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Hey everyone! I'm returning to the game having played very little of 9th and have been trying to think of lists. The one I'm posting here is not meant for tournaments or anything like that, but I'd love to get some feedback to understand if my logic doesn't track.

The purpose of the list was generally just to make use of some of the big cool new models, but I don't know if using 3 completely different sets of dynastic codes for each detachment is a good idea or if I'm making a mistake by doing this. See notes after the list for my general plan/concept.


++ Supreme Command Detachment +2CP (Necrons) [23 PL, 17CP, 450pts] ++

+ Configuration +

Battle Size [12CP]: 3. Strike Force (101-200 Total PL / 1001-2000 Points)

Detachment Command Cost [2CP]

Dynasty Choice: Dynasty: Szarekhan

+ Primarch | Daemon Primarch | Supreme Commander +

The Silent King [23 PL, 3CP, 450pts]
. 2x Triarchal Menhir: 2x Annihilator Beam

++ Patrol Detachment -2CP (Necrons) [38 PL, -2CP, 705pts] ++

+ Configuration +

Detachment Command Cost [-2CP]

Dynasty Choice: Circumstance of Awakening: Relentlessly Expansionist, Dynastic Tradition: Rad-Wreathed, Dynasty: <Custom>

+ HQ +

Technomancer [4 PL, 80pts]: Canoptek Cloak

+ Troops +

Immortals [4 PL, 85pts]: Gauss Blaster, 5x Immortal

+ Elites +

C'tan Shard of the Void Dragon [18 PL, 350pts]: Power of the C'tan: Time's Arrow

Canoptek Spyders [4 PL, 70pts]
. Canoptek Spyder: Fabricator Claw Array, Gloom Prism

+ Fast Attack +

Canoptek Scarab Swarms [4 PL, 60pts]
. 4x Canoptek Scarab Swarm: 4x Feeder Mandibles

Canoptek Scarab Swarms [4 PL, 60pts]
. 4x Canoptek Scarab Swarm: 4x Feeder Mandibles

++ Patrol Detachment -2CP (Necrons) [42 PL, -2CP, 840pts] ++

+ Configuration +

Detachment Command Cost [-2CP]

Dynasty Choice: Dynasty: Mephrit

+ HQ +

Technomancer [5 PL, 105pts]: Arkana: Hypermaterial Ablator, Canoptek Cloak, Relic: Voltaic Staff

+ Troops +

Immortals [4 PL, 85pts]: Gauss Blaster, 5x Immortal

+ Elites +

C'tan Shard of the Nightbringer [19 PL, 370pts]: Power of the C'tan: Antimatter Meteor

+ Heavy Support +

Canoptek Doomstalker [7 PL, 140pts]

Canoptek Doomstalker [7 PL, 140pts]

++ Total: [103 PL, 13CP, 1,995pts] ++

Created with BattleScribe

Army Concept:
The Silent King is an amazing model and seems like he's generally just a powerhouse even if the list isn't 100% built around him. That being said, he would be basically escorted by the spyder (in the general area) the whole game for continued repairs on top of his normal regen. The SK alone is the Szarekhan dynasty.

The two squads of immortals are used for objective control along with both technomancers and the doomstalkers. The stalkers will be positioned to always be in range to overwatch those squads and be repaired by the techno's while also allowing the technomancers to boost reanimation for the immortals. They are small squads, so the idea would be to hide/protect the immortals effectively long enough to score points.

For that same reason, the 2 Immortal squads would perform different functions, one to stay generally far back in my deployment zone camping the objective that would be in my area. These guys should remain mostly safe throughout the game as they'll either be in or near cover or simply out of LOS and range of anything scary. They'll still be next to the techno and stalker.

The other squad of immortals will be pushing forward to a midfield or somewhat centered objective. These guys will be flanked by the Technomancer that has the Hypermaterial Ablater (free cover save from ranged attacks while they attempt to position themselves effectively) as well as the doomstalker.

A major note here is that one immortal squad and technomancer are Mephrit, while the other pair are custom dynasty: Relentlessly Expansionist + Rad-Wreathed. These are for the scarabs and immortals to gain board position early as well as knowing that even the immortals stand a very high chance of being put into combat. The immortals in the custom dynasty will push forward with the technomancer that's Mephrit. BOTH Doomstalkers are also Mephrit (this is the purpose of the dynasty choice).

