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 skoffs wrote:
Are the Spyders and Scarabs going to be hanging back by the Citadel?
Adding 4 bases a turn is going to be pretty sweet.
(Though I would have been tempted to split the Scarabs up. Some to go with the Spyders to be more of a mobile threat, and some to hang back with the Citadel to hopefully be forgotten and slowly grow unmolested until they can zoom off to wreak havoc when least expected).

They will be for the very 1st turn, after which they should be advancing. BTW, I am generating 7 scarab bases a turn (6 from spiders and 1 from the Tomb Citadel's Tomb Ziggurat).

Oh yeah, duh, 6 Spyders. (why did I think there was only 3?)
And these are all the Maynarkh CC Scarabs, too, right?
Man, 17+ of those in one unit... *shudder*

I thought there was a limit on how many scarabs you could potentially create, like if you rolled a 1 you suffer a wound and can no longer create them? Or maybe I'm mistaken and they just don't do that in the battle reports I'm watching.

2+ scarab placed fine, 1 scarab placed and you take a wound.

I haven't ever tried a Scarab farm, never really thought it was that viable a tactic...

how well does it work?

 Gamerely wrote:
I thought there was a limit on how many scarabs you could potentially create, like if you rolled a 1 you suffer a wound and can no longer create them? Or maybe I'm mistaken and they just don't do that in the battle reports I'm watching.

Spiders can always produce. On a roll of a '1', they take a wound but still produce.

The Tomb Citadel stops producing if it rolls a '1'.





Automatically Appended Next Post:

 IHateNids wrote:
2+ scarab placed fine, 1 scarab placed and you take a wound.

I haven't ever tried a Scarab farm, never really thought it was that viable a tactic...

how well does it work?

It is a matchup dependent build that can be quite good against a lot of armies. Other armies, not quite as well, but you can complement its weaknesses with the rest of the army. Just make sure you give it 1 or 2 turns to "grow" before going all out with it.

If you are already fielding scarabs and you can spare 150 points to field 3 Spyders it doesn't hurt.

Honestly though, it comes down to how prepared your opponents are to deal with swarms.

I've been fielding 2-3 scarab swarms,10 bases each, on the deployment line with the Spyders right behind them.
Turn 1 bump one swarm up to 13 bases and run it red tover stlye at the enemy 12+d6" to tie up whatever they are advancing, providing cover saves to my army at the same time.
Move up second swarm 11" and spyders 6", so they are still within 6" range to spawn more scarabs at the beggining of turn 2.

One of those squads will end up tar pitting something. If the opponent can't kill more than 3 bases a turn, you can use the spyders spawn ability to replace losses and keep your scarabs full strength.

If the scarabs get wiped out, they've usually stripped some armor saves. I usually have warriors waiting in rapid fire range at that point to mop up.

Remember to that 3 Spyders pay for themselves in Scarab swarms in 3 turns, and they are not useless beyond that.

I've had mulitple games where people concentrate their fire on the Spyders and get devoured by the scarabs.

I don't normally base my entire army around them, but I'll usually invest in at least a unit of 3 Spyders and 2 swarms of Scarabs.

There are 8 Spyders and 80+bases of scarabs in my collection waiting for the day I can field the Appcalypse formation that revolves around them.

Your prayers have been answered, there IS an Apocalypse Formation..
But it's quite gakky, so we'll have to wait for a normal formation.

Ok, battle report can be found here:


3K Unconventional Necrons with Forgeworld vs Competitive Tau

 adamsouza wrote:
If you are already fielding scarabs and you can spare 150 points to field 3 Spyders it doesn't hurt.

Honestly though, it comes down to how prepared your opponents are to deal with swarms.

I've been fielding 2-3 scarab swarms,10 bases each, on the deployment line with the Spyders right behind them.
Turn 1 bump one swarm up to 13 bases and run it red tover stlye at the enemy 12+d6" to tie up whatever they are advancing, providing cover saves to my army at the same time.
Move up second swarm 11" and spyders 6", so they are still within 6" range to spawn more scarabs at the beggining of turn 2.

One of those squads will end up tar pitting something. If the opponent can't kill more than 3 bases a turn, you can use the spyders spawn ability to replace losses and keep your scarabs full strength.

If the scarabs get wiped out, they've usually stripped some armor saves. I usually have warriors waiting in rapid fire range at that point to mop up.

Remember to that 3 Spyders pay for themselves in Scarab swarms in 3 turns, and they are not useless beyond that.

I've had mulitple games where people concentrate their fire on the Spyders and get devoured by the scarabs.

I don't normally base my entire army around them, but I'll usually invest in at least a unit of 3 Spyders and 2 swarms of Scarabs.

There are 8 Spyders and 80+bases of scarabs in my collection waiting for the day I can field the Appcalypse formation that revolves around them.

The strength of Scarab farm is in direct relationship to the density of terrain. In a dense terrain setup, it is really, really solid. If I know ahead of time that the terrain will be dense, I bring the Scarab farm and wreck face.

I hadn't thought of it that way. Wher I play there usually isn't more than 6-8" of empty space between pieces of terrain.

Scarabs are soo small they can pretty mch hide behind anything.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Kangodo wrote:
Your prayers have been answered, there IS an Apocalypse Formation..
But it's quite gakky, so we'll have to wait for a normal formation.

Yes and Yes.

The Apocalypse formation where scarabs eat ruins is what I was refering to. We have a tables worth of ruins we often play with, and I want to see the look on their faces when the scarabs start demolishing it.

 jy2 wrote:
Ok, just had my battle today against Tau.



3K NECRONS

CAD 1 - Sentrystar:

Imotekh
Obyron
1x Lance-tek
1x Veil-tek

5x Warriors - Ghost Ark
10x Immortals - Gauss

1x Tomb Blade

Nightshroud Bomber
3x Sentry Pylons - FDR
Tesseract Ark

CAD 2 - Maynark Scarab-farm:

Destroyer Lord - 2+, MSS, ResOrb

5x Warriors
10x Flayed Ones - Flensing Scarabs

10x Scarabs - Charnel Scarabs

3x Spiders
3x Spiders

Necron Tomb Citadel

The Second part is not CAD. If you're running Dark Harvest (as the Flayed Ones suggest), Warrior squads have to be taken in a minimum of 10 from that Army List.

 jy2 wrote:


BTW, I played the Sentrystar as conservatively as possible ruleswise. That means hits generated against 1 unit apply only to that unit. For example, if the 3 pylons hit 3 separate vehicles, that means each vehicle takes 6 hits each (and not 18 hits each as would happen under pure RAW).

Not sure why you chose to nerf Sentrystar. The rules are not ambiguous at all and 18 hits would happen in the above example. This is equivalent to playing Wave Serpent's Serpent Shield at 6" instead of the clearly written 60" cuz we want to.

Perhaps they're playing it with the RAI interpretation that whoever wrote the rule for the FDR f'd up and the never intended it to be that overpowered. (sure, RAW saying you can play it that way, but come on, that's pretty ridiculous)

 skoffs wrote:
Perhaps they're playing it with the RAI interpretation that whoever wrote the rule for the FDR f'd up and the never intended it to be that overpowered. (sure, RAW saying you can play it that way, but come on, that's pretty ridiculous)

Like I said, that would be active rule replacement without any justification except to purely power level edit. RAW it's very clear how FDR resolves. Tournaments implement RAW in this case unless a house rule is in place to explicitly overrule. If we are going to start power level editing, where does it start and where does it end? Why power level edit the Sentry Pylon before power level editing the Transcendant C'Tan or the Riptide or the Wave Serpent or Invisibility?

col_impact wrote:

 jy2 wrote:


BTW, I played the Sentrystar as conservatively as possible ruleswise. That means hits generated against 1 unit apply only to that unit. For example, if the 3 pylons hit 3 separate vehicles, that means each vehicle takes 6 hits each (and not 18 hits each as would happen under pure RAW).

Not sure why you chose to nerf Sentrystar. The rules are not ambiguous at all and 18 hits would happen in the above example. This is equivalent to playing Wave Serpent's Serpent Shield at 6" instead of the clearly written 60" cuz we want to.

Because I didn't want to roflstomp my opponent?

In casual play, oftentimes, I need to handicap myself. But if this was a tournament, I'll play it however the event ruled it.

Requizen wrote:

The Second part is not CAD. If you're running Dark Harvest (as the Flayed Ones suggest), Warrior squads have to be taken in a minimum of 10 from that Army List.

Thanks for pointing it out. I had not noticed that.

 jy2 wrote:

col_impact wrote:

 jy2 wrote:


BTW, I played the Sentrystar as conservatively as possible ruleswise. That means hits generated against 1 unit apply only to that unit. For example, if the 3 pylons hit 3 separate vehicles, that means each vehicle takes 6 hits each (and not 18 hits each as would happen under pure RAW).

Not sure why you chose to nerf Sentrystar. The rules are not ambiguous at all and 18 hits would happen in the above example. This is equivalent to playing Wave Serpent's Serpent Shield at 6" instead of the clearly written 60" cuz we want to.

Because I didn't want to roflstomp my opponent?

BAO allowed Forgeworld and the Sentry Pylons. In fact, Sentry Pylons made it to the top 16.Did it play Sentry Pylons your way or RAW way? Sentry Pylons are good and all but if they aren't getting teleported around by Obyron it's generally a volcano the opponent knowingly walks into and if it is being teleported around by Obyron then it's one big glass cannon death star that is fragile to deep strike mishap. Might as well play things RAW at first and adjust for power level second. Sentry Pylons played pure RAW are still going to struggle against Tau,Eldar, and SM mainstays.

It's definitely noble of you to handicap yourself for your opponent, but it winds up being less telling of how that match-up would resolve in actual tournament conditions.

col_impact wrote:

 jy2 wrote:

col_impact wrote:

 jy2 wrote:


BTW, I played the Sentrystar as conservatively as possible ruleswise. That means hits generated against 1 unit apply only to that unit. For example, if the 3 pylons hit 3 separate vehicles, that means each vehicle takes 6 hits each (and not 18 hits each as would happen under pure RAW).

Not sure why you chose to nerf Sentrystar. The rules are not ambiguous at all and 18 hits would happen in the above example. This is equivalent to playing Wave Serpent's Serpent Shield at 6" instead of the clearly written 60" cuz we want to.

Because I didn't want to roflstomp my opponent?

BAO allowed Forgeworld and the Sentry Pylons. In fact, Sentry Pylons made it to the top 16.Did it play Sentry Pylons your way or RAW way? Sentry Pylons are good and all but if they aren't getting teleported around by Obyron it's generally a volcano the opponent knowingly walks into and if it is being teleported around by Obyron then it's one big glass cannon death star that is fragile to deep strike mishap. Might as well play things RAW at first and adjust for power level second. Sentry Pylons played pure RAW are still going to struggle against Tau,Eldar, and SM mainstays.

It's definitely noble of you to handicap yourself for your opponent, but it winds up being less telling of how that match-up would resolve in actual tournament conditions.

I'm not sure. He was the only sentry pylon player in the tourney and he ran them as 2 separate, individual units. But from talking to Reece after the tournament, it doesn't appear that Reece was all too familiar with the rules for the sentry pylons.

BTW, I went suicidal with my pylonstar and teleported them smack-dab in the middle of the Tau army, where all 4 of his riptides and all of his markerlights were waiting.

In tournament play, it'll be as strong as almost any other deathstar. It also has the same weaknesses as any other deathstar army and isn't unbeatable.

BTW (part II), I know how powerful it is if you go by pure RAW. It is absolutely broken. But I think it is better to play with the toned-down version of it and then ramp up the power in competitive play. Playing the weaker version better prepares you in the case that the tournament allows for the stronger version, but playing the stronger version absolutely screws you over if you take it to a tournament and the tournament rules it to be played with the weaker version.

 jy2 wrote:

col_impact wrote:

 jy2 wrote:

col_impact wrote:

 jy2 wrote:


BTW, I played the Sentrystar as conservatively as possible ruleswise. That means hits generated against 1 unit apply only to that unit. For example, if the 3 pylons hit 3 separate vehicles, that means each vehicle takes 6 hits each (and not 18 hits each as would happen under pure RAW).

Not sure why you chose to nerf Sentrystar. The rules are not ambiguous at all and 18 hits would happen in the above example. This is equivalent to playing Wave Serpent's Serpent Shield at 6" instead of the clearly written 60" cuz we want to.

Because I didn't want to roflstomp my opponent?

BAO allowed Forgeworld and the Sentry Pylons. In fact, Sentry Pylons made it to the top 16.Did it play Sentry Pylons your way or RAW way? Sentry Pylons are good and all but if they aren't getting teleported around by Obyron it's generally a volcano the opponent knowingly walks into and if it is being teleported around by Obyron then it's one big glass cannon death star that is fragile to deep strike mishap. Might as well play things RAW at first and adjust for power level second. Sentry Pylons played pure RAW are still going to struggle against Tau,Eldar, and SM mainstays.

It's definitely noble of you to handicap yourself for your opponent, but it winds up being less telling of how that match-up would resolve in actual tournament conditions.

I'm not sure. He was the only sentry pylon player in the tourney and he ran them as 2 separate, individual units. But from talking to Reece after the tournament, it doesn't appear that Reece was all too familiar with the rules for the sentry pylons.

BTW, I went suicidal with my pylonstar and teleported them smack-dab in the middle of the Tau army, where all 4 of his riptides and all of his markerlights were waiting.

In tournament play, it'll be as strong as almost any other deathstar. It also has the same weaknesses as any other deathstar army and isn't unbeatable.

BTW (part II), I know how powerful it is if you go by pure RAW. It is absolutely broken. But I think it is better to play with the toned-down version of it and then ramp up the power in competitive play. Playing the weaker version better prepares you in the case that the tournament allows for the stronger version, but playing the stronger version absolutely screws you over if you take it to a tournament and the tournament rules it to be played with the weaker version.

I don't agree with your logic. Tourneys either play RAW or ban. Rarely do they power level edit. For example, the Transcendant C'tan.

col_impact wrote:

I don't agree with your logic. Tourneys either play RAW or ban. Rarely do they power level edit. For example, the Transcendant C'tan.

No, they do modify with their FAQ's. Every tournament to a degree has done this. Some examples:

1. Modifying the rules for blasts so that it only affects 1 level of a ruins.

2. Re-rollable 2+/2+ becomes re-rollable 2+/4+.

3. Cannot run dual-CAD even though can use 2 detachments.

4. Can self-ally.

5. Can infiltrate unit + character who doesn't have the Infiltrate rules.

6. Modified maelstrom objectives.

7. Psychic-phase modifications.

8. Spawned units (i.e. termagants) not being ObSec from your Primary detachment.

9. Your favorites - disallowing bargelords to join with another unit. Phase shifters only applying to the Lord and not chariot.

There's probably more. But you get the idea.

col_impact wrote:

 skoffs wrote:
Perhaps they're playing it with the RAI interpretation that whoever wrote the rule for the FDR f'd up and the never intended it to be that overpowered. (sure, RAW saying you can play it that way, but come on, that's pretty ridiculous)

Like I said, that would be active rule replacement without any justification except to purely power level edit. RAW it's very clear how FDR resolves. Tournaments implement RAW in this case unless a house rule is in place to explicitly overrule. If we are going to start power level editing, where does it start and where does it end? Why power level edit the Sentry Pylon before power level editing the Transcendant C'Tan or the Riptide or the Wave Serpent or Invisibility?

You may argue its RAW, but the intent is clearly laid out in how the regular Death Ray works.

Fragile wrote:

col_impact wrote:

 skoffs wrote:
Perhaps they're playing it with the RAI interpretation that whoever wrote the rule for the FDR f'd up and the never intended it to be that overpowered. (sure, RAW saying you can play it that way, but come on, that's pretty ridiculous)

Like I said, that would be active rule replacement without any justification except to purely power level edit. RAW it's very clear how FDR resolves. Tournaments implement RAW in this case unless a house rule is in place to explicitly overrule. If we are going to start power level editing, where does it start and where does it end? Why power level edit the Sentry Pylon before power level editing the Transcendant C'Tan or the Riptide or the Wave Serpent or Invisibility?

You may argue its RAW, but the intent is clearly laid out in how the regular Death Ray works.

