Hi.

There is a topic about fluff changes in the Tyranids that has turned into a debate about Necrons in 3rd edition. At some point, Psienesis wrote this:

 Psienesis wrote:

The Necron Codex is really good, and actually gives flavor and personality to a faction that was sorely in need of something other than being "killer robots from outer space". The best thing about Codex: Necron? You can still play Killer Robots from Outer Space. Nothing in the new Codex makes that storyline obsolete, it simply gives people who want to do something else with their Necrons the fluff to do so with.

I don´t think this is right.

 da001 wrote:
They were not trying to kill everything.

After being defeated by Chaos during the Enslaver Plague, they retreated and let the Enslavers starve to death. But they planted the seeds of their victory. The Necrons meddled with the Old One´s genetic projects and started a guided evolution that would eventually create the nulls. There were also buildings and machines that were supposed to be part of a plan to sever the link between Chaos and the real world, with the Cadian Pylons being the best known example: constructions that stopped the growing of the Eye of Terror.

Once awaken, the Necron started to recollect their weapons. They had Harvester Fleets searching for what they had sown millions of years ago. They captured the humans with the proper genes and turn them into pariahs. They set traps to lure the Callidus assassins to recover the C´tan phase swords. They also lured members of the Adeptus Mechanicus and of the Inquisition to learn more about the sentient species they were going to wage war with.

And I am not even mentioning the countless conspiracy theories about the Deceiver being Chegorah, creating the Tau Ethereals, being the Emperor or the one giving Abbadon Drach´nyen.

Lots of stuff. It is ok if someone prefers the new fluff, but saying that the old was all about "killer robots from outer space" is completely unfair. Compared to the old stuff, the new fluff is quite simplistic.

And the Dragon trapped in mars, captured by the Emperor and fuelling mankind´s technology!

This was Psienesis answer:
More people joined the debate, this is Void__Dragon answer to Psienesis


So I am taking all this to a new thread.

Do you think the Necrons were just "killer robots from outer space"?

Nulls affect any type of psychic race so I can imagine that a whole army of Pariahs would have tipped the balance in favour of the Necron, after all, the Achilles heel of the C'tan seems to be Psykers.

Enslavers aren't Chaotic in nature, they are warp denizens. Although according to Liber Chaotica, when the Eldar requested the assistance of their Gods, Daemons did appear.

I also preferred the previous Necron story in most regards, it's not that different to be fair and with a bit of jumbling up could still fit. I think the C'tan still pulling the strings was better than having shards.

I do disagree with the Dragon only being a shard as the notion of shards wasn't created at the time Mechanicum was written, but that's just my opinion.

My thoughts on the subject are well-documented.

 Void__Dragon wrote:
My thoughts on the subject are well-documented.

Indeed

They were basically robo-tyranids, yeah.

Ok, my answer to Psienesis:

 Psienesis wrote:

 da001 wrote:
They were not trying to kill everything.

After being defeated by Chaos during the Enslaver Plague, they retreated and let the Enslavers starve to death. But they planted the seeds of their victory. The Necrons meddled with the Old One´s genetic projects and started a guided evolution that would eventually create the nulls. There were also buildings and machines that were supposed to be part of a plan to sever the link between Chaos and the real world, with the Cadian Pylons being the best known example: constructions that stopped the growing of the Eye of Terror.

Which doesn't make any narrative sense, because the Necrons were already roboted at this point. Why are they worried about the Enslaver plague? Better to posit their conflict with the resurgent Eldar, whom they had already been fighting for unknown numbers of years (possibly millions), as this ties them into the 40K setting more closely (because there is no Codex: Enslavers) and provides a more cohesive narrative. And a race of nulls is great... for that one race. Doesn't do much for the Eldar or the Ork or any of the other races created directly by the Old Ones. In fact, it would seem (even in those days) that the Old Ones got the last laugh, as the Orks continue to be the most-dominant race in the galaxy.

They worried because they were getting defeated. The Necron Lords always had a personality of their own. They were inhuman, but not "mere robots". Of course many things in the old fluff make no sense if they were just robots. This just means that they were not.

Exchanging the Enslavers for the Eldar is also a bad move. The Eldar being moved 60 million years into the past makes absolutely no sense. Their empire lasted 60 million years!!?? Talk about total lack of sense of scale here.

And why didn´t they destroy the Necrons while they were weak?. They got sixty million years to do it. In the Enslavers case, the answer is easy: they are not particularly intelligent parasites, lacking the technology to track the Necrons. It made sense to hide until they starved.

And the loss of a full race would be in itself a bad thing. This setting has lots of interesting, diverse stuff, yet this has no real representation in the game, which is marines against marines and more marines with the occasional humanoid xeno. I would love to see a Codex: Enslavers, and retconning nearly out of existence a xeno breed of such power and significance shouldn´t be seen as something good for the setting.

Once awaken, the Necron started to recollect their weapons. They had Harvester Fleets searching for what they had sown millions of years ago. They captured the humans with the proper genes and turn them into pariahs. They set traps to lure the Callidus assassins to recover the C´tan phase swords. They also lured members of the Adeptus Mechanicus and of the Inquisition to learn more about the sentient species they were going to wage war with.

Why? Why would they do this? This doesn't make any sense, because the Chaos that the Necrons knew is not the Chaos that M40 knows. The various Chaos Gods that exist in M40 did not, to the Necron way of reckoning, exist then. Why Necrons would invent a "pariah gene" for a race that they had no way of knowing was going to become anything, while fighting the Enslavers/Eldar, and then also trying to forecast sixty million years into the future to predict the Tau.... no narrative cohesion or even internal logic.

They are fighting Chaos itself. The Primordial Annihilator. It has changed some names, but it is still the same thing. And I think it works fine with the Necron way of thinking. And why “forecast the Tau”? There were some hints that the Tau Ethereals were Tau modified by the C´tan, but that´s all.

They are still luring those (and other) people to them, that's what Mind Shackle Scarabs are for, and have been depicted as doing in the novels that feature them.

You cannot seriously compare the C´tan cults, the Deceiver´s infinite schemes and Necrons manipulating inquisitors or imperial governors with the use of a single weapon in combat. The 3rd edition Codex was infinitely richer in this regard.

And I am not even mentioning the countless conspiracy theories about the Deceiver being Chegorah, creating the Tau Ethereals, being the Emperor or the one giving Abbadon Drach´nyen.

Fan theories, I don't give weight to those.

The fact that so many fan theories were ripe is in itself a sign of how interesting was the old background. Now people wonder who Trazin has imprisioned… Before we had potential ground-breaking revelations that would shatter the setting.

Lots of stuff. It is ok if someone prefers the new fluff, but saying that the old was all about "killer robots from outer space" is completely unfair. Compared to the old stuff, the new fluff is quite simplistic.

Nothing you've said here paints them as anything other than Killer Robots from Outer Space. The fluff of the C'Tan is... irrelevant, really, and hasn't really changed. Things simply make more sense now. Case in point... you're a star-eating Space-God. Why would you carry a sword? The hell are you going to do with it? A "C'Tan Phase Sword" doesn't make sense from the internal logic, unless we assume that is what humanity called them, not knowing any different. Why would a C'Tan carry a sword? So it just being an example of Necron future-tech is fine... and that hasn't changed either (and has, in fact, been expanded greatly).

The fluff on the C´tan has been radically changed: from godlike beings competing with the Chaos Gods that were instrumental in the setting to pokemons with no relevance at all. They were as powerful as a Chaos God and now they cannot compete with a Riptide.

And the C´tan (if it was a C´tan) wasn´t carrying a sword. He lured the assassin to get the sword, to which he spoke as if it was a sentient being as he absorbed it into itself.

And the Dragon trapped in mars, captured by the Emperor and fuelling mankind´s technology!

Still a theory. Nothing in the recent Codex refutes this (or proves it), other than to imply that it's possibly a Shard, not the full Void Dragon... which makes sense. If the Emperor was able to defeat a god-like C'Tan with an iron sword and a horse, then he could have dueled Horus in his sleep.

Why so? Horus was his son and he was bolstered by something exceedingly rare: the four more powerful Chaos Gods acting together. And the Void Dragon was supposed to be weakened.

The Emperor having problems to defeat a current C´tan shard with his bare hands would be unbelievable. Whatever the Emperor is, he is at least as powerful (in some senses) as a Chaos God.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BlaxicanX wrote:
They were basically robo-tyranids, yeah.

Why so?

 BlaxicanX wrote:
They were basically robo-tyranids, yeah.

Now they are basically robo-Eldar.

 da001 wrote:

And why didn´t they destroy the Necrons while they were weak?.

They were too busy fighting the Enslavers maybe?

Were the Necrons just "killer robots" in 3rd edition?

Yes, they were.

And it was glorious.

That's not to say they were mindlessly slaughtering whatever they found, but they were certainly far more evil than Wardcrons. And therefore far cooler.

When did the Necrons not mindlessly slaughter whatever they found? The only times I can think of them not going omnicidal on a living thing was when they wanted to kidnap it or shove a probe up its ass.

Generally, when they wanted to kidnap it or shove a probe up it's ass

What I'm saying is that it wasn't just mindless slaughter... there was some thought to it. For example, making Pariahs.

About the Void Dragon, wasn't it hinted that it escaped the protective care of whatever Ward was there in "Mechanicum"?
I could have sworn that the whole point of the (can't remember her name)'s roll was to ascend to keep the Dragon locked on Mars away from the prying eyes of the Mechanicus?
Hell, it even goes into a "vision" (if I recall, it's been a while since I've read it), that shows the Emperor, as stated before, fighting a "dragon" with a sword in armor on a horse.
I could be wrong, feel free to chime in and correct me. I'm enjoying this discussion, because I find the Necron's to be one of the most fascinating species in the Grim Dark.

On a side note, in every case in which they appear in BL novels, they have no regard to anything living. They utterly destroyed the Word Bearers when they were hunting for their mysterious Orb, and made Captain Sicarius look like a wimp on Damnos.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
When did the Necrons not mindlessly slaughter whatever they found? The only times I can think of them not going omnicidal on a living thing was when they wanted to kidnap it or shove a probe up its ass.

Well, we have that time when a Necron Lord manipulated inquisitors and members of the Adeptus Mechanicus to gather information about sentient species. And that time when a Necron "something" disguised as an Imperial Governor for years in order to lure an imperial assassin. And then we have Necrons creating heretical cults inside the Mechanicus. And what about enslaving humans and turning them into Pariahs? Actually, they were more about enslaving.

Humans were like ants to them. But they weren´t "mindlessly slaughtering" humans. There was a plan.

 Pilau Rice wrote:

 da001 wrote:

And why didn´t they destroy the Necrons while they were weak?.

They were too busy fighting the Enslavers maybe?

That could be cool... but still doesn´t make sense. They were doing that for 60 million years? The scale of time invalidates the "the Eldar did it" solution.

 liquidjoshi wrote:
they were certainly far more evil than Wardcrons. And therefore far cooler.

Agreed

Well the Necrons went into hiding didn't they, so by the time the Eldar had finished forcing the Enlsavers back to the Warp the Necrons had vanished, or so it seemed ... DUN DUN DUUUUUHHHHH

Ey that actually makes sense...

 Void__Dragon wrote:

 BlaxicanX wrote:
They were basically robo-tyranids, yeah.

Now they are basically robo-Eldar.

For so few words it emcopasses most of my feelings on the newcrons.

As far as the oldcrons go. they were somewhat different from nids. Nids are more like a virus, simple, to the point and wipe out everything. The oldcrons (atleast C'Tan) very much had a vested interest in keeping life in the galaxy (farming food, growing weapons) as well as defending themselves from there main weakness, the warp.

I don't recall the C'tan losing to the Enslavers being stated in the old background. It always seemed more that the Enslavers were just killing off all their food. Never made sense to me why they didn't just finish the Great Work and seal off the Warp when their enemies were effectively neutralised. Nor why the Deceiver didn't dominate the setting in 40K when he'd had millennia to run rampant. Considering his supposed power he shouldn't need to just operate with subtlety. He could have just destroyed the Blackstone Fortresses himself and topple the Imperium by draining Terra's sun. When everyone else had their gods unable to exercise their fully power in the Materium the Necrons should have dominated the galaxy in the timespan they had but instead did nothing much other than play tricks.

da001 wrote:And I am not even mentioning the countless conspiracy theories about the Deceiver being Chegorah, creating the Tau Ethereals, being the Emperor or the one giving Abbadon Drach´nyen.

Only two of these would be remotely plausible (the Ethereals and the sword). The Deceiver giving Abaddon his sword cheapens that character and makes the most powerful Chaos force the pawn of another faction. I don't understand why the Deceiver liked Chaos so much anyway. You'd think the most Psychically potent force in the galaxy (now that the Eldar are restricted) would be more of a concern to the C'tan but instead it's apparently beneficial to help them along.

That could be cool... but still doesn´t make sense. They were doing that for 60 million years?

