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Asura Varuna wrote:
Lots of comments in this thread of "Just wipe them out in a turn". It actually takes quite a few shots to kill 20 T4 4+ models in a single turn, especially so where there are no blasts to punish clumping in cover, or any AP4 guns to simply negate their cover saves. Are there going to be many armies that are capable of doing that, especially at lower points levels. Remember also that a CP can be used to auto-pass a morale test, in case you were planning on relying on that to destroy a unit. If you do attempt to clear a unit in a single turn and fail, you're then left with the dilemma of attempting to destroy a fresh unit, or splitting your fire between the diminished one, but leaving yourself with a new half-dead squad to start reanimating. Throughout the battle, your ability to remove entire squads will decrease as well.

Out of interest, what would people's plans be for destroying warriors wholesale? It'd take about 120 bolter/pulse rifle shots to destroy a unit out of cover, and you'd have to find a way to bring all of those to bear on the same target (may be difficult due to line of sight, and range). There are no large blasts to remove models en masse. I'm quite certain my Tau army would struggle to consistently destroy whole squads in a single turn, and that's even ignoring other threats from the Necron list.

The trick is to engage Battleshock as brutally as possible. For some armies that means a lot of good Shooting, and for others it involves a lot of bonking on the head. They are resilient even to this with their higher stat, but that is the answer. If you're doing it right, all RP will do is recover what Battleshock has done to them.

Asura Varuna wrote:
Lots of comments in this thread of "Just wipe them out in a turn". It actually takes quite a few shots to kill 20 T4 4+ models in a single turn, especially so where there are no blasts to punish clumping in cover, or any AP4 guns to simply negate their cover saves. Are there going to be many armies that are capable of doing that, especially at lower points levels. Remember also that a CP can be used to auto-pass a morale test, in case you were planning on relying on that to destroy a unit. If you do attempt to clear a unit in a single turn and fail, you're then left with the dilemma of attempting to destroy a fresh unit, or splitting your fire between the diminished one, but leaving yourself with a new half-dead squad to start reanimating. Throughout the battle, your ability to remove entire squads will decrease as well.

Out of interest, what would people's plans be for destroying warriors wholesale? It'd take about 120 bolter/pulse rifle shots to destroy a unit out of cover, and you'd have to find a way to bring all of those to bear on the same target (may be difficult due to line of sight, and range). There are no large blasts to remove models en masse. I'm quite certain my Tau army would struggle to consistently destroy whole squads in a single turn, and that's even ignoring other threats from the Necron list.

Every way I've found to reliably remove twenty Necron Warriors in one round is 300-400pts. I'm starting to think you fight the Necrons by trying to pin down and blow up the small/elite units, characters, vehicles, etc. (you know, the things that don't resurrect easily) while leaving the big Warrior blocks alone, and I'm entirely okay with the Necrons working that way.

As I dove through the indexes yesterday, the only things that really jumped out at me as being probably a bit too good for their point cost are a few necron units (especially canoptek wraiths, holy god...) and imperial assassins.

 niv-mizzet wrote:
As I dove through the indexes yesterday, the only things that really jumped out at me as being probably a bit too good for their point cost are a few necron units (especially canoptek wraiths, holy god...) and imperial assassins.

Wraiths are nowhere near as good as they were in the previous editions. In fact, they're worse by a decent margin. And cost roughly the same.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Every way I've found to reliably remove twenty Necron Warriors in one round is 300-400pts. I'm starting to think you fight the Necrons by trying to pin down and blow up the small/elite units, characters, vehicles, etc. (you know, the things that don't resurrect easily) while leaving the big Warrior blocks alone, and I'm entirely okay with the Necrons working that way.

I think you're probably onto something there. Focus the most damaging part of the army first and hope you're not overrun by warriors before you've accomplished that goal. Targeting characters will be neigh-on impossible though unless you have fliers or jump-pack assault infantry. Even then, it'd be pretty sloppy of the Necron player to let that happen.

What sort of 300-400 point solutions did you come up with? As a Tau player I look at 300-400 points and think - that's 1 Riptide or 2 HYMP Broadsides. Neither of those options are going to put much of a dent in a swarm of warriors. Even with Firewarriors, 300-400 points is only netting you 35-50 of them, and you need 120 pulse rifle shots to destroy the unit on average. Obviously this is taking things in a vacuum, which isn't how the game is played, but I'm intrigued by this problem. When it comes to the tabletop, getting all the units in range/in line of sight would make it a completely different ball game as well.

 krodarklorr wrote:

 niv-mizzet wrote:
As I dove through the indexes yesterday, the only things that really jumped out at me as being probably a bit too good for their point cost are a few necron units (especially canoptek wraiths, holy god...) and imperial assassins.

