Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Anrakyr has no dynasty, looks like you can't embark him anywhere.

Vehicles now are locked in combat, right? And have to fall back to get out?

So if I bring a Tesseract Vault and it is charged, its essentially stuck until I can gun down its pursuing monsters while they tear hole after hole in that thing. (It's 6+ WS and 3 attacks isn't really making a difference)

Though vehicles have overwatch now, right?

Yo guys,

I made this Necron list builder thing to facilitate points calculation.

There are 3 sample armies in there to demonstrate what you can do. Simply make a copy of it on your own drive and have fun!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qGvU42yzTLfD1onl_VSj6DonieJZ8NLUy41ZqGiEi8s/edit

It can fall back sure, but its kept out of the game and will get charged again

My thought is that independent characters aren't beat sticks anymore, they are buff dispensers, at least for necrons. As a buff dispenser Nemesor Zahndrekh is pretty unequaled , he has MWBD, a random buff that is pretty sexy (and can stack), and can he can copy a nearby opponent's auras, like say a mad doks FnP or a space marine ancients +1 attack. He is pricey, but on good rounds he will be doing the work of two overlords. There is a lot of synergy between him and vargard Obyron, and plenty of opportunity for mischief with the ghost walk mantle. Outside of those two the other characters seem more situational.

The Ghost Ark is growing on me. QS is better than I initially thought for a start. Being able to shoot it's 10 flayers after moving 12 is decent firepower and it's resurrection ability used with a 20 warrior blob is pretty good.

A res orb-ish that goes off every turn (for one unit) AFTER movement is very handy. With it's 12" move it can bring the healing where its needed and you can move your crypteks in range before it goes off.

It's also an excellent way to move characters in range of units that have deep struck or been moved ahead. Say you are putting a couple of infantry units forward with the Deceiver and/or a Monolith; they won't have the cryptek and res orb support that makes them shine, so after being punished for getting so close to the enemy they only get a 5+ re-an. A ghost ark that's moved up behind can have a cryptek disembark the turn after you have been abussed and move + advance towards the warriors. The ghost ark can then move in and do a second reanimation roll at 4+.

I also just realised that if you sit the deceiver in the middle of 20 warrior unit that he has moved into 12" range then when the enemy charges the warriors he can perform an heroic intervention! That's some awesome protection for the warriors.

torblind wrote:
Vehicles now are locked in combat, right? And have to fall back to get out?

So if I bring a Tesseract Vault and it is charged, its essentially stuck until I can gun down its pursuing monsters while they tear hole after hole in that thing. (It's 6+ WS and 3 attacks isn't really making a difference)

Though vehicles have overwatch now, right?

The Vault (alongside all our other vehicles, hooray for skimmers) has the Fly keyword, so it can shoot as it's falling back. Bit of a bonus we get over the plebs with land-locked tanks.

Do you have to get an Overlord separately from the CCB? The datasheet seems pretty unclear.

If we do have a separate Overlord, then that means we've got MWBD on a 12" move platform, which seems pretty good for getting it where you want it.

 Grimgold wrote:
My thought is that independent characters aren't beat sticks anymore, they are buff dispensers, at least for necrons.

Honestly, the biggest change for me is that Necron HQs finally make me want to take them.

In 7th, every single one felt like a tax. They weren't effective in combat, they weren't effective at range, they had no or negligible buffs etc.

In 8th though, their standard weapons are decent in both shooting and melee, and the new to-hit mechanic means D. Lords and Overlords are now much more accurate with warscythes or such (and the former is pretty damn fast). What's more, there are a lot of good buffs hanging around.- Overlords can improve a unit each turn, D. Lords boost Destroyers, Crypteks improve both RP and invulnerable saves.

I've gone from not wanting to include HQs beyond the bare minimum to worrying about how many points I can afford to spend on all the HQs I want.

The only HQ that doesn't appeal to me at all is the Necron Lord. I just don't see the point over an Overlord or Cryptek.

Yeah, our HQs are now amazing force multipliers. You'd want a variety of them to get all of those buffs out.
The Necron Lord is good for morale and res orb carrying, as res orbs are now one use only. They are a bit cheaper than overlords, so you can theoretically have more orbs with lords than overlords.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Yeah, our HQs are now amazing force multipliers. You'd want a variety of them to get all of those buffs out.
The Necron Lord is good for morale and res orb carrying, as res orbs are now one use only. They are a bit cheaper than overlords, so you can theoretically have more orbs with lords than overlords.

