40K Necron tactics

[Zed]

Mostly for Readon but...

First battle today vs Eldar. 1,000pts. I lost on the roll of the dice at turn 5, though i only had 2 more models to go before phase out.

i fielded:

2 X 5 scarab swarms with disruption
1 X Necron lord with Res orb
3 X 10 man Warrior squads
3 X Destroyers

My lack of heavy weapons vs Fire prisms didnt help, and mass glancing didnt get me far.

Failure to run so i go eaten up a lot by the various blast weapons.

So any tips on using them effectively (assume no monolith for the moment)

 

[Readon]

Lack of heavy weapons are a big problem atm for necrons, it's nice we can glance with all our weapons but that often comes down to being just plain lucky.

Scarab swarms are nice, great for tying down units in CC for several rounds, I don't field mine with disruption fields because i tend to use them against infantry.

I'd always give the necron lord veil of darkness, it's expensive but the teleport ability is amazing for saving squads from CC, landing squads behind the enemies long range units as well as objective grabbing in the last couple of rounds.

The warriors are unavoidable, you simply have to take at least 2 units, I always try to make the units a little larger than the minimum 10 robomen to help stave off Ld tests.

Destroyers are great, but i've never had any luck fielding them in low numbers, they are simply to fragile. I'd suggest either dropping them or increasing their numbers.

If you can spare the points a unit of Immortals can really be amazing, their firepower is a good notch higher than the warriors. This is a unit i always try to take in any list even if i can just get 5 of them.

Heavy destroyers are one of the only options you have for anti tank, but also tend to die fast, but with the range of the weapon they can at least stay quite far away from the regular grunts.

I've found the following site, The C'tan Support Group to be very helpful for tactics and examples of army list.

http://pwl-tech.co.uk/csg/

 

[Aciiid]

I've also read that don't bother with the anti-vehicle destroyers as they're really weak anyway.

The only semi decent cc guys are the paria's and their scythes can get some upgrade to help vs vehicles (turns them into power scyth).

Few video's on youtube, but necron's suffer from lack of tactical variation and expensive units so ara easy for other races to produce an anti-necron force.

Some people swear by lots of wraiths, but i don't think they have power weapons for taking down vehicles. The crypt spiders arn't that good as are huge size so people can shoot them anywhere on the board so the extra 'we'll be back' roll probably isn't that useful unless you keep them in hand to hand (which they're also not that great at but do at least they get 2 wounds).

A wraith swarm may work vs eldar provided you attack their heavy guys (who have feeble cc defence) and maybe guardians. Stay clear (and you'll have the speed) of their close combat guys.

 

[Zed]

one thing that wound me up a little last night was the 'declared' move of 11inched without actually moving the vehicle to ensure they go a 6 to hit in CC. SEems to be in RAW but in my mind definately not a spirit of the game thing since the fire prism could essentially do that and still fire its heavy weapon with los augmentation from its buddy. cheese if you ask me.

 

[Zeus]

one thing that wound me up a little last night was the 'declared' move of 11inched without actually moving the vehicle to ensure they go a 6 to hit in CC. SEems to be in RAW but in my mind definately not a spirit of the game thing since the fire prism could essentially do that and still fire its heavy weapon with los augmentation from its buddy. cheese if you ask me.

erm, you cant do that.
p63 of mini rulebook. 'vehicles and assaults'. just below the d6 roll required table. "Note: when assessing how far a vehicle has moved, only take into acocunt the actual distance covered from its original position. Moving backwards and forwards or driving around in circles does not help!".
so it aint RAW .

 

[Zed]

ooo nice. ill make a note on that one

 

[Zed]

So my scarabs would have gone straight to 20d6 'glancing' attempts. so at least 3 would have glanced if you take rules of average.