on a 6. 65 attacks will have ~ 10 glances. 10 glances will result in ~2 immobilized/weapon destroyed results. And if they didn't manage that T1, T2 they will have 3 more bases in the unit. Of course, the enemy will be shooting at them, but its not as bad you've described. Especially if you go all in on this strategy with say... 3 10base swarms, 9 spyders, and imotekh to provide night fighting. Sit back for 2 turns in the dark and make those squads into 3 16 base scarab swarms...


Long story short, scarabs do just fine, if not outright amazing early game. The hard part is keeping them alive after they munch a tank or two.

A tank or two is all you'd need for only one squad ... but getting back on track the ghost ark with 50 warriors is sounding incredibly powerful with scarabs and maybe a Triarch Stalker for that Target Relay to back up the warriors and to fill the void of an anti tank at range. The ark wouldn't be the top priority of the enemy and the warriors would not be able to be cleaned up in any less then three turns... So what it sounds like is I should sink the money into it? (I already have 36 warriors and 9 scarabs as my current standing army) 50 bucks is a waste if it turns out to be a puny transport akin to a rhino or something, although I doubt that would be the case.

WanderingFox wrote:

DarkHound wrote:It isn't a matter of simply destroying vehicles. You need to be able to do so quickly. It will take the Scarabs a few turns to get into CC, and a few more to demechanize an army. Destroyers (and long ranged anti-tank in general) can start hitting things from turn 1 and can't be negated by maneuvering.

If you don't like Heavy Destroyers, Scarabs are certainly viable, you just disadvantage yourself against ranged powerhouses like IG, or faster armies like Eldar.

re: underlined.

Umm... no it won't. They are almost, at least in my experience, in range T1. Barring that they are on something T2.

Scarabs are beasts... 6" move, d6" fleet, 12" assault... On a good roll you can cover the entire dead zone in a turn. Also, in a single assault even a 5 model scarab squad will obliterate a land raider if it didn't move... 25 attacks on the charge, 12 of which will land entropic. This leaves the land raider at AV2 which means the 25 attacks all auto-pen, and you need new dice if you roll 25 times without a 5 or 6...

If you want to take this seriously, a squad of 10 scarabs backed up by 3 spyders move 6", the spyders spawn 3 scarabs in front of the swarm in a line buying you another 3". The scarabs then d6" fleet. Finally they 12" assault. That's a max movement of 27" on 13 bases. If your opponenet deployed reasonably close to the front line, you might even be able to get a multi-assault off on some tanks. 13 bases even on land raider that moved cruising will stand a fair chance of ruining it. 13x5 = 65 attacks -> ~11 hits -> ~5 entropics = AV9. s3 glances on a 6. 65 attacks will have ~ 10 glances. 10 glances will result in ~2 immobilized/weapon destroyed results. And if they didn't manage that T1, T2 they will have 3 more bases in the unit. Of course, the enemy will be shooting at them, but its not as bad you've described. Especially if you go all in on this strategy with say... 3 10base swarms, 9 spyders, and imotekh to provide night fighting. Sit back for 2 turns in the dark and make those squads into 3 16 base scarab swarms...


Long story short, scarabs do just fine, if not outright amazing early game. The hard part is keeping them alive after they munch a tank or two.

-Implying that opponent will allow you to assault their transports at T1
-Implying that non-transport vehicles want to get near
-Implying opponent does not/cannot countercharge and/or bubble wrap
-Implying Opponent does not take flamers, blast weapons, ID tools.
-Implying not going to fight any horde type army in tourney with scarab spam.

^ +1

-Implying the opponent is a complete idiot

DarkHound wrote:On the other hand, 10 Scarabs will hit remove 3.75 points of armor from a vehicle moving flat out.

Imma go in a different direction than Wandering fox did with why this is a bad reason for scarabs not being awesome.

