orkdom wrote:
Hey guys,

I'm planning to take Necrons to NOVA this year and I've been playing around with trying to make a list that a-- is not Vault Spam and b-- feels like it could actually do something other than fall apart miserably in the face of some more competitive stuff out there. The book feels like a hard slog uphill through a hailstorm in this regard, but I need a break from my regular army (Orks, still stuck in Index limbo) and I'm committed to giving the Necrons a try.

NOVA missions this year are really different from past iterations, and fall much more in line with regular ITC missions; the big differences in the missions are a-- player's choice between Progressive and End-of-Game Objectives for Primary, and b-- Engineer units for Secondary.

You can check them out in detail on the Nova Open's site, but just so you can understand one choice in the list, Engineer units are two units in your army that you pick before deployment; then, at the end of your movement phases, you can choose either or both of those units to "investigate" objectives within 3", giving you +1 point for the mission, but also preventing them from using psychic powers, shooting, or charging for the rest of your turn. As well, if they're characters, they become "targetable" until your next turn, as if they did not have that keyword.

Okay, so here's the list I've cooked up currently. I haven't played a ton of games with them yet so I'd appreciate any comments or pointers you guys could give!

NEPHREKH BATTALION
HQ: Catacomb Command Barge (Warscythe, Gauss Cannon) = 169
HQ: Overlord (Staff of Light) = 94
HQ: Cryptek (Chronometron) = 95
Troops: 5 Immortals (Tesla Carbines) = 85
Troops: 5 Immortals (Tesla Carbines) = 85
Troops: 5 Immortals (Tesla Carbines) = 85
FA: 9 Tomb Blades (Partical Beamers) = 216
HS: Canoptek Spyder (Gloom Prism) = 70
HS: Canoptek Spyder (Gloom Prism) = 70

NEPHREKH OUTRIDER
HQ: Destroyer Lord (Warlord: Skin of Living Gold, Warscythe, Phylactery, Relic: The Nightmare Shroud) = 131
FA: 6 Destroyers = 300
FA: 6 Destroyers = 300
FA: 6 Destroyers = 300

Points Total = 2,000
Power Level = 115
Command Points = 9

The Spyders are my choice for Engineers. They're T7 and get a 2+ save in cover, so they're fairly durable, as well as being cheap guys that don't really need to be doing much of anything else during my turns. Against some lists, they'll also be able to provide some Psychic defense.

I chose Nephrekh for two reasons: so as to be able to Reserve/Deep Strike the Destroyers in certain match-ups, and to ensure that trying to keep them within range of the Cryptek's auras doesn't slow them down. Mephrit won't really matter too much for them, honestly; -3 AP is just good enough, and doesn't depend on getting really close. Nephrekh provides tactical flexibility and makes every model in the army highly mobile. The Warlord trait is also really good!

I was toying around with a list that was basically just characters and canoptek stuff but I'm beginning to think this destroyer-based list is a better route. Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated!

 orkdom wrote:
I'm back-and-forth on those two, for sure, and actually only just switched to the Shroud for a single game on Saturday. But if I understand the FAQ correctly, the Shroud adding +1 to saves means the D-Lord's Phase Shifter goes from a 4+ invul to a 3+ invul, which is a very nice upgrade.

 p5freak wrote:
Spiders are only T6. Why do you need them as engineers ? You only have the CCB. 5 tesla immortals are wasted points, because they are very easy wiped out, no reanimation. Dont use the shroud on the dlord, use the casket and immortal pride for one free deny the witch. Lets you remove a spyder and gives you 70 pts. back which you can invest in larger immortal units.

momerathe wrote:
I have some questions to ask about MWBD coverage.

MWBD boost the damage output of tesla immortals by 50%. Great! However, an overlord costs 94-5 points, which is ~56% the price of another squad. Hmmm. Now, if you're using The Phaeron's Will stratagem, then it becomes clearly cost-effective - but what if you have a third squad? Do you spend the point to get a second overlord? Now admittedly, the overlord add some respectable counter-assault capability, and can be a caddy for Veil. But it's.. marginal.

