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The Imperial-Necron conflict isn't fleshed out as well as the conflicts the Imperium has with other factions.

Regardless, what do you think is the most significant conflict between them?

Not the significance in terms of the change wrought to the factions within the 40K universe, but the significance to us, the audience. The conflict which defines Imperial-Necron relations and generates the greatest dynamic between the two factions.

I've also included a poll highlighting three conflicts which I think are the most significant.

Sanctuary 101 is big, because it's a good depiction of how freakishly terrifying the Necrons are when they decide to sneak up on some people, the Sisters fight well (but are eventually destroyed), and then the Convent sends in some retribution and kicks their metal asses across the subsector.

The Orphean War, the Imperial defenders of Orpheus Sector versus the Maynarkh dynasty. I haven't actually read IA:12, but going by Lexicanum, the whole issue ends with the Imperium considering sector-wide exterminatus, so it must have been big.

 Agent_Tremolo wrote:
The Orphean War, the Imperial defenders of Orpheus Sector versus the Maynarkh dynasty. I haven't actually read IA:12, but going by Lexicanum, the whole issue ends with the Imperium considering sector-wide exterminatus, so it must have been big.

It's actually a fun read. Not my favorite IA book, but there're several good ones. Get a few cold ones and sit down for an evening to read it. You won't regret it.

Also- it gives reason to believe that the "Chapter Master" of the Minotaurs is a robot, and that they should be Exterminatused because the High Lords have an intelligent robot leading their pet Legion.

Utta-prime has to be Sigficant. Also the Siege of Hypnoth. But one of the most significant is the incursion of 5 necron vessels into martian airspace (all of which were destroyed) that suggests they have some interest with mars.

The Orphean war pretty much dwarfs every other conflict simply because of the scale that it involves.

Also, the IA book that covers it is probably my favorite and I don't even play any of the armies in it, lol.

If you're into Necrons, I'd recommend reading it. Or hell, a fan of good 40k fluff.

The Fall of Orpheus is the single largest Imperial-Necron conflict we know of based on the known numbers of participating forces, as well as the spatial and temporal scale.

In the Fall of Orpheus FW book, the reinforced Imperial sector fleet was shown to comprise 7 battleships (including 1 Retribution and 1 Apocalypse class), "more than 60" cruisers and capital ships, "several hundred" escort class vessels, 4 Space Marine battle barges, and 8 Space Marine strike cruisers.

Facing them, the Necrons are described as fielding less than a quarter of the Imperial ship numbers. The breakdown was 2 Tombships, 20 harvest ships, and the rest escort class vessels, with some later confirmed to be Dirge class raiders.

Though the breakdown of Imperial losses was never completely given, the narrative showed that Imperial losses as at least 2 battleships, 1 battlecruiser, 1 heavy cruiser, 2 battle barges, 3 strike cruisers. In the end, less than 10% of the Imperial fleet was still fit for combat. Little detail was shown of Necron losses with the only definite details being 1 destroyed harvest ship and damage to 1 Tombship. The other Tombship was shown to remain fully operational at the end.

In terms of size, FW has definitely taken to upping everything to ever higher limits. The BFG supplement Warp Storm gives the Battle of Callavell in the Age of Apostacy as one of the largest "set-piece" battles in Imperial history, In that, the Imperial force fielded 8 battleships, 5 grand cruisers, 6 battlecruisers, 5 heavy cruisers, 9 cruisers, and 6 light cruisers for a total of 37 capital ships. The renegade forces in that battle fielded 6 battleships, 4 grand cruisers, 6 battlecruisers, 9 heavy cruisers, 11 cruisers, and 8 light cruisers for a total of 46 capital ships.

So in other words, a single Necron dynasty awakened and within 1 year met and virtually wiped out one of the largest Imperial fleets in the history of the Imperium with modest almost minimal losses. This single dynasty goes on to take out 60 worlds in 100 days, essentially gutting the sector, and it fights off the Imperial counterattack sufficiently that 7 years later after the initial Necron attack, the Imperium dissolves the Orpheus sector.

