Can these be added to the existing mod or does a new release have to happen to add them?

If you set all terrain as blocking line of site the hills become less of an issue.

Agreed, on the terrain, but I think anyone who has even dabbled in VASSAL (and that is all I have so far) can tell you it leaves you feeling rather flat (figuratively and literally).  There is a lot to be said for rolling open hills and other types of terrain.  I'm not complaining - it is free and it allows us to do things that were previously difficult or impossible.  I just wanted to point it out for things like the Pylons where a true feel for the unit can only be achieved on a real board.  We can get close though.

Hena, thanks for the info.  It would be great to have Necrons (and other armies) available on VASSAL and I'll see what I can do to coax some changes.

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author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.

so it's been a few days since this thread started and over all there has not been a ton of problems mentioned. well i guess it would be more acurate in saying a ton were mentioned but by only a few people. does this mean that overall most people do not have a problem w/ this list?
like i said it's only been a few days but some of these discussions get pretty lengthy (tau).
or am i just a "glass half full type of guy?"

I've never played with it or against it. I don't know if any of the WHW Thursday regulars have tried the list either. I think there was some gaming done in London.

I've got a Tau playtest tentatively scheduled for tonight, but I'll see if I can get in any Necron games this weekend.

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"EPIC: Total War" Lead Developer

Now living in Boston... any EPIC players want to meet up?

Possibly, or possibly not that many people have necron armies

Anyway, I'm going to try to convince E&C to do an Obelisk Overload battle to see if there's any truth in my fears about them as a core formation.

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http://www.troublemakergames.co.uk/
Epic: Hive Development Thread

I agree with Zombocom; Unlike the Tau army which has lots of players, only a few players have built Necron armies.

If the majority of them are saying there are problems, we should probably listen to them.

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Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

from my experiences i found the following:

strategy rating - i felt obligated to take a c'tan cause strat rating 1 was too low for a teleport army, but i felt 3 was too high, a fixed value of 2 would be perfect.

obelisk - the stand alone formation has provided me with some decent shooting for potshots but without living metal they droped fast with a 5+ RA save, i have no problems with their cost. the bodyguard ones while cheaper also loose their maneuverability as the monolith is a ball and chain being slower.

pylons - these rarely had an effect on my games, i just pointed them at WE and hoped for the best, one of my regular opponents just picked up a vampire for his eldar so i look forward to seeing them do something useful. but as for changes 90cm sounds fair, its just enough to strike enemy deployment zones.

warbaque - i think its fine as is, good for softening up a unit for a 1-2 punch from the portal. while the 2 portal idea sounds cool i think it would be overpowered as it would let a unit charge out, and then fall back into reserve to safety straight away. an AA attack (even 6+) on the heavy gauss cannons on it and the heavy destroyers should help reduce the number of pylons.

c'tan bomb - normally blew my army up but it did go nuclear after a nid army that merged around the dominatrix from loss of synapse charged it......only like 5% of his army was left after that. given its meant to be a very powerful explosion but the problem is the fact its hitting a large area including units not involved with the action nearby.

my proposal with the c'tan crit would be make it TK1 but knock its range to 5cm, this way its going to vaporise whatever killed it in combat (fair revenge, even terminators and leman russ's shouldn't survive that, MW isnt good enough) but not kill the formation watching on the horizon.

and the reduced range means it wont rip your army to bits either, this way a lucky singe dice roll wont throw the game way out from massacaring the necrons to the necrons winning cause their leader blew up 75% of their army.

as for the rest of the army, i have no problems with knocking it to 2 support formations per core aswell as making the monolith unit a set unit size, 1 monolith and 2 obelisk for 200pts is a nicely rounded number. makes it a toss up between pylon and another monolith unit.

what do you guys think?

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HiddenEvil - The Evil within
-EA Necron contributor

Aw, don't you want me to sell lots of Zombie Euro Robot Symbols?

i think having the pylon w/ shorter range would hurt even more. having it further forward where more enemy guns could shoot it makes it an even bigger target. you could easily get 2 units to surpress it. w/ the long range it at least limits the amount of shots coming at it.
basically it is to easy to break and decreasing the range will make it easier.

The problem with pylons is when they are used in multiples, so some kind of restriction on multiples is probably a good idea.

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http://www.troublemakergames.co.uk/
Epic: Hive Development Thread

yes this is true, playing against one is fine (and maybe a bit underpowered agaist some armys) but someone using two is hard but not impossible to beat and three well i've not tried it but it's got to be tough to beat.

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"Dyslexia is a Privilege, not a right"

Take a look at my "Plethora of Pylons" playtest reports... three Pylons are *not* tough to beat at all.

An army with little or no aircraft has next to *nothing* to fear from them... the only armies that they terrify are "heavy air" armies, which, to me is fine, since every army type should have at least one thing the fear.

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"EPIC: Total War" Lead Developer

Now living in Boston... any EPIC players want to meet up?

Chroma: That's contrary to the multiple pylon tests Pulsar and I have tried, where the necrons wiped the floor with a mostly ground based Eldar army, and we both felt there was nothing the eldar could have done differently.

This is my reason for concern about battle reports, they can become regarded as canon when they can instead be anomolies.

The way I see it is that individual pylons are rubbish, but multiple pylons are broken. It's a tricky situation with no easy fix that I can see.  

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http://www.troublemakergames.co.uk/
Epic: Hive Development Thread

AA5+

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Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter