Necrautopsy: Part 8

Here we go again.  More Necron blathering.  This time I’m dealing with some special characters, in this case, Nemesor Zahndrekh and Vargard Obyron.  These guys are pretty much the buddy movie of the Necron Codex.  To have one but not the other just seems slightly off.  Not only that, but you also miss out on some added bonuses on the Vargard’s end.  I’ve been using this double team for a few games now and find them interesting and fun to use, but not without their quirks which can make them difficult to get the most out of.

Let’s start with the reason why they’re a buddy movie.  I mean, aside from the back-story (which I advise you read, it’s quite amusing!).  The big draw to having these guys comboed up is that if you take the Nemesor, the Vargard doesn’t take up an HQ slot.  In larger games this can be a very big deal, as the Vargard has a couple of cool abilities and hits like a sack of bricks attached to a speeding bus.  The ability to fling another Overlord (or whatever HQ choice you fancy) can open up the game to some nasty combos for you to exploit.  But that’s for another day entirely.  Today (and possibly tomorrow), I’m just focussing on these two.

First up is the simpler of the two, and (in my opinion) the less viable on his own: The Vargard.  This guy is pretty much the best Necron assault character going in terms of damage output.  However, much like the halberd-wielding Lychguard, he needs to be precisely targeted to work.  Obyron is unique in a couple of ways, but the most obvious deviation from the norm is in his statline.  Most specifically, his Weapon Skill.  One of the (many) quirks with the Necron lists is that the characters don’t actually have improved statlines apart from wounds and attacks.  All Necrons are Ld10, all have WS4.  Okay, Overlords have S & T 5, but that’s nothing their regular elite entries can’t have.  Obyron breaks the mould in this regard by packing a WS of 6.  He is the only non-C’Tan in the ‘dex that has WS of greater than 4.  It won’t make him harder to hit for most opponents, but usually means that he’ll ht in assault a fair bit more than a Necron character normally would.  This is handy because another great strength of this guy is the wealth of attacks he can strike with.

His attack stat is fairly average at 3.  However, in combat he has a trick to play.  Every enemy attack that misses him grants him a bonus attack (up to 6 bonuses).  Here the character has actually managed to get the appalling I2 to work for him.  This means than, on a charge and with decent luck, he can rack up a full 10 attacks at WS6.  Add the bonuses of a Warscythe to that and you can see how much this guy can literally scythe through.  He has another major strength on top of damage output, but I won’t address it yet.

This guy, unfortunately has a pretty major flaw.  He has no invulnerable save at all.  This is a pretty major problem for an assault character whose main ability relies on him being endlessly wailed on.  If it’s a power weapon doing the wailing, then there is a great risk that he will not strike at all.  As such, placing him in any given combat is a precise affair.  Ideally you want him to be that target of as many attacks as possible, which necessitates him being in base-to-base with as many faceless grunts as possible whilst staying away from anyone wielding a power weapon, particularly a high strength one.  When he’s on his own, this is very difficult to do unless you’re dealing with a very large squad, so other tricks need to be employed.  The best way is to have another of your models in base with the power weapon guy.  Models have to attach an enemy in base-to-base contact as opposed to one that’s only within 2” of a friendly engaged model.  Mastering this form of combat placement is vital if you’re going to get the most out this whirligig of destruction.  It can often mean throwing your other models to their doom in his favour, but hey; that’s what the game’s about anyway!

Finally, we come to the true tricksiness of the Vargard.  He (and any squad that he’s attached to) can teleport, just like a Harbinger of Despair with a Veil of Darkness.  I won’t talk about the teleporting, because I’ve already done so in a previous Necrautopsy post.  However, Obyron’s teleportation doohicky brings a big advantage with it.  You can use it to get out of combat.  This can be fantastically useful, particularly if you’re running for a last-turn contestation of a point but getting held up somewhere else on the board.  His teleport also a couple of odd abilities that specifically tie in with the Nemesor.  If you’re aiming to arrive within 6” of the Nemesor, then him and his squad won’t scatter, which is a useful, useful little perk.  But the stranger ability that this brings is that if the Nemesor or his unit are assaulted, then Obyron has to leave wherever he is and teleport directly to that combat and pile in.  Immediately.  You get no choice.  On the plus side, it means that you HQ guy has a big heavy hitter suddenly turn up to help him out in a combat.  On the downside, it means that the unit he was with are now slogging it everywhere again, without you having any say in the matter.  The quickest way to rectify that is to have Obyron teleport out of the combat during his next movement phase and rejoin his unit again, but that’s a full turn down the drain for them.  That ability is really both a strength and a weakness.

Anyway, that’s a rough run-down of Vargard Obyron.  Later, I’ll approach his bestest friend, Nemesor Zahndrekh.  I’ll maybe even make sense doing it…

Necrautopsy Part 7: C'Tan Shards

Last weekend, I went to the Throne of Skulls and, without false modesty, I can say that I did fairly well.  Four wins and one loss isn’t bad in anyone’s books (especially when that loss was one Genestealer away from a draw, dammit!).  Anyway, my brief summation about the tournament can be heard on the podcast, if you have the inexplicable interest in it.