You see; aside from fast vehicles(and since the scarabs hit on a 6 in Close combat whether the vehicle is fast or not and moving at cruising speed), a vehicle that is moving at cruising speed to get within the 19-24" threat range of a scarab swarm is a vehicle that is not shooting. A vehicle that is not shooting is a neutralized vehicle for that turn. Furthermore if a vehicle moves into the Scarabs treat range it will then have to try and skirt that threat range(possibly with the scarabs moving closer to where the vehicle is or will want to go); meaning the vehicle will have to spend at least 2, maybe 3 turns moving so fast it cannot fire just to exit the scarabs thereat range.

In short Scarabs completely lock down all vehicles. Being on larger bases meas that they can have more of their number within 2" of any scarabs in base contact, often only 2 need to be in contact for the whole swarm to strike on the vehicle. Combine that with the 19-24" threat range being but a radius, and the Scarabs being swarms so they are nearly always going to be spread out to minimize Template/blast hits, and you have an irregular oblong of at least 39.5" minimum on any given side(19*2+1.5 for the base width); and can be up to 71/81" long(15" for 10 scarabs, 18" for 2" spacing between bases, 19/24 inches on each side) I would need to grab some actual models to give you the diameter of a perfect(ish) circle of 10 single-lined scarab bases at 2" coherency(but I do know that is a very good sized circle which extends the Vehicle Neutralization Zone out significantly while keeping the vulnerability to blasts to a minimum).

So yeah; Vehicle neutralization is worth the cost of scarabs alone, and if the opponent takes out a few bases to where they think they can relax their vehicles and slow to combat speed, that becomes 1.25 points of armour reduction/base(5 attacks, 50% hit, 50% reduce armour)

Fast vehicles function more like standard vehicles moving at combat speed, so are still fairly effective, but most of them carry more than 1 main gun; so the only ones that are fully effective when moving at cruising is the SRC, DE planes, Necron Planes, Rocket-pod Valk, or hellhound & variants.

Which brings us to Fast skimmers; most of whom are fragile in AV to begin with and so will want to be going flat out to gain the cover save against gauss shooting(Getting Stunned/immobilized in Scarab territory due to shooting will spell death in assault by scarabs).

I just realized you also calculated the number of Scarab hits on a cruising vehicle based on 4 attacks per base(and you were still wrong on that; it is 3.333, not 3.75); Scarabs get 5 attacks/base on the charge, which is 4.166 points removed from 10 Charging scarabs(enough that all 8.32 hits also have a 66.666% chance to roll on the damage tables, with a 50% chance/hit to Pen; which averages to a destroyed result)

Kommissar Kel wrote:Imma go in a different direction than Wandering fox did with why this is a bad reason for scarabs not being awesome.
...
I just realized you also calculated the number of Scarab hits on a cruising vehicle based on 4 attacks per base...

I realized that too after I left, and I didn't have the book at the time of posting.

While I applaud you for pointing out the virtues of Scarabs you missed my point. I like Scarabs and Spyders and horde infantry. I think that is the superior form of Necrons. However, you miss my point. Melee units as a sole source of anti-tank is incredibly inflexible. The Ork codex is a great example of this. Actually, let me adjust that: you need to have a larger threat range than 24", and the Grey Knight codex is a great example of that. The best lists currently utilize Imotehk and heavy support to suppress ranged elements for the Scarabs.

The Ghost Ark, like many units, is considered overpriced because you pay for all of its tools yet can't apply them all at once. Case in point, the ability to add D3 Warriors is nearly useless for squads of 10 because they're so easily killed. It is tremendously useful for blocks of 20, but at that point they can't take it. To really get your money's worth, you'll need to do both.

I am pretty sure you can take a ghost ark for a squad of 20 warriors, at least based on what I have read of the FOC.

That then opens up options, like putting a 'devestator' royal court into the ghost arks and phaeron led warrior units on the table.

Dedicated transports are only an option to units small enough to fit in them.

DarkHound wrote:Dedicated transports are only an option to units small enough to fit in them.

I've never run into this before, but where does it state that?

