Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I've always done pretty well with my Orks. It's the only army I play, I play them pretty aggressively, and I pride myself on losing with grace, though I actually have had pretty good luck and win over half my games.
Last week I got my first game in with a Necron decurion list and it was just over the top bad ass and destroyed me. I thik it was the hardest game I have ever played. I lost, obviously and for the last few days I've been trying to figure out what I could do differently.
So, do you guys have any Ork Tactics that work well against these undying mofos?

Pretty much the only option Orks have against Necrons is absolutely horrifying amounts of chaff. Boys upon boys upon boys upon boyz, with as many rocket launchas and klaw nobz as you can take thrown in (to handle vehicles when you encounter them).

The reason for this is how unbelievably durable the Decurian makes Necron units. You won't kill anything with low amounts of powerful shots because every model is rocking, at worst, a 5+ FNP save, whilst many also have invulnerables and or very good saves to begin with. So the traditional "reasonably tough but also relatively killy" stuff that we love - Warbosses, bikers, nobz and the like - simply won't be able to put out the sheer number of wounds required to make a dent in anything.

This is, of course, talking about just trying to smack them around. If you're playing maelstrom you can run massive amounts of MSU that's as durable as possible, play objectives, and just hope to out score him by the end of the game.. But you'll spend 6+ turns basically not killing a thing and just capping objectives. So pretty unrewarding.

Meganobz, Lootas, and Tankbustas. Mega Armour Warbosses, and Painboyz. Those are the best things to use against them. Basically though unless your Necron player friend goes easy on you and doesn't bring a Decurion, just be prepared to lose. Necrons are so ridiculously overpowered compared to Orks that you honestly have little to no chance against even the most basic Decurion army list. Orks are just completely outclassed by them.

Honestly, I've found that mass boyz doesn't work as well as one would think. As morganfreeman mentioned, the new Necrons' resiliency is flat-out insane. So when most boyz hit them on 4's and wound them on 4's or 5's, it takes forever to whittle them down even with PK support, either bogging us down or actually grinding the boyz to death. What I've noticed however is their relative distinct lack of spammable AP2 attacks. Thus one of our best ways in combating them are mega-nobz. Their 2+ save and 2 wounds make it so their gauss and tesla spam have a hard time getting through and in combat the mass S8 attacks not only ignore their armour but against most of their troops it gives a -1 penalty to their RP saves. You can't sweeping advance but they do give you a bulwark that your army can hold. The bullyboyz formation is particularly brutal with their fearless and WS5. Also on the occasions they fail their fear tests against them it is absolutely hilarious. The Warboss with the Lucky Stikk in Mega Armour in particular is nasty against them.

Also trukks are super good value against necrons since gauss glances them the same as our battlewagons so trukk spam isn't that bad against them.

Also generally with shooting, you want things that are either S8 (like KMK) or things that ignore their armour or preferably both. Lootas are decent against warrior blobs since they can put out decent amounts of shots while also ignoring their armour. Shoota Boyz are pointless sadly, and for the most part short of KMK, rokkits and deffguns I can't say any Ork shooting does much. The only other exception are mass warbiker dakkaguns but that kinda requires a deffstar build with painboy and Zhadsnark most of the time.

I would generally say that mechanized orks are necessary since you NEED to get the charge to break their units most of the time. Footslogging makes you easy pickings and if you're playing maelstrom often outmanoeuvred.

Ya in my experience the hordes have not worked. If my kommandos had come in before turn 4 the one time maybe it could have worked. A local list that beats up on them was 6 units of trukk boys and 4 units of tankbustas in trukks. I'm not sure on how many busats were in the trukks but I want to say 10. They also had a warboss and most of the trukk boys units were maxed. This was at 1850 points. I personally want to see how 3 gorkanauts fare since they are the best shooting units in my army... Everything else misses. My lootas hate me and rarely even do a single wound even against gaurdsmen...

 matphat wrote:
I've always done pretty well with my Orks. It's the only army I play, I play them pretty aggressively, and I pride myself on losing with grace, though I actually have had pretty good luck and win over half my games.
Last week I got my first game in with a Necron decurion list and it was just over the top bad ass and destroyed me. I thik it was the hardest game I have ever played. I lost, obviously and for the last few days I've been trying to figure out what I could do differently.
So, do you guys have any Ork Tactics that work well against these undying mofos?