This post is about a new unit I tried for the tournament.  I had used a C’Tan Shard once before going to Nottingham, so was still very much unsure as to its capabilities, especially when you have to spend so many points to acquire them.  However, now that the tournament’s over, I’ve bought another one.  My Shard was pretty much the man of the match in every game.  He was also good fun to play, which always helps.  So this blog post is going to focus on my experiences using the C’Tan and the lessons I learned.

First, the set up.  For this Shard I was going for a very specific build to complement the rest of my army.  Writhing Worldscape was the key ability here.  For those who may not know, WW is a passive ability that means for as long as the Shard is on the table, all Difficult terrain becomes Dangerous as well, and all Dangerous terrain will cause damage on a 1 or a 2, rather than just a 1.  Naturally, this applies only to the opponent.  Nice.  This was a cornerstone of my build, as I was running with three Harbingers of Transmogrification (probably one of the most clunkily named units in the game) who are, by default, armed with Tremorstaves.  Tremorstaves are a 36” range blast weapon that inflicts Difficult terrain on any unit it hits.  This stacks with the Writhing Worldscape ability to make a nasty little combo that can really hamper enemy movement and against which there is little defence.  A vehicle will immobilise itself on a 1 or a 2.  Hordes of guys will dies on rolls of 1 during their own movement phase.  Before, Tremorstaving was a delaying tactic.  With the addition of this guy, it was now a proper weapon.

The other ability I gave him was Swarm of Spirit Dust, a fairly unflashy and utilitarian piece of kit that gives the Shard assault grenades, defensive grenades and Stealth, allowing him to better resist being charged, strike at I4 when assaulting through terrain and also give him better odds of surviving being shot at (provided he can find something big to hide behind).  I found that the Annihilation Barges were about the right size and shape to provide this cover easily.

The statline of this monster also gives you a much-needed close assault element with S & T 7 and five attacks on the charge.  Combined with the fact that he’s a Monstrous Creature (it’s worryingly easy to play a NecZilla list!) and he’s very good at taking down swarms of S3 and decent quantities of S4 without really breaking a sweat.  Vehicles are, of course, easy pickings for him and his 4+ invulnerable save will also stand up against other MCs and power fist/klaw wielders with decent odds.  His downfall, as with most other Monstrous Creatures, is Rending (by the bucketload) and Poisoned Attacks.  That Invulnerable save will only get you so far.

My plans in each battle were fairly similar when it came to using the Shard.  He’d advance up behind my Barges for the first couple of turns and the engage small units of elite infantry where he could do the most damage.  In the first game he dealt with a weakened Strike Squad (Eternal Warrior was nice and the T7 meant that Hammerhand didn’t help them), the second game he tore through a terminator assault squad with their Chaplain, he ate a full squad of Striking Scorpions in the third game, the fourth game saw him dispatch a Trygon with ease (not a wound taken!).  Sadly, the fifth game he didn’t really get up to much, but that was Dark Eldar.  They were too fast and too far away for the most part.  His passive ability more than made up for his relative lack of activity in that game though, as four vehicles out of the ten he was field Immobilised themselves whilst trying to move throughout the game.

He died twice during the tournament.  Once when the Doom landed next to him and took three wounds off him immediately due to his death field effect (I had to roll very badly for that to happen) and having his last wound taken by a squad of charging Genestealers.  And second when I was up against the Eldar player and he spent two turns levelling every applicable gun at him to score a moral victory in a losing game.  Certainly not a bad survival rate.

Oh, before I forget, there are two more standard abilities for this guy that need to be borne in mind.  The first is that he doesn’t care about moving through Difficult or Dangerous terrain.  Having that full 6” move through craters and ruins is kind of liberating, especially if you’re trying to hunt someone down.  The second ability is the post-death explosion.  Everything within D6” of a C’Tan that loses its last wound will take a S4 AP1 hit.  This is a very nasty surprise for Terminators and Paladins!  However, it does necessitate you keeping him away from your more breakable infantry models.  There isn’t a more ignominious way to go.

Apart from perhaps Tesla-ing your units to death.  Which I’ve done.

Repeatedly.

And will probably do again.

Soon.

Necrautopsy FAQ Updates

Well, the Necron FAQs are out and have, rather annoyingly, invalidated a bit of I’ve written in the Necrautopsy series, most keenly with the Deathmarks.  When discussing them, I worked on the assumption that attached members of the Court could teleport down with them and a lot of the things I was talking about relied on finding nice Cryptek matches to make the most of this.  We can (almost) ignore this now, which is a shame.

First, a bit of an explanation as why I came to my now erroneous conclusion.  I thought that the Court would work kind of like Wolfguard.  When you attach a Wolfguard to a unit of Scouts, then he doesn’t make the squad lose the ability to outflank and in fact gains it to keep up.  I therefore thought it was going to be the same principle with the Crypteks and Lords.  Whoops.

