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Just played against the Newcrons and they seem rather broken. Is there a relatively easy way to kill Warriors or reduce their RP? At this point, I feel like I'd rather just avoid Wraiths than fight them; they're too hard to kill.

THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO ALL WILL FALL BEFORE THE GLORY OF THE NECRON EMPIRE.

High strength large blasts or multiple small blasts are your friend.

Sniping out the support, any blast with S8/AP4 or better, or tarpitting the warriors (great shooting, balls in melee) are all good ways to fight them.

Strange game. The only way to win is not to play.

Looking at your profile, it looks like your preferred factions are Dark Angels and Daemons? They're not quite as invincible as people seem to think, albeit it will be a tough match up.

Against warriors specifically, Heavy Flamers are your friend. Wound on 3, ignoring armor, even with resurrection it will take out a sizable chunk.

In general though, focus down their fast movers. I've had my best luck when I focus down anything with the jump subtype, almost to the exclusion of all other units. Destroy them and you take out their mobility, and for the most part you'll be able to run around them. I find weight of fire is the best way to do this.

As Dark Angels, a group of full strength Sternguard will trim either of the above down to size with their 2+ poison rounds, or just some tacticals and/or bikes with the banner that turns your bolters into bullet hoses would do the trick. As Daemons, that's a bit more difficult, though my thinking would you would want to do it with Psychic Powers. Alternatively, you could throw something at them that's also absurdly hard to kill. I'm not overly familiar with the Chaos Daemons codex, but maybe a Great Unclean One?

The Decurion formation depends upon lynchpin units for the most part.

If you destroy his Overlord (easier said than done, I know), he loses the rereoll 1s on RP, for instance.

 jreilly89 wrote:
Just played against the Newcrons...
Is there a relatively easy way to kill Warriors or reduce their RP? At this point, I feel like I'd rather just avoid Wraiths than fight them; they're too hard to kill.

Sweeping advances against the warriors, immortals, destroyers, and pretty much any other "1 init 2 regular attack" unit. This does mean you have to get units strong enough to bully them past the blockade of wraiths, scarabs, C'tan, lychguard, and whatever other melee units he uses. And of course, after you zip past them to attempt to get rid of the foot soldiers, they're just going to assault you in the back, so hopefully you sweep them on the charge.

If the cron general is any decent at all and makes a balanced decurion mix of shooty and melee units, you'll probably still lose, but don't worry, because...

...and they seem rather broken...

...They are.

I disagree that Warriors are "balls" in close combat. In the Decurion, with the combination of their high Leadership and enhanced RP, they will defeat non-dedicated assault infantry. Tactical Marines, for instance. Assuming the Marines don't have a sergeant with a power weapon.

Something that I recommend against Necrons BTW.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Here, I'm going to be ignoring the possible rerolls of 1 for RP in the Decurion since they complicate the math. Also not including the reduced RP for S8+ weapons.

Outside the Decurion, Warriors are just as durable as MEQ against AP5 or 6.

Bolter vs. Warrior: 1/2 x 1/2 x 2/3 = 1/6

Bolter vs. MEQ: 1/2 x 1/3 = 1/6

They are however weaker against AP4

Heavy Bolter vs. Warrior: 2/3 x 2/3 = 4/9

Heavy Bolter vs. MEQ: 2/3 x 1/3 = 2/9

But better against AP2

Plasma gun vs. Warrior: 5/6 x 2/3 = 5/9

Plasma gun. vs. MEQ: 5/6

HOWEVER in the Decurion they become tougher than MEQ in all instances with the singke exception of AP4, in which they are slightly weaker:

Bolter against Dec Warrior: 1/2 x 1/2 x 1/2 = 1/8 (vs. Marine 1/6)

Heavy Bolter against Dec Warrior: 2/3 x 1/2 = 1/3 (vs. Marine 2/9)

Plasma gun against Dec Warrior: 5/6 x 1/2 = 5/12 (vs. Marine 5/6)

Oh heck, let's compare weapons that do Instant Death:

Meltagun vs. Warrior: 5/6 x 5/6 = 25/36
Meltagun vs. Dec Warrior: 5/6 x 2/3 = 5/9


Automatically Appended Next Post:

In short, in a firefight with equal numbers of warriors, bolter marines will lose. With special weapons, they will possibly win.

