10th Edition Competitive Faction Focus: Necrons (Updated October 17, 2023)

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.

Changelog

• Update (Latest): 2023-10-12 for Q3 2023 Balance Dataslate.
• Published: 2023-08-03

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.

The Q3 2023 Dataslate

The Q3 2023 Dataslate was one of the biggest balance shakeups that Games Workshop have ever unleashed, and like all factions Necrons were impacted. Prior to the Dataslate Necrons were riding pretty high, sitting with Chaos Space Marines just below the top four factions (Aeldari, Genestealer Cults, Custodes and Thousand Sons). Necrons got fewer targeted nerfs than those top three, and some small buffs to compensate, which meant we (and many others) were pretty bullish on them, but now that the Dataslate has had a chance to fully bed in, it’s fair to say Necrons took more of a hit from it than it initially appeared, and have somewhat dropped down the rankings.

The impact can be broadly summarised as follows:

The Good

• Heavier hits to the top four Factions left Necrons better able to compete with them, and the removal of 10-model Custodes units and reduction in Thousand Sons’ power were particularly welcome.
• Changes to Devastating Wounds are great for the viability of Warriors.
• Discounts on some decent units – Warriors and Illuminor Szeras dropped a good amount, making them more valuable, Imotekh got a small discount just as he became more valuable, one-of Ophydians are even more attractive at 100pts, and a few of the bigger toys like Monoliths and The Silent King are attractively priced.
• The super C’tan was inexplicably not fully removed from the game, and is still absurd at 20pts more.

The Bad

• Lychguard blocks and Doomsday Arks went up in price considerably, alongside some nickel-and-dime increases on other popular units.
• Loss of free Overlord Stratagems (particularly the ability to double tap Undying Legions) hurts the ability to soak an enemy go turn.
• Dedicated melee units like Skorpekh have only risen as far as “OK” rather than good.
• Aeldari builds maxing on Night Spinners sucks to play into.
• Lack of ability to focus fire targets down is starting to hurt more because…
• Rising metagame forces are bad news for Necrons.

The last two points are worth delving into a bit further. What’s glaring when you look at the Necron Roster is that they don’t have shooting that lets them reliably and fully make a target turbo-dead. It’s not that Necrons don’t have good shooting units, as Doomsdays, Doomstalkers and Lokhusts of both variety are still good, but it’s difficult to assemble a list that combines both these and the durable core Necrons require in a way that takes on all comers in a way that things like Fire Prisms or Crisis Suits can. This creates some challenges into rising Votann, Tau and Marine builds – their shooting is hyper deadly, generally concentrated in units that are tough to degrade without a level of concentrated murder Necrons struggle with, and packs a level of redundancy that Necrons often can’t manage. AdMech can also be surprisingly problematic – you often straight up cannot shoot Kataphrons without losing more than you can afford, but at least there they struggle to lift full blocks of Warriors reliably.

None of these are unwinnable matchups by any means, and Necrons are very much still an OK faction, but a softening of the very top matchups has definitely been traded for a more uphill experience into mid tier stuff, and the army has definitely dropped-off in power overall.

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

Ten Lychguard (and their supporting cast of Characters and Cryptothralls), a Canoptek Reanimator, some sort of shooting threat, a Transcendant C’tan 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 with Orikan (plus Cryptothralls and some sort of Leader).

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 (usually either a Lord with an Orb or an Epic Hero), 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.

Unless you’re up against Tau or Chaos Space Marines, who are upsettingly capable of just lifting the unit, 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. The price tag on all this is pretty steep, and after the Q3 2023 Dataslate you’re looking at over 400pts for the full setup,

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.

Next up, shooting. This is an area where the Q3 2023 Dataslate hit the best Necron options quite a bit, so there’s a few ways you can go with this. Lokhust Heavy Destroyers and Doomsday Arks are your top quality choices, but you definitely pay for them. Doomsdays are just all-round good and durable, but hard to hide, a little swingy and run you 210pts each. Lokhust Heavies, on the other hand, are extremely good at killing whichever target you build them for, and fairly easy to hide, but way, way more fragile than you’d normally expect from a 150pts “heavy shooting” unit. You generally need something that can kill enemy tanks, so either three Gauss Lokhusts or a Doomsday is a fine place to start here, which you can either supplement with the choices below, or a second unit of the same (with the option on Enmitic Lokhusts on a second unit).