There is good news for the Deathmarks though, if you don’t mind losing the ability to piggyback onto your opponent’s reserve rolls.  The Marking ability of the Deathmarks also carries over to their attached characters, which opens up the nasty combo of the Harbinger of Despair, whose AP1 flamer template now wounds on 2s against the marked unit.  Add that to the fact that you can teleport about the board with the Veil of Darkness, then you have a tight and potentially devastating assassin squad for 155 points.  You’d need to be bold with the Deep Strike placement, but at only 155 points, it shouldn’t be crippling if you lose them.

Anyway, enough about Deathmarks.  There are more horrible things the FAQ opens up for the discerning robot Overmind.  The official seal of approval for Writhing Worldscape stacking with Tremorstaves and Orikan’s Temporal Snares is blood-pressuring-heightening nastiness to abuse (if rather expensive to lay the groundwork for).  For those who don’t know, Tremorstaves are blast weapons that force any unit they hit to move as if though they were in difficult terrain for their next movement phase, whereas Temporal Snares inflicts this on the opponent’s entire army during the first turn.  Writhing Worldscape upgrades difficult terrain to dangerous terrain.  You can see the horror implicit in such a combo.  Won’t hurt shooting armies much, but an assault horde? Nasty.

You can also now attach two member of a Court to the same squad, provided they come from two different Courts.  This brings up some nice 1-2 punches, giving the attached squad the advantages of say, a res orb and a warscythe along with Cryptek equipment. 

One combo that I like quite a lot (given my affection for the anvil squad of warriors) is packing two Harbingers of the Storm both with Lightning Fields.  What this means is that any unit that assaults the unit will have to suffer 2D6 S8 AP5 hits before landing a blow!  It also significantly increases the quantity of short range fire (8 haywire shots within 12”) without breaking the bank. The Harbingers of the Storm are only 25 points base and the Lightning field is a snip at only 10.  Bung a cheap Overlord or regular Lord in there with a Res Orb and you have a unit that will pose a risk to any approaching unit.  Bitching.

Spyder spawning and Ghost Ark repairs have been downgraded a little, no longer being auto-successes, which isn’t too much of a shock.  The Entropic Strike rule vs vehicles has been cleared up a little so that we now know that, yes, you roll to reduce Armour values on vehicles and then you roll to pen on the new values.  This was something that I’d pretty much assumed was the case (after a GW staffer and I went through the rules for it), but it’s nice to have it in black and white.  Most of the stuff in the FAQ are things that we had figured out (res orbs increasing the Everliving roll as well as Reanimation, for example).  By clearing this up in an unambiguous fashion, the Necron FAQ has done what an FAQ is supposed to do, so I guess I’m happy with it.

I just have to rearrange my Deathmark squads.

And buy a C’tan…

Necrautopsy Part 6.2: Lychguard Finisher

In my last Lychguard post, I waffled a little bit and tried to explain my choice for Halberds versus Shields.  Obviously it’d be cooler if we could mix and match, but you can’t have everything.  Unless you’re a Grey Knight Player.  In which case you get everything, and at a discount.  I chose halberds as being my equipment of choice (I know they’re called Warscythes, but look at them: they’re bloody halberds!).  This choice does render the unit less durable than their more expensive shielded brethren, but ups the punching power to monstrous levels.  Monstrous Creature levels, to be precise.  As such, there are certain things they’re very good at killing, and certain things where the entire unit will collapse.

I’m used to dealing with that kind of mentality with my Dark Eldar.  There are just some units you know can take you apart, so you stay away from them and attack the softer targets while picking away at the scary one.  However, the Dark Eldar are speedy, dodgy little bastards, in stark contrast to the lumbering metal beasts of the Necron army.  They have the ability to pick and choose their targets.  What can the Lychguard do?  The answer is simple: bring a Harbinger of Despair. 

The Harbinger of Despair can take a groovy little piece of kit called the Veil of Darkness.  It’s a teleporter.  Provided the Harbinger’s unit is not in combat, then they can Deep Strike anywhere on the board instead of moving.  It is a key piece of equipment to get the most out of the Lychguard and I probably wouldn’t take them without it.  It doesn’t come without significant downsides though.  The veil and attached Harbinger is a pretty expensive combo, totalling 60 points (70 if you want to give him the Nightmare Shroud, but I wouldn’t bother; if you can’t assault, you should be running instead).  There’s also the risk of Deep Strike Mishaps on what is a pretty expensive unit.  260 points running at the bare minimum.  You need to pick your strike zone carefully, bearing in mind that they’ll be the target of a lot of attention wherever they land.

The other thing I tend to do with this squad is attach an Overlord to it, which is really doubling down on the risk/reward ratio.  The Overlord is useful for the equipment he can bring to the unit, but not as essential as I feel the Harbinger is.  The Resurrection Orb is a must-have for him, the Warscythe is always my go-to weapon for Necron characters and the Sempiternal Weave allows him to reliably soak up those krak missiles.  The Phase Shifter is ridiculously expensive, but a valuable addition to give the Overlord a bit of survivability against otherwise unstoppable damage.  Unfortunately, kitting him out with the above-mentioned trinkets runs the character at a hefty 190 points.  Whether that price tag is worth paying is very much a question of personal preference.  I like it, but can see why it could just be too much.

