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After my beloved Stalker gave up First Blood in my last game after doing exactly sod all (actually, I tell a lie, it moved 6 inches) and having been a bit of an ornament for the past few games (if you can still call something that sheds its gun every 5 seconds and stands up like a fawn on ice (I.E. Doesn't manage to stand up at all) an ornament) I've decided it might be time to trial something different. Whilst it has had its moments (like gibbing Vulkan and knocking Feugan's last wound off with its Heat Ray) it hasn't really done all that much in general except look a little more menacing than my other stuff when I manage to balance it so that it stays up for more than a few seconds.

So, now there's, as the title might have suggested, a rather large, Triarch Stalker-shaped hole in my list.

HQ:
Overlord w/ Warscythe, MSS, Phase Shifter, CCB – 240pts

Royal Court:
Harbinger of Destruction w/ Solar Pulse – 55pts
Harbinger of Destruction – 35pts
Harbinger of Transmogrification w/ Harp of Dissonance – 55pts

[Warlord] Overlord w/ Warscythe, MSS, Sempiternal Weave, Resurrection Orb – 160pts

Royal Court:
Harbinger of Despair w/ Veil of Darkness – 60pts
Harbinger of Destruction w/ Solar Pulse – 55pts
Harbinger of Transmogrification w/ Harp of Dissonance – 55pts

Elites:
Triarch Stalker – 150pts [For the cut]

Troops:
10x Immortals w/ Tesla Carbines – 170pts
7x Warriors – 91pts
7x Warriors – 91pts

Fast Attack:
3x Canoptek Scarabs – 45pts

Heavy Support:
Annihilation Barge – 90pts
Annihilation Barge – 90pts
Canoptek Spyder – 50pts

Total – 1492 [1342]pts

That's the list as it stands, and where my quandry really begins is when I come to put 150pts-worth of useful stuff back in after taking the Stalker out. As you might tell, the list isn't exactly optimal. That is intended, since it's supposed to be themed around my custom Dynasty, but trying to use up spare points in a Necron army is like trying to... to... to do something really really difficult (especially when you reach the last dregs, because nothing worth taking in the codex costs >10pts; at least with marines you can give some random sergeant a melta bomb and be done with it). 150pts Currently buys me a few Spyders and Scarabs; another troops choice; weave and shifter on the Overlords; 4 Wraiths, one with Whip Coils; NO FLIERS (this is set in stone; none of my 40k armies will have even part of a flier in it); a Ghost Ark (perferably not, my models already have a hard timed staying put together without something like falling apart if someone looks at it funny. It also looks pants and doesn't really suit the current theme); some Deathmarks; ???.

Now, as you can see, 150pts when added to the above list doesn't really get a whole lot. 4 Wraiths sound good, but there's only 4, and all they'll be supported by are a handful of Scarabs and a Bargelord, and whilst they might draw fire, they'll be a very expensive draw-fire. Another troops choice sounds okay, but I won't be able to get 10 of anything except Warriors, and playing on a 4'x4' table with not really a lot of area terrain (probably to encourage taking the ubiquitous ADL that everyone and their dog seems to have now) won't really help the cause of a third squad of 4+ armour saves. Deathmarks might be interesting, since I've never used them and I've never seen them used, but people seem to be saying they're quite good.

The only other option is to butcher the list (and subsequent theme) a bit. In order to get more Wraiths, I'll probably have to drop the Spyder and Scarabs, which means I can get 6 Wraiths with 2 Whip Coils, and have 13pts left over in total. They'd be more survivable than the unit of 4, but still lacking a bit; they are only T4 with 3+ saves, after all. I could use the 243pts scavenged to get a third AB, but then I'm back to where I started, with 150pts left, and besides, 3 ABs at 1500pts doesn't sound very... nice outside of a tournament list. Sure, I suppose people would prefer them over Scythe-spam, but it still feels a bit low.

