Necrons and what to do about them?

For the last 6 months or so Necrons have dominated the tournes, big and small, over here and since I only have played Necrons once I feal I canīt really draw any real conclusions from it.

What are your experiances CD vs Necrons and do they have any big flaws that we can use?

They suck at combat. Only good units are wraiths and, to an extent, scarabs. Their shooting is however perfect against daemons. Mostly high volume, high AP stuff that simply forces us to fail a swathe of saves.

Essentially both armies can take the other down, the only problem is they can take us down before we get to them, because they shoot so well. If the board you play on offers any LoS blocking terrain - hide. Use fast stuff that can get into combat as quickly as possible, and plop some crushers in front of him to soak up fire.

When you charge, try to weigh up the average number of kills, and if you can afford to, charge multiple units (especially if he's spamming small Immortal units with crypteks). Nothing sucks more than charging in with a unit of seekers you managed to protect so far, only to end up killing every last model and then being shot to pieces in a single turn.

And use flying monsters. They're survivable, as long as you don't put them i nthe middle of the whole enemy army, and they can also vector strike against annoying vehicles (thirster's especially good at this).

I know there have been psychic monstrosity lists in tyranids that make necrons cry, because puppet master is fun. However, daemons dont have access to psychic powers, so that is of no help.

One of the reasons I like great Unclean ones is because feel no pain, an extra wound, and great close combat abilities while being cheap, it really helps against necrons. However, I have heard of close combat necrons.

My thoughts are to use Tzeentch units against Necrons. Fateweaver, LoC's, even flying tzeentch demon princes can make short work of the new Necron vehicles without becoming too exposed. Pink Horrors can knock down large chunks of warriors since they are assault 3 ap 4. Most of all flamers can take chunks out of a Necron army, especially with their new lower points cost, extra wound, and ability to "wall of fire" overwatch anything stupid enough to charge them.

This is the list that won one of the tournes I was talking about.

Necrons 2000p

Necron Overlord with warschyte,s.weave, mind.
Scarabs, phaseshifter 175
Command barge with gauss 80

Necron Overlord with warschyte,s.weave, mind.
Scarabs, phaseshifter 175
Command barge with gauss 80
(AV 11 all-around, open skimmer)

5 warriors with 2 crypteks HoD with lance.(1 with solarpulse) 155
5 warriors with 2 crypteks HoD with lance.(1 with solarpulse) 155.
5 warriors with 2 crypteks HoD with Lance 135
5 warriors with 2 crypteks HoD with Lance 135
Standard troops stats 4s all around. Lances are neat.

9 scarabs 135
S3 W3, vs AV 4+ strips the armour by -1!

6 wraiths with 3 whips, 1 transdimensional beamer and 1 pistol 260
6 wraiths with 3 whips and 1 pistol 245
S6 T4 W2 A3 SV3+

Annilation barge with tesla 90
Annilation barge with tesla 90
Annilation barge with tesla 90
(AV 11 all-around, open skimmer)

Have no idea what kind of weapons they come with or most of their special rules. Scarabs seem very scary for any AV list and very much so for landraiders or Soulgrinders. 5 barges w. special qantum shields that gives it 2+ armour untill one penetrating hit then it normal AV11 and even if you get a wrecked or destroyed result Necrons can make a save on the crew making them take a wound instead plus they donīt give the extra D6 roll of Screamers, melta and sutch!! Serious ****! How many bolts it would take to deal w. a barge is more than I want to count but it does seem like a bother dealing with a list like this! And if they have the power to resurrect, damn!!

living armor changed for Necrons. It's no longer strength + a single d6, ignore melta extra dice. It is now an ability that gives them 2+ to ignore a shaken result, and 4+ to ignore stunned. in both cases i believe they still take the hull point as normal, and are affected by lances and melta weapons normally.

@LiSharpeleo, you are right, the barge Is AV 13 front and side untill Itīs been hit by a penetrating hit.
Barges and Triarkstalkers should be your first priority, much depending on what the rest of the list looks like. Scarabs melt away In close combat big units of wraits are scary with that 3+ invulneralbe save.

As a full time Necron player, I can guarantee you that their #1 biggest weakness is that most of their units, including their HQs, are non-fearless. Couple that with the fact that they're all initiative 2, and they're basically getting swept in almost every assault they lose. C'tans, praetorians, and the canoptek family of units (wraiths, scarabs, and spyders) are, in fact, fearless and thus do not suffer this crippling weakness, but Necron troops find it almost impossible to hold objectives for any length of time once an enemy gets into assault range. Things may have gotten a tad better in 6th with the addition of Overwatch, but once the melee begins, they almost always end up being overrun at the end.

Having said all that, the unit that scares me the most in the Chaos Daemon codex isn't an assault unit, but the flamer of tzeentch. Big units of flamers have the ability to wipe out my troops in a single turn, glance any of my AV13 vehicles to death, and are mobile enough to get around the board to continue their widespread destruction. I guess breath of chaos is the real threat, so anything that can use that is pretty great, but the newly upgraded flamers are pretty scary to my necrons.

How can robots (necrons) not be immun to Fear? Seems just wrong, but I like it
So we need fast unit that either can endure dacka dacka or something that needs draw their fire to spare other less durable fast units.

