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Hey all Necron lovers ! (and haters )
Just wondering, how do you imagine the Necron army is actually looking/sounding like in action ?
For example, when I imagine Imperial Guard, I imagine a 2nd world war army, everything exploding around, orders being shouted and limbs flying.
With Necrons it's a bit complicated tho - Warriors were not granted the ability to speak at all, while most other units are soulless. The only real 'characters' are the HQs who are shouting orders to soulless robots that warriors move in a synchronized fashion and are pitifully slow melle they are pitifully slow. Its kinda hard to imagine them in action. What do you think ?

Replace T-1000s with warriors, and that tank with a stalker.

The Dawn of War games may not be canon, but they still help add the extra level of visualization

Combo of the 2 above videos.

Warriors with terminator style slow menecing movement along with the other units mixed in.

Apart from weapons fire, I always imagine almost complete and utter silence. Orders communicated electronically, the whisper of gauss fire through the air, the muted whirr of hovering vehicles. When armies are so used to fighting alongside noise (Chaos screaming, Imperium explosions, Eldar lasers, and what not) it must be quite terrifying to fight something completely silent, something that doesn't scream or howl, just descends upon their enemy with cold calculation and unwavering assault...

I imagine lychguard and other necrons move like this in close combat.




Slow, very mechanical movements.

Mr Nobody wrote:I imagine lychguard and other necrons move like this in close combat.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bg5SLBapMiI

Slow, very mechanical movements.

Now THAT is very inspiring, especially in terms of paint-job.....

Necrons? Utterly silent, both the troops and their machinery, advancing implacably forth from their tombs and pouring an unending torrent of silent green lightning into the enemy. Or something like that.

The weapons of the Necrons are not silent, some being described as "making the very air howl in agony" but, otherwise, they are as silent as the tomb.

The Doom/night scythe is described as creating such a loud and furious sound that it drive people to hallucinate and and tear out their own eyes.

The Tomb blades have a similar but smaller engine that has a piercing pitch that can distract the most battle hardened warrior. So I am not sure how silent the Necrons actually are in battle.

I would imagine slow mechanical movements, crack of gauss fire and whole units moving in an identical manner.

I thought that Swallod did a pretty good job at portraying the Necrons in "Hammer & Anvil" - especially given how he managed to take that insidious "Necron Lords have a personality now hurr" twist that GW has decided on and still made their boss a cool character.

But basically, what LordofRust already said. Also how it is apparently a neverending stream of troops, with killed foes vanishing in the sand, seemingly being "dragged down" by invisible claws ... only to re-appear a few minutes later!

Also creepy:
The Battle Sister was caught in the nimbus of a necron flayer blast and her death-cry was lost in the howling discharge of the alien guns. The last of her Tegas saw was the woman’s flesh puffing into scraps that resembled burnt paper.
(reminds me of the nuke scene in Terminator 2)

Hammer and Anvil was the worse showing of the Necron yet in the fluff. It's almost as if the author was forced to add in a antagonist that he knew nothing about. This is most evident when the "Sister" starts naming off units rather then discribing them. Its almost like he had the codex open and just listing the units. A good portrayal of the Necrons and their complex stash twirling is Fall of Damnos. It also has a good showing of the Necrons at war.

I tend to picture a slow moving army of mechanical warriors, the sound of Gauss fire, the crackle of Tesla weapons (and the sound of other weapons), the wailing of dimensional drives and the boom of explosions all combined with the screams of the dying and the droning of scarab wings. Dead necrons simply vanishing while other shaking as the self repair systems kick in.
the relentless advance of robots with every move calculated for efficiency, simply shooting enemies with calm precision. deadly green beams cutting though the air, e.c.t

Very little sound except from their weapon.

The book Dead Men Walking portrays them pretty nicely, in my opinion, units are not named as per codex, just given appropriate names (flayed ones are mostly referenced as ghouls, for example).

I've read somewhere that gauss weapons sound like cloth getting torn. Can't remember where though :/

I prefer to think of what they sound like, but the scream of the victims. I like to imagine most units can speak, except for warriors and and immortals - whose only sound is the steady sound of their unstoppable march- as I believe they communicate using Deathmarks have a few phrases used to terrify their enemy before they excecute them and flayed ones emit a terrifying scream that makes even the most stalwart imperial shock troop want to flee. Lychguard should say things like Space Marines would for their emperor - but rather for their lord/overlord/commander. Even the pilots of vehicles, especially triarch stalkers could scream out or rather telepathically communicate orders. The scream of their vehicles are designed to panic their enemys - making it increasingly hard to keep up morale and fight the enemy - which is why I envision the vehicles like Night-scythe's screaming over necrons and imperial guard locking in fierce cc. v =

there was this tv show called Shadow Raiders (in the states it was called Battle Planets i believe) where there are these beings made out of captured void or somthing, and when they attacked the surface of the planet they would just land, start walking forward, and just shoot at anything that wasn't them.

