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As a necron player, I've come to rely on my ability to keep out of close combat through monoliths and veils, but recently I've started thinking if a different approach would be viable.

What I was thinking of was to stick the deceiver, 20 warriors and 30 immortals into a single list, relying on the immortals doing the long range damage while the deceiver acts as a counter charger and the warriors form two tarpits to catch assaulters. I haven't had the opportunity to playtest this, as I'm lacking a few immortals and the deceiver and I don't have good enough models to proxy them with. (Space Marine-immortals just seem stupid, and I refuse to use them)

So, what I'm asking is, has any of you long time players tried anything like this out, and how did it fare compared to a more traditional VoD/monolith list? If not, any opinions on how it would do? How would you counter an opponent using this sort of a strategy while keeping your list an "all-comers" list at the same time?

Funny enough, I don't think I've ever played in a game against a necron player who has used a monolith. That being said, lots of warriors with immortals will work, but you really need to pack in destroyers to really give you that long range punch. Once you have that, just rail the closest / fastest moveing thing your opponent has each turn and you'll be well on your way to winning.

unless it is an alpha recon then you will be hurting.

I've played against lists that are kinda close to what you suggest. Take a destroyer lord with a warscythe and a phase shifter, max out on immortals and warriors, take the deceiver like you said.

I guess I'd build it like this

deceiver, then destroyer lord, then 30 immortals, then depending on the game size, as many necrons as you have points left. I wouldn't go smaller than 12 man units.

It's probably not as frustratingly powerful to play against as a 'real' necron army, but it plays alright. I'm sure you are imagining hanging back and drawing enemies in, and thats exactly what you've got to do. you'll be relying on warriors to actually do work rather than hide all game like mine do. March towards objectives, keep the deceiver and the destroyer close to potential trouble areas, kill things with immortals, remember the objective of the game and you could win a slight majority of your games against a cross section of opponents. use the destroyer lord to go after basilisks/demolishers/leman russes etc.

It may be an interesting list for you to use occasionally, but I predict very little in the way of fun for you and your opponent, you'll be back to liths and veils soon.

I would suggest perhaps taking some HD if you are thinking about 5th ed - cause otherwise Necrons really just have no AT power above AV11. And Destroyers are now useful in Phalanx again, at least partly, so go for it.

Phoenix:

How did your opponents then do against you? I've found that a monolith is invaluable when the dice seem to be against you, and its tough enough to stand on it's own.
Destroyers are indeed lifesavers, but the extra 18" effective range on them isn't too big of an advantage against most armies, since I've found that the bulk of your damage is done at 24" or less. I suppose I could use them to force the enemy to come after me, but tbh, its not the shooty armies that I imagine having a problem with and few things have an assault threat range of 24" or more. (Dark eldar wytches in a raider and winged lash princes come to mind...)

While destroyers are awesome, I figure that this strategy would rely mostly on being too tough to phase out. Destroyers cost about the same as two immortals and are twice as fragile. The main reason to invest in a monolith in my opinion is to increase the durability of your expensive units so that you get more bang for your buck.
So, do you really find destroyers to be mandatory in all lists? I always imagined that with the current gauss rules, immortals and destroyers are pretty much exchangable for each other...

neofright:

Yeah, alpha recon is going to be hell.

Shep:

I don't really like the idea of an assaulty destroyer lord. The setup you're suggesting costs about the same as six immortals or three destroyers and a warrior, and I don't think he can be enough of a melee threat with his pathetic initiative 4. Although he is ideal for taking down vehicles with AV 12 and terminators, that's a lot of points going into a unit that I don't really expect to live past the first initiative 5 counter assaulters I see.

The warriors on the other hand I don't expect to do really anything. Without a resurrection orb, they quickly become melta, plasma or lascannon food, not to mention being torn apart with power weapons in assault. I suppose they can put the hurt on some units, but I thought their primary use was to shoot twice, catch assaulters, lose combat, fail morale and be insta-gibbed. That would lean towards many minimum sized units, but with 18 points a pop, the warriors are a little too expensive to be just meatshields, and if they are supposted to be shooty they fail miserably compared to immortals. One idea is to use scarabs to catch the assaulters, giving the warriors time to reposition and get ready for when the scarabs start to die... which is what I'll probably try once I get a game going.

The problem is that most of my games are 1500 points, which really limits my options. The deceiver, 30 immortals and the minimum 20 warriors comes to exactly 1500 points, so in order to include more units I'll have to reduce the amount of immortals I'm taking or swap the c'tan for a lord...

lords2001:

I actually haven't even seen the leaked 5ed pdf everyone keeps talking about, but heavy destroyers are indeed very useful to take down sv 2+ units. I just figure that my deceiver's 4 strenght 9 initiative 5 attacks that ignore all saves are enough to take care of fexes, tyrants, terminators and all other threats that heavy destroyers excel against. As for vehicles, doesn't gauss weaponry still cause automatic glancing hits in 5th ed?

You've described my army almost precisely. I've got some Batreps up, so you can go there for detailed listings, but my short answer to your query is: Very Well!

Without spending points on teleporting you reserve them entirely for pure Gauss doom. The armys glaring weakness, assault, is compensated for by the Deceiver, who acts as a goalie. The remainder of the army is the mandatory 20 warriors and some mix of Immortals and Destroyers. The goal is to win via long range gauss while the Deceiver mangles any enemy assault element, or meanders towards their gunline if they have no assault elements. In my opinion it's one of the 2 or 3 strongest lists currently active in 40k.

This army's most difficult matchup is twin lash Chaos, who have a strong advantage as their lashes pretty much negate the Deceiver and WBB, and their durability is comparable to the t5 Necrons. Besides that match there isn't any army you shouldn't expect to have a less than 50% win ratio against. Mech Eldar, Nidzilla, Drop pod Marines, this list can complete with any of them.

My current version, at 1850:

Deceiver
10 warriors
10 warriors
6 Immortals
6 Immortals
6 Immortals
3 Destroyers
3 Destroyers
3 Destroyers
1 Heavy Destroyer
1 Heavy Destroyer
1 Heavy Destroyer