There is no ambiguity in the RAW for FDR. RAW = RAI for the FDR. You have a problem with the power level of the FDR which has nothing to do with RAW or RAI.

There's no way to prove the RAW is RAI on the FDR.
It could just be someone's f-up that was never caught before it went to print (it's not like they're not known for crap like that).
And seeing as how FW never updates their IA FAQs, there's no way to clear it up one way or the other.

 skoffs wrote:
There's no way to prove the RAW is RAI on the FDR.
It could just be someone's f-up that was never caught before it went to print (it's not like they're not known for crap like that).
And seeing as how FW never updates their IA FAQs, there's no way to clear it up one way or the other.

You don't base RAI/RAW discussions on wild speculation. There is no basis for not taking RAW as is. If people wind up having trouble with the power level then they can power level edit or ban.

col_impact wrote:

 skoffs wrote:
There's no way to prove the RAW is RAI on the FDR.
It could just be someone's f-up that was never caught before it went to print (it's not like they're not known for crap like that).
And seeing as how FW never updates their IA FAQs, there's no way to clear it up one way or the other.

You don't base RAI/RAW discussions on wild speculation. There is no basis for not taking RAW as is. If people wind up having trouble with the power level then they can power level edit or ban.

I really don't see why you are so caught up with pure RAW. Now if GW were to update us constantly new FAQ's to address our questions/concerns/arguments, then yeah, I'd be more inclined to go fully with RAW. But the fact of the matter is GW has dropped the ball on us. They have basically told us that they don't care about competitive play and that they are not going to do anything about it (with their lack of updates). So for now, this is a game of RAW/RAI/power-editing-to-balance-the-game-in-the-eyes-of-the-TO's. It's great that some of the TO's are trying to create some uniformity in the game by coordinating their FAQ's, but the fact of the matter is that you really can't play pure RAW nowadays - it's just too unbalancing in competitive play! If you want to go by pure RAW, that's fine. But don't hold everyone to the same RAW standards in tournament play. They've got potentially a lot of money to lose if their player base felt that the game was too unbalanced for them to go to tournaments.

 jy2 wrote:

col_impact wrote:

 skoffs wrote:
There's no way to prove the RAW is RAI on the FDR.
It could just be someone's f-up that was never caught before it went to print (it's not like they're not known for crap like that).
And seeing as how FW never updates their IA FAQs, there's no way to clear it up one way or the other.

You don't base RAI/RAW discussions on wild speculation. There is no basis for not taking RAW as is. If people wind up having trouble with the power level then they can power level edit or ban.

I really don't see why you are so caught up with pure RAW. Now if GW were to update us constantly new FAQ's to address our questions/concerns/arguments, then yeah, I'd be more inclined to go fully with RAW. But the fact of the matter is GW has dropped the ball on us. They have basically told us that they don't care about competitive play and that they are not going to do anything about it (with their lack of updates). So for now, this is a game of RAW/RAI/power-editing-to-balance-the-game-in-the-eyes-of-the-TO's. It's great that some of the TO's are trying to create some uniformity in the game by coordinating their FAQ's, but the fact of the matter is that you really can't play pure RAW nowadays - it's just too unbalancing in competitive play! If you want to go by pure RAW, that's fine. But don't hold everyone to the same RAW standards in tournament play. They've got potentially a lot of money to lose if their player base felt that the game was too unbalanced for them to go to tournaments.

I am really not that caught up with pure RAW. I just insist people are super clear about what they are indeed doing. If they are power level nerfing then admit to power level nerfing, but don't try to insist you have RAI support when you don't. For better or worse, GW has left the maintenance of the ruleset in the hands of the player base. The problem is that the player base is self-interested and prone to lobbying for self-advantage, they are interested in seeing their armies prevail in the rules and their opponents succumb to the rules. So it is of utmost importance that everyone holds themselves and everyone else up to highest measure of fair standards, clear thinking, and honest and logical procedure. So what all this means is that Skoff's wild speculation that some typo is at fault in the way that the FDR is written needs to be called out as nothing more than wild speculation that has no weight in a RAI discussion.

