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So I played Necrons for many years in 4th, 5th and 6th edition and sadly had to sell my beloved army for some much needed cash. I'm back on my feet and 40k is calling. I've always loved Necrons so naturally I thought of them first. I just bought their codex and I have to say...I'm not terribly impressed with it. I've watched quite a few 8th edition games so I understand the meta, but it just seems like a lot of what made Necrons good is now gone.

So, here is my question. How are people making Necrons work now? What's a good place to start?

You... don't really make Necrons work in 8th, unfortunately. We're the weakest major faction in the game by a wide margin. There's some hope for changes in December, but we can't say for certain if they'll actually come. If you want to proceed with Necrons anyways then I think the best start is to buy our half of the Forgebane box; it comes with three of our better units and a solid HQ. After that you'll want more Immortals and a 6-man unit of destroyers.

Give it a month (?) and see if the FAQ makes any changes

Grey Knights are worse. I think Necrons can do okay in a casual setting. Take a lot of Wraiths, Destroyers, and Doomsday Arks, as they're the 3 strongest units in the codex. Tomb Blades are good too. In a competitive meta that's still not going to cut it, though. There's not a lot of outright terrible things in the codex, it's just that most of it is under the curve and overpriced, plus the army has fundamental flaws, and the strong stuff isn't strong *enough* to carry the army.

Grey knights are not worse. Simply look at competitive standings to see Necrons perform worse.

Also only 4 moderately useable units in the entire codex.

Necrons are possibly low-tier in this edition.
Wraiths, Destroyers, and DDAs are good but too expensive pointwise for my liking.
I've seen Necron armies with three Tesseract Vaults but I have no idea how they fare.

Nope infantry pays too much for res and given the increased lethality of 8th rarely get to use it.

valdier wrote:
Grey knights are not worse. Simply look at competitive standings to see Necrons perform worse.

Also only 4 moderately useable units in the entire codex.

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/jforum.page?module=posts&action=list&topic_id=757112&viewResults=true

543 votes for grey knights, 19 for Necons. I think I'll go with the 543 votes. Necrons have more than 4 moderately usable units. Immortals, Scarabs, c'tan, and crypteks are all usable, plus there's 5 better units (destroyers, tomb blades, Wraiths, doomsday ark, vault). The 'better' units are still not awesomely strong and the army is hamstrung overall, though.

I can't believe how some of the dakka posters make statements that necrons are garbage.

Mono factions(no soup) which are worse: Grey Knights, Ad mech(if you don't only spam robots), Space Marines, Inquisition, Dark Angels, Chaos Space Marines

In normal games reanimation protokol is a very strong rule, but here on dakka some will tell you that it's useless and you will never ever roll a single dice for reanimation protocols in all of your games. In smaller games this rule is stupid strong. We had some 1000 points games were necrons had at the end of the game nearly full bodys(except the stuff which hasn't reanimation protocols). Its one of the stongest faction rules in the game but attmittedly didn't scale well when the points get higher. So perhaps some of the posters here only play high point value games.

When the codex came out wraiths, destroyers, DDAs and tesseract vault were seen as overpowered choises but now some claim they are the only ones which aren't completely trash.

Sure after necrons hit the shelf some codex creep happend and extrem stong(overpowerd) codizes came out like drukarii and imperial knights. But not only necrons struggle to beat them .

I think necorns are solid middle tier, top tier in small games and lower tier in high point games(with soup).

So have games with friends which don't allways take the best out of all allowed factions and avoid tournaments and you can have a lot of fun with necrons. Our necron players use lists with nearly all units and mostly wins his games. If you like the gorgeous models, buy them, paint them, play with them and have fun.

OP, Necrons are not great but not unplayable as some would suggest. People always say play what you like, so if you like Necrons, play Necrons. You may get steamrolled by a lot of tournament lists but will be fine in casual play. Like others said focus on getting some destroyers, wraiths, tombblades, immortals, ctan, doomday arks, maybe a vault. The rest of the units suck in their current states.

