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A horde style of IG would work miles better then Vehicles. Wipe out an entire unit one by one, is the best way to take down necrons, and no one can focus fire on a unit better then IG.

Man, there's a lot of people in this thread who don't know squat about Necrons.
(though, granted, there are a couple who appear to know their stuff).

• "Their basic gun can kill tanks so don't bother bringing vehicles!"
Just because gauss CAN hurt vehicles doesn't mean it does so reliably. If they roll a 6 for armor pen then they'll glance. Alright, so do the math on that, then. How many Gauss shots would it take to kill a Russ? ... a lot. So quit your bitchin'.

• "Wraiths are scary!"
Just because they're hard to kill doesn't mean they're good at killing. They're not horrible, but there are far worse things in the Necron codex to face in CC (*coughFLAYEDONEScough*). The main strength of Wraiths are their longevity. They are primarily used to tarpit. So what should you do if you see a pack of Wraiths on the table? Throw your own tarpit against it, obviously!

• "Decurion Necrons are impossible to kill!"
If they're in a Decurion then they don't have ObSec. Do you have ObSec? Then play the objectives. There won't be much they will be able to do. GG.

True. To reliably destroy a single Chimera, outside of cover, you need 26 or so Necron Warriors firing at it. That's 338 points. Gauss is great against expensive single model vehicles, such as Knights and Land Raiders.

 skoffs wrote:

• "Decurion Necrons are impossible to kill!"
If they're in a Decurion then they don't have ObSec. Do you have ObSec? Then play the objectives. There won't be much they will be able to do. GG.

Besides the fact that I find your tone slightly offensive, this is also just not true. I've played against Necron extensively and "playing the objectives" doesn't stop you from getting tabled. And Necron table a lot of armies very often.

You don't beat decurion unless you tailor and season with lots of cheese.

 skoffs wrote:


• "Their basic gun can kill tanks so don't bother bringing vehicles!"
Just because gauss CAN hurt vehicles doesn't mean it does so reliably. If they roll a 6 for armor pen then they'll glance. Alright, so do the math on that, then. How many Gauss shots would it take to kill a Russ? ... a lot. So quit your bitchin'.

27 on average. A single large Warrior squad will do it with a single volley, or a Ghost Ark with a ten man squad. It doesn't take the combined efforts of the entire army to kill something through Gauss.

• "Wraiths are scary!"
Just because they're hard to kill doesn't mean they're good at killing. They're not horrible, but there are far worse things in the Necron codex to face in CC (*coughFLAYEDONEScough*). The main strength of Wraiths are their longevity. They are primarily used to tarpit. So what should you do if you see a pack of Wraiths on the table? Throw your own tarpit against it, obviously!

We're talking about in the context of IG here. They're astoundingly capable against IG. There isn't anything in the IG army that they won't carve through exceedingly effectively. About the only thing in an IG army that they won't obliterate in a single round of CC is a blob platoon, and even then, unless it is a nearly full sized, character reinforced blob platoon that costs nearly twice as much as a full sized and kitted Wraith squad, the Wraiths will defeat it in just another couple of rounds typically.

• "Decurion Necrons are impossible to kill!"
If they're in a Decurion then they don't have ObSec. Do you have ObSec? Then play the objectives. There won't be much they will be able to do. GG.

ObSec isn't a magical gigantic critical weakness, particularly when talking about Necrons vs IG. ObSec only kicks in in a relatively narrow range of situations.

You have to have an ObSec unit on an objective.
The objective has to be contested by another, non-ObSec unit.
The turn on which the above two conditions are true has to be relevant (If you're in a maelstrom mission where nobody has drawn that objective, then it's pointless. If it's an Eternal War mission and we're talking Turn 2, then again, doesn't matter yet).
The objective has to actually make a difference to the outcome (if you're losing 5-1, getting an ObSec unit to another objective to lose 4-2 doesn't mean much, you still lose).
If all of the above don't hold true, ObSec is irrelevant.

To add to this, IG ObSec units are generally all things that Necrons have an exceedingly easy time of destroying, generally low Ld T3 5+sv units, and at worst an AV12/10/10 chimera.