Wraiths are nowhere near as good as they were in the previous editions. In fact, they're worse by a decent margin. And cost roughly the same.

To be fair, Wraiths were undercosted in 7th, even outside of the Canoptek Harvest.

Wraiths were undercosted going back to their 5E book, that was a unit everyone expected to get nerfed with the 7E book and were all flabbergasted when they got massively buffed

 krodarklorr wrote:

 niv-mizzet wrote:
As I dove through the indexes yesterday, the only things that really jumped out at me as being probably a bit too good for their point cost are a few necron units (especially canoptek wraiths, holy god...) and imperial assassins.

Wraiths are nowhere near as good as they were in the previous editions. In fact, they're worse by a decent margin. And cost roughly the same.

Good.

300-400pts was things like twelve-ish Purifiers (shoot, then charge; using Incinerators and halberds), and 45 Guardians (difficult to get within 12", to be sure, but they'll do the job for 360pts if you do).

Best result so far was Harlequins, about twelve to fifteen of them will do it for around 250pts.

 EnTyme wrote:

 krodarklorr wrote:

 niv-mizzet wrote:
As I dove through the indexes yesterday, the only things that really jumped out at me as being probably a bit too good for their point cost are a few necron units (especially canoptek wraiths, holy god...) and imperial assassins.

Wraiths are nowhere near as good as they were in the previous editions. In fact, they're worse by a decent margin. And cost roughly the same.

To be fair, Wraiths were undercosted in 7th, even outside of the Canoptek Harvest.

Not really. They were thunderwolf cavalry that were worse in CC. That's it. Without the formation they weren't stupid durable, and they've never hit exceptionally hard. They tarpit, and that's it.

 krodarklorr wrote:
I'm not saying warriors are bad. A basic infantry gun at AP-1 is awesome. But where are you getting a 2+ save from? Cover is +1, and warriors have always had a 4+ base.

Always? I take it you didn't play them 13 years ago.
Before the warddex they had 3+ armor, an immortals were T5 elites.

I laugh at this thread, when the only option to destroy something is to focus fire it down and hope you battleshock it to death then there is a problem.

In the real game what is likely to happen you get maybe 2 squads of 10 in range. Let's assume Marines in rapid fire range with just bolters 40 shots. ~27hits ~14wounds 7die 50% chance something dies to battleshock. Approximately 2 models get back up leaving you with about 13-15 warriors.

I appreciate this example isn't exact or anything.

 krodarklorr wrote:

This is exactly my point. Necrons are no longer top tier, so people can't really complain now.

A little early to be calling tier lists Also I don't know if you've noticed but every faction has a post about how 8th ed ruined their army. A few samples

Gladius are gone how will SM compete?
They nerfed the wraithknight so eldar are trash now.
They made LRBT awful which ruined guard.
Do orks seem weak to you guys as well?
Necron repair protocols ruined the army.

It's the internet being the internet, everyone needs to take a deep breath, relax, and get out there and get some games in before they come to any shocking conclusions.

As for RP it's a mixed bag, in 7th ed RP made individuals more resistant to incoming damage, over 8 times as resistant as models with similar stat lines on rez orb rounds near a lord. This was very frustrating to fight, I had several occasions where a lychstar took and armies worth of fire and lost one or two guys. If your dice went hot you could ruin someones day, and this was the reason for the RP change, it was a super annoying mechanic to fight, and that was why so much salt was sent the necrons way.

In 8th ed Necrons are no more resistant to incoming fire than any model with a similar statline, so now you can put necrons down fairly easy, and anyone who fought necrons in 7th ed will say that's a large improvement. 8th ed adds a new feature to the equation, the ability to bypass repair protocols, it takes concentrated fire, but it's doable. Not even in 5th ed was it this easy to bypass RP, since RP worked as long as there was another unit near the completely downed unit, now if you ever wipe a unit out in a turn they are gone for good.

The ability to bypass RP is compounded by the fact 7th ed RP was frontloaded, you got all of your advantages as soon as you were hit, in 8th ed it's back loaded, so it's much easier to wipe out a unit. If it took 10 unsaved wounds to kill a warrior squad, 7th ed RP would make that 20, but 8th ed would still take only 10. Even the res orb mechanic has been nerfed, it used to make a unit up to 9 times more resistant to incoming fire, now at best it gets you an extra 25% of your casualties back.

To prevent this from being a gutting nerf, they added the ability to keep rolling in subsequent rounds. I don't know if this will balance out in practice, my suspicion is that smart opponents will focus fire to avoid RP, but that has it's own trade offs. Lacking oracular powers, and tactics being hard to mathhammer, we will just have to wait and see how it plays out. the nice thing about a living ruleset like 8th ed is that if it's too much or too little they can adjust points to bring them into line.