Melee is the best way to handle them. Getting them into melee is another story.

Personally I think Orks ned to saturate the front lines. That means that you have to time your arrival so that everything is sort of coming in all at once in their face. That means selecting units that can do that: Kommandos and their special Formation, as well as Rokkitboyz, and Warbuggies for example. Use the Comms relay to bring it all in at one time to the extent possible. In this way there arent enuhg guns and time for the enemy to whittle you which is how armies typically need to do it.

 Jancoran wrote:

 matphat wrote:
I've always done pretty well with my Orks. It's the only army I play, I play them pretty aggressively, and I pride myself on losing with grace, though I actually have had pretty good luck and win over half my games.
Last week I got my first game in with a Necron decurion list and it was just over the top bad ass and destroyed me. I thik it was the hardest game I have ever played. I lost, obviously and for the last few days I've been trying to figure out what I could do differently.
So, do you guys have any Ork Tactics that work well against these undying mofos?

Melee is the best way to handle them. Getting them into melee is another story.

Personally I think Orks ned to saturate the front lines. That means that you have to time your arrival so that everything is sort of coming in all at once in their face. That means selecting units that can do that: Kommandos and their special Formation, as well as Rokkitboyz, and Warbuggies for example. Use the Comms relay to bring it all in at one time to the extent possible. In this way there arent enuhg guns and time for the enemy to whittle you which is how armies typically need to do it.

It would help if boys weren't S3. You need S8 and ap 2-3 to hurt them. Unless you run lots of MANz cc is the road to defeat. In my expeience at least.

Honestly the best way I've dealt with them has been just playing to the mission and getting stuck in as much as possible. I run Trukk boyz with Eavy armor with single Deffcoptas and MANz bombs, tankbustas that sort of thing.

Necron vehicles, you can kill with anti tank stuff. Necron deathstars like Lychstar you can outrun. Wraithstars, I find orks are one of the few things that can handle thanks to tankbustas being quite solid against tomb Spyders and then the boyz just being able to overwhelm with wounds.

My best game against a decurion was standard decurion with Lychguard-star and wraith formation against my Trukk boyz double cad with solo Deffcoptas, Weirdboy HQs, solo KMKs, MANz in trukks and Tankbustas in trukks.

Turn one he moved the wraiths up to the mid board to prevent the Lychstar from just being kited around all game and try to lure me to the center. Sent a Trukk on a suicide run to tank shock his Spyder out of cover and managed it, then killed it with basically every Rokkit I had. Then four Weirdboy force staffs doing most of the hurting, managed to kill the wraiths with four ard boyz squads.

Took a beating turn 2, since everything was out in the open, but after that point I managed to just get everything in trukks and zoom around the board playing to objectives.

Biggest things to remember:

1) if your boyz squad is locked in combat with a Necron squad on an objective, they're safe and you own that objective.

2) all your trukks should be able to tank shock thanks to reinforced ram. This is your strongest attack against Necrons-use it to move them as close to the full length of the Trukk as you can to set up melee. Often I found myself moving destroyers and the like ONTO objectives for advantage #1.

3) Necrons have no psychic presence. Your offensive powers don't do much (Weirdboyz were basically just force staffs for me this game) but any buffs you get he basically can't deny. If I had thought ahead better id have brought my summoning daemons and gone pure Malefic just to put more tarpits on the field.

4) deathstars can't move 1" near your models. Block them with sacrificial pawns. This was basically the job of my Koptas past turn 1 and they did it really well. The Lychguard and their 300+ points of special characters accounted for maybe half their value in sacrificial orks by game end.

