The Necron Codex is kind of disappointing, lets talk about how to fix some of their worst units.

The Necron’s have a lovely line of models, and a great background. They are also one of the few stand alone Xenos armies in the game. As such they should really be a power house full of great units. Unfortunately they aren’t, and are left with an army that just generally isn’t great. Today lets take a look at some of the worst Necron units, and how we might rehabilitate them and bring them up to snuff.

N.B. I’m not going to talk about characters at all here, as if I did I’d likely never get out of the HQ section of the book. For my thoughts on a few of the Necron named characters check out here and here.

Necron Warriors

The Basics: The core of any Necron force and one of only 2 troop choices, are the basic Warriors. This is the iconic terminator-esque unit. Armed with a Gauss flayer and able to reanimate. They don’t come any more basic than this.

The Problem: Necron Warriors have seen a decease in power over the last few editions. Their armor save has gotten worse, their guns have lost their special anti-tank abilities and their reanimation protocols have arguably also gotten worse. The core issue with them is simply that they aren’t really good at anything. They are slow and horrible in combat. They are mediocre at shooting, with no ability to get better guns or heavy weapons. Their shooting power is actually pretty similar to a unit of Primaris Intercessors, and those aren’t exactly tearing up the table. They also aren’t all that tough, as T4 has fallen to an average, rather than above average toughness and a 4+ save sucks these days. Reanimation Protocols should help them out, but in order to make it really work you have to invest a lot of points in support. All these points of course are wasted if the unit is wiped out, and in modern 40K that’s not a hard thing to do. Finally, they aren’t even cheap, at 11 points a model they are on par with a frankly better Tactical Marine. Since their minimum size is 10, you can’t even buy a cheap unit, and a small unit of Immortals to fill the cheap troop slot is better.

The Fix: As the song goes, lets start at the very beginning. To make Necron’s more viable we have to do something about Warriors. In order to really fix them we have to figure out their role. It’s tempting to just straight up make them more killy, but I think that would infringe on the role of Immortals as a troop choice. Likewise giving them a 3+ save is just lazy. Looking at the troop choices we can see that warriors are fine against infantry to a degree, but Immortals, depending on how you kit them out are really the choice to take down hordes or heavy infantry. To make Warriors what I would do is actually go to one of their old roles, as a kind of pocket anti-tank unit, and boost their ability to deal with armor, this would both be a nod to older Necron rules and fill a hole in the army. The rule I would give them is something like this “Precision Gauss Fire: during the shooting phase, when targeting a unit whit the Vehicle or Titanic keyword, each to hit roll of a 6+ inflicts a mortal wound in addition to its normal damage.” This would actually make mass Gauss fire a threat to tanks and things like Knights, like it used to be, allowing your warriors to have a real place in the battle. It would also give you some great synergy with “My Will Be Done” allowing for tons of mortal wounds. I think this change along could really help Necrons as a whole.

Flayed Ones

The Basics: Crazed Necrons that wear the skin of slain foes and love murder. They are one of the very few Necron close combat units, and act as a “light” assault unit. They can deep strike. Their fluff seems to change all the time, their battlefield usefulness does not.

The Problem: Lets admit it, we all knew flayed ones were going to be on this list. They are a “light” assault unit but are slow, with a movement of 5. They aren’t very hard to kill, with their 4+ save. Even if they get to the enemy they really don’t pack that much of a punch. They’ve got three attacks and reroll wounds, but have no AP and only do 1 damage. They can deep strike, but thats about all they have going for them. Still without guns they are a betting on rolling well after deep striking to do anything. Since they are deployed after My Will Be Done triggers, they can’t even get a +1 to charge. At 17 points a model they are pretty pricey, costing more than a Khorne Berserker – which is a shockingly better unit.

The Fix: Flayed Ones are an odd unit that doesn’t totally fit in the Necron army in many ways. Still I think a few little tweaks would make them actually useful. First off I’d give their claws AP -1. It’s not amazing, but it would let them be a bit more deadly in combat, and put them more on par with the shooting of Warriors. Second I’d give them an ability called something like, Short Bursts of Speed, or Blood Scent. This would be a simple +2 to charge moves. This would allow them more reliably get off charges after deep striking and give them a real role in tying up enemy units with surprise assaults.

Canoptek Spyders

The Basics: A floating spider like support unit that defies conventional spelling. The Spyder is one of the older Necron units and acts as a support platform, capable of fielding decent guns, and also repair vehicles. It acts as the Necron’s only anti-psyker defense. It’s primary role however is the repairing and replenishment of Canoptek Scarabs.

The Problem: You might be scratching your head a little at this one I admit. In many ways the Canoptek Spyder isn’t a bad unit at all. It’s kind of confused, and lacks focus, is it a gun platform, an anti-pysker unit, a repair bot, but overall it’s good. In particular its Gloom Prism is great for Necrons, giving them any ability at all to fight pykers. The big issue here is that the Canoptek Spyder is really easy to kill. While it can soak a bit of anti- personnel fire, with its T6 and 3+, any real weapon will shred the thing, as its only got 4 wounds and no invulnerable save. This really limits its ability to be useful as a canny enemy will take them out in a blink of an eye.

The Fix: The simplest fix here would just be to give them the character keyword. That would allow the Spyders to go about their work without just getting picked off at once. If you wanted something a little more complex, and fluffy, you could give Canoptek Scarabs a bodyguard rule, allowing them to transfer wounds onto themselves from nearby Spyders.

Let us know what you think of these fixes, down in the comments!