Games Workshop - Warhammer 40K: Necrons Dice Set

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Far and away the coolest part of Tau is and has always been the not-Tau, bird-like Kroot. I’m sure many will disagree and say something like no actually it’s the cool battlesuits, but those people are objectively wrong. The Kroot are effectively space American natives who serve as mercenaries and ‘allies’ to Tau forces while the Tau hope to ‘civilize’ the Kroot. I’m sure at some point in the future the Tau will take the Kroot homeworld of Pech and relegate those who refuse to integrate to space Oklahoma but as of right now the Tau have other priorities. While fairly primitive, the Kroot have a Tyranid-like tendency to evolve by eating their victims and selecting for genetic material they want to evolve towards. Their presence in BFG is via the totally-not-an-egg, egg-like Kroot Warsphere which is also the only Tau vessel that has a Warp Drive. Despite their primitive nature, the Kroot likely developed the know-how for a battleship-sized vessel by eating enough Orks to gain the capability to slap metal plates together in a semi-coherent form to create a spaceship. You could of course use the Armageddon Sector list for any other narrative where the Navy are working closely with Marines, and it’s very much a ‘best of both worlds’ situation where you can have the Marines doing what they do best while the bulk of the work is handled by the Navy. That said, if you want to double down on a pure Codex Astartes fleet, there’s more to be said.

Necrons Dice (8-Pack) - TCGplayer Warhammer: 40K - Kill Team - Necrons Dice (8-Pack) - TCGplayer

The Dark Eldar fleets have a lot of the same feel as the Eldar Corsair fleets but the differences in movement make them play much differently than their more nimble cousins. While still having some of the fastest vessels in the game with an excellent turning radius, the Dark Eldar do not gain a second move and cannot benefit from the same hit-and-run style maneuvering – instead they gain a slight armor bonus that gives them an understated but significant durability boost against weapon batteries while still benefiting from the holofield mechanics (here called a shadowfield) that protects them from other weapon types. Gravitic Launchers, which function as torpedo tubes and could have just been named “torpedoes” since the special rule just refers you to the Tau ordnance section. There you find out that Tau have torpedoes missiles that function exactly like torpedoes but can alter course 45-degrees each ordnance phase and can vary speed between 20 and 40cm – which is actually pretty cool.

The relatively inexpensive Light Cruisers are an alternative to the more common Dauntless class and provide some very focused support to the fleet as the Endeavor, Endurance, or Defiant designs trade capacity for hanger bays, lance batteries, or weapon batteries. Space Marines get a whole pile of special rules, pretty much all of which can also be applied to Chaos fleet vessels crewed by Heretic Astartes: The Eldar light cruisers are similar to their bigger Cruiser counterparts although neither carries any launch bays. Instead the Aurora carries a pair of Pulsars and a four-capacity torpedo spread (which, I remind the reader, Eldar torpedoes are fantastic) while the Solaris carries an 8-strength weapon battery. Both options are fantastic acting as individual hunters or squadroned up with some Eldar escorts – plugging a gap in the roster between the hugely expensive cruiser classes and the cheaper but expensive for their size escorts. The Green Tide Space Marine ships appear in two fleet lists. They can either be used as a Codex Astartes fleet, or can be taken as part of a larger Navy fleet by using the Segmentum Solar, Armageddon Sector fleet list. The Armageddon Sector list is a themed list that lets you recreate a fleet representative of the Third Armageddon War, when circumstances led to the Imperial Navy and their Space Marine counterparts sharing command duties. There are some restrictions here; you can only include a Space Marine fleet commander if you have a battle barge, and Space Marine vessels can’t squadron up with Navy ships. Basically all Tyranid ships are all customizable with the aforementioned weapon options and they can be squadroned expansively at anywhere between 0 and 12 vessels. Tyranids also do not use shields or turrets, but rather use spore clouds that act similarly but with some minor differences. When squadroned, Tyranid vessels can combine their spore clouds similar to turrets but won’t gain any benefits to shielding.

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Chaos ships may also now choose to add Chaos Space Marine crews which provides the vessels with a leadership bonus as well as boarding and hit-and-run bonuses at no additional costs – however, it limits the types of marks a ship can take, and additionally limits the fleet to a specific Marine legion unless you pay for additional Chaos Lords to lead alternate legion vessels – and even then certain legions may be not be taken in the same fleet. Classic GW fluff focused roster building. Similar to the Eldar Corsairs, a fleet must include a Dread Archon if it is over 750 points who provides all the same benefits and re-roll options as the Eldar Pirate Prince. The Dark Eldar Corsairs list can be comprised of up to 12 customized cruisers and any number of customized escorts – the customization helps to add some flavor to what is otherwise a single cruiser option and a single escort option. Sigh– I’m not going to lie to you, I do not have the energy or will to talk about the Tau Merchant fleets. Instead I’m going to 100% phone this in since GW did the same thing when they wrote these rules. I promise that I will make it up to you by instead reviewing the far cooler Tau Protector fleets in the final, expanded play article. There is one exception to this – and that is the awesomeness that is the Kroot Warsphere which we will discuss based solely on said sheer awesomeness. These are essentially Cobra class escorts but with a larger weapon battery and slightly more armor. Not a big ship who cares. The Traitor FleetsI do want to take a moment and thank some of our dedicated readers for pointing errors in our previous article – we did not account for the BFG FAQ (which I neglected out of sheer laziness) that does apply some changes to things like Nova Cannons and max ordnance among other things. I make note of this now and state simply that for detailed rule breakdowns, please refer to the actual rulebooks and FAQs that were linked in the original article. Meanwhile, we are just overjoyed that people are reading these articles and have hopefully renewed interest in this fantastically fun game. Core Fleet Expansion Ships The Necrons are a fleet that was designed to be tough, aggressive, and more than a match for their opponents in a fair fight – something about being super old technological elitists. The caveat here is that Necrons are counter-balanced (maybe?) by always giving up victory points at any level of damage which then cascades from untouched, damaged, crippled, to destroyed or left drifting on the table. To get a feel for what this might mean, a Tomb Ship that is left as a drifting hulk may be worth up to 1,650 points to the opposing fleet and if you’re a Necron player you’d seriously struggle to overcome that kind of deficit short of utterly wiping your opponent – which is possible. For that reason a big part of playing Necrons is striking that balance between pounding away with your awesome weapons and preventing incoming damage via Brace for Impact (more on this momentarily).