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2CP.

A necron warrior or immortal unit armed with gauss flayers or blasters may network their targeting and firing timing routines to fire a single precisely focused shot at a particularly tough enemy unit.

The unit must contain at least 5 models. When using this strategem, the entire unit must select one eligible target and fire at it. Make one to hit roll. If the shot hits add 1 to either the str or AP of the hit, and add an additional 1 to either str or AP for every 3 models in the firing unit, to a maximum of 6 points total. If the shot wounds it add 1 to damage plus 1 for every 3 models in the firing unit.

Rational for this: necron warriors and immortals are extremely inflexible units in terms of options and equipment. This gives them a chance of damaging tougher units at the cost of 2cp and forfeiting fire at any other unit that turn.

Not sure about the stacking effect.
At most you will get a +3 mod from immortals and +6 from warriors.

Which means that you'll end up with S8 blasters and S10 flayers. That's kind of weird.

Well, that assumes you only add to str, not ap or d. You have, with an 18 warrior squad, a total of 7 points to add to str, ap or D. With immortals at a max of 10 you only get 4 points to add. But the immortals gauss blasters are stronger to start with.

If you spread the bonuses out in a warrior blob, you could add 2 to each and end up at 1 str6, ap3, d4 shot with one point to add to any of them. At a cost of 2cp and forfeiting 20 regular shots. Not exactly a game breaker. Could still surprise a single more powerful target.

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
Well, that assumes you only add to str, not ap or d. You have, with an 18 warrior squad, a total of 7 points to add to str, ap or D. With immortals at a max of 10 you only get 4 points to add. But the immortals gauss blasters are stronger to start with.

If you spread the bonuses out in a warrior blob, you could add 2 to each and end up at 1 str6, ap3, d4 shot with one point to add to any of them. At a cost of 2cp and forfeiting 20 regular shots. Not exactly a game breaker. Could still surprise a single more powerful target.

I honestly feel this is too weak.

20 warriors are 20 shots, 13.33 hits, and against, say, a Knight, 2.22 wounds and 1.11 wounds. You're pretty likely to get AT LEAST one. According to Anydice, you've got a 68.12% chance of doing one wound and a 30.61% chance of doing two.

With this ONE SHOT, you get one S5 AP-2 D6 shot, or one S8 AP-2 D3 shot.

That is, for the high damage, .67 hits, .22 wounds, .15 unsaved, and .89 damage. (Numbers look a little odd because I rounded in the text, but didn't round on my calculator.)
The other shot gets you .67 hits, .33 wounds, .22 unsaved, and .67 damage. (Again, numbers are odd because of rounding.)

Not only is it less on average, you have a whopping...
85.19% chance of doing NOTHING on the S5 shot, and 77.78% chance of doing nothing on the S8.

What about "select a unit armed with Gauss weaponry. Until the end of the phase, add 1 to wound rolls of Gauss weapons against VEHICLES"
Tesla is good as is, it's gauss that needs the AT options. Make it 1 CP and we're good

Oh wow, I misread that big time. I thought you still get a bunch of shots and you can buff the strength of all of them, to represent the sheer deluge of attacks.

Your proposed rule actually reminds me a lot of a similar mechanic from Dropzone Commander.

In that game there is a unit called scourge warriors. Much like necrons, they have better guns than the other factions, but at a shorter range.
And much like necrons, whilst every other faction gets an anti-tank weapon, this unit doesn't.
However, what this unit can do to compensate is to combine their hits into a single, stronger attack, that's actually better than the other faction's anti-tank equivalents.
IIRC, how it works is that for every three hits on a target, you can combine them together to make a single E11 (basically S11. The highest strength level in DZC is 14) hit.

So what I'm getting at is, why not use that system?
Instead of rolling to hit, you activate the strategem, fire normally and for every 3 hits you can make a single hit that's equal to 2x the strength value, 3x the AP value and 3x the damage value.

So warriors would get S8 AP-3 D3, and immortals would get S10 AP-6 D3

Now, I don't know the exact stats of a knight, but I think at least one of those would get through to deal 3 damage.

Why limit it to just immortals and warriors though? There are other units that field gauss type weapons.
It might be op on destroyers though, hah.