In close combat, whoever gets the charge will probably win (and in the Decurion Warriors have Relentless, note). The increased Init of marines does not bear the doubled attacks from charging. Power weapons will, I think, turn the combat the other way. By this point, the marine unit is getting expensive.

Hmmm, I didn't factor in that one of the marines can throw a krak grenade within 8" though.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Wraiths are hard to kill but they can be tied up for a long time (possibly the whole game) by any tough infantry, (Ogryns, Tyrant Guard, Terminators, Meganobs, even marines really) because their damage output is mediocre.

Yeah, I've seen arguments that the Decurion isn't broken, but having played one to make sure a few days ago it just confirmed what I already knew:

Move through cover and relentless with random little bonus powers for other subformations are already very good detachment benefits. Better than objective secured at any rate. The destroyer and Canoptek formations break the power curve a touch, but meh: Every codex has one or two power units, or in this case power formations. That's not the main issue.

The main issue is that every single Necron on the board may as well be holding last edition's Resurrection Orb. +1 to reanimation, with no lynchpin unit member. It was a 30 point upgrade to do that with a lynchpin unit member in the 5th codex, not even taking the sergeant lord's cost into account. And he wouldn't have been able to keep up with Tomb Blades, Destroyers or Praetorians.

Say you can deal with it or others can learn to deal with it all you like, that's still an absurd benefit to get for free.

The Decurion is a massive, army-wide free buff.

I remember times where extremely strong, army-wide and free were mutually exclusive.

Heh there was a time not so very long ago when 'Strong' and 'army-wide' were mutually exclusive, let alone for free. Guessing that GW feels playing with one specific army needs to be incentivized, now that the best options from any codex essentially are at one's fingertips?

Trazyn the infinite is in disguise as one of the design team. It's the only explanation for how something that OP got out the door.

Assault is definitely key. Drowning them in a symphony of multiple-combat, seems to work reasonably well too.

Here's the report if anyone is interested:

BR1: The Repugnant Ramblers Vs Necrons - 1250pts

Alcibiades wrote:
I disagree that Warriors are "balls" in close combat. In the Decurion, with the combination of their high Leadership and enhanced RP, they will defeat non-dedicated assault infantry.

Yeah, I pointed out it has to be a decent bully unit to win. A full ASM squad with a special weapon sarge and a cc chapter tactic like BA, for example. That's probably the bare minimum you can hit a unit of warriors with and have any hope of breaking and sweeping them. (And against 10 decurion warriors, that only kills like 3 crons on average, so they still have a 50/50 shot of making ld7.)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mushkilla wrote:
Assault is definitely key. Drowning them in a symphony of multiple-combat, seems to work reasonably well too.

Here's the report if anyone is interested:

BR1: The Repugnant Ramblers Vs Necrons - 1250pts

Read it. Nice report. Cron player made a pretty epic mistake early on. Having the wraiths go waste themselves on the talos was a terrible move, and left him all but defenseless when the rest of your army came in. He basically charged like an ork into a trap when he should've been thinking about what was coming up.

Objective or no, I'd have not sent the tomb blades to their deaths for 1 VP, and let the talos stew over in their corner. Especially given that it was that game type where you have to stand on objectives to get cards. I would've been perfectly happy to draw 3 to your 1 until the grotesques came in.

And I'm not a fan of 6 wraith harvests. I think it's a waste of 120-ish points that could be elsewhere. MSU harvests for 230ish a piece is where the money is.

niv-mizzet wrote:

Alcibiades wrote:
I disagree that Warriors are "balls" in close combat. In the Decurion, with the combination of their high Leadership and enhanced RP, they will defeat non-dedicated assault infantry.

Yeah, I pointed out it has to be a decent bully unit to win. A full ASM squad with a special weapon sarge and a cc chapter tactic like BA, for example. That's probably the bare minimum you can hit a unit of warriors with and have any hope of breaking and sweeping them. (And against 10 decurion warriors, that only kills like 3 crons on average, so they still have a 50/50 shot of making ld7.)

