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Proposed Necron balance changes,

Necrons are clearly lacking in some areas. Here are some ideas to balance out a few of those.

While I personally beleive we could use a small points decrease across the board(large for Flayed Ones/Destroyers")
Points decreases will not be a thing in this list, Aside from saying the the proposed changes should not incur a points increase/decrease.

New ideas will be added/changed over time.

Thoughts and Ideas?



Warsythe - Simply add "all successful wound rolls with this weapon also inflict a mortal wound"
Currently warscythess are underwhelming being S7 and 2 damage. falling well short of thunderhammer usefulness
This change would make our Lords/Overlords actually viable as close combat beasts instead of pure buff characters.
It will also make lychguard worth taking.


Ressurection Orb - Complete rework
"Once per game when a unit within 6" is completely removed you may immediately roll ressurection protocols for that unit"
Currently Res Orbs are ok, but have almost exactly the same benefit as a ghost ark.
This would open up alot more tactics for the army while helping to fix the major issue with RP.
Should not be to powerful as a character taking this item is very expensive.


Scarabs - Add "-1 AP to units with the vehicle keyword"
While scarabs are by no means a bad unit currently they do feel rather lackluster vs vehicles.
This would help address most peoples view that we lack anti armour outside of FW.


Invasion Beams/Eternity Gate - Add "Units deployed in this manner may still move as if disembarking from a transport"
Currently these two abilities seem broken, The bonus in choosing which unit to deploy at any time is already offset by the high points cost of the army.
This again will open up more tactics and list variation.


Trazyn the Infinite(Surrogate Hosts) - Replace CHARACTERS with LYCHGUARD
Currently he will never be used. Excess characters are not an option for Necrons, They are simply too expensive.
This would make Trazyn a viable unit and also open up limited new tactics.


Canoptek Spyders(Scarab Hive) - Rework
"At the beginning of your turn for each friendly <DYNASTY> Canoptek Scarabs
unit that is below its starting number of models and
within 6" of any Canoptek Spyders: return a Canoptek Scarab Swarm to the
depleted unit, in unit coherency and more than 1" from
enemy models. If you cannot do this because there is no
room to place the model, do not set it up."
Currently this ability is almost not worth using. This would go part way to helping out Spyders.

All sound like good ideas. Im all for warscythes doing mortal wounds. Right now they really dont seem very scary and id like tk see then like 3rd ed scythes where if they hit you there was no save

"Necrons are clearly lacking in some areas". HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA... I man... good joke... oh wow...

@bobug cheers for the the thoughts.


@lolman1c not sure if you are implying that they are or are not lacking.
If the former then agreed it is a bit laughable.
If the latter then all I can say is try keep it positive and join in with your thoughts about why!

i dont understand how people think necrons are good. The only people who think this dont konw how to play against them

Haha, no just a little joke. I've been getting my ass handed to me by necrons over the last few weeks.

 lolman1c wrote:
Haha, no just a little joke. I've been getting my ass handed to me by necrons over the last few weeks.

Yeah this is a thing, however as a whole, we are very weak atm, almost if not at the very bottom of the power curve. One competitive unit in our whole codex (gauss pylon) and even that struggles against a lot of lists. We just don't have the damage to kill things, pay through the nose for durability that can be circumvented (Imagine if you only got to WAAAAAAGH! or ere' we go ever third or 4th time, instead of all the time, yet still pay for it).

The above changes are actually pretty good, mortal wounds for warscythes would make them much better, fluffy too considering the weapon. Would be a nice way to be able to dish out mortal wounds besides the C'tan, otherwise we are extremely limited in that regards.

Any exact point changes? Overall, though, good ideas.

One thing, though, I'd make Trazyn Lychguard OR Characters, not JUST Lychguard.

The issue isn't something that can be fixed with these small adjustments.

RP needs to work in some way that scales better with the size of the game.

Necrons need their options back. And some new options need to be added.

