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Hi im playing a Necron army soon 2k points and was curious if armor was any good against necrons i have Decimator engine and a Contemptor dreadnaught i want to field

If it's armour that has to get in close, then Gauss may well take it out far easier than expected. Generally while going against Crons I try to stick to tanks that operate outside of 24" so that's not a danger.

If you can, take AP2 or AP3 weapons, preferably with longer range, to mitigate the danger of Gauss, or get in close and focus on instant damage so there's less to shoot back.

Depends on what the Necron player brings. The necron Codex has many tools to deal with armor.

-Scarab Bases, generated from Tomb Spiders every Necron Turn, they take away armor points in close combat. They move like beasts. If scarabs assault a vehicle its basically dead.

-Gauss Weapons, most necron weapons auto glance on a 6 rolled during the pen roll. So most infantry of theirs can glance any vehicle to death.

-Wraiths, wraiths are like str6 rending or something so if a squad of 6 of them attacks a vehicle in CC its basically dead unless its a land raider or a dred.

-Their Flyers and Heavy Slots also give them alot of Str7 Shooting. Their fast attack slot gives them a melta.


So is armor good against necrons? Not really no. Is infantry in the open any better? no not really. Necrons can be out shot and out assaulted, it just comes down to playing well.

If your Decimator is packing a Heavy Conversion Beamer then yes he should be more than safe from most things! Just bear in mind that it has to stand still for a turn for firing calibration. At 42" to 72" range though it will be frighteningly powerful.
Butcher Cannon and Storm Laser make things a little more risky as their 36" range would bring you into range of any Heavy Gauss cannons your opponent might have.
Soul Burner will definitely bring you in to pretty much most Gauss weapon range.

 angelofvengeance wrote:
If your Decimator is packing a Heavy Conversion Beamer then yes he should be more than safe from most things! Just bear in mind that it has to stand still for a turn for firing calibration. At 42" to 72" range though it will be frighteningly powerful.
Butcher Cannon and Storm Laser make things a little more risky as their 36" range would bring you into range of any Heavy Gauss cannons your opponent might have.
Soul Burner will definitely bring you in to pretty much most Gauss weapon range.

Just watch out for the new C'tan formation. That thing can teleport next to your vehicles with a Veiltek and pop it an a Lascannon shot + Stormtek Haywire.

Between stormteks and guass that can be brought to point-blank range with easy, and tesla destructors in both DT and HS slots-AV is not the answer against necrons. they will die, quickly.

A single tank will do nothing against Necrons, since necron infantry can kill vehicles.

However, as gauss isn't that reliable unless used en masse, spamming several tanks / armored units can be somewhat effective.

I am a necron player myself, and have been for two years now. My answer is yes but no, yes because of long range armour, no because of the sheer mass of warriors I see are proving to be popular with the newer players. Take long range, fast vehicles and hope they take out the warriors before they get to you, do NOT rely on transports to get people up front fast.

If you are going to use transports, use a lot of them and hope they drop off their load before getting gauss'd.
Smokes may help.

Also, don't bother with high AV vehicles. Gauss doesn't care about the AV.
What you want is a cheap vehicle with lots of HP.

Rhino spam is actually good. With a Land Raider or similar big target it might take me two, even three turns to get it depending on deployment and positioning afterwards... But it's definitely going down.

With a wall of Rhinos, it's distracting. In a straight fight a Rhino is useless on it's own merits as it has almost no firepower, but redeployment and objective grabbing can be serious considerations.

A given Gauss shot has an 11.1% chance to strip a hull point, assuming no cover saves. So, if we assume 20 shots, we'd have the following spreads...

0HP: 9.5%
1HP: 23.7%
2HP: 28.2%
3HP: 21.1%
4+HP: 17.5%

So, the odds of inflicting...

1+ HP = 90.5%
2+ HP = 66.8%
3+ HP = 38.6%
4+ HP = 17.5%

Which means that 20 Warriors at 12.1" to 24", costing 260 points, plus attached characters, have a 38.6% chance to take out a vehicle in a single round of shooting. Basically, Gauss weapons are able to take out vehicles, but they aren't exactly efficient at it. I've never avoided taking Armour just because I'm facing Necrons, and never felt like I was at a disadvantage. Like all armies, they have multiple ways of handling armour.

People still take vehicles against Guard, and we can spam special / heavy weapons like nobody's business. Same deal with Necrons.

The issue isn't that Gauss by itself is auto-death to vehicles, it's that the majority of Necron lists with say... Seven units on the table is likely to have 5-6 units capable of damaging vehicle armour one way or another.

And whilst vehicles are normally tough to touch and need a dedicated solution, they're pretty vulnerable once you can actually harm them.

