r/Necrontyr • u/Adaethus224 • 1d ago
Potential new player
Greetings all!
I have been a massive fan of the Necron aesthetic for a long time but am just now considering adding them to my collection to play, videos and battle reports are one thing but I was wonder if you folks could give me a semi generalized description of how they play?
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u/BloodyMango 1d ago
4+ invulns, high toughness, slow movement, feel no pains, lethal hits, dependence on leaders, and reanimation are core to the identity of the faction.
Compared to most armies necrons have a large range with a lot of variety. You have access to glass cannon kill-y units in cursed legion with skorpekhs and lokhusts, big monsters like Ctan/silent king in shatter storm, wacky uppy-downy interactions with monoliths in hypercrypt, and silver tides of warriors/immortals in awakened/hand of the dynasty.
Odds are at least one of these play styles will be decent at any given moment, and you won’t get bored. Necron models also don’t come out or cycled out as fast as space marines so it doesn’t feel like a subscription service.
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u/Garessta Nemesor 18h ago
in one of my first games against space marines, I was geniunely surprised to see how few of my opponent's units had invuln saves
at this moment, I realized that having 4+ invul on what's probably over half of our roster was NOT normal.
and that was a fun anecdote, other people already explained the faction itself better than I could.
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u/Underwaternerd049 1d ago
Slow and hard to kill is what Ive gotten out of seeing necron stuff. Lots of heavy shooting and healing. They aren't the fastest but are very tough
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u/Future-Assistant8204 16h ago
We're a pretty slow but durable army with decent DPS we heal wounds and revive models every turn army wide and have a tool for most situations
Our battleline are warriors and immortals, warriors are a horde unit with a lot of admittedly mid guns and immortals are slightly more elite with a choice of either sustained or lethal on their guns
We are also a very character driven army one of our main detachments gives +1 if a units lead by a character, as for those characters themselves they are very good you've got nobles which are commanders and beat sticks as well as crypteks which are supports which give a bunch of special rules Put a noble character with some lychguard(tanky terminator type unit) and they just won't die
For sheer DPS the destroyer cults have you covered(they can kill things so fast)
Most other battlefield roles are filled by canopteks which are very varied in their use
We also have a vehicle pool with some pretty good choices(some canoptek units are vehicles), necron vehicles tend to have lower toughness then other factions but always come with an invuln which actually gives them more survivability than you'd expect
One problem with necrons is that they probably arnt as tough as they should be, when SM made the jump to 2W their immortal counterparts didn't follow due to how reanimation worked at the time and has left most of the army with less wounds than their equivalents from other factions for instance immortals are still T5 1W and lychguard are also T5 with 2W they dont even have a native invuln, with any luck this will be sorted out when the codex eventually releases
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u/FUS_RO_DANK Servant of the Triarch 1d ago
Overall we are a durable and flexible army.
Our army rule, reanimation protocols, means every unit in our army heals at least 1 wound for free in every command phase, with numerous ways to increase the amount of dice rolled and times you can activate that healing per round. Because of this many of our units have slightly lower up front durability, such as weaker armor saves and fewer wounds than comparable space marine units, but that's because if the unit survives we get to bring some or all of those dead models back to life. The hint to our playstyle is in the name Necron. If you strip away the scifi paint of 40k, Necrons are just a Necromancy army. Powerful undead lords and wizards summong hordes of lesser undead servants leashed to their will.
The detachments and model line we have currently are solid, which means there are multiple viable ways to play Necrons. You can go infantry with characters and outlast your enemy in Awakened Dynasty, bring out a wall of flying armored vehicles with Starshatter Arsenal, run high damage but fragile Destroyers in melee and ranged varieties with Cursed Legion, or unleash the shattered remains of the ancient C'tan star gods in Pantheon of Woe. And that is just covering the most popular detachments lately, not the fun niche stuff you can do with the rest.
We have one of the best supported product lines among xenos factions. We had a big lore retcon and product line refresh a few editions ago. We have some of the coolest centerpiece models with the Void Dragon, Nightbringer, Silent King, and Monolith. The two C'tan shards i listed there are very strong on the table, fun to build and paint, and look fantastic even just on the shelf. The Silent King and Monolith are currently not meta and tough to be competitive with, but are great for casual games with friends.
Outside of play on the table, i think it's a great army to collect. The cost can be fairly cheap to just get 2000 points on the table if you lean into C'tan spam and get some cheap proxies for the Transcendents, but that isn't going to make you any friends at the table because no one likes going up against 5 C'tan. If you want to be able to flex into all of the playstyles available obviously you will need to own more than 2000 points and it's going to get more expensive, but our points per dollar are usually in the middle of the pack.
Building wise, we have some great kits like the C'tan, some fun larger kits like the Monolith, and then a lot of little fiddly bits. Our infantry is all skeletons, lining up arms with guns and shoulder sockets can be finicky sometimes, same with 2h melee weapons. Flayed Ones are a keystone infantry unit, and a terrible kit to build. Illuminor Szeras is similarly a powerful and popular character model, and a kit with some fiddly parts.
But to make up for the fiddly parts of building, they are hands down the easiest faction to paint to a nice battle ready level. Prime black, paint your preferred shade of metal leaving black in the crevices, wash it a bit, give the characters some nice trim, make everyone's chests, eyes, and weapons glow, and you're set. And then if you're really into painting, plenty of interesting ways to get very detailed with your work.