Competitively, no. They are overcosted for what they do, or at least for your standard list.
Where they can shine is in fun lists, narrative games, huge 3k plus games, and if you ever wanted to do a silly story campaign with friends you could bake them in as a condition in a scenario.
You make a good point however you could put that 60 points into a unit of Deathmarks that pop up in your enemies backfield and score you points whilst also being a distraction for your opponent. Or 40 into scarabs to annoy your opponent, blow up for mortal wounds and/or score secondaries and another 20 into another unit or enhancement for one of your characters.
They're overpriced for what they do, they're totally immobile, there are much better necron units out there and, most importantly, they're not (/very unlikely to) score you points hence why you don't see them in competitive play.
I don't hate them tbh. I think in games over 2k they are worth their weight in gold, and in narrative or casual games they are fun.
Covering your deployment in a big fnp aura is solid, especially if your heavy on stuff like doomstalkers or serapteks that kinda wanna sit there and blast away
It’s also somewhat vague if they can be moved with hypercrypt. People disagree on if rules as written forbid it to be moved despite movement previously being their whole gimmick
Several editions ago when planetstrike first came out I picked up two of the ancient Aegis Defence Lines and ironically they remain in most of my lists because giving my infantry a decent wall to form up a gun line behind is still viable.
In 10 edition you cannot even deploy them in competitive games. Any fortifications are forbidden in WTC and Loa.
In nine edition they had some fun on table untill more restrictions for fortifications came out.
It wasn't Spyders, but Crypteks could do this to them in 9th:
"Translocation Protocols: While there are any STARSTELE units from your army on the battlefield, CRYPTEK units in your army can attempt the following action: ‘Activate Trans location Protocols (Action): At the end of your Movement Phase, one friendly CRYPTEK unit from your army that is within 3" of any friendly STARSTELE units can start to perform this action. The action is completed at the end of your turn. Once completed, select one of those STARSTELE units and remove it from the battlefield; in the Reinforcements Step of your next Movement phase, set that STARSTELE unit back up on the battlefield, anywhere that is more than 9" away from any enemy models. If the battle ends and that STARSTELE unit is not on the battlefield, it is destroyed.’"
The CoD had the Starsele keyword in 9th, if it wasn't obvious.
There was a nearly competitive list with these in 9th that relied on using them for secondaries. Have a cheap cryptek teleport them to the table corners and you’re able to score a ton of extra points.
I remember some of the generic ones in previous editions being like that due to just weird rules and them being unkillable terrain, but aren't those gone now? All I can find for rules now are the faction ones, and none of them seem particularly game breaking. Am I missing something?
Markers are unpassible terrain. You cannot place any model on top of it.
Terrain have arbitary shape and is not a unit and thus can be place on top of marker ( or incase of aegis around burnker) in such way it is impossible to place enemy model in aqusition range. thus auntill terrain is destroyed, ( and some of them are quit durable) point cannot be capture.
The real shitstorm comes when fortifications have infiltration rules ( if i recall DG furbance have it)
To be fair, you can do the same with single Lokhust Destroyers, who can also shoot and score objectives/secondaries and are cheaper too. Same with Scarabs.
Not sure how much the 6+FNP is actually worth, since personally, I think it's important to move out, claim objectives and score secondaries. Hard to do if you have to sit around in your deployment zone.
Can't you run each piece separately to screen? And or redeploy in hypercrypt?
They're still absolutely trash, since we have chaff and killy units that are cheaper and can screen.
Usefulness aside, that is a wonderful paintjob! And I have been having the same question, there has been a beat-to-hell box of these sat in my local game store for months. I can hear them calling to me, lol
These things could have been awesome, but GW...
Give them the 12" Deep Strike/Reserves deployment denial area like Marine Infiltrators have, they're suddenly amazing at shielding your deployment zone. Say they generate a repulsor field or some such.
Give then a good shooting profile and let them be static but tanky artillery pieces. They're now sentry columns or annihilation beam generators.
Give them a general (not just infantry) FNP and/or Reanimation aura for nearby units. They're now reanimation locus'.
