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Personally I like Nurglitch's idea. It's quite clever really.

Nurglitch wrote:Feel No Pain is boring, uncharacterful, and over-used.

Quite a while ago I proposed something similar to the original proposal, except that casualties were removed and put into reserves. Once an entire unit was back in reserves, it could be brought back onto the board via the usual reserve rules. Additionally, I'd add that Necrons would be put back in reserve if they fail Morale checks. And the difference between Necrons and Constructs would be fixed so that We'll Be Back applied to a subset of Necron units with Necron units being all units in the Codex (similar disambiguation to Chaos Space Marines and Enhanced Warriors).

The notion was to have stuff like the Resurrection Orb be like Icons to Lesser Daemons in Codex: Chaos Space Marines. Stuff like the Monolith Portal would also be an entry point back onto the board, just as it is now.

So it's sort of like combining We'll Be Back and Phase Out in that the entire army can be forced off the board with no entry points and thus forfeit the game.

This retains the balance of Necrons and Constructs, with Constructs like Monoliths providing re-entry points to the Necrons, Tomb Spyders providing a Feel No Pain aura, and so on. Basically it keeps the character of the army while retaining the opportunity for a suite of universal special rules to replace overcomplicated Necron specialist rules. That would give players the option of numberless undead robot hordes, elite super-death robots, and a mixture.

Oh, and Pariahs would be Necrons (or whatever that We'll Be Back rule eventually applies to), damnit.

This interesting but I'm not sue what you are trying to simulate. For example WBB is obviously a game mechanic that represents the necron self-repair; I'm not so sure what aspect of necrons is being represented by putting them back in reserves. This kind of thing my suit daemons better, like coming out through tears in reality. In fact there's a reference in DH codex to something called "sustained assault" in relation to daemons. I have no idea what that was but this kinda sounds like it.

asimo77:

I should probably mention that I don't approach rules from the "simulation" perspective, in that there are no Necrons whose behaviour the rules can simulate. If anything it's the other way around, and the background has to do the work of colouring in the rules with some sort of explanation.

In game terms We'll Be Back means that models can survive unsaved wounds, or beyond ordinary means of inflicting casualties. It has several problems, such as marking the location of casualties, requiring a fair bit of work for a glorified saving throw, and doing nothing to obviate the relatively slow and static nature of most Necrons. Plus it makes the Resurrection Orb a no-brainer, encourages homogeneous armies, and is more "I Still Function!" rather than "We'll Be Back".

I think that's why so many people think replacing We'll Be Back with Feel No Pain is a good idea, since they have identical conditions for activation and negation, the same likelihood of activation, and the same end result while Feel No Pain does away with tracking casualties, units, and so on. But Feel No Pain has the same problem of essentially acting as a save, which doesn't really contribute to gameplay beyond allowing players to attempt to leverage removing that save.

The same thing, making Necrons tougher to kill, can be accomplished by making Necrons harder to kill using the usual hit-wound-save mechanics, rather than adding an additional layer that only works against anti-infantry weapons.

If you still want to think about it in representational terms, simply having a better Toughness or Armour Save or an Invulnerable Save can represent Necron self-repair, but having slowly depleted units of Necrons slog across the board is boring to play with and against regardless of whether or not it represents.

My proposal is intended to create the Necron army that gives it both mobility and an endless swarm of killer robots without changing the fact that individual robots may be slow, and that they tend to bug out if the going gets tough. There was a similar rule for Gaunts in the second 4th edition Codex: Tyranids called "Without Number" where the bugs had the option of disappearing, and then automatically coming in from reserves next turn. My proposal limits their respawn points, their reliability (at least in the early turns of the game), and their army (since it would apply to all Necron units units would compete for respawn points). The increased risk means that their points can be dropped for more models as well, so Necron hordes are more like the pictures of endless hordes spewing from Monoliths.

Thus I like to think my proposal doesn't turn them into Nurgle-bots, and emphasizes their high technology without making them invincible.

If you try it out as described, you might be pleasantly surprised by the game play.

Ok that clears it up quite a bit. I guess I was confused because I've always believed the opposite of this :"the background has to do the work of colouring in the rules with some sort of explanation."

Sounds pretty neat!