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Who wins?

I'm sorry but can I get an explanation of WIH and DAOT? I'm afraid I'm not familiar with these acronyms.

EDIT:

Wait I figured it out, War in Heaven Necrons and Dark Age of Technology Imperium.

Firstly I'd probably correct it by saying Dark Age of Technology Humanity as the Imperium was the Emperor's creation.
And I'd have to give it to the Necrons. As I don't believe Humanity would be up to the task of taking on the entire Necron race at the height of their power even if the Men of Iron wouldn't be waiting in the wings to turn on Humanity.

 Voodoo_Chile wrote:
I'm sorry but can I get an explanation of WIH and DAOT? I'm afraid I'm not familiar with these acronyms.

WIH = War in Heaven

DAOT = Dark Age of Technology

I'm going with the side that has corporeal, sun-eating gods on their side and managed to overthrow and extinct the Old Ones.

Necrons. DAoT is overblown.

Animus wrote:
Necrons. DAoT is overblown.

Absolutely.

DAoT humanity didn't wipe out the Orks, wipe out the Eldar, build a webway, construct a Dyson Sphere, unravel the mysteries of the Warp or venture into other galaxies. It can't have been that great.

At best, DAoT humanity had some flashy science, built competent AI and was then destroyed by that AI.

For all we know, Battlestar Galactica is the DAoT, and the records have simply been lost to time. A lot cann happen and be lost in 20,000 years (or, as 30k to 40k shows, almost nothing can happen in 10,000 years).

Regardless, I wouldn't put DAoT much above the Interex.

DAoT I personally think was pretty mighty and by no means overblown. At peak, their technology neared or barely peaked Eldar's. Regardless, they plummeted. Even then, Necrons win.

Necrons without a doubt.

As much as I dislike the Necrons I'm going to have to give it to them. Though, to be fair, no race even at the height of their power could defeat them.

Mind you, not counting in the C'tan, just the WIH Necrons.

 Ashiraya wrote:
Mind you, not counting in the C'tan, just the WIH Necrons.

Still 90% sure necrons would win. They killed/sharded their own gods and even in modern 40k have some broken fluff. Read the Fall of Orpheus for silly levels to activate.

One of the necron's strengths is their ability to subvert enemy technology. That's also the biggest vulnerability the DAOT humans had.

The necron's main weakness is their inability to manipulate the warp. There isn't much indication that humanity in the DAOT was very good at warp-stuff.

So even if the overall power levels were similar, I'd still have to say necrons look like the winners.

 Ashiraya wrote:
Mind you, not counting in the C'tan, just the WIH Necrons.

WIH Necrons are hand-in-hand with the C'Tan. This is pre-sharding, when the C'Tan directed the Necrons to wage war with the Old Ones. The two were inextricably linked with one another until the end of the WIH when the Necrons turned on their masters. Otherwise, the comparison comes down to something like "IoM vs the Eldar... except the IOM doesn't have the Imperial Guard".

 Psienesis wrote:

WIH Necrons are hand-in-hand with the C'Tan. This is pre-sharding, when the C'Tan directed the Necrons to wage war with the Old Ones. The two were inextricably linked with one another until the end of the WIH when the Necrons turned on their masters. Otherwise, the comparison comes down to something like "IoM vs the Eldar... except the IOM doesn't have the Imperial Guard".

I'd suggest that the War in Heaven started before the C'tan got involved (when the Necrons were losing) and continuing slightly after the C'tan were shattered until the Necrons entered stasis.

DAoT tech was strong, but it has got nothing on the Necrons, especially not on the Necrons of the War in Heaven era.

Necrons, they also had the protocols so total obisience to chain of chomand.

SomeRandomEvilGuy wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:

WIH Necrons are hand-in-hand with the C'Tan. This is pre-sharding, when the C'Tan directed the Necrons to wage war with the Old Ones. The two were inextricably linked with one another until the end of the WIH when the Necrons turned on their masters. Otherwise, the comparison comes down to something like "IoM vs the Eldar... except the IOM doesn't have the Imperial Guard".

I'd suggest that the War in Heaven started before the C'tan got involved (when the Necrons were losing) and continuing slightly after the C'tan were shattered until the Necrons entered stasis.

Nah. Necrons went to war with the Old Ones and got pwned, so withdrew to their worlds to lick their wounds. Then they met the C'Tan. Then they built bodies for the C'Tan. Then the C'Tan told them "Oh, those Old Ones? Yeah, we fought them before, too, and got pwned. Maybe we should team up?". Of course, whether or not this was true is a matter of some debate, as it was the Deceiver who told this to the Silent King. So then they set up the Bio-Transference machines (this was Necron tech from the get-go) and had a bit of a civil war over it until all the survivors were now in metal bodies. None of these things happened over night, and might have taken decades, or even centuries, to reach the latter stages of bio-transference and the civil war it sparked. We're simply not told how long it was between the Necrons first becoming aware that something was eating their stars and making contact with it and them shifting their entire race into metal bodies.

