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That lynchpin model isn't exactly fragile by any means, ESPECIALLY if it either goes first and activates RP, or hides because it's going second, and is also a hilariously good deal on its own considering its abilities and the fact that it costs an unupgraded techmarine.

I've already seen my triple minimum harvest list (over in 40k lists if you want to see it) run several times, and many people have fallen for the "shoot the spyders" trap. They basically spent their first two turns trying like mad to kill a specific 150 points of the cron army while the rest of it just did what it wanted with impunity. An 1850 army that doesn't take damage for 2 turns is better than a 2k army IMO.

If, if, if.

At the end of the day the formation itself is balanced. It's strong, but not unreasonable. And if you're dealing with someone who wants to run 3 of them despite knowing your army can't handle that many (thus negating the whole "both players are supposed to have fun" thing) don't play them. There are plenty of good options in the codex so they don't need to spam that one to have an effective army.

Nothing about a 50pt T6 W3 3+sv MC giving a potential 4+ "not a save" stacking save roll to a unit of 40pt T5 W2 3++sv model with a 12" move and Fleet assault move, for zero additional points cost, is balanced. Sorry, but it's really not.

That's not necessarily specific to Necrons, formations in general have this issue.

If someone else had proposed that to you 9 months ago as a house rule, you'd have laughed at them. I know I would have.

EDIT: same principle as the old CSM 3.5 "free" aspiring champion thing for favored number sized units. It was a rules mechanism designed to get you to run certain units in a certain way (which they conveniently sold boxes of exactly the right sized units for), but it wasn't balanced then, isn't any better now.

Minimum cost to do that is 350 points (that gets you 3 Scarab bases, 3 Wraiths and 1 Spyder). That's not a cost I consider "unfair".

Seriously, if you're going to bring points into it, bring ALL the points into it, not the base cost of individual models.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
Minimum cost to do that is 350 points (that gets you 3 Scarab bases, 3 Wraiths and 1 Spyder). That's not a cost I consider "unfair".

Seriously, if you're going to bring points into it, bring ALL the points into it, not the base cost of individual models.

350 points minimum? A spyder, 3 wraiths and 3 scarabs should be 230pts before any upgrades, not 350. At 350 you get 6 Wraiths in there.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
Minimum cost to do that is 350 points (that gets you 3 Scarab bases, 3 Wraiths and 1 Spyder). That's not a cost I consider "unfair".

Seriously, if you're going to bring points into it, bring ALL the points into it, not the base cost of individual models.

Your math is quite off sir. Check again.

And even if you bring the whole formation into the deal, it's not like they're being forced to take tactical terminators or something. Even the scarabs can be quite useful, as I've seen personally. They can tarpit a unit with less than s6 attacks forever, or eat a land raider. With RP on them as well, they're pretty silly good too, just not as ridic as the wraiths or the spyder.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
Minimum cost to do that is 350 points (that gets you 3 Scarab bases, 3 Wraiths and 1 Spyder). That's not a cost I consider "unfair".

Seriously, if you're going to bring points into it, bring ALL the points into it, not the base cost of individual models.

350 points minimum? A spyder, 3 wraiths and 3 scarabs should be 230pts before any upgrades, not 350. At 350 you get 6 Wraiths in there.

You're right, I mispunched something in when adding it up.

Regardless that's still not an unfair points cost in my book and all I'm hearing at this point, in my increasingly frustrated opinion, is more hot air and whinging than the entirety of Congress.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

niv-mizzet wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
Minimum cost to do that is 350 points (that gets you 3 Scarab bases, 3 Wraiths and 1 Spyder). That's not a cost I consider "unfair".

Seriously, if you're going to bring points into it, bring ALL the points into it, not the base cost of individual models.

Your math is quite off sir. Check again.

And even if you bring the whole formation into the deal, it's not like they're being forced to take tactical terminators or something. Even the scarabs can be quite useful, as I've seen personally. They can tarpit a unit with less than s6 attacks forever, or eat a land raider. With RP on them as well, they're pretty silly good too, just not as ridic as the wraiths or the spyder.

You're right, the math was off, but it doesn't change my point. It's not a cheap addition to an army to start with and the current Scarabs are nowhere as good as they used to be, and more expensive.

A single Harvest is not unbalanced, unfair or "OP". It only gets unreasonable when people play them wrong (re-rolling 1s when they aren't supposed to) or take more than 1 (unless you are up for a challenge or you both are doing something, like playing in a tournament with prizes on the line).

Seriously, the horse is dead, pick a new horse to beat on already because you've already driven this argument into the ground, lit it's remains on fire and danced on it's ashes.

