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 Iron_Captain wrote:
The Men of Iron were pretty much extinct ten thousand years even before the Horus Heresy. They have no place in the fluff of modern 40k and they are too similar in design to the Necrons to consider inclusion as a seperate army, but they are not similiar enough to be in the same codex.

Yes, they for all intents and purposes went extinct, but they could come back. And they may not currently hold a place in the current 40K universe, but that doesn't at all preclude them from becoming part of 40K should GW decide to add them.

And on them being too similar to Necrons, that will come down to how they write the extended fluff and how good their imaginations are. For all we know, GW could come up with fluff and units for the Men of Iron that are as different and unique compared to Necrons as the two Adeptus Mechanicus factions are.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
The Men of Iron are not in any way related to Necrons.

OP: take note of this quote! This is one of the (simplified) key points as to why this idea of replacing Necrons with Men of Iron won't work.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
We are not going to get any new factions for quite some time, I guess (we just finally got AdMech after all these years). And if GW does finally make a new faction again, I'd rather have it be one that is totally unique and not similar to any existing 40k faction. A faction like the Hrud or Slaught or something like that.

Agreed. When we finally do get another, having it be something more unique would be a hell of a lot better. But if they came out with Men of Iron, it would be really cool (especially if they got the fluff right).

 Iron_Captain wrote:
...Not a dumb faction of mindless killer robots. It would be boring as feth.

Again, that will simply come down to how they write the fluff.

The Men of Iron are best left unexplored, I think. The time between us and the start of the Crusade shouldn't be fleshed out because, well, it's 40 000 after all.

I wasn't reasoning for them to be a new force, just an interestimg "what if" fluff conspiracy theory.

I think the time for reintroducing them passed when the Necrons got their first concrete fluff, as they would just be not-Necrons, now.

Would have been cool, though. A splinter group that went into deep hiding, back for revenge under the leadership of the Lords, the most independant of the Iron Men. Maybe even they couldn't quantify how to combat the newly-emerging psychic abilitys of humanity back then, but upon coming back they had developed the Pariahs as an anti-psyker weapon.

But that time has passed, and in the current climate should just be myths as their comparisons at face-value to Necrons would muddy things terribly.

I voted "No".


The Necrons, with the exception of the Silent King, hit the sack right around the time the dinosaurs went extinct on Earth. And the origin of the Necrons is fairly well established.


The "Men of Iron" revolt took place sometime between the 23rd and 25th Millenium A.D., and were of Human origin.

I have actually grown to like my random theory that Necrons are not Men of Iron, but Men of Iron were Necrons. I never had pondered it much that way, and it doesn't affect the Necron army in the slightest, but would at the same time be a great fluff twist.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
I have actually grown to like my random theory that Necrons are not Men of Iron, but Men of Iron were Necrons. I never had pondered it much that way, and it doesn't affect the Necron army in the slightest, but would at the same time be a great fluff twist.

The whole point of the Men of Iron is that they were created by humans. The humans of the DAoT created their own doom. Having the Men of Iron be millions of years old aliens rather than a human creation completely destroys the moral of the story as well as an important background element in 40k lore (the reason for the human aversion to AI and autonomous machines) for no real reason at all. What would be gained by making the Men of Iron into Necrons?

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 AegisGrimm wrote:
I have actually grown to like my random theory that Necrons are not Men of Iron, but Men of Iron were Necrons. I never had pondered it much that way, and it doesn't affect the Necron army in the slightest, but would at the same time be a great fluff twist.

The whole point of the Men of Iron is that they were created by humans. The humans of the DAoT created their own doom. Having the Men of Iron be millions of years old aliens rather than a human creation completely destroys the moral of the story as well as an important background element in 40k lore (the reason for the human aversion to AI and autonomous machines) for no real reason at all. What would be gained by making the Men of Iron into Necrons?

