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Last night I had my second fight against a necron army. It seemed to be going well. Dice weren't all that bad for me but my opponent did well on rolls too. I felt good most of the night. I seemed to be getting a good amount of kills and holding up ok (normally I roll like balls on my armour saves but in this case I made a lot of great saves). Game ended on turn six and final score was 8vp to 0vp in favour of my opponent. The big shock however came when I looked at his casualties. Of his entire force after 6 rounds all that had died for good was 2 immortals. I still had an ok amount of my force left but the point is I was about half strength and he still had pretty much his entire army. Between his ghost ark and resurrection protocol I did next to no damage. I was floored by this. Here's the lists we had for comparison. Oh and in combat his mand shackle scarabs screwed my lord out of being able to fight every. Single. round. My lord was literally able to do nothing all match. How am I supposed to counter those scarabs since I'm forced to make a challenge and be in base contact?

Points was 750

Me
Chaos lord in termie armour escorted by 5 termites, all power swords and combo-boaters mark of tzeentch on my lord

10 marines in rhino with havoc launcher, plasma gun, autocannon and power sword on champ.

20 cultists for backfield objective.

predator with triple las

Opponent
Overlord with rest orb, mindshackle scarabs

10 immortals with Tesla

10 warriors with gaus with ghost ark

5 deathmarks

anhialation barge with Tesla


What went good: With mark of tzeentch my lord was nigh invincible, didn't take a single wound despite copious amounts of firepower dumped into it. Including 2 rounds of shooting from the deathmarks that had marked it for death. (my poor positioning and a good deep strike roll by my opponent allowed this).
My squad of marines did really well and put a lot of hurt out. Overall I was very happy with them except for the round they finally lost some guys to shooting I rolled terribly on morale and fell back off the only objective I held.

What went bad: My predator should have done a lot more damage but between rolling ones to penetrate on hits and him making his cover saves from the trees he was hiding behind. Poor rolls screwed my prod out of doing anything meaningful.
He was able to flank the cover my cultists were behind and anhialated them with an alpha strike from his ghost ark and warriors... no saves means they went down fast.
I rolled terribly on my assault range charge with my termies (even got snake eyes in difficult terrain from 1 inch away for a total charge range of...0 that was depressing)
Mindshackle scarab made my chaos lord useless in cc and because of mandatory challenge I was forced into base contact.
He rolled real well on res protocol and ghost ark stayed alive to keep his warriors up. (he gaussed my pred to death)

TLDR: How do you counter necron and their res protocol and mindshackle scarab?

Dont assault the unit with MSS. Get the Termis to assault the units with the O Lord. Necrons will fall apart in close combat and that is where your Terminators want to be. Destroy his Ghost Ark, once you penn it, it becomes AV 11 so its a lot easier to take on.

His overlord was with his immortals and that is the only squad my termies had any chance of assaulting, My chaos lord was in the same squad as my termies so my options were 1) Assault his immortals squad where I have the advantage in cc (but his res protocol and orb made that a moot point) or 2) Stand still and shoot it out vs his immortals and overlord with 5 termies and my hq. I was sadly too far away from any other units to attack attempt to get in cc with his warriors since they had an ark and other than that he had an anhialation barge. The deathymarks seemed like a bit of a waste of time to attack as they had accomplished nothing all game.

His Overlord only had an Orb and MSS? No Warscythe or 2+ armor?

If it ever happens again, split off Lord from Terms. Terms assault Immortals (if they all had power swords, you should have carved through therm like butter), Lord assaults Deathmarks (anything to keep him out of a combat where there's a MSS bearer).

How to counter Resurrection Protocols: if you are able to knock down the entire unit in any one phase, as in, no one standing, then the unit can not use Reanimation Protocols. They're perma-dead. However, if there is even a single non-HQ model still on it's feet at the end of the phase, it's theoretically possible for the entire unit to stand back up. That's why it's important to focus on one unit until it's completely gone.

bring typhus and an arbitrary amount of zombies.

230 for the HQ, 440 points in cultist is 110ish bodies. Tesla can have fun trying to slow down that many scoring bodies. Pull out 140 points for the pred and you still got 300 points(75 or FNP scoring bodies) of cultists.

Killing them all will be fun, and they can just clog up the entire board. 5 ten man blobs and a bigger blob for typhus to rush forward with.

yes the overlord only had an orb, the mss and the 2+ save, forgot to mention that. No scythe though.

Yeah i'll have to do a lot more focus fire next time I fight him skoffs, I'm thinking hitting things hard will be my only way to really finish off those squads. It's sad that it seems my only defence against the mss is simply to just not fight the overlord. I'm constantly disappointed in the killing potential of my chaos lord if I don't give it artifacts. Survivability on the other hand seems to be something it excels at.

Lord davenport, yeah that suggestion is simply not an option. 1) Not a big nurgle fan
2) I don't run named IC's (it's a personal choice and I know it neuters me, personally I just prefer making my own HQ)
3) I don't have nearly enough models to field that many zombies
4) As funny as that list might be to play a few times it seems a bit cheese and I feel I would get bored of it before too long.
thanks for the suggestion though.

Thanks to everyone who posted tips and tactics. I appreciate it.

I am a csm player and my friend plays crons. I found that power mauls are good for basic troops. Try to have multiple units of less troops.maybe change the las pres for something else. He only has 1 vehicle. Try using the Axe of blind fury. It works well and now new rules with challenges and wounds is great for csm. Challenge with your champ and need warlord out of btb. Try using more units that can sweeping advance. That will nullify the reso orbs and such.I have had very good luck with berserks with chain ax and land raider.

I don't have any berzerkers but I think I could do make some cc marines with MoK and ccw and that'd do the trick? seems my two strats here are get the shooty units into melee and shoot the overlord or swarm him with basic guys, don't let my chaos lord even near his mss.

Looking at his units I'm thinking I may run the burning brand of skalathrax, its an ap3 flamer and since I can't charge my lord at him in melee I might as well purge it by fire.

As always thx for all the tips guys.