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New codex reviews are out in the wild. I'll update the 1st post shortly switching over from index to codex.

For anyone who hasn't seen yet, a quick rundown of changes:

Deleted datasheets - Anrakyr, Obyron, Zandrekh, Lord

New datasheets - only the Translocation Shroud Overlord. He's exactly the same as a normal overlord but is locked to blade and orb, and swaps the damage reduction rule with the shroud

Significant datasheet changes
- Lychguard cannot take crypteks as leaders (RIP Lychguard bricks)
- Cryptothralls lose FNP, but gain a wound (effectively about the same when in a Technomancer unit)
- Warriors lose better reanimation, gain reanimation rerolls, also gaus reaper -1 strength
- Technomancer is now only the cloak version, loses lone op, gains the ability to lead Wraiths (!)
- C'tan all get -1 move to 6" (boo, slowest fly units in the game), all gain a native 5+ FNP (!)
- Transcendent can no longer take enhancements (but has FNP natively so kind of better anyway)
- Hexmark doesn't get infinite return shooting anymore
- Psychomancer still one of the worst characters, but not by as much (debuffs actually work now)

Significant rules changes
- All forms of reanimation boosts have been nerfed or sidegraded
- Orbs are one shot but D6 (so probably best on warriors for the reroll?)
- Reanimator still does the same, but aura cut down to 3"

New detachments
- A few tweaks (mainly nerfs) to Awakened Dynasty, still looks solid though
- Canoptek Court looks mental. Easy hit rerolls almost army wide, solid enhancements (including the ever more common infiltrate a unit) and strats
- Hypercrypt Legion also looks pretty good. Overcomes a lot of movement issues we have, and a good selection of damage buffs
- The other two (Obeisance Phalanx and Annihilation Legion) look to be the weakest, Annihilation easily the worst though

Hot takes
- Void Dragon is potentially the strongest C'tan now due to them all having FNP, but dragon has better regeneration
- C'tan in general seem very usable, either spammed in Hypercrypt Legion or individually out of strategic reserves (rapid ingress) for other detachments
- Tesla Immortals with Plasmancer seem solid in any detachment that can give hit rerolls
- Wraiths will be a common sight, particularly infiltrating in a Canoptek Court
- With so many reanimation nerfs, will probably see a shift to damage dealing armies instead of durable scoring armies in tournaments
- Orbs are weaker, not a huge number of battle tactic strats - Imotekh giving +1CP is a lot more tempting now

Do you think the classic 5th edition army build around 2 unkillable monolits can work in Hypercrypt Legion? I suppose 3 monoliths take up to much of the points cost.

That detachment fixes the movement problem and the invunerable save problem. You also get teix, like charging from reserves.

This whole Codex feels like a typical GW knee-jerk overcorrection.

Niiai wrote:Do you think the classic 5th edition army build around 2 unkillable monolits can work in Hypercrypt Legion? I suppose 3 monoliths take up to much of the points cost.

In a few weeks we'll see the real points costs so will have a better idea then. 1-2 Monoliths could work, especially for teleporting around and dropping off units without using the charging strat.

H.B.M.C. wrote:This whole Codex feels like a typical GW knee-jerk overcorrection.

Yeah a bit. So many nerfs to reanimation and straight up deleting any desire to run Lychguard compared to any other melee unit is rough. There are some strong things in here though so more of a substitution of which things will prop up the faction than an overall overcorrection.

I bet they also increased lychguard's cost. Because you know... GW.

Farewell, Necron Lord.

You shall be forever remembered as the only non-Destroyer Necron HQ that doesn't look like the bastard offspring of the Crimson Chin and a bead curtain.

 Insularum wrote:

Deleted datasheets - Anrakyr, Obyron, Zandrekh, Lord

Oof. Dark eldar sympathize. Those were some of my favorite named 'crons. :(

New datasheets - only the Translocation Shroud Overlord. He's exactly the same as a normal overlord but is locked to blade and orb, and swaps the damage reduction rule with the shroud

Is the translocation shroud basically a veil of darkness? If so, kind of excited for a dedicated teleporter character as the tele-tech is one of my favorite necron gimmicks. A mobility-over-durability option is neat. Not a fan of the limited armory though, given that it's probably the result of simply not selling the model with extra weapon bits.

Significant datasheet changes
- Lychguard cannot take crypteks as leaders (RIP Lychguard bricks)

Aww. But there's that whole short story in the tyranid omnibus about the cryptek surviving her world's destruction alongside her lych guard besty. :( Fluff-wise, it always made sense to me that members of the court would warrant their own dedicated bodyguards (slash spies).