The scarabs, NB, VD, and SK and Spyder can all push forward up the board at varying paces/positioning based on need and deployment but make up the frontline and midline. The SK and Spyder may hang back if needed based on potential for deepstrike or other backline threats but he will likely be positioned somewhere midfield.

My questions:
Is it a mistake to use 3 separate dynasty choices like I have done here?
Is there a significant downside that I'm overlooking aside from the Command Protocols benefit?
Am I undervaluing the CP benefit?

If anyone has any suggestions or strategic pointers on anything, please let me know as I'm very curious as to the list's merits/downsides.


edit: I realized I can spend 2 cp to add both a warlord trait and relic to the technomancers -- I'd likely add the veil of darkness to the 'bare' technomancer that sits in the deployment zone and add 'immortal pride' to the technomancer that moves forward, beefing up his tankiness and adding another layer of defense to the immortals he's escorting. This would leave me with 11CP to work with during the game.

Your Spyder/Cryptek needs to be Szarekhan to heal the Silent King, Crypteks seem better for the job anyway because they are more mobile and get character protection. I don't understand why you want to be rad-wreathed and Mephrit does very close to nothing for you.

Scarabs only get a very small buff from rad-wreathed because of their auto-wound on hit rolls of 6 ability. Silent King has S7,8 and 9 in melee, and C'tan wound on 2+ a good chunk of the time anyways.

SupCom Detachment costs 0 CP and refunds the cost of one Pat/Bat/Bri Detachment, so the CP cost of going with three Detachments is not that great.

Combining the two patrols into a Szarekhan Battalion probably works better for your gameplan, your WL trait and Voice of the Triarch also boosts Command Protocols. A single C'tan should be enough to draw at least some fire from Szarekhan, I would get rid of the Nightbringer if you already own the Void Dragon since your list is supposed to focus on big cool models. You could also just run double Szarekhan Patrol if you really want to keep the second C'tan.

It seems like you are hell-bent on making the Silent King as worthless in your army as possible. Why not invest that little bit more and get a Tesseract Vault instead if you're not going to have any CORE/Triarch Praetorian units to buff and your army cannot use Command Protocols?

You could replace that C'tan with a third Doomstalker and some more Troops (17 reaper Warriors perhaps). I don't know why you need 3 healers in your list, if you go with that third Doomstalker the Canoptek Controller wargear piece becomes a super interesting choice on one of your Crypteks if he babysits the Doomstalker trio.

25 pts for a hypermaterial ablator to use on a 5-man Immortal Squad seems like a waste, you could just get an extra Immortal. If you go with a big Warrior or Immortal Squad it looks a lot more worth it.

 vict0988 wrote:
Your Spyder/Cryptek needs to be Szarekhan to heal the Silent King, Crypteks seem better for the job anyway because they are more mobile and get character protection. I don't understand why you want to be rad-wreathed and Mephrit does very close to nothing for you.

Scarabs only get a very small buff from rad-wreathed because of their auto-wound on hit rolls of 6 ability. Silent King has S7,8 and 9 in melee, and C'tan wound on 2+ a good chunk of the time anyways.

SupCom Detachment costs 0 CP and refunds the cost of one Pat/Bat/Bri Detachment, so the CP cost of going with three Detachments is not that great.

Combining the two patrols into a Szarekhan Battalion probably works better for your gameplan, your WL trait and Voice of the Triarch also boosts Command Protocols. A single C'tan should be enough to draw at least some fire from Szarekhan, I would get rid of the Nightbringer if you already own the Void Dragon since your list is supposed to focus on big cool models. You could also just run double Szarekhan Patrol if you really want to keep the second C'tan.

It seems like you are hell-bent on making the Silent King as worthless in your army as possible. Why not invest that little bit more and get a Tesseract Vault instead if you're not going to have any CORE/Triarch Praetorian units to buff and your army cannot use Command Protocols?

You could replace that C'tan with a third Doomstalker and some more Troops (17 reaper Warriors perhaps). I don't know why you need 3 healers in your list, if you go with that third Doomstalker the Canoptek Controller wargear piece becomes a super interesting choice on one of your Crypteks if he babysits the Doomstalker trio.

25 pts for a hypermaterial ablator to use on a 5-man Immortal Squad seems like a waste, you could just get an extra Immortal. If you go with a big Warrior or Immortal Squad it looks a lot more worth it.

