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The general rule of thumb on a res orb is if the unit cost is 200 points or more it generally becomes worth it. Less then that you probably want to go another direction unless you have other reasons for bring the Lord.

Of course, in the case of Immortals, you can reasonably add it to a group of 10 as you can't make that unit any bigger.

If you're planning on playing with a lot of skimmers/flyers (eg. AV13 wall), it may be worth considering a Pulse-tek, as he'll give your entire army Stealth for a turn, instead of just a single unit.
Having every one of your vehicles jinking on a 3+ is well worth the 55 points.

I tried the tactic VS a SM player who used IA12 mortarium(sp?) tactics with a imperialknight errant(melta) a unit with 3 pulse/plasma cannons(small blast that acted that plasma sorry don't know much outside of my SOB and necron army), a "not-landraider but might as well be an assault land-raider" with a unit of 10 termies with TS/ss and his WL, and a group of marines with some grav weapons another unit with las cannons and some other unit that didn't do anything

I ran a monolith, 2 full deathmark groups c'tan shard, triarch stalker and the 9/20/10 groups of warriors with ghost arks.


Skipping the battle report because this isn't the place for it but wanted to give an idea of the battlefield. ( i like fun list and the guy seemed to be more of a out to win player, wouldn't put him as a WAAC but doesn't take 'bad choices' i would guess)

my 20 warriors with two ghost arks left tied up his unit of ts/ss + w/l with some spear ofr 6 ap 2 or some such from urn 3 to turn 5.Overwatch took out 2 and after shooting from other turns took out 3 more so 5+wl got locked up. my warriors clawed and scratched and the ghost arks (only had 2 for one turn so from then on 1) kept poping out warriors keeping them tied up for a bit longer. But ts/ss+WL did finish going through them by the end of 5.

I do feel an overlord kitting out would have been wonderful to have in there and a pulse-tek would have been lovely as well for a couple shooting phases.


In short it did well but could have been better with the overlord and pulse-tek.

Speaking of pulse-tek is gaze of flame a god idea for 10pts for the warrior group?

If you can spare the points and have somewhere to stick him, ten points for Gaze of Flame is definitely worth it... it's just, most people don't take it because their Destruct-teks tend to be inside the Ghost Ark.

Can I ask why you took the C'tan Shard, though?
Most people know to avoid it because it's one of the worst units in the Necron codex. Did you have a specific idea in mind for it? (and did that idea work out in the game?)

I took the c'tan shard because it is such a wild card that people don't expect at my local gw the t7 lets it shrug off a lot of small arms fire just a little more then t6 can i4 lets it equal a lot of other cc in terms of when it can attack and s7 ap2 attacks put a bunch of troops to bed. I use it as a big rattlesnake for the opponent to shoot at and to duke it out with melee problems. In that game i got lucky with an 11" charge and tied up the imperial knight for two or three turns before it went down. As for powers normally i give it the T.thunderbolt to be able to poke at things with a las cannon and the other power being pyreshards,gaze of death, or even entropic touch since smash got nerfed to only 1 attack and not half and just one success on ES lets him damage even av14.

I don't aim to get him in combat but i do bait out the opponent into doing stuff to it before it strikes back. A couple of times i even put it on an ADL quad gun to use that bs5.


I see as the c'tan shard as a tool that needs careful planning and thought to be used right and not just something you "point and click" with. I feel it IS overcosted and could either use points reduction, a bump in the armor save, or make some of the powers stronger.


Edit: yeah i could take 3 spyders and have 5 more wounds that will stall longer then the c'tan's 4 but i feel the spyders can be far more useful repairing vehicles screening shots for them and making scarabs. The c'tan has a better chance to fight back not just turtle.

I think the reason the C'tan Shard isn't taken by the majority of players is because it's A) too expensive for what it does, B) far too slow and vulnerable, and C) compared to other options in the codex, just not a very good choice (even more so when stacked up next to its MC contemporaries from other codexes: Wraithknight, Riptide, Flyrant, Daemon Princes, even the Dreadknight. All of these outshine the Shard in almost every way).
Long story short, there are much better options available.