Its not really MoI are necrons, and more "lets stick this modified alien AI into our computer to make it run better...oh gak it ate Timmy and started spamming HATE on all the screens."

So not really Necrons, but just Canopteks?

Still don't like it.

My idea was to mysteriously link the Dragon on Mars to humans creating the Men of Iron, not them actually being Necrons that were dug up and began doing the same thing they are now.

In my random musing it would be more like a possible situation where humans of the Golden Age create constructs whose initial invention has mysterious circumstances surrounding it, and then the AI do not go evil on their own, but are corrupted by alien AI that "might" be Necron in origin. Obviously only we as readers could make the connection, in-universe the answer is lost in time.

Just an interesting "what if" that would/could connect old and modern fluff but doesn't actually change anything, just put a different spin on it. Frankly, right now the entire Men of Iron situation could have been an act of sabotage by the Dragon, if it stayed at all that self-aware after being imprisoned by the Emperor. The fun is that endless theorizing can be done but it'll never be solved (I hope).

I go on board officially stating that Necrons should NOT be retconned into the return of the Iron Men. As the original release of the Necrons were not the Iron Men returning, they should never return, as they'd be too similar the way GW does fluff lately.

Come on guys, you really think that with all that dark tech they had locked up in Mechanicus that was forbidden to be used until the dark mechanicus unleashed it, that somewhere under a dusty tarp in a long forgotten basement somewhere, there isn't a MoI STC sitting there on Mars?

 Raven911 wrote:
Come on guys, you really think that with all that dark tech they had locked up in Mechanicus that was forbidden to be used until the dark mechanicus unleashed it, that somewhere under a dusty tarp in a long forgotten basement somewhere, there isn't a MoI STC sitting there on Mars?

I wouldn't be surprised at what is still stashed on Mars. The Mechanicus hasn't "lost" as much as they like to claim, in my opinion. Some of their misdirection is due to hoarding, some due to religious reasons, and a lot due to fear of potentially dangerous tech.


The Mechanicus, from all indications, could build AI constructs with their current technology and stash of STC blueprints. It's just a big no-no.

Raven911 wrote:Come on guys, you really think that with all that dark tech they had locked up in Mechanicus that was forbidden to be used until the dark mechanicus unleashed it, that somewhere under a dusty tarp in a long forgotten basement somewhere, there isn't a MoI STC sitting there on Mars?

It wouldn't be all that surprising if there was, but the Mechanicus would never let it out.... ever. They're not that stupid. Also, something like that (assuming they had it at all) wouldn't be forgotten because it's too dangerous to forget about. My bet is that if at least one STC capable of producing Men of Iron is in the possession of the Mechanicus, they would protect it with some of the most (if not, the most) high level security available to them, which would involved as few people knowing about them as possible without completely forgetting them.

oldravenman3025 wrote:

 Raven911 wrote:
Come on guys, you really think that with all that dark tech they had locked up in Mechanicus that was forbidden to be used until the dark mechanicus unleashed it, that somewhere under a dusty tarp in a long forgotten basement somewhere, there isn't a MoI STC sitting there on Mars?

I wouldn't be surprised at what is still stashed on Mars. The Mechanicus hasn't "lost" as much as they like to claim, in my opinion. Some of their misdirection is due to hoarding, some due to religious reasons, and a lot due to fear of potentially dangerous tech.

The Mechanicus, from all indications, could build AI constructs with their current technology and stash of STC blueprints. It's just a big no-no.

It would be the most logical place to keep them, not necessarily because it's the heart of the Mechanicus/Imperium, but because the Sol system is arguably the most secure system in the galaxy. Also, the technologies required to create AI are probably sitting right next to other forbidden tech like cloning tech. I wouldn't be surprised if there was an entire archive and/or storage facility dedicated solely to the storage and protection of forbidden tech.

There was pre-heresy. I think it got kinda wrecked in Cybernetica though. I haven't finished the book yet, but the protagonist's on his way there to weaponise a heretek.