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Its a solid codex, fluff and rule wise.
Ward's got some of the most competative codecies out there, and in this case, the fluff is good too. The Necrons are WAY more interesting than they were before, and I had 6k of the old ones (as to say I liked them).

Admit it, you want Ward on your codex.

I beg to differ.

In this incarnation, the Necrons :

- have rules similar to the Dark Eldar;
- have fluff similar to the Tomb Kings.

Essentiallly, the worst damage is to the game's continuity: the Necrons have gone from the galaxy's Soul Harvesters to one more expansionnist xenos species. It's lost all colour, ambiance and dread: the Necrons now make alliances and politics, have "codes of honour" and comical eccentricities. They've lost their grimdarkness and gone from Eldricht Lovecraftian Cosmic Threat to comic relief.

This was not necessary to introduce the dynasties or even the C'tan's enslavement. Now the Mechanicus background and novels such as Mechanicum, though recent, seem totally inconsistent.

I didn't understand the hostility against Mr Ward's books. Until now.

Down with ye revisionism!

silence indigo wrote:This was not necessary to introduce the dynasties or even the C'tan's enslavement. Now the Mechanicus background and novels such as Mechanicum, though recent, seem totally inconsistent.

To be fair, it was never outright stated officially that it was the Void Dragon. So it going from being speculated to be the Void Dragon to being speculated to be a particularly powerful shard of the Void Dragon doesn't break any fluff consistency.

BlackMath wrote:Its a solid codex, fluff and rule wise.
Ward's got some of the most competative codecies out there, and in this case, the fluff is good too. The Necrons are WAY more interesting than they were before, and I had 6k of the old ones (as to say I liked them).

Admit it, you want Ward on your codex.

I agree 100%

I've long said Matt Ward makes the best dexes out there. Guy has no competition! His stuff is over-the-top, but always balanced for the points. I don't think the dude can write fluff to save his life though, I'm positive a team member wrote the new Necron fluff due to the mega bashing Ward has been getting lately.

The fluff of this codex is so much better than the last one it is silly.
One of the things the Crons suffered from, fluff wise, was too many influences. They had Terminator, Undead, and Lovecraft, all in one. I like all of those things, but they needed to go with one, and the Egyptian undead robots was the one that was the most original.
I'd have like some more Lovecraft too, though. Less Terminator is better.

If Ward gets on another one of my favourite codexes, i'll be quite annoyed.

Thus far he has fethed up 3 of my favourite armies with his 'improvements' to the fluff and his wacked out rules.

His armies are powerful, yes, but alternately bland and so far in left field you couldn't see them with a telescope on a nice clear night.

He never seems to even read the original fluff before 'improving it', and can't write a nice clear rule (that won't spark a vicious RAW argument) to save his life.

In his defense he is at least consistent, unlike 'arbitrary Cruddace'...

Kelly has his issues too (JOTWW for example, or some of the SW fluff) but he's the best of the three they have.

I would like to see a new breed of codex writers that actually hold some reverence for the stuff that's gone before, and can write fluff/rules well. There has to be SOMEONE out there that's capable of consistantly doing both fluff and rules well, and isn't already working for the competition

BlackMath wrote:Its a solid codex, fluff and rule wise.
Ward's got some of the most competative codecies out there, and in this case, the fluff is good too. The Necrons are WAY more interesting than they were before, and I had 6k of the old ones (as to say I liked them).

Admit it, you want Ward on your codex.

Maybe it's good because the whole team write the fluff while he just wrote rules?


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silence indigo wrote:I beg to differ.

In this incarnation, the Necrons :

- have rules similar to the Dark Eldar;
- have fluff similar to the Tomb Kings.

Essentiallly, the worst damage is to the game's continuity: the Necrons have gone from the galaxy's Soul Harvesters to one more expansionnist xenos species. It's lost all colour, ambiance and dread: the Necrons now make alliances and politics, have "codes of honour" and comical eccentricities. They've lost their grimdarkness and gone from Eldricht Lovecraftian Cosmic Threat to comic relief.

This was not necessary to introduce the dynasties or even the C'tan's enslavement. Now the Mechanicus background and novels such as Mechanicum, though recent, seem totally inconsistent.

I didn't understand the hostility against Mr Ward's books. Until now.

Down with ye revisionism!

+1 to all of this.

I personally like the necron army rules, they seem very fair and balanced and fun in their own right.

I read the necron fluff and while I have some things that made me miss the older more ominous version, I understand they they wanted to promote variety within the necrons and thus need to give the soulless machines some soul. However, despite missing the older army of life harvesters, I enjoyed reading the fluff.

