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So which, and why? Personally I'll always be a fan of the oldcrons myself. They were a lot more terrifying and had a much more intense and interesting lore than the new ones, also to be frank the old models are a lot nicer than the new ones, especially the flayed ones. The pariahs were a bit meh though.

You're asking the ultimate forum of no fluff changes/progress how they feel on a drastic fluff change.

Oldcrons all the way - but if they were to retcon them I would keep Trollzyn, he is hilarious.

Both have good and bad aspects. New necrons seem pretty weak und unnecessary to me. They are fractured, arrogant and next to Eldar and the Imperium just another bunch of stupid warmongers that want to bring their empire to old strength. New Necrons aren't even an old evil anymore, they pale in comparison to Chaos, they side with the imperium against tyranids and they lose to Orks like everybody. They are somewhere between the real bad guys (chaos, DE, Tyranids) and the just a little less bad guys (Imperium).

Old necrons seemed like a much stronger force but in that they were of course similar to Tyranids. Unknown numbers of faceless robots that wake up everywhere, can't be destroyed and don't talk to you. They were even worse than Chaos, as they destroyed the galaxy before it was cool.

Newcrons at their best are better than Oldcrons. While there's definitely a lot of bad lore for Newcrons, it does meet the goal of making the Necrons themselves the relevant characters and leadership of the faction. For me, I did not get into this faction because I like the C'tan; quite the opposite in fact, I detest their aesthetics and generally find them uninteresting. Since what I like is the evil robo-undead I prefer the evil robo-undead to be the decision makers.

The modern form of Necrons largely falls apart when they compromise on their superiority to the other races; there's nothing wrong with Overlords in a speaking role as long as they consider humans to be at best slaves or test subjects.

No contest. Oldcrons. I like the uncaring no personality inevitability. And WBB. And exploding scarabs.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
Both have good and bad aspects. New necrons seem pretty weak und unnecessary to me. They are fractured, arrogant and next to Eldar and the Imperium just another bunch of stupid warmongers that want to bring their empire to old strength. New Necrons aren't even an old evil anymore, they pale in comparison to Chaos, they side with the imperium against tyranids and they lose to Orks like everybody. They are somewhere between the real bad guys (chaos, DE, Tyranids) and the just a little less bad guys (Imperium).

Old necrons seemed like a much stronger force but in that they were of course similar to Tyranids. Unknown numbers of faceless robots that wake up everywhere, can't be destroyed and don't talk to you. They were even worse than Chaos, as they destroyed the galaxy before it was cool.

This sums up my feelings on the subject pretty well. Exalted.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
You're asking the ultimate forum of no fluff changes/progress how they feel on a drastic fluff change.

What ?
We don't mine good fluff, but the new fluff and retcons are almost always bad and not as good and mysterious as the old one. I am not responsible if they don't know how to writte cool stuff anymore.
It is like in the movie industry, look at the old predator and the new one. Or aliens and covenant. Or Star Wars V and VIII
etc
I don't mind new fluff: I like the new black stone fortress for example, but I hate the 13th black crusade retcon.

I like the Oldcrons a lot more. They felt really sinister and terrifying as a race. They sound downright unstoppable in Dark Crusade.

The Newcrons just don't feel threatening to me. Some great characters now, but they're just a footnote Xenos race now and I always expect them to lose when they appear in the fluff.

I prefer the Old version. They felt a lot more alien and sinister.
The reason why there was such "little" fluff was intentional; it was being told from a human point of view, and was building on the horror of the unknown.

You don't get that much mystery now; its told from the necrons point of view, and they come across as metal humans rather than alien.
If I wanted metal humans, I would have started Iron Hands, as Ad Mech didn't exist in 2004.

OldCrons for sure.
Darker, more menacing, Terminator style feel - cant be bargained with, cant be reasoned with. Their purpose was also unknown which made them one of the few races that made you think "what are these guys up to / aiming for in the long term".

All that went out the window with Newcrons, talking, happy go lucky lords with "quirky" personalities, their purpose now explicitly (read: tediously) stated and no undermining sense of brooding left.

Having said all that, parts of the Newcron fluff is decent. Just not as an overall faction / theme.

The Oldcron fluff was massively superior. Unfathomably ancient cosmic horror beats Tomb Kings In Space every time.

But hardly anyone wanted to collect and play them. Their sales figues were abysmal. When I worked for GW in the 3rd/4th edition days, I don't think I encountered anyone who denied that the Necron fluff was awesome, but nobody I knew actually played them as an army. There was no real room for thematic customisation, since the entire faction had exactly two properly sapient characters that you could include in your army. You either played the Deceiver's mindless puppets, or the Nightbringer's mindless puppets, or just a bunch of mindless puppets out on their own for some reason. And the people who didn't mind playing an army of mindless puppets already had perfectly good Tyranid armies. The old Necrons and C'tan were fantastic as part of the setting's background. They utterly failed as a playable faction.

