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Looking at the rules (and art!) for the upcoming Necron Night/Doom Scythes, and liking what I see.
Wondering at the viability of a Necron list with a bunch of flyers, getting to wherever I need to be, playing the battlefield, and deploying around wherever I'm needed.
Wondering if it would work, and what sort of other support it would need.

Looking at something roughly like:

2 Overlords with Warscythes in Catacomb Command Barges

4 x10 Immortals with Tesla Carbines (I prefer them for the mobility) in Night Scythes
4 x Lord with Resurrection Orb, Mindshackle Scarabs, maybe Warscythe
4 x Harbinger of Destruction, two with Solar Pulses

3 Doom Scythes

2 x 5 Canoptek Wraiths with 3 Whip Coils

That's roughly 2500-2800 points, depending on what I give the Lords, if they exist at all, if I keep the Immortals in units of 10, if I keep the Wraiths, if I keep it to 3 Doom Scythes, etc.

Unsure about the Lords, but thought it'd be nice to give them a little assault protection, in case I misjudged where I was deploying them and they got caught.
I like Wraiths quite a bit, so thought to include them, but not sure if they'll be good in this or if they just won't mesh with the rest of the army.
Considered a Monolith, to use the portal to drag units out of Reserve if a Night Scythe crashes, but it may just be too slow. Perhaps if I Deep Strike it...something to consider...
I'd like to put in some C'Tan, as they're what attracted me to the Necrons in the first place so long ago, but I suspect they're just too slow and will get left behind.

Any ideas on changes? Things I've missed that would compliment it well? Opinions on whether this would work at all?

You really could shave the lords off for the points;
You have a nice scythespam list there.

4 NIght Scythes = 400
3 Doom Scythes = 425
2 Scythelords in CCB = 360
2x5 Wraiths (3 coils) = 410
1x10 Scarabs = 150
2x Pulseteks = 110
2x Lance-teks = 70
1x Spyder + Claw = 65
30 Immortals = 510

2500 points

This is a fully equipped 2500 point ScytheSpam list, it's not as tight as it can be (you can fit 2 more night scythes in with some sacrifice, 2 more wraiths as well)
If you want to add something, take something else away.
If you want to scale it down to 2000, figure out what you're willing to sacrifice to make it happen.

This list, as posted, is meant to be aggressively deployed against one of your opponent's flanks, coming in obliquely under cover of night fighting and chewing its way up the ranks, it can also come straight on for an alpha strike.

Your first objective should be to eliminate the units that can drop your scythes. You can tie them up with wraiths, eat them with scarabs, or risk throwing the doom scythes at them, sweep them then disembark and destroy them, You need to hit fast and hard to take out your enemies capacity to fight back.

Everything that can't deal damage early is a waste of points. The RezLords are defensive units, so they were my first cut.

Not gospel, just my $.02

Thanks for the reply; you always have such good suggestions.

Do you find the Immortals are too fragile when there's only like 7 in each group? Or are they in a transport often enough that it doesn't matter?

How do you find Doom Scythes? Do they usually mostly survive the match, or by the end have they generally all been Melted?

Does the Spyder lag behind? I'd think the Claw wouldn't be that useful, though I suppose if anyone broke a Death Ray they could fly back to the Spyder to have it repaired.

Between Death Rays, CCB swipes, Wraiths rending back armor, the occasional Eldritch Lance shot, and S7 Destructors being okay at messing with vehicles even at -AP, do you find the Scarabs to be a good investment?

For deployment, do I want to go first, so I can scream over and start killing a flank, or do I want to let him go first (possibly stealing the initiative) so that I can set up second and pile the threats onto one side?

I'm not a necron player as such but I'm familiar with the playstyle that this list is running, skimmers that zoom up and drop a lot of units to Alpha Strike your opponent in turn 1/2 and try to force an early game, fortunately not being DE means you get a few more breaks than the traditional Alpha Striking Dark Eldar.

With a list like this, your ideal deployment would be reactive.

That is you are able to react to their deployment. Which means going second usually, but trying to seize the initiative back.

Because you have mobility, your initial deployment is important not because it restricts your units ability to engage units, but because you have to place your units according to how much you need to throw at their lines in the early turns.

Do you put all 3 Doom Scythes on one flank and try a sweep across the board?

- In this case you need to identify which is his weaker flank, that doesn't mean the number of units. If he has deployed heavily on the centre and the left flank, leaving the right flank bare but for a single unit, does that mean he has a weak right flank because you can overpower that unit or does that mean he is ignoring the right flank and he's using that unit to draw you away from his consolidated position?

Do you push straight like an arrow and try to punch their central lines?

