taking a pylon (or two) is still essentially a no brainer. necrons need AA support, they only have 1 option for doing so, which means it gets taken. how many necron armies do you see without atleast 1?

if all you play is marine lander assault armies, pylons will do great. their 1 "will kill most things" shot will have a field day against high value targets but as soon as you play against a 8 thunderbolt, or fighterbomba-swarm army, those pylons will do not a whole lot more than diddly before they get broken.

if necrons had other AA firepower, the pylons would not be such an auto-include, but because its the only option in an army that really needs it, they will be. what this means is that the 33% restriction is actually '33%-2 pylons' which doesnt often leave room for the big things (for the record, what i said is if you dont want to go without AA coverage or supreme commander, you cant take an abbatoir. your "1 easily broken AA shot and an abbatoir" example is, to my mind, definitely lacking a supreme commander, and not particularly chock full of AA support either)

thats the point i'm making, by forcing pylons to be included in two seperate restrictions, you're massively limiting their ability to take anything else. if the abbatoir could be a supreme commander, and had minor AA fire (perhaps giving scarab swarms an AA shot, which would also let the quite vulnerable tomb spyders take some pressure off the pylons aswell) and you'd see them more

an abbatoir is in effect a highly specialised warlord titan in an army without sentinel or thunderbolt activations to buff the count. that is why you hardly ever see them.

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~Every Tool Is A Weapon, If You Hold It Right~

Hi Jaggedtoothgrin, that all sounds reasonable. Yes I was describing an army with just 1 pylon and 1 abba, so without a supreme commander. Then after what you've said we'd probably agree that if Necrons needed anything, it would be AA from a different unit rather than Pylons being changed to not count towards their WE limit.

i do think if thunderhawks and landers can be not included in the WE/AC limit, then pylons shouldnt be either.
however, i do think both those things should be included in the restricted part of the list (its probably my biggest complaint in epic at the moment, it or tyranids in general XD)

I definitely dont think that pylons should be both a support formation AND a restricted war engine. for it to be both, and still the only AA option in the army, is really really harsh.

and i definitely think there should be a non-restricted supreme commander option available. or at the very least, let a large harvester engine take the SC upgrade (then you could take a SC-Abbatoir and a pylon at 3000 points)

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~Every Tool Is A Weapon, If You Hold It Right~

The 1/3 limitation is harsh on purpose. It is one of several limiters placed on the army to keep the teleporting horde from crushing opponents. I have found that 3000 point games are challenging for a number of different armies, but that is okay. Keep in mind we're not just making an army list for 3000 point tournament lists, but an army that is balanced overall (larger games, scenario games, etc.). You can always ignore the restriction and let your opponent know you are using house rules. I do believe you would have an unfair advantage, however.

War Engines are fun for the Necron. The Abattoir used to be terrible when it was at DC6 and was mainly a war engine killer. We changed it on the last iteration of the list because it wasn't doing what it was supposed to do (ie. kill infantry). So we upped the DC from 6 to 8, and reduced the number of extra MW TK attacks. This was an important step in improving its survivability as well.

Anecdotal information - I once had my Abbatoir go head to head with an Eldar Warlock. It smote my Necron War Engine and strode away with half its DC still intact.

Aeonic Orbs are good War Engines as well. The problem is that they can be broken with low to moderate effort (DC6) and have a nasty critical. MNB's Orb was destroyed by AT fire on turn 1 of a game. Poof! Gone. It's happened to me as well on turn 2. Sometimes you are the windshield and sometimes you are the bug.

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It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.

I had a game against Steve's Necrons, featuring an Abbatoir. It was probably the worst case scenario for testing this war engine - not just up against a high activation IG army that doesn't intend to win close combats, but also being forced into corner deployment so the Abbatoir would have the longest possible route to the Blitz.

Despite that, the Abbatoir effectively shaped the game from turn 2 onwards. This ended as a Necron loss, but the entire firepower of the IG wasn't enough to take this thing down. In addition to the BTS, Blitz and TSNP goals we've mentioned that this war engine can single handedly affect, if the Necron player puts the other two objectives 30cm from the blitz and each other it can just go to the centre of the triangle and contest/claim them too.

I don't know if Steve would give it a completely whole hearted endorsement but there is something special about something that close to unkillable.

I'd say a simple Leman Russ formation is closer to unkillable and costs less. How many tourney games have you played where a LR formation was outright destroyed? Or Warlord titans? Or any number of of large point formations.

I would expect a 750 point WE to make an impression on the game though. What you are saying doesn't sound out of the ordinary or unreasonable.

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author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.

Russes can be broken and killed off with BMs and Warlords can be taken down with TK weapons?

Well let's see. A Leman russ company gives you 10 4+ reinforced armour tanks for 650pts, so definitely a challenge to kill. However they are absolute assault magnets that will almost definitely break the first time they meet the terminator or thunderhawk drop assaults that are prolific (at least where I play). Once broken, they are losing tanks to anything that pokes a gun in their direction.

The abattoir gives you 8 4+ reinforced armour saves with the advantage of living metal (one save vs TK, two saves vs Macro, all TK(x) becomes TK(1)) making it at least twice as hard to kill with the sort of high powered weapons usually used against reinforced armour, and then if assaulted can retaliate with 8 + 2 attacks, a TK(D3) attack and 3 + 1 ignore cover attacks. (Ie it's not going to loose much).
And if it does it is fearless even if broken.



Not at all, Moscovian. I like it, and think it has good rules that represent what it should be and how it should be used. I'm describing it as a good unit if used properly rather than broken or insanly powerful. It is definitely a heck of a lot better than a leman russ company though

If you think the unit is not overpowered then what is there to discuss? This all sounds like the pylon conversations that went on for far too long. All the necron players think the pylon (or in this case, abbatoir) is okay at best. And all other players looking at it on paper and thinking its overpowered.
Let's look at all the powerful units in the game. Terminators: always in a SM army. Deathstrikes: no one going to argue at there effectiveness. So ask yourself this. If the abbatoir is so overpowered, why do no necron players use them?

Because Pylons draw from the WE alotment. At 3k, it's more important that an army have at least some AA (unneccessarily nerfed or not) than it is to have a beefy, chewy CC WE like an Abbatoir. At larger points, Harvester Engines become a much better option.

However, I'd agree it's not overpowered.

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SG

Ghost's Paint Blog, where everything goes that isn't something else.

Matt-Shadowlord I think is just making a description as opposed to making a complaint.
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MNB, if you want I'll drive my Abbatoir into your Chaos forces any day.

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author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.

So would I. But my argument is that it is a unit that is never used. The only time I ever saw your abbatoir is in raiders, not on the table. Necron players never use it. And it's worth repeating. There is no other unit at this cost that has a one shot critical.
For the record, I like the abbatoir just the way it is.

for the record, the abbatoir doesnt die due to its critical, it just takes a TK hit half the time.

but yes, the abbatoir is ok for its points, its just that going without air cover and/or supreme commander to take one is pretty much always going to be a bad trade

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~Every Tool Is A Weapon, If You Hold It Right~

No the crit is instant death

Not according to Raiders 2.0 or the NetEA draft doc.