Between ld 10 and command points to pass morale I'm still not seeing the Lord's use.

 buddha wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Yeah, our HQs are now amazing force multipliers. You'd want a variety of them to get all of those buffs out.
The Necron Lord is good for morale and res orb carrying, as res orbs are now one use only. They are a bit cheaper than overlords, so you can theoretically have more orbs with lords than overlords.

Between ld 10 and command points to pass morale I'm still not seeing the Lord's use.

If you take enough casualties having a reroll might be a good thing.
You can't regen command points, right? So anything that allows you to save them for something else is a good thing.
You need to take at least 5 causalities in order for morale to become a concern. As warriors only have 4+ saves, it is quite possible for them to lose that many. Anything that ensures they stick around long enough for their RP rolls is a good thing.

 Doctarro wrote:
Do you have to get an Overlord separately from the CCB? The datasheet seems pretty unclear.

If we do have a separate Overlord, then that means we've got MWBD on a 12" move platform, which seems pretty good for getting it where you want it.

CCB already has MWBD on steroids, called wave of command, it's a 12 " bubble


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Arachnofiend wrote:

torblind wrote:
Vehicles now are locked in combat, right? And have to fall back to get out?

So if I bring a Tesseract Vault and it is charged, its essentially stuck until I can gun down its pursuing monsters while they tear hole after hole in that thing. (It's 6+ WS and 3 attacks isn't really making a difference)

Though vehicles have overwatch now, right?

The Vault (alongside all our other vehicles, hooray for skimmers) has the Fly keyword, so it can shoot as it's falling back. Bit of a bonus we get over the plebs with land-locked tanks.

Ah yes, 20 S7 tesla shots should leave a dent on any charger.

Grimgold wrote:My thought is that independent characters aren't beat sticks anymore, they are buff dispensers, at least for necrons. As a buff dispenser Nemesor Zahndrekh is pretty unequaled , he has MWBD, a random buff that is pretty sexy (and can stack), and can he can copy a nearby opponent's auras, like say a mad doks FnP or a space marine ancients +1 attack. He is pricey, but on good rounds he will be doing the work of two overlords. There is a lot of synergy between him and vargard Obyron, and plenty of opportunity for mischief with the ghost walk mantle. Outside of those two the other characters seem more situational.

The nice thing is - they're both. An Overlord that gets in with a Warscythe is beating on anything not a Monster on 2+/3+ with the Warscythe. Even the Staff is fine in combat and can be shot (even when running!). It never feels bad to bring an HQ now.

torblind wrote:

 Doctarro wrote:
Do you have to get an Overlord separately from the CCB? The datasheet seems pretty unclear.

If we do have a separate Overlord, then that means we've got MWBD on a 12" move platform, which seems pretty good for getting it where you want it.

CCB already has MWBD on steroids, called wave of command, it's a 12 " bubble

Nope, only affects one unit. It has a 12" range as opposed to MWBD on 6", though.

torblind wrote:Automatically Appended Next Post:

Arachnofiend wrote:

torblind wrote:
Vehicles now are locked in combat, right? And have to fall back to get out?

So if I bring a Tesseract Vault and it is charged, its essentially stuck until I can gun down its pursuing monsters while they tear hole after hole in that thing. (It's 6+ WS and 3 attacks isn't really making a difference)

Though vehicles have overwatch now, right?

The Vault (alongside all our other vehicles, hooray for skimmers) has the Fly keyword, so it can shoot as it's falling back. Bit of a bonus we get over the plebs with land-locked tanks.

Ah yes, 20 S7 tesla shots should leave a dent on any charger.

Another plus for the Monolith as well - it has 20 Overwatch shots and then can fall back and shoot at full BS. Granted it still does suck that it's not 3+ at full, but still, that's a lot of blasts. Not to mention the Eternity Gate "Overwatch".

 buddha wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Yeah, our HQs are now amazing force multipliers. You'd want a variety of them to get all of those buffs out.
The Necron Lord is good for morale and res orb carrying, as res orbs are now one use only. They are a bit cheaper than overlords, so you can theoretically have more orbs with lords than overlords.

Between ld 10 and command points to pass morale I'm still not seeing the Lord's use.

Lords are almost essential if you're running 10 man units, and if you're running Immortals and things like Praets, Deathmarks and Lychguard why wouldn't you be.

