So, I want to get together, a list of all ideas out there for alterations to units and formations.  That way no one has to hunt and peck through the threads for the info.

Feel free to put forth suggestions for ANY unit or formation you wish, but make sure to include your reasoning for those changes in the post.

Finally, please do not use this thread to discuss these proposals.  After I have a list of the suggestions, I'll create a thread for each Unit/Formation for which alterations have been suggested, and we discuss those proposals there.

Thanks.

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Necron Army Champion
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Ok, here goes:

Monoliths Remove the current army list option and replace with two formation: 3 Monoliths for 250 points, 1 Monolith and 2 Obelisks for 200 points. The main reason for this is to once and for all kill off the "popcorn" side of the list by disallowing single monoliths on their own. Not only are single monoliths potentially popcornable, but even in a non-popcorn list they automatically raise the average activation count to unfair levels.

Pylons Change the AA shot to 90cm TK(1), possibly drop to 175 points to compensate. There have been many complaints about pylons due to their "anti-thunderhawk" nature and ability to cover the entire board with AA range. TK(1) would make the pylon equally effective against all not WE aircraft as it is now, and still have a chance to take down thunderhawks due to multiple Pylons or critical hits. It's just fairer this way, and seemingly most Necron players don't have a problem with it, and it would definately help the external opinion of the list. 90cm range is justified for the pylon when you take the curvature of the planet into account, along with Epic's elastic scale. It's perfectly possible to bounce a laser off the moon, but not to shoot a plane 50 miles away, due to the curvature of the earth blocking the shot. Being able to shoot a spaceship out of the sky is no use when your target is below the horizon...

Obelisks Move the Armoured Phalanx back to a support slot. A Necron army should always be built around a core of necron warriors, and at the moment this isn't the case. Consider this army for a 3000 point game: 9 Armoured Phalanxes and a Pylon. Is that really what a Necron army should be able to look like? The potential abuse of an army consisting of almost nothing but formations of fearless, teleporting skimmers is enough of a reason to change it back to how it previously was.

Wraiths CC4+ EA(+1) First Strike. I think just about everyone agrees these are underpowered at the moment, and not worth taking. I'd also like to see them back as a formation upgrade for Phalanxes; I found them much more useful there than as their own formation.

Abbatoir No idea, but it needs some kind of improvement as it's a poor choice compared to the orb. DC 8? It is supposed to be a world harvester after all, and I'm not sure being a Reaver titan equivilent in size shows that all that well. I'd be fine with it losing one of the extra attacks to compensate a little for the increased resilience.

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http://www.troublemakergames.co.uk/
Epic: Hive Development Thread

(Somebody call Guiness) I am going to agree with Zombocom on most points here.

Pylon: 90cm TK(1) will be a change I can swallow - if for nothing else than to stop the complaining.  The function of the unit will change little, although I will miss taking out SHTs with one hit. I really don't know if it justifies a point change but if it did I would say 175 for the new unit stats.

Obelisks: A questionable idea to move them to the core if for no other reason than it was never playtested.  Of course, I can say the same thing about Zombocom's hypothetical army of Obelisks - I've never seen or heard of it played - it may be easy to defeat.  I would be ambivilant on it being moved with no evidence to show it overpowered or not.  Of course that doesn't speak to the theme of core units argument which, as far as I can tell, is valid.

Wraiths: Something needs to be given back.  You can see it just by crunching it against the Flayed Ones.  I really don't know what though.

Abbatoir: If you do make a change I would make it minimal.  DC7 seems fine.  DC8 seems like a big change unless -as Z suggested- you remove an extra attack.  I must point out though that I have used this unit with much success and know others like MNB don't have a problem with it as is.

I agree on the Monolith formation change, although I believe there may be an easier way to list the formations now that I've had a chance to mull it over.  The current suggestion is two types of formations:
1 Mon, 2 Ob
or
3 Mon
plus upgrades of Monoliths or Obelisks

It seems unwieldy for somebody coming at the list from the outside (i.e. people who don't live on the forums)

My new idea is this: One Monolith plus two to four units (Monoliths or Obelisks) in any combination.
Then fix the price of the Monoliths and Obelisks much to where they used to be.  The formation won't need any upgrades either since they are built into the formation description.  Simple.

It accomplishes the same thing as the proposal we made on the other thread while having only one formation type and smoothing out the pricing.  Right now the pricing is a bit twisted because we were discouraging solo Monoliths with heafty prices (125).  Since we're fixing the minimum number of units in the formation to 3 now, it makes sense to make them uniform again.

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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.

Well, Zombocom took the words right out of my mouth. Except he said it better than I would have.  

Everything Zombocom said.

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Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

What Moscovian said (mostly).

I'd like to see the Pylon retain a TK (D3) attack vs ground targets and a TK 1 attack vs air units.

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Zombocom has said most of it, but Onyx is right the Pylon should keep the D3 with the ground attack

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I also want to keep the Pylon as TK(D3) for the ground shot.

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Epic: Hive Development Thread

i agree w/ everything zombocom said w/ the exception of the abbatoir. not that i disagree i just haven't used it enough to comment. i would love to see the wraiths as an upgrade, i think they would be far more useful there. pylon should keep the ground attack as is.
moscovians suggestion about the monolith formation is pretty good. for some reason i think it might read a bit confusing though.
and if i wasn't convinced about the obelisks moving to support, zombo's batrep pushed me over the edge. not so much for it being overpowering but because it just did not look right at all. certainly did not look very necron.
one last thing. it was mentioned that the deciever was now 4BP. is this neccessary now? before when he was being bought for the 3SR but since now he is being bought for his stats, i think 6BP is fine.

I know we're not meant to discuss in this thread, but the deciever change is largely because he is currently noticably better than the nightbringer for the same cost, regardless of SR.

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Epic: Hive Development Thread

so couldn't the nightbringer be improved? infiltrate?

Potentially, yes, that would be another solution. It depends whether you consider the deciever overpowered or the nightbringer underpowered. I personally think the nightbringer is about right for the points.

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Epic: Hive Development Thread

i agree. i really shouldn't of brought that up about the nightbringer, he is good the way he is. but is the deciever really so much better? i think that he stands out as bringing something different to the list and therefor SEEMS better. i'm not sure he needs to be fixed though. then again even a 4BP is still pretty powerful when considering the "shootiness" of the necron army.

Exactly, 4BP to 6BP isn't much of a change really, just an extra BM. I think the problem is that the nightbringer has a niche role, close combat, whereas the deciever has two roles, shooting AND close combat. He's still pretty handy in a fight as well as his shooting. The issue really stems from their 40k incarnations, where CC is much more important than epic, so the two are more balanced against each other there.

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Epic: Hive Development Thread