Editing Necron (section)

===9th Edition===

8th Edition Necrons were pretty bland, all in all. 9th sought to fix that and delivered in some very good ways.

Every army in 9th has some sort of Combat Doctrine-esque gimmick. The Necrons have Command Protocols. These are orders issued out by your highest-ranking noble and repeated by every character in your army. Reflecting the Necrons' discipline and rigidity, these protocols come in the form of six different cards with two different effects; you pick five of them at the start of the game and arrange them in a very specific order. Each card is then revealed every battle round, and depending on the situation, you pick the effect that suits you best. If you play as one of the main dynasties, they each favor one of these protocols and can choose both options! After which, a unit has to start within 6" of a character to receive these protocols and benefit from them. There is a Fortification that also transmits these protocols, but it sucks ass. Don't bother with it.

Crypteks are no longer just "Crypteks". They now represent four different disciplines that they are known for. They are known as Psychomancers, Plasmancers, Chronomancers, and Technomancers. Those tiles hanging off their necks? They're totally Maesters from Game of Thrones. In space. The Infinite and the Divine even confirms they're made out of a material relevant to each Cryptek's area of expertise, and even aid in enhancing their techno sorceries! Totally not magic, you guys.

The common, rank and file warriors have a shorter ranged Gauss gun, called the Gauss reaper, which shoots at assault 2, 12", ap-2 and dmg 1. They also now have the ability to REROLL 1s ON REANIMATION PROTOCOLS. This. Is. Huge. And potentially friendship breaking... like you have any.

Speaking of Reanimation protocol: It now works... differently. You do not roll per model, PER WOUND. But that is not all. During the shooting and fighting phases, you roll on reanimation protocols every time an enemy unit finishes attacking one of your units with Reanimation Protocols and has killed at least one model in the unit, unless the entire unit got destroyed. (Not abilities, morale tests or psychic fuckery) This is also all or nothing- if a model has multiple wounds, you need to succeed (on a 5+. 4+ if affected by a Reanimator) on all of the wounds a model has to bring it back.

Single wound models like Warriors and Immortals reanimate the same as always, one die per guy since they are only one wound each. Remember the reanimation reroll on Warriors!

For multiwound units: For example, you have a unit of 10 Lychguard. They have 2 wounds each- that's 20 wounds in the unit. During your opponent's shooting phase, your Lychguard encountered the business end of a [[Stormlord|vulcan-mega bolter]]. Thankfully, it only killed 5 of them, and the rest of the weapons took down an additional two.

Seven Lychguard died, and the Stormlord's shooting is complete. This means 14 wounds. So, you roll 14d6. Set aside results of 5+; for each one, you can regain one wound. A Lychguard will not revive until you heal all of its wounds; any left over are lost. Let us say you rolled really well and got 6 fives and 5 sixes. That's 11 wounds back. This is enough to equal the wounds of 5 Lychguard, so you bring 5 Lychguard back from the dead. The single wound left over is not enough to bring back another Lychguard. Eight Lychguard remain.

Reanimation Orbs now allow a once-a-game reanimation roll for a given unit based off the base number of models they started the game with. This gives you one last chance to bring as many back as you can.

Did I mention Technomancers just straight up bring back a model with their Rites of Reanimation ability? Because they can. They can bring back one Infantry model, and if it's a Warrior unit, 1d3 Warriors, during the Command Phase. Stick one behind a unit of Heavy Destroyers and give an opponent fits.

There are now melee destroyers! To differentiate them, the classic hovering destroyers are called Lokhusts, while the melee variant are called Skorpekhs. They walk on three crab legs and are basically 40k versions of the Ossiarch Bonereapers' Necropolis Stalkers. Even their weapon options are similar. Skorpekhs even get their own Lord! These boys can melt through a Marine's armor like a hot knife through butter. If you ever felt Lychguard were too slow and lacked natural rerolls, this unit is the unit for you.

The Monolith got a fancy new resculpt. It is now a Lord of War and is extremely expensive both IRL and ingame. It has a new anti-armor loadout that replaces its gauss arrays with Death Rays. DEATH RAYS. They even got bumped up to a 2+ armor save. They still die surprisingly quickly due to not having any save vs Mortals, no FNP, and no built-in invuln save. Pair these with a Chronomancer.