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 Psienesis wrote:
The Eldar and the Ork have always been contemporaries of the Necrons, as they have always been the two "biggest" races created by the Old Ones (who "seeded the galaxy with life"... they are the Rakata of 40K). That neither of these two races apparently did anything during the War in Heaven was an omission of glaring inconsistency. Why would the favored children of the Old Ones *not* fight the Necrons and the C'Tan?

They did. "The Dawn of the C'tan" featured the Eldar fighting in the War of Heaven, and incapacitating the Void Dragon with a fusillade of Blackstone Fortresses.

Right. There is now. There wasn't then. Back then, it was A C'Tan with Its Armies of Killer Robots from Outer Space.

No, you're wrong. In Xenology, a Necron Lord actually has a conversation with an Inquisitor, and in the 3e codex at least one quote is attributed to a Necron Lord.

Back then it was "Necron Tomb World awakens. Necrons find living things. Necrons harvest all living things, in a program they call The Red Harvest (Necrons aren't a poetic race). Necrons go back to sleep. More living things return to find planet utterly lifeless, wonder WTF just happened here. Rinse, repeat. Robo-mustache twirling commences."

No, the current Necrons with their idiotic eccentricities are the mustache-twirlers. The original Necrons were death incarnate, as someone said earlier, alien in mindset to the extent that a human could not fathom it. Now, there is nothing differentiating them from humans in persona. They are metal men with feelings. Feelings, that can be broken.

As far as C'Tan went? There were more than just the Void Dragon and the Deceiver. We also had Nightbringer, who was (and continues to be) the source of Grim Reaper symbolism throughout every sentient species in the galaxy. We had Llandu'gor, who gave us the Flayer Virus and the Flayed Ones. There was the Outsider, who was apparently a Crazy C'Tan. There was all those that they gave names to, but never any details (ran out of time writing the Codex? Intended future supplement never published? Who knows!) Iash'uddra, Kalugura, Og'driada, Yggra'nya and Nyadra'zatha... who somehow gave the Necrons the keys to the Webway, even though the C'Tan were completely physical-reality creatures... how the star-gods did anything with the Warp was a narrative conundrum that has yet to be resolved, incidentally, though further details on the War in Heaven make more sense with 5E Codex:Necrons... and, also, whether or not the C'Tan ever actually fought the Old Ones is cast into question, for the C'Tan that mentions this is the Deceiver. Which, again, makes sense. Why would they care? They are star-eating space-vampires.

What point are you even trying to make here? That the 5th edition codex made no sense in its handling of the C'tan? Because every C'tan you just named besides the Dragon, Deceiver, Outsider, and Nightbringer was from the 5e codex, as is their hacking the Webway (Despite the Warp and all its works being anathema to them), as is them apparently fighting the Old Ones before the Necrons found them.

Enslavers are still around, just as a background xeno-creature. They have a lot more going on in the various 40K RPGs and other, non-wargame sources. Makes sense. If you had a badass army like the Necrons (pre-5E) who got their asses kicked by the Enslavers, why would you not have an Enslaver product line to return to challenge the Necrons, since no one else in the galaxy apparently could?

GW didn't go that route, though, there was no narrative challenge to the Necrons. The Enslavers never returned to the game, as far as the tabletop was concerned, and became something of a MacGuffin. Narratively, this doesn't make sense.

I disproved this faulty train of thought in the other thread. Do not dare to use it here.

So, to continue with the theme of every main faction having a diametric opposite, the Necrons and the Eldar were paired off against one another. Marines vs CSM (boilerplate Order vs Chaos, the posterboy armies of the setting), Necrons vs Eldar (ancient tech army vs ancient magic army), IG vs Orks (Human Horde vs Alien Horde). Other, more specialized factions (Tau, SOB, Daemons, etc) break from these narrative themes, but that's fine, that's why these armies are/were specialized, niche armies.

The Necrons are not the opposite of the Eldar now. They once could be seen as such, but now? The only differences are that one consists of robots and can't use psychic powers. They both use the same means of FTL travel for Christ's sake.

And for a race that has consistently been described as "ancient", the Eldar make the most sense as the bitter foes of the Necrons. It provides narrative continuity to the setting, rather than (again) having one army that got its ass kicked by another army return to the game, but the army that kicked its ass doesn't... if there had been an Enslaver product line, I would think differently, but there isn't, and probably never will be.

So uh, as I pointed out before, you've clearly not actually read the third edition codex. The Old Ones' child races, with the Eldar spearheading the assault, cut an implacable swath through the Necron/C'tan army, after the C'tan just got done eating each other. The C'tan began devising a grand plan to destroy the Warp forever at this point, but were forced to go into hiding with their metal legions after the "birth" of Chaos (Created by the anger and hatred of the Old Ones' children) when they began running out of food to sustain themselves.

If you do not know anything about the faction being discussed, don't post about them.


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 Psienesis wrote:
The best part about the most-recent Codex: Necrons is that it allows one to play an OldCron Army, if you choose to. It also opens up a bunch of options for other people to play a different flavor of Necrons, which is, perhaps, the biggest strength to its fluff.

Indeed, the best part about the newcron codex is that they put a half-assed two sentence platitude into the codex in an attempt to satisfy the players that the rest of the hundred page codex was alienating.

