9.18.2012

Speed Painted Necron Warriors (and some advice, please)

Apologies for the quality...two bulbs are burned out in my little photo station.
Four hours over a two day period, and all 32 Warriors are finished, from sprue to plastic rods. They need basing, but I can't start on that until I decide on a theme. [read more]

But GW's literature is right, these are really great for beginning players to get a handle on the commitment it takes to paint an entire army.  Apart from the little plasma hose and, of course, the wash, all painting was done with two spray paint cans. I could have saved a bit more time by dipping, but the drying time would have filled up that saved time.

So the recipe is:

Prime with black.
Basecoat with Army Painter Chainmail spray.
Superglue to base.
Wash with Badab Black or P3 Armor wash.
Paint conduit with Scorpion Green.

Easy peasy.

Click to enlarge this crappy photo.
Now that I have my Overlord, Warriors, and about half of my Scarabs done, I just have the Ghost Ark and 5 Immortals left to go from the Battleforce. I also have a Catacomb Command Barge primed and ready to paint. And then there are about 6 or seven Crypteks and ICs....Finecast - sigh.

So I ask you, power gamers, what should I buy next to be a contender in 6th with this army? Scythes? Spiders? Monoliths?


3 comments:

  1. Have you considered a metal drybrush? Are you going for just a metallic look or a dirty metallic look? Impressive to finish so many models so quickly.

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  2. Oddly enough, I just responded to a new Necron player that bought a model of mine just last night with a similar question. He wanted to know what to use for an all-comers list. Here's my email to him:

    The thing with Necrons that differs from most armies is there's more than one or two lists that are competitive within the book, but they all typically focus on one aspect of the book. Some examples of this are:

    *Scarab Farm: Lots of Scarabs and lots of Spyders typically with Night Fighting tossed in via a Harbinger of Destruction (Crypteks) with a Solar Pulse or two, or Imotekh the Stormlord. The Night Fighting keeps your squishy Scarabs safe while Spyders build up their numbers.
    *Writhing Worldscape: A C'tan with Writhing Worldscape, Orikan the Diviner and a bunch of Harbingers of Transmogrification (Crypteks). Orikan creates difficult terrain on turn 1 and the Crypteks create difficult terrain with anything they hit and the C'tan makes all of that dangerous terrain that will whittle down your opponents via Dangerous Terrain checks.
    *AV13 Wall: Nothing but Ghost Arks, Catacomb Command Barges, Annihilation Barges and Triarch Stalkers. AV13 vehicle en masse are hard to deal with for a lot of armies. This is more of an endurance list; outlasting your opponent.
    *Warrior Blob: 20 Warriors and a decked out Overlord with some Ghost Arks behind them regenerating lost Warriors. This unit is more or less unstoppable against most other units in the game one-on-one just because of the durability, but it's very expensive points-wise and once they are taken out you won't have much left on the table.

    There's a few more like these, but they all have very obvious weaknesses and are incredible against only specific enemies. You'll have great match-ups and horrible match-ups with these kinds of lists with nothing in-between. These are some fun lists, but not for all-comers.

    For an all comers list, there really isn't just one way to go, so I'll tell you what to avoid and what to look for all-comers. First some good all-around units:

    *Top of the list is Annihilation Barges. They're incredibly cheap for what they do. Lots of firepower. AV13 is hard for enemies to crack.
    *Canoptek Wraiths are probably the most under-costed unit in the game right now. These will also be your main reliable unit in the book for keeping the rest of your army out of close combat. 90% of the Necron codex doesn't want to be in close combat; these guys will help them stay out. They're not super-amazing at killing things, but they'll survive forever if your dice are at least average.
    *Flyers (Doomscythe/Night Scythe) are the popular thing right now because Flyers are very hard to take out. As time goes on more armies will likely get the use of a rule called Skyfire which makes it much easier to take out Flyers. So right now they're a strong choice, in the future I'm not so sure.
    *Crypteks are all kinds of awesome, but choosing which kind of Cryptek depends on your list. I like using Despairteks (Harbingers of Despair) as they can jump around the board every turn with Veil of Darkness. Destroteks (Harbingers of Destruction) are also a solid choice with their high strength/low AP shooting weapon and access to the Solar Pulse which can give you the protection of Night Fighting. It really just depends on your playstyle and list, but I would personally stay away from the Harbinger of Eternity unless you've got some trick you want to use (a common one is to put one of them with Imotekh the Stormlord so he gets to re-roll his Night Fighting every turn via the Cryptek's Chronometron.)

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  3. Some units to avoid for an all-comers list:

    *Top of the list is probably the Monolith unfortunately... It's real issue is points cost. It's too expensive for what it does and the Eternity Gate is really only good against Imperial Guard, Tau and Eldar/Dark Eldar. It's hard to get a cover save, it's too slow to run away from things should it need to and while it's AV14, all it takes is one meltagun up-close and it's toast.
    *Flayed Ones are arguably the only bad unit in this book. They're, again, too expensive for what they do. They're very easy to kill, they don't have any power weapons and they don't have any special rules that can put them into a good role.
    *Triarch Praetorians and Lychguard. Both of these units are very situational counter-attack units that are....once again, very expensive points-wise. They're very hard to handle on the table correctly and take a lot of practice, so any slip ups will cost you since a unit of 5 of either of these units will cost you the price of a Monolith.
    *Scarabs. Scarabs are great, almost overpowered, at killing vehicles, but they're very flimsy and almost require Spyders to be nearby to keep their numbers up. They're not a great stand-alone unit. On the other hand Spyders can hold their own without Scarabs and are very well priced.
    *Catacomb Command Barge. This transport is either going to be really good or really bad; it just hasn't had any rule-clarification, yet. Here's the deal:
    When this thing's in close combat, it's debated whether enemies are allowed to attack the rider, the barge or a choice of either. If the rule is cleared up and they can only attack the rider; this thing is still pretty good. If it's just the barge they can attack this thing is okay, but not amazing. If the enemy gets a choice between the rider or the barge they'll be attacking, this transport is just horrible. (Why: Typically most units in the game can either hold their own/kill a vehicle or infantry in close combat, but not both. So if they get a choice, that's bad news for you. If they don't get a choice and let's say they can only attack the rider and not the barge, then you'll go after enemies that suck at hurting your rider and take advantage of that.)

    Hopefully this helps. As I said, unlike other armies the Necron's codex's units all have a place somewhere (except Flayed Ones in my opinion). Also unlike other armies, the Necron's units are kind of grouped. Certain units work amazing together (Spyders and Scarabs, Destroyer Lord and Wraiths, Warriors and Ghost Arks, Imotekh and Harbinger of Eternity, etc) while others are horrible together. It's all about synergy.

    Also keep in mind that Gauss is your friend. Tesla's great as well, but Gauss has the versatility of killing vehicles and infantry efficiently that Tesla has on a smaller scale. This codex doesn't have a lot of higher strength weaponry (at least for very cheap) which means vehicles will be harder to deal with, but Gauss weaponry will shift things back in your favor if you have enough of them.

    I'll also note that when it comes to the decision between Warriors and Immortals for your troop choice, there's no wrong answer. Once again it's all about synergy. I personally run both. Immortals are more durable so they'll get close to the action while Warriors will sit back (at least in smaller numbers) and hold objectives or put a road-block in the way for my enemy they have to deal with.

    If any of this doesn't make sense, just say so.

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