I am convinced that unless the base necron weapons get better so that they become a decent weapon against everything they need to find a way to get some specialist weapons. Maybe Gauss with a roll of 6 to wound causes d3 dmg? Give Tesla an extra ap?

Thats really what Necrons need.

On the whole i like these changes, but no mortal wounds on warsythes, thats silly, why not just have them inflict 3 wounds?

@JNAProductions Good point on the Lychguard or Characters call. was thinking it but didnt write it in for some reason.

@Lance845 I don't believe that RP is in that bad of a place. But in any case the above change to Res Orb should address the issue.
remember we are about durability... not invulnerability.

@Formosa I put a fair amount of thought into the Warscythe one.
Fluff wise they go through pretty much anything.
Ignoring invulnerable saves on the whole damage would put them firmly in the OP category, adding a single mortal wound on top of the 2 normal is a nice middle ground.
Anything that can use a warscythe has a low number of attacks so struggles with hordes. This will help to address the issue by letting every hit potentially kill 2 single wound models.
Kinda thematic really.
Wording it this way means that it wont be too good vs 2 wound models.

Skankmarron wrote:
@JNAProductions Good point on the Lychguard or Characters call. was thinking it but didnt write it in for some reason.

@Lance845 I don't believe that RP is in that bad of a place. But in any case the above change to Res Orb should address the issue.
remember we are about durability... not invulnerability.

@Formosa I put a fair amount of thought into the Warscythe one.
Fluff wise they go through pretty much anything.
Ignoring invulnerable saves on the whole damage would put them firmly in the OP category, adding a single mortal wound on top of the 2 normal is a nice middle ground.
Anything that can use a warscythe has a low number of attacks so struggles with hordes. This will help to address the issue by letting every hit potentially kill 2 single wound models.
Kinda thematic really.
Wording it this way means that it wont be too good vs 2 wound models.

Sorry i cant agree with that, free mortal wounds is a terrible mechanic, in addition to mortal wounds being a terrible mechanic (cant stand anything that bypasses all saves), im sure you put a lot of thought into it, but there are other alternatives that dont just give a free un savable wound.

How about make it similar to the weapons that have "Each time you roll a wound roll of 5+ for this weapon, the target suffers a mortal wound in addition to the weapon's normal damage."

Roll high to trigger the Mortal Wound and they still have to make a possible save against the rest of the possible damage.

 Formosa wrote:

Skankmarron wrote:
@JNAProductions Good point on the Lychguard or Characters call. was thinking it but didnt write it in for some reason.

@Lance845 I don't believe that RP is in that bad of a place. But in any case the above change to Res Orb should address the issue.
remember we are about durability... not invulnerability.

@Formosa I put a fair amount of thought into the Warscythe one.
Fluff wise they go through pretty much anything.
Ignoring invulnerable saves on the whole damage would put them firmly in the OP category, adding a single mortal wound on top of the 2 normal is a nice middle ground.
Anything that can use a warscythe has a low number of attacks so struggles with hordes. This will help to address the issue by letting every hit potentially kill 2 single wound models.
Kinda thematic really.
Wording it this way means that it wont be too good vs 2 wound models.

Sorry i cant agree with that, free mortal wounds is a terrible mechanic, in addition to mortal wounds being a terrible mechanic (cant stand anything that bypasses all saves), im sure you put a lot of thought into it, but there are other alternatives that dont just give a free un savable wound.

You have to realise, that our army has incredibly limited access to mortal wounds, nor does it have access to a psychic phase. So we are at the peril of MW armies, and we cannot even answer them with our own units that can smite, besides a few characters. The chassis the warscythes are on are all 5" M models with 2W T5 3+, not exactly impossible for most armies to deal with them before they do anything. I feel the mortal wounds the way it is proposed is actually a good idea, would make the unit considered to take.

@formosa I feel that you disagreement with this is more based on not liking mortal wounds in the first place.
But I am all for suggestions. You mention other ways. Could you please list them?

@klowny cheers for the thoughts. Agree with you.


