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First off, sorry for a wierd format, was replying to a guy on Youtube, don't feel like typing it all again.

Played 4 games with my Necrons so far... Thinking about selling them.

1 - Reanimation protocols are trash now... yeah yeah they were just broken in 7th, but they are garbage now. You used to be able to reliably get up and close because you could sustain an attack or two with a squad or warriors. That's no longer the case... I tried running 5 squads of 10 then I put 3 squads of 20 to test.. Both got annihilated before I could even get close to using my rapid fire (since everyone basically has gauss, rapid fire is the only thing that seperates them from everything else)... Bringing the point equivalent in Immortals is only slightly better. Still terrible.

2- Living Metal isn't very good either. I was able to pull that trick for one turn, the first game. After that my opponents targeted my Doom Scythe until it died from turn 2 g1 threw the rest of the games. (different opponents).

3- They are slow with really bad range. Any Halfway competent opponent can and does just sit back and shoot you, wipe hole units rather than piece some out slowly and you lose.

4- Only way I was able to be semi competitive in 4 games was with giving my guys invulns, and even that didn't do it, also I shouldn't have to force 1 model from the entire army to make any of my guys relevant.

1-4 are points/opinions, not games. Anyway.. In all 4 games, I was not even remotely competitive (in non competitive games) and was nearly tabled in all games by turn 4... I literally can't think of anything to do, to not only keep them competitive.. But just keep them worthy of fun pickup games..

Any suggestions?

What were you against?

Kind of suprised Necrons didn't get Shred on everything that had Gauss.

I've heard the opposite. Perhaps your list just isn't optimized or you're playing against someone with a more optimized list?

No one is to be fooled, the "best" lists are still out there, just yet to be found.

I heard from a competitive player that Necrons are great, especially one of their unique characters apparently has some crazy trick up his sleeve. Unfortunately I don't remember which, but you might wanna give the characters a closer look and think about some combos with fitting units.

The reality of 40k is, and has always been, that if your collection happens to be formed of "currently not that great" units that make a "currently not that great" build, the only way to fix it is to use your wallet. However, if you have enough models to do pretty much anything, there should be atleast one competitive build for Necrons aswell. It's probably not been found yet/made known to the average player.

I'd say wait it out, wait for the Codex, wait for the meta to develop and don't sell them. Stay alert for guides and ideas.

Having watched bat reps of necrons play on youtube and gw stream i have to say are you joking?

If active threads on this board are to be believed, Necrons are simultaneously OP and Garbage-tier. Didn't know robots could suffer from schizophrenia.

Just like in previous editions, Necrons only pretend to be slow. Canoptek Scarabs and Wraiths are quite fast and can effectively ignore morale. Deathmarks and Flayed Ones can teleport anywhere on the board, and the Night Scythe lets you bring units right up into you're opponent's face. Ghost Arks give your infantry legs and can revive stuff out of sequence.

You'll have to pardon my lack of sympathy for a Necron player complaining that his units die too easily now.

Pfft...you think necron sucks? Chaos space marines suck even harder.

 TheNewBlood wrote:
If active threads on this board are to be believed, Necrons are simultaneously OP and Garbage-tier. Didn't know robots could suffer from schizophrenia.

Just like in previous editions, Necrons only pretend to be slow. Canoptek Scarabs and Wraiths are quite fast and can effectively ignore morale. Deathmarks and Flayed Onescan teleport anywhere on the board, and the Night Scythe lets you bring units right up into you're opponent's face. Ghost Arks give your infantry legs and can revive stuff out of sequence.

You'll have to pardon my lack of sympathy for a Necron player complaining that his units die too easily now.