- Here you need to judge the value of the units in his centre lines. If its say Space Wolves and he has 3 Long Fangs squads deployed in the same ruin in the centre of the rear of his deployment zone does that mean you should drive hard to the ruin or should you circle around it in a pincer and use terrain to get cover saves until you can get a one turn drop and kill on the unit. Is there a lot of ruins on the board that block LOS and therefore you can ignore the Long Fangs by being mindful of their sight lines and focus on greyhunters going for objectives?

Pretty much your deployment will be defined by what your opponent does.

The other option is to reserve all your units. Your opponent sets up, nothing happens the first turn, turns 2-4 your units trickle onto the board where you want them, denying your opponent the ability to target his preferred targets at the cost of exposing your units.

DoW is probably an easier scenario for your list compared to other armies.

Go second, put everything in the turn 1 reserve, your opponent either deploys units for you to pick off or crams all their stuff in reserve as well. Because your second you can bring your units on the table to react to his placement. The downside of going second is your first shooting phase of the game has Nightfighting and his first shooting phase with your units present as targets, is normal.

Nightscythes aren't quite as reliable as Dark Eldar gunboat spam lists.
You don't have the advantage of being able to use the squad when they are inside for shooting or charging, but moreover, a squad won't simply continue doing it's job minus the transport's fire, when the transport has been picked off. They don't plop out, at a nice time, it's as if they were never there for your board position.

They also aren't as cheap, and the gun isn't exactly tailored to any particular field. It's really interesting!

I really like the idea of mitigating this with the use of a monolith. It adds some degree of scythe insurance as well as being a deep striking unit for weird deployment lists (which I assume is more of a sixth edition consideration when it comes to the enormous monolith) but also provides incredible cover and an impressively resilient target to those guns your opponent would rather be popping your scythes, and sundering your grip on the board. The mobility is also really helpful with fragile immortal units that would rather not let fast assault units get too close to them.

But, it's not for everyone. Monoliths are pretty wonky at the moment, but the increase in precision and survivability they get from the proposed sixth edition rules, might just overcome their wonkiness and make them efficiently costed, just by reason of how hard they are to kill.

Another idea you might like, is how much better gauss immortals feel when you can reliably get them up close in personal. Though, immortals are usually not making their points back in combat, with defensive grenades or similar USRs and maybe a lord, they become a lot less exciting to assault. I've been trying to figure out how to utilitize a squad of mechanically augmented phyrrian eternals in a list. But there are other ways of getting USRs like Zandrek or the Destructek's gaze of flame.

Just some ideas.
I really do love tesla immortals in scythes though... They just feel like they cost too much to be as weird and narrow as they are.
Tell us how they perform!

Nightbringer's Chosen wrote:Thanks for the reply; you always have such good suggestions.

Do you find the Immortals are too fragile when there's only like 7 in each group? Or are they in a transport often enough that it doesn't matter?

How do you find Doom Scythes? Do they usually mostly survive the match, or by the end have they generally all been Melted?

Does the Spyder lag behind? I'd think the Claw wouldn't be that useful, though I suppose if anyone broke a Death Ray they could fly back to the Spyder to have it repaired.

Between Death Rays, CCB swipes, Wraiths rending back armor, the occasional Eldritch Lance shot, and S7 Destructors being okay at messing with vehicles even at -AP, do you find the Scarabs to be a good investment?

For deployment, do I want to go first, so I can scream over and start killing a flank, or do I want to let him go first (possibly stealing the initiative) so that I can set up second and pile the threats onto one side?

Immortals:
Immortals if they have a perfect number I havent done the math on it, but I usually only ever run 5 or 10.
In the Scythespam list, your troops are kind of an afterthought; your firepower is coming from your transports; however, your troops are usually not embarked.
Since immortals are so resilient to everything except psyker battle squads, they can be disembarked early and just provide more shooting. With a scythespam list they tend to get ignored, often because nothing is available to shoot at them.

Doom Scythes
They need to survive 2 rounds. You want to target their S6+ vehicles with these things. Keeping them alive means you have to have a full engagement all at once. Your strike has to be well aimed.
We'll come back to this.

Scarabs & 1 Spyder:
Why? For no other reason than the fact that A spyder will give you 2.5 Extra inches of movement with your scarab swarm. You want that scarab hitting the enemy line ASAP; because the more units you prevent from moving and shooting, the more vehicles you damage, and the faster you do it, the safer your Scythes are from counter-fire. The Spyder has a claw because later on, if your scythes take the rare "weapon destroyed" result, the spyder can get them back in the fight. He doesn't have to keep up with the army, he's just a repair shop you may never need to use.

Night Scythes: You Do not care about S4 weapons in this list. Let the enemy keep their bolters and lasguns. Night scythes stun lock vehicles, with the potential to arc off and hurt infantry as a secondary effect. A night scythe firing into a tactical marine squad will do 1-2 kills. A night scythe that stuns a razorback and arks off into a squad of marines will still get 1 kill.

