# necrons in need of dire help



## Andevard (Feb 3, 2009)

alright so i always play my friends who are CC freaks..
i'm looking for some type of strategy to be able to beat them in close combat.. we usually do 1500 or 2000 pt games..
usually what i do is gear up my necron lord with a destroyer body,warscythe, and res orb and take him with a squad of pariahs to counter their CC guys
my monolith usually sits around their guys.. particle whipping everything it can practically.. and i shoot stuff.. what am i doing wrong?


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## Katie Drake (Nov 28, 2007)

First, don't fool yourself into thinking that you can beat a close combat oriented army at its own game. The best you're going to be able to do is take a ton of Destroyers and shoot the living hell out of things before they get close. Immortals can do this job too.


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## Sebi (Mar 3, 2009)

Katie Drake said:


> First, don't fool yourself into thinking that you can beat a close combat oriented army at its own game. The best you're going to be able to do is take a ton of Destroyers and shoot the living hell out of things before they get close. Immortals can do this job too.


exactly what he said

we have absolutly no chance as Necron against a "normal" CC army and even less against a specialiced CC-List

I once was forced to handle a SW list and got caught in CC and it was pure luck my Warriors survived 2 rounds as I passed all LD tests (which were around 8 ... lucky me)

If you really want to take the challange your best bet would be a 
nightbringer
flayed ones
Wraiths
a Desi-Lord with Scythe

and Scarabs as Blocker

honestly ... shoot em down ... thats what Necrons are best at ... don't try to keep up with 5the Edition CC armies as our Skills in this area is screwed
the stability the WBB and our good Armour offers is worthless when being mowed down in a sweeping advance


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## Pirate Metal Troy (Jun 2, 2008)

Scarabs are awesome. Plant a conga line of scarabs in front of your guys. They don't provide cover, so you can shoot over top of them, without risk of getting assaulted. Destroyers are awesome in full squads, and if he;s running a lot of CC, the destroyers will probably get away with harassing them all day long.

Veil of Darkness. This little doo-dad will save your ass. especially with a big fat squad of immortals. just keep bouncing around the board unloading 20 shots at a time into his models. 

Scarabs form a defense wall in front of your warriors, who pull the usual phalanx bullshit, aided by your little scarab shield. When he kills the scarabs (hopefully on his turn) he'll get left standing around like tool. In eihter case, use the time bought by the scarabs wisely and get out of charge range, wait till he breaks combat, and unload on him with everything. Scarabs will rack up an impressive amount of hits and wounds in close combat if you get the charge, and at 3 wounds a piece, can be hard to take down with good rolls. When you factor in the fact that they move 12", and can turbo-boost, they're a steal for 12 points a model. one squad of 10 should do the trick. The little bastards are fearless to boot. So no sweeping advances.

Use that monolith to cycle your warriors and give them a longer life. If you can't keep a res-orb close, then you may be in for trouble. Being able to teleport your warriors out of close combat with the monolith will save you as well. You can only move one unit per turn, but if you've timed it right, that'll save most of that squad from dying a horrible death in CC, and get you another turn of shooting. 

Lord, res orb, veil of darkness

10 immortals

10 warriors
10 warriors

10 scarabs
5 destroyers
5 destroyers

Monolith

that's 1495, and if you're hurting for more warriors, you can try dropping the monolith. I've never used one, personally, but it seems like it'd be a tough nut to crack. Just use stall tactics to rack up as many turns of rapid fire as you possibly can.

Overlap your fire and try to drop your target entirely before moving onto the next. Another good tactic is a 20-man warrior squad teleporting with the veil of darkness. It's 40 shots of rapid fire, res orb protected, troops scoring goodness. 

It's always fun to plan your turns just right and end up with the "hammer" (very last turn) and your veiler still alive next to a troop choice. This give you the ability (scatter dice willing) to grab a last second objective, or teleport to the other side of the board and wipe out the last 3 models of a broken unit to grab one final kill point in annihilation.

Same goes for the monolith. You can teleport any "necron" 18" at the start of your turn, if you park the fat bastard on an objective and use it's teleport move to spit them out on the objective and grab a win, then it's a good times all around.

Don't forget that the scarabs (if they live, which is unlikely) can turbo-boost, as well as the destroyers, which makes for a few angry faces when you swoop in to contest an objective at the last moment.

