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Okay, so apparently Necrons are tier two. Tier one is Taudar, Screamerstar, and Flying Circus variants of death star/buffed super shooting. And the problem that Necrons face is... How do we kill this stuff?

Conventional wisdom is that necrons run three annihilation barges in a competitive lists. These are simply targets in games vs the above.

How do people feel that a list based around three Doom scythes functions in the current tournament meta. I know it isn't the standard build - even at 1850 (which is what in concerned with), but I'm thinking it's got to be the best tactic against a lot of star lists.

What do others think?

notice how all these super deathstars rely on alies? and a single necron no allied army is now "second tier"

sigh. this is why i hate allies. its the dumbest thing in the world to be added.

in answer to your question, i like my necron royal court disco inferno. load up with phase shifters and weaves, pack as many MSS as you can, and take a varity of weapons, plus a veil, etc. heck, even grab some tesseracts. when the other guys army fights you, each model has to make a 3d6 LD check or beat his own unit to death, while laugh and swing in with your own str 7 ap 1 fun. got a tricky foe? hey rolla d6 under your current wounds... or just... go away... passed? ok do that 5 more times. oh yea, im also rocking a 2+/3++ AND i get back up... AND i can teleport... AND i can shoot down pretty much anything on the board from termies to landraiders without blinking, and chop the rest up in CC. want a build?

zandrekh
obyron
overlord w/ WS, MSS, weave, phaseshifter, tesseract
overlord " "
court: 5x lords with WS/mss/weave/phaseshifter/tesseract
5x crypteks, (2 stormteks 1 with lightning fied, other with ether crystal, 1 despair tek w/ nightmare shroud, 1 eternitytek w/chrono, and 1 destructotek w/ gaze and solor pulse)

thats a 3 HQ slot, 14 man unit that can deepstrike, teleport, fire out 8 haywire shots, a str 8 ap 1 flamer, force morale checks, reroll dice, and also features 7 models with MSS, and 8 with warscythes. you also have 2 str 8 lance shots, a solor pulse, and if all else fails... 7 tesseracts to vaccum away troublesome beasties. not to mention LOS ability across the whole unit, and majority is t5, with a 2+/3++.

round out your 2k list by filling up with 5 warriors in night scythes. the entire list can DS / reserve, with the exception of 3 characters. (you essentially have 5 units aside from fliers, so the court + obyron reserve, zandrekh and the 2 overlords deploy in behind something out of range and los, and chill until the court comes in. court walks on behind, they join the unit, and then hilarity ensues next turn. or just man up and deploy the whole big thing and laugh at the other guy trying to kill you.

Tau get interceptor/skyfire fairly easily, plus a gack-number of shots that can glance AV 11 to death. When the Doom Scythes finally make their appearance, you're likely to only get one shot or fewer before getting shot down. Against some portion of the enemy army, those couple shots can be key. Sadly, anything with a 2+ invul/cover won't need to worry about the death ray.
It seems like the best bet is still to go with massed fire (barges), good assault units (wraiths), and allies to fill in some gaps.

Except that necrons were never Tier 2. Just most of the people jumped wagon. If you want examples check out Jy2's batrep reports. He still has not lost to Taudar with his nerons.
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/473966.page

So the short answer is to be Jy2. The long answer is to play to the game and use the necrons absolute domination of the movement phase to win on objectives.

With the new escalation the necrons may come out of this with the best balanced army of all the factions. Allies or not.

Also DarthSpader your comment about allies is kind of goofy because 2 of the three he listed are CD dex only.

In fact even the only GT worthy deathstar is the CWE+DE seercouncil with baron and grisly trophies. The screamerstar is CD only. Ovesa'Star has pretty much seen it's day (but even then no allies probably would have meant a very different supplement). The farsight bomb and draigowing are both single codex. Am I missing 2-3 allied deathstar builds? If not that comment was very strange indeed.

my posistion on allies remains. just because the OP only mentioned one option, i think its silliness, and when people bring allies, i think "what, you arent confident enough in your own single codex, you have to bring a second one?"

just because allies dont always allow "deathstars" dosent change matters. i still see it as silliness - and will always promote single codex armies.

however, i also think people can play how they want, without anyone else telling them how they should play. so i mean, you want allies, and allied detachments, and forts, and superhevs and what all else, go for it. you might get one game from me. i probally wont play you. but im not gonna call you a dumbass or disparge your choice in army either. this is just my personal opinion, and i leave it at that.

i also think each codex can win on its own, vrs any other codex - with smart generalship and a touch of brains.. nothing is impossible. tough match up? maybe. but those are all the more sweeter to claim victory from.

edit: my thoughts on deathstars are kind of the same. i find its a "i cant win with anything else but a cheesy super unit" - dosent mean i havent built used and tried them... i have. i just think they are overrated and end up in a game thats not fun for one or both players. so why bother? the disco inferno i posted above is an example of a cron single dex DS, but i have used it all of once, and decided i didnt like it. toned down, and smaller version of... OK. but not something that crazy. its just.... too much.

