500 Point Necron Armies Pt 2

This is a continuation of my 500 point Necron lists. With the new codex and all the variation available, it really is outstanding – you can actually get any of the special characters you like into the list!

Barge Anrakyr:

Anrakyr the Traveller + Catacomb Command Barge

9 Immortals w/ tesla – Pyrrhian Eternals

10 Warriors

This list is quite small, but with Anrakyr flying about, stealing any big tanks that anyone else decides to take, or alternatively just smashing them open if they haven’t got any guns worth taking, it can do quite a bit of damage. The Immortal squad is great for holding objectives and packs quite a punch against other basic infantry – they should be able to actually kill IG or Tau troops thanks to the tesla and furious charge if necessary. The Warriors are again just for holding objectives, but is a nicer size at 10 men instead of 5 or 6 like in many of the lists.

Anrakyr:

Anrakyr the Traveller

9 Immortals w/ tesla – Pyrrhian Eternals

5 Immortals w/ Gauss

Annihilation Barge

500 Point Necron Armies Pt 1

What an improvement! Necrons now have choice in 500 point battles! In the old codex the 2 Troops 1 HQ ran you up 460pts, leaving you not enough to take anything particularly, and meaning you got absolutely slaughtered by most other armies who could take their elites in small points games. With the new codex though, you can get literally anything in, from a C’tan to a Doom Scythe, from a Monolith to Tomb Blades. I’ve had one list in particular serve me well recently – I’ll be posting a battle report soon in which it performs exceptionally – but it has been fun looking at what units can be fitted into a 500 point force. There’s quite a few of them so I’m splitting this across two posts.

Monolith List:

Overlord + Warscythe

Cryptek – HoD

5 Immortals w/ tesla

6 Warriors

1 Monolith

Now in this list the main hitting force is the Monolith. It can also potentially be a big threat by deep striking it in, and due to the smaller armies it is more likely to be able to get nearer without hitting enemy models. It can also be very useful in teleporting the other units to itself, allowing you to suddenly have many more shots coming from wherever it is. I have had reasonable successes in this list running the Cryptek as a ‘court of one’ instead of having him join a unit. It means that although he is fragile, it’s easy to get him a cover save from terrain and it means he can be firing at whatever he needs to without worrying about the unit. The tesla can be swapped on the Immortals but I prefer the extra range and hits especially against models that were going to get armour saves either way, and the Warscythe just gives the Overlord extra punch.

This and Tomb Blades are the models I'm most
looking forward to for the second wave.

What have I been working on?

While I've been unable to post for just over a month now unfortunately, I have still managed to get a few hobby related things done and hope to get posts up over the week on them. 

First, I painted up a Ultramarine. I've decide that I'm going to try to paint all the first founding Space Marine chapters up just for fun and because it'll let me work on some skills and using colours I don't usually use. Next up is likely a Salamander if I can get the bits I want for him.

 I've also spent quite some time experimenting with 500 point Necron lists. Many of my friends enjoy low point games and within the old Necron codex, there was so little variation that they weren't really any fun. With the new one, I can squeeze anything from a Monolith to Tomb Blades in a 500 point army - which is much more fun, so I'll post an article up on the various lists and observations I've been making on low point Necron armies. 

Finally, though it won't have pictures, I've got a brief battle report of a 3-way 500 points a side battle between Necrons, Dark Eldar and Orks. Let's just say it went rather well for the Necrons involved. One of my friends has just started Grey Knights and while it will certainly be interesting, I am struggling to understand why they are so over powered for their points cost. I mean for three points more per model over a standard tactical marine you instead get a force weapon and a stormbolter instead of a boltgun, as well as Hammerhand. How is that balanced? My current plan for dealing with them consists of a tag team of destroyers for anyone in power armour and some wraiths to deal with things like paladins, and otherwise maxing out on the tesla weapons - make them role enough dice and they're bound to fail some!

Anyone got any tips for dealing with Grey Knights using Necrons, or any other army?

Imperial Fist Sergeant

This is Sgt. Sienos of the Imperial Fists. I painted him up partially to give myself practice of painting yellows, and also as one of my friends is starting Imperial Fists, to help him out. Unfortunately I couldn't get a hold of a camera to do WIP shots, but here he is finished. Please comment and let me know your thoughts!