So I would completely be in favor of power level editing the T C'tan and the Revenant Titan and the Warhound. Also I would be in favor of power level editing the PylonStar if it proved to outclass other deathstars like the Centurion Star.

I wouldn't call my RAI speculation "wild" so much as "plausible", in that the whole debacle reeks of their typical indifference toward competitive play, quality control and play testing.
... actually, I wouldn't even call it mine.
(I'm not the one who initially proposed it, this theory of "it's probably another oversight that no one caught" has been around for a while.)

 skoffs wrote:
I wouldn't call my RAI speculation "wild" so much as "plausible", in that the whole debacle reeks of their typical indifference toward competitive play, quality control and play testing.
... actually, I wouldn't even call it mine.
(I'm not the one who initially proposed it, this theory of "it's probably another oversight that no one caught" has been around for a while.)

Those kinds of theories have no weight because they can be applied without restraint to anything. How do we know Warriors have a 24" shooting range and not a 36" range? "it's probably another oversight that no one caught"

We need to have standards as to what can count as support in a RAW/RAI argument. "it's probably another oversight that no one caught" is actually nothing more than wild speculation.

Ok, battle report completed:


3K Unconventional Necrons with Forgeworld vs Competitive Tau

col_impact wrote:

 skoffs wrote:
I wouldn't call my RAI speculation "wild" so much as "plausible", in that the whole debacle reeks of their typical indifference toward competitive play, quality control and play testing.
... actually, I wouldn't even call it mine.
(I'm not the one who initially proposed it, this theory of "it's probably another oversight that no one caught" has been around for a while.)

Those kinds of theories have no weight because they can be applied without restraint to anything. How do we know Warriors have a 24" shooting range and not a 36" range? "it's probably another oversight that no one caught"

We need to have standards as to what can count as support in a RAW/RAI argument. "it's probably another oversight that no one caught" is actually nothing more than wild speculation.

There is a standard to compare it to, and that is the Deathray of the Doom Scythe. It's like saying ok there are boltguns, but the boltgun of unit XYZ shoots double the shots and does that number of hits to every unit in a straight line within range. Sometimes, you've really got to wonder whether the developers really meant to make the weapon that much more powerful than the standard weapon of its kind, or was the writer under the influence when he actually wrote it (as well as the editor who edited it).

 jy2 wrote:

Ok, battle report completed:


3K Unconventional Necrons with Forgeworld vs Competitive Tau

col_impact wrote:

 skoffs wrote:
I wouldn't call my RAI speculation "wild" so much as "plausible", in that the whole debacle reeks of their typical indifference toward competitive play, quality control and play testing.
... actually, I wouldn't even call it mine.
(I'm not the one who initially proposed it, this theory of "it's probably another oversight that no one caught" has been around for a while.)

Those kinds of theories have no weight because they can be applied without restraint to anything. How do we know Warriors have a 24" shooting range and not a 36" range? "it's probably another oversight that no one caught"

We need to have standards as to what can count as support in a RAW/RAI argument. "it's probably another oversight that no one caught" is actually nothing more than wild speculation.

There is a standard to compare it to, and that is the Deathray of the Doom Scythe. It's like saying ok there are boltguns, but the boltgun of unit XYZ shoots double the shots and does that number of hits to every unit in a straight line within range. Sometimes, you've really got to wonder whether the developers really meant to make the weapon that much more powerful than the standard weapon of its kind, or was the writer under the influence when he actually wrote it (as well as the editor who edited it).

One weapon is on a flyer. The other is on an artillery model. Artillery guns tend to be more powerful, fluff-wise, logic-wise, and game-wise. It's also called Focused Death Ray and not Death Ray to imply that they were actually very serious about making it stronger. There is absolutely no case for nerfing the Focused Death Ray to be a Death Ray unless you just want to power level edit. Which is fine. Just don't pretend you have RAI for it.

So in your example above it's like comparing a boltgun to a focused boltgun (which is another word for "super").

Also, keep in mind that what makes sentry pylons OP is not the strength of their guns but their new to 7th edition ability to be granted relentless.

col_impact wrote:
So in your example above it's like comparing a boltgun to a focused boltgun

I would have went with Bolter and Heavy Bolter, or Bolt Cannon... but your point is still valid