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Scarabs kill Tanks pretty damn well in my experience and I play mechanised Vets and Armoured Battlegroup with Hellhounds in almost every list. Then the flyers. AV 12 isn't immune to Str 7 tesla. And that is withoup my usual opponnent getting nasty and bring Wraiths that will mmulch through anything that isn't 30 men strong w/priest and Psyker support.

You sure that's 7th ed. 'Crons you're talking about?
- Old Scarabs were excellent at destroying armor. Current Scarabs are only as good as Guass (only glance on a 6. Can work, just not as well as other options.)
- Wraiths are good in combat, but not because they "mulch" everything. Their main strength is their survivability (2W T5 with a 3++) for tarpitting important enemy units. Like Scarabs, they're fishing for sixes to be able to do any real damage with rending. Better options out there.
- Yes, S7 AP- can still hurt some vehicles, but luckily the days of Tesla spam are well behind us. Highly unlikely you'll see too many tanks destroyed by flying french pastries these days.

But by way of wondering, does anyone know of a battle report with Mech Guard vs NewCrons in which the Necron player totally annihilated the opposition's vehicles? Because, yes, I will admit it would be possible... but I've just never seen it done, so I'd be keen to see how they would have done so (expand the tactical repertoire, if you would).

Well I have noticed that of five Chimeras I am lucky to still have one at the end of the third turn.
Ghost Arks and Scarabs roll so many dice it isn't even funny. With a working factory behind them they soon reach critical mass and will wreck anything through sheer weight of dice.
Wraiths wreck anything with AV10-11. It's not like they don't have str 6 base. Flayed ones may be scarier against infantry but they have the decency to die when shot at.

 skoffs wrote:

Ffyllotek wrote:
I really wouldn't bring much armour, necrons excel at popping it.

Really?
Excel at popping armor, do we?
While i must admit Cult Heavy Destroyers are pretty good at that job, they're only single shot on a unit incapable of splitfire. So at most that's only one vehicle a turn. If someone rolls up with mass tanks, as Guard are known to do, there's not a hell of a lot Necrons are going to be able to do to deal with that apart from, what, aiming Warriors at them and hoping for sixes? Not exactly something most experienced players are going to find worrying...

Yes, excellent. I stand by that. Gauss is a major player. Sure, it's sixes. Three sixes to wreck most tanks. Four sixes to wreck anything. And with the necron's insane duability it's repeatable anti-tank, anti-MC you can rely on.

Especially so on tomb blades with twin linked je bikes with ignores cover.

If a guard player rolls up with a tank column he'll have tank squads and you won't need to worry about your HD's only hitting one tank a turn.

Fishing for sixes works against vehicles. It does not work against MCs and GMCs.

Martel732 wrote:
Fishing for sixes works against vehicles. It does not work against MCs and GMCs.

It's alright. Sure, it's not a sure method and you don't generally want GMCs / MCs in rapid fire range but against a 4+ invincible save, for example, a squad of marines with a melta probably kills an MC slower than a necron warrior phalanx. Someone will probably mathhammer me now XD

Ffyllotek wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Fishing for sixes works against vehicles. It does not work against MCs and GMCs.

It's alright. Sure, it's not a sure method and you don't generally want GMCs / MCs in rapid fire range but against a 4+ invincible save, for example, a squad of marines with a melta probably kills an MC slower than a necron warrior phalanx. Someone will probably mathhammer me now XD

It's absolutely better than a marine squad with a melta. But it's still probably not good enough to avoid being stepped on because they get saves vs those 6's.

If someone is going to mathhammer, I'd be interested in findings out:
How many shots would it take for a Marine squad with melta to kill a vehicle? (range of armor values and hull points would be best)
How many shots for gauss?
What's the price difference between the units?
(basically, who does it better for cheaper?)

In regards to Tomb Blades being made out to be these excellent vehicle annihilators,
Your most common Tomb Blade unit tends to be minimum if in a Decurion (3), so that's only 3 to 6 shots a shooting phase, depending on range. Highly unlikely they'll be killing a tank each turn.
Even with the more competitive 5 strong builds, that's still only 5 to 10 shots. Better chances, yes, but worthy of the fear some people seem have for gauss? *shrug* Kinda seems a little blown out of proportion.
Now if you were to go crazy a take a full "Blade Wing" of 3x9 Tomb Blades, okay, NOW you've got a legitimate threat to be concerned about... but let's be honest, when was the last time you ever saw anyone take something like that?

A single bs4 gauss shot does 0.11111 HPs so you need 27 gauss shots to deall 3 HPs of damage

At melta range a single Bs4 melta shot does 0.981 HPs vs av12 (this is accounting for the fact that its explodes on a pen 1/3 of the time which i caclulated as dealing 3 hps instead of 1)

So to deal 3 HPs of damage within 6" you need 4 melta guns vs 27 gauss shots (from rapid fire) meaning 14 necron warriors and 2x10 man tactical squads to take 4 meltas (the 4th melta should also account for the difference between av12 and av13 also). so 182 points of warriors and 300 pts of Tacticals. If you were to use Sternguard however you can get 4 combi melta on 5 guys for 150 points leaving you with a points difference to also get a drop pod.

I have one word... Manticores.