My comments are backed up by game results. The newbie I wrote a list for is wrecking everyone with triple minimum MSU harvests. They just charge forward, the opponent shoots everything they can at 150 points of spyder, and then they permanently lose the use of 6 units of cron player's choice thanks to scarabs and wraiths. Plus whatever the veil lych squad decides to murder, and plus what the destroyers take out with their "ALL THE REROLLS" formation bonus, and plus what the standing part of the rec legion shoots down.

It's worked that way virtually every game so far. The end of the game is either the other army is tabled or they have a few guys held in combat while the crons are dragging out lawnchairs and martinis over by objectives.

It's bad enough that our group is banning the decurion for pick up games after this little testing phase.

Just played a game against Crons and man, their survivability is through the roof. I feel like they don't kill as much, especially in CC, but god do they just fething stay. They are awful to kill, especially Wraiths.

@ niv

I'm guessing 2000pts?

All of his shooting power comes from 9 Destroyers, 20 Warriors and 3 Tomb Blades? (20 boltguns, 6 AP3 Heavy Bolters with worse range and 3 ignores cover, S6 blasts)

I seriously don't understand how that little firepower (most of which has a range of 24" on platforms with a 6" move) is tabling opponents... And Wraiths/Scarabs seriously shouldn't be annihilating any units worth their salt in combat. Surviving, yes, but that's it.

Maybe try NOT aiming at the Harvests (as you've said, that's a waste) and shoot the other units (the Tomb Blades and then Destroyers)

niv-mizzet wrote:
My comments are backed up by game results. The newbie I wrote a list for is wrecking everyone with triple minimum MSU harvests. They just charge forward, the opponent shoots everything they can at 150 points of spyder, and then they permanently lose the use of 6 units of cron player's choice thanks to scarabs and wraiths. Plus whatever the veil lych squad decides to murder, and plus what the destroyers take out with their "ALL THE REROLLS" formation bonus, and plus what the standing part of the rec legion shoots down.

It's worked that way virtually every game so far. The end of the game is either the other army is tabled or they have a few guys held in combat while the crons are dragging out lawnchairs and martinis over by objectives.

It's bad enough that our group is banning the decurion for pick up games after this little testing phase.

Congrats, you spammed a good unit and used that spam list to declare something broken.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
Minimum cost to do that is 350 points (that gets you 3 Scarab bases, 3 Wraiths and 1 Spyder). That's not a cost I consider "unfair".

Seriously, if you're going to bring points into it, bring ALL the points into it, not the base cost of individual models.

350 points minimum? A spyder, 3 wraiths and 3 scarabs should be 230pts before any upgrades, not 350. At 350 you get 6 Wraiths in there.

You're right, I mispunched something in when adding it up.

Regardless that's still not an unfair points cost in my book and all I'm hearing at this point, in my increasingly frustrated opinion, is more hot air and whinging than the entirety of Congress.

Well, from my point of view, it's difficult to think of much that matches the same killing power, resiliency, and speed for that number of points, particularly once you enlarge the wraith unit to 6 strong.

It's certainly challenging to think of anything of that can deal with the formation, particularly as part of the Decurion, that's of roughly equal points cost.

I've noticed that Flesh Hounds with a Khorne Herald + Grimoire + The First War of Armageddon + Hatred Locus are pretty good at dealing with Wraiths when charging.

That's 347 points for 12 Flesh Hounds and the Juggernaut Herald who has the Grimoire if I recall correctly. Unitwide 2++, Hatred, Furious Charge and 27 Wounds. And ofcourse the cost of the vehicle giving them the Armageddon ( had a Sicaran myself as it's Fast, but hey, it was doing other things too than just buffing. ) On the charge that's 42 attacks with Hatred, with minimum S and WS of 5.

With support from the rest of the army I've now had them mow down the minimum harvest Wraiths twice. When they were gone the Necrons were pretty helpless.

But, there were only 2 of the minimum formations. 3 would probably be worse, but not undoable ( maybe. ) You can ofcourse fail your Grimoire inwhich case you might end up rather dead ( unless you play Daemons and Kairos, inwhich case your chance of success is quite high. )

Now that's all before making them Invisible with Be'lakor ofcourse, I just left him out at first since he bumps the cost " a bit " and just makes the whole thing overkill. But yeah, fire needs to be fought with fire. After that they're dog food and there were hardly any losses. So even if I invested a gakton of points into utterly decimating them it paid off, as the same combo decimated the rest of the Necron army aswell ( and totals to 892 points iirc, so there's space for other stuff and that already includes a large melee unit, a top tier tank, and the most ridicilous singular FMC in the game. )

Super small sample size and next time I will ask him to bring 3 formations, but it has been a complete overkill on the first two games atleast.

