# Target Priority when Fighting Necrons?



## Moxsis (Sep 9, 2009)

What is the best Target Priority when Fighting Necrons?

What squads need to die fast, what can be ignored.. Thanks!


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## Wolf_Lord_Skoll (Jun 9, 2008)

If you can drop the Lords, then thats always a good start. However, they usually hide away in big units so that might not be as easy as it seems.

Monoliths can generally be ignored, as most armies don't have the firepower to reliably bring them down. Just think that those Lascannons/Missile Launchers could be shooting Destroyers and the like. They cause Instant Death and also deny We'll Be Back if there is no Resurection Orb.

Just a couple of things I've picked up from my limited experience.


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## Iron_Chaos_Brute (Feb 3, 2010)

Anything that counts towards phasing them out dies first. Then you win. Playing Necrons is actually that simple.


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## Yousei (Nov 4, 2009)

destroyers first, then hopefully you're up to cc range with something against warriors (sweeping advance is what you're trying for, which is actually fairly easy to achieve with a half-decent assault unit) failing that, pick off warriors and anything thats laying hurt on you. (immortals spring to mind). Ignore the c'tan if there is one, or bring it down with high str shooting. they do die fairly easily to concentrated fire.

Skoll's right about the mono's. Unless you literally have nothing better to do with lascannon/other s10, dont bother. s9 is potentially going to hurt it, s8 is forgettable.


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## darklove (May 7, 2008)

1: Destroyers
2: Immortals
3: C'tan (These things can kill a whole army on their own if they are not controlled)
4: Destroyer Lords (standard Lords are usually too imbedded to be worth going after)
5: Monolith

That would be my top 5, focussing on taking out all the long range units first because they will be doing most of the damage from turn 1. 
From turn 2 you will be getting heavy fire from any Immortals. 
From turn 3 you will probably get assaulted by a C'tan, at which point you have either lost the game or managed to manoeuvre your army so that you are more spread out.
At about the same time you are very likely to be hit by any assault oriented Destroyer Lord builds, so be careful.

People say ignore Monoliths, but I don't agree for several reasons: 


 Monoliths can do huge amounts of damage and if you don't kill them you will die (stunning does not stop them using the big gun)
 They provide WBB re-rolls
 They can pull Necrons out of CC
 They can teleport Necrons and increase the mobility of the whole army
 They are often used to block line of sight so that the enemy can't see anything else to shoot at

Basically, don't ignore them.

[EDIT] Important note: Las Cannons and Missile Launchers do NOT negate WBB for Destroyers - EVER. Only S10 attacks would negate WBB, if there is no Orb nearby, and S10 shots would be better used vs a Monolith than Destroyers.


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## Tim/Steve (Jan 25, 2009)

I would say that its frankly impossibly to come up with a standard priority list ahead of time for fighting necrons- they really are the most game sensitive enemy, but there are some things to look out for.

*1-* any necron unit more then 6" from a similar type (with no tomb spider close) that you can wipe out in 1 turn. This includes any unit that is both a necron and the only one of its type on the board (noobish necron player mistake).
*2-* any necron unit out of orb range that you can do large amounts of ID to (eg a vindicator can see a unit of warriors that isnt near a lord).
*3-* if you think you can kill all of a unit containing a lord and have enough firepower left to kill the lord himself then go for it.
*4- *if you have a unit with flamers and they can get into scarabs then do it.
*5-* if you can get into combat do it... this almost always works as a rule, but obviously use a little more thought then that (and dont charge C'tan ffs).
*6-* then go after the preset lists... personally I would say heavy destroyers, destroyers, immortals, warriors + lord then warriors.
*7-* sometimes it is necessary to kill monoliths... I always try to ignore them completely and just take the damage they do, but occasionally you _must_ kill them. On these occasions the monolith jumps to the top of the pile of what should be killed.


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## MJayC50 (Oct 30, 2007)

id suggest going for the lords with res orbs - i made this silly mistake about 3 months ago and ended up losing because i couldnt get at the orbs and didnt hit them with enough stuff to make sure. WBB rules curse you! (still havent managed to live down the shame of losing to the necrons...)


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## Stella Cadente (Dec 25, 2006)

anything with the WBB rule is priority, starting with warriors, everything else you can just ignore because there rubbish, unless you got nothing else to shoot at.

of course this gets easy if they spam monoliths and take a C-tan, because now they have almost no warriors waiting for you to DS them, and a C-tan who suck harder than a hooker.


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## Larx (May 17, 2009)

C'tan are slow moving and should be able to be mostly ignored, I usually target 1 warrior squad at a time and destroyers. Spam firing on one squad at a time is the best way to deal with WBB.


