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TompiQ wrote:
IMO, the best choice for immortals is leaving them on the shelf and picking tomb blades instead.

A squad of 5 Immortals is your cheapest troop choice for ObSec at 85pts. Use them to hold onto an objective and forget about them. 3+ armor with 4+ RP makes them pretty durable.

My opponents are usually distracted by my much more killy units that they tend to go the game unmolested, while holding objectives in my deployment zone.

 adamsouza wrote:

TompiQ wrote:
IMO, the best choice for immortals is leaving them on the shelf and picking tomb blades instead.

A squad of 5 Immortals is your cheapest troop choice for ObSec at 85pts. Use them to hold onto an objective and forget about them. 3+ armor with 4+ RP makes them pretty durable.

My opponents are usually distracted by my much more killy units that they tend to go the game unmolested, while holding objectives in my deployment zone.

That is if you run a CAD. I prefer the decurion myself. And if they're unmolested while holding objectives, do you really need ObSec?

TompiQ wrote:

 adamsouza wrote:

TompiQ wrote:
IMO, the best choice for immortals is leaving them on the shelf and picking tomb blades instead.

A squad of 5 Immortals is your cheapest troop choice for ObSec at 85pts. Use them to hold onto an objective and forget about them. 3+ armor with 4+ RP makes them pretty durable.

My opponents are usually distracted by my much more killy units that they tend to go the game unmolested, while holding objectives in my deployment zone.

That is if you run a CAD. I prefer the decurion myself. And if they're unmolested while holding objectives, do you really need ObSec?

You said the best use was on the shelf. I was pointing out the uses for them, CAD or Decurion.

You missed the sublte hint that I'm actually using in a Decurion myself, but I did feel it was worth pointing out that they are the cheapest method Necrons have for aquiring ObSec. I acutally had to buy Immortals and tomb Blades to field the Decurion. In general I prefer warriors over Immortals.

If you're having trouble removing OBSEC troops or Vehicles while having Tomb Blades in your army , I dunno what to say.

It's not that huge of advantage if the troops that have are dead.

bodazoka wrote:
How do I find a way to kill one of my Necron Warriors in the first turn so that I can add the Overlord to the unit in the Ghost Ark?

Dangerous terrain?
-Matt

Hollismason wrote:
If you're having trouble removing OBSEC troops or Vehicles while having Tomb Blades in your army , I dunno what to say.

Tomb Blades are durable, but not super killy, unless you think ignore cover magically erases enemys

No but it erases really annoying units that some rely on, plus their just good at moving up to 12" getting in rapid fire range and getting rid of that OBSEC Drop Pod , etc..

That's what I mean though. I'm more convinced now with the last couple of game to just completely ignore fliers.

Hollismason wrote:
No but it erases really annoying units that some rely on, plus their just good at moving up to 12" getting in rapid fire range and getting rid of that OBSEC Drop Pod , etc..

That's what I mean though. I'm more convinced now with the last couple of game to just completely ignore fliers.

I want to be able to say that this is a viable tactic but it just doesn't seem like one. What if you encounter an extreme air firepower army, like Tyranids can be for example? Now, you can probably focus on just murdering everything that isn't a Flyrant over the course of the game; however you're going to be eating eGrubs and like 220 HITS from the devours of 4 Flyrants over the course of 5 turns. You'd better hope that the game ends on 5 because even Necrons aren't so resilient as to take another 45 or so hits each game turn. That results in like 38 wounds for T4. I know we're durable, but 38 wounds a turn means 10 dead warriors, even in Decurion. You'd need a few more to kill 10 immortals. Tomb blades? It'll kill about 5 since they're T5.

My point is that some armies pack a ton of firepower that really should not be just ignored if you want to win. I think I'm going to try out the Gauss pylons and see how they serve for AA. 6 las cannon shots a turn with Skyfire ought to do some work. Even a Flyrant is going to have to make a lot of jink saves, and then pray he doesn't fall into the waiting arms of my wraiths.

I stack heavy on the Tomb Blades, I had some older destroyers I've been using as suitable substitutes, I will not take less than 10, they're that crazy good. They're insane in the Decurion. I usually am now taking 1 flyer in my Competitive Decurion lists and just going with MSU from Wraiths and the Destroyer Cult.

Also stopped just taking the base 3 Scarabs and going with 4 with the Decurion and going with 2 Squads of 3 Wraiths instead because having 6 Wraiths 8 Scarabs and 2 Spyders, gives you 12 Scarabs on turn 2 and you can actually get a first turn charge off with the Scarabs which is surprising as gak if someone does not catch it and sets up to prevent it.

Using the 2 Spyders you just move forward with them and add the Scarabs to the front of the Scarabs outside of the deployment zone allowing you to move them forward 12" which means their 8 inches away from the front of the deployment zone usually. It's a roll off to see and not a instant first turn assault but with them ignoring cover it's pretty sweet to do.

