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They're one of the best units in the codex, but despite being required for the Decurion, you hardly ever see them played much more above their minimum.

Was just wondering if taking a large number of them (like 15+) would be a decent idea, or whether they'd just be mediocre.

CAD or Decurion, they're going to be performing the same as far as scoring goes.
But at least with Decurion they'd be a little more resilient.
(though I did have an idea for speed focused CAD 'Crons that basically involved 3 GA, 2 NS, and 3 units of 9 Tomb Blades for some fairly hard to kill score-o-rama fun)

Anyone tried fielding tons of them? How'd it work out?

A player local to me ran 18 in a list at 1850 with only average results against other reasonably high end tourney lists.

He ran them with shields, scopes and then 2 gauss, 1 with the blast weapons

While I know that's very anecdotal its all I can offer!

When you say "2 gauss, 1 with the blast weapon"
do you mean he played them with units consisting of 2/3 gauss and 1/3 beamers (blast weapon)?
Or two units with gauss, one unit with beamers?

Either way, average results against top level lists isn't exactly bad . May even indicate there's potential there with the right build.

By way of wondering, do you know if he was playing them in a CAD or a Decurion?

I think they are a great unit that supports the rest of the necron army. However I don't think their strong point is spam. Instead it is being a harassment/annoyance unit. I used to run 3 units of 3 and had really good results. All gauss with shields.

I think 15 might be a bit overkill.

Currently, yes, most people only use them as harassment units,
But they have the potential to cause some serious hurt, between massed gauss, blasts, and even twin linked Tesla.
But so far as I can tell, this is only theory, as no one has a ton of Tomb Blades to even test this out with.
:/

Offensively, they provide a lot of mid to low strength fire and mobility. Which is basicly what Ghost Arks full of Warriors also provides offensively. So also spamming Ghost Arks seems like you're dumping way too much into the Guass plan.

IMO, you need some low AP support to complement them. So perhaps Rod Praetorians in the Elites slot with min squads of Tesla Immortals in a CAD. Then throw in Heavy Destroyers for picking off transports. The Praetorians can keep up with the Tomb Blades and provide AP 2 and assault protection. Immortals and Heavy Destroyers can provide support from afar while capping objectives in your backfield. For an HQ, I guess a cryptek hiding with a unit of Immortals would be fine.

I don't know if that would be a great list. I know it would be a fun list.