You could, for example, replicate an OldCron Army by putting your C'Tan Shard in the back, surrounded by an Honor Guard of Lychguard or Destroyers, and then arrange your forces before it. You could model your C'Tan Shard being borne on a litter carried by Necron Warriors or your Necron Lord and its Royal Court. I mean, you could go crazy with the modeling projects to represent an Oldcron army with the C'Tan still the boss... or you could do something totally different, now that you have the options in the Codex to do so.

Indeed, just as you could model a Grey Knights army to be consisted entirely of nubile warrior women who worship Slaanesh and rape Eldar children.

The official fluff makes it clear that no C'tan is in charge of anything in the current fluff. "Oh well you can ignore the fluff" is not a valid argument.

From the other thread, a comment was made about C'Tan phase swords being shards of their necrodermis...

... the original write-up for the Phase Sword credits the C'Tan with having built them. Which doesn't jive with them being part of its necrodermis shell (which they didn't build), and also doesn't explain why that bit of necrodermis can be that powerful while a Warrior can't just punch your Baneblade apart with his necrodermis hands. Necrodermis is Necrodermis.

Hmmmm, in-universe speculation on the Mechanicum's part vs. the actual Necron codex which depicts the Deceiver simply absorbing a C'tan Phase Sword back into its body... Choices... Choices...

You are aware that the 3e Warscythes are just C'tan Phase Blades in the form of a scythe, right?

I think you are mixing old fluff and new fluff here. I will happily admit that the existence of many C´tan (instead of just four) is a good change. However, all that C´tans are currently some sort of Pokemon, while the old C´tan were like this:

The Nightbringer definitely predates 5E Codex:Necrons. Hell, the novel dedicated to that particular C'Tan predates Ward's Codex by more than a decade. We've always had four or five "main" C'Tan (Void Dragon, Outsider, Nightbringer, Deceiver) with the Flayed One being a "background character of note" and then a bunch named in passing but never fleshed out...

Fleshed out. Heh.

Which is what I most dislike of the new Codex. They had a badass army, and they scratched off the most important part of their background. There were references to Enslavers all over the place. There are rules for them in Rogue Trader. They were (and still are) an important part of the background. With a single line Ward had them joined to an ever growing list: Squats, Zoats, Slann, Lost and the Damned, Genestealer Cults, Arbites, Hurd, Exodites... Incredibly cool and awesome armies still in the background but only as a footnote. It is a pity.

A narrative necessity. If the Enslavers were so bad-ass, why haven't they returned (to the tabletop) to fight the Necrons? How does one build an Enslaver Army? What Codex do I base them on? Are they ultra-psychic Tyranids? Are they super-psychic Space Wolves? When you establish a faction like the Enslavers (or the Mechanicus, the Arbites, the Squats, the Hrud...) you're inviting people to ask where they are on the tabletop, and when you get people asking that question, it leads to either scratch-built or converted armies (IG turned to Arbites, for example) or endless forum posts about "Where's the Enslavers/Hrud/Barghesi/Mechanicus at?".

For the "narrative games" style that GW has moved to, it creates a very large narrative hole. We have an alien species in possession of super-science, being functionally immortal, able to time-travel, move from one end of the galaxy to the other in comparative safety with relative ease, in a fraction of the time of everyone else, who are in possession of Galactic Doomsday technology...

... and we're supposed to believe that these people are somehow on par with a faction that turned a tractor into a tank? With green-skinned English Soccer Hooligans? With people that turned a tractor into a tank and then put spikes on it?

And the one army that made them flee is Codex: Not Appearing In This Game? Just doesn't fly.

People get into armies for all sorts of reasons, and sometimes it's because their friend plays Army X, so they want to play Army Y, which is the diametric opposite and primary foe. So with the Oldcrons you had... uh.. nothing. No Army Y to their Army X. No one, originally, even on par with them to present a narrative challenge (game mechanics are a different matter entirely). That had to change.

Eldar (specifically Altaioc, iirc) and the Krork made the most narrative sense, both being ancient races possessing psychic abilities (one actively, the other more in a gestalt manner). So you get a narrative conflict of technology & science vs nature and mysticism (Space Elves, after all) or of civilization and order against the savage barbarian hordes. Rather than the boilerplate "we fight them because they are trying to kill us".

The Eldar were always the ancient enemies of the Necrons.

Not to the extent then as they are portrayed now. Then it was more C'Tan (and their killer robots) vs the Old Ones (and their Space Elves and Soccer Hooligans). With the adjustment of things, the Eldar take a more prominent role in the conflict.

Which is fine, it's a tighter narrative focus.

Yes. The only necrons with "personality" were the c'tan. They directed the rest like a hive mind.

 Psienesis wrote:
Not to the extent then as they are portrayed now. Then it was more C'Tan (and their killer robots) vs the Old Ones (and their Space Elves and Soccer Hooligans). With the adjustment of things, the Eldar take a more prominent role in the conflict.

Which is fine, it's a tighter narrative focus.

It also entirely sidesteps the problem oldcron players have with the emocron codex.


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Kiwidru wrote:
Yes. The only necrons with "personality" were the c'tan. They directed the rest like a hive mind.

Wrong.

On the quick subject of Chaos during the WIH not being the Chaos of M40- Chaos within the warp is not affected by causality. They have always existed within the warp. While they might have a set DOB- go poking into the warp at any time and you'll certainly find them. The Oldcrons may have gone poking in there and learned of Chaos specifically for that reason.

