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Ok, so I run deathmarks as part of my 1850 list and they typically do very very well. No real complaints (unless I'm playing against Tau - then I complain a lot).

I'm curious if anyone has actually used the ethereal interception rule? I really don't see the benefit other than you don;t have to make a reserve roll but now you'll get shot up and probably assaulted before you get to do anything.

[You Make Da Call question but I'm throwing it in here anyway]
My deathmarks typically embark on a NS. Would that mean I could fly my NS on in the other players turn? And does arriving in another players turn mean you did 'arrive via deep strike/zoom-in' in your turn?

 necron99 wrote:
Ok, so I run deathmarks as part of my 1850 list and they typically do very very well. No real complaints (unless I'm playing against Tau - then I complain a lot).

I'm curious if anyone has actually used the ethereal interception rule? I really don't see the benefit other than you don;t have to make a reserve roll but now you'll get shot up and probably assaulted before you get to do anything.

This is the same issue that I've had with this rule (either through deathmarks or when using Zanhdrek). I have used it once and it went from deep striking the unit in an exposed area to maximize damage to dropping them behind a building, out of LoS in order to 1) throw off my opponent and 2) ensure they survive to next turn.

 necron99 wrote:

[You Make Da Call question but I'm throwing it in here anyway]
My deathmarks typically embark on a NS. Would that mean I could fly my NS on in the other players turn? And does arriving in another players turn mean you did 'arrive via deep strike/zoom-in' in your turn?

Since Night Scythes no longer have the Deep Strike Special Rule, it can't come in using this rule. Since the Night Scythe doesn't have deep strike and you have to declare deep strike arrival when denoting a unit is staying in reserve (per Deep Strike USR) you would have to declare the deathmarks as not arriving via deep strike. Thus, you wouldn't be able to take them out of the night scythe in reserve and deep strike them.

Why would you get assaulted? The enemy will not Deep Strike in his own territory, otherwise he would have just deployed that unit.

The best way to use this ability is by countering a sudden Deep Strike in your own territory.
Sure, they might get shot at; But they have 3+ and RP, so they will survive.
And they won't get assaulted because his Deep Striking unit cannot assault that turn.

I am probably going to take some Deathmarks because my enemies like to DS terminator-squads in my base.
So I DS 2x5 Deathmark, next turn I will fire 20 shots => 14 hits => 12 wounds with 2 rending and two failed armour-saves.
That means I basically took down 4 of his 5 terminators and I got their points back!

He might shoot at them, but that means he is not shooting at the unit he intended to kill when he picked that specific DS-spot.
My meta has three kind of deep strikes:
-Terminators in your base.
-AT-units near vehicles.
-CC-teams that just want to see the world burn.
And none of them want to shoot at Deathmarks!

The moment he decides to take a shot at the Deathmarks first, means I basically undid his entire tactic.

PS. I will probably take a Monolith, just so I can always unload them even if I screw up on Reserve-rolls.
PPS. I would prefer to take 2x5 instead of 10 Deathmarks. They can both DS close enough and it means you can 'mark' two units; they benefit from eachothers 'mark'.

I don't really run them with a tek so never really tried to make use of the rule. If I were to run them solo, I doubt I would ever use that rule.. most of the time I want to bring them down and shoot up something. I have a purpose for that unit and don't want to lose models before they get to do their job. 10 of them are 190 points... I'm not wasting that unit to avoid shooting on my warriors or something less important.

Kangodo wrote:
Why would you get assaulted? The enemy will not Deep Strike in his own territory, otherwise he would have just deployed that unit.

You seem to have forgotten that the enemy will have the rest of his army still on the ground, and how do you know your enemy won't DS on his own side of the board? People do it all the time; it's aa tactical decision to made in the moment, not something to pre-plan as such.

Kangodo wrote:
The best way to use this ability is by countering a sudden Deep Strike in your own territory.
Sure, they might get shot at; But they have 3+ and RP, so they will survive.
And they won't get assaulted because his Deep Striking unit cannot assault that turn.

I am probably going to take some Deathmarks because my enemies like to DS terminator-squads in my base.
So I DS 2x5 Deathmark, next turn I will fire 20 shots => 14 hits => 12 wounds with 2 rending and two failed armour-saves.
That means I basically took down 4 of his 5 terminators and I got their points back!

But this doesn't benefit at all from Ethereal Interceptor, as you could do the exact same thing by Deep Striking in your own turn. Same result with less risks; that's why this rule is total pants.

It has one and only one benefit, and that is to avoid having to roll for them on your turn and possibly failing. It's mostly just one of those rules that they include to add a little flavor from the fluff, but has little impact on the game.

 Roci wrote:
I don't really run them with a tek so never really tried to make use of the rule. If I were to run them solo, I doubt I would ever use that rule.. most of the time I want to bring them down and shoot up something. I have a purpose for that unit and don't want to lose models before they get to do their job. 10 of them are 190 points... I'm not wasting that unit to avoid shooting on my warriors or something less important.

You never, ever, Deep Strike them with a Cryptek.
DnD is for flying over there, unloading the unit and killing something within a turn.
The moment you DS them and nominate a target, the opponent will know what you are up too and shoot it down asap.

 Godless-Mimicry wrote:
You seem to have forgotten that the enemy will have the rest of his army still on the ground, and how do you know your enemy won't DS on his own side of the board? People do it all the time; it's aa tactical decision to made in the moment, not something to pre-plan as such.