Edit: Tried to get the point costs and stats as accurate as possible, no book/scribe with me now.

 RunicFIN wrote:
I've noticed that Flesh Hounds with a Khorne Herald + Grimoire + The First War of Armageddon + Hatred Locus are pretty good at dealing with Wraiths when charging.

That's 347 points for 12 Flesh Hounds and the Juggernaut Herald who has the Grimoire if I recall correctly. Unitwide 2++, Hatred, Furious Charge and 27 Wounds. And ofcourse the cost of the vehicle giving them the Armageddon ( had a Sicaran myself as it's Fast, but hey, it was doing other things too than just buffing. ) On the charge that's 42 attacks with Hatred, with minimum S and WS of 5.

With support from the rest of the army I've now had them mow down the minimum harvest Wraiths twice. When they were gone the Necrons were pretty helpless.

But, there were only 2 of the minimum formations. 3 would probably be worse, but not undoable ( maybe. ) You can ofcourse fail your Grimoire inwhich case you might end up rather dead ( unless you play Daemons and Kairos, inwhich case your chance of success is quite high. )

Now that's all before making them Invisible with Be'lakor ofcourse, I just left him out at first since he bumps the cost " a bit " and just makes the whole thing overkill. But yeah, fire needs to be fought with fire. After that they're dog food and there were hardly any losses. So even if I invested a gakton of points into utterly decimating them it paid off, as the same combo decimated the rest of the Necron army aswell ( and totals to 892 points iirc, so there's space for other stuff and that already includes a large melee unit, a top tier tank, and the most ridicilous singular FMC in the game. )

Unit wide 3++. Still, that's a pretty large unit to dedicate and unfortunately, the Herald takes up one of the all important HQ slots.

The First War of Armageddon should make it a unitwide 2++ unless I misunderstood said Litany of Hate. I ran CSM with allied Daemons in these two games. And yes, quite a large unit but as I mentioned they didn't just steamroll the wraiths, they steamrolled everything else aswell ( well, mr. Be'la helped a few times. ) It could very well be that next time he will play differently and the whole thing can still fail to bad Grimoire rolls, not saying it's a foolproof strategy. But hey, atleast there is something that seemingly just walks over the Wraiths if all goes well.

Said unit is also a pretty good bubblewrap for a Chaos Typhon with FWOA. But then you can't afford Be'lakor most of the time, and you kind of want Perdus Rift Anomaly anyways.

I used a calculator so this might and probably isn't accurate, but a Wraith smacking an Invisible 2++ Flesh Hound gets 0.019 wounds through?

Even if it is, then your 1 tarpit (that has a 5++ invulnerable save every 3rd turn 'cause you don't have fateweaver) engages 1 of his 3 tarpits. What are his other 2 units of 4+ FNP wraiths doing (because daemons can't kill the spyders effectively early)?

In said games I engaged both 2 tarpits and as mentioned before, supported the Flesh Hounds with the rest of my army ( such as shooting at them before engaging and finishing the few odd ones off with Be'lakor. ) I either got 2 wounds in or killed a Wraith by shooting in the newest game, can't recall what happened with that in the first. I was stuck with the 2 formations for 3 turns, there was no third. After that I was free to pretty much demolish the rest as there was nothing as tough as the Wraiths on the Necron side.

I'd presume the third would be fighting against the rest of my army, isn't that quite obvious.

I kinda have a hunch were this is going and I'm not joining the reality dodging, ever receeding vacuum bubble inwhich every action one does in a match is perfectly countered by the opponent in theory, when in practice such things just never happen. I also said it's not a foolproof strategy, merely mentioned something that can take on the wraiths and come out on top, unless there's like 18 of them.

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:
My fairly competitive Space Wolf/Sisters army just got rolled in two back-to-back games, which just ended up feeling like the worst grind ever.

I didn't get rolled per-se, as I only lost by two objective-points, but it felt soooo demoralizing seeing the volume of saves of all kinds Decurion, etc, ends up allowing.

It just FEELS horrible shooting ignores cover melta by the handful, or high strength AP1 or 2, or even using TWC in assault and having shred for days, all be needed to remove just a couple models from a unit.

Whilst I agree, this seems a little ironic when many people have exactly the same problem with TWC, in that they can tank a frankly ridiculous amount of firepower (including AP1/2/3 stuff, thanks to SS), and even a couple of them hit like a truck in melee. God help you if there's a Lord attached.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Nothing about a 50pt T6 W3 3+sv MC giving a potential 4+ "not a save" stacking save roll to a unit of 40pt T5 W2 3++sv model with a 12" move and Fleet assault move, for zero additional points cost, is balanced. Sorry, but it's really not.

