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Posted deep in another thread, I was explaining why I didn't like the Ghost Ark. The discussion seems to warrant it's own thread.

Ghost Arks are bad, why are they bad? If I could list 115 reasons, that'd be a reason/point, but I don't think I can find that many reasons.
- Strength 4 shooting is bad
- Being Encouraged to take terrible troops is bad (they also have S4 shooting)
- It's special ability is "meh" resurrect D3 terrible troops?
- Using it as a platform for two elidrich lances (S8 AP2) is middling. As cool as that sounds, it's 135 pts for the MSU + Lances, + 115 for the Ark, and then you're encouraged to take more crappy warriors.
- It's not fast
- It's open topped
- It's 115 points (15 points more than the superior Night Scythe, which is super-sonic (4+ turbo-boost save), holds more guys, holds any kind of guy, including 5 Tomb Blades, and has a better gun)

Heheh, I love lorewevaer's characterisations and descriptions. I'll respond because I also love both Warriors and GAs.

Strength 4 being what it is, let keep in mind it is Strength 4 with Gauss, and 5 of them on each side, so if you ever actually get it into the thick of things (rapid fire range for both sides) it can dish out just over 2 glancing shots per turn, which is really not bad at all from a dedi transport, and that's not even including the perps insides.

If its "meh" ability goes off two turns a game, that's an average of 4 warriors or 52 points, not to shabby.

Open topped is an advantage I think for the most part, and the quantum shielding dramatically mitigates any disadvantages open topped confers.

It's a huge mobile wall of cover.

It's the only dedicated transport Crons have that helps with AV 13 saturation.

As for warriors, I love the fact they can point at anything and do something to it (via shooting), I love how they synergise with lords and overlords, and I love how, point for point, they are among the most difficult units in the game to kill. For my Money MSS/WS/RO Lord+Phaeron dropped into a group of 20 is 460+ points of awesome

That's 460 points of firepower that wounds MEQ on a 4+ and scores 2 glancing hits on a Rhino and then gets swept in combat by a unit of 5 marines. *laughs* (well.. not that often)

I do agree that if you're building a AV 13 saturation list, the Ark's have good synergy.

The downside with it being massive, is it's tough to give it cover.

Things that are open-topped can die to glancing hits. (16.7% of the time).

Night Scythes will out-preform the Ghost Ark in most situations. The 4+ Turbo-Boost save more than makes up for the lack of AV 13. Also, the Night Scythe is not open topped.

Keep in mind that 6th Ed might go to a different vehicle damage chart system, kindof like 3rd edition, when you were in cover, you only could glance said vehicle. I suggest that because of Shimmer Fields on DE vehicles leads me to believe that cover saves for vehicles might be going away.

If you take a 115 point ghost ark for cover, why didn't you just take 10 more warriors for cover? (at a cost of 15 more points).

That doesn't address one of the big problems, that warriors are also terrible... 4+ armour is a big pile of stink. Immortals will outperform warriors for the points all the time. 4 points more per model for something that has a 3+ armour over 4+, and a significantly better gun (either the S5 Guass or the S5 Tesla).

S4 shooting is basically the standard for every troop unit for every army in the game so you can't really complain about that. Necron shooting is far better than just straight S4 shooting though, as you can glance anything with it thanks to Gauss. The same goes for the Ark itself, it pumps out a heap of anti infantry firepower and is going to shut down vehicles with shaken results from glances. Add a Lance Cryptek and you get a pretty solid all round unit.

Warriors aren't terrible troops, they do exactly what troops are supposed to do, provide support fire and most importantly capture objectives. Its not like they are expensive and against shooting they are very durable for their cost.

No matter how you spin it the primary function of troops is to capture objectives. If people are shooting your troop units (which considering how tough Necron troops are you should be pretty happy with tbh) its always nice to be able to keep them up and running. I expect to see good players frequently leaving 1 Warrior per squad out of LOS around a corner, so any time they are left with 1 guy in the unit you have effectively wasted your shooting as the Ark/s brings the squad back up to a useful strength.