2 points to pass a Morale check is a lot, the average Necron army will have 4 CPs as getting a brigade is quite tricky. I'm thinking you'll see it reserved more for your big 20 man warrior/flayed one type blocks that have eaten a turns worth of damage and lost ~15 or so models, or 9 out of 10 Lychguard, where burning the 2 CP is the difference between taking the unit off the board and you bringing back 75% of the casualties next turn with a res orb/ghost ark.

Where Lords come in is the 10 man squads as above. Losing 7 or 8 models is the danger zone. 7 models and rolling a 6 for morale will wipe the unit. 8 models and rolling 4+ will wipe the unit. The Lord is essential for the reroll to hedge against these outcomes - yes you can burn 1 CP for the same effect, but CPs are a precious resource, you want those CP rerolls for whiffed D6 damage rolls, skill checks, and the like.

The Lord is also a slot for a Res-Orb, which can be taken by a Cryptek, but not if you've gone for a named one.

torblind wrote:

 Doctarro wrote:
Do you have to get an Overlord separately from the CCB? The datasheet seems pretty unclear.

If we do have a separate Overlord, then that means we've got MWBD on a 12" move platform, which seems pretty good for getting it where you want it.

CCB already has MWBD on steroids, called wave of command, it's a 12 " bubble

Yeah, sorry I meant having MWBD in addition to Wave of Command, getting you two units with the buff. If the Overlord is included in the cost printed for the CCB, that's pretty good, a big movement upgrade for 37 points.

The Problem with CCB is that your lord is pretty exposed, because he can't hide behind other units because he is not a character. he also does not have a phase shifter or a phylactery, and the barges are on the level of dreadnoughts when it comes to durability, which is to say it's not impossible for a devastator squad to polish him off in a round. Also since he loses character lychguard can't protect him either. As soon as your opponent watches you do command wave from the barge he will drop what he is doing and nuke it off of the face of the earth.

Halfpast_Yellow wrote:

 buddha wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Yeah, our HQs are now amazing force multipliers. You'd want a variety of them to get all of those buffs out.
The Necron Lord is good for morale and res orb carrying, as res orbs are now one use only. They are a bit cheaper than overlords, so you can theoretically have more orbs with lords than overlords.

Between ld 10 and command points to pass morale I'm still not seeing the Lord's use.

Lords are almost essential if you're running 10 man units, and if you're running Immortals and things like Praets, Deathmarks and Lychguard why wouldn't you be.

2 points to pass a Morale check is a lot, the average Necron army will have 4 CPs as getting a brigade is quite tricky. I'm thinking you'll see it reserved more for your big 20 man warrior/flayed one type blocks that have eaten a turns worth of damage and lost ~15 or so models, or 9 out of 10 Lychguard, where burning the 2 CP is the difference between taking the unit off the board and you bringing back 75% of the casualties next turn with a res orb/ghost ark.

Where Lords come in is the 10 man squads as above. Losing 7 or 8 models is the danger zone. 7 models and rolling a 6 for morale will wipe the unit. 8 models and rolling 4+ will wipe the unit. The Lord is essential for the reroll to hedge against these outcomes - yes you can burn 1 CP for the same effect, but CPs are a precious resource, you want those CP rerolls for whiffed D6 damage rolls, skill checks, and the like.

The Lord is also a slot for a Res-Orb, which can be taken by a Cryptek, but not if you've gone for a named one.

I'm definitely not arguing morale control is great but the lord just lets you re-roll a dice and if you've taken a lot of losses this round that sure as heck isn't a reliable savior. Indeed, for his point cost I'd rather just have more guys,

An improved version for the offensive mathhammering:

Thanks to the original creator!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HA7fEpvn5633-AHO_YKdaLw_lIgKKRtE0fBPv3JKXI8/edit?usp=sharing

This sheet does some things: you input the T, W, Sv, invuln and number of models of that type at the top, then it calculates 3 things: the amount of points you would need to sink into a specific unit to deal 1 dmg to that foe, how many unsaved wounds a specific number of modles of each type would inflict opon that enemy and how many points you would need to sink soley into one model type to statistically kill that amount of foes. To do this it uses some values that are just conveniant inputs made by me and that need to be adjusted to compare the performance of units in your armies: the "units size" column. The point price is independent of this, but the number of total dmg dealt is not. Therfore you can handily see with one sheet what would be the optimal unit to attack that given foe, and how many wounds each of your described units would deal.