None of these suggestions help against 3++ Knights, the most AP you need in November 2018 is -2. MWs with a single unit firing Gauss weapons on wound rolls of 6 against a single vehicle for 1 CP, 2 CP for PL 10+.

Your suggestions seem really good for abilities gauss weapons should just have, not worth taking gauss troops and then also paying CP for though.

 pique311 wrote:
What about "select a unit armed with Gauss weaponry. Until the end of the phase, add 1 to wound rolls of Gauss weapons against VEHICLES"
Tesla is good as is, it's gauss that needs the AT options. Make it 1 CP and we're good

This seems like a reasonable way to boost the damage output of a big squad, and it seems like a solid throwback to the old gauss rule. Is it effective enough against knights though?

And for the sake of discussion, what about making it like a more niche version of the Snakebite stratagem? 2 or 3 CP. Choose an enemy vehicle at the start of the shooting phase. All gauss weapons add +1 to to-wound rolls against that unit for the remainder of the phase. Too much?

OK so would this be better if it was a default setting and cost no CP? Also what if they could do it twice with weapons at half range?

I like the idea of a mortal wound, but perhaps make it dependant on the amount of hits.

For example:

Focussed Gauss: for every 10 hits inflicted on a vehicle by this unit in this shooting phase with GAUSS weapons, the target vehicle also receives a mortal wound in addition to any other damage.

so it's not mind bendingly powerful, but it does mean that overwhelming firepower can chip away at the enemies heavy armour. Wouldn't work on infantry as they wouldn't be focussing. brings back the old "glance on 6's" from the original Gauss weapons.

You need to make it generic for monsters too.

Focused Gauss (3CP): Choose a unit. During this Shooting Phase, the AP values of Gauss weaponry that unit uses apply to all saves (armor saves, invulnerable saves, feel no pain/disgustingly resilient etc.).

Thoughts?

 Phaeron Gukk wrote:
Focused Gauss (3CP): Choose a unit. During this Shooting Phase, the AP values of Gauss weaponry that unit uses apply to all saves (armor saves, invulnerable saves, feel no pain/disgustingly resilient etc.).

Thoughts?

Feels a little wonky and doesn't seem to really address the core issue of, "Necrons need better anti-big-stuff."

Even if you adjusted the language to actually work against both saves and feel no pain variants (nitpick, but FNP equivalents aren't saves), it wouldn't do much against the majority of vehicles out there. A rhino, for instance, wouldn't be impacted by this change. I'm also not sure why your ability to dissolve me layer by layer suddenly makes you better at getting around my holo-suit invul save or a Succubus's dodge save.

Something like +1 to wound against big stuff or mortal wounds on 6s against big stuff seems cleaner and more directly helpful for the goal of upping Necrons' collective anti-tank abilities.

The wording needs work, but I think it gets the idea across.
The issue I have with a flat wounding bonus is that I can already wound stuff sufficiently well with Extermination Protocols, DDA's, etc. It's the rules writers' habit of plastering invuln saves on every other reasonably high toughness target that makes Necron anti-tank wiff in my experience (that and rolling way too much dice for no. of damage/shots). Mortal wounds might work, but I'm not sure.

OK, maybe one cp, unit must fire at one single target, makes one to hit roll for the unit and on a hit the target takes one mortal wound for every 3 units in the squad in addition to normal damage? Gauss flayer and blaster units only. Can be done twice of the unit is in rapid fire range. Or would 2 cp be better? Or 1cp to fire once and 2cp to rapid fire if in range? I'm open to ideas here...


Obviously on a shot like this you'll use any sort of bonus to to shooting you can get, making triarch stalkers more useful.

Take the dynasty with the solar fury option that adds 1 to AP and use this at12" to make vehicle owners sweat a little.

I suppose tomb blades could be allowed to use this with gauss fire. Given the minimal benefit tomb blades would get from this they might be allowed to do it sans command points, being a built in targeting option.

Not sure how to do this with doomsday or ghost arks, given the number of shots from their gauss arrays they could get waaaay excessive bonuses against vehicles. Might have to rule that arks can't do it...

Honestly the best fix for Triarch units is to actually make them feel elite and give them WS/BS2+. That's a whole different topic though.

A stalker is useful in that you can reroll 1s when shooting after it hits something.