Look at how they are doing the tabling. Is there any way around it/any way it could have been avoided?
I find that people I play against who end up getting tabled or very close to it do so because they try to take Necrons on in a situation where the Necrons have the advantage.
"Uh oh, here comes a big unit of Wraiths/Lychguard! I better focus everything I have into them!"
Well, that was bait. Now your entire army is focused on that one incredibly tough unit while my more killier units are free to whittle down your forces with little resistance.
"His big blob of Warriors are camped on that objective! I better shoot them/charge in with my assault guys to clear them off so I can take it. Oh no, they keep standing back up! This is going to take forever!"
Or, you could have just dashed in with an ObSec Rhino, hide half out of sight of my guys, scored the objective, then buggered off to the next one before I can do anything to retaliate.

The biggest ass whooping I ever had ended with me having 6 units left to his 2. But he knew exactly what to sacrifice where to distract me or keep me stuck exactly where he wanted me. As a result, he ended up dominating on points despite my numerical advantage. All because he was playing to his strengths and not letting me play to mine.

People can play cheese if they want, but playing smarter is often a tactic people tend to over look.

 skoffs wrote:
Look at how they are doing the tabling. Is there any way around it/any way it could have been avoided?
I find that people I play against who end up getting tabled or very close to it do so because they try to take Necrons on in a situation where the Necrons have the advantage.
"Uh oh, here comes a big unit of Wraiths/Lychguard! I better focus everything I have into them!"
Well, that was bait. Now your entire army is focused on that one incredibly tough unit while my more killier units are free to whittle down your forces with little resistance.

Again, Wraiths are more than killy enough to generally destroy most any IG unit in a single CC round typically. Anything killier is rather is simply overkill, the Wraiths are as killy as anything needs to be to kill anything other than a massively expensive gigantic blob, and the Wraiths are going to start killing stuff faster than other assault units.

Thus, if you ignore the Wraiths, they're going to kill just as much stuff, likely more, compared with the "killier" units following behind.

"His big blob of Warriors are camped on that objective! I better shoot them/charge in with my assault guys to clear them off so I can take it. Oh no, they keep standing back up! This is going to take forever!"

Sort if irrevelant when talking about IG.

Or, you could have just dashed in with an ObSec Rhino, hide half out of sight of my guys, scored the objective, then buggered off to the next one before I can do anything to retaliate.

If it's a large blob of Warriors, properly spaced and deployed, the only way you'll get an ObSec unit in there is going to be by Tank Shock, and if the game doesn't end immediately after, that unit is probably gone either way. Not exactly a tremendously reliable alternative. Hiding out of LoS is also not always an option.

Wraiths destroy squads of guardsmen in melee. You could get a blob and tarpit them sure, but you'll probably end up using more points of guys than they have wraiths. You'll probably also have to go the Platoon Infantry route, which is plain less powerful than the Veteran route.

Wraiths charged my 10 man squad with a flamer. They destroyed the squad in one turn without taking a single wound.

They then got flamed by 4 flamers from a platoon command squad, took no wounds.

They then charged the 4 flamer platoon command squad, took no wounds, and then destroyed it.

They then zoomed across the map and charged yet another squad with a flamer and destroyed it. Suffered no wounds. By this point the rest of my army was killed by the remaining Necrons.

I killed 5 warriors with a heavy flamer. That was the enemy losses for the entire game.

Hmmmmm.

Don't forget that reanimation protocols don't stop you from dying due to instant death. If they fail even one reanimation protocol roll, the model is dead.

 skoffs wrote:
Man, there's a lot of people in this thread who don't know squat about Necrons.
(though, granted, there are a couple who appear to know their stuff).

• "Their basic gun can kill tanks so don't bother bringing vehicles!"
Just because gauss CAN hurt vehicles doesn't mean it does so reliably. If they roll a 6 for armor pen then they'll glance. Alright, so do the math on that, then. How many Gauss shots would it take to kill a Russ? ... a lot. So quit your bitchin'.