The most efficient 25% units are marked with a green background, the top 25% units regarding amount of dmg dealt is marked with orange text.

The third thing this shows you is how many points you need to spend on a single unit type to kill of some foe. This uses the # of enemy models input, and highlights the most efficient unit (in its own column) with red text.

Ive tried to get realistic values that kind of represent battle field situations while still beeing comparative. This results in some arbitrarily pre set unit sizes youre free to change to get unsaved wounds per unit of this size that better match your needs - and resulted in the quirk that ive put in the obelisk at half its cost with half its shots. The "points per unsaved wound" metric is universally aplicable without taking any unit numbers (neither friend nor foe) into account and are mostly relevant if youre min/maxing against a certain type.

At the time of sharing this sheet represents the battle between 20 genestealer and 10 flaye ones and shows you:
- the most efficient (points wize) way to deal with genestealers is flayed ones, But you need 315points of them to kill one 230points blob of genestealers. This is roughly 16pts per wound - which is more than the 12pts the genstealer cost. :(
Then if you look at the plaing field at the bottom you see that this 20 genestealer put out exaktly 20 unsaved wounds against units with the stat line of flayed ones.
I conclued that its inefficient to field 20man flayed ones against them! Looking at the next best options we see that immortals with tesla are pretty close regarding wounds per points: 19pts per wound by normal tesla immortals, and 16 by ones that are buffed by an overlord with his mwbd. This is the only exception made to points calculations in the sheet so faar: the "Immortal Tesla buffed" column not only calculates the dmg delt by the immortals divided by there cost, but adds a naked overlord (without adding any dmg done by him) together with its buff* and its bare points costs.
Note: the amount(#) number in the lower part (my playing field) is not used in any way in the version shared. Add your own calculations
This shows me, that i either can use 15model units of flayed ones and ABSOLUTLY have to strike before the genestealers - or i can put the poinst of 5 of this FOs into tesla imortals (and then some) and use a combination of 10 Immortals and 10 FO to reliably kill a whole 20 man unit of genestealers. This minimizes lost points on flayed ones if they dont charge first, and lets me take more Immortals (which are better facing several other unit types).

Plugging in another target, e.g. a Land Raider with T8 W16 2+ we see that our most efficient way of deal with such kind of thread would be a Nightbringer - if only its CC weapon and Gaze of Death would hurt vehicles on a 2+. This is lazyness on my part - you have to look at the "points needed to kill that foe" list manually and search for the smales entry to get the "best" unit to deal with it. In this case its heavy destroyers followed by sword and bord guards (740pts and 810). Using the other stats we can also see that the nightbringer is actually our second best bet against such beastialities - between gaze of death and his CC attacks he deals 4.9 wounds (47pts/wound), which is a litle bit cheaper than the sword and board guards 47pts/wound - a unit of 10 of them deals tasty 6 wounds in CC at 50pts/wound.

With a land rader as target we now can make a real ocmparation between doomsday arks and doom scythes: the ark puts out 3.1 wounds with its big gun and 1 wound with the smaler profile + the 2 gaus flayer arrays at 24'' (i didnt include other configurations since this are the ones i want to compare - the low energy shot has 24'' range now) at 65 or 195 points per wound, the domm scyth deals 2.6 wounds with its death ray and 0.4 with the tesla destructor = 3 wounds at 72pts each.


What ive found out playing with this: there are some corner cases in which the nightbringer actually achives it to cost less than the unit he kills, but most of the time we need 2-3 times the points to destroy things. But thus faar ive only testet against marines and some tyranids.
Marine vehicles are depressing: a 70pt Rhino needs 270pts of sword and board guard,385pts of heavy destroyers, 550pts of stalkers with a heat ray, or 540pts rapid fire gauss warriors (thats 1080 pts at > 12'' thats 45 or 90(!)) or 260pts of NIghtbringer ( = 2 shooting + 1 CC phase).

Next thing ill do (after the next 1...n beer) is to try to get an overview of what weapons we will face , and see how resilent we are against them. Will be hard to factor in RP but hopefully other races have to spend even more points on killing us than we spend on killing them. So faar im really not impressed -.-

[Edit:] hopefully im not disclosing too much with this google spread sheet, havnt used that publicly jet.

Nice I do love improved, maybe add a column for how many rounds it takes the unit to kill the target?

 Adam Spielmann wrote:

torblind wrote:
We are back with Tesla in overwatch now, right?

