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 flyingnecronmaster wrote:
In the youtube video that was taken down, does anyone remember if there was any specific details about how the veil of darkness worked? like after the relic bearer and unit teleported, the unit had to be 3''/6'' away from the relic bearer? or could the relic bearer teleport to one location and the other unit could be as far away from the relic bearer as possible?

The Veil of Darkness was: "One use only - at the end of the movement phase, pick one friendly <dynasty> infantry unit within 3" of the carrier. The carrier and the unit is removed from the table and deployed anywhere on the battlefield more than 9" away from enemy units and within 6" of the carrier of the Veil of Darkness"

I dont remember if it was WHOLLY within 6" of the carrier or just within 6"

Edit I - Youtube is up again, though without showing the pages from the book, just audio. I linked the time when he talks about the necron traits and stratagems:

Edit II - He doesn't quote the exact wording of the stratagem with rerolling 1s for reanimation protocol, and it seems like its ALL 1s not just for A unit. This gives me a shadow of doubt on my memory, I can't really remember if it was for A unit or just general. Time will tell I guess.

Frontlinegaming released their review, which gives some insight into the wording of the veil of darkness. Basically, it's what you said, but yes, they have to be wholly within 6''.

https://www.frontlinegaming.org/2017/11/25/chapter-approved-review/

 Cmdr_Sune wrote:
The priority should be.
Index:
Tesla immortals
Tomb blades (magnetize weapons)

FW:
Tesseract Ark
Tomb sentinel

We now that Tesseract Arks and Tomb sentinels will be unaffected by chapter approved. So they are the best bet.

How are Acanthrites?
They seem like a shooty version of Wraiths while being more vulnerable too, what with not having an invul save and only protected by -1 To Hit...
In contrast to Wraiths, these could disengage from combat and blast enemies in the face tho.

Has anyone found a good model for Toholk the Blinded by the way?

Cheers

 DaKhriS wrote:

How are Acanthrites?
They seem like a shooty version of Wraiths while being more vulnerable too, what with not having an invul save and only protected by -1 To Hit...
In contrast to Wraiths, these could disengage from combat and blast enemies in the face tho.

Has anyone found a good model for Toholk the Blinded by the way?

Cheers

So IMO Acanthrites are in a peculiar position. They have 1 less str than wraiths, but str 6 "only" matters against T3, 5, 6 and in the rare case T10, however Acanthrites have ap -3 on their attacks which is huge (they carry Voidblades, however it's not faqed in forgeworld to give +1 attack) so all in all same amount of attacks.
They also have str 7 shooting attacks, with melta effect at ap -4, albeit range 12", though they have m12" with their fly which means fallback and shoot. And defensively wraiths have 3++ which is far stronger than 3+ with -1 to hit and you get roughly 1,5 wraith for 1 acanthrite.
So they will fill completely different roles, Wraiths bog down and acanthrites is very good for vehicle hunting and MEQ/TEQ hunting.
If we compare them to destroyers, or even heavy destroyers which is a bit awkward considering max 3 per unit, unless you field 1 in a full destroyer unit (5+1), then it all comes down to reanimation protocol, and now with the new stratagem, Acanthrites might actually be very viable.

My experience with Acanthrites (I have 9, though only fielded 7 when I field them, never a full squad) they have wrecked havoc and now with the stratagem... mmmmmmhmmm looks great!

 Nogil wrote:

 DaKhriS wrote:

How are Acanthrites?
They seem like a shooty version of Wraiths while being more vulnerable too, what with not having an invul save and only protected by -1 To Hit...
In contrast to Wraiths, these could disengage from combat and blast enemies in the face tho.

Has anyone found a good model for Toholk the Blinded by the way?

