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Hi

I played my first game in three years yesterday (1750 points), and it went rather badly. I'm still getting to grips with the rules so I can take a loss or two, but I was completely out of my depth when it came to thinking up a terribly effective counter with the models at my disposal.

I used:

Zandrekh
Overlord with warscythe, weave, mindshackle, arrow
royal court of 5 crypteks (4 destruction with pulse, 1 eternity with chronometron)
Royal court of 1 destruction cryptek with pulse, 1 eternity with chronometron, 1 lord with mindshackle and warscythe
2 x 10 Immortals with tesla
1 x 5 warriors with Ghost Ark
8 scrabs swarms
2 Anil barges
5 Lychguard with sword and board (forgot my monolith so subbed these in)

He used (approx):

2 Slaanesh Princes with Lash
9 Obliterators
3 Rhinos with plague marines (2 units melta, 1 unit Plasma)
1 Rhino with Berzerkers


I did forget to use my solar pulses but I found I wasn't losing to much at long ranges, losing most to being wiped in combat and at medium range firefights. The mindshackles failed to stop princes from messing up my command units, and my shooting killed off little (2 oblits, rhino, 5-6 marines of various kinds) before I was tabled. I tried to hit as many rhinos as I could early on, but we were playing dawn of war deployment, and there was a preponderance of cover that meant saves were taken against the few attacks I could get on him. All my vehicles fell rather easilt to the enemy before doing much of anything, and I was unable to prevent myself being double lashed into melee range of the nasty stuff. Zandreks immortal unit got charged by both pronces at once, and despite mindshackle failings (the court lord was deployed there) I managed to kill one prince before being run down. Elsewhere I made an attempt to clear off some plague marines and bezerkers from my objective using the other overlords immortal unit and some remaining lychguards, but they were eventually ground down by the other plaguemarines and obliterators that enetered the fray. I mindshackled an obliterator to hit his own unit, 3 hits/wounds... but also 3 x 6's rolled to save...

What kind of units/configurations should I be looking at to help me with a better shot at not being tabled before I do a bit more damage? Any advice would be appreciated.

Dawn of War should actually help get you more distance. You've got to stand off a bit from chaos & shoot them up.

The only unit Necrons get which is a direct counter for Lash is spiders with Gloom Prism.

That or try fielding more transports. This is a new concept to the 'Crons but they can go mech now.It is a tough, tough match up though because almost all of your weapons have a 24" range.

I did find that the 24" range stuff put my tin-men in a dangerous range, lash wise. Wouldn't the transports be in trouble with that many lascannons and melta-toting plaguemarines hanging around?

Well, looks like an uphill battle. How about some outflankers which forces the CSM army to react to it?

I'd suggest dropping The Lychguard, and Zahndrekh until you get to higher points.

The Solar pulses should help mitigate the firepower from the Oblits, for the first two turns.

Did your replace the Tesla Cannons on the Annihilation barges with Gauss Cannons? The AP 3 should help a lot when dealing with the DPs, and Marines in general.

Two Annihilation barges that fire on a single DP with the Gauss cannons should be able to kill it. Between the Solar pulses, and the rest of your firepower, hopefully you can take care of those two buggers early on.

Consider running two Vanilla Overlords with just a Scythe in CCBs. Replace the under-slung Tesla Cannon with the Gauss cannon for more AP3 Goodness. The Sweep attacks will take care of Vehicles.

Your Eldritch lances will also rip through just about everything in his army.

Are heavy gauss cannons are s5 ap3? If so it will take 6 wounds to get 4 wounds past the invo, and 12 hits to cause 6 wounds.

Tesla seems like less work. Wounds on a 2+, so just dump 12 wounds into the deamon prince.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
looked at my book.

Gauss cannons are S5 AP3 with 2 shots averaging 1.333 hits/turn. The Tesla destroyer is S7 with 4TL shots averaging 6 hits per turn at S7. The gauss cannons are better than the tesla cannons, but the gauss cannons is small potatoes compared to the tesla destroyer. Since the barge can't move and shoot both weapons if you have to chose 1 light the deamon prince up with the testla destroyer.

i would suggest

1. taking a ctan with writhing and what ever you want. coupled with dest cryps it will thin out his oblits and Zerks pretty quick esp if your troops are in cover (yeah i know...lash).

