Allies for the Necrons - what are our choices?

So in a previous post I talked a bit about using Assassins as Allies. A neat trick, for sure, but what are our other options?

A good Ally fills out some requirements:
1) It should fill gaps that the main army has. For Necrons, that's Special Weapons squadrons, long range artillery, hordes of bodies/tarpits, and Psychic power.

2) It should be easy to slot in, points wise. Sure, we'd all love to ally in a big Thunderwolf Calvary Deathstar, but then suddenly you have no points for the Necrons themselves. The things you want out of an Ally list should be cheap, easy to get, and efficient. If you need to invest half your points to get what you want out of an Ally, then you might just want to play that other army.

3) A good Alliance level. While there are some good Come the Apocalypse allies that I'll talk about below, they're also pretty problematic to utilize. Deployment becomes a pain, as does positioning if you have a Desperate/CtA ally and both are filling the same role. An Imperial Guard gunline standing next to a Necron gunline is going to have problems unless you place them carefully, and in a game where you want as much mobility and map control as possible, that can really screw with holding the right spots on the board.

Progress

Sorry posts have been low, been working on painting up my army for Adepticon. All that's left are 3 models and the basing, which will be done tonight! Some pictures after the break.

Sorry for the size, took them with a crappy camera and uploaded them to Imgur. Media guru, I am not!

Conclave of the Burning One

A big thing that you'll see many armies nowadays have are "Deathstar" units. A Deathstar unit is a big, expensive, powerful unit that is designed to scare the pants off anything that comes within its threat range, or to bring some other sort of utility that is worth a large price point. That threat range changes depending on what it is: a Shooting Deathstar has the effective range of its guns, while an Assault Deathstar has the threat range of Movement + effective charge distance. You'll see lots of different Deathstars, from the tough and killy Wolfstar, to the Psychicially powered Screamerstar and Jetbike Council, to the shooting ball of Centurionstar.

Well, the Conclave is a Deathstar - albeit one with only 3 models in the unit. Let's take a closer look at it after the break.

Cult of DESTROY

I have not been subtle about my love of Destroyers. I loved the idea of them last edition and for them to be buffed in this edition for no price increase (and in fact a price drop for Heavies) was just my dream. They're rather fantastic now: able to shoot and scoot with Assault moves and super durable with the new RP and extra wound. T5 3+ was... pretty good before, but would die to any amount of focus fire. Now, T5 3+/5+++ and double the wounds, plus able to jump back into cover? That's fantastic.

Assassin Allies

I speak quite a bit about the Assassin dataslate and how easy it is to fit into any army. And it's true, you just include one unit and gain all of the cool things they bring. For Necrons, this can be a real boon. Let's take a look:

An Army of Formations - but not a Decurion!

As a follow up to yesterday's post, here's a thought I had:

Could an army made of just Formations work? Including neither a CAD nor a Reclamation Legion required to make it a Decurion. As follows:

• The Reclamation Legion, as I said before, is kinda lame because of the restrictive nature and the fact that it requires a lot of Troops but robs them of ObSec.
• The CAD is nice, but is basic and doesn't bring the powerful addons of the Formations.

Our formations are fantastic, let's get that out of the way. Canoptek Harvest giving Scarabs/Wraiths/Spyders RP? Heck yes. Destroyer Cult making the already fantastic Destroyers more powerful? Superb. Deathbringer Flight making our pretty good flyers extra scary when they work in tandem? I mean, I'll take it, even if I wasn't particularly looking for it. 

Both the CAD and the Decurion add an overhead to these. Not necessarily a bad  overhead, don't get me wrong. ObSec is game changing. 4+ RP is golden. And the units, while not particularly overpowered, are useful in their own right. 

List Building with Req: First Swings

So I'm building a list for a tournament that will be here in a couple weeks. I know I'm cutting it a little close, but with personal stuff and the new Codex, it's been a bit tight on time.

Rawdogger over at Frontline Gaming put out an interesting article about his experiences with tournament lists and what to expect. I've decided to take a look at his points and put a Necron spin on them.

Decurion or CAD?

The new codices all have new detachments that give a bit of flavor. Dark Eldar have one that gives them cover saves, Grey Knights have a Deep Strike turn 1 thing going on, etc. Our Decurion is an interesting beast, a detachment of formations rather than Force Org Chart.

It's quite powerful, I'll say that from the get-go. 4+ RP army wide, Vehicles ignoring Crew Stunned, and nearly all formations giving Move Through Cover (and some Relentless) is fantastic. It increases our already high durability by quite a bit and army-wide Move Through Cover means that we're going to have a surprising amount of mobility compared to other foot armies.

Warscythe Lychguard - Obyronstar?

Obyron leading Warscythe Lychguard will remove anything from the board in a round or two. Knights? Gone. Baneblades? Bye bye. Terminator sqauds? Not even an issue. Even going at I2, the amount of Warscythe attacks being thrown out by this unit will shred anything to bits in ways that would make Khorne proud.

Removing Vehicles: Necron Anti-Tank Options

When it comes to building a list, there's a lot of things to take into account. How fast can I move across the board? How do I deal with Flyers? What do I have to protect against Alpha Strikers?

Today we're going to focus on Vehicles. "But Req!" you cry, "We have Gauss! We're the anti-vehicle army!". Bah, I say, Gauss is unreliable. a 1/9 chance to Glance is nothing when our army lacks Melta and Haywire. Last edition was different, 3 Stormteks with Night Scythes in an army and you were golden. No vehicle would come within 42" of your table edge lest they take 4 Haywire shots to the face.

But we live in a world where Knights exist, and can be slotted into any army. A world where Eldar lists can very realistically contain 5 or even more Wave Serpents. And vehicles in other armies, though not as heavy, still have to be dealt with effectively.

With the new codex changing units and losing Haywire, we have to think about what we have that can remove vehicles from the board, and do it effectively.