Thursday 20 August 2009

Forth the impetuous scarab swarms!

Scarabs are one of the most underestimated necron units. They come free with a box of warriors, they cost 12 points and they take up those precious fast attack slots that can be used for destroyers or wraiths. Despite all of those points which would lead one to believe that scarabs are just cannon fodder I believe that used correctly scarabs are lethal.

Because scarabs move like jetbikes they can turbo boost 24 inches in the first turn, which gives them a 4+ invulnerable save against those nasty heavy weapons and it also sets them up for a turn two charge. Then there's the fact that they're cheap and expendable. With the 4+ invulnerable save granted they should be able to absorb lots of fire that would otherwise be pumped into your other troops. Not only that but they don't count towards your phase out limit, which means their deaths are of little importance.

The sheer number of attacks that a sizeable swarm of scarabs can churn out is easily enough to kill your enemy's biggest, shootiest unit or at least tie them up for a few turns. Another absolutely key feature that scarabs have is disruption fields. These allow the scarabs to score glancing hits if they roll a 6 on the armour penetration roll. With 40 attacks on a stationary vehicle about 6 or 7 glancing hits will be scored, easily enough to cripple or destroy a vehicle. In this way a 160 point scarab swarm could do the nasty with a land raider, battlewagon or even an enemy monolith (should you ever find yourself in that position) and bag double their points worth of tank. Then they'd attract a large amount of firepower away from your warriors and such, buying you more time to execute your plan.

Greg out.

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