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I've got a basic/TAC Necron list that I'm looking for opinions on:

Battalion

Destroyer Lord w/ Warscythe, Phylactery - 150
Overlord w/ Voidblade, Resurrection Orb

10 Immortals w/ Tesla - 170
10 Immortals w/ Gauss - 170
10 Immortals w/ Gauss - 170
10 Immortals w/ Gauss - 170

3 Destroyers + Heavy Destroyer - 264
3 Destroyers + Heavy Destroyer - 264

1500pts (6CP)


The Destroyer Lord goes with the Destroyers (oddly enough), the Overlord goes with the Tesla Immortals. I don't know if Phylactery is optimal on the Destroyer Lord, but it's something I want to try.

I'm not really a fan of the Resurrection Orb, but I couldn't think of anything else to spend the points on.

I also wasn't sure whether I should have more than one Tesla Immortal squad.

Any thoughts/suggestions?

Seems like quite a tough shooty list, especially if you can bunker down in ruins. The main things I would say really depend on your local meta.
Primarily, you lack a lot of anti-tank outside of the Heavy Destroyers (and I guess the Warscythe). You have enough firepower in the list to whittle wounds off of most tanks, but if you really need something dead you might have issues.
A second unit of Tesla would also depend on what you will be coming up against most of the time. Tesla is great against anything with a 4+ save or worse, but speaking as someone who runs 2 Tesla squads in a Space Marine meta, I find myself wishing for that -2AP more often than not.
The only other thing I would suggest is maybe dropping the Phylactery on the Destroyer Lord (if you find it isnt doing much) so that you can give the Overlord a Staff of Light. It doesnt quite have the AP of the Voidblade but it'll let him shoot instead of just standing there behind the Immortals, waiting to heroicly intervene.

Thanks for the feedback.

 Fentlegen wrote:
Seems like quite a tough shooty list, especially if you can bunker down in ruins. The main things I would say really depend on your local meta.
Primarily, you lack a lot of anti-tank outside of the Heavy Destroyers (and I guess the Warscythe). You have enough firepower in the list to whittle wounds off of most tanks, but if you really need something dead you might have issues.

Regarding anti-tank, would it be better if I exchanged the Destroyers for 2 units of 3 Heavy Destroyers? This would also give me about 100 extra points to play around with.

 Fentlegen wrote:

A second unit of Tesla would also depend on what you will be coming up against most of the time. Tesla is great against anything with a 4+ save or worse, but speaking as someone who runs 2 Tesla squads in a Space Marine meta, I find myself wishing for that -2AP more often than not.

Hmm, I do play against marines a lot, so I'll try with just the one Tesla unit for now. Cheers.

 Fentlegen wrote:

The only other thing I would suggest is maybe dropping the Phylactery on the Destroyer Lord (if you find it isnt doing much) so that you can give the Overlord a Staff of Light. It doesnt quite have the AP of the Voidblade but it'll let him shoot instead of just standing there behind the Immortals, waiting to heroicly intervene.

Okay. I'll try it with Phylactery first and if it never does anything I'll swap it out for a Staff of Light as you suggest.

Incidentally, do you think the Warscythe is the better choice for the Destroyer Lord, or would you recommend a Staff of Light for him as well (assuming I could find the points)?

 vipoid wrote:
Thanks for the feedback.

 Fentlegen wrote:
Seems like quite a tough shooty list, especially if you can bunker down in ruins. The main things I would say really depend on your local meta.
Primarily, you lack a lot of anti-tank outside of the Heavy Destroyers (and I guess the Warscythe). You have enough firepower in the list to whittle wounds off of most tanks, but if you really need something dead you might have issues.

Regarding anti-tank, would it be better if I exchanged the Destroyers for 2 units of 3 Heavy Destroyers? This would also give me about 100 extra points to play around with.

That might work, you certainly have enough Gauss Blasters that you shouldn't miss the Cannons too much (maybe the mobility but eh). Another idea might be 4 Destroyers and 3 Heavy Destroyers, leaving you 51 points. That 3rd Heavy Destroyer sits a bit better in my mind than just the 2. As for the Destroyer Lord, it really depends what he's going to be doing. He'll be hanging out with the Destroyers of course, so the Warscythe is a nice deterrent to chargers and lets him hurt bigger stuff if he needs to. A Staff of Light is still a nice deterrent though against everything bar Vehicles and Monsters (which the Destroyers/Heavy Destroyers can shoot) so honesty I say it comes down to points.

