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Even in new Necron fluff most Warriors are basically mindless robots, only the leaders are sentient and maybe some of the Praetorians, so higher ranking officers. They fit your description pretty well. Just leave out Flayed Ones . There are also female versions from WGE if you really need "sexy stuff". You could also concentrate on Canopthek constructs which are all "real" robots (no soul trapped in there).

I don't know where there's sexy or hot stuff in DE that's not in normal Eldar as well...

Mechanicum from 30K could have been an option for you, but sadly GW/FW was too dumb to ever port them to 40K.

In the end your list is already pretty good, so take what you think looks best. You'll use these miniatures the rest of your life and have to look at them for hours when painting them, so if you don't like Necron Skull faces but dig the Tau-suit aesthetic, well, take Tau then.

I hate to say it but if you dislike tech advancement not really being a thing, not sure 40k's the right setting for you. that said if you didn't say you disliked bio stuff I'd argue that Tyranids would check almost all your boxes

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well in that case if Orks manage to win eneugh they actually do advance, the war of the beast series gives us a look at what Orks are CAPABLE of if left alone to do their thing too long

I think what you want is admech, skitarii, or mechanicum, with the Cawl as your leader; maybe add in a few knights for sexy.

 Big Mac wrote:
I think what you want is admech, skitarii, or mechanicum, with the Cawl as your leader; maybe add in a few knights for sexy.

by sexy I think he means "cheese cake" which TBH isn't something 40k really pushes (thankfully IMHO)

Honestly it sounds like you want Necrons.

The entire range is an army of metal warriors led by powerful intelligent leaders whilst the regular warrior can range from a just awakened drone to semi-sentient. They also have their Canoptech machines which are, well, proper full machines (no previous soul) which were mostly made to guard and maintain their tombs whilst the Necrons slept.

The lack of sexystuff - as said GW doesn't really do that through most of their range. The men are all hunks and the women are not bad; but they don't go for full on sexy stuff for most of their release - though AoS gets close with things like Witch Aelves.

Honestly if you want "sexy" warhammer https://www.ragingheroes.com

They do a range of factions in alternate sculpt form in resin. Of course you can use them at any club or 3rd party event; but you won't be able to use them at a GW store or GW event because they are not GW models. Depending on the store manager you can sometimes get away with the odd model here and there in an otherwise GW army and converted parts are fairly open to interpretation as to how far you can go - but a straight up alternate army from another company isn't allowed


Adepticus Mechanicus might also interest you, even though its part of the dreaded human world of the Imperium.

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No race can turn an entire planet into spaceships. A Tomb World is a world upon which there are great tombs buried beneath the surface, chock full of sleeping Necrons.


Early Necrons were basically totally mindless as they awoke; as they've advanced the story they've gained more independent thought on the whole. However its more so the leaders. The underlings are more ghosts of their former selves, driven by the directive to follow orders and obliterate all life from the universe. Whilst they technically have souls they've no sense of taste, love, lust, etc.... so they are as close to machines as you can get.

A few, like the crazed flayers, have bit more madness in them - but they still obey.

Also have a look at the puppets war Cyber nightmares range. These are alternative Necrons with an own style, but complement the GW range nicely. Their Warriors are very different and look like mechanical Insects, they might be exactly what you're after (and you can avoid skulls with these ) not sure if they do ship to the USA though.

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Ah well yes races can build space ships. What I meant is they can't make a planet into a spaceship.



Tyranids are getting close though, they've built a planet sized organic construction which, at present, is seen to project a huge Shadow into the Warp which blocks the demons around it. However other than that its not done anything yet, so we've no idea what its real and full purpose is.

Indeed barring the organic aspect, Tyranids fully embody the ideal of a single minded race controlled by a greater mind. Even if that mind is formed by the unity of the countless numbers of the swarm that comprises it.

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Well they exist in a galaxy where the standard method of faster than light travel is to take a trip through hell.

Also Tyranid lore is a bit more flexible than many other races if mostly because its made from outside perspectives. It's also shifted somewhat over time. They have had codex and evidence that they do devour mineral content of worlds. I'd argue that it takes them longer and as they are more on the offensive they just take the easier to digest biomass.




Their great volume comes from the fact that they devour all and they waste nothing with non-essential life. Every Tyranid is built for a specific purpose. Their only weakness would indeed be the burn of energy in transfers; however they can park around a sun and soak up the radiation for energy.



Otherwise don't "overthink" the science too much in a world where Gods exist; where Hell is waging war on the living; where demons are reality. Heck Tyranids come from the empty nothing outside of the Galaxy.

