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Hey everybody outhere
im going to play with my spacemarine- bike army against the new necrons terrain combo and tons of scarabs.
the problem i see is that any failed difficult terrain tests will hurt enourmously as it means one bike just dies because of movment.
however i dont know a lot about the new necrons and would be glad about any tipps.

Well, the difficult=dangerous terrain effect comes from a C'Tan Shard MC. And this particular MC will cost your opponent well over 200 points, and only has a 4++ save and 4 wounds. So, if your army has a reliable way to killing it early, then your opponent's gameplan will fall apart quickly.

Also, Scarabs do not like templates of any sort. Flamestorm templates and Plasma blasts will wipe out Scarabs in record time.

Does this particular variant of terrain combo contain both Orikan the Diviner and tremorstaves or just one? As noted already, the real lynchpin is the C'tan Shard, but knowing how he is spamming is important to. Orikan works by making all terrain difficult for the first turn. You could nullify this by either benching your entire army for the first turn or by not moving. Orikan becomes a fairly underwhelming after that. He also does not count as an overlord, barring him from a royal court. At the very least, this means a maximum of 5 tremorstaves. At lower point levels, he may not even have enough points to spare for a second HQ to allow any royal court at all.
Tremor staves are rather problematic....ish. They have 36 range, but are only small blast templates. Blast means 2/3 chance of drift, average drift from two dice with a BS of 4 should be 3 inches. Certainly not a guarantee. I don't know your exact composition, but on any given turn there should be some units that are missed and able to move forward without worry. Just don't move the guys that are hit, relying on them as bullet bait, while your other forces sweep around to flank? You could also attempt to bait the tremorstaves with sacrificial units. Figure that anything close will be a priority target as Necrons really don't like getting assaulted.

Final thought on the C'tan Shard, iirc, bikers treat all difficult terrain as dangerous but are not slowed by it....yes??? Wish I had the exact rule book in front of me. I might be mixing some skilled rider in there or something. If that's the case, the C'tan shard wouldn't even be that necessary to hurt your bikers as only tremorstaves would be required to force the dangerous checks. If your army is focusing on bikes as your post seems to suggest, the C'tan may actually be less of a priority compared to the tremorstave wielding harbingers. I don't know the stats for SM bikers, but I know the ork ones are pretty good at assaults. If SM bikers are the same, you could try a "damn the torpedoes" approach. Charge in soaking the few minor dangerous terrain wounds (it's only a 1/6 chance per model) and hope to sweep the necron warriors with attached cryptek.
That's still contingent on the whole "bikers don't get slowed" thing I have stuck in my head. If any of my armies actually had bikers I might be able to remember those rules better

It's not a 1 in 6 chance if the c'tan is still around. It's a 1 in 3 chance. Pretty rough.

Dont move.

As much as you can, whatever's not on bikes should probably be jump infantry...

CxOrillion wrote:As much as you can, whatever's not on bikes should probably be jump infantry...

As much as I approve of this poster's avatar, jump infantry are a poor choice in a C:SM army, particularly when facing this type of opponent.

I don't know what types of support elements your army has, but I would go for units that can remain stationary and reach out and touch the enemy, like rifleman dreads or autolas predators. They'll remain safe from the tremorcombo and can destroy the C'Tan at range. That's about as much advice as I can give without knowing his army (does he have a monolith to hide the C'Tan? What type of troops does he use? etc.)

Roboute wrote:

CxOrillion wrote:As much as you can, whatever's not on bikes should probably be jump infantry...

As much as I approve of this poster's avatar, jump infantry are a poor choice in a C:SM army, particularly when facing this type of opponent.

I don't know what types of support elements your army has, but I would go for units that can remain stationary and reach out and touch the enemy, like rifleman dreads or autolas predators. They'll remain safe from the tremorcombo and can destroy the C'Tan at range. That's about as much advice as I can give without knowing his army (does he have a monolith to hide the C'Tan? What type of troops does he use? etc.)

I definitely agree, but I just mean for things that need to move, the ability to just go, "Difficult Terrain? Meh." is pretty powerful.

azazel the cat wrote: And this particular MC will cost your opponent well over 200 points, and only has a 4++ save and 4 wounds.

It's a keystone army with an fairly easy to remove keystone. Doing 8 wounds at range is well within nearly every army's abilities (sorry 'Nids).

If you are playing khan. just outflank everything and pincer him in the middle. You may have to take some Dangerous terrain tests after that, but he most likely won't be able to outrun you. So, if you get those tremorstaves in CC, they can't do anything to your army.

CxOrillion wrote:I definitely agree, but I just mean for things that need to move, the ability to just go, "Difficult Terrain? Meh." is pretty powerful.

Not when it means you treat all difficult terrain as dangerous terrain, which combined with the C'Tan doubles your chances to fail the test. That just guarantees you'll lose a third of the squad every Movement phase.

Mechanized troops are much better in this situation, as you're moving just as fast, only taking one test, and the dudes inside are safe until their transport is blown.