At the end of the day I won 10 to 4, but still only killed 700ish of his 1850 points. There's no easy solution to decurion, you just have to use the advantages you have to try and win the mission.

Thanks all. Lots of good stuff here and it gives me some ideas. I had been thinking Trukk boyz and lots of them, and that seems to be common in these responses, so that will be part 1 of the plan.

Thanks again!

Yep, I'm right there with you. Necrons are a tough fight. Deffkoptas and Trukks should help with objectives. I'm building MANZ, and trying to squeeze in some burnas/skorchas, and Weirdboyz. We can do this!

NOTHING - NECRONS SHALL RULE THE GALAXY ONCE MORE


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Buuut on a serious note, you definitely need trukks, massive of boys footslogging it is a Necron players dream. And bikes. Definitely scared of Ork bikes.
The rest really depends on what he's actually running.

Well, it seemed that it was primarily Lichstar, Arcs, and warriors in the Decurion formation. 13AV, Gauss, 4+ RP was really all it took. Unfortuntely we were doing Eternal War missions, got Big Guns, and he only had 1 heavy to my four.

Running MSU ObSec against a Decurion?
You win, GG.
(there's very little we can do against that, except for HOPEFULLY wiping out every ObSec unit around each objective... but seeing as how our strength is in survivability not killing, that doesn't happen very often).

Otherwise, yeah, as already listed:
• Z's warbikes
• Bullyboyz
• Trukks
• Lootas (kinda)

I am not an Ork player so obviously I don't know their codex that well.

I'm a Necron player though and what I can say is that putting out lots of shots/attacks is more important than having AP4 and having AP4 is in turn more important having Str8. Again, I don't know what orcs have available to them but large blasts generally do a good job.
A quick glance at the Ork weapon list makes me think the following weapons would be rather good vs Necrons (considering Orks's gakky BS):
- Shokk attack gun
- Killkannon
- Burnas and Skorchas
- Burna bombs

Especially skorchas and burna bombs seem like very good guns to me when dealing with Necrons.

not when you consider the cost and the platforms.

 koooaei wrote:
not when you consider the cost and the platforms.

If you can get Burnas into position, they would be OK, but they're more expensive than Tankbustas ppm, so...
Skorchas on the other hand are a viable option. A few Kombi Skorchas can add some punch to your units. I've been considering Skorcha Buggies/Trakks vs. Necrons. Str 5 AP4. Buggies can Outflank, and they're about as cheap as Deffkoptas. No morale issues either. Definitely appealing.

In my last game against Necrons, I charged in and assaulted 2 units of Warriors and 1 unit of Destroyers with units of Slugga Boyz, PK Nobz, and 1 had a MA WB with DLS. Drawn combats. All of them. Even the challenge was a drawn combat. Orks put out a lot of attacks, but between armor saves and that 4+ RP, it's really hard to take Necrons down. On the return side, Necron Warriors only put out 1 attack base, so they barely scratched my Boyz. Frustrating.

I disagree. Orks objective against decurion is not to kill the 4+ SV units. It's to assault them and stay safe while claiming an objective.

Eavy armor is a better investment than scorchas and ordnance. GW doubled the overall durability of an already durable race when they handed out the decurion, trying to kill them is no longer a viable option unless you're packing strength D. In melee you can still sweep them and usually an entire army can focus down and kill a Wraith formation but stuff like lychstars are functionally immortal. Don't even try.

the_scotsman wrote:
I disagree. Orks objective against decurion is not to kill the 4+ SV units. It's to assault them and stay safe while claiming an objective.

Eavy armor is a better investment than scorchas and ordnance. GW doubled the overall durability of an already durable race when they handed out the decurion, trying to kill them is no longer a viable option unless you're packing strength D. In melee you can still sweep them and usually an entire army can focus down and kill a Wraith formation but stuff like lychstars are functionally immortal. Don't even try.