No, you're wrong. In Xenology, a Necron Lord actually has a conversation with an Inquisitor, and in the 3e codex at least one quote is attributed to a Necron Lord.

One Black Library book out of many, and thus they are now all intelligent? Or it could've been the artistic license of one individual author to try and make them actually interesting, which they took to the logical conclusion in the 5th edition codex...Because there was no way of creating intelligent lords with the actual codex itself, nor has fluff ever shown any other intelligent Necron lords before the 5th edition writeup

No, the current Necrons with their idiotic eccentricities are the mustache-twirlers. The original Necrons were death incarnate, as someone said earlier, alien in mindset to the extent that a human could not fathom it. Now, there is nothing differentiating them from humans in persona. They are metal men with feelings. Feelings, that can be broken.

Yes, they instead were METAL TYRANIDS. Wakeup, harvest, sleep. They were trying to take over the narrative by making them enemy of all, better then chaos, better then tyranids, unbeatable by Imperium, Chaos, and even Eldar quake in fear of them.

It was like the ultimate shilled race before they realized how bland they were.

 Psienesis wrote:
The Eldar and the Ork have always been contemporaries of the Necrons, as they have always been the two "biggest" races created by the Old Ones (who "seeded the galaxy with life"... they are the Rakata of 40K). That neither of these two races apparently did anything during the War in Heaven was an omission of glaring inconsistency. Why would the favored children of the Old Ones *not* fight the Necrons and the C'Tan?

Well, we kind of know that they did fight each other, as we have the War in Heaven story

http://web.archive.org/web/20080406181835/http://uk.games-workshop.com/necrons/eldar-mythology/

And I am sure that there are other tales out there.

da001 wrote:Still, nothing of the like is said in the last Codex. The writer needed a reason for the Necrons to hide and for some reason the Enslavers were retconned. So he took a 40k army from 60 million years in the future and used it. Not a single sentence is given to turn this nonsensical assertion into something acceptable. We can talk about how this madness can be understood, but at least is really, really lazy writing.

They didn't retcon the Enslavers, they just weren't mentioned by name, the Codex says

Ultimately, beset by the implacable onset of the C'tan and the calamitous Warp - spawned perils they had themselves mistakenly unleashed, the Old Ones were defeated, scattered and finally destroyed. - p9

You can draw a pretty parallel line between the two.

 Psienesis wrote:
And for a race that has consistently been described as "ancient", the Eldar make the most sense as the bitter foes of the Necrons. It provides narrative continuity to the setting, rather than (again) having one army that got its ass kicked by another army return to the game, but the army that kicked its ass doesn't... if there had been an Enslaver product line, I would think differently, but there isn't, and probably never will be.

But the Enslavers are still a fairly limited species, they don't appear to have any technology and do just one thing. Yeah, they could flesh them out and give them toys but why bother, you would just have another race and a can of worms opened up on the others that could have a line produced. Anyhoo ...

The Eldar already had a mortal enemy that they feared above all others and the Necron have always been an enemy.

I would ask this question:

What did the Necrons (3rd edition) really add to the setting at the time? Did they actually make it better, more rich?

I don't like calling the 3rd edition Necrons 'oldcrons' because they existed in 2nd edition without that background, and before even then the models / trope existed as Chaos Androids.

 Daba wrote:
I would ask this question:

What did the Necrons (3rd edition) really add to the setting at the time? Did they actually make it better, more rich?

I don't like calling the 3rd edition Necrons 'oldcrons' because they existed in 2nd edition without that background, and before even then the models / trope existed as Chaos Androids.

Except Chaos Androids were a bit different lorewise, they were more akin to the old Robotic models that even the Orks had..Not as hilarious though.

 Void__Dragon wrote:

They did. "The Dawn of the C'tan" featured the Eldar fighting in the War of Heaven, and incapacitating the Void Dragon with a fusillade of Blackstone Fortresses.

Interesting... Didn´t know that. Thank you for that reference.

 Psienesis wrote:

A narrative necessity. If the Enslavers were so bad-ass, why haven't they returned (to the tabletop) to fight the Necrons? How does one build an Enslaver Army? What Codex do I base them on? Are they ultra-psychic Tyranids? Are they super-psychic Space Wolves? When you establish a faction like the Enslavers (or the Mechanicus, the Arbites, the Squats, the Hrud...) you're inviting people to ask where they are on the tabletop, and when you get people asking that question, it leads to either scratch-built or converted armies (IG turned to Arbites, for example) or endless forum posts about "Where's the Enslavers/Hrud/Barghesi/Mechanicus at?".

So we get rid of Enslavers, Hrud, Mechanicus, Arbites, Slann, Exodites, Eldar Corsairs, Chaos Legions, Lesser Chaos Gods, Lost and Damned, Genestealer Cults, Barghesi, Nicassar, Tallerian, Piscean, Beastmen, Adeptus Astra Telepathica (including psy-titans), Sisters of Silence, Custodes, Demiurg, Kroot mercenaries, Malal Daemons, the Afriel Strain, Heretical Ecclesiarchy Forces, PDF, rebels, Squats, Chaos Squats, Morralian Deathsworn, Zoats, Rak´Gol, Enoulians, Fra´al, Stryxxis, Loxatl, Nekulli, Yu´Vath, Thyrrus, Xenarch and the rest?