However - it seems to me the real benefit of teslamortals+MWBD is negating penalties. If you've got a -1 from advancing (it chafes my britches that there's no "advance without penalty" dynastic code), or are shooting at Raven guard/Altaioc, then MWBD boosts tesla damage by a whopping 100%, which is well worth it by any metric.

So, should you/do you take enough overlords to buff all your units of tesla immortals every turn?

 orkdom wrote:
@torblind: I am really, really not sold on basically any Necron vehicle besides the CCB; the cost of the DDA is prohibitive for the actual, reliable measure of it's damage output, especially on the targets for which it is ostensibly designed. It's not efficient enough. So, the Spyders have their particular use, and maybe they can heal the CCB a bit too, which would be cool if it comes up.

@DarknessEternal: Yeah, going back and comparing it against the Bullgryn Slabshield, the particular wording seems to indicate your interpretation, which... stinks, haha. Casket is back to my #1 choice I guess.

@p5freak: Engineer is a particular sort of mission objective, nothing to do with repairing vehicles.

As for the Immortals, I find they're low on target priority so as long as I don't make them too obviously critical to my list they sort of hide in buildings and add their shots to plink away at different targets around the board. They'll die if they warrant solid attention, sure, but frequently the level of attention given means they survive a couple turns.

Which, on the subject of Engineers as a mission objective, is why I stopped using the Immortals for that rule; makes them important, makes them get shot, makes them die. And hence the addition of the Spyders. But maybe I cut one spyder and upgrade the Overlord to another CCB?

 DarknessEternal wrote:
What's TLW?

Also, this chart is missing no-save mod Talent for Annihilation.

 Drider wrote:

momerathe wrote:
I have some questions to ask about MWBD coverage.

MWBD boost the damage output of tesla immortals by 50%. Great! However, an overlord costs 94-5 points, which is ~56% the price of another squad. Hmmm. Now, if you're using The Phaeron's Will stratagem, then it becomes clearly cost-effective - but what if you have a third squad? Do you spend the point to get a second overlord? Now admittedly, the overlord add some respectable counter-assault capability, and can be a caddy for Veil. But it's.. marginal.

However - it seems to me the real benefit of teslamortals+MWBD is negating penalties. If you've got a -1 from advancing (it chafes my britches that there's no "advance without penalty" dynastic code), or are shooting at Raven guard/Altaioc, then MWBD boosts tesla damage by a whopping 100%, which is well worth it by any metric.

So, should you/do you take enough overlords to buff all your units of tesla immortals every turn?

As promised Here is the Mathhammer for tesla immortals and with pretty much all variations of buff that seem interesting.

As before it's set up for maximum possible output, so max unit sizes and relevant buffs in effect I.E. Meph pick up the ap mod.
TLW is caclulated as (Chance to wound+((1/6)*Chance to wound) additionally to the formula described in my last post.

As far as analysis goes i'll leave that up to you guys to discuss.

 DarknessEternal wrote:
What's TLW?

Also, this chart is missing no-save mod Talent for Annihilation.

 Drider wrote:
As promised Here is the Mathhammer for tesla immortals and with pretty much all variations of buff that seem interesting.

As before it's set up for maximum possible output, so max unit sizes and relevant buffs in effect I.E. Meph pick up the ap mod.
TLW is caclulated as (Chance to wound+((1/6)*Chance to wound) additionally to the formula described in my last post.

As far as analysis goes i'll leave that up to you guys to discuss.

 vict0988 wrote:
Tesla works out like having BS 5+ with thrice as many shots, makes the math a little easier. Stacking buffs is a huge deal, it's much more important to have that second Overlord if you also have a Lord and a Triarch Stalker and the downside of not having anything to buff in the late game is mitigated if the rest of your army is Infantry instead of Bikes and Vehicles.