- Warriors lose better reanimation, gain reanimation rerolls, also gaus reaper -1 strength
- Technomancer is now only the cloak version, loses lone op, gains the ability to lead Wraiths (!)

Hmm. Might be fine. I play silver tide and was pretty happy with how it was performing before. Am okay with less durable warrior squads so long as they're still durable enough to behave the way I need them to.
What does this mean for my technomancer who's modeled without the cloak? Can I reasonably call him a chronomancer if I still want him to support my warrior blobs? Losing LO and letting him join wraiths makes sense. That was clearly the intended use case before anyway.

- C'tan all get -1 move to 6" (boo, slowest fly units in the game), all gain a native 5+ FNP (!)

Gives me flashbacks to when the talos was a skimmer that could only move 6". Ah well. At least we're still faster than spore mines?

- Hexmark doesn't get infinite return shooting anymore

So they're just mediocre snipers that you can deepstrike but probably shouldn't?

- Hypercrypt Legion also looks pretty good. Overcomes a lot of movement issues we have, and a good selection of damage buffs

This is encouraging. See above about enjoying teleportation shenanigans.

Question: Does silver tide still look viable in general? If we're less durable/good at scoring and need to retool towards offense, I'm wondering if BS4+ makes warriors too unreliable to be worthwhile. Previously, their offense with an attached character still made them just okay offensively. It was the defense that made them perform well.

 vipoid wrote:
Farewell, Necron Lord.

NMNR is such a fething cancer on this game.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 vipoid wrote:
Farewell, Necron Lord.

NMNR is such a fething cancer on this game.

I don't disagree, but don't the removed units all have models?

 vipoid wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 vipoid wrote:
Farewell, Necron Lord.

NMNR is such a fething cancer on this game.

I don't disagree, but don't the removed units all have models?

Pretty sure the Lord was a resin model. All the old special characters definitely were. The distinction between Overlord and Lord was always a bit weird to me anyway and I really don't see why the same model couldn't have been used for both. I'd have rather had a new plastic Lord model than the weird translocation Overlord that nobody asked for.

Lords are the metal (later FineCost) models that we've had since 3rd.

So a few of us have gone from having 3 Overlords and 3 Lords to have 3 Overlords and 3 unusable extra Overlords because we can only field 3 of any non-BL/transport unit type.

Adding a slightly different Overlord that just has a piece of Wargear doesn't make up for that. That teleporting Overlord shouldn't be a separate choice, in the same way that the Gravis Captain w/Heavy Bolt Rifle being a separate choice was stupid in 9th, and how Phobos Lieutenant w/Combi-Weapon as a separate unit choice is stupid now. Especially as he's locked with his equipment.

Some of us also have Technomancers who aren't riding Scarab Surfboards.

Time to start theory crafting the new combo's then.

Getting the easy one out of the way first - new Overlord doesn't do anything other than make one unit advance better. The only unit he leads with assault weapons are tesla Immortals so that's a thing I guess.

CP manipulation options have increased from 1 to 3, Imotekh is still the best option but there is also:
The Awakened Dynasty is largely the same as before (except Lychguard suck), main new option I can see is Wraith centric:
Canoptek Court has a couple of options:
Hypercrypt Legion can do some interesting things:
Shout out if you think of anything else. Once there is a definitive list of effective options I'll likely stick them in the OP for easy reference.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
This whole Codex feels like a typical GW knee-jerk overcorrection.

That would assume they were actually playtesting index about year ago enough to realize it needs correction.

New MFM points available at Warhammer Community now.

No major surprises, nerfed units have received points cuts and nothing you would expect to see in a tournament list has gone up in cost. Praetorians still weirdly expensive and the new Overlord costs no extra despite having more abilities (something something wargear is free).

tneva82 wrote:
That would assume they were actually playtesting index about year ago enough to realize it needs correction.

No it doesn't. Not even slightly. Mostly because "knee-jerk" generally means a snap decision, made quickly, without any real forethought or prior analysis beyond surface-level inputs. If, as you posit, they were playtesting the index "about a year ago", then it, by definition, wouldn't be knee-jerk.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
That would assume they were actually playtesting index about year ago enough to realize it needs correction.

No it doesn't. Not even slightly. Mostly because "knee-jerk" generally means a snap decision, made quickly, without any real forethought or prior analysis beyond surface-level inputs. If, as you posit, they were playtesting the index "about a year ago", then it, by definition, wouldn't be knee-jerk.