Depends on the codex, some codexes has "If the squad numbers 10 or less it may buy a rhino" for example.

Kaime wrote:Depends on the codex, some codexes has "If the squad numbers 10 or less it may buy a rhino" for example.

none of the new codex say that though.

It said so in the Blood Angels book, and in the Dark Eldar book on page 91 under the heading "Dedicated Transports" it notes that units cannot purchase transports if they can't fit despite not specifying so in the unit's wargear choices. I'd take Ghost Arks just for the D3 regen; I'd remember a crucial bit of information like if I was allowed to take them or not.

DarkHound wrote:It said so in the Blood Angels book, and in the Dark Eldar book on page 91 under the heading "Dedicated Transports" it notes that units cannot purchase transports if they can't fit despite not specifying so in the unit's wargear choices. I'd take Ghost Arks just for the D3 regen; I'd remember a crucial bit of information like if I was allowed to take them or not.

I made a thread about this in YMDC, and it looks like you are incorrect about not being able to buy a Ghost Ark with a 20 man warrior squad

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/412514.page#3603002

Kommissar Kel wrote: A vehicle that is not shooting is a neutralized vehicle for that turn.

Because the only purpose of a vehicle is to shoot? I've been using my rhinos all wrong. I was using them to move troops to strategically advantageous positions and cheating myself out of all that awesome storm bolter fire.

It said so in the Blood Angels book, and in the Dark Eldar book on page 91 under the heading "Dedicated Transports" it notes that units cannot purchase transports if they can't fit despite not specifying so in the unit's wargear choices.

That's partially incorrect. 5ed Marine codexes (Blood Angels included) can take dedicated transports for larger units.

The limitation is on a codex by codex basis. As you say, DE state it in the dedicated transport section. This tripped people up for a bit last year as in every other codex its stated in the unit entry. However I see no such limitation in the necron codex in the warrior unit entry or the dedicated transport section.

Necrons can take a squad of 20 warriors and an ark. OR you take an ark with a 2nd squad inside of it to fire form the open topped vehicle. And able to split off baring destruction.

I really like the arks for the 20 man squads, BUT if they put out rules in the FAQ saying 2 overlords can put two lords in the same squad, then Ghost Arks get a frighting new ability. As an open topped skimmer, with 2 close combat models and 5+ bodies to soak hits, you get a reasonable hammer for counter attack WHILE still marching up with your giant 20 man relentless phalanx blocks.

While yes you can do it now with just one necron lord/squad, its the second lord that really makes the small cc unit come out on top for still reasonable points.

darkslife wrote:20 Warriors get swept way too easily.

If sweeping wasn't a rule in 6 ed then 20 warriors + phaeron overlord + tremor stave cryptek + ghost ark = shooty unit of death that you can't get close to, or kill easily.

Sweeping happens. We can't all be marines. Besides, if you're leaving your warriors vulnerable to random assaults without forcing your opponent to make a difficult choice of some kind you're kind of doing it wrong.

Good tactics can make up for a stunning number of short-commings.

And...

Ghost Arks are awesome for what they do. If they live long enough to rez 9 warriors they're essentially free. No other vehicle in the game can do that. Just make sure you pack enough vehicles in your list that the ark isn't your opponent's default #1 AT target and it should get to do something useful eventually.

"...If they live long enough to rez 9 warriors they're essentially free..."

If they live long enough to rez 9 warriors then they have made their points back; but are not FREE, since you are giving up 115 points when you make the list in order to take them. If I could rez 9 guys and one would pop up that would be free, and welcome. But I don't want to shell out 115 points for a unit that doesn't make its points back offensively and relies on model generation to justify its points. I just wish they were priced a little cheaper.

if you're leaving your warriors vulnerable to random assaults without forcing your opponent to make a difficult choice of some kind you're kind of doing it wrong.

Man with the variety of units in the game you often can't avoid assault no matter your tactical prowess. On top of that the footprint of 2-3 fifteen to twenty model warrior wads is as sizable as it is accessible.