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So, Necrons...

I've done a bit of reading on the web and general consensus is that Necron's are not competitive.

I don't understand that.

My gaming buddy and I have played 3 games with Necrons, I've been Necrons twice, admittedly with 2 very similar 1500pt army lists (standard GW stuff from the codex, no Forgeworld stuff), and all 3 games (vs Space Marines, Eldar (I think, might have been vs Dark Angels) and Thousand Sons) the Necrons seemed to be over powered, especially the last vs Thousand Sons where I completely annihilated my gaming buddy's army, with only the loss of 1 unit of 10 Immortals (which came back on anyway), and the game (Meat Grinder) was all but over by the start of (my) turn 3.

They seem to be the easiest army to win with in my honest opinion, of those that we've tried so far (Space Marines/Dark Angels, Orks, Thousand Sons, and Eldar (and possibly CSM)).

So, why is the general consensus, that I've read, that Necrons are not competitive in 8th edition?

Necrons are generally too expensive for what they do. Their Reanimation Protocol rule is also trivially easy to negate, especially at higher points values while being potentially overpowered at much lower points values. Necron characters are overpriced and their abilities much more restricted than those of most other characters. That means it's difficult to generate lots of CPs because cheap characters are essential to doing that. This is further exacerbated by the absence of any options for allies.

The particular problem with Necrons may actually be the fact their weaknesses aren't that obvious. They're not massively overpriced in the same way that Grey Knights are, nor do they struggle with outright survivability in the same way Grey Knights do, for example. However, pretty much every single unit is just a little bit overcosted and that adds up quickly over an army.

One thing Necrons do have going for them, which can sometimes catch newer players off-guard and lead to them thinking they're overpowered, is a set of very weird and unique rules. Necrons will need a different approach compared to other enemies. Their vehicles are extremely resilient to things like melta and lascannons, for example, but fold easily to plasma or autocannons. They can stack buffs on units quite easily to create one-turn deathstars but they still lack the outright damage output of other armies.

It's because this is DAKKA. Unless an army is posting tournament wins, it's underpowered. For your regular pickup games, Necrons are very strong! Very few of their units are actively bad, and most stuff is in the medium-great territory. They just aren't crazy OP, they don't have access to allies and their allies' stratagems, and they don't have a ton of CP to throw around. And as such, Dakka says they're broken and worthless. It is the law of Dakka to say such things.


But seriously, for the kitchen table, they're just fine. Unless you guys are looking to win tournaments, and then yes, Necrons really are an army that's unlikely to win a tournament.

I play Necrons and I think they're a ton of fun to play and actually a lot more versatile than you might expect.

Irrespective of their competitiveness in tournament play, there are a few things that are frustratingly awkward and prevent more varied play styles from being effective.

For example, we have two transports capable of carrying our combat elites. But units have to disembark before the Monolith or Night Scythe moves. So if you want to use the (very expensive) Monolith's deep strike ability, you have to wait till Turn 2 to deploy the Monolith then wait for Turn 3 to disembark any units. With the Night Scythe, you'll need to fly at the enemy, then survive a round of shooting before anything can exit. There are ways around this, like using the Deceiver. But at that point you're paying a lot for the ability to get melee units into combat before turn 2.

Which is frustrating because our melee units themselves can hit like a truck but are generally too slow.

But yeah if you can handle the main issues (cost, no allies) then they can do very well. I remember when the codex first came out I won about 5 games in a row against Astartes, Custodes and Knights.

I happen to think learning to work with the limitations Necrons have will make you a better player

Necrons are really strong in casual and pickup games, but have a bit more trouble with ultra-competitive lists as they can't field as much stupid gak as other factions can.
They can't soup, they have no psy and their LoWs aren't great unless you invest in Forge World.