10 asm on the charge will inflict 30 attacks, 15 will hit, 7.5 will wound or 10 will wound if that's BA than half will be saved with armor resulting in 3.75 / 5 wounds before rp.
If he's running decursion, it's gona be 1.875 / 2.5 wounds
If he's running decursion with a lord to reroll 1-s, it's gona be 1.56 / 2.08 wounds
If he's popping a res orb it's gona be 0.94 / 1.25 wounds

in any case, like 10-15 cron warriors will be able to strike back dealing ~ a wound.

So, if they don't fail ld 8-9 this turn, they'll tie with asm. Oh, btw, they kill 1 marine on overwatch statistically.

I'd not hope for bullies to kill them so easilly. Tie them? Yes. That's probably one of their weaknesses. Not too killy. But stupid durable. Use obsec for your advantage. Something like a bunch of tactical marines in pods will kill a few and tarpit them half the game scoring VP.

niv-mizzet wrote:
Read it. Nice report. Cron player made a pretty epic mistake early on. Having the wraiths go waste themselves on the talos was a terrible move, and left him all but defenseless when the rest of your army came in. He basically charged like an ork into a trap when he should've been thinking about what was coming up.

Objective or no, I'd have not sent the tomb blades to their deaths for 1 VP, and let the talos stew over in their corner. Especially given that it was that game type where you have to stand on objectives to get cards. I would've been perfectly happy to draw 3 to your 1 until the grotesques came in.

Thanks.

Yeah, that was a big mistake, but hindsight is always 20/20. The problem with not tying the talos up is then they come to you, and I don't think the wraiths had the punch to take on either of the grotesque units. That being said they might have been able to tie up one of the squads of grotesques long enough for the rest of the necron army to try and out manoeuvre/shoot down the other unit. It's hard to tell how these things would play out differently.

Also the Covenite Cotery isn't exactly a balanced list itself (suffers against things like imperial knights and force weapons). Pure assault armies are also a rarity in this edition so its not like its a practical solution all armies can adopt.

TheQuietK wrote:
Looking at your profile, it looks like your preferred factions are Dark Angels and Daemons? They're not quite as invincible as people seem to think, albeit it will be a tough match up.

Against warriors specifically, Heavy Flamers are your friend. Wound on 3, ignoring armor, even with resurrection it will take out a sizable chunk.

In general though, focus down their fast movers. I've had my best luck when I focus down anything with the jump subtype, almost to the exclusion of all other units. Destroy them and you take out their mobility, and for the most part you'll be able to run around them. I find weight of fire is the best way to do this.

As Dark Angels, a group of full strength Sternguard will trim either of the above down to size with their 2+ poison rounds, or just some tacticals and/or bikes with the banner that turns your bolters into bullet hoses would do the trick. As Daemons, that's a bit more difficult, though my thinking would you would want to do it with Psychic Powers. Alternatively, you could throw something at them that's also absurdly hard to kill. I'm not overly familiar with the Chaos Daemons codex, but maybe a Great Unclean One?

Yeah, I played them with Daemons and in one combat I was able to sweep his Warriors with a Biomancy DP. I also take a Bloodthirster and some Flesh Hounds and while I think they would have destroyed his Warriors, I made the mistake of charging his Destroyers with my Hounds and his Wraiths with my Bloodthirster. They got tied up pretty much all 5 turns.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Another issue was that we played Purge the Alien, so straight up Killpoints. I took out one or two units, but his 20 group of Warriors are just so hard to put down. Like I said, I think it'd be easier to just avoid the Wraiths and kill everything else.

Avoiding wraiths is a huge chore though. They're pretty much the fastest functional assault unit in the game between beast movement and the wraithflight rule. Avoiding pretty much comes down to throwing sacrificial units at them which doesnt help a whole lot in a kp mission.

I feel your pain about Decuricrons. I play daemons and nids and neither seem to have a good answer for them at the moment. After watching 3 flyrants flail away at blocks of 20 warriors im pretty sure some ap 4 is key in the shooting phase. That experience led me to revisit some reincarnations of the flickering fire spam of old with daemons. I made a few lists that i think could hold their own against a Decurion but they almost feel tailored. Im not sure how well theyd do against other strong armies.