A Flyrant kills in average 2.22 Decurion Warriors or 2.96 normal Warriors each turn.

So in 5 turns 4 Flyrants will kill 44.44 Decurion Warriors or 59.26 normal Warriors.

That's 572pts of Decurion Warriors or 767pts of normal Warriors compared to the 960 pts of 4 Flyrants

A flyrant needs 8 turns of shooting to kill it's own weight on Decurion Warriors or 6 to kill it's own weight in normal Warriors.

IMHO, unless you are facing a full 7-8 Flyrant army, don't bother with AA. And if you are using Decurion, not even then you would need to bother.

Are you taking into account the reroll 1s that the Warriors get from an Overlord?


How many Tomb Blades do they kill taking into account the reroll 1s from the Overlord if their part of the Decurion.

 Tyran wrote:
A Flyrant kills in average 2.22 Decurion Warriors or 2.96 normal Warriors each turn.

So in 5 turns 4 Flyrants will kill 44.44 Decurion Warriors or 59.26 normal Warriors.

That's 572pts of Decurion Warriors or 767pts of normal Warriors compared to the 960 pts of 4 Flyrants

Not to mention as long as you're playing anything except Purge the Alien, Flyrants in the air aren't capturing objectives.

I think you should plan for but honestly if you play the ground game and just focus on all units that are not the Flyrants you can actually safely ignore them with 2 + squads of Tomb Blades.

Tomb Blades are even resilient to Mawloc blasts.

Yeah he is; otherwise it would be 2.3 warriors per Flyrant per turn. That is pretty stupidly resilient actually. But you don't need to kill the warriors in Decurion - you just need to stand next to them at the end of the game. With anything, not just obsec. Then your obsec wins you the game.

Something I found also running a normal CAD is the extreme vulnerability to assault. If your troop choices for the Decurion aren't in a transport (which most people I think are trying to cut down on points) then you will get assaulted and swept if you're not careful. A single failed morale check at I2 likely means the whole unit is lost. Unless of course you bring counter assault units


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Hollismason wrote:
I think you should plan for but honestly if you play the ground game and just focus on all units that are not the Flyrants you can actually safely ignore them with 2 + squads of Tomb Blades.

Tomb Blades are even resilient to Mawloc blasts.

...because they're T5? You can't jink a Mawloc blast

That and they get the 4 + you can actually spread out well that's why. Decurion Tomb Blades are insanely resilient especially near a Overlord.

Say he get's all 6 , 3 + to wound , 4+ , 2 Wounds. That's just Average. I think that's right.

Hollismason wrote:
Are you taking into account the reroll 1s that the Warriors get from an Overlord?


How many Tomb Blades do they kill taking into account the reroll 1s from the Overlord if their part of the Decurion.

Taking into account the reroll 1s a Flyrant kills 1.85 Warriors each turn. The Flyrant would need 10 turns to kill it's own weight in Warriors.

Assuming the Tomb Blades have the 3+ then a Flyrant kills 0.99 each turn. Assuming you also bough them the ignore cover, a Flyrant would need 11 turns of shooting to kill it's own weight in Tomb Blades.

Really the best Mawloc defense is to spread out and present no good targets. That way, you might get lucky and have it kill all 3/4 models under the blast (it happens twice remember) and then it will appear on the table, where you can either deal with it, or at least it has to waste a turn sitting there before it can burrow again. A Mawloc repeatedly going into and out of ongoing reserves is one of the most devastating ways to spend 140 points.


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 Tyran wrote:

Hollismason wrote:
Are you taking into account the reroll 1s that the Warriors get from an Overlord?


How many Tomb Blades do they kill taking into account the reroll 1s from the Overlord if their part of the Decurion.

Taking into account the reroll 1s a Flyrant kills 1.85 Warriors each turn. The Flyrant would need 10 turns to kill it's own weight in Warriors.

Assuming the Tomb Blades have the 3+ then a Flyrant kills 0.99 each turn. Assuming you also bough them the ignore cover, a Flyrant would need 11 turns of shooting to kill it's own weight in Tomb Blades.

True but if I'm playing Tyranids, then I suddenly remember that Flyrants can also assault (bet you didn't remember that ) some high strength AP 2 will cause them to break in a couple rounds of combat, and then I5 is then end of that unit. If you don't have enough wraiths to prevent me from doing that repeatedly, I will

You're not going to get off a Charge on Tomb Blades w/ Flyrants unless you take 4 and stick each one in the middle of each 4 quarters of the board because the first thing the Tomb Blade player will do is go, Move 12" Turbo Boost w/ Jetbikes. See Ya.Then shoot you with ST5 weaponry as you try to hunt them down.If you do land then it's possible the Tomb Blades and everything else will just shoot the Flyrant in the same area as well.They are in fact twinlinked ST5 weaponry.

