Warhammer 40K: Big Winners From Codex: Necrons
Necrons have a rad new Codex that really shakes up the army. Let’s take a look at some of the big winners of that book.
You’ve no doubt heard that Space Marines have a new Codex out, and it’s the talk of the town. However, did you know that Necrons also have a new book out? That’s right, just in time for Halloween, the spooky space skelebois are back with new units, new powers, and it appears new players. As with any book that makes major changes to the army, there are some winners and some losers, today lets talk about 5 of the biggest winners in the new Codex.
5. Crypteks
Crypteks are a newer (though not really NEW) Necron character unit that falls into the buffing/support role. In the previous book, they were a useful unit but limited in what they could do. You likely wanted one in your army, but they kind of did a specific thing, and that was it. Now Crypteks have been split up into four different units: Technomancer, Psychomancer, Chronomancer, and Plasmancer. Each of these does something a little different from buffing or healing friendly units to hurting or outright killing enemy units. Combined, they have a lot of cool powers, and each represents a valid option, but also diverse options allowing you to build a lot more types of armies with them.
On top of expanded powers, Crypteks also have access to the Cryptek Arcana items, which are a set of items you can buy with points to upgrade your Crypteks. These again lean into letting you really tailor you Cryptek to what you need and want, allowing you to get even more use from these guys.
4. C’tan
C’tan were already pretty rad in the past, though a bit expensive for the list. These enslaved star gods pack and punch and get some cool pseudo-psychic powers that can be pretty deadly. The new book has only made them more deadly and harder to kill. In particular, the change to the Necrodermis rule that makes it so that a C’tan can’t take more than 3 wounds in a phase is really great for them. As characters with 9 wounds and high T and an invul save they were already hard to target and take down, but now you really need to work to kill them and probably need to use psychic powers or have some way to target characters to do it. Given that they heal a wound a turn, you won’t be able to kill them reliably, only doing 3 wounds a turn. At only 350 pts, you can easily fit one or more in a list, and it’s a good thing they are limited to one per detachment.
3. Necron Warriors
There’s been times when Warriors kind of felt like a 2nd rate troop choice, with the more powerful Immortals taking center stage over them. In an edition where troops and units with obsec are very important to winning the game, Warriors really look to shine. They are a fairly cheap core troop unit that can be taken in significant numbers. This really allows you to throw a lot of them onto an objective. On top of that, they are pretty tough for their points, with Reanimation Protocols working well with their 1 wound. They also get the new special rule “Their Number is Legion,” which lets them re-roll 1s on reanimations, buff that with Canoptek Reanimator, and they can reanimate on a 4+ and re-roll ones. A Technomancer can also bring some back each turn, making them even harder to move. On top of that, they get access to a new weapon, the Gauss reaper, which, while short-ranged is really powerful.
2. Nightbringer
I know I already mentioned C’tan above, but I want to specifically call out the Nightbringer here because boy, does this guy look good. All the things I said about the other C’tan are true of Nighbringer. He’s now super hard to kill and gets some cool powers. But on top of that, he’s now a super combat monster and arguably the most deadly combat character in the game. Right off the bat, he gets an extra attack over other C’tan. He gets two combat modes, his Reaping sweep gives him an impressive 12 attacks, and allows him to go through horde units like a… well like a scythe through wheat, which makes sense… because he uses a scythe. His other mode however, Entropic blow, is absolutely crazy. This mode gives him 6 attacks at S14, with AP -4 and doing d6 damage each. On top of that, you cannot take invulnerable saves against this attack, and his “Drain Life” rule means that you ignore all rules that would prevent these wounds from being lost. This means against most targets he’s hitting and wounding on 2+s with no saves of any kind being allowed. Pretty much if he touches a character, it IS going to die. With more and more characters having rules that limit the number of wounds they can take each turn, having someone that can bypass that is super good.
1. Players That Want Options
In the past, Necrons have been kind of a limited army. While their roster has slowly grown from its starting point of like… 5 units, they’ve often suffered from not having a lot of play styles. Yes, you had a few ways to play, but they kind of came down to like Warrior Spam, Vehicle Spam, or Flyer Spam. You just didn’t have a ton of ways to play the army. The new book really opens up your options for playing the army. You’ve got a lot more assault/combat units now, so you can build a close combat focused army. You can still go long-range, or short-range, and anything else. With a host of different Crypteks and build your own Dynasty rules, more Canoptek units, and just more options all around, it’s an army that has a lot more freedom to build what you want from it. I think that’s a huge win for the Necrons.
Let us know what you think the big winners of Codex: Necrons are, down in the comments!