The setting is amazingly rich and complex. If the game is to convey that, they should create rules that add variety to the table, instead of turning full factions into a footnote. Following your reasoning we all would eventually play space marines against space marines. Boring, unimaginative and lame.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

No, you're wrong. In Xenology, a Necron Lord actually has a conversation with an Inquisitor, and in the 3e codex at least one quote is attributed to a Necron Lord.

One Black Library book out of many, and thus they are now all intelligent?

I think all depictions of Necron Lords did that. I can give you four instances of Necron Lords being intelligent previously to 2011 5th edition.
1) Codex Necrons 3rd edition. Page 24. The most powerful Necrontyr retained their intelligence.
2) Xenology: we have a Necron Lord talking and talking for pages on. And no, it is not a human-like being. It is clearly a Xeno talking.
3) Dead Men Walking: we see Necron Lords communicating with humans. Also tolerating them and enslaving them.
4) The Dawn of War: Dark Crusade videogame.

Could you give a single instance of a Necron Lord without intelligence?

 Pilau Rice wrote:

They didn't retcon the Enslavers, they just weren't mentioned by name, the Codex says

Ultimately, beset by the implacable onset of the C'tan and the calamitous Warp - spawned perils they had themselves mistakenly unleashed, the Old Ones were defeated, scattered and finally destroyed. - p9

You can draw a pretty parallel line between the two.

That´s too few. They were a Rogue Trader race, and I liked them a lot. I also know some people who liked them to the point of writing fan-dexes, and had been waited since 3rd edition (ten years, no less) for additional information on the matter. They have been reduced to nearly nothing.

However, what really grinds my gears is the number of factions that have been left behind. I quoted some. There are many and I collected some of them.

 Daba wrote:
I would ask this question:

What did the Necrons (3rd edition) really add to the setting at the time? Did they actually make it better, more rich?

Yes, of course. They added lots of things. Many people complained because the setting was altered in such a brutal way. In particular, it answered many questions about what was actually going on in the setting, and we got the beginning of the story: all races were created by the Old Ones during a war against gods that existed in the physical realms and commanded an army of sentient machines.

 Gogsnik wrote:

Personally my issue with the 3rd Edition Codex is the whole 'the Old Ones made everyone' garbage. I'm glad the new Codex doesn't reiterate the guff about the Krork as that one little tiny snippet of information single-handedly ruined decades of incredibly detailed Ork background at a stroke. I said once on these boards some years before the latest Ork Codex came out how it seemed the Studio were moving away from 'the Old Ones done it' by reintroducing the original Ork background material with the Enslaver Plague as just a possibility and not actualité.

I must admit I didn´t know that. I thought the first explanation about the origin of the Orks was the one given in Codex Necrons.

May I ask you to give a brief summary (or a link) about how Orks were created before 3rd Edition?

Not "just" killer robots.
I always thought of them as metal Tyranids with lame wannabe Chaos Gods in charge.

4) The Dawn of War: Dark Crusade videogame.

The one you are thinking of here is the Pariah, the only time we see the Necron Lord "speak" is when Chaos Lord Eliphas tries to communicate with it via psyker, and it basically click/whirr/beeps a bit, and he's scared less

However the one in Soulstorm was derided because it spoke, many called it a break of lore and was just another lore breaking moment in a bad fluff game.

1) Codex Necrons 3rd edition. Page 24. The most powerful Necrontyr retained their intelligence.
2) Xenology: we have a Necron Lord talking and talking for pages on. And no, it is not a human-like being. It is clearly a Xeno talking.
3) Dead Men Walking: we see Necron Lords communicating with humans. Also tolerating them and enslaving them.

Ironically these contradict the codex as the Necron Lords are suppose to be "Silently compelling their skeleton warriors forward"

"The Necrons have no dealings with any species whatsoever. To the Necrons, each population is another target to be harvested at the whims of their masters."

"They are a chilling sight on the battlefield, directing their warriors' attack in unnatural silence"

Found the line. (It was on Page 25.)

"Only a few of the very strongest retained their intellect and even they were shadows of their former selves"

That sounds like what could be SC's, rather then a whole line of necron lords, at best that would not be showing that the Necron Lords would even speak, as why would the C'tan even allow their puppets to talk?

Yes that was the line I was talking about.
English Version: page 25. The Fall of the Necrontyr.
Spanish Version: page 24.

Sorry for the confusion.



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 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

4) The Dawn of War: Dark Crusade videogame.

The one you are thinking of here is the Pariah, the only time we see the Necron Lord "speak" is when Chaos Lord Eliphas tries to communicate with it via psyker, and it basically click/whirr/beeps a bit, and he's scared less

However the one in Soulstorm was derided because it spoke, many called it a break of lore and was just another lore breaking moment in a bad fluff game.

1) Codex Necrons 3rd edition. Page 24. The most powerful Necrontyr retained their intelligence.
2) Xenology: we have a Necron Lord talking and talking for pages on. And no, it is not a human-like being. It is clearly a Xeno talking.
3) Dead Men Walking: we see Necron Lords communicating with humans. Also tolerating them and enslaving them.

