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I played with a friends army of Necrons the other night and I must say they're a bit more fun to use when you're on the other side of the table (it sucked playing Orks vs. Crons).

I was giving it some thought and honestly I was thinking that if you build the list right there wouldn't be a lot that Necrons couldn't take down except three armies: Iron Warriors, Deathwing and Godzilla Nids with 2+ saves where you can get em.

Other than that, you're looking at an army that shouldn't have too much trouble walking all over Eldar (at least when the new codex comes out and Seer Councils and 3 Shot Starcannons go bye bye), DE, Orks, Tau, Guard, and possibly could out do most Marine armies, leaving some CC Chaos armies out in the dust (well at least those that use Demons other than Demonettes). 

Sure there are some spoilers there, but not a whole lot.  I was thining something with two large squads of Warriors, 2 Lords (one destroyer w/ Orb+Warsythe, one with Veil + Orb), a Monolith, and some Destroyers/Immortals and scarabs could really be a beast to take on all comers.

The only downside is that I can't allow myself to collect another army otherwise these guys seem pretty interesting and tough to boot.

They're a competitive army, but they just aren't going to win the tough matchups. Too many marine builds will give them fits.

It is a very nice list, my brother plays that exact one. It is really good in that it can oversaturate the enemy with threats on turn one. The monolith's whip, the destroyers, the immortals, scarabs, and a veiling warriror squad all can be causing pain on turn one, or at the very least turn two. The problem is that if you stay calm and make your target priority rolls, you can drop whole squads at a time and prevent WBB's.

You can probably make a top ten with them. They can win consistantly enough but it's hard for them to take top tournament spots because of victory conditions. You will struggle to win by more than just solid victory's and usually need massacres to pull a top seed.

I've found it's one of the hardest armies out there. They (can) have more mobility than nearly any other army out there. They can get objectives, very resilient, has one of the best vehicles in the game and can lay down very impressive amounts of fire (trying to make up for lack of AP).

In two words: very competitive.

A necron player won the san diego 40K league last time (about 30 players each season) against some really good players with brutal lists.

He ran two lords with orbs, one with veil,

two squads of warriors,

max immortals

Simple, but tough, he beat zilla nids, chaos, shooty marines, tau, all played by very good genearls as well.

Dont collect Necrons. They are cheese, and loads of powergamers play them!

Thanks xenos, it's great to know that in your mind Necrons are powergaming cheese while a 16 AC SM list is perfectly acceptable.

Necrons are, as said, a mixed bag. They possess great power, but at the same time are so expensive that they can have trouble getting decent VP margins. our local Necron player does well, but struggles to get much better than a minor victory.

My 1500pt list only contains 12 assault cannons actually, which is perfectly acceptable. My 1000pt list contains 9, and my 2000pt list contains 14. Nowhere in any of my lists do I have 16 assault cannons.

And anyway, my assault cannons dont get back up when they are dead. With necrons, they are as hard to kill as space marines, and they still get back up on a 4+. Throw in the gauss weapon rule for a little extra cheese, and a lord with res orb to really make the opponant throw up at the sight of so much dairy produce.

Classic definition of cheese-They can do something that my army can't.

Actually, its not just that. They also get WBB for FREE. Every model has this ability for FREE!! Its almost as bad as the cheese of the death company!

It's hard to take someone seriously who's taking 14 assault cannons and still can't deal with necrons.

Actually, I usually draw against them. I use my land speeders maneuvarability to stay out of their ranges, and just hide my dreads behind area terrain.

14 Assault Cannons may be tough, but remember they still get back up from rending hits outside combat. I also have no way to kill the monolith, so they get more WBB rolls from there. Doing the math..

14 Assault Cannons gets 48 shots, 32 hits, of which 8 are rending. The remaining 24 hits cause 20 wounds, which means approximatly 7 more deaths. So 15 dead in total, of which 7.5 get back up (lets say 7).