@Draco765 while that would also work I do not believe it would be enough.

Skankmarron wrote:
@formosa I feel that you disagreement with this is more based on not liking mortal wounds in the first place.
But I am all for suggestions. You mention other ways. Could you please list them?

@klowny cheers for the thoughts. Agree with you.


@Draco765 while that would also work I do not believe it would be enough.

Yeah it is that i dont like mortal wounds as a mechanic, same way i dont like any mechanic that gives free units, auto fails etc.

Changes to warsythes that do not use mortal wounds, not all of them, just one change:

3 Wounds

Wounds on a 2+ vs non vehicles (pretty scary)

d3 wounds, 6 to wound causes d6 instead.

d3 attacks +d3 per 5 men in enemy unit (also scary)

2 attack modes:

str+2, -2 save, 1 wound, sweep attack: auto hits all enemy models in B2B

Or

Str x2, -4 save, 2 wounds roll to hit at normal.

I could go on but these are just off the top of my head.

I'm not too against Warscythes doing mortal wounds because they almost did that in 4th. But it's still too funky. I say they get a flat 3 damage. No special rules needed once you add that.

You could steal an idea from the plague flails plague marines get. Each attack made with this weapon does d3 attacks instead and the damage done spreads onto other models in the unit(similar to a mortal wound but does not ignore the save). This type of cleaving effect feels pretty appropriate for a scythe, and boosts scythe-wielding units against all targets.

Arachnofiend wrote:
You could steal an idea from the plague flails plague marines get. Each attack made with this weapon does d3 attacks instead and the damage done spreads onto other models in the unit(similar to a mortal wound but does not ignore the save). This type of cleaving effect feels pretty appropriate for a scythe, and boosts scythe-wielding units against all targets.

I actually really like this.

I'm still wanting to wait for the actual codex and see what GW comes up with though.

Skankmarron wrote:



Warsythe - Simply add "all successful wound rolls with this weapon also inflict a mortal wound"
Currently warscythess are underwhelming being S7 and 2 damage. falling well short of thunderhammer usefulness
This change would make our Lords/Overlords actually viable as close combat beasts instead of pure buff characters.
It will also make lychguard worth taking.


Ressurection Orb - Complete rework
"Once per game when a unit within 6" is completely removed you may immediately roll ressurection protocols for that unit"
Currently Res Orbs are ok, but have almost exactly the same benefit as a ghost ark.
This would open up alot more tactics for the army while helping to fix the major issue with RP.
Should not be to powerful as a character taking this item is very expensive.

I'm okay with most of the proposed changes, but I'm not sure I'm onboard with the warscythe or the orb. The scythe I dislike because it disregards defenses that other armies have paid for for the sake of a raw damage boost. Giving a weapon good AP or the ability to swing more attacks or do more damage with a given attack or whatever is all well and good because it interacts with my choice to field good armor/invuls/lots of bodies/bodies with lots of wounds. Getting hit by this would feel less like you'd chosen an option that was effective against my options and more like you had a weapon that gets to kill my dudes just 'cause necrons are cool and stuff. From a biased fluff-perspective, I'm not sure what properties of a warscythe would allow it to hurt a wych that dodged it, a harlequin that was never touched by it, or that would it allow it to bypass whatever arcane shenanigans make a set of warlock rune armor work. And whatever properties those would be, why don't archons, chapter masters, tech priests, or daemons have access to it? ;D

There are lots of cool alternatives to the "free mortal wound" suggestion in this thread. I'd go with one of those instead.

The orb just seems like it could be abusable, and it seems abusable in a way that would be frustrating to play against. Against 'crons, you generally want to focus fire either to force a morale test or to wipe them out and prevent reanimation. 'Crons are fairly tough, so it's easy to spend a big part of your offense (read: a big part of one of your precious turns) killing a squad off. So when I point the better part of my army at a 20 man squad of warriors and manage to wipe them out, I'm going to be very disappointed to find that a single piece of wargear basically just cost me most of my game turn. Even if the orb triggers immediately thus allowing me the option to keep shooting at the (on average) 7 warriors that stand back up, there's a good chance I won't have the firepower to take them out. And that means they'll potentially bring back another (on average) 5ish warriors at the start of your rapidly approaching turn.

The worst part of 7th edition RP wasn't the raw durability it gave necrons; it was the fact that you basically couldn't interact with it. I feel like the proposed rez orb change would take us a half-step back towards that. I rather like being forced to make interesting decisions against necrons in order to mitigate their strengths.

What would you suggest in place of that for Res Orbs? Because as it stands, Reanimation Protocols might be interactive for the opponent, but it's not interactive for the Necron Player, since they'll never get to use it against a good player.

 JNAProductions wrote:
What would you suggest in place of that for Res Orbs? Because as it stands, Reanimation Protocols might be interactive for the opponent, but it's not interactive for the Necron Player, since they'll never get to use it against a good player.

Perhaps something along the lines of...

A.) Per the OP's suggestion, but only allow it to be used on units with a starting size of 10 models or less. Getting 5 warriors back (3 from the rez orb, then about 2 more at the start of your turn) is much less severe than getting ~10 back, and the number of points of warriors you'll average/max returning models to life seems much more reasonable for the cost of the orb.

B.) Make it a modest flat bonus to the number of warriors rez'd in a squad within 6" of the orb bearer. Something like, "Immediately after making your reanimation protocol tests, you may select a necron <dynasty> unit within 6" of a model bearing a resurrection orb. That model reanimates an additional d3 models (but may not exceed its original unit size). Makes your reanimation much better when you get it, but doesn't deny your opponent the ability to make decisions that deny RP in the first place.

C.) Make it sort of like summoning but without the movement penalties and the chance to hurt yourself. Set aside X points during list creation. Instead of shooting and charging, a lord that is not within 1" of an enemy unit can use his rez orb to "summon" a unit from your dead pile. The lack of mobility restriction actually makes this a decent way of bringing back whatever units your opponent was most eager to kill. You'd be able to keep reinforcing the area of the battlefield near your orb, but you aren't turning a 35 point upgrade into 120 points of reanimated warriors.

A) Seems like an unneeded restriction. There's literally one RP unit that can go above 10, and it's the weakest one.

B) Is useless, as per current reanimation protocols.

C) Is even worse than summoning-and summoning is NOT in a good place right now.

 JNAProductions wrote:
A) Seems like an unneeded restriction. There's literally one RP unit that can go above 10, and it's the weakest one.

B) Is useless, as per current reanimation protocols.

C) Is even worse than summoning-and summoning is NOT in a good place right now.

All fair points, though I'm still not a fan of basically giving a double rez to a unit that your opponent made efforts to wipe out. What about letting necron players pop the orb immediately before their opponent resolves a shooting attack or activates a unit to fight. For the remainder of the phase, all necron <dynasty> units gain a 5+ FNP for the remainder of the phase. So basically old RP for a turn on top of normal RP at the start of your next turn. It boosts the survivability of the bearer and those near him, it only lasts for a turn meaning it isn't as annoying as 7th edition RP, and it doesn't take away your opponent's ability to be make worthwhile decisions regarding target priority. Granted, 35 points might be too costly for one phase of FNP, but the specifics could be tweaked from there.

Or possibly make it an automatic ressurection for d3 models in a unit immediately after your opponent resolves a shooting attack or fights. Again, it boosts your survivability (assuming your opponent doesn't wipe the unit with one attack), but it doesn't deprive your opponent of the ability to make decisions that interact with that survivability.

Thoughts?

I like the ability to give a FNP. Obviously 35 is too pricey for one phase of FNP, but conceptually, I like it. It's like it's turbocharging the reanimation, so it happens near-instantly rather than over some time.

Wyldhunt wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
A) Seems like an unneeded restriction. There's literally one RP unit that can go above 10, and it's the weakest one.