They wouldn't have been fighting them for that long but it could have distracted the Eldar while the Necrons went into stasis. Identifying Tomb Worlds could well have been a long and arduous process and without knowing where they were it would have taken considerable resources. Not to mention it's entirely possible that they didn't want to resume a war with the faction which had just destroyed their creators. It's unlikely that they knew how weakened the Necrons were or that they'd shattered the C'tan.

SomeRandomEvilGuy wrote:
I don't recall the C'tan losing to the Enslavers being stated in the old background. It always seemed more that the Enslavers were just killing off all their food. Never made sense to me why they didn't just finish the Great Work and seal off the Warp when their enemies were effectively neutralised.

The Necrons were unable to stop the Enslavers. I am counting that as a defeat. It is in page 26, but I don´t have an English Codex right know. A translation would be like: they "flew" from them. "Apocaliptic" and "catastrophic" are used to describe the Enslaver Plague. They "found a solution" to "escape" from them. Also, they didn´t finish the Great Work and seal off the Warp because of this. They were escaping. They hid. For millions of years. The Great Work was interrupted.

Nor why the Deceiver didn't dominate the setting in 40K when he'd had millennia to run rampant. Considering his supposed power he shouldn't need to just operate with subtlety. He could have just destroyed the Blackstone Fortresses himself and topple the Imperium by draining Terra's sun. When everyone else had their gods unable to exercise their fully power in the Materium the Necrons should have dominated the galaxy in the timespan they had but instead did nothing much other than play tricks.

He was sleeping. It is said in page 26 too that the C´tan slept for millions of years, and only two have awaken.Also I am not sure about the amount of power the C´tan have after waking up. They are clearly not yet at god-like level.

That could be cool... but still doesn´t make sense. They were doing that for 60 million years?

They wouldn't have been fighting them for that long but it could have distracted the Eldar while the Necrons went into stasis. Identifying Tomb Worlds could well have been a long and arduous process and without knowing where they were it would have taken considerable resources. Not to mention it's entirely possible that they didn't want to resume a war with the faction which had just destroyed their creators. It's unlikely that they knew how weakened the Necrons were or that they'd shattered the C'tan.

Ok I get it.
Still, nothing of the like is said in the last Codex. The writer needed a reason for the Necrons to hide and for some reason the Enslavers were retconned. So he took a 40k army from 60 million years in the future and used it. Not a single sentence is given to turn this nonsensical assertion into something acceptable. We can talk about how this madness can be understood, but at least is really, really lazy writing.

I miss the Oldcrons, soooooo much. Newcrons are just Tomb Kings in space, which annoys me.

the older crons were wanna-be terminators in space...

Old Crons were Cthulhu Robots. They heralded the end of life. They would rise, harvest and then sleep. They were another death knell for the Eldar.

They didn't ally with anybody.
They were quite capable of superluminal speeds.
They didn't rely on Warp travel.

They were shadows of their former selves in mechanical bodies. Only the Lords, and to a lesser extent Immortals/Destroyers, had a limited grasp of what they once were. They were hatred brought to life.

The two things I wish they had kept were the Superluminal travel and the Four C'tan, with the Dragon on Mars. Everything else in the new codex is fine, I just wish they had kept those two things. Necrons have been massively downgraded in terms of galactic threat.

Oh and one last thing I wish had been kept in, no allying with anybody ever.

What's the question here? Did Necrons just want to destroy all life back in the day? Yes.
Basically, they were death incarnate.

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
I miss the Oldcrons, soooooo much. Newcrons are just Tomb Kings in space, which annoys me.

And the old ones are just Tyranids in Metal Bodies, with the only interesting things being the C'tan..Which were Mary Sue Villains.

Well, we have that time when a Necron Lord manipulated inquisitors and members of the Adeptus Mechanicus to gather information about sentient species. And that time when a Necron "something" disguised as an Imperial Governor for years in order to lure an imperial assassin. And then we have Necrons creating heretical cults inside the Mechanicus. And what about enslaving humans and turning them into Pariahs? Actually, they were more about enslaving.

Humans were like ants to them. But they weren´t "mindlessly slaughtering" humans. There was a plan.

The funny thing is, that's not Necrons.

That's all C'tan, the Deceiver as the Governor, there was no plan. They just want to cut off the warp and be complete from it, which will kill everything within the galaxy anyways. The Necrons create and do nothing, simple followers of their 'Synapse' C'tans, who order and use them to move things along, and who will simply go back to feeding once done with their task against chaos.

Everyone seems to attribute it to Necrons, when it's all C'tan. Codex: C'tans would've been a more interesting idea to say the least..

Necron Lords had a personality of their own. It was a Necron Lord who manipulated the Inquisition, not a C´tan. Not all Necron forces are commanded by C´tans.

Which means that the same reasoning can be applied to all Chaos forces, with Chaos Gods doing everything, and to the Tyranids (Hive Mind).

And there is a plan, you are saying that it is "C´tan´s plan" and not "Necrons´ plan". But it is not mindless killing.

 da001 wrote:
Necron Lords had a personality of their own. It was a Necron Lord who manipulated the Inquisition, not a C´tan. Not all Necron forces are commanded by C´tans.

Which means that the same reasoning can be applied to all Chaos forces, with Chaos Gods doing everything, and to the Tyranids (Hive Mind).

And there is a plan, you are saying that it is "C´tan´s plan" and not "Necrons´ plan". But it is not mindless killing.

Except the Chaos Forces fight to get the attention of the chaos gods, they aren't simple machines programmed by the C'tan to get them more food, the chaos forces can think outside of what was given to them.

And yes the Hive Mind does everything...Which is why it's a Hive Mind and why the Tyranids are genetically modified and manufactured in an evolutionary process.

Much like the C'tan wanted of the Necrons, mindless machines that'll do their bidding in time.

Forgive the necron noobiness here but I was under the impression that the necrons now controlled the C'Tan? After the war in heaven didn't they shoot the living hell out of them and put the shards in tesseract vaults letting them out to stretch their legs once in a while?

The Eldar and the Ork have always been contemporaries of the Necrons, as they have always been the two "biggest" races created by the Old Ones (who "seeded the galaxy with life"... they are the Rakata of 40K). That neither of these two races apparently did anything during the War in Heaven was an omission of glaring inconsistency. Why would the favored children of the Old Ones *not* fight the Necrons and the C'Tan?

That is why the Eldar are now (or, rather, still... they were never, ever a "young race" in 40K) a sixty-plus million year old empire of space-elves. They were contemporaries of the Necron, as were the Krork.

Still, nothing of the like is said in the last Codex. The writer needed a reason for the Necrons to hide and for some reason the Enslavers were retconned. So he took a 40k army from 60 million years in the future and used it. Not a single sentence is given to turn this nonsensical assertion into something acceptable. We can talk about how this madness can be understood, but at least is really, really lazy writing.

Read James Swallow's Hammer and Anvil and Faith and Fire.

MSS are only a battlefield weapon on the tabletop (like every other weapon presented in the Codices) in the fluff of the Necrons it is so much more.

Necron Lords had a personality of their own. It was a Necron Lord who manipulated the Inquisition, not a C´tan. Not all Necron forces are commanded by C´tans.

Right. There is now. There wasn't then. Back then, it was A C'Tan with Its Armies of Killer Robots from Outer Space.

Back then it was "Necron Tomb World awakens. Necrons find living things. Necrons harvest all living things, in a program they call The Red Harvest (Necrons aren't a poetic race). Necrons go back to sleep. More living things return to find planet utterly lifeless, wonder WTF just happened here. Rinse, repeat. Robo-mustache twirling commences."

As far as C'Tan went? There were more than just the Void Dragon and the Deceiver. We also had Nightbringer, who was (and continues to be) the source of Grim Reaper symbolism throughout every sentient species in the galaxy. We had Llandu'gor, who gave us the Flayer Virus and the Flayed Ones. There was the Outsider, who was apparently a Crazy C'Tan. There was all those that they gave names to, but never any details (ran out of time writing the Codex? Intended future supplement never published? Who knows!) Iash'uddra, Kalugura, Og'driada, Yggra'nya and Nyadra'zatha... who somehow gave the Necrons the keys to the Webway, even though the C'Tan were completely physical-reality creatures... how the star-gods did anything with the Warp was a narrative conundrum that has yet to be resolved, incidentally, though further details on the War in Heaven make more sense with 5E Codex:Necrons... and, also, whether or not the C'Tan ever actually fought the Old Ones is cast into question, for the C'Tan that mentions this is the Deceiver. Which, again, makes sense. Why would they care? They are star-eating space-vampires.

Enslavers are still around, just as a background xeno-creature. They have a lot more going on in the various 40K RPGs and other, non-wargame sources. Makes sense. If you had a badass army like the Necrons (pre-5E) who got their asses kicked by the Enslavers, why would you not have an Enslaver product line to return to challenge the Necrons, since no one else in the galaxy apparently could?

GW didn't go that route, though, there was no narrative challenge to the Necrons. The Enslavers never returned to the game, as far as the tabletop was concerned, and became something of a MacGuffin. Narratively, this doesn't make sense.

So, to continue with the theme of every main faction having a diametric opposite, the Necrons and the Eldar were paired off against one another. Marines vs CSM (boilerplate Order vs Chaos, the posterboy armies of the setting), Necrons vs Eldar (ancient tech army vs ancient magic army), IG vs Orks (Human Horde vs Alien Horde). Other, more specialized factions (Tau, SOB, Daemons, etc) break from these narrative themes, but that's fine, that's why these armies are/were specialized, niche armies.

And for a race that has consistently been described as "ancient", the Eldar make the most sense as the bitter foes of the Necrons. It provides narrative continuity to the setting, rather than (again) having one army that got its ass kicked by another army return to the game, but the army that kicked its ass doesn't... if there had been an Enslaver product line, I would think differently, but there isn't, and probably never will be.

Just to add my two pence worth...

I agree with Psienesis on the broader issue. The Studio invented the Necrons (using the old Chaos Android models as a base look and a snippet from Codex Imperialis about the C'tan) but struggled so much to work out what the "Killer Robots from Outer Space" actually were and would do that they went and created the Tau in the meantime! Then they came back to the Necrons who were still just "Killer Robots from Outer Space" but this time they were driven by the commands of their overlords the C'tan. Xenology did not introduce a Necron with personality until several years later.

Personally my issue with the 3rd Edition Codex is the whole 'the Old Ones made everyone' garbage. I'm glad the new Codex doesn't reiterate the guff about the Krork as that one little tiny snippet of information single-handedly ruined decades of incredibly detailed Ork background at a stroke. I said once on these boards some years before the latest Ork Codex came out how it seemed the Studio were moving away from 'the Old Ones done it' by reintroducing the original Ork background material with the Enslaver Plague as just a possibility and not actualité.

Could the Studio have done more to keep the mindless, lethal terminator robots? I reckon they could have although I don't mind the newer personality included Necrons but let's face it, the Studio couldn't, for whatever reason, come up with some decent terminator-robots background and so made the Necrons Tomb Kings in Space instead. Better than going the Squat route.

The best part about the most-recent Codex: Necrons is that it allows one to play an OldCron Army, if you choose to. It also opens up a bunch of options for other people to play a different flavor of Necrons, which is, perhaps, the biggest strength to its fluff.

You could, for example, replicate an OldCron Army by putting your C'Tan Shard in the back, surrounded by an Honor Guard of Lychguard or Destroyers, and then arrange your forces before it. You could model your C'Tan Shard being borne on a litter carried by Necron Warriors or your Necron Lord and its Royal Court. I mean, you could go crazy with the modeling projects to represent an Oldcron army with the C'Tan still the boss... or you could do something totally different, now that you have the options in the Codex to do so.


From the other thread, a comment was made about C'Tan phase swords being shards of their necrodermis...

... the original write-up for the Phase Sword credits the C'Tan with having built them. Which doesn't jive with them being part of its necrodermis shell (which they didn't build), and also doesn't explain why that bit of necrodermis can be that powerful while a Warrior can't just punch your Baneblade apart with his necrodermis hands. Necrodermis is Necrodermis.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
And yes the Hive Mind does everything...Which is why it's a Hive Mind and why the Tyranids are genetically modified and manufactured in an evolutionary process.

Much like the C'tan wanted of the Necrons, mindless machines that'll do their bidding in time.

No. Necron Lords had a personality of their own. It was a Necron Lord who manipulated the Inquisition, not a C´tan. Necron Lords were not mindless machines. And this has not changed. It is the same in 6th edition, all basic Necrons are mindless machines, and the Necron Lords have a personality. True, they obeyed the C´tan, but it was not mindless slavery. They were intelligent, far more than the average human.

Page 24 3rd edition Codex. The more powerful of the Necrontyr retained their intellect.

 Chaos Rising wrote:
Forgive the necron noobiness here but I was under the impression that the necrons now controlled the C'Tan? After the war in heaven didn't they shoot the living hell out of them and put the shards in tesseract vaults letting them out to stretch their legs once in a while?

