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Hi everyone!

My little brother has indicated that he wants to start playing 40k, and I know his favourite army are the necrons, so for his birthday/Christmas I was thinking about getting him a small force.

He already has nemesor zandrekh (sp?) and I was thinking about getting him the battleforce. What would be a good addition to that? Our meta is space marines, eldar and chaos, and we don't use fliers nor do we play overly competitively.

Any tips would be really appreciated.

Battleforce is a solid call for necrons. The cool thing about Necrons is they don't have any really bad options. Necrons can manage fine without their flier, so you wont miss out on much without it.

If he's really young, he may not care about the meta too much, and may not even care about winning as much as the feeling of being powerful. As such, bringing a unit of Warriors, Immortals, and a C'Tan to the field is quite rewarding. As stated, Necrons don't really have anything "bad", so giving your little bro free reign over what he wants will work great for getting him excited over the hobby.

Once he's got his chops and starts looking for more powerful stuff, let him decide what the next correct addition to the army is. He might want flyers, or Tomb Blades, or a full Decurion. You might just create a monster!

It really depends on how you like to play and what you think look good. You can field a lot of warriors in boats and unload on your opponent with lots of firepower. You can take to the skys with their flyers which are some of the best in the game. Finally, if you like the wraiths and scarabs you can make an assault army that is one of the best in the game. Because of necrons overall power and pretty good internal consistency you are good buying just about anything.

NG77 wrote:
Hi everyone!

My little brother has indicated that he wants to start playing 40k, and I know his favourite army are the necrons, so for his birthday/Christmas I was thinking about getting him a small force.

He already has nemesor zandrekh (sp?) and I was thinking about getting him the battleforce. What would be a good addition to that? Our meta is space marines, eldar and chaos, and we don't use fliers nor do we play overly competitively.

Any tips would be really appreciated.

Having Zahndrekh is a great start, probably one of the best HQs in the book. Buy the battleforce, it'll be all he needs to start playing right away.

Does he want to use the decurion? If so, all you need is Tomb Blades to finish out the Reclamation Legion, and then from there you can get whatever he likes. If you're going CAD, then there's a lot of things that are good.

How does he want to play? Assault Necrons can pick up any of the Assault units, as they all rock. If he wants to shoot, then Destroyers are good, as are mass Warriors/Immortals/Tomb Blades. I have middling opinions on the vehicles, but if he wants to add on Monoliths and Ghost Arks you can make a solid army out of that too.

Starting any army 40k requires the same initial first step.

Go to your bank and talk to a mortgage advisor.
If you qualify - then congrats! Your 1 step closer to "fineforging" your new narrative!

If you don't qualify - then it's ok. GW dosent want your income level of narrative anyway.

Don't forget to bring "finescrub" quality finewipes to clean up the finelube.

 Yarium wrote:
Necrons don't really have anything "bad"

Glad you used quotation marks around that qualifier.
There are a few "bad" things the Necrons can field:
• some of the special characters are garbage *coughTRAZYNcough*
• the Transcendent C'tan is pretty trash
• the Tesseract Vault, too

Apart from that, there's some fairly mediocre things that may be just above the "bad" line, but barely worth considering (eg. Annihilation Barges, Monoliths, etc).

So while, yes, the Battle force is definitely a good start, it would also help to let him know what things would be better than others.

 skoffs wrote:

 Yarium wrote:
Necrons don't really have anything "bad"

Glad you used quotation marks around that qualifier.
There are a few "bad" things the Necrons can field:
• some of the special characters are garbage *coughTRAZYNcough*
• the Transcendent C'tan is pretty trash
• the Tesseract Vault, too

Apart from that, there's some fairly mediocre things that may be just above the "bad" line, but barely worth considering (eg. Annihilation Barges, Monoliths, etc).

So while, yes, the Battle force is definitely a good start, it would also help to let him know what things would be better than others.

I must be super out of the Necron loop - I had no idea c'tan and Annihilation barges were now considered garbage.

 McNinja wrote:

 skoffs wrote:

 Yarium wrote:
Necrons don't really have anything "bad"

Glad you used quotation marks around that qualifier.
There are a few "bad" things the Necrons can field:
• some of the special characters are garbage *coughTRAZYNcough*
• the Transcendent C'tan is pretty trash
• the Tesseract Vault, too

Apart from that, there's some fairly mediocre things that may be just above the "bad" line, but barely worth considering (eg. Annihilation Barges, Monoliths, etc).

So while, yes, the Battle force is definitely a good start, it would also help to let him know what things would be better than others.

I must be super out of the Necron loop - I had no idea c'tan and Annihilation barges were now considered garbage.

Not "garbage" tier, like Trazyn, just... mediocre (there are usually better things to use your points on)

My cousin brings a Monolith every game. Back when broadsides had TL S10 rails it died on the turn it showed up almost every game. Now it usually kills a squad or 2 before it dies or the game ends turn 5.

I feel like they are underestimated.

 Wolfnid420 wrote:
My cousin brings a Monolith every game. Back when broadsides had TL S10 rails it died on the turn it showed up almost every game. Now it usually kills a squad or 2 before it dies or the game ends turn 5.

I feel like they are underestimated.

