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Gentlemen (and Ladies). Rematched some Necrons today with Tau monster mash and post game was talking to my opponents husband about ideas for her in a competitive environment. Decuricrons should be charging gargantuan lords of war in competitive play.

You have a ghost arc that is an assault transport... move up 6"... disembark 6". Assault 2d6 into a stormsurge unit or Imperial Knight or Wraith Knight. Those undying robo zombie ninjas can tie up an 860 pt unit of Storm surges for several rounds and keep them out of your soft under belly. Maybe competitive necron players know this already, but to me it was like a "Eureka!" moment. What are your thought robo zombie gurus? Good advice?

Sine Ghost Arks can only carry Warriors and Warriors do die to stomps and D weapons no I don't think this is a good tactic

Warriors will die to Stomps, but when you've whittled down their wounds, you can shoot and charge the Stormsurges with Decurion Warriors for whatever it is worth. Relentless is amazing, really.

Necrons arent fearless, so you will charge in, lose quite a lot of models to Stomp, break and run off or get swept, without having much chance of doing any wounds. Deathmarks are better for taking down gargantuans. Rapid fire wounding on a 2+ with pseudo-rending does serious damage

Surely you could put lychguard inside the ark on turn one? Nothing stops this. Lychguard with dispersion shields and an overlord with void reaper. Then you're wounding that garg on 2's too.

There's a rule that forbids anything except characters and warriors from using the ark.

Which is a stupid rule for a transport. They really should have let the ark be a support unit for warriors instead of a dedicated transport.

It doesn't even make sense background wise; the necrons have teleportation tech that they use frequently, why would they waste their time riding around what is essentially a necrontyr hearse? Something like a smaller, faster and fragiler monolith that moves around and teleports a squad within a certain radius to its gate would have been fluffier.

Anyway, several problems with this tactic -

1) Overwatch
2) Stomp
3) You have to get very close, which means that the arks have to survive a few turns of shooting. Stopping 24-30" away is a bad idea, as the likelihood of rolling boxcars isn't great, so not only will they get shot from overwatch they won't even be in combat.
4) The surges are better in combat than warriors. The warriors will lose.

Yeah, if you could use Immortals then maybe. But Warriors are stomp-fodder.

I wouldn't even use immortals.
You do not want to tarpit with necrons, due to their price, lack of fodder and their lack of fearless. It is not a reliable tactic.
If surges are S5, one could use swarms which are the only real fodder unit the necrons have. I'm pretty sure they are S6 though.
Wraiths might be able to pull it off thanks to their high toughness, invuls and fearless, but it'll be pricey.

I thought the restriction on ghost arks was simply infantry only models?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
EDIT: Just looked. Warriors only. My bad.

I mean, against a knight army, you could just get up within 12 and get what, 40 shots off with a ghost ark+warriors inside?

I faced knights a few times with my necrons and they never were too big of a threat. I also ran max destroyer cult and tons of warriors. Stormsurges though, I still havent faced one. CC is smart with a stormsurge, but not if you will get stompped out.
To get that think locked up right, you want just enough fearless models so that the stomps can only kill 1 or 2 models max, so everyone is in B2B. Scytheguard could probably just kill both of those in CC though. Take a few HP/W down in the first turn or two, then plop off your unit and assault. Wraiths are a good call on the surge, but the knight is risky, as then you really need those rends.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
There's a rule that forbids anything except characters and warriors from using the ark.

Which is a stupid rule for a transport. They really should have let the ark be a support unit for warriors instead of a dedicated transport.

It doesn't even make sense background wise; the necrons have teleportation tech that they use frequently, why would they waste their time riding around what is essentially a necrontyr hearse? Something like a smaller, faster and fragiler monolith that moves around and teleports a squad within a certain radius to its gate would have been fluffier.

Anyway, several problems with this tactic -

1) Overwatch
2) Stomp
3) You have to get very close, which means that the arks have to survive a few turns of shooting. Stopping 24-30" away is a bad idea, as the likelihood of rolling boxcars isn't great, so not only will they get shot from overwatch they won't even be in combat.
4) The surges are better in combat than warriors. The warriors will lose.

Do you mean supporting fire? because the storm surges are gargantuan and cannot overwatch.

the stomps represent some scare, but running a full decurion, those 4+ reanimation protocols will save quite a few, and ld 10 isn't fearless, nor is it dismissable

the ghost ark should be able to move 12" flat out 6" more and jink/behind cover turn 1, and then move 6" disembark 6" and charge ~7" turn 2 for 37"

Storm surges are ws2, i2 2 A, that's not "better" by most accounts, since the warriors are still getting 4+ saves, and as stated are just designed to tie up a high power unit. and if the ghost ark is within 6", it can repair d3 per turn, making them last longer than expected.

Yeah, the stats aren't much better, but they still get stomps, and surges have a greater likelihood of winning combat than warriors have of winning.
You are assuming that the warriors will never lose combat and flee.
The odds just aren't great.

2 Stormsurges can pretty much murder any non SH/GMC in cc with 2d3 stomps, they are actually pretty damn amazing in CC and your basic warrior has a decent WS but they are going to get murdered by those S6 Ap4 stomps or they are going to roll a 6 and then attempt to sweep you...with both of you being I2 thats a damn big risk.

Your best attempt would be to tie them up with wraiths (and hope they don't roll a 6) or use a scarab farm to keep them perpetually in CC