• "Wraiths are scary!"
Just because they're hard to kill doesn't mean they're good at killing. They're not horrible, but there are far worse things in the Necron codex to face in CC (*coughFLAYEDONEScough*). The main strength of Wraiths are their longevity. They are primarily used to tarpit. So what should you do if you see a pack of Wraiths on the table? Throw your own tarpit against it, obviously!

• "Decurion Necrons are impossible to kill!"
If they're in a Decurion then they don't have ObSec. Do you have ObSec? Then play the objectives. There won't be much they will be able to do. GG.

And you clearly don't know squat about the Guard

"Just take obsec" as if that will somehow miraculously remove the (non-obsec) 4+Sv 4+RP basic Necrons that are camping it. We don't get jetbikes (like Necrons do) so we lose out on the grab objectives game. Also, ignoring the enemy army to take objectives only ever works out in misguided oversimplified forum posts, rarely ingame.

"quit your bitchin'". 18 Gauss hits will, on average, knock out a LRBT. Is that your definition of 'a lot'? Warriors come in squads of up to 20 and the weapon can rapid fire, smaller squads can use a transport which is practically a relentless Gauss-hose. Naturally, your basic units are BS4. Don't forget that swarm unit that also wrecks vehicles and can be indefinitely spawned by spyders.

When you say "wraiths aren't good at killing" it makes me pretty certain you've never even seen a guardsman on a table in this hobby. Hint: They aren't particularly tough.

Edit: Just saw your follow-up post. You suggest people try to outmanoever you with a Rhino while you just push models forwards, throw out high S low AP shooting and don't lose a model. Keep suggesting people L2P while you stick to such a finesse army like Necrons.

I won't comment on the theory, but I'll say what my experience is with my guard against current necrons.

1. Artillery in carriage batteries given the deny cover order will cause the necrons player to hate you. In a recent flgs tourney my madusa carriage batteries destroyed his army at will. Frankly if I brought a stormsword I could have ended the game in the first turn.

2. Conscripts with a priest will win against wraiths. Once engaged the wraiths are effectively out of the game for the cost of 150 points and hours of painting. I've used this several times and its hard to miss with it. The unit can span the field and you can laugh every time someone decides to waste shots at it.

3. Kill the crap by itself. If anything is outside of a unit you should kill it first.

4. Your units will die in one round of combat so expect that and keep 10 man squads around as speed bumps and shoot whatever comes out of the combat.

That's what I know that works. I guess snipers arnt a bad idea... I aught to try to send in the ratlings one of these days... Probably aim them at the toughest thing that's not a garg creature. Eh, if it works I'll post it eventually.

PS. So far my record is pretty good with pure guard vs new crons. Don't give up on it and add more s10 deny cover

war wrote:
I won't comment on the theory, but I'll say what my experience is with my guard against current necrons.

1. Artillery in carriage batteries given the deny cover order will cause the necrons player to hate you. In a recent flgs tourney my madusa carriage batteries destroyed his army at will. Frankly if I brought a stormsword I could have ended the game in the first turn.

2. Conscripts with a priest will win against wraiths. Once engaged the wraiths are effectively out of the game for the cost of 150 points and hours of painting. I've used this several times and its hard to miss with it. The unit can span the field and you can laugh every time someone decides to waste shots at it.

3. Kill the crap by itself. If anything is outside of a unit you should kill it first.

4. Your units will die in one round of combat so expect that and keep 10 man squads around as speed bumps and shoot whatever comes out of the combat.

That's what I know that works. I guess snipers arnt a bad idea... I aught to try to send in the ratlings one of these days... Probably aim them at the toughest thing that's not a garg creature. Eh, if it works I'll post it eventually.

PS. So far my record is pretty good with pure guard vs new crons. Don't give up on it and add more s10 deny cover

Some places don't like Forgeworld still. I know it's silly, but for some reason this unusual opinion remains. Furthermore medusa/earthshaker carriages cost like, £75? I don't know what alternatives are appropriate to use.

150 points of conscripts with a 25 point priest will tie up thir 129 points of wraiths. You're still losing out points to points. I suppose you could take less conscripts than 50 though. You also need to take a platoon command squad and infantry squads, which are plain worse than veteran squads and company command squads.