Ok so yes...warriors on mass will be difficult to deal with but not(as in 7th ed) almost unstoppable. As someone who has played since the rt era i can say that focussing firepower will be the downfall of the army. Saying that, they know you will be trying to do this and will plan accordingly.

Try to get out of the way of thinking that leads to..."well i failed to destroy that unit this turn so my stufff must be awful".

Necrons are tough. It's their reason to exist so to speak but.....the transition to the original rules for what was called "we'll be back" combined with the new morale rules will see them actually falling to small arms fire (given enough of it).

The main issue i have with the last few editions of 40k is the mindset that if a unit can't totally obliterate something in one round then it is bad. This is not a fun experience for either player.

Necron players want their troops to be hard to kill, and they will be. But no longer will they have multiple redundancies to fall back on (and its looking like their characters will be nowhere near hard enough to kill if isolated) so its going to come down to strategy.

As a tyranid player i see nothing here that makes me curse as much as i did when i first read the decurion for 7th.

Always remember....both players want to feel their chosen army is effective.....something that 7th singularly failed to do.

To sum up..this wil be a learing curve for everybody..try and have some fun.

It seems like necron troops are pretty durable. What else is strong? Crypteks seem good, and Monoliths can get the slow but survivable Warriors. Are Destroyers viable?

I personally don't mind Necrons being tough and getting back up. The problem is they also have good shooting 3+ to hit with ap-1 weapons.
If they were like 4+ or 5+ BS them not dying wouldn't really be an issue.

Has anyone read the rules under matched play yet? It explicitly states, "Sometimes a psychic power or ability will allow you to add units to your army, or ]replace units that have been destroyed". pg 214 (emphasis added) It then says that you need to put points aside for this. There is a chance that this includes reanimation protocols, which would really hurt the Necrons in match play as they are basically losing an ability that is common among their forces. Now the rules says units not models, but if I was a Necron player I would certainly want GW to answer that before I spent a lot on money on warriors to take advantage of Reanimation. Also I am not saying it should be one way or the other, just that it would not be shocking if there was an FAQ that screwed you on this.

As bad as it may seem, and as much I dislike Necrons, I have to say this isn't nearly as bad as 7th. In 7th, RP could have been made multiple times (as it was a save). Now, RP can only be made once before the model is finally removed. The -1AP weapons with SM levels of shooting is where it gets good, especially for such a cheap model. That's where I would be most worried, but it isn't so bad, I'm sure they suffer in other places. Necrons seem to have translated nicely into 8th, at least much better than some other armies (Deathwatch, Orks).

Yes, you will be concentrating far more than their own points on them in order to wipe them out in a single turn. That's because one-turn wipeouts ain't cheap, units in 40k aren't balanced around one-turn wipeouts, but they are effective. Making sure one unit is good and dead in a single turn is inherently more valuable than putting a dent in several units, because dead units don't shoot back.

You're not changing your army composition, only your target priority. It's just like fighting a multi-wound model (except not as bad, because RP only brings back 1/3 of the firepower they lost, not all of it). If you know you can expect to inflict 12 wounds this round, do you take 3 wounds off 4 different 12-wound models, or do you concentrate your fire to make sure one of those models dies even though that means shooting at that one model with 4x its points value?

 Boniface wrote:
I personally don't mind Necrons being tough and getting back up. The problem is they also have good shooting 3+ to hit with ap-1 weapons.
If they were like 4+ or 5+ BS them not dying wouldn't really be an issue.

We got the -1 AP to make up for losing our Gauss special rule, outside of that our shooting is the same as ever. We had gauss in 7th ed because we don't have special weapons in our squads, so our gauss weapons need of be jack of all trades. A -1 AP seems a fair way to accomplish that though I was hoping for a different solution personally.

xeen wrote:
Has anyone read the rules under matched play yet? It explicitly states, "Sometimes a psychic power or ability will allow you to add units to your army, or ]replace units that have been destroyed". pg 214 (emphasis added) It then says that you need to put points aside for this. There is a chance that this includes reanimation protocols, which would really hurt the Necrons in match play as they are basically losing an ability that is common among their forces. Now the rules says units not models, but if I was a Necron player I would certainly want GW to answer that before I spent a lot on money on warriors to take advantage of Reanimation. Also I am not saying it should be one way or the other, just that it would not be shocking if there was an FAQ that screwed you on this.