I agree using it as a weapons platform isn't the greatest idea, but its actually surprisingly effective. Lances get you some proper hard hitting firepower in each Warrior unit which for Necrons is surprisingly hard to come by (1 Lance per squad, 2 is overkill and very hard to manage as well both in terms of the stuff you need to take to unlock it and points). Because you can move and shoot the Lance you might as well start in the Ark since open topped lets you fire out, unlike other units which can be shut down by shaken results you can easily just jump out and keep firing which is huge. Its 215pts for this btw, which is the same ballpark cost for a comparable squad + transport for any other army.

Its impressive how you have managed to overlook its main purpose and its main advantages as well as spin some of its good features as being a bad thing. Its an AV13 transport, which is something no one else in the game can get and does a great job of keeping your troop units alive. By itself that makes it a useful unit. Compared to the Night Scythe it is far far more durable and actually has more anti infantry/glancing ability. Not being fast make very little difference since you are going to be moving and shooting most of the time anyway. The disadvantages of open topped is largely counteracted by being AV13 and allows you to fire out of it from a position of safety. As with most things a balanced mix of units is going to serve you the best, 2 Arks with Warriors + Crypteks gives you solid durable scoring options and 2-4 units of Immortals/Warriors in Night Scythes gives you mobility and heavier firepower.

That's 460 points of firepower that wounds MEQ on a 4+ and scores 2 glancing hits on a Rhino and then gets swept in combat by a unit of 5 marines. *laughs* (well.. not that often)

The dice Gods would have to of officially excommunicated me the day 5 marines assaults a Lord w/WS, and Overlord, and 20 warriors, and I get sweapt. Actually, because of Phaeron, 9 times out of 10 I'm doing the assaulting. Theirs just not many units in the game that can withstand 40 rapid fire shots and 40 attacks on the charge. Even if 5 warriors die in the first round of combat (again, not many units that can actually kill 5 warriors reliably in one round after taking 40 rapid fire shots to the face) that sill leaves me with 30 attacks, 3 WS attacks, MSS, and what ever I felt like throwing on my Phaeron. Statistically against MeQ it's not hard to come up with 5 wounds with all of that.

Things that are open-topped can die to glancing hits. (16.7% of the time).

Sure, they can. And a group of grots can kill Mephy. Still, I think its been pretty well established with all the other popular Cron choices that AV 13 open topped is pretty resilient.

That doesn't address one of the big problems, that warriors are also terrible... 4+ armour is a big pile of stink. Immortals will outperform warriors for the points all the time. 4 points more per model for something that has a 3+ armour over 4+, and a significantly better gun (either the S5 Guass or the S5 Tesla).

Don't get me wrong, Immortals are good. But trust me on this, point for point warriors are more resilient then Immortals, and that's just by themselves, not to mention because of the bigger squad size they can stretch a RO much further and more efficiently. You keep mentioning the 3+ but that's only 16.7% increase in survivability (at a 30.7% increase in point cost). Against vehicles Immortals are only better at AV 10, although they are certainly a strong tick better at hunting foot sloggers. (Now of course against AP 4 the 3+ is nails, but thats why we have the big pretty GA providing cover to dem warriors).

Still, pros and cons and what have yous, I would say they are both tools I definitely like having in my toolbox (all three really, as I consider Gauss Immos and Tesla Immos two clearly different tools).

You could use the things creatively, like make Necron AV 13 Ravagers with 3 Lance Crypteks stealing the ride if you like...I sometimes do that.

But really, a group of Warriors on/supported by a Ark are a versatile threat. I love it, S4 is decent enough, can split fire 3 ways with Necron Warriors aboard, AV 13, and can usually suppress 2 vehicles between mounted Warriors+1 Array early on, 3 vehicles later on when it's safe to move into midfield.

Really? I've used ghost arks in my games of vassal, and they seemed to perform surprisingly well.
For one, they are fairly hard to kill despite being open topped, and the S4 gun's don't matter because it is not meant to kill things.
It has 3 functions

-Moving warriors to an objective, or close enough to the enemy to unleash a barrage of gauss
-A sniping post for crypteks
-Keeping warriors alive.
-Annoying enemy vehicles, and giving covering fire.

