Night Scythe
Night Scythes are a flying piece of Necron technology introduced in 5th Edition that, at the start of 6th edition is one of the many reasons people called the 'crons Mega-Cheese.
On the Tabletop
5th Edition
The Night Scythe provides the Necrons with a flying transport option, While a flying transport's not all that weird (after all, the IG have Valkyries and the Space Marines have Thunderhawks), the Night Scythe had some things going for it that other flying transports didn't, which is why it was regarded as a cheese machine before everyone got decent anti-air:
- Firstly was that it could be taken as a dedicated transport, this at the start of sixth edition meant that you could flood the board with these, if you couple that with their extremely fast speed and pretty decent weaponry your opponent would have no reasonable way of dealing with them. Sure they were a bit pricey but their durability (remember that back then nearly everyone needed 6's to hit them) made them almost guaranteed to make their points back.
- The second (and very minor) difference was that if those other flying transports crash, they can potentially kill members of the squad it was carrying. If a Night Scythe crashes, since it technically uses a wormhole to another area to move troops around (similar to the monolith but smaller), the Necrons waiting "in" it enter ongoing reserves instead (though they cannot deep strike), denying your opponent a much weaker unit to score an easy kill point off of.