It wasn't until after all of the above that the War In Heaven really got started.

The Necrons, this would be a curb stomp.

There's clearly an infestation of Mindshackle Scarabs in the ranks of DakkaDakka. The Necrons win anyway, considering that they enslaved star gods, killed the Eldar gods, forced the old ones to create the Ork precursors and numerous other races, managed to let loose a plague of enslavers upon the galaxy because they were immune to them and therefore didn't give a damn and could just have used the Celestial Orrery to just supernova all the stars orbited by planets that pose a real threat.

This is why the nigh-invincible zombie robots wild most likely win.

 StarTrotter wrote:
DAoT I personally think was pretty mighty and by no means overblown. At peak, their technology neared or barely peaked Eldar's. Regardless, they plummeted. Even then, Necrons win.

There was a recent book where the mechanicum and two marine chapters converged on a space hulk. In the center of the hulk was a ship from the dark age of technology that was just basically dormant. The mechanicum had been trying to track that ship down for a long long time.

When they found the ship, the marines almost didn't go inside because the ship operated by voice command and the doors moved on their own... Not exactly high tech stuff by our current standards. I was left with the distinct impression that our current technology level would be considered "dark age" stuff. The ship did have an AI which was kind of cool, but ultimately, the whole thing wasn't exactly something that could even remotely compare to what the Necrons have.

I'd have to go with "Necrons" FTW on this one.

Different interpretations by BL authors have varied what DAoT humanity was capable of... but it was during this time that they terraformed planets, built entire star-systems out of lifeless rock to house human populations, enacted massive gene-therapy regimens on entire planetary populations to breed better humans, and all kinds of whiz-bang sci-fi stuff. As noted elsewhere, DAoT rivaled the Eldar Empire at its height, and the Eldar were impressive, indeed.

As Volo Dynasty points out, the Necrons are masters of super-science. Though the Enslaver Plague is not really a thing anymore (and for which the Necrons were not actually directly responsible), they do have time-traveling robo-mummies and a device that can blow up every star in the galaxy at the press of a button.

The Necrons kick the absolute gak out of Dark Age of Technology mankind considering the Necorns as of the War in Heaven were backed up by the full powered C'tan, who could run around being pretty much invincible to all possible attacks while blowing up solar systems as they went and dumping black holes on things they didn't really like.

Plus just look at the basic Necron infantry weapon to see how their tech functions- Necron gauss weapons don't care about your durability or armor. They simply peel apart your atoms and suck them back into their gun. As for their ships- they regenerate from damage, have capital ship weapons capable of instantly mission-killing any ship they please, and can phase out of the materium into some dimension other than the warp to completely ignore damage. And, as their attack on Terra showed, dodged torpedoes from the defenses of Terra and the Sol System which are described as being thick enough that one could walk across Sol without ever touching its surface. And for everything but the statement of the C'tan, that is the Necron of M41. The decayed shattered version of the Necron Empire a good sixty million years ago.

Yeah, 'crons for sure.
DAoT Imperium might have gotten a few good "surprise haymakers", but they weren't exactly all about sharing any tech they had with eachother, so they would probably fire off a couple of, "oh, WTH super weapons, that would then get destroyed, then they'd forget how they ever made them, LOL.
Then the 'crons would kill them all. If the Emprah were there, though...he did beat up one C'Tan on his own, at least once...

 Fos Kenos wrote:
Yeah, 'crons for sure.
DAoT Imperium might have gotten a few good "surprise haymakers", but they weren't exactly all about sharing any tech they had with eachother, so they would probably fire off a couple of, "oh, WTH super weapons, that would then get destroyed, then they'd forget how they ever made them, LOL.
Then the 'crons would kill them all. If the Emprah were there, though...he did beat up one C'Tan on his own, at least once...

IIRC, that C'tan was just a shard. A full powered well-fed C'tan would just drop a black hole on the GEOM and end everything right there.

The Eldar, at their height, basically ignored the DAoT humans at their height. Humans were nothing more than another mon'keigh accumulation that should be pruned eventually.

The Eldar fought a desperate war (WiH) with the Necrons, and managed to win.

WiH Necrons were on the same level as pre-Fall Eldar. Humanity, even at its best in the DAoT, aren't even a contender compared to the forces involved in the WiH.

(Note that it was Slanesh that killed most of the Eldar pantheon, and most of the Old Ones fell to their own Warp machinations due to fighting the Necrons)

Bharring wrote:
The Eldar, at their height, basically ignored the DAoT humans at their height. Humans were nothing more than another mon'keigh accumulation that should be pruned eventually.