Cheers

So IMO Acanthrites are in a peculiar position. They have 1 less str than wraiths, but str 6 "only" matters against T3, 5, 6 and in the rare case T10, however Acanthrites have ap -3 on their attacks which is huge (they carry Voidblades, however it's not faqed in forgeworld to give +1 attack) so all in all same amount of attacks.
They also have str 7 shooting attacks, with melta effect at ap -4, albeit range 12", though they have m12" with their fly which means fallback and shoot. And defensively wraiths have 3++ which is far stronger than 3+ with -1 to hit and you get roughly 1,5 wraith for 1 acanthrite.
So they will fill completely different roles, Wraiths bog down and acanthrites is very good for vehicle hunting and MEQ/TEQ hunting.
If we compare them to destroyers, or even heavy destroyers which is a bit awkward considering max 3 per unit, unless you field 1 in a full destroyer unit (5+1), then it all comes down to reanimation protocol, and now with the new stratagem, Acanthrites might actually be very viable.

My experience with Acanthrites (I have 9, though only fielded 7 when I field them, never a full squad) they have wrecked havoc and now with the stratagem... mmmmmmhmmm looks great!

Like the sound of that, and I like focusing on Canoptek models. But doesn't the Canoptek Tomb Sentinel (or two) fill the vehicle hunting role better?
They can deepstrike where they need to be and draw fire for a round maybe.

Was thinking of buying a Tesseract Ark and 2 Sentinels, but could replace the Ark with some Acanthrites...

Maynarkh for the win :p

Cheers

There's a video on YouTube on converting 3 wraiths to a tomb stalker, (or the cc variant of the two) , it's really nice, it's cheaper, it's plastic and it's fun! (Haven't tried it but plan to)

Interesting replies concerning the Pylon...
Making them 550pts is harsh indeed, but are Tesseract Arks and Tomb Sentinels really going to be enough to take down the heavies?

I had great anti-tank success at Blood&Glory 2017 with the Combination of 1 Tesseract Ark, 1 THGC Triarch Stalker and 2 DDAs.

I even went up against a Pylon and took it down in 2 turns.

My favorite anti-tank is 2 Tesseract Arks, 1 DDA and Triarch Stalker w/ THGC.

I like the Tomb Sentinel but it lacks QS and it's gun is only 12" so you have to be close to use it. If your not charging after you shoot the Exile Cannon then it will be shot up in 1-2 turns. It also around the same points as a Triarch Stalker w/ THGC.

Is it stated that named characters cannot take the Veil of Darkness? I understand that is how it works in general, but the codices themselves state that named characters cannot take relics. Is that verbage anywhere to be found in Chapter Approved?

Drakmord wrote:
Is it stated that named characters cannot take the Veil of Darkness? I understand that is how it works in general, but the codices themselves state that named characters cannot take relics. Is that verbage anywhere to be found in Chapter Approved?

The only thing I remember from looking at the page in CA it was "<C'tan shards> cannot take relic or warlord" it didn't say anything about named characters, atleast not under our necron specific page in the CA.

Imgur has images.... the blood of kittens blog has all the leaked info.

Sadly, it looks like crons will get no help in chapter approved. I'm not optimistic about our codex at this point either

I feel the same,there are just too many missed opportunities for straight forward adjustments of the necro army with little or no risk

punisher357 wrote:
Imgur has images.... the blood of kittens blog has all the leaked info.

Sadly, it looks like crons will get no help in chapter approved. I'm not optimistic about our codex at this point either

My guess is because the codex is fairly near.
Patience is gonna be a virtue here.

Chapter approved is no help and even a hurt in many cases with the pylon cost increase.

The fact that this means our codex may be soon is even worse since it will be based mostly on initial testing and not on bad performance.

Given that reece et al are telling gw how great and powerful necrons are this doesn't bode well at all.

I wouldn't be surprised at this point if our codex made us worse instead of better,...

zacharia wrote:
Chapter approved is no help and even a hurt in many cases with the pylon cost increase.

The fact that this means our codex may be soon is even worse since it will be based mostly on initial testing and not on bad performance.

