Editing Warhammer 40,000/9th Edition Tactics/Necrons (section)

==Tactics and strategy==

===Your meta===
As of october 2022 here are the things you need to consider if you want to play Necrons in a competitive way:

* Play the Necron specific secondaries, we cannot remark this enough, you are not [[Tyranids|going to kill things hard]] [[Harlequins|and fast]], you are neither [[Blood Angels|good]] [[Orks|at melee]] or [[Imperial Guard|at]] [[Tau|shooting]], you are not even that great at [[Death Guard|tarpiting and receiving punches to the face]], what you are good at is at taking the objectives and extracting as many Victory Points as possible before your opponent sends you back to your Tomb, in a way you are a discount [[Sisters of Battle]] army, yes, they are now S Tier, their whiny article is terribly outdated, oh the irony that they and the Tyranids are better than the Skeleboys right now.

* On the matter of Command Protocols, Sudden Storm may as well be your always-on option due the movement and action benefits you will get to your army in order to achieve Victory Points.

* Do you remember how awesome the Necrons were back in 3rd edition or for that matter Dawn of War? Well guess what, you are not that anymore since a couple of editions ago, your warriors and flayed ones blobs will die miserably to concentrated Blast weapons if they get overexposed, your Lords and Overlords are going to get shoot and ripped to pieces if you don't bring a unit to bodyguard them and the Monolith doesn't even have a Invulnerable Save or FLY keyword, which means you WILL have to take advantage of the Chronometron, cover and obscuring terrain as much as possible and keep your Characters under Look Out Sir as much as possible, they are support units, no 9th edition Lord will ever kill just by himself even a Tactical Squad, as for the Monolith, eh, sorry, you should have used that money to buy the Silent King instead, [[Troll|but GeeDubs thanks you your purchase]].

* On that matter, The Silent King is as mandatory as Eternal Conquerors and Relentless Expansionists (Obsekh), yes, you can try Novokh or Mephrit, but having bonus at melee and shooting bring your damage output from mediocre to just decent and no, the recent nerf to him and the Catacomb Command Barge isn't that important, your Nobles are there to support your units, not for shooting and fighting.

* Yeah, about shooting and fighting, even with Szarekh you are still in a uphill battle, so only fully engage when you are absolutely sure the attacking unit has a chance at surviving the counter-attack unless this allows you to get those juicy Victory Points, OBVIOUSLY charging at some cheap sacrificial units is a big no if you are not going to get spectacular strategic returns, there is nothing sillier than, say, losing a fully kitted Wraiths because you managed to kill a cheap troops unit.

* Bring Technomancers and Chronomancers, their job isn't as much to buff your units in a fight as to resurrect them and keep your blobs alive, yes, Canoptek Control Node, Failsafe Overcharge and the Chronometron will give you bonus in an attack for Canoptek units and a re-roll to charge, the problem is, this may make you over-expose your crypteks, so think very carefully before leaving them alone or sending them in into a charge, oh, and in case you need more crypteks remember to use Dynastic Advisors, yes, everyone says they are for babysitting Skorpekh Destroyers, no don't think it's that easy to position them into a charge, see them more as a threat unit screwing over the enemy movement than a beatstick on a murder rampage.

* People say Canoptek Scarabs are great, and they are, but not just for the reasons you may be thinking (tarpiting and Mortal Wounds), instead they are good for getting to those faraway objectives in the battlefield your other units can't get fast enough into in order to do '''Ancient Machineries''' and '''Treasures of the Aeons''' (even easier if you are using Obsekh), even if they are killed in the next turn sacrificing 90 points of units to potentially get more than 15 Victory Points is absolutely worth it, at worst you will force your opponent to shift their units positions.

* The above point also applies for Canoptek Wraiths, being so fast, while they too could deal some decent damage in order to dislodge enemy units it's more a thing of taking an objective while being annoying, just be more careful in any exchange for Victory Points as they cost more. With some careful preparation and a bit of luck, you can charge your Wraiths into a unit that is screening for a ranged threat, then as long as your Wraiths survive the turn you can Fall Back your Wraiths *behind* the screening unit, then immediately charge into the actual target that you want to kill.

*If you are not controlling at least 3 objectives by the end of turn 4 then you are doing it wrong, of course this means you may have to sacrifice some units, that's why scarabs and wraiths are so important, however, be careful if your opponent has tailored his secondaries to get points from killing models, necrons can be easy to farm with '''No Mercy''' and '''Grind Them Down''' if you are too reckless due how Reanimation Protocols work and the average necron player using low count Scarabs and Immortal units.

* Veil of Darkness is auto-mandatory and so Gauss Reapers... Except it depends on your meta and opponent, say, you are going to fight against an army which excels at hit and run tactics or a player who knows how to put his units in such a way you can't redeploy in his side of the table due the 9" requirement, there is nothing more sad than having your warriors murdered by Dark Eldar or Tau units which can just jump out of cover, shoot at you and then pull back while you only manage to get within range by turn 4, in the event you want to make the walk consider using Chronometron and having an Overlord with Orb of Eternity instead.

* Always save one last Command Point for Resurrection Protocols, there is nothing dumber than losing an HQ and then discovering you can't bring it back because you wasted it in, say, a D6 reroll.

* See the Heavy Support section? Well, you can call it "Lokhust Heavy Destroyers and fluff collectibles", ok, you may get a decent exchange with a blob of standard Lokhust Destroyers (or not), the Doomsday Ark may be situational and you will need to get lucky (you will have to use the aforementioned D6 reroll in case you get less than 3 when rolling Blast), the Annihilation Barge is basically there for getting some Victory Points like a more expensive Scarab Swarm, somewhat, and then there is the Canoptek Doomstalker, which, err, well, they look cool and that's it, I feel sorry if you bought 3 of them or something, if nothing else you may try to put them to guard near objectives or something, the point is, get Lokhust Heavy Destroyers if you want to kill things, they are great at that, just remember they are terrible at surviving counterfire.