Sweeping warrior bricks is solid advice, but seems a lot easier said than done. Ld 10 combined with 4+/4+++ makes it one tough nut to crack. The warriors are generally gonna do a wound or two back in combat meaning you have to kill around 5 to have any real hope of sweeping them. Thats gonna take a dedicated CC unit to accomplish amd lets not forget that said CC unit will somehow have to slip by wraiths who would be more than happy to tie you up all game

I have found that applying more dakka is a winning strategy.
Priority target is the guy who gives them rerolls on reanimation protocols. Shoot him dead. Use ALL OF THE BULLETS. For my army, a full turn of shooting with my entire army will generally kill him and his entire unit. Which is rough, because nobody wants to waste an entire turn's shooting on one unit, but it can be worth it; once he drops, the rest of the force is considerably easier to destroy.

As already noted here, it's surprisingly easy to tarpit a unit of warriors, so that can be a stop-gap if you find yourself lacking sufficient dakka. Watch out for spiders and wraiths, though.

 Marsyas wrote:
I have found that applying more dakka is a winning strategy.
Priority target is the guy who gives them rerolls on reanimation protocols. Shoot him dead. Use ALL OF THE BULLETS. For my army, a full turn of shooting with my entire army will generally kill him and his entire unit. Which is rough, because nobody wants to waste an entire turn's shooting on one unit, but it can be worth it; once he drops, the rest of the force is considerably easier to destroy.

As already noted here, it's surprisingly easy to tarpit a unit of warriors, so that can be a stop-gap if you find yourself lacking sufficient dakka. Watch out for spiders and wraiths, though.

I think you're severely overestimating the worth of a 12 inch bubble of reroll ones.

Is it a further buff? Yes. Is doing what you described liable to be horrendously poor targeting priority? Even more so, yes.

If it's mostly a reclamation legion, I'd prioritise the Tomb Blades first. Advice would change depending on specific auxiliary formations of course.

I think you're severely overestimating the worth of a 12 inch bubble of reroll ones.

Is it a further buff? Yes. Is doing what you described liable to be horrendously poor targeting priority? Even more so, yes.

If it's mostly a reclamation legion, I'd prioritise the Tomb Blades first. Advice would change depending on specific auxiliary formations of course.

Are tomb blades the annoying 'ignores cover' jetbikeish things? Because yeah, I'd prioritize those first, too.

 astro_nomicon wrote:
Avoiding wraiths is a huge chore though. They're pretty much the fastest functional assault unit in the game between beast movement and the wraithflight rule. Avoiding pretty much comes down to throwing sacrificial units at them which doesnt help a whole lot in a kp mission.

I feel your pain about Decuricrons. I play daemons and nids and neither seem to have a good answer for them at the moment. After watching 3 flyrants flail away at blocks of 20 warriors im pretty sure some ap 4 is key in the shooting phase. That experience led me to revisit some reincarnations of the flickering fire spam of old with daemons. I made a few lists that i think could hold their own against a Decurion but they almost feel tailored. Im not sure how well theyd do against other strong armies.

Sweeping warrior bricks is solid advice, but seems a lot easier said than done. Ld 10 combined with 4+/4+++ makes it one tough nut to crack. The warriors are generally gonna do a wound or two back in combat meaning you have to kill around 5 to have any real hope of sweeping them. Thats gonna take a dedicated CC unit to accomplish amd lets not forget that said CC unit will somehow have to slip by wraiths who would be more than happy to tie you up all game

Seriously. The one sweeping advance was pure luck. Second, I charged a group of 6 Wraiths with a kitted out Bloodthirster, a 10 man squad of Bloodletters, and a Soul Grinder with a WarpSword and by the time all of that was wiped out (due to some extra Scarabs and a Spyder) I killed about half of those Wraiths and the last 3 had 3 wounds left. Had they not been joined by anyone else, I probably could have done it, but seriously, that's how much I threw at them, and I feel like avoiding the with FMC's and charging other units is just a better option than bothering with them.

