Quote: (Chroma @ 29 Mar. 2009, 18:07 )
Quote: (Evil and Chaos @ 29 Mar. 2009, 18:05 )
Zombocom is a Necron player.
What are my opponents doing right that his are doing wrong in that my Pylons wind up doing very little during a game other than causing some initial fear which is soon converted to laughter?
When I first started playing Necrons my opponents didn't really know what to do against them, so obviously I won early games pretty much hands down. Then, as is usual, they started developing anti-necron tactics, such as bunkering up with scout screens and overwatch. The problem came when I developed tactics to deal with this; By careful use of Warbarque, Obelisk and Monolith shooting, teleporting behind terrain and popping up, combined with the C'tan bomb, I'd be able to wipe out the scout screen and often a lot more
before my infantry were even committed to the table. Due to the high activation count of pretty much all Necron armies I could keep my infantry formations offboard until the enemy was out of activations, then take out sections of their army at my leisure.
I really don't want this to sound like I'm boasting. I guess for some reason my playstyle works very well with the Necron army. I find it easy to see what to do with them to leave my opponent little chance of victory. I have around an 80% victory rate with necrons (compared to about 40% with my dark eldar for example).
From reading your battle reports, it seems as if you perhaps don't have such an intuitive understanding of how the necron can be played for maximum effectiveness. I really don't mean that to sound insulting, I'm not much good with some other armies (as my dark eldar win-rate shows).
Anyway, Pylons...
Your absolutely right that a single Pylon is very easily dealt with. No army has much to fear from one, since they can shoot it twice before they have to bring any planes onto the board. However, with multiples this becomes increasingly difficult, not least because the Pylons can teleport behind terrain in places difficult for the opponent to get line of sight at it, and because of the sheer number of activations which must now be devoted to breaking the pylons.
The other difference with single to multiple pylons is for fighters and bombers. Formations of non-transport aircraft are an excellent way to deal with single pylons, particularly those hidden in difficult to reach areas. Against a single pylon a formation of bombers has a 50% chance of losing a plane, but then has a decent chance of doing a DC of damage in return to break the pylon and allow the transport aircraft to fly in unmolested.
This doesn't work at all against multiple pylons, since the chance of losing planes on the way in is increased dramatically, and even if enough planes survive to break one of the pylons the other remains to molest the incoming transport.
The Necron player shouldn't be forced to spend 200 points for useless AA, but nor should 400 points bring an AA that's far more than twice as hard to deal with.
Perhaps upping to DC3 and a points rise is the solution, making single pylons more viable but multiples too expensive to take?