Wraiths: This is your real anti-infantry. Also an amazing Heat Sink (wraiths take a beating before they die) 2 squads of wraiths coming in on opposite flanks in the wake of a scythe assault - they are an amazing clean up crew, 6 wraiths can win assaults against 10 meqs in 2 rounds (almost a 25% chance of this result), perfect for keeping them safe from enemy shooting and free to assault on your next turn.

Back to the immortals: You want to disembark immortals between 25-31" of your enemy line, keeping them safe with a round of nightfighting - once your doom scythes, scarabs, CCBs etc, de-mech a little bit of the enemy force, you can start closing in, staying in the 18-24" sweet spot and focus firing on stray infantry.

Back to the Doom Scythes: Now, if you timed your attack right, you'll get some of your anti-mech in there (either CCBs, Scarabs, or Stun-locking Night Scythes) to cover for your doom scythes. Weathering that first shooting round is pretty much the hardest part of the game for you. With 1 round of night fighting covering your approach, you'll mitigate some enemy shooting. From my experience, a lot of players will either focus fire scarabs or wraiths (which is great) or risk very unlikely night fighting rolls to try to drop the doom scythes. Night Scythes and CCBs tend to get ignored, (unless Anrakyr happens to be in one) Once you cross that line, past the nightfighting threshold (21") where you're getting hit more often than not, so you need to start neutralzing threats from the top down.

HQ choices: Using Imotekh means you are losing 1 warscythe CCB, which sucks; but his Initiative Seize is huge! I wouldn't count on the lightning storms to do anything for you as you'll probably end up using your solar pulses to shut off NF on your turn. Nemesor, also no warscythe, and we don't care about phased reinforcements, or his ressurection orb, so waste of points; Trazyn - i've never seen anyone use him; Anrakyr - My favorite HQ, even if he cant use mind in the machine in a CCB, a tachyon arrow will still auto-kill a thunderfire cannon from across the world.


The impact:

As any dark eldar player can attest, the impact of an alpha strike is pretty disheartening. You can De-mech an army very quickly with this list - but there are also 6 tesla destructors and 30 tesla immortals inside to weaken infantry hordes. You have no 'soft' targets except your troops. People seem to think scythes are easy to destroy, but really if you limit the number of units that can shoot at them, kill the biggest threat to them first or lock it up in CC, protect them with 2 turns of night fighting, and remember that you have Living armor to negate shaken/stunned, and a spyder to fix Weapon Destroyed, you're golden.


A note on monoliths:

When your Night Scythes hit the enemy lines they should be empty. No one is going to shoot at your troops while they're looking at 12 wraiths, 11 scarabs, 6 scythes, and 2 ccbs. So justifying monoliths as tools to bring in reserves doesn't apply; however everything else about them is awesome for you. You want to get the monolith close to center, and just move it relentlessly towards the enemy line. It's great for hiding units behind, and teleporting Gauss Immortals out of the back ranks and into rapid fire range (if you don't just use all tesla immortals). Most players won't have a choice but to ignore your monolith, as they're going to be trying to kill your (2) doom scythes or CCBs with High Strength weapons. if you do bring the monolth with you, you can march the spyder right up along behind it, out of LOS and able to repair any unfortunate damage results. The only risk of the monolith is the giant deep strike footprint - a mishap is terrible - but it takes forever to walk it along the board, so getting it into position is a bitch.

I'd say smack all the scythes, doom first, into your opponent's lines (disembarking the guass immortals and rezlords into the rapid-fire they excel at), bringing wraiths/lychguard/preatorians on as a 'second wave'.
IE:
2 Doomscythes smack into the enemy lines (popping vehicles), instantly followed by 3 Nightscythes disengorging 10 rapid-firing Guass immortals (with warscythe/rezorb lord) each will muck-up most guard/tau style deployments. If Anrakyr was in one of the Nightscythes, he can take over any vehicles that survived the doomscythes' initial assault. Top this off with a doomsday ark dropping s9 ap2 templates on any deathstar assault units like abaddon w/ lightning claw terminators, it'll be scary to face.

After (if) your opponent survives all this, the Lychguard/Preatorians will move in and mop up any remaining units your opponant may still have.


A monolith could be good, because if say abaddon & co was just out of assault range of one of your troop squads, it can get them out of the way of a scattering DD ark template, which should take care of the cc specialists.

A note on C'Tan Shards. They can be great, if you equip it with Gaze of Death (other power irrelevant) it can regenerate wounds from CC's. If the other player actually manages to kill it, it'll explode at s4 ap1. This should kill most CC units with relative ease, maybe even destroy an entropic-struck vehicle.