So, out of all my assault cannon fire, ive killed 8 necrons. The heavy bolters on the speeders only cause another 4 dead, 2 dead after WBB. We are looking at 10 dead necrons. 180pts. Whoppee *fudge*ing doo! Now they all turn round and gauss cannon the hell out of me!

It wouldn't be so bad if all he had was warriors, I could stay out of their ranges and shoot them to bits, killing 1 whole squad at a time. But the destroyers get back up with a res orb even if you kill an entire squad of them! (I was unsure about this, so I asked my necron opponant, and he said a res orb always allows them to get back up, whether it be from instant death, or the entire squad been wiped out). So I kill his destroyers, but then half get back up, then a further half get back up through the monolith, then shoot me the same turn! Dont tell me that isnt cheese, because it is!!

Posted By burnthexenos on 08/23/2006 8:47 PM
Actually, its not just that. They also get WBB for FREE. Every model has this ability for FREE!! Its almost as bad as the cheese of the death company!

Uh, Necrons Warriors and Space Marines have basically the same stats.  Necrons cost 3 points more.  Space Marines have ATSKNF, special and heavy weapon options, unit leader options, and transport options.  Necrons have WBB, oh yeah and Phase Out.  So Space Marines get a bunch of special stuff Necrons can't, while Necrons get an in play bonus, and then pay 3 points for WBB.  So where's the free?

And playing against a cheater doesn't make the army list broken.

Necrons are in my opinion the best army in the game. With the veil lord, 30 immortals and two monolith build (whatever else is superfluous really).

Otherwise they're still top tier, but going to lose to some armies.

The problem is the necron army is pretty boring to play. Like, mega boring.

Posted By burnthexenos on 08/23/2006 8:47 PM
Actually, its not just that. They also get WBB for FREE. Every model has this ability for FREE!! Its almost as bad as the cheese of the death company!

OH NOES!!11!!!

Necrons getting WBB for FREE?!?!  My god, their statsline is on par with (if not a little worse than - the Master fixes the LD) a SM, they have no heavy or special weapon options, they lack transport options, they have no character upgrades, and yet they cost more and lack ATSKNF - an ability that is often regarded as better than fearless.

So,
+ Gauss shooting (good)
+ WBB (good,but denied by a good cross section of shooting, unless you spend a significant amount of points to protect one, maybe two units)
- No ATSKNF
- No weapon options
- No Transport options
- No character options
- More expensive

Kill me now, the Necrons are just too cheesy.

Wait a second? Necrons are cheesy but you take TWELVE BLOODY ASSAULT CANNONS AT 1500 POINTS?

If you played with my gaming group (who are very sensitive to cheese armies in our friendly games) you would get beaten with the BGB till you cried. Even at a tournament you'd get looks. 12 Assault Cannons at 1500 points is no where near "acceptable" if you want to talk about what's cheese and what's not cheese, it's a powered up army no way you slice it. Sure it's alright for tournaments and stuff or if you're playing "hard" armies for fun, but I don't see how you could sit there with a straight face and tell me Necrons are broken but an army with 12 Assault Cannons at 1500 Points is "acceptable".

Back on topic, I really don't see how they're a "boring" army. I love the mobility they have, as IMO more mobility = more fun most of the time.

I'm guessing the 30 Immortal + 2 Liths build is for 1850, as that seems pricey as hell. I was actually thinking about maybe two Veil Lords and leaving the 'Liths at home to deal with getting a better phase out count.

Unfortunately.....or fortunately vails are 1 per army.

My favourite army list (to be built in the future) would be:

Veil/orb lord

10 warriors
10 warriors

8 immortals
8 immortals
8 immortals

10 Scarabs with disruption fields
6 Scarabs
5 Scarabs

Monolith

All this for 1750, or dropping a few immortals and scarabs for 2 heavy destroyers just for flavour, though I fear getting much use from them would be difficult, atleast in alpha missions where you want to take quarters they would pay off.

Staying near the orb if possible and out of los would make them hard to kill even with indirect fire.

