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Returning to 40k for the first time since 4th edition, I waltzed into a hobby shop with a buddy of mine -- I picked up some Necrons, he picked up some Eldar.

The store manager reticently remarked that the Eldar are a top-tier army, but the Necrons have what it takes to shut them down. Can someone please elaborate for a poor nubile like myself?! From what I gather, the Eldar's Wave Serpent + Dire Avenger combo is nasty, but between re-learning the rules and inundating myself with tactica I am becoming a bit overwhelmed. Can't I just Gauss them to death??

Don't worry about any thing else anyone says in this thread ignore all advice and just buy and paint and play which models look cool and have fun.

Seriously don't worry about it.

Eldar are strong and can give many armies headaches due to their ability to spam serpents. The serpents have a special shield that grants them a good cover save which heavily mitigates any damage that goes their way which means you'll need a lot more gauss shots to kill them then a normal tank.

However necrons do have a unit that is capable of ignoring the serpent shield which is the tomb blades with the ignores cover upgrade. This unit will allow you to glance to death the serpents while ignoring their shields. If you expect to face a lot of eldar in your meta it is a good idea to have 1-2 decently sized squads of these to deal with them. Plus tomb blades are great objective grabbers, and deal with all hordes(or anything that relys on cover) and light vehicles very easily. So just invest in a couple of these squads and they should bring you to a level playing field against eldar and then fill out the rest of your army to your own personal liking.

The Decurion Detachment is probably what you'll want to be taking, at least at the start and depending on what kind of units you've already purchased. An Overlord, 20 warriors, 5 immortals and 3 tomb blades is the bare req. and that's a very basic core of units that you'll want to have anyway. You'll probably want more than 3 Tomb Blades though and their upgrades are so cheap they're a must take. Tomb Blades equipped with gauss blasters and nebuloscopes sound like a decent counter to wave serpents and even if your friend isn't attempting a WAC sort of list, they'll be good at support fire and grabbing objectives.

Punisher wrote:
Eldar are strong and can give many armies headaches due to their ability to spam serpents. The serpents have a special shield that grants them a good cover save which heavily mitigates any damage that goes their way which means you'll need a lot more gauss shots to kill them then a normal tank.

However necrons do have a unit that is capable of ignoring the serpent shield which is the tomb blades with the ignores cover upgrade. This unit will allow you to glance to death the serpents while ignoring their shields. If you expect to face a lot of eldar in your meta it is a good idea to have 1-2 decently sized squads of these to deal with them. Plus tomb blades are great objective grabbers, and deal with all hordes(or anything that relys on cover) and light vehicles very easily. So just invest in a couple of these squads and they should bring you to a level playing field against eldar and then fill out the rest of your army to your own personal liking.

Just a correction here... The shield does not grant the cover save. All skimmers have access to a rule called "Jink". This is what grants a cover save by reducing the effectiveness of it's weapons. OP, makes sure you and your opponent look up the rules for Skimmers, and in particular the rules for Jink. It's a very common tool that will be new to you.

Tomb Blades have an upgrade that allows them to ignore cover saves when shooting with their own weapons (the Wave Serpent shield has nothing to do with this). Since 'Jink' is classified as a cover save it also gets ignored by Tomb Blades who take the upgrade (Nebuloscope I believe it's called).

Wave Serpents also have an upgrade called 'holo-fields' that improves their cover saves by 1, making Jink more potent on a Wave Serpent.

What the Wave Serpent's shield actually does is allows the user to reduce Penetrating hits to Glancing hits on a 2+ roll. Alternately, the player can use the shield as a ranged attack with 60" range and Str 7. Doing this will remove the defensive part of the shield during the player's next turn.


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Honestly the best way to learn the new rules is to dive into a game. If you can't find a particular rule during the game then roll off on it and look it up later. It'll take a few games to get all the rules straight.

There's a lot of new keywords and every unit has a lot of these keywords. Bookmark the 'special rules' section of the BRB because you'll have to go there often.

Hollismason wrote:
Don't worry about any thing else anyone says in this thread ignore all advice and just buy and paint and play which models look cool and have fun.

Seriously don't worry about it.

OP, it's good advice to never listen to anyone who says field what you want.
This game is not balanced.

Hollismason wrote:Don't worry about any thing else anyone says in this thread ignore all advice and just buy and paint and play which models look cool and have fun.

Seriously don't worry about it.

By and large I follow your advice when it comes to new games, but it's also not fun to get spanked day in and day out! Ideally I'd be able to take cool - and effective - units.

Truth118 wrote:The Decurion Detachment is probably what you'll want to be taking, at least at the start and depending on what kind of units you've already purchased. An Overlord, 20 warriors, 5 immortals and 3 tomb blades is the bare req. and that's a very basic core of units that you'll want to have anyway. You'll probably want more than 3 Tomb Blades though and their upgrades are so cheap they're a must take. Tomb Blades equipped with gauss blasters and nebuloscopes sound like a decent counter to wave serpents and even if your friend isn't attempting a WAC sort of list, they'll be good at support fire and grabbing objectives.

