10th Edition Competitive Faction Focus: Necrons

Welcome to the first in a series of Faction Focus articles for 10th Edition. 10th has now been in the wild for long enough that people have really started to get to grips with what each faction can do, and starting today we’re going to be publishing articles exploring each one in turn. This Edition, we’re planning to be much more modular about how we handle our enduring competitive content for the game’s various factions, aiming to make it easier to maintain, and this is the first step down that road.

First up, largely for the reason that it’s the one I’m in the best position to write end-to-end is Necrons. Necrons are having a pretty fantastic start to 10th, vying to be one of the best factions outside of the two big outliers (GSC and Aeldari), so what’s making them tick? Let’s find out.

Why Should You Play This Faction?

After two Editions spent either in the wilderness or locked in to skew builds, Necrons finally play how the fluff says they should – as a relentless horde of undying robots that just will not die. Necrons can field some of the toughest tarpits in 10th Edition, and support them with a variety of highly effective shooting threats tailored to various targets. They’re also a combo player’s dream – your core units can mostly have two Leaders embedded in them, and there’s a huge toolbox of different buffs you can access this way, letting you tinker to your undying heart’s content. Finally, you get access to some super-powerful toys as centrepieces – C’tan are terrifying in this edition, and the Monolith is also no joke.

Necrons enter 10th Edition at a power level that makes them serious contenders and with the most fun set of rules they’ve had in years, so if you’ve been sleeping on a silver horde of your own, now’s the time to arise and start conquering the galaxy anew.

Five Things You Need to Know

1. Reanimation Protocols Rocks: In each of your Command Phases, each unit in your army heals d3 wounds, which can restore dead models to life. You can boost this up with a Canoptek Reanimator, and trigger it at other times with Resurrection Orbs and Protocol of the Undying Legions. Using the latter correctly is a huge part of playing the army well.
2. Leaders are Crucial: The Command Protocols detachment rule (plus the stratagems) reward you for having a Leader in as many units as possible and/or bringing along the Sovereign Coronal to substitute for it. Don’t skimp on including these.
3. You Have Some of the Toughest Units in the Game: Fully buffed Lychguard and Warrior units are exceptionally tough to kill, while some of your higher-end Characters like C’tan shards, Szeras and Catacomb Command Barges with the Sempiternal Weave die harder than the vast majority of stuff in their weight class.
4. Your Stratagems are Incredible: The six Protocol stratagems are wall-to-wall bangers – Undying Legions is the most important, but Conquering Tyrant  and Hungry Void can be vital for allowing your units to punch up, Sudden Storm adds mobility, and both Vengeful Stars and Eternal Guardian can unpick opposing plans at a crucial moment.
5. You’re Slow: The price you pay for all of this. Necrons are a fairly ponderous army, so you need to make sure you’re planning ahead regarding where your units need to be, and seeding in some options to provide early/emergency mobility.

What Are the Must-Have Units to Start This Faction?

Ten Lychguard (and their supporting cast), a Canoptek Reanimator, Lokhust Heavy Destroyers, and a Hexmark Destroyer. You’ll also want a second “big” unit, which can either be even more Lychguard or a full block of Warriors.

Buffed-up Lychguard can be made into one of the single toughest units in the entire of 10th, and are the key anchor for your forces to work around. By default, you want to run them with shields, and embed some sort of Noble (an Overlord with an Orb for at least the first unit, more flexibility on the second), a Technomancer and a pair of Cryptothralls. The resulting brick is an absolute nightmare to kill, especially once you factor in access to Reanimation on demand via Protocol of the Undying Legions. A mix of 4+ and 5+ Feel No Pains from the Cryptothralls and the Technomancer buff means they’re far, far more resilient to D2 weaponry than they used to be, while T5 and built-in -1 to Wound is the sweet spot where small arms will be plinking harmlessly off them and most anti-elite weaponry is still only Wounding on 4s. It’s very, very common for such a unit to end the game at or near its full starting strength as opponents simply give up trying to clear it out. It’s also reasonably deadly, in a grindy sort of way – the Lychguard don’t do explosive damage, but because they’re so durable they’ll tend to gradually win a fight they get involved with. Protocol of the Hungry Void is also very good with them – it pushes their strength to the key break point of 7, at which point they’re wounding most things on 5s at worst, ensuring that even Knights will eventually fall to their blades. All this at a very appealing price tag – obviously a unit with the buffs Characters embedded ends up reasonably pricey (375pts for the standard setup), but they’re worth every point, and you can happily go for a second unit if you want.

A key part of ensuring that the Lychguard stay alive is the Canoptek Reanimator, which has a massive 12” aura that adds an extra d3 wounds each time a unit activates its Reanimation Protocols. Park it behind a wall in the vague vicinity of your Lychguard and other core units and watch the opponent weep as any damage they inflict rapidly heals up. They’re not even trivial to kill with Indirect – their 4+ Feel No Pain ensures they can tank a lot of incoming firepower, and because they benefit from their own aura, anything less than a full and immediate kill is likely to heal straight back up. You need one, usually exactly one.