I tend to start off with these guys in a fairly unobtrusive place so they can be ignored by most of the enemy fire.  Thinking about it though, they could be used as a handy piece of walking cover for the rest of your army although, again, that could prove quite risky in practice.  Quite where I teleport the Lychguard depends entirely on my opponent.  A lot of the armies that I’ve been going up against with my Necrons split themselves into a forward element (typically assault-focussed units) and a back table firebase.  The aim of the Lychguard is to attack the firebase.  As I’ve previously mentioned, too many assault units can exploit the weakness of the Lychguard for it to be worth trying to go toe-to-toe with them.  The mainly shooty targets at the back however are a completely different story, comprising primarily of the soft targets that the unit can just walk through.  When it looks like my opponent’s assault element are too far forward to  easily backtrack, the Lychguard teleport into the backfield, run to spread the formation out a little, weather the enemy fire and then go to work.  If they survive to the last turn they can even teleport to contest an objective (don’t worry about Mishapping with them at that point.  What else are they going to do?).

So, that’s my take on the Lychguard thus far.  A very expensive unit, but effective when applied to the correct target.

And a lot of fun to play as well.

Necrautopsy 6.1: Lychguard Primer

Recently, I’ve been experimenting with different (and some may say silly) list builds rather than the tried-and-true, blood-pressure-raising Tremorstave bonanzas that my serious lists style themselves.

Among the riskiest things in these silly lists is a single unit: Lychguard.  I’ve talked briefly about these guys before, saying that they didn’t really work for me and detailing bits and pieces about them, but never really going in deep.  Well, since playing them more and getting a bit more of a grip on them, I’m prepared to (potentially) rethink my opinion.

Just to sum up, Lychguard are one of the assault options in the codex.  There is a definite hurdle with a lot of the assault units in the Necron book and it’s summed up (for pretty much all of them) in one phrase: Initiative 2.  Assault is tough when you’re going at the same time as your opponent, but going last?  That’s an entirely new form of irritation.  The way most of the Necron assaulters try to deal with this is by being tough, and the Lychguard are no exception.  They are T5 with 3+ saves, lending them decent durability against low quality damage.  Against your standard small arms, they’re just as tough as Terminators.  In fact, they only drop to worse than Terminators when you hit S7.  And that’s not counting the Reanimation Protocols.  Even against your tankbusting weaponry, they can stand back up later, 50% of the time if you’ve got a Resurrection Orb in the unit.  Simply put, they are fantastically hard to bring down with shooting.  They should be just as hard to take down in combat, right?

Unfortunately this is not necessarily the case.  These guys are designed for combat, but you need to be very careful about what combat you throw them into.  Lychguard (like all Necrons) have Ld10, which is nice, but they lack Stubborn, Fearless or any chance for rerolls on Ld tests (chronometrons potentially excepted).  This is their major weakness.  If they lose a combat, they can run and if they run, with I2, they will most probably be swept away.  Then you’ve lost one hell of an expensive unit, especially if you’ve kitted them out.  As they will be striking last in the vast majority of combats, some Lychguard will probably fall before getting their returning blows, reducing the chance of you getting enough hits in to draw or win the combat.  This is a big deal.  If you see a unit that can take down a decent number of your Lychguard, then you have to avoid them until they’re weakened enough to deal with, or just avoid them all together.  This makes them a very odd hammer unit. But against the right opponents, they are one hell of a big hammer.

There are two setups for these guys; warscythes (S7 power weapons that roll 2D6 for armour penetration) or shields (4+ Invulnerable saves and bog-standard S5 power weapons).  There are definite advantages for either option, but I prefer running the Warscythe kit for a couple of reasons: I like halberds.  Don’t know why, I just think they look cool.  The other two reasons are mentioned in the weapon description.  They are Strength 7 and roll 2D6 for armour penetration.  Against most enemy infantry, they’re killing on 2s.  Against most Monstrous Creatures, they’re wounding on 3s and against most vehicles… You can imagine. 

Actually, you don’t have to.  They are penning 11 hits out of 12.  This makes them a riskier unit to use, as you don’t have the Invulnerable save to fall back on when you’re up against big assault threats or Demolisher Cannons, but conversely, it makes them far scarier for the opponent, because the things they are good against they can just tear apart without breaking a sweat.  The S5 power weapon and 4++ are more durable, but they’ll be winning fights through grinding attrition, rather than flat out eating the opposition.  Maybe I’m selling the shield variant a little short.  I haven’t used them, so anything I say about them is probably going to be conjecture.  Apart from this:  They definitely can’t kill vehicles as well.  In a Codex that lacks the amount of hardcore vehicle-killing that this dex does, this makes them a more attractive prospect.

Anyway, that’s the rough run-down of the Lychguard from where I sit.  I’ll go a bit more into how I use them, and how they’ve been working for me, at some point soon.  In the meantime, enjoy this list:

Things Lychguard can kill

Pretty much anything not on the below list

Things Lychguard should stay the hell away from

Furioso Dreadnoughts with Blood Talons

Genestealers

Anything with tonne of Rending or Poisoned attacks

S4 or S5 power weapons en masse (S3 power weapons are an acceptable risk)

Thunder Hammer/Storm Shield Terminators

Full strength Ork mobs (odd case, these guys.  If you charge them, you’ll probably be fine.  If they charge you, you’re doomed)

Any more you want to add to the lists?  Go ahead!

