# Beating necrons with SM/SW



## inquisitormaus (Nov 3, 2013)

So im getting way more frustrated than i feel i should be over necrons, them being the only army i cant seem to beat with any of my normal beat all lists. Ive been playing a guy that has em quite a bit because i think im the only one that will, and everytime i figure out how to counter the cheese that is his list he tweaks it a bit and im once again on my ass. First it was a bunch of stalkers twin linking everybody so he could delete squads at will, fixed that with mass anti tank fire and forcing CQC. Then they got parked on top of a skyshield landing pad with 10 harbingers of destruction, fixed that with mass long distance anti tank fire, an orb. bombardment, a storm talon, and staying far away. Next came GK psykers with their blast template power, coteaz and jokeiro mixed in with the same so he could twin link all their guns but not realizing it doesnt work for the psyker power, again defeated by staying far, far away. 

Now the current army is all necron, rocking zandrakh and obyron with another lord with veil, and just deep striking around the table. One of the squads is a bunch of deathmarks then a couple guys with some flamer weapon thats S8 Ap2 that normally wounds on leadership which wouldnt be much a problem against SM but apparently the deathmarks can mark the squad and they suddenly get to wound on 2+ with the things so he just veils in, marks the squad while putting some rends and normal wounds on em, then blasts em with these flamers and literally wipes out a ten man squad at will. Then theres the two squads of warriors with the other two teleporter guys and they pop in and just rapid fire the piss outta me. Couple flyers come in turn two and drop more warriors and i believe another one of the death mark squads. I guess zandrakh or obyron or both of em can deep strike out of close combat so i just dont know what the hell to do. They cant be stuck in CQC and even if they were theres ap1 close combat weapons on their side. Reanimation protocols dont help anything either seeing as i landed my orb bombardment on his squad of twenty three missing one warrior so eight or nine of em stood right back up, and while i had two rune priests to get a bunch of lightning each turn, one with jaws to snipe ICs, he got killed when the deathmark squad popped in to say hello. I just dont understand how its supposed to be beat when he can damn near table the 3/4 of my army i had on the field on turn two. Any ideas or strategies that have worked for anyone else or am i just el screwdo?


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## MidnightSun (Feb 10, 2009)

He can only take one of those Deep Strike items, since he can only bring one Royal Court and therefore only one of each piece of Cryptek wargear.

Outside of that, he has a tonne of points wrapped up in individual dudes. I'd invest in some Terminators with Thunder Hammers and Storm Shields - they can weather AP2 without much of a problem, and although he can Deep Strike out of combat with Obyron, he can't deep strike if he's dead. Something I'm fond of is to throw Knights (in your case, Hammernators) into a unit along with a detached character in Power Armour or a couple of Tactical Marines - if Necrons lose combat, they have no Stubborn or Fearless available to them, and they have such low initiative that if you have a token few Power Armoured models, you can run them down without a problem. If you can't, don't worry about it - failing Leadership removes all of their Reanimation tokens, so you still get a lot of mileage out of close combat.

The Abyssal-Staff-Deep-Strike trick is cute, but needs good positioning and good luck. Due to Deep Strike Formation, it's quite difficult to hit many models, and Necrons have no scatter reduction. In addition, it has been FAQ'd that you cannot mark more than one unit, so the trick works exacty once, if at all, before it goes back to being a kind-of-shitty, standard template.

As far as allies go, allying a Riptide with Early Warning Override will just remove those Deep Striking squads whenever they pop up, and Grey Knights can use Warp Quake that stops all deep-striking within 12", as well as being the kind of good in combat that is just enough to beat Necrons and run them down.

Midnight


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## lokyar (Apr 24, 2011)

Allied grey knights with Coteaz and a few GKSS would solve your problems with necrons mostly. coteaz is very good and a GKSS squad with psybolt and double psycannon will wreck a necrons day because of the high str shots, ID, powerswords and warp quake (insta mishap within 12"). it wil only set you back 300 points


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## MidnightSun (Feb 10, 2009)

Actually, I don't think Warp Quake works on the Veil of Darkness since it's not arriving from reserves, so never mind.

Coteaz seems wasted without Henchmen.

