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I'm trying to compile some opinions on why Necron rules make them one of the least competitive factions at the moment and what could be done to make them an interesting choice to take and fight against.

I had posted in the Necron tactica thread but wanted to have other players eyes on this. I'd be very happy to hear your thoughts on the matter.

My biggest fear is that they fix the obsiously broken things (trnsports lacking transport keyword and some points reduction) but keep Reanimate as is. It doesn't scale well at all and good opponents can really easily ignore it.

Here's a draft of what I'd have to say to GW about the current state of Necrons. It's mainly gathered from reading the discussions here and some anectodal experiments from playing with them.

I'll start with what has been working great for Necrons:

Quantum Shielding: It's great. It sounds alien and is unique to Necrons, is a great rule that is relevant most of the time and feels very rewarding.

Reanimation Protocols: Going back to a unique rule that actually puts models back in the table (as opposed to a plain extra save) was very welcome. The rule has issues and I'll discuss them in detail below.

Necrons are innacurately perceived as powerful. This is perhaps the greatest hardship on balancing the Necron Codex. On the surface, their rules sound powerful and intimidating, but a somewhat informed opponent can easily focus on the weaknesses and guarantee victory due to Reanimation Protocols inner workings.

Reanimation protocols issues

New rules wins: The new rendition of Reanimation Protocols (RP) feels very thematic, bringing back some of the post "FNP-esque" ruling of 6th and 7th. As much as it feels great though, its current iteration creates some crippling issues that I'll explore below.

Negation Issue: The rule can be completely negated by opponent if he manages to wipe your squads. There is nothing the Necron player can do to prevent this and it basically means that the premium in unit cost paid for the special rule is lost.

Scale Issue: Reanimation Protocols (RP) as is has a scaling problem in where it is strong in small scale games and loses power significantly as the games scale up. The more power your opponent has to wipe your units, the smaller the effect of RP is. The issue becomes even more significant if they fail to wipe the unit, as the power is at peak efficiency the more rolls you have to make.

Please address this issue. As it is a key ability to Necrons and equals a premium on unit costing it should be carefully planned.

Army composition issue: RP encourages large units to make maximum use of the ability, but that makes it so Necron Armies have to pay a tactical tax on top of paying a unit point cost tax already. Larger blocks of warriors means costlier base tax for detachments. It all results in Necrons paying several interests on top of the base unit cost that compound into very limited actual build choices. This also results in the army losing in on Command points due to the high tax of its troops choices.

Conclusion: The combination of being easily negated by experienced players and the fact that it heavily impacts list-building into either ignoring it (going for Canoptek units or Quantum-shield spam) or sinking points into huge squads that don't do that much (basic infantry with no special wargear) means that Necron Players have a small toolbox to work with.

Proposed exploration: Allow rolling of RP after a unit wipe in some fashion. Maybe allow them to bolster other units already on the table (enemies have to wipe ALL warriors to deny warrior RP) or allow Necrons to roll for wiped units (resurrection orbs should do THAT and be cheaper).

Tombworld Deployment issues

Cool new rule: It should feel like you are the master of a legion that can teleport troops on a whim across the galaxy, but the actual inner workings of the rules makes them just broken and too much a liability.

Lack of Transport keyword: The lack of this keyword on our transports means that units arriving from Transportation Beams arrive from reserves and can't move after arriving.

Lack of character support: Since you can only bring 1 unit at a time it breaks any type of character synergy as troops are isolated and unsupported, unless the player dedicates extra resources on an additional transport for the supporting characters.

Losing the transported units is too great a liability: Since we lose the emergency disembarkation rules and just outright lose our reserved units, on top of the issues above, Necron Players simply don't feel like investing in transports and putting precious points in tomb-world development worth the risk of losing all that investment.

Proposed exploration: Consider allowing characters to be beamed over alongside a unit deployed from Tombworld. Give every model able to teleport units onto the table the Transport keyword. Consider some alternative to emergency disembarkation or even just allow the units to safely disembark upon destruction and factor that in the points cost of a transport unit, something that makes Necrons feel even more advanced, ignoring certain perils that other races must consider when transporting units.

Lack of character synergy

Destroyer Lords are melee beasts, but buff a ranged option.

Necron Lords are near useless as we usually invest heavily.

Overlords only buff a single unit, as opposed to something like SM chapter masters and their buff auras.

Proposed exploration: Explore the Necron Hierarchy. Make Overlords be able to buff more units the more Lords you have, make Lords cheaper and allow them to enhance an Overlord's buffs. Something unique to Necrons. Overlords could get a secondary aura ability based on supporting lords/crypteks.