The Eldar fought a desperate war (WiH) with the Necrons, and managed to win.

WiH Necrons were on the same level as pre-Fall Eldar. Humanity, even at its best in the DAoT, aren't even a contender compared to the forces involved in the WiH.

(Note that it was Slanesh that killed most of the Eldar pantheon, and most of the Old Ones fell to their own Warp machinations due to fighting the Necrons)

The Eldar didn't win.. the WIH. Their side lost.

The Necrons got exactly what they wanted. They Eradicated the Old ones, who created the Eldar, and Then shattered the C'tan. They went to sleep because after fighting two separate wars, and winning, they were weakend. The fact is, The Necrons still had enough time to build Tomb Worlds acrosst he Galaxy, and lay asleep for 60 million years, and The Eldar could do nothing....

Not even remotely a contest.

The War in Heaven involved casual reality warping on both sides on massive scales with whole solar systems being plunged into black holes formed by thought, stars living and dying at the flicks of switches, time and space themselves being contorted for advantages, and in the end effectively irreversibly corrupted an entire dimension because of how unpleasant it was.

Dark Age Humanity lived in the shadow of the Eldar Empire; who were at best a pale shadow of the Old Ones.

The Necrons crush humanity with the same ease a bullet train crushes a butterfly in it's path.

A running theme in 40k is that things decline.

The Eldar Empire was lesser in every way than the Old Ones before them. Humanity during the Great Crusade is beneath humanity of the Dark Age. Abaddon at his peak is much weaker than Horus before he had even a jot of Chaos power. The divided Necrons now have access to only the barest fraction of what they had before humanity was a twinkle in the eyes of proto-primates.

The galaxy of the Dark Age is at best a diluted imitation of the galaxy before the War in Heaven with man being Necrons lite and the Eldar being diet old ones.

Off topic but...

The Necrons won the WiH, and then went into hiding, as a shattered and scattered reace, without the resources they used to have, being unable to project force at all.

The Eldar won the WiH, and then went on to do whatever the hell they wanted, whenever they wanted, as a post-scarcity society that lacked any challenges.

Somehow, I think only one side actually won.

(The bulk of Eldar might - all their Gods and unbound Psykers - were still alive and well in 30k).

Without the Old Ones fighting, the Necrons would have done better. Without the C'Tan, the Eldar would have done better. But in the end, one race dominated, and the other fled.

Bharring wrote:
Off topic but...

The Necrons won the WiH, and then went into hiding, as a shattered and scattered reace, without the resources they used to have, being unable to project force at all.

The Eldar won the WiH, and then went on to do whatever the hell they wanted, whenever they wanted, as a post-scarcity society that lacked any challenges.

Somehow, I think only one side actually won.

(The bulk of Eldar might - all their Gods and unbound Psykers - were still alive and well in 30k).

Without the Old Ones fighting, the Necrons would have done better. Without the C'Tan, the Eldar would have done better. But in the end, one race dominated, and the other fled.

You are right, One race did dominate, the Necrons.

They War in Heaven isn't about the Eldar, it's about the Old ones versus the Necrons. The Eldar are barely mentioned as footnote during this time, there were nothing. The only reason they were not wiped out, is because the Necrons turned on the C'tan. This the only point when the Eldar would have been able to doa nything, and they still were not able to stop the Necrons from persevering their empire. The Eldar literately did nothing.

the Eldar won nothing.

Bharring wrote:
Off topic but...

The Necrons won the WiH, and then went into hiding, as a shattered and scattered reace, without the resources they used to have, being unable to project force at all.

The Eldar won the WiH, and then went on to do whatever the hell they wanted, whenever they wanted, as a post-scarcity society that lacked any challenges.

Somehow, I think only one side actually won.

(The bulk of Eldar might - all their Gods and unbound Psykers - were still alive and well in 30k).

Without the Old Ones fighting, the Necrons would have done better. Without the C'Tan, the Eldar would have done better. But in the end, one race dominated, and the other fled.

The Eldar only "won" because the necrons had already killed off the Old Ones (who were far more powerful and advanced than the Eldar even at the Eldar's peak) and then turned on the huge army of solar system devouring, time and space controlling, soul sucking space gods.

If the Necrons attacked the Eldar before attacking the C'tan, the Eldar would have been rendered extinct and 40k's plot would have been largely invalidated.

The Eldar claiming victory is akin to a toddler claiming he won a fight after two big kids on the block killed his parents and drove his siblings insane, only for one of the big kids to turn on the other and then kill him and loot his stuff before taking a power nap because he's tired of all the fighting.

The Eldar's war against the Necrons has always been a hopeless one.