Seems like my list with Kairos and 2 x 3 Cavalcade Seekers chariots with crushers flamers and screamers will do wonders vs necrons! Thats a load of my sholders as Necrons are the new big thing after Grey Knights over here anyway.

Here locally both in normal games and in tournaments necron players absolutely massacre everybody up to a point that our most old school and hardcore necron player said today that this army is not fun to play anymore. I personally refuse to play against them.

Watched game vs demons that just had been shot to bits piece meal. Boith players are really good so there was no question of demon player making lot's of silly mistakes. Absolutely horrible army. Perhaps chariot spam can make it to comabt and deral with them. But then you got canopteks to deal with and wraiths with their invulnerable 3+ save. Once again I can on;ly say "thank you Mat Ward".

Personally Necrons were my first army, and continue to be my main army.
However, currently my local club is doing a pyramid league to help get everybody used to 6th edition. I refused to bring my Necrons to that since they are as cheesy as grey knights right now and I didn't want to turn anyone off from the game right as we are trying to get people to play.

That being said, I started Necrons near the end of 4th, played them through 5th and started Demons about half way through, and right before the codex change I had a fully painted 5,500 point army. I will continue to collect and play both Necrons and Demons, but until more armies come out for 6th and people get used to these rules I probably won't be bringing anything with too much spam or cheese.

@chaos: not sure about this codex, but last codex it was because they would make tactical retreats and not get caught by the enemy to allow their technology to get in the hands of the enemy.

I think necron strengths result from their versatility and durability. Small arms fire can kill land raiders, they can spam tons of flyers, and have marine profiles for shooting, and have access to 3+ or 4+ armor saves with a 5+ reanimate protocol roll to negate casualties, which unlike FNP can be buffed to a 4+ with gear and isn't bypassed by instant death.

Their weakness to assault is a big deal tho. I played a game yesterday where a ork shoota mob was shot down to like 8 guys and it swept a 10 man strong unit of immortals in assault. So necrons CAN be beaten. The problem is how to capitalize on their weakness in an edition that boosted their strengths?

My opinion is that shooting necrons is just not effective. Reanimation protocols and quantum shielding nerfs any attempts at hurting them at range. You will end up fighting a losing attrition battle as 1/3rd to 1/2 of your kills respawn and your heavy weapons have trouble glancing let alone penetrating their AV 13 vehicles (which are pretty much 110 pt land raiders).

So the answer is assault. Necrons do not get reanimation protocol rolls if they break morale and with leadership 10, the easiest way for that is through winning assaults.

The hardest part is just getting guys into assault. I'm experimenting against necrons and have a few ideas. I'm thinking nurglings are a very nice unit that can be very helpful in getting into assault. It can tie up units and eat overwatch fire, freeing up other killy units to get into assault with less resistance. Same with high target priority units like flamers. Just drop them in the enemies face and melt a chunk of their force. They'll draw significant fire and ideally pull threat off your other units.

Once thing I'm a bit sad about though is with the changes to shooting that non-fleet assault units like bletters or crushers are no longer worth their points. Crushers are more durable, but if you look at the new flamer cost I just cannot see why you'd want to take crushers over flamers especially since crushers have no answer now for terminators due to the crap AP3 on hell blades.

I played against 1500 pt necron list this weekend with my daemons and romped my opponent

list was

Bloodthirster
GuC

6 Fiends
5 Flamers
4 Flamers

10 horrors BoC + Changling
10 Horrors BoC
5 Plaguebearers
8 Bloodletters

4 Screamers

He had

destroyer lord with 5 wraiths
1 overlord with 10 tesla immortals + res orb

10 warriors
10 warriors
3 tomb blades with large blast

2 doom scythes


First, i got the half of my army i actually wanted which included the bt, and fiends and screamers and flamers + 1 unit of horrors

Horrors are sick at blasting warriors to bits with high rate of fire and ap4, they are also good at blasting tmb blades, they went down after some focused fire by my screamers slashing and horror shooting

his unit of wraiths and lord took 4 wounds from my flamers templating them in the face, sucks they have 3+ invulnerable.

Bloodthirster did nothing, fiends hid

his turn he assaults my flamers who cause another wound but due to invulnerable and 2 wounds each and fearless they hold.

he shoots at stuff and I make nice ward saves only loosing maybe 4 or 5 horrors

my turn EVERything else comes on right in his face so hes got a lot of targets now.

Flamers land and melt his immortal unit, BT vector strikes same unit.

plague bearers land on an objective 400km from where the fighting is and stay there all game

his wraiths kill my flamer

my other horrors shoot up his warrior unit hiding in ruins at an objective and kill 5!

GuC threatens his warriors

fiends rape stuff and anyway...

his fliers come on and due to invulnerables dont do as much dmg as they could

all he had left in the end was the 2 fliers i had most of my army.

remember that flamers of tzeentch get the wall of fire special rule same as space marine flamers. that means we get d3 automatic hits per flamer or model with gift of chaos as our overwatch shots. extra scary.

Necrons still disappear to massed shooting. Focus on a target and if you can knock down the entire unit excluding attached crypteks or independent characters then they can't get back up. Also, if the unit runs away which it has to test for before reanimation protocols, then they lose all the models that were knocked down (ever-living is an exception i believe)