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Hey Guys,

Been trying to figure out a few things about Necrons but can't seem to find the answer.

(i) Can 41st Millennium Necrons create Tomb World? And do they?

Because I figure it may be a part of their expansion to convert conquered world into Tomb Worlds.

(ii) Short of an Exterminatus, can a Tomb World be conquered?

Because plenty of Imperial Worlds are on top of Tomb Worlds which awaken and become active, but can they be reconquered, effectively deactivated and decommissioned?

Cheers Guys

Necrons certainly have the ability to create new Tomb Worlds, but why go back to sleep after 60,000,000 years? When they conquer worlds they build complexes on them, fortify them etc, but a unique property of Necron architecture is their use of Living Stone. Living Stone can reform and reshape like Living Metal into whatever is needed for them - when a Tomb World awakens, the Tombs themselves don't stay Tombs, they reform into palaces, citadels, armouries, that sort of thing.

The Imperium do not possess the technology to conquer a Tomb World. Some kind of deus ex machina might shut the inhabiting Necrons down, but the Imperium couldn't do it themselves.

Fair call. Sleep is over-rated haha

So essentially when the Necrons take over a world, you have to take it back before they completely 'infest' (for lack of a better word) the world, or Exterminatus it into oblivion?

That kinda sucks for the Imperium :/

 IllumiNini wrote:
Fair call. Sleep is over-rated haha

So essentially when the Necrons take over a world, you have to take it back before they completely 'infest' (for lack of a better word) the world, or Exterminatus it into oblivion?

That kinda sucks for the Imperium :/

In the fluff, if the Necrons set their sights on a planet and begin to actually conquer it, there's little that can be done. You'd need to get rid of any Necron ships in the vicinity, wipe out any artillery on the planet designed to destroy Imperial ships, and then exterminatus it.

Yeah, there is no need for them to go back to sleep but they'd still probably create defensive networks on the planet.

And it is extremely hard to get rid of Necrons, as far as fluff goes they are extremely hard to kill

Scarey Nerd wrote:
Necrons certainly have the ability to create new Tomb Worlds, but why go back to sleep after 60,000,000 years?

Just 5 more minutes!

 Iron_Captain wrote:

Scarey Nerd wrote:
Necrons certainly have the ability to create new Tomb Worlds, but why go back to sleep after 60,000,000 years?

Just 5 more minutes!

Just did a calculation based on my own Snooze button. That's a Snooze of 750,000 years for a 60,000,000 year period haha

 Kharne the Befriender wrote:
Yeah, there is no need for them to go back to sleep but they'd still probably create defensive networks on the planet.

And it is extremely hard to get rid of Necrons, as far as fluff goes they are extremely hard to kill

So they're essentially like Tyranids: You either fend them off, destroy them almost instantaneously after their victory, or perform and Exterminatus?

Scarey Nerd wrote:
The Imperium do not possess the technology to conquer a Tomb World. Some kind of deus ex machina might shut the inhabiting Necrons down, but the Imperium couldn't do it themselves.

Is this actually backed up by examples in the fluff though?

On the lexicanum, several tomb worlds are listed as former tomb worlds. In the case of Cadrim, it states that the world was "cleansed'' by the White Scars and returned to Imperial hands. It's from the White Dwarf magazine, but still, it happened without exterminatus. Bellicas seems to be another example of a liberated tomb world.

So while it rarely happens, it does seem like the Imperium is capable of reclaiming tomb worlds.

In both of those cases they're passing comments with no real details - I'm not disputing that they happened, of course, but they're basically just "And then the Imperials won". Whenever there's been a detailed look at a Tomb World, the Necrons either won, were killed by other Necrons, or GW shuffle their papers and don't really think about it. Even on Damnos, one of the most detailed Necron campaigns with a few novels, a book for the tabletop, references in multiple codexes across multiple editions etc, at the end it's just "And then Sicarius came back and reclaimed the world for the Imperium".

For the purposes of this question, they don't really help find an answer, since there's no supporting facts or details - but, equally, clearly they did happen. In some cases it might have been an exterminatus and that counted, but I did use the phrase deus ex machina for a reason I'll happily concede my huge bias, however, but it's a result of my frustration that GW made a faction that outstrips every other faction in the biggest power creep ever written, but then don't really represent it much of the time, with a few happy exceptions.

Unfortunately Necron fluff is pretty over the top in terms of their durability. At the end of the day anything written about just comes down to "who has the plot armor this time?" That being said, every faction gets plot armor sometimes.

Scarey Nerd wrote:
In both of those cases they're passing comments with no real details - I'm not disputing that they happened, of course, but they're basically just "And then the Imperials won". Whenever there's been a detailed look at a Tomb World, the Necrons either won, were killed by other Necrons, or GW shuffle their papers and don't really think about it. Even on Damnos, one of the most detailed Necron campaigns with a few novels, a book for the tabletop, references in multiple codexes across multiple editions etc, at the end it's just "And then Sicarius came back and reclaimed the world for the Imperium".

For the purposes of this question, they don't really help find an answer, since there's no supporting facts or details - but, equally, clearly they did happen. In some cases it might have been an exterminatus and that counted, but I did use the phrase deus ex machina for a reason I'll happily concede my huge bias, however, but it's a result of my frustration that GW made a faction that outstrips every other faction in the biggest power creep ever written, but then don't really represent it much of the time, with a few happy exceptions.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence , though in this case there is evidence, however sparse on details examples of the Imperium reclaiming tomb worlds might be. There's still nothing supporting the statement that the Imperium is incapable of retaking tomb worlds through means other than exterminatus.