Ironically these contradict the codex as the Necron Lords are suppose to be "Silently compelling their skeleton warriors forward"

"The Necrons have no dealings with any species whatsoever. To the Necrons, each population is another target to be harvested at the whims of their masters."

"They are a chilling sight on the battlefield, directing their warriors' attack in unnatural silence"

No.
You are mixing "talking" with "being intelligent" here.

1: Dark Crusade: the Necron Lord was intelligent. He didn´t talk, but he was in command of the army, not a C´tan. The pariah talked to him from time to time.
2: They direct their warriors in unnatural silence: your point being? He directed them without oral orders, as a good mechanical being does. One of the silliest point of the 5th edition codex is the "robot piloting robot" and the "robot talking to robot" thing. Since when robots communicate with other robots by talking? That´s a human thing.
3: Silently compelling their warriors: the same.
4: The necrons had no dealings with the rest of the species: yes, they looked down at them as if they were cockroaches or cattle. What´s your point again? Are you suggesting that a xeno species must consider mankind its equal to be branded "intelligent"? I find Necrons showing respect in 5th edition for the noble heroes of the SPACE MARINES is something incredibly childish.

That sounds like what could be SC's, rather then a whole line of necron lords, at best that would not be showing that the Necron Lords would even speak, as why would the C'tan even allow their puppets to talk?

But they do. I have quoted you some examples of Necrons being intelligent, and you quoted back examples of Necrons not talking, directing armies to battle without the need of a single word.

Also your interpretation of the line (they must be SC´s) is quite strange. Necron Lord Special Characters in 3rd edition? There were none. The sentence means what it means: some Necrons retained their intelligence. The strongest of them.

But they do. I have quoted you some examples of Necrons being intelligent, and you quoted back examples of Necrons not talking, directing armies to battle without the need of a single word.

Also your interpretation of the line (they must be SC´s) is quite strange. Necron Lord Special Characters in 3rd edition? There were none. The sentence means what it means: some Necrons retained their intelligence. The strongest of them.

Okay then, intelligence does not equal speech, I did get hung up over this, But I was mostly meaning to the fact as to why would they ever communicate with other species, along with the fact they couldn't.

Sure they are intelligent, but at the same time they follow the orders of the C'tan without a willful personality, I'm sure there's some protocols in there that allows for them to make tactical decisions and such, essentially mindless robots with dictated thoughts of how to further serve their master rather then anything resembling an intellect that hasn't been pre-programmed in by the Deceiver to serve them.

My thoughts on the matter is that those SC's would have been Necron Lords that actually remember their past, their actual knowledge as Necrotyr, rather then being tactical slaves under C'tan Lords, those that have personality and the actual intellect beyond the martial need of C'tan, aka, those powerful few, they would be SC's because they aren't standard Necron Lords and have something resembling minds of their own.

The problem with intelligence in this case, is that sure they can show themselves to be intelligent..But they are pretty much just servants with no thoughts, no personalities, if a C'tan commands they must obey, they'll forever march to the beat of their C'tan Lords and masters without ever knowing anything more, forever continuing the harvest for their masters. Any intellect they show is just a shadow they were, of what the Deciever allowed because it amused him.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

Sure they are intelligent, but at the same time they follow the orders of the C'tan without a willful personality, I'm sure there's some protocols in there that allows for them to make tactical decisions and such, essentially mindless robots with dictated thoughts of how to further serve their master rather then anything resembling an intellect that hasn't been pre-programmed in by the Deceiver to serve them.

My thoughts on the matter is that those SC's would have been Necron Lords that actually remember their past, their actual knowledge as Necrotyr, rather then being tactical slaves under C'tan Lords, those that have personality and the actual intellect beyond the martial need of C'tan, aka, those powerful few, they would be SC's because they aren't standard Necron Lords and have something resembling minds of their own.

The problem with intelligence in this case, is that sure they can show themselves to be intelligent..But they are pretty much just servants with no thoughts, no personalities, if a C'tan commands they must obey, they'll forever march to the beat of their C'tan Lords and masters without ever knowing anything more, forever continuing the harvest for their masters. Any intellect they show is just a shadow they were, of what the Deciever allowed because it amused him.

Which is actually a possible, logical interpretation.

That is not shared with Simon Spurrier (Xenology), Steve Lyons (Dead Men Walking), the team who developed Dawn of War, me and many other Necron players I know (or knew, since most of them quit the game in 2011). A lot of people assumed that the Necron Lords had intelligence and personality. You only need to look at the way they appear in the battlefield: completely different from one another.

I would like to point out that most people who said that Necrons were "just mindless robots" also adds "which is the reason I didn´t like them". Just like some people say "Sisters of Battle are just female imperial guard" or "Chaos Space Marines are just Space Marines with spikes" followed by "which is the reason I don´t like them".

That is not shared with Simon Spurrier (Xenology), Steve Lyons (Dead Men Walking), the team who developed Dawn of War

The problem is there have been plenty of writers who have either messed up lore (Sandy mitchell), some who have gotten things wrong (Gav Thorpe) and some who have obliterated fluff with a missile launcher (C.S Goto). Just because an author writes it, doesn't mean it'll mesh well with canon.

me and many other Necron players I know (or knew, since most of them quit the game in 2011). A lot of people assumed that the Necron Lords had intelligence and personality. You only need to look at the way they appear in the battlefield: completely different from one another.

