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About a year ago, I picked up a decently sized Necron army for fairly cheap. I've only used them once as allies, but really they have just sat on the shelf. I saw a really nice paint scheme recently, and that has me motivated to work on them and get at least an allied detachment ready to support my CSM. My goal with them is to provide some resilient scoring units with solid shooting. My idea intial template is

Necron OverLord with - sempiternal weave, warscythe, mindshackle scarabs, res orb
Cryptek - Harbinger of the Storm, Lightning Field
Necron Lord - warscythe, res orb

20 x Necron Warriors, Night Scythe
20 x Necron Warriors

Put the Overlord and Cryptek in one unit of warriors and the Lord in the other. If I had another Night Scythe I would include it as well. I do have a ghost ark, but I don't know if it will actually help much.

Beyond that I'm not sure what to add or if this will even work well at all.

I also need to work with the models I have since money is a little tight, and I don't necesarrily want to invest more money in to Necrons until I know if I really enjoy them or not. Here's what I have to work with.

1 x Monolith
1 x Magnetized Night Scythe/Doom Scythe
1 x Ghost Ark
5 x Death Marks
1 x Imhotek
1 x Overlord
1 x Trazyn
1 x Cryptek
10 x Immortals
60 x Warriors
4 x Destroyers
2 x Heavy Destroyers
20 x Scarabs


So looking at what I have to work with, is my initial idea solid, or do I have something better there to work with. Also, what are the real strengths that Necrons can bring to the table. I see resilient troops, great mid-range shooting, and nasty flyers.
If I do want to branch out what do you reccomend. I love the wraith models as well as annihilation barges.

You definitely have the beginning sof a solid necron ally force. Not super competetive, but definitely a start.

To get the most out of your warrior bricks, put resorb overlords and ghost arks in them (you may have to pick and choose) and you'll have a unit that just doesn't die. Since this is an allied detatchment, keep one of these warrior bricks with the ghost ark, and put your immortals, with either tesla or gauss depending on your play style, on the night scythe to go around killing stuff.

Your destroyers are usable, just take three of them and put in two heavies and you have a useful unit whose shooting can reasonably threaten just about any model in the game.

Death marks are great, Death Marks with a Despairtek ensure that any one unit you want removed is going to be out of the game, so put your Cryptek with him.

Trazyn is primarily for objective trolling more than anything else and you don't quite have enough to make full usage of his ability to never leave the game ever.

As for your monolith, it's certainly not the prize winner it once was, but it's usable if you have a hefty chunk of points left over. The gate of eternity is gimmicky to be sure, but can be a nasty surprise.

Resilient Scoring units is pretty much summed up in what you said. What style of scoring do you want; march forward and grind out resistance underfoot or sit ion your objectives and just not move all game?

If points are not an issue, based on what you want, I would say:

Overlord (Warscythe, Sempiternal Weave, MSS)
Royal Court of:
2x Lords (Warscythe, Sempiternal Weave, MSS) Proxied from Trazyn + Imotekh
Cryptek with Veil of Darkness
2 Blobs of 20 Necron Warriors
5 Deathmarks

Loadout as:

2 20-man Warrior Blobs with Lords.
Deathmarks with Cryptek + Overlord.

Warriors either camp objectives or march across the board wrecking gak
Deathmarks teleport into position turn one, killing off something marked for a lot of wounds forced from an AP1 template (Termies make a good target).

Turn two, the Overlord jumps out of the unit and goes around killing things, and the Deathmarks teleport somewhere else to be a pain.

Although, you do realise that you have roughly a full 2500 point army there, right?

I like my units to be able to move forward and control midfield rather than sit back on home objectives. Since I'm looking to use them as allies for CSM, I can reserve a few units of cultists to walk on to the board and grab objectives in my zone.

I hadn't really thought about Deathmarks, so it's good to know that they are effective.

 IHateNids wrote:
Although, you do realise that you have roughly a full 2500 point army there, right?

Yep. I do realize that. At some point I may go ahead and run them as a full army, but with what I have currently there would be quite a few holes in any list I built.

