Necrons in 6th Edition: Thoughts and Observations

Old School here to provide my thoughts and observations from my table-top experience so far in 6th with the Necrons and some ideas I have from reading over the rules and FAQs. I want to say up front that I am obviously not an expert on 6th as none of us are, but hey, I'll throw my two cents in and maybe get some ideas back from you in return!

I will cover some of our weapons, some of our units and some things that are new to us in 6th that may be useful.


Dealing with Fliers - I could write an entire article on how I think the internet is over reacting to fliers and maybe I will, but for the Necrons, it wouldn't be required reading, they already have some built in ways to deal with it like ... tesla.

CVinton and I were both fans of Tesla before the edition change and while my immortals are looking to upgrade to guass weapons, I still think the annihilation barge is a great tool, not only for infantry and transports, but also for Fliers. You see, when shooting at a flier, you are BS1, so the already twin-linked Tesla Destructor will get a chance to re-roll any non-sixes - but any sixes you roll equal a total of three hits a piece. Even if you roll just one six, that is three chances to hurt the flier. I did manage to blow up most of Wolfson's DE fliers with ground forces last game (no Skyfire at all). That doesn't mean much to the valks or the Storm Ravens (AV12), being S7, but to other fliers, it can be deadly.

Let's get back to the immortals, they aren't bad in a pinch either against a flier if they are massing Tesla ... though with the lower rate of fire, I would only use this in an emergency.

This goes without mentioning our own fliers, which of course are both just fine in the anti-flier department!

Using Fliers: This brings me to using our fliers. Necrons are a very fast army. This has been true since the new codex dropped, but is even more true in 6th edition. First of all, a Night Scythe can zoom 36" and still drop off it's passengers via the Invasion Beam ... and if it wants to, it can then flat out move another 12-24" right off the board - or add its own fire to the fight.

This gives you a lot of control of where you want your troops and how you engage your fliers as well as the ability to play games with the enemy target priority. Add in the veil of darkness or the monolith and you have an army that can be anywhere it needs to, whenever it needs to.

Finally, the speed of fliers also makes the range and ability to position the Doom scythe's Death Ray much more deadly than before. This means mech players and people with T5 multi-wound models are really going to have to think hard about positioning their army or suffer the wrath of our alien death rays!

The weaknesses of course in our fliers is that we are pretty easy to shoot down with other fliers and AV11 can hurt us when the skyfire units do start to come out to play.

The Douche Canoe is now the Douche Chariot: This change is very interesting. The chariot allows us to still sweep enemy units, though the distance has been greatly reduced, but we also gain the ability to assault with the chariot! The chariot causes D6 S6 hits when it assaults and the Overlord still gets his attacks (with a +1 to his armor save). With the importance of movement in this edition, you can use the command barge to maneuver around a combat or a unit and hit it on a side it may be most vunerable at.

An example: I played Wolfson's DE and managed to bring two barges around the back side of a spread-out beastmaster pack. I was able to charge into the side packed with razorwing flocks. The way wound allocation works, the impact hits killed five razorwing flocks from Instant Death before anything else even got to use its initiative step. This will be situational, but still helps out! The down side is that the lord can be attacked, but hey, I think it is an even trade, just be smart!

Scarabs and Spyders: Scarabs got the ability to move 12" in the movement phase, meaning that Spyder will have a harder time keeping up, but I think if you apply the same idea of adding scarbs to a group and launching them, you should be sound. Scarabs may not have the move 6, run 1-6 and charge 12, but they now ignore taking difficult terrain tests, making them a little faster on some battlefields. They did lose stealth though, meaning that night fight will still be your friend with heavy scarab lists. The ability to get 5+ on open ground from a pulse is still pretty good, better if you are already in cover.

Deathmarks: The hunters from hyperspace went from being a unit I really didn't understand to being something I really value these days. Their ability to take a scythe, join a veil tek and even the weird deployment all add to their true strength - Rapid Fire Sniper Rifles! The changes to snipers in this edition makes them really great for removing the elements of enemy squads that really can make a Necron have a bad day! Having the sniper rifle on a fairly resilient body is even better, but being able to defend yourself with rapid fire sniper rifles in a bad situation makes you even better. I plan to keep working with these guys in various amounts to see where they fit into my 6th edition lists.

Beyond that, there isn't much to talk about since that covers the limited 6th Ed experience I have so far. I have been thinking a little about tremorcrons, but they really aren't my style and I haven't gotten any experience with them. I really like scythes, veilteks, chariots, A barges, spyders and scarabs so far, but we will see where I stand in the future.

That is all I have for now. I would like to hear from any other robotic overlords or any other good feedback on these thoughts and observations or your own - there are plenty of things that I left out simply for a lack of experience or knowledge ... like how does Stormlord's Lightning work on fliers? How do the Stalkers perform so far ... or any other unit I haven't mentioned?