To be fair, every army is going to have these players. You want a good laugh, go through the Imperial Guard threads when the index was first leaked. We were overwhelmed with posts of "IG is the worst army in the game this is BS" and other such malarky. I remember seeing people complain that slugga boyz were too slow to reliably do anything the other day, and another time a guy who said that plasma is absolute trash because the grenade launcher is 2pts cheaper (pro tip, it's the exact opposite, GL is nowhere near as good as plasma in literally every scenario)

Many players are still adjusting to the fact that this is an actually new edition. Literally EVERYTHING has changed, so it's hard to get a good baseline on what is actually good or OP or just ok or plain bad in some situations until you've either done some reading or played a few games.

We'll keep seeing this for the first few months more than likely as people trickle in reading the books and not realizing that everyone changed, not just them.

Heck, people are still wrapping their heads around the fact that infantry can actually survive in the open and vehicles aren't just one hit kill deathtraps now. Just wait till they start seriously trying to understand the differences between all the armies.

Try being mononurgle biomancy monster mash.

We are all going to have to reorganize how we play, and those of us who had above average for their points units need to accept the nerf and move on, or change armies.

40k needed balancing. Necrons have viable ways to play in the new edition, but you will need to find them.

The edition has been officially out one gorram day, man. Give it a little time ...

 Runic wrote:
I heard from a competitive player that Necrons are great, especially one of their unique characters apparently has some crazy trick up his sleeve. Unfortunately I don't remember which, but you might wanna give the characters a closer look and think about some combos with fitting units.

Depending on your definition of crazy it's either Nemesor Zandrek buffing up a unit of Immortals teleported to him by Varguard Obyron, or Imhotek the Stormlord letting Flayed Ones re-roll To Hit and To Wound with their four attacks.

Please let us know:
1. Your list
2. Your opponents lists.
3. Your board set up (how much terrain, and how much of that terrain you can see through)

That is all I can think of for the moment to help you.

 CadianGateTroll wrote:
Pfft...you think necron sucks? Chaos space marines suck even harder.

Former Necron player, I switched to Thousand Sons because I was frustrated with how squishy my Necrons were in practice.

In the game of Orks vs. Necrons I played (I was Orks obviously) I was hiding behind a building the majority of the game. The tactic my opponent used was to teleport in some assassin units to snipe off the support characters of my force, and then march up a gunline. and jeez is the gunline intimidating. On the turn my Deff Dread stepped out into the open, it died from a single round of Necron shooting with plenty of damage to spare.

 Warboss Kruk wrote:
In the game of Orks vs. Necrons I played (I was Orks obviously) I was hiding behind a building the majority of the game. The tactic my opponent used was to teleport in some assassin units to snipe off the support characters of my force, and then march up a gunline. and jeez is the gunline intimidating. On the turn my Deff Dread stepped out into the open, it died from a single round of Necron shooting with plenty of damage to spare.

Not sure what kind of Ork force you could be running that would be that scared of Necrons. Just assault them and you win.

As with any new edition there's usually a reshuffling of which units are good and which are bad in each army. If you try to run something close to the 7th edition Decurion Necrons I think you'll struggle.

8th seems to favour large amounts of infantry with some specialist support units backing them up and a lot of 7th edition Necron armies loaded up on Wraiths, Scarabs and Destroyers with a minimum of Warriors and Immortals. Now you want lots of Warriors and Immortals because the character buffs on them are amazing. Wraiths are still good but not the terrors they once were.

My limited experience has shown that Necrons are pretty good. You need to have big enough units that you won't die in one shooting phase so Reanimation works in your favour. It's pretty much always worth spending 2CP to autopass a Morale Check with a heavily depleted unit. You should be combining Cryptek and Res Orb bonuses to let 75% of your casualties stand back up in your turn.

It would really help to know what list the OP was using and what he was up against. I think Necrons will have some problems with very fast armies.

Honestly I think we can blame the player in this instance.

The army is fine. RP is better than it was from 3rd/4th edition and I was fine with it there. Just now, people can actually do something to counter it. Which is focus fire.

I'll buy the argument they should have a FNP equivalent though since they're robots.

