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I play Blood Angels. Heavy drop pod list. I typically win by reducing squad sstrength to very low numbers or wiping them completely. I have trouble against crons as I need to make sure the whole squad is dead on the alpha strike. Other wise I just wasted the turn.

Any tips for dealing with them?

It's quite easy to destroy them all, remember you have Sweeping Advance.
He loses 8 wounds, you lose 1 and now he makes a Ld-test with -7.
He will probably lose the Sweeping Advance-roll and the entire unit is dead.
Or he will somehow win (unlikely) and he still runs away and the dead Necrons can't get back up.

It's highly unlikely that he will stay in combat and that half of the casualties resurrect.
But that is even better for you, since that means you will be locked in combat in his turn!
You will then be safe in his shooting phase and destroy the unit in his assault phase, ready for a new charge in your following turn.

I don't know how you're causing 8 wounds when he is causing 1. In my experience Necrons are very resilient in CC and if they have their Special Characters in a unit then they can even have a punch back.

I play Dark Eldar and I find that the best way to get rid of the Necrons is just to outlast them in combat. Hold them there for as many turns as possible and thin their numbers with your superior number of attacks and (hopefully) better offensive capability.

While your CC unit is holding them up use this time to focus on other units in their army. This is all assuming of course they don't have the thing that lets them deep strike all over the place out of combat.

No, Special Characters hardly ever give a punch back.
It are the Overlords and Lords who have decent weapons.

The numbers were an example.
9 DC bring 45 attacks, 22 hits, 16 wounds and 8 dead Necrons.
12 remaining Warriors have 12 attacks, 6 hits, 3 wound and 0.66 dead DC.
So my guess was quite accurate.

You might have a character in both units, but that hardly changes anything.
Perhaps you will lose one or two additional models and he loses combat with 5 wounds.

The end-result is roughly the same: Necrons lose the combat and:
1. They run away: No RP.
2. They get swept away: No RP.
3. They stay in combat: RP, and he will lose next turn.

Death Company can hardly be taken as an average example here. Any shooty unit would fold to that treatment.

Anyhow, it depends somewhat on playstyle.

You say you run drop pods? Well, you're perfectly suited to scraping a lot of points off the table from the get go against heavily mechanised Necrons.

Against horde Necrons, taking advantage of your superiority in combat is definitely a good plan.

Against the rarer playstyle of assault oriented Necrons, with lots of Wraiths, Spyders, Scarabs, Destroyer Lords and Phaerons... You probably won't have that many obvious targets. Rapid Fire in Wraith's faces, flamethrowers on Scarabs and disruption of Scarab Farms is good, I guess. Then try to either overwhelm at range or get the charge against whatever unit a Phaeron is in.

Well, what else would you put in Drop Pods and assault with for Blood Angels?

It's more something that people should learn about Necrons: It's not that bad when their models get back up.
In close combat you will usually deny RP or it won't matter, it's panicking about the rule that is worse.

Kangodo wrote:
Well, what else would you put in Drop Pods and assault with for Blood Angels?

I'd probably fill the drop pods with meltas, flamethrowers and so on and have the Death Company use their Jump Packs, honestly.

It's more something that people should learn about Necrons: It's not that bad when their models get back up.
In close combat you will usually deny RP or it won't matter, it's panicking about the rule that is worse.

It's FNP in the shooting phase, basically. The psychological impact of them standing back up is nasty, but it's no worse in practice than say, Red Scorpions.

Combat is the way to go, sweeping squads gets around a lot of their resilliency and while they can hit back, most units will have already done the damage they need to ensure the return attacks are pretty inneffectual. Even a Tactical Squad can run small squads off, and Assault Squads should have no issue.

AP4 weapons ruin their day, so pack HF on your Tacticals, maybe bring Sternguard with special ammo, and a Whirlwind or Dakkapred are a nice, cheap way of throwing out a lot of AP4.

Lastly, Crons are effective in about a 9-24" bubble; closer and they're getting assaulted, further away and they are outranged on most weapons. So focus on stuff that excells up close or from long range, trying to minimise the amount of mid-range stuff you bring.

Well, that's what I would do too but we're talking about the OP.

I'd rather have FNP, that stops them from dying and doing a morale-check! But it's a big Necron-thing: Psychological warfare.
Many things, like MSS or RP, look scarier than it really is.

To be honest, the pure flier army is way scarier than the RP rule. My BA just keep punching until they stop.

 Paradigm wrote:
AP4 weapons ruin their day, so pack HF on your Tacticals, maybe bring Sternguard with special ammo, and a Whirlwind or Dakkapred are a nice, cheap way of throwing out a lot of AP4..

I wouldn't particularly care about AP4, personally. That only really means anything against someone who fields lots of warriors.

