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Can this happen?
Imotekh uses his storm, rolls 2, he uses his 1 time warlord reroll, gets a 1... Can he then command reroll that?
Someone was saying you can only ever reroll a die once

You can never re-roll a dice more than once.

You used to be able to do that, but then it got FAQ'd out, iirc.

Ok, that's good to know thank you... In the middle of a game and we are both new, trying to find rules on the fly is always difficult

Slaul wrote:
Hi folks, any tips for a newcomer to Necrons?

I am buying a second-hand Necron army this afternoon and have no idea how to use any of it yet haha!

Spoiler:

40 Warriors
10 Tesla Immortals
Overlord
2 Cryptek
Catacomb Command Barge
2 Monoliths
Doomsday Ark
Ghost Ark
2 Spyder
3 Tomb Stalker
Doomscythe
Some tomb blades on sprue (not sure how many)
Some Scarabs
6 Wraiths
5 Death Marks

Is it possible to build a half decent starter list out of that? What would be the best next things to build into?

From what you have, you can start with warriors, ghost ark, overlord / CCB, cryptek and immortals as the core of your army.
2 small units of immortals, a ghost ark, warriors, an overlord and a cryptek should leave you enough points for some goodies whilst giving you a battalion. The cryptek and ghost ark should keep the warriors alive long enough for them to shoot up stuff once they get in range, and the ghost ark isn't too bad either. If you have the points, upgrade the overlord into a CCB. I use that as the core of my army (tons of warriors from 3rd ed, and not enough immortals) and it tends to be fine most of the time. It does annoy the hell out of my opponents when they fail to wipe out the warriors and about 50%-75% of them come back.
Or you can take the big unit of immortals and 2 min sized units of warriors, which would probably give you more damage output, but will be about 65pts more than 2 small units of immortals + 20 warriors.

Now for the goodies...
Its a pity you don't have destroyers, as they are one of the biggest sources of damage in a necron army. However, you do have a DDA and tomb blades, which are the next best thing.

Spyders, deathmarks and monoliths are pointless. Waste of points. You could do double monoliths for funsies, but then you won't have enough points for anything else, and will probably lose them when they arrive because of their abysmal deep strike rules. Whoever decided to give the monolith hovering + 12" minimal deepstrike range must have had Vietnam style flashback of them in 3rd ed, because they are tactically useless with that combination.
Now, those 3 units might be useful at some point if GW ever decides to think things through with necrons for once, but right now they are just pretty shelve decorations. Nothing wrong with that, mind you, collection is a part of the hobby, they just aren't that good in game currently.

Doomscythe could work, but you will have to go Sautekh in order to make the most out of the deathray, because for some stupid reason it can't move and shoot heavy weapons without penalty. This problem isn't unique to necrons, but to all flyers.

Now, you do have scarabs and wraiths, which is great, as that can form the basis of a decent Novokh or Nephrekh list. Abuse Adaptive Subroutines and you can get some juicy charges that could take your opponent by surprise, especially with nephrekh.
Even if you don't go for those factions, scarabs are still nice to have as they make good screens and objective grabbers. Wraiths are pretty handy too, but they are expensive so you might have to struggle with points.

When you say tomb stalker, do you mean the Triarch Stalker or the actual FW unit? I don't have much experience with either of those anyway, so I can't really say. The weapon options and rerolls that a Triarch Stalker brings are nice I guess, and I suppose the tomb stalker could work with novokh or nephrekh.
I kind of hope that those are tomb stalkers you are talking about, because then you can make a nice little Canoptek melee list. Which might not be competitive, but should be fun as hell to play.

Thanks so much for the information!

I believe the tomb stalkers are actually triarch stalkers.

It sounds like my best bet for investing into necrons would be to pick up a couple boxes of destroyers and maybe some more immortals. Probably another doomsday ark or two as well.

It looks like the lot I bought also has some Praetorian on sprue. Not sure how many yet, still sorting through everything!

Although I have a small Necron army, I mainly play Chaos. I haven't run into Necrons at tournaments yet. What do I do versus the triple doomscythe, triple doomsday ark lists that are now popular?

You die ?

Against quantum shielding any D2 weapon is effective, because the necron player needs to roll a 1, or a 2 if he uses quantum deflection. Necrons are helpless against psychic powers, smite them. Try to charge the DDA, it cant use its doomsday cannon with high power profile when it moves in the necron players turn. Any anti air tactic works against doom scythes.