In my experience, neurons can't deal with transport rush, other than scarab screening, but even then they get shot down turn 1 to clear a path. I played against dark eldar and orks and while I could maybe kill a transport every turn, the guys inside and the other transports still come in and assault. Open topped makes it even worst as DE can out gun you from the safety of their raiders. You basically have 1 turn before everything gets assaulted.

asauve19 wrote:
First off, sorry for a wierd format, was replying to a guy on Youtube, don't feel like typing it all again.

Played 4 games with my Necrons so far... Thinking about selling them.

1 - Reanimation protocols are trash now... yeah yeah they were just broken in 7th, but they are garbage now. You used to be able to reliably get up and close because you could sustain an attack or two with a squad or warriors. That's no longer the case... I tried running 5 squads of 10 then I put 3 squads of 20 to test.. Both got annihilated before I could even get close to using my rapid fire (since everyone basically has gauss, rapid fire is the only thing that seperates them from everything else)... Bringing the point equivalent in Immortals is only slightly better. Still terrible.

2- Living Metal isn't very good either. I was able to pull that trick for one turn, the first game. After that my opponents targeted my Doom Scythe until it died from turn 2 g1 threw the rest of the games. (different opponents).

3- They are slow with really bad range. Any Halfway competent opponent can and does just sit back and shoot you, wipe hole units rather than piece some out slowly and you lose.

4- Only way I was able to be semi competitive in 4 games was with giving my guys invulns, and even that didn't do it, also I shouldn't have to force 1 model from the entire army to make any of my guys relevant.

1-4 are points/opinions, not games. Anyway.. In all 4 games, I was not even remotely competitive (in non competitive games) and was nearly tabled in all games by turn 4... I literally can't think of anything to do, to not only keep them competitive.. But just keep them worthy of fun pickup games..

Any suggestions?

keep playing. So far it sounds like your complaints are your opponents figured out how to react to your army and list. This is a good thing and means you now need to react to their changes in strategy.

Reanimation is actually really good, did you field arcs?

One thread asking if Necrons are unplayable, another asking if they are OP.

Seems about par for the course.

Isn't there another thread talking about Necrons being unbeatable.

Have people just tried changing their tactics and what they are used to?

 Talamare wrote:
Isn't there another thread talking about Necrons being unbeatable.

Have people just tried changing their tactics and what they are used to?

Shhh...don't try to bring sense into this. There is only kneejerk reactions to be found here.

asauve19 wrote:
3- They are slow with really bad range. Any Halfway competent opponent can and does just sit back and shoot you, wipe hole units rather than piece some out slowly and you lose.

4- Only way I was able to be semi competitive in 4 games was with giving my guys invulns, and even that didn't do it, also I shouldn't have to force 1 model from the entire army to make any of my guys relevant.

Range really isnt an issue. Try using Grand Illusion from the C'Tan, or run some Monoliths, or run some Deathmarks, or Tomb Blades or Scarabs for mobility, or use the Nightscythe for transport (I mean the list goes on and on here).

Also, why is taking Orikan a bad idea? I get the statement that you dont want to feel you are "foced" to take a model, but Crypteks give buffs. Just like any other model, if you don't want the perks, don't take the model.

asauve19 wrote:

4- Only way I was able to be semi competitive in 4 games was with giving my guys invulns, and even that didn't do it, also I shouldn't have to force 1 model from the entire army to make any of my guys relevant.
Any suggestions?

How is that any different from taking a HQ choice?
Also, you mean that you don't want the character buffs, something that every army has access to now?

It would also help to know if the game was points or power levels. I think the wildly varying reports might be because necrons are particularly bad at power level games where almost all their units completely lack optional upgrades or their optional upgrades are kinda crappy, while other armies not only have a ton of upgrades but a lot of those upgrades are specifically good against necrons. Whipcoils vs power weapons, plasma cannons vs particle beamers, that sort of thing.

asauve19 wrote:
First off, sorry for a wierd format, was replying to a guy on Youtube, don't feel like typing it all again.

Played 4 games with my Necrons so far... Thinking about selling them.

1 - Reanimation protocols are trash now... yeah yeah they were just broken in 7th, but they are garbage now. You used to be able to reliably get up and close because you could sustain an attack or two with a squad or warriors. That's no longer the case... I tried running 5 squads of 10 then I put 3 squads of 20 to test.. Both got annihilated before I could even get close to using my rapid fire (since everyone basically has gauss, rapid fire is the only thing that seperates them from everything else)... Bringing the point equivalent in Immortals is only slightly better. Still terrible.

2- Living Metal isn't very good either. I was able to pull that trick for one turn, the first game. After that my opponents targeted my Doom Scythe until it died from turn 2 g1 threw the rest of the games. (different opponents).

3- They are slow with really bad range. Any Halfway competent opponent can and does just sit back and shoot you, wipe hole units rather than piece some out slowly and you lose.

4- Only way I was able to be semi competitive in 4 games was with giving my guys invulns, and even that didn't do it, also I shouldn't have to force 1 model from the entire army to make any of my guys relevant.

1-4 are points/opinions, not games. Anyway.. In all 4 games, I was not even remotely competitive (in non competitive games) and was nearly tabled in all games by turn 4... I literally can't think of anything to do, to not only keep them competitive.. But just keep them worthy of fun pickup games..

Any suggestions?

Ghost Arks give you a re-roll on RPs and can protect really low units and from being wiped out, and Quantum Shielding prevent it from taking really big hits usually.

Try 2 units of 10 and 1 Unit of 20 with a Ghost Ark. Keep 1 unit in the Ghost Ark when a unit gets low you dump the fresh unit and pick up the damaged one.

Selling your army? Then you are not a Necron fan I take it then. I would say hold on to your army if you like Necrons after all when they get a new codex who knows what the Codex creep will be like, but you might just regret selling them.

If you want to go on to a new army nothing wrong with that. Buy you might regret selling them so hold on to them if you can.

 Actinium wrote:
It would also help to know if the game was points or power levels. I think the wildly varying reports might be because necrons are particularly bad at power level games where almost all their units completely lack optional upgrades or their optional upgrades are kinda crappy, while other armies not only have a ton of upgrades but a lot of those upgrades are specifically good against necrons. Whipcoils vs power weapons, plasma cannons vs particle beamers, that sort of thing.

Power level seems to take upgrades into consideration. A dev squad costs 2 power more than a tac squad and theyre basically the same without upgrades

Yeah, power levels do incorporate upgrades and are based of an average of what the squad can take. They are actually pretty well balanced, as power levels and points levels are proportional to each other.

This has to be a joke thread right? Necrons are brilliant. RP is in aa good place, 5+ every turn for every model that dies (4+ with a ctyptek which you should definitely have). Quantum shielding is brilliant. I honestly dont undersrand how you could say necrons arent good unless you were spammimg wraiths before, in whih case i have no pity for you

I know power takes upgrades into account, specifically they take the average between what a unit can cost at minimum and at maximum and then divide by 20ish.
This still hurts the necrons, like a space marine sergeant that takes a grav pistol and power fist is under paying by a little because it was averaged out with the cost of him taking nothing, while something like a destroyer lord is being partially charged for a staff of light even though he will almost certainly take the cheaper warscythe.
A unit with 0 optional upgrades like warriors and immortals are always paying exactly how much they're worth in points in converted power, they can never benefit from the loss of granularity. And many units like wraiths do get a discount on being fully equipped with whipcoils and transdimensional beamers but those are already kind of bad, over-costed upgrades so it's not as dramatic an advantage as the unit of devastators taking grav cannons for just over the cost of heavy bolters in averaged out power.

It isn't a massive disadvantage but so far it seems to be a recurring trend where threads about necrons getting smashed are early pick up games with power levels while people who are reporting wins or at least closer games are using points.