GW didn't change the Necron/C'tan fluff because people disliked the old fluff. They changed it because the old fluff didn't encourage people to collect and play Necrons. And that's the only reaason for fluff to exist, as far as GW is concerned. It's just marketing for the minis.

Newcron fluff is naff. It's as lame as if GW had actually gone ahead and introduced the Hrud as just Skaven In Space (as they briefly flirted with in 3rd edition before thinking better of it). But at least it works as the background for a playable army. It therefore better fits GW's purposes than the old version.

The hilarious irony is that the new fluff ended up making the Necrons more popular than the fantasy army they had ripped off. You could almost say that the Necrons killed the Tomb Kings and took their stuff.

I vote original, pre-codex Necrons.

Necrons. I admire them for how they dealt with the C'Tan.

Humans: "Out gods treat us badly so we get down on our knees and praise them and tell them how awesome they are and grovel at their feet and praise them for treating us badly so they won't treat us worse. "

Necrons: "Our gods treated us badly. Once. So we attacked them, shattered them into shards, enslaved them and turned them into our permanent bitches."

You do not get more badass than that...

As an old BFG player who had a large Necron rivalry, I hated what they did to their FTL. The Dolmen gates were nonsense. Did they ever retcon the retcon and give Necrons back proper FTL? Can't say I have kept up with Necron fluff.

FTL travel is the most important part of 40k empire building. Look at Tau. It doesn't matter how powerful their armies are, without decent FTL they are a joke race on the galactic scale.

I'm biased. I started with Newcrons, so I don't have much experience with the Old.

But I feel that Newcrons are generally better, since "Galactic extermination menace" is kinda what the Nids are. Personality helps. Plus, you still HAVE genocidal Crons.

I dunno... Again, biased, but Newcrons just seem more fun.

Technically both still present

As someone who got into 40k briefly in third then properly at the tail end of 6th, both times collecting necrons to start with, this is a misleading question at best. There’s little to no difference other than more of a light shone on the aristocracy who still have minds, a disappointing lack of pariahs and a bit of a clash between monolith style vehicles and boat vehicles.

The -real- retcon was on the C’tan, and whilst they went a bit far with it in my opinion, having more actual characters to focus on than just having the deceiver show is a plus.

In conclusion, oldcrons and newcrons are the same thing, pariahs should come back and my ideal stance on the C’tan would be to find a middle ground between their two incarnations.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Trickstick wrote:
As an old BFG player who had a large Necron rivalry, I hated what they did to their FTL. The Dolmen gates were nonsense. Did they ever retcon the retcon and give Necrons back proper FTL? Can't say I have kept up with Necron fluff.

FTL travel is the most important part of 40k empire building. Look at Tau. It doesn't matter how powerful their armies are, without decent FTL they are a joke race on the galactic scale.

Yes, the Inertialess Drive is back, it getting briefly retconned out was the result of some guy in the lore department who was trying to push for there being no non-warp way to break the speed of light.

They still have the dolmen gates too though, for the convenience of hacking into the webway when they were hunting down the Old Ones.

Oldcron fluff might have been cooler as an adversarial Xenos race, but (personally) Newcron fluff is better when you collect the army, and don't have to bend over backwards to make Your Guys fit the wider lore without coming off as hacky fanfiction.

TBH, the only significant changes were the addition of sentient court members for your Warlord to bark at, and the personality being moved to the Overlord from the C'Tan.

 Phaeron Gukk wrote:
Oldcron fluff might have been cooler as an adversarial Xenos race, but (personally) Newcron fluff is better when you collect the army, and don't have to bend over backwards to make Your Guys fit the wider lore without coming off as hacky fanfiction.

TBH, the only significant changes were the addition of sentient court members for your Warlord to bark at, and the personality being moved to the Overlord from the C'Tan.

I agree with you on that point. The old Necron fluff trapped them in a purely adverserial Xenos role. They were basically lesser Tyranids. They couldn't have the numbers and were, ironically, much younger and much less alien. They did well to give them some personality.

New.

Old necrons didn't have any point or purpose, just another faceless, mindless baddy doing pointless bad things for unexplained reasons of badness, with extra-bad gods.

The current version could still use some work, but at least they've got some legs now, rather than watered-down chaos or tyranids without the tentacles.

Oldcrons for sure. It's an ancient horror, that's going to farm you for eternity and are anti magic backed up by gods versus weird old people/tomb kings, pokemon and psykerless psykers with handwaving tech they don't use.

