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Actually, there is some grimdark present in the newcron dex. It's just heavily diluted by ward's inability to write amoral or generally dark subject matter.

Look up the entries on the Ghost Arks and Doomscythes, and you will find some pretty dark stuff there. And Deathmarks and destroyers ain't too shabby either.
I would also say flayed ones...but they are a bit too silly.

Hmm, so i need to read the codex rather than the 30,40 whatever number of pages a white dwarf gives to introducing a new codex to discover that necrons are no longer silent, undead style terminators and now have human-like personalities?

Once again quoting without seeming to pay any attention to the quote.

Axlbush wrote:Hmm, so i need to read the codex rather than the 30,40 whatever number of pages a white dwarf gives to introducing a new codex to discover that necrons are no longer silent, undead style terminators and now have human-like personalities?

Once again quoting without seeming to pay any attention to the quote.

Really mate, the short crappy summary in the white dwarf magazine is not a valid source for fluff. I am sure there are things in the codex that WD didn't even touch on.

Axlbush wrote:Hmm, so i need to read the codex rather than the 30,40 whatever number of pages a white dwarf gives to introducing a new codex to discover that necrons are no longer silent, undead style terminators and now have human-like personalities?

Once again quoting without seeming to pay any attention to the quote.

To understand, the full extent of the fluff, yes you do. You can't read something out of context, without the source material, and have an informed opinion. However, it seems to me you just want to continue to revel in your ignorance.

And there is not even close to 30-40 pages of fluff in a White Dwarf. The number I quoted includes the fluff+Unit entries in the codex, in which case it's full of information.

This thread started with a guy asking for peoples opinions on the new necrons. I had an opinion on a single aspect of the new necrons and gave it. Its not a difficult opinion to comprehend. I dont really need to know how they came into existance, what they eat for dinner and who they are mates with on facebook. Other people came on and gave their differing opinions. Some good valid reasons they were too.

I'm not sure how you can really bandy around the words "ignorance" . We are talking about necrons and 40k after all. I certainly don't feel impoverished for not having an encyclopaedic knowledge of the hobby.

I still find it absurd that people say the Newcrons lost their grim-darkness. So a race of souless unfeeling terminators who view all other life as nothing more than vermin fit only for eradication or enslavement is happybright (antithesis to grimdark of course)?

If anything the new book is more grimdark since it likes to toy with the concepts of madness, dementia, and "deal-with-the-devil" type stories. The old codex was grimdark because the writers simply said "oh my god Necrons are so dark, mysterious, and Lovecraftian!" without really showing it.

I will admit that Dolmen Gates and the loss of Pariahs are rather lame, but they're small grievances compared to the vast improvment of the new codex.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Axlbush wrote:This thread started with a guy asking for peoples opinions on the new necrons. I had an opinion on a single aspect of the new necrons and gave it. Its not a difficult opinion to comprehend. I dont really need to know how they came into existance, what they eat for dinner and who they are mates with on facebook. Other people came on and gave their differing opinions. Some good valid reasons they were too.

I'm not sure how you can really bandy around the words "ignorance" . We are talking about necrons and 40k after all. I certainly don't feel impoverished for not having an encyclopaedic knowledge of the hobby.

Well the problem is by your own admission you don't have that much knowledge on the subject so why should we consider your opinion as strongly as someone who does have knowledge on the topic?

Sasori wrote:
EDIT:

While you can describe other characters similarly, you would be missing out on key pieces. For instance Chaplain Cassius hates nids. That sums him up, but it's being disingenuous. Cassius believes nids are the biggest heretical threat because they invaded Ultramar and he's gathering warriors who have fought nids to counter them. There is a story there. There is conflict. There is personality. There is a purpose. Yarrick is the toughest commisar, versus: Yarrick is the only human Ghaz, the ork prophet, thinks is worth fighting after Yarrick took the arm from one of his nobs as his own. Yarrick hunts Ghaz for the atrocities he committed on Armageddon. Again, story, conflict, personality, purpose. Necron characters lack these. They're a bag of saltines.

You are oversimplifying the Necron Characters, to try to prove your point. It's being disingenuous they way you are portraying them.


For instance, for Trazyn, It's a lot more than "Collecting" the Galaxy one part at a time. He clearly enjoys History, and want's to preserve it, with tastes that range from all over the galaxy. He also seems to have a unique background during the HH, since he calls Gulliman, an "Old Friend" in his conversation with Sicarus, while this could just be him taunting him, that still shows personality. His chat with Valeria also shows he has a mischievous side, with his bit of the Hyperstone maze.

Here, I'm going to take your first few sentences, and switch a bit around. Watch the magic.

While you can describe other characters similarly, you would be missing out on key pieces. For instance the Silent King hates nids. That sums him up, but it's being disingenuous. The Silent king believes nids are the biggest threat to his people's apotheosis because they invaded the galaxy. He's gathering warriors to counter them. There is a story there. There is conflict. There is personality. There is a purpose.

See? I can do that too, for every Necron character.

He was interested in Valera because she collected stuff too. He saw a fellow collector and gave her a bauble. As for the White Dwarf thing, I don't even know what to say about that. It doesn't correlate with anything else Black Library has put out or even codexes. It was fluff for a battle report. He collects because he collects. That is his story. He has no other real impulse. That is fine and dandy if it's sprinkled about, or driving somewhere, but every Necron Lord they made seems to me to fall in the "I do this because that's what I do."

The Silent King is an interesting character. He shows up for a brief wild 2-3 pages? Then he's out of the picture and we're left with the rest of the lot.

I think it's also worth mentioning that the Necron characters are rather new in the fiction and don't have the years of backstory other characters do. I wouldn't be suprised if some Necrons eventually get novels and the like centered on them, but as it stands they simply haven't been around long enough to flesh out.

If you go on just codex entries pretty much every special character in all the codexes is going to sound simple, that's what happens when you only have a few pages of backstory. In other words just give the authors some time to flesh them out then we'll see.

Also I think the Necron lords doing things because "I do this because that's what I do" is more to illustrate how minor ticks and idiosynracies blossomed into pathologies and psychosis after the hibernation. Just look at Imotekh. Conquering and arrogance may be his one thing but that's kind of the point. His personality quirk got way blown out of proportion thanks to being a robot.

I wouldnt play Crons if it werent for the new fluff. I like a bit of personality - opens options for my own backstory. Mindless robocops are just too 80s and boring IMO.

Old-Cron-Fluff was extremely limited.

On a first reading of the old Codex, their single-minded "ancient evil out to destroy all life" schtick made for a single, cool "wow"-moment. But than the thing got old before most people finished painting the first unit of Warriors; and there was nothing else. Old-crons just had no "depth" to explore, not texture or variance. Trying to play Old-Crons in a club campaign was one of the most frustrating experiences I have had. All other people grew their stories, armies and fluff with each battle. Space Marine Captain here having a grudge with the other guy's Ork Warlord. The valiant Farseer shoring up defenses against the brash Tau Commander. Even the "less serious" fluke events added fun, if tonque-in-cheek stuff to their respective armies history. And the Necron "We come to destroy all life! (Yawn!, again?).

The new fluff, for anyone who actually cares about fluff, hoping to explore, expand and, most importantly "play" with it (rather than just read the book once) is lightyears better. Like the "Grey-Knight" reimagination (another former fringe army with fluff only appealing to a few socially awkward neckbeards), one of the most brilliant "fluff-initiatives" to come out of GW in many, many years. I am deeply impressed.

Old fluff was better, in this codex they should of expanded it more and added some depth

I was even thinking they could be the solution to the tyranid problem - not anymore !!

Guess we are all boned árd now

Maugan Ra is the solution to the "Tyranid Problem" (as far as their is a problem with an entire alien faction unable to beat a mere 1000 people Space Marine's chapter other than said faction being utterly underwhelming as a threat in 40K terms).

In the old fluff, necrons had souls that were trapped in machines. In the new fluff, the C'tan ate their souls while trapping their minds in the machine bodies. I liked how previously there seemed to be an unwritten rule that in 40k all truly sentient life had a soul. There were no "androids". It implied something fundamental about the nature of the soul in 40k and how it might be necessary to be "alive" and have intelligence beyond a base animal form. Now this has changed.

Now necrons more resemble computers with minds imprinted on the machines. The implacable army of zombie robots is still there though. Some tomb worlds are completely automated having lost nearly all sentience.

The new fluff shows the necrons as much more fractured in their allegiance with each other. They have quirks, and dementia. Some still want their bodies back. Some just want to kill, kill, kill. They're not just one dimensional, "necron raiders". But they can still show up, lumber forward killing everything, and vanish in a puff of green electricity.

One interesting thing is that on lychguard, the spine extends low past the pelvis. Did necrons have tails?

Well the Triarch Praetorians have tails for what it's worth.

I, personally, don't like to play a race if I can't have some interesting, unique fluff for my particular army. With the Oldcrons, the best I could do was differentiate between "these necrons woke up on a desert world, look how dusty they are" and "these necrons woke up on a swamp world, look how covered in swamp plants they are".

I like the new ones. They have style.

The problem with the "if you don't like the new fluff, you can still portray your Necron army like oldcrons" counter-argument is that while this is certainly(and obviously) true, the portrayal of Necrons in the new dex will be as they are portrayed in new fiction. If you dislike the new fluff, there's no way to 'deal with' that.

Personally, I don't think the new fluff is absolutely terrible. I do like a small subset of the new ideas(Destroyers and flayed ones having a sort of 'virus' or mental flaw -- that's great), but I do largely miss the non-personality of the oldcrons.

I don't need to identify with the Necrons, and I feel like part of the new fluff was there for just that. I *much* preferred the horror that was barely understand and couldn't be negotiated through any known means 'terminators' than such things as the 'skeleton nobles' that's present now. While there is(was) indeed overlap(in the broad sense) between oldcrons and tyranids, a good writer would have been able to differentiate the former from the latter, I feel.

While oldcrons were limited and certainly in need of an update, surely it was possible for a good writer and dex author to create a gameplay and theme-flexible army while still maintaining the 'menacing mystery' flavor of the oldcrons?

Ronin-Sage wrote:The problem with the "if you don't like the new fluff, you can still portray your Necron army like oldcrons" counter-argument is that while this is certainly(and obviously) true, the portrayal of Necrons in the new dex will be as they are portrayed in new fiction. If you dislike the new fluff, there's no way to 'deal with' that.

Personally, I don't think the new fluff is absolutely terrible. I do like a small subset of the new ideas(Destroyers and flayed ones having a sort of 'virus' or mental flaw -- that's great), but I do largely miss the non-personality of the oldcrons.

I don't need to identify with the Necrons, and I feel like part of the new fluff was there for just that. I *much* preferred the horror that was barely understand and couldn't be negotiated through any known means 'terminators' than such things as the 'skeleton nobles' that's present now. While there is(was) indeed overlap(in the broad sense) between oldcrons and tyranids, a good writer would have been able to differentiate the former from the latter, I feel.

While oldcrons were limited and certainly in need of an update, surely it was possible for a good writer and dex author to create a gameplay and theme-flexible army while still maintaining the 'menacing mystery' flavor the oldcrons?

Yes, it was. But we didn't get a good writer; we got Ward.
As such, we should just be grateful that we got something almost decent.

Oh hey look it's people pretending that an army getting their themes and identity (Or lack of it, which was the point) retconned and rewritten, but having a little footnote that you can still sort of play as the old Necrons if you want is a perfectly natural progression of fluff, rather than being a complete retcon.

DakkaDakka don't change.

And yeah, the problem for me is that the new codex will now completely change how the Necrons are portrayed in future appearances.

Oh and it also retconned Mechanicum, effectively, as well as Nightbringer. And that wasn't too cool.

Void__Dragon wrote:Oh hey look it's people pretending that an army getting their themes and identity (Or lack of it, which was the point) retconned and rewritten, but having a little footnote that you can still sort of play as the old Necrons if you want is a perfectly natural progression of fluff, rather than being a complete retcon.

DakkaDakka don't change.

And yeah, the problem for me is that the new codex will now completely change how the Necrons are portrayed in future appearances.

Oh and it also retconned Mechanicum, effectively, as well as Nightbringer. And that wasn't too cool.

I agree they retconned alot, but its alot more than a footnote that you can have the same old necrons in the newcrons minus the c'tans. Some tomb worlds are broken down to the point they just repetitively raid, or attack the surface.

What do you mean by retconned Mechanicum? Are you talking about a sleeping c'tan on mars and necron/admech cults?

To be fair, changing the C'Tan to become some form of "Avatar of the C'Tan" or "C'Tan shard" has been a fan-favorite for as long as I can remember. People always seemed be extremely irritated (for reasons I could never quite follow) by having the "actual" C'Tan on the table.

I woulda preferred the "old, real C'Tan" along with the new Necrons, but it is, I guess, what happens, when GW actually does cave to popular demand from the player-base.

Zweischneid wrote:Maugan Ra is the solution to the "Tyranid Problem" (as far as their is a problem with an entire alien faction unable to beat a mere 1000 people Space Marine's chapter other than said faction being utterly underwhelming as a threat in 40K terms).

As much as i like them, everyone is strangely underwhelming compared to Spess Muhreens. Eldar Craftwords? Who cares, one chapter is sufficient to devastate one. Having a battlebarge traped in Commorragh? Hahahaha, good joke, Spess Muhreens to the rescue! Badab war? "And then chapter xy conquered an entire defended planet because they were that awesome". The Contqual subsector is rioting? Send in the Irons Hands, they will execute one third of the entire subsector's population. The Fabricator General is still fuming about the ammo bill they sent him...

KingDeath wrote:

As much as i like them, everyone is strangely underwhelming compared to Spess Muhreens. Eldar Craftwords? Who cares, one chapter is sufficient to devastate one. Having a battlebarge traped in Commorragh? Hahahaha, good joke, Spess Muhreens to the rescue! Badab war? "And then chapter xy conquered an entire defended planet because they were that awesome". The Contqual subsector is rioting? Send in the Irons Hands, they will execute one third of the entire subsector's population. The Fabricator General is still fuming about the ammo bill they sent him...

Perhaps. But Tyranids seem to be lower on that hierarchy than most, even if Space Marines are undoubtedly the very top. I mean, Maugan Ra stopped an entire Splinter Fleet from making planetfall.. by himself (how was he on all poles, all continents and across the equator at the same time? Don't even start on ammunition). Vallhallans starved (!) a Nid Fleet to death. Tau adapted faster (!) to the Nids than Nids adapted to them. Yriel has notches on his spear for not one, but two entire Hive Fleets? Given the Nids overall track record, even Abaddon might soon call his first victory should he ever encounter a swarm.

That's cause GW hates Tyranids :(

Even before the new codex the fluff had begun to change:




This was most definitely a book about NEWcrons, and it was awesome. I was expecting the same old boring robots but what I got was personality, strife, politics, and betrayal.
The only thing I dislike about the new fluff is the c'tan nerf. I agree it was stupid to have a freaking Star God on the table, but I think they could've worked out a better solution.

I actually disliked that book. I thought the necron fluff in it was cool and I liked that they developed the army in it. But, I really that the book's layout was rather poor. The build up really just fizzled out at the end. But, thats just my opinion.

When Necrons first appeared, in "metal-space-egyptian-terminator on the cover" White Dwarf 217, they obviously had some personality, since one of them is seen flying around on something the size of a bike and laughing at some poor Imperial dude.

This was a Loooooooooong time before the first necron codex, so technically they're retconning a retcon.

No FTL outside Haxxoring Teh Webway is just stupid though.

Zweischneid wrote:

KingDeath wrote:

As much as i like them, everyone is strangely underwhelming compared to Spess Muhreens. Eldar Craftwords? Who cares, one chapter is sufficient to devastate one. Having a battlebarge traped in Commorragh? Hahahaha, good joke, Spess Muhreens to the rescue! Badab war? "And then chapter xy conquered an entire defended planet because they were that awesome". The Contqual subsector is rioting? Send in the Irons Hands, they will execute one third of the entire subsector's population. The Fabricator General is still fuming about the ammo bill they sent him...

Perhaps. But Tyranids seem to be lower on that hierarchy than most, even if Space Marines are undoubtedly the very top. I mean, Maugan Ra stopped an entire Splinter Fleet from making planetfall.. by himself (how was he on all poles, all continents and across the equator at the same time? Don't even start on ammunition). Vallhallans starved (!) a Nid Fleet to death. Tau adapted faster (!) to the Nids than Nids adapted to them. Yriel has notches on his spear for not one, but two entire Hive Fleets? Given the Nids overall track record, even Abaddon might soon call his first victory should he ever encounter a swarm.

Oh, the true redshirts of 40k are most certainly the sisters. Whenever they appear in the fluff they die...horribly. The Nids got at least the honour of wiping out/ almost wiping out two Spess Muhreen ( but...how? did someone sabotate their character shields? ALPHARIIIIIIIUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUS!!!) chapters and reducing a large Eldar craftworld, along with hundreds/ thousands of planets to rubble.
Sisters get...well, i don't know. The sisters on the other hand are usualy spanked worse than the plaything of some particularly sadistic Dark Eldar dominatrix.

Zweischneid wrote:To be fair, changing the C'Tan to become some form of "Avatar of the C'Tan" or "C'Tan shard" has been a fan-favorite for as long as I can remember. People always seemed be extremely irritated (for reasons I could never quite follow) by having the "actual" C'Tan on the table.

I woulda preferred the "old, real C'Tan" along with the new Necrons, but it is, I guess, what happens, when GW actually does cave to popular demand from the player-base.

Oh don't get me wrong I agree.

The C'tan (As in the actual star gods) should never have been playable, but there was a much more dignified way to fix this rather than giving them the Khaine treatment.

It isn't even like GW would have had to have been creative. Dawn of War already made avatars of the C'tan useable, using the same principle as the newcron codex, only instead of being ripped to cosmic pieces and being compressed into different Necrodermis bodies, a C'tan lends a portion of its power to a Necron Lord to rearrange its Necrodermis to resemble the C'tan. Use this principle, make there be bodies that the C'tan's power can be imbued into (This fits with old fluff perfectly well, the Nightbringer had a ship it would often imbue with a portion of its power), and bam, C'tan units that are not the real C'tan. Basically C'tan avatars.

What also bothers me about the change is that the C'tan shards don't actually get any more fluff than what it takes to justify their existence and acknowledging that "Yeah this is a playable unit I guess here is some fluff". Basically, none of the battles mentioned them at all, which I found rather lame. I fear that the C'tan will go the route of the Avatars of Khaine, that is to say they will only be mentioned in other army codices about some big bad monster that exists to get the gak kicked out of it by the new special snowflake hero.

So instead of having them be like avatars of khaine, you'd rather have them be like the harbinger from mass effect 2?
...
You know, I actually like that.