The Necron background suffered many, many radical changes in 2011 (5th edition). For instance, the C´tan were like gods to the Necrons, and in 5th edition they suddenly turned their servants. We had many stories about the C´tan, including stuff like one of them being the entity worshipped as the Omnissiah by the Adeptus Mechanicus, and one of them having lost his sanity, trapped in an artificial world at the edge of the galaxy, a point Tyranid fleets avoided. And many more. All these stories vanished in the new Codex.

 Psienesis wrote:
The Eldar and the Ork have always been contemporaries of the Necrons, as they have always been the two "biggest" races created by the Old Ones (who "seeded the galaxy with life"... they are the Rakata of 40K). That neither of these two races apparently did anything during the War in Heaven was an omission of glaring inconsistency. Why would the favored children of the Old Ones *not* fight the Necrons and the C'Tan?

The "first Eldar" and Krorks fought... and were defeated. First by the Necrons, and then came the "apocaliptic", "catastrophic" Enslaver Plague.

Necron Lords had a personality of their own. It was a Necron Lord who manipulated the Inquisition, not a C´tan. Not all Necron forces are commanded by C´tans.

Right. There is now. There wasn't then. Back then, it was A C'Tan with Its Armies of Killer Robots from Outer Space.

You are usually right but I think you are wrong in this one. I am talking about a background book called Xenology, written four years after the 3rd edition (2002 -> 2006). It has a Necron Lord manipulating inquisitors and members of the Mechanicum, no C´tan involved. It was intelligent and operated alone. I just read again the final part, and the "unknown entity" says: "our master is a most talented deceiver"... also it speaks about its kind: "Most are mindless, pure, undistracted by personality. But there are those of us who remember. Lords and Ladies of another age, converted and purified but not cleansed of memory. I remember the frailty of emotion, the weakness of the flesh, the imperfection of mortality". THAT is the way a Necron Lord (or Lady) should talk, instead of sending love letters to inquisitors.

And it stands to logic that most operations were conducted by Necron Lords. How could it be otherwise? There were only TWO C´tan awake, and Necrons were a galaxy-spanning threat.

Enslavers are still around, just as a background xeno-creature. They have a lot more going on in the various 40K RPGs and other, non-wargame sources. Makes sense. If you had a badass army like the Necrons (pre-5E) who got their asses kicked by the Enslavers, why would you not have an Enslaver product line to return to challenge the Necrons, since no one else in the galaxy apparently could?

GW didn't go that route, though, there was no narrative challenge to the Necrons. The Enslavers never returned to the game, as far as the tabletop was concerned, and became something of a MacGuffin. Narratively, this doesn't make sense.

Which is what I most dislike of the new Codex. They had a badass army, and they scratched off the most important part of their background. There were references to Enslavers all over the place. There are rules for them in Rogue Trader. They were (and still are) an important part of the background. With a single line Ward had them joined to an ever growing list: Squats, Zoats, Slann, Lost and the Damned, Genestealer Cults, Arbites, Hurd, Exodites... Incredibly cool and awesome armies still in the background but only as a footnote. It is a pity.

So, to continue with the theme of every main faction having a diametric opposite, the Necrons and the Eldar were paired off against one another. Marines vs CSM (boilerplate Order vs Chaos, the posterboy armies of the setting), Necrons vs Eldar (ancient tech army vs ancient magic army), IG vs Orks (Human Horde vs Alien Horde). Other, more specialized factions (Tau, SOB, Daemons, etc) break from these narrative themes, but that's fine, that's why these armies are/were specialized, niche armies.

And for a race that has consistently been described as "ancient", the Eldar make the most sense as the bitter foes of the Necrons. It provides narrative continuity to the setting, rather than (again) having one army that got its ass kicked by another army return to the game, but the army that kicked its ass doesn't... if there had been an Enslaver product line, I would think differently, but there isn't, and probably never will be.

 Psienesis wrote:
The Eldar and the Ork have always been contemporaries of the Necrons, as they have always been the two "biggest" races created by the Old Ones (who "seeded the galaxy with life"... they are the Rakata of 40K). That neither of these two races apparently did anything during the War in Heaven was an omission of glaring inconsistency. Why would the favored children of the Old Ones *not* fight the Necrons and the C'Tan?

They did. "The Dawn of the C'tan" featured the Eldar fighting in the War of Heaven, and incapacitating the Void Dragon with a fusillade of Blackstone Fortresses.

Right. There is now. There wasn't then. Back then, it was A C'Tan with Its Armies of Killer Robots from Outer Space.

No, you're wrong. In Xenology, a Necron Lord actually has a conversation with an Inquisitor, and in the 3e codex at least one quote is attributed to a Necron Lord.

Back then it was "Necron Tomb World awakens. Necrons find living things. Necrons harvest all living things, in a program they call The Red Harvest (Necrons aren't a poetic race). Necrons go back to sleep. More living things return to find planet utterly lifeless, wonder WTF just happened here. Rinse, repeat. Robo-mustache twirling commences."

No, the current Necrons with their idiotic eccentricities are the mustache-twirlers. The original Necrons were death incarnate, as someone said earlier, alien in mindset to the extent that a human could not fathom it. Now, there is nothing differentiating them from humans in persona. They are metal men with feelings. Feelings, that can be broken.

As far as C'Tan went? There were more than just the Void Dragon and the Deceiver. We also had Nightbringer, who was (and continues to be) the source of Grim Reaper symbolism throughout every sentient species in the galaxy. We had Llandu'gor, who gave us the Flayer Virus and the Flayed Ones. There was the Outsider, who was apparently a Crazy C'Tan. There was all those that they gave names to, but never any details (ran out of time writing the Codex? Intended future supplement never published? Who knows!) Iash'uddra, Kalugura, Og'driada, Yggra'nya and Nyadra'zatha... who somehow gave the Necrons the keys to the Webway, even though the C'Tan were completely physical-reality creatures... how the star-gods did anything with the Warp was a narrative conundrum that has yet to be resolved, incidentally, though further details on the War in Heaven make more sense with 5E Codex:Necrons... and, also, whether or not the C'Tan ever actually fought the Old Ones is cast into question, for the C'Tan that mentions this is the Deceiver. Which, again, makes sense. Why would they care? They are star-eating space-vampires.

What point are you even trying to make here? That the 5th edition codex made no sense in its handling of the C'tan? Because every C'tan you just named besides the Dragon, Deceiver, Outsider, and Nightbringer was from the 5e codex, as is their hacking the Webway (Despite the Warp and all its works being anathema to them), as is them apparently fighting the Old Ones before the Necrons found them.

Enslavers are still around, just as a background xeno-creature. They have a lot more going on in the various 40K RPGs and other, non-wargame sources. Makes sense. If you had a badass army like the Necrons (pre-5E) who got their asses kicked by the Enslavers, why would you not have an Enslaver product line to return to challenge the Necrons, since no one else in the galaxy apparently could?

GW didn't go that route, though, there was no narrative challenge to the Necrons. The Enslavers never returned to the game, as far as the tabletop was concerned, and became something of a MacGuffin. Narratively, this doesn't make sense.

I disproved this faulty train of thought in the other thread. Do not dare to use it here.

So, to continue with the theme of every main faction having a diametric opposite, the Necrons and the Eldar were paired off against one another. Marines vs CSM (boilerplate Order vs Chaos, the posterboy armies of the setting), Necrons vs Eldar (ancient tech army vs ancient magic army), IG vs Orks (Human Horde vs Alien Horde). Other, more specialized factions (Tau, SOB, Daemons, etc) break from these narrative themes, but that's fine, that's why these armies are/were specialized, niche armies.

The Necrons are not the opposite of the Eldar now. They once could be seen as such, but now? The only differences are that one consists of robots and can't use psychic powers. They both use the same means of FTL travel for Christ's sake.

And for a race that has consistently been described as "ancient", the Eldar make the most sense as the bitter foes of the Necrons. It provides narrative continuity to the setting, rather than (again) having one army that got its ass kicked by another army return to the game, but the army that kicked its ass doesn't... if there had been an Enslaver product line, I would think differently, but there isn't, and probably never will be.

So uh, as I pointed out before, you've clearly not actually read the third edition codex. The Old Ones' child races, with the Eldar spearheading the assault, cut an implacable swath through the Necron/C'tan army, after the C'tan just got done eating each other. The C'tan began devising a grand plan to destroy the Warp forever at this point, but were forced to go into hiding with their metal legions after the "birth" of Chaos (Created by the anger and hatred of the Old Ones' children) when they began running out of food to sustain themselves.

If you do not know anything about the faction being discussed, don't post about them.


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 Psienesis wrote:
The best part about the most-recent Codex: Necrons is that it allows one to play an OldCron Army, if you choose to. It also opens up a bunch of options for other people to play a different flavor of Necrons, which is, perhaps, the biggest strength to its fluff.

Indeed, the best part about the newcron codex is that they put a half-assed two sentence platitude into the codex in an attempt to satisfy the players that the rest of the hundred page codex was alienating.

You could, for example, replicate an OldCron Army by putting your C'Tan Shard in the back, surrounded by an Honor Guard of Lychguard or Destroyers, and then arrange your forces before it. You could model your C'Tan Shard being borne on a litter carried by Necron Warriors or your Necron Lord and its Royal Court. I mean, you could go crazy with the modeling projects to represent an Oldcron army with the C'Tan still the boss... or you could do something totally different, now that you have the options in the Codex to do so.

Indeed, just as you could model a Grey Knights army to be consisted entirely of nubile warrior women who worship Slaanesh and rape Eldar children.

The official fluff makes it clear that no C'tan is in charge of anything in the current fluff. "Oh well you can ignore the fluff" is not a valid argument.

From the other thread, a comment was made about C'Tan phase swords being shards of their necrodermis...

... the original write-up for the Phase Sword credits the C'Tan with having built them. Which doesn't jive with them being part of its necrodermis shell (which they didn't build), and also doesn't explain why that bit of necrodermis can be that powerful while a Warrior can't just punch your Baneblade apart with his necrodermis hands. Necrodermis is Necrodermis.

Hmmmm, in-universe speculation on the Mechanicum's part vs. the actual Necron codex which depicts the Deceiver simply absorbing a C'tan Phase Sword back into its body... Choices... Choices...

You are aware that the 3e Warscythes are just C'tan Phase Blades in the form of a scythe, right?

I think you are mixing old fluff and new fluff here. I will happily admit that the existence of many C´tan (instead of just four) is a good change. However, all that C´tans are currently some sort of Pokemon, while the old C´tan were like this:

The Nightbringer definitely predates 5E Codex:Necrons. Hell, the novel dedicated to that particular C'Tan predates Ward's Codex by more than a decade. We've always had four or five "main" C'Tan (Void Dragon, Outsider, Nightbringer, Deceiver) with the Flayed One being a "background character of note" and then a bunch named in passing but never fleshed out...

Fleshed out. Heh.

Which is what I most dislike of the new Codex. They had a badass army, and they scratched off the most important part of their background. There were references to Enslavers all over the place. There are rules for them in Rogue Trader. They were (and still are) an important part of the background. With a single line Ward had them joined to an ever growing list: Squats, Zoats, Slann, Lost and the Damned, Genestealer Cults, Arbites, Hurd, Exodites... Incredibly cool and awesome armies still in the background but only as a footnote. It is a pity.

A narrative necessity. If the Enslavers were so bad-ass, why haven't they returned (to the tabletop) to fight the Necrons? How does one build an Enslaver Army? What Codex do I base them on? Are they ultra-psychic Tyranids? Are they super-psychic Space Wolves? When you establish a faction like the Enslavers (or the Mechanicus, the Arbites, the Squats, the Hrud...) you're inviting people to ask where they are on the tabletop, and when you get people asking that question, it leads to either scratch-built or converted armies (IG turned to Arbites, for example) or endless forum posts about "Where's the Enslavers/Hrud/Barghesi/Mechanicus at?".

For the "narrative games" style that GW has moved to, it creates a very large narrative hole. We have an alien species in possession of super-science, being functionally immortal, able to time-travel, move from one end of the galaxy to the other in comparative safety with relative ease, in a fraction of the time of everyone else, who are in possession of Galactic Doomsday technology...

... and we're supposed to believe that these people are somehow on par with a faction that turned a tractor into a tank? With green-skinned English Soccer Hooligans? With people that turned a tractor into a tank and then put spikes on it?

And the one army that made them flee is Codex: Not Appearing In This Game? Just doesn't fly.

People get into armies for all sorts of reasons, and sometimes it's because their friend plays Army X, so they want to play Army Y, which is the diametric opposite and primary foe. So with the Oldcrons you had... uh.. nothing. No Army Y to their Army X. No one, originally, even on par with them to present a narrative challenge (game mechanics are a different matter entirely). That had to change.

Eldar (specifically Altaioc, iirc) and the Krork made the most narrative sense, both being ancient races possessing psychic abilities (one actively, the other more in a gestalt manner). So you get a narrative conflict of technology & science vs nature and mysticism (Space Elves, after all) or of civilization and order against the savage barbarian hordes. Rather than the boilerplate "we fight them because they are trying to kill us".