Chaos
+Scary stuff
+Ascension
+Greater Daemons are epic
+Slaanesh stuff is hawt
-Excessive Gore
-Lack of advancement. No advancement in science or society. No nation building. They are 100% steal followers from other races faster than they kill their own. Correct me if I'm wrong.
-No sustainability. Once they "win" that's it. The end. They kill themselves faster than they reproduce so the end.

Excessive gore is only really something found on Khorne and Nurgle. Which you don't need or require.
No sustainability is also untrue, considering there are whole sectores and claimed worlds. Further the endgoal of the Legions atleast allways was to conquer the empire, however the gods prefer the status quo somewhat so it isn't as clear cut.

-Their tech is primitive being super old, lack of maintenance, and no advancement

And this is the point where dark mechanicum would whack you over the head and turn you into a sacrifice for their innovation:
Introducing: Obliterators, mutilators, Hellblade fighters, Helltalon fighter bombers, Decimators, sonic dreadnought, , defieler, Helldrake, forgefiend, Mauler fiend, Soul grinder, greater brass scorpion, blod slaughterer, blight drones, etc.

-Sentient race of individuals

Just as likely to be a bunch of chaos androids (yes that was a thing) or Darkmech forces, (which yes were a thing) . too possesed, which are also not really individuals anymore.
Further as a owner of a ghost CSM army shakled to a necromancer i find this chaos and it is offensive. (Joke is joke)

-Pure Evil

The legions? yes (except maybee AL because we have no idea what they do.). The Daemons, YES. The Lost and the damned, aka renegades and heretics, more often then not tragically unaware for whom they fight.

More sexy models here:

https://wargameexclusive.com/

Sounds like Dark mechanicus to me.
They're a chaos version of imperial mechanicum, except they have no boundaries.
Most of them will want to merge realspace and warp, so you get a lot of impossible living daemon engines, which are a fusion of robots and daemons that defy conventional (in-lore) physics.

Pros:
As for the hivemindedness, can go anywhere you want with the tech. You could have a warlord that commands an army of robots by linking his soul to them, or remote controlling them via the noo-sphere or whatever you want really. I believe they're still not hot on AI though.
Scary stuff is a check, you have daemons and spooky tentacly murder robots.
Ascension is also a given due to the nature of chaos.
Given how the dark mechanicum are more individual, you can make things as sexy as you want. Slaanesh is a thing, but there is no governing design philospophy. You could have sleek futurustic aesthetics, or merge humans with machines in a giger-esque fashion, etc.
Epic is easy, they make titans too.
Gore, again, is up to you, you could literaly make machines fueld by blood and have open organs or you know...not.
You have machines and walkers galore.
It doesn't get more advanced than dark mechanicum. Yes, Necron have more advanced "realty" based tech but dark mechanicum are merging two dimensions as they will it.

Cons:

They are baseline humans, so are about as sustainable as the imperium. This is also a pro though in that said they are about as human as your toaster once they survive to a notable level. Biologically speaking, as well morality wise.
The cons depends largely on how you visualize the mechanicum. you could see a focus on biology and such, but it's not really a con as you can focus on a general that pursues research more inline with what you want.
A big con on the other hand would be that you will not see much of this in videogames, or even the lore.

Apart from googling, you can also check the forgeworld site (Horus Heresy -> mechanicum). It's mostly the "good" guys but I reckon that many of them would still see use today as they are much easier to mass produce as opposed to binding daemons into a machine.
From 30k, a dark mech general
but of course you also have stuff like the Kytan or Scorpions, Defilers, Decimators, etc.

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Actually that is not true.
It depends on the daemonengine type.
Soul grinders are f.e. voluntary. Decimators are a Bunch of mercs. Defieler and the more melee ones are forced,helldrake basically is when a pilot and the Machine spirit fuse.


Well the Techno Virus basically turns the soul into a daemonic machine from witch the power of obliterators stem.

Also daemonworlds are not the only place and further many legions are owners of their own hovels of course including cultists,mutants,etc.

Further decimators are actually unkown,since they do have alien aswell as chaos weaponry,further they supposedly can be hired.

The biggest plus of chaos is,that you can fit all concepts in and customize then to your liking.
Sadly ia13 isn't anymore but that list got quite a lot you could draw Inspiration from.