You also still lose the points battle with #4

(I'm most interested to hear about artillery carriage alternatives though.)

war wrote:
I won't comment on the theory, but I'll say what my experience is with my guard against current necrons.

1. Artillery in carriage batteries given the deny cover order will cause the necrons player to hate you. In a recent flgs tourney my madusa carriage batteries destroyed his army at will. Frankly if I brought a stormsword I could have ended the game in the first turn.

2. Conscripts with a priest will win against wraiths. Once engaged the wraiths are effectively out of the game for the cost of 150 points and hours of painting. I've used this several times and its hard to miss with it. The unit can span the field and you can laugh every time someone decides to waste shots at it.

3. Kill the crap by itself. If anything is outside of a unit you should kill it first.

4. Your units will die in one round of combat so expect that and keep 10 man squads around as speed bumps and shoot whatever comes out of the combat.

That's what I know that works. I guess snipers arnt a bad idea... I aught to try to send in the ratlings one of these days... Probably aim them at the toughest thing that's not a garg creature. Eh, if it works I'll post it eventually.

PS. So far my record is pretty good with pure guard vs new crons. Don't give up on it and add more s10 deny cover

Granted, a lot of my comments were general play, not specific to IG.
But this guy? He gets it.
Some basics against Crons:
• Tie up the Wraiths with something that won't run. You're probably not going to kill them, but congrats, Wraiths out of the game now.
• If you see Lychguard, just avoid them. Too hard to worry about killing, too slow to catch anything to kill.
• If you see anything else meele related, shoot it. They're not as hard to kill as the above two, but they will certainly be a lot killier. Do not engage in combat with if at all possible.
• If you see Destroyers, get into combat with them. Doesn't matter with what. They're the deadliest shooters we've got, but they're crap in assault. Tie them up to neuter their effectiveness.
• If they're walking, take flyers. Laugh as he can do practically nothing against them without Night Scythes.
• If you see a vehicle, shoot it once from behind to pop its shield. Now almost anything can kill it.
• Take lots of sacrificial ObSec units to just throw at objectives where and when needs be. You'll probably lose the unit, but if they score you the points, then they've done their job.

 skoffs wrote:

war wrote:
I won't comment on the theory, but I'll say what my experience is with my guard against current necrons.

1. Artillery in carriage batteries given the deny cover order will cause the necrons player to hate you. In a recent flgs tourney my madusa carriage batteries destroyed his army at will. Frankly if I brought a stormsword I could have ended the game in the first turn.

2. Conscripts with a priest will win against wraiths. Once engaged the wraiths are effectively out of the game for the cost of 150 points and hours of painting. I've used this several times and its hard to miss with it. The unit can span the field and you can laugh every time someone decides to waste shots at it.

3. Kill the crap by itself. If anything is outside of a unit you should kill it first.

4. Your units will die in one round of combat so expect that and keep 10 man squads around as speed bumps and shoot whatever comes out of the combat.

That's what I know that works. I guess snipers arnt a bad idea... I aught to try to send in the ratlings one of these days... Probably aim them at the toughest thing that's not a garg creature. Eh, if it works I'll post it eventually.

PS. So far my record is pretty good with pure guard vs new crons. Don't give up on it and add more s10 deny cover

Granted, a lot of my comments were general play, not specific to IG.
But this guy? He gets it.
Some basics against Crons:
• Tie up the Wraiths with something that won't run. You're probably not going to kill them, but congrats, Wraiths out of the game now.

This assumes two things: that the wraiths (having *way* more mobility and the choice of where to engage) can be engaged by the tarpit, and that there is only one unit of Wraiths, not always true.

• If you see Lychguard, just avoid them. Too hard to worry about killing, too slow to catch anything to kill.

Unless they're dumped just outside a deployment zone from a NightScythe

• If you see Destroyers, get into combat with them. Doesn't matter with what. They're the deadliest shooters we've got, but they're crap in assault. Tie them up to neuter their effectiveness.

