I played a couple of games with the necrons yesterday, and to be honest, I'm once again concerned about the list still being pretty overpowered.
I played two games, against Tau and Eldar, and in both cases my opponents gave up after one turn.
I normally play with a deliberately poor necron list, with one pylon, no supreme commander (SR 1), an abbatoir and only 4 monoliths. I was challenged yesterday to try to break the list, so I cam up with the following. Apologies if this is slightly off, I'm working from memory...
phalanx (BTS) pariah immortal tomb spider x2 wraith
phalanx pariah tomb spider
phalanx
2 x pylon
5 x monolith
Warbarque (Supreme Commander)
Obelisk recon
destroyers x 5 heavy destroyer lord
3000 points, 13 activations.
Frankly, it was just way too easy for me to slaughter my opponents. They were both very experienced players who have played many times against necrons. I just had too many activations, allowing me to draw out all their activations before bringing my phalanxes onto the board.
The eldar player bunkered up behind a line of overwatching scouts, as you expect, but they were simply swept aside by the decent shooting in the list (warbarque, destroyers, obelisks, pylons). He made a couple of mistakes later on in the turn, but I did find it incredibly difficult to think of anything he could have done to save himself.
As I said before, with a maxed out list it was way too easy.
The problem seemed to stem from a few places. Firstly, phalanxes are too cheap. They're 75 points less than a tactical marine formation, and sure they have much worse shooting and close combat, but they also have the necron rule and the ability to come through portals. The ability to use portals needs to be costed higher.
Secondly, the sheer number of activations that is possible by using lone monoliths is sick. Corey, I know you think the most effective way to use monoliths is with obelisk escorts, but it really isn't. Individual cheap as chips monoliths give a 60cm range around them that can be engaged out of (30cm monolith double move, 15 cm engage move, 15cm firefight range), and by having them individually you can spread them out to cover almost the entire board. Either monoliths need to go up in price or a total rethink is needed on how they work.
I think formations of 3 monoliths with a much more limited flux arc is the way to go. Either reduce the number of shots to a fixed +3 or a reduce firefight to 6+ and have formations of 3, forcing monoliths to be in one place and one activation, rather than 3 seperate disposable activation which can spread out leaving the enemy with nowhere to run to.
Oddly, the reason we tried the eldar game was to test out the brokenness of pylons, which actually were in no way an issue, managing to only shoot down one fighter before they were broken by the other planes.
Soemthing really does need to be done, and soon, since my gaming group are getting fed up with playing against the list in its current form.
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