This is a direct and honest and brutal critique and I very much appreciate it. I did completely miss that crypteks and spyders need to be from the same dynasty as the model(s) they repair as well as the requirement that ALL units from the army are from the same dynasty for Command Protocols to even be used, so yea that would answer my original question about 'what it was that i was missing' by taking a bunch of different dynasties.

I do like the idea of bringing the Nightbringer (as I think the model is awesome too, even if old), and the point isn't to be super efficient but to take as many cool models as possible. With that logic, I don't necessarily want to
drop the second patrol just for the sake of efficient CP, but I'm going to have to take your suggestions and see about rebuilding the list a bit and figure out if merging to a battalion simply ends up being the most interesting list I can come up with.

As for the 'worthless' bit regarding the SK, I've been reading that while he's clearly a monster when surrounded by the right units, he's not a bad individual unit alone. So my thought was that it wouldn't be too bad just to have him doing his own thing. If that isn't the consensus then that's definitely good to know. Another minor caveat is that I own all of the models that I've chosen for this list (I do also own a TV, but haven't been particularly excited about the unit itself) but I do own quite a lot more than what's listed, I just had the desire to try to make a list that had a bunch of cool things in it.

To your last point, is the hypermaterial ablator a bad TACTICAL choice there or simply not efficient in your mind for the unit it's protecting?

Thanks again for taking the time to critique!

The SK might be strong alone, I don't know the consensus on that, I just see the SK must be your Warlord because of the Detachment he is in and that is a lot of rules not being used. What does he do in your list that a Vault doesn't do better? I personally love my Vault model and don't have a SK yet I'm just looking at stats, abilities and pts. Doing the triple C'tan thing is also pretty cool and requires very little in terms of changing your list. Just take a Mephrit Vault (although you don't get the -1 AP) in favour of SK and Spyder.

One thing to note about SK is that if you don't care about healing you can still get Command Protocols with one other dynasty, you can even trigger the double Protocol for a dynasty like Novokh because SK is an agent. I just feel like your list is more or less ideal for Szarekhan regardless because as a poster pointed out in the Necrons mega-tactics-thread, you can ignore mortal wounds your own explosions cause.

I think putting your faith in a 5-man Immortal squad is optimistic whether it has the benefit of light cover or not. But I was commenting from an efficiency standpoint, not a tactical standpoint.

IMO it depends on how competitive you want to make the list man - if you want something that is gonna be able to compete consistently (and consistently is the key word here) at tournaments then the list definitely needs some work.

The main issue is that you don't have enough stuff that can actually score you points, and scoring points is how you win the game. A solid 3/4 of the list points wise is dedicated to killing stuff. This sorta build was great in 8th but really doesn't work well for 9th, it doesn't matter if you've been tabled at the end of the day if you're 20 points in front. Vic is right here in that relying on 5 man immortal squads to hold down your primary score is a gamble.

As a super general rule of thumb, the more stuff you can field the better; and the more durable said stuff is the better - you'll have more chances that a unit will be free, in many cases to perform actions, to score you points. Infantry are unrestricted in the actions they can perform in a lot of cases, so its often worth having at least 3 or 4 units with the 'infantry' keyword and without the 'character' keyword too

Really though, the game is about having fun. Its literally a hobby. If winning isn't equivalent to having fun for you then just keep the list the same mate and play with whatever you like. Otherwise I'm sure the guys here or on the tactics thread would be happy to give you more pointers

TheNEWnew wrote:
IMO it depends on how competitive you want to make the list man - if you want something that is gonna be able to compete consistently (and consistently is the key word here) at tournaments then the list definitely needs some work.

The main issue is that you don't have enough stuff that can actually score you points, and scoring points is how you win the game. A solid 3/4 of the list points wise is dedicated to killing stuff. This sorta build was great in 8th but really doesn't work well for 9th, it doesn't matter if you've been tabled at the end of the day if you're 20 points in front. Vic is right here in that relying on 5 man immortal squads to hold down your primary score is a gamble.