Keep in mind though that the low power profile still hurts like hell. If you engage it with a vehicle it might be able to shrug it off though.
If it falls back it will also suffer -1 to hit due to the heavy weapons penalty UNLESS he's running Sautekh.

Flyers are flyers. Zone them off the table. They can only move in a straight line and turn 90 degrees at the start of their movement. If you flood the board with screens you can probably push them off the table. Either that or just shoot the crap out of them with heavy weapons. Necron flyers don't have quantum shielding, so lascannons hurt them.

You're probably going to have more trouble with DDA, as they are the better units.

The fun thing about DDA's is that even at close range they always have the firepower of 10 warriors to add to their low-power profile. While they're BEST firing from far away with high-power, they're still pretty brutal right up in close. This also gives them some flexibility if there are no appropriate targets for high-power shots.

Yeah, the arks have some surprisingly nice close range damage output.
Warriors + Ghost Ark actually have some good anti-infantry firepower. Its just that compared to tesla immortals + MWBD its not quite as cost effective, though I could be wrong.

Is there something I’m missing which prohibits Destroyers from riding in Night Scythes?

Bad idea, but legal.

sieGermans wrote:Is there something I’m missing which prohibits Destroyers from riding in Night Scythes?

vict0988 wrote:Bad idea, but legal.

Hmmmm, maybe not. I mean yeah, the Night Scythe is gonna die, but it protects them turn 1, at least until the transport is popped.

If it dies, just pop the strat and disembark them. I guess the real annoyance is that if it doesn't die, they still can't get out until turn 2.

Destroyers are one of the few units that don't need to be in any particular Dynasty to be good.

So you're better off making them Nephrekh then paying a CP to put a squad in Translocation Crpyt than investing valuable points in an imperfect solution like a Night Scythe

IanVanCheese wrote:

sieGermans wrote:Is there something I’m missing which prohibits Destroyers from riding in Night Scythes?

vict0988 wrote:Bad idea, but legal.

Hmmmm, maybe not. I mean yeah, the Night Scythe is gonna die, but it protects them turn 1, at least until the transport is popped.

If it dies, just pop the strat and disembark them. I guess the real annoyance is that if it doesn't die, they still can't get out until turn 2.

There are two things I’m working on here (haven’t solved it just yet):

1. CP are expensive for Necrons. A CP costs us about, and at least 130 points. Accordingly, putting Destroyers into Nephrek and CP deep striking them costs about the same as a Night Scythe.

2. I’m trying to leverage the unique de-coupled aspect of Necron transports that any of them can disembark anything in reserve. If built correctly this should allow you to use them as Swiss Army knives (kinda like old drop pods) and to protect your most essential units.

This requires that you field multiple and that you have different tools available for each purpose... the latter of which is a bit difficult for us since we don’t have a lot of options in our infantry.

Infantry :

Anrakyr
Imotekh
Szeras
Vargard
Orikan
Trazyn
Overlord
Lord
Cryptek
Destroyer lord
Deathmarks
Flayed ones
Lychguard
Praetorians
Destroyers
Immortals
Warriors

Really not a lot of options for infantry.

The real problem is that night scythes arent viable. You are paying 135 pts. for a unit which does pretty much nothing T1, except for killing some chaff models. You may even lose it, if you dont get first turn. You can only "disembark" one unit per turn, two if you spend 1CP. Which is ridiculous, i dont know any other transport which has that restriction of disembarking only one unit. At that point you may as well spend the CP to put the unit in a translocation crypt. You need more than one scythe, if you have lots of units on the tomb world, because you can only set up one unit with a stratagem when all scythes are destroyed.

Or save a CP and use a veil, which you should always have anyway. It may be one use only, but its still a very good relic, and you only really need to use it once.
I've used the night scythe a few times, and I have made the following observations -

1) Flyer movement rules are crap
2) Necron flyers are surprisingly fragile.

I have yet to play a game where the night scythe survives until the end of the game, unlike my other necron vehicles.
I might as well use a veil to get gauss immortals / lychguard in position.

Locking the translocation crypt to nephrekh is dumb and gak design. It should be made available to all factions, and nephrekh should get something that actually seems unique instead of a piece of tech that you'd think all necrons would have access to anyway.

