Bonzi

Generically Necrons are in a solid place. The current dex is infinitely better than last edition. Necrons are still a top tournament army but the most recent point changes have put the army down to one really effective build. Canoptek leaning into Doom Stalkers and Wraith spam. If those units take a points hike Crons will probably fall off the top leader boards unless GW hands out some point cuts to other units. Now if you don't care about tournament meta the dex is fantastic. The Obesiance Phalanx and the Destroyer Cult detachments are poor to actively bad, but the other 4 are fun and offer a lot of different ways to build functional armies. Most of our units have some amount of play even and or interesting rules. If you love Warriors the army will be a little rough for you but it's not impossible. Warriors are too expensive to spam for a unit that doesn't really kick out damage on its own. They're purely for holding an objective and absorbing damage. As such one or two 20 man blobs is about the most you would reasonably want to bring. 10 mans are just too frail to be worth the cost. If you are set on Warriors look to Sezeras to make them more lethal, Reanimators to make them more durable or Chronomancers to make them more mobile. Awakened Legion and Canopetk Court or Hypercrypt Legion have the best rules to help them.

I ran one in a list just to try it out. I played against Guard so I found the deny cover ability to be the only useful thing about its shooting (I ran the heavy gauss cannon which is too weak for vehicles, but would likely shine vs Marines). In general the points are steep for such a generic unit and I'd rather have a more interesting synergy or leadership ability from a Triarch unit. The heat ray is probably the best all round gun for the model. The best ability it has is a scout move that lets you get on mid board objectives early. I have three and I plan on fielding them in an Obesiance Phalanx army to see if the +1 to wound and some of the Triarch keyword strats might make them shine. In general I find this to be one of the few Necron units whose glow up from last edition was very phoned in and lackluster.

I ran a full unit of 10 in an Annihilation Detachment vs a Green Tide Ork list. They got the charge on a blob of 20 Boyz but mostly bounced due to the Boyz 5++ rerolling ones with a 5+++ FnP save. Ultimately they scored me 5 points and killed 6 or 7 Boyz before the remaining Boyz and characters punched back and killed the whole squad. Annihilation Detachment is an absolute dogger whose main rules are barely useful. It does come with some excellent strats that are really helpful with Necrons melee units, especially the -1 to hit. I think Flayed Ones are best used in MSU squads as objective and action units. Infiltration and stealth are a solid foundation for that roll. I like their special rules vs units below half strength...but the truth is that any unit below half strength is probably going to die vs the Flayed Ones even without the buff. They are one of the few anti-horde melee units we have...but whip coil Wraiths probably outshine them with their better mobility and durability. Also, an army with Tesla probably shouldn't be trying to kill blobs in melee anyways.

I think they're a great one off filler unit at their cost. Several armies out there including Tau, Guard, Necrons, and Orks have very strong buff characters that can be threatened by a single unit of 5. Being able to threaten Ork Pain Boys or Weird Boys arriving via da jump is gonna be a must in the upcoming meta. At the least they score points and perform actions on the cheap too.

That was my gut feeling but I really wanted someone else to ride in on a white horse and tell me that page x line x guaranteed that I could roll both. Ah well.

Here's my question in regards to reanimation in 10th, and hopefully someone who has read and understood the rules better than me can answer. 20 Warriors are joined by an Overlord forming and Attached Unit. Both individual units have Reanimation separately. What happens in regards to Reanimation when a sniper pings a 3 wounds off of my Overlord and regular shooting kills 3 Warriors? Reanimation rules say the 'unit' rolls for Reanimation. Does that mean the attached unit makes a single reanimation roll, with the results first going to heal the Overlord then any remaining being used to bring back warriors -or- does the Overlord get a reanimation roll to heal himself and the warriors get a separate roll to bring back lost models. It's basically a question of the difference between 'unit' and 'attached unit' and the rules that go with joining characters. The answer has big impact on what units are best to put characters in and if snipers can be used to effectively reduce the total returning models by harming the attached characters.

I think the hexmark is a sleeper nightmare unit in the midfield skulking behind or beside units that are gonna take shots. Excuse me sir...did you just shoot at my friends? That's 6 precision shots at your unit immediately after you fire, hope that unit didn't have a frail buff character in it. Same with anyone who steps within his gun range...precison overwatch hitting on a 2+? He has good odds against three and four wound characters AND he can shoot out of sequence. At the minimum he forces your opponents to make decisions about what they'll risk. He will be very points dependent though on deciding if he's a better take than another Cryptek of some kind. I will agree the Triarch is a weaker link in the dex...but my eye keeps going to that particle cannon D6+6 blast with devastating Wounds...that's could be tasty if the models point cost isn't super high.

Sezaras also gets a 4+ FnP save so he's decently survivable and his buff that reduces AP attacks against a battle line unit is decent in an edition where AP has been reduced across the board. That Catacomb barge is probably a touch frail to be used as a frontline unit, but quantum shielding reducing most heavy attacks to only wounding on a 4+ (unless the gun is S 16) and then a 3+, 4++ on top of that means it's a risk to shoot big guns at him. 50% chance to wound and a 50% chance he shrugs it means poor returns for a lot of low volume antitank shots. That's not terrible (point cost depending). I see him as a really solid backline buff character with the Sovereign Coronal letting him lift several units and get a res orb off on the unit that needs it the most.

Incoming nerf on the Sovereign Coronal which can give +1 to hit to any and all Necron units within 6" as currently worded (including all vehicles and flyers). Pretty sure they'll rework that to say 'friendly infantry units' count as being lead by a character.

