Whether you are new to Warhammer, or even wargames, or you’re interested in starting your second or fifth new army, getting started in Warhammer 40k can be confusing. We’re here to help get you started, and show you how to get your new favorite army on the table with our new series: The First 2,000: Necrons. 

In Part 3, we look at how the December Dataslate impacts our choices, and discuss chasing the meta when starting out with an army in Warhammer 40K.

Grotmas & The December Dataslate Update

Dataslate Update Day is like a Warhammer holiday party and funeral all in one. You get to see some old friends, and they’re doing very cool stuff, but also, you’ve lost someone close to you, and that sucks. It’s a time when factions can be shaken to their core, or barely shifted at all. Add to that the Grotmas Detachment releases we’ve been getting, and the grand plan for this Necron force could have shifted significantly.

The Necron Grotmas Detachment is called Starshatter Arsenal. The Detachment Rule is Relentless Onslaught, which gives any model that attacks an enemy within range of an objective marker +1 to the Hit roll. Vehicle and Mounted models that are not Titanic gain Assault as well. That’s a pretty great rule for lists with Destroyers and Doomsday Arks. It doesn’t do much for the current Necron list, though in the future I might want to build up to playing this Detachment.

I’m mostly running Warriors and Lychguard, so they won’t benefit from the Assault. Additionally, if I run Awakened Dynasty, characters give +1 to the Hit roll of that unit anywhere, not only near Objective markers. Since each block of Warriors and Lychguard has a leader, that’s got some decent flexibility.

Where Starshatter Arsenal is useful for my current list is in the backline. The Doomstalkers and Reanimator could make use of the +1 Hit and Assault rule. Assault grants a unit the ability to Advance and still shoot, so that really only helps the Reanimator to Advance into the Reanimation Beam Auro and get a shot off. Sadly, the Reanimator’s Atomizer Beam isn’t the best weapon, so it’s not really worth the trade off. The Doomstalkers have 48” range weapons, so advancing them is less likely to come up often. Since the tradeoffs don’t really favor Starshatter for the models I  have, I’ll stick to Awakened Dynasty as the Detachment.

That just leaves the business of the updated points and Dataslates. Happily, none of the ability changes really did much to my list. These were aimed at lowering the number of units that Hypercrypt Legion could move to reserve each round. Since I’ve not built around Hypercrypt Legion, this isn’t a problem for me. What does alter my plans slightly is the updated points for the models.

There are some clear winners for Necrons in the points adjustment. Plasmancers have dropped to 60 points from 65, and Wraiths are down 10 points for three and 20 points for six. A six-pack of Wraiths are 230 points is pretty awesome, but I haven’t included Wraiths in this list. There are also some downsides. The C’tan Shard of the Void Dragon has been increased by 10 points, to 300. The Royal Warden is up by 10 as well, to 50 points. Warriors also got a points drop, but only for 10 models. 20 Warriors is still 200 points, which is my current plan for running them. 

These points updates don’t hurt my list too much. I was coming in at 1945 points, with room to add some Enhancements, and room to wiggle if points went up significantly. The only change for me is the Void Dragon going up, so my list is now 1955 points. I still have room for upgrades, and maybe I can cram another character in there at some point. 

So, after the big update, my list is unaltered!

The Current List

Current Purchases

2x Necron Combat Patrol ($302.40)

1x Trazyn The Infinite ($29.48)

1x Necrons Royal Court ($114.75)

2x Lychguard ($108.00)

1x Hypercrypt Legion Battleforce ($216.00)

1x Necron Warriors ($46.80)

2x Chronomancer ($75.60)

Current Units

1x Trazyn

1x Overlord with Translocation Shroud

1x Skorpekh Lord

1x C’tan Shard of the Void Dragon

2x Chronomancer

40x Warriors

1x Canoptek Doomstalker

1x Canoptek Doomstalker

1x Canoptek Reanimator

20x Lychguard

6x Skorpekh Destroyers

Points and Cost

Current Total: $893.13

Current Points: 1955