Midnight


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## lokyar (Apr 24, 2011)

coteaz is one of the most pointeffective HQ's even without the henchmen, also warp quakes wording says: any unit that ends their deep strike within 12" of the unit warp quaking unit will automaticly suffer a mishap


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## MidnightSun (Feb 10, 2009)

Yeah, looking back over Coteaz he's pretty solid in a GK detachment. I've Been Expecting You works in this scenario too, which is pretty dang awesome.

Midnight


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## lokyar (Apr 24, 2011)

as a GK player: you have to have a VERY good reason for not taking coteaz unless you are playing fluff.
side note:
if you have points left you can take a dreadnought with double TL autocannon with psybolt for even more ap4 goodness (only 100 pointish)


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## emporershand89 (Jun 11, 2010)

Playing a member of my local Game shop who plays only Necrons I may be able to offer some advice. Here are three bulletins I found have helped me in defeating him in tournements......


1) Blade and Bolter! Literally I have found the best way to defeat Necrons is to use their infantry swarm tactics against them. Using a lot of chainswords and missile launchers I have easier defeated the basic and mobile weapon platform units in mutliple engagements. The one downfall to this is if he takes a Monolith or two, in which case you may have to sack a unit or two IOT bring heavy firepower.

2) Vehicles go Boom!! Many times I have fought Necron players only to have the guass cannons eat through my vehicles armor like it was paper. Basic Leman Russ and Predators were killed by basic infantry or mobile platforms that hit their rear armor. Additionally arty was only so effective before Monoliths and fast attack units close for the kill. Thus the more infantry to better. 

3) More Heroes!!! This part is just my experience, but the more HQ units you take the better. These units tend to last longer and score more hits/melee kills against a Necron army. Plus if you play the cards right their abilities can counter the psychic attacks that some Necron players will attempt to unleash. 

Anyway cheers mate; hope this helps.


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## MidnightSun (Feb 10, 2009)

emporershand89 said:


> Plus if you play the cards right their abilities can counter the psychic attacks that some Necron players will attempt to unleash.


:read:

:scratchhead:

Midnight


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## falcoso (Apr 7, 2012)

MidnightSun said:


> He can only take one of those Deep Strike items, since he can only bring one Royal Court and therefore only one of each piece of Cryptek wargear.
> 
> Outside of that, he has a tonne of points wrapped up in individual dudes. I'd invest in some Terminators with Thunder Hammers and Storm Shields - they can weather AP2 without much of a problem, and although he can Deep Strike out of combat with Obyron, he can't deep strike if he's dead. Something I'm fond of is to throw Knights (in your case, Hammernators) into a unit along with a detached character in Power Armour or a couple of Tactical Marines - if Necrons lose combat, they have no Stubborn or Fearless available to them, and they have such low initiative that if you have a token few Power Armoured models, you can run them down without a problem. If you can't, don't worry about it - failing Leadership removes all of their Reanimation tokens, so you still get a lot of mileage out of close combat.
> 
> ...


The court is actually one per overlord so he can take 2 in under 2000pts. 

+1 on the thunder hammer terminators, they are extremely annoying to crons who either have to get rd of their AP2 for an invun or just kill maybe one and then die horribly... as I have experienced many times *Cough*f***ing deathwing knights*cough*. Also you can force obyron (and just obyron) out of his current combat if you assault Zandrekh's unit (assuming they aren't in the same unit), this can leave good assault units to finish off obyron's attached unit and move on.

While the deathmakrs can only mark one unit, if he takes a second unit of them he gets another marks which affects all deathmark units so be wary of that, generally when I try it I often mishap horribly, or my opponent has spread out his units in such a way that if a scatter just a bit I mishap into one of theur units, generally forcing me to wait until later on to deep strike.

Against crons vehicles, melta are very much your friends, 5 bikes with a melta will often destroy one of my vehicles or if not it will take down my shielding for the rest of the army to finish it off.



emporershand89 said:


> Plus if you play the cards right their abilities can counter the psychic attacks that some Necron players will attempt to unleash.


Hate to break it to you but crons don't have psychic powers...


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## MidnightSun (Feb 10, 2009)

falcoso said:


> The court is actually one per overlord so he can take 2 in under 2000pts.


True, but as this guy is running Zahndrekh and Obyron with no signs of double FOC, I'm assuming he's only running one Court.



inquisitormaus said:


> Now the current army is all necron, rocking zandrakh and obyron with another lord with veil, and just deep striking around the table.


