Sentry Pylons: The Ultimate Heldrake Counter?

It probably wont surprise you when I say i often scour various 40k forums. Though I dont have accounts on any of the big ones like Dakka Dakka or Warseer, I do like to read the forums and sometimes wish i could put my 2 cent in. One of the few universal truths i have come across it seems is that of the the almight chaos Heldrake. When you mention this particular unit words like "game-breaking" or "WAAC players" often get thrown in. Now I have encountered the dreaded heldrake lists and yes it is annoying but it is MASSIVELY overrated. gamebreaking? Not even close. But there are many who just havent found ways to beat these things and while there is no 100% fullproof solution (yet) there are ways to fight back. Enter the Sentry Pylon:

Now the rules for the Sentry Pylon can be found in Imperial Armour 12 in the Necron list though they can be taken in normal Necron armies as a heavy support choice. The great thing about these units is there sheer eefficient. Because while these things will wreck flyers you can use them for ANY vehicle.

The Sentry Pylon comes in three different flavors but by far the best is the Gauss Pylon. The Gauss pylon comes with a 120“ Strength 9 ap2 heavy 2 cannon with sky fire and interceptor. Yeah that will wreck most flyers pretty easily. But wait! How is that efficient? Won't it die the next turn if you fail to make a kill? Well the 2 main factors that makes these so damn good is the fact that they are 130 points each and they can be taken in squads of 3(!). Yep for A little less than 400 points you can get 6 shots from these in one FOC chart. That is just really good. It may not seem like much in theory but bin practice 3 of these provide a formidable counter to held rakes. And what of defense? Well the pylons are toughness 7, 3 wounds with a 3+ save which means many weapons are going to bounce off it( ie: baleflamers) so these are durable. If you are really worried about survival you can take a15 point upgrade to get It Will Not Die!

Gauss pylons are a great unit for the points. 135 is a steal for dedicated AA of this kind. If you dont play Necrons and arw having flyer problems, then ally with them to get these 3 pylons in 1 FOC slot. Its very efficient. The sentry pylon is honestly the gem of the new necron units in this book. In tournaments where i know im going to face lots of flyers, i dont hesitate on these anymore. Heldrakes BEWARE!

Tesseract Tactics: How to get the most out of your Vault 101.

So the other day I had a 20,000 point apocalypse game with just me and my friend at my LGS. In this game i really learned alot about Tesseract Vaults and how they are much different units than most super heavies. Me and my opponent discussed what made them good and how I could improve my usuage. So i thought id share the conclusions we came too ( he is also a necron player and used his own vault in our game) . So here are some tips to hopefully get the most mileage for these things.

1. THIS IS NOT A TITAN: The Tesseract Vault is not a vehicle intended to sit back and blast away. Rather it should be actively supporting your forces rather than hiding it in your deployment zone.
2. PLAY AGRESSIVELY: This goes to the previous point. Unlike most superheavies like a baneblade or shadowsword, you cant just camp this. The weapon ranges are too short. Instead you need to drive this thing to the heart of your enemy to maxamize on the shorter ranged powers or too catch side armour shots. Dont be afraid too crash this into your opponents lines because when this dies you will always get a TITANIC explosion so you can actually suicide bomb this if you know it doesnt have long left. *Note though this tactic should only be used when the situation is appropiate. Dont send this to the heart of the storm for no reason.*

3. YOU DONT HAVE TO KILL THE BIG THINGS! Now while it may be cinematically cool to watch your superheavy duke it out with others you really shouldnt. The Vaults weapons are good but most of the time your gonna be up against some tough armour. Instead use this as a supporting fire weapon to clear squads of lighter vehicles or elite troops. But if you think you can go for the big takedown then go for it. But just dont be upset if you realize this may not be the Vaults best field of attack.

4. Understand that sometimes this unit will underperform . Yes it is sad, but i think it should be mentioned. Sometimes its the powers you pick and sometimes its the dice but no matter what you gotta play it smart. You are gonna have to be crafty with these. You can do tons and tons of damage or you can end up spending 500+ points for nothing. It's really up to you.

These are just the main conclusions we got. This is still a very good unit but it is by no means an instant problem solver. Rather this should be your tool for anyjob, and the Tesseract Vault can do it all.

Tesseract Tactics: What to put in your Vault Part 2.

First off,i know thats an Obelisk not a Tesseract Vault. Second this post will cover the last 3 powers you can take. These 3 all have very solid rules so it can be difficult at times to know just what to take. But hopefully this clears things up a bit.

