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Not Online!!! wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Make them characters. That should increase their rate of survival.

Why, that is not really making much sense now doesn't it.

You don't necessarily have to explicitly make them characters, but give them a bespoke rule that makes them untargetable unless they're the closest target, like artillery crew. Chalk it up to phasing/stealth tech, if anyone can hide a 9 foot spyder it would be Necrons. Though personally I feel like they should have more of a role that buffs canoptek units in general and not just scarabs. Maybe an aura that gives them some sort of bonus?

 Grimskul wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Make them characters. That should increase their rate of survival.

Why, that is not really making much sense now doesn't it.

You don't necessarily have to explicitly make them characters, but give them a bespoke rule that makes them untargetable unless they're the closest target, like artillery crew. Chalk it up to phasing/stealth tech, if anyone can hide a 9 foot spyder it would be Necrons. Though personally I feel like they should have more of a role that buffs canoptek units in general and not just scarabs. Maybe an aura that gives them some sort of bonus?

The reasoning has been made previously in the thread. Spyders have been the managers of the Necron tombs for 60 million years, they can form a neural network to increase their effectiveness. They might be 9 feet, but they only have 4 wounds, that's half of a DP and he's a character.

If we leave pts out of the equation for a second then it is a question of what their strengths and weaknesses should be. Should they be a support unit that are vulnerable to snipers, a tough support unit that isn't vulnerable to anything in particular, a vulnerable support unit with a decent melee punch but vulnerable to everything? Is it a Techmarine, a Trojan Support Vehicle or a Wyrdvane Psyker squad?

*Option 1, the Techmarine route: make Spyders characters so it can survive and do it's thing despite being squishy.
*Option 2, the Trojan route: give Spyders 2-4 extra wounds so they don't die when a multi-damage weapon looks their way.
*Option 3, the Wyrdvane route: change nothing, Spyders should often be the #1 target for opponents because they provide a relatively large punch in melee and a relatively large amount of support compared to how easy they are to kill.

No matter whether you do 1, 2, 1 and 2 or 3 you would have to find a balanced cost. There is also the fourth option of giving them a new ability that supports Canoptek units, Morale or Reanimation Protocols in some way, but that makes them an even bigger target and just as easy to kill if you don't couple it with another change. I think a good change would be one that makes 9 Spyders an option, I've used them all twice and it feels pretty bad with how easily they die and how useless they are so it's only really an option for creating fun intro armies for people to play against while they are learning.

One of the biggest issues I can see with our current codex is the weakness of our transports. GA's are decent but not for their transport capabilities. What can be done? The Monolith needs a 2+ saves. I don't see why we couldn't have Living Metal be D3 wounds back standard with Cloaks and Phylactery granting an additional wound on top of that. Invasion Beams needs a rework bad IMO.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Make them characters. That should increase their rate of survival.

Why, that is not really making much sense now doesn't it.

Except it does though?

If Gulliman and C'tan can hide behind units, then so can spyders.
Lore wise spyders are supposed to be like overseers, supervising tombs and directing lesser canoptek constructs towards threats and required maintenance jobs.
That sounds like a character to me.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 vict0988 wrote:

 Grimskul wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Make them characters. That should increase their rate of survival.

Why, that is not really making much sense now doesn't it.

You don't necessarily have to explicitly make them characters, but give them a bespoke rule that makes them untargetable unless they're the closest target, like artillery crew. Chalk it up to phasing/stealth tech, if anyone can hide a 9 foot spyder it would be Necrons. Though personally I feel like they should have more of a role that buffs canoptek units in general and not just scarabs. Maybe an aura that gives them some sort of bonus?

The reasoning has been made previously in the thread. Spyders have been the managers of the Necron tombs for 60 million years, they can form a neural network to increase their effectiveness. They might be 9 feet, but they only have 4 wounds, that's half of a DP and he's a character.

If we leave pts out of the equation for a second then it is a question of what their strengths and weaknesses should be. Should they be a support unit that are vulnerable to snipers, a tough support unit that isn't vulnerable to anything in particular, a vulnerable support unit with a decent melee punch but vulnerable to everything? Is it a Techmarine, a Trojan Support Vehicle or a Wyrdvane Psyker squad?

