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So a friend has a small necron army, and i'm still pretty low on marines so for now our games are around 500-800 points using FOC. Now i've been out the game since 4th edition and was never that competative then so in terms of strategy i'm still a complete novice. That said i can hold my own against CSM and other C:SM pretty well. but these bloody necrons are making my poor ultramarines run crying to the emperor.

So i'm calling on you for some tactical advice for taking out these pescky space skellys. I have tried varying my lists such as using a cheap dev squad to try to wipe out units and stop them getting back up. Scouts to hold up warriors in combat over objectives and a librarian to teleport me around and boost some bad ass fire power. My most effective list had a unit of 5 termies with an assault cannon mow down a pretty chunk of his warriors, but in the mean time my other troops got the crap kicked out of em!

I have a good veriety of models at my disposal so any advice i should be able to act upon!
Thanks!

For one thing, space marines struggle at lower point games. Anything less then 1k is hard for them. Necrons, exept for overlords, are bad in combat, so scout squads with combat weapons might be a good idea. I don't think terminators are a good idea at such low points. They're just to much of your list. If you give us an example of your list, or if you are still trying variations, the style of space marines you play, we can give more advice.

Can you give us an idea of his list he normally plays

Also the models you have access to.

Agree with previous about terminators being too expensive for 500pts. In my opinion, you should never take terminators in a game of less than 1500 points. While they're good for what they do, they're slow, expensive, and non scoring and to use them effectively you either need an assault vehicle (for assault termies) or something with a teleport homer/beacon (for shooty termies) to get them into the fight quickly. Unless you get purge the alien as your mission, I can already tell you that you're not going to have enough bodies on the table for what you need to do. In low point games, scouts with sniper rifles, missile launchers, and camo cloaks have always been a good choice for me. Also, something to consider would be a thunderfire cannon. It's pretty punishing, versatile and is stupid cheap (plus you can use the techmarine to fortify some ruins for your snipers ). This is my 2 cents for low point games, but as the other said, it would be easier to see what you have to pick from and what you usually work with.

An example Marine List:
Librarian - 100
5 scouts (snipers, cloaks, ML)
5 Scouts (CC weps HB)
10 Devastators, 3 ML

Opponents necrons (roughly)
Lord with orb/ some shooty thing (cant remember what but it had high AP)
2x squads of 8 warriors
5 scarab bases
Waraith
5 or 6 immortals

I have access to:
Captain
Chaplain
Jump Chaplain
Librarian
Terminator Librarian
loads of tactical marines (60ish) with all heavy and special weapon options (enough to make a dev squad)
11 scout snipers, 9 CC scouts, 1 HB scout and 1 ML scout.
5 termies (including assault cannon and a chainfist)
Dreadnought w/ plasma cannon
landspeeder (not yet assembled)
Rhino
Drop pod

Scouts shouldn't mix CC weapons and heavy weapons. Devs should be maxed in heavy weapons before they add more guys. I would drop some dev meat shields to add some more scouts to both squads.

What's the Necron fielding?

 stargasm wrote:


Opponents necrons (roughly)
Lord with orb/ some shooty thing (cant remember what but it had high AP)
2x squads of 8 warriors
5 scarab bases
Waraith
5 or 6 immortals

 Fafnir13 wrote:
What's the Necron fielding?

That

Heavy flamers are pretty okay vs necron warriors if you get to do some damage with them before the rapid fire gauss kills you. Speeders can be helpful for that. Whirlwind does that kind of thing too and the dakka pred isn't an awful idea.

Immortals tend to be trickier. Your best hope is either focus firing them off the board or getting something into assault with them.

Poor c:sm. They just aren't in a good way. Blocking with rhinos might help and using combat tactics to run away from assaults and rapid fire again is useful.

Most necrons have a 4+ save and heavy bolters are AP 4 so get plenty of them and you can mow down the warriors with no problem and get in close with scouts to hold them up until your heavy bolters finish with other units.

So maybe use a HB dev squad or even just put them in tactical squads? sounds a good plan.

I'd spam missiles at low points levels. You can use blast templates if he clumps up, Instant death the Wraith, etc.

Make sure to take a Librarian with Null Zone to make that Wraith reroll his Invuln.

As always, with necrons, focus fire one unit down at a time. If you don't finish the job, a few of the might come back.

If you are running CCW Scouts, don't take a heavy weapon.

If the Lord doesn't take his 2+ save item, make sure to blow him off the table too.

If I were the necron player I'd screen my warriors with the immortals, making the ap4 much less effective.

12 heavy bolter shots kills a little more than 3 warriors per turn if the warriors have cover. What's really to worry about is the later +5 rp roll. Focus fire or having something close in is your best bet.

It's too bad your scoring options are so costly and mediocre. I wonder if the land speeder transport would be any use.
Cassius and a group of sternguard squad might help.

I would be tempted to take a Chaplain instead of a Librarian. That extra punch in close combat will really help.

Tactics-wise, you're looking to get into combat quickly and cause enough damage to overrun the unit, making them run, and hopefully catch them - preventing them from getting back up. For this reason, I would make the admittedly rare suggestion of Assault Marines. Bikers would do well here too, while expensive they get the added firepower on the way in.

Otherwise, close combat Scout squads are a great idea, they're extra close combat attacks at a cheaper price AND scoring, which the Assault Marines and bikers aren't. Termies I would say are still an OK choice at the higher end of your games (ie, around 800). The assault cannon in particular is a good buy for them, a heavy flamer would be too.

One final word of warning... against Necrons in particular, Overwatch is going to hurt. For that reason, take bigger assault units rather than multiple smaller ones. Things like Devastators are fine to leave in smaller squads though.

A landspeeder typhoon with a heavy bolter would be good . 2 frag/krak missiles from a skimmer skirting around the edges of the battle could do wonders for you.

Most Necron players who take the Overlord don't take phase shifter, a 3+ invulnerable save, due to the extraordinary cost of points. Ap 1 and 2 weapons are pretty good vs Necrons. If you can find a way to get a high ap blast in your list. Your opponent is going to have a tough time.

The best way to beat Necrons is to focus down units one at a time. Preventing Reanimation Protocol is a glaring weakness for Necrons.

His list doesn't look that crazy. I'd suggest getting as many bolters on the table as you can. That means for your HQ, you are taking a cheap Librarian. Scouts are useful here as well, and if you have access to any bolter or CC Weapon scouts, I would take them as well. I'd also suggest at least one tac. squad, probably with a plasma gun and either a ML, HB, or PC. Plasma is helpful here because it allows you to bypass the armour on his Immortals and Warlord, while and the Plasma Cannon will quite rapidly destroy his infantry and is insanely good against his scarabs (because of how the swarm USR works with wound allocation, a single unsaved wound effectively removes two scarab bases from the game, as when allocating wounds you apply the first wound to the nearest base, which causes instant death, and then the second wound to the next nearest base, also causing instant death. This means that if you get even two hits against the scarab swarm you should easily be able to take out most of the squad).