Funny, most I know thought they were pretty much just differentiated because the Deciever wanted to make sure each Necrotyr lord got their own individualized look because they were pretty prideful, even the one's who liked Necrons didn't think they were much beyond their programming.

I would like to point out that most people who said that Necrons were "just mindless robots" also adds "which is the reason I didn´t like them". Just like some people say "Sisters of Battle are just female imperial guard" or "Chaos Space Marines are just Space Marines with spikes" followed by "which is the reason I don´t like them".

I actually liked Necrons, though felt they were too much metal tyranids.. What I actually I didn't like was the C'tan themselves being set up as the universal big bad, worse then the tyranids (or worse, according to fanon Controlling them!), and better then chaos in everything, and at times even controlling or helping it for their further goals (Such as when Abbadon found an artifact because of a 'golden man')

I like the thought of both oldcrons and newcrons existing, which you can actually simulate in the new book, with the Silent King, and even then you could say your necrons never managed to break free from the C'tan that control them, and thus are still mindless to semi-mindless drones controlled by their C'tan Overlord.

 Psienesis wrote:

For the "narrative games" style that GW has moved to, it creates a very large narrative hole. We have an alien species in possession of super-science, being functionally immortal, able to time-travel, move from one end of the galaxy to the other in comparative safety with relative ease, in a fraction of the time of everyone else, who are in possession of Galactic Doomsday technology...

... and we're supposed to believe that these people are somehow on par with a faction that turned a tractor into a tank? With green-skinned English Soccer Hooligans? With people that turned a tractor into a tank and then put spikes on it?

You really need to figure out if you want to talk about new or old fluff, of the four things listed only good FTL was possessed by only oldcrons both have immortality (oldcrons is slightly better as it is significantly harder to end them permanently) but only newcrons have time travel and galactic doomsday tech. So if you don't like time travel or galactic doomsday tech that's between you and Ward.

And honestly how are we supposed to believe the "green-skinned English soccer hooligans" are on par with anyone, regardless of their possession of spiked tractor/tanks.

ZebioLizard2 wrote: I like the thought of both oldcrons and newcrons existing, which you can actually simulate in the new book, with the Silent King, and even then you could say your necrons never managed to break free from the C'tan that control them, and thus are still mindless to semi-mindless drones controlled by their C'tan Overlord.

I'll just put this here because you clearly missed it the first time.

Void_Dragon wrote: Indeed, just as you could model a Grey Knights army to be consisted entirely of nubile warrior women who worship Slaanesh and rape Eldar children.

The official fluff makes it clear that no C'tan is in charge of anything in the current fluff. "Oh well you can ignore the fluff" is not a valid argument.

I remember being a bit shocked while reading Dead Men Walking that the Necrons would bother to directly communicate, if only very concise and in an absolute monologue, to the humans. That was definitely NOT part of their general theme before that moment. Even now, with the 5E dex, I still get the impression they are fairly reticent ... albeit much more intelligent and articulate than previously indicated.

"Oldcrons" were more of a mystery. I prefer the "Newcrons" (I love the idea of TK in Spaaaace). That said, neither fluff ever made me seriously consider buying a Necron army.

You really need to figure out if you want to talk about new or old fluff, of the four things listed only good FTL was possessed by only oldcrons both have immortality (oldcrons is slightly better as it is significantly harder to end them permanently) but only newcrons have time travel and galactic doomsday tech. So if you don't like time travel or galactic doomsday tech that's between you and Ward.

And honestly how are we supposed to believe the "green-skinned English soccer hooligans" are on par with anyone, regardless of their possession of spiked tractor/tanks.

You seem to think I prefer Oldcrons. You would be incorrect.

And if one does not consider the Orks a galactic threat, one is not paying attention to the fact that the majority of populated worlds in the galaxy are Ork-held worlds. As we have been told by the studio, time and time again, if the Orks were to ever unify as a collective race, they would be unstoppable. Fortunately, this will never happen.

So we get rid of Enslavers, Hrud, Mechanicus, Arbites, Slann, Exodites, Eldar Corsairs, Chaos Legions, Lesser Chaos Gods, Lost and Damned, Genestealer Cults, Barghesi, Nicassar, Tallerian, Piscean, Beastmen, Adeptus Astra Telepathica (including psy-titans), Sisters of Silence, Custodes, Demiurg, Kroot mercenaries, Malal Daemons, the Afriel Strain, Heretical Ecclesiarchy Forces, PDF, rebels, Squats, Chaos Squats, Morralian Deathsworn, Zoats, Rak´Gol, Enoulians, Fra´al, Stryxxis, Loxatl, Nekulli, Yu´Vath, Thyrrus, Xenarch and the rest?

I am not sure how you got that from what I wrote. Not sure at all.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

Funny, most I know thought they were pretty much just differentiated because the Deciever wanted to make sure each Necrotyr lord got their own individualized look because they were pretty prideful, even the one's who liked Necrons didn't think they were much beyond their programming.

Seriously? Never heard that explanation. What about the Necrons that followed the Dragon or the Nightbringer?
Everyone I know assumed they were like Tomb Kings in this regard. They look like kings, or try to.

I would like to point out that most people who said that Necrons were "just mindless robots" also adds "which is the reason I didn´t like them". Just like some people say "Sisters of Battle are just female imperial guard" or "Chaos Space Marines are just Space Marines with spikes" followed by "which is the reason I don´t like them".