Reading the Fall of Damnos i imagine more or less the same thing happening. The only sounds you would here from the 'crons are their footsteps and that whipping sound from their guns, and of course the explosions and screaming of the stuff they're blowing away...

heres the intro to Shadow Raiders in case anyone else fancies a trip down memory lane...

Mr.Fuffcans wrote:there was this tv show called Shadow Raiders (in the states it was called Battle Planets i believe) where there are these beings made out of captured void or somthing, and when they attacked the surface of the planet they would just land, start walking forward, and just shoot at anything that wasn't them.

Reading the Fall of Damnos i imagine more or less the same thing happening. The only sounds you would here from the 'crons are their footsteps and that whipping sound from their guns, and of course the explosions and screaming of the stuff they're blowing away...

heres the intro to Shadow Raiders in case anyone else fancies a trip down memory lane...

Oh yeah, I remember this from when I was a kid.
It was actually based off a toy line called War Planets. Hasbro, iirc.

Stonerhino wrote:It's almost as if the author was forced to add in a antagonist that he knew nothing about.

This is somewhat true - Swallow wrote on his blog how the novel was delayed because GW contacted him with some new fluff about Necrons.
Of course, Black Library authors are rarely "forced" to do anything in their novels, as they enjoy a large amount of artistic license, but I suppose GW may have had more interest in it this time as they saw the novel as a means to "disseminate" new Necron info, or Swallow himself opted to work the info in as good as he could so that his novel wouldn't be regarded as "out of date" right when it gets published.

Personally, I enjoyed the descriptions in the book - for me, they made the changes somewhat more bearable as the novel tried to connect the new info to the old. I also don't recall the Sisters "naming" Necron units, aside from maybe(!) the most obvious ones like calling a monolith a monolith. I do believe that the more elaborate unit names only appeared in third person narration.

CthuluIsSpy wrote:

Mr.Fuffcans wrote:there was this tv show called Shadow Raiders (in the states it was called Battle Planets i believe) where there are these beings made out of captured void or somthing, and when they attacked the surface of the planet they would just land, start walking forward, and just shoot at anything that wasn't them.

Reading the Fall of Damnos i imagine more or less the same thing happening. The only sounds you would here from the 'crons are their footsteps and that whipping sound from their guns, and of course the explosions and screaming of the stuff they're blowing away...

heres the intro to Shadow Raiders in case anyone else fancies a trip down memory lane...

Oh yeah, I remember this from when I was a kid.
It was actually based off a toy line called War Planets. Hasbro, iirc.

ya, i remember the commercials i think this may have come out in conjunction, i remember wanting that big one that ate the planets soooo baaaaad...

Mr.Fuffcans wrote:there was this tv show called Shadow Raiders (in the states it was called Battle Planets i believe) where there are these beings made out of captured void or somthing, and when they attacked the surface of the planet they would just land, start walking forward, and just shoot at anything that wasn't them.

Reading the Fall of Damnos i imagine more or less the same thing happening. The only sounds you would here from the 'crons are their footsteps and that whipping sound from their guns, and of course the explosions and screaming of the stuff they're blowing away...

heres the intro to Shadow Raiders in case anyone else fancies a trip down memory lane...

That just screams Reboot to me,


anyways,

Lordofrust wrote:Apart from weapons fire, I always imagine almost complete and utter silence. Orders communicated electronically, the whisper of gauss fire through the air, the muted whirr of hovering vehicles. When armies are so used to fighting alongside noise (Chaos screaming, Imperium explosions, Eldar lasers, and what not) it must be quite terrifying to fight something completely silent, something that doesn't scream or howl, just descends upon their enemy with cold calculation and unwavering assault...