Roboute wrote:
Not when it means you treat all difficult terrain as dangerous terrain, which combined with the C'Tan doubles your chances to fail the test. That just guarantees you'll lose a third of the squad every Movement phase.

Nothing compels them to move.

DarknessEternal wrote:

azazel the cat wrote: And this particular MC will cost your opponent well over 200 points, and only has a 4++ save and 4 wounds.

It's a keystone army with an fairly easy to remove keystone. Doing 8 wounds at range is well within nearly every army's abilities (sorry 'Nids).

You have to be able to see it to kill it. If the Crons have 1 to 2 turns of Night Fighting and a Mono to hide the C'Tan behind it's not as simple as point at and roll dice. And it's 8 T 7 wounds, so statically 18 rockets... not impossible for most armies for sure but you're still diverting a lot of heavy weaponry away from the ABarges, Monos, Scythes, Wraiths and the like. Really the only army that can kill him with ease at range are DEldar.

DarknessEternal wrote:Nothing compels them to move.

And if they don't move, their mobility is wasted, not to mention the fact that jump-equipped Marines all have short ranged weapons. Why take the jumpers if you're not going to move them? As I said, the points would be better spent on long-range firepower that doesn't need to move to be effective.

Or, as I said, transports. Getting a squad of Sternguard in close would mitigate Solar Pulse shenanigans, and hellfire rounds would make short work of a C'Tan.

Err, leave the bikes at home and take a static long range destruction list? Then he will get tired of spamming dangerous terrain when all you do is stand there and maybe stop playing a one trick pony of a list.

Even if he spams night fight all you need is one vehicle with a searchlight to get in range of that C'tan, then its face wreckin' time.

He can just keep the ctan hidden behind some terrain or a monolith, take it out if you can but that really can't be the extent of your game plan. Also to use a searchlight you need to, y'know, move a vehicle up to about 21" without it getting shot or tremobilized (tm).

Do dozer blades work against writhing worldscape? I mean since the tests are outright dangerous terrain and not difficult terrain making you take a dangerous test but i guess the immobolizing on a 2 is for the original difficult dangerous test but the 1 is the outright dangerous part? I'm not sure what goes on there.

Actinium wrote:Do dozer blades work against writhing worldscape? I mean since the tests are outright dangerous terrain and not difficult terrain making you take a dangerous test but i guess the immobolizing on a 2 is for the original difficult dangerous test but the 1 is the outright dangerous part? I'm not sure what goes on there.

Dozer blades still allow the reroll, so they help quite a bit.

Kevlar wrote:Err, leave the bikes at home and take a static long range destruction list? Then he will get tired of spamming dangerous terrain when all you do is stand there and maybe stop playing a one trick pony of a list.

Even if he spams night fight all you need is one vehicle with a searchlight to get in range of that C'tan, then its face wreckin' time.

I'm not saying he should leave the bikes at home. As I suggested in my first post, it's all about the units you have supporting the bikes. Bikes, by themselves, will fail miserably against a hidden C'Tan, as every time they move to bring their (fairly short-range) firepower to bear they will lose about 1/3 of their models. In an all-bike army, destroying the C'Tan becomes the number one priority, and the Necron player can use that to his advantage.

So it's all about the support, if we're assuming that the list will remain predominantly bikes. Long range static firepower could work, but the more I think about it, the more I believe a Drop Pod full of Sternguard would be the best answer to the C'Tan. They can come in first turn, DS close with no chance of failure, come in at an angle so he can't hide behind a Mono, and then unleash up to 20 hellfire rounds. On average, a squad of 10 will deal 11 wounds to the C'Tan (before saves), giving a high chance of wiping it in one go.

Roboute wrote:On average, a squad of 10 will deal 11 wounds to the C'Tan (before saves), giving a high chance of wiping it in one go.

Just sucks when the dice gods fail you. My buddy made 8 saves in a row with his C'tan against a lot of my shooting, and half my melta guns exploded!

Im assuming your opponent will have orikan and ctan and tremorstaves.

no idea what points you are playing but orikan is not an overlord so your opponent will still have to take an overlord to get crypteks to get tremorstaves...

best move is first turn denial. If you are playing a bike army start in reserves.

It is always better to start fully in reserves with any models you want to move than on the table and not move them. The reasoning behind this is if your models are on table and don't move your opponent can shoot them with tremorstaves and then you get locked into a cycle where you aren't moving next turn either without rolling for dangerous terrain...

Accept that you will have to make some rolls.

Your goal is to minimize those rolls, because honestly your opponent is sinking a hefty amount of points into trying to kill you with dangerous terrain rolls. By minimizing that effect you are minimizing a large percentage of your opponents tactics, and army.

You want to as quickly as possible engage the tremor staff units. or just plain get into protracted assault to deny them attempting to make you roll for dangerous terrain.

Honestly after the first turn its better to focus on the tremorstaves which are making you count as if in difficult terrain. the writhing worldscape rule has no effect if your are not in difficult terrain or do not count as moving in difficult terrain.

Ignore the c'tan if you can get the tremorstaves.