That's about all I have for advice. Best of luck.


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## Andevard (Feb 3, 2009)

thanks!!
i have a game soon so hopefully this will help me kill those nasty 'nids.


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## Tim/Steve (Jan 25, 2009)

Pirate Metal Troy said:


> Scarabs are awesome. Plant a conga line of scarabs in front of your guys. They don't provide cover, so you can shoot over top of them, without risk of getting assaulted.


Almost total rubbish- this will work for destroyers since they are much higher then the scarabs but normal warrior sized infantry will give away cover when shooting through swarms- the rule stops MC/vehicles getting cover behind swarms (managing to hide 50% of either would be something to see) but nothing else... nids will still love you for giving their front rank a cover save (though any decent nid player should have 90% of his army in cover anyway).


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## jesse (Sep 29, 2008)

Pirate Metal Troy summed it up pretty much to a tee.
shoot, shoot, teleport, shoot.
win:biggrin:


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## Daneel2.0 (Jul 24, 2008)

jesse said:


> Pirate Metal Troy summed it up pretty much to a tee.
> shoot, shoot, teleport, shoot.
> win:biggrin:


consider yourself sig'd

:laugh:


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## Sebi (Mar 3, 2009)

Tim/Steve said:


> Almost total rubbish- this will work for destroyers since they are much higher then the scarabs but normal warrior sized infantry will give away cover when shooting through swarms- the rule stops MC/vehicles getting cover behind swarms (managing to hide 50% of either would be something to see) but nothing else... nids will still love you for giving their front rank a cover save (though any decent nid player should have 90% of his army in cover anyway).


in fact the Cover rule works in advance of the player placinf smaller units in front of the firing unit:

[quote="BRB p21 upper right]If a target is partially hidden from the firer’s view by
other models, it receives a 4+ cover save in the same
way as if it was behind terrain.[/quote]
so if anything of my NEcron warriors is blocked by a swarm I very well get 4+ cover

and as the cover is determined from the view of the firer it might very well happen that thw smaller unit that grants me cover does not grant your unit cover I am firing on

best example is the well known Gaunt shield or the Gretchin shield:
though the Tyra Zoa is "covered" by gauts its "viewing" point is so high any target it fires on will never get cover from the gaunts
same with Gretchin:
my Boyz and Nobz are big enough to see over the gretchin but will get cover as even if the slightes part of the model is covered by a gretchin blocking your LoS ... by RAW it gets cover.

long story short ...
Scarabswarms give cover esspecially if built as indended but do not block the LoS of the Warriors so the Warriors in most cases get cover.

Of course this is a very shacky problem and resolving the cover-situation is very hard as you have to count the models that are "covered" by swarms or Gretchinand then compare it with the Models further back in the target unit that are not covered ... but for ten Warriors I see no problem:
S = Scarab
W = Warrior

_S_S_S_S_S_S_S_
WWWWWWWWWW (unit 1)
WWWWWWWWWW (unit 2)


as you can see this 7 scarabs can provide cover very easily for the forst unit of warriors the following get theirs from the warriors in front of them ... now if you shift each warrior of unit 2 slightly left or right so that their LoS is not blocked by unit 1 and so again ... they might get very well cover but their LoS is not blocked so you don't get cover for them shooting through unit 1

it is cheesy somehow but very well legal


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## darklove (May 7, 2008)

Necrons don't really need many tactics: shoot stuff until it is dead and try not to get assaulted. It works for me.


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## Sebi (Mar 3, 2009)

darklove said:


> Necrons don't really need many tactics: shoot stuff until it is dead and try not to get assaulted. It works for me.


yeah ... but not getting assaulted is sometimes rather tricky when you consider Jumpmarines, Stormboyz Drop pods and fast transpot vehicles ... so I really like the idea of setting up my troops so that the enemy has no chance getting at my warriors and has to take out the cheaper Scarabs first :grin:

Anyway .... there are some possibilities to get out of CC alive as long as you don't have bad luck 

the few times I was caught I survided luckily with passing my Ld tests and then pulling my warriors out with a Mono or a VoD .... anyway getting caught in CC was those time a fatal misstake by myself so you are right in a general way:
Shoot'n'scoot Kill'n'win :grin:


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## Tim/Steve (Jan 25, 2009)

Oh no sebi, not that again- we've had a thread on just when swarms give cover or not ... you can argue they dont get in the way of LoS but its a pretty dodgy argument unless there is some kind of slope involved.
and FYI- its in the same way as area terrain... so you need 50% of your unit to be behind the interviening unit to be able to claim a cover save


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## Pirate Metal Troy (Jun 2, 2008)

Ohshit! You guys are right. Scarabs do provide cover, just not to monstrous creatures. I read the swarms rule wrong.


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## Sebi (Mar 3, 2009)

I see no point to argue about the rules are clear in this case as I quoted them

it gets shacky as soon as you have a larger unit behind the "screen" and then it is argueable but in my example there is no doubt - RAW the Warriors behind the Scarabs get cover (as long as you donÄt built the bases so low that nothing of the warrior is covered)

But you're right this is not the right place to discuss this matter.


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## Logyn (Oct 8, 2009)

Sebi said:


> best example is the well known Gaunt shield or the Gretchin shield:
> though the Tyra Zoa is "covered" by gauts its "viewing" point is so high any target it fires on will never get cover from the gaunts


actually, the zoanthrope's target gets a cover save too. the "view", or true los rule only applies to MC's and vehicles. any infantry model simply counts anything between them and their target as an intervening unit and therefore grants a 4+ cover save. The rules on cover in 5th edition are "deliberately generous," to quote the BRB, and swarms are still intervening models.

EDIT: didn't see 2nd page, sorry


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## Sebi (Mar 3, 2009)

sorry to bring it up again but you're wrong I am afraid:



BRB p16 said:


> Line of sight must be traced *from the eyes of the firing
> model* to any part of the body of at least one of the
> models in the target unit (for ‘body’ we mean its head,
> torso, legs and arms)


thats the reason why some people built their Fire warriors to crouch or lie to be able to fire through under the Tau skimmer tanks


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## Tim/Steve (Jan 25, 2009)

Which is also against the rules- you arent allowed to re-model your units just to get a gaming advantage (its in the BRB but I cant find where). Any of my models that are converted to be kneeling or taller then normal the LoS to and from then should be worked out as if they were standing in a normal pose.


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## Concrete Hero (Jun 9, 2008)

Back onto the Necrons...

An interesting build is one filled with Wraiths, with a Destroyer Lord with a warscythe and rez orb flying with them with a Monolith in tow. 

That Wraith Squad is ROCK hard to bring down, 3+ In with a double WBB? Thats insane... And they're bound to thin the attacks back against them with the I6m S6 and 4 attacks on the charge. While the warcythe can cut through pretty much anything.

Being Jetbikes means they'll close for assault pretty quickly and are a great means of contesting objectives towards the end of a game


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## Sebi (Mar 3, 2009)

Don't overrate the Wraith ... I have played them several times now in the combination you describe and often they were simply shot down with lots of fire so that no wraith was left for a WBB roll ... sometimes stupidity I admit but often concentrated fire of the opponent as they really are afraid of this unit caused by the stats you quote

so I really rather take 4-5 scarab bases as guards of the destroyerlord and let him do the dirty work ... the wraith are for me not the ideal choice ...
of course in lots of terrain like CoD or when we play a mission with it the wraiths are simply priceless as they move through anything without being stopped by anything and they have grenades etc ....
S6 with high ini combined with the lord is good ... but please keep the costs in mind and don't overrate this unit


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## Concrete Hero (Jun 9, 2008)

You mean like your overrating a T3 swarm with a 5+ save and no Necron special rule?

You must be damn unlucky to lose 3 Units of Wraiths a turn, thats 9 3+ Inv saves with a double WBB.

And I wasn't overrating, I've used and seen this army in action and when used well its been pretty devastating every time, with the ability to move through terrain its not too hard to stay out of small arms fire. It certainly isn't invincible, but should be considered more than your putting it down


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## Tim/Steve (Jan 25, 2009)

Concrete Hero said:


> You mean like your overrating a T3 swarm with a 5+ save and no Necron special rule?
> 
> You must be damn unlucky to lose 3 Units of Wraiths a turn, thats 9 3+ Inv saves with a double WBB.


You only get a double WBB if you dont die... 27 bolt gun, 54 lasgun or 24 fleshborer shots should kill them (hell my dakka tyrant should eaily kill them in 1 turn if you come within 18" + 6" move). Ok yes I didnt bother including the lord in this so you'll actually need more shots but you get the point- a relatively small amount of short ranged firepower will kill these guys easily.
Multiple units is harder to get rid of but still not hard (and if you portal them they'll normally be too far away to charge.. the monolith cant keep up with them).

Scarabs are a hell of a lot harder to kill- in the open they are 3W instead of a 3+inv and 1 less T (but still with 5+ save against some shooting) but where they shine is if they turbo boost- automatic 2+ cover save... unless the enemy brings flamers or gets into combat the unit is almost unkillable.


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## Sebi (Mar 3, 2009)

exactly what tim/steve say (says?)

and as the swarms simply are additional LP for the Lord and cheaper I had more success with them then with 3 wraiths

they can unleash heck of a fight but normaly they die by being shot to death for me ... and my opponents have their long range fire support no matter what I play be it Necrons or Orks.
Maybe I play it wrong but they die to quickly here for my taste.

Good unit ... but not unbeatable


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## Concrete Hero (Jun 9, 2008)

Tim/Steve said:


> You only get a double WBB if you dont die... 27 bolt gun, 54 lasgun or 24 fleshborer shots should kill them (hell my dakka tyrant should eaily kill them in 1 turn if you come within 18" + 6" move).


I'm getting the point, but remember its three separate units, so you would have to split fire. So one Hive Tyrant couldn't kill them all


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## Sebi (Mar 3, 2009)

are we talking about a single unit or three... the later I would not field ... you sacrifice the possibility to field destroyers... which is just not my style to play Necrons.

Of course three wraith-units are deadly as hell ... and well worth it in a CoD battle where the long range and movability of destroyers is not working well
But in an open battle on a normal table I so far only fielded one unit as guards for my Lord with Destroyer body.
I am sorry if I didn't get your point.


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## Tim/Steve (Jan 25, 2009)

Yeah, I was being a muppet when I wrote that bit  I had it in my head that they were 3 3W models in a unit... 

I prefer wraiths over scarabs since as soon as you get into combat any unit with scarabs in it is going to lose (they are just too easy to wound.. sure your fearless but its stil not winning, worst of all would be the enemy wiping out the rippers and giving you something like a -5Ld test) but it does take a lot more thinking about how to get into combat with them- I would say wraiths are more a counter assault unit rather then a strike/diversion force.


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## BrotherR (Oct 10, 2008)

I've had a unit of 8 scarabs wipe out a marine devastator squad. Against cc specialist they are just a speed bump but they are a terror against anything else.


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## Sebi (Mar 3, 2009)

I am playing around with equipping them with desruption field to unnerve the enemy and make him take care about his vehicles *evilgrin*


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## titan11 (Jul 24, 2009)

scarabs do not get a +1 bonus to their cover sv when moving flat-out they get a +1 cover bonus to cover from the TERRAIN they are in from being small AND an additional +1 bonus to their cover save from the stealth universal special rule. Making them take a dangerous terrain test by moving flat out is still a good idea because the wound will not insta-kill a scarab and only causes a single wound out of 3 IF you roll a 1 on the dangerous terrain test.


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## Tim/Steve (Jan 25, 2009)

Scarabs have the 'stealth' USR (they are 'swarms', all 'swarms' get 'stealth' automatically), this gives them +1 to all cover saves. Turbo boosting gives the unit a 3+ cover save (which I think is clearly covered by "all cover saves") and as such stealth upgrades it to a 2+...

basically speaking its nearly impossible to hit something that small moving that fast


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## PurePwnage (Feb 19, 2010)

keep the monolith a small distance away from the battle. if things are looking grim in cc necrons may phase out of battle and reemerge out of the monoliths portal. use this to your advantage cause necrons aren't bad shooters either


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## PurePwnage (Feb 19, 2010)

keep the monolith a small distance away from the battle. if things are looking grim in cc necrons may phase out of battle and reemerge out of the monoliths portal. use this to your advantage cause necrons aren't bad shooters either


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## darklove (May 7, 2008)

Threadomancy! Welcome to the forum PurePwnage, but contributions on active discussion are preferred to the double-posting of comments dead topics (4 months of silence).


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## Colonel Wolf (Nov 11, 2009)

Pirate Metal Troy said:


> Ohshit! You guys are right. Scarabs do provide cover, just not to monstrous creatures. I read the swarms rule wrong.


Kudos for saying it :victory:


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