Thats exactly how I picture it, utter silence, and utter terror,

I always liked the "electric whip" noise gauss flayers made in Dawn of War. I also loved the idea of utter silence from the Necrons themselves. Made them different from every other race which bellowed and roared as they went about war. They just march forward while firing, then if you knock them down you hear nothing, they just get back up and resume firing. Also, even if the Phase Out rule from the old days was VERY annoying, from a fluff standpoint it was pretty awesome. I mean, after a hard-fought battle, even if someone managed to beat the Necrons at tremendous cost, there were no trophies. No prizes, no loot, no nothing. You had no proof at all that there was even a battle here; apart from the sights, smells, and sounds of your own dead and dying. That part to me was far more terrifying than anything else. There was never any true victory against the Necrons. It was very GRIMDARK.

SoulGazer wrote:Also, even if the Phase Out rule from the old days was VERY annoying, from a fluff standpoint it was pretty awesome. I mean, after a hard-fought battle, even if someone managed to beat the Necrons at tremendous cost, there were no trophies. No prizes, no loot, no nothing. You had no proof at all that there was even a battle here; apart from the sights, smells, and sounds of your own dead and dying. That part to me was far more terrifying than anything else. There was never any true victory against the Necrons. It was very GRIMDARK.

That hasn't changed. Fluff wise phase out exists the same way it always did. It was just removed as a rule.

riplikash wrote:

SoulGazer wrote:Also, even if the Phase Out rule from the old days was VERY annoying, from a fluff standpoint it was pretty awesome. I mean, after a hard-fought battle, even if someone managed to beat the Necrons at tremendous cost, there were no trophies. No prizes, no loot, no nothing. You had no proof at all that there was even a battle here; apart from the sights, smells, and sounds of your own dead and dying. That part to me was far more terrifying than anything else. There was never any true victory against the Necrons. It was very GRIMDARK.

That hasn't changed. Fluff wise phase out exists the same way it always did. It was just removed as a rule.

Except now you can tie down Necrons with magnets and they don't phase out. Fall of Damnos was interesting in many ways, lol.

SoulGazer wrote:

riplikash wrote:

SoulGazer wrote:Also, even if the Phase Out rule from the old days was VERY annoying, from a fluff standpoint it was pretty awesome. I mean, after a hard-fought battle, even if someone managed to beat the Necrons at tremendous cost, there were no trophies. No prizes, no loot, no nothing. You had no proof at all that there was even a battle here; apart from the sights, smells, and sounds of your own dead and dying. That part to me was far more terrifying than anything else. There was never any true victory against the Necrons. It was very GRIMDARK.

That hasn't changed. Fluff wise phase out exists the same way it always did. It was just removed as a rule.

Except now you can tie down Necrons with magnets and they don't phase out. Fall of Damnos was interesting in many ways, lol.

since when in fall of damnos did the marines tie the crons down with magnets?

Farseer Zelaine wrote:The Doom/night scythe is described as creating such a loud and furious sound that it drive people to hallucinate and and tear out their own eyes.

Now that is interesting. An army (technially) without ears, who can simply 'shut off' sounds they don't need and receive their orders through 'linked-mind communication' would make perfect use of sound weapons. The louder the gauss flayers, the more powerful the engines, maybe even using speakers to broadcast screams of pain and suffering. I'd like to see a Noise Marine-esqe unit choice for the 'Crons who uses sound waves to terrorise the enemy...

rednecroncryptek wrote:since when in fall of damnos did the marines tie the crons down with magnets?

The marines did not, the guerrilla humans did. It was some kind of trap that was holding a warrior in place. It was only a fleeting line in the book, but it was there. Unless I somehow misread the thing, but that was what I remember.

Klogger wrote:

Mr.Fuffcans wrote:there was this tv show called Shadow Raiders (in the states it was called Battle Planets i believe) where there are these beings made out of captured void or somthing, and when they attacked the surface of the planet they would just land, start walking forward, and just shoot at anything that wasn't them.

Reading the Fall of Damnos i imagine more or less the same thing happening. The only sounds you would here from the 'crons are their footsteps and that whipping sound from their guns, and of course the explosions and screaming of the stuff they're blowing away...

heres the intro to Shadow Raiders in case anyone else fancies a trip down memory lane...


That just screams Reboot to me,

Well that would make sense it was made by the same studio mainframe studios i think, who also did "Beasties/Beast Wars" and its follow up "beast machines"

sorry about screwing up the quoting HTML always made my head spin...

SoulGazer wrote:

rednecroncryptek wrote:since when in fall of damnos did the marines tie the crons down with magnets?

The marines did not, the guerrilla humans did. It was some kind of trap that was holding a warrior in place. It was only a fleeting line in the book, but it was there. Unless I somehow misread the thing, but that was what I remember.

No, those were magnetized grenades, not magnets.


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I'm pretty sure anyways.