With IG, the Destroyers will typically beat anything they have in combat, and being jet infantry with long range weapons, they're not particularly easy to get into assault with.

• If they're walking, take flyers. Laugh as he can do practically nothing against them without Night Scythes.

Night Scythes are still both quite solid and quite popular in many Necron armies, and unless we're talking about List Tailoring, may not be an entirely realistic option. Necrons have much more generally effective flyers.

• If you see a vehicle, shoot it once from behind to pop its shield. Now almost anything can kill it.

This assumes you get a penetrating hit. Against a Jinking AV13-shielded vehicle, you need an average of 12 BS3 Lascannon shots to get a single penetrating hit, while the same number of shots would simply kill an AV13 tank (assuming no cover) through simple HP loss.

Wyverns are always pretty helpful, Hell hounds could do some hot things to that open topped transport. As for the people suggesting conscript blobs to take on wraiths.... come on man. How in the world is a conscript squad supposed to catch up to something moving 12 inches at a time? These posts are so frustrating because people suggest things that can only work in a vacuum with nothing else on the table. I think people forget that if your guard isn't in cover, then they'll straight up just get removed if any Necron shoots at it unless they're wearing carapace. And even then, what... a +5 cover save? What about an aegis line? Well how do you use your obsec to get objectives if you're hiding behind a wall? When you're being hit on 3s, wounding on 3s. And you're hitting on 4s wounding on 5s then dealing with a 4 up then a 4 up re-rolling 1s. Out ranging them might work with Russes could be pretty viable. But I hope you have a hot hand and can roll that scatter dice like a phenom.

As a former guard player - fighting Necrons is all about bodies. I am talking as many boots as you can fit in the list (no conscripts, skip those). The idea is that necrons won't be able to shoot you enough to win. And ANYTHING drowns in enough dice. Focus fire with as many squads as it takes. Avoid CC like the plague.

I like to take HWT in every squad, and put a lascannon in the command squad for the juicy BS upgrade. I also appreciate one or two twenty man squads with no HWT and a commissar for a fearless wall of man. And by the emperor take an Aegis.

With infantry guard - timing is everything. March forward at the wrong time, you will be sad. Stay put too long before falling back, its not ending well. Don't be afraid to sacrifice a squad to create space too. With enough men, they are EXPENDABLE. Treat them that way, and try to enjoy that final 12" double rapid fire rate. Remember - you can usually afford to lose more than DOUBLE what they lose. Took 5 wounds? That's fine as long as the 'crons pay with 2 or more of their own.

First turn takes forever. Fifth turn there won't be much left on the board (from either side )

I wonder if these "how to beat crons" wisdoms are the result of actual experience. I play a game vs crons every week. It takes 120 str 5 shots to kill a unit of necron warriors (Firewarriors). It's 240 shots at str 3. Both scenarios are best case, it gets worse if the warriors reroll 1s on RP.

Every other cron unit has 3+ saves or T5. Good luck with volume of fire.

I recently had a game against my buddy who is just starting his Necron army, so it was his third game of 40k.

He brought a decurion with a ccb and a destroyer lord, a destroyer cult and a canoptek harvest with just 3 Wraiths and some deathmarks.

I brought 40 skitarii in drop pods, 40 ig infantry, 2 units of veterans, a wyvern and some other random stuff I had thrown together for a casual introduction match to 40k.

Aaaand I almost got tabled Necrons are so resilient, it's crazy.

I did learn a lot from the match though (I have only played against the newest Necron codex once before, when my Lord of Skulls tore through his entire army): Focusing down the Canoptek Spyder right away was the right move: I used skitarii plasma vanguards in a pod, but if I had been running full IG I would have directed all my long range shooting at it.

Wraiths aren't actually that powerful in combat! A unit of 5 Wraiths will, on average, kill 10 guardsmen on the charge. That's assuming they have no re-roll on saves from a Priest, or any sort of invul from a psyker etc. 10 guys is a lot to most armies, but I can feed my opponent 10 conscripts all day.
The problem is getting the Wraiths to charge your cheap conscript blob instead of your other stuff, but its doable by spreading out and covering a lot of area, blocking off their movement (remember Wraiths can jump over units, but 5 wraiths needing to stay more than an inch away from your units before assaulting still need a lot of space).