Lokhust Heavy Destroyers are the second unit after Lychguard that you basically can’t go wrong with 1-2 units of, providing you with either highly effective anti-tank from the gauss build, or spectacular anti-horde from the enmitic option. You probably want to start with a unit of the gauss (or three individuals), as they’re packing what is straight up one of the nastiest anti-tank guns in the game on an easily hidden platform, but this edition the other gun is a real option too in a full unit – get within the (fairly generous) 18” Rapid Fire range and they’re shooting 36 good shots with Sustained Hits and access to full wound re-rolls from Protocol of the Conquering Tyrant. Quite honestly, a squad of three of each would be a perfectly fine way to build out a collection (and just taking lots of gauss is also fine). Taking three individuals can also be handy, as that pushes up your drop count and gives you things to park on objectives. If you don’t fancy Destroyers (or just want even more dakka), Doomsday Arks are also an extremely good shooting option that feature in most top builds, so you can happily pick those up instead – one of the good things about the Necron Index this time around is that it’s deep and versatile enough that, outside the Lychguard lynchpin, there aren’t many true “must haves” – just lots of good options.

The final unit where you’re kind of shooting yourself in the foot if you don’t bring one is the Hexmark Destroyer, who is an ultra-versatile utility piece. Deep Strike, Lone Operative, accurate Precision fire, free Overwatch, and getting to shoot in response to your opponent’s attempts to kill nearby friends adds up to a whole bunch of headaches for anyone facing them down, and they’re particularly good in some key current matchups like Genestealer Cults and Thousand Sons. The key trick with them is to wait till the opponent has finished their movement phase then Rapid Ingress 12.1” away from any of their units, within 3” of whatever they’re planning to alpha strike, then go wild with revenge shooting, potentially melting some buff characters in exchange for the opponent’s feeble attempts to halt the silver tide. You’d basically be mad not to take one, and people are quite legitimately running two or three (though I’d probably hold off on buying that many if you haven’t already, as I honestly think they’re top of the list for units that might catch a nerf at some point just because of how painful a play pattern they generate in multiples). They’re also an excellent carrier for the Sovereign Coronal in lists that are going in on gunboats and Doomstalkers, as Lone Operative means they’re hard to take out, and hanging out next to your big toys is likely to result in their ability getting triggered a lot.

After that? Go wild. You definitely do want a second tarpit unit to lean into the army’s strengths, and if you aren’t going for more Lychguard, 20 Warriors is a great choice. There’s much more flexibility in how you buff these – the default Overlord/Technomancer option is still fine, but you can also take Orikan for an invuln, Royal Wardens because they’re cheap and flexible, or plenty of the Epic Heroes and expect them to do well. Backing them up with Illuminor Szeras is also very powerful. With that in place, you do want to make sure you have a few inexpensive things that can go out and grab an objective, with Tomb Blades being the default (but not only) option, and can fill out with exciting toys from there. The only cautionary point is that Skorpekh Destroyers (previously a superstar unit) are conspicuously not fantastic right now, and should probably be near the back of your list of purchases.

How Does This Faction Secure Objectives?

Sticking Lychguard or Warriors on them. Simple.

The slightly longer answer is that early on you will often want to use either cheap, expendable units like Tomb Blades or a buffed brawler like a Command Barge or Transcendant C’tan with the Sempiternal Weave to go out, sit on an objective, and draw the enemy in. Then the Lychguard get involved.

Sometimes, of course, your Lychguard and Warriors will need to get straight onto objectives, and this is where having a Technomancer with a Canoptek Cloak in the unit is ultra valuable. You generally need just over 8” of movement from the line to make it to an objective, so on these 5” move units you’d need to roll a 4+ on an Advance to do so, far from a sure thing. The Canoptek Technomancer has a 10” move and a 50mm base, however, which lets you solve the problem – position two of the models from your unit on the line as close to the objective as possible, put the Technomancer next to them, and then if you move those models 5” forward you’ll be able to place the Techomancer with their base tagging the objective while still coherent with two other models from the unit.

Obviously this does mean the opponent can come get you and you can’t then pull the Technomancer to get out of range, but that’s where the durability comes in. This trick is also great for pushing out the charge range of Lychguard units – if your opponent isn’t thinking about it, you’ve got nearly 4” more reach than they might be planning for.

How Does This Faction Handle Enemy Hordes?

In a wide variety of ways – there’s lots of good anti-horde here. Enmitic Heavy Destroyers are great at it, as are Warriors, but you can also get a lot of anti-horde dakka from Tesla Immortals with a Plasmancer, Tomb Blades are no slouches and Lychguard will happily carve through an entire 20-model unit of T3 5+ models in a Fight Phase. This is, to be blunt, not somewhere you’re going to struggle.

How Does This Faction Handle Enemy Tanks and Monsters?