Not sure if you were disagreeing with me; I was just offering up options. I actually agree with you. Playing the objectives is the best way to go. Good point on the 'eavy armor.

The hardest games I ever have with Necrons against Orks is against mobs and mobs Slugga/Choppa boys delivering Power Claws. It's very hard to widdle them down before they smash into your lines, and besides the Canoptek units, Necrons units depsite their toughness don't hold up well to the number of attacks Orks can produce if they make it to combat.

Squiggoths are tough to deal with too. Super tough, deliver a squad of boys, and provide good cover for your boys on foot.

Dakkajets make you take alot of saves; they can be good support if the Necron force you're playing is more infantry oriented.

All of this sounds like fun to try. I'm going to start looking at scorchas for my buggies to start. I have a lot of buggies.
Also, been running a fairly boyz light list, so it's time to bring that body count back up.

I've never played against Necrons, but here's what I always do when playing orks:
Give as many models as possible the 'eavy armour upgrade
Don't group your HQ together.
Always put Warboss with Nobz.
Group boys together, they're useful in numbers.

My two teef.

 matphat wrote:
Well, it seemed that it was primarily Lichstar, Arcs, and warriors in the Decurion formation. 13AV, Gauss, 4+ RP was really all it took. Unfortuntely we were doing Eternal War missions, got Big Guns, and he only had 1 heavy to my four.

Advice won't help unless we know some more specifics about the list so we can help tailor it more to counter, but there's a LOT of misinformation being thrown around in this thread and I'm going to clear the air right now:
1. Necrons aren't as unkilly at shooting as someone made them out to be. Concentrate enough firepower and the Orks will die. Tomb Blades will also more than likely have AP4 AND Ignores Cover. Buying the 4+ armor is a terrible idea and will only waste points on your end.
2. Melee might have been okay in the previous codex, but Reanimation Protocols work differently now. It works like FNP 4+, and therefore you aren't just going to sweep them. I'm specifically sick of seeing this stupid piece of advice being thrown around, especially when:
3. Warriors can get the charge on you, believe it or not. Relentless doesn't seem like much of a bonus, but with Ghost Arks being Open Topped, they can get out, shoot you, and charge before you're actually given your opportunity to tie them up.
4. You won't win a fight against Lychstar. Don't even bother trying to tie it up; it'll kill whatever needed and then sweep.

Primarily, as very vague and basic advice, I would entirely recommend Tank Bustas and Mek Guns.

I've had great luck against Crons with a Green Tide (10 nobs with PK, painboy), 2 weird boys for demon summoning, and tankbustas in trukks, and KMK mek guns.

The Green Tide provides a unit with a massive footprint and a lot of board control that the Crons will be unable to get rid of. Crons lack a lot of options for horde control - very few flamers and blasts available.

The demon summoning from the weird boys gives a Green Tide list staying power and free objective grabbers which is great against Crons.

col_impact wrote:
I've had great luck against Crons with a Green Tide (10 nobs with PK, painboy), 2 weird boys for demon summoning, and tankbustas in trukks, and KMK mek guns.

The Green Tide provides a unit with a massive footprint and a lot of board control that the Crons will be unable to get rid of. Crons lack a lot of options for horde control - very few flamers and blasts available.

The demon summoning from the weird boys gives a Green Tide list staying power and free objective grabbers which is great against Crons.

I wouldn't say that to be honest, necron gauss and tesla takes its toll on the green tide and they still have their ultimate anti-horde weapon: Flayed Ones. Those things will shred up boyz like there is no tomorrow, even with FNP, they will kill many times their number since they have 4 attacks base even without charging.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 matphat wrote:
Well, it seemed that it was primarily Lichstar, Arcs, and warriors in the Decurion formation. 13AV, Gauss, 4+ RP was really all it took. Unfortuntely we were doing Eternal War missions, got Big Guns, and he only had 1 heavy to my four.

