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I was just wondering, is there actually tactics when it comes to 40K. Don't get me wrong, I love the game, but is there anything other than SPAM lists.

Let me elaborate. I am a Necron player, I'm a student, keen to win, and I've had my fair share of success AND loss in 40K (NO THIS IS NOT A DATING SITE INTRO). But most of the guys at my FLGS say that a sure fire way to win is Wraith Spam, Scythe Spam blah blah blah. Mind you I do like a good Silver tide backed up by GA. But this got me wondering, what tactics do you Cron players (BESIDES SPAMMING) have when it comes to competitiveness. Oh and other armies share the goodies too, because I might be starting/allying a new army too, and I want to know good ways to use them. For the record, I'm looking for tactics 1500 - 2000 pts games, but over this is alright too.

Thanks

I use some of the stuff from IA12 to great success.

I don't use more than two of anything until I reach 1850, where I have three night scythes instead of two.

Necrons don't need to be Spammy and they have such a great set of standard and FW stuff that nearly everything is quite competitive.

In 1850 I take:

Toholk The Blinded.
Destroyer Lord.

10 Maynarkh Warriors in Night Scythe.
10 Maynarkh Warriors in Night Scythe.
10 Maynarkh Immortals with Tesla Carbines in Night Scythe.

8 Charnel Scarabs.
6 Wraiths.

2 Annihilation Barge.
Tesseract Ark.

In testing, this list synergises well together and brings a lot of pain without being too spammy.

I'd agree with spam not being tactics; it's strategy. Every additional LRBT, for example, is added stress on your opponent's anti-tank units to perform, while largely negating some other part of his or her list. If I only have one Vehicle it's going to eat all of my enemy's anti-tank fire turn 1 and explode.

If you look at the recent tourney winning lists lately, most tend to have actually very little spam now a days. Spam is a lot easier for new players to do well at the game since it relies on less units, less things to remember and can be run fairly one dimentionally which requires a lot less tactics and less thinking required.

These kinds of lists are easier to win with against moderate to new players but often suffer from rock paper scissors match ups which can make or break you at tourney. Good players take very little spam now a days because to win a tourney you actually need flexibility.

Try some one of a kind lists. You'd be pleasantly surprised how well they work as long as you understand what each unit is supposed to be doing at any time. Allies allow this kind of flexibility very easily and make for a much more balanced lists.

Taking very large squads like in the above example is OK as long as your enemy plays along and has targets that you wouldn't overkill by shooting 3 LR at each turn. Also, due to squadron rules you can still make yourself very vulnerable to mass melt as like a bunch of fire dragons shooting out of a wave serpent or wraithknight assault as you have to assign all of those pen's to other members of a squad anyway so it's not always guaranteed that more of one thing will give you that much more survivability.

Well generally it comes to a skill level. The more intelligent you you are, the less you have to netlist and spam. There is a difference, don't get me wrong, but often they are the same.

The old Daemonhunter book might as well had a stamp that said

40k HARD MODE

across the top. But, many of us were able to win tournaments with superior intellect. And trust me, that was an army that made you either quit, or get good in a hurry.

There are many great Necron units...as long as you're not trying to make units fulfill roles they aren't meant for...you should be good.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I second sudojoe

While I have not personally run wraith spam, I have seen other people do it and lose badly from low model count.

When I run necrons without allies I like to use a modified silver tide setup - a couple full ghost arks bolstering a 20 strong warrior unit with rez orb. Add a few scythes with snipers and immortals, round it out with support from the royal court.

Wraith spam is also hard countered now by a lot of str 8 fire from new eldar things and instant death again from eldar like d-scythes wraithguard. good luck charging that squad.

Also rune priests and jaws want to say hi as well.

I consider spamming units to be a legitimate strategy.

It just makes good sense: if your opponent's list is (hypothetically) 33% AT, 33% AA, and 33% AI then taking nothing but Tanks will effectively nullify 2/3 of their army.

That's a pretty extreme example, but it serves to illustrate why spamming units works.

Difference between spam and redundancy. SPamming would be 3 full squad's of the max amount of wraiths, or the 9 necron flyer list.

But generally, most take 2 squad's of wraith's, or up to 4 flyers, because redundancy is good, but beyond that, you are wasting points. No-one is likely to take down 4 necron flyers easilly, so why throw away points taking 9?

Spam tend's to be players who just want to point and click with an army, a person who semi-spams, is just making sure that if they lose their squad, they have another one to finish the job, for redundancy's sake.

redthirst wrote:
I consider spamming units to be a legitimate strategy.

It just makes good sense: if your opponent's list is (hypothetically) 33% AT, 33% AA, and 33% AI then taking nothing but Tanks will effectively nullify 2/3 of their army.

That's a pretty extreme example, but it serves to illustrate why spamming units works.