They don't have a lot of long-range firepower (except Destroyers), use this to your advantage. Push some cannon fodder in the way if you must to slow down their advance, while your artillery slowly withers them down.

In my game I had a chance to win in turn 5 by pushing my infantry up to objectives, using orders (3d6 pick highest to run/shoot + run) to move up faster.

Ignore Cover orders to take down Tomb Blades, pinning orders when shooting at warriors (ld10 but it can happen!), Monster Hunter against the spyders, Go to Ground and then Get Back in the Fight! when they get close to you, then run to the objectives (assuming you play either eternal war or some form of modified maelstrom like ITC or ETC).

If I were to list-tailor the next time, I would bring either Basilisks or Earthshaker artillery carriages (FW) to deny him his armour on most things, and reduce his res.protocol. I think psykers can be helpful too, as Necrons have a hard time stopping you from casting them (unlike Eldar/Daemon/GK with 20-30 warp charges)

Two tank commanders and three heavy support slots worth of maxed out squadrons Leman Russ Demolishers usually does the trick.

Look, these are just things that, as a Necron player, I find to be what more than often costs me games.
If an IG player can use some of things to exploit a weakness and turn things in their favor, hey hey!

The answer to this literally couldn't be easier. 9 Wyveryns.

Edgarion wrote:
I wonder if these "how to beat crons" wisdoms are the result of actual experience. I play a game vs crons every week. It takes 120 str 5 shots to kill a unit of necron warriors (Firewarriors). It's 240 shots at str 3. Both scenarios are best case, it gets worse if the warriors reroll 1s on RP.

Every other cron unit has 3+ saves or T5. Good luck with volume of fire.

I think you forget the weight guard can have. It's not difficult to fit over 100 guard in 1000 points. They have a high proportion of heavy/special weapons. Enemy can't shoot at every squad of yours, and you can usually focus fire on theirs. With a Leman Russ, basilisk, or 2, you are raining ap3 pie plates. It can be tough for any MEQ to fight horde guard

 skoffs wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 skoffs wrote:
• Tie up the Wraiths with something that won't run. You're probably not going to kill them, but congrats, Wraiths out of the game now.

This assumes two things: that the wraiths (having *way* more mobility and the choice of where to engage) can be engaged by the tarpit, and that there is only one unit of Wraiths, not always true.

If they're playing Decurion typically most people don't have enough points to fit in more than one Harvest, and if they do, then the rest of their forces are going to be pretty slim to free up points. Use that to your advantage.

The fact that there's less of something else is more than counterbalanced simply by the existence of more Wraiths, the Wraiths are plenty killy and fast to mandate being the immediate priority target simply because they'll typically kill any IG unit in a single round of combat, even squadrons of tanks. 6 Charging Wraiths are putting out an average of 8 HP"s on a rear AV-10 vehicle unit, and 9.77 wounds on a T3 5+ sv infantry unit. Ignoring them just means they get to pick apart them army by themselves.

But yes, if they're spamming CAD Wraith units they'll typically get to choose where and what they engage with... at least for their first combat. Try to close on any combat they're in that hasn't ended so you can get in there and keep them there.

Ideally, but it's a far more tricky and less reliable thing to do than for the Necron player to simply drive the Wraiths forward and engage what they want to engage. It also relies on the tarpit itself not getting softened up in the meantime.

Well, once they get out of their plane they can't really do much. Use that extra turns grace before they can close to gtfo of there or throw something disposable in their way if possible. They don't have a lot of attacks so hopefully your number of wounds should be sufficient enough to hold them while the rest of your guys get clear away so they have nothing to charge afterwards?

T5 3+ with RP and often a 3++? These guys, as a unit, can be just as hard to kill as Wraiths, cutting them down to ineffective sizes in a single round just isn't often possible. With 4+ RP we're talking 72 BS3 lasguns shots to kill one, or 15 BS3 Plasma Gun shots, meaning two quad plasma platoon command squads, costing 200pts combined, unloading into a unit can expect to inflict a single casualty if they're sporting the 3++ (and likely losing two plasma gunners to Gets Hot! in the process).