So... If your list is reliant on one or two big expensive vehicle models, those are going to struggle against Necrons. Even if you hold way back, Scarabs are fast and we have ways of getting a Stormtek over there with his four haywire shots if we need to.

Genuinely, Necrons that use lots of Gauss have a hard time finding points for more dedicated AT.

At 1500 points, lets say someone decides to use a pair of 20 strong Warrior squads, with a Res Orb Lord, with Warscythe. That's 335 per block, for 670 points. We need an Overlord to unlock a Court, so let's say he's going to join some Immortals in a Night Scythe. Overlord has Warscythe, Mindshackle Scarabs and Sempiternal Weave, at 130 points. [We're at 800 points] So the [10] Immortals in Scythe cost 270 points. [1070 pts]

2x Annihilation Barge for fire support 180 points. [1250 pts]

We could probably fit another Haywire Cryptek, and delivery system in there... and some scarabs, maybe to take us up to 1500 points. We could trim the Warriors / Immortals down to free more points, but that's reducing the number of Gauss Shots.

Which brings me to my main point. If you want to take lots of Gauss shots, you can't take much dedicated AT, at which point you're directing all that "anti-infantry" firepower into tanks, which means you can't shoot the guys inside. This is the crux that all armies face, which is why I have no fear of bringing armour against Necrons. They're flexible, so they aren't specialized. For 335 points I could bring some SERIOUS anti-tank, instead of something that's probably going to work. You could buy a Wave Serpent and some Fire Dragons for that price. No they aren't as survivable, not even close, but they'll bust a tank with much more certainty than those 20 warriors will.

The only real issue I see that army having with a mechanised list is how horribly unweildy a twenty warrior block is at maneuvering and getting to shoot with all it's members.

That said, yeah: A list that sinks everything into troops doesn't leave any room for fun toys. Is forgoing all those toys particularly common in your meta?

NOOOOOOOOOOOO

That depends on what your opponent is actually playing.
Gauss can be dangerous, but is also quite overrated, but I wouldn't want to rush into 20 Necron Warriors with a Land Raider.

Not being able to take much dedicated anti-AV isn't a big problem for Necrons as Necrons have terrible dedicated AV. Necrons have almost no AP 2 or better weapons bar melee and if they do, they come at a super premium deluxe price (looking at you, Heavy Destroyers) or on fragile bodies (Destroteks).

Keep in mind that you can give a Necron blob Tank Hunter with Zahndrekh - which further increases their AT by a good margin.

@Kangodo: Yep! Everyone who decided to get the Land Raider close to my Blob in order to use the weapons and exterminate the squad will never, ever do the same

Sure, armor works fine against Necrons. Just bring some good AP4 Anti-infantry and a MC killer for those Tran C'tans and you should be good to go.

 Sigvatr wrote:
@Kangodo: Yep! Everyone who decided to get the Land Raider close to my Blob in order to use the weapons and exterminate the squad will never, ever do the same

This one time someone put a Baneblade-variant within 30" of my Infinite Phalanx.
That was funny.

Pff. That's "funny"?

Funny times were before GW decided to nerf Scarabs. Before the update, you could eat a Titan in a single round of combat. Those were good times

As any of my regular opponents will tell you, armor is no where nearly as effective against Necrons as it is against other races.

Gauss - glances on a damage roll of 6, reguardless of armor value

Twin Linked Tesla Destructors - S7 Assault 4, rerolls misses, and each 6 to hit causes 2 additional hits is on Scythes and Annihalation Barges, and is probably the most hated weapon by those playing against Necrons. Decent chance of glancing to death anything AV 13 or lower.

Storm Teks - not as common, but have an 12" Assault 4, S5 weapon with Haywire

Scarabs - 5 attacks on the charge, every hit, on a roll of 4+, reduces the vehicles armor value by 1 on alll locations. If a location drops to AV 0 the vehicle is wrecked.

Well im bringing 1 Decimator engine 1 Rhino with plague marines 1 Contemptor Dreadnaught then 2 Soul grinders and 1 helldrake was gonna bring 2 but i dont wanna be "That" guy

Dreadnoughts dropping in the shrouded pod with dual heavy flamers have done decent damage against my crons before. Aside from that, the list that adamsouza just gave is exactly why I never fear any armour with my crons (even serps).
Crons are highly effective against armour yet very weak against MCs. Swings and roundabouts.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Don't forget also with scarabs that if they reduce the armour to 9 they can start causing hps themselves. Eg: 3 scarab bases charge a stationary LR. 15 hits, -7 (7.5 but lets be kind) average off the armour, armour 7 all round now. 7.5 hps caused as attacks glancing on a 4+, penning on a 5+.

zilka86 wrote:
NOOOOOOOOOOOO

Thats your answer!