Not one of those functions require a high strength gun.
S4 gauss is sufficient for stun locking enemy vehicles, and priming them to be ripped apart by heavier weapons.
The points cost is meant to be mitigated by the repair ability.
6 resurrected warriors is all what it needs to make it the same price as a drop pod. With AV13, guns that can pick different targets, living metal and the fact that it moves AND carry guys at the same time, that's quite a bargain.


NOW, what you should be tearing into is the doomsday ark. That vehicle Suuuucks!

Smurfy wrote:You could use the things creatively, like make Necron AV 13 Ravagers with 3 Lance Crypteks stealing the ride if you like...I sometimes do that.

But really, a group of Warriors on/supported by a Ark are a versatile threat. I love it, S4 is decent enough, can split fire 3 ways with Necron Warriors aboard, AV 13, and can usually suppress 2 vehicles between mounted Warriors+1 Array early on, 3 vehicles later on when it's safe to move into midfield.

warriors with a couple lance teks in the ark in rapid fire range = almost like a DE raider, aka metric loads of dead infantry.

20 gauss flayer shots,10 from arc on one side, cryptek, and if you have a couple stalkers everything is twin linked.

Nasty nasty drive by's since it's open topped they can all shoot out.

BronzeJon wrote:

Smurfy wrote:You could use the things creatively, like make Necron AV 13 Ravagers with 3 Lance Crypteks stealing the ride if you like...I sometimes do that.

But really, a group of Warriors on/supported by a Ark are a versatile threat. I love it, S4 is decent enough, can split fire 3 ways with Necron Warriors aboard, AV 13, and can usually suppress 2 vehicles between mounted Warriors+1 Array early on, 3 vehicles later on when it's safe to move into midfield.

warriors with a couple lance teks in the ark in rapid fire range = almost like a DE raider, aka metric loads of dead infantry.

20 gauss flayer shots,10 from arc on one side, cryptek, and if you have a couple stalkers everything is twin linked.

Nasty nasty drive by's since it's open topped they can all shoot out.

Yeah, but the problem with drive by is that it's only 6 a turn. against P fists and meltas, it could get nasty.

CthuluIsSpy wrote:NOW, what you should be tearing into is the doomsday ark. That vehicle Suuuucks!

We'll leave that for another thread! :-) The Doomsday Ark earns an equal amount of ire from me.

I wish for the ghost ark:

It cost 40-55 points, then could be upgraded to give it quantum shielding and the d3 resurrection ability.

A good use of it that I've done is loaded 5x harbingers of destruction into it and keep it void of warriors inside, but have it escort 20 warriors lead by a phaeron.

Also str 4 weapons are bad on a vehicle? Tell a landraider crusader that...

edit: just realized i made the same point in another thread (mindshackle thread) about the bare bones ark... man it's been a long day *shakes head*

I need a nap lol

My real question regarding this AV13 resiliency is that is it really resilient?

I mean Av13 is all good but open topped seriously makes this questionable.

A ghost ark flyby is easily mitigated by a single shaken result which is easy to achieve with any type of decent shooting (ML spam, Psycannon spam, Dark Lance, etc)

Sure AV13 is hard to penetrate, then again, against ghost arks, you dont need to penetrate anyway. Merely shaking them already hurts their primary role, and it hurts even more if you roll a 6 on the glancing table.....

Yuber wrote:My real question regarding this AV13 resiliency is that is it really resilient?

I mean Av13 is all good but open topped seriously makes this questionable.

A ghost ark flyby is easily mitigated by a single shaken result which is easy to achieve with any type of decent shooting (ML spam, Psycannon spam, Dark Lance, etc)

Sure AV13 is hard to penetrate, then again, against ghost arks, you dont need to penetrate anyway. Merely shaking them already hurts their primary role, and it hurts even more if you roll a 6 on the glancing table.....

Shaking can be ignored, and to gank them with S7 you will need to roll a 6 followed by another 6.
That's not easy to do.
And I lost count how many times S9 weapons failed to do anything against AV13.
Now lances though...they could get nasty. Especially since they are fielded en masse.

