Resurrecting the Necrons, Part 1: Changes...

So, the Necrons finally got the codex update we've all been waiting for. It's made some units better, some unusable and some... are just different. While I never stopped using mine, really, they'd sort of taken a back seat to my Admech and Marine armies on the gaming table. With the all the new kit, it seems like high time they come to the fore again, but it's going to take some heavy reorganization....

I loved my Destroyer wing army. Three squads of them like big, multi-wound tanks zipping about and torrenting things to death. Now they're jump infantry with weaker 24" guns, and not much else going for them.  So, like everyone else under the sun, I'll be using the models as Tomb Blades. As they were, they would have competed with the Blades for a Fast Attack slot, but honestly, did the Necrons really need a new jet bike unit? Couldn't we just add tesla weapons as an option and left them as Jetbikes? For that matter, when you think of jump infantry, you think of a some sort of standing model with a jetpack, and these are... skimmers with flight bases. Oh well, both forms of Necron jump infantry blow anyway. If I ever buy any Triarch Praetorians, they'll be turned into Crypteks. Now the only viable Destroyers to have in an army are the heavy variety:

And even these are competing with things in other slots for points. At least Heavy Gauss Cannons didn't get nerfed that much. Still, it makes me want to re-jigger these into an Immortal with big stabilizer legs and jump wings of some kind. You'll see what I mean further below.

I barely ever used Tomb Spiders at all in my old army. They cost too much, did too little, and died rather pathetically. However, I loved the model so much I invested in a group of them when I found them on the cheap on e-bay. I bent the hell out of the parts to give them a more dynamic pose, and added extra arms from the old Wraiths to give them some surgical kit. How were they supposed to operate with those big clumsy tri-claws, anyway? 

I never understood why they decided to call them spiders when they're basically giant beetles. Oh well. Now their stats are great for the price, they fix vehicles, and they still shit scarabs like there's no tomorrow. Can you field nine of them in big crawly units? You probably shouldn't but who knows? From the book art, I'm betting there's going to be a plastic  kit that can either be a Spider or a Wraith, which means some nice leftovers either way. Speaking of Wraiths: 

They're slightly better now! Whee! Their options are.... different, and mostly not so good. I do like the particle caster and whips, but the transdimensional beamer, ilk ethe other characteristic test shenanigans in the codex, is shit. They should've written them to force the enemy unit to take their tests on 2D6, or just plain made it a different sort of weapon (like a flamer with entropic strike, or gauss, or something else). My Wraiths lost their surgical tools, and got whips to make them more creepy and ethereal as they flew around:

No, they won't be hiding behind any low terrain, either. I'm willing to put up with it to have them swimming through the air like those sentinels from the Matrix trilogy. Sadly, the new wraiths are constructs, so these may have to be beheaded. 

I ran out of whip arms, and as a result their commander made do with all the extra claws from the others. The new multi-eye heads, providing they aren't too big, will make them more insect/cephalod like as a whole. I don't think I'll have the heart to behead the poor buggers win the time comes, though. I only ever ran them as two units alongside with my Destroyer Lord, General Vhespid:

He was also engineered never to get cover, sadly, but being a jet bike, he never needed it. Just zipped right in with a cloud of scarabs or wraiths and axed things to death. This configuration, with legs, is closer to what destroyers are now, or should be. Honestly, all GW had to do was relabel the old Destroyers as Tomb Blades and give them different arms, and go from there. What the hell use does Preferred Enemy have for shooting units? 


Ooooh wait, 6th edition is coming. Maybe it'll make all shooting twin-linked or something? Who knows? I prefer to expect the worst; that way I'm pleasantly surprised when good things manage to happen, like Ghost Arks and Annihilation Barges.