Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Necron Tactics for beginners

I've looked into just about everything on Necron tactics. I have read other people's ideas and battle strategies. Through this I have come to one conclusion. Most people are wrong. A large majority of people who think they are helping necron players with their advice are actually doing the opposite. That said I'll give a brief description of what I think is ideal in a necron army compared to the tips others give.

1. One of the main tactics I found for necron army builds is taking tons of warriors. Ok, warriors are good but you shouldn't take 5 units at full capacity. during my last game against Agni Prime my warriors were practically useless. one thing I know for certain is, keep the numbers LOW in your units of warriors. 10 is perfect but 11 to 13 warriors are ok too. In a 2000 point game you should take 4 squads of this small size. Especially in a capture and control mission, you need lots of troops units. Even if you can zoom in with your destroyers to contest, to win you need to have some points under your control.

2. Tip number two, TAKE HEAVY DESTROYERS
I've read so many negative comments on heavy destroyers, about how they are worthless. As far as I can tell these comments are wrong. especially in our gaming club armor is power and saves keep your units alive. high toughness is great but a good armor save is even better, most players know this and use it in their armies. you need a way to get past that armor. Heavy destroyers do that, and in a pinch you can run them in to contest a point. One squad will do just fine, try and protect them though. Destroyers and heavy destroyers are tough but not invincible.

3. My final tip goes for everyone non-necron players included



Don't put too much faith into any one unit. Trying to run a list based solely around an amazing super unit is a losing tactic. At best you will end up killing of one or two units with your unit. when other players see a unit like that they will light it up. If your not trying to be sneaky or you think your "super" unit can take the fire of a whole army you will be sorely disappointed. I've tried using my destroyer lord in this way and he kills things but he ends up dying too quickly. play defensively, play smart, and don't think that any one unit will win you the game. Winning will always be a matter of making the right choices. Starting with what units you take and ending with the final culmination of the game. The winner will be determined by who kept their cool and made the best choices and who took the safest risks.

hopefully I haven't ranted too much and good luck to all players in the upcoming 40k day.

4 comments:

  1. Great read! From what I know about necrons I would say you've got a good grasp on them.

    I agree that most people the play 40k don't seem to have a good idea about what works and what doesn't. For instance, everybody and their mother says daemon princes are amazing. But I have yet to see a battle report or play a game myself where my daemon prince did anything but die. No matter how it was deployed or used, they just don't pull their weight.

    One thing I was thinking is, you gotta be careful with taking less warriors. They do die very easily and you risk the phase out rule.

    Also, in regards to your comments about super units. I think it really comes down to how you use them. Not to mention, the anvil or super unit as you call them are SUPPOSED to die. That is their job, to get in there, distract, and make the enemy deal with them. They are a suicide unit for the most part. So don't get too bent out of shape when your necron lord goes down, as long as he's pulling his weight, that's all that matters.

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  2. here here!

    great discussion Forsaken,

    There are definitely two schools of thoughts on the issue of the anvil unit. I personally agree with the view that there is just too much riding on that one unit. That is why I roll with a distributed system of units that can overlap and carry the weight of each other, if one goes down, the others pick up the slack. teamwork if you will.

    However, in practice, the anvil unit is very effective. it demands all the attention of you opponent, which means, you have the ability to control the field of battle. Whereas the distributed army is able to adapt and react to the opponent, the anvil takes command of the battle, it dares your opponent to defend. assigning roles from the very start.

    I had the opportunity to watch most of your game against the nids and I thought you did an excellent job utilizing the strengths of your necron lord and scarab entourage.

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  3. I agree that a super unit will and is supposed to die however I found that pushing more points into the unit wont help that much and certainly wont prevent it from dieing. For example the Destroyer lord with scarab swarms. Even if I take a full squad of scarabs the scarabs wont actually be dealing out many wounds. Actually I think my scarabs have dealt fewer than 5 wounds in all the games I have played. Furthermore if an opponent has what it takes to deal with our super unit, in my case ordnance blasts, no amount of points will prolong that units life more than a turn or two.

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  4. Yeah but the scarabs aren't supposed to do wounds. The destroyer lord is supposed to get in the backfield and take out heavy support units and vehicles.

    There is effectively noway of stopping him from doing that aside from bringing the full firepower of your army down on him. Blast templates are nice, but aren't reliable enough to deal with him before he gets where he's going.

    There really is two schools of thought. Until your balanced army gets totally destroyed by an anvil unit. Then you'll be seeing the other side :P

    Not to mention brother c. the only reason you don't have an anvil unit is cause the dark angels don't have an anvil unit.

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