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I cba to wade through 45 pages of Necrons goodness, so I'll ask. Are Lychguard or Praetorians useful at all in 7th?

PS: I am not a competitive player...

It really depends on the powerlevel of your opponents list.
I know I personally enjoy fielding Lychguard and I even win with (thanks to) them.

They are mediocre, but I see them as better than the mediocre units of other Codices.

So mostly still as bodyguard units for royalty or do they have more purpose now?

 BladeTX wrote:
So mostly still as bodyguard units for royalty or do they have more purpose now?

No.

That's why we all have our fingers crossed waiting for the new codex

I swear by them, still

 BladeTX wrote:
I cba to wade through 45 pages of Necrons goodness, so I'll ask. Are Lychguard or Praetorians useful at all in 7th?

PS: I am not a competitive player...

Lychguard can make a deathstar that's only okay at best (after all, Orbs + Swords make for a 4++ and 4+++, but Warscythes are better than swords. If we could mix I would almost rethink the statement). Praetorians are still just though, losing out to Wraiths and Arcathrites.

There are significantly better things to spend 2-400 points on.
Hopefully that changes come January, but for the time being, no, they're one of the worst units in the codex (sharing the bottom tier with the likes of Flayed Ones and Doomsday Arks).

Can we chat about Triarch Stalkers really quick?

I love this thing. It's a great model, it fits AV13 armies nicely, and in theory the Twin Linking is amazing. But I have yet to have one survive until the end of the game, or often even make its points back. It just seems to have no defenses other than the AV13, if they have a Melta, Lance, or just powerful enough weapons, it just cries. Open-topped with no save, no jink, and no Stealth or Shrouded means I take this thing off the board in the first few turns nearly every game.

Does anyone have other experiences with it? I would be fine with its performance if we were talking 2/3 or less of the points cost, but I have yet to feel like it is worth the investment. Have you had games where it has been worthwhile?

Requizen wrote:
Can we chat about Triarch Stalkers really quick?

I love this thing. It's a great model, it fits AV13 armies nicely, and in theory the Twin Linking is amazing. But I have yet to have one survive until the end of the game, or often even make its points back. It just seems to have no defenses other than the AV13, if they have a Melta, Lance, or just powerful enough weapons, it just cries. Open-topped with no save, no jink, and no Stealth or Shrouded means I take this thing off the board in the first few turns nearly every game.

Does anyone have other experiences with it? I would be fine with its performance if we were talking 2/3 or less of the points cost, but I have yet to feel like it is worth the investment. Have you had games where it has been worthwhile?

It usually won't make its points back. That's just something you have to accept.

If you like to run Royal Courts a lot, buying one with the TLHGC allows twinlinking of those weapons we all know and love (Haywire Stick, Despairtek, etc). Not entirely cost effective, but it will make the difference between something being almost dead and something being actually dead.

You don't use Stalkers with Storm/Despair-teks,
You use them with Destruct-teks, the guys who need rerolls the most.

 skoffs wrote:
You don't use Stalkers with Storm/Despair-teks,
You use them with Destruct-teks, the guys who need rerolls the most.

You use them with anything not a TL'd Tesla Desctructor. The issue is that those are already easily bought.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 skoffs wrote:
You don't use Stalkers with Storm/Despair-teks,
You use them with Destruct-teks, the guys who need rerolls the most.

You use them with anything not a TL'd Tesla Desctructor. The issue is that those are already easily bought.

You can use them for anything not TL'd, but the issue with stalkers is that you have to build a list around them - and you need 2 of them to maximise your chances of getting the benefit. In those circumstances, you want the best bang for your buck, so Destruct-Teks, warrior blobs, teleporting immortals (tesla is probably preferred) and the Doomsday Ark tend to benefit the most.

I use one with my Monolith, usually to brutal effect.

But I have noticed that it seems to die an awful lot when on it's own. I guess people are just scared of them

 IHateNids wrote:
I use one with my Monolith, usually to brutal effect.