The problem with monoliths is that they don't bring much for 200 pts. Their main gun is s8 ap3, can't jink, difficult to get cover for it, main weapon is ordanece making the rest of it's guns almost useless, only 24" range like most of necron's weapons. If it still had it's immune to melta/lance rule it would be much better and would almost be competitive pick if it had it's drop pod style DS rule too. If you want a face-melting cannon there is the DD ark for less.


Saying all that I still run a monolith every now and then and I have a blast with it. It is still a fun model to use.

Thanks for the replies everyone! General consensus is that he can pretty much get anything then?

This makes my life a lot easier haha.

I have a feeling he'd like a couple of vehicles, which is their best non flier?

Necrons are one of the few codexes that dont really have any bad units. Better units or situational units yes, but nothing like Vespid for Tau which are all around complete ass.

Wraiths are the main thing that come to mind as amazing, but honestly you could get him just about anything and he could use it.

Lowest on that totem pole to me is the Barge thingie (the transport skimmer) whatever its called. Its useful enough to be playable but its the closest i'd say to useless without being useless. I havent seen a necron player field one in a long time. The variant with the big cannon is another question, though.

NG77 wrote:
I have a feeling he'd like a couple of vehicles, which is their best non flier?

Ghost Ark.
No contest.

NG77 wrote:Thanks for the replies everyone! General consensus is that he can pretty much get anything then?

This makes my life a lot easier haha.

I have a feeling he'd like a couple of vehicles, which is their best non flier?

Vineheart01 wrote:Necrons are one of the few codexes that dont really have any bad units. Better units or situational units yes, but nothing like Vespid for Tau which are all around complete ass.

Wraiths are the main thing that come to mind as amazing, but honestly you could get him just about anything and he could use it.

Lowest on that totem pole to me is the Barge thingie (the transport skimmer) whatever its called. Its useful enough to be playable but its the closest i'd say to useless without being useless. I havent seen a necron player field one in a long time. The variant with the big cannon is another question, though.

skoffs wrote:

NG77 wrote:
I have a feeling he'd like a couple of vehicles, which is their best non flier?

Ghost Ark.
No contest.

Blob quote because laziness

Annihilation Barges are still not bad. 4 TL Shots at S7 with Tesla isn't bad, but they got more expensive and worse when you Jink. And they're really only good if you have multiple, so with the price increase that's hard to do. They used to be spammed because 90pts was cheap as chips.

Ghost Arks are the "best" vehicle competitively, but they're basically just a transport. If your brother wants Tanks like a IG list or something, I'd say the Doomsday Ark is the best, or the Stalker if you have a bunch of troops to make use of the +1BS. Those two are relatively able to shoot well and hold their own with AV13. Ghost Arks are great support for Warriors but don't really do much by themselves.

If annihilation barges are bad now, what tanks should necron be picking up instead? I have a stalker, but was pretty unimpressed by the TL gauss cannon when I used it.

Veryance wrote:
If annihilation barges are bad now, what tanks should necron be picking up instead? I have a stalker, but was pretty unimpressed by the TL gauss cannon when I used it.

Stalkers will never really wow you with killing things themselves. It's the +1BS bubble that makes them good, having a BS5 army is quite solid. Especially if you combo them with Destroyers, who reroll 1s to hit and basically auto-hit now. A unit of 3 Gauss Stalkers with a Destroyer Cult full of Heavy Destroyers is 9 S9 AP2 shots that are all Twin Linked, 2/3s of which are rerolling Wounds/Pens. Few things can stand up to that sort of firepower.

It depends on what you want Tanks for. If you want to run a "Steel Legion"-esque army where everything outside of required troops is a Vehicle... well we're not that great at it. If you want to go that route, you'll need a mix of all the vehicles (including a Ghost Ark and CCB) and will probably want to take an Obelisk. But there's no one Vehicle we can spam now and be happy with, like we could with ABarges in the last book. Night Scythes are the only things that come close, but that's something different altogether.

NG77 wrote:
Hi everyone!

My little brother has indicated that he wants to start playing 40k, and I know his favourite army are the necrons, so for his birthday/Christmas I was thinking about getting him a small force.

He already has nemesor zandrekh (sp?) and I was thinking about getting him the battleforce. What would be a good addition to that? Our meta is space marines, eldar and chaos, and we don't use fliers nor do we play overly competitively.

Any tips would be really appreciated.

No flyers really helps. other than the requisite troops and HQ, I would start deciding whether or not you like armor. It will drive a lot of the cost in Necron armiesif you go that way. But if you're liking armor, the Obelisk is really excellent. Its a beautiful centerpiece to a force also but it's effective, decent points wise for what you get and instantly gives you a lot of the heavier str guns you'll want on a real sturdy platform.

other than that I personally can find no fault with Wraiths. they're just damn good.

Best way to get started with Necrons is ther Battleforce box, an HQ, and a box of Tomb Blades so you can make the primary formation for the Decurion. Then look through the book at the auxialiary formations, and pick which one you like.

Regarding vehicles, the Flyers are fun, easy to assemble, and I think look awesome. Monoliths are not the best unit for the points or anything, but they are pretty cool on the board, especially with an Obelsisk. Stalkers are cool looking, and they used to be pretty good, I think they got an unnecessary nerf, but the formation they are in is good.

Ghost Arks are good. One comes in the battleforce. Be warned they are a huge PITA to assemble and paint.