Gauss Heavy Destroyers and Doomsday Arks are the main standouts here, and you do have to be a bit more judicious in your selections for this slot, as fewer things are incidentally great at it. You can, of course, also choose to bring hefty toys of your own – Monoliths pack some spicy guns, while any of the C’tan are at least decent at killing big stuff, while the Nightbringer and Void Dragon are actively great at it (the latter for Vehicles only). Cheaper alternatives such as the Doomstalker are also pretty decent, but need some buff support that undermines their price tag.

You can also make use of the Stratagem sheet to help punch up into big targets – full wound re-rolls on shooting from Protocol of the Conquering Tyrant can allow smaller stuff (or regular Lokhusts) to flay wounds off almost anything, while Protocol of the Hungry Void can often push you to a Strength breakpoint. Even with that, being realistic about what you can or can’t expect to kill at a given moment is very important, and you should always focus on the things that realistically threaten to clear your units, as you can weather firepower from lesser enemies comfortably.

What Combos Should You Build Around?

Where to start, honestly? Let’s get the important one out the way first:

Lychguard Deathbrick

• 10 Lychguard
• Technomancer with Canoptek Cloak
• Overlord with Resurrection Orb
• Cryptothralls

Not particularly complicated, but one of the toughest units in the entire game. Your opponents will learn to hate Cryptothralls, oh yes. When being shot at, always think ahead to what the next likely inbound fire is when allocating attacks – you generally want to be saving anything that’s AP-1 or AP0 on the Cryptothralls, and should also prefer then for soaking up D3 attacks, as they’re more likely to tank one than a Lychguard is. At the other end of the spectrum, you don’t want your opponent to manage to force you to soak up something at AP-4 with massive damage on a Cryptothrall, as it’ll just kill one outright. Even if the current attack can go on either type of model comfortably, the next one has to go onto whoever you just allocated to, so make sure you’re considering that.

Warrior Deathbrick

• 20 Warriors
• Technomancer with Canoptek Cloak (or alternatives)
• Overlord (or alternatives)
• Cryptothralls

You can just do this with the Overlord and Technomancer again and it’ll be pretty good (and consider adding the Hypermaterial Ablator to one of the Characters, as it’s good here), but you can get a bit weird with it if you want something different. Nemesor Zandrekh is a pretty good expensive option for the Noble, while if you want to go cheap you can take a Royal Warden, who adds welcome mobility via making weapons Assault and still lets you bring a Cryptek alongside him. For your Cryptek, Orikan the Diviner is the other big option here, as a 4+ invulnerable save is very handy, as is his once-per-game ability to go sicko mode in melee. You can also try a Chronomancer, who provides useful extra mobility, though if you are you definitely want to back the unit up with Szeras too to reduce incoming AP.

Plasmancer Immortals

• 10 Immortals with Tesla Carbines
• Plasmancer (optional Veil of Darkness)
• Optional Cryptothralls

Immortals have a very strong ability to re-roll wounds against targets that are on an objective, so if you can rack up enough hits with them they’ll inflict chip damage on anything. A Plasmancer lets you do that – Sustained HIts 2 and Criticals on a 5 combines to give you an average of 30 hits, which will annihilate hordes and at least scare anything else. The Plasmancer’s own shots work well with the re-rolls too. I’ve been using this unit a lot, and adding the Veil to turn them into a powerful beta strike piece.

Unstoppable Brawler

• Catacomb Command Barge OR Transcendant C’tan
• Sempiternal Weave

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

• Technomancer OR Hexmark Destroyer
• Sovereign Coronal
• Lots of Doomsday Arks and Doomstalkers

The Awakened Dynasty detachment rewards you for having Leaders, but what about units that can’t have one? Bring the Sovereign Coronal, providing a 6” aura of “I’m being lead, honest”, and enjoy access to +1 to hit and easy full Wound Rerolls from Conquering Tyrant on your Doomsdays (or even a Monolith).

Army Lists

To round out, a couple of army lists – the latest version of my current build, and Jamus Thayn’s top performing list from the US Open Tacoma.

Jamus Thayn’s Necrons – 5th Place – US Open Tacoma

Army List - Click to Expand

Jamus’ list brings together a lot of the things we’ve talked about in this article – you’ve got the double Lychguard brick and the super C’tan for durability, and then loads of Heavy Destroyers and Doomsdays to blow the enemy to bits while they’re stonewalled. Two Hexmarks and some Tomb Blades complete the build, providing powerful utility pieces and harrassment capability. Jamus only dropped a game to the event’s overall winner, so if you’re looking to get into Necrons you can’t do better than this as a starting point.

Wings’ Necrons

Army List - Click to Expand

Yeah so I do not like painting Doomsday Ark’s, so this is what I’m currently packing. This uses some overlapping tools, but goes harder on Infantry-based threats, including the Immortal Tesla block. Szeras is one of my very favourite models and key to anchoring the list down, and I’ve started wanting access to Zandrekh in order to apply Vect in key matchups like Genestealer Cults.

Wrap Up

We’ll be back tomorrow with a look at the glorious golden boys of the Adeptus Custodes, and dipping into some chaos factions next week. Stay tuned!

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