Lack of Psychic power counters

Necrons should be somewhat resistant to Psychic powers, especially the ones that deal with Leadership effects.

My biggest issue is with the RP. Those just weren't play tested with an appropriate amount of attention paid to how much the ruleset encourages focused fire. If you rolled those before morale somehow, it might work as intended. It really needs to be addressed though, because it's the suck right now.

Even just changing the whole mechanic to something like Disgustingly Resilient would be fine with me. Keep the fluff and use a simple mechanic that has precedent in the game. It's not ideal, and lacks character, but at least it would be playable.

Tombworld deployment is my other hot stove issue, although for me it ranks behind RP in importance. Losing the source of deployment, and thus the associated units, is an awful mechanic - it's too easy to zap the source. If there were another option, say "summon w/in 6" of Necron Lord", as a stratagem, or trait, or equipment that could save the unit, I'd be less concerned.

The character and psychic issues are likely (hopefully?) to be addressed in a codex anyway, so I'm less concerned about them.

I wish that monoliths and Nightscythes could have units embark on them again. Or at the very least, allow them to disembark one unit, plus any characters.

 cuda1179 wrote:
I wish that monoliths and Nightscythes could have units embark on them again. Or at the very least, allow them to disembark one unit, plus any characters.

Spitting recycled (or new) Warriors out of Monoliths was when playing Necrons was the most fun.

Beyond what's been discussed necron offense is why I think they remain so uncompetitive. Tesla destructors used to be a sweet spot with the strength 7 which was enough to glance any vehicle and wound most infantry on a 2. Almost all vehicles were based around that gun. Now with the new wounding and rend system they are like hitting with a wet paper towel.

To make matters worse we lack Anti-tank weapons and more specifically anti-multi wound. Take the destroyers main gun. It is almost identical to the DG blight launcher but so hilariously over costed comparatively. Or my other frustration which the doomsday ark which, despite being forced to stand still puts out less damage and shots then a standard leman russ.

We also lack almost any mortal wound generation which means Hugh invul units like Magnus means we auto lose. Naturally the army doesn't have psykers but we also don't get anything to offset it.

You can look through the index and see the whole army suffers. So let's summarize:

No psykers
Poor offense
Almost no mortal wound ability
Low mobility
High cost
And broken reanimation

That is why we are at the bottom.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Beyond what's been discussed necron offense is why I think they remain so uncompetitive. Tesla destructors used to be a sweet spot with the strength 7 which was enough to glance any vehicle and wound most infantry on a 2. Almost all vehicles were based around that gun. Now with the new wounding and rend system they are like hitting with a wet paper towel.

To make matters worse we lack Anti-tank weapons and more specifically anti-multi wound. Take the destroyers main gun. It is almost identical to the DG blight launcher but so hilariously over costed comparatively. Or my other frustration which the doomsday ark which, despite being forced to stand still puts out less damage and shots then a standard leman russ.

We also lack almost any mortal wound generation which means Hugh invul units like Magnus means we auto lose. Naturally the army doesn't have psykers but we also don't get anything to offset it.

You can look through the index and see the whole army suffers. So let's summarize:

No psykers
Poor offense
Almost no mortal wound ability
Low mobility
High cost
And broken reanimation

That is why we are at the bottom.

Monoliths pulling infantry units from battlefield through its eternity gate as in 7th would be nice, would synergize with their slow movement

It had that rule longer than that. That's from all the way in 3rd ed.
But it doesn't have it anymore. Because our iconic vehicle just has to be a paper weight now.

As for transports - necrons should never have conventional transports. Why would they ride around in a vehicle if they can teleport? I would much rather they get around by using some sort of teleport relay, like if you have relay A here and relay B 24" away, a necron unit can instantly pop up in Relay B after entering Relay A.

I started a thread talking about this a while ago, and since then basically threw up my hands and played other armies. I played dark angels, primaris marines, Black legion, and a few others, seeing the game from new angles and time playing the edition have modified my views on a few things.

What I said about tomb world deploy is still absolutely true, it's just not a good idea right now. GW has been toying with the idea, the genestealers infestation rule is obviously a derivative, so I hope they've learned enough to fix it. If I ran the zoo, Tomb world deploy would work like this:
-Happens at the beginning of the movement phase (no alpha strike shenanigans).
-Units "Disembarking" From tomb world deploy could move afterwards.
-Being in tomb world deploy would count as being embarked on a transport rather than being in reserves.
-Units within embankment range of a portal equipped vehicle can re-enter tomb world deploy.
-If all Portals are lost, units in tomb world deploy are removed as casualties.
-1 Unit of infantry and/or 1 Independent character can disembark per portal per turn (no more characters bottlenecking an army).