The Eldar were always the ancient enemies of the Necrons.

Not to the extent then as they are portrayed now. Then it was more C'Tan (and their killer robots) vs the Old Ones (and their Space Elves and Soccer Hooligans). With the adjustment of things, the Eldar take a more prominent role in the conflict.

Which is fine, it's a tighter narrative focus.

Yes. The only necrons with "personality" were the c'tan. They directed the rest like a hive mind.

 Psienesis wrote:
Not to the extent then as they are portrayed now. Then it was more C'Tan (and their killer robots) vs the Old Ones (and their Space Elves and Soccer Hooligans). With the adjustment of things, the Eldar take a more prominent role in the conflict.

Which is fine, it's a tighter narrative focus.

It also entirely sidesteps the problem oldcron players have with the emocron codex.


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Kiwidru wrote:
Yes. The only necrons with "personality" were the c'tan. They directed the rest like a hive mind.

Wrong.

On the quick subject of Chaos during the WIH not being the Chaos of M40- Chaos within the warp is not affected by causality. They have always existed within the warp. While they might have a set DOB- go poking into the warp at any time and you'll certainly find them. The Oldcrons may have gone poking in there and learned of Chaos specifically for that reason.

No, you're wrong. In Xenology, a Necron Lord actually has a conversation with an Inquisitor, and in the 3e codex at least one quote is attributed to a Necron Lord.

One Black Library book out of many, and thus they are now all intelligent? Or it could've been the artistic license of one individual author to try and make them actually interesting, which they took to the logical conclusion in the 5th edition codex...Because there was no way of creating intelligent lords with the actual codex itself, nor has fluff ever shown any other intelligent Necron lords before the 5th edition writeup

No, the current Necrons with their idiotic eccentricities are the mustache-twirlers. The original Necrons were death incarnate, as someone said earlier, alien in mindset to the extent that a human could not fathom it. Now, there is nothing differentiating them from humans in persona. They are metal men with feelings. Feelings, that can be broken.

Yes, they instead were METAL TYRANIDS. Wakeup, harvest, sleep. They were trying to take over the narrative by making them enemy of all, better then chaos, better then tyranids, unbeatable by Imperium, Chaos, and even Eldar quake in fear of them.

It was like the ultimate shilled race before they realized how bland they were.

 Psienesis wrote:
The Eldar and the Ork have always been contemporaries of the Necrons, as they have always been the two "biggest" races created by the Old Ones (who "seeded the galaxy with life"... they are the Rakata of 40K). That neither of these two races apparently did anything during the War in Heaven was an omission of glaring inconsistency. Why would the favored children of the Old Ones *not* fight the Necrons and the C'Tan?

Well, we kind of know that they did fight each other, as we have the War in Heaven story

http://web.archive.org/web/20080406181835/http://uk.games-workshop.com/necrons/eldar-mythology/

And I am sure that there are other tales out there.

da001 wrote:Still, nothing of the like is said in the last Codex. The writer needed a reason for the Necrons to hide and for some reason the Enslavers were retconned. So he took a 40k army from 60 million years in the future and used it. Not a single sentence is given to turn this nonsensical assertion into something acceptable. We can talk about how this madness can be understood, but at least is really, really lazy writing.

They didn't retcon the Enslavers, they just weren't mentioned by name, the Codex says

Ultimately, beset by the implacable onset of the C'tan and the calamitous Warp - spawned perils they had themselves mistakenly unleashed, the Old Ones were defeated, scattered and finally destroyed. - p9

You can draw a pretty parallel line between the two.

 Psienesis wrote:
And for a race that has consistently been described as "ancient", the Eldar make the most sense as the bitter foes of the Necrons. It provides narrative continuity to the setting, rather than (again) having one army that got its ass kicked by another army return to the game, but the army that kicked its ass doesn't... if there had been an Enslaver product line, I would think differently, but there isn't, and probably never will be.

But the Enslavers are still a fairly limited species, they don't appear to have any technology and do just one thing. Yeah, they could flesh them out and give them toys but why bother, you would just have another race and a can of worms opened up on the others that could have a line produced. Anyhoo ...

The Eldar already had a mortal enemy that they feared above all others and the Necron have always been an enemy.

I would ask this question:

What did the Necrons (3rd edition) really add to the setting at the time? Did they actually make it better, more rich?

I don't like calling the 3rd edition Necrons 'oldcrons' because they existed in 2nd edition without that background, and before even then the models / trope existed as Chaos Androids.

 Daba wrote:
I would ask this question:

What did the Necrons (3rd edition) really add to the setting at the time? Did they actually make it better, more rich?

I don't like calling the 3rd edition Necrons 'oldcrons' because they existed in 2nd edition without that background, and before even then the models / trope existed as Chaos Androids.

Except Chaos Androids were a bit different lorewise, they were more akin to the old Robotic models that even the Orks had..Not as hilarious though.

 Void__Dragon wrote:

They did. "The Dawn of the C'tan" featured the Eldar fighting in the War of Heaven, and incapacitating the Void Dragon with a fusillade of Blackstone Fortresses.

Interesting... Didn´t know that. Thank you for that reference.

 Psienesis wrote:

A narrative necessity. If the Enslavers were so bad-ass, why haven't they returned (to the tabletop) to fight the Necrons? How does one build an Enslaver Army? What Codex do I base them on? Are they ultra-psychic Tyranids? Are they super-psychic Space Wolves? When you establish a faction like the Enslavers (or the Mechanicus, the Arbites, the Squats, the Hrud...) you're inviting people to ask where they are on the tabletop, and when you get people asking that question, it leads to either scratch-built or converted armies (IG turned to Arbites, for example) or endless forum posts about "Where's the Enslavers/Hrud/Barghesi/Mechanicus at?".

So we get rid of Enslavers, Hrud, Mechanicus, Arbites, Slann, Exodites, Eldar Corsairs, Chaos Legions, Lesser Chaos Gods, Lost and Damned, Genestealer Cults, Barghesi, Nicassar, Tallerian, Piscean, Beastmen, Adeptus Astra Telepathica (including psy-titans), Sisters of Silence, Custodes, Demiurg, Kroot mercenaries, Malal Daemons, the Afriel Strain, Heretical Ecclesiarchy Forces, PDF, rebels, Squats, Chaos Squats, Morralian Deathsworn, Zoats, Rak´Gol, Enoulians, Fra´al, Stryxxis, Loxatl, Nekulli, Yu´Vath, Thyrrus, Xenarch and the rest?

The setting is amazingly rich and complex. If the game is to convey that, they should create rules that add variety to the table, instead of turning full factions into a footnote. Following your reasoning we all would eventually play space marines against space marines. Boring, unimaginative and lame.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

No, you're wrong. In Xenology, a Necron Lord actually has a conversation with an Inquisitor, and in the 3e codex at least one quote is attributed to a Necron Lord.

One Black Library book out of many, and thus they are now all intelligent?

I think all depictions of Necron Lords did that. I can give you four instances of Necron Lords being intelligent previously to 2011 5th edition.
1) Codex Necrons 3rd edition. Page 24. The most powerful Necrontyr retained their intelligence.
2) Xenology: we have a Necron Lord talking and talking for pages on. And no, it is not a human-like being. It is clearly a Xeno talking.
3) Dead Men Walking: we see Necron Lords communicating with humans. Also tolerating them and enslaving them.
4) The Dawn of War: Dark Crusade videogame.

Could you give a single instance of a Necron Lord without intelligence?

 Pilau Rice wrote:

They didn't retcon the Enslavers, they just weren't mentioned by name, the Codex says

Ultimately, beset by the implacable onset of the C'tan and the calamitous Warp - spawned perils they had themselves mistakenly unleashed, the Old Ones were defeated, scattered and finally destroyed. - p9

You can draw a pretty parallel line between the two.

That´s too few. They were a Rogue Trader race, and I liked them a lot. I also know some people who liked them to the point of writing fan-dexes, and had been waited since 3rd edition (ten years, no less) for additional information on the matter. They have been reduced to nearly nothing.

However, what really grinds my gears is the number of factions that have been left behind. I quoted some. There are many and I collected some of them.

 Daba wrote:
I would ask this question:

What did the Necrons (3rd edition) really add to the setting at the time? Did they actually make it better, more rich?

Yes, of course. They added lots of things. Many people complained because the setting was altered in such a brutal way. In particular, it answered many questions about what was actually going on in the setting, and we got the beginning of the story: all races were created by the Old Ones during a war against gods that existed in the physical realms and commanded an army of sentient machines.

 Gogsnik wrote:

Personally my issue with the 3rd Edition Codex is the whole 'the Old Ones made everyone' garbage. I'm glad the new Codex doesn't reiterate the guff about the Krork as that one little tiny snippet of information single-handedly ruined decades of incredibly detailed Ork background at a stroke. I said once on these boards some years before the latest Ork Codex came out how it seemed the Studio were moving away from 'the Old Ones done it' by reintroducing the original Ork background material with the Enslaver Plague as just a possibility and not actualité.

I must admit I didn´t know that. I thought the first explanation about the origin of the Orks was the one given in Codex Necrons.

May I ask you to give a brief summary (or a link) about how Orks were created before 3rd Edition?

Not "just" killer robots.
I always thought of them as metal Tyranids with lame wannabe Chaos Gods in charge.

4) The Dawn of War: Dark Crusade videogame.

The one you are thinking of here is the Pariah, the only time we see the Necron Lord "speak" is when Chaos Lord Eliphas tries to communicate with it via psyker, and it basically click/whirr/beeps a bit, and he's scared less

However the one in Soulstorm was derided because it spoke, many called it a break of lore and was just another lore breaking moment in a bad fluff game.

1) Codex Necrons 3rd edition. Page 24. The most powerful Necrontyr retained their intelligence.
2) Xenology: we have a Necron Lord talking and talking for pages on. And no, it is not a human-like being. It is clearly a Xeno talking.
3) Dead Men Walking: we see Necron Lords communicating with humans. Also tolerating them and enslaving them.

Ironically these contradict the codex as the Necron Lords are suppose to be "Silently compelling their skeleton warriors forward"

"The Necrons have no dealings with any species whatsoever. To the Necrons, each population is another target to be harvested at the whims of their masters."

"They are a chilling sight on the battlefield, directing their warriors' attack in unnatural silence"

Found the line. (It was on Page 25.)

"Only a few of the very strongest retained their intellect and even they were shadows of their former selves"

That sounds like what could be SC's, rather then a whole line of necron lords, at best that would not be showing that the Necron Lords would even speak, as why would the C'tan even allow their puppets to talk?

Yes that was the line I was talking about.
English Version: page 25. The Fall of the Necrontyr.
Spanish Version: page 24.

Sorry for the confusion.



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 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

4) The Dawn of War: Dark Crusade videogame.

The one you are thinking of here is the Pariah, the only time we see the Necron Lord "speak" is when Chaos Lord Eliphas tries to communicate with it via psyker, and it basically click/whirr/beeps a bit, and he's scared less

However the one in Soulstorm was derided because it spoke, many called it a break of lore and was just another lore breaking moment in a bad fluff game.

1) Codex Necrons 3rd edition. Page 24. The most powerful Necrontyr retained their intelligence.
2) Xenology: we have a Necron Lord talking and talking for pages on. And no, it is not a human-like being. It is clearly a Xeno talking.
3) Dead Men Walking: we see Necron Lords communicating with humans. Also tolerating them and enslaving them.

Ironically these contradict the codex as the Necron Lords are suppose to be "Silently compelling their skeleton warriors forward"

"The Necrons have no dealings with any species whatsoever. To the Necrons, each population is another target to be harvested at the whims of their masters."

"They are a chilling sight on the battlefield, directing their warriors' attack in unnatural silence"

No.
You are mixing "talking" with "being intelligent" here.

1: Dark Crusade: the Necron Lord was intelligent. He didn´t talk, but he was in command of the army, not a C´tan. The pariah talked to him from time to time.
2: They direct their warriors in unnatural silence: your point being? He directed them without oral orders, as a good mechanical being does. One of the silliest point of the 5th edition codex is the "robot piloting robot" and the "robot talking to robot" thing. Since when robots communicate with other robots by talking? That´s a human thing.
3: Silently compelling their warriors: the same.
4: The necrons had no dealings with the rest of the species: yes, they looked down at them as if they were cockroaches or cattle. What´s your point again? Are you suggesting that a xeno species must consider mankind its equal to be branded "intelligent"? I find Necrons showing respect in 5th edition for the noble heroes of the SPACE MARINES is something incredibly childish.

That sounds like what could be SC's, rather then a whole line of necron lords, at best that would not be showing that the Necron Lords would even speak, as why would the C'tan even allow their puppets to talk?

But they do. I have quoted you some examples of Necrons being intelligent, and you quoted back examples of Necrons not talking, directing armies to battle without the need of a single word.