Advice won't help unless we know some more specifics about the list so we can help tailor it more to counter, but there's a LOT of misinformation being thrown around in this thread and I'm going to clear the air right now:
1. Necrons aren't as unkilly at shooting as someone made them out to be. Concentrate enough firepower and the Orks will die. Tomb Blades will also more than likely have AP4 AND Ignores Cover. Buying the 4+ armor is a terrible idea and will only waste points on your end.
2. Melee might have been okay in the previous codex, but Reanimation Protocols work differently now. It works like FNP 4+, and therefore you aren't just going to sweep them. I'm specifically sick of seeing this stupid piece of advice being thrown around, especially when:
3. Warriors can get the charge on you, believe it or not. Relentless doesn't seem like much of a bonus, but with Ghost Arks being Open Topped, they can get out, shoot you, and charge before you're actually given your opportunity to tie them up.
4. You won't win a fight against Lychstar. Don't even bother trying to tie it up; it'll kill whatever needed and then sweep.

Primarily, as very vague and basic advice, I would entirely recommend Tank Bustas and Mek Guns.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 matphat wrote:
Well, it seemed that it was primarily Lichstar, Arcs, and warriors in the Decurion formation. 13AV, Gauss, 4+ RP was really all it took. Unfortuntely we were doing Eternal War missions, got Big Guns, and he only had 1 heavy to my four.

Advice won't help unless we know some more specifics about the list so we can help tailor it more to counter, but there's a LOT of misinformation being thrown around in this thread and I'm going to clear the air right now:
1. Necrons aren't as unkilly at shooting as someone made them out to be. Concentrate enough firepower and the Orks will die. Tomb Blades will also more than likely have AP4 AND Ignores Cover. Buying the 4+ armor is a terrible idea and will only waste points on your end.
2. Melee might have been okay in the previous codex, but Reanimation Protocols work differently now. It works like FNP 4+, and therefore you aren't just going to sweep them. I'm specifically sick of seeing this stupid piece of advice being thrown around, especially when:
3. Warriors can get the charge on you, believe it or not. Relentless doesn't seem like much of a bonus, but with Ghost Arks being Open Topped, they can get out, shoot you, and charge before you're actually given your opportunity to tie them up.
4. You won't win a fight against Lychstar. Don't even bother trying to tie it up; it'll kill whatever needed and then sweep.

Primarily, as very vague and basic advice, I would entirely recommend Tank Bustas and Mek Guns.

1) I agree with you in the instance of a footslogging list, but in a Trukk list Eavy armor is a solid investment. In a Trukk boyz squad it's the difference between winning round one of combat and losing round 2 vs a normal decurion warrior squad, and winning the first round by more and still winning the second. That gives you more than double the chance to sweep.

2) Agreed, melee is less effective for killing. However with the decurion not having Obsec, melee becomes a much safer place for you to be where you can still hold objectives.

3) They can, it's true. A boyz squad that gets their Trukk popped, then gets shot at by warriors and an arc is already basically dead. If the enemy then wants to leave the safety of their transport to charge out at you? That's a win, not a loss. Also, Ghost Arcs aren't actually that difficult to crack with Tankbustas, thanks to open topped and tank hunter. That should be used to the ork players advantage.

4) Flayed ones are actually not as common as you'd think in most decurion detachments. I typically see them set aside for wraiths, as Necrons usually prefer the mobility to the damage output of the flayed ones, and most people aren't building to counter the extremely rarely used MSU melee list. They do, however, kick orks' butts, unless you happen to have KMKs and Tankbustas lying around to shoot them to bits.

The issue that I have had with a tide is a unit of about 6 or so wraiths with the RP from the spider come and tie up the whole tide for four turns taking maybe a single wound each turn on their 3++ 4+ inv and RP. I'll have to give squiggoths a shot since I have a few.