Except codex was long done.

After 10th ed codex there was 0 time to input knee jerks from games to codex as codex was done and ready to go...

Unless you think GW has figured time machine and actually went past and changed the book in the past...

Any kneejerk reaction would have to be on their internal playtesting because they never had time to kneejerk based on players playing because codex was done and ready by the time players got their hands on index.

Unless you assume GW has time machine ;D

At which point...why on earth GW would waste their time selling plastic toy soldiers? With actual functioning time machine they could become richer beyond their wildest dreams. Warhammer models would pale in comparison to profit they could do with TIME MACHINE that allows to change the past...

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Lords are the metal (later FineCost) models that we've had since 3rd.

And some of us are still using the original 2E Necron Lords. Well, they do still have a fancy cloak, so I guess they get promoted to Overlord?

So, does 6 Canoptk Wraith with attached Technomancer (+5 Feel no Pain + healing D3 wounds) looks preety good in Canoptek Court?

Wondering if they are rather anvil unit needing Skorpek Destroyers with Skorpekh Lord as a "hammer" or if to go all-in with "canoptek" units only for detachment bonus.

I'd say that 6 Wraiths with a Technomancer is good in any Detachment. +5 FnP, d3 Healing in movement, and Reanimation will make it a difficult to shift unit that can also be fast at 10". As for the Canoptek Court the fact you can give Warriors and Immortals conditional re-roll hits is nice but would +1 to hit for having a Leader be better?

Is the Warden worth taking now that they changed his ability from granting Assault and Heavy to Fall Back and shoot/charge?

Side note. In the app it still lists Lychguard for the Technomaner instead of Wraiths

Xyxel wrote:So, does 6 Canoptk Wraith with attached Technomancer (+5 Feel no Pain + healing D3 wounds) looks preety good in Canoptek Court?

Wondering if they are rather anvil unit needing Skorpek Destroyers with Skorpekh Lord as a "hammer" or if to go all-in with "canoptek" units only for detachment bonus.

6 Skorpekh's and a Lord do more damage than 6 Wraiths and a Techno in any detachment (including shooting, fighting and Wraith Form bonus damage), Wraiths are hot because they are the new super tanky unit, and fast by Necron standards. Wraiths will see play in any detachment, either as a fast tanky unit, or as a replacement for the now dead Lychguard brick (Technomancer allows Cryptothralls to join, in an Awakened Dynasty you could also add the stealth enhancement etc to turn them into a slow super tank).

BomBomHotdog wrote:I'd say that 6 Wraiths with a Technomancer is good in any Detachment. +5 FnP, d3 Healing in movement, and Reanimation will make it a difficult to shift unit that can also be fast at 10". As for the Canoptek Court the fact you can give Warriors and Immortals conditional re-roll hits is nice but would +1 to hit for having a Leader be better?

Is the Warden worth taking now that they changed his ability from granting Assault and Heavy to Fall Back and shoot/charge?

Side note. In the app it still lists Lychguard for the Technomaner instead of Wraiths

Rerolls vs +1 to hit seem pretty interchangeable really, but I think the Court has better damage builds from enhancements and stratagems though (tesla Immortals and infiltrating Wraiths seem the obvious choices).

The Warden is a bit weird, at 40 points for a good gun and a leader ability I think he's fine, but fall back and shoot is only really going to be high value on a big warrior block.

I like the Warden much better now. No more overlap with the Awakened Dynasty benefits. Being able to keep my warrior blobs agile/shooting was the reason I bought him in 9th. He'll be useful for my Hypercrypt silver tide where the plan is to plop down next to the enemy, fire 40+ shots, and then most likely get immediately tarpitted.

6 wraiths with a technomancer seems like a decent hammer unit. Not really a "deathstar," but beefy enough to take a hit and take most enemies head-on.

A weirder, probably too-expensive option I'm wondering about is a suicide cryptek with the infiltrator enhancement. Basically, charge him in head-first on turn 1 and then pop the Curse stratagem so that you receive the benefits of the curse all game long.

Hyperphase crypt looks like a lot of fun and fits the fluff I've been wawnting to go for since starting 'crons. Going overboard on the gimmick risks giving up control of the board's center, but judicious use of it means that opponents have to stress about screening and constantly worry that we're going to drop a silver tide on their flank.

I'm thinking the secret sauce is to send our chunky elite units, maybe C'tan, and maybe a warrior blob up the middle of the table. Our opponents won't want to run headfirst into that, BUT staying too close to the flanks makes it easy to drop piles of warrior/immortal shots on them when we come in from reserves.The obvious counterplay for the reserve blobs is to charge them, but then that means that the enemy is close enough for our melee units to reach them.