This would make sense only if you were facing aspect only Eldar. Most units can do more than one thing. Even those Scorpions can take a S8 claw to kill your vehicles in an AI unit.

Marine's bring meltabombs.

Termagants can roll anything from MEQ to TEQ to Tanks.

GKTs can handle fliers, tanks, and infantry.

 ductvader wrote:

redthirst wrote:
I consider spamming units to be a legitimate strategy.

It just makes good sense: if your opponent's list is (hypothetically) 33% AT, 33% AA, and 33% AI then taking nothing but Tanks will effectively nullify 2/3 of their army.

That's a pretty extreme example, but it serves to illustrate why spamming units works.

This would make sense only if you were facing aspect only Eldar. Most units can do more than one thing. Even those Scorpions can take a S8 claw to kill your vehicles in an AI unit.

Marine's bring meltabombs.

Termagants can roll anything from MEQ to TEQ to Tanks.

GKTs can handle fliers, tanks, and infantry.

It still makes sense because while you can kill an Ork Boy with a Lascannon it's a suboptimal weapon for the purpouse, just as Striking Scorpions should never get anywhere near a vehicle to Power Fist it to death.

Yeah, Mr. OP, I hear what you're saying but I think especially with crons we're sort of left with spamming. Some codexes like GK, SM and IG have a lot of options that work well. Meanwhile we have Flayed Ones, Lychguard an Praetorians. Sorry they just suck. Almost alll of our weapons are 24" and, of course, all of our troops are slow foot slogers. So why wouldn't I run a NS to get my troops from point A to point B at hyper speed? Check - there's two NS's for transporting 3-4 of my troop choices around (and protect my HQ for that slay the warlord denial). I also like to run 2-3 death & despair units. Can't have them walking around and when they DS in the abysal staff may not be in optimum position. And what if your target is still holed up in a LR? Best use for them is to fly around in a NS until a target presents itself. So now I'm up another 2 to 3 NS. Then there's the Doom Scythe. One of the biggest problems I have is dealing with terminators and draigo wings. That's where Doom Scythes shine. So do I fly a lot of scythes? Yes. Am I spamming? I beg to differ. I like to think of it as spamming with a purpose. Each group of scythes I listed are going to act differently on the battlefield as they each have a very specific mission.

That's the real strategy, I think, when it comes to scythes. Not taking them because they are hard as hell to hit most of the time but using them to fulfill a specific function in your army. I don't even run three Doom Scythes - I always take a ani barge, too. If anything I'm beginning to see a real art in maximizing the flyers 'time on board'. When I first started playing flyers, even when it was only three, I'd fly them on, drop off dudes and fly off the board. Now I start looking at where I want to have each flyer on every turn of the game with a certain amount of flexibility to maximize the amount of damage they can do on turns two, three and five. Doom scythes can be really viscous when they fly past your opponent's ADL. He thinks he's safe Now we can fire the death ray out our butt (I forget if it was FAQed or if I just figured that one out). Suddenly all his dudes are praying for a 6+ go-to-ground save.

So, yeah, I think necons are sort of a spammy army. Even when I ran wraiths I probably spent only half my points on wraiths. When I run scythes I don't even use half my points on them so is that really spamming? In theory I could run 12 scythes in a single FOC but I usually run between 6 and 7. 12 would just make me TFG even if I lost....

Suboptimal...there's the ticket. That's what spam is against any list that is the paper to its rock.

When I face Lascannon Guard spam with my TAC horde bugs...I barely have to try. When I face Draigowing with TAC horde bugs...I barely have to try. Now the one in fifty chance that I face purifier spam with bugs..that might suck...but I still have 49/50 games where I have a decent or better chance simply because I went TAC.

 ductvader wrote:

redthirst wrote:
I consider spamming units to be a legitimate strategy.

It just makes good sense: if your opponent's list is (hypothetically) 33% AT, 33% AA, and 33% AI then taking nothing but Tanks will effectively nullify 2/3 of their army.

That's a pretty extreme example, but it serves to illustrate why spamming units works.

This would make sense only if you were facing aspect only Eldar. Most units can do more than one thing. Even those Scorpions can take a S8 claw to kill your vehicles in an AI unit.

Marine's bring meltabombs.

Termagants can roll anything from MEQ to TEQ to Tanks.

GKTs can handle fliers, tanks, and infantry.

I mean, I did say it was an extreme example used to illustrate a point.

Still, an 1850 TAC list with 1,000 points dedicated to AA/AT is probably going to get run the feth over by 1850 points worth of Ork Boyz because over half their list is extremely ineffective in that MU.

Likewise, an 1850 TAC list with over a 1,000 points dedicated to taking out infantry and AA is probably going to have a hard time against Armored Company or MC spam.

