My title is, of course, referring to the recent release of Codex Necrons. So I'll have a wee talk about my first impressions of book.
As most people do in 5th ed i looked straight at the anti-tank potential. I'm going to disregard Entropic Strike for just now (I'll muse on that later). We've got the Heat Ray wielding Stalker throwing out 2 multi-melta shots every turn, sound good? Well...maybe. I can see the stalker going the way of the vindicator - got a great anti-tank gun, but only one, only moves 6'' when firing and has negligible combat potential. Not to fret though it's not our only melta...wait...facepalm. I do think that when fielded alongside its clankey creators it'll preform admirably thanks to the mass shake/stun dished out by the rest of the army and the nightfight manipulation available to crypteks and I-mo-tekh.
Moving on to an option that very much still up in the air for me. Massed Crypteks with Eldritch Lances. First of all they don't have the lance rule!!! Competitively speaking i don't realy care about the lack of the lance rule (DE players know what I'm talking about), in fact, lack of it probably shaved 5pts off its cost. But still, it is called a lance. With that mini-rant out of the way I'll start on why these could be a good choice, but probably arn't. For 35pts you get dark lance without the lance but with the assault rule, i'd say that sounds alright. They have the option of splitting up into other squads of stick together and hang around in a ghost ark or a pyramidy looking piece of terrain. The trade off is that you'll be needing an Overlord of every 5 Crypteks you take, leading to more points spent than just the 35 per lance, and to take 10 you'll be denying yourself the rather impressive Destroyer Lord (his name is Lord E Lordie and you will kneel before him). Possibly more importantly though, if Crypteks have lances they don't have tremorstaves, which I'll discuss in good time.
The command barge. Stick a Warsythed up Overlord in one of these puppies and make some sweep attacks. Can't argue with the (theoretical) results. Though when it comes down to it if your opponents tank wasn't out of position, yours probably will be.
I'll not bother assessing heavy destroyers or wraiths because, well, did you use them in the last book? They haven't changed, that is, when it comes to killing tanks.
I'm not relay that big a fan of the Doomsday Ark, and basically the reason is that if you want it to be good at killing tanks then it has to stand still. Not cool. It's not bad but it just seems like there are far better options available. I'm undecided on whether or not the same can be said about the Doom Scythe. What i am decided on is that the Doom Sythe is very vulnerable to luck, for example - your opponent gets a lucky night fight roll and blows it out of the sky or your 3D6 roll for the length of the line you draw when you fire the weapon. Of course the opposite could also happen resulting in massed devastation and surviving to fight another turn, hence the undecidedness.
You think you hate dreadnoughts? Well Destroyer Lords seem to have made it their one goal in life to wreck the lot of them. With preferred enemy, s7 and 2D6 armpen these guys seem perfect for killing those pesky psyflemen. Granted they don't like DCCW but how often do we see them? And this is all provided that he can get behind all those blocking rhinos and razorbacks. He will also have a good go at anything that's moved less than 6inches.
I'll finish with the annihilation barge. I think its great. For 90pts you get 5-6 s7 hits per turn. its -ap leaves it a difficulty with killing tanks, but it is particularly good at putting shake/stun results across the table.
So that's us for now, leaving out entropic striking scarabs, i would say these are the predominant anti-tank options in the book. On this alone I'd say i was unimpressed, so thank god for entropic strike, which I'll talk about in a later article along with anti-infantry and general shenanigans.
Happy reading.