Slashy McTalons wrote:
Grey Knights are worse. I think Necrons can do okay in a casual setting. Take a lot of Wraiths, Destroyers, and Doomsday Arks, as they're the 3 strongest functional units in the codex.

Fixed that for you.


Hyperbole aside, the Necron Index was severely flawed in a multitude of ways and the Necron codex failed to address the vast majority of those issues. Here's a non-exhaustive list of problems:

1) The resurrection mechanic basically forces you to take max-sized squads, which is limiting in and of itself as well as causing difficulties in filling out many detachments. More importantly, though, it can be easily overcome by decent tactics - rendering your army's main defensive ability completely worthless.

2) Necron HQs can't get back up at all without the aid of a stratagem (which only gives them a chance of coming back, and then only once per game per HQ). Given that HQs are supposed to have better recovery systems than basic troops, this is lacklustre in both fluff and rules. Necron HQs do regain 1 wound per turn, but this is almost entirely irrelevant.

3) Speaking of HQs, we have the Destroyer Lord. Remember when people used to fear him as a fast, dangerous HQ? Those days are long gone. His offensive output is pathetic, he's not particularly durable even with artefacts/warlord traits, and he's only capable of buffing ranged attacks on Destroyers. So we have a melee HQ whose only real purpose is buffing a ranged unit. A round of applause for GW's design department who approved this twice (first in the index and then again in the codex).

4) Necron troops, whilst good on paper, really aren't great on the battlefield. Warriors in particular are absolutely abysmal. Yeah, they have AP-1 Bolters but that's also all they have. They cant take any long-ranged or specialist weapons, they don't have any decent melee ability, and they die a lot more quickly than you might think. And trying to use the various buffing units is just spending good points after bad.

Immortals are a little better in that they at least have decent shooting. However, they're still very limited in that they really can't do anything but move up the table and shoot.

The main problem though is the complete lack of variety with Necron troops. Do you want the slow, mid-range shooty unit or the other slow, mid-range shooty unit? Moving Scarabs or Flayed Ones to troops would have at least added a little variety.

5) Most Tesla weapons are still awful. High strength AP- weapons just aren't good in this edition. The Index was a chance to observe this - especially with the Tesla Destructor, which is the primary weapon on at least two Necron vehicles, with no alternative options available. However, it was left exactly the same (and exactly as useless) in the codex as it was in the index.

6) Necron transport rules are still awful. They're supposed to be more advanced than normal transports, yet their rules make them worse in basically every way. And adding stratagems that let us spend CPs to make them slightly less crap for a turn is not a reasonable fix. Hell, quite a few stratagems in the Necron codex seem like they were made as solution to problems that should never have existed in the first place.

7) Trazyn is still terrible. I appreciate that this probably isn't an issue for some, but I happen to own the model and I'd like to be able to actually use him without feeling that I'm crippling my list in the process. It would be nice if someone at GW would remember that when he was first introduced in 5th, he was replacing ~35-45pt models. Now he's replacing models that are 80pts at minimum... and yet probably brings less to the table than they do. And why does the great collector of artefacts not have a single artefact?

8) Triarch Praetorians still don't benefit from any Dynasties or HQ buffs. No one really wanted to use those, right?

9) The monolith is about as useful and threatening as a free-floating slick of chocolate cake.

10) The Ghost Ark has all the properties of an open-topped transport except for the one about being open-topped.

11) I'm not entirely sure how a Necron list without several Doomsday Arks or a ton of Destroyers is supposed to take down vehicles but I believe the correct procedure involves sacrificing d3 goats.


On a more subjective note, the biggest issue for me personally is that the codex fills me with apathy, to the point that I just can't get invested in the idea of playing Necrons. Every time I start trying to make an army on Battlescribe or such, I quickly lose interest and find myself going back to one of the other armies I own.

Necrons are only bad on a competitive level. In casual games i have been pretty successful with them.