This is sort of the problem all around IG have with Necrons, they're just so resilient against both quantity and quality of firepower that you can dump an entire gunline into a unit, kill only half of it, leave it still semi-effective, and the rest of the army unscathed.

Likewise, with the way they can be deployed from a Night Scythe, it's not hard to make it so that it's incredibly difficult to avoid a charge the next turn, 6+2d6" radius means you need to clear a pretty big ring around them, especially if anything wants to shoot.

They'll do a hell of a lot more damage shooting than bashing on your guys. Getting anything in there, even if it means certain death for the unit in question, is better than letting them run around to blast whatever they want. But yeah, gotta catch em first. Good luck.

Exactly, you have to catch them. IG don't really have anything that can effectively do that, and even if they do get something stuck in, the Destroyers are likely to win combat and not be locked for long, if at all.

Night Scythes are still fairly common, but are no longer as auto include as they once were. If you luck out and face an opponent who is focusing on his formations AND you brought a flyer, rejoice!

Again, that's a lot of luck however, and even then isn't a great guarantee of anything.

That's why I said shoot it from behind, where it's only AV11, to pop the shield.

IG have really one unit that can really do something like that, Scions/Stormtroopers, which are neither cheap nor spectacularly effective, and to which Jink is still an incredibly capable counter. Even assuming you're DS doesn't scatter you out of melta-double-pen range or into a mishap, it's not an easy thing to pull off, and likely only have the resources to try it against a single vehicle.

Ultimately, yes these are all things you can try, but you're still going to be at a marked disadvantage, while having to drastically outplay a Necron player who can simply drive forward with very few consequences. Against a similarly skilled Necron player, the effectiveness of these options is going to be relatively minimal unfortunately.

 zgort wrote:

Edgarion wrote:
I wonder if these "how to beat crons" wisdoms are the result of actual experience. I play a game vs crons every week. It takes 120 str 5 shots to kill a unit of necron warriors (Firewarriors). It's 240 shots at str 3. Both scenarios are best case, it gets worse if the warriors reroll 1s on RP.

Every other cron unit has 3+ saves or T5. Good luck with volume of fire.

I think you forget the weight guard can have. It's not difficult to fit over 100 guard in 1000 points. They have a high proportion of heavy/special weapons. Enemy can't shoot at every squad of yours, and you can usually focus fire on theirs. With a Leman Russ, basilisk, or 2, you are raining ap3 pie plates. It can be tough for any MEQ to fight horde guard

Yes you can get in 100 guardsmen in 1000pts, but if you're doing so, that's largely all you are going to be bringing, and there's any number of very common hardcounters available to just about every army in the game, especially Necrons.

You don't see Basilisks for a reason, they're very slightly cheaper LRBT's that are an order of magnitude easier to kill, and even LRBT's aren't typically considered particularly great units (you'll be hard pressed to find them in most IG army lists). AP3 pieplates are not the terror they once were three editions ago, there's all sorts of ways to claim cover, and RP still gets to play.

You don't typically see IG armies composed of masses of infantry with a couple of AP3 pieplate throwing tanks, that's been a dead paradigm since 4th edition, they're just not really all that functional.

I love all these necron player posts. I thought it was just my buddy who thought that way. When I lose he likes to give me advice. Because you know, I obviously need the help. Then I tell him how much bolter fire it takes to kill a decurion warrior, or powerfist hits I need to take out a wraith. After that he gets a look on his face. He starts to wonder if hes really that good at the game. Is he really the greatest 40k General he knows, or maybe, just maybe his codex is one of the most unbalanced pieces of excrement GWs ever dropped on this game.

Then we talk about movies.

S-so, when I lose games, does that mean I'm just the worst player ever?