 CrownAxe wrote:
A single bs4 gauss shot does 0.11111 HPs so you need 27 gauss shots to deall 3 HPs of damage

At melta range a single Bs4 melta shot does 0.981 HPs vs av12 (this is accounting for the fact that its explodes on a pen 1/3 of the time which i caclulated as dealing 3 hps instead of 1)

So to deal 3 HPs of damage within 6" you need 4 melta guns vs 27 gauss shots (from rapid fire) meaning 14 necron warriors and 2x10 man tactical squads to take 4 meltas (the 4th melta should also account for the difference between av12 and av13 also). so 182 points of warriors and 300 pts of Tacticals. If you were to use Sternguard however you can get 4 combi melta on 5 guys for 150 points leaving you with a points difference to also get a drop pod.

Thanks for the math!

So it seems full Ghost Arks are potentially capable of taking down a vehicle a turn (30 shots within rapid fire range, assuming no cover saves, etc.). Not bad as far as anti-AV goes, but there are better/more effective ways available. I still posit that most experienced Necron players use gauss as a backup to dedicated anti-AV, stripping final lingering hullpoints from things, rather than relying on it as the primary way to handle tanks.
If you see a lot of Warriors/Ghost Arks/Tomb Blades, yeah, they are going to be somewhat of a threat, but hardly a reason to panic. Just play smart, keep your stuff behind cover as much as possible, and stay out of rapid fire range as long as you can.

This is good advice for any Imperial Guard player. Thanks.

maceria wrote:
You might also consider Forge World Artillery Carriages. They are the same guns as your arty tanks, Earthshaker, Medusa, etc, but are artillery unit type, so T7, not vehicles and, depending on your groups interpretations, can take orders. They give you a not-tank platform for Earthshaker guns.

They also fit an infantry heavy army much more thematically.

I think the best loyalist rules for them are in Imperial Armor 2: Second edition, but I may be wrong. I use evil guardsmen.

Imperial Armour 1: Second edition - IA2 is marines.

 Scott-S6 wrote:

maceria wrote:
You might also consider Forge World Artillery Carriages. They are the same guns as your arty tanks, Earthshaker, Medusa, etc, but are artillery unit type, so T7, not vehicles and, depending on your groups interpretations, can take orders. They give you a not-tank platform for Earthshaker guns.

They also fit an infantry heavy army much more thematically.

I think the best loyalist rules for them are in Imperial Armor 2: Second edition, but I may be wrong. I use evil guardsmen.

Imperial Armour 1: Second edition - IA2 is marines.

Ah, thank you! As I said, I'm a heretic.

As a loyal Necron player (my only army for more years than I care to admit to Necron player) I'll add a little. (I, barring specialized games always bring a Decurion, at least one Canoptek Swarm, Flayed Ones plus a Conclave of the Burning One and often Deathmarks for reference)

The main thing that AM brings that causes me problems is that despite that gauss ALWAYS glances on sixes, you actually have to roll sixes so a heavily mechanized AM can be a royal pain and said tanks tend to force lots of saves which further adds to the pain. Even at 4+ all it takes is one handful of bad dice or not so bad dice if the weapon is S8 even with Decurion to ruin a unit. So heavily mech'd up can work rather well as the odds of gauss glancing something to death in a single turn isn't very likely and that takes fire away from other things. Sure we can deal with mech but barring farming scarabs or dedicating units that would rather be disintegrating some thing else it can be a massive distraction.

Secondly PRIESTS!1!, YOU NEED 'EM for any blob of guardsmen you want to stay and try and tarpit.

Finally never, ever forget that Necrons have no psychic phase to speak of so any mind magic you can bring will help a lot (honestly I normally use my Deathmarks just for killing pyskers/sorcerers/ect.).

I know I shouldn't be giving advice to the enemy but as a massively arrogant Overlord player I need worthy enemies xD.

 Valkenheim wrote:

I know I shouldn't be giving advice to the enemy but as a massively arrogant Overlord player I need worthy enemies xD.

Sounds like you just miss the good old days of having to fight tooth and nail for so much as a draw.

Necrons don't like long-range fights, don't have access to lots of blasts/templates, and lose some of their vaunted durability if you can double them out. Fearless Conscripts to plug them up and Basilisks to do the killing, I'd think.

It does depend a fair bit on what sort of Necron army you're facing, conscripts and Basilisks would get violently disassembled by a flying circus.

In the vein of artillery,conider the Thudd gun, its another FW carriage, that fires as many shots as the wyvern with more strenght and AP (AP wont matter vs necrons, that said), it unique advantage is that it should be an elite slot artillery carriage rather than a heavy support slot and you might be able to take 4 of them per slot. I say should and might because they are like tat in the Death Korps Siege regiment list.

If they are, consider them instead of Wyverns, as you'll be able to field more heavy firepower that way. Oh and don't take standard LRBT if you can take Earthshaker carriages, 2 of these will cost you about the same as a LRBT, but you got 2 of them and then you can give them orders, too.

And remeber that the T7 of the artillery is actually harder to kill with gauss than the AV14 of yout tanks, they'll wound both on a 6, but you get a 3+ save on the arty on top of it, as well as more wounds than HP on the Earthshaker carriages and possibly more wounds on the Thudd gun via sacrificial crewmen.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
It does depend a fair bit on what sort of Necron army you're facing, conscripts and Basilisks would get violently disassembled by a flying circus.

I believe the term you were going for was "'Cron-Air" ("Flying circus" is typically the nickname given to FMC spam lists). Regardless, luckily you won't be seeing too many flying French bakeries around at the moment, thanks to changes in Night Scythe price and the nerfing of Tesla, so shouldn't be too much of a worry.
But yes, long range weapons + fearless tarpits = Necron frustration, typically.