* Finally, check your local meta, if for some reason you live in a city where GEQ equivalent armies are more prevalent then you will need to adjust your builds accordingly.

* Again your priority is to get the secondaries, not to kill enemies, the way Games Workshop has redesigned necrons in 9th edition means you are not there as much to interact with the other player as to see how you farm Victory Points while avoid getting removed from the table.

And now for some more friendly games...

===Command points===
We have a few amazing Stratagems listed in their own section, another thing to keep in mind is that the game is about VP, not CP.

Wound rolls for attacks that cause multiple wounds and only need a 3+ are another good use of CP, as are the number of wounds a weapon causes (if it causes D6 wounds and you rolled a 1,) invulnerable saving throws for multiple wound models against wounds that cause multiple damage, quantum shielding rolls against attacks with a damage of 4 or higher. 

When conducting your Shooting and Assault phases you should consider when a re-roll might be most effective, re-rolling a wound roll for a Gauss Pylon yields an average of 6.66 additional (often unsavable) wounds. Re-rolling a wound roll for a Doomsday Ark will yield an average of 2.31 (again often unsavable) wounds. Wasting a re-roll to kill that last Chaos Space Marine when you could use that CP to re-roll the number of wounds needed to kill off Magnus would be silly, so shoot with the things that benefit most from re-rolls first. Assault is a lot more complicated, but unless you need to think of other things, such as enemy units possibly making a counter-attack, you should also attack first with the units that benefit most from re-rolls. 

On the matter of large formations, as stated before you will get excellent ways to increase your firepower, with more units making for better effects, also, if you are operating blobs you may find Insane Bravery very convenient to make your warriors or immortal formations stand their ground, in turn allowing Ghost Arks and Technomancers to do their job at bringing your stuff back to life.

In general, you want to re-roll as late in the process of doing unsaved wounds as possible. Take Heavy Gauss Cannon for example. Re-rolling a hit roll yields 0.67 hits or 0.5 hits depending on the platform. But re-rolling a wound roll will always yield a hit. Re-rolling a 1 on a D6 is usually always a good idea, number of wounds for a Gauss Destructor, C'tan Antimatter Meteor, or a Doomsday Arks number of shots.

You want to use your command points as early in the game as possible without wasting them. If we assume that a command point is worth 20 pts and both players have 6 command points then by turn 4 if one player has used all his CP and his opponent has used 2 he is essentially ahead by 80 pts. The thing about these small advantages early game is that they snowball, so if you manage to destroy just a little more of your opponent's army on the first turn than he does of yours, he is going to be having that little bit less to shoot you with next turn. If you keep ahead by using your command points as soon as you have a good use for them and you avoid keeping units in reserve you can make this snowball effect work for you. Those 200 points spiral into 250, then 400 and suddenly you're ahead by 600 pts because you used the forces and assets at your disposal instead of saving them for a rainy day that may never come.

===Spooky Scary Skeletons send shivers down your spine...===
Have you ever wanted to have a guardsman, hell even a space marine, literally shit themselves to death in fear of you? Well by following these simple steps you can! Here's what you'll need:
* The Deceiver
* Flayed Ones
* A Psychomancer with the Dimensional Sanctum and Veil of Darkness
How this strategy works is that you deep strike your FO's, and Psychomancer down near the C'tan. The Flayed Ones get close the unit you them next to, as their aura is 3", and you cast Cosmic Insanity on that unit. The leadership debuff from the FO's widens the potential of mortal wounds, leading to potentially double digits. Now, the main issue with this tactic is sequencing of events, out of deep strike, unless you make a 9" charge on those Flayed Ones, you have to wait until your next movement phase to get them to enemy units in range of their Terrifying Foes aura. So you need to keep your Flayed Ones alive for a turn. There are some things that can help do this for you, the Shadows of Drazak stratagem for starters, more Flayed Ones, coordinating your Command Protocols to make sure Undying Legions or Eternal Guardian is the next protocol following these units' deployment, Canoptek Reanimators, and the Szarekhan dynastic code, anything you think will keep these guys on the board. Of course the Deceiver also makes for a good distraction for your Flayed Ones (and we all know how hard it is to kill a C'tan in one turn). Once you get to your next turn with Flayed Ones, let the scary flow!

You're probably wondering how many mortal wounds you can get with this? Well, since its based off of a D6, it fluctuates, but the point of the Flayed Ones and Psychomancer is that they increase the amount of Mortal Wounds you do. Taking an Intercessor Sergeant as the base with their leadership of 8, you can drop it down to 5. In the contested roll from Cosmic Insanity that means they can get anywhere from 7 to 12 (or 6 to 11) as their total, while the Deceiver can get 11 to 16 for a maximum of 10 MW's. With their low leadership, combat attrition rolls will damage them even further. This tactic naturally works better with lower leadership armies: Guard, Tau, Tyranids and Daemons, typically armies that have on average a 7 leadership. 

Note that this strategy also works on vehicles, as does the -2 Ld aura from the Flayed Ones and the -1 from the Psychomancer.

===Flayed One Bomb===
20 Novokh Flayed Ones and the Silent King make for a very good combo, being Novokh means the Flayed Ones are more likely to make their charge and the extra AP and re-rollable wound rolls makes them a threat to anything in the game.