I mean, that's just common sense - if your opponent is spending points to counter things that aren't in your list instead of spending them to counter things that are then that's going to give you an advantage before you even put terrain on the board. That's what spamming one unit/type of unit does.

Really, spam is a valid army set up, but really you need to know how to use the list. I spam With my Tyranid list, but I'm spamming T6 (Tyrant/Swarmorld, Hiveguard, Tervigon, Trygon). The list has an almost auto loss from Dark Eldar, but against almost everything else it does really well. But my real nightmare army is Imperial Guard Toolbox. I've got something for everything, and backups if that gets taken down....and another backup for that. Necron flyer spam? Defence Line Quad Gun, Hydras, and Valkyries. 2+ armour saves? Medusas, Plasma Gun Squads, Lascannon Heavy Weapon Teams. Mob of 50? Manticore, Medusa, Valkyrie....and so many flashlights that I could light up Vegas. My guard hasn't lost yet, had a few interesting turns, but for the most part...unstopable. But I won't play it in a friendly game either....loses friends that way.

I agree with Evileyes. At some point you reach a level of diminishing returns adding more of the same.

This of course assumes that units are equally useful and balanced. If you're book has an OP unit, then you suffer less from spamming it.

People spamming undercosted units is a GW tradition. I'm kind of numb to it by this point.

 ductvader wrote:
Suboptimal...there's the ticket. That's what spam is against any list that is the paper to its rock.

When I face Lascannon Guard spam with my TAC horde bugs...I barely have to try. When I face Draigowing with TAC horde bugs...I barely have to try. Now the one in fifty chance that I face purifier spam with bugs..that might suck...but I still have 49/50 games where I have a decent or better chance simply because I went TAC.

I don't really know what to say, but you pretty much proved my point.

I'm not talking about spamming a unit/model that has one narrow application (like a ton of Lascannons), I'm talking about spamming a unit/model that has a very narrow answer (like Helldrakes or Landraiders).

Spamming a "horde" of "bugs" is still spam and has the same strengths (though, probably in a lesser degree since most anything can effectively - if not efficiently - take out a bug): it basically turns off a significant portion of your opponent's list because they "wasted" points on answers to threats that you don't have in your list (i.e. - the Lascannons your Guard opponent bought for his list instead of more bodies/high ROF weapons/templates).

Necron99 brings up a point that occurred to me while writing my earlier response. Sometimes a thing can LOOK like spamming, but is not really spam. Our nightscythes are a good example. Each scythe transports a different unit with a distinct purpose and set of capabilities. The fact that they are all riding the in the same type of transport does not necessarily detract from this. People deride nightscythe spam because they wrongly assume that their opponent plans to win the game by having a high volume of mobile S7 fire, when this is in fact less than half the purpose.

Six scythes with 5 warriors each is spam. Six scythes transporting a mixture of deathmarks, immortals, warriors and royal court members is not spam.

I recently started necrons, but I made a vow to avoid the standard wraith and flier spam. Here's the list I came up with.

Trazyn the Infinite
• 2 Necron Lords

6 Lychguard 240
C'tan Shard: Time's Arrow; Gaze of Death.

10 Necron Immortals
10 Necron Immortals

5 Canoptek Scarabs
3 Canoptek Wraiths: 2× whip coils.

Necron Monolith
Necron Monolith
3 Canoptek Spyders

I had a blast. I one shotted the swarm lord with times arrow, I teleported my Warriors away from rampagimg terminators and onto objectives for the win. I sucked up a full squad of thousand sons with my portals of exile.

I'm not saying this to boast (well, not just to boast ) my point is there is fun to be had with necrons without spamming wraiths.

I consider spamming to be a legitimate strategy. If the player thinks they will win by using these tactics, then go for it. I realize this is a tabletop game and the points system is meant to balance out the game and make it "fair", remember one of the crucial tenets of warfare: you never want to go into a fair fight. Always try to have the upper hand!
I like to think I avoid "spamming" simply because I play units I'm interested in and tactics I want to try out.

Spamming is not a strategy, it's a list-build.
How you play each unit is where the tactic gets involved.

And I also think that 'spamming' is a weird word for it:
What are our 'best' tournament models?
>Annihilation Barge
>Warriors in Nightscythe
>Canoptek Wraiths
So what do we do? We take as many as possible.

 minigun762 wrote:
I agree with Evileyes. At some point you reach a level of diminishing returns adding more of the same.
This of course assumes that units are equally useful and balanced. If you're book has an OP unit, then you suffer less from spamming it.

You really don't have that level of diminishing return at the models the first post is talking about.
It's not that they are the most overpowered units, they are the most effective units!

And one more note: Overpowered doesn't mean it's the best or most effective model.
A Monolith for example has insanely good firepower, armour and transport-capabilities for only 200 points!
I would call that model overpowered, but you hardly see it on tournaments.

