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I'm trying to formulate a competitive list for necrons at 1500 points. I'm not sure what to take, there's a metric tonne of decent units in the book, and most are particularly expensive. Which leads me on to the monolith. Is it worth it. The portal seems like a nice idea, but it's pitiful slow speed makes me wonder if it's ever going to get used. I like the idea of keeping immortals in reserve and not having to roll for them. I also like the idea of a S8 AP3 pie plate. But I want to know if people actually get any use out of them. They seem decent enough... But they are costly. Let me know your successes or failures.

Monoliths and competitive lists don't go together well. It is a mediocre unit that is extremely expensive and packs little firepower, its main use being the portal.

Furthermore, it's in the HS slot where a lot of awesome stuff makes good competition - Annihilation Barges and Sentry Pylons for example are superior to the monolith. The portal is neat, but using a Nightscythe to get your troops where you want them is a cheaper option that's well worth the price.

They're slightly better now in 7th, what with AV14 being a tougher but to crack, but there's still enough downsides (too slow, large footprint with lack of deepstrike mishap protection, etc.) that it's rarely ever seen, especially in low point games.

You can try it if you want, but keep in mind for 20 points less you could take 2 Annihilation Barges.

...or almost two Sentry Pylons! ;D

What about Tesseract arks?


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I'm assuming they are deemed far too expensive?

Tesseract Arks are very good and flexible units. Their points cost is ok given their high resilience and good firepower. You rarely seem them fielded because they are extremely expensive to buy and cannot be scratch-built / proxied well.

Liths are difficult to use, without deepstrike protection you can't deepstrike them since it's so big they alway hit something( unless your playing with criminally little terrain). Best way to use them is to use them as a mobile piece of terrain so that you can deny portions of your enemies shooting from hitting the other parts of your army. With the new Edition they are even harder to crack which is nice, the new edition opening up the HS section should also allow them to see some use in games since you don't have to sac one of your 3 HS slots for it. A monolith protecting a scarab farm with a couple fabricator claws makes a formidable flank for your opponent to deal with only problem is it is a little costly though you could fit it in with 500pts.

For a 1500 point game, I wouldn't use them. When things start getting into the 2500 point neighborhood, I may be in the minority, but I've gotten good use out of them in 6th, and now that you need AP1 or 2 to blow them up, they're a bit better.

I've used 2 or 3 at a time (a) covering units and (b) teleporting units. Entrance/Exit. Teleport units into RF range but still out of charge range with Monolith 1, pull units out of danger as needed with Monolith 2.

This has usually worked well for me as a feint tactic for as long as both Monoliths remain up. However, they have usually quickly become target priorites, and were not very hard to explode in 6th.

Now you need AP1 or AP2 to blow them up on a pen, so I'm looking forward to trying this out in 7th.