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I would very much like opinions on how useful the Necron's terrain warping effects are in a game. Generally, I'm meaning using a c'tan shard with writhing worldscape, Orikan, and 3-4 cryptekts with tremor staves.

As far as I can see, this means:

First turn, all terrain counts as dangerous, wounds taken on a 1. Unless hit by stave, in which wounds taken on 1 or 2.
Second turn, all difficult terrain dangerous and fails on 1. If hit by stave in open ground, this counts as dangerous also. If moving through dangerous terrain, this fails on a 1 or 2.

My questions: how useful is this against a jump pack army? I'm facing Blood Angels and want to stop him getting close, or at least slow him down giving me enough to bring my weapons to mash them.

How do the above rules interact with jump packs? Do the jump pack units landing in difficult terrain fail on 1 or 2? Do they take two tests for taking off and landing if hit by staves or in difficult terrain? And what happens if hit by stave before a charge or charging with jump packs through difficult terrain? Do they get to reroll all their 3d6, for instance?

Many thanks for clarification. It's a huge point cost so I want to be sure it's going to support my strategy as well as being deadly to the unlucky few.

Thanks,

Lord Ffyllotek

I can see you're new, so you might not have been around when the army list known as "Tremor-Cron" was being played.
(basically, yes, W.W. C'tan with Tremor-teks, often including Orikan).
It stopped being as viable in 6th after it became possible to take armor saves against dangerous terrain tests.

in regards to your questions, I believe the FAQ would say they would be affected, but you may want to double check to be sure.

Short answer is "meh."
They can work, but usually you can spend the points elsewhere more reliably. In a fun of fluffy game it could be a neat thing to try.

Yeah, skoffs and BM pretty much nailed it. If you're taking it to do damage, outside of fighting horde armies, don't expect it to do much.

If you can manage to pair it up in a list where Orikan and the C'Tan are contributing in other ways, and the terrain shenanigans are just icing on the cake, then it's potentially pretty good. Orikan's reinforcement thing can be pretty awesome for a Flyer heavy lists and saves you on the ADL, and C'Tan can be effective if you keep them alive.

I would say don't try it till at least 1500, maybe more. Monolith seems like a good pairing with this though. Could use Orikan's reinforcement buff to come in pretty easily turn 2, and then bring the C'Tan up to party through the portal. Also, the opponent might respond to the WW shenagins by clumping up a bit and staying still. The Mono could then take advantage of this with some 8/3 pie plate goodness.

Other units that seem to be good in a list like that would be LG. Good place for Orikan to hide, and LG would love taking advantage of the opponents gimped movement.

Historically (in 5th) people paired WW with scarab farm. Then you have 4+ MCs, a bunch of scarabs storming down the field to take advantage of slowed units. Not an awful build.

I can't remember, would all of Orikan's abilities work if he was not deployed first turn but was rather in a Night Scythe?

Edit: Originally wrote "customer" instead of "opponent." Heh, that's what I get for trying to post in between tickets at work.

The extra range on a tremor staff might give a backfield objective holding unit something to so when there are no nearby units.

The best use of the staff in 6th is to slow down units. With random charge lengths and overwatch the difficult terrain tests may be more worthwhile especially if someone is charging tesla immortals.

I'm not saying spam it, but 1 in an army might be nice.

Yup. Tremor-crons are dead, and armour saves for dangerous terrain is what killed 'em.

The difficult terrain thing will slow down foot armies, but not jump-packs appreciably. (since they can mostly ignore it)

Thank you for the advice. From this I am picking up that there is no real way to slow down Blood Angels with threats of two dangerous terrain tests per turn. Thank you.

No ideas about how I might be able to stop them getting close?

Ffyllotek

Storm-tek with a Lightning Field works decently.
Tremor-tek with Seismic Crucible in a shooting unit can be pretty good, too.