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After playing a few games with my new stealer shock army I finally came up against a very good list.

His List
Necron.

Walking lord with Veil and Res Orb.

2 Squads of 10 warriors.

2 Squads of 8 immortals

3 Squads of 3 destroyers.

1 Monolith

My list.

Hive Tyrant
Enhanced Senses
Catalyst
Toxin Sacs
Venom Cannon
Barbed Strangler
Total

Hive Tyrant
Enhanced Senses
Toxin Sacs
Venom Cannon
Barbed Strangler
Total

Carnifex
Enhanced Senses
Venom Cannon
Barbed Strangler
Total

Carnifex
Enhanced Senses
Venom Cannon
Barbed Strangler
Total

Carnifex
Enhanced Senses
Venom Cannon
Barbed Strangler
Total

8 Gene Stealers w Scuttle

8 Gene Stealers w Scuttle

8 Gene Stealers w Scuttle

8 Gene Stealers w Scuttle

8 Gene Stealers w Scuttle

9 Gene Stealers w Scuttle

The scenario is Dawn Raid.

The Terrain is sparse. 5 pieces 2 in each dep zone and 1 in the middle. We agree all the terrain pieces (A set of irregular hills about 12 inches wide and 2 to 4 inches deep) will be level 2, provide 5+ cover and be crossable as difficult terrian.

I set up as many of my stealers as possible in the middle of my dep zone and my fexs and rants my left flank hill. I scuttle my stealers towards the hill in no mans land but can’t get very good cover.

My opponent lines up on my left flank. His immortals in two front rows, his warriors behind, his detroyers center. His lord goes in the middle of his warriors and immortals giving all the benefit of his res orb. He chooses to deep strike his monolith.

I win first turn.

Turn 1 Me.
My first turn I rush my stealers forward till almost all get some form of 5+ cover. (I love the 50% +1 cover rule for squads.)

My Fexs fire at the destroyers and kill 2 (1 with a venom cannon who will not be getting back up).

My rants fire at the immortals and kill 3.

Turn 1 Him
1 dest and 2 immortals stand up again.
He moves his warriors forward, screening his immortals


Well his fire is devastating.
The combined fire from the immortals and the Destroyers kill 24 stealers.

1 Cowardly squad of 3 stealers breaks and runs off the table.

My Turn 2.

Having not much choice I move towards his warriors. Only a 2 partial squads will make it into HtH .

My shooting does not much better this turn. 2 Destroyers die and will not come back, 3 immortals die.

I rend 4 warriors and lose 1 stealer. (Orb means they will get WBB)

His Turn 2.
2 immortals and 2 warriors come back to life.
The Monlith deep strikes.

He moves his devastators around to get LOS on my un-engaged stealer squads.

His immortals walk forward.

His lord veils his warriors out of HtH

Everything shoots genestealers.

The Lith does that every squad in 12 inchs takes hits thing.

EVERY SINGLE STEALER DIES!

Mostly to the monolith, the destroyers and immortals. There were plenty of extra wounds to go around. EC saves against the warriors and the Lith would not have made any difference.

Turn 3

Well I have to admit at this point I was feeling pretty low. I had my MC hold ground. Pumped my Fexs into the Lith and my Rants into the Destroyers. The Lith was stunned and shaken many times but I was told that this had viturally no effect on it.

rants kill a single Dev but it came back on his turn.

His turn 3.

The lord Veiled his warriors into my dep zone on my far right, out of range.

The Lith moved 6 inches and teleported a squad of warriors forward.

Combined fire killed one walk rant and put a wound on one fex.

My Turn 4

I had not choice but to hold and fire.

I got 2 good template hits on his warriors and combined fire from all 3 fex’s killed them all. (Bunching his warriors was the only mistake he made all game)

My Rants failed to kill any Destroyers.

His turn 4.

More combined fire and my wounded fex dies.

The Lith drops a plate on my last Rant and wounds him.