Also your interpretation of the line (they must be SC´s) is quite strange. Necron Lord Special Characters in 3rd edition? There were none. The sentence means what it means: some Necrons retained their intelligence. The strongest of them.

But they do. I have quoted you some examples of Necrons being intelligent, and you quoted back examples of Necrons not talking, directing armies to battle without the need of a single word.

Also your interpretation of the line (they must be SC´s) is quite strange. Necron Lord Special Characters in 3rd edition? There were none. The sentence means what it means: some Necrons retained their intelligence. The strongest of them.

Okay then, intelligence does not equal speech, I did get hung up over this, But I was mostly meaning to the fact as to why would they ever communicate with other species, along with the fact they couldn't.

Sure they are intelligent, but at the same time they follow the orders of the C'tan without a willful personality, I'm sure there's some protocols in there that allows for them to make tactical decisions and such, essentially mindless robots with dictated thoughts of how to further serve their master rather then anything resembling an intellect that hasn't been pre-programmed in by the Deceiver to serve them.

My thoughts on the matter is that those SC's would have been Necron Lords that actually remember their past, their actual knowledge as Necrotyr, rather then being tactical slaves under C'tan Lords, those that have personality and the actual intellect beyond the martial need of C'tan, aka, those powerful few, they would be SC's because they aren't standard Necron Lords and have something resembling minds of their own.

The problem with intelligence in this case, is that sure they can show themselves to be intelligent..But they are pretty much just servants with no thoughts, no personalities, if a C'tan commands they must obey, they'll forever march to the beat of their C'tan Lords and masters without ever knowing anything more, forever continuing the harvest for their masters. Any intellect they show is just a shadow they were, of what the Deciever allowed because it amused him.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

Sure they are intelligent, but at the same time they follow the orders of the C'tan without a willful personality, I'm sure there's some protocols in there that allows for them to make tactical decisions and such, essentially mindless robots with dictated thoughts of how to further serve their master rather then anything resembling an intellect that hasn't been pre-programmed in by the Deceiver to serve them.

My thoughts on the matter is that those SC's would have been Necron Lords that actually remember their past, their actual knowledge as Necrotyr, rather then being tactical slaves under C'tan Lords, those that have personality and the actual intellect beyond the martial need of C'tan, aka, those powerful few, they would be SC's because they aren't standard Necron Lords and have something resembling minds of their own.

The problem with intelligence in this case, is that sure they can show themselves to be intelligent..But they are pretty much just servants with no thoughts, no personalities, if a C'tan commands they must obey, they'll forever march to the beat of their C'tan Lords and masters without ever knowing anything more, forever continuing the harvest for their masters. Any intellect they show is just a shadow they were, of what the Deciever allowed because it amused him.

Which is actually a possible, logical interpretation.

That is not shared with Simon Spurrier (Xenology), Steve Lyons (Dead Men Walking), the team who developed Dawn of War, me and many other Necron players I know (or knew, since most of them quit the game in 2011). A lot of people assumed that the Necron Lords had intelligence and personality. You only need to look at the way they appear in the battlefield: completely different from one another.

I would like to point out that most people who said that Necrons were "just mindless robots" also adds "which is the reason I didn´t like them". Just like some people say "Sisters of Battle are just female imperial guard" or "Chaos Space Marines are just Space Marines with spikes" followed by "which is the reason I don´t like them".

That is not shared with Simon Spurrier (Xenology), Steve Lyons (Dead Men Walking), the team who developed Dawn of War

The problem is there have been plenty of writers who have either messed up lore (Sandy mitchell), some who have gotten things wrong (Gav Thorpe) and some who have obliterated fluff with a missile launcher (C.S Goto). Just because an author writes it, doesn't mean it'll mesh well with canon.

me and many other Necron players I know (or knew, since most of them quit the game in 2011). A lot of people assumed that the Necron Lords had intelligence and personality. You only need to look at the way they appear in the battlefield: completely different from one another.

Funny, most I know thought they were pretty much just differentiated because the Deciever wanted to make sure each Necrotyr lord got their own individualized look because they were pretty prideful, even the one's who liked Necrons didn't think they were much beyond their programming.

I would like to point out that most people who said that Necrons were "just mindless robots" also adds "which is the reason I didn´t like them". Just like some people say "Sisters of Battle are just female imperial guard" or "Chaos Space Marines are just Space Marines with spikes" followed by "which is the reason I don´t like them".

I actually liked Necrons, though felt they were too much metal tyranids.. What I actually I didn't like was the C'tan themselves being set up as the universal big bad, worse then the tyranids (or worse, according to fanon Controlling them!), and better then chaos in everything, and at times even controlling or helping it for their further goals (Such as when Abbadon found an artifact because of a 'golden man')

I like the thought of both oldcrons and newcrons existing, which you can actually simulate in the new book, with the Silent King, and even then you could say your necrons never managed to break free from the C'tan that control them, and thus are still mindless to semi-mindless drones controlled by their C'tan Overlord.

 Psienesis wrote:

For the "narrative games" style that GW has moved to, it creates a very large narrative hole. We have an alien species in possession of super-science, being functionally immortal, able to time-travel, move from one end of the galaxy to the other in comparative safety with relative ease, in a fraction of the time of everyone else, who are in possession of Galactic Doomsday technology...

... and we're supposed to believe that these people are somehow on par with a faction that turned a tractor into a tank? With green-skinned English Soccer Hooligans? With people that turned a tractor into a tank and then put spikes on it?

You really need to figure out if you want to talk about new or old fluff, of the four things listed only good FTL was possessed by only oldcrons both have immortality (oldcrons is slightly better as it is significantly harder to end them permanently) but only newcrons have time travel and galactic doomsday tech. So if you don't like time travel or galactic doomsday tech that's between you and Ward.

And honestly how are we supposed to believe the "green-skinned English soccer hooligans" are on par with anyone, regardless of their possession of spiked tractor/tanks.

ZebioLizard2 wrote: I like the thought of both oldcrons and newcrons existing, which you can actually simulate in the new book, with the Silent King, and even then you could say your necrons never managed to break free from the C'tan that control them, and thus are still mindless to semi-mindless drones controlled by their C'tan Overlord.

I'll just put this here because you clearly missed it the first time.

Void_Dragon wrote: Indeed, just as you could model a Grey Knights army to be consisted entirely of nubile warrior women who worship Slaanesh and rape Eldar children.

The official fluff makes it clear that no C'tan is in charge of anything in the current fluff. "Oh well you can ignore the fluff" is not a valid argument.

I remember being a bit shocked while reading Dead Men Walking that the Necrons would bother to directly communicate, if only very concise and in an absolute monologue, to the humans. That was definitely NOT part of their general theme before that moment. Even now, with the 5E dex, I still get the impression they are fairly reticent ... albeit much more intelligent and articulate than previously indicated.

"Oldcrons" were more of a mystery. I prefer the "Newcrons" (I love the idea of TK in Spaaaace). That said, neither fluff ever made me seriously consider buying a Necron army.

You really need to figure out if you want to talk about new or old fluff, of the four things listed only good FTL was possessed by only oldcrons both have immortality (oldcrons is slightly better as it is significantly harder to end them permanently) but only newcrons have time travel and galactic doomsday tech. So if you don't like time travel or galactic doomsday tech that's between you and Ward.

And honestly how are we supposed to believe the "green-skinned English soccer hooligans" are on par with anyone, regardless of their possession of spiked tractor/tanks.

You seem to think I prefer Oldcrons. You would be incorrect.

And if one does not consider the Orks a galactic threat, one is not paying attention to the fact that the majority of populated worlds in the galaxy are Ork-held worlds. As we have been told by the studio, time and time again, if the Orks were to ever unify as a collective race, they would be unstoppable. Fortunately, this will never happen.

So we get rid of Enslavers, Hrud, Mechanicus, Arbites, Slann, Exodites, Eldar Corsairs, Chaos Legions, Lesser Chaos Gods, Lost and Damned, Genestealer Cults, Barghesi, Nicassar, Tallerian, Piscean, Beastmen, Adeptus Astra Telepathica (including psy-titans), Sisters of Silence, Custodes, Demiurg, Kroot mercenaries, Malal Daemons, the Afriel Strain, Heretical Ecclesiarchy Forces, PDF, rebels, Squats, Chaos Squats, Morralian Deathsworn, Zoats, Rak´Gol, Enoulians, Fra´al, Stryxxis, Loxatl, Nekulli, Yu´Vath, Thyrrus, Xenarch and the rest?

I am not sure how you got that from what I wrote. Not sure at all.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

Funny, most I know thought they were pretty much just differentiated because the Deciever wanted to make sure each Necrotyr lord got their own individualized look because they were pretty prideful, even the one's who liked Necrons didn't think they were much beyond their programming.

Seriously? Never heard that explanation. What about the Necrons that followed the Dragon or the Nightbringer?
Everyone I know assumed they were like Tomb Kings in this regard. They look like kings, or try to.

I would like to point out that most people who said that Necrons were "just mindless robots" also adds "which is the reason I didn´t like them". Just like some people say "Sisters of Battle are just female imperial guard" or "Chaos Space Marines are just Space Marines with spikes" followed by "which is the reason I don´t like them".

I actually liked Necrons, though felt they were too much metal tyranids.. What I actually I didn't like was the C'tan themselves being set up as the universal big bad, worse then the tyranids (or worse, according to fanon Controlling them!), and better then chaos in everything, and at times even controlling or helping it for their further goals (Such as when Abbadon found an artifact because of a 'golden man')

Wowowow stop there. Better than Chaos? Chaos defeated them and they flew and hid for 60.000.000 years, no less. They were and are quite powerful, able to me a real threat to Chaos, perhaps the worst. Both Chaos and Necrons have been brutally nerfed in the last editions, but they were and are at the same level of power.

I like the thought of both oldcrons and newcrons existing, which you can actually simulate in the new book, with the Silent King, and even then you could say your necrons never managed to break free from the C'tan that control them, and thus are still mindless to semi-mindless drones controlled by their C'tan Overlord.

From a game-wise point of view, perhaps. From a background point of view, no it is not possible. Old style Necrons are mentioned (the Severed Worlds, nice name) but they are clearly stated to be wrong. This is not Codex: The Severed: they are just pathetic, broken machines with a penchant for self-proclaiming themselves "Emperors", which is a human trait, something that, yet again, makes no sense at all. "Makes no sense at all" is clearly the motto of the Codex.

However, I would love to see a 6th edition Codex Necron giving us both newcrons and oldcrons, eternally at war with each other, each one claiming to be the "real Necrons", and the player let to decide which version of the story to believe. I do not hate newcrons, I like them a lot. But I loved the oldcrons, and I miss them.

 Psienesis wrote:

So we get rid of Enslavers, Hrud, Mechanicus, Arbites, Slann, Exodites, Eldar Corsairs, Chaos Legions, Lesser Chaos Gods, Lost and Damned, Genestealer Cults, Barghesi, Nicassar, Tallerian, Piscean, Beastmen, Adeptus Astra Telepathica (including psy-titans), Sisters of Silence, Custodes, Demiurg, Kroot mercenaries, Malal Daemons, the Afriel Strain, Heretical Ecclesiarchy Forces, PDF, rebels, Squats, Chaos Squats, Morralian Deathsworn, Zoats, Rak´Gol, Enoulians, Fra´al, Stryxxis, Loxatl, Nekulli, Yu´Vath, Thyrrus, Xenarch and the rest?

I am not sure how you got that from what I wrote. Not sure at all.

Perhaps I misunderstood you. I thought you were defending the lost of an entire faction (the Enslavers, who have been around since Rogue Trader) by saying that they lacked a Codex or because the writer was unable or unwilling to forge a narrative with the elements at his disposal.
Quote: "A narrative necessity. If the Enslavers were so bad-ass, why haven't they returned (to the tabletop) to fight the Necrons? How does one build an Enslaver Army? What Codex do I base them on? "... "For the "narrative games" style that GW has moved to, it creates a very large narrative hole."

So what? We write a new Codex. We fill the hole with a good story. There are enough references in the background, both in the past and in the present of the setting. This is just lazyness. I know people that have written down fan-made Codex: Enslavers. I hate it when GW squats an army. I played Zoats and Lost and the Damned, and my brother played Squats. It is not cool.

Wowowow stop there. Better than Chaos? Chaos defeated them and they flew and hid for 60.000.000 years, no less. They were and are quite powerful, able to me a real threat to Chaos, perhaps the worst. Both Chaos and Necrons have been brutally nerfed in the last editions, but they were and are at the same level of power.

Enslavers are not Chaos, Enslavers are just creatures that their natural habitat is the Warp, they aren't associated with the Chaos Gods in any matter, and aren't produced Daemons of any kind.

And even then they didn't defeat the Necrons, they took out much of their food supply and so they went to sleep to allow the species to repopulate so the C'tan can feed.

