Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

And we're back with the second, exciting part of the Dawn of the Necrons!

The year was 1998, the month was March and the quote of the month was "Thou Shall Not".



And the big release was the Digganobz! Kind of sad for our skully little robots, they've been in 2 issues and only got blurbs, no cover image.

Of course if you've seen the models you'd know why...

The issue leads off with new relases and the news.


The Greenwich Village store is still there, now managed by my buddy Don and pretty much always full.

Chaos is the other big release so we get to see the new and improved and PG-rated Daemonettes.

And the not-so mutated Marauders

The marauders are a big disappointment after the classic chaos warriors and thugs of the late 80s but still better than the Conan-wannabes we have today.


The sorcerers are made of win though. two of them are still in my Plague marine army.



But this champion... geeze try not too laugh guys.

Gorkamorka was the cover story though. Ah Gorkamorka, truely the best thought out game GW ever made.

1. Everyone likes Orks
2. Profit!

Yeah killing Necromunda for Mad Max meets Orks, that was a smart idea...

So now they bring humans into Gorkamorka. But not just any humans! No, we get humans who really, really wish they were Orks. The Diggaz!



The Diggaz, not too bad to tell the truth. I mean if you're looking to play an army of losers who wish they were Orks these are certainly the guys for you.



Digga truck. Not to be confused with Fred Flintstone's car.

Other big stories included the Gold Demons for 1997


Here is really neat flying boat.

And an even neater scratch-built falcon (from before the kit came out)

2 vipers and a Leman Russ hull according to the text.


Die like guardsmen...

Come back next episode for the exciting conclusion!

And speaking of dying like guardsmen, we'll have the Massacre at Big Toof River!

Heehee! I long since incorporated all of my Diggas as grots (slaves) in my Ork army. It fits with the fluff that my warboss and his boyz are escapees from Gorkamorka (the planet and the game).

That flying boat is ace! That kind of stuff is why the "Good old days" were good.

The crab-clawed daemonettes though... my eyes, my eyes...! *Shudders*

An all-Digga "Ork" army -- done well -- is a great army concept out there for the taking.

Although I'll pass...I already have an expensive, OOP metal moneysink in my GCult.

I wish I'd kept all my digga stuff.. I kick myself every night for not doing that.

I always wondered whether Gorkamorka was set on a Tomb World. There were pyraminds on the planet. Orks getting too close to them at night mysteriously disappeared. And the rulebooks hinted heavily that the Diggaz were descendents of an Imperial research teams (all their equipment was still there) of the kind that was mentioned early in Necron fluff.

What do you reckon

Was never a massive fan of Diggas themselves. It was an add on the game didn't really need (Rebel Grotz were fun though).

And I liked the Crab Claw Daemonettes, though I can't put my finger on why...

Flashman wrote:And I liked the Crab Claw Daemonettes, though I can't put my finger on why...

Well not in public anyway.

Flashman wrote:And I liked the Crab Claw Daemonettes, though I can't put my finger on why...

Kid Kyoto wrote: Well not in public anyway.

EXALT!

Stand fast and die like guardsman.

Total in my sig now.

Flashman wrote:I always wondered whether Gorkamorka was set on a Tomb World. There were pyraminds on the planet. Orks getting too close to them at night mysteriously disappeared. And the rulebooks hinted heavily that the Diggaz were descendents of an Imperial research teams (all their equipment was still there) of the kind that was mentioned early in Necron fluff.

What do you reckon

I certainly sounds like something I read somewhere once...

Loving the retro-reviews, Kid K. Keep 'em coming.

And post them to the articles section!

Wikipedia, infallible source of all knowledge, lists the "Night Horrors" as being necrons, based upon artwork and other fluff.

Kid_Kyoto wrote:
I mean if you're looking to play an army of losers who wish they were Orks these are certainly the guys for you.

Wait, does that mean I'm a digga?

Hmm, some of the images I uploaded for this (including the cover) were deleted.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/225144.page

I'll come back to this when I figure out what the problem is.

OK I think that's straightened out so... ON WITH THE SHOW!

When we last say WD 218 it was admondishing some Mordians to 'Die Like Guardsmen' well that's some pretty well-timed advice since it's time to look at...



THE MASSACRE AT BIG TOOF RIVER!

This was a 1997 Games Day diorama but IMHO it's one of the most important ones in the development of GW games. Just a year or two before Forgeworld launched it featured all sorts of scratchbuilt Imperial and Ork tanks and showed the potential for 28mm versions of 5mm Epic models. It also showed just how good a bijillion 28mm models can look on a table (keep in mind at the time 40k games had 20-30 models on a side).

The storyline is pretty simple, a group of Praetorians attack an Ork settlement and well... Die Like Guardsmen.