Just seen this - Lords cannot take Veils of Darkness. Either it's a Cryptek, or it's not allowed.

Midnight


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## falcoso (Apr 7, 2012)

MidnightSun said:


> True, but as this guy is running Zahndrekh and Obyron with no signs of double FOC, I'm assuming he's only running one Court.


Obyron doesn't take up an HQ slot if you have Zandrekh too, so it is still possible


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## MidnightSun (Feb 10, 2009)

Chapeau, but if he's buying Zahndrekh, Obyron, Overlord, and two Royal Courts with Harbingers of Despair with Veils of Darkness, _just how many points_ is he putting into his fairly-fragile HQ choices?

Midnight


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## falcoso (Apr 7, 2012)

Touche


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## inquisitormaus (Nov 3, 2013)

he is running two courts and two deathmark squads. One veiled first turn, marked a unit, and then they died. But now that i look at the hunters from... rule, being as he deployed them onto the field at the very start and deployed first, do these guys lose their ability to mark since i have no one on the board at that point? cause the rules say choose a unit when they are deployed so that makes it sound like if you dont veil them out of reserve they cant deepstrike with a cryptek and mark. Hes freaking terrified of wolf priests cause of lightning and jaws so i suppose i could take a base priest and just sacrifice his ass at the front of a squad but not attach him so only he gets hunters on him....but then im throwing 100 points away but then again how much did he spend on that deathmark squad to kill that 100 points...

In my experience everything with necrons seems to be a one trick and done type of play style. before the faq it was hitting a squad with that line weapon on the doom scythe that did as many hits as there were people in the squad, yeah that deletes one of my ten mans but the things blown out of the sky next turn. then this deathmarks strategy especially, pop in, mark and kill squad, then theyre pretty much done for the rest of the game. And while yeah thats pretty simple to work around, him dropping a big ass squad of warriors or two via veil or a night scythe within rapid fire range is something not evern termies are gonna deal with that great. The 3 up invuln from a shield is nice yeah, along with the 2 up armour, but when i have 30 gauss wounds to save, i will roll a few ones and my expensive termies will wither away. 

My next plan is to infiltrate in some scouts and a tac squad via sicarius one of them with locator beacon, drop three drop pods in almost a wall, two dreads and one tac squad, have them hammer away while my storm raven and two storm talons make their way up to support and a land raider with th/ss termies using the drop pods to screen its advance. Once im in cc the crons fall apart besides zandrekh getting his extra attacks if you miss but if im using hammers he wont get that anyway. im thinking possibly a librarian to get gate of infinity just incase the land raider gets glanced to death. 

Thank you very much to everyone thats answered its been very helpfull. looking into allying in some interceptor via tau or gk cause that would help deal with those stupid veils


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## The Sturk (Feb 3, 2012)

inquisitormaus said:


> he is running two courts and two deathmark squads. One veiled first turn, marked a unit, and then they died. But now that i look at the hunters from... rule, being as he deployed them onto the field at the very start and deployed first, do these guys lose their ability to mark since i have no one on the board at that point? cause the rules say choose a unit when they are deployed so that makes it sound like if you dont veil them out of reserve they cant deepstrike with a cryptek and mark. Hes freaking terrified of wolf priests cause of lightning and jaws so i suppose i could take a base priest and just sacrifice his ass at the front of a squad but not attach him so only he gets hunters on him....but then im throwing 100 points away but then again how much did he spend on that deathmark squad to kill that 100 points...


Based on the wording of the Hunters from Hyperspace rule, I would assume that if there is nothing on the field to mark, then they lose out on marking for the game, as it happens when they deploy. Had he gone second or held them in reserve, then yes, his marks would work.

I can't say I blame him from being terrified of Jaws, so a bait may work. And considering that the standard 5 man Deathmark squad w/ the Cryptek costs 150+ points, you do end up winning on value here. Remember though, any Deathmark unit is affected by the Hunters from Hyperspace rule, even if they go after a unit that another Deathmark unit tagged.