*Option 1, the Techmarine route: make Spyders characters so it can survive and do it's thing despite being squishy.
*Option 2, the Trojan route: give Spyders 2-4 extra wounds so they don't die when a multi-damage weapon looks their way.
*Option 3, the Wyrdvane route: change nothing, Spyders should often be the #1 target for opponents because they provide a relatively large punch in melee and a relatively large amount of support compared to how easy they are to kill.

No matter whether you do 1, 2, 1 and 2 or 3 you would have to find a balanced cost. There is also the fourth option of giving them a new ability that supports Canoptek units, Morale or Reanimation Protocols in some way, but that makes them an even bigger target and just as easy to kill if you don't couple it with another change. I think a good change would be one that makes 9 Spyders an option, I've used them all twice and it feels pretty bad with how easily they die and how useless they are so it's only really an option for creating fun intro armies for people to play against while they are learning.

I would like to see a return of that 3rd ed rule that allows wiped units to come back if they are within range of the spyder and another unit, as well as that rule that allows them to split apart and act as independent units after deployment.
Even if you give spyders extra wounds they are still going to get shot up pretty easily, and option 3 will still make them unplayable. No point in having strong effects if they don't live long enough to use them.

That would be cool, sort of like a Necron Mob Up thing.

Spyders should have 6 wounds minimum. I think if you have a unit of scarabs between the Spyder and an enemy unit that enemy can't target the Spyder. Or the Spyder can pass off wounds to the Scarabs on a 2+

And in terms of making them an actually desirable unit, a Spyder can give Canoptek units reanimation protocols if its within 6"

I like that idea a lot! Scarabs acting as a "guard" 7nit for Spyders while the Spyders grant RP, that would make me happy to field a couple.

v0iddrgn wrote:
I like that idea a lot! Scarabs acting as a "guard" 7nit for Spyders while the Spyders grant RP, that would make me happy to field a couple.

Providing a 6" bubble with reanimation for Canopteks would be cool. Suddenly they have a very clear mission in life. Could perhaps even bring back Acanthrites.

Of course Spyders need to be character or something else, being able to nearby Canopteks as Tau's shield drones for example.

There's already a strat for giving canopteks RP though. You'll have to either remove it or change it.
Now what wouldn't conflict with the strat would be to give canopteks 5+ FNP instead of RP. You can call it maintenance or something.
Hell, why not allow it to give ALL necron units 5+ FNP. Then people might actually start taking it.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
There's already a strat for giving canopteks RP though. You'll have to either remove it or change it.
Now what wouldn't conflict with the strat would be to give canopteks 5+ FNP instead of RP. You can call it maintenance or something.
Hell, why not allow it to give ALL necron units 5+ FNP. Then people might actually start taking it.

I'd wager GW is terrified of making Necrons unkillable and thus 5+++ is something very rare for us but we need something to feel like we can sustain damage and still get use out of our gimmick.

v0iddrgn wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
There's already a strat for giving canopteks RP though. You'll have to either remove it or change it.
Now what wouldn't conflict with the strat would be to give canopteks 5+ FNP instead of RP. You can call it maintenance or something.
Hell, why not allow it to give ALL necron units 5+ FNP. Then people might actually start taking it.

I'd wager GW is terrified of making Necrons unkillable and thus 5+++ is something very rare for us but we need something to feel like we can sustain damage and still get use out of our gimmick.

Its from a specific unit that can only protect a few units at a time. I don't see how that's game breaking.
In fact, if it did have that ability, then that would justify not giving it the character keyword (though perhaps a wound increase would still be in order), so as to provide some counter play against it.

I never said I thought it was game breaking. I merely pointed out that I think GW is scared of Necrons becoming what they were in 7th. Besides they'll probably shy away from 5+ FNP just based on the fact that that's Plague Marines territory now.

Fair enough. A 6+ FNP would probably be sufficient anyway. Just 1 necron needs to survive in order to get RP to activate.

I just don't get it. They gave Death Guard the exact same army wide FNP ability, yet they don't get heat. Were necrons unlucky to be first out with this in that time and age? Perhaps combined with a functional mid range damage output?

torblind wrote:
I just don't get it. They gave Death Guard the exact same army wide FNP ability, yet they don't get heat. Were necrons unlucky to be first out with this in that time and age? Perhaps combined with a functional mid range damage output?

DG generally is one of GW's golden boys.
Golden boys get stuff, the rest is afterthought.

torblind wrote:
I just don't get it. They gave Death Guard the exact same army wide FNP ability, yet they don't get heat. Were necrons unlucky to be first out with this in that time and age? Perhaps combined with a functional mid range damage output?

Necrons never had FNP, they had super-FNP for the majority of a single edition, but at the cost of losing the flavour of standing back up. Canoptek units only had FNP when taken in a Formation. Plague Marines have had FNP since at least the 3,5 Codex AFAIK. Is FNP a good rule mechanic? No, it slows the game down. FNP on multi-wound models is really freaking strong, the weakness FNP has toward high-damage weapons is basically irrelevant since the units had that weakness already. Instead of FNP they should've given them the TS +1 Sv ability against single damage weapons. Rubric Marines were supposed to be weak toward weight of fire, not multi-damage weapons with AP -1/-2 or D1 AP -3 weapons.

The DG codex also came out 6 months before the Necron codex, which is irrelevant anyway since the Indexes were released at the same time. The Necron Codex didn't make that many mistakes, over buffing Destroyers slightly and Vaults by a lot, compare that to the Necron Index datasheets and RP which were absolute gak, that was the real culprit. Could the codex have fixed more? Upped the stats of Spyders, fixed RP, fixed the Tomb World, yes. At the end of the day GW staff are human and the writers probably don't play Necrons and didn't have time to playtest and didn't get enough encouragement to go and find feedback on the broken mechanics released with the index.

How can Deathmarks become relevant? Not sure if their Synaptic Disintegrators are viable as is. They probably need a complete rework like RF 15" str5 AP-2 with an alternate firing mode to a allow a long range shot up to 48".

v0iddrgn wrote:
How can Deathmarks become relevant? Not sure if their Synaptic Disintegrators are viable as is. They probably need a complete rework like RF 15" str5 AP-2 with an alternate firing mode to a allow a long range shot up to 48".

Give them back their marking ability from 5th, except give it 8th ed level steroids. Like, instead of 2+ to wound it inflicts mortal wounds against a single, designated unit on a 4+ instead of a 6+.
That way they at least have a good chance of killing something before getting wiped out.

Ignore me.

 vict0988 wrote:

v0iddrgn wrote:
How can Deathmarks become relevant? Not sure if their Synaptic Disintegrators are viable as is. They probably need a complete rework like RF 15" str5 AP-2 with an alternate firing mode to a allow a long range shot up to 48".

Not relevant to this thread. The only real answer is changing the value/pts ratio by buffing stats or abilities and leaving pts the same or just straight lowering their price. They'd have to be at least as cheap as Tesla Immortals to compete with their current rules, which makes them seem bad but not horrible as is, about on the level of Warriors. If you want to discuss rules changes then this thread isn't the place. Squads of 5 can grab objectives and harass, squads of 10 can really blunt the edge of an enemy deep striking unit.

Um, what? This is the proposed rules subforum, and from what I can tell, not only are you not the OP, but it was explicitly made clear that this thread was about changes that one would make to touch up the weak parts of the Necron codex, with the OP asking for feedback on his changes. I feel like you're a little too possessive/control freaky when it comes to these threads, given how you acted in the Ork Kultur one.

I'd say that each unit of Deathmarks should be able to mark down an enemy model with the CHARACTER keyword at the start of the game during deployment, and that unit on the turn they arrive from deep strike amy reroll to hit and wound rolls against that target. Add a 1 CP stratagem that allows the Deathmark unit to effectively remove themselves from the battlefield and deep strike again and apply their "mark" on another character in the enemy army and get the reroll to hit and wound against them as well. Buff up their guns a bit (S5 AP-1 should be good enough) and they're good to go IMO.

Let's try again, thanks to Grimskul for pointing out I was in a different thread than I thought I was.

I think Deathmarks could work fine as is, they are pretty fun to use, Reanimation Protocols being what they are and them often having to drop in close to high-intensity areas makes them pretty vulnerable, I'd like to see their cost go down a couple of pts so they are level with Tesla Immortals.