Definitely Damnos.
After the Ultramarines were defeated the first time it caused an Imperium-wide collapse of morale.
When the Ultramarines returned and destroyed the Necrons there, they fixed that problem and Calgar was able to sort out some proper anti-Necron strategies which he distributed among his fellow Chapter Masters.

Sanctuary 101 was significant historically because it was the first recorded appearance of the Necrons as a force in the galaxy.

If they had appeared before then, it was under circumstances that permitted no message to be relayed away.

Damnos is important because it marks the Imperium gaining some knowledge of how to fight the Necrons.

Orpheus is very important because it shows that even with the best the Imperium has to offer, the Necrons are still capable of running circles around them. It's also the most significant from an out of universe view, because it shows us that despite Ward's best efforts Necrons are still capable of utilising Inertialess Drives and being awesome terrors.

haha I don't see any love for Helbrecht


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The Imperial Answer wrote:
Utta-prime has to be Sigficant. Also the Siege of Hypnoth. But one of the most significant is the incursion of 5 necron vessels into martian airspace (all of which were destroyed) that suggests they have some interest with mars.

utta prime sounds familiar. Which book is it from?

Orpheus definitely comes out on top; while the book mostly focuses on the naval action as described previously here, there is also a concurrent land battle on Amarah Prime, the sector capital, where the Necrons basically walk through several million PDF and IG troopers, the planet is reduced to smouldering wreckage, and the Necron attack is only stopped when the Death Korps of Krieg manage to blow up the chief tomb complex on the planet, and the Imperial Fleet manages to cripple the Necron flagship (owing to the Minotaurs ramming the damned thing with their own relic flagship, the Daedalos Krata, and board the tombship chapter-strong.)

And yet for that desperate victory, the Imperial force is decimated, the spinward sections of the sector are totally under Necron control or otherwise wrecked, and the subsequent effort to salvage the sector fails, and it is cordoned off and administratively dissolved.

The necrons all but wipe out one Marine chapter (Angels Revenant) by plastering their homeworld, millions upon millions of Imperial soldiers, and fight an amassment of Imperial Force including some of their most powerful formations and technologies to a Pyrrhic victory. There are few forces in 40k which can take those kind of odds.

Additionally, the Maynarkh are described as being significantly more powerful than your average dynasty, not just a squabbling lord like Imhotek or Zandrek, these were the praetorians of a sort for the Silent King and the seniormost Necron leadership "back in the good old days," but so debased, unstable and unpredictable that they were effectively exiled to the fringes of the galaxy. FW managed to inject a little more of the lovecraftian otherness back into the Necrons with the Maynarkh, and demonstrate their power in ways which don't feel juvenile or deus ex machina, as it often is in the codex fluff.

For instance, the Necrons used matter from neutron stars as torpedos. As someone who knows a little bit about astrophysics a) that is so far beyond our capacity to ratonalize as to be decried as impossible, and b) absolutely horrifying.

I wonder why people think an "Imperial reckoning" is coming for the Tau, when we have incidences like this of the Imperium giving up entire sectors to xenos that beat them.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
I wonder why people think an "Imperial reckoning" is coming for the Tau, when we have incidences like this of the Imperium giving up entire sectors to xenos that beat them.

Well, the Maynarkh are probably quite a bit more powerful than the Tau; they took in 100 days territory which exceeds the entire Tau Empire. The Tau are insignificant to the point of irrelevance, and will only justify an "Imperial reckoning" at the point where they can match the kind of threat something like the Maynarkh pose. The forces mustered on Amarah greatly exceeded the Damocles Gulf Crusade, which were it not for a little bug problem near Ultramar, had the capacity to cripple the Tau Empire.

IA12 ends with the Imperium massing forces to try and at first contain, and eventually liberate the Orpheus sector, but that it will be a very long time before such forces are available, oh, and the Executioners Chapter from the Badab War fly right past the cordon into the sector as part of their penitent crusade, and are never heard from again.