CthuluIsSpy wrote:

Yuber wrote:My real question regarding this AV13 resiliency is that is it really resilient?

I mean Av13 is all good but open topped seriously makes this questionable.

A ghost ark flyby is easily mitigated by a single shaken result which is easy to achieve with any type of decent shooting (ML spam, Psycannon spam, Dark Lance, etc)

Sure AV13 is hard to penetrate, then again, against ghost arks, you dont need to penetrate anyway. Merely shaking them already hurts their primary role, and it hurts even more if you roll a 6 on the glancing table.....

Shaking can be ignored, and to gank them with S7 you will need to roll a 6 followed by another 6.
That's not easy to do.
And I lost count how many times S9 weapons failed to do anything against AV13.
Now lances though...they could get nasty. Especially since they are fielded en masse.

Gak. I forgot to elaborate. You only need to "shake" it upgrading it to stun thanks to open topped. Stun is not so easy to remove either.

CthuluIsSpy wrote:

Yuber wrote:My real question regarding this AV13 resiliency is that is it really resilient?

I mean Av13 is all good but open topped seriously makes this questionable.

A ghost ark flyby is easily mitigated by a single shaken result which is easy to achieve with any type of decent shooting (ML spam, Psycannon spam, Dark Lance, etc)

Sure AV13 is hard to penetrate, then again, against ghost arks, you dont need to penetrate anyway. Merely shaking them already hurts their primary role, and it hurts even more if you roll a 6 on the glancing table.....

Shaking can be ignored, and to gank them with S7 you will need to roll a 6 followed by another 6.
That's not easy to do.
And I lost count how many times S9 weapons failed to do anything against AV13.
Now lances though...they could get nasty. Especially since they are fielded en masse.

I agree here. A lot of people seem to forget to throw living metal into the mix as well. The Ignoring Shaken on 2+ and Stunned on 4+ on all of our vehicles is pretty huge. Combined with QS, Necron Vehicles are very resilient.

When you get 6+ Av 13 Vehicles in the mix, it starts to get very hard to take down, as you have to concentrate a ton of firepower into each vehicle to destroy it.

I went up against a list with 30 Lootas, and thanks to living metal, they never managed to do anything to my Vehicles. You really have to get lucky with strength 7 to do anything to Quantum shielded vehicles, even if it is possible it is exceptionally unlikely.

Lances can be a problem, but only one army fields them en masse, so it's not a huge issue.

Gak. I forgot to elaborate. You only need to "shake" it upgrading it to stun thanks to open topped. Stun is not so easy to remove either.

You still suffer the -1 on Glances, so You'd need to roll a "3" to stun it. On Pen you have a 50% to wreck it anyhow, so it's not as big of a deal.

I use 2 ghost arks, each with 9 warriors and a destruction cryptek, and they have always been fantastically useful.

Yes, they can be point hogs, but they are also very, very resilient. Look at the common weapons that will be trying to crack them open:

Autocannons, Missile Launchers, Meltaguns, Lascannons, Dark Lances. A str 8 weapon needs a 5 to glance and a 6 to pen, and living metal gets to reduce damage further. So getting your melta gun into range, you still have less than a 1/3 chance to even roll on the vehicle damage chart, and if you don't blow up the ghost ark, odds are that squad is getting torn to pieces next turn. Two full ghost arks covering each other can shoot almost any unit off the board in one turn.

The flyers aren't bad, but dropping their cargo into reserve is a huge, huge disadvantage. Instead of being a safe bunker to hide your troops in, you have to drop them off, or else expect them to get sent back off your objected early and often. Everything else about the night scythe is amazing, and even the AV 11 is better than the Razorback, and nobody complains about them being too fragile. But for how 40k is played now, the Ghost Ark is much closer to a Land Raider than a Rhino in terms of how to deal with it. That's a paradigm shift for an army's main transport.

Emperor awfulness wrote:I use 2 ghost arks, each with 9 warriors and a destruction cryptek, and they have always been fantastically useful.