Coming from a fiction-writing background, New is far and away the best in terms of character and scope. Old was certainly tighter, but it's difficult to have lore issues with a race whose only concern is getting from A to B and reducing everything between that point into very very small little bits, preferably without missing a step. There's so much more you can do with Newcrons, even if the official lore is now more spotty and inconsistent as a result.

Oldcrons. Not just for the lore but also the tabletop representation of the Warriors, Flayed Ones and Immortals. Aka, their basic Warrior was beefier than a Space marine.

 Insectum7 wrote:
Oldcrons. Not just for the lore but also the tabletop representation of the Warriors, Flayed Ones and Immortals. Aka, their basic Warrior was beefier than a Space marine.

If I'm not mistaken Immortals are still beefier than Space Marines, but now, regular warriors are smaller.

epronovost wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Oldcrons. Not just for the lore but also the tabletop representation of the Warriors, Flayed Ones and Immortals. Aka, their basic Warrior was beefier than a Space marine.

If I'm not mistaken Immortals are still beefier than Space Marines, but now, regular warriors are smaller.

Nah. T4, 3+, same as a Marine.

Immortals were T5.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Immortals were T5.

I know. I was talking about them as they are NOW, not as they were.

From a background perspective, I much preferred Oldcrons. Outside of Trazyn, the new lore just doesn't interest me at all.

Mechanically, my favourite Necron book was probably the one in 5th edition. Much as I liked Oldcrons for fluff they were a very shallow army with very little choice or customisation.

And while I dislike quite a bit of what 5th added to Necrons, I did appreciate many of the new units and wargear/options. I also preferred their RP mechanics (though I thought We'll Be Back was a better name for them), which didn't make the army evaporate when reduced to 25%.

Unfortunately, 7th basically made them into Death Guard, with their resurrection abilities reduced to boring FNP saves, and 8th removed RP from characters entirely and made it easy to make it irrelevant on units by wiping them out entirely.

5th was also the best edition for my favourite Necron - the Destroyer Lord. 7th made him into Jet Infantry and 8th has just rendered him garbage.

The one thing I did really hate about the new books was the sidelining of Necron Lords. I would have been fine with them adding a new unit underneath them, but I really dislike the fact that they were just completely sidelined in favour of Overlords. I much preferred the simple elegance of Necron Lords to the bulky, overly-elaborate Overlords that look like coral reefs on legs. I much preferred the ragged cloth capes of the Necron lords to the bead-curtains worn by every Overlord.

 Arachnofiend wrote:
For me, I did not get into this faction because I like the C'tan; quite the opposite in fact, I detest their aesthetics and generally find them uninteresting. Since what I like is the evil robo-undead I prefer the evil robo-undead to be the decision makers.

Much as I liked Oldcrons, I very much agree with this point. I don't mind C'tan being the overall leaders, but I wish they'd been made more distant, with Necron Lords having more authority and generally running things. Quite honestly, I think it was a mistake to have the C'tan as actual models. They're supposed to be literal gods and their stats really don't do a good job of reflecting that.

 Duskweaver wrote:

But hardly anyone wanted to collect and play them. Their sales figues were abysmal. When I worked for GW in the 3rd/4th edition days, I don't think I encountered anyone who denied that the Necron fluff was awesome, but nobody I knew actually played them as an army. There was no real room for thematic customisation, since the entire faction had exactly two properly sapient characters that you could include in your army. You either played the Deceiver's mindless puppets, or the Nightbringer's mindless puppets, or just a bunch of mindless puppets out on their own for some reason. And the people who didn't mind playing an army of mindless puppets already had perfectly good Tyranid armies. The old Necrons and C'tan were fantastic as part of the setting's background. They utterly failed as a playable faction.

Do you think the issue might have been less with their fluff and more with their mechanics? Their model range was tiny and they had virtually no customisation (1 HQ choice, 1 Troop choice, basically no wargear outside of the Necron Lord), they were so ludicrously expensive that most of your points were gone by the time you'd bought your mandatory troops and HQ, and they could never make any sort of last stand because their army just vanished if they lost too many models.

 Avatar 720 wrote:
Coming from a fiction-writing background, New is far and away the best in terms of character and scope. Old was certainly tighter, but it's difficult to have lore issues with a race whose only concern is getting from A to B and reducing everything between that point into very very small little bits, preferably without missing a step. There's so much more you can do with Newcrons, even if the official lore is now more spotty and inconsistent as a result.

I'll half disagree. I like that there is the availability for personality between lords, although I'd argue there was room for that in Oldcron lore. I find the Newcron personalities disappointingly anthropomorphic and comic-bookey.