The yellow was done over a white spray, with three thinned coats of Iyanden Darksun. This was washed with multiple coats of Gryphonne Sepia, before being highlighted with light drybrushing of Iyanden Darksun, and varying mixes of Iyanden Darksun and Dheneb Stone (roughly 3:1, 2:1, 1:1, 1:2 but it wasn't exact). This was washed again with the sepia wash, and some Devlan Mud sparingly in recesses. Again this was highlighted up a little with the same mixes.

The black power fist was based in 2:1 Adeptus Battlegrey: Chaos Black. Then, I used Adeptus Battlegrey to highlight, before giving a heavy Badab Black wash. Edges were highlighted with the Battlegrey again to define them more. This was also applied to the chest Aquila, part of his backpack and his belt.

Painting A Soul Grinder Part 1: Torso

Finally had some time to get started on this beautiful model - I think it's very visually impressive, and it is probably my favourite current Chaos model (apart from maybe the Demon Prince, for pure customisation options). I decided to go for a dark green colour scheme for the torso, with silvery/bronze colours for the armour and some dark red plating here and there as a spot colour. In this post I will show you what I have done so far and what steps I took to get there. The torso isn't quite finished, I haven't done the face, the bone or the metal on it, but I am pretty happy with how the actual flesh has turned out.

First I basecoated the model in Chaos Black, and all the mechanical components got a layer of Boltgun Metal. I followed this with two slightly thined coats of Orkhide Shade from the foundation range, to give me a dark green base on the flesh.

After the Orkhide Shade and Boltgun basecoats - it just means
that the recesses will actually be a very dark green instead of pure black, which
I find does help it look better in the long run - black often looks too unnatural for me.

C'tan in White Dwarf

Just got this months White Dwarf and in amongst all the lovely Vampire articles, there is some Necron Tactica by Matt Ward - and more interesting than that a extract called "Crafting your C'tan", including a list of named C'tan:

"You should always feel free to mix and match C'tan powers as you see fit - the Shards are creatures of godlike ability and can pretty much do whatever they want. However, if you want to pick powers fitting for specific C'tan, I'd recommend the following:

Mephet'ran, the Deceiver - Grand Illusion, Swarm of Spirit Dust

Aza'gorod, the Nightbringer - Gaze of Death, Transdimensional Thunderbolt

Iash'uddra, the Endless Swarm - Swarm of Spirit Dust, Writhing Worldscape

Og'driada, the Arisen - Pyreshards, Sentient Singularity

Tsara'noga, the Outsider - Transdimensional Thunderbolt, Time's Arrow

Yggra'nya, the Shaper - Moulder of Worlds, Writhing Worldscape

Nyadra'zatha, the Burning One - Lord of Fire, Pyreshards

Mag'ladroth, the Void Dragon - Entropic Touch, Sentient Singularity

Llandu'gor, the Flayer - N/A, He's been completely destroyed!"

I have one of these that I never got round to even building and I'm thinking
 of making him up to look as intimidating as possible *cough* made out of fire *cough*

I'm mostly posting this because I thought it was interesting and Necron players who don't get White Dwarf might find it interesting (I would have missed it if I hadn't have picked it up for the Vampire articles). For me the most interesting ones are "The Void Dragon" and "The Outsider", the 'other two' C'tan that we had heard about previously, supposedly the only four left along with The Nightbringer and the Deceiver before the new codex changed the fluff - it's nice to see what GW (or at least Matt Ward) thinks are appropriate abilities for them out the options in the new codex. I would still love to see more C'tan models from GW, or even better would be some from Forge World (like the Eldar Avatars), although I'd also love to see some FW rules for Super-Heavy C'tan Shards for Apocalypse games.

Necron FAQs

As many people have already said, Games Workshop have updated most of the 40K FAQs today, and most importantly added one for the Necrons! In general, the only nerf I can really see is of Scarab Spawning tactics, no more conga lines across the field, however probably the best thing is the confirmation of members from different Royal Courts being allowed to join the same unit. The Gauss Flayer Array has been cleared up and now acts like the old Monolith Flux Arc for purposes of line of sight - if one of the Flayers is in and LoS and  range then the entire array counts as being in LoS ("As long as you can draw line of sight along one of them, you can target the unit") which is rather brilliant IMO - hiding a Ghost Arc/Doomsday Arc mostly behind a piece of terrain but with just the front Flayer in front of it could be useful; you'd be able to shoot with the Array but would count as in cover/out of LoS for purposes of them shooting back at you from the side.