Okay your response post makes much more sense. Your first post was just strange as allied deathstars are not exactly common as compared to single codex.

It is all the same really. The game is a game and should be gotten into with the same expectations from both sides for maximum enjoyment. If you don't do this whether cheesy unit, under powered list, or allied codex you get bad results.

Your response doesn't seem to be a logical one but rather a illogical emotion based one. It is fine if you don't like something but try to remember that it may not automatically be a problem in the context of every question.

As for the OP. I will repeat that you definitely have to read Jy2's batreps as he has made a point of "proving" that necrons by themselves are first tier. With my experiences against them and the batreps I have seen I would say a properly designed necron list has very few truly bad matchups and can win the objective game against pretty much anyone. With practice and experience there should never be a game where you cannot win.

I find deathstar units are normally not worth it. Their biggest use is to distract the opponent and make them forget the game in favor of trying to deal with your deathstar.

As an example the screamerstar can do very little against flyers and if you spread the objectives out your opponent will have great difficulty in trying to keep you from winning on objectives.

There is also the entire D weapon flip flop. Before the D all units are equal and expensive deathstars leave their advantages at the door.

 ansacs wrote:
Except that necrons were never Tier 2. Just most of the people jumped wagon. If you want examples check out Jy2's batrep reports. He still has not lost to Taudar with his nerons.
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/473966.page

I agree with this sentiment. Necrons aren't flavour of the month anymore, but they still don't have any GT matchups that they can't win, and most of them they win very easily.

Necrons, especially with veil crypteks, wreck eldar serpent spam as hard as any army in the game. Crons deal with doing HP to vehicles rather than AP2-1 weapons, so the serpent shield is much less effective. Also, serpents spam isnt particularly good vs 4+ saves or better.

Screamer star is getting hit hard at competitive events as the grimorie is getting banned. However, crons still have a good chance of being able to deal with it. If the grimorie ever fails, crons can get a lot of shots on target.

They also have a lot of cheap fliers, which gives them the ability to avoid a lot of the 'stronger' armies. Tau/eldar still struggles with aircrons.

I think the problem is more like GK in 6th. Everyone saw them as broken as feth in 5th, and then crons broken in early 6th, so they stopped playing them. The game has crept back with more armies having solutions to crons, but there still is the stigma of being unfun to play against. Give it a few months and eldar and tau will probably be in the same boat until someone knocks them off the top spot.

Crons are still top teir IMO. If not top, then the solution to a lot of the top armies.
1: Warrior/veil units are great counters to serpents/screamerstar.
2: Scythes butcher serpent spam and grav spam
3: Wraiths are one of the few units that still gives riptides a hard time on the ground. Sure, it can sometimes hit a few with its template, but 3+ inv and fast units mean they will still see CC.

 DarthSpader wrote:

edit: my thoughts on deathstars are kind of the same. i find its a "i cant win with anything else but a cheesy super unit" - dosent mean i havent built used and tried them... i have. i just think they are overrated and end up in a game thats not fun for one or both players.

As if necron flyer spam is fun for anyone. Op was not talking about fun. He was talking about dealing with tourney deathstar lists...and tourney lists are rarely fun in common understanding of this word. Tourney players usually try to win using stuff measured by power and effectiveness and not anything else.
Also, noone obliges you to take allies for cheeze! Sometimes i use chaos space marines tacticals with a sorc as allies to my orkses just cause they look so cool and it's quite fluffy that they work "side by side" manipulated by a cunning sorcerror. Until there's nothing left to chop so they start beating faces to each other. Mostly i use guard allies now - i totally enjoy using master of ordnance and want to custom a grot model by fitting master of ordnance's gear on him cause i find a powerful but highly inaccurate bombardment quite orky! So orkses could 'provide' their Masta of da Big Gunz - a very lucky and gifted grot faivored by a big mek - to their allies of convenience or slaves (orkses sometimes enslave imperial population to make them produce weaponry and stuff).

Anywayz, let's return to an Op's request. What to do vs a deathstar. Just ignore it and use u'r awesome mobility to weaken everything else first. Deathstars usually cost like 3 times more than a regular unit would. So you got an option to try to focus on everything else first and only after that on stuff you can't reliably deal with. Also, psyker-deathstars have a chance to fail psy tests - use it in your favor when they accidentally do fail.


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Oh and you could use an allied gk force to deal with some of them. Either a stormraven gunshit with anty-psyker missiles or a vindicare assassin (noone expects u're bringing him)!


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Also necrons are in a great condition atm pretty capable of winning tourneys so there's no point to be desperate. Or it starts to sound that i have less problems playing orkses than you playing cronz

Really interesting advice everyone. I guess it's about gambling about when I drop what troops I can one the markers and can I go second...? Because most of these units are fast, throw out a lot of shots and ignore cover. So a good player with a deathstar type list might not be able to kill all my troops when they are in the fliers, but quite possibly can kill them all when they are on objectives...


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The necron battle report thing was very handy btw. Thanks for posting that!