And taking out a Lemun Russ or Land raider on turn 2 with the disruption field scarabs would just be awsome....course you would also assualt a lone squad nearby to avoid taking any return fire

Actually seems a relatively easy army to build and paint so I might just have to order it on saturday...... though the scarabs might be hard to come by....

You could order the scarab sprue I bet.

I think at 1750 that is one of the toughest armies in the game V. I can't imagine anyone saying it is not a contender for the prize in any case.

You gotta watch it with those scarabs though man. They evaporate under Godzilla fire, or assault cannons. You can see a fairly significant chunk of points gone in one phase.

In your list, I think I would rather drop the 10 scarabs and a couple other scarabs to get another monolith

Perhaps, but everyone uses liths, who uses scarabs like that!?

I like to be a tad original.

Scarabas have a sprue?

I thought they where like tyranid rippers and tau drones, you just get one or two on each sprue, like with the warrior and destroyer sprues....or whatever else comes in plastic.

I guess it might just be on the Warrior sprue. I know they come in boxes of warriors, maybe destroyers too.

Yeah, I guess it'd be more original at least. It'd definitely win more than it lost.

Yeah they're on the warrior sprue and that's it. However you can use less per base and other creative means (greenstuff molds, etc.) to create more then you'd normally be able to.

Also keep the scarabs far far away from a hellhound. The thing will obliterate scarab squads, even if it misses. Flamer shoots at a squad of 8 scarab bases, bases are spread out so it only nicks 4 of them. Flamer hits, all four +2 wounds are rolled. 8 Scarab stands removed if all are in range.

I have been playing necrons for awhile now. Trust me, theyre boring as hell to play. Its not to say there isnt thinking involved, because there most certainly is alot of thinking just to prevent the bots from phasing out, let aone pulling a win sometimes.

Thats the nature of necrons. The order and law of the bots are so tight, that there is not room for creative variation in list building.

Mauleed has a good point, its a tough match up against the good streamlined lists.

Not to mention, its the ultimate starter army. They have the very forgiving stats and tactics that the SM possess, but you also get the easy paint scheme to boot. You can paint these suckers up to a very high quality and have a 1500 point army in less than a month. I did.

I've got a necron army (or rather my son does), and I've played it a few times myself.

Not a particularly exciting army to play. After he accidentally smashed his monolith with the car trunk hinge, I lost any interest in trying it again.

I can see why people see it as a boring army to play against since they have to ignore most other things and just go for phase out, which can be very hard since Necron lists are built to just grind away at you with troops that won't die.

As far as playing with it, I figure with all the mobility that it should be relatively fun even if there isn't a whole lot of variation. The only down side is that I can see Immortals being better than Destroyers and it's pretty cheap to get Destroyers with the Battleforce, so the idea of a quick and cheap army goes out the window.

Hey Vsurma, check out Battlewagon bit for those scarabs, that is a great site. they may not have necron stuff, but it is worth a look.

If not, you can always ebay

Is there a way to make plastic immortals? I might get into necrons again... I borrowed an army for a little while to give them a spin. If I could I'd try a 30 immortal force with lots of destroyers. Can you imagine? 10 immortals with a veil and the medicae strategem?

Also, I can't tell if burnthexenos is an imbecile, or just a witty guy, because this *has* to be self-parody...

Burnthexenos, asides from the 14 assault cannon army *cough* lame *cough*, is there anything out there that isn't "broken". *rolls eyes*

We have a guy in my group who plays Nids, and Crons. He said the otherday that he basically refuses to play Crons anymore, because no one can beat him. So guys, what is a Marine list (excluding deathwing) that I can take him down with?

Tooling up to beat necrons with Marines? I'd probably take 3x1 Speeder, Libby + 2 AC Termy Retinue in Pod, maybe another termy squad, 4 or 5 6 Man Las/Plas squads, a 6 Man 3ML Dev Squad.

If you really wanted to piss off the Necron player take the Las/Plas squads, the termy+ assault cannon deal, and then throw some Assault Terminators in drop pods and watch the Necron player cry. The biggest weakness the Necrons have is fighting 2+ Saves, especially 2+ Saves that assault them.