Wave of Withering: The Wave of Withering is awesome. Why? Because it is the Vaults only Destroyer weapon! And destroyer weapons are brilliant and much better now. But there are some problems sadly with this power. The destruction of this power is only limited by your imagination...and its HellstormTemplate for its range. Yep. That awesome D Ap1 weapon is fired from that small template. Though the hellstorm is much bigger than a standard template, remember you MUST measure all LOS and range from the Ctan in the Vault itself. And considering the Ctan is buried in the middle of this huge model,  you are losing a bit of range on top of everything else. This is a good power and can be great but you're gonna need to use this thing very agressively to really get the full destroyer effects.

Antimatter Meteor: ITS A HUGE METEOR, THAT HAS NO MATTER!!!! But seriously, this thing is pretty fluffy cool if you can imagine a huge meteor crashing down. In game the antimatter meteor is using that new apocalypse MEGABLAST (notice a trend on using the new templates? Very clever, GW) I have already discussed the stats and rules for this power in another post, so you can look it up, but the damage output is pretty good. Since you have a BS 5 then it is almost impossible to miss something at the very least. Use this for hordes and large concentration of light vehicles (vindicators, leman russes) to maxamize damage.

Transdimensional Maelstorm: Its pretty simple here, this fires a 7“ mega blast at strength 9 ap 2. Seems good? It is good. This is actually the sleeper for the new Tesseract Vaults powers rule wise. It gives you a good coverage and high strength with low ap. You can seriously wreck anything shy of a super heavy with this. The only bummer is the 36“ range so you will have to be a little too close for comfort, but one shot is usually enough. I would take this over the Antimatter meteor personally for damage output but hey!

So for the few of you who read this blog, what do you think? Did I value these powers rules too high or too low? Let me know.

Tesseract Tactics: What to put in YOUR Vault.

So by now I have gotten a few games in using the new Necron Tesseract Vault .I've used just about every possible combination of its 6 powers and I think Ive come to conclusions on all of them by now. So lets take a look at 3 powers first that you can select:

Seismic Assault: Now this is the most expensive upgrade being 200 points but man, this is the best power in the Vault from my experience. 6d6 shots usually averages to 20+. Now remember in the vault you are hitting on 2's so probably 3/4 of your shots will hit all the time. The Strength of 8 is actually really great because you can bog down other super heavies in sheer volume of fire. In my games I destroyed a War hound (without void shields however) Titan with one of these. I've also wrecked a couple of baneblades with some shots at side armour which is brutal if you can get low armour. I also came 1 wound short of killing a squiggoth outright once. This thing is also great for killing marines and that NEVER ENDING SWARM of Tyranids with that sexy ap 3. This should be your primary power if you want to be really competitive and do list of carnage.

Next power : Cosmic Fire: OK so let's be straight here, this IS the worst power but it IS  the cheapest. A Strength 6 ap2 hell storm while"good" is just not enough for any vehicle attacking role. It does do great aganst swarms but there is a MUCH better hellstorm power you can take anyways. But 60 points is good if you dont want to spend alot on thr Vault as a whole.

Sky of Falling Stars: This is my favorite power in terms of fluff. And it usually is my 2nd choice just because the area you can cover. It fires that cool appocalypse barrage amd you get to roll the dice 6 times to see where each shot lands so depending on how you roll this can do some good killing. My only reall bummer is a strength of 7 so you can't really use this against supetheavies or vehicles with av14. But this is the second cheapest power and its just too good to pass in most cases. One final note is since this is a barrage weapon you do not needLOS so if you can, you can hide your vault and blast away (but remember its only 48“) But this tactic is usually better with the Transcendent Ctan but still worthy of note

So what do you think? What would you put in your vault? Soon ill put up part 2

Canoptek Acanthrites: And you thought real dragonflies were scary...

...or maybe you dont. But thats besides the point of this post which is about these bugs. So first off you may or may not have noticed but these Acanthrites were released long before Imperial Armour 12 was (with expirimental rules to use in the meantime) But they are here now and these things are pretty cool actually.

Now first off, I really like this model. It is one of my favorites. It looks like a dragon fly but it doesnt in the same way a Tomb Spyder doesnt look like a real spyder either. Having some of these personally (18) i can tell you they are a bit of a pain to assemble. At first. So you gotta be very patient when assembling these guys.

Now for the rules. Each one of these guys is gonna cost you 50 points each so the same as a tomb spyder and 15 more than a wraith. But i think these are a lot more versatile than both.

The statline of these things is also pretty solid with them being toughness 5, 2 attacks, and having 3 wounds EACH. Yeah and considering you can take these in squads of 9....thats a lot wounds coming at you.