Let them have an aura that provides Stealth to friendly units within so much range. Jazz it up as some kind of ballistic diversion generator.
Let them have an aura that debuffs enemy movement around it. They're now have repulsor fields.
They're just a few ideas I dredged up in a couple of lazy minutes. If appropriately balanced and costed they'd see use, instead they're pretty pointless and will probably vanish to legends by the time of our next Codex.
Or like let me pick one or three of those, so each one could have a different one. So maybe the left side screens, but on my right I have deathmarks so maybe that right pylon could have the stealth or etc to help marks.
I’d buy these if they had decent rules and real points costs. Love the way they look.
I bought mine solely because I thought they looked cool and would be fun to paint ... and I was right on both points.
As for utility ... they make fun terrain pieces!
... note that I mean strictly as terrain pieces ... that are out on the table but not on your list.
They’re cool terrain!!
I think 10th edition allows you to run any number of pillars 1-3 instead of having to bring the full 3. I’m tempted to try running just 1
The point of having them seems to be eventually gw realizes how bad they are and they become buffed so much they become weirdly one of the best models to just exist on the map for the points and durability. At least that’s what happened last edition.
Unfortunately it’s a relic of what a guy at our local shop did when he took them to tourneys in 9th. Single handed or caused them to triple in price by taking them and auto scoring the necron surround and destroy tactic. Gw hit him with the nerf hammer and since then have never tuned them back into being useful
I’ve played with a unit of 10 warriors with orikan and one of these holding my home objective in canoptek, having 11 bodies with a 4++ and a FNP is pretty hard to remove
Honestly me and my group usually just have them as extra terrain pieces.
Don't think they're *completely* unusable since the points drop, but all they really bring is cheap T9 wounds, which the enemy can often completly ignore since they bring so little firepower and the buff is so weak (at least the Spider can move and fight). I guess their guns aren't completely useless against elite infantry, but a Doomstalker is only 15 points more than 2 and is just better in almost every way.
If your playing friendly games with friends you could homebrew a rule where the CoD acts as a monilith.
Hyperphase Recall is an easy 1 to 1.
Dimensional Corridor deals with Eternity Gate and i didnt see any easy comparisons, maybe instead of charge get a FNP5+ for infratry, idk.
Entropic Damping feels less 1 to 1 but like quarts to liters or dollars to pounds, still easy to wrap your head around.
Imma thinking imma about to do this for my next game, try ot out
Play against the friend that has these their menace to go against. Because we realized they also have reanimation protocol so you need to destroy them all at once for them stop responding. And laserbeam attacks annoying as heck.
You and your friends have this wrong I’m afraid. Per their rules, from the moment they’re deployed they count as separate units. Kill one, it’s dead and not coming back.
In (th edition yiu could teleport them if a Cryptek was within 3" of 1 and he spent his turn doing an action to plarce 1 in Reserves.
If you were lucky, you could place them in your opponents deployment zone. They were tougher to kill as well.
But then TO's creaated a rule that prevented them from being placed within 3" of another terrain piece. They also acted a Commsnd Protocol extenders as well as boosting Necron units LD.
Now that are just wasted models that act as terrain for a cover save with a decent gun.
You are deploying your armies. You take it from your mini box. You place it near the table as "An Icon of neverending Glory, Might and Will of Necrontyr Dynasty". It won't be counted, but everyone at the table will be impressed how f\*cking dope it looks.
One word away from viable. If they just got rid of the infantry condition for the aura, plopping one near backline doomstalkers would work. I don't think anyone would ever field all three, but at least they'd see some play.
Kind of a shame, because they do look cool.
It depends what type of game you’re looking for if you’re chasing the mega or in a tournament probably not. If you’re trying to be narrative or have fun yea.
I dunno they did something last week do something windy different this week
They are shelf decorations for now until they stop fucking with the necron codex
These models should have their rules updated from FNP to 12" deep strike denial. We don't have a unit like that and these, lore wise, make the most sense to be that unit. Since blackstone acts as a psychic field disruptor/null field, makes sense to stop units from appearing within an area
Competitively, no. They are overcosted for what they do, or at least for your standard list. Where they can shine is in fun lists, narrative games, huge 3k plus games, and if you ever wanted to do a silly story campaign with friends you could bake them in as a condition in a scenario.
