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With the new FAQ allowing two crypteks to be attached to a squad, do you think it is worth taking Warrior Squads in 5-man MSU units in Ghost Arks and attaching 2 Lance Crypteks to them? I plan on having two Overlords anyway, so I am not counting that as part of the startup cost. It seems pricey at about 250 points for the Warriors, Ark, and Crypteks, but I was curious if anyone else had tried it.

I've explored this a bit myself and I personally like the idea of doing so though there are draw backs to MSU of warriors mostly that you lose a lot of potency with your arks ability to reanimate warriors. Overall though I do think that this could build a strong list around the idea.

(Not so coincedently I'm sure) a 5 man warrior squad plus a ghost ark costs 180 points exactly what a old 10 man squad used to cost. and considering that the arks guns are broadsides you'll most often be shooting 10 gauss flayers at the unit. I rather liked what they did to offer a stronger unit this way compared to what you got for the same point cost just a few months ago.

One of those times I want to describe a thing in a game as both ugly and cute.

It's a really durable scoring unit that will shoot the hell out of any mob of garbage nearby and even give str8 attacks a hard time. It shores up the fragility problems of your moderately priced utility shooting. It gives you access to solar pulse and it gives you all sorts of neato blocking tricks, resurrection or last minute objective utility your crappy cheap men are begging for.

It's really expensive though. but it kind of reminds me of having a scoring unit in a land raider. You feel like you've paid too much. You might get a couple turns of shooting you feel like you paid through the nose for, but you've given yourself a real reliable unit, and made questionable units actually kind of good at their job and given them new found usefulness. Of course any utility purchased this weirdo synergistic way comes at the expense of not having more stuff that might diversify and inherently give you more abilities that way...

Making sure you can use courts/arks/warriors to the best of their ability may be the key to cracking necron's power, or it may just be a maddening fools errand.

Making sure you are always having some men benefiting from the av13, while you have some other warriors bubble wrapping it or in some other way getting the repair rolls would be an interesting exercise.

Overall seems like a really clunky expensive unit, that feels "alright", rather than the AWESOME dark eldar and SM players are used to.

70 points for 2 s8 shots seems too expensive. I would rather double scythe lords for 90 with 8 warriors if you want to use the ghost ark as a transport. More warriors to heal up, the 6 s7 2d6 pen scythes on the charge gives more bang often than the 2 s8ap2, and with an open topped skimmer deploying the 2 lords isnt that hard.

Its certainly viable as the Arks are very durable and since the Lance can move and fire you can't stunlock the unit. Tbh most of the time you won't need to double up the Lance Crypteks on a single Warrior unit as you can just spread them around to ensure every unit gets one. If you do this I don't think its worth it with only 1 Ark/Warrior/Cryptek unit, you really want 2, partly for the redundancy (2 very durable scoring units to hold your half while everything else pushes forward) and also so that you can reliably bring a unit back to full strength in a single turn. If you have to disembark leave 1 Warrior around a corner out of LOS and bring the entire unit back next turn.

Better to go with 8 Warriors. It's not much of a cost increase, and that way you're actually getting your money out of the Ghost Ark's special ability.

DevianID wrote:70 points for 2 s8 shots seems too expensive.

I have been wondering this myself. At 35 points, I do not know if Lance Teks are really a solid "spammable" choice. How many Crypteks is too many... or too few? Anyone have any ideas?

35 points is consistent with similar units in other codices. A Trueborn with a Dark Lance is 37, a Kabalite with a Dark Lance is 34, and those are Heavy 1, not Assault 1. Don't get me started on Bright Lances.

It's the only anti-tank that Necrons can spam (I'm not counting Tesla destructors or Gauss, what with AP - and glancing). So you better spam it, whether or not AP 2, Lance weapons are overcosted in 40k (they are).

Its how I ran my ghost arks today and they did great.

