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So I understand that some Necrons are motivated by a sense of nostalgia for their lost empire...

But is there any practical point to Necrons actually engaging in conquest? I ask this because I can't see what they'd do with planets that they conquer; their population is static, they can't reproduce and I'm sure that magic metal they use isn't apparent on all worlds so I am not sure what resources they glean.

Is it literally just pointless pride and prestige?

To be honest, were I a Necron Lord, I'd be pretty clueless about just what to do; my peons are non-sentient automatons... I suppose the only real motivation I'd feel is a desire to preserve what's left of my race's culture and history (protect Necron relics, etc.)

Oldcrons conquered to harvest for their C'Tan overlords.
Newcrons re-conquer. Haven't seen any fluff suggesting they attacked systems without Necron presence.


The Newcrons also have a feudal system , maybe its a matter of " my household got more than those pesky xyz-dynasty "

Some worlds they want to conquer could be seen as a pre emptive strike to a threat to their belongings too. Necrons would happily undo any Eldar creation, get rid of Orks infesting and spreading, keep the access of chaos to the material realm as low as possible, assure the young races know their place, etc.

If I was a Necron Lord, I'd take my army of silent automata and my small council of still coherent under-lords and create my own empire. I'd rule over lesser races like humans or Tau and actually have a real claim in the galaxy; a real empire with real citizens.

Either that or I'd go around collecting all the wonders of the universe like Trazyn.

For the Necrons, time is infinite. They can indulge in almost anything for as long or as little time as they want. They could even create new technology and advance their own race to return them to power. Maybe even one day find a way to reverse the process which made them the Necrons. Most wouldn't be reversible but the ones who retained their minds could be returned to real bodies perhaps. And on top of that, with their technology they could easily sustain themselves for thousands of years and still encase themselves with incredibly tough armour. Therefore any disadvantages of losing their necron bodies would be mitigated.

And, I'd wager, in order to achieve that they'd need lots of test subjects, probably humans seeing as they were able to transfer them into Pariah bodies (in oldcron fluff anyway).

Some Necrons just hate that your alive. Like waking up to a vermin infestation.

 Henners91 wrote:
So I understand that some Necrons are motivated by a sense of nostalgia for their lost empire...

But is there any practical point to Necrons actually engaging in conquest? I ask this because I can't see what they'd do with planets that they conquer; their population is static, they can't reproduce and I'm sure that magic metal they use isn't apparent on all worlds so I am not sure what resources they glean.

Is it literally just pointless pride and prestige?

To be honest, were I a Necron Lord, I'd be pretty clueless about just what to do; my peons are non-sentient automatons... I suppose the only real motivation I'd feel is a desire to preserve what's left of my race's culture and history (protect Necron relics, etc.)

Many Necrons are planning to expand their numbers, either through Biotransferrence back into fleshy shells or forcefully converting others into more like them.

Because if you woke up after a long nap with one hell of a head ache (reanimation can't be easy for an overlord. Bug checks, rebooting, system diagnostics, etc.) finding that your home was populated by monkeys, you'd be pretty miffed as well.

Well...that's the case for some overlords anyway. Some do it for glory, others want test subjects for SCIENCE!

the Necrons are searching for a suitable race to put their souls back into flesh bodies. They will have a servant race that they can put their souls back inside, getting a new body every time the old one dies.

Some Necrons think that being Machines is awesome though.

As demonstrated with the myriad of responses, there is no single answer. When the fluff was rewritten in the last dex, every tomb world has it's own motivations. Some are trying to reunite the Necrons under a single banner, some are trying to erase all life or inferior life forms, some are looking for new shinies, some are trying to restore the Necron race to flesh, some are so degraded they are simply executing corrupted code without any driving guidance, etc. In other words, generally they wrote the fluff so it's pretty much up to the player as to why their particular tomb world is fighting.

Mostly a case of "Hey Kids get off my Lawn!"

Let's see, the galaxy is heavily populated by the remnants of your Ancient Foe's (Old One's) creations. Why wouldn't you want to extinguish this Warp taint?

As far as they're concerned, they're the most awesome dudes ever. Ideally, every other race must bow before them or be eliminated. Kind of similar to the Tau method, but without the (nominal) egalitarianism.