And then we can leave any injured units in the backfield or heal them in reserves via the strat to limit our opponents' ability to whittle such units down.

Having a monolith running up the center seems like a natural fit for the HYpercrypt (gives us a way to bring squads in mid-field if nothing else), but what do you guys think? That nearly $200 price tag is a real deterrant, and I"m tempted to just poorhammer up my own cardboard/sprue/paper monolith.

Fun little combo I found using Hypercrypt. If you take the Overlord with Translocation Shroud and give him the Hyperspatial Transfer Node you get +12 to your Advance. With the added benefit of being able to move through terrain and models thanks to the Overlord.

Both give +6 to Movement instead of rolling an Advance. Both are modifiers and do not set a Characteristic to a set number so they can stack.

I don't think thats how that works. Both are modifiers that are used instead of rolling a dice that is true but when you use one you can't use the other because your not rolling a dice since your using the first ability to replace rolling a dice.

I am not explaining this well.....

Is this an error or am I missing some core rule:

The "Implacable Resilience" ability of the "normal" Overlord reduces the damage characteristic of an allocated attack by 1.

Since there is no "to a minimum of 1 damage" mentioned, he is kind of able to negate damage 1 attacks to his unit, or not?

Amaurosis wrote:
Is this an error or am I missing some core rule:

The "Implacable Resilience" ability of the "normal" Overlord reduces the damage characteristic of an allocated attack by 1.

Since there is no "to a minimum of 1 damage" mentioned, he is kind of able to negate damage 1 attacks to his unit, or not?

There's a Core Rule stating you can't modify stats like that below 0. You can SET them to 0, but subtractions cannot bring it to less than 1.

Finally got my book, started flipping through datasheets before dinner.

Started with the overlord. Had a bit of a 'Oh, GW' moment when I realized the wargear change (from the index cards) hit NMNR territory.

The overlord can't have an overlord's blade and rez orb. Because... reasons.
The model comes with tachyon arrow and overlord's blade. It can swap BOTH for either staff of light or voidscythe. The end.
If it doesn't have a tachyon arrow, it can have a rez orb. So that can only be paired with staff or scythe.

Now both the translocation overlord and command barge can have orb and blade without any issues, but... not the standard foot guy.

At this point I'm wondering how the staff of light option survived...

Voss wrote:
Finally got my book, started flipping through datasheets before dinner.

Started with the overlord. Had a bit of a 'Oh, GW' moment when I realized the wargear change (from the index cards) hit NMNR territory.

The overlord can't have an overlord's blade and rez orb. Because... reasons.
The model comes with tachyon arrow and overlord's blade. It can swap BOTH for either staff of light or voidscythe. The end.
If it doesn't have a tachyon arrow, it can have a rez orb. So that can only be paired with staff or scythe.

Now both the translocation overlord and command barge can have orb and blade without any issues, but... not the standard foot guy.

At this point I'm wondering how the staff of light option survived...

NMNR is going off the rails a bit these days, a fair few of the discontinued characters are still available, but stuff that has quietly been dropped from the webstore like the Lokhust Lord and old Overlord model (the only scythe and orb model) are still present. I guess the stack of arbitrary restrictions is building up and starting to become unmanageable.

Codex FAQ is up. Canoptek Court devastating wounds stratagem has been nerfed very hard - still costs 2cp but now only affects specifically Cryptek/Canoptek models and not the entire unit (so basically worthless on anything other than wraiths). Other stuff in the FAQ is just clarifications.

Got my first game in with the new codex. I ran:

HYPERPHASE CRYPT (1,000 points)
Warden with dimensional overseer (joined a warrior squad)
Technomancer (joined a warrior squad)

1 squad of 5 gauss immortals
2 squads of 20 warriors with flayers
1 squad of 5 death marks
2 squads of 3 wraiths with a mix of weapons
1 canptek doomstalker (first time trying him out!)

My opponent ran an extremely elite Leagues of Votan list. Something like:
1 Chonky hammer character who does mortals on the charge and imposes -1 on to-wound rolls against high strength weapons.
2 squads of the guys with 2+ saves.
2 of their big, chonky transports. (Not the sagitarius things)
1 squad of 3 bikes

I was even rustier than I thought and messed up before the game even began by selecting behind enemy lines and deploy teleport homers. The theory was that he'd struggle to advance and defend his rear, but I misremembered the teleport homers objective. (I thought they could be deployed anywhere in no man's land.) Also, the mission rule was Delayed Reserves, so that was rough for my first time out with the Hyperphase Crypt!