But after dropping the Spyder and Scarabs, if there's still not enough, then it's going to start hurting the theme a lot. First to go will probably be the Harpteks, which spoils the theme, followed by the CCB, which spoils it further. After that will probably be the now CCB-less Overlord, along with his Royal Court, in favour of a Destroyer Lord, using the points for more Wraiths. Then where do I end up? A sort-of, perhaps-at-one-point-in-time themed list, with overbearing tones of Wraith-spam and a hint of netlist.

So, I guess my real question here is: what can I replace the Stalker with without removing most of what makes this list themed and stand out from the rest?

What exactly is the theme? I'm having trouble coming up with ideas when it sounds like so many things are verboten in your home brew dynasty.

Stalkers have been useless since they came out. Only use they have is with the H gauss cannon due to range so they can stay in cover (150 pf lascannon ftl). 2x MM is vastly overrated. AP2 in melee would have really helped them or a 2nd weapon mount.


More spiders or scarabs. This is a mid ranged fire list with little assault. You need a way to tie up units or shield your shooting better.

Actually, stalkers are amazing when used for their targetting relay, especially with doomsday arks.

Personally at 1k5 I feel you don't have enough troops and your HQ slot is eating up a ton of points but that's just my opinion.

I can see why you aren't liking the Stalker, its a strange unit as two of its weapon load outs are AT but most of your anti infantry guns would really benefit from being TL. I normally use the Partile Shredder on the Stalker and leave the AT to Harbinger of Storm + 5 Warrior in NS.

150 Points Fillers

5 Deathmarks + Harbinger of Despair w/ Veil of Darkness - 155 pts. Very effective with that AP1 flame template that wounds on a +2. Best use is to stick them in a NS but your not into flyers so use the Veil.

2 Spyders + 3 Scarabs. People underestimate Spyders and Scarabs but I think they are really good and of course very cheap. Great tarpit unit, that melts tanks, bubble wraps your units, super fast speed, 5 attacks on the charge and you should be getting 3 scarab bases per turn.

Buff up your Warrior units, 7 Warriors aren't going to do much. Two groups of 10 or a super blob with a Overlord/lord with a orb can take tremendous damage and still be an effective unit. its better backed by 2 Ghost Arcs though.



On another note, why are you playing on a 4x4?

zephoid wrote:
Stalkers have been useless since they came out. Only use they have is with the H gauss cannon due to range so they can stay in cover (150 pf lascannon ftl). 2x MM is vastly overrated. AP2 in melee would have really helped them or a 2nd weapon mount.


More spiders or scarabs. This is a mid ranged fire list with little assault. You need a way to tie up units or shield your shooting better.

Gonna agree with this guy for the most part. I really don't see why you have a Stalker in this list to begin with. You don't have enough volume of fire to make the twin-linking ability worth wild, and not getting the HGC upgrade is just a no no(exception vs hordes with no long range shooting).

Any opposeing general that knows Necrons will know that Stalkers make easy First Blood points. The way you counter this is to use a Solar Pulse and start the thing out of range of all his Lascannons but close enough for it to move into range after the round of night fighting. By then most opposing generals will have other priorities.

Anywho, more scarabs would be my suggestion.

Darrett wrote:What exactly is the theme? I'm having trouble coming up with ideas when it sounds like so many things are verboten in your home brew dynasty.

3 Things now = so many? If it were half the codex then I'd agree with you, but the people posting after you seemed to find ways around having to do without suggesting 3 things, one of which I wouldn't have been able to afford anyway. Was "add Ghost Arks/Scythes" all you could come up with, since that's really all that's 'verboten' here.

zephoid wrote: Stalkers have been useless since they came out. Only use they have is with the H gauss cannon due to range so they can stay in cover (150 pf lascannon ftl). 2x MM is vastly overrated. AP2 in melee would have really helped them or a 2nd weapon mount.

More spiders or scarabs. This is a mid ranged fire list with little assault. You need a way to tie up units or shield your shooting better.

I found mine performed quite well to start with, which is why I kept on using it. It has since slipped into uselessness, however.

Nakor The BlueRider wrote:Personally at 1k5 I feel you don't have enough troops and your HQ slot is eating up a ton of points but that's just my opinion.

I can see why you aren't liking the Stalker, its a strange unit as two of its weapon load outs are AT but most of your anti infantry guns would really benefit from being TL. I normally use the Partile Shredder on the Stalker and leave the AT to Harbinger of Storm + 5 Warrior in NS.

150 Points Fillers

5 Deathmarks + Harbinger of Despair w/ Veil of Darkness - 155 pts. Very effective with that AP1 flame template that wounds on a +2. Best use is to stick them in a NS but your not into flyers so use the Veil.

2 Spyders + 3 Scarabs. People underestimate Spyders and Scarabs but I think they are really good and of course very cheap. Great tarpit unit, that melts tanks, bubble wraps your units, super fast speed, 5 attacks on the charge and you should be getting 3 scarab bases per turn.

Buff up your Warrior units, 7 Warriors aren't going to do much. Two groups of 10 or a super blob with a Overlord/lord with a orb can take tremendous damage and still be an effective unit. its better backed by 2 Ghost Arcs though.

On another note, why are you playing on a 4x4?

Strangely enough, I've never had an issue with the number of troops; enemies seem to want to take out my Immortals, Barges and Scarabs first, often leaving my Warriors free to sit on bjectives, harps sniping things in the enemy back-field or overall being a nuisance. Strength 6 on them is still fairly decent, and making it easier for a lance to penetrate has helped a few times (although there was one Land Speeder I managed to get down to AV6 all around before it finally bit the dust (my Stalker charged it ), but that was back in 5th).

For the Deathmarks, how often do you get to use the Veiltek's template when DSing? It seems to me that you're relying on the dice not to be fickle bastards when it comes to deep striking, or relying on the enemy coming to you; or is it just worth 55pts to allow the squad to hop around the board instead of having 3 more marks?

For the Spyders option, would it be worth dropping one of the Scarab bases for a Gloom Prism, seeing as you are, as you say, going to build 3 bases per turn? Sure, the range is pathetic, but with the right positioning it could help defeat a particularly nasty power.

As for the warriors, I don't really use them much. They're 7-strong because, with the additional 2 Crypteks they get, it brings the squad to 9, the lowest value possible where they have to take 3 casualties instead of 2 to force a morale check. I could buff them up a bit, but they never really have the opportunity to add anything, preferring to camp on objectives and let the Crypteks do the shooting. I could try and use them more aggressively, but with the boards not having as much cover on them as they used to, I've found they like to fall over to a stiff breeze. In my experience, also, res. orbs haven't been nearly worth the 30pts I pay. It might just be that I'm terribly unlucky (I am) but that 30pts has yet to really save anything. It might help an Immortal up every now and then, but he quickly goes down again, and then tends to stay down. The Overlord carrying it has yet to actually rise again (not that he dies very often to start with, though).

I play on a 4'x4' because the local GW is tiny, and where the choice is 2 6'x4' or 3 4'x4', given the amount of people who play there 3 4'x4' is usually the better choice. Sometimes there's 2 4'x4' + 1 6'x4', but that wasn't there last night, and I dunno if it's because it blocks one of the few lanes around the store when it's out, or for some other reason. It's generally useful to assume a 4'x4' in any case.

Any opposeing general that knows Necrons will know that Stalkers make easy First Blood points. The way you counter this is to use a Solar Pulse and start the thing out of range of all his Lascannons but close enough for it to move into range after the round of night fighting. By then most opposing generals will have other priorities.

Anywho, more scarabs would be my suggestion.

Easier said than done, considering this is on a 4'x4', and Night Fighting was in effect at the time.

It seems the general suggestion is more spyders/scarabs, so I'll give them a bit of a trial run. How would a Gloom Prism or two feel on any further spyders? Waste of a scarab base-worth of points?

Pity you don't like fliers, a nightscythe would make an excellent delivery system for at least one squad of your troop choices (especially that squad of immortals).

I'd fill out your scarab swarm to 10 (105 pts)
and
Add another Canoptek Spyder (50 pts)

Total upgrades 155 points, so with the rest of your list that is 1497 (and still legal for a 1.5k FOC).