Necrons are still a solid army, especially for new players. All units are okay, you don't have to worry about weapon choices and the army is sturdy enough to allow some mistakes. Their only weakness is anti-tank, you'll need some specialized units to deal with multi-wound models. Also important, they're much more interesting to play than in 7th for your opponent, as there's actually a way around Reanimation protocols, they aren't the "I-win-button" they were in 7th because of decurion.

I think they need a buff to anti-tank, but other than being a bit overcosted on some units, I find Necrons to be very enjoyable to play.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
Necrons are still a solid army, especially for new players. All units are okay, you don't have to worry about weapon choices and the army is sturdy enough to allow some mistakes. Their only weakness is anti-tank, you'll need some specialized units to deal with multi-wound models. Also important, they're much more interesting to play than in 7th for your opponent, as there's actually a way around Reanimation protocols, they aren't the "I-win-button" they were in 7th because of decurion.

In a way, that's the problem. All their unique units are just "okay"*, there's nothing in the codex that makes you go "wow"; there's little in the way of synergistic combos that make the good codices sing.



* except the monolith, which is hot garbage

If you were interested in getting into Necrons, I'd save up and wait a bit for the FAQ. I don't suspect any real changes in the FAQ in regards to army balance, but you never know. There's not much harm in waiting, and you might just decide to try a different army instead.

Sninsch wrote:
I can't believe how some of the dakka posters make statements that necrons are garbage.

Mono factions(no soup) which are worse: Grey Knights, Ad mech(if you don't only spam robots), Space Marines, Inquisition, Dark Angels, Chaos Space Marines

In normal games reanimation protokol is a very strong rule, but here on dakka some will tell you that it's useless and you will never ever roll a single dice for reanimation protocols in all of your games. In smaller games this rule is stupid strong. We had some 1000 points games were necrons had at the end of the game nearly full bodys(except the stuff which hasn't reanimation protocols). Its one of the stongest faction rules in the game but attmittedly didn't scale well when the points get higher. So perhaps some of the posters here only play high point value games.

Thing is rp is pretty nonexistant in 2k and that is NOT high point value. It's the standard game is designed for

tneva82 wrote:

Sninsch wrote:
I can't believe how some of the dakka posters make statements that necrons are garbage.

Mono factions(no soup) which are worse: Grey Knights, Ad mech(if you don't only spam robots), Space Marines, Inquisition, Dark Angels, Chaos Space Marines

In normal games reanimation protokol is a very strong rule, but here on dakka some will tell you that it's useless and you will never ever roll a single dice for reanimation protocols in all of your games. In smaller games this rule is stupid strong. We had some 1000 points games were necrons had at the end of the game nearly full bodys(except the stuff which hasn't reanimation protocols). Its one of the stongest faction rules in the game but attmittedly didn't scale well when the points get higher. So perhaps some of the posters here only play high point value games.

Thing is rp is pretty nonexistant in 2k and that is NOT high point value. It's the standard game is designed for

This guy gets it.

Wait for Chapter Approved. It's in a few months. You can buy the boxes still as they can make good bitz for terrain, but right now the army suffers in terms of rules. I WILL say that the codex is creative and each Dynasty does encourage a different style of play, but if those units aren't good who cares?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
Necrons are still a solid army, especially for new players. All units are okay, you don't have to worry about weapon choices and the army is sturdy enough to allow some mistakes. Their only weakness is anti-tank, you'll need some specialized units to deal with multi-wound models. Also important, they're much more interesting to play than in 7th for your opponent, as there's actually a way around Reanimation protocols, they aren't the "I-win-button" they were in 7th because of decurion.

Decurion was only "I Win" until the rest of the 7.5 codices came out.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Sninsch wrote:
I can't believe how some of the dakka posters make statements that necrons are garbage.

