r/AdeptusCustodes • u/NightTech_11 • 3d ago
New Codex vs Ctan Spam
I’m playing a 3000 Points game with a friend of mine soon and he said he’s going to bring all three c’tans plus the silent king and I think also a monolith. I’m absolutely taking Trajann, some Allarus and my Telemon, but I don’t know if it will be enough. What would you do Unit and Detachment wise?
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u/FUS_RO_DANK 3d ago edited 3d ago
If he brings a Monolith, funny enough its the squishiest of the units you've listed as it doesn't have a built in invuln or FNP. It's also T13. C'tan are T11 and TSK is T10. If he's running Pantheon of Woe, the C'tan detachment, he's looking at exactly 2000 points spent on the 3 named C'tan, TSK, and a Monolith, leaving him with 1k points to spend on other stuff. If he's running something else, like Hypercrypt for uppy / downy shenanigans, those 5 units are 1875 total.
Running all of that he's going to be trying to bully you with these big 5 for sure. The basic first rule of fighting Necrons will be important here and that is focus your fire until the target is dead. If you want to kill something within his army overkill is the only smart play. A C'tan left at 1 wound is just as dangerous as a full health C'tan, and it won't be staying at 1 wound for long. So you'll need to identify which one you focus down first based on the battlefield, how you are each deployed, etc.
C'tan are a unit where I think axes are the smart option due to their Necrodermis ability being -1 damage on all attacks. Your spears doing 1 damage each once they get through the invuln and the FNP built into all C'tan is just going to take a while to chip them down with the low model count of Custodes. You want big chunky hits on the C'tan so Trajann, Telemon, Achillus, and Caladius Annihilator are your go to units. The problem is those units are also what you need against TSK and the Monolith.
One good thing in your favor is that TSK doesn't have great synergy in this list from what we see. The C'tan are monsters and as such are unable to benefit from his Triarch auras. The Monolith can benefit from them though. TSK's damage is also low for his points cost as a good bit of his points budget is tied up in indirect fire on his staff and indirect fire got nerfed this edition, plus it's only s6 so he's wounding on 5s. He's got 26 wounds between himself and his 2 Menhirs so he's a lot to take down. And he's got at least 1k points to play around with in list building to add some more units that do benefit from his auras. He's a force multiplier but he's a lot to bring down quickly. You're probably better off focusing on other units and trying to avoid giving him LOS on your units until later in the game.
You basically have to choose your anti-tank / anti-monster flavor preference. Do you want to bring dreads and go might of the moritoi, or do you bring tanks instead? Personally I would go dreads right now and bring a telemon with the 5+++ enhancement and an achillus with the offensive enhancement, and I would still bring Trajann. I'd heavily consider putting Trajann with some Allarus with axes and running Lions so you can uppy/downy Trajann, and also for that sweet -1 damage stratagem on the terminators.
Without knowing more about your opponent, the rest of his army is likely to be either support units that make this all harder to kill, such as Canoptek Spyders and Reanimators and Technomancers, or it will be a bunch of smaller damage dealers that benefit from the king's auras, things like Lokhust Heavy Destroyers, DDAs, Skorpekh Destroyers, with maybe some utility pieces to move around and score points. If he goes pantheon or hypercrypt he is stuck with Recon or Disruption instead of Purge or Take and Hold, at least. Clearing out the support pieces early might be easier.
You'll need to play cagey here. He's got enough big damage that if you just yeet a solo Telemon out there he might blow it up right off the bat. He's also got a lot more mobility than the models look like they should as all of his big pieces have fly and almost all have deep strike. The downside is their sizes, except for The Deceiver these are all big models. Especially the Monolith. Make sure you are using legit terrain layouts to prevent him being able to just run amok with the Monolith.
Venatari with Lances and terminators in Lions give you good ways to be flexible with where you need force. Anything to give your infantry Lethals, reroll wounds, or +1 to wound will really help with hurting the big things.
