Necrons are different from other armies. It's how they were designed, and I can perfectly understand why that rubs people the wrong way.

But I also think people should stop being angry at the designer for Living Metal. It's almost straight from the old Necron Codex.

Take a Monolith. It has AV14 all around, like a Land Raider, so 4+ Reinforced Armour. So far, so good. But it also has a special rule that says that any other special rules affecting armour penetration is useless against it. A Bright Lance (the archetypal Lance weapon) doesn't get to reduce it to 12, so Lance doesn't work against Living Metal. A Multi-melta (your basic Macro Weapon) doesn't get the extra penetration dice, so MW doesn't work either. The best way to deal with Monoliths is with Tau Railguns or Lascannons, both of which are AT in Epic. And wouldn't you know, AT attacks are the way to deal with LM in Epic.

So Living Metal in Epic is not designed by asking "how can we make this unit unreasonably tough?" It's designed by translating the source material, the first Necron codex, into Epic. A codex which was current with the source material for the three lists in Epic: Armageddon and Epic: Swordwing. You can ask, is the Living Metal rule wrong for Epic, I got no problems with that. But please stop throwing baseless allegations around as for why it was designed that way in the first place.

Brumbaer - I'm sure you have some decent points but its difficult to give them credence when
- the tone of the post and boasts of army selection, 40k rulebook accreditation, name dropping and ability as some kind of wargame rules savant come across as, at best, breathtakingly arrogant.
- past trolling about SM tactics
- that the examples you talk about are either dubious (all powerful drop pod armies) or blatantly false (intermingling at 4k)
- none of it is based on playtesting

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I think Minervans are fine since they aren't immune to blast markers and will still lose assaults to being outnumbered and outmanoeuvred (and in assaults ALL weapons are AP and AT). This is a game of claiming objectives, not of using AP shots to kill things.

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Sorry, just to clarify my point. It's okay if an army is particularly resistant to a certain tactic, and the minervans certainly are resistant to an attrition war, being immune to AP shots and overall very, very tough. But it's okay because they can break easily due to low numbers, lose assaults, fail to claim objectives, lose massively due to hackdowns as each hackdown takes out an important part of the army. Now, when you have an army that is super tough, can still operate after being broken, can move anywhere in the battlefield instantly due to widespread teleport, is fearless, etc etc is when people start complaining.

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I wouldn't blame the Necron AC/list designer, certainly not when I know nothing about the history, and I by no means assume that anything in Epic begins its life there. But where I think we differ is that I personally don't think GW's WH40K rules are beyond reproach. They're arguably the worst offenders of all in terms of rules creep, and the WH40K special rule you describe is absolutely typical in my (cynical) opinion. It would not surprise me one jot if a new weapon came out that had a special rule "gets extra penetration dice, even against Living Metal", just to make the Necron players feel inferior and make them go out and buy the new "best weapon in the game".

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I'll agree brumbaer's slightly self-important monologue doesn't do him any favours, but I think it's understandable given he's being attacked on the basis of his knowledge and his argument being misrepresented.

IMO the playtesting bit is not relevant to his point, or at least the half of his point that resonates with me. It's completely irrelevant if my opponent has played vs a given army - if I show him my list and he thinks "I don't want to play you", then that's a shame. So personally I think it's worth making some sacrifices and abstractions in order to produce a list that doesn't elicit that reaction. That is of course the extreme manifestation of the issue, and I'm not saying it's true of Necrons, but you have to admit that the list looks a bit cheesy when you first read it, no?

Maybe brumbaer's tolerance for such things is lower than most other people (e.g. I don't really get the same impression from the Minervan list as he does), but that doesn't invalidate his point entirely.

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I think the main point of the Necrons in EA is that they are designed to be different. Very different. I can see exactly where brumbaer (and carlos) is coming from - the list has some very obvious strengths. Add to that some not-so-obvious strengths (Monoliths in some ways get better when they break, Phase Out is beneficial in round 1 and 2) and it's a hard list to face and it reads broken.

It wouldn't be unreasonable to ban it from some tournaments, actually. Facing them the first time isn't very fun. I partly agree with brumbaer that playtesting doesn't really come into this. It's so different from a game against, say, Orks or IG, that it can be a real downer to play against.

However, given that the list exists I think it should be kept (mostly) as it is. The fact is that almost all reports I've heard from groups who have played with it over time say that as you get used to them, the list is ok. If the opponent knows what he's doing, they aren't harder or easier to win against than other armies, but they require very different tactics.

They have a raft of special rules, but I honestly can't see what to remove without changing the army into something unrecognizable. We can tinker with them to improve them (like Living Metal which is currently up for discussion), but removing any of it would IMHO cheapen the character of the army more than it would help make it palatable to face.

So, to conclude: Necrons can be horrible to face if you have played little against them. I think the thread is a good thing as it highlights this, and it's always nice to have feedback from yet more gaming groups. But it's hard to do anything about this without gutting the list completely and turning it into something else. And that's why I want to focus balancing on games between players who are both experienced playing with or against the Necrons. And why play experience is so critical if you want to contribute.

I didn'y much enjoy my game last night to be honest, I just had no idea what to do against them, Mike sensibily teleported his pylons in contesting both my objectives, then slowly advanced his monoliths and obelisks behind cover, waiting for me to commit activations.... I couldn't get my shooting stuff into range (having no artillery is a big disadvantage against them) to shoot remotely effectively, and the preponderance of living metal means you need to be firing without modifiers to stand a reasonable chance of doing any damage anyway

I ended up castling most of my army on overwatch in the hope of shooting up the troops as they came out of the portals.... this forced mike to play very cautiously, but when he got an opening, it was a case of troops pinging all over the place and there was nothing I could do to stop them really.....

I think necrons are seemingly overpowered against inexperienced players, your Steve Gullicks and Tim Hunts of this world aren't going to suffer, but perpetual wooden spooners like me are repeatedly punished

I've had 4/5-0 kickings from virtually every army, but I've never felt like I had no chance of winning or holding to a 2-1 loss, this wasn't the case against the necrons, I felt completely helpless, and the successes I did have were more down to luck than judgements

Overpowered? no

Fun to face? not remotely

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As long as you read+understand the armylist (which if you don't do before a tournament against an army you might face is your own problem) + the 5min warmup explanation from your opponent I don't think the necrons are more challenging to face for a first time than eldar, tau, tyranids or even SM, each of which have tactics and special rules which are exclusive to them.
The other important factor is having a balanced armylist - which again is down to the player

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I will clarify that I'm currently ill with a cold and felt like lukewarm shite last night, plus I hadn't eaten all day so my bloodsugar was through the floor, so I wasn't really at my best......

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Just to note: Strength D weapons (the Wh40k equivalent to Titan-killers) igonres Living Metal. There is simply no protection from a Strength D ( = TK) weapon other than Invulnerable Saves, Void Shields and Power Fields.

Also you quoted the 5th Edition rules for Living Metal.

In the current Codex Necrons (6th Edition) Living Metal only gives a save to avoid Crew Shaken and Crew Stunned results on the Vehicle Damage Table.

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which amply illustrates why epic needs to base its rules on weapon balance rather than the ever-shifting 40k system.... but that's a discussion for another time/place...

I have had time to think about it now and I still can't see how I could have won my game last night, perhaps wasting less shots on monoliths, and not clumping my objectives together would have been sensible....

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They would indeed!

Making it very difficult for phalanxes to pick off lone units and/or hit you with a nasty clip is also advisable. Fms mutually supporting each other but not intermingling makes it very difficult for even large Necron Phalanxes to successfully engage large targets.

Thank you! I tried to make this same point in other threads but some just don't get this idea, or just don't like it. Either way it's better way to look at things!

Or at least to not try to adapt a list over time. That is, freeze a list in time, and if people want to write a new list based on a (radically different) view on how an army should function, fine.

My own personal view though: base a list on the concept of an army - certainly not the 40K rules, not even the specifics of a unit's weaponry.

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