Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Does anyone have any solutions to armor for Necrons.
Because I realized with the changes in 8th we have a hard time killing tanks.

Codex is coming next month. Aparently some mobility and wargear options are returning.

If mobility gets a big boost, lychguard with warscythes will pretty much eat everything alive.

3+ WS, str 7, ap-4, dmg 2, 2 attacks per model

10 Lychguard

13ish hits 7ish wounds 12-14 dmg. average against a land raider.

Hopefully they will get some kind of points drop or an extra attack or something.

 Lance845 wrote:
Codex is coming next month. Aparently some mobility and wargear options are returning.

If mobility gets a big boost, lychguard with warscythes will pretty much eat everything alive.

3+ WS, str 7, ap-4, dmg 2, 2 attacks per model

10 Lychguard

13ish hits 7ish wounds 12-14 dmg. average against a land raider.

Hopefully they will get some kind of points drop or an extra attack or something.

Landraider is T8 Sv2+, so it is likely you get somewhere 4 wounds through armor save. So it takes 8 dmg. Not bad, at least it is down one category now, but not as powerful. And you need to find a reliable way to get them in there.

I think it is better to go Heavy Guass Canon spam..... It has good range and the platform has good mobility, and the Overlords nearby can make them hit on 2+. Just the points costs is so high for both the Destroyer body AND the canon. Hope it decrease in the codex.

Triarch Stalkers seem good; a sturdy platform with a strong weapon that buffs all of your other anti-tank shooting even if it doesn't hit. If FW is an option Sentry Pylons ain't too shabby either.

It's almost pointless to discuss this with the codex so close. A lot depends on how some of the current options, like the Stalker and others, get tweaked and where the synergy lies in the new rules. Plus all this deployment and movement related goodness we keep hearing about.

Personally, I hope Stalkers get good enough to be regular choices in competitive lists. I like the model a lot, and I like the synergy potential it has.

 Fenris-77 wrote:
It's almost pointless to discuss this with the codex so close. A lot depends on how some of the current options, like the Stalker and others, get tweaked and where the synergy lies in the new rules. Plus all this deployment and movement related goodness we keep hearing about.

Personally, I hope Stalkers get good enough to be regular choices in competitive lists. I like the model a lot, and I like the synergy potential it has.

How good stalkers are will probably depend on how good quantum shielding is. If it's the -1 damage to a minimum of 1 like the warlord trait, I expect you'll see more Necron vehicles.

As for how current necrons deal with anti-vehicles, the answer is not efficiently:

Ranged
Heavy destroyers - like a dev squad you pay 225 points for but only get three las cannons.
Stalker - A dreadnought equivalent with twin las.
Lots of Destroyers - like heavy destroyers but not as good at killing vehicles.
Monolith - Particle whip is so so, but on the list because necrons have so little else

melee
C'tan - Surprisingly not crap, basically a juiced up powerfist, doing a d6 damage at -4 AP.
Lychguard - With scythes they aren't bad, but seeing them in melee on the back line is like seeing a turtle on top of a fence post, you aren't sure how they got there, but you are pretty sure they didn't do it themselves.
Scarabs - always wounding on 5s makes them surprisingly not completely awful, just kind of bad.

Triarch stalker X 2 Doomsday ark X3 is what i use for 1000pts right now.
We'll see with the codex. 6 Heavy destroyer might come back with a vengence.

 Grimgold wrote:

Heavy destroyers - like a dev squad you pay 225 points for but only get three las cannons.

Place them in cover, put an overlord nearby. With MWBD heavy destroyers hit on 2+, rerolling 1s. They have a 2+ armor sv, a nearby cryptek gives them 5++, and +1 to RP. Still, a lot of points. I expect a point drop for them, something like 50 pts.

 Grimgold wrote:

Scarabs - always wounding on 5s makes them surprisingly not completely awful, just kind of bad.

While scarabs arent huge damage dealers they prevent enemy vehicles from firing. Usually vehicles cant outrun them. Once they are in CC, the vehicle is pretty much useless. Unless it can still fire when falling back.

 Grimgold wrote:


How good stalkers are will probably depend on how good quantum shielding is. If it's the -1 damage to a minimum of 1 like the warlord trait, I expect you'll see more Necron vehicles.

As for how current necrons deal with anti-vehicles, the answer is not efficiently:

Ranged
Heavy destroyers - like a dev squad you pay 225 points for but only get three las cannons.
Stalker - A dreadnought equivalent with twin las.
Lots of Destroyers - like heavy destroyers but not as good at killing vehicles.
Monolith - Particle whip is so so, but on the list because necrons have so little else

Quantum shield is really good defence for Necron vehicles, since it have a quite high chance to nullify those Damage 4 or higher wounds. Making Dmg 3 or Dmg 2 weapons the only good choice against Necron Vehicles.

Heavy Destroyers have the mobility that Marine Devastators lack, and do not suffer -1 to hit penalty for moving. They are overpriced sure, but their mobility is one of their great merit.

