Imotekh gives you an extra CP each turn and has decent shooting and melee, plus a once-per-game Mortal AoE. He doesn’t buff his unit at all though, which feels like it might pull counter to what the army is trying to do. You’ve got your hands on some core characters and troops, now where do you go? Necrons have a number of different angles to play and some of them are quite competitive. Let’s discuss a couple possible options among many that are available and how you might branch into them. Hexmark Destroyer • Lokhust Destroyer • Lokhust Heavy Destroyer • Ophydian Destroyer • Skorpekh Destroyer Each time a unit's reanimation protocols are enacted, make Reanimation Protocol rolls for that unit by rolling a number of D6 equal to the combined Wounds characteristics of all the reassembling models. Each Reanimation Protocol roll of 5+ is put into a pool. A Reanimation Protocol roll can never be modified by more than -1 or +1.

Sounds promising, and it is – this is pure upside. For it to be great, however, the effects need to be good, so let’s take a look. Have you tried killing something that has a 4+ Invulnerable Save and a 4+ Feel No Pain? It’s pretty hard, and either of these units are great places to put the Enhancement that allows it. Fancy Hat Guy With the new book in play, Necrons play pretty much how you’d expect just from looking at them. Legions of durable infantry lumber up the board, surrounded by a panoply of strange and terrible damage dealers, whether they be viciously be-clawed constructs, robot space wizards wielding arcane relics, imprisoned star gods or looming ancient war machines. Your core forces are extremely durable, while your specialist units are exceedingly effective when deployed in the right situations. The tradeoff for all of this is that you have to think ahead. Many units are relatively ponderous, while the powerful Command Protocols have to be planned out before battle is even joined. Get your strategy right and you can grind your foes before you. Get it wrong, and the pesty galactic usurpers will run rings around you, forcing you to make a tactical withdrawl to your tomb world rather than be undone. To round out, a couple of army lists that have succeded at post-Dataslate events. Cameron Glodowski – 1st Place – Battle Zone Ursa 2023 The ListDepending on your budget Skorpekh are going to be easier to come into, but Wraiths are a great kit and a strong independent unit so we’ll leave it to your personal preference. Lychguard are also no slouches in combat, though they are slower, so if you want a good midfield threat that can shield your characters that’s not a bad option. Once you have a few large melee threats established you’re going to want to fill out your list with some sturdy troops and fast objective-grabbers/harassers, which Warriors and Scarab Swarms fill quite nicely. A lot of players also really enjoy bringing along a C’tan Shard of the Nightbringer, who is a HUGE threat to anything nearby and provides solid offense and/or distraction (note it does not benefit from the Dynasty traits). Necrons feel like they’re going to reward players who really get to know their army. There’s enough raw power and toughness here to be forgiving in early games, but a deep understanding of how best to use your forces is going to be needed to get the most out of them. The faction also has a lot of support for themed armies – powerful options are available that will reward going deep on either Canoptek constructs or Destroyer Cult units. This is also great news for existing Necron players – pretty much whatever set of tools you have access to, there will be a way to put them together that leverages the new book. The update is especially exciting if you favoured Warrior or Canoptek-based lists, both of which look vastly more interesting compared to 8th, where Immortals, Destroyers and vehicles were the main game in town – and on that note, let’s look at what the book covers. What’s in the Book? Triarch Stalkers are primarily armed with a main weapon located under its main hull. This weapon can be any one of the following:

