The Necron Air Force is a powerhouse in the 6th edition.

Hey guys Son of Adam here with a NOVA prep discussion about the Necron Air Force list.  As you guys know from the teaser below I recently had a chance to play against the dreaded Necron Air Force in a NOVA primer mission. 

            Some quick updates on my progress before we begin: with 7 days left, most of the army is built, most of the basing is done, the army list is getting near finalized, and the display board needs a bunch of work.  Tonight some of the fellas are coming over and we are going to paint all night.  Even though my stuff isn’t done yet, I’m still going to try and produce some content for the site and so here we go.

            The Necron Air Force is a very potent list that has most NOVA attendees frightened.  That is one of the reasons I wanted to get a battle report in here about them.  This list is generally based off of having maxed out, or nearly maxed out flyers.  It also tends to add one of the Necron characters (typically the Traveler or the Stormlord) with a large and tough enough squad not to get wiped on the first turn.  Then the question has been what travels in the night scythes.  Some swear to the survivability of the immortals, some the fire power/tricks of crypteks, and other the points effectiveness of the 5 man warrior squad.  In the end you are generally left with 8+ scythes (3 of which are doom scythes), a beefy/deathstar unit, and massed mobile scoring units.

            Some of the guys at my FLGS were talking about how to challenge this list and flyer lists in general.  Each time an idea came up; there would only need to be a slight change to the Air Force list that would knock it down again.  We even ran the IG air force against it, but the Doom Scythe is just too strong for aerial combat.  In the end it kept looking like nothing could shoot down enough of those flying croissants without being wiped off the table.  This may change with new updates and war gear, but for now the biggest threat to flyers is other flyers and even then, cron flyers are the best of the lot at this point.

            One problem that developed was a mirror match.  In the competitive scene, you have to expect that whatever is being considered one of the most powerful lists is going to be there in numbers.  If that’s the case, everyone who is bringing this list must consider this possibility and prepare accordingly.  This is where the special characters come in.  The stormlord allows for some extra defense, while providing unreliable support at bringing flyers down.  On the other hand the Traveler allows you to potentially get control of 4 Doom Scythes a turn with his mind in the machine. 

Necron’s firepower destroys units.

            As far as a response to flyers goes, some armies have a few options to bring them down, others must rely on allies.  Presently flyers are the best way to fight flyers, but this inherently has the problem of escalation.  If I bring three flyers then my opponent will bring four.  And, in the flyer vs. flyer games, first turn tends to loose as they will alpha strike an empty table and then get alpha’d in return.  On the other hand you can bring AA defense guns on the Aegis or the Bastion.  However, the Aegis gun tends to get dropped rather quickly and the Bastion is expensive and disallows scoring.

            There is only one real weakness that I can find for the flyers in this pre-AA adolescence of 6^th edition in regards to NOVA style tournaments.  However, this weakness is not one that is exclusively held by flyers.  Tanks and flyers don’t count for scoring in table quarters missions.  If you start the game with 8+ flyers, or >1000 pts for crons, you will be at an initial disadvantage against armies like nids that are all scoring.

            All in all the air force lists are very strong until 6^th gets more AA rules and there isn’t much that can compete with them.  However, with the prevalence of table quarter missions, some inexperienced cron players may be eliminated during these rounds.  I won’t go into what happened in my last match, but you can watch some of the other air force games on different sites and check back here by the end of the week to see how this one went.  I will be a little more thorough in how I tried to defend against the crons in the strategy follow-up that comes out after the report.

Thanks for reading.  Check back soon for some of the content that will be coming out.  Make sure to follow our website, like our facebook, and subscribe to the YouTube channel. 

-Peace.