well, i'm hesitant to say it because it is, to my mind, pretty much the reason necrons are still able to win the odd game XD
the simple plan is as follows:
Overwatch. when they assault you, shoot the infantry. then, you've got a pretty good chance of beating the infantry in the assault, and once the infantry formations are dead, the portals (and thus, monoliths) are largely irrelevant.
then you just maneuver away from the monoliths (which are slow as hell since they cant march, and have short range weapons) and on turn 3, break anything that is on objectives you can claim victory off.
If you kill their infantry, but don't break their monoliths, the monoliths are actually much slower than basically every other army in the game (breaking monoliths is currently a terrible idea for the most part, because they just disappear and redeploy where you want them next turn, it doesnt hamper their portals, and while losing the supporting fire/activations sucks, you still get your free double to move into position)
most armies can have 2-4 formations on overwatch before the necrons get to strike, and can position those overwatch orders based on what appears to be the strike target from the placement of monoliths.
that, alone, is enough to hamper most necron assaults to begin with. coupled with the other (seemingly) obvious tactics against these assaults (being scout screens, clustering formations if there's no deciever/aeonic orb on the table, deploying in either a single solid castle or two widely seperate flanks placing objectives in such a way as to stop them both/all being contested by a single pylon/warbarque/abattoir.) and you've got it made, so to speak.
there's no need to slog your way across the table against necrons, they will rarely have the ability to cordon you out, so you can generally afford to spend the first part of the game castled up on overwatch, then strike out on turn 3 with your fast units to secure objectives
pylons, as they stand, really need the leader ability or an extra dc or something. right now, i deploy a pylon. if i teleport it into position, i've got a 1 in 3 chance of starting with a blast marker. as a DC2 immobile engine, this means i will be broken as soon as someone bothers to shoot at me, regardless of my armour capabilities, i will be functionally useless for a turn and when i rally, i'll be back to 1 blast marker, and in exactly the same situation again. Pylons, which cannot phase out, are well worth shooting at. likewise, the warbarque or abattoir. pile AT abilities on them, and a warbarque is just 3 russ strapped together. not actually that tough to kill. people get hung up on the fact that lance and TK stuff isnt as good at killing them, but those weapons are far from the mainstay (and as a titan player of all stripes, i've lost more DC to AT shots than TK shots in virtually every game)
so, never shoot monoliths unless you have the massed firepower to kill all of them, or it's the third turn. overwatch anything that is likely to be assaulted by the necron first strike, and shoot the infantry, not the tanks. break pylons as soon as you get the chance and you'll have total air superiority. kill anything else that cannot phase out. but prioritise infantry. on turn 3, break everything if you do this, you'll win. if for whatever reason you dont win. everything you break on the final turn counts as destroyed, so you'll be pretty sure to win on VP
also, remember that anything that assaults you, and ends up more than 5cms away from an unused portal, is stuck on the table and/or dead. it's very easy to predict where an assault will be once the monoliths are down. it's also the main reason why large formations of infantry arent seen (i personally use 6 warriors, 1 pariahs, and 1 or 2 immortals in my phalanxes) anything more, and they cant all fit back into the portal on the consolidate, which either kills everything left behind, or forces the entire formation to stay on the table, and thats basically suicide (because as covered, the infantry are how necrons win their game, once they're dead, the list is basically toothless)
as it stands, there's not a single reason to encourage infantry to stay on the table. they dont provide AA or supcom benefits, they always phase out and thus cannot be expected to hold objectives. if you gave them one or both of those options, you'd start to see people take a full sized blob of infantry, with 3 tomb spyders (for AA and regeneration) and they'd be more likely to sit on objectives and marshal to recover casualties. but in the end, the list is a portal assault list, and that will always be its bread and butter. unless you change the way phase-out works (and the only way i can see of doing that without destroying its elegance, is to make it happen immediately, and/or making it optional for the necron player. both of which would require significant rebalancing)
_________________ ~Every Tool Is A Weapon, If You Hold It Right~
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