I just don't think " I'll assault them is a good plan with fighting against them". The main problem they have is they do not have a good handle on T+6 and 2+ armour saves.

 luke1705 wrote:
Really the best Mawloc defense is to spread out and present no good targets. That way, you might get lucky and have it kill all 3/4 models under the blast (it happens twice remember) and then it will appear on the table, where you can either deal with it, or at least it has to waste a turn sitting there before it can burrow again. A Mawloc repeatedly going into and out of ongoing reserves is one of the most devastating ways to spend 140 points.


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 Tyran wrote:

Hollismason wrote:
Are you taking into account the reroll 1s that the Warriors get from an Overlord?


How many Tomb Blades do they kill taking into account the reroll 1s from the Overlord if their part of the Decurion.

Taking into account the reroll 1s a Flyrant kills 1.85 Warriors each turn. The Flyrant would need 10 turns to kill it's own weight in Warriors.

Assuming the Tomb Blades have the 3+ then a Flyrant kills 0.99 each turn. Assuming you also bough them the ignore cover, a Flyrant would need 11 turns of shooting to kill it's own weight in Tomb Blades.

True but if I'm playing Tyranids, then I suddenly remember that Flyrants can also assault (bet you didn't remember that ) some high strength AP 2 will cause them to break in a couple rounds of combat, and then I5 is then end of that unit. If you don't have enough wraiths to prevent me from doing that repeatedly, I will

That's why you have Heavy Destroyers. Although you are right that most Necron are weak in assault, the answer is either avoiding being in assault range or having your own counter assault units.

 luke1705 wrote:
But you don't need to kill the warriors in Decurion - you just need to stand next to them at the end of the game. With anything, not just obsec. Then your obsec wins you the game.

Considering many games are played with Maelstrom missions or equivalent, ObSec doesn't come up nearly as much. There's much less swooping onto an objective to contest at the end of the turn - ObSec really only applies when an objective is being camped and an ObSec unit swoops in to take it.

Are most Necrons actually still bad in assault or is that a hangover from the last book?

Flayed Ones
Wraiths
Scarabs
Praetorians
Lychguard
Orikan empowered
Ctan
Destroyer Lord

Also.. Decurion warriors have a 4++ (and sometimes 4+, 4++) in assault. Sure they wont kill you but you are not likely to kill too many either!


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 HawaiiMatt wrote:

bodazoka wrote:
How do I find a way to kill one of my Necron Warriors in the first turn so that I can add the Overlord to the unit in the Ghost Ark?

Dangerous terrain?
-Matt

Seems about it.. I am playing some small games later on and I am contemplating starting one squad of warriors outside of there Ark so the enemy will shoot them down a couple of models.. The ghost ark can always bring them back to 9 models.

Pretty stupid situation really.

TompiQ wrote:
IMO, the best choice for immortals is leaving them on the shelf and picking tomb blades instead.

Then again, depends on if you're running a decurion or not. If you do, reserve a 5-man squad and pour the rest of your points into TBs. If it's a cad, I suppose you need the troops, but you'd still preferably keep them in a NS.

In addition to the ObSec issue (irrelevant in the Decurion), Immortals have the advantages of being

1) able to use Night Scythes and Eternity Gates

and

2) physically significantly smaller than Tomb Blades, meaning that they are much harder to hit with blast weapons and much easier to put in cover. Your squad of Tomb Blades is not going to all fit in a ruin.


It was something of an epiphany for me to realize that GW prices things not only based on the statistics of the unit, but on the physical size of the model as well.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Hey, it just occurred to me that maybe that's why Wraiths seem undercosted. The fact that those models are huge and sticking up in the air -- meaning that you can't really hide them from LOS without a big building or something -- is factored in.

It's good that the Necron AA abilities are being scrutinised, but Eldar have been winning tournaments for a long, long time now with very speculative AA. The Crimson Hunter is available to them, but most people don't bring it.

Warp Spiders (very few people bring a lot of these, since swooping hawks are also useful) and Wave Serpents can cause a few glancing hits on flyers, but their effectiveness is much in the style of a couple Necron units using TL weapons to shoot up. If someone brings 4 Flyrants, the Eldar aren't going to be targeting them at all either and are just forced to ignore them somehow.

If you take a lot of Tomb Blades you have about the same type of AA as most Eldar armies, as they have similar chances of causing glances as the Wave Serpents, and both ignore cover. Tomb Blades at rapid fire range are better at taking down flyers than Wave Serpents are, point by point.

How do we best counter highly resilient Thunderwolf Cavalry Deathstars? I'm pretty sure 4 Iron Priests with fenrisian wolves stuck in a Marine Bike command squad with a chapter master Rune Priest on bike and some ind of feel no pain is going to be seen a LOT at tournaments. There are a couple of different builds of this sort of thing. Dark Angels in order to scout and bring in a PFG and apothecary, White Scars with Smashfeth, etc.