What I was saying was that Necrons was becoming the overarching bad guy of the Universe, with the C'tan all mighty and powerful and not having any weaknesses, but at the same time existing in real space so that they can actually hurt things while the Gods are trapped in the Warp, while Necrons use their technology to seal away the warp, prevent psykers from doing their thing, destroy daemons easily, and generally make chaos far weaker by being in it's presence.

The Enslavers have not been Squatted. They have never existed as an army, so they cannot be. Likewise, most of the things you listed are not gone or missing, with some exceptions.

One, Malal was created by a pair of comic writers (Alan Grant and John Wagner) for GW publications in the 80s. However, when these two ceased working with GW, ownership of Malal and its associated characters came into question. So they replaced Malal with Malice, purely for CYA reasons pertinent to real-world business practices.

Two, the Zoats disappeared when Tyranid fluff changed. When they became the all-consuming-swarm, the idea of them having a slave-race went out the window, and were replaced by the Tyranid Warrior (which the Zoats, originally, were... you had to have half your army made of Zoats to play Tyranids). They made references to them in 3rd Edition, but this was to present them either historically or to explain what happened to them.

It's also possible that the Zoats were unique to Hive Fleet Colossus, which has been destroyed.

Most of the Xenos you've listed there have, at best, a half-dozen sentences devoted to them each. These have not been Squatted, they're just in the background and not doing anything. They also haven't had any significant interaction with the table-top armies that would justify them having a full Codex, unlike the former lay-out of the Enslavers.

The Adeptus Custodes are still around. They aren't an army. Aren't designed to be. Don't function well as. They're bodyguards.

Most of what you've got listed here are nothing more than background flavor. In the main, they take no pivotal role in how things play out between them and another faction (also, many of the things you listed are simply small parts of a larger, more-established faction). The Enslavers, as the things that came down, ate the galaxy, and forced the robots to go to sleep, had a much more pivotal role.

... they also stole most of the Tyranid's thunder, as well as that of the Necrons. Why worry about the Hive Fleets or the Red Harvest when you have the Enslavers lurking about in the Warp? Better to keep them much more in the shadows than build them up as a thing that you never do anything with.

 Psienesis wrote:
The Enslavers have not been Squatted. They have never existed as an army, so they cannot be. (...)
Most of what you've got listed here are nothing more than background flavor. In the main, they take no pivotal role in how things play out between them and another faction (also, many of the things you listed are simply small parts of a larger, more-established faction). The Enslavers, as the things that came down, ate the galaxy, and forced the robots to go to sleep, had a much more pivotal role.

Enslavers featured in Rogue Trader. I know it is not much, but it is still a loss. Being a background flavor is what all these factions are about. Nobody expected a Codex: Enslavers, but they added flavor. I love w40k... because of the setting. It is the reason I am here in this forum.

Saying that I cannot play Zoats anymore because they were "destroyed in a battle" does not help. Malice is nowhere to be seen. Chaos Legions, Chaos Undivided, Lost and the Damned, scores of sub-factions in the Imperium, hundreds of different xeno species.... The setting is amazing. This game could have been great.

This is from Codex: Chaos Daemons, page 6: "Warp space is Chaos, Chaos is Warp space; the two are indivisible.” Saying that Enslavers are not associated with Chaos while stating that their natural habitat is the Warp sounds odd

Yes it's odd, but you have to remember that the Warp didn't use to be filled with Chaos until the Old Ones and Eldar stirred up the Warp hardcore in their war vs Necrons..Which makes it still sound weird when the Chaos gods have been and always will be..

It's the Warp, it doesn't have to make sense.

Though that might be retconned now, I have no honest clue, since the Warp used to be filled with other things beyond Daemons, but most of those don't show up unless it's in things like FFG or Black Library.

The last Codex only has a tiny reference to Furies. Which are described as Daemons born of "indecision" (what?).

It seems that Independent Demons, Minor Gods of Chaos, Malal, Enslavers and the countless Citizens of the Warp have been squatted. Chaos has been reduced to four entities. And the Eight Pointed Star represents... Nothing? Just a funny symbol?

Necrons is not the only faction that has seen its fluff butchered.

 da001 wrote:
The last Codex only has a tiny reference to Furies. Which are described as Daemons born of "indecision" (what?).

It seems that Independent Demons, Minor Gods of Chaos, Malal, Enslavers and the countless Citizens of the Warp have been squatted. Chaos has been reduced to four entities. And the Eight Pointed Star represents... Nothing? Just a funny symbol?

Necrons is not the only faction that has seen its fluff butchered.

Yeah..I miss Undivided Daemon Princes.

Malal is mentioned however, with the sons of Malice. (Since they didn't have the rights to Malal,, the sons of malice run his colors and modus operatus)

Minor Gods of Chaos have been gone for a while when they wanted to split it from Fantasy, and the rest have just been either not mentioned, or squatted over time.

What if the C'tan just tricked the Necrons into thinking that they destroyed them? What if Silent King was The Deceiver and he orchestrated everything to get rid of the others?

Sure, far-fetched, but not so far that you couldn't make a story out of it, resembling the 3rd edition Necrons. As is often repeated, 40k is a setting, not a story. So make your own reasons that suit your own tastes.

The problem with the current codex in my opinion, is that it goes way too deep into specifics. It removes the mystery of it. Before, the necrons were these silent machines, harvesters of flesh, destroyers of the weak. They were the Reapers of Mass Effect 1. They were the Sovereign and we were their food. Then 5th edition codex came and ALL was explained about them. Same thing with Mass Effect 3 and the obnoxious Star brat. The mystery is gone, the magic is gone.

They wanted to give freedom to the players, but instead they just gave us more of the same lines to follow, restricting us instead. Explaining everything isn't giving it complexity. In a narrative sense, it's simplyfing it so the audience can understand. But if the audience isn't inspired by it before you explain it, they'll certainly be even less inspired by it after. Shutter Island vs Prometheus. And ME 1 vs ME 3. It's a sign of bad writing and bad narrative and the fact that Mat Ward writes abhorring fluff is pretty much the only consensus on the internet at large.

Well, the Necrons know that they didn't destroy the C'Tan. They can't be destroyed, really. Even the one that has been destroyed may yet reform at some later aeon long after the events of M41 have passed into myth. The C'Tan are physical-plane gods, in a sense.

and the fact that Mat Ward writes abhorring fluff is pretty much the only consensus on the internet at large.

That's not a fact, it's a bandwagon.

Ward's 5th Ed fluff for Necrons isn't terrible. In fact, it's pretty damn good. It actually made me give a gak about the Necrons as a faction. Previously, they bored the hell out of me, because they were robo-Tyranids

Yeah, the Enslavers aren't squatted, Trazyn has one pinned to his wall.

Oh, no, from a narrative standpoint, he writes utter gak. On a personal level, things aren't so bad. But when you look at the bigger picture, it's incredibly bland, familiar. Directly the opposite of the old codex, in fact. And equally as unfulfilling. The fact he gave Necrons personality isn't an issue, it's definitely a plus. The fact he gave them motivation we can understand/connect to is. Why the need to humanize menacing millions-of-years-old alien robots? Why do I need to know what drives them? We share -nothing- in common, as human motivation is always shaped by its weaknesses. In fact, all organic life works that way. Evolution is based on that assumption. I don't share -any- weaknesses with a robot, why would I understand it?

The appeal with Tyranids is that they are very easy to understand and their motivation frightens us precisely because we understand it. But Tyranids are evolution incarnate. They're literally the perfect organism. A force of nature. The Necrons are the extreme opposite. Their motivation we can never understand(or shouldn't) and therein lies their cold menace and their appeal. They can have personalities gallore, as long as they're not "human" ones.

Imagine if in the new codex Tyranids, they just retconned the Hive Mind and gave each Tyranid Hive Tyrant a personality(not intelligence, personality, completely independent from a higher purpose) of its own and a little litter of Tyranids of its own? And they fight little bug wars between each other(kinda like Worms video game, without the nukes) while making deals and shaking hands(claws, tentacles, pincers, whathaveyou) with Space Marines over victory well-fought against their common enemy? Yuck. And make no mistake, if this was a Mat Ward story, Swarmlord, as the speshulest bug that he is, would invade Holy Terra single-handedly fighting back the entire sector's defenses, lay his eggs in the Big E's lap and then steal his toenail before escaping unharmed with his trophy.

The Oldcrons were Terminators. The silent, implacable enemy marching shoulder-to-shoulder across the battlefield to destroy everything before them, against which nothing could stand.

Imagine if in the new codex Tyranids, they just retconned the Hive Mind and gave each Tyranid Hive Tyrant a personality(not intelligence, personality, completely independent from a higher purpose) of its own and a little litter of Tyranids of its own? And they fight little bug wars between each other(kinda like Worms video game, without the nukes) while making deals and shaking hands(claws, tentacles, pincers, whathaveyou) with Space Marines over victory well-fought against their common enemy? Yuck. And make no mistake, if this was a Mat Ward story, Swarmlord, as the speshulest bug that he is, would invade Holy Terra single-handedly fighting back the entire sector's defenses, lay his eggs in the Big E's lap and then steal his toenail before escaping unharmed with his trophy.

Inter-fleet wars between Hive Fleets already happen. It's a "weapons test" program, and the Fleet that wins eats the other one for its biomass, as it is obviously the superior organism.


The Blood Angel/Necron alliance thing... makes sense, really. Which would you rather have? The Blood Angels getting wiped the feth out because the Necrons destroyed them after wiping out the bugs, or that both sides with draw with a measure of mutual respect for the other's combat prowess.

In the former case, the BA probably would have withdrawn, rather than fight the Necrons and the Tyranids, let the bugs take the planet, and then Exterminatused it, killing two Xenos with one Cyclonic Torpedo. And so you're left with another Space Marine fan-spank victory where they trounce two Xenos armies in their spare time. Boring.

@Araenion is right on the spot there.
I particularly like his comparison between the Reapers and the 3rd edition Necrons. Both were clearly inspired by Lovecraft and are quite similar. They are both "harvesting", they are sentient machines, they both have been dormant for aeons, god-like technology, want to create hybrids with humans, destroy life while planting the seed for the next harvest...

1: Ward writes as a fanboy. There is no mystery, no sense of a hidden truth. Everything seems like an episode of the Power Rangers. And better not to start pointing out the blatant internal contradictions, the total lack of sense, the butchering of any previously established background, the absolute absence of any reference to any sci-fi setting, the total failure at grasping the basic scientific concepts (that galactic empire without FTL!!) and and and and and I think you get it. I am not good at writing in English because it is not my mother tongue, but I can easily see the breach between Alessio Cavatore or Kelly (neither of them are particularly good writers) and Ward.

2: Ward has a vivid imagination. If you manage to get past his writing, he is really good at creating amazing visions. Most of the stuff in the GK Codex seems like something taken from a legend. That planet sized Necron machine or the story of the Silent King are awe inspiring. And he creates things, he is not copy pasting stuff from other places. Finally, his rules are quite good. He is the best at internal balance, with many different builds available. Lots of crazy, fun stuff and many options. It is fun to play. Once you finish one of his Codexes, you want to start writing lists. He is awful at external balance, but all GW writers are.

I really like what he created with the "newcrons". But he didn´t "expanded the faction". He destroyed it, completely. And then built one from the scratch. I would have rather kept the old Necrons or, if possible, get two different factions (I love having many factions, in case someone didn´t notice).

Psienesis you didn´t like the faction and as a result you saw them as "just robots", and thus boring. There were lots of stuff in the 3rd edition Codex: the Dragon on Mars, two pages about the Outsider, the pariahs and the human-necron interbreeding, Necrons and C´tans infiltrating humanity, the war against the Old Ones and the Warp turning into Chaos and countless predators destroying everything. It was crude, with many things to further develop... but it was complex and ambitious.

The current Codex is a simplification, a "let´s make it easy by washing away all the things that make people think" approach. How many conspiracy theories did you see concerning the C´tan? Countless. Concerning the Newcrons? None. Who cares? They are just your average humanoid xeno. They are no mystery.

Animus wrote:
Yeah, the Enslavers aren't squatted, Trazyn has one pinned to his wall.

Yessssssss... that is the only thing left of what once was one of the most powerful factions in the setting. Those who killed the Old Ones. Those who nearly exterminated their offspring. Those who made the Necrons flee and hide behind a rock for millions of years.

Look on their works, ye Mighty, and despair!

I particularly like his comparison between the Reapers and the 3rd edition Necrons. Both were clearly inspired by Lovecraft and are quite similar.

if you think that is what Lovecraft was writing about... then you're not really reading Lovecraft, because neither the Necrons nor the Reapers have *anything* in common with Lovecraft's Mythos other than they come from outer space. The Mythos does not sow. It does not reap. It does not harvest. It does not *care* about humanity in any way, shape or form. 99.9% of the Mythos entities are not even aware that humanity even exists.