Necrautopsy: Part 5

In a similar vein to my dissection of the Annihilation Barge, I’m going to talk about another of the ‘odder’ choices in my army.  Not many Necron players (that I know) think much of the Deathmarks.  They are certainly a strange unit, as many people will look at their short-ranged sniper rifles and ability to Deep Strike in the opponent’s turn (leaving you very vulnerable to attack and unable to spread out) and wonder why these things are in any way ‘good’.  I mean, Deep Striking during the opponent’s turn certainly has novelty value, but the inability to separate the unit or fire before the opponent’s shooting phase is almost inviting the opponent to kill them immediately.  The Rapid Fire rule added to the sniper rifles is cool, but it requires you to be within 12” of the target and no sniper should be that close if he wants to be in any way alive during the next turn.

However, it’s my belief that both of these strange-sounding aspects of the unit can be used to great (and often surprising) effect during the game.  Of course, my experience of this is only based on a few games, so take it for what it is (probably woefully inadequate).  One of the best things about the Deep Strike special rule is that it helps to take away the reliability problem with reserve rolls.  Admittedly it does sort of rely on your opponent rolling well (or, indeed, having reserves in the first place), but the important thing to bear in mind is that there is no limit to the number of Deathmark Squads that can ‘piggyback’ onto an opponent’s reserve roll.  If they get one unit onto the board in turn2, then you can get every Deathmark squad in your army down then as well.  Having that level of control over when your units can arrive opens up many tactical options for co-ordinated attacks and distractions.  It also brings the psychological advantage of disrupting your opponent’s plans for his movement phase.  Usually in a game, you will have decided on what you’re going to do in the movement phase before the opponent’s turn has ended (and, if not, you should have!) and having a couple of units appear out of nowhere can put unexpected pressure on you, increasing the chance of making mistakes.  This is only a good thing.  Sometimes it’s worth the destruction of the entire squad purely for the disruption they can cause to the opponent’s plans just by turning up.

Next up is the Rapid Firing Sniper Rifle.  Again, this is one of those things that can cause people to raise an eyebrow.  Firing two shots per guy is great, but you need to get uncomfortably close to do so and the maximum range on their guns is (like so much else in the Codex) only 24”.  Clearly too short to use then in the traditional sniper nests.  And that’s a common trap I feel gets fallen into when people dismiss then as being unworthy of serious consideration.  They’re crap as sniper, because they’re not really snipers.  When you stop using them as you would a Pathfinder or a Sniper Scout, and just start using them as Immortals with different guns, these guys become an entirely different animal.  They’re pretty much the most resilient sniper(ish) unit out there (with the possible exception of the Vindicare Assassin) and aren’t tied to cover for their survival.  They can march alongside (or ahead, if you want) the rest of your army, levelling a lot of Pinning and Rending shots at anything foolish enough to wander with 12” of them.

Then there is the big draw of the unit; the Marking ability.  Basically, whenever a Deathmark unit deploys you may pick one opposing unit on the field (even in a transport) and, for the rest of the game, any Deathmark shooting will wound them on a 2+ rather than a 4+.  This is kind of a big deal for any gun with the Sniper trait.  Especially nice when deployed against Monstrous Creatures and command choices to rack up as many extra wounds as possible and force pinning tests.  Lovely.  It also adds another psychological trick to the unit.  Against an opponent not used to Deathmarks, it makes them very paranoid about the unit.  It’s one of the additional reasons that they disrupt enemy movements when they Deep Strike out of turn.  Most of my opponents have wanted them dead the moment they turn up.  This marking ability is also one of the reasons why I field Deathmarks in small squads.  The marking ability applies to all Deathmark shooting, not just the squad that marked the unit.  This means that the effectiveness of marking increases exponentially with each unit you deploy and also, even if one of the units get killed the moment it turns up, the marking is still valid for the other unit(s) for the rest of the game.

As you may have noticed, a lot of the things I’ve been saying about these guys involve them getting killed in one way or another.  This is another reason why I tend to field them in small squads.  I also add a Harbinger of the Storm in with each squad as a nice complement to the squad (a decent Assault 4 weapon with 12” range and haywire gives them a little extra bite for suppression and distraction) but even that only bumps the squad up to 120 points.  By keeping them this low, it allows me to be bolder with Deep Striking them, using them as speedbumps or distractions without risking too many points in the process.  Even at the low level I use them, they’re still capable of churning out a nice amount of quality firepower with a great deal of flexibility, although this admittedly lacks range.  I find the marking adds a nice additional tactical element to the game and enjoy deploying the psychological tricks that they can bring to bear.

So; there you have the Deathmarks.  Better than they look on paper.

Well, I think so…

Necrautopsy: Part 4

Okay, so far in my series of Autopsies, I’ve been talking about very solid, reliable units (and, in two of the cases, units that are compulsory in one way or another).  Just to add a bit of flavour to proceedings, I’m going to briefly address some of the units that are more of a personal choice to add to an army, and choices which many players may disagree with.  Let’s start with the Annihilation Barge.