I don't think it's worth taking a second OL over a Lord unless you have 5 Infantry units, so I'd usually only go for the second Overlord if I have a Battalion and at least one other Detachment that needs an HQ slot filled, I'd get a Cryptek if I needed a fourth HQ, our HQ are too expensive if you're not getting CP for fielding them. I'm finding that 3 units of 10 is too many Tesla Immortals, two units of 10 Tesla Immortals is plenty and can be serviced by 1 OLord, I'd take a squad of 20 Warriors or 5 Gauss Immortals in a Mephrit Detachment and 5 Tesla Immortals if I were playing Sautekh.

momerathe wrote:

 Drider wrote:
As promised Here is the Mathhammer for tesla immortals and with pretty much all variations of buff that seem interesting.

As before it's set up for maximum possible output, so max unit sizes and relevant buffs in effect I.E. Meph pick up the ap mod.
TLW is caclulated as (Chance to wound+((1/6)*Chance to wound) additionally to the formula described in my last post.

As far as analysis goes i'll leave that up to you guys to discuss.

So I think what this chart doesn't say is that if you have -1 to hit: it literally cuts tesla effectiveness in half. I think that counteracting these penalties is MWBD's hidden gem.

 vict0988 wrote:
Tesla works out like having BS 5+ with thrice as many shots, makes the math a little easier. Stacking buffs is a huge deal, it's much more important to have that second Overlord if you also have a Lord and a Triarch Stalker and the downside of not having anything to buff in the late game is mitigated if the rest of your army is Infantry instead of Bikes and Vehicles.

I don't think it's worth taking a second OL over a Lord unless you have 5 Infantry units, so I'd usually only go for the second Overlord if I have a Battalion and at least one other Detachment that needs an HQ slot filled, I'd get a Cryptek if I needed a fourth HQ, our HQ are too expensive if you're not getting CP for fielding them. I'm finding that 3 units of 10 is too many Tesla Immortals, two units of 10 Tesla Immortals is plenty and can be serviced by 1 OLord, I'd take a squad of 20 Warriors or 5 Gauss Immortals in a Mephrit Detachment and 5 Tesla Immortals if I were playing Sautekh.

I think stacking buffs is the only reason to ever take a Lord - it's so hard to make his points back otherwise. A "re-roll 1" is a flat 14% bonus, which means that to be cost effective he needs to be buffing 6-times his value. That's something on the order of 480 point's worth of immortals. Two full squads pre-buffed with MWBD make it worth it. The more buffs you can apply the more worth it it becomes. Honestly, I think the character buffs are marginal for most armies - MWBD stands out as being much better than average. Of course, you've got to take one or more HQs anyway, so, eh.

I'm interested you say that 3x10 teslamortals are too much. Are your opponents particularly tank-heavy/horde-light?

torblind wrote:

"Damage density" (in lack of a better word) is seldom discussed. And near impossible to point quantify. Winning their points back in an isolated setting is hardly a fair nor a realistic mark.

torblind wrote:
"Damage density" (in lack of a better word) is seldom discussed. And near impossible to point quantify. Winning their points back in an isolated setting is hardly a fair nor a realistic mark.

You might not have room for another unit of immortals, and you need to take a HQ. That helps making Lords etc affordable.

A unit requires infrastructure, you may have the Veil planned to bring 10 immortals to the optimal position. A new 5 man immortal unit that isolated is worth more than the Lord that veils the first ten, are still left way back, not hitting the favorable target. The 10 that got veiled, and 14% buffed, now increase in performance more than 5 left behind immortals offer you. The same argument goes for LOS, range etc, factors that support buffing dongle models instead of adding more models. With 5" movement we have limited options to adjust for optimal shooting angles turn after turn.