1: Ward writes as a fanboy. There is no mystery, no sense of a hidden truth. Everything seems like an episode of the Power Rangers. And better not to start pointing out the blatant internal contradictions, the total lack of sense, the butchering of any previously established background, the absolute absence of any reference to any sci-fi setting, the total failure at grasping the basic scientific concepts (that galactic empire without FTL!!) and and and and and I think you get it. I am not good at writing in English because it is not my mother tongue, but I can easily see the breach between Alessio Cavatore or Kelly (neither of them are particularly good writers) and Ward.

The Necrons have had an inertialess drive (permitting FTL speed) since Battlefleet Gothic. They also have their Dolmen Gates, which function in a manner very similar to Eldar Web-Way gates. Ward did not create a star-spanning empire without the race having FTL travel.

Sure, in the early years of their colonization, they used Torch Ships. That's early-empire Necrons, not what the Dynasties eventually became, while still being the Necrontyr.

If you are looking for any kind of basic scientific realism.... well.... 40K ain't the setting for you. 95% of the gak we love in this setting simply would not work in real life, and has been proven to be inferior with real-life technologies and examples.

Yessssssss... that is the only thing left of what once was one of the most powerful factions in the setting. Those who killed the Old Ones. Those who nearly exterminated their offspring. Those who made the Necrons flee and hide behind a rock for millions of years.

Ah, so, your real beef is not that you don't have Killer Robots from Outer Space anymore, but that Killer Gas-Bags from the Great Beyond aren't as focused on anymore?

here were lots of stuff in the 3rd edition Codex: the Dragon on Mars, two pages about the Outsider, the pariahs and the human-necron interbreeding, Necrons and C´tans infiltrating humanity, the war against the Old Ones and the Warp turning into Chaos and countless predators destroying everything. It was crude, with many things to further develop... but it was complex and ambitious.

Pariahs: Boring. Makes more sense as a human genetic flaw, as a counter to psychic expression being the natural evolutionary path for Humanity. Also, one in one hundred billion humans is born a Blank (being one million times less common than a Psyker), as opposed to the one in one million that are born Psykers. The Necrons were *terrible* at this genetic manipulation thing if they seeded the race with the Pariah Gene.

Also, current Flayed Ones are cooler.

Dragon of Mars: Might still be there. We don't know. Might not be. We don't know. Might be a C'Tan. Might not be. This has always been a rumor and a theory, never proven. That's how 40K works in the most part.

Psienesis you didn´t like the faction and as a result you saw them as "just robots"

And you did like them and apply complexity and intrigue where others found silent, nameless robots driven by Lolthulus for the purpose of galactic consumption. Boring.

 da001 wrote:
I must admit I didn´t know that. I thought the first explanation about the origin of the Orks was the one given in Codex Necrons.

May I ask you to give a brief summary (or a link) about how Orks were created before 3rd Edition?

There were three hefty books published by Games Workshop during Rogue Trader that pretty much covered just background for the orks, they were not codexes but they did include army lists for all the various orks unit types, weapons, vehicles et cetera. They were: Waaargh The Orks (1990), Ere We Go (1991) and Freebooterz (1991).

The Ork origin story is reiterated a little in the current Ork Codex, much of what that Codex has to say is literally copypasta from Waaargh The Orks. In short, what are known as snotlings in the 41st Millennium were the original green skinned aliens. On their home planet these creatures took to eating fungus that had the effect of giving them genius level intelligence. They created many advanced technologies and even created the orks and gretchin to be servants and warrior slaves. Unfortunately these green skinned aliens did not know that they owed their enhanced intellignece to the fungus and so took no measures to stop the orks from eating it too. On the orks it had the same effect and boosted their intelligence although not to the same degree but enough to get the orks thinking that they didn't much like being ordered around by tiny little creatures.

The orks rebelled and gorged themselves on the fungus. Despite attempts to grow the fungus on other worlds it could not be transplanted and once the orks had eaten all that was the end of that. The orks enhanced intelligence bred true but for the 'Brain Boyz' as the orks called them, the effects wore off. Realissing that they were doomed the Brain Boyz encoded all of their scientific and technological knowledge into the orks DNA so at least something of them would survive. From that point on the Brain Boyz ceased to exist, and the snotlings are their present day descendants, under evolved but ironically still used by the orks to harvest and farm fungus.

Orks did not then change much until they encountered Mankind, some twenty thousand years before the current setting. At that time the Blood Axes were in charge of all orks being as they are given to leadership and tactical qualities lacking on other orks. However, in a repeat of what happened to the Brain Boyz, all the other ork clans got together to overthrow the Blood Axe rule because the Blood Axes had many dealings with other alien races, particularly humans and it was on that point that the other orks decided enough was enough; they just couldn't stand the Blood Axes mingling so easily with humans and in what became known as Da Big Party the Blood Axes were largely destroyed. The present day status of the orks is a relatively knew state of affairs for the species.


Then came Codex: Necrons that said, in a few short lines, that the 'green-skinned' Krork were made by the Old Ones and the Deceiver muses on the krork still being around, ergo, the Krork must be the Orks!! And all the fantastic ork background went strait down the toilet (and it has only recently begun to recover).

 Araenion wrote:
Oh, no, from a narrative standpoint, he writes utter gak. On a personal level, things aren't so bad. But when you look at the bigger picture, it's incredibly bland, familiar. Directly the opposite of the old codex, in fact. And equally as unfulfilling. The fact he gave Necrons personality isn't an issue, it's definitely a plus. The fact he gave them motivation we can understand/connect to is. Why the need to humanize menacing millions-of-years-old alien robots? Why do I need to know what drives them? We share -nothing- in common, as human motivation is always shaped by its weaknesses. In fact, all organic life works that way. Evolution is based on that assumption. I don't share -any- weaknesses with a robot, why would I understand it?

The appeal with Tyranids is that they are very easy to understand and their motivation frightens us precisely because we understand it. But Tyranids are evolution incarnate. They're literally the perfect organism. A force of nature. The Necrons are the extreme opposite. Their motivation we can never understand(or shouldn't) and therein lies their cold menace and their appeal. They can have personalities gallore, as long as they're not "human" ones.

Imagine if in the new codex Tyranids, they just retconned the Hive Mind and gave each Tyranid Hive Tyrant a personality(not intelligence, personality, completely independent from a higher purpose) of its own and a little litter of Tyranids of its own? And they fight little bug wars between each other(kinda like Worms video game, without the nukes) while making deals and shaking hands(claws, tentacles, pincers, whathaveyou) with Space Marines over victory well-fought against their common enemy? Yuck. And make no mistake, if this was a Mat Ward story, Swarmlord, as the speshulest bug that he is, would invade Holy Terra single-handedly fighting back the entire sector's defenses, lay his eggs in the Big E's lap and then steal his toenail before escaping unharmed with his trophy.

Nothing about the oldcron motivations (and tbh it's the C'tan really) were unknowable they were in fact rather straight forward and uniform. Which made them quite similar to Tyranids. Also what's a non human personality? I don't think you can add personality and not touch upon motivation or relate-ability on some level. The Tyranids example would be terrible indeed, but we're not discussing Tyranids so I don't see how it's relevant.

@da001

"The current Codex is a simplification, a "let´s make it easy by washing away all the things that make people think" approach. How many conspiracy theories did you see concerning the C´tan? Countless. Concerning the Newcrons? None. Who cares? They are just your average humanoid xeno. They are no mystery."

Terrible, counter intuitive, and downright silly fan theories shouldn't be the metric for how interesting a faction is. However, the amount of stories I can make about my army is a great metric for how interesting a faction is, something the new fluff allows for much like how people invent a CSM warband or SM chapter. Now necron players have more than "tombworld is disturbed, necrons awaken, and necrons kill" to work with. Motivation and character is better than mystery for the player, it lets you get behind your army and its characters (and if you don't want that there's tyranids). And really the old mystery was a mix of the authors simply saying 'ooh how Lovecraftian and unknowable!" without it really being so, and partly there being so little literature, now you can make your own mystery with a custom dynasty. Necrons are more than just a plot device now.

Manchu wrote:
I remember being a bit shocked while reading Dead Men Walking that the Necrons would bother to directly communicate, if only very concise and in an absolute monologue, to the humans. That was definitely NOT part of their general theme before that moment. Even now, with the 5E dex, I still get the impression they are fairly reticent ... albeit much more intelligent and articulate than previously indicated.

"Oldcrons" were more of a mystery. I prefer the "Newcrons" (I love the idea of TK in Spaaaace). That said, neither fluff ever made me seriously consider buying a Necron army.

Well see, that is just blatantly untrue. It was rare, but communication between oldcrons and their foes did happen.

Now, they throw dinner parties with them.


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 Psienesis wrote:

Most of what you've got listed here are nothing more than background flavor. In the main, they take no pivotal role in how things play out between them and another faction (also, many of the things you listed are simply small parts of a larger, more-established faction). The Enslavers, as the things that came down, ate the galaxy, and forced the robots to go to sleep, had a much more pivotal role.

... they also stole most of the Tyranid's thunder, as well as that of the Necrons. Why worry about the Hive Fleets or the Red Harvest when you have the Enslavers lurking about in the Warp? Better to keep them much more in the shadows than build them up as a thing that you never do anything with.

I am pretty sure regurgitating the same argument over and over again after it was debunked is actually considered trolling.


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 Psienesis wrote:
Well, the Necrons know that they didn't destroy the C'Tan. They can't be destroyed, really. Even the one that has been destroyed may yet reform at some later aeon long after the events of M41 have passed into myth. The C'Tan are physical-plane gods, in a sense.

Well no, see, that is just Wardian internal inconsistency at work yet again (Similar to how Grey Knights can be entirely immune to corruption, yet Purifiers are even more immune).

That the Flayer C'tan might reform is speculation. Speculation that has less basis than Roboute Guilliman finally finishing his dump.

That's not a fact, it's a bandwagon.

Ward's 5th Ed fluff for Necrons isn't terrible. In fact, it's pretty damn good. It actually made me give a gak about the Necrons as a faction. Previously, they bored the hell out of me, because they were robo-Tyranids

That you liked it is subjective. I am of the opinion that the new codex is inferior to the old one overall, while putting forth some good ideas and SC.

That Ward is a sub-par writer is objective. He can have good ideas, but he has serious problems conveying them on paper.


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 Psienesis wrote:
The Oldcrons were Terminators. The silent, implacable enemy marching shoulder-to-shoulder across the battlefield to destroy everything before them, against which nothing could stand.

So why do you think your opinion has more merit than other people's?

If anything it has less because I've shown everyone multiple times that you have at best cursory knowledge of the Necron fluff, yet choose to make wide, sweeping generalizations on it.

Make no mistake. Not a soul among us can begin to match me in Necron knowledge. As da001 is for Chaos, I am for the Necrons.

There were lots of stuff in the 3rd edition Codex: the Dragon on Mars

Which also retconned the Adeptas Mechanicus, which was irritating as

Make no mistake. Not a soul among us can begin to match me in Necron knowledge. As da001 is for Chaos, I am for the Necrons.

Typically those who believe themselves to be knowledgeable, are usually the best at misquoting it considering they believe everything they say to be true.

Well see, that is just blatantly untrue. It was rare, but communication between oldcrons and their foes did happen.

Only in black library, in cases that contradict the codex, and infact makes them less 'alien'

 Psienesis wrote:
The Oldcrons were Terminators.

That's hardly fair, the Terminator was funny.

The thing that stuck with me about the oldcrons was how GW had problems giving them story hooks. In campaigns it was always "the faceless horde shows up, kills some stuff then leaves mysteriously"

They couldn't even give the Necron Players the hooks because it would lose some of its mystery.

That's the major reason I'm in favor of the new fluff.


And as far as enslavers go, they actually did have units in a chapter approved supplement during 3rd, but I don't remember the details

@Gogsnik: thank you very much.

 Psienesis wrote:

I particularly like his comparison between the Reapers and the 3rd edition Necrons. Both were clearly inspired by Lovecraft and are quite similar.

if you think that is what Lovecraft was writing about... then you're not really reading Lovecraft, because neither the Necrons nor the Reapers have *anything* in common with Lovecraft's Mythos other than they come from outer space. The Mythos does not sow. It does not reap. It does not harvest. It does not *care* about humanity in any way, shape or form. 99.9% of the Mythos entities are not even aware that humanity even exists.

1: Unfathomable creatures from the dark beyond, waking from a deep slumber, bending the minds of anyone unfortunate enough to gaze upon them.
2: Insanity all over the place. Most of the reports from Codex Necrons include humans turned insane.
3: A fear of sex made apparent by utterly terrifying hybrids (the gods want to have sex with you in its horrible way)
4: Humans little more than cockroaches.
5: They are not alive. Nor are they dead; they merely wait, and soon they shall wake. They shall return to rule this world, and all our grandest achievements shall have been in vain.

Lovecraft (one of my all time favorite authors, by the way) is not only Lovecraft, it is everything he created. The Circle of Lovecraft expanded the mythos. It is the force behind the cosmic horror stories.

Also, if I am not wrong, the authors themselves (there are five) said in a WD that they were inspired by the Cthulhu Mythos.