I'll be playing this list once I get the cash to buy the models. Imotekh can be well chosen: go second, counter deployment, give 2 turns of night fighting 'cover saves' till your guys are on top of the other guy's guys.

Also the Lightening can be wicked, I killed a Leman Russ squadron on my turn 1 with it last saturday. they hadn't even fired yet.

I'm going to don my "a-hat" and say...

2500 points? Who plays 2500 points?

Nightbringer's Chosen.


Duh.

I like 2500 points - It lets you do some pretty insane stuff; like MSU LandRaider spam, Full force org tyranids, Farsight Suit Spam, huge green tides... etc

Really the only reason I made it 2500 was that after taking most of the things I wanted to it ended up being around 2500. I'd much prefer 2000, but I wasn't sure if the list could survive with the idea intact.

It probably will, if you loose wraiths, and one of the Doomscythes

I'm really liking the idea of the Wraiths cleaning up infantry and taking care of anyone hiding in cover from the aerial assault.

Dropping the Lords.

Considering Imhotek, the Seize bonus is very nice and lightning is a nice bonus, but I think I'll stick with the second CCB to make it as frustrating as possible for the enemy to find an easy target that isn't zipping all over the place.

I guess I'll get rid of the third Doom Scythe, since I'm trying to bring it down to 2000 points. Think that'll hurt my plans a lot?

Worth keeping the two Harbingers of Destruction without the Solar Pulses? 35 points each.

Dropping the Immortals down to squads of 8, dropping the Lords, dropping a Doom Scythe, down to 2244...trying to figure out what else I can lose while keeping the army concept intact.

I'm wary of dropping the Immortal units too much lower, since I want to be able to hold objectives without just dying to bolter fire; the smaller the unit the easier for it to just get shot down enough that I don't get RP rolls. Anyone with experience in this sort of list care to comment on such?


And thanks again to everyone, this is quite a bit of useful info!


As an aside, Eyclonus, I've wondered; with the Dark Eldar Raiders, can you only shoot out of them if you move 6" or less, just like any other transport? That seems counterpoint to the idea of them blazing around the field with a hail of splinters, but I don't see where in the rules it allows the passengers to shoot if it's going faster.

Okay, trying to scale this down to 2000; after using a Night Scythe in a tournament for the last time yesterday and liking it a lot, I want this to be more of a standard army for me, rather than just something to try now and then (my other usual being a Writhing Worldscape army that I'm quite fond of)

Trying to fit in:
2 Bargelords (pretty bare-bones with these)
4 Night Scythes with Tesla Immortals
2 Doom Scythes
2 units of Wraiths (5ish each)
2 Pulse'teks

Having issues with being a bit over in points. Unsure whether it's worth bringing down the numbers of Immortals in each squad, or taking it down to only 3 Night Scythes, or what.
Suggestions?

Loose a Night Scythe w/ Immortals. Use any spare points to upgrade bargelords

Why Doomscythes? Annihilation barges are far more cost efficient and resilient.

Jabbdo wrote:Why Doomscythes? Annihilation barges are far more cost efficient and resilient.

Because an annihalation barge dosent have a S10 AP1 that can go around corners, that's why

IHateNids wrote:

Jabbdo wrote:Why Doomscythes? Annihilation barges are far more cost efficient and resilient.

Because an annihalation barge dosent have a S10 AP1 that can go around corners, that's why

Doom Scythes arent really reliable at killing tanks with that single shot, and annihilation barges do anti infantry far more cost efficiently. They're also far more resilient. What role are the Doom scythes filling here which could not be done better/cheaper by another unit?

Jabbdo wrote:

IHateNids wrote:

Jabbdo wrote:Why Doomscythes? Annihilation barges are far more cost efficient and resilient.

Because an annihalation barge dosent have a S10 AP1 that can go around corners, that's why

Doom Scythes arent really reliable at killing tanks with that single shot, and annihilation barges do anti infantry far more cost efficiently. They're also far more resilient. What role are the Doom scythes filling here which could not be done better/cheaper by another unit?

They don't just have a single shot though, they have a tesla destructor and the 10/1, both weapons can hit multiple targets. Also, it can move 12" and fire its weapons, something the ABarge cannot do. The average length of the Ray is 10.5", given the current proliferation of vehicles, you will often be presented with the opportunity to hit 3+ vehicles at once, with a Strength 10 AP 1 shot. So, that's a whole list of things it can do that nothing else in the codex (let alone the game) can do.

Mostly because they're just that mobile. They can get to wherever you need them to be, just like all the other things in the army.
And I do like the idea of that Death Ray. I don't have any other ranged anti-tank (for real tanks, I mean, not just breaking Rhinos).

Very well put Shadar. The doom scythe is a better ABarge with a S10AP1 corner-shot