Their wargear is also very good and you can handle vehicles, infantry, and terminators  equally easy. The acanthrite comes packed with a voidblade, so now you have rending and entropic strike goodness in your attacks. So nothing is immune to you. really. But the acanthrite also has a cutting beam which is a 12“ Strength 6 MELTA weapon.

So lets think, these guys are jump infamtry who can can be taken in squads of 9 with toughness 5, 3 wounds oh and they have stealth so an always cover save of 6+, these things can wreck anything you send them at. They are just so well equipped. The bummer is the 50 point price so if one of these dies that is alot of points you can lose in these guys. Nevertheless these things can tackle any MC or vehicle in the game.

To sum it up:

-If you like running Wraiths these are for you.

-If you are looking to try a different unit in your fast attack slot besides
wraiths, take these.

-If you want to brutally shatter ypur opponents riptides and wraithknights (entropic strike FTW) take 9 of these.

-If you are hesitant to sink 50 points each for these things and are still unimpressed then dont take these.

-If you have a phobia of draginflies (especially the robotic type) please avoid these at all costs then!

Necron Tesseract Ark: What a gunboat!

Well this week has been a tough for me. There was a death in the family so thing have been pretty emotional here. But im trying to get past that and continue the Imperial Armour
at the new Necron units. I thought i had covered this one but i guess i hadnt so lets change that promptly.

Now when we first look at the Tesseract Aek ine might be lead to believe its just some famcy annihlation barge or something. But that could not be more wrong. This thing is just filled with rules and wargear, more so than any other unit in this book.

The fluff of the Tesseract Ark is it has something called the Singularity Chamber which is used to hold a dying star...as an epic weapon. As a result this not only gives you awesome long range power (something Necrons lack) but very good durability as well. Lets look at the primary fire mode out of 3 for this. And i guarantee you will use this one 90% of the time anyways.

Solar Pulse: 48“ Strength 7 AP 2 Heavy 3 blast

That right there is very nice, it gives some good long blasts which can eat a terminator squad if lucky.

The next power works like the Necron Deathray and autohits everything under a ling with Strength 5. But it also has armour bane which is actually nice if you roll well.

The last power is a template weapon which will kill hordes and marines equally easy but sadly, its not a torrent weapon.
Now that is a very impressive firepower but not w for the durability. The Ark is AV 12 all around BUT it has Quantum Shielding so its AV 14 14 12 really. The Singularity Chamber also gives this guy a 5++ Invunernalble save which is great. The Chamber also forces enemy units who wish to assault the ark to take dangerous and difficuly terrain tests! Oh, and any unit counts as making a disordered charge regardless. This gives you a nice defense from assaults, but you should never be that close as the Ark is a HEAVY vehicle so you can move and fire its epic gun and TWO tesla or gauss cannons.

So how much for this guy? 175? 200? 225? Thats right 250 points!!! This is easily the most expensive Necron unit you can take in the codex (which counts as a heavy support slot in a regular army list)

As usual there is a catch: if thing suffers a weapon explodes on a 4+ the entire Ark dies too. But this sshouldn't happen....
I really like this thing but it is extremely fickle. USE WITH CAUTION! But by all meams use thisunit. Its very versatile and awesome.

Apocalypse in regular Warhammer 40k games: Home Rules

So apocalypse has now been released and I'm really enjoying it so far. But there is one thing that just bugs me. Gamesworkshop releases all these awesome super heavy vehicles but limits them to only apocalypse. Now i dont know about you but sometimes you just want to use that new shiny toy and not care. And apocalypse games take time and planning (at least the good ones do). So thats kind of a slap in the face personally. To counter this my awesome gaming group all sat down and discussed ways to include super heavies in our normal games. Yes that might be a little crazy but im really happy with what we got. So here is what we decided for our personal playing and maybe whoever reads this will take an idea or two or add a suggestion. So here we go.

1. You may take one sulerheavy vehicle in lieu of taking any allies. For games using double FOC you may still have only 1 super heavy but no allies still

2. A single superheavy vehicle can NEVER be more than 25% of your point value in your force unless...
3. In games of double FOC you may have a superheavy worth up to 35% of your overall points. This is not cumalitive. However ddepending on the actual game amount you can increase this as needed.
4. Destroyer weapons are not allowed.

5. Superheavies are subject to normal damge now like weapon destroyed or immobalizations. Glancing hits reduce 1 hull point. For penetration Hits you roll on the Vehicle Damage table as in the War hammer 40k rulebook. If you roll an Explodes! Remove d3+2 hull points.

6. Superheavies may never be scoring. They also can never claim first blood.

7. You cannot take two of the same weapon system on any Titan.

I think thats mostly it. I may not have gotten all of them but that's the basic idea. So what do you think?