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Like the title says: If you were bringing a Codex: Necrons army to a tournament with only CAD allowed, what would your HS slots be filled with?

If your taking scarabs then Spyders for some scarab farming action. If not then probably Heavy Destroyers as it gives you a means to take on MC with high armor and Vehicles from range. Doomsday Ark is a decent option but im not sure if its a top tier unit.

As mentioned, Spyders (have shooting, assault and support roles, cheap monstrous creature that only has speed as any meaningful limitation) and Heavy Destroyers (Preferred Enemy lascannons on a durable JSJ platform) are good.

Also good is Doom Scythes: With night scythes being nerfed a little and doom scythes dropping in points cost, I would take a Doom Scythe as my air support option every time now.

For the rest:

Annie Barge was too good before, merely okayish now... Very slightly over-nerfed. I wouldn't play them before because they were the power build in fashion at the time and I've never liked building around netlists, I don't play them now because I have more interesting things to do with a heavy support slot.

Doomsday Ark is very hit and miss, it needs to be given good targets to really shine.

Monolith: A Leman Russ that costs an extra 50 points for upgraded side and rear armour and a portal that's too finicky to see much real use. Not as bad as it's reputation, but not good either.

Tran C'tan: Not actually a Transcendent C'tan: It's not even nerfed from before, it's been outright replaced by a misnamed C'tan Shard. As the least interesting of the three C'tan when C'tan are already too random to actually use, skip. (seriously, the random power mechanic isn't even -fun-, what were they even thinking?)

Outside of decurion, doom scythe and spiders seem the best choice.

Doom scythes are great if your not up against a lot of AA, Death ray is one of the strongest weapons in the Necron armory (st10 ap 1 blast with the lance special rule), and 4 x S7 Twin Linked tesla shots can lay down some serious hurt. However they become near useless if forced to jink, since Tesla doesn't work on SS, and no death ray at all. Jink hurts them so bad, you may want to just take the hits.

Spiders are great for scarab farms, so long as the opponent doesn't have many s6 weapons it can be an infinite tarpit. With scarabs having entropic strike and a ton of attacks, they can bring down just about anything with enough numbers. Three spiders kicking out scarabs means you'll probably have enough numbers.

So Canoptek Spyders, Heavy Destroyers, Doom Scythes and sometimes Doomsday Arks, gotcha. Which of those 4, then, would you recommend for taking out high volumes of Leman Russes? I'm thinking either Doomsday Ark or Heavy Destroyers - DA for the 2d6 armour penetration, Heavy Destroyers for their manoeuvrability and likelihood of getting behind the damn things and hitting their rear armour.

Doom scythes can get behind a tank line too, and their blast has Lance, so even if you're forced to take shots at front armor, you're glancing on a 2+. That said, I don't like blasts against tanks, but if you're gonna use one, the death ray is better than most.

Not a necron player, but on paper, doomsday arks seem damned solid. Basically a vindicator with triple the range & side armor 13 that has a good choice to ignore stunned/shaken, and can jink to boot if something really mean targets it (like deep striking meltas).

Yes, it can't shoot after a jink, but a jinking vehicle is a hell of a lot better than a dead one.

Anyways - what makes them a not-so great choice? Especially in the necron codex, that generally lacks hgh str, low ap shooting,

 Kap'n Krump wrote:
Not a necron player, but on paper, doomsday arks seem damned solid. Basically a vindicator with triple the range & side armor 13 that has a good choice to ignore stunned/shaken, and can jink to boot if something really mean targets it (like deep striking meltas).

Yes, it can't shoot after a jink, but a jinking vehicle is a hell of a lot better than a dead one.

Anyways - what makes them a not-so great choice? Especially in the necron codex, that generally lacks hgh str, low ap shooting,

Its good but with it being a long ranged vehicle that needs to sit still to get the Str 10 large blast it basically becomes a turret or else it dramatically takes a hit to its effectiveness when it needs to move. To keep it safe you need to put it back some and if you do that then most things will get at least a little bit of cover from its shooting. If you put in a spot with a clear shot on most of the board it tends to be a "shoot this first" kind of unit, then it jinks against the scary tank killer weapon and it becomes useless. Its a great on paper unit but in practice it tends to fall a bit short (still not terrible). It also doesn't see a lot of use because trying to field one in a Decurion means your stuck with the formation that also requires two annihilation barges which are rather meh.