Meanwhile we have Flayed Ones, Lychguard an Praetorians. Sorry they just suck.

I don't run LG, but I've seen them used quite effectively. I do run the other two units extensively and know for a fact they don't, indeed, "suck." Praetorians are practically Wraiths, who trade CC flexibility for resiliency and CC focus (Either Anti-tank/horde or anti-teq/meq). How some people think one unit is a must have, bring 12 to 18 of them, and the other unit "sucks"....I will never understand.

(Actually, I do understand. It's just a lot of people don't grasp the math, and prefer to sub the internet hive mind for their own cognitive capabilities. Sad).

Kangodo wrote:
Spamming is not a strategy, it's a list-build.

List building is where strategy starts. Many people have a strategy with a list built to enact on that. The fact that there are hard counters and TAC lists is a demonstration that lists are indeed strategy.

I run http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/537755.page

lots of fun

The main problem is you want your army all to be doing the same thing or all working for the same goal. If you take a army that is 50% melee and 50% shooting your opponent can focus his 100% shooting on your 50% melee, wipe it out before it gets to an assault and then shoot at your other 50%. Or it will use its 100% melee to destroy your 50% melee and then run down your shooting. One unit of wraiths is not scary because you can reliably shoot it down before it can assault you on turn 3. If you have 3 units of wraiths it is much harder to kill all three units. One will get into assault and wipe the floor with everything they touch. This is why spamming is so popular. If a single unit is scary to the opponent he will focus it down and it will not be a problem, if you have multiple of that unit then they can't reliably kill it fast enough before you do some damage. Too many times I see armies that are too much jacks of all trades, masters of none, and because of this they get stomped by both the pure shooting list and the pure melee list. Spam is the easiest way to make list coherency.

What's more, some units are just better than others, they might do the same thing but one does it better or cost less doing it. This is another cause for spamming, why take a weaker unit when the stronger one will do the same job better? If you wanted melee units in necrons would you take all wraiths or would you spend some points on flayed ones?

So because of this we have spamming of one unit many times over other units. There are very few codices that don't lend themselves to all out spamming. The new Tau and eldar codices are pretty good at not spamming (though eldar serpent spam is possibly the strongest build). Tau has very few actual units but they all do the same thing, shooting, and they all do it kinda differently so there is no one clear better option. You will want a riptide, but you also want crisis suits, and firewarriors and kroot and broadsides, a hammerhead is also nice to have. When you get down to it the lists are varied well and not spamed. Eldar is similar, as all the units are very good and you can easily take a unit of everything and have a coherent list.

Eldar. Check out my army on my blog. 1750 list placed second at anime expo tourney, with lots of strong daemon/tau/Nid players. Balanced list, no spam, no shenanigans, no psychers. It worked even versus a seer council.

Spamming, probably effective in most cases and its a legit strategy.
But its also boring and unimaginative.
I play for fun and I like lists that are unique and unpredictable.
I won't complain if someone spams, I just might not play against them.

I feel theres a huge paper scissors rock element to 'spam lists' which makes me want to projectile vomit whenever I see one.

Take Redthirst's post for instance;

redthirst wrote:
I consider spamming units to be a legitimate strategy.

It just makes good sense: if your opponent's list is (hypothetically) 33% AT, 33% AA, and 33% AI then taking nothing but Tanks will effectively nullify 2/3 of their army.

That's a pretty extreme example, but it serves to illustrate why spamming units works.

If he takes all tank and I take balanced, I lose because 2/3 of my army is now useless while everything in his has a target.

So to counter this, I need to be taking an all-whatever army myself. If I were to run a Green Tide (all Infantry), 2/3rds of his attack power would theoretically be nullified as well. And then it all boils down to each army having a type and a target - my green tide is Infantry - Anti Infantry, so I lose against Anti Infantry lists, defeat Infantry lists, and its anyones game against something like a Vehicle - Anti Vehicle list. So like a cancer, one spam list spreads into the lists of everyone else in the meta and sets about wrecking some hobby

Frankly, if I want to play paper scissors rock I'll do it without the thousand dollar pricetag. Keep your spam lists away from me...

The funny part of this is that Green Tide, venom spam, serpent spam, and mechvet are all super fluffy lists which fit perfectly with their armies respective backgrounds. Really it is the "balanced" (seemingly here defined as taking a random assortment of infantry and AV with no specific thought put into what the opponent will shoot at) lists that are unfluffy.

Spam lists suffer from obvious strategy syndrome however. If you spam the same unit then the opponent will know how to counter your entire list the same way. Therefore they can sacrifice the non optimal parts of their army to stop you from killing the part that is really good against you. You also loose tactical flexibility with most of these spam lists which can count for alot when playing a good opponent.

I don't mind lists that spam AV or infantry but if you do so we will need to greatly vary the missions. That is why GW and FW make campaigns and special mission books.