I've just started necrons as part of an escalation league and they seem super strong if the enemy doesn't have great damage output and then sometimes feel just over costed if they do have enough firepower to just remove a unit a turn. They are definitely fun and while I wouldn't consider them OP at all they can definitely feel that way if your opponent isn't bringing enough firepower or not focusing units to remove one per turn. But im enjoying playing a more control style army and looking forward to adding more units and playing more in the upcoming weeks

The major problem i think everybody (necron players and opponents) have with Reanimation Protocol is that it very "Feast of Famine" kind of ability. And the more you want to invest in it, the more one side will be frustrated by the outcome.

If we take the warriors blob, to get the better of RP you would want to add as much support as possible :
- Maxed unit (20) to have a better chance of being alive at the end of the turn.
- Cryptek for RP on 4+
- Ghost ark or res orb for a second roll
- Immortal Pride or 2CP for ignoring moral (mandatory and frankly a pain in the ass))
- Chronometron to gain a 5++

For the 'defensive' buffs but usually you will want to add 'offensive' buffs too which lead to a unit relatively expensive (220pts) with ton of support to 'work'.

This lead to a scary unit for the opponent who will try to deny you RP and will commit to its destruction.
If he does leave the unit to one model, you can and get ~15 warriors back.
If he wipe the unit, your support is kinda wasted.

For Necron players who want to be competitive, i think it is too much random and dependent of your opponent's target selection
In the tactica topic, you'll find a lot of players who don't take RP into account when building the list, considering the mechanic as a "nice to have".

For the opponent i understand the frustration when all your shooting phase get's negated and give a feeling of invicible army, but it's not the norm.

The moral is particulary problematic because if you don't keep it into account, you will bleed your precious CP (and necron don't have a lot of them, usually 9 for my armies).
I will probably try smaller immortal units (6-7 immos) in the future at the cost of less effectives MWBD (or take immortal pride).

TL;DR Necron gives polarized opinion because of it's core mechanic, not enough stable to be reliable, but very frustrating when it triggers, thus the perception "Necron are weak" VS "Necron are OP"

You'll notice that pretty much everything dakka says is wrong when applied to casual metas.

We have catachan guard players with terrible winrates, tank guard players who have next to no CPs and have terrible trouble vs melee armies, admech armies that are the OP hotness, eldar that suck and marine players who dominate.

This is why the whole But What If Two Casual Players Choose The Wrong Army What Then HUH? scenario is so funny to me.

You're just as likely to have one guy choosing grey knights and building a competent competitive army because he's read that GK suck, and the other guy choosing eldar but randomly selecting units so his list has no cohesion.

the_scotsman wrote:
You'll notice that pretty much everything dakka says is wrong when applied to casual metas.

We have catachan guard players with terrible winrates, tank guard players who have next to no CPs and have terrible trouble vs melee armies, admech armies that are the OP hotness, eldar that suck and marine players who dominate.

This is why the whole But What If Two Casual Players Choose The Wrong Army What Then HUH? scenario is so funny to me.

You're just as likely to have one guy choosing grey knights and building a competent competitive army because he's read that GK suck, and the other guy choosing eldar but randomly selecting units so his list has no cohesion.

Assuming both players know what they're doing, I'd still say a well-built GK army will lose to random Eldar units.

Every faction can do well in casual games, in the right circumstances. Yes even Grey Knights.

There's currently only one or two builds that could be potentially classed as semi-competitive. But Necrons are decent overall, have some good combinations and access to powerful strategems. And at the end of the day, player skill is the most important thing

However.....

 Yarium wrote:
Very few of their units are actively bad, and most stuff is in the medium-great territory.

This isn't really true. You can make an argument that around half the codex is either bad or just not worth taking even in a more casual game, due to points costs and lack of synergy

Well I've played necrons since 2nd and I can honestly say they've never sucked as badly in an edition of 40k as they do now.

As a Necron player, their biggest strength is that they are really easy to play well and if you set your army up for survival, you have a decent chance of wiping your opponent by maintaining your firepower against an increasingly decreasing opponent.

