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Been playing against a Necron player recently with my Tau and I'm noticing his units are exceedingly tough to kill. I've beaten him every game but it's getting more and more difficult. I was wondering what the most efficient (in terms of fire power) way to deal with the following units is.

Wraiths (I haven't played against them yet but I've heard some horror stories)

C'Tan shard (thing 1 shotted 2 of my Riptides last game [I realize he never should have caught them but the dice gods were NOT on my side for those rolls]). It weathered quite a bit of fire power to get at them. Much more shots than I wanted to shoot at it)

Monolith (same thing as the shard. It soaked everything I could throw at it for 3 rounds while still dropping ordnance plates on my guys. I finally killed 1 and lucked out with the second one getting a mishap and me getting to place it off in the corner where it couldn't touch me but still they just wouldn't go down)

Thanks

What are you using exactly? They shouldn't be that hard to be with Tau.

For the monolith, have you considered charging it with EMP equipped firewarriors? Monoliths are very bad against haywire. Where is your fusion?

Brutal Viking wrote:
Wraiths (I haven't played against them yet but I've heard some horror stories)

These guys have a 3+ invul, I would saturate them with fire, and avoid wasting low AP value shots unless they are Instant Death. You need to get these guys out before they get you. They ignore dangerous and difficult terrain, so they're fast as hell. If they assault, your unit is toast, especially with a Destoyer Lord.

Brutal Viking wrote:
C'Tan shard (thing 1 shotted 2 of my Riptides last game [I realize he never should have caught them but the dice gods were NOT on my side for those rolls]). It weathered quite a bit of fire power to get at them. Much more shots than I wanted to shoot at it)

These are nothing special survivability-wise, just shoot til it dies.

Brutal Viking wrote:
Monolith (same thing as the shard. It soaked everything I could throw at it for 3 rounds while still dropping ordnance plates on my guys. I finally killed 1 and lucked out with the second one getting a mishap and me getting to place it off in the corner where it couldn't touch me but still they just wouldn't go down)

As a Necron player, I cannot in good conscience give you any tips on this.

jasper76 wrote:

Brutal Viking wrote:
Monolith (same thing as the shard. It soaked everything I could throw at it for 3 rounds while still dropping ordnance plates on my guys. I finally killed 1 and lucked out with the second one getting a mishap and me getting to place it off in the corner where it couldn't touch me but still they just wouldn't go down)

As a Necron player, I cannot in good conscience give you any tips on this.

Heh, I guess that makes me a traitor

All I'll say is Misslesides and fusion guns tend to cause the most problems for my crons.

I had a deepstrike team of target lock fusion suits that's how I killed the first one. 1 suit killed his command barge as well. I'm just not a fan of suicide squads but if if that's my best bet then I'll keep going that route

I did think to try the emp grenades but the unit was blasted to ash before I could bring them to use. EMP grenades can only be used if assaulting can't they or are they a shooting attack?. Cause if they're assault then I can't assault it anyway due to not having a weapon capable of hurting it. Is there a good way to get my fire warriors in range before they get oblitersted?

I was also running 2 railheads (1 with longstrike) but I kept whiffing my rolls for them after I took out his annihilation barge on the first turn.

think my best bet will be to run a farsight list again as that seemed to be the best against them. I haven't tried a farsight bomb yet so maybe I'll give that a go with the next game...

I'm still interested in other peoples opinions so if you have an idea I'd like to hear it.

Brutal Viking wrote:
I had a deepstrike team of target lock fusion suits that's how I killed the first one. 1 suit killed his command barge as well. I'm just not a fan of suicide squads but if if that's my best bet then I'll keep going that route

I did think to try the emp grenades but the unit was blasted to ash before I could bring them to use. EMP grenades can only be used if assaulting can't they or are they a shooting attack?. Cause if they're assault then I can't assault it anyway due to not having a weapon capable of hurting it. Is there a good way to get my fire warriors in range before they get oblitersted?

I was also running 2 railheads (1 with longstrike) but I kept whiffing my rolls for them after I took out his annihilation barge on the first turn.

think my best bet will be to run a farsight list again as that seemed to be the best against them. I haven't tried a farsight bomb yet so maybe I'll give that a go with the next game...

I'm still interested in other peoples opinions so if you have an idea I'd like to hear it.

Both. They can either be thrown (1 per squad a turn, range 8") or used in combat (everyone gets 1 emp attack)

Why is it only 1 per squad if I'm buying them for each model?

Brutal Viking wrote:
Why is it only 1 per squad if I'm buying them for each model?

Those are the rules for throwing grenades.

1 model may choose to throw a grenade instead of firing a weapon.

If everyone in the squad can throw a grenade, that means about 5+ small blast markers (from frags) or 5+ haywires (from EMP) a turn from a troop unit.

Everyone can use grenades in an assault.

Brutal Viking wrote:
Why is it only 1 per squad if I'm buying them for each model?

its a balance thing as far as I can tell

Ah gotcha. Now I just gotta get them close enough to deliver the payload... was thinking maybe darkstrider attached to a unit and a well placed positional relay might work

i pay necrons all the time, and one of my friends is a tau player. heres what he does that just ... hurts.

markerlights+fireblade+tons of firewarriors. - just soooo many shots... at str 5... it CHEWS through warrriors, and when you have 30 fire warriors all firing 3 shots, hitting on 3 and wounding on 3 even wraiths go down quick.

crisis suits. 3 guys with plasmas and another 3 with meltas... with marker support to remove cover, they can dissapear a full unit of immortals betweeen them. the fusion guys are also real good at taking down vehicles. but 6 rapid firing plasma guns that ignore cover... = ouch for crons. especially when they bounce back out of LOS.

riptides.. ive seen both the ion cannon and the HBC and bothare quite powerful at dropping stuff. combned with broadsides and marker lights... well again pretty easy task putting crons down.

some general tips:
- kill the cosest stuff first, focusing on faster moving units. pick a unit, knock the whole thing down (to deny RP) then move on. necrons have generally a 24" range, so tau should be able to keep them at arms length and snipe them down at range before taking alot in the way of punishment.
- keep your suits back, but on field. when he deepstrikes a unit in, or trys teleporting, bounce the suits over and fill them full of plasma/melta fire. use your firewarriors and pathfinders first, and save the suits for mop up and finish.
- wraiths are fast and scary, but really a 6 man unit is essentially a 12 man SM squad. pump them full of pulse rifle fire, or use salvosides and they go away pretty fast.

Thank you darthspader; very helpful