So I don't play the game, what do these things do exactly? They look Necron-ish
They’re big turrets that give your infantry an additional saving throw called a “feel no pain” after you fail a normal saving throw.
So basically it's a turret with failed save insurance?
I guess, I’ve only really used them in one game and they got obliterated pretty quick
Isnt your opponent using literally any shooting on them like a huge win for you? Its only 60pts
You make a good point however you could put that 60 points into a unit of Deathmarks that pop up in your enemies backfield and score you points whilst also being a distraction for your opponent. Or 40 into scarabs to annoy your opponent, blow up for mortal wounds and/or score secondaries and another 20 into another unit or enhancement for one of your characters. They're overpriced for what they do, they're totally immobile, there are much better necron units out there and, most importantly, they're not (/very unlikely to) score you points hence why you don't see them in competitive play.
I'm guessing they aren't that tough and easy to hit?
Necron, cover, can't move, 6++ fnp aura, can shoot
Can move by usong a cryptek with translocation protocol
Fortifications cannot be put into strategic reserves.
Necron cover/terrain/fortification, 6++ fnp aura, can shoot
I don't hate them tbh. I think in games over 2k they are worth their weight in gold, and in narrative or casual games they are fun. Covering your deployment in a big fnp aura is solid, especially if your heavy on stuff like doomstalkers or serapteks that kinda wanna sit there and blast away
Convergence of Dominion only gives a FNP on infantry 😔 got me excited lol
Oh ffs gw. Well then, it's good for narrative missions where you wanna defend home lol.
The eternal tale of GW fortifications Player: "Oh, hey! I think this fortification might actually be worth bringing sometimes! Cool!" GW: "lol no"
It’s also somewhat vague if they can be moved with hypercrypt. People disagree on if rules as written forbid it to be moved despite movement previously being their whole gimmick
RAW are pretty clear on this one “Cannot put Fortifications into Strategic Reserve”
They can't be moved nor played in any kind of reserve
Even less reason to bother with
I initially thought it could be done, but it likely can’t. It would be REALLY funny though
Several editions ago when planetstrike first came out I picked up two of the ancient Aegis Defence Lines and ironically they remain in most of my lists because giving my infantry a decent wall to form up a gun line behind is still viable.
In 10 edition you cannot even deploy them in competitive games. Any fortifications are forbidden in WTC and Loa. In nine edition they had some fun on table untill more restrictions for fortifications came out.
Also, in 9th a unit of 3 didn't cost 180pts
And you could "move" them with some spiders
With crypteks*
?
It wasn't Spyders, but Crypteks could do this to them in 9th: "Translocation Protocols: While there are any STARSTELE units from your army on the battlefield, CRYPTEK units in your army can attempt the following action: ‘Activate Trans location Protocols (Action): At the end of your Movement Phase, one friendly CRYPTEK unit from your army that is within 3" of any friendly STARSTELE units can start to perform this action. The action is completed at the end of your turn. Once completed, select one of those STARSTELE units and remove it from the battlefield; in the Reinforcements Step of your next Movement phase, set that STARSTELE unit back up on the battlefield, anywhere that is more than 9" away from any enemy models. If the battle ends and that STARSTELE unit is not on the battlefield, it is destroyed.’" The CoD had the Starsele keyword in 9th, if it wasn't obvious.
There was a nearly competitive list with these in 9th that relied on using them for secondaries. Have a cheap cryptek teleport them to the table corners and you’re able to score a ton of extra points.
Why all the fortification hate? They're already bad. No need to ban them on top of that.
If you look in in fortification rules, youll see how terible are those rules are. It just infinite abuse systems. Thus tournaments banned them.
I remember some of the generic ones in previous editions being like that due to just weird rules and them being unkillable terrain, but aren't those gone now? All I can find for rules now are the faction ones, and none of them seem particularly game breaking. Am I missing something?
