November 11, 2011 by darrell
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Warren and Darrell discuss the main HQ choice from the new Necron Codex... the Overlord and his Royal Court...
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You’ve made a mistake on Cryptek gear. When you choose a Cryptek’s Harbinger affiliation, they automatically get the weapon (ie, Tremorstave for the Transmogrification, Eldritch Lance for Destruction, etc.). It’s the two wargear pieces which have to be unique and are one per Royal Court. So you can have 5 Tremorstaves, but only one Harp of Dissonance in a single royal court.
When it says everything you apply preferred enemy to everything, then in the rulebook on page 75 it says that “this ability does not work against vehicles without a weapon skill”.
You can argue all you want that you have preferred enemy against vehicles, but preferred enemy doesn’t work against vehicles, so it a moot point
Yup that nails the lid shut on that one lol!
Nope. Codices overrule rulebook.
I’m really liking the look of the new book. I don’t play a necron army but they seem really balanced if I play against them, unlike against other ward armies where it always seems to be an uphill fight for the whole game
I have to agree with that final tagged on rule.
Its like taking a five year old to a sweet factory, showing them endless bars of chocolate, and forcing them to leave with a single curly wurly.
First army thats interested me since the blood angels though, I have to say (and blood angels interested me because they were my first ever army back in 2nd edition), I like the idea of necrons, and I kind of like the modelling possibilities.
Its a really good new Necron codex this one – a lot of character and it makes the Necrons an interesting and viable ace for narrative battle reports.
Something which you see in evidence in the newest White Dwarf.
Love the character and all these new special characters and HQ choices.
With Necrons so far I am liking more from Overlords than from special characters. I will use Overlord so for some time and I pick special charachter only if one of them turns out to be better than all other HQ options.
Here’s a question, but first the scenario:
Say I have 2 Overlord Characters, and thus am entitled to take 2 Royal Courts. For each overlord, I take 3 Lords/Crypteks (A,B,C and X,Y,Z). Now say I have 3 units of Immortals (let’s number them 1,2,3).
Now, according to the rules as I understand them, you can’t have more than one member from the same Royal Court ‘joining’ a unit (“Only one member of the Royal Court can join each unit in this manner”). So you can have 1A, 2B, 3C, but never 1AB or 2ABC.
Here’s my question. Can I have a member of the Royal Court for each Overlord join a unit? With the notation above, I could have 1AX, 2BY, 3CZ. This doesn’t contradict the rule above, right? I ask because for bigger points or apocalypse games, I might want to have both a Necron Lord toting a Resurrection Orb and Warscythe as well as a Cryptek with some of the nifty Harbinger abilities in the same unit.
Oh and while I’m here… I read from a post somewhere that you could use the Harbinger of Eternity’s Chronometron dice re-roll ability to help “prolong” Imotekh’s Night Fighting, but that re-roll only applies to a roll by his unit right? (Assuming that they are in the same unit) I thought that the player was the one rolling the dice for determining whether the Night Fighting continued or not, not Imotekh (see the distinction)? Same thing for determining if an enemy unit is struck by lightning, I think.
Finally…… even though I don’t really like the limitation on the “upgrades” for Crypteks, I think it’s a necessary evil. Imagine a player with 7 Harbingers of Destruction, each with a Solar Pulse. You would be looking at perpetual Night Fighting on your opponent’s turn (the Solar Pulse says “can be used at the start of any turn”. And according to the General Rulebook FAQ, when not specifically stated, that is taken as a player turn, so the Night Fighting only ‘darkens’ your opponent’s turn). That’s just one example….. though I would have liked to see what 10 Harps of Dissonance could do!
You should study more maths 😀 Infinity can be in series, dimensions, or even withing a range. For example you have an infinite number of points within one inch. You have an infinity of directions from a single point etc etc. If range was inifinite, it would be a staight line in one direction. So it wouldn’t even go around the planet and hit you back in the head, since that wouldn’t be straight.