I know Mr Ward did the Blood angel, grey knights and necron codex's, I enjoyed both the necron and blood angel books from both a fluff and rules point of view. So I will give Ward the benefit of the doubt, provided he does not release something as downright terrible to read as the grey knights codex ever again. That was the most boring and painful to read 40K book ever.

Mat Ward has long been the far and away best writer for 40K in the race.

Space Marines 5th was what really brought me back into the game. So much diversity, variant builds, etc.. it's a mindboggingly good book to this day. I can still open the book and tinker with a "new" army set-up/strategy after over 3 years. I love his fluff and greatly enjoy the interconnectivity of the books and the world building in broad strokes, including the much maligned Necron-teaser-reference in Blood Angels (which, for the first time ever, made Necrons interesting to me) and the Inquistitor/Necron links in Grey Knights and Necrons. I greatly enjoyed the new Grey Knights too, loosing their stiff, pretentious Daemonhunter-flavour was the best thing that ever happend to them.

Necrons are awsome too


I just about stopped buying non-Ward Codexes. They always come across of flavourless and uninspired in comparion, lacking the depth, but also the fresh, fun depecrating irony of Ward's work.

silence indigo wrote:I beg to differ.

In this incarnation, the Necrons :

- have rules similar to the Dark Eldar;
- have fluff similar to the Tomb Kings.

Essentiallly, the worst damage is to the game's continuity: the Necrons have gone from the galaxy's Soul Harvesters to one more expansionnist xenos species. It's lost all colour, ambiance and dread: the Necrons now make alliances and politics, have "codes of honour" and comical eccentricities. They've lost their grimdarkness and gone from Eldricht Lovecraftian Cosmic Threat to comic relief.

This was not necessary to introduce the dynasties or even the C'tan's enslavement. Now the Mechanicus background and novels such as Mechanicum, though recent, seem totally inconsistent.

I didn't understand the hostility against Mr Ward's books. Until now.

Down with ye revisionism!

Well stated. It seems to be GW's long-range plan to employ derivative hacks like Ward to turn every last non-SM army into the same play-type ("synergy") with the same goals ("expand that Empire/reclaim that Empire"). I can't wait for the next Tyranid codex, when we learn that Hive Tyrants and Warriors actually have "personalities", that Zoanthropes have had secret negotiations with the Adeptus Astra Telepathica, that Hive Fleets really are separate "dynasties," and that Tyranids once ruled this galaxy and THEY WANT IT BACK! Now wouldn't that be more INTERESTING? I'm sure Ward and the lads at GW could justify that as well as they've justified eradicating the true Necrons and replacing them with the current lot of TK-in-space.

-Loki- wrote:

silence indigo wrote:This was not necessary to introduce the dynasties or even the C'tan's enslavement. Now the Mechanicus background and novels such as Mechanicum, though recent, seem totally inconsistent.

To be fair, it was never outright stated officially that it was the Void Dragon. So it going from being speculated to be the Void Dragon to being speculated to be a particularly powerful shard of the Void Dragon doesn't break any fluff consistency.

It didn't even mention the Void Dragon in the new codex, so it's entirely possible that he was never broken into shards. I like that explanation better, and just pretend that this mass retconning never happened. Necrons and the C'tan will still be the Lovecraftian horrors of the Galaxy to me.

BlackMath wrote:Its a solid codex, fluff and rule wise.
Ward's got some of the most competative codecies out there, and in this case, the fluff is good too. The Necrons are WAY more interesting than they were before, and I had 6k of the old ones (as to say I liked them).

Admit it, you want Ward on your codex.

Ward can keep the feth away from my Chaos. He's already done his best to nerf our primarchs, who knows what he'd do if he got his hands on our fluff and rules? 'Codex: Chaos but we want to be Ultramarines'.

I really like the new Necron Codex. I love the new background and feel it is a pretty balanced codex.

LordOfTheSloths wrote:

silence indigo wrote:I beg to differ.

In this incarnation, the Necrons :

- have rules similar to the Dark Eldar;
- have fluff similar to the Tomb Kings.

Essentiallly, the worst damage is to the game's continuity: the Necrons have gone from the galaxy's Soul Harvesters to one more expansionnist xenos species. It's lost all colour, ambiance and dread: the Necrons now make alliances and politics, have "codes of honour" and comical eccentricities. They've lost their grimdarkness and gone from Eldricht Lovecraftian Cosmic Threat to comic relief.

This was not necessary to introduce the dynasties or even the C'tan's enslavement. Now the Mechanicus background and novels such as Mechanicum, though recent, seem totally inconsistent.

