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The Tesseract Ark is supposedly really good. I don't have one myself because we usually don't use FW stuff.

The Stalker and DDA are ok.

Tesseract Ark is excellent.
DDAs are decent. Arguable comparison between them and equal point value number of Heavy Destroyers.
Stalkers are fantastic as a singleton to buff your army, with diminishing returns thereafter.

Updated the previous list based on available models (I was short on Tomb Blades):



Played a test game against a foot slogging, non-Mortarian build Deathguard list.

4 plague marine squads
1 pox walker squad (max size)
1 cultist squad (max)
1 terminator squad (deployed in reserve)
Various characters
4 nurglings

Mission rolled for 4 objectives worth 3 pts. each at the end of the game. I win first turn.

Turn 1:
My entire army bar Tesla Immortals target one plague marine squad for FB.
The Tesla Immortals wipe a second squad on their own.

Thoughts: My god DDAs feel underwhelming against non vehicle targets.

He deep strikes his terminators into midfield (I counter deep strike my Deathmarks. [This was a mistake on my part,though not a grave one]
He targets half his force on the Tomb blades and wipes them. Second half goes for the Gauss immortal squads and takes each down by half (he expected better plasma outcomes and didn’t want to waste a possible lottery result from his rapid fire range from other squads).

Turn 2:
I’m playing defensively trying to screen weakened and valuable targets. I “waste” all my heavy shooting on his terminators, resulting in only one successful wound. Invulns and FNP are tough to crack!

His turn is great with a charge wipe on my Deathmarks and his nurglings bogging down my tesla Immortals for the turn. He does light damage to my stalker (2) and finishes off one of my Gauss squads.

Turn 3:
I fall back with Tesla Immortals and focus on getting what’s left of my Gauss into range of Toholk (this is rewarded next turn with 4s to reanimate!). Again my heavy fire concentrated on his terminators is ineffective.

His turn is strong on possible points, but one turn too soon: he moves his cultists forward to grab an objective and falls back with nurglings and charges my scarab screen of my Tesla Immortals with his poxwalkers.

Turn 4:
DDAs turn into gun ships and simply delete his cultists, taking the objective. Tesla Immortals delete the poxwalkers after scarabs fall back. T. Ark uses its flamer on the terminators and kills 2. Finally.

His response is largely ineffective as all he has left are one squad of marines in the backfield, his terminators (at half strength) and random buff bots.

We shake hands.

Close game with tons of learnings on my side.

Sweet victory when it finally presented itself.

Should you have held back more?

Good game.

I agree that invul and FnP on Deathguard is a pain. They are however very slow and unless supported by characters their infantry are not so good in CC.

The only thing I'm worried about are deep striking units (only terminators?) and flying characters. Haven't played against Mortarion, but nurgle Demon princes are pretty tough.

torblind wrote:
Sweet victory when it finally presented itself.

Should you have held back more?

I overvalued the free round of shooting from the Deathmarks, as I failed to remember that Disgusting Resilience May be rolled against Mortal Wounds. As a result of my reactive deepstrike, the Deathmarks were left just chillin’ near midfield with only a Gauss immortal line screening them. They would have been more valuable deep striking later in his back field to threaten an objective and possibly focus fire on a weaker character.

Tomb Blades could have been held back for a later power move, but I suspect that their damage soak and role in wiping one of the two marine squads on T1 was worth it strategically; though expensive tactically.

sieGermans wrote:

torblind wrote:
Sweet victory when it finally presented itself.

Should you have held back more?

I overvalued the free round of shooting from the Deathmarks, as I failed to remember that Disgusting Resilience May be rolled against Mortal Wounds. As a result of my reactive deepstrike, the Deathmarks were left just chillin’ near midfield with only a Gauss immortal line screening them. They would have been more valuable deep striking later in his back field to threaten an objective and possibly focus fire on a weaker character.

Tomb Blades could have been held back for a later power move, but I suspect that their damage soak and role in wiping one of the two marine squads on T1 was worth it strategically; though expensive tactically.

Yeah I struggle with deciding the right tactics for pushing forward the tomb blades. When should they make a move and against what type of targets, and how should you move about to get to that situation.

No use rushing them up against a gun line to decimate some infantry unit, if they only get shot to smitheries next turn.

Yep you have to play conservatively with them, to get the most out of the points. Especially against space marine armies, the -2 AP really helps clearing them out. They cannot survive massed shots that well, although the T5 does help against all that S4 out there.

If possible, always try to keep one Tomb Blade in the unit out of line of sight to enemy shooters. Anything you can to ensure you have someone survive until your next turn so you have a chance to revive your extremely expensive bike guys.

 skoffs wrote:
If possible, always try to keep one Tomb Blade in the unit out of line of sight to enemy shooters. Anything you can to ensure you have someone survive until your next turn so you have a chance to revive your extremely expensive bike guys.

Doesn't work. If you can see one guy, you can kill his whole squad.

 Klowny wrote:
Yep you have to play conservatively with them, to get the most out of the points. Especially against space marine armies, the -2 AP really helps clearing them out. They cannot survive massed shots that well, although the T5 does help against all that S4 out there.

Marines aren't the issue though.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

sieGermans wrote:
Tesseract Ark is excellent.
DDAs are decent. Arguable comparison between them and equal point value number of Heavy Destroyers.
Stalkers are fantastic as a singleton to buff your army, with diminishing returns thereafter.

One thing to remember is that, with the codex, a price cut is basically guaranteed for the DDA. The question is how big of a price cut will happen.

I'd assume we won't have to wait that long for a price cut,
It'll probably happen next month with the index update.

I am holding off on all new Necron purchases till the Codex. The Nid Codex fills me with joy and hope, so many different and competitive ways to build Nids is in my opinion one of the greatest accomplishments of 8th.