Not that its important 🙂 I do get that you’re just kidding btw 🙂
No, no, no, you see, he’s right, you can go an infinite in any direction, it doesn’t mean he can target more than one unit with the Harp, he’s doesn’t have a Multi-tracker! ;P
Oh, and you can’t forget Line of Sight, if he can’t see the enemy, it’s not like he can shoot at it.
@warzan i wish infinite range worked like that! tachyon arrows would be amazing then.
ANY NUMBER of Crypteks – Can be upgraded to a SINGLE specific type – ie 5x harbinger of destruction.
as for trying to sneak two court members from different courts into a single unit, i have to disagree. based on the last two sentences of p. 90 in the description of the court. “only one member of THE (does this include one court or both???) royal court can join each unit in this manner. otherwise, they remain part of the royal court.”
so would the criteria for identifying the valid royal court member in a unit be as follows?
is there a member of the royal court in this unit?
Y/N if no, they may join.
if Yes, “Otherwise they remain part of the royal court. ”
this rule should have been written as “only one member From ANY royal court can join each unit in this manner.”
Thoughts on on this guys???
Each of the cryptek harbinger’s UNIQUE wargear options can only be chosen once per court.
P. 84 no cryptek can mix wargear from two or more disciplines.
My interpretation is similar to spacewolves using living lightening and jaws to differentiate between Rune priests. Give all 5 tek’s Transmo, leave 2 as the basic tremorstave upgrade. give the 3rd seismic crucible, the 4th harp of dissonance, and the 5th both crucible and harp. this is if you want to fully load out a court with a specific type.
each of the wargear options are still unique and independent of each other. you are not copying and pasting.
if the rule were more specific it would read, each option may only be taken once in each royal court. there is substantial difference here.
as for the cheating refered to in the vid this could be avoided if you mark each cryptek when you buy it so if it is a harbenger destruction mark it as H.D and so on
Hi Warren,
I don’t really get your argument about the “balance stuff by points cost” issue.
True, there are a lot of items that the Crypteks can have, and I think the sheer amount might confuse some people. But the rule that you can only take one of each unique items is not really hard to grasp.
On the other hand, you cannot always balance by points cost. Say you want a cheap item, but you want it to be only once in the army. Would you then let it cost 200 points when its worth only 10 points? Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, does it? And increasing points cost really makes things difficult. Wait, how often do I have this item? How much is it worth now? Ehm…
And only because you have the OPTION of having high points Lords does not mean that they are intended to be fielded in that way. I really do hope that in 6th edition HQ choices will not be more important. I really do hope that the bog standard troopers will get more rules and a bigger role in the game. I really hate seeing just a couple of troopers camping in their darn vehicles while the rest of the army does the work.
I mean, normally you would think that an army would have a huge amount of grunts that does the work and a couple of specialists for special operations. But in 40k the majority of grunts seem to stay at home, and those who are present take a nap in their transport while the specialists do the fighting.
The big question with necrons for me is: will you be able to play them in a necron legion style succesfully? I do hope so, but I fear even at 13 points they won’t be able to do the heavy lifting and will be condemmed to camp objectives in units of 5.
Pyromancer vs. Avatar. Wailing Doom is melta. So it’d destroy the avatar if it’s rebounded. But the avatar is immune to melta. Problem?
Warren, I watched all the vids this week, great work, However, please stop mistreating that codex. What has it done to you!
I have heard you talk about poor binding on GW stuff, I’m starting to think you might be the one destroying your Books.
Darrell wants a hard back, I think you might need a linen one.
Harbringers of Tranmogrification: “… masters of the science once known as alchemy”
so they are literally ‘Full Metal Alchemists’ xD
you forgot to put the BoW logo on in the background 😛 Still using XP i see, haha
The shroud of despair is AP1 so even on wounding on 4+ its not that bad surely? A template thats half a squad of marines dead immediately.
