I'm going to have a closer look at Jaggedtoothgrin's post later, but...

1) It could have been nice to have some feedback earlier. This change has been on the table for close to a year now.

2) If the list truly behaves exactly as you describe, the list is broken and should really be scrapped and be rebuilt from the ground up...



There are problems with the list (see above), and I also think that "ignore your special rule" is bad design.

I think others have found the Necrons better than Jaggedtoothgrim. Being in the first supplement a long time ago meant the list would have been playtested heavily at the time. The Epic-UK list has weaker living metal and various other changes, but it's fairly similar to the Net-EA list and it has won 52% of its games including a lot of recent ones.

I voted yes for the change but am not really sure enough either way, could you imagine switching one yes vote for metalcurry instead?

Now it's getting confusing +1/-1 for yes, -1 no, +1 Metalcurry.

I'm not saying there's nothing wrong with the list, or that there's nothing wrong with living metal, but I really don't think this is the answer, as it just increases the scissor paper stone effect of the list, and basically makes the special rule pointless most of the time.

Personally I'd prefer something like 4+ reinforced against AT, 5+ reinforced against MW and 6+ reinforced against TK. This would retain the gradual drop off in protection that most units get against increasing weapon strength, while also showing the necrons' higher protection against such high powered weaponry.

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Epic: Hive Development Thread

Jagged, what is your Simple Plan for beating Necrons? You're oddly unspecific for such a long post

From what you write it might be to simply focus on breaking them on turn 3?



I'm not sure I can agree that increasing vulnerabililty to MW increases the RPS effect? How could that be?

The new rule does limit LM to only apply against TK hits, but I'm not sure that that's bad. It basically turns into the Necrons version of Special War Engine Protection rule (all the various Fields and Shields).



I'd love a way to have LM degraded linearly like other defenses against MW and TK. This way would replace negating rerolls with save modifiers, which looks a bit weird to me.

In other news, I'm considering just leaving the Raiders list as it is and focus any new development on the Tomb World list. The entire Raiders list is a contentious issue, and may have managed the feat of being both overpowered and underpowered at the same time.

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)

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also, for what it's worth, i have been saying these things for years now (i know i was talking about AA spyders and pylon restrictions back in 2011)

entirely new idea, however.
Including Aircraft.

now, I don't like the new necron fluff. I don't like most of the new necron units.
I do think that most of them would allow for a more 'normal' playing style for a necron list, but i'm not entirely convinced that is a good thing (atleast, not for the raiders list, a variant list would be good)

But necron aircraft are definitely a good addition to the game.

Two units, being the Doomscythes and the Nightscythes. Doomscythes would be fighters, preferably with an AA capable macroweapon for their death ray Nightscythes would be fighters as well, but instead of the cool gun, they'd have a portal. exactly like the current one. I'd also say that when they land, they become skimmers. (as a note: because they're not transport units, they'd have to have a special rule in regard to their landing. I'm not sure an air assault is needed, but it might be interesting. but just having manueverable but fragile portals would be a big change in the necron list, likewise, having versatile AA units, and something for enemy AA to shoot at, would open up new play styles too

anyway, those are fairly spur-of-the-moment thoughts and have not been given the degree of thought experimentation most of my suggestions have, but I think they're a good idea :) (and obviously, being that they'd not have living metal, that would decrease reliance on them, decrease reliance on monoliths, and be much much easier to be killed than most anything else in a necron list. infact, i wonder if they wouldnt be totally massacred as soon as they delivered their payload)

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

Many good points here. Castling, scouts and overwatch are especially potent. I also agree that infantry phalanxes are what the army revolves around.

I do disagree with some stuff though
- Phase Out doesn't make Necrons significantly worse at holding objectives. No formation can hold an objective in the same turn that it breaks, and since they stay on the board until the end of the turn you can still sacrifice them if you want to use their ZOC to limit enemy movement.
- It's risky to teleport Pylons, true. But a pair of them can still have decent AA coverage even if they're deployed at the start of the game with their long range. Even so, Leader might be just the thing they need.
- I'm not sure if aircraft is the way to go. For one thing, portals on aircraft would just be an even more extreme version of air assault, even though you have to retain to pull it off. 3 fighters don't run the risk of a critical wiping them all out, and even if they all die the 'cargo' is still safe and unaffected. And they have an extra 10cm engage range (relevant if you're attacking the edge of an AA envelope) over non-jump pack troops (who are often, but not always, CC specialists).

Sentry Pylons with Gauss Exterminators could be an option.

Hmm, we are getting a bit off-topic here aren't we.

we are a bit

I find that monolith units, (and pylons and even warbarques i suppose) which are the most likely to be on objectives tend to be very small and thus easily broken.
and a rallied unit can still contest TSNP. even if it cannot contest actual objectives. it's usually pretty easy to break any monoliths on your side of the table (which tends to result in atleast a 2-1 necron loss)
[edit: also, breaking a tank formation doesnt award your enemy Break Their Spirit, breaking a phaseable necron BTS does]
it's been my experience that phase out (and reteleporting in, which often results in more blast markers and sometimes immediately rebreaking) and necron formation sizes/types in general means that it's very hard to rely on necrons claiming scenario wins against a foe who has not been thoroughly hamstrung in the first two turns

I was thinking that formations of 2 nightscythes would be the way to go, that way if you can avoid AA you can theoretically portal out again but might not be able to do so (mostly i'd use them to suppliment my monoliths, assault from the nightscythe, retreat into the monolith)
but maybe just making it so that they are indeed used as an air assault would be the way to go, but i'm not sure how that would work with activation rolls and whatnot.
I do think having fighters and non LM portals would greatly increase flexibility.

and yeah, those new forgeworld sentry pylons might be a good AA use, the tomb spyder suggestion was in part to make tomb spyders more tempting. (it was also suggested to me yesterday that the free necron regenerate at the end of the turn could be "equal to the number of leaders in the formation" instead of just one)

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

Vote looks in favor of nerfing LM. Will have to take that into account, think on it a bit more and reread feedback and then give a recommendation to the ERC (no guarantee they'll listen to me!)

Other odds and ends:

I'm liking the suggestion of Leader for Pylons. I'm also going to propose a unit of AA Sentry Pylons for the Raiders list. I'll make a new thread for that.

Not enamored of aircrafts with portals. I think it opens too many cans of worms. I'll leave that to Lord Aaron's newstyle list. If Tomb Spyders aren't used at all in the Raiders list (can't say I have ever used them) I'll see if they can't be made to work in the Tomb World list instead. Thematic enough I think.

I don't see what's wrong with my more graduated suggestion.

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Epic: Hive Development Thread

I just think it's a bit finicky - I like the results better than for normal LM, but I guess it's been so long since I've played Warhammer FB that stacking save modifiers seems weird.

Other than that - would it still reduce TK damage to 1 point max?

Let's look at the probabilities:


And expected number of hits per damage taken



I think you'd definetly need to keep the "max 1 damage from TK"-rule, otherwise war engines would be toast.

Let's say a war engine gets hit by a Volcano Cannon (hits per damage):



For war engines, I think the EUK variant actually gives the smoothest curve, given that a large majority of titan killer weapons are TK(D3) - AT does one damage per 4 hits, MW does one per 2 and TK(D3) does one per hit. Smooth.

For units that don't have DC, or TK(1) weapons, the curve for Zombo's version looks best (to me, at least).

I'd keep the reduce to TK(1) rule.

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Epic: Hive Development Thread

Interesting discussion

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