 MajorStoffer wrote:
Orpheus definitely comes out on top; while the book mostly focuses on the naval action as described previously here, there is also a concurrent land battle on Amarah Prime, the sector capital, where the Necrons basically walk through several million PDF and IG troopers, the planet is reduced to smouldering wreckage, and the Necron attack is only stopped when the Death Korps of Krieg manage to blow up the chief tomb complex on the planet, and the Imperial Fleet manages to cripple the Necron flagship (owing to the Minotaurs ramming the damned thing with their own relic flagship, the Daedalos Krata, and board the tombship chapter-strong.)

And yet for that desperate victory, the Imperial force is decimated, the spinward sections of the sector are totally under Necron control or otherwise wrecked, and the subsequent effort to salvage the sector fails, and it is cordoned off and administratively dissolved.

The necrons all but wipe out one Marine chapter (Angels Revenant) by plastering their homeworld, millions upon millions of Imperial soldiers, and fight an amassment of Imperial Force including some of their most powerful formations and technologies to a Pyrrhic victory. There are few forces in 40k which can take those kind of odds.

Additionally, the Maynarkh are described as being significantly more powerful than your average dynasty, not just a squabbling lord like Imhotek or Zandrek, these were the praetorians of a sort for the Silent King and the seniormost Necron leadership "back in the good old days," but so debased, unstable and unpredictable that they were effectively exiled to the fringes of the galaxy. FW managed to inject a little more of the lovecraftian otherness back into the Necrons with the Maynarkh, and demonstrate their power in ways which don't feel juvenile or deus ex machina, as it often is in the codex fluff.

For instance, the Necrons used matter from neutron stars as torpedos. As someone who knows a little bit about astrophysics a) that is so far beyond our capacity to ratonalize as to be decried as impossible, and b) absolutely horrifying.

and that post signifies all the things I can't stand about necrons! but anyways I agree that orpheaus is probably the biggest one thanks to all the above information. wiping out at least one space marine chapter signifies them as a huge threat.

I would personally support the World Engine incident.

If I recall correctly, it was some lower-ranking Necron royalty to wanted to take it out for a spin and ended up screwing over a fairly good sized Imperial force. I just find it extremely amusing that "petty hubris" of the Necrons is able to wipe out quite a bit of the Imperium's assets. It also implies at the fact that more than 1 World Engine may exist.

 MajorStoffer wrote:

For instance, the Necrons used matter from neutron stars as torpedos. As someone who knows a little bit about astrophysics a) that is so far beyond our capacity to ratonalize as to be decried as impossible, and b) absolutely horrifying.

I didn't know that and thank you for enlightening me. That is hilarious.
The density of neutron star matter would pretty much make it the ideal torpedo material... in science fiction at least. You can have a teaspoon's worth of neutron star matter going at relatively low speed and it'll still punch through just about anything other than other neutron star matter.

Voted for the World Engine as well.
Bearing in mind it was a single planetoid sized structure rather than a Necron battlefleet it managed to take on an entire Sector Battlefleet.

The Imperial response force included the entire sector fleet and elements from fifteen Space Marine chapters, including the Blood Angels[3], Ultramarines, Astral Knights, Invaders and Aurora Chapters.

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/World_Engine

Thats not a subsector fleet, thats an entire sector and whats more destroy a third of it.
In addition to that the Navy was joined by elements of 15 different Space Marine Chapters and their fleets.

Unfortunately theres no info on the size of the Vidar sector fleet that engaged it but some sample sector sizes can be viewed here. Obviously Cadia and Armageddon are huge and its probably not appropriate to compare Vidar to them but somewhere inbetween them and Agripinaa seems fair.

http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Imperial_Navy

Notable Imperial Navy Battlefleets

Battlefleet Agripinaa
Battlefleet Armageddon
Battlefleet Bakka
Battlefleet Cadia
Battlefleet Calixis
Battlefleet Corona
Battlefleet Corribra
Battlefleet Gothic
Battlefleet Koronus
Battlefleet Scarus
Battlefleet Solar

After the Astral Claws landed their entire chapter on the surface of the Engine only 5 survived to plant the charges and were then killed in the supernova.

I hate to see more of these things on the rampage.....