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I've been having major problems lately with Necrons and their vehicle eating scarabs.

My friend just loves them and states how they eat vehicles. Its just from one vehicle to another with him and he'll usually take them out in a turn or two of assault. He runs around 6 of them and they seem way to over powered.

He states that all he has to do is hit the vehicle (no strength penetration needed) and it goes down an armor value. And once that side goes down to zero the vehicle gets wrecked. Them Being able to move twelve inches doesn't help me either.

Is any of this wrong guys. It seems like this is over powered? And are if this is all true are they're any tactics against it?

I'm not a Necron player, and don't ply against them often, but I believe that after the hit, he must roll again, and on a 4+ they lose the Hull Point. Of course, they can then make normal attacks after this...

High strength blast templates make short work of them, if he is spawning more, take them out at the source as soon as possible. What army do you play?

I play space marines. And i dont quite understand what you mean jifel.

And i know of the blast weapons but he either hides them or always makes them as far away from them as possible. I'm a heavy lasgun guy not blast templates.

goodriddans2 wrote:
I play space marines. And i dont quite understand what you mean jifel.

And i know of the blast weapons but he either hides them or always makes them as far away from them as possible. I'm a heavy lasgun guy not blast templates.

Scarabs have 'entropic strike'. For each hit on a vehicle, the attacker rolls a D6. On a 4+, the vehicle losses 1 point of armour from each side. The scarabs then get to make armour pen rolls on this reduced armour.

jifel's point was that each hit doesn't automatically reduce the armour value of vehicles. Every hit has a 50% chance of reducing the armour value of vehicles.

What Jifel was getting at is that scarabs have "entropic strike." Simply put, they roll to hit as usual (auto if the vehicle is still, 3's if the vehicle has moved). For every hit successfully rolled, a d6 is rolled to determine whether the entropic strike takes effect or not. This is a special, separate roll that comes before the penetration rolls. The vehicle armor is reduced by 1 for each 4+ rolled. Then the necron player takes all the successful hit rolls and rolls for penetration based on strength 3 against what the new lowered armor value is.

Needless to say, it can be quite effective.

My advice is to hit them early with blast weapons. Scarabs are on 40mm bases and present a large target when in a group. Strength 6 blasts will cause both double wounds AND instant death (after you double the wounds). One battle cannon shot can easily take out 6+ bases in one hit. Massed auto-cannon fire can work as well if you are adverse to blast templates (but as a guard player, you really should become best friends with your 5" blast template)




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 DexKivuli wrote:

goodriddans2 wrote:
I play space marines. And i dont quite understand what you mean jifel.

And i know of the blast weapons but he either hides them or always makes them as far away from them as possible. I'm a heavy lasgun guy not blast templates.

Scarabs have 'entropic strike'. For each hit on a vehicle, the attacker rolls a D6. On a 4+, the vehicle losses 1 point of armour from each side. The scarabs then get to make armour pen rolls on this reduced armour.

jifel's point was that each hit doesn't automatically reduce the armour value of vehicles. Every hit has a 50% chance of reducing the armour value of vehicles.

Super Ninjah'd!!!

Dex is correct, he just doesn't believe in long, rambly posts like I do

Against most vehicles, a charging group of scarabs will kill it in one round. Hypothetically speaking, 6 scarabs charge a land raider. 30 attacks. 20 hits (and 10 points reduction in armour value). Every hit will glance on a roll of 1 or more.

The point is that you really need to stop almost all of the scarabs, because even a small number can chew their way through most tanks. And if they manage to surround your transport, then the guys inside are dead too.

As a Necron player, the thing I worry about most is templates/blasts/large blasts. Standard instant death weapons (S6+) are pretty good too. S6+ blasts/templates are awesome.

Small arms fire are a waste of time. If you use bolters on scarabs, you're going to be doing very few points worth of damage each turn. Best to lob a blast or large blast or two on them, and have a group of marines in front to absorb the charge. Scarabs are pretty crappy at chewing through marines (WS 2, S3).

Another question i have about necrons are they're (please do not swear) gauss weapons. Take in mind were still getting used to six edition.

How when they get a six it is an automatic glancing hit. That takes a hull hull point away meaning that the regular warriors can take down even land raiders.

Again i don't think this is all right, but for house rules (because he thinks it is overpowered aswell we only count it as half a hullpoint.)

goodriddans2 wrote:
Another question i have about necrons are they're (please do not swear) gauss weapons. Take in mind were still getting used to six edition.

How when they get a six it is an automatic glancing hit. That takes a hull hull point away meaning that the regular warriors can take down even land raiders.

Again i don't think this is all right, but for house rules (because he thinks it is overpowered aswell we only count it as half a hullpoint.)

The gauss special rule does mean that they glance on a 6 and remove a hull point. Its powerful, but Necrons were designed with 6th in mind, and overall it doesn't seem to be that powerful. A full squad of 20 Warriors in rapid fire range will only cause 4.44 glances on average and cost 260 points, so as long as you don't let your Land Raiders get within 18" of the warriors before you have the contents assault the squad you should be fine (especially since you should be shooting them, and they shouldn't stay at 20 models for long).