If you are looking for any kind of basic scientific realism.... well.... 40K ain't the setting for you. 95% of the gak we love in this setting simply would not work in real life, and has been proven to be inferior with real-life technologies and examples.

There are limits. "I like science fiction / fantasy" does not mean "I am ok with any form of incoherent rambling written by someone who has never been properly scholarized". Some of the stuff in the setting is rather interesting, deep and based on classical concepts or real scientific advances.

Did you know that every Space Marine implant was inspired by some real medical advances (or wild hypothesis) of the time? This maybe of interest to someone: it is a blog written by biotechnologists. One of them likes w40k and wrote some articles about what scientific advances inspired the people in GW to create the Space Marines. Especifically, he quoted the advancements in biology behind the Secundary Heart, the Ossmodule and the Biscopea. It is in Spanish, and really difficult to translate given the high amount of scientific names (sorry )

The same applies to a lot of elements of this setting. Mythology, anthropology, science, classic literature, social references...

Yessssssss... that is the only thing left of what once was one of the most powerful factions in the setting. Those who killed the Old Ones. Those who nearly exterminated their offspring. Those who made the Necrons flee and hide behind a rock for millions of years.

Ah, so, your real beef is not that you don't have Killer Robots from Outer Space anymore, but that Killer Gas-Bags from the Great Beyond aren't as focused on anymore?

It is not my major beef, but it is actually a reason for me to dislike the change.
I don´t like complete reboots of factions. Some people were waiting ten years for the new Codex Necrons, an army they had invested a lot of time, effort and money on.

Psienesis you didn´t like the faction and as a result you saw them as "just robots"

And you did like them and apply complexity and intrigue where others found silent, nameless robots driven by Lolthulus for the purpose of galactic consumption. Boring.

 da001 wrote:

Animus wrote:
Yeah, the Enslavers aren't squatted, Trazyn has one pinned to his wall.

Yessssssss... that is the only thing left of what once was one of the most powerful factions in the setting. Those who killed the Old Ones. Those who nearly exterminated their offspring. Those who made the Necrons flee and hide behind a rock for millions of years.

Look on their works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Let's be honest, Enslavers weren't that big or important in 40k, they were just some beasties from RT raised up as an excuse to have the Necrons go to sleep, they could have used Vampires, Astral Spectres or even just daemons. Besides that, the Necron codex still says the Old Ones were beset by "calamitous warp spawned perils they had mistakenly unleashed," so it's not hard to imagine the Enslavers still kicking around then, even if their power level wasn't so high as before.

 Void__Dragon wrote:
Well see, that is just blatantly untrue.

Sigh. What exactly is "blatantly untrue"?

 da001 wrote:
@Gogsnik: thank you very much.

My pleasure

Did you know that every Space Marine implant was inspired by some real medical advances (or wild hypothesis) of the time? This maybe of interest to someone: it is a blog written by biotechnologists. One of them likes w40k and wrote some articles about what scientific advances inspired the people in GW to create the Space Marines. Especifically, he quoted the advancements in biology behind the Secundary Heart, the Ossmodule and the Biscopea. It is in Spanish, and really difficult to translate given the high amount of scientific names (sorry )

Spoiler:

http://biotecnoblogos.febiotec.es/ciencia-al-servicio-del-emperador/
http://biotecnoblogos.febiotec.es/ciencia-al-servicio-del-emperador-ii-el-tamano-importa/

Google did a pretty good job of translating those articles which are very interesting. I have a great affection for orks but Space Marines were and still are my main army of choice so I found that very informative, thanks for the links.


On the Newcron/Oldcron subject it seems to me that destroyers pretty much continue the Oldcron theme in the newer background. They don't have a readily interchangeable human-like personality and still follow the old 'exterminate the living' theme that drove the Oldcrons; albeit that was at the behest of the C'tan due to their insatiable hunger for life force but I see no reason for that not to be the case even now.

Since the Necrontyr came to worship the C'tan but only began to wake up to the terrible fact of what was really going on almost literally as they were being turned into Necrons then the idea of the Necrons rebelling against the C'tan was seeded in the Oldcron background. If you look at the progression of Necron background since they first appeared in White Dwarf then the fully restored personalties we see now do fit with that progression.

Naturally the Destroyers epitomise the more religious amongst the Necrontyr, they willingly gave up their lives because they abhor and detest all life and that theme, I would say, is enhanced in the Newcron background, in fact, I would say they are even nastier now than before. Going with the progression of the background as matching the slow awakening of the Necrons then the revelation of the Dynasties, and the re-emergence of Necrontyr honour and ability to parley fits well. As for the difference in Lords where they could be presented as more mindless or not then the simple explanation is that not all Lords were created equally, would it not fit that those Necrontyr that were more powerful would have Lord servants that were more like their mindless warrior slaves just because? We could say that some Necron Lords represent a favoured noble or a lesser Dynasty or some such and they managed to retain personality and their own agendas but other Lords were favoured generals and the like and their reward was to have their minds stripped, leaving only their tactical brilliance and obedience behind.

I don't see a reason (in purely Necron related backgrond, not the Old Ones, War in Heaven et cetera) that the newer background isn't compatible with the earlier material. In the wider context of the C'tan then the problem lies with the 3rd Edition Codex having them as tabletop characters. They should have been like the Chaos Gods, too powerful to have anything other than their servants present in a game. However, even if they had been restricted to the background then their presence still stymied the Necrons and, as I have said about the Krork, that information had a deleterious affect on a lot of the background for no particular gain. Backtracking on that background, nerfing the C'tan to make them playable but whilst retaining their awesome power, should all their shards be reunited, seems like a positve step forward to me.

Count me amongst the few who hated the "villiain sue" oldcrons with a passion. Omnipotent not-chaos gods ruling over an army of non-tyranid lesser critters. Necrons threw narrative coherence to the ground, challenging so many estabished rules and notions that the entire 40k universe had to be rewritten for them to fit in.

Cosmic Horror is not just about intrincate cosmologies, ooglie booglies, jumps and scares. Rather, it's about the notion that God exists, and He(/She/It) hates us. And 40k already had that: Chaos.

In 40k, Chaos is the force behind the earthquake, the plague, the design flaw that causes the explosion, the well-meaning, enlightened ideologue that unwillingly sets the wheels of genocide in motion. It's a universe where the basic laws of nature, gifted with a malevolent sentience, conspire to kill or harm us. It's Lovecraft plus Moorcock, and yet manages to be even more brutal and pessimistic than the mere sum of its parts. I won't say it's a masterpiece of horror, but it's a hell of a good idea.

But all that was ruled to the background when someone forcefully inserted some C'Tan "Star Gods" (the name makes my neurons hurt), older, deadlier, more mysterious and ten times more awesome than the Ruinous Powers. Cosmic Horror gave way to Lovecraft-lite, lame "ancient astronauts" stories cobbled together from the cheesiest bits of 80s UFO lore, and an over-convoluted galactic origin story as complex as it was dumb.

The new codex is far from being the best bit of fluff ever written for 40k, but at least it fixes some of the gaping wounds in the narrative caused by the Necrons' previous incarnations.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

Only in black library, in cases that contradict the codex, and infact makes them less 'alien'

I wasn't aware the third edition Necron codex was Black Library.

My mistake.


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Manchu wrote:
Sigh. What exactly is "blatantly untrue"?

Read the second part of the post segment you quoted.

I am digging through my old White Dwarf, issues 217 and 218 introduced them to 2ed.

"The Necrons are a biologically dead race that was wiped out in a galaxy wide catastrophe approximately 60 million years ago. Faced with extinction the Necrons constructed metal bodies as repositories for their hyper-advanced minds."

I was around for the playtesting that submitted win/loss ratios to GW to tweak the Necron army. Back in 3rd ED they were a significantly powerful list, unbalanced even. The one thing I have noticed over the years is that the fluff did not contradict itself, it evolved for sure, but here GW got one right and they have not pulled any punches.

- J


Automatically Appended Next Post:
It was Andy Chambers and Rick Priestly who "forced the Necrons" into the narrative. Also note, there was mention of Necrons in Rogue Trader, so they have always been there.

- J

Been reading, really enjoying this thread. You know, I considered getting a Necron army, I now regret not going that route.

It's because this thread really showed how much the Necrons' design evolved more than any other (maybe Soritas also).

Like Orks have always been Orky. Eldar, we got newer things like Warp Spiders, Wraithknights, but stayed basically intact.

But Necrons...it was this that really jolted my memory. I started the Hobby with the likes Heroquest by Milton Bradley/GW:

 necrondog99 wrote:
It was Andy Chambers and Rick Priestly who "forced the Necrons" into the narrative. Also note, there was mention of Necrons in Rogue Trader, so they have always been there.

- J

I believe this was exactly true, alongside the original Ymargl Genestealer and Zoats and things I've forgotten.

Andy Chambers and (his mentor, whom he quoted on this) Rick Priestly didn't like to "tie up loose ends."

It's because those "loose ends" were the seeds of new ideas to explore in the future. This was key.

The kicker is I'm not sure the word "Necron" was even used. Back then, they were "Chaos Androids".

(It's ok, back then, "Chaos" was just a generic blanket term meaning anything that was especially evil.)

But back then, it wasn't because the designers were lazy. It was a deliberate "loose end".

---

So IMHO, yeah, Necrons were just "killer robots" even in 1st ed/Space Crusade.

But also IMHO...they were never meant to just stay that way. It was a "loose end" for future ideas.

And what we see now, again IMHO, was exactly that concept evolving into something much cooler.

I doubt this was exactly how Andy/Rick saw Necrons, but it's ok...they just wanted to see them grow.

I wasn't aware the third edition Necron codex was Black Library.

My mistake.

I've quoted the codex for how the Necron Lords should be, do you have any otherwise besides a snarky comment?

Well, it can all be put in proportion.

Oldcrons were at least far more interesting than, say, DKoK.

I can see both sides of the argument. I liked the Oldcrons, but then, I often like things that others don't.

@Animus: yeah you are probably right. Still don´t like it though.

 Gogsnik wrote:
In the wider context of the C'tan then the problem lies with the 3rd Edition Codex having them as tabletop characters. They should have been like the Chaos Gods, too powerful to have anything other than their servants present in a game. However, even if they had been restricted to the background then their presence still stymied the Necrons and, as I have said about the Krork, that information had a deleterious affect on a lot of the background for no particular gain. Backtracking on that background, nerfing the C'tan to make them playable but whilst retaining their awesome power, should all their shards be reunited, seems like a positve step forward to me.

I must admit I saw this as the biggest problem with 3rd edition Necrons. I assumed it represented an "avatar of the C´tan" instead of a full C´tan, like a Bloodthirster to Khorne. However, the Necrons rebellion against their gods seems odd too. Imagine the next Chaos Space Marine Codex saying that Abbadon got fed up of the Chaos Gods and sent an army to the Warp, defeated them and trapped them. If you think about it, the Silent King is to Kaldor Draigo as Chuck Norris is to Justin Bieber.

 Agent_Tremolo wrote:

Cosmic Horror is (...) about the notion that God exists, and He(/She/It) hates us. And 40k already had that: Chaos.

That´s by far the best definition of Cosmic Horror I have ever read. And Chaos certainly fits it.

However, I liked the C´tan as a Chaos Gods equivalent. Humanity was thrice doomed. We had three unstoppable menaces, all of them converging on Terra:
1: The Chaos Gods working together and supporting a new Warmaster in the 13th Crusade drew the attention of the Empire. They attacked Cadia, but they were aiming for Terra.
2: The Dragon sleeping on Mars turned the Solar System into a first priority target for the C´tan.
3: The Tyranids being attracted by the Astronomicon as if they were moths.

No way this was gonna have a happy ending for Terra. And if Terra falls, then the Imperium will instantly turn into small kingdoms. A dark time will come that will make people remember the 41st millennium as "the good old times". Grim darkness indeed. I loved it.

Now two of those menaces have been somehow neutralized. Chaos is no longer that big of a threat and Necrons are not particularly interested in Terra and, even if they were, they like to negotiate and talk things out. Perhaps even ally with the Imperium. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, but it has not been caused by a progression in the story. It has been caused by a rewriting of the story from the beginning. If you like it dark, the setting got worse.

Lots of stuff in this thread I didn´t know though. Keep it coming.

 Void__Dragon wrote:
Read the second part of the post segment you quoted.

That's not an answer. As I said, Necrons talking was never a part of their general theme. That's different from saying it never happened at all. But their general theme is remaining eerily silent. In Dead Men Walking, a giant hologram of the Necron Lord appears over the hive to give an address to the defenders.

 Psienesis wrote:

We have an alien species in possession of super-science, being functionally immortal, able to time-travel, move from one end of the galaxy to the other in comparative safety with relative ease, in a fraction of the time of everyone else, who are in possession of Galactic Doomsday technology...

... and we're supposed to believe that these people are somehow on par with a faction that turned a tractor into a tank?
.

This made my drink spurt out of my nose...