As of the Dataslate, these are less definitively the “best” options, and you can certainly play around with any of the following as either replacements or supplements:

• Regular Lokhust Destroyers with a Lord. Lethal Hits on these means they can chip most things (especially as you can add re-roll Wounds as well), and are good into some rising metagame tools, but suffer from being an unwieldy unit to move and low AP, so can have issues into 2+ saves.
• Canoptek Doomstalkers. These have pretty high threat potential and durability for their price, but pay for it with BS4+, meaning that you generally need to invest in the Sovereign Coronal to make them work, which hikes up the price tag and means you generally have to take multiple to make it worth it.
• Forge World options. Tomb Sentinels are a good supplement for Doomstalkers if you’re already investing in the Coronal, while the Tesseract Ark is a decent all-round shooting unit at a low price, but doesn’t have the strength to lift really hard targets by itself.

At its new price, the Monolith is also reasonably attractive, but its viability heavily depends on terrain, as on some tables it’s very hard to move. Annihilation Barges are also decent as additional supplemental tools.

Finally, two Characters that you’ll learn to love, and everyone else will love to hate. First up, the Hexmark Destroyer 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. They caught a small points increase in the Dataslate, which makes running multiple less exciting, but one is still great.

Finally – the super C’tan (a Transcendant C’tan with the Sempiternal Weave). Flatly, nothing this tough should ever be allowed to exist, and the power and utility this unit brings to the table can’t really be matched, meaning the first 310pts of every list you build are pretty much spoken for. Being able to teleport to a flank and hold up half an army while you get things done elsewhere is incredibly good, and while the damage output is only OK, the fact that you generally have it up for all five turns means it adds up. You do have to remember that the unit isn’t actually indestructible, just mostly (scientific testing has confirmed that the shooting of two full Crisis Teams with Commanders can just about kill one, and watch out for big Melta weapons because of how the ordering of modifiers works), but once you get a feel for what can’t kill it you can make some truly outrageously aggressive moves with it and expect get away with it.

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, Flayed Ones 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.

Finally, it’s worth highlighting that one unit of Ophydian Destroyers is a great addition to lists where you can find points for them. They provide a strong Rapid Ingress tool, more than capable of flattening an enemy utility piece, and their ability to do a redeploy gives you some late-game flexibility, or enduring value from them after they’ve done their first strike.

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. It’s a little bit harder to find the points for this after the Dataslate, but if hordes ever become a defining metagame force (which with current CSM builds and the rise of horde Tyranids, maybe!) then packing in Enmitic Lokhusts is likely your best bet – they’re utterly outstanding at horde murder, and can use wound re-rolls from Conquering Tyrant to still punch real damage into anything with less than T14.

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, which we covered in more detail above.

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
• Lord with Resurrection Orb or Imotekh
• 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
• Orikan
• Royal Warden or Imotekh
• 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 Doomstalkers and

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 that have succeded at post-Dataslate events.

Cameron Glodowski – 1st Place – Battle Zone Ursa 2023

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

This is a great example of what “all-rounder” Necrons looks like post-dataslate, and demonstrates that you very much can still do well with the same tools as before, just with Warriors swapped in for a second Lychguard block. Pretty much everything in here has been talked about in the article already, and if you’re here wanting to start this faction and want a list to just pick up and go with, use this one.

Bart Wasteels – 3rd Place – Belgium GT 2023

Army List - Click to Expand

This build represents a much more complete re-imaginging of Necrons for a post-Dataslate world. It retains the single Lychguard block, because you’re basically not utilising one of Necrons’ biggest assets if you don’t, but makes massive changes elsewhere. Three Doomstalkers around the Silent King and the Canoptek Control node (hiding in the Lychguard block, nice value double-tap there) provides some reliable shooting at a bargain price, letting Necrons actually compete in a gunfight against all-comers. Two Hexmarks and the Super C’tan provide some tools that can go out and score points, and the result looks very strong, and a build I’m very keen to give a go!

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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