The problem with Necrons is that their potential is highly limited. Most of the top armies win through being either fast with great firepower or numerous, with great firepower. Necrons lack great firepower, are outmatched for speed by almost all armies and are too expensive to be numerous and gain board control.

That's not to mention the lack of soup.

Outside of a competitive opponent however, they are reliable, boringly reliable.

 Yarium wrote:
It's because this is DAKKA. Unless an army is posting tournament wins, it's underpowered.

This is something I don't understand. Please don't get me wrong, to those out there that have either read my signature or read my posts announcing that I'm a casual player or only will be playing at a local store with possibly an occasional trip to a tournament just for the fun of playing and meeting new people interested in the hobby, thank you for all your responses.

For those out there who respond to everything based on mathhammer, tournament standings at large events, or standings posted on Best Coast Pairings... why? Unless someone specifically says, "This is a list I'm taking to a tournament" or "Competitive list," why do people on this forum seem to assume that everyone wants opinions based on the most recent highly competitive tournament-based lists/armies?

That's something that's always puzzled me since I started posting on this message board back in 2015.

SG

EDIT: As a suggestion, maybe ask if this list/army is for a local FLGS/GW pickup game or an Tournament event. Or, if you have the time, post your opinions on how you think the list/army would do in both a Competitive and a Non-Competitive meta.

 ServiceGames wrote:

 Yarium wrote:
It's because this is DAKKA. Unless an army is posting tournament wins, it's underpowered.

This is something I don't understand. Please don't get me wrong, to those out there that have either read my signature or read my posts announcing that I'm a casual player or only will be playing at a local store with possibly an occasional trip to a tournament just for the fun of playing and meeting new people interested in the hobby, thank you for all your responses.

For those out there who respond to everything based on mathhammer, tournament standings at large events, or standings posted on Best Coast Pairings... why? Unless someone specifically says, "This is a list I'm taking to a tournament" or "Competitive list," why do people on this forum seem to assume that everyone wants opinions based on the most recent highly competitive tournament-based lists/armies?

That's something that's always puzzled me since I started posting on this message board back in 2015.

SG

EDIT: As a suggestion, maybe ask if this list/army is for a local FLGS/GW pickup game or an Tournament event. Or, if you have the time, post your opinions on how you think the list/army would do in both a Competitive and a Non-Competitive meta.

Because it trickles down. A well balanced army is fun both in competitive play and in casual play. While a badly unbalanced army might be fun in casual play, but even then sometimes new player will happen upon broken combo or hyper efficient list by accident, and thus ruin the enjoyment of their friendly group.

Basically, there's no downside to having a healthy game balance meta, at all, except maybe the extra work you have to invest to make it so! And hyper competitive is the best way to gauge the OP-ness and weakness of everything.

Congratulations on your wins as Necrons! In non-big league tournaments and casual games Necrons are a great and fun faction to play! They are versatile, can shoot, cast "spells", melee decently, can be mobile etc. Necrons have a lot of fun and unique rules, and most units are pretty straightforward in what you want them to do (HQs buff, Troops kill infantry and hold Objectives, Destroyers destroy, DDAs wreck big stuff). They are kind of a "gotcha" army though in this edition. If you haven't gone against Necrons, than things are going to be tough for you, if you have, than you know EXACTLY what you need to do: wipe squads, and use your D2-3 guns vs the tanks.

Necrons are a very beginner friendly army, they are easy to paint, have a great model range with MOSTLY plastic minis, and with somewhat easy to understand rules. The big issue with Necrons though, is they have a tough time against BIG models with Invuln Saves and no real way to stop a psyker heavy army outside of a Warlord Trait or Tomb Spyders.

8th Edition's rules just don't really favor the army either. Most factions have allies, Necrons do not, so there really is no way to cover their weaknesses. Also, 8th edition really favors super cheap infantry, which Necrons do not have. Necrons are a Marine Equivalent (or MEQ) army, so they suffer from a lot of the problems as marines do.

