Andy Quas-Cohen, better known to competitive Warhammer 40k players as Andy QC, is one of the best Necron commanders in the world. Currently number 11 on the global ELO leaderboard, he was the ITC’s top-rated Necron player in both 2024 and 2025, and has piloted the undead androids to victory after victory since ninth edition. For this interview he’s sharing his tactical insights into the ancient and eldritch Xenos, and how he expects the dynasties will fare in Warhammer 40k 11th edition.
This is the fourth interview in Wargamer’s masters series, where we talk to players at the very top of the game about the Warhammer 40k factions they’ve built their reputations with. Every competitive player I’ve talked to has been wonderful, and their insights are just as valuable for casual and narrative players as they are for tournament grinders.
Raising the dynasty
According to Quas-Cohen, the Necrons are tough as living metal. “Things like C’tan, Warrior blobs, in the past Lychguard, units that are just really hard to kill that then come back afterwards can make a joke of a lot of armies”. When it comes to throwing a punch, “they’re more of a shooting focused faction; things like the Tesseract Vault, Silent King, Doomsday Arks, they’re the bread and butter of a shooting army”. “A lot of other armies don’t want to see them on the table because they’re very tricky to deal with”, he adds.
Despite this shooting focus, “they also have a lot of different ways of building a list and playing the list”, Quas-Cohen says. “In some armies you’re very focused on one particular style, maybe two, but with Necrons, with the detachments we’ve got and the units we’ve got, there’s a lot of different ways of playing – you can fill any gap”.
But he warns any new Necron players not to expect list building to be simple plug and play. “Finding the way that you want to play and then collecting the units for that way of playing” is a massive challenge for aspiring Overlords. “There are some armies [where you can] just look at the best datasheets and put them together, and it’ll work”, Quas-Cohen says, “whereas, if you do that with Necrons, the balance won’t necessarily be there between surviving, killing, and scoring, you have to consider all three”. “It’s not always the best data-sheets that are best at those three roles”, he adds.
Actually delving into each detachment is beyond the scope of the interview, but Quas-Cohen wants to impress on new players that “it’s easy just to collect a generic amount of models, but they don’t always work together in detachments”. In other words, this is an army that requires a little bit more research before you commit to buying a specific set of minis. For more intel, check out the Command Protocols competitive play podcast which Quas-Cohen co-hosts.
Assuming you can get that well tuned list, you should also be prepared to “struggle with melee a bit more than anything else”, Quas-Cohen says, “Simply because a lot of our options are either a bit slow or a bit lethargic when it comes to the damage. or they just don’t survive combat”.
This has particular issues for defensive melee units intended to unstick your lines from enemy assaults. “If you’re heroically intervening into something and they fight into you, your unit could just die – or you heroically intervene, but then you don’t kill them”. The monstrous C’tan are an exception, but they’re “expensive, and there are some armies that can just kill them quite happily”.
“Trying to find that balance between shooting and having some melee presence that has to be respected is the key bit”, Quas-Cohen says. It’s a weakness that Necrons just have to accept. “We don’t have a lot of ways of building a big alpha strike army where we can just go at the enemy and kill everything”, he says, “you’re always looking for good trades where you can gain small advantages over time which will snowball into a win, and identifying what units your opponent needs to win the game and trying to eliminate those”.
Looking to 11th edition
At the time of our interview the detachment points and dispositions for the Necrons aren’t yet available, but Quas-Cohen is upbeat about their prospects in 11th edition. “The core rules are quite friendly for us”, he says,”I think we’re going to be one of the boogie men at the start of 11th!” He expects that this will “come with inevitable nerfs – but as I said before we have lots of options to fall back on, so the future for Necrons looks bright”.
“Being able to use our big vehicles a lot more easily due to pivot and movement changes will be huge for our mobility”, he say, “and the Tesseract Vault having its own detachment is awesome as it’s the best model in the game!”.
In case you missed it, The Phaeron’s Armoury detachment buffs both the Obelisk and the colossal Tesseract Vault with +6″ movement as well as extra stratagems and enhancements. “The Obelisk needs to be just that little bit better… no-one’s played them the whole edition”, he says, adding “I really want to see the Tesseract Vault moving more than its actual width, ’cause it’s 10 inches wide and it only moves eight inches”.
“Add in the new shooting rules regarding toeing in to terrain to shoot out rather than having to be wholly within, and the extra move penalties for charging jump pack infantry, means we might be a bit safer with the gun line”, he says. “C’tan are going to be even better and more threatening due not having to move around terrain, so expect to see more star gods than ever before”.
He also thinks that if Triarch Stalkers keep their 10th edition rules they might see more play, thanks to “their ability to strip cover for the rest of our army” – effectively +1BS for your troops. And with enemy units unable to stack offensive strategems, they’ll have a bit more survivability.
“The only thing that gives me a small concern is, characters aside, our army tends to be quite a low leadership one, which for a group of undying liquid metal robots seems quite strange!” With battle-shock now persistent between turns even for units above half strength, “we might need to consider more Royal Wardens running around to score primary objectives”.
As a long-term and fully committed Necron player, Quas-Cohen has a substantial wishlist for the 11th edition codex. “Some of our cool characters were removed in ninth edition because they were resin, they didn’t have new models”, he says, “I’d like to see them return”. One wish that seems eminently likely is for “the Deceiver to get his massive new model” to match the other updated C’tan. When I suggest that maybe the Tesseract vault could do with an upgraded kit, he jokes “I don’t want them to change that kit because I’ve got three of them and they were expensive!”.
As for detachments, he only has one complaint. “I’d like the replacement for the Destroyer detachment [Annihilation Legion] to actually be good, because it’s been terrible for the entirety of 10th and they haven’t addressed it at all”, Quas-Cohen laments. His prayers may have been answered by the first 11th edition Faction Pack for the ‘Crons, as it updates the rules for the Annihilation Legion and gives all Destroyer Cult models +1AP whenever they target the closest enemy unit as well as the existing bonuses.
But overall, he thinks that the detachment system from 10th “where we have different options and we’re not all just shoehorned into playing one style” has worked well – “I’d like that to stay in 11th”.
Really, his main hope is that the codex is good “but not ridiculously broken, because then everybody jumps on the bandwagon”. There are plenty of excellent players who army-hop to the perceived top faction in the meta, and if they land on the Necrons the “win rate will go through the roof, then we’ll get nerfed to the ground”. Ah, the life-cycle of codex balancing. “Then they’ll all run away, and it’s left to people like me to pick up the pieces”.
Rebuilding from the ashes seems perfectly fitting for the Necrons, but here’s hoping that their codex does indeed turn out in the balance sweet spot, with lots of fun options. If you’re going to join the fight to reclaim the lost worlds of your dynasty, why not hop into the Wargamer Discord community and share your progress?
Source: Wargamer