My turn 5
I fail to cause many casualties as my opponent refuses to bunch up like he did the last time.
My fex’s stun the lith like crasy but apparently that is no good against it.
2 or 3 immortals die but they all get back up.

His turn 5
He moves his Lith forward and will get in my dep zone next turn.

His immortals walk forward.

His. Fire kills my last walk rant.


My Turn 6
I take a last desperate stab at his lith with both fex’s and blow off a weapon.

His turn 6
He moves his Lith and teleports a squad of immortals into my dep zone.
The turbos his Destroyers into my Zone.
Fire puts 1 wound my my fex.



Victorious slaughter for my enemy.

Final Thoughts…

Well that did not go well…

My opponent told me that if I had not gotten first turn He would have deep struck his monolith to block my stealers advance. (I think that would have been pretty darn effective too.)

I lost the vast majority of my stealers to AP4 fire and on the second turn I took so many extra wounds I can’t believe EC would have helped me here either.

On the other hand EC on my MC’s might have been a big help, but they could not have gotten into the enemies Dep zone even then. It may have made a Victorious slaughter into a regular massacre and I would have had 6 fewer stealers.

In retrospect concentrating the fire from my Fex’s on his lith was a mistake. I had thought 6 str 10 hits would make short work of it. I did not realize how hard those things were to take down.

I would love any advice on how I should have fought this battle. I have thought it out again and again and I can’t see how a stealer shock list can win against a necron list like this. Too many WBB rolls, WBB even against rending. Viel and Lith Tport to get squads out of HtH, Mountains of AP 4 weapons fire.

Advice needed.

No advice on how I could have played differently? No list advice for stealer shock against this kind of army?

We played 2 different Necron armies with our Stealer shock army at the last Adepticon and as far as my game against both of them it was definitely one of the better match-ups for our army (we phased them out in both of my games). One game featured a single Monolith and the other one had 2 Monoliths.


In this case, the solution is simple: Your lack of a flying Tyrant (with a 2+ save) is what kills your army against this matchup. That one unit is practically invulnerable to any kind of fire Necrons can pour out (besides Heavy Destroyers) and its firepower can easily take out a unit of 3 Destroyers each shooting phase.


And your 3 Carnifexes indeed should have made easy work out of the Monolith. Its ability to pull units out of combat and obliterate your stealers within 12" makes it the key to the enemy's plan.

Against 3 Gunfexes, a Monlith should be destroyed or severly crippled after a couple rounds of shooting. Simply put: You were unlucky, but you can't let that persuade you from playing towards the tendencies in the future. Yes shaken results do nothing and stunned results only stop the flux arc from working for a turn but any 4, 5 or 6 result will have a permanent effect against the Monolith and with enough shots (which you have) you should roll a '6' for the damage result eventually.


The gameplan with a stealer shock against this Tyranid army is thus: The flying Tyrant goes after the Necron Lord (and whatever unit he is hiding with) while the Gunfexes go after the Monolith. You can use the Flying Tyrant to shield some units of Genestealers from the AP4 firepower as they advance.

A combined charge of the Tyrant plus the stealers should be able to do enough damage to wipe out whole units or outnumber them enough to ensure that you can run them down (especially since the Tyrant counts as 10 models for outnumbering purposes).

Once the Lord and the Monolith are dead you should be able to wipe out the rest of the army with fire from the Gunfexes and your Tyrant. Your Genestealers will almost certainly always die with that much AP4 firepower on the table but you should be easily able to phase out the Necrons and win the game.

Sounds like with the limited cover you should have lined up your MC in a shield wall and brought your stealers up behind them. A little slow but it would have allowed you to get more stealers into HTH. Always take a winged Tyrant to hunt down hard to deal with targets or to match mobile opposing HQ's (Daemon princes ect).

It really comes down to: Hope you get lucky against the liths. The Necron list is basically the Death Star, as long as its shields are still up you are boned. Soon as the liths go down though, you race for the reactor core (locking into combat).