Alternatively, I think it'd be very cool if they could ignore LOS like their snipers don't even notice walls they just see the target and press the trigger and then their target's insides are microwaved to slush. They are pretty bad at killing characters so they either need to be cheap enough to where that's okay or they need some kind of secondary role like targeting units that are out of LOS, they already kind of have that with counter-DS, but I think stacking another gimmick on top like a bit of a shooting boost on the turn they arrive like Grimskul suggested or ignores LOS would be cool, but not really something I'm dying to see, I'd much rather they update many other datasheets before this one to be honest.

What they had in 7th was kinda useful though. One action of highly increased damage output. That allowed them to really mark something for death.

And regardless of that effectivity there's an almost equally effective psychological bonus to it. Your opponent has to consider of it's worth playing his tactic, knowing those guys might come in and obliterate a key unit.

A naturally higher Strength value would compensate for the marking ability and make them more TAC at least. S6 would allow easier wounding of T3-T5 models and is mostly inconsequential for T6 and T8.

Deathmarks guns could be S5 AP-1 but they have an innate +1 to wound when targeting infantry, beasts or monsters.

(It never made sense to me and has always felt like lazy rule writing that their weapons could do Mortal Wounds to Vehicles)

dapperbandit wrote:
Deathmarks guns could be S5 AP-1 but they have an innate +1 to wound when targeting infantry, beasts or monsters.

(It never made sense to me and has always felt like lazy rule writing that their weapons could do Mortal Wounds to Vehicles)

What if Synaptic disintegrators had 2+ poison AP-1, but is S5 against vehicles?

Disclaimer: I'm very new to Necrons.

It seems to me that one of the intended strengths of Necrons is Reanimation Protocols which is great in smaller point games but useless in larger games due to the amount of firepower that can be brought.

What if Necrons had more access to morale immunity and could roll D3 (or maybe D6) RP rolls when a unit would be completely destroyed (maybe its a strategem?).

From my limited experience it seems like if Necron HQs got a 6" bubble, gave morale immunity, and Necrons didn't immediately lose RP when the unit is wiped they might have a chance to get to their ideal threat range.

Necrons should really have blanket morale resistance. They are a race of machines, and morale already punishes them by permanently removing models from the table.

There should be a hard cap on the number of models they can lose, like 3. It would make the Immortal Pride warlord trait less of a no brainer when it comes to silver tide, at least.

Yeah, getting a RP roll on unit wipe would be handy. I would just make it a single roll though; you have 1 chance to stop a unit from getting wiped.

A single RP roll on unit wipe would probably be fine if some other stats were tweaked too. Like the T5 immortals / 3+ save warriors discussed above.

Maybe a strat to make it D3 RP rolls instead of a single one?

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Necrons should really have blanket morale resistance. They are a race of machines, and morale already punishes them by permanently removing models from the table.

There should be a hard cap on the number of models they can lose, like 3. It would make the Immortal Pride warlord trait less of a no brainer when it comes to silver tide, at least.

Yeah, getting a RP roll on unit wipe would be handy. I would just make it a single roll though; you have 1 chance to stop a unit from getting wiped.

Thing is, running away for moral isn't necessarily an illogical choice, against hopeless odds, you run away to fight another day. Logical for humans, and logical for machines. The fact that emotional distress is what causes it in humans doesn't change the fact that it can be a meaningful response.

torblind wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Necrons should really have blanket morale resistance. They are a race of machines, and morale already punishes them by permanently removing models from the table.

There should be a hard cap on the number of models they can lose, like 3. It would make the Immortal Pride warlord trait less of a no brainer when it comes to silver tide, at least.

Yeah, getting a RP roll on unit wipe would be handy. I would just make it a single roll though; you have 1 chance to stop a unit from getting wiped.

Thing is, running away for moral isn't necessarily an illogical choice, against hopeless odds, you run away to fight another day. Logical for humans, and logical for machines. The fact that emotional distress is what causes it in humans doesn't change the fact that it can be a meaningful response.

My issue with it isn't lore-wise, it feels like Necrons are encouraged to penalize themself in a way. Because of morale you need to basically ignore RP in high point games which sucks because point values are costed to account for it.

Edit: and to be clear, I'm not sure I'd agree with a blanket morale immunity. I'm thinking more like certain HQ's give a morale immunity bubble or perhaps targets of MWBD are immune to morale or something.