 Fentlegen wrote:

That might work, you certainly have enough Gauss Blasters that you shouldn't miss the Cannons too much (maybe the mobility but eh). Another idea might be 4 Destroyers and 3 Heavy Destroyers, leaving you 51 points. That 3rd Heavy Destroyer sits a bit better in my mind than just the 2.

Good idea. If I did that, would it be worth upgrading one of the 4 Destroyers to a Heavy Destroyer as well?

Also, whichever one I end up doing, what would you suggest spending the excess points on? Scarabs perhaps? If I use 2 units of Heavy Destroyers and drop the Resurrection Orb I'll have 113pts left over - enough for a Cryptek or a unit of 5 Deathmarks, but I don't know if either of those would be any good in this list.

Any thoughts?

 Fentlegen wrote:
As for the Destroyer Lord, it really depends what he's going to be doing. He'll be hanging out with the Destroyers of course, so the Warscythe is a nice deterrent to chargers and lets him hurt bigger stuff if he needs to. A Staff of Light is still a nice deterrent though against everything bar Vehicles and Monsters (which the Destroyers/Heavy Destroyers can shoot) so honesty I say it comes down to points.

Okay, that makes sense. Cheers.

Yeah Scarabs seems a good shout, they're good for momentarily tying up units and grabbing objectives in Maelstrom. Don't expect them to survive long though, they're there to die so the rest of the army doesn't.

are you hell bent on running destroyers?

again it depends on what you are facing, but they are low model count, with an okay save, but D6 damage weapons will absolutely wreck them.

Do you have many vehicles? 2x DDA that start at the front lines will outdamage destroyers most of the time, if the flayer arrays are being used simultaneously with the big gun. They are also exponentially more survivable. That way you could drop the d/lord too, add in a second overlord and if you swap a unit of immortals to tesla, you have 2 of each, so you can choose what to MWBD. You should always give preference to the tesla, it outperforms gauss at every range until RF range, so having 2 units of each gives flexibility.

Additionally, tesseract arks are phenomenal, highly customisable, the most survivable vehicle we have with a 5++ and an awesome gunboat. Much more flexible than a DDA in terms of mobility and damage options.

Basically, the idea would be 20 immortals on each flank (1 of each weapon type) backed by an O/Lord, with either a DDA behind each phalanx, or a single DDA and a TA floating between them both.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also every necron player should be trying to incorporate scarabs into their lists, they are extremely points efficient in what they do, very tactically flexible, they have a very linear damage output and the only things that will shred them are very high RoF weapons/ multiple damage weapons that also have a substantial amount of shots, or CC monsters.

Most small arms fire doesn't actually do much to them, a 9 unit squad needs a huge amount of bolter equivalent shots invested in them to bring them down, its 27 wounds on a 10" platform that wounds a warhound titan the same as a marine....

 Klowny wrote:
are you hell bent on running destroyers?

Well, I'd like to run a Destroyer Lord at least.

 Klowny wrote:

again it depends on what you are facing, but they are low model count, with an okay save, but D6 damage weapons will absolutely wreck them.

Yeah, this is why I'm wary of running Heavy Destroyer units - since the standard ones can at least have an extra body or two to soak up wounds.

 Klowny wrote:

Do you have many vehicles?

I have a single Annihilation Barge/CCB and a single Triarch Stalker.

 Klowny wrote:
2x DDA that start at the front lines will outdamage destroyers most of the time, if the flayer arrays are being used simultaneously with the big gun. They are also exponentially more survivable.

I know DDAs are better, but I just don't own any.

 Klowny wrote:
You should always give preference to the tesla, it outperforms gauss at every range until RF range, so having 2 units of each gives flexibility.

Okay, I'll switch one unit to Tesla.

 Klowny wrote:

Additionally, tesseract arks are phenomenal, highly customisable, the most survivable vehicle we have with a 5++ and an awesome gunboat. Much more flexible than a DDA in terms of mobility and damage options.

I'm sure that's the case, but as with DDAs I don't own any.

 Klowny wrote:

Also every necron player should be trying to incorporate scarabs into their lists, they are extremely points efficient in what they do, very tactically flexible, they have a very linear damage output and the only things that will shred them are very high RoF weapons/ multiple damage weapons that also have a substantial amount of shots, or CC monsters.