Yes, they can be point hogs, but they are also very, very resilient. Look at the common weapons that will be trying to crack them open:

Autocannons, Missile Launchers, Meltaguns, Lascannons, Dark Lances. A str 8 weapon needs a 5 to glance and a 6 to pen, and living metal gets to reduce damage further. So getting your melta gun into range, you still have less than a 1/3 chance to even roll on the vehicle damage chart, and if you don't blow up the ghost ark, odds are that squad is getting torn to pieces next turn. Two full ghost arks covering each other can shoot almost any unit off the board in one turn.

The flyers aren't bad, but dropping their cargo into reserve is a huge, huge disadvantage. Instead of being a safe bunker to hide your troops in, you have to drop them off, or else expect them to get sent back off your objected early and often. Everything else about the night scythe is amazing, and even the AV 11 is better than the Razorback, and nobody complains about them being too fragile. But for how 40k is played now, the Ghost Ark is much closer to a Land Raider than a Rhino in terms of how to deal with it. That's a paradigm shift for an army's main transport.

IMO this is the problem. Mostly you can only field 2 ghost arks because they fill up points too fast, and the Annihilation Barges arent much of threat in all seriousness. This AV13 "saturation" is merely an illusion unless ofcourse you plan to field something else AV13 which would either be the dooms day ark or the command barges, stuff that really cost alot, esp at 1.5k pointages.

They are also incapable of taking/holding objectives from the opponents deployment side reliably.

A Ghost Ark transporting 8 Warriors, led by a Phaeron and RC member is an exceptionally good firefighter selection that fills two compulsory slots.

Sure, you can't effectively MSU Ghost Arks. compared to the Nightscythe/Immortals.

But if you want competitive MSU, you shouldn't be playing Necrons in the first place.

Emperor awfulness wrote:I use 2 ghost arks, each with 9 warriors and a destruction cryptek, and they have always been fantastically useful.

Yes, they can be point hogs, but they are also very, very resilient. Look at the common weapons that will be trying to crack them open:

Autocannons, Missile Launchers, Meltaguns, Lascannons, Dark Lances. A str 8 weapon needs a 5 to glance and a 6 to pen, and living metal gets to reduce damage further. So getting your melta gun into range, you still have less than a 1/3 chance to even roll on the vehicle damage chart, and if you don't blow up the ghost ark, odds are that squad is getting torn to pieces next turn. Two full ghost arks covering each other can shoot almost any unit off the board in one turn.

Wrong. dark lances have the lance ability, meaning that they glance on a 4 and pen on a 5+

In 2k points I'm taking 3 and so far they did well in the game I played against space wolves with 3 units of long fangs.

He deep striked a unit of terminators + IC in my backfield. They were wiped out in 1 turn of shooting by 2 arks (twin linked by a stalker). That was about 57 shots twin linked gauss goodness not even using the flayer arrays that were facing away.

1 GA got destroyed, and at the end of the game the warriors unit from it was at full strength from the surviving GA next to it.

To get an idea of the amount of pure firepower from 3 full ghost arks. 30 warriors + 6 arrays, within 24 inches that's between 45-120 shots per turn.

The ghost arc also can make a good supporting unit.

Lets say that you have 20 warriors with 1 necron lord with a ress orb in the squad. These guys are extremely hard to dislodge from an objective. Against shooting they will get a cover save (50%) then a FNP save (50%), and then the ghost arc is bringing 1-3 of them back a turn.
Against some armies, such as my mech' eldar its nearly impossible to dislodge them.

You dislodge those warriors by assaulting and sweeping them. RP isn't the same as FNP. As soon as the warriors are falling back, you don't get your RP rolls. 20 warriors aren't scary, hence one of the many reasons the Arks aren't so hot.

loreweaver wrote:You dislodge those warriors by assaulting and sweeping them. RP isn't the same as FNP. As soon as the warriors are falling back, you don't get your RP rolls. 20 warriors aren't scary, hence one of the many reasons the Arks aren't so hot.

The fine Folks at Frontline Gaming have shown quite a few times, that 20 warriors are scary. You do have to invest quite a bit more in the unit though.

loreweaver wrote:You dislodge those warriors by assaulting and sweeping them. RP isn't the same as FNP. As soon as the warriors are falling back, you don't get your RP rolls. 20 warriors aren't scary, hence one of the many reasons the Arks aren't so hot.