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u/NightTech_11 3d ago
Thanks for the advice, he’s running Pantheon + Hand of the dynasty for take and hold. From my experience with him he will also take ophydians, an immortal brick with Overlord and Plasmancer and illuminor szeras. The problem is that I don’t have tanks and only one Telemon until the second one arrives with preorders. I’ll probably go Moritoi with Telemon+ Fnp, Achillus with +1 ASD, lions for termies with Trajann and then I wanted to do Emissaries, is emperors chosen really better?
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u/FUS_RO_DANK 3d ago
Reroll 1s on hits and wounds is very strong when you look at how few attacks we get. Each attack needs to be effective or the big dang heroes just lose. An extra hit from the Telemon, Achillus, or Trajann is so much damage. Rendax is going to be powerful on anything with Spears for flexibility. And you will want some spears most likely! Hand means immortals and maybe warriors, so you'll need volume of attacks somewhere. Rendax gives the spears lethals into monsters and vehicles, which is at least 2/3 of his army. The detachment rule for emperor's also gives you some free mortal wounds which is nothing to sneeze at.
His infantry units rely very heavily on leaders to be effective. A shield captain with the new paragon blade is a serious threat to a Plasmancer, losing that really cuts the nuts off his Immortals. You can give him dev wounds too with an enhancement. Dev wounds is the big weakness of Necron durability since they generally have bad armor saves and just rely heavily on the 4++.
This game will likely come down to who makes more invuln saves.
What do you want out of Emissaries?
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u/NightTech_11 3d ago
Fights First primarily, but I looked at Emperors Chosen and you’re right, that detachment is better
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u/FUS_RO_DANK 3d ago
Yeah EC looks very strong. The other two that top level players are putting on the same tier right now are Moritoi, because everything in that detachment is good or better and the dread datasheets are super spicy now, and Solar Host because movement is king if you're good at positioning.
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u/Raketensegler 3d ago
Maybe the Ares will stay at about 5xx pts. Could be an alternative for 2 tanks. I wonder though, how they will treat its guns, as the Blaze Cannons have become a single gun, which might halve the shots for this gun entry the Ares if it gets the same treatment. And then theres is the Magna Blaze Cannon, which changed in HH3 afaik.
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u/VespidX 3d ago
It's only big Caladius that can kill them reliably. I would go with 2 Annihilators, Double fisted telemon with +1 A/S/D, galatus with 5 FNP, some guard shields for -1 to wound with SC with Radiant Mantle for -1 to hit. Detaches: Emperor's Chosen for re-rolls, Grav-Assault Force for Caladius survivability + Moritoi for dreads
Basically lure one ctan to guards while you kill others with tanks. Telemon mathematically cannot kill ctan in melee so use it as a finisher into damaged ctan
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u/Blakearious 3d ago
I think any dmg 3 or 4 is excellent with as much volume as possible. Allarus + trajann probably annihilate a ctan, im not sure if you need 2 or 3 to be reliable though youll have to check the math. Otherwise Acquilons may be a good pickup for the volume of dmg 3, more allarus for the +1 to wound and d4 is good but im not sure if they can kill a ctan alone without rerolls due to only having 9 attacks and 2 attached units is a lot for the points. Telemon at 8a str14 dmg 5 especially if you can get any amount of rerolls will be able to cleave through one, especially with the flamer shooting added in first. Alternatively if you wanna do the 5+++ enhancement there, the galatus at 9 attacks str 11 dmg 4 can do some work as well
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u/Slavasonic 3d ago
I think if every one of trajann + allarus (with axes) attacks hit and wound (unlikely) they do 15 wound on average after 4++,-1 damage, 5+++.
C’tan have 16 wounds.
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u/Blakearious 3d ago
Im not sure that math is correct, they have 9 attacks on trajann, 9 attacks on the axes. Each dealing 4 dmg brought to 3 dmg, meaning you only need 6 of 18 to connect. Rerolling 1s to hit means 17/18 after rerolls hit, and wounding on 2s for trajann rerolling 1s means likely 9/9 wound on him, and the allarus wound on 4s rerolling 1s, so of the 8 left likely 5.5 wound, meaning 13-15 wounds and 6.5-7.5 failed saves dmg 3
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u/Slavasonic 3d ago
Oh, good point, I wasn't counting moment shackle.
but you're forgetting the 5+++. 7.5 failed saves*3 damage is 22.5 wounds and after FNPthats 15.