So while I am glad you won your games, and had fun with the army, these are the reasons why some people claim Necrons are NOT-COMPETITIVE in tournament play. The truth of the matter is if Knights became less prevalent, and hordes armies more prevalent, than I think we would see Necrons start taking off. They have issues vs tanks, but by god can they shred infantry and elite infantry.

I don't agree that Necrons are beginner friendly. They may be easy to paint, but they are some of the hardest models to assemble. They also have a relatively small number of units, all of which are specialised to some degree. Unlike Marines they are not a decent jack of all trades army, although not as particular as say, Eldar.

Necrons are in many ways an "almost there" army.

The usual means of anti-tank (Gauss) translated to above-average AP across the board...which is useless in the face of the hordes and/or Invuln that comprises most of their common enemies.
The MEQ infantry stat-line as (near-)standard...is downright detrimental due to it's cost relative to its benefit.
Tesla Immortals get Assault 2....which means my gunline almost always needs to get into the enemy kill-zone to shoot the enemy. With 5'' MS.
But rolling a bucket-load of hits with Tesla is great!...Until the enemy starts rolling their saves because AP 0
HQ's are almost always keystone gunline buffsticks...overcharged for superfluous melee capabilities
RP is great at low point games...and so can't be buffed out of near-irrelevance for high point games without throwing the system out of whack

In my mind, the Necron codex is just unpolished (as opposed to GK-tier trash), but clearly so.

Necrons don't have issues against tanks. 3 DDAs kill any tank(s) in the game.

 p5freak wrote:
Necrons don't have issues against tanks. 3 DDAs kill any tank(s) in the game.

And surprisingly very tough to kill by AT in return.

Necrons issues are more with cost rather than rules, as in, you pay too much for what you get in return. CA2018 addressed some of that with the price drops across the board.

Necrons aren't necessarily bad - they're just not IG or Eldar levels of good.

3d6 or 10.5 shots.
Hitting on 3s, for 7 hits.
Wounding on 3s usually, for 14/3 wounds.
No saves, unless they have a 2+ or an Invuln.
3.5 damage per wound, or 49/3 or 16.33 damage.

So... If by "any tank" you mean" any tank short of a Baneblade or Landraider" you're mostly right. But it also fails to kill an Armiger in a round, thanks to their Invuln.

And Tank Commanders hit Doomsday arks back even harder... 2 Cadian TC's should kill a Doomsday ark, while it takes 3 arks to kill the russ. This assumes neither moved, though if both moved the russ is even better comparably.

Helverins do decent as well.

Quantum Shielding isn't that good, against 3 damage hits you only block it 33% of the time.

 p5freak wrote:
Necrons don't have issues against tanks. 3 DDAs kill any tank(s) in the game.

DDA is very unreliable, usually rolls trash more often than not in my experience, it always appears to be something like "Numbers of shots: 2, rolls to hit: 2 hits, rolls to wound: 1 wound against that Rhino, rolls of dmg: 1." So, it just scratch the some paint off the Rhino class vehicle.

I would rather spam Destroyers to do the AT job.

 ServiceGames wrote:

 Yarium wrote:
It's because this is DAKKA. Unless an army is posting tournament wins, it's underpowered.

This is something I don't understand. Please don't get me wrong, to those out there that have either read my signature or read my posts announcing that I'm a casual player or only will be playing at a local store with possibly an occasional trip to a tournament just for the fun of playing and meeting new people interested in the hobby, thank you for all your responses.

For those out there who respond to everything based on mathhammer, tournament standings at large events, or standings posted on Best Coast Pairings... why? Unless someone specifically says, "This is a list I'm taking to a tournament" or "Competitive list," why do people on this forum seem to assume that everyone wants opinions based on the most recent highly competitive tournament-based lists/armies?

That's something that's always puzzled me since I started posting on this message board back in 2015.

SG

EDIT: As a suggestion, maybe ask if this list/army is for a local FLGS/GW pickup game or an Tournament event. Or, if you have the time, post your opinions on how you think the list/army would do in both a Competitive and a Non-Competitive meta.