If you had sufficient priority threats like T1 Charging wraiths, destroyers, veil of darkness teleported warriors it could be fun to send up 3 Night Scythes with some stuff like Lychguard on the tomb world.

If your opponent only aims for the Night Scythes its game over but providing they're intimidated by the destroyers and wraiths, you'll have at least one left to unload stuff into their lines direct

So I've been thinking - is it worth taking an Overlord if you don't have a bunch of tesla immortals on hand? I'm wondering if it might be better to go double cryptek for RP covering, instead of the Overlord + Cryptek configuration I usually do.
Keep in mind that I have only 5 tesla immortals.

It depends. +1 to hit on a 20 warrior blob isn't to be sniffed at. Likewise with Lords, that reroll 1 to wound bubble is solid.

dapperbandit wrote:
If you had sufficient priority threats like T1 Charging wraiths, destroyers, veil of darkness teleported warriors it could be fun to send up 3 Night Scythes with some stuff like Lychguard on the tomb world.

Its gonna be fun for your opponent because you are wasting 135x3 pts. Those night scythes shouldnt cost more than 70.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
So I've been thinking - is it worth taking an Overlord if you don't have a bunch of tesla immortals on hand? I'm wondering if it might be better to go double cryptek for RP covering, instead of the Overlord + Cryptek configuration I usually do.
Keep in mind that I have only 5 tesla immortals.

What does your average list look like?

Overlords are great for maxed out units of Lychguard and Tesla Immortals, Destroyers as well against Aeldari or flyers.

CCBs are are great in the same situations as Overlords if your opponent brings a bunch of assassins or snipers.

Cloakteks are great if you have at least one 200+ pt unit and a couple of vehicles. Chronoteks are great if you have at least one big unit of Scytheguard or Warriors.

Lords are great if you can fit 800+ pts worth of Infantry units within his aura after other modifiers. So Tesla Immortals count 1,5x if you have an Overlord that can MWBD them.

Destroyer Lords are great if you don't have any great options.

So do you usually run those 5x Teslamortals in an Outrider or as part of a Battalion with 40 Warriors? I can see a situation where I'd want a second Cryptek to babysit Destroyers and/or Tomb Blades and one dedicated for my Warriors, but I'd say the need for a Cryptek is rare and 2 Crypteks even more rare.

The exact contents tend to change around a lot because I don't like playing the same list twice in a row, but generally speaking its a single battalion consisting of a big squad of warriors, a GA, and 2 units of immortals. One tesla, one gauss. Because that's what I have on hand. For HQs its usually a cloaktek and an overlord.

Usually have destroyers because those are my favorite, ever since 3rd, and there will be typically scarabs.

Night Scythes are really unnecessary. If you want to save your Destroyers, either place them at the back of the field (out of range) or behind los blocking terrain. Then use the Veil of Darkness to put them in an effective spot.

 Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll wrote:
The fun thing about DDA's is that even at close range they always have the firepower of 10 warriors to add to their low-power profile. While they're BEST firing from far away with high-power, they're still pretty brutal right up in close. This also gives them some flexibility if there are no appropriate targets for high-power shots.

Yeah I have had success using dda as assault boat rather than sniper when there's no vehicle targets to shoot(or the ones that are near dead). The flayers are surprisingly useful.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Or save a CP and use a veil, which you should always have anyway. It may be one use only, but its still a very good relic, and you only really need to use it once.

I rarely want to use veil in first turn though. It's more useful generally to bail tripointed squad out of combat so I can actually shoot at the enemy. Albeit lack of good counter charge unit is big reason for that. But without either unit to counter charge or veil it's basically bye bye if good h2h unit gets into my lines with enough bodies as they will be locked in combat from there on thus unshootable.

Aren't Lychguard a counter charge unit? I find they do have some decent output, its just they are too slow to be used that well offensively.

Yeah. I just don't have them every time. Especially as they are soft and if they don't have warscythes(with them they are so soft they die when somebody says "boo") also rather low in damage output. Nothing like spending 3 combat phase trying to clear one stinking marine support character. 1 attack just doesn't cut it and good AP is pretty irrelevant in age of "if you want to have any survivivability you have inv save".

Lychguard have 2 attacks though.

2 Atacks each at S6 AP3 D1 still isnt bad, given the platform has T5 3+/4++/RP