But it's full of scratchbuilt vehicles that later showed up in resin, and now plastic.



wrecked baneblade and Ork fighter bombers



Early Hydra and Atlas



A kazillion Orks



And the whole table. Does anyone know if it's still on exhibition at GW HQ?

The next feature is the tale of 4 gamers



It was an interesting idea. As GW prices rose they decided to have 4 staffers show us how to build an army on a budget.



So lets see what tips the pros have for us!

First up let's check on Paul Sawer's Beastmen



Ah... so that's what I've been doing wrong. Next time I'll just ring up mail order and ask them for a plastic Reaver Titan and some pre-release Adeptus Custodeus.

Well how about Richard Gunson's Brettonians? What wisdom does he have for us?



Ah... so you say if I buy my stuff for 33% off at a grand opening I can get more with less?

I understand in later articles GW staff recommend selling your blood, beating up small children and stealing their models and performing sexual favors for the mail order trolls.

Come back next time when we finally see...



The NECRONS!

And now at last...



THE NECRONS!

This second article finished off the early Necron list by adding the Lord and the Destroyer bringing them up to a mighty 4 units!





The list is even more limiting that that since the Necrons have literally NO equipment options. No Veil of Darkness, no Ressurection Orb, no nothing.

But that doesn't stop them from taking on the second-youngest army in the 40k universe, the mighty Sisters of Battle!



Hmm, Massacre at Sanctuary 101, I wonder how that will turn out?

I'm sure it's just a name, like how they named that planet Armaggedon even though no actual armaggedon occured there. I'm sure the rules are completely fair and balanced.



Ah, so the Necrons get 2000 points to the SoB's 1000 and, as an added bonus, the SoBs can only take allied support if the models are female.

Paging Doctor Thunder, Paging Doctor Thunder!

The scenario is the SoB have to hold off the Necrons until their off-table psykers get out a distress call. OK, so it's a defensive game against tough-as-nails vehicle killing robots. So with some wise unit picks the SoBs can still win. right?



So um, 2 tanks, a close assault unit (who, keep in mind, lose their wargear when fighting Necrons due to their disruption field) and a total of 1 long range heavy weapon...

The Necron player?



Well with only 4 units to pick from he's pretty much as expected.

So how does it go?



Apparently the cunning plan of standing around shooting bolters at T5, 2+ armor robots who get up didn't work all that well. The SoBs are tabled on turn 6.

WD at the time was INFAMOUS for printing battle reports where the flavor of the month slaughters it's target but this battle report was the most blatant favoritism I've seen.

So let's take one last look at the mighty 2nd edition Necrons, all 6 of them.



Yeah not much to look at but say what you will, they're still here when the Squats, Adeptus Mechanicus, Lost and the Damned are not.

One last note, these were the dying days of 2nd edition and unlike the move from 3rd to 4th or 4th to 5th there was a wholesale rewriting. All old books were made obsolete. Why was that?

Well let's ask WD itself.



Rules for the GT basically ban whole parts of the game.



NO PSYCHIC PHASE at all. At the time there was a whole psychic phase that required a deck of cards and pitting your power cards against your opponent's dispells. The powers were dealt out randomly and many of them required unique templates to use.



Oh and no strategy cards or missions. Both of those were infamously unbalanced. One 'strategy' was a virus outbreak that could wipe out any army not in power armor on turn 1.

So it's pretty clear that by 1998 even GW was sick of 2nd edition and in the mood to ditch it for something more streamlined.

And so we say g'bye to WD 218, an interesting milestone in 40k's journey.

Nice one there. A good reminder that WD battle reports have always been cack. In that vein, I'd love to see your take on WD222, which contains my personal favorite battlereport, "Last Stand at Glazer's Creek". It was a fun read, didn't link to the release of the month (well, not directly anyway), and was the last time, IIRC, that a 40k game was presented where units were chosen outside of the formal armylist in order to be fluffy.

I'd never run across those tournament rules at the time, but it makes sense, as 2E had no army composition system beyond "0-50% characters, 25%+ squads, 0-25% support/allies", though the exact numbers varied.

So what can we learn from launching the Necrons? Why are they still around when the Adeptus Mech, the Arbites, the Squats, the Kroot and Lost and the Damned are not?

We'll never really know, unless someone from the studio at that time can jump in and say what happened behind the scenes it's a mystery. Maybe someone was a big killer robot and fan and was determined to make them work. Necrons after all were GW's second experiment with skeleton robots, they had skeletal Chaos Androids in Space Crusade.

Maybe an artist or sculptor came in one day with some brilliant art, maybe it was just luck, maybe they outsold all expectations. We just don't know.

But looking at this early list we can see some features.