You can't think of Dark Mechanicum as a united faction, even less so than Chaos marines. It's more a number of individuals that share common traits/goals with precious little restraint. That's also why you can do pretty much whatever you want.
There is no doubt someone crazy enough to work on AI too, but it's not really sensible when you can insert actual sentience via daemons much much easier. There is the Kaban Machine for example.
That said, daemons are probably less dangerous than AI when it comes to 40k, they always end up going full skynet.
I don't have any example for linking souls, but with the dark Mechanicum the sky is the limit. Anything goes, it's only because of the nature of 40k that nothing ever comes of it.
Fulgrim has made actual primarchs by the dozen and yet you don't see them steamrolling the galaxy because he kills them or they get trader or whatever. The mechinicum was able to link with the hive mind or at least draw vast knowledge from gene memory which would have changed the universe, only to get blown up, etc, etc. The knowledge and tech is out there, despite not going anywhere storywise. Doesn't mean that great things don't happen though and with eldar being able to capture souls and have them pilot machines, alpharius likely having a shared soul, I have no doubt that it's possible / has been done in lore to share your soul in some fashion for control instead of conventional tech, which really isn't that big of a deal. Might require the odd harvested brain or so, but hey.

As for reproducing, there is plenty of that going on. They even have forced breeding camps or...way..way worse. Read on the Daemonculaba if you can stomach it.
Plus daemon worlds have been around for thousands of years, I think it's safe to say that humans CAN live there...not that you'd want to, but they are not lacking in numbers.

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Don't forget rule 34.

Either way, it seems like Necrons or Tau are the way to go.

Necrons were once all sentient, yes, but post-biotransferance the species lost their sentience in relation to where they stood in prefall necrontyr society, which was a highly caste-based society. Lords and Overlords are still who they once were, mostly, soldiers maintain some degree of self-awareness, the common peasants are about as self-aware as a servitor. If I were to make my own necron army, I would have it based on a simple lord who ruled over an agrarian planet, he deeply cared for his people and kept them mostly out of (the first phase of) the war in heaven (conscientious objectors, like the amish). This meant that his people never became warriors and rose in the necrontyr ranks, thus being deemed useless by the C'tan and were robbed of all their personality during biotransferance. The lord was the only one on the planet who maintained his personality. Now he lives among the soulless, emotionless husks of his beloved people, forever wracked by guilt. But enough of my own lore, I will admit it can be hard to get past the Egyptian aesthetic, and the necrons most certainly have gore (flayed ones).

The T'au have a class-based society, they are not communists. It's not even like a 1984 party members vs non-party members thing, they are overtly divided into 5 castes. It's more hindu than anything. Sure, they say all castes are equal, but can it really be said that the hands/Kshatriyas (warriors) are just as valued as the feet/Shudras (peasants), or that the fire caste is just as valued as the earth caste? And if this makes their sentience a little more tolerable, they tau (except their rulers, the etherials) have very weak souls, little psychic presence. Of course, I don't know if there is a connection between sentience and psychic ability or soul strength. But again, their aesthetic is hard to swallow unless you like gundam/anime. Hell, most of Tau lore follows the same kind of Imperial Rescript on Education (Japanese state school propaganda) derived plot found in most military-based animes, with a few warhammeresque twists.

I would suggest the normal mechanicus if you are put off by deamons, as they are kinda separate from the wider imperium, but I don't think skirarri get anesthetic when their legs get ground off and replaced with augmetics. Of course, the dark mechanicus do similar things, if not much worse.

Honestly, looking at your list of likes and dislikes, I wonder if you actually like 40k. A lot of your dislikes are recurring themes (individualism, for example, plays a big part in the fluff, even for races which exalt the whole). That said, I agree with the consensus that Necrons are probably the closest to what you're looking for.

I was thinking of Adeptus Mechanicus, but since you refuse to use the Imperial forces...

If you are open to conversions and some fluff forging, you could play the Men of Iron, using perhaps AdMech rules and heavily converted models. Their fluff is rather vague and can be modified as you please.
https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Men_of_Iron

Men of Iron using AdMech rules

Things I like:
+Single sentient supercomputer entity with a bajillion robots doing his bidding. Only he is the sentient one, no one else is sentient so when his minions "die" it's like losing a car or a computer, not a life. (they are sentient machines, but can be modified)
+Scary stuff (possible)
+Ascension (possible)
+Sexy or hawt stuff (unlikely)
+Epic stuff (definitely)
+Machines (YES!)
+Walkers (YES!)
+High-Tech (YES!)