Not sure what the math is on how many doomsday arks you would need to buff with the stalker for it to be better than just paying for another ark. My guess would be Too Many.

I'm not a fan of the unit making a single shot, because it implies that either all of them hit or all of them miss.

I still think that a mortal wound for every X hits would be sufficient. The idea is that an overwhelming quantity of gauss is hitting the target and that a large unit should be more effective than a small one at this.

2CP, use when targeting a VEHICLE, MONSTER or TITANIC unit in the shooting phase. For every 5 hits with gauss weapons from this unit this phase, inflict a mortal wound in addition to other damage. All models in the unit must fire at the same target.

IIRC max squad is 20 warriors, so 40 shots, if all hit that's 8 mortal wounds. More likely to get 5-6. it'll take a chunk out of most vehicles. Can anything Necron kick out more gauss fire than that? if so, might have to increase the hits per MW to 6.
Alternatively, discard the hits and inflict MW, no normal damage. leftover hits can still be used.

so score 19 hits, discard 15 for 3 MW, then roll to wound with the 4 leftover hits.

 some bloke wrote:
I'm not a fan of the unit making a single shot, because it implies that either all of them hit or all of them miss.

I still think that a mortal wound for every X hits would be sufficient. The idea is that an overwhelming quantity of gauss is hitting the target and that a large unit should be more effective than a small one at this.

2CP, use when targeting a VEHICLE, MONSTER or TITANIC unit in the shooting phase. For every 5 hits with gauss weapons from this unit this phase, inflict a mortal wound in addition to other damage. All models in the unit must fire at the same target.

IIRC max squad is 20 warriors, so 40 shots, if all hit that's 8 mortal wounds. More likely to get 5-6. it'll take a chunk out of most vehicles. Can anything Necron kick out more gauss fire than that? if so, might have to increase the hits per MW to 6.
Alternatively, discard the hits and inflict MW, no normal damage. leftover hits can still be used.

so score 19 hits, discard 15 for 3 MW, then roll to wound with the 4 leftover hits.

I've actually come to agree with you. One mortal wound per 3 hits regardless of whether they penetrate/wound or not sounds like a good option, but again the WHOLE unit MUST fire at ONE target,

 Techpriestsupport wrote:

 some bloke wrote:
I'm not a fan of the unit making a single shot, because it implies that either all of them hit or all of them miss.

I still think that a mortal wound for every X hits would be sufficient. The idea is that an overwhelming quantity of gauss is hitting the target and that a large unit should be more effective than a small one at this.

2CP, use when targeting a VEHICLE, MONSTER or TITANIC unit in the shooting phase. For every 5 hits with gauss weapons from this unit this phase, inflict a mortal wound in addition to other damage. All models in the unit must fire at the same target.

IIRC max squad is 20 warriors, so 40 shots, if all hit that's 8 mortal wounds. More likely to get 5-6. it'll take a chunk out of most vehicles. Can anything Necron kick out more gauss fire than that? if so, might have to increase the hits per MW to 6.
Alternatively, discard the hits and inflict MW, no normal damage. leftover hits can still be used.

so score 19 hits, discard 15 for 3 MW, then roll to wound with the 4 leftover hits.

I've actually come to agree with you. One mortal wound per 3 hits regardless of whether they penetrate/wound or not sounds like a good option, but again the WHOLE unit MUST fire at ONE target,

That's REALLY not a downside like you're trying to make it to be.

 Techpriestsupport wrote:

 some bloke wrote:
I'm not a fan of the unit making a single shot, because it implies that either all of them hit or all of them miss.

I still think that a mortal wound for every X hits would be sufficient. The idea is that an overwhelming quantity of gauss is hitting the target and that a large unit should be more effective than a small one at this.

2CP, use when targeting a VEHICLE, MONSTER or TITANIC unit in the shooting phase. For every 5 hits with gauss weapons from this unit this phase, inflict a mortal wound in addition to other damage. All models in the unit must fire at the same target.

IIRC max squad is 20 warriors, so 40 shots, if all hit that's 8 mortal wounds. More likely to get 5-6. it'll take a chunk out of most vehicles. Can anything Necron kick out more gauss fire than that? if so, might have to increase the hits per MW to 6.
Alternatively, discard the hits and inflict MW, no normal damage. leftover hits can still be used.

so score 19 hits, discard 15 for 3 MW, then roll to wound with the 4 leftover hits.

