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Question for the wise heads out there....

I am facing a necron army. No idea what my mate will be brining other than it will be necrons. 1k match, part of a tournament. The rest of my list is sorted except for one elite slot. I am tossing up between a 5-man squad of boltstorm aggressor (225 points) or a 5-man terminator squad with a cyclone missile launcher (215 points), 2 power fists, 2 chain fists.

What would you take and why?

Is the extra low-AP d1 firepower of the aggressors worth it, or is the invulnerable save of the terminators more valuable against necrons?

Rest of my list includes a squad of 3 eradicators in the list, a smash chappy, a lieutenant with teeth of terra, two squads of tactical marines with grav cannon and amp, chains words on the sergeants, 1 with a storm bolter, 1 with combi-plasma, 1 intercessor squad (assault bolters) with grenade launcher and chains word on sergeant and a squad of grav devastators (combi plasma on the sergeant).

If you are facing mainly Necron warrior horde army. Aggresors are better pick due to T5. If your opponent brings lots of D cannons and Destroyers who are Str6-7, Terminators have better resilience.

In terms of offensive power, Aggresors have it though at shorter range. Salamander flamer Aggresors on average dice rolling and CP buff could wipe out a whole squad of Necron warriors. But outside of that, neither aggressors nor Terminators could wipe a full squad of Necron warriors in one go to prevent their reanimation.

Neophyte2012 wrote:
If you are facing mainly Necron warrior horde army. Aggresors are better pick due to T5. If your opponent brings lots of D cannons and Destroyers who are Str6-7, Terminators have better resilience.

In terms of offensive power, Aggresors have it though at shorter range. Salamander flamer Aggresors on average dice rolling and CP buff could wipe out a whole squad of Necron warriors. But outside of that, neither aggressors nor Terminators could wipe a full squad of Necron warriors in one go to prevent their reanimation.

Thanks. I have no idea what he is going to bring, so I am leaning towards terminators for durability, and rely on my other units to assist in any anti-horde duties.

Most necrons list as of late has a lot of warriors.
Warriors can be buffed to be pretty rude atm so its kinda expected.

 Vineheart01 wrote:
Most necrons list as of late has a lot of warriors.
Warriors can be buffed to be pretty rude atm so its kinda expected.

You basically need to kill the whole squad in one go, or they can get their unique 5+ FnP save. Outside of buffed Salamander Aggresors, the other units in the game can do that are probably the Genestealers buffed by Broodlord which have 80 attacks hitting on 2s. Seems like all other units in the game just don't have the numbers of attack to wipe them in one salvo of attacks.

Yup. The approach I am taking is if I am faced with a big blob of warriors, is to basically throw everything at it, i.e all troop firepower, aggressors/terminators, devastator squad and, if only a few models left, charge in and mop up.

THEN, and only then would I turn my attention to the bigger badder units.

So I would not be relying on either the terminators or aggressors to do this alone. I suppose the terminators, with a cyclone missile launcher, might be of more value after the hordes are thinned?

Slightly shorter range on the Aggressors isn't an issue because they're spitting at MINIMUM 3 extra shots. On average it's 5-6. Plus they bring weight of attacks to bear.

Only thing Terminators have an advantage with is Deep Strike. Now, it IS a great advantage, but not enough to make up for the much greater offensive output.

BA lightning claw assault terminators will rip through a big blobs of necrons in assault doctrine 6A per model with the strat hitting on 2's wounding on 3s rerolling misses and ap3.

6-man Plasma Inceptors (not supercharged) buffed with the chaplain +1 to hit and to-wound while under the auspices of a captain and LT rerolls do the trick too. It’s a lot of buffs, but it should do the job in one go.

Could be wrong but there's got to be better kill methods then aggressors. I ran them in a tournament recently and while they're tanky, they're not killing anything in mass unless they're t3.

Thanks all for your excellent suggestions. So, as it was with my mate, it was more relaxed than other tournament games. He didn't have any big nasty necron vehicles, so I went with the Aggressors.

I lost 57-38 (no painting points), but that was an improvement from the last time we played (where I lost by almost 40 points!).

As with many games, a few tiny things different could have swayed the result. When the game ended, I had one unit 3.25 inches from an objective – that ¼ of an inch would have meant an extra 15 VP from primaries for me, (53) and another 2 from a secondary objective (55). If I had managed not to roll four 1s in a melee with a stubborn necron unit with my smash chappy in the second last round, I would have scored attrition that round. So, it was close.

My plan was to take down his warrior units first, secure objectives, then, if I had spare units not sitting or contesting objectives, deal with any other threats. It didn’t turn out that way! He went first, and along with aggressive deployment he had a strat that allowed his entire army to move before the first round. That meant he got onto 3 of the 4 objectives by the end of his first movement phase. So, from there it was about clearing objectives.

We had a really good debrief after the game. He is an experienced marine (Raven Guard) player and his analysis was that if I had used MOA to put my aggressors in the centre of the board, or near his deployment zone I probably would have gotten onto other objectives and held them long enough to win. He thought the terminators would have “struggled for longer” doing the same as the Aggressors but “it would have tied me up for longer trying to clear them”.

So, this is what I learnt:

1. It was a mistake not to take MOA. I didn't end up using swift and deadly, so I wasted a CP on hero of the chapter on the lieutenant to give him that trait. If I am going to not take MOA, I should take Terminators for the teleport ability instead.

2. Starting Eradicators on the board with careful positioning can work really well.

3. Grav devastators are awesome, even on the move.

4. Smash chappy is awesome, but maybe too much of a CP investment. The Teeth of Terra relic is just an amazing, no matter who you put it on.

5. Aggressors did amazing amount of damage, but even with help from other units I struggled to get rid of his warriors.

6. In hindsight, having the ability to deep strike a unit via teleport (Terminators) or MOA (Aggressors) would have helped me put pressure on the objective in his deployment zone, which only had 10 warriors guarding it. That would have meant he would have had to deal with that threat, instead of clogging up two of the objectives closest to me and bogging me down.

7. Tactical marine squads with a grav cannon, combi plasma and chain sword wielding sergeant are awesome all-rounder units.

8. Bolter fusillades and whirlwind of rage provide great all-round army-wide buffs, and synergise well with Raven Guard.