Things I don't like
-Gore, including physical torture (not sure)
-Humanity or any other sentient race of individuals (they can be of any form)
-Stupidity (you need some bug fixing and patches)
-Lack of advancement (nope)
-Primitive savages (nope)
-Animals or Nature (nope)
-Bio stuff (nope)
-Tanks. I don't care how big they are, tanks are boring. (they have hovercrafts)

 flandarz wrote:
Honestly, looking at your list of likes and dislikes, I wonder if you actually like 40k. A lot of your dislikes are recurring themes (individualism, for example, plays a big part in the fluff, even for races which exalt the whole). That said, I agree with the consensus that Necrons are probably the closest to what you're looking for.

regarding individualism, it's kinda important to a mini's game because it let's you add some varity and embellishments to your various models, helps make the painting go easier.

roboemperor wrote:
Tyranids
[...]
+No Gore

Wut?



Prv.

Sounds like Necrons to me.

Also, there is fluff that an advanced AI took over an entire dynasty. One of the earlier codex.

roboemperor wrote:

The Daemon Prince Shukketh Voidmaw infects the tomb world of Vorketh with the taint of Chaos. Vorketh’s regent awakens to find his crypts transformed, and his legions already locked in battle.

Does this mean
1. Chaos Necrons. or
2. Necrons are fighting Chaos in the tomb world

--------------------------------

I think I'm gonna go with a Necron Phaeron who expelled all of his necron soldiers to other dynasties and just spends all of his time turning planets and moons into armies of necron vehicles and spaceships or super weapons and rents them out to other Necron Dynasties.

The thing holding me back from Chaos is that Arch-Hereteks can't make their own Daemons or human souls, and human breeding farms are just sick, too evil. So unless powerful psykers can create their own Daemons without a Chaos God or souls, I think I'm gonna go with Necrons. Self-Sufficiency is important for me, and if the creators of Daemon Engines have a 0% chance of being self-sufficient, then that's a deal breaker.

That depends on your definition of self-sufficient. A lone necron lord buliding armies? He is entirely reliant on helpers like scarabs and what have you, which are not extensions of him iirc. Super Wifi sure, but not truly linked.
Dark mech and daemons can't create their own souls, but not for the reasons you think and an arch-heretek can do the same thing as the necron lord while giving you more flexibility in design and aesthetics. They would be about equally self sufficient.
Both would also need resources from somewhere, can't build from nothing, meaning you need to mine and or raid. There's no way you can be 100% self sufficient.

Unless someone here shows me that Daemon Princes can make their own Daemons? Anyone? That might actually make me choos Chaos. Be a Daemon Prince who makes his own Daemon Engines from his own essence.

This depends, daemons are splinters of the chaos gods themselves. Horrors can split themselves, Avatars of khaine are equally splintered, the C'tan have splintered, there are plenty examples of it being a thing.
To do it on an army level however would require stupid amounts of worship to that particular daemon, it's not really feasible.
That said, on a smaller scale, even low tier daemons are capable of creating ammo out of thin air when possessing people or bound into a daemon-engine.

Now that said, the soul is separate from the body as seen with eldar soulstones and even the "imperium" has created similar tech as seen in the eisenhorn novels. Some xenos races have warp based weaponry that does not rely on the chaos gods that can rip your soul out.
And you can interact with these bound souls, like say the wraithbone constructs. Horus' soul was obliterated and yet he somehow still roams the warp doing his thing.
So, in theory you could bind your own soul into a machine and effectively becoming the 40k equivalent of a lich. That's something Necron can't do, not having a soul and all.
And say you were previously possessed by a daemon and exorcised it (people do this), with any luck you could gain the knowledge needed to spew out you're own bullets or whatever you want really. Not sure if you have enough mojo to do it with just one puny soul though.
Daemons are still part of something MUCH greater after all, they're not truly sentient.

There is also psychic tech, so between warp based tech (not chaos god related necessarily) and psychic shenanigans you could easily rival necron tech in terms of self suffciency and interconnectedness.
Hell, who knows, it might be possible to weaponize your own soul and turn it into a pseudo daemon virus and go all literal ghost in the machine, so a "living" AI sorta thing.

Bottom line:
Become immortal, then you can do whatever you want really. You're self sufficient in that you don't need sustenance.
Necron already start this way, a heretek would have to get damn inventive, but it's theoretically possible. And you aren't just ascended by the gods on a whim either.
Otherwise necron and dark mech are very similar in what they can do, just by different means.
Necron however have actual models and are represented in other media. Dark mech just kind of....exist.

@OP it sounds like a case of having the cake and eating it too.

You should narrow down your "priorities" further as there's not a single faction that fulfills all of your thematic needs.

Also, if you're not a powergamer and trying to get into the hobby for the visual & background, I'd say search on google for [FACTION] army, and see which army screams out to you. Many times, the visual aspects of the army (not units) can help you cope with the things you don't like about their lore and vice versa.