Given that reece et al are telling gw how great and powerful necrons are this doesn't bode well at all.

I wouldn't be surprised at this point if our codex made us worse instead of better,...

Well here's hoping they don't listen to "anything-but-necron" fanboys. Reece obviously never had his units wiped in one go when playing as necrons.

Who is Reece and why do we care about his opinions?

Here's a new idea, 'Cronies,
So apparently this thread is one of the more looked at sources of info for Necron tactics on the internet at the moment.
We've already got a "these are the best units" write up in the OP so people can quickly find what's worth considering (though it could do with some updating).
How about we compile a list of everything that's WRONG with Necron units at the moment?
A basic outline of what makes competitive Necrons dead in the water.
Reasoning being, if we can educate the masses about why no one takes Necrons if they want to win anymore maybe it might get back to GW (if the rumors are true and the codex is coming out soon, it would be too late to try to change it, but at least then they'll understand why no one is buying Necron stuff anymore after the release).

I say YES!

Should make this the main focus of the first post

How about we compile a list of everything that's WRONG with Necron units at the moment?

What I find Wrong about us is Reanimation Protocols and Running from Morale.

RP is done well and the concept makes more sense then 7th but the practically of it being clutch or even working is very slim. While our unit is alive we can RP but once we lose the whole unit then we can't RP anymore which (to me) makes RP feel like a tax.We are paying for survivability but our RP doesn't add to our survivability. It just annoys our opponents more and makes them focus fire during their next turn. It does feel like we pay big points for our armies special rules some of the time...

Morale is probably the biggest issue to me. I would love to run max Squad warriors but because Morale means any models that ran away can't get RP then it hinders our RP. We pay 240pts for 20 Warriors, we lose 4 via morale and now we payed 240pts for 16 warriors...


I think our units should have special rules that allow us to only go down to 1 infantry model but still allows our opponents to score cards if they "technically" wiped the unit. We should also be immune to Morale. L10 Helps but not for any unit with 14+ models. We are ever living Android's that Phalanx across planets wrecking havoc on our enemy. Not an army of some spinless robits that run away after several warriors have caked it.

Well, fluff-wise, running from Morales is phasing out. We're not dead. Unless irrepairable dmg is done, at which point we self-destruct. Visually the same so leaves opponents guessing. Remember that rule that we lost the game as soon as 75% of our units was gone?

Now that was fluffy, but can only be done if we're made tougher than Death Guard or we'd be losing even more games...

Uh, that can sprint quickly into a Negativity Spiral.

I suggest instead that we focus on where/how Necrons can answer various meta archetypes and reveal gaps through that analysis.

Otherwise it’s just a pity party without any defined criteria.

sieGermans wrote:
Uh, that can sprint quickly into a Negativity Spiral.

I suggest instead that we focus on where/how Necrons can answer various meta archetypes and reveal gaps through that analysis.

Otherwise it’s just a pity party without any defined criteria.

Well, this thread has been 145 pages about just that, and we're none the wiser.

Detailing the problems and how GW has not dealt with them on numerous occasions might be in order.

Apologies, but this has been 145 pages of sporadic, ill defined discussion (which is fine!) and doesn’t constitute a cogent, crystallized analysis of the meta with coherent Necron answers-to.

To follow that up with a whine list of units which need buffed, even if everyone agrees, is going to be a bit baseless without a reasonable, holistic treatment of how this buff would fit into the rest of the required revision.

I mean, I’ve been playing in tournaments and experiencing it on the front lines! I recognize our insoluble challenges! But I also see comments that suggest there is very little commonality in our (a) perceptions of what are problems, nor (b) agreement as to the best solution.

To put this another way, consider the design challenges for Necrons:

You have a shooty Army with a history of tough to crack CC units. What was that about cakes and eating them?

You have an army with a history of high lethality and sustained resilience (rather than acute resilience). The only way to balance this is with high point costs, however you have a fluff and history of “innumerable forces” marching “inexorably at their foes.”