This vehicle is a bit of an odd one, when it comes down to it.  It slow (or at the very least, not Fast) and short to mid-ranged (24” on all its weapons), which is far from a user-friendly combination.  It’s also Open Topped, which is another black mark against it.  Open Topped is only a (potential) advantage for transports.  On a gunboat, it serves no purpose other than to get it killed.  Add in the fact that all its guns (which it needs to remain stationary in order to use all of, might I add), and the perfectly valid query may be raised: Why are you taking this thing?

Several reasons really.  I’ll start with the least important (or most important, depending on the type of player you are).  It looks really cool.  When I first saw the Barge in the pre-release pictures, I didn’t think too much of it.  Not bad, not great.  But the more I saw of it, the more I liked it, and when it came to my self-imposed challenge of building a new model Necron army for under £100, this thing was top of the list to buy.  Not only for the aesthetics, but also for the fact that it a plastic Overlord included in the kit as well.  So that’s the first reason.

The second reason is durability.  The Quantum Shielding lends this cheap little 90 point vehicle with a great deal of resilience from the off.  Strength 6 torrent fire can’t affect it.  Autocannons can’t penetrate it.  Krak missiles only pen on a 6.  And the living Metal rule allows you to disregard the shaken and stunned results reliably often.  This makes the Annihilation Barge a useful piece of movable cover to chug forward at the head of the army, whilst still emanating the threat of all the S7 shooting it can bring to bear it you wander too close.  I often use them in the way, to provide a cover save to my Canoptek Spyders (which can also repair weapons and immobilisations on the Barges in a nice bit of symbiosis) and I’m fairly confident that they will lengthen the survivability of the Stalker when I get it as well.  I tend to keep them moving until they hit the 24” sweet spot and then set them down and let rip for the rest of the game (or until they die, whichever happens first).  The points cost also helps in this regard, because no-one weeps over losing a 90 point vehicle.

Finally, I love the weaponry.  If you’ve read my previous autopsy (the one on Immortals) then you’ll know that I really enjoy the Tesla mechanic.  Because of this, I always go for the Tesla cannon rather than the Gauss for the vehicle, but again it’s a personal taste thing.  There are certainly times when the AP3 given by the Gauss would’ve been handy though.  Anyway, the Tesla Destructor (the big main gun of the thing) packs a good deal of firepower (4 S7 shots) with all the possibilities that silly Tesla rules bring (up to 12 hits!) making it good enough for vehicle suppression fire (although the AP- makes it of limited use as a dedicated vehicle killer) and it works well as a threat to foot troops with the weight of fire that it can fling out (nearly all of which will be wounding on 2s).  It’s an odd thing, but until AP3, I really don’t care about AP values for infantry killing.  I suppose it’s ingrained with this army and the Dark Eldar ones I run that sheer weight of fire is enough to kill MEQs without worrying about it.  It leads to a more relaxed army formation for me.  If, for example, you’re deploying plasma weapons to kill marines, then providing your target with a cover save is a real problem and cause for concern.  If you’re just piling on the AP- shots though, I couldn’t care less about cover or obscured lines of sight.

Anyway, that was a bit of a tangent, *slap face* back on point.  Not only is the fun Tesla hitting mechanic in action with the Destructor, but there is also arcing to be taken into consideration.  Now this effect is highly unlikely to happen during any one incident, and when it happens it may not have any effect (vehicles, mainly) but that just makes it that much more amusing to me when it kicks off.  It makes you cast your eye for densely packed clusters of infantry or light vehicle to increase the chance of collateral damage flying about.  Which is always fun.  The final point about the Destructor is a point that I hadn’t realised for an embarrassingly long time.  I had played four or so games with the Annihilation Barge and being underwhelmed by it.  I’d got another one, because I thought they’d work better in small hunting packs, but they still didn’t quite bring enough to the field to justify their existence.  Then, during game 5 at my local GW, someone (I think one of the staffers) pointed out that the gun was twin-linked.  This made a large and noticeable improvement in both the improvement of my Barges and the amount I liked them.  After realising that I had been playing them wrong for quite some time, they really started to click and I was able to run them with more confidence that my points weren’t being completely wasted.  I still run two, quite often in a pack to provided cover and support to one another, and haven’t been disappointed with them since.  That said, the downsides I listed earlier are all relevant and I can’t argue against people choosing not to use them for those reasons.

But, dammit, I enjoy my Annihilation Barges!

Even if they can’t be squadronned.

Necrautopsy Part 3

Now that I’ve covered one of the Troops choices in the army, I should probably address the half of the double act; Immortals.  Now, amongst people who have had a look at the codex, the Immortals are the more popular choice and it’s fairly easy to see why.  The have better guns (either bigger Gauss guns or Tesla Carbines) and a better save, allowing them to better shrug off the wealth of AP4 that can be fielded about the place. And they’re only a touch more expensive than the humble Necron Warrior (4pts per guy, or about 33%).  However, it’s not all good.