That's not necessarily specific to Necrons, formations in general have this issue.

If someone else had proposed that to you 9 months ago as a house rule, you'd have laughed at them. I know I would have.

Agreed.

 vipoid wrote:

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:
My fairly competitive Space Wolf/Sisters army just got rolled in two back-to-back games, which just ended up feeling like the worst grind ever.

I didn't get rolled per-se, as I only lost by two objective-points, but it felt soooo demoralizing seeing the volume of saves of all kinds Decurion, etc, ends up allowing.

It just FEELS horrible shooting ignores cover melta by the handful, or high strength AP1 or 2, or even using TWC in assault and having shred for days, all be needed to remove just a couple models from a unit.

Whilst I agree, this seems a little ironic when many people have exactly the same problem with TWC, in that they can tank a frankly ridiculous amount of firepower (including AP1/2/3 stuff, thanks to SS), and even a couple of them hit like a truck in melee. God help you if there's a Lord attached.

Don't forget that TWC have psyker support on top of that.

niv-mizzet wrote:
My comments are backed up by game results. The newbie I wrote a list for is wrecking everyone with triple minimum MSU harvests. They just charge forward, the opponent shoots everything they can at 150 points of spyder, and then they permanently lose the use of 6 units of cron player's choice thanks to scarabs and wraiths.

That's how a scarab farm always worked. You just took 6 dedciated assault units, and the opponent spent theit time shooting the Sypders instead, and then wondered how they got tarpitted.

Also, rolling 1's a few rounds in a row happens. Just last night I ran CAD + Decurion + Canoptek Swarm and my fraking Canoptek Swarm's Spyder killed itself in Turn 3, by taking a wound each time he spawned scarabs

Can someone please explain to me how Wraiths got better? Same stat line, slightly more expensive, Whip Coils nerfed...

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Can someone please explain to me how Wraiths got better? Same stat line, slightly more expensive, Whip Coils nerfed...

They now get RP which is even better than before as it now is a "not a save" save.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Can someone please explain to me how Wraiths got better? Same stat line, slightly more expensive, Whip Coils nerfed...

Beasts, +1t, access to a formation that gives them RP, whip coils making them i5 during combat, a price drop on their upgrades. The only real negative is that they went up 5pts.

Also it's not the same stat line. You missed a +1 T.

 Crazyterran wrote:

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Can someone please explain to me how Wraiths got better? Same stat line, slightly more expensive, Whip Coils nerfed...

Beasts, +1t, access to a formation that gives them RP, whip coils making them i5 during combat, a price drop on their upgrades. The only real negative is that they went up 5pts.

... Whip Coils got significantly worse, but Beasts and +1 Toughness I'll grant you. The formation, yes, but that's not really the Wraiths' fault themselves.

Yes, Whip Coils are worse. Old Coils were always strike first or simultaneous. New coils mean that there are a lot of things that strike before Wraiths.

 Sigvatr wrote:

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Can someone please explain to me how Wraiths got better? Same stat line, slightly more expensive, Whip Coils nerfed...

They now get RP which is even better than before as it now is a "not a save" save.

If they stay within 12" of a 6" moving spider...

What Wraith targets strike before i5?

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Can someone please explain to me how Wraiths got better? Same stat line, slightly more expensive, Whip Coils nerfed...

They became beasts, which makes them faster.
Whip Coil had an incredibly small nerf for a big point-cost reduction.
Their Toughness went to 5 and they have a Formation to give them RP (and even RP4+)

 Furyou Miko wrote:

Yes, Whip Coils are worse. Old Coils were always strike first or simultaneous.

They did get worse, but they also got 70% of their cost knocked off. So, a Wraith squad with Whip Coils costs the same as before, but has T5 and Fleet thrown into the bargain.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
New coils mean that there are a lot of things that strike before Wraiths.

I can't think of many, to be honest. Maybe some Dark Eldar stuff? And, of those, virtually none have the capacity to inflict any significant damage on the Wraiths (most will need 6s just to wound them).

What I6+ units do you think will be slaughtering Wraiths left, right and centre? I'm honestly intrigued because they're bloody durable at the best of times, and most units with I6 or higher have traded power for speed.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
The formation, yes, but that's not really the Wraiths' fault themselves.

No, it's the designer's fault.

It's hard to see Whip Coils as being worse, yeah some things can strike first, but it's even less critical now, the Whip Coils are much cheaper, and the affect doesn't only work against enemy models in base to base contact.

Against most targets, they're actively better.