Specifically, I'm trying to do something with a maxed out destroyer cult, ideally in a Decurion (for that 4+ RP goodness), but I keep coming up against this list in my head and thinking "what to fdo"?!?! I know if I take 3 flyrants and a venomthrope as allies to a destroyer cult I can give them something that they can't deal with, but what else? Specifically, what are the Necron answers? Wraiths to tarpit? He'll kill them all eventually and then split the ICs off to zip onto objectives).

I had a game yesterday were I payed decurion with lychguard against the thunderwolf cavalry. He charged my lych with his Calvary and killed 2 out of 8 next turn 20 warriors joined the battle. I keeper them at bay for 5 rounds while my rest army won the game.. Also how can the decurion counter the flying circus tyranid formation?

bodazoka wrote:
Are most Necrons actually still bad in assault or is that a hangover from the last book?

Flayed Ones
Wraiths
Scarabs
Praetorians
Lychguard
Orikan empowered
Ctan
Destroyer Lord

Also.. Decurion warriors have a 4++ (and sometimes 4+, 4++) in assault. Sure they wont kill you but you are not likely to kill too many either!


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 HawaiiMatt wrote:

bodazoka wrote:
How do I find a way to kill one of my Necron Warriors in the first turn so that I can add the Overlord to the unit in the Ghost Ark?

Dangerous terrain?
-Matt

Seems about it.. I am playing some small games later on and I am contemplating starting one squad of warriors outside of there Ark so the enemy will shoot them down a couple of models.. The ghost ark can always bring them back to 9 models.

Pretty stupid situation really.

The problem is the lack of fearless on most units, one bad round and they can be swept.

 HawaiiMatt wrote:

bodazoka wrote:
How do I find a way to kill one of my Necron Warriors in the first turn so that I can add the Overlord to the unit in the Ghost Ark?

Dangerous terrain?
-Matt

If they're in a Decurion then they have Move Through Cover which auto-passes Dangerous terrain.

Too bad you can't shoot or tank shock your own units. I don't think there's a reliable way to kill just 1 Warrior to fit an overlord in a Ghost Ark with them.

 bloodoffi wrote:
I had a game yesterday were I payed decurion with lychguard against the thunderwolf cavalry. He charged my lych with his Calvary and killed 2 out of 8 next turn 20 warriors joined the battle. I keeper them at bay for 5 rounds while my rest army won the game.. Also how can the decurion counter the flying circus tyranid formation?

What did he have in the deathstar? Even with Decurion, I would have expected him to sweep you fairly easily. He's at least as durable with a proper build and a lot more killy. With decent initiative.

Tesla immortals will always be my go to unit for a night scythe. A small unit of 5 in the scythe for a linebreaker and harass unit. Plop then 24" away from whatever the enemy has back there, in cover is best, then take pot shots with them.

I wouldn't have charged 20 warriors into a TWC blender, no matter what they are equipped with. The SW player should have turned all the TWC he could onto the warriors for an easy combat res win, then the inevitable sweeping advance!

 Kholzerino wrote:

 bloodoffi wrote:
I had a game yesterday were I payed decurion with lychguard against the thunderwolf cavalry. He charged my lych with his Calvary and killed 2 out of 8 next turn 20 warriors joined the battle. I keeper them at bay for 5 rounds while my rest army won the game.. Also how can the decurion counter the flying circus tyranid formation?

What did he have in the deathstar? Even with Decurion, I would have expected him to sweep you fairly easily. He's at least as durable with a proper build and a lot more killy. With decent initiative.

Here's the new hotness:

Decurion

Reclamation Legion
Zahndrekh

10 Lychguard with Shields

Royal Court
Orikan
Lord w/ Warscythe
Overlord w/ Warscythe (or more)

740 point Deathstar (before upgrades) [I sometimes run slightly less Lychguard to keep the points managable]

Lychguard are 3++ rerolling 1s, 4+ Reanimate (even against ID) rerolling 1s. Zahndrekh can just choose not to switch his warlord trait and remain Zealot, so they can't run away/be swept.
It's also fairly killy: 20 S5 AP3 attacks, [2 S4 AP2] or [4 S7 AP2] attacks rerolling hits, and 5 S7 AP2 attacks.

Orikan Lychstar is pretty insane to kill and scary to charge. You can use it as the central line of your army - march it up the board right down the middle, or on an intercept course for the enemy Deathstar. Either they have to swing around it as wide as possible (giving you good board control) or they intercept it and get tied up forever. If there's a scary Challenge from a Character (Chapter Master Smashfather, for example), throw the Lord or Overlord into it, especially if you give him a Phase Shifter.