Lets hope the people doing our Necron Codex puts that kind of love into them.

Pyrothem wrote:
I am holding off on all new Necron purchases till the Codex.

I mean, that's fair and all, just be prepared for a pretty long wait.
(we're assumed to be one of the last)

Not like we have much of a choice in a lot of cases. Between "temporarily unavailable" and "no longer available" kits, the pickings are getting slim.

If Chapter Approved doesn't have any worthwhile changes for us, I'm putting my Necrons in storage. Which hurts me, honestly, but we need serious help.

Just played small game yesterday vs Marines, we played 1000pts.

He got 2 dreadnoughts, snipers, terminators, tacticals.
I got Stalker, DDA, CCB, 10 immortals and about 20 scarabs.

I went 2d, he didn't have damage output to kill my guys. 1st turn i destroyed 1 dreadnought and half of his tacticals.

He deepstriked terminators and managed to get 9' charge with reroll. In single combat he wiped my Stalker, then i killed some of them in shooting and charged them 12 scarabs.

They were in combat untill the end of the game, slowly killing 1 terminator a turn.

DDA and Tesla Immortals were destroying everything. I won.

I would take another unit of 10xImmortals with gauss because 2+ save is very hard for Tesla.

Gauss for Tomb Blades (can get into rapid fire faster)
Tesla for Immortals (they're gonna be hanging back anyway)

There is a case for tesla tomb blades, they become super, super fast then as you can still advance and shoot, although you lose the tesla proc (if they get MWBD in the codex however.......). This gives them a threat range of 14+D6", with 36 S5 shots, nothing to sneeze at. However, as it stands I feel the gauss just shreds better. They are infantry killers, and being fast, 2W T5 3+/5++ with RP they take a while to chew through, and I cannot stop singing their praises lol.

So what would be a uniquely meta’ed Necron list versus a stock Guilliman + Assault Cannon list? Like, what actually works for us to counter that effectively while playing for points?

sieGermans wrote:
So what would be a uniquely meta’ed Necron list versus a stock Guilliman + Assault Cannon list? Like, what actually works for us to counter that effectively while playing for points?

I'd say spammed Wraiths and Scarabs. Once those get into contact with the Razorbacks you've won. The question is if they'll survive.

Keep a squad of destroyers perhaps, should tempt him to aim his multi wound weapons elsewhere, helping the scarabs stay alive

Or, you know, just get more Scarabs.
(for the price of a Destroyer unit you could get a TON of Scarabs)

Another Test game with the tournament list today; this time versus an Alpha Legion List.



Maelstrom, Standard 3 TacOs (Tactical Objective cards).

His Brigade build consisted of:
3 Demon princes with Slaanesh, Khorne, and Nurgle marks.
3 Khorne Berserkers
1 squad of Terminators
2 squads of obliterators
3? Squads of min cultists
1 terminator lord
(I’m missing some squads here of something, since he had 16 units to deploy)

He wins first turn.

Deployment was vanguard strike, and he used the Alpha Legion command to put his berserkers into infiltrate reserve. These then got placed right on my front lines. (Interesting rule quirk, RAW, it seems Deathmarks can Hunters from hyperspace based on this infiltrate maneuver).

Turn 1:
I HfHed the Deathmarks onto one of his squads of berserkers, and in his movement killed all but 1.
In his shooting, he kills both DDAs, the T. ark, and in CC knocks the squad of Tesla Immortals. He burns through 6 CPs to provide strength, rerolls, and extra shooting for his terminators.
Scores FB, and two TacOs.

On mine, I manage to knock 5 wounds off the Slaanesh marked DP and kill 2 berserkers.
I score 1 point for holding an objective.

Bottom of Turn 1, he has full board control and has all relevant shooting in range with berserkers and DPs in charge range ready to mop up.

We shake hands.

The Alpha strike is real.

Wow, makes you wonder what't the point


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Could you have deployed differently? Or done anything?

Alpha strikes are real, but im kinda confused how he got so close with his termies and got into CC with your immortals T1? You have 7 scarabs, vehicles and deathmarks as screens. Not having a go, just when you see alpha legion zerkers you immediately turtle on deployment as a shooting army.

 Klowny wrote:
Alpha strikes are real, but im kinda confused how he got so close with his termies and got into CC with your immortals T1? You have 7 scarabs, vehicles and deathmarks as screens. Not having a go, just when you see alpha legion zerkers you immediately turtle on deployment as a shooting army.

He might've been lucky on the charge with the Terminators, but Terminators don't suck for firepower this edition, and the Berserker Marines infiltrated instead, which means they still get to move.

How much longer until chapter approved again?
I know we're all doom and gloom here, but honestly, with the constant losses, unless they can fix things soon, I think I'm gonna be done with Necrons for the foreseeable future.

I know I'm begging for Ghost Arks to be open topped again and that Night Scythes get much cheaper so we got a reason to use Gauss Immortals more.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
I know I'm begging for Ghost Arks to be open topped again and that Night Scythes get much cheaper so we got a reason to use Gauss Immortals more.

Ghost Arks, yes, but even if Night Scythes got cheaper, how would they be of much use to Immortals? (you use the "disembark" portal before moving the flyer, so they'd probably be blown out of the sky before they get anywhere near what the Immortals were hoping to shoot).
Plus, seeing as how Necrons have the extra added penalty to Monolith and Night Scythe "disembarking" where the HQ aren't allowed to use the same portal as the infantry in the same turn, your Tesla Immortals won't have their Overlord nearby to give them MWBD unless you get him his own Night Scythe to get out of that turn (AND hope it wasn't shot down the turn before, too).
No, unless Chapter Approved features a massive overhaul of how our transports work, a price change isn't going to do a hell of a lot.