I've actually come to agree with you. One mortal wound per 3 hits regardless of whether they penetrate/wound or not sounds like a good option, but again the WHOLE unit MUST fire at ONE target,

Don't we do that already? I mean, there's not really any point in splitting fire from a unit that all have the same weapon, now is there?

 vict0988 wrote:
None of these suggestions help against 3++ Knights, .

yeah but there's not ONLY knight in the ''big tanky vehicule'' departement that necrons must deal with. AT weapons are also good for kastellan robot, riptides, leman russes + manticore parking lot, etc.
Personally, i like the idea that you can couple every 3 guys together for a bigger hit, it reminds me a lot of CombinedRangedAttack in warmachine, which is exactly how they give certain unit of weak models the ability to still be usefull against heavier armour.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Techpriestsupport wrote:

 some bloke wrote:
I'm not a fan of the unit making a single shot, because it implies that either all of them hit or all of them miss.

I still think that a mortal wound for every X hits would be sufficient. The idea is that an overwhelming quantity of gauss is hitting the target and that a large unit should be more effective than a small one at this.

2CP, use when targeting a VEHICLE, MONSTER or TITANIC unit in the shooting phase. For every 5 hits with gauss weapons from this unit this phase, inflict a mortal wound in addition to other damage. All models in the unit must fire at the same target.

IIRC max squad is 20 warriors, so 40 shots, if all hit that's 8 mortal wounds. More likely to get 5-6. it'll take a chunk out of most vehicles. Can anything Necron kick out more gauss fire than that? if so, might have to increase the hits per MW to 6.
Alternatively, discard the hits and inflict MW, no normal damage. leftover hits can still be used.

so score 19 hits, discard 15 for 3 MW, then roll to wound with the 4 leftover hits.

I've actually come to agree with you. One mortal wound per 3 hits regardless of whether they penetrate/wound or not sounds like a good option, but again the WHOLE unit MUST fire at ONE target,

That's REALLY not a downside like you're trying to make it to be.

I think the idea is that all damage must be allocated to a single model? So the rule would only be helpful against monsters and vehicles, it would do nothing against a squad.

I like that, actually - it would need a bit of "special snowflaking" to make it work, but make it so that "all mortal wounds must be allocated to a single model, and do not carry over to other models if the first model is slain. this is an exception to the usual rules for mortal wounds."

it's up to the defender to allocate the MW, so it's a waste to use this on any non-scary units, and better to use it on single, large models.

I don't think 3 hits is enough though, would definitely go for every 5 instead. 20 warriors in rapid fire would inflict about 23 hits, so 8-9 MW's if it needs 3, or 4 MW's if it needs 5. any more than 4 MW's in one go seems gratuitous to me, and vastly OP.

Keep in mind you're wasting 240 pts of shooting wounding on 5s and doing 1 damage with AP -1 (-2 with Mephrit). 240 pts worth of range 12 shooting should destroy a vehicle. 3 Salamanders Tac Squads with meltas do about 11 wounds using 1 CP for a re-roll, that's Tac Squads... Doing 5 MWs + the 2-5 AP-1 D1 wounds for 240 pts and 2 CP isn't going to break the game. 1 CP isn't worth a single MW, that's the hallmark of a gak Stratagem, this one would have to be really good to make up for the fact that you're shooting 240 pts worth of units into something they don't want to shoot at.

GW isn't going to release new Stratagems specifically for Necrons unless it's part of that new rumoured formation thing that might be coming out in the future. I suppose it'd make more sense to talk about something you might buy as an upgrade for several units at the start of the game because that's what's rumoured to actually come out. 1-3 CP (depending on if you want to make a balanced faction or a balanced Stratagem) to give every Necron unit in a Detachment a minimum of D2 against Vehicles and Monsters when using Gauss weapons would be nice.

OK if a mortal wound for every 3 hits is too high if a 20 man unit can fire suppose we limit it to like 3 mortal wounds tops, but we must let it work with rapid fire. I mean if they get close enough to use rapid fire they deserve some reward. They would ace to roll the two rapid fire shots separately.

