"To the Pink One (and crew),
Let's start with the standard "Love the blog, well written, yaddayaddayadda...". I started reading your blog a couple of months ago after giving up on YTTH and all the whining about being unemployed (but still posting regularly to the blog??) and elitist "You're Wrong, but I'm not going to clarify why..." attitude that tends to float around in the atmosphere there. I must say, I am far more impressed with the writing style, layout, and general collection of easy-to-process information and open-mindedness to different approaches found over here than most of what Stelek has been producing in the past 6 months.
All butt-kissing aside, I've recently been mulling over Necrons, trying to make an idea fit... I looked at the AV13 spam list, processed it for a bit, scrached my head, and decided I didn't quite like the flavor. So, as the gears turned, I looked, and looked, and after scrapping some hare-brained ideas (scarab/spyder spam, lists based around Writhing Worldscape...) I came up with a list that actually hearkens back a little bit to last-edition Tyranids.
I liked the idea of implacible warriors that just kept getting up, and Necrons just aren't Necrons without the warriors. So I started there. 4 squads of warriors. Increase survivability, increase mobility.... that brings us to Night Scythes or Ghost Arks. Ghost arks have Quantum shielding, more gauss, and can put my broken warriors back together. So, 4 ghost arks. That handles the scoring units.
Next up, anti-tank. Scarabs could work, but that means at least 150 points of Spyders, and I'm not sure if I'm willing to start there. HoD Crypteks, however, they can generate a few results. Doubling them up for reliability means we'll need 2 lords. Easy enough. So 8 HoD crypteks and 2 nekkid Overlords. That ought to cover it on anti-tank. Without a Warscythe, the lord doesn't really need a CCB, so he can ride with the warriors, same as the crypteks. While we're at it, we may as well fill out the squads, so 10 more warriors (+3 on two of the squads, +2 on the others, boats are full, and it takes more shooting to remove any of the squads, while the Arks can restock the ranks.)
So what to do next... Anni barges are nice, but don't really fill a gap in the army, since I already have a pretty decent number of potential shots, and another squad of warriors with crypteks will end up costing. I'm lacking manouverability, though, and a means to mop up massed infantry... Doom Scythes are good, but don't really fit the bill here. They also go to the top rank of target priority and cost almost as much as a Monolith. It's a tough call...
A couple of Tri-Arch stalkers could be a good thing, but it's an open-topped walker with melta... a little tougher than the Doom Scythe, but still a high-priority target needing to get way too close for anti-infantry fire. Tomb Blades... Call me crazed, but blast-spamming Tyranid warriors actually scared a few lists back in the day, especially after breaking things out of their transports. At 30 points per model, and the ability to quickly redeploy, these actually have some potential here. So after a bit of chin scratching and thought, and filling in some extra points, I came up with this:
Necron Overlord
Phaeron
Necron Overlord
Phaeron
Crypteks (x4)
HoD (x4)
Solar Pulse
Crypteks (x4)
HoD (x4)
Solar Pulse
Necron Warriors (x7)
Ghost Ark
Necron Warriors (x7)
Ghost Ark
Necron Warriors (x8)
Ghost Ark
Necron Warriors (x8)
Ghost Ark
Tomb Blades (x4)
Particle Beamer (x4)
Tomb Blades (x4)
Particle Beamer (x4)
Tomb Blades (x4)
Particle Beamer (x4)
Total: 1750
I'd greatly appreciate some insight, input, comments, criticism, advice, etc. since I seem to be having some difficulty racking my brain to fine-tune and figure out where this list is lacking in theory, and I've not yet gotten around to installing Vassal to playtest it. You and yours seem to know your stuff, so please, by all means, if it needs to be completely reworked, I'm not married to any of it. Looking forward to the input, and on a completely unrelated note, hopefully they can fix your toilets so they flush in the right direction.
-Dronze"
The list has a ton of anti-infantry but not much in terms of being able to take on tanks. In short the list is lacking in anti-tank. 8x S8 shots plus Guass is all you really have (plus S6 blasts). Furthermore, you're also banking on Games Workshop doing a good xenos FAQ where double courts = double crypteks in squads. If this is FAQ'd in the other direction, the whole list will fall apart.
I think your skipping both of the Barges is a mistake as I think slipping them into the list would be excellent as it would give you some middling strength firepower to hand out suppression and drop any weaker tanks (and more anti-infantry pewpew) as well as the ever-awesome turboing ScytheBarges. Ironically enough it takes you back towards a large amount of AV13 vehicles without really being 'spammy' though if you don't like this...don't do it.
The problem here is finding the points for such (180 for the CCB + Sycthes and 90 each for the Annihilation Barges). We save 40 points losing the Phaeorn upgrades but the only other place is the Tomb Blades. Now I like the Tomb Blades concept - it's going to really hurt infantry and you can annoying tanks with them due to their speed. However, with your Warriors + Arks already, you don't need much more help in the anti-infantry department. If you dropped all of the Tomb Blades you'd easily have enough points for two of each Barge and still have enough points to eek in a few solo Tomb blades (with Stealth) or more Warriors. The issue here is you're really moving completely away from the list concept you originally had in mind. You could potentially just look to add in the Annihilation Barge but then the Overlords aren't really being efficient - they are an expensive upgrade to make Warriors relentless.
I think with this in mind perhaps the combination of Warriors + Tomb Blades isn't the best. Tomb Blades are taking away from some of your anti-tank choices (Heavy Destroyers, Scarabs, etc.) and you're not really maximising your anti-tank elsewhere outside of your Crypteks. A couple of Tomb Blades running around as S6 blasters? I think that's a more feasible idea rather than three largeish squads and use extra points to grab some Barges, Heavy Destroyers or Warriors instead.
If you really wanted to use the larger Tomb Blade squads I think you'd need to look at a different Troops setup - i.e. Teslamortals + Scythes. This gives you more anti-tank + suppression ability but loses a bit of anti-infantry potential without the rapid firing Gauss weapons where the Tomb Blades can help out.