I actually liked Necrons, though felt they were too much metal tyranids.. What I actually I didn't like was the C'tan themselves being set up as the universal big bad, worse then the tyranids (or worse, according to fanon Controlling them!), and better then chaos in everything, and at times even controlling or helping it for their further goals (Such as when Abbadon found an artifact because of a 'golden man')

Wowowow stop there. Better than Chaos? Chaos defeated them and they flew and hid for 60.000.000 years, no less. They were and are quite powerful, able to me a real threat to Chaos, perhaps the worst. Both Chaos and Necrons have been brutally nerfed in the last editions, but they were and are at the same level of power.

I like the thought of both oldcrons and newcrons existing, which you can actually simulate in the new book, with the Silent King, and even then you could say your necrons never managed to break free from the C'tan that control them, and thus are still mindless to semi-mindless drones controlled by their C'tan Overlord.

From a game-wise point of view, perhaps. From a background point of view, no it is not possible. Old style Necrons are mentioned (the Severed Worlds, nice name) but they are clearly stated to be wrong. This is not Codex: The Severed: they are just pathetic, broken machines with a penchant for self-proclaiming themselves "Emperors", which is a human trait, something that, yet again, makes no sense at all. "Makes no sense at all" is clearly the motto of the Codex.

However, I would love to see a 6th edition Codex Necron giving us both newcrons and oldcrons, eternally at war with each other, each one claiming to be the "real Necrons", and the player let to decide which version of the story to believe. I do not hate newcrons, I like them a lot. But I loved the oldcrons, and I miss them.

 Psienesis wrote:

So we get rid of Enslavers, Hrud, Mechanicus, Arbites, Slann, Exodites, Eldar Corsairs, Chaos Legions, Lesser Chaos Gods, Lost and Damned, Genestealer Cults, Barghesi, Nicassar, Tallerian, Piscean, Beastmen, Adeptus Astra Telepathica (including psy-titans), Sisters of Silence, Custodes, Demiurg, Kroot mercenaries, Malal Daemons, the Afriel Strain, Heretical Ecclesiarchy Forces, PDF, rebels, Squats, Chaos Squats, Morralian Deathsworn, Zoats, Rak´Gol, Enoulians, Fra´al, Stryxxis, Loxatl, Nekulli, Yu´Vath, Thyrrus, Xenarch and the rest?

I am not sure how you got that from what I wrote. Not sure at all.

Perhaps I misunderstood you. I thought you were defending the lost of an entire faction (the Enslavers, who have been around since Rogue Trader) by saying that they lacked a Codex or because the writer was unable or unwilling to forge a narrative with the elements at his disposal.
Quote: "A narrative necessity. If the Enslavers were so bad-ass, why haven't they returned (to the tabletop) to fight the Necrons? How does one build an Enslaver Army? What Codex do I base them on? "... "For the "narrative games" style that GW has moved to, it creates a very large narrative hole."

So what? We write a new Codex. We fill the hole with a good story. There are enough references in the background, both in the past and in the present of the setting. This is just lazyness. I know people that have written down fan-made Codex: Enslavers. I hate it when GW squats an army. I played Zoats and Lost and the Damned, and my brother played Squats. It is not cool.

Wowowow stop there. Better than Chaos? Chaos defeated them and they flew and hid for 60.000.000 years, no less. They were and are quite powerful, able to me a real threat to Chaos, perhaps the worst. Both Chaos and Necrons have been brutally nerfed in the last editions, but they were and are at the same level of power.

Enslavers are not Chaos, Enslavers are just creatures that their natural habitat is the Warp, they aren't associated with the Chaos Gods in any matter, and aren't produced Daemons of any kind.

And even then they didn't defeat the Necrons, they took out much of their food supply and so they went to sleep to allow the species to repopulate so the C'tan can feed.

What I was saying was that Necrons was becoming the overarching bad guy of the Universe, with the C'tan all mighty and powerful and not having any weaknesses, but at the same time existing in real space so that they can actually hurt things while the Gods are trapped in the Warp, while Necrons use their technology to seal away the warp, prevent psykers from doing their thing, destroy daemons easily, and generally make chaos far weaker by being in it's presence.

The Enslavers have not been Squatted. They have never existed as an army, so they cannot be. Likewise, most of the things you listed are not gone or missing, with some exceptions.

One, Malal was created by a pair of comic writers (Alan Grant and John Wagner) for GW publications in the 80s. However, when these two ceased working with GW, ownership of Malal and its associated characters came into question. So they replaced Malal with Malice, purely for CYA reasons pertinent to real-world business practices.

Two, the Zoats disappeared when Tyranid fluff changed. When they became the all-consuming-swarm, the idea of them having a slave-race went out the window, and were replaced by the Tyranid Warrior (which the Zoats, originally, were... you had to have half your army made of Zoats to play Tyranids). They made references to them in 3rd Edition, but this was to present them either historically or to explain what happened to them.

It's also possible that the Zoats were unique to Hive Fleet Colossus, which has been destroyed.

Most of the Xenos you've listed there have, at best, a half-dozen sentences devoted to them each. These have not been Squatted, they're just in the background and not doing anything. They also haven't had any significant interaction with the table-top armies that would justify them having a full Codex, unlike the former lay-out of the Enslavers.