Luckily it sounds like your opponent wasn't playing very competitively.

Yeah i'm thankful for a very relaxed for fun mindset players. I do agree the c'tan is way to expensive, to slow, needs a better save or FNP if it only has a 4+ armor. Here's hoping for some point adjustment for 7th or bump in power.


What is everyone's views of the Tesseract Ark (from FW). I think it is a very powerful model but it looks like bleh imo. And what would one equip it with? the two tesla cannons or two gauss cannons?

Every time bring a Shard, I wonder why I didn't just bring 3 Spyders instead. A slightly worse statline for more than double the wounds, potentially better shooting, and utility options.

As much as I love the C'Tan lore- and modelwise, I usually regret putting it on the table 9 times out of 10. The only time it's worked "well" for me is with Swarm of Spirit Dust and Writhing Worldscape on boards with lots of cover and terrain, where it can get a 3+ cover and screw up enemy movement.

Its shooting abilities are pretty weak other than the lascannon shot, but if you use that then you lose the ability to run, which he kind of needs to get to many armies. Is he going to absorb a huge number of shots? Sure, T7 on a big, scary model will do that. But even regular S4 guns can wound on 6s, and a 4++ isn't going to hold out forever.

So things I learned this week:

A single three man grav centurion unit can easily kill a full squad of Sentry Pylons in a single turn of shooting.

I may have had a good chance to kill them first, but Coateaz and scatter were not my friends. :-(

Hard counter. Didn't get to shoot once.

So then what's the best counter to invisible Grav-Cent-Star?
Doom Scythes?
If they weren't invisible, I guess Deathmarks might be okay.

Kholzerino wrote:
So things I learned this week:

A single three man grav centurion unit can easily kill a full squad of Sentry Pylons in a single turn of shooting.

I may have had a good chance to kill them first, but Coateaz and scatter were not my friends. :-(

Hard counter. Didn't get to shoot once.

Make sure to analyze what happened. What could you have done differently to take the game? Did you deploy appropriately and in correct response to how your opponent deployed?

With that many points, the initial hits often generate enough momentum to win the whole game. His wiping your 900 point pylon star was brutal and possibly the winning play of the whole match. It's key that the pylon star unit recoups points when it hits the table. Was there a less risky play available? The pylon star is a silly powerful cannon but it's nonetheless a glass cannon. Still, with Tranny C'tan you have a lot of power on the table and the capacity to recoup. How did Tranny play out? Did (s)he make her points?

It's certainly possible that the final analysis leads you to conclude that the 900 points invested in pylon star is better invested in 900 points of deathmarks and stormteks in night scythes. Night scythes are really really good in apocalypse, empowering the necron player with a platform of survivability for the units inside.

One nifty Apocalypse combo is a Vindicare Assassin on a Bastion with a quad gun. Basically you can choose to use the quad gun with skyfire or intercept (to nail incoming drop pod units) or step away and use the vindicare standard attack with maximim LOS.

I didn't actually lose. I drew, and should have probably won (tiredness - game took five hours to get to the bottom of turn five and I forgot to shoot with an annihilation barge - the successful killing of one space marine would have put him off the relic and I'd have won 15-0!). The Tranny C'Tanny and the Pylons themselves did absolutely nothing in the game. But I did very well in the secondary and managed to kill his warlord with Deathmark/Despairtek overwatch to win the tertiary for a draw. 10-10

Anyone interested in a more drawn out report? And yes, I did a lot of thinking afterwards about what I could have done differently...

Kholzerino wrote:
I didn't actually lose. I drew, and should have probably won (tiredness - game took five hours to get to the bottom of turn five and I forgot to shoot with an annihilation barge - the successful killing of one space marine would have put him off the relic and I'd have won 15-0!). The Tranny C'Tanny and the Pylons themselves did absolutely nothing in the game. But I did very well in the secondary and managed to kill his warlord with Deathmark/Despairtek overwatch to win the tertiary for a draw. 10-10

Anyone interested in a more drawn out report? And yes, I did a lot of thinking afterwards about what I could have done differently...

