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Necron players tend to mostly discuss the utility but no one ever discusses the Stalker.
As the new models came out, I (perhaps a bit foolishly) bought the stalker cuz it was an awesome model, but I'm curious about it's general aplicability. Any tips guys ? Cheers

Depends on what you want it to do. If you primaliry want it as AT, then the Heatray.

If you want it more for the Twin-linking, The Heavy Gauss Cannon is better, because of it being twin linked, and the increased range.

I tend to prefer the Heat Ray, a Two shot Multi-melta is no joke. It can always be used to hammer Infantry squads if you run out of Tanks as well.

You can't plug Stalkers into every list, they need to work well with the rest of the list. They go well with AV13 Walls, and do well as a pair. They can be used by themselves too, but they will likely jump up the target priority list.

I just had a game against 2 of them vs an av13 wall, I gotta say they were underwhelming, the twin-link is nice but it really didnt help much as everything else was out of range to benefit.

The second one had a heatray, which suffice to say never got near any of my tanks.

I could see them as being a good tarpit tho, provided the enemy has no hidden pf, but lets face it who dosent.

Stalkers are a really good unit for quite a few reasons:
- They're in the Elite slot which is usually the one which not many lists use so you won't have to drop units you want, to be able to take the Stalkers.
- There Targetting relay makes other units twinlinked, this is really good for Tesla Immortals as it'll usually guarantee a couple of 6's for a ton of hits and it's also good for Crypteks with Eldritch Lances to take down Transports at range.
- Stalkers are also one of not so many units in the Necron army which is good at taking down AV14 at range so you won't have to suicide a Scarab unit or Overlord to deal with a Land Raider or Leman Russ.
- Stalkers make a great Tarpitting unit once they have dealt with any vehicles which are around, so you can charge it in to a group of 20-30 Orks to stop them from reaching an objective or to delay them until you bring some Wraiths or Flayed ones over to take them out.

If you are planning on bringing Stalkers i wouldn't reccomend taking one on it's own as it'll just get shot down fast and be an obvious target, you should instead run them in pairs with a couple of Barges aswell so your opponent will have to decide which of the vehicles he wants to try and take down. Overall i really like them and think they're great at dealing direct damage to high toughness things and taking down all types of vehicles aswell as supporting the rest of your army.

Stalkers are absolutely murderous in AV13 walls. I don't play 'crons, but I have had two games where the stalkers twin link ability helped my opponent win.

As a CSM player that uses defilers I just can't get into the stalker. It's kindof reminds me of my defiler, except replace the battle cannon and replace it with a single multi melta/heavy flamer and all 4 DCCW stripped off :(

The twin linking of stuff is cool, but I'm not sure if spending 150+ points is worth it. Twin linking increases necron accuracy from 66% to 88%. So if firepower is very concentrated and 450 points of necron dakka shoots at something it will hit like it's 600 points of necron dakka, so basically the necron firepower has to be concentrated at over 450 points per turn to make the TL worth while.

Its a great unit, adds another av 13 vehicle and alot of synergy

In an AV13 spamming army the CCB and annihilation barges already have twin linked weapons. The only synergies I see for it is with doomsday arks, ghost arks, and dakka from the troops. Even then over 450 points in dakka needs to be twin linked for the stalker to pay for it's self in twin linking that turn.

Ummm..CCB is not TL but your point is valid.

The stalker is more than just something to twin-link your army thought, its an AV13 walker with a multi-melta/flamer with 3(4 on charge) str 7 attacks, with move through cover and if you pay for the particle shredder, it 'shreds'(heh) infantry of ANY kind

Exalted Pariah wrote:The stalker is more than just something to twin-link your army thought, its an AV13 walker with a multi-melta/flamer with 3(4 on charge) str 7 attacks, with move through cover and if you pay for the particle shredder, it 'shreds'(heh) infantry of ANY kind

Though it lacks MC and DCCW attacks, so armour saves can always be taken against it.

Ive liked my stalker in the few games ive had since getting it last week. With the heat ray it seems a good unit to have in a crisis - it can melta a landraider rushing your lines or heavy flamer and tie up an assault unit that gets to close (most units do not have fists! if they do its still 6`s to pen).
The target relay has some potential but can very easily be misused. For instance it may be tempting to use it like the Guide power for eldar and shoot at some infantry to twin link a squad of Tesla Immortals but the benifit of this is negligable and not worth 150pts- only worth it if there are no good melta targets around.

The only times the target relay is worth it is when you are focus firing several units against a tough high priority enemy unit. In this situation it can be a massive force multiplier simiar to the Eldars Doom power.

To make the most effective use of the target relay the Stalker needs to be in an army which is;

-Big. The bigger the game the more force there is to multiply.
-Shooting focused. If you have lots of wraith and scarabs in your army there will be less guns to potentially benefit.
-Lacking in other target relays. Two target relays will never both be able to acheive their potential, 1 will always be wasted.

I think the Stalker will take some skill to play well because in any given turn you need to be able to decide wheather it is best to just use its base weapon or try and take advantage of the relay (sometimes this will be easy e.g. Paladins are good melta targets and you want to focus fire them).

Stalkers have great synergy to shooty armies. They also provide super reliable AT and are one of the few ways that necrons can pop av14 at range. They can also tarpit most things reliably; until penned krak cannot hurt them, and pfs only pen 1/6th of the time til penned.

I look at the relays not as a necessity but more as "if I really want something dead then it will die". Sure, anni barges get very little benefit from them, but my crypteks, immos, warriors, arks, etc. Do just build a list around em.

As with any unit that is a fire platform it has to be in pairs otherwise it won't do well. However, I have see 2 proxied in a game with heat ray and they were fantastic.

(Full Disclosure: The proxies were IG sentinels and so they were smaller that the stalker is.)