> In my experience everything with necrons seems to be a one trick and done type of play style. before the faq it was hitting a squad with that line weapon on the doom scythe that did as many hits as there were people in the squad, yeah that deletes one of my ten mans but the things blown out of the sky next turn. then this deathmarks strategy especially, pop in, mark and kill squad, then theyre pretty much done for the rest of the game. And while yeah thats pretty simple to work around, him dropping a big ass squad of warriors or two via veil or a night scythe within rapid fire range is something not evern termies are gonna deal with that great. The 3 up invuln from a shield is nice yeah, along with the 2 up armour, but when i have 30 gauss wounds to save, i will roll a few ones and my expensive termies will wither away.


As Necrons are my primary army, I can see what you are getting at. If I use the Deathmark/Cryptek combo, I tend to target high priority, high armored targets, such as terminators or a Deathstar unit.

I don't recall the Doom Scythe working that way. Whatever the (1mm) line crosses over determines how many hits are caused in the unit. So if it passes over 3 out of 5 models, it will only cause 3 wounds. I tend to use the Doom Scythe for breaking armor that is hiding in the back of the board, such as Basilisks or Leman Russes, or whatever is currently a large threat.

Not much you can do about the mass gauss wounds except stay out of their rapid-fire range if you can manage it. Of course, if you can lock those warriors in an assault, then the warriors are as good as gone.



> My next plan is to infiltrate in some scouts and a tac squad via sicarius one of them with locator beacon, drop three drop pods in almost a wall, two dreads and one tac squad, have them hammer away while my storm raven and two storm talons make their way up to support and a land raider with th/ss termies using the drop pods to screen its advance. Once im in cc the crons fall apart besides zandrekh getting his extra attacks if you miss but if im using hammers he wont get that anyway. im thinking possibly a librarian to get gate of infinity just incase the land raider gets glanced to death.
> 
> Thank you very much to everyone thats answered its been very helpfull. looking into allying in some interceptor via tau or gk cause that would help deal with those stupid veils


I believe it is Obyron who gets the extra attacks, but yeah, in most instances, CC will wreck crons. That said, beware of Lords/Overlords who commonly carry Mindshackle Scarabs and Warscythes. Wraiths are also pretty nasty, but they die to mass bolter fire, and unlike other Necrons, they don't get back up.


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## inquisitormaus (Nov 3, 2013)

That damn getting back up is my bane. Its really disheartning to see half or more of the guys i kill stand back up


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## falcoso (Apr 7, 2012)

Yeah if you can try and focus on a unit at a time to deny it, obviously if there area several units close you may want to spread it out a bit, also prioritise res. orbs.

As for HfHS I never actually noticed that before, but yes you are right, it has never affected me before as I always go second or I need to mark a unit that will likely be in reserves. 

Another possible tactic that may be of use is move everything forward together: because crons rely on quantity fire moving everything together forces prioritisation on what they can do more damage e.g. if I have a 10 man tactical and a 5 man terminator squad to shoot at I have a hell of a time deciding what to do, as I either risk doing absolutely nothing but if I do it could save a unit, or I shoot at the tacticals and do some damage but have an increased threat of the terminators.


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## MidnightSun (Feb 10, 2009)

The Sturk said:


> I don't recall the Doom Scythe working that way. Whatever the (1mm) line crosses over determines how many hits are caused in the unit. So if it passes over 3 out of 5 models, it will only cause 3 wounds. I tend to use the Doom Scythe for breaking armor that is hiding in the back of the board, such as Basilisks or Leman Russes, or whatever is currently a large threat.


Before an FAQ corrected it, the correct grammatical interpretation of the rule was that if the line hit a unit, it deal a hit to every model in the unit.

Falcoso's advice to Focus-Fire is doubly effective in this scenario. He's bringing Zahndrekh, Obyron, an Overlord, and two Royal Courts. He has at least 25% of his army wrapped up in HQs who are either lacking in offensive power or quite fragile. He'll have few actual units, allowing you to focus your fire that much more easily, and every unit you do kill will be a major blow.

Midnight


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## emporershand89 (Jun 11, 2010)

Can not the Night-bringer(the C'Tan) use psychic abilities on the table top? Or am I mistaken?


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## The Sturk (Feb 3, 2012)

emporershand89 said:


> Can not the Night-bringer(the C'Tan) use psychic abilities on the table top? Or am I mistaken?


No. Necrons have no Psychic powers at all. The closest thing to Psykers for Necrons would be the C'tan shards and Cypteks, however, all their 'powers' are merely upgrades to the unit that require no test to use.


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