As a super general rule of thumb, the more stuff you can field the better; and the more durable said stuff is the better - you'll have more chances that a unit will be free, in many cases to perform actions, to score you points. Infantry are unrestricted in the actions they can perform in a lot of cases, so its often worth having at least 3 or 4 units with the 'infantry' keyword and without the 'character' keyword too

Really though, the game is about having fun. Its literally a hobby. If winning isn't equivalent to having fun for you then just keep the list the same mate and play with whatever you like. Otherwise I'm sure the guys here or on the tactics thread would be happy to give you more pointers

Very much appreciated! I didn't realize how different the game is from 8th, since as I mentioned, I haven't gotten to play much at all of 9th yet. The note about infantry is definitely good to know. I did come up with a modified list that followed suggestions from Vict's posts above (combining the detachments into a Battalion and dropping the NB). While I want to use my big new shiny stuff, a list that won't flop is also part of having fun for me. I'm mostly playing with friends regardless, so winning or losing isn't the goal, instead I like to see close games between evenly matched (and sometimes just creative) lists. I'll post an updated list later today and keep thinking on what you both said.

Thanks again to both of you guys for the input!

It'd be a pretty sweeping cut but you could keep SK and both ctan while remaining pretty competitive by cutting the doomstalkers, immortals and Spyder. You could take 2x 20 man warrior squads. Reaper Warriors are the biggest beneficiaries of SK buffs, especially if you go for novohk. I'd personally switch the technomancer for a chronomancer. This'll give you a big board control boost and a durable recipient for the silent king rerolls.

Okay so I put this together before the most recent suggestion about dropping the stalkers etc. so it doesn't reflect thoughts on that. I couldn't decide which would be more useful/valuable: 4 warriors or 2 praetorians. I defaulted to the praetorians for now, but feel free to let me know any thoughts you all have. I also don't know if there's a preference on weapons for praetorians, but I personally like the staves better overall.

++ Supreme Command Detachment +3CP (Necrons) [23 PL, 18CP, 450pts] ++

+ Configuration +

Battle Size [12CP]: 3. Strike Force (101-200 Total PL / 1001-2000 Points)

Detachment Command Cost [3CP]

Dynasty Choice: Dynasty: Szarekhan

+ Primarch | Daemon Primarch | Supreme Commander +

The Silent King [23 PL, 3CP, 450pts]
. 2x Triarchal Menhir: 2x Annihilator Beam

++ Battalion Detachment -3CP (Necrons) [81 PL, -4CP, 1,548pts] ++

+ Configuration +

Detachment Command Cost [-3CP]

Dynasty Choice: Dynasty: Novokh

+ HQ +

Technomancer [4 PL, 75pts]: Relic: Voltaic Staff

Technomancer [5 PL, -1CP, 95pts]: Arkana: Phylacterine Hive, Dynastic Heirlooms, Relic: Veil of Darkness

+ Troops +

Immortals [4 PL, 85pts]: Gauss Blaster, 5x Immortal

Immortals [4 PL, 85pts]: Gauss Blaster, 5x Immortal

Necron Warriors [12 PL, 208pts]
. 16x Necron Warrior (Gauss Reaper): 16x Gauss Reaper

+ Elites +

C'tan Shard of the Void Dragon [18 PL, 350pts]: Power of the C'tan: Sky of Falling Stars

+ Fast Attack +

Canoptek Scarab Swarms [4 PL, 60pts]
. 4x Canoptek Scarab Swarm: 4x Feeder Mandibles

Canoptek Scarab Swarms [4 PL, 60pts]
. 4x Canoptek Scarab Swarm: 4x Feeder Mandibles

Triarch Praetorians [12 PL, 250pts]: 10x Triarch Praetorian
. Particle Caster and Voidblade

+ Heavy Support +

Canoptek Doomstalker [7 PL, 140pts]

Canoptek Doomstalker [7 PL, 140pts]

++ Total: [104 PL, 14CP, 1,998pts] ++

The Immortals might get wiped at once and won't be a target for the Technomancer.

Maybe something else would be better in that spot.

 Manchild 1984 wrote:
The Immortals might get wiped at once and won't be a target for the Technomancer.

Maybe something else would be better in that spot.

Yea I have been trying to figure out what I'd do there. Might be better just to drop the praetorians in favor of more models per immortal unit.

the list would basically be:

SK
2x techno
20 reaper warriors
10x2 gauss immortals
VD
5x2 Scarabs
2x Doomstalkers

This list looks almost identical to the one that was mentioned in the last day in the necrons tactics thread o_O. Doesn't quite resemble the initial goal of my list but it would likely be much stronger with objectives.