Mono factions(no soup) which are worse: Grey Knights, Ad mech(if you don't only spam robots), Space Marines, Inquisition, Dark Angels, Chaos Space Marines

In normal games reanimation protokol is a very strong rule, but here on dakka some will tell you that it's useless and you will never ever roll a single dice for reanimation protocols in all of your games. In smaller games this rule is stupid strong. We had some 1000 points games were necrons had at the end of the game nearly full bodys(except the stuff which hasn't reanimation protocols). Its one of the stongest faction rules in the game but attmittedly didn't scale well when the points get higher. So perhaps some of the posters here only play high point value games.

When the codex came out wraiths, destroyers, DDAs and tesseract vault were seen as overpowered choises but now some claim they are the only ones which aren't completely trash.

Sure after necrons hit the shelf some codex creep happend and extrem stong(overpowerd) codizes came out like drukarii and imperial knights. But not only necrons struggle to beat them .

I think necorns are solid middle tier, top tier in small games and lower tier in high point games(with soup).

So have games with friends which don't allways take the best out of all allowed factions and avoid tournaments and you can have a lot of fun with necrons. Our necron players use lists with nearly all units and mostly wins his games. If you like the gorgeous models, buy them, paint them, play with them and have fun.

1. Inquisition don't have a codex. We aren't counting Index armies and you know that.
2. CSM are absolutely better than Necrons.
3. AdMech don't just have to rely on Cawlbots now thanks to the Drill.

Honestly that only leaves Grey Knights and Marine variants (and yes I count Blood Angels because Codex: Slamguinus is going to be hit. Watch.)

Also RP is laughable even in smaller games. It's not magically harder to focus on one squad at a time.

Depending on the point level. Infantry is really good for smaller sub-1000 pt games. You can bring 20-strong blocks and expect them to be worth their points and in some cases be close to an auto-win vs a number of foes. But when you go higher, it becomes apparent that they don't scale as well cause reanimation protocols don't do anything if the squad is fully down.


So, necrons don't scale all that well. However, you still have a bunch of decent and sometimes good units to work with - basically at any levels.

Destroyers. Widely considered the strongest unit of the codex. They shoot really well, they're tough-ish for points and if you manage to hide them from part of the enemy fire, they're a real menace due to protocols once again. Great strategem also.


Doomsday arks. The only good long-ranged anti-tank. But it also rocks 20 gauss shots in rapid-fire range. So, it can be considered an all-purpose gun platform. Tough to ring down with anti-tank weaponry that's not a plasmagun due to quantum shields getting better the more damage they face.

Tesla immortals. Face all the issues of reanimation protocols but 5-man units are pretty good for backfield scoring and add nice anti0infantry shooting. Though, can occasionally deal a couple wounds to vehicles. Some lists take 10-s of them and buff them with My will be done - which makes their tesla trigger on 5+. If you run sautekh, they can generate 2 extra hits on a 4+. It's dead killy. A unit of 10 will statystically generate 36.67 s5 hits. Anywayz, you'll likely need command points, so immortals have high chances of endin up in most necron lists.

Than some situationally good units.

Ctans. Pretty good for their points. They're toolboxes than can put out mortal wounds against any army pretty efectively. They're basically there for counterplay. Facing msu? You can drop multiple enemy units at once within certain radiuses. Facing a bunched up gunline (and there are lots of those around), shoot chain lightning that deals mortal wounds to everything around theinitial target. Facing something tough like knights or Mortarion, just take a basic meteor power and drop d3 - d6 mortal wounds a turn. It's up to you to decide. Ah, and they're also characters with <10 wounds, meaning the enemy can no longer just shoot them to bits. To be honest, i can't remember Ctans being any better than they currently are. And i've played some 3-d ed necrons.

Lords. All sorts of them. Destrolords are fast, tough, relatively ok in mellee - though lack attacks - and cost few points. Barge lords have some shooting, mobility, are well protected against anti-tank weapons and can command your infantry. Ok in some lists, though, i prefer destrolords most of the time. Footlords - your budget option for hanging around your warrior/immortal blobs with a scythe and a teleportation cloak. Works great in smaller games. Can be used to teleport lychguards in larger games if you plan on bringing lychguards of course.