The flying tyrant might have helped, but his real trick is messing up firing lines for the crons, and with the Liths active they'd just pull his victims out of his grasp, double WBB to get em back up and he'd be rapid fired down in short order.

Defensive Crons vs. any kind of rush list is an uphill battle, and Stealer Shock suffers against any Necrons whatsoever. I think abandoning the scuttle plan and putting your guys behind your MC's is the only way you can go, but that just goes back to hoping you get that Lith down early.

One suggestion I've got for your list is Zoey's. Between the Choir (which crons HATE) and more high strength shots against the liths they will be helpful, and they are not appetizing targets for him to fire on, given their low point cost.

I concur with you about the matchup. Stealer Shock doesn't work on Necrons, especially defensive Necrons. Until the Monoliths go down a blitz just isn't helpful. You've got to hold back the stealers, maybe for the entire game, at which point it isn't stealer shock anymore.

In this case, the solution is simple: Your lack of a flying Tyrant (with a 2+ save) is what kills your army against this matchup. That one unit is practically invulnerable to any kind of fire Necrons can pour out (besides Heavy Destroyers) and its firepower can easily take out a unit of 3 Destroyers each shooting phase.

With respect Yak, your just plain wrong here. No way in heck is an 18" range 12" movement unit going to catch a 36" range 12" movement unit unless that unit wants to get caught.

Further the math hammer is 2.5 Destroyers fail saves but 1.25 on average get backup back up with WBB meaning only 1.25 destroyers killed not 3. (My opponent never had his destroyer squads more than 6" apart from each other so wiping out a squad of 3 to prevent WBB would not work either.).


Having said all that I do agree a winged Rant is probably a good idea. I will look into killing two stealers to make it happen.

Russell wrote:
With respect Yak, your just plain wrong here. No way in heck is an 18" range 12" movement unit going to catch a 36" range 12" movement unit unless that unit wants to get caught.

Further the math hammer is 2.5 Destroyers fail saves but 1.25 on average get backup back up with WBB meaning only 1.25 destroyers killed not 3. (My opponent never had his destroyer squads more than 6" apart from each other so wiping out a squad of 3 to prevent WBB would not work either.).


Having said all that I do agree a winged Rant is probably a good idea. I will look into killing two stealers to make it happen.

Of course Destroyers can theoretically stay out of the Tyrant's range the whole game, but the reality of the board means that your Tyrant (who doesn't need to worry about cover or anything else against this army) can start in the center of the table and angle his approach to isolate a corner where the Destroyers are. The result is that it becomes difficult for the Necron player to keep his Destroyers out of range of the Tyrant for more than one turn without turbo-boosting (at which point he wastes a turn of shooting, which is great).

If your opponent keeps his Destroyers within 6" of each other then:

a) even if some of the unit get back up you've still gotten the VPs for the destroyed unit.
b) you may see the opportunity to charge his Destroyers, wipe out a unit and massacre consolidate immediately into another unit.


But really, the minutiae is unimportant. The Flying Tyrant is effectively unkillable against this particular Necron army and can therefore run rampant through the Necron army (besides the Monolith). So if you have a winged Tyrant and you don't get unlucky against the Monolith with your Gunfexes, you win the game.

Russell wrote:With respect Yak, your just plain wrong here. No way in heck is an 18" range 12" movement unit going to catch a 36" range 12" movement unit unless that unit wants to get caught.

Te Winged Hive Tyrant is the way to go. As Yakface said, ours did great at Adepticon vs. Necrons.

With an effective range of 30", you should be able to get a shot at the destroyers if you start in the middle of the board. There is no where to hide.

Also as you know, if you can kill one “type” of unit, then they don’t come back. So it might be worth it to shoot everything you had at the destroyers to drop all 9 and keep them down.

