List Update: 1850 GT Final

At the end of October Gamer's Haven is hosting their GT and I am fully prepared to do my best at not sucking at this thing. It's one thing to win a 20 man tournament, it's an entirely different thing to win a 60 man tournament. I've decided to lock in my list early and play test the ever living shit out of it to ensure that my only excuses for losing at the tournament is bad dice/ no sleep/ the sun in my eyes/ society/ how broke the Chaos Marine codex is/ that I stubbed my toe. Not to mention the need to be fully painted before the tournament so I can maybe actually get some sleep for once before the tournament instead of painting all night... A novel concept I know. Anyway here is the list I am planning on bringing:

NECRONS: 1850

HQ: 320

(2x)Destroyer Lord: 160ea (320)

-Mindshackle Scarabs, Sempiternal Weave

TROOPS: 725

(2x) 8 Warriors 219ea (438)

-Ghost Ark

10 Immortals: 170

-Tesla Carbines

9 Warriors: 117

FAST: 410

(2x)5 Wraiths: 205ea (410)

-3 Whipcoils

HEAVY: 270

(3x)Annihilation Barge: 90ea (270)

FORT: 125

Bastion: 125

-Quad-gun

Breakdown: 

HQ:

Destroyer lords are my personal favorite HQ choice for Necrons in 6th edition, as time goes on I'm really beginning to see royal courts as more of a point sink than anything. Sure they add utility, and the lack of lanceteks can really be felt but the cost of adding them is too great in my eyes. The Destroyer Lords serve my army in an entirely different capacity. They act as force multipliers, usually leading my wraiths from the front and acting as a tank until the unit makes it's way into close combat. Once they are locked in to combat they provide preferred enemy to the wraiths, greatly increasing their combat ability. They also are able to peel off annoying fist sergeants win hand over hand to ap3 characters and generally do a pretty good job at keeping the heavy hitters at bay. They are more of a finesse HQ that requires that you cherry pick their roles on a combat by combat basis. Against other Necron HQs they generally go down pretty hard, as well as against most monstrous creatures. They are not the super combat beast that a lot of players seem to think they are. 

TROOPS:

I'm only bringing 4 troop choices, which is a bit less than I'd like to bring but overall I think they are durable enough that I dont need to worry too much about their performance. I'm bringing the Warriors in Ghost arks primarily as mobile scoring units/ anti-heavy armor. The tesla immortals and foot warriors can be used flexibly I can place either or both inside the bastion depending on my opponent's army build. Either way the foot units are my designated backfield protectors, if the mission calls for it I can utilize the tesla immortals as additional midfield support.

FAST:

Wraiths... Are amazing. They are the army's problem solvers. Against an assault centered enemy they can be used as backfield countercharge specialists. They can also be used as hunter-killers, sneaking through terrain towards the enemy backfield in order to shut down enemy fire support (broadsides, longfangs, devastators) or to contest enemy objectives. More often than not their primary use is as interceptor missiles, moving in and tying up enemy deathstars for the majority of the game. In this role they are very reliant on the Destroyer lord providing them preferred enemy so they can whittle down enemy numbers enough to survive multiple turns. Typically against enemy deathstars they are hitting on a 4+, the extra 8% chance to hit the D-lord provides on top of the extra chance at wounding/ rending can really push their output damage over the top. 

A common misconception is that the Wraiths are the core of my army and that I am relying on them to wade through and shut down the enemy army single-handedly. This often means that my opponents over-prioritize them. This usually works pretty well into my strategy, a Wraithstar is far more of an defensive than an offensive unit their goal is to draw enemy resources into dealing with them so that the rest of my army can accomplish their mission.
HEAVY:

Annihilation barges are one of my favorite vehicles in the game they are capable of producing some pretty incredible number when firing, they are extremely flexible, capable of handling anti-air, anti-transport, and anti-infantry all at a relatively even level of productiveness. Throw that on top of them being tough as nails and you've got a winning combination. I think many people underestimate just how good their flexibility is, unlike a night/doom scythe they can have 100% uptime during the entire game (able to fire at their optimal target) they can sit still and unload on a target if they find good cover/ dont need cover, they can move 6" and shoot at nearly full capacity if they are pursuing a ground target. They can move 12" and shoot at reduced capacity if they need to catch a unit that is further out. And most importantly is that they are great anti-air defense. They can always move 12" and still reach full anti-air firing capacity allowing them to almost always be in position to shut down flyers wherever they may pop up. And best of all if your playing against an air-force list you can flat out an annihilation barge in order to put them in defensive mode and ensure their surviveability against an oncoming flyer onslaught, all while moving them 18" to ensure that they are in position to catch enemy flyers wherever they end up coming in. 

FORT:

Finally we come to the Bastion. As good as Annihilation barges are you can unfortunately only take 3 in a single force org chart and against a flyer spam list usually they aren't enough to take out all of the flyers themselves, that's where the bastion comes in. In most other armies I personally would suggest aegis lines instead of bastions, however, since this army has armour saturation on av13+ the bastion is actually a force multiplier, requiring that my opponent commit the same kind of weaponry that is effective against my vehicles to the bastion if they want to deal with it... Which effectively increases the surviveabilty of my vehicles. Now if I could take another Annihilation barge in place of a bastion, you best believe I would, however I take what I can get and I'm happy with it. (Also it keeps my army from being completely overtly spammalicious)

Final Words

The two main themes I followed in the construction of this list were flexibility and durability. With 6 AV13+ models, and two units of what are effectively 2+/3++ (due to LoS!) marines with two wounds and jump packs this army isn't easy to remove from the board. The true beauty of the list comes from the fact that the current local metagame is heavily favoring mass Str6-8 fire to be used as anti-air weaponry... Which happens to be exactly the wrong kind of weapon you want to bring to bear against this list. It may lack the straight up fire power that other armies pack but I believe it's durability and ability to focus fire can win the day.