Let's Be Friends! - Necrons

Greetings, salutations, and welcome, to this week's installation of Let's Be Friends! You'll notice that the above headline seems to be a bit ahead of where we'd expect to be with the series. Worry not dear readers, for I have left the allies matrices of the Imperial Guard and Knights in the extremely capable hands of our own Godfrey. He has significantly more experience with each of those armies as a primary detachment than I do, and thus I feel confident that he will be better equipped to provide the best breakdowns possible, especially in the wake of the new Astra Militarum. That said though, I missed including this blurb as a part of my Tomb World Awakens series, and so now, almost a year after the conclusion of that series, the epilogue is stapled on.

But on that note, there's not much to talk about here. The Necrons are sort of the elder evil of the setting (well, outside of Daemons), and thus have an allies matrix on the level of Orks, which is just a step more friendly than Daemons and Dark Eldar. There's 4 options available to us, and none of them are brothers in arms, meaning that Necrons hold the dubious honor of being the only army which cannot have friendly psychic powers cast on it. All of that considered, Necrons, not unlike Grey Knights, dominated the last six months of 5th edition, and even carried into the first year or so of 6th. What happened to them? Where did they go? And could some friends help bring them back?

Necrons want desperately for two things, low AP firepower, ignores cover, and cheap troops, none of which should seem to be negotiable in an age of Riptides, Wraithknights, and Knight Titans. Without plasma guns, lascannons, or even flamers, what's an evil robot to do? Read on to find out.

In an attempt to be as evil as possible, our first stop is with the Chaos Space Marines. After all, the slaves of darkness have pledged their souls to the dark gods, why not liberate them from the constraints of the flesh? Regrettably, bringing allied Chaos Space Marines, though it can solve many of our problems, requires about the most meta of allied detachments to accomplish such. Your choice of HQ, mated to cultists, baledrake, and lascannon toting havocs solves a lot of problems, for the low low price of about 600 points. It's a steal, but requires investigation of your local meta to feel out if it's appropriate, as the cultists with baledrake can be bland and predictable.

Or, there's the option of Imperial cultists: henchmen, brought to you courtesy of Coteaz himself. I'm not entirely sure why Grey Knights will work with Necrons, but the Inquisition proper won't, but it's not my call. The obviously allows you to bring not only a dreadknight, but also, should the mood strike you, something alien to the xeno, 2+ armor saves in the form of Terminators. This solution on the whole is lacking, especially when compared to the potency of CSM, but it can still be worth looking at.

If you're looking for something really exotic, there's also the ability to consider Orks. Yes, for some reason our hyper logical robots are willing to not shoot at the vile greenskins for a while. I would tell you to keep shooting though, as though boyz offer a cheap troop, they do little to supplement your lack of ignores cover, or bolster your low AP firepower. These guys are probably on the whole the weakest option available to us.

Finishing out our options is the quintessential December-May relationship of the oldest army recruiting the youngest, that's right, we can shanghai the Tau into servitude. And for just over what CSM will surrender to us, we can strap a magic suit commander to "that dataslate" and bring along a team of fire warriors as well. If you choose to acknowledge that the Necrons probably have mass S 7 under control, then you can leave the railguns on the broadsides. Nevertheless, much like CSM, this Tau allied detachment is very common and may not be received well in all areas.

And that is about the extent of the damage. Assuming we don't want to go without what allies can grant us, our options aren't appetizing. We either compromise on all but the cheap troops, or in the search for ignores cover, we very quickly find our list going from potentially casual to tournament quality in short order. This isn't necessarily a problem in and of its self, but it leans heavily on whatever social constructs your playgroup ascribes to. Nevertheless, this concludes our look into which meatbags we'll deign to enslave in our quest for supremacy. See you next week!