One thing I was wrong on though is repair protocols, because I misunderstood what the rule is for. I thought it was to make necrons tough, and if that's the measure stick, RP is a horrible failure due to how easy it is to bypass. As I thought about it though, In 8th ed if you want to make a unit tough you add wounds, add model count, give it an invul, or give the unit FnP. There are lots of ways they could have made necrons "tough", but RP isn't like any of them. Instead RP makes necrons more or less immune to getting ground down, you have to strike decisively or not at all when you are fighting Necrons. That's an interesting mechanic, which pairs nicely with the idea of slowly grinding your opponents to dust. Viewed in that light, it being bypassed isn't the issue, that's how you dictate the pace of the fight, the problem is that target prioritization becomes trivial.

When I say target prioritization becomes trivial it's because necron units that have strong offense have low numbers, and units with high numbers have low offense. So an opponent who isn't asleep at the wheel, just targets your offensive units, removes them and then can basically run the board because you lack any credible offense. I've seen probably a dozen batreps on youtube where that is exactly what happened, the latest was a Glacial Geek where 4 dreads basically took out an entire necron army. So with the problem in plain sight, how do we fix it?

Lots of people think just reducing points will make necrons viable, and while I think a few things are overpriced and need to be adjusted (gauss cannons for instance), you don't make a unit good by making it cheaper you just make it bargain. If we have learned anything from half a years worth of 8th eds meta it's that good units get used, bargain units get spammed. Instead I think we need to make target prioritization harder by making necron units more rounded, IE: make offensive units tougher and tough units more offensive. Here are my ideas on how to do that:

Increasing defense on offensive units
-All Multi wound non-canoptek models get the living metal special rule in addition to RP (it will end up being just one wound per round, but over the course of a game it could be an extra model or twos worth of wounds)
-Increase the number of wounds on destroyers by 1 per model (takes them out of easy las cannon kill range)
-Quantum shielding must be equal to or lower than the damage inflicted to negate the damage (upgrade from less than damage inflicted)

Increasing offense on Tough units
-Gauss weapons get +1 damage on a to wound roll of a six or more (doubles their effectiveness on T8 units, and increases their effectiveness on t5-t7 units by 50%)
-My will be done can give a +1 to hit or a +1 to wound chosen at the time the buff is applied (allows gauss to be better against heavy vehicles/monsters, while keeping Tesla good for crowd control)

With five small changes, suddenly target prioritization becomes much harder, you can go for the high offense units, but they are tougher targets and you won't gut the necrons abilities to hurt you. Of course to sad subtext to this conversation is that the die has already been cast, with a codex coming in march they have already gone gold with codex and if they haven't started printing now, they will be printing soon.

You know, I wonder if it would help sending GW this thread. They do like feedback, so it might be worth it. Then again, it would be odd to just go "hey, read this thread, kthxbye" so idk.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
You know, I wonder if it would help sending GW this thread. They do like feedback, so it might be worth it. Then again, it would be odd to just go "hey, read this thread, kthxbye" so idk.

If enough people send them the message they are bound to at least give it a read. I'd say its worth the 20 seconds to write it over to 40KFAQ@gwplc.com

arhurt wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
You know, I wonder if it would help sending GW this thread. They do like feedback, so it might be worth it. Then again, it would be odd to just go "hey, read this thread, kthxbye" so idk.

If enough people send them the message they are bound to at least give it a read. I'd say its worth the 20 seconds to write it over to 40KFAQ@gwplc.com

K, done.
I really hope that's the right place to send it, because it does look like where you send FAQs and not general feedback, but I guess it'll be fine.

It's the only communication channel I know of. Can someone walk over to GW's HQ and nail this post in printed form to their doors?

Emailed

I’d wait until their codex before worrying about what’s wrong with necrons. Even very non competetive index armies have gotten extremely good with the codex

I bet there will be a strategm that lets you recycle slain Necron Warrior units for CP - have them teleport by Monothliths, Doomscythes etc.

stratigo wrote:
I’d wait until their codex before worrying about what’s wrong with necrons. Even very non competetive index armies have gotten extremely good with the codex

Grey Knights.

 MIKEtheMERCILESS wrote:
I bet there will be a strategm that lets you recycle slain Necron Warrior units for CP - have them teleport by Monothliths, Doomscythes etc.