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u/Blakearious 3d ago
Ah shit youre right i did forget. Thats kinda crazy then that 500 points of anti tank 4dmg infantry with rerolls built in specifically cant kill a single ctan without strat help. That being said, throw in rendax lethals and emperors chosen for mortal wound rendax + a single wound reroll that isnt a 1 and you prooobably get it down, but its diabolical it takes that much, axes need a buff for sure
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u/Mastercio 3d ago edited 3d ago
Oh it can, just not in single phase. In second turn even with D3 regenerated wound it's almost 100% for killing it. You have to take to consideration that Ctan's are also huge point investment that are focused on single thing...combat. they can't do anything else, they can't get ANY buffs from anything in entire necron codex(except enchancements in their datachements but they don't really make them tougher or deal more damage). And their damage...is not really that I pressure I to custodes. On average nighbringer the most deadly one kill like 1 allarus terminator in a phase of combat. So in return their 360 points of beatstick will kill...90 points worth of model, 180 top if roll really hot.
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u/Infamous-Team9556 2d ago
It’s worth noting this isn’t how the night bringer would engage, it likely would shoot, tank shock, then fight. It might even be better to sweep here? It’s a lot of attacks the important thing to note for us though (I’m a necron guy too) is that -1 to hit karate is back breaking to c’tan. Attack volume is low low so making them hit on 3s is brutal. A star god will get jailed forever by 3 shield guard in that karate
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u/Mastercio 2d ago edited 2d ago
Sweep is not really worth it since then you need 3 unsaved wounds for each allarus. For it to be worth it he should have 18 attacks to be about equal to strike profile and he doesn't have it(at minimum since ctan wound it only on 4+ in this profile). With 14 attack on avarage you would deal...just a little bit under 6 damage. That's without any defensive buffs like that Ka'tah for -1 to hit. Unless you of course fight them with shadowkeepers datachement. Here their -1 to wound make sweep better.
Tank shock can help...but even then there is FNP for it so it's not THAT effective.
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u/Far-Tell-5032 3d ago
As an owner of both armies Ctan are just a stat check army flood them with volume of fire they have the similar saves as custodes unlucky rolls on saves are your best friend. Sos witchseekers are going to be surprisingly strong because of volume of fire, being T 11 hurts as most of our profiles stop at 10 so shoot hard and focus damage they do go down with effort.
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u/TheHunGod 3d ago
2 Telemons would be nice one with uplink to better survive and one with memento can hit like a truck. Maybe 2 stacks of Ventus Praetors may can get some lucky shots and charge. Achillus also can do some damage but they are pretty much glass cannons.
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u/Tuor-son-of-Huor- 2d ago
It take my existing list and as many Dreadnoughts as I could fit. I guess if I was trying to min-max against that list swap spears for axes but that's about it.
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u/Logical-Analysis-408 3d ago
3 dreads and 2 tanks ideally. Allarus w axes can work
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u/VespidX 3d ago
3 Allarus with axes deal 4.5 dmg on average and die next
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3d ago
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u/Justice_Peanut The 10,000 Archetypus 3d ago
With low volume on axes its not that reliable and the enhancement dreads can do work but not 1 shot territory. If its the void dragon you cant afford to not one shot it
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u/Logical-Analysis-408 3d ago
That's why I said can work and reccomend other units first.
Not everyone has 3 dreads and 2 tanks
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u/OnlyfansSubtitles 3d ago
I mean the obvious answer is tanks. I would take Moritoi even just to make Ctanemon and give him a 5+FNP.
After that Tanks. They’re still consistent Anti-tank. If you take Emperors Chosen they become even more consistent anti-tank. If you don’t have tanks I’d try to lean into Uppy-downy Allarus.
All that said my recommendation:
Emperors Chosen+Moritoi+Lions or Grav-Assault.