Right now, I'm enjoying my CSM and am just looking for a way to help out in the troop department and get a little feel for them. Also, my necrons are a mish-mash of various paint jobs, unpainted models, and models that need repaired. If I focus on an allied contingent, than I will be motivated to get them painted up to a nice standard without being overwhelmed.

to be honest, theres not that many holes.

Im pretty sure that anything you could build would be pretty solid.

I would recommend getting a Lychguard box + Immortals box and convert 5 Lords, and 5 Crypteks.

Hmm. I do have an extra box of immortals/deathmarks that I haven't put together yet. A lychguard box isn't all that expensive to pick up.

Which Crypteks do you find most useful?

Since I noticed this has not already been mentioned (so far as I was able to locate anyway):

Imotekh makes an absolutely 'horrible' inclusion as an ally or into any army containing allies. The reason for this is found in the 'Lord of the Storm' ability, which doesn't discriminate against allied units and actual enemies. Well, unless you like randomly raining down electrical death on your 'own' units, in which case he is your man!

LOL. How bad would that be to accidentally take out half of your own force with lightning.

stewy37 wrote:
Hmm. I do have an extra box of immortals/deathmarks that I haven't put together yet. A lychguard box isn't all that expensive to pick up.

Which Crypteks do you find most useful?

Despair teks, as I mentioned, make for excellent bombs when paired with Deathmarks. Destruteks have a nice shooting attack and can really infuriate your opponents with Solar pulse. Stormteks one shot any vehicle in range while the Lightning field makes for a good tarpit breaker. These three make the trinity of Crypteks, although the basic Cryptek has a good MEQ killing shooting attack and weapon.

I recently took to running a 5-man squad of Cypteks with 1 Veil, 2 Storm, and 2 'nilla.

5 S5AP3 shots + 8 S5AP- shots + an AP1 template that wounds on 4s vs MEQ will make a large dent in most MEQ squads

and

8 Haywire shots minces any vehicle in 40k at the moment, Apocalypse not included.

5 bodies, so landing isn't that difficult, and its 160 points, which is a steal for what it does.

 IHateNids wrote:
I recently took to running a 5-man squad of Cypteks with 1 Veil, 2 Storm, and 2 'nilla.

5 S5AP3 shots + 8 S5AP- shots + an AP1 template that wounds on 4s vs MEQ will make a large dent in most MEQ squads

and

8 Haywire shots minces any vehicle in 40k at the moment, Apocalypse not included.

5 bodies, so landing isn't that difficult, and its 160 points, which is a steal for what it does.

That's pretty beastly, and I bet most people will ignore it until it destroys something. Or at least they will the first time. This is the sort of stuff I'm looking for. Little tricks that can be devastating and catch people way off guard. The fact that it's so cheap is amazing as it allows that many more threats to be taken.

Yeah, ive used one a fair few times. Without fail, they kill something. Their body count includes:

- Forgefiend
- Maulerfiend
- 10-man Chaos marine Squad (x2)
- Heldrake*
- a squad of Plague Marines between two of these units.

*I understand that this was amazingly lucky, and was TL thanks to a Triarch Stalker.

But yeah, to answer the original question, depending on your playstyle, any of the Crypteks can be dangerous.

LanceTeks in cover make a good firing line, hitting hard enough to damage most things
StormTeks kill vehicles so easily it isn't funny, or you put them in a combat unit to give a small amount of shooting + D6 S8 hits @ overwatch
DespairTeks teleport around, flaming gak (funny on guard)
ChronoTeks are most useful when giving someone a re-roll, but a 3++ at the front of something can be useful.Again, combat unit for anti-plasma. (expensive as hell, would not recoomend)
TremorTeks work well with a C'tan using Writhing Worldscape. Any unit hit is now in dangerous terrain. coupled with the Character Cryptek (Orikan I think his name is), who can frequently become a I4 MC with a 3++, this makes for a game where your opponant's units that he has to get to your lines just cant move.