I don’t really see the point in the bigger Gauss guns at the moment.  The rapid fire weapon type requires the squad to stand still to use it to best effect, massively limiting their use and the extra strength makes it a bit better against troops, wounding on 3s instead of 4s in the case of MEQs.  The AP4 instead of 5 is okay, but there really aren’t that many 4+ saves in the game to make this a major advantage, especially with the preponderance of cover saves in this edition.  When it comes to vehicles, all the extra strength does is allow you a 1 in 6 chance to penetrate armour 10s.  That’s it. In pretty much any other army, the jump from S4 to S5 is a far bigger deal, allowing the unit to have some effect against heavier and heavier vehicles.  Unfortunately, all gauss weapons can have an effect against vehicles regardless of strength, reducing the effectiveness of incremental strength upgrades for vehicle suppression.  For these reasons, I always use the far more fun Tesla Carbines as my gun of choice for these guys.

My reasons for this choice are fairly comprehensive (I think).  Same strength, so you’re not downgrading. They are Assault 1 weapons, allowing to you to move and still cover a good amount of board space with electrical zappyness.  Add in the fun little Tesla rule (any 6s on the to hit roll automatically generate an additional two bonus hits) and these guys tend to average a 100% hit rate when they fire.  They can also assault after they’ve fired, which may not sound like much when you’re dealing with an army as deficient in assault as the Necrons, but there are many opportunities for an assault against a weakened unit, or any unit that is more effective shooting than close assaulting in any given game.  Having that option there, even if it’s better that you don’t use it, is a plus for me.  There are two prospective downsides to the Carbine versus the Gauss Blaster.  It is AP-, which means that, of course, everyone will get their armour saves against the wounds.  However, given the mass of 3+ saves that proliferate in this universe, the lack of an AP value makes no practical difference in the majority of your infantry culling expeditions.  Yeah, those guardsmen with get to use their flack armour, and it’s always nice to see the surprise on the Ork player’s face when he finds out he can use his 6+ save against something at range.  Admittedly, the AP- will hurt a bit when dealing with vehicles.  Any glancing hits you score will be at a -3 penalty on the damage table, rendering them highly, highly unlikely to do anything lasting to vehicles.  But then again, that’s not their role.  The other disadvantage is that in the 12” window, the Gauss Blaster is getting more shots than you.  However, that’s a sacrifice I’m more than willing to make for the far increased mobile ranged effectiveness these guns can offer.

I mainly use Immortals in small five-man squads rather than the full complement of 10.  This is because I normally give them Crypteks to follow them about, creating a relatively durable unit with some funky ranged options with the Harbinger upgrades (I prefer Transmogrification, myself), operating them on an MSU basis.  For my army, the main role of my Immortals is to act as satellite units for my big anvil unit of Warriors, providing point defence against any unit that gets a bit too close, providing cover (one five Immortal squad plus the Cryptek can easily provide cover for the whole 22-man Warrior squad) and also providing sacrificial speed bump services against assault units when necessary.  I like them a lot for that, and they have ably assisted my anvil unit to victory on many occasions (read: 4) through my brief and probably disgracefully unrepresentative career as Robot Zombie Overmind.

That’s my view on Immortals, at least in the context of how I’ve been using them at the moment.  Not as kick-ass units in their own right (which I’m sure they can be), but as a natural partner and complement to other components of my army.  Any of you use them differently?  Leave comments, etc.

Necrautopsy Part 2

Last time I talked about Necron Warriors and using them as an anvil unit (as opposed to the old ‘hammer unit’ idea).  I also said that there was one more thing that I did with them in my 1,500 point army to make them even better in this role.  This added bonus come in the form of the Illuminor Szeras, a special character in the back of the book.  I really like this guy.  Stat-wise he’s not great.  He’s got the same stat-line as an Immortal but with an extra wound and four attacks, which would be nice, but he doesn’t have a power weapon or a strength above four, so those attacks an go hang, frankly.  I normally try to keep him out the fighting wherever possible.  If he’s hanging around with the anvils unit, he normally hides in the middle of them o he can’t get punked out in an assault.

His equipment is alright, but not particularly spectacular.  Nothing special to hit with in close combat, but he does give his squad defensive grenades and necrons, being what they are, need all the help they can get on the receiving end of a charge.  His ranged weapon is pretty cool though.  Like any Harbinger of Destruction (more on the Harbingers later…) he comes with an Eldritch Lance, which is a nice semi tank-buster at 36” range, S8 AP2, Assault 1.  I wouldn’t rely on it to kill a vehicle (you just can’t do that with S8 in 5^th Edition), but it does provided a nice added bite to his unit’s shooting.  But at 100 points for him, he’d better bring more to board than an alright shooting attack, some defensive grenades and an extra wound.  Fortunately, he does.

