Necrons and Convoy missions

[Bozeman]

Hey all, I've been playing Gothic for a while, but I haven't had a chance to play until recently when I found someone else in the area with a fleet.  I have a few, one of which is Necrons.  Because my new friend is unfamiliar with Gothic, we've been playing a new mission every game.  He's also been sampling a different fleet every game.  For our next game, he wants to play against the Necrons in a Convoy mission.

Later, I thought that the Necrons can't really play the Convoy mission like other fleets.  They don't have access to the Planetary Defences list and so can't take transports.  In addition, they have no torpedoes or attack craft.

So, I'd like the opinion of all of you Gothic fans, which of the following options best describes how the Necrons would play Convoy?

1. Necrons do not have access to the Planetary Defences list, and so cannot legally take transports.  IN addition, they have no ordnance of any kind in their fleet list.  Therefore, they cannot be the attackers or the defenders, and so can't play the Convoy mission at all.

2. Even though Necrons can't normally take options from the defences list, the Convoy mission specifically states that the defender gets 2 transports for every 100 points of their fleet.  Therefore, they can be the defenders (assume the transports are captured, like Dark Eldar can?).  However, because they have no ordnance they cannot be the attackers.

3. Necrons can't take transports, so can't be the defenders.  However, the Convoy mission states that the ordnance that the attacker can receive is either torpedoes (assume regular torpedoes) or any of the regular attack craft.  Therefore, they can be the attacker and not the defender.

4. Best of both worlds: Necrons can take transports in order to be the defender even though they can't normally take choices from the Defences list.  Necrons can also be the attacker, and attack craft and torpedoes are the generic choices, even though the Necron fleet does not have an Ordnance section.

I'm thinking that 3 is the most "fluffy" option, as Necrons would never need slow crappy transports.  However, Necrons do have fighters, etc., and could have "deadfall" versions.  However, from a fun standpoint, 4 is the one that is the most fun.  From a rules-lawyer douche standpoint, you can make an argument for 1.

What do you think?

[Xca|iber]

Well I suppose the first question to ask is which version of the rules are you playing? (i.e. Classic, BFG:R, BFG:FR, FAQ 2007, FAQ 2010, etc) That way it'll be easier to help you out (or give some guidance about how other people have dealt with this issue).

[Bozeman]

FAQ 2010.  I really liked the changes in 2010.

[Xca|iber]

Alright. So assuming the regular rulebook + armada + FAQ 2010...

First off I'm not seeing any explicit restriction on Necrons using the default imperial transport ship (or planetary defenses, for that matter). That said, there's certainly some good fluff reasons why you wouldn't want to use imperial stuff in a Necron list.

As you said, though, Necrons don't have any formal attack craft or torpedoes in their fleet, and don't have any transports of their own, so there needs to be a bit of fudging to make them work (the unfortunate side effect of the fleet being written after the scenario - something to keep in mind when using anything other than IN, Chaos, Orks, or original Eldar).

With that in mind, I feel like Option 4 is the most fair (and most fun), because it can be generally applied to any fleet with similar issues in this scenario. (In other words, it's much more convoluted to come up with specific scenario modifications for each race than to just say "fudge it a bit and use imperial bits to fill the gaps").

Moreover, Necrons do have "attack craft" in the fluff  (as you said), so using generic fighters, bombers, assault boats, and regular "deadfall" torpedoes really isn't all that bad. Likewise, the "captured transport" excuse is perfectly valid, and one that comes up quite a bit throughout the BFG scenarios when you have a situation like this with factions that weren't around in the original BFG. (The authors were not especially concerned with giving each race its own transports, it seems).

If you'd like a 5th option, I might also suggest trying to use Dirges as your Necron transports, but take their cost from the allowed cost of defenders. You'll end up with a situation where the Necron transports move very fast, but have little in the way of defense squadrons (which makes some sense, as the Necrons hardly feel threatened by anything). Not necessarily more balanced, but could be an interesting take on Necrons as convoy defenders.