I’m not sure I agree about the criticism about the lack of spam. Thing is, if the points went up for that stuff you wouldn’t see anyone take it as they’d be complaining all the options are too expensive. It wouldn’t solve the solution either as it would mean either people don’t take it at all or that they take a single one – how is that better than what we have here? They allow you to take the upgrade to whichever harbinger as many as you want as perhaps thats the more balanced stuff. I do agree that they probably add it as an afterthought for balance, but thats not really a bad thing I’d rather have it balanced.
For one thing I’m happy that we have characterful sergeants in squads now 😛
about the veils of darkness, you can only have 2 crypteks with a veil of darkness, but you also have the vargard obyron character that has a special veil of darkness. coupled with one or two monoliths you could have a large portion of your army teleporting around board and messing around with the other army 😛
Ok, maybe somebody said this already and I know you guys were annoyed with the fact that the crypetks can only have one type of the unique wargera options but I was just thinking.
1: Necron vverlord
1. Cryptec with Harbinger of dispair, staff of light, Veil of darkness
1. Cryptec with Harbinger of dispair, abyssal staff, veil of darkness
1. Cryptec with Harbinger of dispain, staff of light, veil of darkness, nightmayer shroud
etc
Now these are all unique wargear options, therefore is this not a way of getting around this problem.
If anybody reads this let me know if I am making any sence or not
You do make sense. But I think it does not work this way for Necrons.
For Space Wolves Runepriests it is exaclty as you describe. Same for Fantasy Dwarves Magic Runeitems.
But for Necrons I think what the Codex says is: You can have multiple Harbringers of the same kind, but you can only take each option (=item, not item combo) once. So only one Veil of Darkness for one Royal Court. And by the way, you automatically have the Abyssal Staff!
So what you can do is:
1. Cryptec, Harbringer of despair (includes Abyssal Staff), Veil of Darkness, Nightmare Shroud
2. Cryptec, Harbringer of despair (includes Abyssal Staff), nothing more possible, this guy can now be spammed
or
1. Cryptec, Harbringer of despair (includes Abyssal Staff), Veil of Darkness
2. Cryptec, Harbringer of despair (includes Abyssal Staff), Nightmare Shroud
3. Cryptec, Harbringer of despair (includes Abyssal Staff), nothing more possible, this guy can now be spammed
But the question for me is: Can you put 2 Lords or Crytecs from two diffrent Royal courts to the same unit? Example: Court A Lord + Court B Cryptec in a unit of Necron warriors.
Check pg. 90.
“Upgrade to a Harbinger Of Despair, exchanging Staff Of Light for Abyssal Staff… May then take any of the following-”
So the Abyssal Staff comes as standard when you upgrade a Cryptek to a Harb.Despair, we’re cool with that (if he wants to be a Harbinger, he can’t keep his Staff of Light… though, I don’t know why you’d want to keep it).
That “any of the following” (Veil & Shroud) would be the unique gear they’re talking about, and you can only take one per court.
So in your court, you could have:
1x Harbinger of Despair (Abyssal Staff, Veil of Darkness, Nightmare Shroud)
4x 1x Harbinger of Despair (Abyssal Staff)
OR
1x Harbinger of Despair (Abyssal Staff, Veil of Darkness)
1x Harbinger of Despair (Abyssal Staff, Nightmare Shroud)
3x 1x Harbinger of Despair (Abyssal Staff)
Or any mix of other Harbingers (and Lords), so long as no two Harbingers of the same type are carrying the same “any of the following” items in the same Court (take a second Overlord if you want two “any of the following” items in your army).
woops, lol, ninja’d.
can someone tell me the points costs for all the upgrades for the overlord plz?
heres some cheese,, in the codex it says you are allowed 0-5 lords and 0-5 crypteks,,does this mean you could have a court consisting of ten characters? it doesnt mention anything about ther being a 5 model limit to the overlords court!