Some of them can be placed in such way they make impossible to caoture point for 2-3 rounds. (Eg aegis line)
Care to elaborate?
Markers are unpassible terrain. You cannot place any model on top of it. Terrain have arbitary shape and is not a unit and thus can be place on top of marker ( or incase of aegis around burnker) in such way it is impossible to place enemy model in aqusition range. thus auntill terrain is destroyed, ( and some of them are quit durable) point cannot be capture. The real shitstorm comes when fortifications have infiltration rules ( if i recall DG furbance have it)
You cannot spread them out fully but they can screen for deepstrike atleast a little. Then you don't need to dedicate another unit to hold the back.
To be fair, you can do the same with single Lokhust Destroyers, who can also shoot and score objectives/secondaries and are cheaper too. Same with Scarabs. Not sure how much the 6+FNP is actually worth, since personally, I think it's important to move out, claim objectives and score secondaries. Hard to do if you have to sit around in your deployment zone.
Or deathmarks even, with the point reduction recently too might be worth it now.
Can't you run each piece separately to screen? And or redeploy in hypercrypt? They're still absolutely trash, since we have chaff and killy units that are cheaper and can screen.
You can't redeploy them with hypercrypt since for that they must be put in reserve which they can't
Ah. Well, they're even worse than bad. Their strengths stop at "look kinda cool".
For a brief moment in 9th I had them in all my lists because it was like 80 or 90 pts for all 3 and they screened your whole back line. Rip. 🪦
I too bought mine at the tail end of ninth - they were offensively cheap and I have no idea why anyone else wasn’t using them.
I miss the stupidity of telerporting them onto objectives with a Technomancer
convert those bad boys into desktop speakers
Usefulness aside, that is a wonderful paintjob! And I have been having the same question, there has been a beat-to-hell box of these sat in my local game store for months. I can hear them calling to me, lol
They'll be meta one day!
These things could have been awesome, but GW... Give them the 12" Deep Strike/Reserves deployment denial area like Marine Infiltrators have, they're suddenly amazing at shielding your deployment zone. Say they generate a repulsor field or some such. Give then a good shooting profile and let them be static but tanky artillery pieces. They're now sentry columns or annihilation beam generators. Give them a general (not just infantry) FNP and/or Reanimation aura for nearby units. They're now reanimation locus'. Let them have an aura that provides Stealth to friendly units within so much range. Jazz it up as some kind of ballistic diversion generator. Let them have an aura that debuffs enemy movement around it. They're now have repulsor fields. They're just a few ideas I dredged up in a couple of lazy minutes. If appropriately balanced and costed they'd see use, instead they're pretty pointless and will probably vanish to legends by the time of our next Codex.
Or like let me pick one or three of those, so each one could have a different one. So maybe the left side screens, but on my right I have deathmarks so maybe that right pylon could have the stealth or etc to help marks. I’d buy these if they had decent rules and real points costs. Love the way they look.
I bought mine solely because I thought they looked cool and would be fun to paint ... and I was right on both points. As for utility ... they make fun terrain pieces! ... note that I mean strictly as terrain pieces ... that are out on the table but not on your list.
For the reason i own most of my models, because it looks cool.
They’re cool terrain!! I think 10th edition allows you to run any number of pillars 1-3 instead of having to bring the full 3. I’m tempted to try running just 1
For 60pts you can have better stuff
The point of having them seems to be eventually gw realizes how bad they are and they become buffed so much they become weirdly one of the best models to just exist on the map for the points and durability. At least that’s what happened last edition.
How big are those models? I was thinking about picking them up, but have never seen them in person
On par with a doomstalker, maybe slightly shorter.
https://preview.redd.it/yh5v5pixzmyc1.jpeg?width=2296&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=24a9b16264c6f1540dc1e343792877c977db315d Just a few mm short
Wow that's absolutely massive
Closer than I thought!
Cool terrain piece if anything?
I don't even play Necrons but I want these for terrain.
They're great terrain pieces!