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## darklove (May 7, 2008)

@Larx: I must say you seem to have a lot of experience with this. Yes there are a lot of people that pick up Necrons and don't know how to play them.

Good Necrons players keep their Warriors off the table, where they can't be shot at by spam fire, or fire of any kind. 
C'tan can move 7-12" per turn and ignore all terrain effects - making for a turn 2-3 assault in most games: what is slow about that?
Destroyers should indeed be your top priority target - but you make it sound like they are easy to kill: they will be in 2-3 medium sized groups, have T5, 3+ save, and get back up again and can re-roll if portalled - while at the same time they are shooting back and taking out anything that can hurt them.

'Go for Phase Out' is old - and it does not work. Kill Destroyers first. Kill Immortals and C'tan urgently if they are within 24" of you. Kill Monoliths if they are within 24" of you and also if they are preventing you being able to do any damage to the rest of the Necrons (which is their main battlefield role).
Kill Warriors: only if they are on an objective you need, or in the open and away from a ResOrb, and it is safe to do it without a C'tan smacking you down.
In my games, by the time that the Warriors are being targeted it is usually too late for the enemy - you can't kill 30+ Warriors in 2 turns if most of your army is already dead, and that is usually what it needs to cause PO. Warriors are like 'fool's gold' to a prospector, they look like an easy target for a quick game win but they really are not.


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## Tim/Steve (Jan 25, 2009)

I would agree that good cron players should keep their warriors off the board (or at least protected) and that this makes phase out much harder... but its not impossible. 

I would suggest players always make a decision at the start of each game (after deployment)- do you have enough shooting/combat power that can get its teeth into the enemy to force phase out in 5 turns? If the answer is possibly then dont try for phase out... Its quite soul destroying to see a unit of 20 warriors isolated (example only... should see units of >10), you destroy 19 of them, then see them portalled and back up to 16 models- stopping the enemy's best units is sometimes just the better option.


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## Wolf_Lord_Skoll (Jun 9, 2008)

I still don't think Monoliths should be targeted unless you have some significant high strength firepower. Alot of armies really on S8 to take down vehicles as opposed to less strength 9/10 shots. 

Why waste S8 shots on a Monolith when you can drop Immortals/Destroyers(especially if you can take out all there Destroyer near each other, as then its no WBB).

The ability to take Warriors out of combat isn't really that important, because you can just break and sweep them (No WBB EVER ). 

Also, C'tan are pretty slow, and you can always feed them expendable units. 

I'd give a target priority list as:

1: Lords/Destroyer Lords (if you can get them on their own).
2: Destroyers/Heavy Destroyers
3: Immortals
4: Tomb Spyders
5: Pariahs
6: Warriors
7: Flayed Ones
8: C'tan
9: Monolith
10: Scarabs

Of course, battlefield circumstances would change this. Pariahs about to charge would jump up the list, Tomb Spyders that are the only thing that Destroyer unit from getting WBB ect.


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## darklove (May 7, 2008)

Wolf_Lord_Skoll said:


> Of course, battlefield circumstances would change this.


Come on, you can do better than that! What is the point of your priority list if you dump it as soon as the game starts?!?:no:


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## Larx (May 17, 2009)

C'tan can kill anything they get in close combat with, but are a basic foot slogger. They don't have fleet so assault range is 12" most armies can handle this kind of movement, and if they run which is better then their shooting attacks they really are not a threat until turn 3 or 4 which is often too late. Snipers do really well at averaging a wound per turn on C'Tan. I have never seen a C'tan earn the points back. 

Destroyers toughness 5 squads of 3 1 wound are not that hard to deal with. Squads of 5 are a little harder but still go down fairly easy. Get in close combat and they suck. Since they are jetbikes it is hard to force them into close combat with a c'tan walking nearby.

I usually will only spend first turn focusing fire on monoliths in hopes of popping one I think I have only popped one monolith before, but I have immobilized many which reduces mobility of the army greatly and makes warriors much easier to deal with. 

Take out the mobility of Necrons and then force them into close combat, easy PO.


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## MaidenManiac (Oct 2, 2008)

As I have understood it if you kill a Monolith with Warriors awaiting in reserve they count as dead too, unless there are more Monoliths. This makes killing Monoliths a more tempting idea if plausible 

Destroyers, heavy or normal, are more or less no 1 on my list. They can redeploy and threaten more or less all Vehicles in the game very quickly. On top of that the standard ones shoots a lot, which makes them very threatening to inf as well.

Immortals are no 2. They are not as manouverable as the Destroyers but still lethal. 

Other then that is situational.


