Necron Tactica Part 3

Because it's probably the question that is most important - and most obvious, with 40k's current emphasis on vehicles - I'm going to address the Necron ability to deal with mech armies.

I was a bit surprised when last night I found out that Fritz, AKA wayofsaimhann on youtube, actually posted some useful information about Necrons the other day. He's got quite a list of videos dealing with Necron tactics, but most of the initial ones deal with a 50-warrior list, which I think is a terrible waste of resources...but that's a topic for another time. Recently, he posted a vid about Necron anti-tank options that really hits the nail on the head. Basically, the goal with the Necrons isn't to destroy your opponents' vehicles, but rather to nullify them.

As Necrons, we really have very few options for true tankhunting. The Monolith's Particle Whip is ok if it's in range, but usually better spent dealing with infantry targets. Heavy Destroyers are commonly cited, but 65 points for a mobile lascannon on a single-wound model just doesn't cut it - it'll get shot up before it has a chance to really do anything. That leaves our anti-mech assaults, but anything that can kill a vehicle in close combat for Necrons usually has a much more important job to do somewhere else - The C'Tan or Lord w/ Warscythe being prime examples.

So our only remaining option then is to ensure that those vehicles can't hurt us. Glancing got nerfed heavily in 5th Ed, but it can still be very useful in buying time... And the longer the game goes, the more it favors the Crons because of our insane durability. Consider Fritz's example of the Vindicator: it's S10 AP2 blast shot makes it a major threat to everything in the army, ignoring armor, We'll Be Back!, and our high toughness. In order to fire, however, it has to move right into the Necron sweet spot - 24".

Bear with me, we're about to do a bit of Mathhammering. Feel free to skip this part if you don't believe in math.

A squad of 10 warriors firing from maximum range at a Vindicator has pretty good odds. With 10 shots, 6-7 will hit (33.3% miss rate). Of those you're almost certain to get one glance (16.67 chance to glance any target). Now we're in business, because there is nothing that can happen on a glance that the Necron player wouldn't want:

1-3: Shaken. It can't fire. 10 S4 shots to make sure a S10 Ordnance can't fire? I'd take that trade any day.

4: Stunned. Same as above, but now it can't even get away.

5: Weapon Destroyed. The "ideal" result against a Vindicator...I can now completely ignore it for the entire game.

6: Immobilized. Not quite as good as the other results in the short-term, but since a Vindicator is so short-ranged, I can ignore it now as long as I avoid its field of fire. For obvious reasons, this is the ideal result against a transport.

Speaking of transports, it's worth bringing up that most troop-transports can take a relatively cheap (15 points) upgrade that makes it much harder for glances to affect them - Extra Armor. Stunned becoming Shaken may not seem like much, but when all you do is glance, that means your opponent just halved your chances of keeping that transport from moving for a turn. It's in cases such as this that you bring out your big guns - Destroyers. Their S6 is extremely potent against most transports (excluding the Land Raider variants, which I'll admit are very tough to deal with as Necrons), especially since they have the mobility to pull off side shots against Chimeras and the like. Make sure you know at the beginning of the game which transports your opponent has put extra armor (or its equivalent) on - these are the ones that you need the Destroyers to focus on.

This is getting kind of long again, so I'll end it here for now. I'll save the discussion of vehicles contesting your objectives for when I go into more detail on the mission types and how hey affect your play...though that won't be next week's topic. I think I'll talk about Phase Out next.