Tomb Blades look awesome, so I'm totally on board. In light of their mobility, is it suggested that you throw your warriors in a transport? With the Decurion +1 RP, footslogging Necrons seem viable, but Ghost Arks seem good with repairing abilities, and Night Scythes look AWESOME. Maybe I split the two warrior squads - one with transport, one without? It'd be nice to save some points for a Canoptek Harvest or Judicator Bataillion, if neither is totally unviable. We'll probably start at 500-750 points, move up to 1000, then hit 1500-1850 down the road.

Zimko wrote:Just a correction here... The shield does not grant the cover save. All skimmers have access to a rule called "Jink". This is what grants a cover save by reducing the effectiveness of it's weapons. OP, makes sure you and your opponent look up the rules for Skimmers, and in particular the rules for Jink. It's a very common tool that will be new to you.

Tomb Blades have an upgrade that allows them to ignore cover saves when shooting with their own weapons (the Wave Serpent shield has nothing to do with this). Since 'Jink' is classified as a cover save it also gets ignored by Tomb Blades who take the upgrade (Nebuloscope I believe it's called).

Wave Serpents also have an upgrade called 'holo-fields' that improves their cover saves by 1, making Jink more potent on a Wave Serpent.

What the Wave Serpent's shield actually does is allows the user to reduce Penetrating hits to Glancing hits on a 2+ roll. Alternately, the player can use the shield as a ranged attack with 60" range and Str 7. Doing this will remove the defensive part of the shield during the player's next turn.

Good to know, thanks for the clarification. The ranged attack sounds worse than the save bonus... All the more reason to down the WSs as soon as possible and take some Tomb Blades...

Verviedi wrote:

Hollismason wrote:
Don't worry about any thing else anyone says in this thread ignore all advice and just buy and paint and play which models look cool and have fun.

Seriously don't worry about it.

OP, it's good advice to never listen to anyone who says field what you want.
This game is not balanced.

Glad to see that nothing has changed despite several updates to the core rules!

Depends what your eldar foe is fielding. If he is going for wave serpents, be prepared to spend way more fire than you would prefer to bring them down. Anything that lets you ignore cover will help. So will wraiths. In early turns, you may wish to assign only enough firepower to get each wave serpent to jink (which means they snap fire until next turn). Once you have what you need to kill them in place, fire with as much as it takes to kill them. Do not leave mostly dead units behind you; kill them completely.

Warriors and Ghost Arks are solid against Eldar. They tend to have lots of S6-7 weapons which struggle to hurt the Arks, and with no AP they're not really a threat to Warriors either. I'd recommend leading your Nemesor Zahndrekh or (especially if you Ghost Arks) a Catacomb Command Barge. Keeping him nearby will make your Warriors even tougher.

Tomb Blades are also very decent, but I'm not entirely convinced the gauss blaster is the weapon of choice. At 13-24" the particle beamer is just as deadly to AV12 Serpents (and more so against AV10 Vypers, but nobody takes those), and against Jetbikes you'll get plenty of hits, wound on 2+ and get to ignore that irritating shrouded Warlock. Maybe you should play a couple of games to get a feel for the different weapons.

There are almost no bad units in the new Necron Codex, just some combinations that are better than others, so you really can't go wrong.

I would however suggest you stear your early purchases towards the minimum requirements for the Decurion. You can always use the same units in a CAD, but at least that way you can play the Decurion for it's added USRs and +1 to RP.

Hollismason wrote:
Don't worry about any thing else anyone says in this thread ignore all advice and just buy and paint and play which models look cool and have fun.

Seriously don't worry about it.

I took that advice to buy awesome Kayoss Spessh Mehrines!

Now I am selling at a big loss because they suck and dont get free chapter tactics and etc... Dont listen to this guy unless you have disposal income to blow. if that is the case can you buy my army?

 adamsouza wrote:
There are almost no bad units in the new Necron Codex, just some combinations that are better than others, so you really can't go wrong.

I would however suggest you stear your early purchases towards the minimum requirements for the Decurion. You can always use the same units in a CAD, but at least that way you can play the Decurion for it's added USRs and +1 to RP.

Thanks, this is helpful on a number of levels. I'm aiming to put together Decurion-based lists, and this purchase the following:
1. Battleforce. The Warriors and Ghost Ark are key, and I can assemble the Deathmarks as Immortals to cover another Reclamation Legion requirement. The scarabs will also come in handy once I field a Canoptek Harvest.
2. Battleforce #2. Another Ghost Ark, more Immortals/Deathmarks, and additional warriors - some will be converted to Flayed Ones (models which I am still on the fence about fielding, but with awesome fluff and conversion possibilities)
3. CCB. Pretty self-explanatory. I'll build the kit as an Annihilation Barge and Overlord if need be.
4. Tomb Blades... Lots and lots of them!

After that, I'll pick up some Harvest materials and maybe some Lychguard. Does this seem like a reasonable approach? The 2 battleforces may be excessive; is be curious to hear others' opinions. The Harvest seems like a safe default aux formation, and I'll have Flayed Ones (and possibly Deathmarks) to try out, but I see a lot of lists with Destroyer Cults to...

If you can find the Tomb Awakened box set anywhere it might be worth considering.
For the auxiliary formations, all three of the main ones (Cult, Harvest, Judicator) have their merits, but it really depends on what else your army consists of that will determine how effective they will be.