One thing though is to always kill ALL models of the chosen type. So kill ALL destroyers if you go for them. This means ALL on the table. If you do then they wont get back up ever. Regardless of Orbs, Monoliths, Spiders and crap. After that then you can go to the next target type


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## darklove (May 7, 2008)

Thankfully 5th ed. has changed the Monolith and reserve rule for Necrons. Necron Warriors can now come on from the table edge, which means killing the Monolith makes no difference anymore.

C'tan are great, they really are, and always make their points back. Vs vehicles they will almost always auto-penetrate, and in CC they will instant death most units.


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## Wolf_Lord_Skoll (Jun 9, 2008)

darklove said:


> Come on, you can do better than that! What is the point of your priority list if you dump it as soon as the game starts?!?:no:




Aye, I can, I'd have some complex algorithm as to what chages when.

To me a target prioty list is a general plan, Tactical descisions in game will always affect it


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## Keelia (Aug 3, 2009)

I always fight a ctan in CC they are babies and usually die first turn.

Wyches with a buried IC>Ctan


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## Aramoro (Oct 7, 2009)

I think you'd be fairly lucky to kill a Nightbringer in the first round of combat with Wyches. The Wyches themselves cannot physically hurt a Nightbringer, Strength 3 vs Toughness 8. So it's down to your succubus and IC which have to have Agonizers or poisoned weapons. Then have the Nightbringer fail all his saves.

Surely Etheric Tempest just means he pushes your squad out of combat every turn as well? So you never get a chance to hit him. 

Aramoro


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## Tim/Steve (Jan 25, 2009)

Keelia said:


> I always fight a ctan in CC they are babies and usually die first turn.
> 
> Wyches with a buried IC>Ctan


There are 2 C'tan... 1 might be a little worried by your unit, the other would laugh in your face as its _impossible_ to kill it in CC if it doesnt want to be there- the deceiver can choose to disengage from combat for free whenever you get to charge it, there are no downsides for it doing so (in fact it gets a free 2D6" move in any direction it wants- you just helped it get to wherever it wanted to be).


To look at this thread from the opposite point of view- if a cron player is using the deceiver then his target priority is to get rid of all the guns in the enemy army that can really hurt the deceiver so he can then go cause chaos.
So the priority when fighting against crons with a deceiver is to either kill the deceievr early, or to take out anything capable of killing your anti-c'tan weaponry (presumably destroyers/heavy destroyers).


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## Keelia (Aug 3, 2009)

I just dont see Ctan as a huge threat. They are easly killed by shooting, you dont even have to use big bad guns.....just force saves and they will fail enough.

True the Deciever wont be in combat unless he wants to be, so thats why you just shoot him. If hes hiding him behind a monolith depending on the points of the game he wont have many actual necron units and phase out shouldnt be that hard. People always seem to forget that mass volume of shots will kill anything given enough shots.

Necrons are slow, if you are a mobile army, and you should be this is 5th edition, you can easly redeploy around them. Drop their biggest long ranged threats....if they have any. So kill the destroyers off the bat. All you have to do is drop them......if u wipe all of them they wont be WWB rolling reguardless of a tomb spider or not. 

You just have to look at what they have in their force and address the issues that are critical to that game and point value. If its a 1500 point game and hes running a Ctan, Lord and monolith....hes going to be short on troops.


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## Aramoro (Oct 7, 2009)

A second ago you said they were easily killed in CC when neither of them can be touched in close combat unless they want to be. Forgive me if i'm skeptical. 

Target priority is tricky with Necrons, you want to force the Phase out but without ignoring their big hitter entirely. I would say it's entirely situational depending on what you're playing, the number of Necrons he has.

Aramoro


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## Keelia (Aug 3, 2009)

Aramoro said:


> A second ago you said they were easily killed in CC when neither of them can be touched in close combat unless they want to be. Forgive me if i'm skeptical.
> 
> Target priority is tricky with Necrons, you want to force the Phase out but without ignoring their big hitter entirely. I would say it's entirely situational depending on what you're playing, the number of Necrons he has.
> 
> Aramoro


They are. If for some reason a necron player leaves the deciever in combat with wyches with buried agonizers he is going to die. Always ignore the monolith unless you have Str 10 weapons......S9 and lower are better saved for dropping units. Kill their smaller unit sized stuff. Like destroyers....they wont have alot and clear them out all you have to do is knock them all down and they wont be coming back.


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## darklove (May 7, 2008)

The Deceiver can't be assaulted if it doesn't want to be, so it can never be assaulted by something that could hurt it. If it does stay in combat then it would be for a very good reason. I sometimes use C'tan as CC suicide bombs to take out key enemy infantry (because of the exploding death effect), but not often.


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