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Hi all,

I play Ultramarines and my friend plays Necrons with Ork allies. I'm not so worried about the orks since anti-horde tactics will fix them relatively easily. I'm more concerned about the Necrons. I've never played Necrons before. What are some things I need to look out for? What are weaknesses to exploit? I know he plans on using 3 Triarch stalkers, a few ghost arks with warriors, an Anni barge or 2 and 5 wraiths. Any heads up would be great. Below is the list I plan on running (neither of us own or play with fliers, hence the lack of anti flier in the list).

2,000 points

Tigurius

Sternguard (10) - x2 Combi's, Drop Pod
Legion of the Damned (5) - Melta Gun, Multi Melta, Combi Melta

Tatical Squad (10) - Flamer, Rhino - Sergeant w/ Combi-Flamer
Tatical Squad (10) - Plasma Gun, Rhino - Sergeant w/ Combi-Plasma
Tatical Squad (10) - Flamer, Rhino - Sergeant w/ Combi-Flamer
Tatical Squad (10) - Plasma Gun, Rhino - Sergeant w/ Combi-Plasma
Scout Squad (5) - Sniper Rifles, Camo Cloaks

Bike Squad (5) - x2 Grav Guns, x1 Combi Grav
Bike Squad (5) - x2 Grav Guns, x1 Combi Grav

Devastators (5) - x4 Heavy Bolters - Sergeant w/Signum
Devastators (5) - x4 Lascannons - Sergeant w/Signum

If you are going to shoot his warrior squads make sure to put the entire squad down or you've wasted your shooting.

I use large warrior blocks with Rez orbs supported by ghost arks. I've seen my warriors take 50 bolter shots, killing. 60-70% of the squad, then half of those get up from the orb, and I repair another 4 from the ghost ark and watch my opponent slump over in frustration.

Kill the squads entirely with focused fire or kill the arks first. Chances are his orks will be bubble wrapping the arks so you won't get into melta range. Ork boys are dirt cheap and do this job very easily.

Avoid his wraiths. They will handle any of your units with ease. 5 wraiths is 20 s6 rending attacks on the charge. If he has a destroyer lord with them it's even worse as they have preferred enemy everything.

Your list is not a great matchup against his. The triarchs will bust your rhinos and your units won't survive the shooting. You can't get your bikers into grav range as 18 is more than close enough for his wraiths to threaten you (12" move and 2d6 assault). Your las cannons are your best bet. They have double the range of most of his stuff but you have so many targets to shoot at and he only really has to worry about them. Keep a unit or 2 of tac marines nearby them so it's not so easy to take them out.

Thanks, your advice is basically what I fear most- that I don't bring enough to deal with his list as fast as I need to.

Would you suggest more devastator lascannons?

The key with necrons is, as mentioned, to kill them all, so ideally you should be focusing on half of his army with all of yours, and the pods/rhinos are great for this.

More LC are always good, but only add more if you don't have to alter the list too much. I'd almost suggest dropping the scouts for more upgrades everywhere.

In terms of more specific stuff, Whirlwinds are now great for killing warrior blobs now they are cheap barrage AP4, dual HF speeders are nice for an alpha-strike, especially if you bring a couple, as you can get the blob from behind, negating the 2+ tanking lord. Also, if you get precision shots with your characters, always use them to hit the lords, they only get a 4+ LOS and only one wound, and if you can get a wound to stick, the blob is way less dangerous.

The whole army is a threat to the rhinos, so ideally you want to be using them to get into a good position and not expecting them to make it past T2. If they do, great, but with deploy 12", move 12", flat out 6", you can get to a good position easily and then move out from there.

Keep the bikes away from the wraiths, and they should do pretty well, with the extra mobility you should be able to avoid them for a while,

The scouts should just camp really, and don't be afraid to GTG if you have to, the bonus to the save is easily worth 5 SR shots.

Finally,Dont' be afraid of assaulting if you get the chance. Tacs should be able to beat equal numbers of warriors in assault, providing you fire bolt pistols (and lob a krak grenade for more AP4). Challenge the lord, and then hit the warriors, if you win your extra Init will make running them down easy.

Hope that helps.

Ok some issues I see are, his list pretty much excels at taking out light vehicles and infantry which is your list.

Your list really lacks anything that's really gonna scare his list. I would suggest a thunderfire cannon, to just lay out barrages on his phalanx which from the looks of it is going to have to remain relatively close together, so you can exploit this with barrage weapons.

The other issue I see is that you both share the same threat ranges with similar weapons(both being primarily bolter equivalents), except that due to the stalkers his units will all be twin linked. To mitigate this, seeing as the units you've posted, none have range greater than 24" I would suggest(as silly as it may seem) a squadron of heavy bolter speeders to kite his entire army and put some serious hurt on his warrior/ork squads, alternatively attack bikes can perform this as well.

Your initial targets should be the wraiths since they will do a lot of damage one they hit your line. After that you should either focus fire on single squads of warriors as mentioned above to completely wipe them/make them fall back(a falling back unit of warriors cannot resurrect fallen members that phase).

The other point I see is that you have 1 drop pod unit... That is gonna drop in one turn shoot maybe kill the target and then die. The entire army is gonna be able to twin-link that squad to death and that squad is going to cost you more than any unit it manages to destroy/injure. I would suggest you lose the drop pod and put them into a rhino so they can arrive with the rest of your army or to drop them all together and add in some long range damage (such as the thunder fire cannon).

Also I would suggest not charging a unit with his Overlord with your HQ, since he probably will be giving it a warscythe and MSS it will likely win a challenge, since half the time your character just attacks himself.

My thoughts hope it helps and good luck once you get your game in.

Seems like a nice list.
I would keep your Transports to the back till you bashed his army a little.