What does an army assault them with?
Your deathstar unit will get shot up on the way there, or overrun by scarabs.
It needs to be a squad that cannot be neutralized by the mindshackle scarab. Throwing mephiston at that squad results in mehphiston dying 50% of the time.
it also needs to be a squad large enough to win combat vs the lord and 20 warriors. A 5 man squad with a PF will not do the job at all. If there is a mindshackle involved, the problem increases as the PF will be hitting 1-2 of their own allies.
Don't forget if the lord has a sycthe, he is also causing PW wounds back on the assaulting squad. Combine that with the mindshackle, and things can go very poorly for an assaulting squad.

Sure, you might be playing a DoA army that has a ton of jump troops that can bridge the gap quickly to assault the squad, and has enough bodies to keep the scarabs busy while you do.
Those armies are the exception and not the rule. Most armies will have an extremely hard time dislodging a 20 man unit of warriors with a necron lord attached.

" Immortals will outperform warriors everytime."

So it is about 10 vs 13 Say each takes 15 wounds.. 5 dead immortals vs 8 dead warriors. RP and say 3 dead immortals vs 6 dead warriors. Add a res orb and 2 dead immortals vs 4 dead warriors. Now add a ghost ark and we are talking 2 dead warriors vs 2 dead immortals. The pain really occurs when you maintain tight formation and have multiple arks.

Dying in HTH? That is what mind scarabs and lightning fields are for. Not 100% but it pulls the enemy from 100% certainty of death.

20 warriors are a different story, especially at 12". Then again this has nothing to do with the ghost arks =P

The reason the warriors came up is because the ark helps to enhance them. With an arc supporting the warriors you get a few advantages.

* You return ~2 warriors a turn, meaning that your opponent must kill at least 3 to get any real effect
* You can use the ark to control your fallback, giving you an extra turn or 2 to rally. This can be done when your arc is adding to the squad. So your 20 man squad can drop to 8, fall back, and rally after the arc adds to the squad. You use the arc to enforce the squad to move as far as possible to the side so you get a few extra turns to buff them up.
* You can use the arc to block attackers. If your going to be assaulted by a killer squad, stick the arc in the way and shoot under it. The ark may die, but your warriors can stay on the objective.

Taking a look at the ark by itself, yes its very expensive for a transport with its guns. Taken in conjunction with the 20 robot warrior blob, and its actually a nice upgrade to the unit.

labmouse42 wrote:The reason the warriors came up is because the ark helps to enhance them. With an arc supporting the warriors you get a few advantages.

* You return ~2 warriors a turn, meaning that your opponent must kill at least 3 to get any real effect
* You can use the ark to control your fallback, giving you an extra turn or 2 to rally. This can be done when your arc is adding to the squad. So your 20 man squad can drop to 8, fall back, and rally after the arc adds to the squad. You use the arc to enforce the squad to move as far as possible to the side so you get a few extra turns to buff them up.
* You can use the arc to block attackers. If your going to be assaulted by a killer squad, stick the arc in the way and shoot under it. The ark may die, but your warriors can stay on the objective.

Taking a look at the ark by itself, yes its very expensive for a transport with its guns. Taken in conjunction with the 20 robot warrior blob, and its actually a nice upgrade to the unit.

Good post. Just wanted to add that using the ark as a buffer against assault has the added advantage of turning into difficult terrain even if they do pop the GA.

Except there is a flaw in that argument, because any decent 40k player would know better than to try to shoot it to bits with small arms fire.

They will probably be eating assault or heavy artillery plates - nothing which the ghost ark can really help with.

Yuber wrote:Except there is a flaw in that argument, because any decent 40k player would know better than to try to shoot it to bits with small arms fire.

They will probably be eating assault or heavy artillery plates - nothing which the ghost ark can really help with.

Well, it can repair the warrior after both situations, assuming they survive.

And, if used right, GAs can keep you out of assault, or at least allow you to dictate the terms of the assault.