Not much happened turn one. He advanced and had no targets. I dumbly moved a squad of wraiths and the immortals out into the open mistakenly thinking they could drop some beacons. The doomstalker took a few wounds off a transport. The technomancer's warrior squad poked their heads out to fish for lethal hits against the transport and threaten to contest an objective.

On his second turn, he wiped out a wraith squad effortlessly. Turns out D4 weapons are pretty rough on W4 wraiths. The rest of his army poured everything they had into the technomancer warriors and just barely managed to finish them off.

I stuck the immortals and my warden's warriors into reserves planning to pop out and do some return damage. Unfortunately, Delayed Reserves kept my warrior blob out of the fight. Deathmarks spent half the game babysitting an objective in my deployment zone. The doomstalker landed 6 hits on his infantry... that then turned into 2 wounds as i rolled four 2s (which failed due to his character). 2 dead bodies. The immortals chipped in. killing maybe 1 more dude. The remaining wraiths charged the infantry and did nothing.

On his turn, he thinned the immortals and killed the wraiths. We spent the next turn trading shots. He thinned out the remaining warriors and finished the immortals. I finished off one of his infantry squads but not the character.

I brought my deathmarks in on his home objective, shot my entire remaining army at his character (who no longer had a squad) and brought him down to a single wound. The rest of the game was kind of a slap fight. I "killed" his character who then stood back up with 1 wound remaining. He killed off all my remaining units except the deathmarks who spent their time throwing down another beacon.

TAKE-AWAYS:
* I definitely messed up piloting the army. I definitely should have chosen better secondary objectives given my lack of action monkeys in this list. Guess it pays to take the time to re-read the objectives.

* Doomstalker seems really solid. Reasonably durable. Reasonably hard-hitting (even if this particular enemy was a tough matchup for it). I'm thinking of grabbing a second given that my army doesn't have much reach.

* Gauss flayers just do not cut it against hard targets. My warriors all have flayers instead of reapers, but I should probably ask my opponents if I can run them as reapers in the future. The extra pip of AP might make a big difference. That said, they *still* wouldn't be very good at taking out T6+ Sv2+ targets. I need to find more tools with decent AP.

* Warriors feel a little iffy. A squad with a technomancer (for 5+ FNP) took a beating before dying, but it still died in a single turn. And only getting back d3 warriors in the command phase means that they can't bounce back the way they used to. Hitting on 4s instead of 3s definitely cost me a lot of hits too. So they're not very killy, they're not really flexible in their target selection, they're not durable enough to avoid being wiped out even with a technomancer, and they don't recover enough of their losses to make much difference when the squad does stick around.

If I keep running the Hyperphase Crypt, maybe I'll be better off running mostly 10-man squads so I can spread out more and focus on objectives.

* Without a monlith in the mix, half the Hyperphase stratagems aren't available. The other half are good in theory, but I never had a turn where I had a wounded unit in reserves to heal, and the only time I needed to plop a squad somewhere away from the board edge I used the Deathmarks who deepstrike anyway.

I was really excited about the Hyperphase Crypt for fluff reasons, and I really like the agility it gives my slow infantry squads, but I'm not sure if I can justify it with my current collection being mostly warriors.

* Deathmarks benefitted reasonably well form the 'crypt. It lets them hold objectives, then bounce around to better sniping positions later on. If I had multiple squads of them to drop beacons, I might have wracked upsome decent VP.

*Wraiths were surprisingly underwhelming. But I guess they're not really made to fight enemies with high T and 2+ saves.

Overall, I think I either need to lean away from the silver tide to get more offense, or else I need to look into one of our other detachments. This was a smaller game, but I think my lack of anti-tank would only become more of a problem at higher points.

Kind of bummed about warriors. They just don't feel tough enough to be worth supporting or lethal enough to be worth taking over a different unit. I should probably give them a few more trial runs against less durable opponents before cutting them though. Especially given that they make up the vast majority of my 'cron collection. :\

 Insularum wrote:
Codex FAQ is up. Canoptek Court devastating wounds stratagem has been nerfed very hard - still costs 2cp but now only affects specifically Cryptek/Canoptek models and not the entire unit (so basically worthless on anything other than wraiths). Other stuff in the FAQ is just clarifications.

Fun while it lasted; back to the index detachment (Awakened Dynasty) for me. =(