First off they are very limited but almost ridiculously powerful and easy to play. Most of the other fringe armies were underpowered and hard to use. We like to think that models sell armies but I'd say power sells a lot more. Good painting and converting can cover up fugly models but for some armies no amount of good playing can make them win. I saw a lot of people convert defilers and drop pods before there were models, I don't see too many rushing out to build Land Speeder Storms.

These early necrons were also extremely easy to paint and assemble. Other fringe armies have required extensive conversions. I've personally started and abandoned 'counts as' arbites and mechanicus armies because the painting and conversion just got to be too much. But if it was easy and cheap...

Third they manage to be a fantasy army in 40k without being too obvious about it. They're Space Tomb Kings but at least they're not Space Mummies with skeleton space chariots. So they're a good mix of the familiar and the novel.

Thoughts?

That battle report was when I realised how much garbage WD Battle reports were and stopped buying them.

Dexy wrote:That battle report was when I realised how much garbage WD Battle reports were and stopped buying them.

LOL you and Legoburner can start the 'WD218 made me quit' club.

The Battle At Big Toof River was awesome.

I saw it and all the other displays at Warhammer world back in 2000.

Best one or shere scale was the vampires attacking the empire city though.

Remember that WD, still have it in a box downstairs.... and I had all 6 of those necron warriors many times over...

Kyoto, I've been mulling Necrons over lately, in part due to the rumors of their new codex. I think it's interesting how the Necrons were conceptually built up over time, and that's led to their current incarnation still feeling kind of bolted-together.

I mean, GW's original inspiration was said to be the Borg and other "faceless evil robot" archetypes, and some of their look came out of their old Chaos Androids too. Fine. The current models definitely have a smooth, high-tech robotic look, and there's obviously a kind of uniform, regimented feel to their army list.

But then you have the whole ancient evil/Lovecraftian angle, which was mostly expanded and developed in the Necron codex. And IMO, the current designs don't work very well for that. They aren't particularly scary, for one. Look at the Tomb Spyder. Shouldn't that be a scary model? It's an ancient evil robot spider...that lives in tombs. But look what we have instead. And do the rules make Necrons "scary" in game terms? You could argue that psychology might be one of their weaknesses, weirdly.

The other point is that smooth, high-tech looking surfaces don't scream Lovecraft. That kind of ancient evil implies *ornateness.* Ironically, the original Necrons seen here might do a slightly better job of that, although they're cruder sculpts. Necron models would probably be better served with arcane writing all over their surfaces and designs that evoke an ancient, long-forgotten civilization.

Then you have the C'tan angle, which was also bolted on out of a throwaway line from one of the 2nd edition rulebooks. I guess they were thrown in to give the army character since they made the conscious decision that Necrons would be completely boring. But now your army lacks character if you don't include the C'tan. And as *star gods* should they ever really have been part of the game in the first place? What's worse, the Necron background apparently says they're to blame for every bad event in the universe, from galactic conflict to acid reflux.

Anyway, the point of all this rambling is that the Necrons somehow don't feel like they really fit together conceptually, and you can see the reasons why starting here.

Holy blast from the past. thanks for the post it brings back lots of memories.

Kid, I believe the Falcon did have a kit that came out around 1996 or so... I only remember because I recall reading the silly 2nd ed rules that you could fire both weapons on the turret, but the second target could be no more than 6" away from the first target, because the guns were fixed. There may have even been a diagram with it.

Also, it was the first kit to have the new style scatter laser.

That seems like so long ago now. I was still in college - no wife - no kids.

I have never seen Necron #5 and I have a whole army of classic 'crons (see my photo0dump for pics). I bought all my minis in boxes, so maybe that one only came in a blister.

Flashman wrote:I always wondered whether Gorkamorka was set on a Tomb World. There were pyraminds on the planet. Orks getting too close to them at night mysteriously disappeared. And the rulebooks hinted heavily that the Diggaz were descendents of an Imperial research teams (all their equipment was still there) of the kind that was mentioned early in Necron fluff.

What do you reckon

Almost cetainly. There's a piece of art in one of the two Gorkamorka rule books that show an ork trukk driving in the direction of some pyramids in the distance. To the side of the picture is a pile of scrap with a Necron head at the front.

A later issue of Whide Dwarf covered Necron scenery and made some abandoned equipment from an exploration team (including the disected Scarab model IIRC), a monolith and a huge pyramid.

gorgon wrote:...

...

Anyway, the point of all this rambling is that the Necrons somehow don't feel like they really fit together conceptually, and you can see the reasons why starting here.

Nearly everything GW have ever done in 40K and WHFB has been cobbled up, mashed together from different sources, ret-conned, re-written and otherwise messed around with in a disorganised manner.

Interesting that in late 2nd edition tournaments were so important that the whole game was re-written to make them work properly. Compare with the current situation.

You can also see Ork glyphs on the original necron lord's robes. There was a theory that the Nec's were the original creators of the brain boys and orks but it was never followed up on.