MWBD increases Tesla immortals by 50%. Adding 14% on top of that gives you another 20% effectively. If Lord buffs two MWBD units, he has almost made a 5 man immortal unit back in one turn of shooting. Being a character he is also way more persistent than a 5 man infantry unit (and can keep on buffing 14% flat turn after turn)

 Blndmage wrote:
Having this kind of breakdown for Sentry Pylons would be super helpful.

 p5freak wrote:
If the sentry pylon has the DYNASTY keyword it wouldnt suffer -1 to hit with sautekh when it arrives from deepstrike.

 Drider wrote:

 Blndmage wrote:
Having this kind of breakdown for Sentry Pylons would be super helpful.

[image clipped for loading]

It's fairly obvious that I've done the basics but not filled out all the variables.
I could add in MD and TFA but it would be low impact. Bare in mind though that if you are starting them in reserve and bring them on via Teleportation Matrix, Sentry Pylon's weapons are Heavy so will be -1 to hit and be less effective. (MD would offset this.)
The gauss pylon's guass annihilator focused beam, is +1 to hit fly and -1 to hit ground, so the BS2 assumes that MD is offsetting this
The flux arc is also heavy so also would get the -1 to hit on the turn it arrives form reserve.

 Drider wrote:

 Blndmage wrote:
Having this kind of breakdown for Sentry Pylons would be super helpful.

It's fairly obvious that I've done the basics but not filled out all the variables.
I could add in MD and TFA but it would be low impact. Bare in mind though that if you are starting them in reserve and bring them on via Teleportation Matrix, Sentry Pylon's weapons are Heavy so will be -1 to hit and be less effective. (MD would offset this.)
The gauss pylon's guass annihilator focused beam, is +1 to hit fly and -1 to hit ground, so the BS2 assumes that MD is offsetting this
The flux arc is also heavy so also would get the -1 to hit on the turn it arrives form reserve.

torblind wrote:
I think stacking buffs is the only reason to ever take a Lord - it's so hard to make his points back otherwise. A "re-roll 1" is a flat 14% bonus, which means that to be cost effective he needs to be buffing 6-times his value. That's something on the order of 480 point's worth of immortals. Two full squads pre-buffed with MWBD make it worth it. The more buffs you can apply the more worth it it becomes. Honestly, I think the character buffs are marginal for most armies - MWBD stands out as being much better than average. Of course, you've got to take one or more HQs anyway, so, eh.

I'm interested you say that 3x10 teslamortals are too much. Are your opponents particularly tank-heavy/horde-light?

ImPhaeronWeasel wrote:
Is there ANY reliable way to get NOVOKH Lychguard into combat?
Buffed they do so much damage and one could punish deployment mistakes with them (if they can simply move from combat to combat). Its just that I dont see a way HOW to get them to the other side of the board?
They are slow af...
Deciver —> cannot charge, have to hide
Veil —> 9“ charge and Im not the lucky one with dice
The only way I thought of would be by 3Scythes and hoping one survives...
If you somehow manage to take them up the table you have to think of Anrakyr whos one slow mafukka too...

ImPhaeronWeasel wrote:
Is there ANY reliable way to get NOVOKH Lychguard into combat?
Buffed they do so much damage and one could punish deployment mistakes with them (if they can simply move from combat to combat). Its just that I dont see a way HOW to get them to the other side of the board?
They are slow af...
Deciver —> cannot charge, have to hide
Veil —> 9“ charge and Im not the lucky one with dice
The only way I thought of would be by 3Scythes and hoping one survives...
If you somehow manage to take them up the table you have to think of Anrakyr whos one slow mafukka too...

ImPhaeronWeasel wrote:
Is there ANY reliable way to get NOVOKH Lychguard into combat?
Buffed they do so much damage and one could punish deployment mistakes with them (if they can simply move from combat to combat). Its just that I dont see a way HOW to get them to the other side of the board?
They are slow af...
Deciver —> cannot charge, have to hide
Veil —> 9“ charge and Im not the lucky one with dice
The only way I thought of would be by 3Scythes and hoping one survives...
If you somehow manage to take them up the table you have to think of Anrakyr whos one slow mafukka too...