Wraiths. Great unit. Have tons of advantages like being really fast, relatively ok in mellee and can fly through stuff. Can also fallback and charge and are not infantry, so they can often hide from shooting if they surround an enemy. rock 3++ and 3 wounds. But cost 55ppm and have no protocols unless you pay 2 cp for a chance of resurrecting some. So, in practice, you can't just roll forward and eat enemy shooting like you could in 7-th edition. But they're amazing once you get them in position. So, terrain is your best friend. Also, they have a strategem that allows them to advance and charge.

Lychguards. They hit hard - especially if you bring a mellee-oriented dinasty. But they're oh so fragile and slow. Can counterplay it with either bringing a lot of them alongside other mellee threats like wraiths and characters or dropping them with a scythe. None of this options are ideal but they can and they do work when used correctly. Your best (and probably only) option against imperial knights since those can be protected with 3++ from your arks at range.

…
There are some other units worth mentioning but it's already a pretty long post. Anywayz. My point is there are some good units and builds. There is some sort of variety as you can build a successful infantry heavy list for smaller pts games, a gunline with arks and tesseracts if you like to play it safe and boring or a balls out unexpected melee list. If you like necrons, go for it, they're a nice army.

Disagree on ctans. They are very expensive, a tvault is a little more than twice the points, but can do 3 ctan powers and has almost 4 times the wounds. More important, a tvault has the DYNASTY keyword. Use nihilakh, park it near an objective marker, and play reclaim a lost empire at the end of your turn. Your tvault will get a 3+ inv sv until your next turn, making it very hard to kill. Play it twice for a 2+ inv sv. Use hyperlogical strategist and try to get some of the spent CPs back.

The big issue with necron's is indeed their super unscalability. Small games they work very well. 2k they start to suffer. And heaven forbid if you play bigger game than that...

8th ed is very much unscalable to begin with and necrons are even worse on that. And alas the necrons seems to be scaled more like 1k games while other armies are scaled toward the 2k mark...

Pity. And bit miffed as I just started them as I like models and got for cheap. I seem to be always drawn to weak armies ;-) Orks, necrons. IG before 8th ed when they were weak. Deathwing...

Now are the necrons hopeless? No. I'm not 100% sure but I seem to recall having read statistics on current win rates on factions and GK, tyranids and necrons were bottom 3 around 40%. So they still can win. And on more casual local meta they can win. And sometimes you can win just by objectives without killing. Albeit necrons are rather expensive and not neccessarily THAT survivable per point which makes it harder than say with my orks that have won games despite killing virtually nothing and being nearly tabled but still with some cunning, luck and sufficiently soft meta you CAN still win. But make no mistake. You will be at disadvantage. But it's not quaranteed loss and with GW's changes you might one day end up uber broken army suddenly when GW shuffles up randomly meta around again. IG has gone from strenght to strenght across years as well going from weak army to strong, weak, uber strong in 8th and back to strong middle tier/low top tier generally as part of soup. Orks have had their ups and downs as well. About only consistent has been eldar and even they suffered in 8th ed index...

In terms of Competitive and tournament play -We suck. Not because we are bad but because we can't Soup like other armies, our army is generally expensive to field, RP can be completely ignored if forced morale or if the unit is wiped and because people are "legally" cheating by using loop holes to make strong lists.

In terms of casual play and friendly games - We are pretty good imo. Since the Codex I have 19-1-0 with Necrons and that from various amounts of 1k, 1.5k and 2k games.

If your not into competitive play Necrons are a fun army to play albeit expensive to field. However, if you want to play in tournaments, not get tabled and have a shot at doing well you will need a new army in this meta of Knights, Soups and legal cheating e.g. Loop holes

Dig deeper into 40k 8th edition before you decide if/how to come back. The game is in a very “soupy” place right now.