The fluff suggests a faceless foe, in a game moving increasingly toward Cult of Personality type heroes.

Necrons are a great Antagonist force in a D&D GMed Campaign, where a GM can mete them out as required to challenge the adventurers... funny that, since that’s exactly how Necrons we’re introduced. But the combination of Mary-sues going on in their fluff and their prior editions of rules is not sustainable without overhaul.

Which means no one is going to be happy, and they will be unhappy for wildly different reasons.

If you only focus on collecting all of the disconnected reasons why people are unhappy, and further subdivide that granularity across specific units/models, the hodge-podge you’ll end up with will not be useful at all: and will have poisoned the community with focus on negativity and resultant inevitable disappointment.

So let’s take an organized contructive approach. Let’s establish a decent list of meta lists and describe the suitable Necron list building strategies to deal with them. Then let’s do a light degree of mathhammering to sense check these solutions. These two steps should reveal where we lack solutions. That kind of information is a gold mine to developers as it gives actionable information.

IMO.

Godeskian wrote:
Who is Reece and why do we care about his opinions?

He runs Frontlinegaming.org, The Las Vegas Open (largest North American 40K tournament), the Bay Area Open tournament, the SoCal Open tournament, and founded the ITC. He is also an official playtester for GW and is a Youtuber/Podcaster/Twitch Streamer.

Next game we increase with PL15 so i'll toss in 5 destoyers and (try to) have some fun, cuz I like the models :p

Cheers

To be honest, reading the thread I think we have already discussed these drawbacks before, we just need to compile them and append it on the first post.

From top of my mind, and summarized.

- Reanimation Protocols: Fluffy but not scalable. The larger the game, the easier to wipe out squads. Since wiped squads lose it it is very swingy, you either trollface the enemy or he trollfaces you.

Proposed Solution:

- Tombworld deployment issues: Lack of Transport keyword means the unit can't move. Since you can only bring 1 unit at a time it breaks character synergy. Losing the transported units is too great a liability.

Proposed Solution:

- Lack of realiable weapon options: Our biggest guns are very swingy and pay too much premium for Living metal. We also lack weapon diversity for medium vehicles, we are either grat vs hordes (tesla), great vs elite infantry (Gauss). Lack of a Melta/Missile Launcher equivalent.

Proposed Solution:

- Weird lack of synergy buffs from characters: Overlord MWBD affects only a sinlge unit at a time. Lord's bonus is crap with Ld10 already. Cryptek is great, but given the reanimation protocol issues it just amplifies the problem: Lose the unit and your cryptek's investment is null.

Proposed Solution:

If these issues are all properly addressed and balanced carefully, Necrons can quickly become viable and stable as an army.

Honestly, some of the above items are pretty OP.

Let’s look at some of the above:

Reanimation Protocols:
The issue with this ability is that it is too reliable to be costed cheaply. At a 1/3 chance of standing up, combined with all other stats, a Warrior is, point for point, waaaay better than most other troop choices. To allow for any buffs to unit stats or reductions in point costs, RP needs to become more unreliable.

Tombworld Deployment:
There are two issues here: one is the mechanic itself, which is very Brittle (like a hard candy shell: gives good initial benefits but which can easily crumble), and the second are the transports which use it.

The mechanic has pros/cons:
Pro: anything can deploy from any of them, which means you can bring the right Tool to bear at the right location.
Pro: units are totally immune unless every possible “transport” is destroyed.
Con: units are totally deleted upon destruction of all eligible transports, rather than the usual roll-for-models system.

On balance, this makes the mechanic very contingent on the resilience of transport options. Ideally you would have costly resilient ones and cheap ‘risky’ ones. However, on its own, the mechanic has good internal balance, though requires monitoring to avoid becoming too powerful.