In a 1500 point army this was my list:

Overlord w/ scythe on a command barge (didnt get a chance to do much,... infact barge got popped by a defiler that caught him when his sweep strikes missed)
His royal court
-2x cryptek of destruction (1x with solar pulse)
-1x lord w/ res orb, warscythe and mindshackle scarabs


Overlord phaeron with phase shifter, mindshackle scarabs, and warscythe
His royal court
-2x cryptek of destruction (1x with solar pulse)
-1x cryptek of transmorg with seismic crucible

Troops: 10x gauss immortals lead by the phaeron and it had the lord and cryptek of transmorg

5x warriors in a ghost ark with 1x cryptek of destruction from each royal court (so 2x )

Another squad of 5 warriors in a ghost ark, same crypteks.

6x scarabs

2x annihilation barges

The crypteks of destruction are a reliable way of weathering down your enemies. They killed a lot of khorne berzerkers before they got to the arcs. Also keeping with 5 warriors it leaves a nice easy number to work with as it leaves your points ending with a 5 or a 0 if you work in fractions of 5.

I'd do it again and would do it again. The 8 inside is nice... but if they're inside they arent benefitting at all from the ability to res them

In regards to comparing the 24 inch assault s8 ap2 necron lance to dark eldar, you forgot 2 things. First, the necron lance doesnt have the lance rule, unless they snuck it in the faq when I wasnt looking.

Second, the DE blaster is the analog to the cryptek lance, and it is MUCH cheaper than the dark lance you mentioned.

35 points on top of the 65 of the warrior squad nets you 100 points, 135 with 2. Now, for a troop unit that is not great in close combat, this isnt terrible, BUT its not a heavy weapon due to the short range, and when compared to real heavy weapon squads or real special weapon squads, it comes up short. IE, melta vets with their 3 meltaguns hit harder for 100 points, or spacewolves with melta/combimelta for a bit more. When looking at longer range troop options, the psycannon clocks in at 110 for 4 shots, or 140 for 8 shots if you take a special char. Then you get to even longer range troops like missile scouts for 85 or templars with las/plas for 101.

Anyway, my point is that as a troop weapon, the crons pay a bit too much for massed lances. The cron lance still has a place IMHO because it comes with the excellent solar pulse option. Also, a 3 lance, harp, and chronometron royal court is not terrible to stick with someone like imotek, who thanks to the FAQ really likes to have a chronometron handy.

It's not the best spammable fire, but it's something you kind of have to make due with.
It's your moderately priced high ap mid ranged answer. You need them. Tesla only shoots so far and isn't reliable to do everything under the sun.
Think about what your other options are.
Harps? Bah!
Heavy destroyers are lacking a little durability, but I still like them in a niche.
Stalkers are really expensive and weird.
Haywire launchers?

We have a lot of CC anti tank, and that's fine and dandy, but it's going to be unhappy after it charges the tank or MC on our turn, pops it, and then gets counter charged the next.
You really want some consistent disruptive fire in there too.
You are also benefiting from immobilized vehicles a bit more because of them.
But yes, it's a bit cumbersome, considering its cost and the hoops you jump through to get it and make it robust.

Now what I think we really have to worry about is the ruling that you can't solar pulse out the side of your flying jeep...

It's got a 36" range, not a 24" range. Just like a Dark Lance. You're right that it's not Lance, which I had forgotten, but then again it's Assault 1 instead of Heavy 1.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Now what I think we really have to worry about is the ruling that you can't solar pulse out the side of your flying jeep...

That FAQ entry only says that you can't draw LOS for abilities that require it. The Solar Pulse, luckily, does not require LOS.

Lucre wrote:

Now what I think we really have to worry about is the ruling that you can't solar pulse out the side of your flying jeep...

The FAQ only covered wargear that requires LOS, which SP does not, so we should be ok.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

DevianID wrote:In regards to comparing the 24 inch assault s8 ap2 necron lance to dark eldar, you forgot 2 things. First, the necron lance doesnt have the lance rule, unless they snuck it in the faq when I wasnt looking.

Second, the DE blaster is the analog to the cryptek lance, and it is MUCH cheaper than the dark lance you mentioned.

35 points on top of the 65 of the warrior squad nets you 100 points, 135 with 2. Now, for a troop unit that is not great in close combat, this isnt terrible, BUT its not a heavy weapon due to the short range, and when compared to real heavy weapon squads or real special weapon squads, it comes up short. IE, melta vets with their 3 meltaguns hit harder for 100 points, or spacewolves with melta/combimelta for a bit more. When looking at longer range troop options, the psycannon clocks in at 110 for 4 shots, or 140 for 8 shots if you take a special char. Then you get to even longer range troops like missile scouts for 85 or templars with las/plas for 101.

Anyway, my point is that as a troop weapon, the crons pay a bit too much for massed lances. The cron lance still has a place IMHO because it comes with the excellent solar pulse option. Also, a 3 lance, harp, and chronometron royal court is not terrible to stick with someone like imotek, who thanks to the FAQ really likes to have a chronometron handy.

I normally follow your logic pretty easily Devian but you lost me a bit here. You said "due to the short range":, but Lanceteks have an effective range of 42" (really up to 50" if disembarking from a GA), many of the guns you're describing on have effective ranges of 18" (meltagun) to 30" (Psycannons which of course reach there maximum effective range at 24").

Also, the crons are much more resilient then any of those, whether on foot with 7 T4 4+/RP5+ wounds or hiding in their AV13 vehicle. I would say all things considered they are right in-line with other AT options from the troop selections.

8 Warriors 2 LanceTeks in a GA clocks in at 289 points. A bit pricey but can dish out 2 8/2s at 36, 13 Gauss shots at stand still 24", 26 gauss shots at a mobile 18", and a fabulous 36 Gauss shots at roughly 6" (double broadsiding or crossing the T for you Battle of Trafalgar enthusiasts out there). Also they are resilient as nails.

I'm fond of the idea of having a couple of these two-cryptek units in arks, and then have a full 20-man warrior unit deployed in front of them. Not only do they provide a nice screen against assaults, but the ghost arks can add models to any warrior unit, not just the one they are transporting.

Ah sorry guys... I defaulted to the crons having a range of 24. It is of course 36, which invalidates my second point of the lance being too short ranged to compete with other spammed weapons in the troop slot like meltaguns and psycannons.

So considering the extra range, the cron lance is only really beat by units like the templar las/plas for 101 or missile scouts for 85 in terms of ranged power on a cheap troop.

140 gets you 4 s8 ap2 shots, before you stick them in squads (assuming 2 troops are always available so we wont factor them into the cost if you only take 4 crypteks). Compared to dedicated ranged shooting units like long fangs and psy dreads, this still too expensive by about 20-25 points.

Compared to non-dedicated long range shooting units however, 140 is not a terrible cost in that light.

3 MMAB run you 150 due in part to the speed you are paying for. 2 lascannon sternguard run 155 thanks to the special bolters and extra attacks. 2 Razorbacks are 150 thanks to the vehicle transport bit.

So anyway, I am reversing my decision a bit. The double lance cryptek upgrade, by itself, is a worthwhile upgrade to a troop unit you were going to take anyway and not hide in reserve. This is not to say that the 250 point 2 cryptek ghost ark unit is a good shooting unit, because at 250 points you are paying 180 points to get 70 points of shooting around--and as I hopefully showed the lance as a shooting unit just barely cuts it at 70 points.

In my conclusions then, the Ghost ark must stand on its own without being just a cryptek ferry--covering other models, repairing a block of warriors, whatever. The troops must be on the field for a reason other then capping a home base objective--advancing towards an enemy objective, or staying away from enemy assaults that could otherwise nab a reserving unit of troops. Due to these conclusions, this kind of puts a hard limit on the double cryptek ghost ark unit to 2 such units total if you dont want to be leaking points, in a list with a nice block of warriors up front and 5 warriors in reserve for late game objectives.

I'm leaning towards running two 8-man squads with double lances in Ghost Arks. Any ideas on how many total lances a 2K army should be packing?