What I'd really like to see is a 1CP stratagem that lets you deploy a Tombworld unit without a vehicle (just plain DS). That would fix a lot of problems.

 EnTyme wrote:

stratigo wrote:
I’d wait until their codex before worrying about what’s wrong with necrons. Even very non competetive index armies have gotten extremely good with the codex

Grey Knights.

That could be the fate that awaits us. Though in all fairness, the early codices were more or less written in a vacuum, before they had the wealth of player feedback they have now. So My hope is that even if they didn't quite get what they did wrong, they at least learned enough about the meta to make necrons competitive in other ways. It's hard to guess what's coming since we don't have any sister factions like space marines do, and GW has been stone cold silent on the issue. We can't even extrapolate based on the CA changes since we barely got any.

I really hope they listened to feedback, Grim. I played a couple games early in 8th, got blown off the table by weak lists, and decided to shelf the 'Crons in favor of AoS until we get at least something to help us compete.

RP rolls would not be an issue if we could always use it. Even if it was a -1 modiefer to RP destroyed units that would be a vast improvement over what it is now.

E.g. say you have a Unit of 5 Destroyers and 1 Heavy D w/ an Overlord or Cryptek. Then on your opponents turn they mass focus on the Destroyers with anything that can do d3-d6 wounds. Well instead of just having the unit become a hot pile of wasted points and leaving a HQ in the open. What if we were allowed to roll RP for destroyed units but on a 6+ a model from the unit comes back? That would make every <Dynasty> infantry unit w/ RP at least 33% more survivable. And if it was allowed to be buffed by a Cryptek for 5+ that would be amazing.

Imagine a unit of 20 warriors RPing every single turn even when destroyed. Would give the Necrons the defensive we need and would stop people exploiting our weakness.

Also, I think there should be a <Dynasty> faction rule for QS alone. I'd love it if we were able to re-roll failed QS rolls without using a CP. Sure you can't re-roll a Re-roll but at least we aren't spending our precious CP on them if we get a faction wide rule that allows it. Or if we rolled 2 dice and discared the highest.

Something needs to be done anyway and I don't think the suggestions I have made will "break" the game but will at least but our faction from a "push over" to one that is nearly as resilient as DG but have a better way of surviving.

I imagine we'll get the usual gamut of subfaction rules.

-One dynasty ignores cover (mephrit)
-One dynasty gives a -1 to hit (Nihilakh)
-One dynasty gets an extra attack on charges (Novokh)
-One dynasty that's spooky and gives -1 to leadership (Maynarkh)

Then the Sauhtekh which will give +1 to leadership and some other benefit like being able to advance and fire rapid fire weapons.

 Odrankt wrote:
RP rolls would not be an issue if we could always use it. Even if it was a -1 modiefer to RP destroyed units that would be a vast improvement over what it is now.

E.g. say you have a Unit of 5 Destroyers and 1 Heavy D w/ an Overlord or Cryptek. Then on your opponents turn they mass focus on the Destroyers with anything that can do d3-d6 wounds. Well instead of just having the unit become a hot pile of wasted points and leaving a HQ in the open. What if we were allowed to roll RP for destroyed units but on a 6+ a model from the unit comes back? That would make every <Dynasty> infantry unit w/ RP at least 33% more survivable. And if it was allowed to be buffed by a Cryptek for 5+ that would be amazing.

Imagine a unit of 20 warriors RPing every single turn even when destroyed. Would give the Necrons the defensive we need and would stop people exploiting our weakness.

Also, I think there should be a <Dynasty> faction rule for QS alone. I'd love it if we were able to re-roll failed QS rolls without using a CP. Sure you can't re-roll a Re-roll but at least we aren't spending our precious CP on them if we get a faction wide rule that allows it. Or if we rolled 2 dice and discared the highest.

Something needs to be done anyway and I don't think the suggestions I have made will "break" the game but will at least but our faction from a "push over" to one that is nearly as resilient as DG but have a better way of surviving.

The great thing with this is that opponents would no longer have to focus fire them down anyway, since they will still come back to some degree. Which means we could safely go with smaller unit sizes, and suddenly a bunch of pieces fall into place.

The great thing with this is that opponents would no longer have to focus fire them down anyway, since they will still come back to some degree. Which means we could safely go with smaller unit sizes, and suddenly a bunch of pieces fall into place.

Smaller unit sizes also mean we get to save points e.g. instead of 2 units of max Immos and a unit of max Warriors, If we ran them at "starting cost" instead we save 290pts from the index which is nearly enough pts for 2 Triarch Stalkers or a DDA with Scarabs.