2. he is able to target 3 units with his oblits and thats his only long ranged AT. But still 9 lascannon = 6 hit = 1 glance and 2 pens on average. not that bad considering the points in blits.

3. if you can nail his transports early then you have the firepower advantage.

4. split the troops into units of 5 so any lash into assault range/plasma cannon will kill a max of 5 and not 10.

5. i prefer 2 warsythe only Olords or Olord and the Traveller on barges. they chop up the back field transports (zerks transport prim threat) and make the enemy split fire. the Blits now have to target 2 threats in the rear or engage the dest cryps.

6. i would drop the chrono cryp and lord with warscythe for more dest cryps. whilst i love chrono and more Mscarabs, firepower is king for defeating the oppos list. 10 str8 assault shots?! yes please!

7. drop the lychees or monolith for 3 spyders. more wounds, can add scarabs, are MCs, more attacks for the points and can play wound allocation. As he doesnt have Pfists int he units, he will really struggle vs 3 spyders and the spyders will snip him apart.

8. be careful with the anni barges as their 24 in range means 1 shot before being exposed to assault.

To OP, Lash Princes are not that difficult to deal with. I have both armies and have run them. The trick is to capitalize on their weaknesses - relatively low toughness and inability to hide inside units due to not being IC. As others pointed out, tesla destructor from annihilation barges will do wonders on them and has the range to do it.

Regarding the lash, it is not as useful as apparently it used to be, because many armies now have psychic defenses. Speaking of a psychic defense, newcrons have spyders that can take an upgrade that will cancel an enemy psychic attack half the time. If you take a squad of them with the upgrades, my understanding is each spyder can try to negate the power separately.

Another thing to remember about the lash is that it cannot affect vehicles and passengers inside vehicles. So, if you run ghost arks with warriors, for example, the lash is useless on them until the ghost ark is popped.

Regarding the particular match up, there is a glaring weakness in your list - an inability to deal with long-range firepower. Even if you shut off the obliterators with solar pulses for a turn or two, eventually you will run out of pulses, and then they will kill you. This matchup shows you you have to have something in your list that can DS, e.g. wraiths.

Also, this matchup is about CSM trying to get close to use their meltas and berzerkers, while supported by the obliterators. So, you have to have the ability to dance around and shoot for as long as possible. This means night scythes and/or sacrificial scarabs to rip the CSMs out of their tin-cans. Once they are dismounted, they get to be shot for longer.

Overall, the CSM list is a pretty efficient one - close to one of the versions I tend to run when I play CSM. So, you are not dealing with a weak list. In comparison, your list is very unbalanced - at 1750, you have two courts and the nemesor, which makes it top-heavy and light on the big guns. If you rework your HQ and courts, you can free up a ton of points to get more killy stuff like tesla destructors on night scythes, an extra barge, and wraiths. Also, the ark with 5 warriors is neither here nor there. Mixing immortals and warriors in the same list is a big mistake IMO. It should be either a phalanx list with a ton of warriors and several arks, or a list with no ghost arks whatsoever.

I hope this helps.

I really like that chaos list, really simple and effective.

For you, maybe scrub the Vanilla Overlord, combine your royal courts, drop the lichguard and sub in a destroyer lord (w/mindshackle) and some wraiths.

I know I'm the big wraith proponent around here, but they'll let you get backfield and harass those oblits (you act first vs. power fists) or stop the DP (with wound allocation shenanigans / potential mindshackle scarabs).

I don't like Lichguard without transports, it's just too hard to get them in the fight.

I feel that your were reasonably unfortunate if this was your first game in 3 years and to come up against a very tournament savvy CSM list.

As already said, prioritise your shooting on the Princes first and foremost. If your force is not completely meched up, they will get a 2nd turn charge on you almost everytime (I'm pretty good at getting 1st turn charges with my CSM )

From a necron player's point of view, the Zerkers Rhino is the next main target after the princes, and then blast them as much as possible. Plague Marines, should they get close to you, shouldn't stand up to the lychguard as much as the Zerkers as the Khorne boys will sweep you lychguard the 1st round of combat.

Sounds like a crazy tactic, but with your list I would tend to ignore the Oblits as much as possible and focus on the princes and troops, as you don't have much low AP shots and they are two wound termies