I am interested in a more drawn out report. The Tranny C'Tan should have been able to do something. (S)he is after all the best LoW in the game. I load Tranny out with the Transliminal Stride/Seismic Assault/Withering which combines mobility with AA, AT, and AI. I am curious how (s)he actually did nothing. In the games I have played with her she always managed a huge dent in the enemy forces before going down to a massively committed and focused fire. Of course each game is different and she could have been stomped in her tracks in your bout.

Nightscythes are so good and so survivable in Apocalypse I am curious if you think the points in Tranny and Pylon Star would have been better spent in multiple NS cavalry squads (deathmark and stormteks). One approach to Apocalypse is to eschew LoW and deathstars altogether for uber-potent MSU and Necrons have some of the best MSU in the game with MSU in NS.

Also interested in a full report, but maybe not posted here in the tactics thread.
(just give us a link to the post on the battle reports board?)

Kholzerino wrote:
So things I learned this week:

A single three man grav centurion unit can easily kill a full squad of Sentry Pylons in a single turn of shooting.

I may have had a good chance to kill them first, but Coateaz and scatter were not my friends. :-(

Hard counter. Didn't get to shoot once.

It's not really a hard counter if the only reason you didn't kill them before they shot you is a bad scatter. In a drop pod they might be a hard counter.

Which Warlord trait chart do you guys tend to go for, I've been using Strategic, but thats more out of habit from my other armies, and I've been finding a lot of them not very useful.

I've used those in IA12 for the most part... they are all quite good for the Necrons, albeit not in all instances.

Other than that, strategic do serve quite well, depending on your play style of course.

If running Destroyer Lords, I tend to favor Personal traits.

CCB lords too...

Yeah I run 2 CCB lords, and I used personal for the first time yesterday making my lord fearless and have IWND, which was really useful.

Eldercaveman wrote:
Yeah I run 2 CCB lords, and I used personal for the first time yesterday making my lord fearless and have IWND, which was really useful.

If they're on a chariot they're already fearless

But IWND, tho...
Nice.

 CrownAxe wrote:

Eldercaveman wrote:
Yeah I run 2 CCB lords, and I used personal for the first time yesterday making my lord fearless and have IWND, which was really useful.

If they're on a chariot they're already fearless

Yeah but the IWND was nice, although I only played it as giving it to the Overlord, and not his chariot.

I played a tournament and got #5 on personal for my chariot every game! It did take a couple CAD rerolls, but pulling off FNP on the chariot is amazing! 2+/3++/5+(4+RP)

This thread really could do with some summaries for general Necron tactics, lists, tips and tricks etc adding to the OP.

Eldercaveman wrote:
This thread really could do with some summaries for general Necron tactics, lists, tips and tricks etc adding to the OP.

Was actually thinking of something along those lines myself.
Starred throwing together a "7th Edition Necron Report Card" (rated list of everything in the codex) to start if off... only issues would be A) getting the community to come to a consensus on the "grades" assigned to each unit, and B) getting the OP of this thread to edit it into the first post.

Maybe I'll post what I've got in a new thread first.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Ok, posted-

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/616099.page#7221919

Please check it out/leave some comments on what should be changed and why.
Hopefully if it pans out, OP here can add it to the first post so people after info will have something to start with.

Hey gang. Sorry I haven't posted that big game battle report. Have worked on it and will get it up soon.

MEANTIME - Going to a tournament in a couple of weeks. They allow Unbound, LoW up to 800pts and are using modified Maelstrom missions.

Been toying with fun unbound lists (tranny CTanny plus dlord/wraithwing plus 2CCBs) and just wondering if anyone had any smart ideas. I don't own 20 annihilation barges. Sadface.

TAKE 20 ANNIHIL--awwww, never mind...
:(

Do people think that the monolith is worth it now under 7th edition rules?

The monolith didn't gain anything of note from 7ed except for scoring but Ghosts Arks do it way better because they get to Jink and Objective secured