Nope. That rule says UNITS. Reanimation protocol adds MODELS. Just like Space Marine Apothecaries. But if you are adding an entire unit (like summoning demons) or replacing an entire unit (as some missions did in 7th edition) then you have to pay with reserve points.

 krodarklorr wrote:

 niv-mizzet wrote:
As I dove through the indexes yesterday, the only things that really jumped out at me as being probably a bit too good for their point cost are a few necron units (especially canoptek wraiths, holy god...) and imperial assassins.

Wraiths are nowhere near as good as they were in the previous editions. In fact, they're worse by a decent margin. And cost roughly the same.

Are we looking at the same data sheet? I've gone through all the indexes now, and canoptek wraiths look balls out amazing for their points in matched play. Adding a 3rd wound, keeping their awesome statline and movement, keeping the amazing 3++ in an edition where good invuln saves are amazing, and an extremely competitive point cost. If there was a nerf other than just them losing access to formations, I'm not seeing it.

 Grimgold wrote:

 Boniface wrote:
I personally don't mind Necrons being tough and getting back up. The problem is they also have good shooting 3+ to hit with ap-1 weapons.
If they were like 4+ or 5+ BS them not dying wouldn't really be an issue.

We got the -1 AP to make up for losing our Gauss special rule, outside of that our shooting is the same as ever. We had gauss in 7th ed because we don't have special weapons in our squads, so our gauss weapons need of be jack of all trades. A -1 AP seems a fair way to accomplish that though I was hoping for a different solution personally.

I know, i just think they should always have been 4+ BS. They need to have some drawback, which is clearly not the cost.

Compared to a marine the Necron seems significantly better and cheaper

Should be formidable....

 docdoom77 wrote:

xeen wrote:
Has anyone read the rules under matched play yet? It explicitly states, "Sometimes a psychic power or ability will allow you to add units to your army, or ]replace units that have been destroyed". pg 214 (emphasis added) It then says that you need to put points aside for this. There is a chance that this includes reanimation protocols, which would really hurt the Necrons in match play as they are basically losing an ability that is common among their forces. Now the rules says units not models, but if I was a Necron player I would certainly want GW to answer that before I spent a lot on money on warriors to take advantage of Reanimation. Also I am not saying it should be one way or the other, just that it would not be shocking if there was an FAQ that screwed you on this.

Nope. That rule says UNITS. Reanimation protocol adds MODELS. Just like Space Marine Apothecaries. But if you are adding an entire unit (like summoning demons) or replacing an entire unit (as some missions did in 7th edition) then you have to pay with reserve points.

Also, you're not replacing them. It specifically says that the original models are coming back to life.

 Boniface wrote:
I know, i just think they should always have been 4+ BS. They need to have some drawback, which is clearly not the cost.

Compared to a marine the Necron seems significantly better and cheaper

I disagree. If they are to have a failing, let it match their fluff and be like the Tau. Necrons and Tau both see the ranged game as the best and most honorable way of fighting a battle, which means they should both be more fumble fingers in close combat. This would allow the Lychguard and Flayed Ones to have a more unique setup which emphasizes the close combat over the ranged.

 gnome_idea_what wrote:
It seems like necron troops are pretty durable. What else is strong? Crypteks seem good, and Monoliths can get the slow but survivable Warriors. Are Destroyers viable?

I think so. They are really expensive, but they do well against most targets, are pretty mobile, tough, can be buffed (unlike praetorians), and are a good source of multiple damage.
You can also add a heavy destroyer to their squad, which makes them really good at hunting vehicles.

As somone who plays with, and against crons, I am incredibly happy the old FNP mechanic is gone - it was incredibly frustrating to play against.

The new rule? same as older dex - just wipe out the unit.

Crons are still severely limited in what they can take where - and still have a lot of limitations (notice the new and improved monolith is bs3 now?).

I play crons and marines (and more) and honestly can say I am not worried about crons at all.
(I am giddy for my marine bikes, and my nids however!).

Yeah, the grass is always greener - it will be fine.

Close combat seems like the way to go here, right?

1) Warriors are much more dangerous at range than in CC, especially against things with decent saves.

2) CC specialists tend to be able to do more damage more quickly than equivalent points in ranged models, so you'll get through the squad faster.

3) Either you get to fight them a second time on their turn, killing them faster, or they Fall Back and don't do anything with their reanimated models anyway.

4) If you can surround the Warriors your consolidation at the end of the fight can make it impossible for dead models to reanimate. Note that reanimated models have to be placed in coherency with models that did not reanimate in the same turn, so this doesn't have to be perfect -- you can leave room to replace one or two models without having to worry about them replacing many more in coherency with those.

But yeah, naked basic Troops choices are really durable for their cost. Good luck shifting 240 points of naked Guardsmen in just a turn or two without a dedicated assault unit.

Thought the general idea of 8th was to not have tiered armies.
Guess that fell through.