Also, to make it fair, if the destroyed unit doesn't RP atleast 1 model then the unit is destroyed for the rest of the game (untill we play a new Stratagem that lets us bring a destroyed unit within 6" of our deployment zone edge). Seems quite fair forwhat I am proposing.

I really think that the best solution to having necron units come back after getting wiped is to let it be a passive Spyder ability.

For a couple of reasons -

- It references 3rd ed, so there's a precedence
- Makes spyders worth taking; atm spyders are too unreliable as a spawner and not great as a repairer as you have to buy a piece of gear and hug the vehicle.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Grimgold wrote:
I imagine we'll get the usual gamut of subfaction rules.

-One dynasty ignores cover (mephrit)
-One dynasty gives a -1 to hit (Nihilakh)
-One dynasty gets an extra attack on charges (Novokh)
-One dynasty that's spooky and gives -1 to leadership (Maynarkh)

Then the Sauhtekh which will give +1 to leadership and some other benefit like being able to advance and fire rapid fire weapons.

I wouldn't like that.
Necrons aren't marines in that there's a specific set of marine chapters, all having their derivatives.
There are supposed to be thousands of Necron dynasties as of 5th ed, each with their own little quirk.
Having these dynasties be a derivative of those seems wrong to me.
If they are going that path, they should at least include a Severance or Rogue dynasty, to represent the more "esoteric" dynasties who aren't under the Triarch and a generic dynasty template to represent those who aren't derived from big named ones.

Necrons really just need the Eldar treatment. Make a huge points shift down and things will even out much more. The biggest problem isn't even the RP mechanic, it's the fact that there aren't enough choices Necron players give an enemy. It's so much easier to focus fire units down one by one when the units are expensive and fewer units overall. Once you start upping the number of models Necron players can throw on the table, it really starts to shift the power dynamics.

Yes, but there are some problems that points changes can't solve, such as the transportation methods that destroy any rules synergy unless you jump through a lot of incredibly inefficient hoops.

Necrons won't need much to 'fix' them, they're not irreparably broken as a faction.

1) RP is generally overcosted. It should probably become a weaker mechanic with corresponding large points decreases to most of the RP units. Then, implement stratagems and the like that can boost the effect; that way, the burden of cost for RP is shifted onto the Stratagem economy - for example, RP becomes a 6+ default return roll, but you can burn a point to increase it to 5+ or whatever. That way when say, a unit of Destroyers or Immortals is put down in one round of shooting, you haven't 'burnt' points on an unusable mechanic, but when they aren't you can choose to use your resources to boost your Necrons up. This fixes both the negation issue and the scaling issue, because the stratagem points system scales more effectively from smaller to larger games and handles 'negation' (wiping a unit) better because available stratagem points effectively pool across your whole army, the realisation of their value is not contained to one unit.

2) Monolith and Nightscythe basically being overpointed and not providing the effect they should for the army. The Monolith doesn't and shouldn't have to have amazing firepower compared to other vehicles in it's but it's battlefield control should be exceptional to make up for it. For example, let it pull any Necron units within 2" of a point chosen within 18" out of combat without penalty. All of a sudden it's a lynchpin unit on the field instead of just an underpowered expensive drop pod.
The Nightscythe is overpriced and needs to convey transport rules for units it brings in. Let it bring in up to X models from the 'tombworld' per turn, and implement a stratagem that allows tombworld units to enter play from the board edge if no NS/Monoliths are available.

4) Just providing the general codex options and tools re: traits and stratagems that other codexes get. Extra artifacts and warlord traits.
A Dynasty or stratagem with counterplay to the Psychic phase.
A Dynasty or stratagem that gives Quantum Shielding to Canopteks.
A Dynasty or stratagem that allows rapid firing after advance,
And so on.

Have a look at Necron Warriors with their gauss weapons.
Their shooting against Land Raiders was legendary in the previous editions.
But now? How do they strip off 16 wounds against a model with 3+ save?

 wuestenfux wrote:
Have a look at Necron Warriors with their gauss weapons.
Their shooting against Land Raiders was legendary in the previous editions.
But now? How do they strip off 16 wounds against a model with 3+ save?

what Necrons need is a dedicated anti tank unit for this edition

BrianDavion wrote:

 wuestenfux wrote:
Have a look at Necron Warriors with their gauss weapons.
Their shooting against Land Raiders was legendary in the previous editions.
But now? How do they strip off 16 wounds against a model with 3+ save?

what Necrons need is a dedicated anti tank unit for this edition

Indeed, weapons with D3 to D6 damage are important in this edition.