[though, seriously, just trying to help by suggesting ways we usually have our asses handed to us in nonspecific general game play in the hopes that something might come in handy. Necrons can be beaten, but there are certain match ups that are straight up tough. IG just happen to be scissors to 'Cron's rock. If nothing's working, you could always do what everyone else does and throw in a Knight or three. Necrons have real trouble with those.)

 skoffs wrote:
S-so, when I lose games, does that mean I'm just the worst player ever?


[though, seriously, just trying to help by suggesting ways we usually have our asses handed to us in nonspecific general game play in the hopes that something might come in handy. Necrons can be beaten, but there are certain match ups that are straight up tough. IG just happen to be scissors to 'Cron's rock. If nothing's working, you could always do what everyone else does and throw in a Knight or three. Necrons have real trouble with those.)

I agree that debating wether crons are op or not isnt helping anyone.

My experience playing crons with Eldar/Tau is that I need to tailor my list not to get tabled. Both armies are just too squishy and range wont help if you need those objectives. It's the reason I hate crons the most, my friend can play any list he wants and have a competetive chance against me. I need to bring a list of digusting D-spam or triptide cheese. And even then a destroyer cult can ruin my day.

Im not familiar enough with IG units but this is what works fot me. Ill list the units I have succesfully used in that role for comparison. Mind you its still a dice game, no succes guaranteed.

- alpha strike the spider (Skyray/Scatbikes)
- volume of high str fire against wraiths (scatbikes/drones /w commander.
- DONT use volume of fire against anything but warriors. Preferably ap 4 against wars (Broadsides).
- Load up on ap 3 high str shots
- Draw fire with 2+ distraction carnifexes (riptides/jain zar in a unit of wraithblades)
- Use ld shennigans. They have high ld but no so much fearless/stubborn (Hemlock/Amour of misery/Jain Zar)
- Sweep them in assault with units that are equally tough. (Wraithblades). DONT assault with glasscannons, necron will weather the cannon and break the glass.

With Tau Ive only beat em by a hair cause I made a triptide gunline with a fire support cadre and got lucky on objectives. Ive been tabled about 6 times trying to play a more mobile list though. (Because a gunline is just deploying and dice rolling, yaaaawn).

With Eldar vs Crons its either table or get tabled in my experience. If you spam D or bring Dark Eldar allies they will melt before you. Scatbikes and venoms MURDER wraiths (Assuming no RP). If you wanna built a nice cool looking fluffy list with aspect warriors and tanks.... you'll probably tabled.

But hey I got my friend to shelf his crons. That seems to be the best solution for everyone's enjoyment

 Vaktathi wrote:


You don't typically see IG armies composed of masses of infantry with a couple of AP3 pieplate throwing tanks, that's been a dead paradigm since 4th edition, they're just not really all that functional.

He is asking for suggestions - that was mine. Maybe providing your opinion for fighting Necrons as guard will help the guy out.

Zsolt wrote:
Recently I played a few matches against Necrons, and (no surprise) had some problems making them die. The 3++ with 4+ reanimation (5+ if you happen to bring ID or S) is a real big pain in the ass.

I encountered the Wraith - Spyder - Scarab formation, we play it with multiple spyders (because playing Necrons leaves you with too many friends, you need to remove some more with adding more spyders to your canoptek formation), also some "You can't remove this HQ", likely pretorians with some lord, resulting in 3++ with 4+ reanimation protocolls (same for the wraiths in the formation above).

Since IG is not the fastest nor toughest army around, grabbing objectives and staying on them isn't a viable strategy (that's what Necrons can do).

I was able to remove quite a lot of wraiths, which weren't in the formation (different game), but for that I shot them with pretty much everything I had, and lost Pask and buddy in the process.

Call the Cult Mechanicus and have them bring Kataphron Destroyers

This is another one of those jobs for 50 fearless conscripts. I've faced some pretty big wraith units in Necron games, and I've always just positioned conscripts such that they wraiths would have to go through them in order to hurt anything else of mine. And, that's the beauty of 50 conscripts and a priest. For 175 points, you can effectively take super CC units out of the game. The Wraiths are going to kill lots of poor little humans. That's fine. It will take 5 game turns to grind through them all. That's a win.