Most small arms fire doesn't actually do much to them, a 9 unit squad needs a huge amount of bolter equivalent shots invested in them to bring them down, its 27 wounds on a 10" platform that wounds a warhound titan the same as a marine....

Yeah, I can add some scarab.

Serious question though - is it even worth me playing Necrons in this edition? It seems that good lists need a lot of huge models that I don't have, and for me to throw away all the models I want to use.

I love the destoryer lord, trust me he was my standout unit in 7th, ran him literally every game (never ran the decurion). But now he is only good at buffing destroyers, and he does that well, but hes best equipped with a SoL and Res orb (like the model is) so his CC isnt as good as it could be with a WS and Phylactery. But currently whoever you face will just point their heavy weapons at your destroyers. Like I was saying in another thread, if you have Destroyers next to a DDA, they will focus the destroyers 100% of the time, due to not having QS. So even if you mixed in some vehicles your destroyers should be getting focused. :(

Whether to play crons in 8th it depends. Necrons are nowhere near as easy to play as they were in 7th, even when self nerfed like I used to play them I would curb stomp alot of games.

Now our durability is severely reduced, unless your opponent is a novice. Yet we still pay through the nose for it. Combined these with and you realise that you have to be very careful as to where/what you do as every model you lose hurts. Like GK, but not as extreme.

As a whole its entirely subjective if you want to continue with them, if you dont want to buy new models wait till the codex drops and see if you get reinvigorated.

Immortals are actually good, a list like this isn't actually bad, you just need some big guns for support.

If all you have is the above list, a CCB/anni barge and a stalker then yes your going to have to invest in some vehicles at least to play competitively. Casually is a different ball game however, alot more forgiving as you can be playing against other not great armies.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
You could say, run a silver tide of just immortals backed by O/lords, like you have, and just spam scarabs. will take a while to eat big monsters but it will take an eternity to kill your boys

 Klowny wrote:
I love the destoryer lord, trust me he was my standout unit in 7th, ran him literally every game (never ran the decurion). But now he is only good at buffing destroyers, and he does that well, but hes best equipped with a SoL and Res orb (like the model is) so his CC isnt as good as it could be with a WS and Phylactery. But currently whoever you face will just point their heavy weapons at your destroyers. Like I was saying in another thread, if you have Destroyers next to a DDA, they will focus the destroyers 100% of the time, due to not having QS. So even if you mixed in some vehicles your destroyers should be getting focused. :(

I've tried the SoL but it just seemed lacklustre - especially considering it costs more than the Warscythe. It does let him shoot without exposing himself though, so maybe it's worth it just for that.

Regarding the Resurrection Orb, I've never been keen on once-per-game effects - especially when I have to take it in lieu of the Phylactery. But that's probably just me being weird.

 Klowny wrote:

Whether to play crons in 8th it depends. Necrons are nowhere near as easy to play as they were in 7th, even when self nerfed like I used to play them I would curb stomp alot of games.

Now our durability is severely reduced, unless your opponent is a novice. Yet we still pay through the nose for it. Combined these with and you realise that you have to be very careful as to where/what you do as every model you lose hurts. Like GK, but not as extreme.

As a whole its entirely subjective if you want to continue with them, if you dont want to buy new models wait till the codex drops and see if you get reinvigorated.

Immortals are actually good, a list like this isn't actually bad, you just need some big guns for support.

If all you have is the above list, a CCB/anni barge and a stalker then yes your going to have to invest in some vehicles at least to play competitively. Casually is a different ball game however, alot more forgiving as you can be playing against other not great armies.

I have other stuff - just not big guns.

I've got Trazyn, the Stormlord, a couple of Crypteks, a Lord, 10 Lychguard, 10 Deathmarks, some Scarabs, another Destroyer, a Tomb Spyder, and 30 Warriors (though some of them are proxying Immortals for the above list).

Anyway, I'm not playing in tournaments, so there's that at least. I'll try this army a couple of times and see how it does in a semi-casual environment. If it does badly, I might shelve Necrons for the time being and see if the codex improves the models I own.

 Klowny wrote:

You could say, run a silver tide of just immortals backed by O/lords, like you have, and just spam scarabs. will take a while to eat big monsters but it will take an eternity to kill your boys

Do you think that would work better than running Destroyers? If so, I'm happy to give it a go.

I'd still want to run a Destroyer Lord with it though. I know he's bad but my converted Destroyer Lord is my favourite Necron model and I really want to include him.