And against the only other model with a poor save, even Bolters ignore a Scarab's save. Scarabs get three wounds for the price of a one wound model though, so if they're actually getting good use out of their extra wounds that's a bonus, not a downside if they aren't.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Kangodo wrote:
Well, that's what I would do too but we're talking about the OP.

I'd rather have FNP, that stops them from dying and doing a morale-check! But it's a big Necron-thing: Psychological warfare.
Many things, like MSS or RP, look scarier than it really is.

OP didn't mention putting assault units in the pods, just that he likes to alpha strike.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Kangodo wrote:
Well, that's what I would do too but we're talking about the OP.

I'd rather have FNP, that stops them from dying and doing a morale-check! But it's a big Necron-thing: Psychological warfare.
Many things, like MSS or RP, look scarier than it really is.

OP didn't mention putting assault units in the pods, just that he likes to alpha strike.

My typical list right now

Elites:
2x 10x man sternguard situational combis in ppods:

troops
2x 10xman tacs melta heavy flamer sarge with 2xInferno or combi and power weapon in pods

fast
3x 5x man assaults 2xmeltas 2inferno or combi and power weapon in pods

heavy
raven

against crons i have considered the 3 raven/tac formation for anti infantry and 20sternguard for anti vehicle. One tac brings empty pod so everything comes in turn 1

Serg Rush wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Kangodo wrote:
Well, that's what I would do too but we're talking about the OP.

I'd rather have FNP, that stops them from dying and doing a morale-check! But it's a big Necron-thing: Psychological warfare.
Many things, like MSS or RP, look scarier than it really is.

OP didn't mention putting assault units in the pods, just that he likes to alpha strike.

My typical list right now

Elites:
2x 10x man sternguard situational combis in ppods:

troops
2x 10xman tacs melta heavy flamer sarge with 2xInferno or combi and power weapon in pods

fast
3x 5x man assaults 2xmeltas 2inferno or combi and power weapon in pods

heavy
raven

against crons i have considered the 3 raven/tac formation for anti infantry and 20sternguard for anti vehicle. One tac brings empty pod so everything comes in turn 1

Five man assault units I can shoot for a turn before they become an issue? Yeah, those I'm not too worried about.

Honestly my biggest worry there would be you focus firing on a unit to wipe it out every turn whilst I'm trying to play keep up and threat assessment.

changemod wrote:

Serg Rush wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Kangodo wrote:
Well, that's what I would do too but we're talking about the OP.

I'd rather have FNP, that stops them from dying and doing a morale-check! But it's a big Necron-thing: Psychological warfare.
Many things, like MSS or RP, look scarier than it really is.

OP didn't mention putting assault units in the pods, just that he likes to alpha strike.

My typical list right now

Elitesm
2x 10x man sternguard situational combis in ppods:

troops
2x 10xman tacs melta heavy flamer sarge with 2xInferno or combi and power weapon in pods

fast
3x 5x man assaults 2xmeltas 2inferno or combi and power weapon in pods

heavy
raven

against crons i have considered the 3 raven/tac formation for anti infantry and 20sternguard for anti vehicle. One tac brings empty pod so everything comes in turn 1

Five man assault units I can shoot for a turn before they become an issue? Yeah, those I'm not too worried about.

Honestly my biggest worry there would be you focus firing on a unit to wipe it out every turn whilst I'm trying to play keep up and threat assessment.

Exactly. This is dirty list against normal armies. It removes squads or large chunks of them from the board very quickly and makes it hard to recover. Not reliable against crons

Serg Rush wrote:
[Exactly. This is dirty list against normal armies. It removes squads or large chunks of them from the board very quickly and makes it hard to recover. Not reliable against crons

I dunno about that, focus fire is one of the more reliable methods to deal with Necron units normally. There's small odds of a huge number standing back up, but odds are higher that killing eight of a ten man unit leaves you with around four when everything's over.

If its an objective based game tie them up in melee and claim the objectives with cheap units (like scouts, or IG squad etc). And like everyone else says if you knock them off the board they can't come back.

Okay, just some thoughts here on how I'd attempt to counter these guys, and maybe it would help you counter-counter.


My typical list looks something like:

Combat Phaeron and a random bag of Crypteks,

Two Immortal units,

A full wraith unit,

A Scarab unit,

A Spyder unit.

Deathmarks,

Other stuff depending on whim.

So, I assume your plan is to drop forty guys on turn one and reinforce them with small five man units later, right?

In that case, I'd toll up my survivors of the alpha strike and:

Wraiths would charge something. Phaeron's immortal unit and Spyders would shoot then charge, Scarabs would probably disorganised charge at multiple pods if possible, maybe tie up one of your squads if not.

At this point the rest really comes down to these rounds of assault. If I'm lucky, I'll chew through enough of your army to recover and let the Deathmarks, Tesla Immortals and whatever else I've got going chip in.

Should be a good fight actually, regardless of the winner both sides are going to have a large corpse pile.