Massed Destroyers might be...... not bad, but their "low strength" (for standard of AT / Anti Monster) really sucks, and they are not much cheaper than heavy destroyers. So, unless there are something in the Necron army allow them to reroll to wound rolls, it might be better to go with the heavy destroyers. The normal Destroyers looks more like an anti Terminator Centurion / biker / Primaris Marines / Chaos Obilterators or Plague Marines / Nidz Warriors or Raveners unit due to S5 and D3D.

Quantum shielding is bonkers right now, it's as bad as Grav in 7th ed in terms of poor design. It makes you immune to quite a few titan weapons, it's going to get changed.

You bring heavy destroyers to do one job, kill fatties, anything that is not directly related to that is just wasted points. Sure they can move and not get a -1 to hit, but with a 36" range how often do they have to move to get in range to kill fatties? You cop a squat in some cover, and hope you live long enough to earn your points back. They are expensive enough per model to make shooting them with lascannons totally worthwhile, so the extra wounds and toughness just don't end up mattering all that often.

They either need to get much tougher so they can fill the role of light vehicles, or get dropped down to glorified bikes, and become much cheaper. This half and half thing they have going on right now is awful, because they are not cheap enough to deploy in numbers, but not tough enough to be depended on at low model count.

If you don't change their statline, you'll have to give them something like the guards shoot twice if you didn't move to bring them up to snuff.

Neophyte2012 wrote:
Massed Destroyers might be...... not bad, but their "low strength" (for standard of AT / Anti Monster) really sucks, and they are not much cheaper than heavy destroyers. So, unless there are something in the Necron army allow them to reroll to wound rolls, it might be better to go with the heavy destroyers. The normal Destroyers looks more like an anti Terminator Centurion / biker / Primaris Marines / Chaos Obilterators or Plague Marines / Nidz Warriors or Raveners unit due to S5 and D3D.

Destroyer Lords let destroyers (and heavy destroyers) reroll 1's to wound. Generally not considered to be worth his rather exorbitant points cost, though.

"Not worth the exorbitant point cost" covers pretty much the entire index right now.

Oh, a unit that kinda sneaks by in this argument is Illuminor Szeras. He's not the most efficient choice in terms of damage per point but there's definitely something to be said for putting a long range anti-tank weapon on a character body. HQ's are kind of a tax for Necrons at the moment so since you have to take one anyways why not take one that contributes significantly to your anti-vehicle damage output?

The best analogy I can think of for space marine players is imagine if the only heavy weapons you had access to came on devastator centurions. That's one of the fundamental flaws with necrons currently.

Both RP and QS have their problems, but they make Necrons unique and fun (my opinion). There are ways to fix these shortcomings and hopefully that's just what we'll see in the codex (although I wouldn't hold my breath).

Changing QS to -1 damage will make it worse against las cannons and melta guns. It will however get better against autocannons and oc plasma. Looking at pure numbers the average QS is usually better than -1 damage if you average a bunch of different weapon types.

The sad thing is that Necron vehicles are also T6 which is probably a factor of them having QS.

Quantum Shielding Numbers

1 damage averages to 1 damage dealt, no damage reduced
2 damage averages to 1.67 damage dealt, damage reduced by .33
3 damage averages to 2 damage dealt, damage reduced by 1
4 damage averages to 2 damage dealt, damage reduced by 2
5 damage averages to 1.67 damage dealt, damage reduced by 3.33
6 damage averages to 1 damage dealt, damage reduced by 5

Average reduction on a d6 damage weapon is 1.94.

On topic:
The solution is FW. Tesseract Arks seems good and so does the Tomb sentinels.
The index doesn't have any good anti armor. Some swear by the Triarch stalker, but 2 lascannon shots for 181 points?

Off topic:
This is a comparison of QS vs -1 damage for different weapon types.
The bottom row averages doesn't really say much, because it's an average on one weapon of each type fired, Nonetheless it's an interesting number to look at.


So which one is better is entirely up to your meta. QS better against high damage. -1 reduction better against medium damage.

What can be said is that QS has the potential for higher damage reduction at an increased unreliability.
However it does give you the option to reroll a QS roll for a CP.

Should the Necron vehicles be more survivable? Should they be as survivable as Alaitoc Wave Serpents and Plague Burst Crawlers (and Necron Tesseract Arks)?
I would like to see the following and no changes to QS except maybe that >6 damage weapons auto penetrate the shield or is halved.
Triarch stalker: T7
Ghost/doomsday ark: 3+ save
Doom/night scythe: T7
Monolith: -1 damage reduction
Annihilation barge: no change

... who I'm I kidding, it's highley unlikely that the codex will change anything.

I'd say the only change QS really needs is a roll of 6 always fails to negate the damage, giving a chance for Titan weapons and such to do damage.

On the anti-tank front, I use multiple triarch stalkers and they get the job done. They aren't the most efficient, but if you go non-forgeworld, I feel like they are a solid mix of firepower + durability. At least the best we have at the moment.