Because most of the time DS-units are kept in reserve because they want to be in the opponent's deployment.
If he Deep Strikes them in his own deployment, you simply put the Deathmarks in your own deployment and tactically pick a target: No loss there.

But this doesn't benefit at all from Ethereal Interceptor, as you could do the exact same thing by Deep Striking in your own turn. Same result with less risks; that's why this rule is total pants.

Except for the part where this rule gives you a 100% chance to Deep Strike them.
Ethereal Interception isn't good because you can Deep Strike them.
It's good because it allows you to use Hunters from Hyperspace on a unit that YOU want.

Imagine that they lost Interception and DS:
What are you going to do against those MC's that DS in your deployment?
What will you do when he DS's a terminator-squad in your base?
What will you do when you pick a target as their prey and they keep this squad safely in his base?
This entire rule is about picking the prey on MY conditions, not the enemies'.

Kangodo wrote:
It's good because it allows you to use Hunters from Hyperspace on a unit that YOU want.

You always get to use Hunters from Hyperspace on what you want. You are making illogical leaps here; for instance, why would your target be hiding in his base unless you yourself made the mistake to pick such a unit? And how is coming down in his turn after his drop and picking any different to coming in down in your turn, which is still after his drop, and picking then? He will have the same time to react. Where have you gotten the idea that the enemy can ever dictate your target?

As for the list of questions you posed at the end of your last post, not one of those things are things that Necrons worry about because of one thing; Tesla. The only thing Deathmarks ever get used for anyway in competitive lists is to give the DespairTek a 2+ to wound AP2 flamer, and these always come in a Night Scythe, because that's the smarter move than Deep Striking.

I'm glad this rule works fr you, bt IMO you are giving it far too much credit, as what you are achieving is easier to do by other means.

 Godless-Mimicry wrote:
This doesn't benefit at all from Ethereal Interceptor, as you could do the exact same thing by Deep Striking in your own turn. Same result with less risks; that's why this rule is total pants.

The answer to this, and to OP's question is simple: somebody at GW f'ed up.
See, because the Necron codex was written while the 6th ed. rulebook was being written, they knew what some of the new rules were going to be. They included mechanics that would be able to abuse these new rules and features in the codex, but because said codex would be coming out before the new rulebook, they couldn't exactly directly reference those rules without letting the cat out of the bag. (hence the reason why MSS were at first a head scratcher, but as soon as 6th dropped, everyone was like "Ohhh, challenges! THAT'S what these things are for!").
Now, in the case of the Deathmarks, it seems pretty obvious that when using Ethereal Interception they were SUPPOSED to have the Interceptor rule (I mean, ffs, it's right there in the name of the ability). Not only that, but the way the ability works, it's CLEARLY supposed to be a counter-deep-strike "HA! Surprise, motha fukka!" effect (otherwise the ability makes zero sense).
Now, because GW apparently lacked any form of quality control back then, the codex launched as a complete cluster fekk. The FAQ department were so busy dealing with fixing all the broken loopholes (eg. Scarab Conga Line, multiple Hunters From Hyperspace mark generation via Veil abuse, etc.), that in the pandemonium to correct all the major problems, they passed over updating this ability to do what it most obviously was supposed to have done.
By this time it's probably too late to fix it now (it would have had to have been done as soon as 6th dropped), so the best we can hope for is they update the codex entry once the 6th ed. Necron codex eventually comes out... so in, say, three more years? (hopefully they fix everything else wrong with it, too)

Sounds plausible. Good post.

 Godless-Mimicry wrote:
You always get to use Hunters from Hyperspace on what you want. You are making illogical leaps here; for instance, why would your target be hiding in his base unless you yourself made the mistake to pick such a unit? And how is coming down in his turn after his drop and picking any different to coming in down in your turn, which is still after his drop, and picking then? He will have the same time to react. Where have you gotten the idea that the enemy can ever dictate your target?

No, you don't always get HfH on the unit you want.
If, in turn 2 or 3, the opponent has a unit in my deployment then I want HfH on that unit.
But I could not target that unit since it was not deployed at the time I got to pick HfH-targets.
Sure; you could always keep them in Reserve and hope for reserve-rolls to align JUST the way you want them, but I prefer not basing my tactic on luck like that.
So to answer “what is different from coming down in my turn?” would be: You have to roll a dice for that.

Which is where Interception comes into play: It's a guaranteed way to bring this unit on the board when the opponent Deep Strikes.
It's basically an anti-Deep Strike unit that says: "If you DS in my territory, we will come out and shoot you down."
It only has one downside and that is being able to shoot at the Deathmarks.
Luckily they have 3+ and RP, so that’s not really an issue.

As for the list of questions you posed at the end of your last post, not one of those things are things that Necrons worry about because of one thing; Tesla. The only thing Deathmarks ever get used for anyway in competitive lists is to give the DespairTek a 2+ to wound AP2 flamer, and these always come in a Night Scythe, because that's the smarter move than Deep Striking.

I'm glad this rule works fr you, bt IMO you are giving it far too much credit, as what you are achieving is easier to do by other means.

Tesla or not, a group of AT-marines or Terminators DS’ing in my base will get tricky.
Deathmarks are a decent answer to that problem.

And really, I don’t care about competitive play.
If I cared about that, I would play 18 Wraiths and I wouldn’t even bother reading a thread about Deathmarks without Crypteks.

I’m also not really giving it too much credit.
I know exactly what the rule does and I understand the cases where it might be useful.
Acting as if they might as well remove that ability because it’s “useless in tournaments” is really the wrong attitude for a game like Warhammer.