The Skorpekh Lord is slightly nastier in terms of personal killing power, but a bit less mandatory to make their unit excel. They do add Lethal Hits, which is a strong effect, plus Mortals on the charge, but our strong vibe is that Necrons are very much a synergy army, so the Skorpekh might fall behind. You then reduce the number of dice in that pool by a number equal to the Wounds characteristic of the Reanimated model and repeat this process until either there are no more reassembling models, or the number of dice remaining in the pool is less than the Wounds characteristic of any of the reassembling models. Any models that did not Reanimate fail to reassemble, and any dice remaining in the pool are discarded. Seismic Assault: Roll for each model in a target unit, and deal mortals on 6s. Now capped at 10MWs, and Vaults still get +1 to the rolls. C ryptothralls: The little trashcan velociraptors that could. Seriously Play some games with them. They are astounding.

When a unit disembarks from a TRANSPORT model, set it up on the battlefield so that it is wholly within 3" of that TRANSPORT model and not within Engagement Range of any enemy models. If, for any reason, a disembarking model cannot be set up, that model’s unit cannot disembark. This is a very basic intro modelling set, but offers a bundle of some test models and a good spread of paints for the “standard” Necron color scheme. With 6 paint colors, 3 models, and a brush, this set works out to about the same amount as if you bought them on their own, although the Agrax Earthshade and Tesseract Glow containers are smaller than the retail versions which are more expensive so separately you’d get slightly more paint for slightly more money. With a whole new Edition, and Necrons featuring in the starter boxes, there are likely a lot of new players wondering if Necrons might be for them – so why should you play Necrons? Necrons feel like they’re going to reward players who really get to know their army. There’s enough raw power and toughness here to be forgiving in early games, but a deep understanding of how best to use your forces is going to be needed to get the most out of them. The faction also has a lot of support for themed armies – powerful options are available that will reward going deep on either Canoptek constructs or Destroyer Cult units. This is also great news for existing Necron players – pretty much whatever set of tools you have access to, there will be a way to put them together that leverages the new book. The update is especially exciting if you favoured Warrior or Canoptek-based lists, both of which look vastly more interesting compared to 8th, where Immortals, Destroyers and vehicles were the main game in town – and on that note, let’s look at what the book covers. What’s in the Book?The Necrons' flavour has been heavily reworked in the 5th Edition to be even more evocative of ancient Egyptian cultural references. You only get one shot but at S10 -4AP and 3D3 damage, it hits almost like a Castellan volcano lance. If you want to go for screen-killing, you can also throw on the enmitic exterminator for 3d3 S7 -1 AP shots. Just taking a complete shot in the dark on this one…but we feel like the gauss destructor is going to be wildly more popular. If you do take a squad of 2-3, it also says that any number can take whichever weapon (they can be mixed). In case you want an all-around decent firebase, you could do something like two gauss destructors and one enmitic exterminator. The Dynastic Traditions list contains a lot of repeats of one half of the named Dynasty traits. Most notably, all of the following are available: Bear in mind that the above ideas are just two of a multitude of choices you can make and if you have settled you want to use X unit because you think they’re awesome then by all means go your own way. Competitively at the moment you’ll often see Sautekh and Novokh on top, though just about every dynasty (and custom dynasty) has neat options that you can play to and give your opponent a tough challenge.

C’tan are terrifying! C’tan get a gigantic power boost (and, to be fair, cost hikes to match) making the star gods the absolute monsters they should be. Especially the NIghtbringer. Oh we’ll get to the Nightbringer.Annihilation Barge • Catacomb Command Barge • Doomsday Ark • Ghost Ark • Tesseract Ark • Tomb Blade • Monolith ( Doomsday Monolith) • Megalith • Obelisk • Tesseract Vault • Dias of Dominion and Triarchal Menhirs • Triarch Stalker The last point is worth exploring. Up front, the bad news is that the old Cryptek +1 to reanimation aura is gone. It’s a shame for Necron players because it would have been very good with this new rule, but honestly probably a bit much given the power in the book. Technomancers, one of the Cryptek sub-classes, can now reanimate a single dead NECRON CORE model from a unit (or d3 Warriors) in your command phase in homage to their old abilities, but don’t expect to be routinely rolling this on a 4+. The only sources of that are Canoptek Reanimators, which still have a terrible statline and the Orb of Eternity relic. You do have one more angle to mess with the rolls directly in the Protocol of the Undying Legions, where one directive lets you re-roll one dice each time this triggers, but by and large you’ll be rolling this down the line, and once you’re done your models are gone. Or are they?

I do think we’ll see less Sautekh than we used to simply (ironically) because of how much better this book is now. Previously, the Sautekh warlord trait and some of the characters were duct tape desperately trying to hold together a terrible faction – now it might turn out you simply have better options. There is still stuff to like here though, so expect to see them tried. Custom Dynasties The analysts of the Inquisition's Ordo Xenos have not yet determined the technical specifications of the recently encountered Canoptek Tomb Stalker. To manifest the psychic power, you must first pass a Psychic test. The opposing player can then select one of their PSYKER units that is within 24" of the PSYKER unit attempting to manifest the power and attempt to deny that power before its effects are resolved by passing a Deny the Witch test.New and exciting for the Necrons, we have custom dynasties. Two lists of traits ( Dynastic Traditions and Circumstances of Awakening) are provided, and you have to choose one effect from each list. Indeed, only the massive use of force is capable of wounding a Tomb Stalker in the first place. Tomb Stalkers are devastating ‘living’ weapons; masses of shifting pseudo-metal, bladed limbs and razor-sharp armour plates. Protocol of the Vengeful Stars: Additional -1AP on 6s to wound when shooting OR ignore Light Cover within half range. Favoured by Mephrit, surprising no one who’s familiar with them. We start strong with the Technomancer, and while a lot of these are cool, this guy does a tonne of stuff supporting multiple archetypes. As baseline, in your command phase they can reanimate one model from a CORE unit, or d3 Warriors. There are lots of ways you can make him do more than that though. You can optionally upgrade him with either a Canoptek Cloak or a Canoptek Control node. The former is a steal at 5pts, giving you a 10″ FLY speed and allowing you to repair a Dynasty model for d3 wounds at the end of movement. This is vastly more flexible than it used to be, and can be super helpful for getting a wounded character ready to re-join the fray. It’s also handy for making sure you’re in position to make use of any Arcana you’ve brought along. The Canoptek Control Node is more of a build-around, giving a 6″ aura of +1 to hit for CANOPTEK units. This is an incredibly potent buff, and especially good with the spiicy Canoptek Doomstalker. It’s good with the melee stuff too, but keeping up with them can be more of a challenge, meaning you might want to add Thrall of the Silent King to increase the range. This is a very cool ability. While some of the effects are clearly better than others, there’s use cases for all of them, and while the boosts are mostly incremental they will add up over the course of the game. I also like that having two options for each protocol tends to mean that most builds will find a way of using all of them