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I think a relatively recent rulebook (5th edition, 6th, maybe?) suggested 25% of the board should be big, line-of-sight blocking terrain.

And yes, faced with an antitank gunline you have three choices:

1) Drown them in bodies. Firing lascannons at guardsmen, gaunts or grots is an exercise in frustration because he doesn't actually have many shots. Skitarii are cheap, quick, and put out a lot of damage.

2) Avoid their lines of fire. More terrain, or stratagems and abilities which mess with their shooting - I think Mechanicum have some stuff to do this (at least one canticle does, I believe). If you can shield the robots from fire until they get up close - or deliver them up close with some sort of teleport/outflank/tunnel rule, they might live long enough to get to punch someone.

3) Outshoot them. As noted, Centurions and Predators put out immense amounts of las-fire but aren't that tough for their cost. Similar 'big guns' could potentially chop them up something rotten before they get to shoot.

(2) is probably the place to start first because it doesn't involve changing your army.

I’d agree with the terrain idea, but add trying lower points games. He could try an infantry heavy list without spending more.

Necrons shouldn't have any issues with marines. Gauss weapons ignore their armor saves, Necron anti-tank is more than enough for marine vehicles. Only thing I can think of that you SHOULDN'T do vs marines is to get into CC with them.

Im no necron expert but it seems to me you are being hard countered by an AT gunline list. Necron range is not best. As sugested try more terrain as well.

I would consider adding more bodies to the list. Maybe some wraiths and more worriors/immortals. Drop the monlith prhaps?

Maybe worth to post your list on the necron tactica thread and explain your problems there and necron people will offer more advice.

The main strength is that he has to overkill your units or risk re-animation protocols... By taking things like crypteks and a lot of immortals and warriors you can drown him in bodies. At the same time making him respond to wraiths charging towards the predators/shooty marines. With their 3+ invulns they should be a thorn in his side.

The full cawl ball will outshoot anything he can field. Make sure to bring an assassin or 4 to keep him honest with his positioning too.

You are playing armies that are in similar tier with Marines, except Orks who is slightly superior than Marines in 8th ed. So who take the optimized list would like to win. If you play Tau, Eldar, GSC or IK/IG soup, you will almost always crush marines no matter what they bring, so long as you bring above average good units yourself.

Dont play tomb sentinel and monolith, they suck.

I really can't see that Marine list beating your necrons, based on what you have.

Monolith aside, your quantum shielding should protect your vehicles from his lascannons. Necron warriors will mince marines in a straight up fight too and Destroyers are well known for being able to delete anything they look at.

The only worry is his characters. i'd hang back at around 24 inch range and light him up. his list isn't fast and you can outgun him easily at that range. Any closer and you run into his beatstick characters, though you do have a destroyer lord who can countercharge if needs be.

I think a lot of what you are experiencing is due to being a new player and maybe not using all of your best strategies and rules.

His army is fairly straightforward and somewhat forgiving (space marines are still probably the easiest to learn army, its a quick few games to get up to speed because of all of the similarities. Peopel are going to argue that probably but i am just talkign the initial getting used to playing , mastering an army is a whole different dan of worms, I am taking learning basic strategy, weapons profiles, and use to no forget things)

I suggest watching a lot of videos of necrons being played on youtube or the miniwargaming vault. see how people with more experience use them and admech to win or delay.

given his army your quantum shielding as mentioned should be invalidating a lot of his damage.

Space marines are an all rounder army, which is both good and bad at the same time.
Its good because they generally have an answer for everything and while they arent elitists with like ~40 bodies in a 2k game, they still arent horde either so they can actually use cover rules unlike most armies right now.
Its bad because they pay through the nose for those multitasking abilities, even if its not being utilized. Their heavy weapon teams still pay for their WS3 S4 base attack, even though thats a deathwish if they use it.

Space Marines are one of the easiest armies to play because of this, but at the same time the high point they can reach isnt much higher.

Their costing frequently means they cant address any given threat with enough force.

lefyr wrote:
I play necrons, orks and admech. My friend recently started playing space marines and I've lost every game since then.

I have noticed how space marines generally pack a lot of punch and can take quite a few themselves, all for very little points. On top of that, they require no real thought to be put into the choices you make ingame.

I've even tried to build armies specifically anti space marine, but they have no real weaknesses.

Can anyone help me understand why they are so strong? Or maybe any tips on strategy against space marines?