I'm trying not to wallow in the negativity of it all. Honestly I've skipped through a lot of the other factions and everyone seems to feel they've been wronged and weakened which makes me feel less bad about some of Sisters obvious issues. Some of this is looking at everything through the eyes of hyper lethal 9th Ed where the game had devolved to trading units to capture points and everything had to kill its target in one round before they instantly died in the next player turn. Hopefully the reductions in AP and volume of attacks in every faction will make fights draw out a bit longer and be a touch more tactical. Some of this is the inevitability of an index era. This happened the last time they did index armies as well, except even worse. Every army was horrifically bland, points were nonsensical for many units and obvious errors and omissions were everywhere. I dreaded the coming of 10th edition for this reason. 9th Ed was a dumpster fire at the end and there was no way to right that ship without a clean slate and major overhauls which I wanted but knew that it meant another era of index grind which I HATED. It's a catch-22. I'm trying to focus on the positives. I like that they busted the toughness cap on vehicles so weapon strengths could spread out more and make more room for differences. I agree with a lot of the changes to melta...the multimeltas of last edition invalidated almost all armor and monsters. I like battle shock and units getting special rules baked back in and stratagems getting pared waaaay back. I like the Sisters detatchment rules (at least in theory), if the lethality of the edition has dropped I really like the mechanics of an army that gets more potent as they take damage. I especially like how this will play out on our tanks, effectively letting us ignore the damaged bracket and hit harder vs some of the tougher targets especially. I like the new overwatch of this edition and there's a very large part of me that wants to drop down quad flamer Retributors and dare someone to come close enough. I really want to throw Celestine and 10 Zypherim at something. Mostly I'm thankful that our book isn't one of the first three or four. That's a very bad place to be if history repeats itself.

After thinking about the new dataslates this morning I do agree sisters biggest gap is dealing with heavy tanks and i don't think the old play styles are gonna hold anymore. Our units like Retributors or Repentia are no longer solo acts that can trade up in fights ala 9th Ed. It's clear the new style is much larger units banking on characters, miracle dice AND the detatchment bonuses to climb big hills. Melta took a hit (but it was frankly the answer to everything except horde in 9th). Now to tackle heavy vehicles it's going to take combos. Retributors + the immolator bonus to dismounting units allowing wound rerolls or the addition of a Palantine for Lethal Hits letting the unit autowound on 6s, and also the use of miracle dice. I think it's pretty clear GW wants dice to be a core mechanic rather than a nice little bonus. Also our detatchment bonus + rules for the Castigator and Exorcist make them worthwhile considerations. A single wound pushes those tanks to hitting on 2s. Below half and they're back to hitting on 3s with +1 to wound. I'm also hoping the general drop in AP and shooting output gives our units a little more longevity on the battlefield and possibly bigger dividends from our detatchment bonuses.

The big change is a large uptick in miracle dice generation and refund opportunities. Also, it's now allowed for each unit to use a single miracle dice per phase. That's a big jump compared to only allowing a single miracle dice to be used per phase in total. It seems like their want miracle dice to be a more central gimmick of the army. Downside is that with the changes to battleshock...a roll of a 1 on a miracle dice has zero use in 10th. I suspect characters like the dogmata will have an expanded roll in modifying dice for that reason. Exorcist got a slightly more even shot output on the Krak missiles and didn't lose a pip of AP like most weapons are seeming to this edition (though the antipersonell missiles did lose their AP). Indirect fire is back to a built in feature instead of a strat which is nice. Hopefully it gets a big bump in toughness and reasonable points cost. Article mentioned the Castigators becoming tougher but showed no profile. Hopefully both the exorcist and Castigator are now tougher than Rhino profiles. The detatchment bonus is decent. Giving +1 to hit for being wounded and +1 to wound for being below half strength gives sisters a good mechanic to become more dangerous as their units get damaged.

I like the changes, even the nerf to warriors. If GW gets the points cost right Warriors will be a cheap horde unit while Immortals will be effective elites. It lets the units differentiate in roles and uses rather than one being superior in every way to the other. I like RP now. It's simpler and more regulated and hopefully lets GW better cost our units. GW always way over valued the effect of RP in previous editions. I also suspect that while the new RP is a little bland, I would bet units like Crypteks, Reanimators, and Ghost Arks will play a bigger roll in brining back more models. I bet those units will allow out of phase RPs to be rolled. One roll of D3+3 on a warrior blob might not be huge...but what if Crypteks guarantee flat 6 or if the let you roll a second time? What we've seen is the base rule, but I see a lot of possibilities for GW to create more layers to that simple interaction. Very excited to see Gauss rule basically come back. In an era where the toughness scale has almost doubled, autowounding weapons are not to be sneered at. I do wish they had shown an HQ or the Silent King just so we could see how the leaders work for us. I am cautiously optimistic. Last edition was an absolute trainwreck and proved GW had no clear vision of the faction or how they should work or be costed. It was misery even when they over corrected and made units too cheap. The way the new RP works, I see Necrons as a strongly late game army. Turn one your opponents are gonna be able to bypass RP and remove whole units, but as the game wears on armies lose that potency as their own units are degraded. Turn 2 and 3 our units will start to heal evenly with incoming damage. Turn 4 and 5, our units surviving units will be rebuilding to full size while the opponents units are down to the nubbins. I suspect Necrons will have to ride out the storm of turn 1-2 to win the game in turn 4-5. At least that's how RP looks to me now.

I'm a little surprised how many think Oath is overpowered. It is good but it absolutely doesn't scale with game size at all and it will be Space Marines only army rule. At 1K it's amazing, at 2K it's half as effective, at 3K it's a let down. They're killing the heck out of one unit...just one. I think it's pretty bland myself.

Excellent work. I really like that candy coated blue look for the armor.