The transports are terrible. You rightly point out the crippling lack of transport keyword, which makes already slow [transportable] cc options even slower. More importantly, we do not have an expensive “safe” option. I think some sort of 2 point stratagem could solve this.

Weapon Options:
Our shooting is pretty excellent, with a minor gap for high VoF shooting with decent AP. This doesn’t necessarily hinder us as our shooting has strength in other areas. All told, we are pretty spoiled when it comes to gun options.

Character Buffs:
I suspect this is an Index vs. Codex issue. Overall there are very few Necron buffs that interact with anything beyond Lychguard/Immortals/Warriors. Definitely this could be expanded upon, probably to include rerolls/strength/AP/ignore-cover/etc.


My view of our current challenges stem mainly from:

The cost of our units. They are (correctly) super expensive due to a type of resilience that either never matters (because they don’t die) or doesn’t work (entire unit wiped).

And, the type of meta. WH40k 8ed suffers from an Alpha Strike problem. This issue is actually made worse by abilities which get WORSE the more damage/casualties have been suffered: such as RP. I expect there’s a niche role here that armies could occupy by actively harming armies which go for Alpha strikes (rather than just weathering them). Quantum Shielding is a good example. The AdMech mechanic of causing mortal wounds to shooting units against which they successfully make an invuln save. In this context, things like RP become more managea, both by fitting into the design philosophy and by feeding off the fewer casualties taken.

Proposed Solutions:
Nerf RP to a 6 up.
Reduce point costs on RP models by 33%.
Give transports <Transport>.
Reduce toughness on Nightscythes to 5, provide QS, and reduce cost to 140.
Increase toughness on Monolith to 9.
Introduce stratagem for 2cp to instantly teleport a tombworld deployed model to within 3” of your Warlord. This unit may not move or advance this turn.
Introduce additional generic shooting and defensive bubble buffs to our named characters.

Exotic options include:
Stratagems which inflict mortal wounds for successful saves (in particular Quantum Shielding saves).
Stratagems which inflict morale saves on a unit within 12” of a Necron unit which undergoes Reanimation Protocols, at -1 LD for each unit which stands up.

Etc.

The RP, as many have pointed out, is a very either-or mechanic. It is at its very strongest when you are almost wiped out.

Example: 19 of 20 warriors are shot dead. RP now gives you 6-7 free warriors, or 9-10 with a cryptek.

However with only 1 warrior left you are almost near the very weakest RP situation: unit wiped.

This property, that RP gets stronger the more units that die, yet suddenly it gets worthless once wiped, is the problem that GW should solve. In my opinion. In 7th it was boring but very stable. In 8th its fun but very unstable. And _does_ _not_ _scale_. ie higher points means easier to wipe a unit.

The transport is much the same thing. If the Nightscythe survives with 1W, it is now able to deliver its lethal payload. If that last W was lost, the payload is suddenly gone. That too is a very much knife-edge either-or ability. That also scales poorly.

Just soften those knige edges somehow.

Im not sure 6+ RP is the right medicine. I wish that the 8th RP should be able to function meaningfully the way it does.

"2CP roill RP for a wiped unit" or "Res. orb roll RP for a wiped unit" would be nice. It means its not critical for the enemy to wipe the unit any more. It may still come back.


Giving teleported units normal move, as with transport, would that not be slightly OP? You can now bring full units into the fray, while "mechanical" transports have to rely on troop limits. And we can bring any infantry unit, while other codexes' transports have limited options.

I agree with Quantum shielding to Night Scythe, but why not also the Monolith instead of T9?

Also perhaps 2CP deploy a unit from the tomb world anywhere on the battlefield outside 9" of the enemy. The warlord might very well be dead turn 3. Or within 3" of any HQ choice.

And some way to get more CP. Perhaps +1 CP for any overlord or lord. Fluffwise these beings are master calculators after all. At least if you resort to CPs to solve some of the necron challenges.

torblind wrote:

Im not sure 6+ RP is the right medicine. I wish that the 8th RP should be able to function meaningfully the way it does.