EDIT: I believe I failed to clarify my issue. My general playstyle is to find a weakness in the other person's army and exploit it. So my issue with space marines is that I can't find any weaknesses. This may be due to my inexperience, which is why I created this discussion. (And thanks to everyone who already offered to help)

Made me chuckle. I hope you are kidding, not really worth putting energy into reading the whole thread so I'll just give some pointers on SM weaknesses in case you are not trolling. Space Marines are one big weakness, from their high cost meaning low number of CP and lack of board presence, relatively low durability in melee and at range when outside of cover to their low firepower when they move and are outside 12" as well as their low mobility, relatively bad Relics, WL traits and mostly terrible Stratagems.

Against a Lascannon-spam list? More boys, fewer toys.

There aren't many factions that would see Marines as OP. Necrons, Admech, and GK would be the first three that spring to mind. And you play two of them.

I don't think anyone has given you actual advice on your orks yet. What kind of list are you running?

A list like his should not be giving you any trouble if you use your units properly and your army isn't just kanz and stompas.

lefyr wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
well nothing about his list seems terriably off, he's playing a list that, is proably mostly a fluff list (Imperial fists are siege experts)

can you give us some ideas as to what proportions you're running in? if he's spamming a ton of las canons you might be having some trouble if you're running a list with not a ton of models. As Not online said, his list basicly hard counters a vehicle heavy list. drowning him in bodies might work. maybe a necron list that's heavy on warriors.

He generally plays 2 predators, 1 dreadnought, 2 captains, 3 centurions and the rest is all infantry (2000 pts).

I play an overlord, 20 warriors, 6 destroyers, 1 destroyer lord, 1 stalker, 1 doomsday ark, 1 tomb sentinel, 1 monolith and 10 praetorians.

Thanks for the reply, by the way.

Okay so you lack immortals, one of the best necron units, have destroyer lord(inefficient), only 1 doomsday ark so you have hard time vs vehicles. Stalker and sentinel both are not so competive and praetorians plain STINK with monolith being huge point sink. It's basically giving very worthwhile target for enemy lascannons. At least doomsday ark loves facing lascannons rather than autocannons!

Your list is far cry from good necron list.

Drop monolith and praetorians and change 20 warriors into 20 immortals and add more stuff and you will already jump up higher.

BTW sounds like you don't even have battallion so you will struggle with CP's. Make that 3x10 immortals, overlord and cryptek and you have nice battallion.

Marines are one of the easier opponents for you. Albeit ravenguard is bit annoying due to no tesla bonus without MWBD from overlord or getting in their face but ah well that's the breaks.

Bharring wrote:
Against a Lascannon-spam list? More boys, fewer toys.

There aren't many factions that would see Marines as OP. Necrons, Admech, and GK would be the first three that spring to mind. And you play two of them.

Nah, Necrons can compete with marines no worries. Outside a few builds, I'd say Necrons handily spank marines to be honest. CA 2018 helped us a lot more than the smurfs.

is this a late april joke? How on earth can one say that space marines are OP is beyond my understanding.

DudleyGrim wrote:
Necrons shouldn't have any issues with marines. Gauss weapons ignore their armor saves, Necron anti-tank is more than enough for marine vehicles. Only thing I can think of that you SHOULDN'T do vs marines is to get into CC with them.

Could be the guy has luck like me, I manage to lose to necrons in CC with GSC all the time.... Just stand there, running the odds in my head, while I look at all those ones and twos I rolled.

As others have said (with varying degrees of tact) Marines are very far from OP this edition. Seriously, you should play against a competitive Eldar list, which aren't even tippy-top tier right now, but blow Marines out to the water themselves.
It's just that you have a slow list with far too many vehicles against a list that outranges you with guns that are ideal for killing vehicles.

There are 2 solutions:
A) Drop all the vehicles in your list and replace them with faster units, preferable ones that "waste" Lascannons' potential. I.e. 1W models (as many 10-bot Immortal units as you can fit), models with 3+/4+ invulnerable saves (Wraiths), or cheapo models (Scarabs)
B) Take more fast units (Scarabs, Wraiths, Tomb blades). And A LOT of them. You can't just add 1-2 units. You need 2-3 units of 4-5 Scarabs to run interference and stop his tanks from shooting. If you take Tomb blades, max out the unit.

More Destroyers would be ok, but they are also an ideal target for Lascannons, so I don't know that would be good

If, however, you don't want to (or can't because models cost $$$) do either of the above, I would AT LEAST swap the Monolith for 2 more Doomsday Arks. As much as I like the Monolith and want it to work, it ....just.....SUCKS this edition, especially against Lascannon Spam. Swapping it for 2 more DDAs will not only split your targets up, but give you far more range

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