The big deal about the Illuminor is that at the beginning of the game he upgrades one of your basic Warrior or Immortal squads with a random upgrade.  On a 1-2, they get upgraded with an extra toughness, on 3-4 they gain a ballistic skill and a 5-6 grants them an extra strength.  None of these are bad, although some definitely aren’t as good as others.  I’m talking about the strength upgrade here.  Yeah, it’s nice to have, but in an ideal plan, these guys won’t be getting into a fight anyway.  Nevertheless, it’s handy to have as a bonus.  The ballistic skill upgrade is really nice, especially as I always choose my anvil squad for the upgrade and they pack so many guns that the BS5 really gets maximum results.  When shooting at vehicles, you need all the hits you can muster to increase odds of getting that Immobilising glancing hit.  But Toughness 5 is where the Illuminor really shines.  The Warriors become so much work to take down, that in the (admittedly few) games I’ve played at 1,500 points, my opponent didn’t really bother trying to kill them.  When upgraded to toughness 5, small arms won’t cut it anymore.  You need ordnance to shift them.  And even then, half of them will get back up again.  Also, anything that allows more of them to remain standing in an assault to punch back is greatly appreciated at a pinch.

So, that’s my rundown of the Illuminor and my synergistic way of getting the most out of your basic Robot Zombies.  Next up…

Something!

Maybe.

Necrautopsy Part 1

Okay, I’ve been playing these guys for a little while now (in broadly the same list) and so I think I can cast some aspersions their character by now.   I’ve had a decent run of wins with this base list and it’s dependable, if not exciting, relying as it does very much on the troops section of the army.  Now, when I say that it’s not exciting, I don’t mean it’s not fun.  I’ve had a good time in all the games I played and enjoyed the army a lot so far.  Now, part of this enjoyment is probably the ‘new army’ factor which probably hasn’t quite worn off yet.  After all, it’s only been a month or so.

Another factor is just the sheer change in gear that these guys present when compared to my usual army of choice, the Dark Eldar.  In many ways, these guys are polar opposites.   This has led to the natural challenge of changing play styles.  Gone are the days of unparalleled manoeuvrability, strict anti-personnel/anti-tank weaponry and staggeringly high initiative stats.  Now I’m commanding shambling hordes of I2 robot zombies.  It’s been a challenge getting used to them, and I don’t think I’ve managed it yet.  Nevertheless, this doesn’t mean I’m going to spare you my ill-thought out drivelling under the guise of rational analysis!

You lucky thing, you.  So then; my impressions, unit by unit.

Necron Warriors:  Very much the core of my army.  Since weighing them up in the book, I’ve pictured them as an anvil.  I tend to picture nearly anything you have a squad of twenty as some kind of anvil, provided they have a decent armour save and/or toughness.  Wyches need not apply.  Same with you, Termagants.  These guys have a few things going for them in the anvil stakes.  The T4, 4+ save is a good start when complimented by the vast numbers you can acquire.  What also helps (and is nigh on necessary for this build) is the ability to add another body to mass, in the form of a Cryptek or a Lord, boosting the maxed number to 21.  This is a big(ish) deal for me, which may appear odd, but let me explain.  The morale test for shooting casualties hinges on losing 25% (or more) of the models in any given unit.  This means that units which don’t divide evenly into four have a bit of an advantage.  More specifically, units of size 5, 9, 13, 17 and 21 have to take a disproportionately large number of casualties before seeing if they bottle.  Now, on a Ld of 10, this is highly unlikely (1 in 12 to be precise), but it’s always better not to take a test at all rather than risk failing it, no matter how unlikely.  A 20-man unit would have to test after taking 5 casualties, but a 21-man unit has to take 6 before the test.  With firing a hell of a lot of guns into the squad, this outcome is unlikely, which is a load off my mind.

This, combined with the 50/50 chance of them getting up again when they’ve been killed (thanks, res-orb!) means that this unit can shrug off a huge amount of firepower.  This doesn’t mean you can get careless with them though.  Cover is essential, as there are many weapons boasting an AP4, which cuts the long-term survival down significantly.  The other major weakness is in combat.  These guys aren’t very good.  This is another reason to go for numbers rather than MSU with these guys.  A lot of these guys will fall down before getting to hit.  You need as many still standing as possible to remain upright so they can try to even the score.  Unlikely, but some chance is always better than none.  This is where the Lord becomes useful, packing his warscythe for a little bit of decent punch and some vitally needed anti-vehicle assault.  Nothing worse that these guys getting tied up by one armoured sentinel with no recourse.

There are also a couple of extra things in my list which make these guys even better.  I tend to pack a (relatively) cheap Phaeron Overlord.  What the Phaeron upgrade does is make the Overlord and whatever unit he is with Relentless.  20 relentless rapid-firing warriors is a scary prospect.  As mediocre as S4 AP5 shooting may be in this day and age, when you’re doubling, tripling or even quadding it up, it can be horrific.  It also helps maximise the Gauss effect on enemy vehicles through sheer weight of numbers.  It can also help you tip assaults in your favour by providing a lot of antipersonnel firepower before stealing a charge.  Sure you’ll strike last, and some of your guys may well be taken down first, but they’ll be getting double the attacks per model and you’ll be stealing that bonus attack from your adversaries.  Given that setup, they can get the drop on nearly any assault unit.  Not quite all, but close.

Anyway, that’s it for now.  Don’t want you to get bored.  Yet.

I’ll pick through the rest of the units I’ve been using during a couple of later posts, including one more thing I use to get the most out of my anvil unit.