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So I'm playing against Necrons in few days. I'm pretty sure that last time I've faced them they looked like this:


I suspect things have changed a bit since then...

I'm running mostly Infantry based Space Marine list (mostly PA, few scouts and termies), only vehicles being a Stormtalon and a Rhino. I've eyed the Necron book, but I still have no idea how to fight these guys. Now, I totally expect to get crushed, but any tips that would give me at least a fighting chance would be appreciated.

If you have no inkling of what your opponent is gonna field it's gonna be hard for us to give you specifics since there are many ways to make good Necron lists.

Some of the more popular list setups:

- Cron Air Force: small squads of warriors or immortals with a Night Scythe as a dedicated transport, backed up by doom scythes. Not much you can do against that short of bringing your own air force

-Wraith-spam: usually 2 big blobs of wraiths with a destroyer lord attached, very nasty and durable (3+ invulnarable and 2 wounds)
-scarab farms: multiple spyders pooping out scarabs every turns,

Mind Shackle Scarabs: Beware assaulting anything that looks like a WraithLord. They get MSS to use in CC and they use that to make you hit yourself. A lot. So be prepared for your heaviest assaulting model to be hitting your own unit if you try to take this guy down in CC.

My recommendation would be to range the sucker off the board.

can get overwhelming really quickly...

There are many more ways to make a good Necron list, and I'm not even going into allies combos...

Try to get us some more details so that we can give you some tactics and list advice.

 DieselJester wrote:
Mind Shackle Scarabs: Beware assaulting anything that looks like a WraithLord. They get MSS to use in CC and they use that to make you hit yourself. A lot. So be prepared for your heaviest assaulting model to be hitting your own unit if you try to take this guy down in CC.

My recommendation would be to range the sucker off the board.

^This. Don't assault any unit with an HQ choice in it without first asking if it has MSS.

Oh and any vehicles or anything with AV to be gone off the board turn 2-3.

How I deal with Necrons is, keep them at range, and when you can charge them, charge them. Remember if the entire unit is wiped out, they can't get back up, 90% of the time.

Be aware: No army is currently built as well to the 6th edition ruleset, or to mitigate the changes from 5th to 6th, as Necrons are.

Expect ground vehicles with AV13 shields until you penetrate them (then they drop to AV11) and very solid flyers. Don't expect any of your vehicles to last very long at all between Gauss able to spam shots to inflict HP damage and Tesla weapons able to generate huge numbers of hits. Avoid challenges as Mindshackle scarabs will generally auto-win them for the Necron player if a Lord is involved. Wraiths and Scarabs are terrifyingly effective units. Warriors are easy to deal with but often have hidden HQ models.

As you are going infantry mostly, and assuming your opponent knows this,... id expect lots of tesla.

Tesla scores another 2 hits on the roll of a 6 on hitting your squad,..which also allowes for a dices to be rolled too see if nearby squads are hit. Yes the shots will be ap- but one way to kill marines is mass fire.. He might force you to roll so many dices that you will fail eventualy. If he goes gauss,... les shots,.. still dangerous but less,... far less in my opinion.

If you are going to assault see if there is a Lord in that squad first. ASSUME he has mindshackle scarabs.. If you fail the test one of your random models in base contact with the lord will attack his own squad,... if you get in a duel with this guy,... chances are 50% you kill yourself or 50% chance he kills you

For further advice,.. i think we need point totals so we can sorta expect what he might field...

If you see wraiths,.. large bug like creatures,.. mass fire to kill them or str 8 shots to insta kill them. They have a 3++ inv save standard and are never slowed by terrain.. And they are dead killy in CC.

Anyway,

is there more you can give us? Do you know what your opponent has?

This is part of a tournament. Lists are TAC lists, but we do not know the enemy composition beforehand. I heard the Necron player has two flyers, so expect them to be on his list. If this is the case, I'm sure my single Stormtalon will be overwhelmed rather quickly.

MSS seems to be pretty insane. Apart the Wraiths Necrons do not seem to be that hot in CC, but MSS turns the tables really quickly. On the other hand it seems unlikely that I can outshoot them, either. Oh well.

Most Necron lists count big mobs of Warriors or Immortals to quickly fill up the Troops slots. The key to breaking these is to hit hard in assault, in order to sweep the unit in one go which prevents any Necrons from getting back up. MSS can be a danger, but can only be used on one model in base-to-base contact, so there are ways to avoid suffering too badly from it. One is to challenge (or accept) with a Sergeant so you only suffer a couple of attacks against yourself, rather than a more powerful character. Another is to carefully line up the charge so that you're not in base contact with the Lord to start with, by the time he piles into base contact any melee characters running at I5 will have already done their damage.

For vanilla marines though, your only real options for pulling off such an assault are beatstick characters, Termies, and Assault Marines with an attached Chaplain. So you'll be looking to try and pull off multiple assaults.

There's a chance that those fliers are Night Scythes though, which are transports, so you may instead find yourself facing just a couple of Troops units which he'll try to keep safe until later when he can drop the Troops off on top of objectives. Don't sweat it too much if this happens - the Stormraven might not take both down but it will certainly give them a run for their money unless he gets a very lucky shot in first.

Lastly, don't expect anything with an Armour Value to last long. Gauss weapons strip off hull points like veils on a Vegas showgirl, and that's even assuming there's no Scarabs involved.