If a unit from your army starts your Movement phase embarked within a TRANSPORT model, that unit can disembark in that phase. In addition, if all units from your army are from the same dynasty (excluding DYNASTIC AGENT, C’TAN SHARD and UNALIGNED units), select one command protocol that has not been assigned to a battle round (there will typically only be one). That command protocol is active in every battle round in addition to the one assigned to that battle round – select which directive your units will benefit from at the start of each battle round. Note that if this additional command protocol is the one described in your dynasty’s code, this means both of its directives apply to all units with this ability in your army in every battle round, in addition to the protocol assigned to that battle round. The available command protocols are shown below. You only get one shot but at S10 -4AP and 3D3 damage, it hits almost like a Castellan volcano lance. If you want to go for screen-killing, you can also throw on the enmitic exterminator for 3d3 S7 -1 AP shots. Just taking a complete shot in the dark on this one…but we feel like the gauss destructor is going to be wildly more popular. If you do take a squad of 2-3, it also says that any number can take whichever weapon (they can be mixed). Hexmark DestroyerHonestly, I’d say Warlord Traits are the one real area of disappointment in the book. I expect you mostly take either the Sautekh, Nephrekh or Szerakhan ones on your Warlord, buy your biggest melee nasty Enduring Will and maybe throw out Thrall of the Silent King when you have a use for it. Relics At the end of the day, regardless of how you get ahold of them there’s a number of good units you’ll probably want to have on-hand for whatever army you eventually want to buy. The following is stuff that builds out to a decent core that almost any army can use effectively: A bunch of rules in the Necron Codex work based on a set of common keywords that turn up across multiple units. The most important ones are: Every unit in your army that isn’t a C’tan Shard or a Dynastic Agent has to be from the same Dynasty. That means mixed-dynasty lists switch these off, likely making them quite rare. The good news is that although the Silent King is from the Szarekhan Dynasty, he’s a Dynastic Agent as well, so you can include him alongside an army using another Dynasty and still benefit from these. What are your personal opinions on these two units? Since they’re both heavy support, do you think one will be more popular over the other?

When you deploy these three models, they all have to be within 12″ of each other. After that, they’re all treated as a separate unit. On top of getting three models for one drop, they give your Necrons some bonus Leadership which has been the Achilles heel to fat Warrior blobs. Dynastic Agent: Units that can be added to any Necron detachment without breaking detachment abilities or protocols.

Here are a couple 1000pt lists created around some of the builds discussed above to give you an idea of what can be accomplished on what budget: That’s Not Rust, It’s Blood Units that disembark from a TRANSPORT model that made a Normal move this phase count as having made a Normal move themselves; they cannot move further during this phase. Such a unit also cannot declare a charge in the same turn, but can otherwise act normally in the remainder of the turn. If all models in that unit have their starting number of wounds, but that unit is not at its Starting Strength, one destroyed model is returned to that unit with one wound remaining. Finally, it’s worth highlighting that one unit of Ophydian Destroyers is a great addition to lists where you can find points for them. They provide a strong Rapid Ingress tool, more than capable of flattening an enemy utility piece, and their ability to do a redeploy gives you some late-game flexibility, or enduring value from them after they’ve done their first strike. How Does This Faction Handle Enemy Hordes?

Following in the theme of Necron units being led by characters and how that affects their output, we get to the Stratagems. The protocols that we were used to from the previous book, have all been turned into stratagems that do different interesting things that match their name – and pretty much all of them are good. They also all get better if a unit is lead by a Character (except for the Eternal Guardian), further reinforcing the detachment theme. Overall, with a random D6 shot output and only hitting on a 4+, you’ll most definitely want to bring more than one of these to get the most value out of your points. Definitely a sweet model though. Lokhust Heavy Destroyer Light Cover from Eternal Guardian. This one’s super interesting, because there’s a huge tension inherant in it. If you’re worried about getting alpha striked you might choose to line it up for the first turn – but then if you end up going first it probably does nothing for many of your units. I do also find it amusing that performing a charge doesn’t switch this off. Warriors • Immortals ( Despotek • Guardian) • Pariahs • Deathmarks • Lychguards • Triarch Praetorians • Flayed Ones • Cryptothrall

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Finally, Ghost Arks. Great ability, unclear if what it carries is worth it, and as a Dedicated Transport you have to bring someone to ride. The ability is that once per turn you can trigger the same effect as the Protocols of the Undying Legions stratagem on a nearby Necron Warriors unit, which is very good. However, 10 Necron Warriors with one Character (which is what it carries) might be a challenging sell (no room for Cryptothralls, boo), so we’ll have to see what the cost looks like. Big Vehicles Chronomancer ( Orikan the Diviner) • Plasmancer • Psychomancer • Technomancer ( Illuminor Szeras) • Apprentek Acanthrite • Doomstalker • Plasmacyte ( Reanimator • Accelerator) • Reanimator • Scarab • Seraptek • Spyder • Tomb Sentinel • Tomb Stalker • Wraith Each one of these is also coming with a pretty nasty short-range gun that is oddly…only S4 but doing -3AP 3 Damage. Big spicy boys. Pretty scary, durable thanks to T6 and able to ignore modifiers to their stats when fighting in melee, which can be clutch against some armies. Also get to take one plasmacyte token per three for a once-per-game shot of Devastating Wounds, which can create big swing turns. Ophydian Destroyers