They also cleared up a issue that I had before with how Entropic Strike is distributed in vehicle squadrons "Split the successes equally between all member of the squadron with any excess allocated by the squadrons controlling player. Then roll to penetrate as normal.", and I do like that they have confirmed that you roll for Entropic Strike and to penetrate, as well as the fact that if there are multiple units in the CC, then the other ones only roll to penetrate after Entropic Strike has been resolved if at the same initiative. Only other thing that I previously had a question about had been concerning Trazyn the Infinate's "Surrogate Host" ability, but that too has been cleared up - he rolls for Reanimation Protocols first and then if he fails that, he makes his Surrogate Host roll.

All in all I think it was a pretty good FAQ update, we haven't been completely nerfed which is nice for a xenos army, and I can't say I'm surprised at the removal of Scarab chaining across the field. I do honestly think that the new Necrons might be one of the most balanced armies in 40K at the moment - we have some pretty powerful things but do pay the points cost for it and don't appear to have anything game breaking at all, or anything that will make everyone drop any other army just to pick Necrons up. The only thing I'm sad about is the lack of a Flayer Lord - even if it meant your army was significantly reduced in what options it could take, (like no vehicles, nothing from the Triarch and no Lords that weren't Flayer Lords) it would have been a nice fluffy additions, regardless of the actual strength of the army, as well as the lack of say Destroyer Lords moving Destroyers into the troop section, or a SC that made Lychguard/Triarch Pretorians troops. However, I can't complain, compared to the old one, I'm loving having so many options and so many brilliant models - just hope we get the DE treatment instead of the Tyranid one!

First game with the new Necron Codex

I recently played my first game with the new Necron codex; it was a doubles match and my team consisted of 1500pts of Necrons and 1000pts of Dark Eldar, against 1500pts of Orks and 1000pts of Eldar. In hindsight, neither of us were prepared to deal with the Orks as we were under the impression we were fighting either Vanilla Marines or IG alongside the Eldar.

I think this may be my next Necron purchase -

It's a lovely model anyway but the night fighting is just brilliant!

Now, if only there was another character that could give units Night Vision...

Anyway, we held them at bay, some elements did better than others and I learnt some weaknesses elements of my codex have (The Monolith does not survive as long as it used to, and 20 odd powerklaw attacks will break it), and questions that need to be answered (How does entropic strike work against units of vehicles, e.g. Killa Kans?). Possibly the best thing was the Stormlord's night fighting (even if I did forget to do the lightning strikes until turn 3...). It stopped the Eldar Fire Prism and Support Weapons, as well as the Ork 10 man unit of Deffguns from doing any damage all game!

This is the list, please comment with advice on improvements - like I said, I've only played one game with them! Imotekh was in with the Immortals and the Overlord was with a unit of Warriors (and killed the Deff Dread that charged them in one go - yay for Warscythes!):

Necron Warriors

Still think this looks appropriately intimidating...

These are the first forty or so of my Necron warriors. I'm not 100% sure how many I own in total now but I think it's around seventy - I use to favour playing a lethal warrior phalanx, using large squads all within range of a resurrection orb and they basically killed anything that got too close! They're being painted in two different colour schemes now, as I couldn't decide which I preferred between the silver and gold, and I've since made my own fluff for them (They come from twin tomb worlds).


Painting them involved successive drybrushes and a couple of washes, but they aren't quite finished:

Current Forces - 2012

My name is Vargna and I've been playing and painting 40K for most of my life. I intend on using this mostly as motivation to myself to actually finish my various on the go projects but also because I thought it would be nice if more people could also see the things that I'm pouring so much time into, and hopefully help me to improve. My current plan is to post things such as my plans for army lists, what I think of units, maybe rough battle reports, and hopefully some project logs.

My first and largest army is Necrons, and I have since collected quite a few others, all of which in varying states of disrepair or incomplete: