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.



Battle Brothers
Our only choice is ourselves, and while that works, there's not much to talk about and it's not very exciting. Still, putting a CAD next to a Decurion or Formations is a well known and good strategy.

Allies of Convenience
Here's where we start to get choices.

Chaos Space Marines - While not the best army in the game right now, the Spiky Marines bring a couple things that we lack. Necrons, for the most part, can't really bring together special weapons in any reasonable amount. Chosen can do that, and you can get lots of varied heavy weapons from Obliterators. Additionally, you can nab some Psykers from here, and even if they can't put Blessings on the 'Crons, they can weaken our enemies, give Deny dice, or even summon up some Daemons.

If you're looking to bring C'Tan, grabbing a Daemon Prince or Be'Lakor can take some heat off of your own MCs or other Deathstars. And FMCs are never a bad thing to have.

Tau - Tau are similar to Necrons in that we're both primarily a shooting army. But while Necrons have extreme durability and some dedicated Assault units (Wraiths, Lychguard, Flayed Ones), Tau instead have good range and more powerful firepower point for point.

Taking Tau allies might have some overlap, but you could also make a solid argument for doing something like a heavy Assault Necron list (Orikanstar or Wraiths) and instead of putting points into Necron shooting, put some Tau firepower behind them from Broadsides or Riptides.

Renegades and Heretics - A Forgeworld list, so see if your group will let you run them. Basically Chaos Imperial Guard/Astra Militarum, which means lots of cheap, weak bodies but also a lot of heavy guns on tanks or emplacements. There's not a lot of overlap between this book and our own - something very good when it comes to Allies. Our "cheap, weak bodies" are Warriors, 13 points per model. A Renegade is 3. And while they're completely worthless, with crappy guns and no saves before upgrades, you can put a massive amount of them on the table, and sometimes that's exactly what you need.

Another thing that they bring that we lack is Artillery. Our blast weapon choices are the Monolith, the Doomsday Ark, and Sentry Pylons. All of which are ok, but the sheer amount of downfield fire power you can get from the Heavy Support section for fractions of the cost in Renegades and Heretics is obscene.

Again, like Tau, you're both shooting armies primarily, but Necrons have pretty good Assault options. Getting them on the table and putting Renegades behind them with blobs of ObSec and lots of firepower could be a very, very interesting list.

Desperate Allies
A single choice here.

Orks - Orks are... well Orks. Like Renegades, you can get a lot of cheap bodies, but here you're looking at the Orks being the frontline while you stay behind with the big guns. Masses of Boyz or things like Meganobz in Trukks charging at the enemy while you put Warriors, Immortals, and Destroyers in firing positions could be quite effective. However, Orks aren't hugely awesome at the moment, and if you want a blob of Boyz, you might do well to just look at Flayed Ones in your own codex.

Come the Apocalypse
The rest of them.

Space Marines (and Variants) - Just gonna lump these together since I'm going to say much of the same thing. Necrons kind of play like variant marines already, with the obvious differences being there. Like CSM, they can bring a lot more special weapons to the table, while ours our mostly uniform across squads. But, being an "elite" army (that is, an army that needs substantial point investments per model), you'll find it hard to fit them alongside your Necrons in a reasonable list.

Due to the deployment/placement issues of CtA, the only sorts of lists I could see working here is something like Drop Pod heavy or Bike heavy, but then, why aren't you just playing Space Marines?

Astra Militarum/Imperial Guard - Just play Renegades and Heretics. If someone doesn't allow you to because "wah Forgeworld is so OP" (which is wrong), then this still doesn't work that well. Sure, you can do some of the same deals as R&H, but with all the drawbacks you'll confer doing so, is it worth the hassle? I think not, personally.

Imperial Knights - Now here's a CtA ally that I can get behind. Positioning issues are problematic depending on what Necrons you bring, but Knights are just so good that putting them in is probably worthwhile anyway. If you're not doing much Assault in your Necrons, stomping your Knight downfield is probably fine even despite the restrictions. A big, nasty target that will draw fire, kill at a range, and kill in Assault is a solid investment.

Eldar - I've seen it work. But I'm not a huge fan of it. If you want Psychic dice, you can get them from CSM. Eldar are another primarily shooting army like Tau and Necrons, but instead of being long range and killy like Tau, or durable like Necrons, Eldar take speed instead. Jetbikes, Wave Serpents, Swooping Hawks, Warp Spiders, all are fast and do good shooting.

However, we have our own fast units in Tomb Blades, CCBs, Wraiths, Scarabs, Night Scythes, etc. There are a few units that would make a decent addition that have no comparable Necron units (Swooping Hawks perfect deep striking in, Wraithknights, etc), but overall, like Space Marines, both require significant point investments and that's hard to work with.

Dark Eldar - Like Eldar, but more fast and fragile. This I could slightly see more acceptable than their Craftworld counterparts. Why? Webway portal. Perfect deep striking is great. Swooping Hawks have it, but the DE can give it to any unit - including a specialist unit with lots of special weapons, of which the Dark Eldar have lots. Plopping down a bunch of Haywire Blasters or Dark Lances exactly where they can do the most damage is easy to maintain and is something that we overall lack.

Still, you're taking away a lot of points from Necrons, and it totally isn't fluffy. Pass, imo.

Chaos Daemons - Lots of Psychic Dice. Lots and lots of it. Daemons are nearly completely Assault and Psychic, which actually kind of complements Necrons. You can even DS everything all the way down the table while your shooting base sits back. There's a possible list to be made here, something about mixing durable Necron shooting with cheap, Warp Dice laden Daemons. Just don't go too crazy into MCs on either side, or you'll run out of points faster than you thought possible.

Tyranids - Sorta like Daemons, except slightly different. Less Warp Dice, no mass DS, but throwing in Flyrants with Psychic, Devourers, and Fleshbane or Haywire Templates is scary. Like Knights, these sorts of allies are powerful no matter what army takes them, and are sometimes worth the problematic CtA restrictions. However, anything more than 2 Flyrants will start to eat at your points, so if you are the sort of person that just wants to throw Flyrants on the table, maybe you should just be playing Tyranids?