It depends a lot on how the +1/-1 to hit is worded.

Mathematically speaking, I think that a +1 to hit would prevent us from using abilities that allow us to re-roll ones. as a roll of 1 would be a "2" and a roll of 6 would be a "7".

Conversely, with a -1 to hit, a roll of 6 would be a "5". It's all about how it is worded.

Re-rolls happen before modifiers (if any) are applied.

I've been toying around with powergame ideas for the 'Necron Brigade', seeing what sort of reasonable army could be fielded to access the 9+ CPs in a 3000 or less point game.

So far I've come up with

Brigade Detachment:

Zandrekh
Obyron
Orikan the Diviner

10 Immortals with Tesla
10 Immortals with Tesla
10 Immortals with Tesla
10 Immortals with Gauss
10 Immortals with Gauss
10 Immortals with Gauss

Deciever
Triarch Stalker with Twin Heavy Guass
Triarch Stalker with Twin Heavy Guass

3 Scarab
3 Scarab
3 Scarab

Doomsday Ark
Doomsday Ark
Doomsday Ark

with an Outrider Detachment:
Lord with Hyperphase sword
3 Scarab
3 Scarab
3 Scarab

3000 exactly netting 10 CPs.

Seems pretty brutal to me.

 Grimgold wrote:
Nice I do love improved, maybe add a column for how many rounds it takes the unit to kill the target?

I think the "how many points do i need of this model" way of thinking is more flexible and makes it easier to understand situations - but its nothing i commonly see in this forum so ive added the "turns to kill" metric

Hmm GA not being open topped isn't that great. I suppose you can just have the 10 dudes out front, shooting until they start to take damage, then they can just embark and RP up until back to full strength, then get back out again and keep shooting?

 buddha wrote:


I'm definitely not arguing morale control is great but the lord just lets you re-roll a dice and if you've taken a lot of losses this round that sure as heck isn't a reliable savior. Indeed, for his point cost I'd rather just have more guys,

A Lord with a Hyperphase is just 76 points, approx 4 Immortals. With the way morale and resurrection works, that reroll just has to save a unit once for him to have saved his total value through the The Lord's Will

Here's how it works.

You have 10 Immortals, the enemy kills 8. You test for morale, roll a 4. 4+8-10LD = 2 more dead Immortals, you lose a unit.
Or, you reroll and get a 3. 3+8-10= 1 dead Immortal, leaving 1. Now it's your turn, and you reroll Res for 9 Immortals on a 4+ thanks to a handy Cryptek. You still have a unit of 5-6 Immortals with possible further regeneration.

If you have a unit of 10 and lose 9, it's an 84% chance to lose your unit, a Lord changes this to 68%
If you have a unit of 10 and lose 8, it's a 50% chance to lose your unit, a Lord changes this to 25%
If you have a unit of 10 and lose 7, it's a 16% chance to lose your unit, a Lord changes this to 2.7%

Lords are worth it, because unlike any other army, keeping a unit in the game doesn't just mean keeping 1 or 2 models around, but 5-6 thanks to immediate resurrection following a morale test.

An efficient cost to power ratio for an Immortal based army is a Battalion detachment of

Cryptek + Staff of Light
Lord + Hyperphase
10 Immortals
10 Immortals
10 Immortals

at 690 points giving 3 CP.

That gives a lot of room and flexibility to add in one or two 1CP detachments of toys to get a strong 4 or 5CP force in a 1500-2000 point game.

We should probably start a thread in general for discussing our 8th ed changes, 32 pages is a tab bit intimidating for people coming for a quick run down.

I was thinking of just starting a new tactica page when 8th drops fully tbh

Given that we have the rules, now seems as good a time as any.

Skoff's has done a really good job with keeping this one going, changing the heading and all that, see if he wants to make the next one

Also one other interesting thing for target priority, the biggest threats to your QS vehicles come from Str 7 weapons like Autocannons and Plasma. Taking them out first is a big deal for keeping your vehicles in play.

A real danger is the revamped Predator with Autocannon and HBs - one of these firing with some reasonable rolls could cripple a Stalker, perhaps even an Ark in one round.
Plasma is also scary, especially on overcharge which is fairly easy to achieve safely with Space Marine aura models allowing them to reroll 1's. Hitting well, wounding on 3s, no save, consistent 2 damage that can easily bypass most of your quantum shielding saves.