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Nick speaking,
So, moving onto HQ units in this New Necron Codex Review series, is the mighty Necron Lord. And lets face it he needs to be mighty, as at the moment apart from the point expensive C'Tan, he's all we've got!
Although I own three foot Lords, which were great to put in amongst your walking phalanx in forth edition. Nowadays I stick to my two Destroyer Lords. Destoyer Lords are great for getting away from huddling around the Necron Orb. Without the Orb and with the freedom of a Destroyer base, all of a sudden the Lord can take on a whole new role.
Join a Destroyer Lord to a unit of Scarabs Swarms and send them out as a delivery system for the Lords still fantastic Wargear. Turbo boost them out on turn one, get into terrain on turn two and pop of Nightmare Shroud on as many units as you can. Use the Scarabs and Lord to draw fire, taking advantage of the 2+ cover saves. Get into the back ranks and de-mech those objective holding tanks with the Lords Warscythe!
Oh and don't forget to ALWAYS take Solar Pulse, with a 33% change of Night Fight, you just have to have it, there is nothing better than coming on the table edge on turn one in Dawn of War, and shooting you Destroyers at 36" during Night Fight.
So what is wrong with the Necron Lord? Well I have heard rumours of new variants of the Lord with a tiered points cost, and if this is true, then it sounds great. Personally, I don't mind that I only have one Lord to choose from at the moment. But, I would like to see the usual points reduction on it to come in line with current Codex's.
The only thing that I find very annoying with the Lord is his Weapon Skill four! Please, please make him Weapon Skill five so that my Warscythe can get through to actually cause a few wounds!
So what do you think of the Necron Lord? Keep him similar to he is now? Totally revamp him? Add more Lord options?
Uh... Nightmare Shroud isn't actually very good because most units will pass it fairly easily (even Ld7 beats most of the time, and Ld9 laughs it off with an auto-regroup). Sending Lord + Scarabs into the heart of the enemy army is a perfectly excellent plan, but you do it to deliver one or two T6/3+ guys with an ultra power weapon, not to get some one-use mediocre wargear. Lord jumps something moderately tough, Scarabs pounce on something shooty, laugh as half the enemy's firepower can't do anything.
ReplyDeleteSolar Pulse is extremely mediocre. Sure, it's nice when it lets you shoot in DoW, but it simply doesn't do all that much (50% of the time the enemy won't be around to shoot at anyways) and sucks up points that could go to other, more helpful options.
When Necrons get a new book, the Lord will probably have WAY more options to pick from and have his old ones revamped into being actuall worthwhile. They are also going to give Necons more HQs because no army is stuck with just one HQ and one troop anymore- that's poor army design.
If I was going to send my Dlord off hunting tanks in the back field I would send a scarab unit with him to suck up wounds, and the cover save. And if I am doing this I may as well see if I can break a unit or two. If your doing this turn 1 then you will see units with in 12" of the table edge and one bad LD role could send them of the edge. If it dose nor work then it is a good "oh $***" trick that will get most players to scream kill it now!
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that you have a finite pool of points to spend on him, and Nightmare Shroud simply doesn't do much for its cost. Against a Tau or IG army? Sure, you might send something important skittering off the table. But against Marines, you _might_ get lucky and get one unit occasionally. And the armies vulnerable to it are the armies most likely to have ways to shred you as you approach (negating or diminishing your cover saves, inflicting instant death on the Scarabs, etc.) It's a marginal strategy that doesn't even work against mechanized units, which are one of the things that Necrons struggle most against.
ReplyDeleteAnyone who panics against a mediocre trick like that is probably such a bad player that you hardly need help beating them anyways; the proper response to the Scarabs + Lord _is_ to kill it quickly, as it's a dangerous unit that can't be left to run around in the backfield. But with Flamers, countercharges, etc, it's not actually all that hard to take out- the Lord will carve things up with a Warscythe, but eliminating the Scarabs (to deny him the cover saves) is the real goal of such an attack, so any wounds inflicted on him are merely a bonus.
I think that the Lord should be able to veil pariahs and have some cool enhancements to allow themes lists. For example taking flayed ones as troops for a fear build or taking destroyers as troops for a really fast army.
ReplyDeleteMulti part plastic kit!!! Like the Marines.
ReplyDeleteOptions of all the weapon upgrades.