I didn't understand the hostility against Mr Ward's books. Until now.

Down with ye revisionism!

Well stated. It seems to be GW's long-range plan to employ derivative hacks like Ward to turn every last non-SM army into the same play-type ("synergy") with the same goals ("expand that Empire/reclaim that Empire"). I can't wait for the next Tyranid codex, when we learn that Hive Tyrants and Warriors actually have "personalities", that Zoanthropes have had secret negotiations with the Adeptus Astra Telepathica, that Hive Fleets really are separate "dynasties," and that Tyranids once ruled this galaxy and THEY WANT IT BACK! Now wouldn't that be more INTERESTING? I'm sure Ward and the lads at GW could justify that as well as they've justified eradicating the true Necrons and replacing them with the current lot of TK-in-space.

Yeah, and they're really under-powered too, a complete nerf from the last codex, and that's saying something.

Whine whine whine, you have no idea what you're talking about.

Aside from that Daemons codex, Matt writes good rules, its the fluff that pisses people off.

Though honestly, I like the new Necron fluff, and think that people who bitch about it are bitching for the sake of it.

I mean, look at the old Necron fluff. The Lords had personalities to some small extent, they were heavily egyptian themed, and were said to be just waking. It was as if GW made them to be later fleshed out and given personality. Hell, they didn't even retcon anything aside from that silly "C'tan did everything!" bit, which was quite frankly, stupid and made every other race much less than they really were in comparison to the C'tans epicness.

Fluff gets changed from time to time, and in this case I think it was a good change. The necrons are strong without being stupidly so, there are no god characters like Draigo, and they're still quite evil, unstopable, and zombie-like. People just keep focusing on what's changed rather than what's stayed.

LordOfTheSloths wrote:
Well stated. It seems to be GW's long-range plan to employ derivative hacks like Ward to turn every last non-SM army into the same play-type ("synergy") with the same goals ("expand that Empire/reclaim that Empire"). I can't wait for the next Tyranid codex, when we learn that Hive Tyrants and Warriors actually have "personalities", that Zoanthropes have had secret negotiations with the Adeptus Astra Telepathica, that Hive Fleets really are separate "dynasties," and that Tyranids once ruled this galaxy and THEY WANT IT BACK! Now wouldn't that be more INTERESTING? I'm sure Ward and the lads at GW could justify that as well as they've justified eradicating the true Necrons and replacing them with the current lot of TK-in-space.

The 'personalities' added into the necron codex was to actually allow people to have more freedom to create their own necron armies with their own name, colour schemes and history. All the other armies had this freedom except for the necrons. Even the tyranids could be painted and modeled differently to represent different gene strands. As such I understand thier decision to change the necrons the way they did.

Personally, I would have preferred perhaps that they still had the life harvesting aspect to them. For example, they need to consume life energies (like the c'tan did) to sustain their current existence or else they regress into the more soulless necron warriors. Of course, given their current freedom, you could make an army with that kind of back-story.

Hive Tyrants are already shown as having more autonomy than other Tyranids, not quite to the point of personality, but individuality nonetheless. Anyway, the Tyranids have always been the established "Harvester" race, so Tyranids would stay the way they were. They had heaps of fluff. Necrons came in late and had virtually no fluff.

I, for one, am extremely happy with the new Necron Codex.

But then I was completely satisfied with the Tyranid Codex, so maybe I can't make juudgement in this matter.

Maybe.

I stopped playing Grey Knights because of the current book's very poor fluff and i no longer have any desire to start Necrons.

BlackMath wrote:Its a solid codex, fluff and rule wise.
Ward's got some of the most competative codecies out there

It's useable, much moreso than previous, but I wouldn't say it's amongst the most competitive. A lot of the book relies on win-big/lose-big gimmicks and stuff the core rulebook doesn't cover (Doom Scythe Death Ray, Stormlord's nightfight+lightning, C'tan shard abilities, etc), and has a good chunk of underwhelming units (hooray praetorians!).

and in this case, the fluff is good too.

Very subjective. There's more personality and a fleshing out of the ancient necrontyr race, but the atmosphere of an implacable advance by an ancient race enslaved by their own excesses and desires to the will of evil gods sweeping across the universe also resonated with a lot of people and they've lost some of that dark, impossible feel.

Admit it, you want Ward on your codex.

Nope.

To be fair. Necrons didn't have a whole lot of stuff to mess up. For me the Necron codex is kind of a "Uhm, no thank you." It's not that terrible, but it's not that exciting either. I don't think Necrons need any fleshing out. Tchaikovsky said that the more limits he had, the freerer he felt. It took more imagination, really.

The thing is.

They left players the options of having the mindless Necrons in the fluff. They're "damaged" but it still essentially means "If you want to be this fluff wise, here is the reasoning."

So now you can have your mindless necrons, but with more options.

Wow, i really can't understand all this hate on the new Necron codex's fluff. If your a fan of the old style "Terminator /harvest " feel of the OOD codex then i ask you to open the new codex to page 16 and read "The empire of the severed" this is your "Terminator" sect here. Sure the C'tan stuff has been changed this codex but really, what other force has a (demi)god in its back pocket? Imperium? well good luck getting the emperor's bones to fight for you on the field so there's a no-go, Eldar? that avatar (who dies super easy to ranged) just seems like its missing a update calling it a chard that can go home and be summoned behind another set of bronze doors at a later battle( i see that in a new codex). Chaos? the most active gods around fluff-wise...well there great behind the scenes and know how to make a daemon ..but you don't see slaanesh or the others in a codex chart, why coz there all to damn powerful and would be game changing or the only things used...so how do we even the field? we cut out necrons closest thing..we CHARD the damn C'tan!!! and i for 1 think it was a excellent option rather then the next..to lose it.
So now we have the Terminator feel covered, a reason the C'tan are chopped down but what of the harvester part of the old codex the flesh/souls that used to go to the c'tan? i ask you to read Page 16 again but the section just to the left of empire of the severed called "Tranis, the raider's moon" ...OMFG it explains the "Harvest!!!" so really all people had to do was stop crying for a second and actually read the codex, use a little imagination (heaven forbid a sci/fantasy game ever require a little imagination!) and ingest a little gtf over it!

there you go if you like the old feel you can smile again a little bit..or keep crying in the corner till your game starts while the rest of us can choose to stick to either the old feel due to above listed or have a blast with infinite more options.

Namica wrote:Though honestly, I like the new Necron fluff, and think that people who bitch about it are bitching for the sake of it.

Or maybe those people loved the old lore and are more than just a bit dissapointed that, according to their own codex, it now never existed. It's perfectly fine if you like the new background, just don't expect everyone to have the same opinion as you.

Titanforge wrote:there you go if you like the old feel you can smile again a little bit..or keep crying in the corner till your game starts while the rest of us can choose to stick to either the old feel due to above listed or have a blast with infinite more options.

I agree that the more flexibility is the best thing they could have done, you can still have the harvesters, or you can have a misguidedly noble sect that believes in saving life as much as possible. The options are there. Also the quirks of the lords adds a nice insanity angle to the whole story. Sure the necrons are no longer soulless harvester, but they are pretty much dangerously insane, an insanity that drives them to be quite unpredictable, and gives them lots of room for growth. (personally I would have liked it is the storm lord guy was a little more unstable.)

My only gripe between the old and the new is the flayed ones. I really liked the idea of these necron warriors being stuck in their metal bodies but unable to move and unable to feel while being conscious during the many centuries of stasis eroding at their sanity until they are forced to try and feel organic again and do so in a futile attempt by draping the skin of the living over them.
I don't mind the trying to eat the flesh part they have now, it would fit with that madness I described, but the madness being brought on by a curse / virus caused by the destruction of a c'tan. Feels too light and like a cop out for me.

Ward writes solid rules and solid fluff, but usually adds in one or two things that cause everybody to SCREAM HATRED. I do believe that, in this case, the "space egyptian" recasting probably wasn't invented by Ward alone.

But some of the fluff (BEST TACTICIAN THE GALAXY HAS EVER KNOWN!) clearly was.

I think the codex is pretty solid. might have to play a few more games to see its protential. IMO, I think a few people were looking over Wards shoulder making sure he got more right his time around

Titanforge wrote:Sure the C'tan stuff has been changed this codex but really, what other force has a (demi)god in its back pocket?

Grey Knights.

Deathly Angel wrote:

Namica wrote:Though honestly, I like the new Necron fluff, and think that people who bitch about it are bitching for the sake of it.

Or maybe those people loved the old lore and are more than just a bit dissapointed that, according to their own codex, it now never existed. It's perfectly fine if you like the new background, just don't expect everyone to have the same opinion as you.

Thank you.

Abadabadoobaddon wrote:

Titanforge wrote:Sure the C'tan stuff has been changed this codex but really, what other force has a (demi)god in its back pocket?

Grey Knights.

Blood Angels also


Who could be wrting in all these uber powerful..oh yeah...


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I want an Ork Demigod, if everybody else gets one

Ghazzy is a good start