The good thing about a Flyrant is it makes the Necron player choose to shoot his whole army at the Flyrant trying to take it out and ignore the Genestealers, or shoot the Genestealers and then get hit with the Tyrant that will be killing a few with it’s shooting, and then killing smaller squads in assault, and then getting them to break.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not hating on the Hive Tyrant, but as long as the Liths are up he's just hitting his head against a wall.

Round one he rushes forward, blasting a unit of Immortals. Let's say 3 drop? They make their morale test, one stands up, probably don't go through the lith. Necron shooting is focused on the stealers, or they are hiding and the Necrons kill or maim the Tyrant. (2 Immortal units put a wound on them each, 2 Destroyer + warrior units RFing units finish it off)

Presuming the Stealers were visible the Tyrant is untouched and moves up again. He can shoot and charge a Destroyer unit at this point if he likes, most likely killing it. Alternatively he can shoot an infantry brick and charge in. Say he gets 3 from shooting and 3 more in assault. They make morale, 3 stand up, warp out through a lith and another 2 stand up.

This round the rest of the stealers die as they reach the flux arcs range and take a second round of shooting. Game, as the Veil is enough to hold off the tyrant.

This is highly favorable to the Necrons, but it isn't extraordinarily unlikely. Fundamentally what Yakface says is true. The Necrons have to choose between firing at the Tyrant with their whole army or blasting the entire stealer wave. The problem is that either of those choices costs them just one round, and while the Monoliths are working there isn't anything to prevent them from doing the other next round even if, by some miracle, the stealers make it around the tank shocking, fluxing Liths and get in assault the Crons have 3 units pulled out each round, 2 getting double WBB.

Without a choir, and without keeping his stealers back Russell is in trouble. When you siege the Two Towers you have to take your time, pick at them with venom cannons from long range. You've got to use your choir to keep him away from his liths, for fear of getting pinned by barbed strangler casualties. The Flying Tyrant is MVP, but he's got to work with a choir so he can threaten sweeping advances and force the enemy to pay attention to him even before the Liths go down.

The Monoliths HAVE to go down, and swiftly, for Defensive Crons to lose to attrition tactics. With no choir he's got nothing except attrition tactics. It comes down to hoping he gets one lith down on the first round and another on the second. If the Liths are still alive on round 3 he's out of time. His stealers are dead and his tyrant is facing 2 ports (Veil and Lith).

EDIT: Misread that his enemy had 2 liths, rather than one. Less grim of a scenario, but you still need to focus on getting the Lith down. Just bad luck that one lith took 3 Fexes shooting for more than a round.

Against 'crons, I would say a Flyrant with Talons instead of 2x TL Devourers is the way to go. Tyrants are MCs, so no armor save for the necrons , and no armor save equals no wbb (with the exception of orb/lith trickery).

Luebbi wrote:Against 'crons, I would say a Flyrant with Talons instead of 2x TL Devourers is the way to go. Tyrants are MCs, so no armor save for the necrons , and no armor save equals no wbb (with the exception of orb/lith trickery).

Nope. The CC Tyrant "makes his money" with the cumulative damage he does when you combine his assault phase plus the opponent's assault phase. Necron armies excel at pulling units out of CC meaning the Tyrant doesn't get that 2nd round of combat.

The x2 TL Devourer Tyrant, OTOH is able to shoot with pretty devestating effects (12 TL BS4 S6 shots that also re-roll to wound) and then he's able to follow that up with a charge that has (with Acid Maw & +1WS) four WS6, S6 attacks that re-roll wounds and ignore armor saves (and cause double wounds against multi-wound creatures due to Implant Attack).

It isn't even close. Against Necrons the shooty winged Tyrant is by far the superior choice.

40kenthusiast wrote:Don't get me wrong, I'm not hating on the Hive Tyrant, but as long as the Liths are up he's just hitting his head against a wall.

