Tactica necrons: competitive list builds

In this post I'm going to talk about competitive necron army lists, the most common used ones and some uncommon ones.

1) wraithwing
These armies are fast and are brutal in combat, they can also withstand a lot of punishment as they move up the board as well. The army is based around wraith squads, usually one squad is led by a D.lord with MSS and sempiternal weave. As the wraiths can move like jump infantry and ignore terrain expect to assault on turn 2, if not definitely turn 3. They also have a 3++ so can ignore most firepower targeted at them, and those ID weapons as well. These squads are usually backed up with annihilation barges and warrior/immortal squads in night scythes. Obviously adding flyers into the force, brings even more speed and mobility to your army. 

2) Flyer spam

As the title of this tactic says, stick as many flyers as you can in your army. Necron's still have some of the best flyers in the game, especially the night scythe, as no other transport flyers have quite the same rules as it does. Models inside don't take hits if it gets blown out the sky and simply get placed into reserve. Also models inside of the night scythe can disembark even if the flyer is zooming, so other flyers become vulnerable as they have to go into hover mode, while your's does not. This army is fast, very fast, you can pretty much place your units down on the board where you want them, meaning you can really make some last minute moves that my might win you the game at the end of the day. But using this sort of list will mean that you dont deploy much on the board at the start of the game and if your opponent gets first turn then he has a good chance of tabling you. Get around this by putting annihilation barges in as your heavy support choices and you'll start off with some AV13 vehicles on the table.

3) AV13 spam

Basic idea in these sorts of lists is to put as many vehicles in your list as possible. Due to quantum shielding on all of our vehicles, front and side armour values count as 13, until the first penetrating hit has been rolled. With the new rules it's a lot harder now to penetrate higher armour value vehicles, which makes necron vehicles one of the toughest in the game. You can effectively create a AV13 wall and slowly move up the battlefield, while your opponent tries to down them as quickly as possible. But just a word of warning as soon as one of your vehicles takes a penetrating hit, it will more than like go bye bye, due to it being open-topped.

4) Scarab farm

The basis of this list is 3 units of 3 canoptek spyders, you can give them upgrades as well if you want, I would maybe give each unit 1 gloom prism for anti-Psyker, if I have the points. You will also need at least one unit of scarabs of minimum size, this is because the canoptek spyders have to place their newly formed scarb bases onto an existing unit. To play safe I either start with a unit of 10 scarab bases, or 3 smaller units and each gets paired up with a unit of canoptek spyders. I do this because if your opponent is smart then they will target your scarab units first, to negate the canoptek spyders' ability to form new bases to the unit. So either place them in cover in turn 1 if your opponent is going first, or straight away create new bases if your going first. Eventually your opponent will keep shooting at your scarab unit(s) and you'll keep forming new bases to replace the list ones.

5) Resurrecting deathstar 

This tactic is very very rarely used. The idea uses the ghost arks ability to bring warriors back to life after reanimation protocols. But the wording on the special rule is unclear and it's been confirmed that ghost arks can also bring independent characters back to life that were attached to the target unit and any other royal court characters that were also attached. So simply get 2 units of 5 warriors in ghost arks, and at least a 15 strong unit of warriors (preferably 20). Put an overlord in that unit with a resurrection orb and a member from his royal court. And simply watch your opponent shoot at the unit, kill as many they can, resurrect some with the resurrection orb and some more with the ghost arks. You can go one step further if you want, another overlord for a second royal court, or a destroyer lord to give the unit preferred enemy (everything!).

  

So there are 5 ideas for a competitive necron army list. There are obviously different tactics out there, and tactics that work for each individual's playing style. I currently run lists which are a mix between AV13 spam and flyer spam, so usually troops in ghost arks and night scythes, backed up with annihilation barges. So I have lots of firepower, mobility, resilience and troops to hold objectives.

I'm probably going to do a post on sample army lists for each of the ideas above. Feel free to comment below about your opinion(s) on these tactics, and which tactics you like to use, or use against necrons for that matter.

40K 1212