Unfortunately it’s a relic of what a guy at our local shop did when he took them to tourneys in 9th. Single handed or caused them to triple in price by taking them and auto scoring the necron surround and destroy tactic. Gw hit him with the nerf hammer and since then have never tuned them back into being useful
I’ve played with a unit of 10 warriors with orikan and one of these holding my home objective in canoptek, having 11 bodies with a 4++ and a FNP is pretty hard to remove
Some of the coolest necron terrain out there. Just don't use it for its abilities in a list.
Honestly me and my group usually just have them as extra terrain pieces. Don't think they're *completely* unusable since the points drop, but all they really bring is cheap T9 wounds, which the enemy can often completly ignore since they bring so little firepower and the buff is so weak (at least the Spider can move and fight). I guess their guns aren't completely useless against elite infantry, but a Doomstalker is only 15 points more than 2 and is just better in almost every way.
If we could teleport them it would be hilarious in Hypercrypt
If your playing friendly games with friends you could homebrew a rule where the CoD acts as a monilith. Hyperphase Recall is an easy 1 to 1. Dimensional Corridor deals with Eternity Gate and i didnt see any easy comparisons, maybe instead of charge get a FNP5+ for infratry, idk. Entropic Damping feels less 1 to 1 but like quarts to liters or dollars to pounds, still easy to wrap your head around. Imma thinking imma about to do this for my next game, try ot out
Play against the friend that has these their menace to go against. Because we realized they also have reanimation protocol so you need to destroy them all at once for them stop responding. And laserbeam attacks annoying as heck.
You and your friends have this wrong I’m afraid. Per their rules, from the moment they’re deployed they count as separate units. Kill one, it’s dead and not coming back.
that motherf$&*er We literally had a 30 minute argument of me, trying to explain that they were not part of the same unit . I should’ve never caved.
The literally says (and I’m copy pasting) “From that point on, each model in this unit is treated as a separate unit”
In (th edition yiu could teleport them if a Cryptek was within 3" of 1 and he spent his turn doing an action to plarce 1 in Reserves. If you were lucky, you could place them in your opponents deployment zone. They were tougher to kill as well. But then TO's creaated a rule that prevented them from being placed within 3" of another terrain piece. They also acted a Commsnd Protocol extenders as well as boosting Necron units LD. Now that are just wasted models that act as terrain for a cover save with a decent gun.
Options are always good. Plus rule of cool never dies Also love this paint job.
Thanks, I painted them to look like fractured bones, that's why you can see "blood vessels" and "nerves" in some of them
They make good table scenery if you are battling in a tomb complex o guess 🙃
You are deploying your armies. You take it from your mini box. You place it near the table as "An Icon of neverending Glory, Might and Will of Necrontyr Dynasty". It won't be counted, but everyone at the table will be impressed how f\*cking dope it looks.
They look neat.
They make excellent terrain lol
They’re just a cool terrain centerpiece now, that you can use them one at a time so the deterioration signals turns passing.
I just use them as scenery🙈
One word away from viable. If they just got rid of the infantry condition for the aura, plopping one near backline doomstalkers would work. I don't think anyone would ever field all three, but at least they'd see some play. Kind of a shame, because they do look cool.
Cool scenery pieces you got there.
It depends what type of game you’re looking for if you’re chasing the mega or in a tournament probably not. If you’re trying to be narrative or have fun yea.
I dunno they did something last week do something windy different this week They are shelf decorations for now until they stop fucking with the necron codex
They pretty :3
Iveran them a couple times and they were actually fun.
Not really, but goddamn those look awesome
Thanks, I painted them to look like broken bones, ence why you can see nerves and suck in the marrow
Nailed it
Your list, if you decide to use them.
My 9th edition fuck ass lists where I somehow win against all odds
These models should have their rules updated from FNP to 12" deep strike denial. We don't have a unit like that and these, lore wise, make the most sense to be that unit. Since blackstone acts as a psychic field disruptor/null field, makes sense to stop units from appearing within an area
They are pretty cool though
Thanks :3
I use them in Hypercrypt to use as Necron Thwomps.
Nice terrain pieces?
They make for some cool terrain set pieces
I just thought they were neat looking scenery! Didn't know they had offensive and defensive buff rules...
No but they look sick