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Greetings y'all, I am a novice wargamer who finds frequent defeat at the hands of necons. Does anyone have some general advice and tactics when squaring off against 'crons? Thanks in advance.

Outscore him

So far my luck against necrons is entirely that, luck. Ive tried pen'ing his armor and only allowing him his reanimation (less shots as a result) and i still just cant kill enough.
I try heavy RoF, throwing like 20-30 dice per unit but not penning armor. Nothing.
I even tried spamming Ion weapons, which are S8 AP4 or better. They double toughness and i pen warrior armor. Still takes 3 rounds of 2 ghostkeels pi-plating a squad of warriors to fully remove them, either from lucky as hell 5+ rolls or i missed.

In their defense its about all they got, since majority of their weapons are crap or really difficult to field multiples of. But still, good god i hate that 4+ reanimation. Wish instant death removed it, not reduce it by 1.

Outscoring them doesnt really work when you cant push them off objectives either.

 Vineheart01 wrote:

Outscoring them doesnt really work when you cant push them off objectives either.

tankshokk!11

LD10, highly unlikely. Believe me i tank shock a lot even as Tau.

You don't need to frighten them. All you need is to get to the point with your obsec transport. Than you tarpit them in mellee as long as you can. Ideally, you should be an ork for that.

Tau can probably tarpit them with riptides or maybe crysis suits if you come from a right angle.

I have a pretty good experience of cleaning large groups of Necron warriors with Heavy Flamers (S5 AP4). Also one should remember that Instant Death reduces their RP save to 6+ (5+ with orb). It helps a lot.

I am a necron player and I won a 2500 point game against guard last week, I destroyed 4 Lehman russ tanks and 50 guardsmen and all I lost was a few hull points on vw jails and 1 necron warrior. necrons are a very hard to kill army unless you focus fire

 Vineheart01 wrote:
LD10, highly unlikely. Believe me i tank shock a lot even as Tau.

Tank shock doesn't require them to fail their leadership. Whether they fail their leadership or not, it moves the necrons out of the way allowing your Objective Secured transport to take the objective over their non-objective secured troops (assuming they're running a Decurion). This forces the necron player to either forfeit the objective or waste at least one of his unit's shooting to destroy the otherwise useless transport.

Just be sure that you deploy your troops before-hand or that you're sure the necrons can't surround your vehicle afterwards and destroy it. That would be bad!

I play necrons and find most of my heavy losses model wise are a result of sweeping advance. If I lose a combat by more than 2 wounds its usually goodbye having only I2. So send units with decent initiative into close combat with them.

Jamie Shred wrote:
I play necrons and find most of my heavy losses model wise are a result of sweeping advance. If I lose a combat by more than 2 wounds its usually goodbye having only I2. So send units with decent initiative into close combat with them.

For the last time, sweeping advance doesn't work like it used to due to RP being FNP+. Anything that won't want to be in melee is either in a Ghost Ark (Warriors), camping in the backfield (Immortals), or is too speedy for average units to catch (Tomb Blades).

Don't focus on trying to kill all his models, because realistically, you won't. Play to your mission, this goes double for Maelstrom. Bring an Objective Secured CAD with lots of scoring troops. Bring mobility. Don't focus on trying to bypass his saves, focus on blocking his troops from getting to objectives. Tie up or dismantle his units that have mobility. Outrange him, most of his guns are 24". Force lots of saves rather than trying to bypass his saves. Try to force Initiative tests or penalize his Leadership tests, Necrons have very little access to Fearless units. A good round of melee with power weapons will devastate most Necron infantry, between the casualties inflicted and the Sweeping Advance.

I've played Necrons for years, and these are the things that will typically cost me games, outside of direct intervention from RNGesus.

If your meta is chock full of Necrons, then tailor your list to be melee heavy, bring destroyer weapons, and as much ObSec as possible.

Focus on objectives. Only engage Necron units on objectives. You're not going to table them.

Myth: "Necrons fold in close combat."
(This is old thinking. People who say this have most likely never faced new 'Crons. It's just not the case anymore, they tend to not lose enough wounds to be able to reliably sweep. Not only that, but some of their CC units are actually quite good. You run the risk of getting mulched if you run into the wrong Necron squad)

Fact: "Necrons are horrible at the Objective game."
(If they're using Decurion, just get something ObSec of yours into combat on an objective. If you can do this for all objectives, he'll be able to do very little about it)

 skoffs wrote:
Myth: "Necrons fold in close combat."
(This is old thinking. People who say this have most likely never faced new 'Crons. It's just not the case anymore, they tend to not lose enough wounds to be able to reliably sweep. Not only that, but some of their CC units are actually quite good. You run the risk of getting mulched if you run into the wrong Necron squad)

Fact: "Necrons are horrible at the Objective game."
(If they're using Decurion, just get something ObSec of yours into combat on an objective. If you can do this for all objectives, he'll be able to do very little about it)

Quoted for truth.

In a different thread I had mentioned that a squad of 130pt bare bones warriors can tie up most units for the majority of the game, if not the entire game. It's really, really unwise to jump into CC with Necrons that aren't on an objective unless you're swinging Str 8+ weapons and they're not in a Decurion.

