Friday

Tactica: Space marines versus Necrons

Rpnightsend has written this awesome piece on facing Necrons with your space marines,
I hope you find it usefull, my last fight against them didnt go well at all for me!

"Space Marines and the New Necron Codex
I’ve been playing against (and occasionally alongside) Necron for almost as long as I’ve been playing Warhammer, and my group’s Necron players have had to adapt to a number of new codices of mine since we started playing. With the new Necron codex it’s been my turn to have to adapt, and I’ve pitted a number of different Codex: Space Marines and Dark Angels lists against a variety of Necron armies, so here’s my two cents about the new Necron and how to beat them with your trusty Space Marines.





Mobility
This was the single biggest underestimation I made while playing against the new Necron. With a slew of new fast, flying transports and gunships, I found a previously very slow army flying circles around my rhinos and predators. So far my mid-ranged and deep striking lists have performed very poorly against Necron, as they tend to glance my tanks to death and can move too quickly out of the way of my deep striking units. My close-combat centric mechanized lists have performed well, though not spectacularly, but they’re still a good deal faster than me. Footslogging lists have been a toss-up, but assault marines and land speeders do a good job of keeping up with their Ghost Arks and Catacomb Command Barges.
If you’re expecting to fight a mechanized Necron list, my best performers have been my terminators (who they tend to lack enough firepower to kill), Land Speeders, and Assault Marines. Rhino Squads, Vindicators, and Dreadnoughts tend to perform poorly.
Firepower
Necron have always been a shooty army and the new codex did little to change that. What it did do was introduce a number of powerful shooting units including triarch stalkers, crypteks and deathmarks, both adding new shooting units and adding options to older units such as warriors and destroyers. For me, the second part of the old maxim “Shoot the chargy stuff and charge the shooty stuff” has held true. With no boost to their initiative and few options to improve close combat potential, the bulk of the shooting Necron units, including destroyers, immortals and warriors are as susceptible to close combat as ever. Necron Lords losing their power weapons (at least without an upgrade to a warscythe) removes a measure of their counter-assault ability and the ability of solar pulses to bring night fighting over the field doesn’t protect them from being charged.
Equipment makes a lot of the difference when it comes to this. Remember to give all of your tactical squads a power fist and even they will pose plenty of a threat to most Necron units. On several occasions I’ve gotten a dreadnought in close combat and my Necron opponent has found he has no way to kill it until it comes out of combat.







Durability
Another old strength of the Necron, they’ve had both gains and losses in this category in the new codex. Although their new Reanimation Protocol can’t be ignored, it’s only on a 5+ without a resurrection orb now. Additionally, warriors only have a 4+ armor save and immortals lost a point of toughness. The biggest loss for them is the changes in living metal to no longer provide nearly as much protection. In return they’ve gained Quantum Shielding on many of their vehicles, which so far has been one of the single most frustrating abilities I’ve ever had to fight against. Many common tactics for taking out light vehicles such as Riflemen dreadnoughts and Heavy Bolter/Autocannon predators will barely leave a scratch on their vehicles until the shielding is gone. The advantage for us is that we only need one penetrating hit to remove the shielding and leave them a nice target for our autocannons and assault cannons. Small numbers of lascannons and missile launchers can do this from range, but nothing works better than reliable meltaguns and multi-meltas which, given the fact most of their vehicles are open topped, will probably kill their vehicle or seriously disable it on the first hit anyways.
Against infantry, most of the old ways of fighting Necron are still effective, including plenty of plasma and power weapons. The lower armor of warriors means autocannons and heavy bolters will work wonders against them too. Unfortunately none of these will do much against that nasty quantum shielding, and its up to chainfists, melta weaponry, and the odd shot from a Lascannon to handle most of their vehicles."


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