But I have noticed that it seems to die an awful lot when on it's own. I guess people are just scared of them

It's a buffer potentially for every other shooting unit, so its tactically smart to take out the Stalker early.

Honestly, I think it's a knee-jerk to OMG-TL, as it effects more than just itself

Do you think Sentry Pylons are still worth taking if you're not going to be using Obyron for a Sentry Star?

Nope.
They used to be awesome last edition with their Gauss guns hitting all targets at an insane range, but now you gotta get close using the Deathray or not use them at all. Shame, really.

Well, it's not super close ranged. 24" is the same as pretty much the rest of our army, plus 3D6" on the ray itself. And if you still stick a Phaeron in there, they can move 6" and shoot, for an effective firing range of 33"-48". That's obviously not the same as the 120" Gauss Exterminator, but for T7/W3/3+ that's not a bad effective fire range. Obviously taking Obyron for the mobility is better, but for him you're paying the same price as an entire Death Ray Sentry Pylon for what is essentially an expensive caddy.

Quick question about firing a squad of sentry pylons with Focussed Death Rays, do all 3 death rays need to target the same point on the battlefield and use the same 3D6 line (hitting everything under the line 6 times) or can they each target different points on the battlefield and each roll 3D6 individually for their own lines?

 unfassbarnathan wrote:
Quick question about firing a squad of sentry pylons with Focussed Death Rays, do all 3 death rays need to target the same point on the battlefield and use the same 3D6 line (hitting everything under the line 6 times) or can they each target different points on the battlefield and each roll 3D6 individually for their own lines?

Only FW knows There is no rules to give us an idea how to work it. Sadly I sent them an email about 2 weeks ago asking to clarify this for a tournament but have gotten no answer. I would like something on paper from them.

 unfassbarnathan wrote:
Quick question about firing a squad of sentry pylons with Focussed Death Rays, do all 3 death rays need to target the same point on the battlefield and use the same 3D6 line (hitting everything under the line 6 times) or can they each target different points on the battlefield and each roll 3D6 individually for their own lines?

The only restriction is that you have to declare some legal target unit initially (so something has to be on the battlefield that you could target). However, after that it plays out without any connection to the unit you targeted. Each pylon will resolve separately with a different target point on the ground.

At the moment, the only indicator we have is that the start of each ray's line is drawn anywhere within 24" of the Pylon firing it.
There's nothing saying the lines all have to be drawn the same way. Just within the 24" bubble around the Pylons.

I asked Tim King, who runs Caledonian Uprising about them about a year ago. He scratched his head a bit and said that he reckoned it would be: pick the same point, draw the same line, roll the 3d6 seperately for each model and resolve all the hits together. Which seems to make about as much sense as anything else.

Cally is one of the biggest tournaments in the UK and frequented by lots of ETC players. Which is a thing, apparently.

I am going heavy combat with my necrons, btw. After winning my first tounrnament last week with stupid double Trans C''Tan, I've decided to try - 3 units of wraiths and 2 CCBs at a local tourney this weekend. Wish me well, fellow zombie robot weirdos!

Finally got a chance to try out my Necrons for the first time. My friend brought Space Wolves and handed me my spine. 2 drop pods bristling with Grey hunters, a 3rd with Wolf Guard pretty much wiped all of my troops away/locked them in combat by turn 2. Blew up my ghost ark in turn 1 before I even got a chance to do anything with it. I started a lot of the vehicles in reserve to prevent the melta assault but didn't seem to help much. Are there recommendations for stopping the drop pod assaults? Even with a unit of 15 warriors in rapid fire I couldn't kill but 3 of this 10 because of the +3 armor save. Then they assault and they're slowly whittled away.

Don't use reserve against other armys that rely on reserves, unless your dropping units on his tableside.. You want to have more of a presence on the board if your worried about drop pods. You really should deploy all your vehicles so he doesn't have room to deploy his drops near you.

Terrain. Make sure you are using adequite amounts of terrain. There shouldn't be wide open spacesi n your depolyment zone for his drop pods if there is terrain with your vehicles and infantry between them.

Scarabs. Anything that want's to fight you in melee, introduce to your scarabs. Aything that he has that is great at shooting, and not so good in melee, introduce to scarabs. If you run lots of scarabs, run 3 spyders. Nothing is as demoralizing to your enemy as you scarab swarm growing every round, even though he's steadilyinflicting 5-6 wounds on it.

The plan was to deep strike the monolith (I know it's a subpar vehicle, I wanted to try it out) and use the gate to transport my big unit of warriors to his deployment zone. But I misshaped and had to wait until turn 3, which by then the warriors were in assault. Lots of terrain really isn't useful against drop pods since they can't mishap unless they fall off the table, especially if one has locator beacons. Generally, everything in the Space Wolves codex is going to be pretty good at cc. First round drop pods with 4 meltas between them is really tough to deal with. Wraiths/spyders w/ scarabs would be helpful, but I didn't bring them. That and my 3 warscythes effectively rolled snake eyes for either to-hit or to-wound approximately 6 times. He also enfeebled me with his Rune Priest for 4 rounds. Humbling loss, but he's got the attention of my Overlord now, I'll play around with my list and bring something a little more.... effective.

 Gamerely wrote:
Lots of terrain really isn't useful against drop pods since they can't mishap unless they fall off the table, especially if one has locator beacons.

The point isn't for them to mishap ,it's for them not to have enough room to deploy them near you.

6" of space between terrain pieces is enough for a LandRaider to drive through, but not enough for a drop pod to deploy when there are models deployed within that gap.

I bring it up because I have seen too many battle reports with 6-8 pieces of terrain on a 48"x60" table.

 adamsouza wrote:

 Gamerely wrote:
Lots of terrain really isn't useful against drop pods since they can't mishap unless they fall off the table, especially if one has locator beacons.

The point isn't for them to mishap ,it's for them not to have enough room to deploy them near you.

6" of space between terrain pieces is enough for a LandRaider to drive through, but not enough for a drop pod to deploy when there are models deployed within that gap.

I bring it up because I have seen too many battle reports with 6-8 pieces of terrain on a 48"x60" table.

Yeah that was a mistake on my part, I'm not 100% aware of what drop pods are capable of, I thought that they couldn't land on craters for some reason. I had about 25 warriors on the field, I suppose I should have bubble wrapped the dickens out of my ghost ark. Losing that turn 1 really crippled me. I have 3 of them, but only 1 fully built.

Is there any rule preventing scarabs from entering and using a wall of martyrs bunker ?

So when it comes to the competitive scene, what are army building options? Obviously we're still rocking the Flyer Spam, though it's less perfect now that there's more Skyfire and you have 3 Flyrants on a table that can shoot them down pretty easily.

Scythe spam is very close to an MSU-focused force. Generally right now it's just 5 Warriors and a Stormtek, or some Deathmarks and a Despairtek, but could we expand on that to make a true MSU style Necron army? Take out the CCBs (I'm not a huge fan of them right now, tough to kill but have basically no killing power for their price), add in some Ghost Arks carting around Warriors + Destructionteks (for S8 AP2 goodness), maybe start including Lords to toughen them up with Res Orbs and to terrify enemy assault.

2 Overlords as HQ means we can bring up to 10 special weapons in the army, which is quite a bit and more than a lot of people can boast. We already see this with the Stormtek spamming to take down Knights and the like, but I feel like Despairteks are underappreciated. Keep 5 in the Royal Court, put them in a Ghost Ark, now you have an AV13 vehicle that's carting around 5 Lascannon shots.

Maybe not a great idea, and everything is likely to change with the new codex, but I'm working on my army and just spitballing.