I find necron get really scary in the 24" range. Having weapons to stay outside that range combined with having fast units to close that gap so your boys can get into melee asap are my go to plans. I like lootas and mek guns to hammer away at the necrons while my boyz and bustas launch themselves where they are needed in trukks. "hidden" pklaws in small units of bikes/copters/stormboyz,trukk boyz are nice for denying the 4+ RP, while at the same time can be used to crack any vehicles that your lootas/bustas were not able to explode, (with lootas more like glance to death ). I find that many kills come when my heavys are able to get in good shooting. having everything in trukks useally forces the necron to shoot at thhat melee threat while mostly ignoring the long range guns. If you can, pop transports and bikes to limit the mobility of the cron player allowing you to mop up with whatever unit you see fit.
In short, blast them from long range and when they start getting within danger zone, launch the trukks and pray to gork and mork that you get good dice rolls!

Throw 8x30 boyz. Throw 2x30 per wraith. Win on maelatorms, covering 3/4 game board.
Per mob its about 16 wounds, so about 1-1,5 unsaved wound. If charakter got dls then its 3-3,5 wound. And youre doing objectives.
I got good experience with them. 2 times tabled decurion with boyz only list.

Burna Bombs hurt my Warriors....

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 matphat wrote:
Well, it seemed that it was primarily Lichstar, Arcs, and warriors in the Decurion formation. 13AV, Gauss, 4+ RP was really all it took. Unfortuntely we were doing Eternal War missions, got Big Guns, and he only had 1 heavy to my four.

Advice won't help unless we know some more specifics about the list so we can help tailor it more to counter, but there's a LOT of misinformation being thrown around in this thread and I'm going to clear the air right now:
1. Necrons aren't as unkilly at shooting as someone made them out to be. Concentrate enough firepower and the Orks will die. Tomb Blades will also more than likely have AP4 AND Ignores Cover. Buying the 4+ armor is a terrible idea and will only waste points on your end.
2. Melee might have been okay in the previous codex, but Reanimation Protocols work differently now. It works like FNP 4+, and therefore you aren't just going to sweep them. I'm specifically sick of seeing this stupid piece of advice being thrown around, especially when:
3. Warriors can get the charge on you, believe it or not. Relentless doesn't seem like much of a bonus, but with Ghost Arks being Open Topped, they can get out, shoot you, and charge before you're actually given your opportunity to tie them up.
4. You won't win a fight against Lychstar. Don't even bother trying to tie it up; it'll kill whatever needed and then sweep.

Primarily, as very vague and basic advice, I would entirely recommend Tank Bustas and Mek Guns.

100% this. Trying to melee a mob of Warriors will at best cause you to lose whatever unit you threw at them for the entire game (your troops may not die, but they wont be able to kill the warriors).

The reason behind my bold statement is: In a Decurion RP is 4+. What was left out is all warriors in a Reclamation legion also re-roll 1's. On top of that, you'll hardly ever see a warrior blob without an escort of a Ghost Ark or an Overlord. Any smart Necron player will always have a Ghost Ark near by. Imagine this: You rush the Necrons. You survive overwatch. Now, you're hand to hand with a blob that has a 4+ FNP, re-rolls 1's. You kill 3. What you might not have anticipated is the Ghost Ark that will resurrect at worst 1 of the dead, possibly even all three. If you manage to kill 4 or more, the Overlord pops his rez orb, and we start the 4+-re-roll 1's over again.

Personal experience: I had an opponent throw 6 Terminators into a mob of 14 Warriors and a Cryptek. I moved my Ghost Ark to the required distance without making a big deal out of it. I lost on average 2 Warriors per fight. Without even using a rez orb (Crypteks can't take them). At the end of turn 6 those 6 Terminators only managed to kill 3 of the 14 warriors, and lost 2 Terminators themselves. Now, unless his goal was to tie up my warriors with his Terminators for 5 turns (which doesn't make sense, we we're playing Annihilation) this tactic backfired on him greatly.

Now for some advice: Burn them. Burn them with all and every fire imaginable. The 4+RP doesn't work on heavy flamers (I don't know if Orks have them, I only play Necrons). The only surefire way to effectively kill Necrons is "removes from play" and Destroyer weapons.

Cheers.