 astro_nomicon wrote:
That experience led me to revisit some reincarnations of the flickering fire spam of old with daemons

Hmm, that's not a bad idea actually. Considering Necrons new Resurrection Protocols can't be used along with Feel No Pain, you can mostly ignore the downside of the Warpflame rule. If they fail the toughness test, then you beauty some free wounds and if they pass then big deal they already have a better RP roll. Flickering Fire being a Heavy Bolter equivalent can put out some serious hurt on 4+ save troops, especially because the potential to get alot of shots off is there. And when you don't really need to worry about handing out FNP, then it seems like a pretty good choice to make especially considering that every Tzeentch psyker gets it for free now.

 GoonBandito wrote:

 astro_nomicon wrote:
That experience led me to revisit some reincarnations of the flickering fire spam of old with daemons

Hmm, that's not a bad idea actually. Considering Necrons new Resurrection Protocols can't be used along with Feel No Pain, you can mostly ignore the downside of the Warpflame rule. If they fail the toughness test, then you beauty some free wounds and if they pass then big deal they already have a better RP roll. Flickering Fire being a Heavy Bolter equivalent can put out some serious hurt on 4+ save troops, especially because the potential to get alot of shots off is there. And when you don't really need to worry about handing out FNP, then it seems like a pretty good choice to make especially considering that every Tzeentch psyker gets it for free now.

Hmmm, maybe a good use for Flamers of Tzeentch now right? Also, Flickering Fire is AP - right?

S5 AP4. It's a Heavy Bolter equivalent, except on average it's doing 7 shots. A Tzeentch Herald can make it S6 for his unit with the Tzeentch Exalted Locus that gives +1S to all Psychic Powers. If you have lots of Pink Horror squads, Heralds of Tzeentch, Lords of Change or Tzeentch Demon Princes you can start to throw alot of dice into alot of shots for it.

AP4 is pretty clearly the way to go against warriors. Heavy bolters ahoy!

If the opponent goes with Immortals instead though... whoops.

As it is, there is not a single Necron army in the top 16 of the LVO 2015. So, yeah, it can be beaten and is not broken.

Kill the support and fast units (Overlord, Spyder, Blades, etc), force the saves. You'll win through quantity of shots.

 Frozocrone wrote:
As it is, there is not a single Necron army in the top 16 of the LVO 2015. So, yeah, it can be beaten and is not broken.

Kill the support and fast units (Overlord, Spyder, Blades, etc), force the saves. You'll win through quantity of shots.

How much representation did the new codex get? Out of the pictures I could only make out a few non-decurion wraith spam lists. (And I've already been saying I think balanced decurion with wraith support is leagues better than wraith wing.)

Do you have all the lvo lists or something? Do you even know if a single decurion list was run? Did people even have time to make their decurion and practice with it since the codex came out less than a month ago? Were the cron lists even running out of the new codex since the old one was still allowed, similar to the tyranid situation last year? Did a decurion get run and either have a general play terribly or have epic fail rolls?

You're inferring quite a lot from a very small sample size. That is not scientifically sound, sir.

niv-mizzet wrote:

 Frozocrone wrote:
As it is, there is not a single Necron army in the top 16 of the LVO 2015. So, yeah, it can be beaten and is not broken.

Kill the support and fast units (Overlord, Spyder, Blades, etc), force the saves. You'll win through quantity of shots.

How much representation did the new codex get? Out of the pictures I could only make out a few non-decurion wraith spam lists. (And I've already been saying I think balanced decurion with wraith support is leagues better than wraith wing.)

Do you have all the lvo lists or something? Do you even know if a single decurion list was run? Did people even have time to make their decurion and practice with it since the codex came out less than a month ago? Were the cron lists even running out of the new codex since the old one was still allowed, similar to the tyranid situation last year? Did a decurion get run and either have a general play terribly or have epic fail rolls?

You're inferring quite a lot from a very small sample size. That is not scientifically sound, sir.

Agreed. It's still relatively new, so maybe people are hesitant to take it to a tourney, but Decurion with Wraith support seems to do better overall, especially in objective based games, than pure Wraith spam.