I know a 20 warrior letting rip would normally be like 14-15 hits and 4-5 mortal wounds so this would cap it at 3 for a non rapid fire attack, 6 for a rapid fore one.

 some bloke wrote:
I like that, actually - it would need a bit of "special snowflaking" to make it work, but make it so that "all mortal wounds must be allocated to a single model, and do not carry over to other models if the first model is slain. this is an exception to the usual rules for mortal wounds."

it's up to the defender to allocate the MW, so it's a waste to use this on any non-scary units, and better to use it on single, large models.

I don't think 3 hits is enough though, would definitely go for every 5 instead. 20 warriors in rapid fire would inflict about 23 hits, so 8-9 MW's if it needs 3, or 4 MW's if it needs 5. any more than 4 MW's in one go seems gratuitous to me, and vastly OP.

Why not just tie it to the vehicle/monster keyword as those are the targets this is really meant to help against?

"Use this stratagem in the shooting phase when you target an enemy Monster or Vehicle with a unit equipped with gauss weapons. For every X successful to-hit rolls generated with the attacking unit's gauss weapons, the target unit suffers 1 mortal wound in addition to any other damage."

Technically, it would spill over to other vehicles/monsters that were squadded up, but that doesn't seem so bad to me. Think of it as the warriors redirecting their focused fire once they've determined their initial target has been critically damaged.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
OK if a mortal wound for every 3 hits is too high if a 20 man unit can fire suppose we limit it to like 3 mortal wounds tops, but we must let it work with rapid fire. I mean if they get close enough to use rapid fire they deserve some reward. They would ace to roll the two rapid fire shots separately.

I know a 20 warrior letting rip would normally be like 14-15 hits and 4-5 mortal wounds so this would cap it at 3 for a non rapid fire attack, 6 for a rapid fore one.

Stratagems that inflict d3 (average 2) mortal wounds are usually 1CP. 2CP for up to 6 mortals doesn't seem so bad. Assuming you up the BS of a given squad to 2+ when you plan on using this (which you will every chance you get), then you're looking at about 1 miss per 6 shots. 3 warriors or immortals = 6 shots. So for the sake of easy math, 18 warriors would fire 36 shots in rapid fire range and hit about 30 times. If we say that you generate 1 mortal wound for every 5 hits, you're looking at about 6 mortal wounds. Pretty respectable. It's powerful, but you have to get in range with it, opponents will often try to whittle down large warrior squads thus reducing how effective this stratagem will be. Even if you get lucky and manage to hit with all 40 shots from a 20 man squad, you're still only looking at 8 mortals. Which is a lot, but probably not game-breaking. It more or less ensures you'll kill a rhino-sized target, but you're investing in an expensive unit and its delivery system to pull it off.

30 hits wounding 1/3rd of the time against T7 (i.e. most non-light vehicles) = 10 wounds. Assuming a 3+ save (which becomes a 4+ against warriors), you're looking at 5 unsaved wounds + 6 mortals = 11 damage. Enough to kill most vehicles in the game, but only just barely.

I guess what I'm saying is that an artificial limit on the max number of mortals probably isn't needed. If it's 1 per 5, you'll be generating a healthy number of mortal wounds on top of your normal damage.

considering that with nihilus, Imperial fist get the following :
1CP-Seismic devastation: Use this Stratagem at the start of the shooting or fight phase. Pick a Siegebreaker unit from your army. For each wound roll of a 6+, inflict a mortal wound on top of any additional damage.

I'd say that this idea makes more and more sense. I know they can't use this with, say, 20-man space marine bolter squad, but I think cents can shoot a good amount of shots too?

VoidSempai wrote:
considering that with nihilus, Imperial fist get the following :
1CP-Seismic devastation: Use this Stratagem at the start of the shooting or fight phase. Pick a Siegebreaker unit from your army. For each wound roll of a 6+, inflict a mortal wound on top of any additional damage.

I'd say that this idea makes more and more sense. I know they can't use this with, say, 20-man space marine bolter squad, but I think cents can shoot a good amount of shots too?

Cents can, in theory, get 36 Bolter shots plus their heavy weapons.

They also suck. Really hard. Even with this.