Night Scythe

The original flying croissant.

Night Scythes, also known as Flying Space Croissants, are a flying piece of Necron technology introduced in 5th Edition that, at the start of 6th edition is one of the many reasons people called the 'crons Mega-Cheese. Fluff wise though, these are your transports to your Doom Scythe fighters.

Unlike most troop transports however, these craft do not contain any transportation compartment. Instead, they ride into battle with a captive wormhole linked to a distant Tomb World built into its hull. As all Necrons are made of inorganic Necrodermis, they don't really need to care about any adverse affects of that wormhole.

Despite their emphasis on transportation, these vehicles are armed with twin-linked Tesla Destructors and are still formidable craft in their own right when compared to the attack craft of lesser races.


On the TabletopEdit

5th EditionEdit

The Night Scythe provides the Necrons with a flying transport option, While a flying transport's not all that weird (after all, the IG have Valkyries and the Space Marines have Thunderhawks), the Night Scythe had some things going for it that other flying transports didn't, which is why it was regarded as a cheese machine before everyone got decent anti-air:

  • Firstly was that it could be taken as a dedicated transport, this at the start of sixth edition meant that you could flood the board with these, if you couple that with their extremely fast speed and pretty decent weaponry your opponent would have no reasonable way of dealing with them. Sure they were a bit pricey but their durability (remember that back then nearly everyone needed 6's to hit them) made them almost guaranteed to make their points back.
  • The second (and very minor) difference was that if those other flying transports crash, they can potentially kill members of the squad it was carrying. If a Night Scythe crashes, since it technically uses a wormhole to another area to move troops around (similar to the monolith but smaller), the Necrons waiting "in" it enter ongoing reserves instead (though they cannot deep strike), denying your opponent a much weaker unit to score an easy kill point off of.

7th EditionEdit

Still awesome. A little pricier... but still just as awesome as ever. Moved into fast attack... so...

Fast attack your opponent off the table! Stay focused on your warriors of course, but you wont regret it.

The Night Scythe took a Nerf with the release of Death From the Skies, both Scythes lost Sky Fire removing a standard Necron force's anti-air capability.

8th EditionEdit

Now they're in the dedicated Flyers role, among the many other changes made to vehicles.

Forces of the Necrons
Command: Cryptek - Destroyer Lord - Necron Lord - Necron Overlord - Phaeron
Troops: C'tan Shards - Deathmarks - Flayed Ones - Immortals
Lychguards - Necron Warriors - Triarch Praetorians
Constructs: Canoptek Spyder - Canoptek Wraith - Crypt Stalker
Scarab - Tomb Sentinel - Tomb Stalker - Seraptek Heavy Construct
Vehicles: Annihilation Barge - Catacomb Command Barge - Doomsday Ark
Ghost Ark - Monolith - Sentry Pylon - Triarch Stalker - Tesseract Ark
Flyers: Canoptek Acanthrite - Doom Scythe - Heavy Destroyers
Necron Destroyers - Night Scythe - Night Shroud - Tomb Blades
Abattoir - Æonic Orb - Doomsday Monolith - Megalith
Necron Pylon - Obelisk - Tesseract Vault