B) Is useless, as per current reanimation protocols.

C) Is even worse than summoning-and summoning is NOT in a good place right now.

All fair points, though I'm still not a fan of basically giving a double rez to a unit that your opponent made efforts to wipe out. What about letting necron players pop the orb immediately before their opponent resolves a shooting attack or activates a unit to fight. For the remainder of the phase, all necron <dynasty> units gain a 5+ FNP for the remainder of the phase. So basically old RP for a turn on top of normal RP at the start of your next turn. It boosts the survivability of the bearer and those near him, it only lasts for a turn meaning it isn't as annoying as 7th edition RP, and it doesn't take away your opponent's ability to be make worthwhile decisions regarding target priority. Granted, 35 points might be too costly for one phase of FNP, but the specifics could be tweaked from there.

Or possibly make it an automatic ressurection for d3 models in a unit immediately after your opponent resolves a shooting attack or fights. Again, it boosts your survivability (assuming your opponent doesn't wipe the unit with one attack), but it doesn't deprive your opponent of the ability to make decisions that interact with that survivability.

Thoughts?

You can already get a double res from a Ghost Ark? So its not a new mechanic, albeit it would actually be more reliable due to normally not having a GA/unit to res alive.

Res orbs need to be looked at much less than RP in general needs to be changed. But thats a very hard thing to balance, as it has many moving parts. Its durability that you pay for, but you dont get it alot. But if you make it powerful enough that you get it, its very easy to get into the OP end of the spectrum.

 Klowny wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
A) Seems like an unneeded restriction. There's literally one RP unit that can go above 10, and it's the weakest one.

B) Is useless, as per current reanimation protocols.

C) Is even worse than summoning-and summoning is NOT in a good place right now.

All fair points, though I'm still not a fan of basically giving a double rez to a unit that your opponent made efforts to wipe out. What about letting necron players pop the orb immediately before their opponent resolves a shooting attack or activates a unit to fight. For the remainder of the phase, all necron <dynasty> units gain a 5+ FNP for the remainder of the phase. So basically old RP for a turn on top of normal RP at the start of your next turn. It boosts the survivability of the bearer and those near him, it only lasts for a turn meaning it isn't as annoying as 7th edition RP, and it doesn't take away your opponent's ability to be make worthwhile decisions regarding target priority. Granted, 35 points might be too costly for one phase of FNP, but the specifics could be tweaked from there.

Or possibly make it an automatic ressurection for d3 models in a unit immediately after your opponent resolves a shooting attack or fights. Again, it boosts your survivability (assuming your opponent doesn't wipe the unit with one attack), but it doesn't deprive your opponent of the ability to make decisions that interact with that survivability.

Thoughts?

You can already get a double res from a Ghost Ark? So its not a new mechanic, albeit it would actually be more reliable due to normally not having a GA/unit to res alive.

Res orbs need to be looked at much less than RP in general needs to be changed. But thats a very hard thing to balance, as it has many moving parts. Its durability that you pay for, but you dont get it alot. But if you make it powerful enough that you get it, its very easy to get into the OP end of the spectrum.

It's less to do with the double rez and more to do with the double rez on top of bringing a unit back to life after it was wiped. Though you bring up a good point. Under that proposed set of rules for the rez orb, you'd potentially be getting 3 reanimation attempts on a unit that was previously wiped out, which is even worse. XD

So i helped my buddy make a list and he liked the way it performed. At 2000 points hes going frontline with 20 man warrior groups of course crptek and ghost ark but the models he dismissed before were the destroyer. He feilded 3 groups of 2 destroyers plus one heavy. This gave him the anti tank range he needed and then he is using the monolith to deep strike in and attract some fire. Over all it looks solid to me and covers all the bases. The destoyers are his most bang for buck i though. 75 points for a lascannon eq thats not taxed with taking a whole unit but if you do take a unit its 9 t5 wounds with 3 up saves and reans to go through.