The Adeptus Custodes are still around. They aren't an army. Aren't designed to be. Don't function well as. They're bodyguards.

Most of what you've got listed here are nothing more than background flavor. In the main, they take no pivotal role in how things play out between them and another faction (also, many of the things you listed are simply small parts of a larger, more-established faction). The Enslavers, as the things that came down, ate the galaxy, and forced the robots to go to sleep, had a much more pivotal role.

... they also stole most of the Tyranid's thunder, as well as that of the Necrons. Why worry about the Hive Fleets or the Red Harvest when you have the Enslavers lurking about in the Warp? Better to keep them much more in the shadows than build them up as a thing that you never do anything with.

 Psienesis wrote:
The Enslavers have not been Squatted. They have never existed as an army, so they cannot be. (...)
Most of what you've got listed here are nothing more than background flavor. In the main, they take no pivotal role in how things play out between them and another faction (also, many of the things you listed are simply small parts of a larger, more-established faction). The Enslavers, as the things that came down, ate the galaxy, and forced the robots to go to sleep, had a much more pivotal role.

Enslavers featured in Rogue Trader. I know it is not much, but it is still a loss. Being a background flavor is what all these factions are about. Nobody expected a Codex: Enslavers, but they added flavor. I love w40k... because of the setting. It is the reason I am here in this forum.

Saying that I cannot play Zoats anymore because they were "destroyed in a battle" does not help. Malice is nowhere to be seen. Chaos Legions, Chaos Undivided, Lost and the Damned, scores of sub-factions in the Imperium, hundreds of different xeno species.... The setting is amazing. This game could have been great.

This is from Codex: Chaos Daemons, page 6: "Warp space is Chaos, Chaos is Warp space; the two are indivisible.” Saying that Enslavers are not associated with Chaos while stating that their natural habitat is the Warp sounds odd

Yes it's odd, but you have to remember that the Warp didn't use to be filled with Chaos until the Old Ones and Eldar stirred up the Warp hardcore in their war vs Necrons..Which makes it still sound weird when the Chaos gods have been and always will be..

It's the Warp, it doesn't have to make sense.

Though that might be retconned now, I have no honest clue, since the Warp used to be filled with other things beyond Daemons, but most of those don't show up unless it's in things like FFG or Black Library.

The last Codex only has a tiny reference to Furies. Which are described as Daemons born of "indecision" (what?).

It seems that Independent Demons, Minor Gods of Chaos, Malal, Enslavers and the countless Citizens of the Warp have been squatted. Chaos has been reduced to four entities. And the Eight Pointed Star represents... Nothing? Just a funny symbol?

Necrons is not the only faction that has seen its fluff butchered.

 da001 wrote:
The last Codex only has a tiny reference to Furies. Which are described as Daemons born of "indecision" (what?).

It seems that Independent Demons, Minor Gods of Chaos, Malal, Enslavers and the countless Citizens of the Warp have been squatted. Chaos has been reduced to four entities. And the Eight Pointed Star represents... Nothing? Just a funny symbol?

Necrons is not the only faction that has seen its fluff butchered.

Yeah..I miss Undivided Daemon Princes.

Malal is mentioned however, with the sons of Malice. (Since they didn't have the rights to Malal,, the sons of malice run his colors and modus operatus)

Minor Gods of Chaos have been gone for a while when they wanted to split it from Fantasy, and the rest have just been either not mentioned, or squatted over time.

What if the C'tan just tricked the Necrons into thinking that they destroyed them? What if Silent King was The Deceiver and he orchestrated everything to get rid of the others?

Sure, far-fetched, but not so far that you couldn't make a story out of it, resembling the 3rd edition Necrons. As is often repeated, 40k is a setting, not a story. So make your own reasons that suit your own tastes.

The problem with the current codex in my opinion, is that it goes way too deep into specifics. It removes the mystery of it. Before, the necrons were these silent machines, harvesters of flesh, destroyers of the weak. They were the Reapers of Mass Effect 1. They were the Sovereign and we were their food. Then 5th edition codex came and ALL was explained about them. Same thing with Mass Effect 3 and the obnoxious Star brat. The mystery is gone, the magic is gone.

They wanted to give freedom to the players, but instead they just gave us more of the same lines to follow, restricting us instead. Explaining everything isn't giving it complexity. In a narrative sense, it's simplyfing it so the audience can understand. But if the audience isn't inspired by it before you explain it, they'll certainly be even less inspired by it after. Shutter Island vs Prometheus. And ME 1 vs ME 3. It's a sign of bad writing and bad narrative and the fact that Mat Ward writes abhorring fluff is pretty much the only consensus on the internet at large.

Well, the Necrons know that they didn't destroy the C'Tan. They can't be destroyed, really. Even the one that has been destroyed may yet reform at some later aeon long after the events of M41 have passed into myth. The C'Tan are physical-plane gods, in a sense.

and the fact that Mat Ward writes abhorring fluff is pretty much the only consensus on the internet at large.

That's not a fact, it's a bandwagon.

Ward's 5th Ed fluff for Necrons isn't terrible. In fact, it's pretty damn good. It actually made me give a gak about the Necrons as a faction. Previously, they bored the hell out of me, because they were robo-Tyranids