As an additional note, I would like to add that while Scarabs are good against vehicles, they are a mediocre tarpit at best against infantry. They have a low WS and toughness, and even though they are fearless they do not have RP, so while they can tarpit a non-melee unit for a while, a dedicated melee unit will tear through them. Remember that Power Maul's ID scarab bases, so EACH wound caused by a model with a maul removes a base.

The gauss weapon hitting on a 6 causing a glance is a special rule of the necrom codex which was good for stun locking in 5th, but it got brutal against armour in this edition.

1 suggestion- read the opponents codex.

You have every right to read it. If someone days "oh this unit auto hits, wounds on 2+ and causes instant death with ap1" , would you believe me? I think you would OP.

I must say it's pretty crappy your necron friend lied about the rules. Or they have pretty crappy reading skills. Either way, I wouldn't put up with that Of a lying Kicker

The math of it works out like this:

4x Scarabs will destroy a Land Raider on the charge, thanks to their high # of attacks and entropic strike. I forget the exact numbers, but I believe the Entropic Strikes from 4 models will drop the armour value low enough that you'll get two pens and a glance or two; at least enough to remove all the Hull Points.

Scarabs are a very undervalued unit. They will also do a number on any small MEQ squad.

There is a necron lord who can grant a special ability. My buddy uses this to give scarabs furious charge on the turn they assault. STR 4 scarabs are a pain.

All it takes is a few str 6 hits to come in and even large units will diss appear quickly. I play against a dread knight user who always equips it with the torrent weapon. Not worth brining them, at any amount, when something like that is on the table.
They can work wonders, but it only takes one model to counter them hard.

Bubble wrap and power mauls. Wrap a 10 man tac squad around a vehicle with a power maul on the sarg. Scarabs are great vs vehicles, poor vs inf. Sarg hits on 3s, wounds on 2s, so ~2 wounds with the maul, killing 2 bases. The squad should do ~3 wounds more, killing another base. With 7 scarabs he should hit back for 8 wounds, killing 2 guys. You should easily win that combat though it will take a bit. A terminator squad charging in will clear combat in 1 round.

Would suggesting TH Termies be considered overkill?

I can just imagine Scarabs climbing over their armor:

"Wait, there's one on your back, hold still while it gently knock it off. . ."

Same effect as mindshackle scarabs at that point

zephoid wrote:
Bubble wrap and power mauls. Wrap a 10 man tac squad around a vehicle with a power maul on the sarg. Scarabs are great vs vehicles, poor vs inf. Sarg hits on 3s, wounds on 2s, so ~2 wounds with the maul, killing 2 bases. The squad should do ~3 wounds more, killing another base. With 7 scarabs he should hit back for 8 wounds, killing 2 guys. You should easily win that combat though it will take a bit. A terminator squad charging in will clear combat in 1 round.

Keep in mind, Entropic Strike works on any armor, so if they do manage to wound a multi-wound model, that model has no armor for the rest of the turn. That's bad against an IC in Terminator armor.

I've had a single unit of scarabs kill 2 dreadnaughts, then make 6 terminators w/Librarian (grey knights) flee off the board. fething hate scarabs.

.... Then dont allocate the wounds to the IC with terminator armor. There are no characters in scarabs and you chose the model to allocate wounds to. Also, if you have an IC in terminator armor with a power maul, the scarab unit often dies in 1-2 rounds of combat. Really there should be almost no concern about ICs losing armor save unless you lack S6 in the whole squad and cannot get another unit to charge the scarabs. Power mauls are vastly underrated and are very useful vs crons.


edit:.... GK have Heavy 4 S7 overwatch to pop off bases then force weapons in the squad. Then following with a demonhammer in the squad. You must have terrible luck to fail in combat when each wound kills a base.

Tye_Informer wrote:
Keep in mind, Entropic Strike works on any armor, so if they do manage to wound a multi-wound model, that model has no armor for the rest of the turn. That's bad against an IC in Terminator armor.

Bold is false.

It permanently loses the armour save: "Any model that suffers one or more unsaved wounds from a weapon or model with this rule immediately loses its armour save for the rest of the battle. - C:Necrons Pg.29"

Tye_Informer wrote:

zephoid wrote:
Bubble wrap and power mauls. Wrap a 10 man tac squad around a vehicle with a power maul on the sarg. Scarabs are great vs vehicles, poor vs inf. Sarg hits on 3s, wounds on 2s, so ~2 wounds with the maul, killing 2 bases. The squad should do ~3 wounds more, killing another base. With 7 scarabs he should hit back for 8 wounds, killing 2 guys. You should easily win that combat though it will take a bit. A terminator squad charging in will clear combat in 1 round.

Keep in mind, Entropic Strike works on any armor, so if they do manage to wound a multi-wound model, that model has no armor for the rest of the turn. That's bad against an IC in Terminator armor.

The model still has to fail its armor save to lose it. Scarabs are just AP- in melee. Its just that if you take an unsaved wound from Entropic Strike you lose your armor.

If a model somehow manages to receive a wound from a Scarab, it DESERVES to lose its armor!