It's important to remember the following things:
-A penetrate takes away quantum shielding and all his vehicles are open-topped! So Melta-pens destroy the vehicle on a 3+
-Sternguard are very strong, I would put those near his HQ and away from the Wraiths.
-Legion of the Damned can clean up the vehicles that the Devastators didn't wreck, I would prefer them against the Ghost Arks since they ignore the coversave.
It gets even better when you assault the warriors that come out of it, they will surely lose.
-Wraiths look scary, but those 5 Wraiths will die just as fast as 10 Marines to normal shooting.
-Plasmaguns are excellent against Necron-vehicles after you penned the shield away.
-Gauss has a short range, I would try to use your bikers to Immobilize them before they get in range of anything scary.

But most important:
-If you go for the Warriors, don't stop until you are finished!
I've seen too many people complain about "OP necrons" because they kill a warrior or 5 and then leave them alone (repeat for the next 5 turns).
That's not how you fight them, that won't work!

Would you suggest more devastator lascannons?

I would spread them over the squads.
In my opinion it would be smart to get at least one penetrate on as many Stalkers as possible.

One cheesy tip: Scouts can take a LSS, and you can force Necrons to do an Initiative-test or else they fire at BS1

Auto-cannon/hb predators put out a good number of shots at 36" which is out of his range. And for the price having the armor 13 in the front isn't bad for what you get. In my experiance it takes 2 turns to make that wraith unit no longer scary from shooting one of these at it.

Awesome advice guys, much appreciated! Some great points and heads up to consider here. Below is a revised list (its a TAC) that I've been toying with. Any thoughts on how it would do?

Tigurius
Marneus Calgar - Armor of Antilochus
Honor Guard - x4 Honor Guard, x1 Chapter Champion, Drop Pod

Sternguard (10) - x3 Combi's, Drop Pod (Hawk Lords)

Tatical Squad (10) - Flamer, Rhino - Sergeant w/ Combi-Flamer (Imperial Fists)
Tatical Squad (10) - Plasma Gun, Rhino - Sergeant w/ Combi-Plasma (Aurora Chapter)
Tatical Squad (10) - Plasma Gun, Drop Pod - Sergeant w/ Combi-Plasma (Sons of Orar)
Tatical Squad (10) - Plasma Gun, Rhino - Sergeant w/ Combi-Plasma (Ultramarines)

Bike Squad (5) - x2 Grav Guns, x1 Combi Grav (White Scars)

Devastators (5) - x4 Lascannons - Sergeant w/ Signum

=2,000 points

Looks ok, I would advocate getting some LC or even ML in the tac squads, just to give you the ability to take out the AV13 at range, as against necrons, anything you can get with range greater than 24"is a real thorn in their side. I kind of think that Calgar and Tiggy is a bit much, even at 200, as dropping one or the other could get you another squad or some more upgrades.

Also, unless you're playing KP, combat squad everything, as that way, no matter how much TLing and firepower he has, he can only kill 5 marines with each squad.

Thanks for all of the great feedback, everyone! There is a lot here and I'll be reading and re-reading the responses. Necrons is basically the only army I've never really faced ever- at all, either in 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th editions, etc. So, my knowledge in their capabilities is pretty limited.

My goal is to make a few varying TAC lists for my space marines (that's always my goal) so I don't want to tailor specifically against this one player/list. I realize I'll never have an optimized anti-necron list, but I'd like to get as close as possible to presenting a TAC list that stands a good chance any day of the week.

I'm trying out running Tigurius and Calgar in the same army because I've watched a few battle reports lately where people did that and they seem to have some nice mutual benefits. No doubt it's expensive, but the army-wide utility those two characters bring is really impressive (too many to list).

I agree that loading up on the long range AT seems to be the answer (or at least more than 24"). I've gone back and forth on heavy weapons in the tactical squads several times (it's ok though since I magnetize EVERYTHING for easy switching out). With combat squads I would get some use out of the heavy weapons while allowing the specials/combis the ability to manuever in their rhinos. I'd like to bring a second Devastator squad but struggle to find the points. With Calgar (or just Tiggy in general) I like the theme of many tacticals, hence 4 tactical squads is a staple of my lists.

At 2,500 points the Calgar + Tiggy combo works a little better since you have points available to fill out the other slots (a 10 man LoTD squad and Plasma Devastators). Luckily, we frequently play 2,500 points, which is where I think this list theme excels compared to 2,000.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Would it be worth adding a Hunter or Stalker into my list? Generally, for anti flyer, but their ability to hit skimmers (which most of his vehicles are) would be huge once their quantum shields are down. Thoughts?

Actually, a hunter would be great against crons for the reasons you stated. 7+2d6 and AP2 will make short work of most necron vehicles, and at worst is likely to drop the shields so your plasmaguns and the like have a better chance of hurting them. On the other hand, if you are building a TAC list but don't generally see fliers, I'd avoid one, as it is largely useless against armies with no skimmers if no one really uses fliers. It really depends on meta.

I agree the Calgar/tiggy combo is very nice in boosting the army as a whole, but all I can really advise is to try it for yourself. If it works, great, if not, then just swap one or the other out.

I'd certainly take the HW on tacs if you can, it adds punch to the squad in those vital early turns where small arms are out of range. If you can get so much as one vehicle with them in the early turns, they've done their job, and also make the enemy more wary when it comes to deployment. If I go up against an army with just special weapons, I'll just deploy agressively where my guns can do most damage, if you're packing lascannons and the like in most squads, I'll have to be more conservative with my placement in the event you sieze the initiative or get a shot on your T1. This is soubly true for necrons, as due to the short range even on vehicles, if you can take one out before 24", you've probably killed it before it does anything.