The reasons for this aren't necessarily because everyone responding is a tournament try-hard out to smash everyone in every game they play. Tournament/competitive play is an easy constant to measure something against because it's roughly the same everywhere around the world. Once you start getting into questions like "will my army be OK for a friendly, non-competitive FLGS" nobody can answer that with any authority except the people you'll be playing with. The variance in different locations is so high that we can't know for sure what "friendly" armies look like so everyone defaults to the lowest common denominator.

I agree they're quite decent in casual games, especially at low points. They're also quite forgiving, both in play style and list building, as they have decent internal balance.

Their competitiveness is also hindered by the current meta. Necrons tend to have a lot of decent strength, decent AP weapons, which are great against medium/somewhat heavy infantry, but struggle against big armored targets, and can't make their points back against chaff. But the competitive meta contains more IK and IG than tactical marines.
The matchups you mentioned contain 2-3 marine armies. If these lists contained lots of MEQs and some TEQs, it's not surprising necrons did well.

Neophyte2012 wrote:

DDA is very unreliable, usually rolls trash more often than not in my experience, it always appears to be something like "Numbers of shots: 2, rolls to hit: 2 hits, rolls to wound: 1 wound against that Rhino, rolls of dmg: 1." So, it just scratch the some paint off the Rhino class vehicle.

Thats why you take three, its very unlikely you will only roll 1s and 2s for all three.

Neophyte2012 wrote:

I would rather spam Destroyers to do the AT job.

Destroyers are good as well, but one DDA is better than 3 of them.

Cynista wrote:
I don't agree that Necrons are beginner friendly. They may be easy to paint, but they are some of the hardest models to assemble. They also have a relatively small number of units, all of which are specialised to some degree. Unlike Marines they are not a decent jack of all trades army, although not as particular as say, Eldar.

I disagree, while some kits are harder to assemble, I feel the rules for them are easier to understand. Marines, and indeed, most Imperial armies have rules for swapping out weapons for special/heavy weapons. I have found that some newer players (myself included) were a bit put off and confused as to what weapons were good or what they were used for. Otherwise, I agree with your second statement in that Necron units are specialized, I found that helped me a lot more figure out what to buy and what to use each unit for.

Outside of counter-psyker shenanigans Necrons are a pretty well rounded force with 1 or 2 units good for each role: Anti-Infantry, Anti-Tank, Melee.

Necrons don't have issues against tanks. 3 DDAs kill any tank(s) in the game.

Eh, less so since Chapter Approved, but dropping almost 500 points to guarantee kill 1 Predator is a bit silly. You HAVE to run 3 DDAs because of RNG and not many other AT options that are cost effective enough, not because DDAs are particularly good. I am hoping the GW look-over of the Exorcist will help some of the random swingy weapon profiles out there.I'd much rather have 3 guaranteed shots per DDA than a chance to only get 1 or 2.

Imagining myself painting a Ghost Ark is literally giving me a panic attack. I think I'd rather die.

hobojebus wrote:
Well I've played necrons since 2nd and I can honestly say they've never sucked as badly in an edition of 40k as they do now.

6th edition Necron Offense too good, nerfed in 7th
7th edition Necron Defense too good, nerfed in 8th

8th edition Necrons suffer overpriced Reanimation Protocol, which is nowhere as good as it used to be, and they lost any great offensive tools, no Psychic Phase.

Tesla was nerfed.
Reanimation Protocol was nerfed.
Spawning Scarabs nerfed.
Cryptek Abilities nerfed.
Gauss special rule was effectively given to all armies in 8th
Transcendent C'tan nerfed
Virtually none of the Necron vehicles are competitive
Necron troops lack flexibility and ability to cope with superheavies

And we are so slow, no point trying to ds via a monolith.

Flyers are a garbage option, no point taking a repair badge for transport.

So we are left hoofing it with only mid range weapons which means we get picked off unit by unit because terrain rules are terrible.

Necrons arent slow. You dont know how to play them.