Round one he rushes forward, blasting a unit of Immortals. Let's say 3 drop? They make their morale test, one stands up, probably don't go through the lith. Necron shooting is focused on the stealers, or they are hiding and the Necrons kill or maim the Tyrant. (2 Immortal units put a wound on them each, 2 Destroyer + warrior units RFing units finish it off)

Presuming the Stealers were visible the Tyrant is untouched and moves up again. He can shoot and charge a Destroyer unit at this point if he likes, most likely killing it. Alternatively he can shoot an infantry brick and charge in. Say he gets 3 from shooting and 3 more in assault. They make morale, 3 stand up, warp out through a lith and another 2 stand up.

This round the rest of the stealers die as they reach the flux arcs range and take a second round of shooting. Game, as the Veil is enough to hold off the tyrant.

This is highly favorable to the Necrons, but it isn't extraordinarily unlikely. Fundamentally what Yakface says is true. The Necrons have to choose between firing at the Tyrant with their whole army or blasting the entire stealer wave. The problem is that either of those choices costs them just one round, and while the Monoliths are working there isn't anything to prevent them from doing the other next round even if, by some miracle, the stealers make it around the tank shocking, fluxing Liths and get in assault the Crons have 3 units pulled out each round, 2 getting double WBB.

. . .

EDIT: Misread that his enemy had 2 liths, rather than one. Less grim of a scenario, but you still need to focus on getting the Lith down. Just bad luck that one lith took 3 Fexes shooting for more than a round.

With his Tyranid army, a second Monolith would be the best thing he could possibly see on the table. A second Monolith means the opposing army will have signifigantly less firepower and it will be much easier to phase them out (with the above army it would cost him a little more than a whole unit of Immortals to get a 2nd Monolith).

With 3 Gunfexes by the end of the game there is a decent chance that both Monoliths will be destroyed.

Also, The scenario presented where the Necron player is able to destroy the Tyrant in a single round is highly unlikely simply because in most cases not every single unit in the Necron army will be within range and LOS of the Tyrant (especially not the Warrior units on the first turn).

And the opposing army simply cannot fire everything at the Tyrant on turn one, if they do the Stealers will run rampant in close combat on turn 2. While the Veil and the Monolith can pull units out of combat, if enough stealers and/or the Tyrant get into combat against such small units as the Necron player is fielding, often they will cause enough wounds to win combat and (especially with the Tyrant in a combat) outnumber the remaining Necrons enough to force them to fall back, at which point the Necrons will often be run down.

With 2 Monoliths, the Necron player would likely only have 38ish Necron models which would make it pretty ridiculously easy to cause phase out.



Personally I will take a stealer shock army with a flying Tyrant any day of the week over a Necron army that doesn't have any Heavy Destroyers in it. I'm not saying you'll win every single time, but I certainly like my chances.

The x2 TL Devourer Tyrant, OTOH is able to shoot with pretty devestating effects (12 TL BS4 S6 shots that also re-roll to wound) and then he's able to follow that up with a charge that has (with Acid Maw & +1WS) four WS6, S6 attacks that re-roll wounds and ignore armor saves (and cause double wounds against multi-wound creatures due to Implant Attack).




Hate to correct you, but doesn't the Flyrant Devourer have strength 5? Base 5, +1 for toxin sacs, -1 for Devourer? And The Acid Maw only allows 1's to be rerolled.

Railguns wrote:



Hate to correct you, but doesn't the Flyrant Devourer have strength 5? Base 5, +1 for toxin sacs, -1 for Devourer? And The Acid Maw only allows 1's to be rerolled.

Yes the tyrant is Str 5 devourers, but the acid maw allows full re-rolls not just 1s.

Yeah, my bad on the Devourers.

Deleted.

hoffner5 wrote:

Is he unkillable because of the previously mentioned 2+ armor save combined with high toughness? My recollection is that flyrants cannot take extended carapace, so it will be stuck with a 3+ save.

Warp Field. It's a 2+/6+ save.

Xenos killing xenos. A beautiful thang.

: )

- G(reen)