"2CP roill RP for a wiped unit" or "Res. orb roll RP for a wiped unit" would be nice. It means its not critical for the enemy to wipe the unit any more. It may still come back.

This I dig, back in DoW - Dark Crusade (I know, not tabletop, but that game got me into 40K and Necrons ^^), Rez orb was used to partially resurrect dead units. Would then at least be appriopriately priced at its 35pt for a single use item

torblind wrote:

"Res. orb roll RP for a wiped unit" would be nice. It means its not critical for the enemy to wipe the unit any more. It may still come back.

This.

Let the res orb keep its 'one use only' and replace its current ability to "roll for a wiped out unit". And depending on how great (or bad) this effect would be, you can increase/decrease its pts cost.
Also remove its limit of infantry models to any model with reanimation protocol (to include Tomb blades).

 DaKhriS wrote:

Like the sound of that, and I like focusing on Canoptek models. But doesn't the Canoptek Tomb Sentinel (or two) fill the vehicle hunting role better?
They can deepstrike where they need to be and draw fire for a round maybe.

Was thinking of buying a Tesseract Ark and 2 Sentinels, but could replace the Ark with some Acanthrites...

Maynarkh for the win :p

Cheers

My two tomb sentinels have done Great work in all of my matches, I love em, also the model is fantastic.
Consider the following:

torblind wrote:
The RP, as many have pointed out, is a very either-or mechanic. It is at its very strongest when you are almost wiped out.

Example: 19 of 20 warriors are shot dead. RP now gives you 6-7 free warriors, or 9-10 with a cryptek.

However with only 1 warrior left you are almost near the very weakest RP situation: unit wiped.

This property, that RP gets stronger the more units that die, yet suddenly it gets worthless once wiped, is the problem that GW should solve. In my opinion. In 7th it was boring but very stable. In 8th its fun but very unstable. And _does_ _not_ _scale_. ie higher points means easier to wipe a unit.

The transport is much the same thing. If the Nightscythe survives with 1W, it is now able to deliver its lethal payload. If that last W was lost, the payload is suddenly gone. That too is a very much knife-edge either-or ability. That also scales poorly.

Just soften those knige edges somehow.

Im not sure 6+ RP is the right medicine. I wish that the 8th RP should be able to function meaningfully the way it does.

"2CP roill RP for a wiped unit" or "Res. orb roll RP for a wiped unit" would be nice. It means its not critical for the enemy to wipe the unit any more. It may still come back.


Giving teleported units normal move, as with transport, would that not be slightly OP? You can now bring full units into the fray, while "mechanical" transports have to rely on troop limits. And we can bring any infantry unit, while other codexes' transports have limited options.

I agree with Quantum shielding to Night Scythe, but why not also the Monolith instead of T9?

Also perhaps 2CP deploy a unit from the tomb world anywhere on the battlefield outside 9" of the enemy. The warlord might very well be dead turn 3. Or within 3" of any HQ choice.

And some way to get more CP. Perhaps +1 CP for any overlord or lord. Fluffwise these beings are master calculators after all. At least if you resort to CPs to solve some of the necron challenges.

I like your RP solution. Quite a bit, actually. High cost for decent gain.

Re: Transports getting <Transport>, possibly it’s too good, though I don’t think so. Remember that not everything can get placed in teleport reserve, and moreover they only teleport in at the start of movement phase; so the transport will have sat there for whole turn. If it’s the vulnerable, cheap night Scythe, with my recommended 5 toughness, that’s not a sure thing!

Re: QS on the Monolith, I don’t think combining high wound count with a mechanic that inhibits high Damage weaponry is a healthy combination for the game.

I think 2CP=Deepstrike might be too good, and could overtune Portals by overly mitigating their drawback. Indeed, it could very well lead to folks eschewing any actual teleporting from the transports and just using the Stratagem. Which feels... bad?