Objectives, objectives, and more objectives until you have all the objectives. This is the major downfall of every Necron army.

Jamie Shred wrote:I play necrons and find most of my heavy losses model wise are a result of sweeping advance. If I lose a combat by more than 2 wounds its usually goodbye having only I2. So send units with decent initiative into close combat with them.

I have never been able to sweeping advance crons... I either fall into the category of I don't deal enough wounds, or he is fearless given some circumstance.

I will caveat that I don't think I have played my buddy with any of my new Eldar lists yet... and those I have better cc units in (compared to tau). So who knows maybe my luck will change with that.

Otherwise, the best shooting I ever did was 2 riptides and 2 ghostkeel killed 1 unit of 10 warriors in one turn. With markerlight support. ion riptides I think are the best way to get rid of warriors and the 3+ equivalent guys (forget name), ghostkeel are great against warriors with that ap4 CIR.

Even just denying them an armour and cover save should be enough to whittle them down.

Shout out to Riptide for helping against RP.

But yeah Outscore them. Only go into CC if you know you can beat them or cause enough casualties for them to fail a morale check (eg TWC, DC, MANz, etc)

Even DC really can't reliably do it. Unfortunately.

Might be just my set up. I have a Chaplain attached to them (fluffy) and he has the Relic that causes a Fear check on -2. Sometimes a Biomancy Libby that luckily gets Enfeeble.

Granted Fear isn't the best way to beat them in CC (that would be blind) but it's not too shabby, particulary when my opponents have a knack for rolling nines and tens. Enfeeble allows for ID Wraiths and hitting on 2's against Warriors. But you have to roll it, which is why I don't play it often.

" particulary when my opponents have a knack for rolling nines and tens."

You don't need a good unit set up if you opponent rolls poorly.

I've never considered using a chaplain in 7th because they are so bad.

9s and 10s on a leadership for necrons is a pass, thats why he was saying he likes the -2 fear tests because then it fails.

And i can agree, blind is awesome on necrons. My firewarriors ALWAYS throw a Defensive Grenade if i can, its almost a guaranteed blind on Init2 models. BS1 and WS1 for a turn FTW!
Its also great against Wraiths because their high init is a wargear in combat, not a base stat bonus. So even they have a lousy success rate against blind tests.

 Vineheart01 wrote:
9s and 10s on a leadership for necrons is a pass, thats why he was saying he likes the -2 fear tests because then it fails.

And i can agree, blind is awesome on necrons. My firewarriors ALWAYS throw a Defensive Grenade if i can, its almost a guaranteed blind on Init2 models. BS1 and WS1 for a turn FTW!

9's and 10's aren't a pass in CC if I win by a couple of models. That was my point I can win by one and if the Necron player throws a "10" it's over.

If though..

I think everyone might be missing the point, here:
You don't get into combat on objectives with Decurion Warriors to try to kill them,
You do so to keep your own ObSec units safe and scoring.
(the Warriors are much more deadly shooting than in CC. They're not ObSec, so if you get YOUR OWN ObSec units into combat with them on an objective, the Necron player will be practically powerless to do anything there and concede you the points for that spot every turn, unless he wants to divert any of his actual CC threats to take care of them. But chances are you'll have more ObSec than he'll have Wraiths, etc., so it'll be a loosing battle of attrition for him, one that will more than likely win you the game in the end).

TL;DR- if you're focusing on trying to kill them... you're doing it wrong.

That's a huge issue tho.. if you ignore them they can easily whittle you down so you can't win through simple scoring.

Another thing in cc with warriors is that their durability becomes a liability in this case.

When they get stuck, they're forced to consolidate every turn enveloping the opponent. They're usually not killy enough to wipe out the attacker themselves. And they're too durable to get reliable gaps for a real cc-oriented necron squad to help them out. There's simply no place to charge in. Or you just get a few models striking and also lock your cc squad for who knows how long.

Necrons are very tough, especially if you don't have much in the way of D.

I'm just going to echo what others have already said : you can't worry about killing them off cause it ain't gonna happen. Play the objective game and beat them by points. The other piece of advice I can give is they lack low ap weapons. If you can bring 2+ armor they will find it difficult to kill your units and you can turn the "unkillable units" table against them. Other than that just cross your fingers and hope for luck.

They actually won't care much is you bring 2+. We treat it the same as every other target: which ones takes priority and which ones are more mathematically bad for the cost, etc.

Playing the objective game isn't going to work when they just park their ObSec ghost arcs on top of objectives.

And taking out both the arc, and the dudes inside, requires ALOT of work. especially for a shooty army.


Necrons are seriously heavy counter tau. the best answers to them is out-obsec them, or get into CC where you can get sweeps after a decent melee round.
Problem is, tau can't ObSec with any level of efficency (our troops are fragile), and we can't CC without insane luck. (happens, but not a valid strategy)

I've played alot against them, and so far I've found no reasonable answer to warrior blobs with 4+ RP and a 5+ anti-shooting invul (damn cryptek.), or to heavy destroyers. whoever said necrons don't shoot properly and NOT faced heavy destroyers backed by massed gauss. they can and WILL gun down everything you bring there.