I absolutely love stalkers. Of course with gauss and then they can mark opponent units preferably for tesla immortals which can shine when they are twin linked. Very good for rapid firing warriors as well.

A single Spyder?
A single NAKED Spyder?
what is the point of that?

yes, I would advocate replacing the Stalker with either more Spyders + Scarabs, a Death & Despair squad, or Wraiths (if you end up going with 6, I'd recommend 3 whip coils. I've tried running just 2 on them before, it never seems to work out right).

However, in defense of the Stalker, I think the problem might have been that you only had the one. Those things are bullet magnets. If you take two, you fix redundancy issues. Top off the list with Tesla Immortals, Destr-teks, and D.Arks, and you have some serious pain.

 Avatar 720 wrote:

Darrett wrote:What exactly is the theme? I'm having trouble coming up with ideas when it sounds like so many things are verboten in your home brew dynasty.

3 Things now = so many? If it were half the codex then I'd agree with you, but the people posting after you seemed to find ways around having to do without suggesting 3 things, one of which I wouldn't have been able to afford anyway. Was "add Ghost Arks/Scythes" all you could come up with, since that's really all that's 'verboten' here.

 Avatar 720 wrote:

NO FLIERS (this is set in stone; none of my 40k armies will have even part of a flier in it);
a Ghost Ark (perferably not, my models already have a hard timed staying put together without something like falling apart if someone looks at it funny. It also looks pants and doesn't really suit the current theme)

The only other option is to butcher the list (and subsequent theme) a bit. In order to get more Wraiths, I'll probably have to drop the Spyder and Scarabs, which means I can get 6 Wraiths with 2 Whip Coils, and have 13pts left over in total. They'd be more survivable than the unit of 4, but still lacking a bit; they are only T4 with 3+ saves, after all. I could use the 243pts scavenged to get a third AB, but then I'm back to where I started, with 150pts left, and besides, 3 ABs at 1500pts doesn't sound very... nice outside of a tournament list. Sure, I suppose people would prefer them over Scythe-spam, but it still feels a bit low.

But after dropping the Spyder and Scarabs, if there's still not enough, then it's going to start hurting the theme a lot. First to go will probably be the Harpteks, which spoils the theme, followed by the CCB, which spoils it further. After that will probably be the now CCB-less Overlord, along with his Royal Court, in favour of a Destroyer Lord, using the points for more Wraiths. Then where do I end up? A sort-of, perhaps-at-one-point-in-time themed list, with overbearing tones of Wraith-spam and a hint of netlist.

So, I guess my real question here is: what can I replace the Stalker with without removing most of what makes this list themed and stand out from the rest?

You expressly discounted three things (Ghost Ark, Night Scythe, Doom Scythe). You hinted that dropping the Spyder and Scarabs also drops the theme, but that bringing in more wraiths doesn't restore it. Apparently your Royal Court and CCS Overlord also impact the theme. I bolded the mentions of theme in your post to highlight how often you mentioned the theme without ever actually saying what it is.

I gather that it's a tomb world in which the majority of the warriors were destroyed somehow, and is now populated mainly by the upper echelons with supporting scarabs, spyder and stalker? I don't have enough information to give you my suggestions, which would be an attempt to maintain the fluff of the army if I knew what the exact theme was, thus the question. If you want random suggestions on what can fit into 150 points, then that's doable, but may not fit in with the theme you apparently have.

theme.

Darrett, 5 people managed to come up with ideas without whining about it; I doubt it's beyond your capabilities.

I can come up with several suggestions. You made it sound like there was a fluff component to your decision making without defining it, so I requested clarification, which you refuse (or maybe I just read too much into it) to provide. Seems like you're set though.

I'd go with the "add more spyders, then more scarabs" idea. The one spyder/min scarabs doesn't seem like it really threatening or effective. I'd say, either bump that squad to 6, and pump out 3 swarms a turn to it, or create a second squad of 3, send your original 3 forward and start buffing the lagging unit.
If you don't go that route, how about a min. str squad of Warriors with 2 dest-teks? 65 + 70 = 135. Then one more scarab? I like the small squad with double tek for backfield camping.
Thoughts?