Besides, I'm not sure astartes being astartes in the fluff qualifies as deus ex machina. They do the same over-the-top things to other factions all the time, so why should the Necrons get a free pass? On the other hand, what happened on Icnarus probably does qualify as deus ex machina, which is way I didn't mention it.

Anyway, I understand where your frustration comes from (though the same could easily be said about the Necrons being OP), but there's nothing to back up that assertion.

 EngulfedObject wrote:

Scarey Nerd wrote:
In both of those cases they're passing comments with no real details - I'm not disputing that they happened, of course, but they're basically just "And then the Imperials won". Whenever there's been a detailed look at a Tomb World, the Necrons either won, were killed by other Necrons, or GW shuffle their papers and don't really think about it. Even on Damnos, one of the most detailed Necron campaigns with a few novels, a book for the tabletop, references in multiple codexes across multiple editions etc, at the end it's just "And then Sicarius came back and reclaimed the world for the Imperium".

For the purposes of this question, they don't really help find an answer, since there's no supporting facts or details - but, equally, clearly they did happen. In some cases it might have been an exterminatus and that counted, but I did use the phrase deus ex machina for a reason I'll happily concede my huge bias, however, but it's a result of my frustration that GW made a faction that outstrips every other faction in the biggest power creep ever written, but then don't really represent it much of the time, with a few happy exceptions.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence , though in this case there is evidence, however sparse on details examples of the Imperium reclaiming tomb worlds might be. There's still nothing supporting the statement that the Imperium is incapable of retaking tomb worlds through means other than exterminatus.

Besides, I'm not sure astartes being astartes in the fluff qualifies as deus ex machina. They do the same over-the-top things to other factions all the time, so why should the Necrons get a free pass? On the other hand, what happened on Icnarus probably does qualify as deus ex machina, which is way I didn't mention it.

Anyway, I understand where your frustration comes from (though the same could easily be said about the Necrons being OP), but there's nothing to back up that assertion.

There are in fact cleansed tomb worlds that have been conquered by other forces. Look in the galactic map of Necron dynasties in the new Necron codex. Several tomb worlds are listed as "inactive" which could also mean atoll asleep). However, the world of Cardrim in the western part of the ultimate segmented has the words "(cleansed tomb world)" next to it, so we know of at least one cleansed tomb world. That said, Necron tomb worlds are insanely hard to conquer. The world of Damnos, which has been invaded by the ultramarines twice and exterminatused once, is still listed as "active".

My knowledge of Necrons is limited, but from what I know, I imagine it could be possible to take back a tomb world. But to do so, it would be necessary to destroy where the necrons are coming from - either via the portals mentioned in some BL books, or wherever they end up once they phase out. I figure that if you destroy these spaces where the Necrons are coming from, or being repaired, then Necrons become like any other conventional army and can be fought and possibly defeated as such.

However, this would require some pretty suicidal missions and probably massive casualties - I imagine that portals and tomb complexes are extremely well defended. But if you can stop them coming in from off-world, stop them from rebuilding their "dead", and then wipe them out... I figure it's possible to reclaim a world.

But like I said, massively difficult and costly in terms of effort, casualties and probably time. I would say this is only justified where the Imperium (or whoever else is trying to reclaim the place) absolutely cannot afford to lose the planet, and needs it intact. Otherwise, the exterminatus option is probably the better solution.
So, possible, but probably not something that happens often.

 troa wrote:
Unfortunately Necron fluff is pretty over the top in terms of their durability. At the end of the day anything written about just comes down to "who has the plot armor this time?" That being said, every faction gets plot armor sometimes.

Indeed It just comes down to who is writing what.

I think that story of the world engine getting taken down by melta bombs was funny.

 Desubot wrote:

 troa wrote:
Unfortunately Necron fluff is pretty over the top in terms of their durability. At the end of the day anything written about just comes down to "who has the plot armor this time?" That being said, every faction gets plot armor sometimes.

Indeed It just comes down to who is writing what.

I think that story of the world engine getting taken down by melta bombs was funny.

At least it took an entire Chapter and half a fleet to get those bombs there

Scarey Nerd wrote:

 Desubot wrote:

 troa wrote:
Unfortunately Necron fluff is pretty over the top in terms of their durability. At the end of the day anything written about just comes down to "who has the plot armor this time?" That being said, every faction gets plot armor sometimes.

Indeed It just comes down to who is writing what.

I think that story of the world engine getting taken down by melta bombs was funny.

At least it took an entire Chapter and half a fleet to get those bombs there

Yeah im fine with it taking an extraordinary about of effort to do so. makes the payoff way better.

Honestly wouldn't mind necrons being super crazy op. as long as their numbers where low or a great portion of them was out of order. but i think recently they increased the amount of them in fluff and also gave them a lot more personality which i disagree with kinda.

 Desubot wrote:

Scarey Nerd wrote:

 Desubot wrote:

 troa wrote:
Unfortunately Necron fluff is pretty over the top in terms of their durability. At the end of the day anything written about just comes down to "who has the plot armor this time?" That being said, every faction gets plot armor sometimes.

Indeed It just comes down to who is writing what.

I think that story of the world engine getting taken down by melta bombs was funny.

At least it took an entire Chapter and half a fleet to get those bombs there

Yeah im fine with it taking an extraordinary about of effort to do so. makes the payoff way better.

And I gotta admit: Destroying a World Engine is a pretty awesome way to go out if there ever was one! haha

I just find it annoying how there's a novel and a whole bunch of other fluff surrounding taking out things like World Engines, but when it comes to Tomb Worlds and the like, it's either it gets destroyed or "Magic happens, and now the Imperium controls the world again".

 Desubot wrote:
Honestly wouldn't mind necrons being super crazy op. as long as their numbers where low or a great portion of them was out of order. but i think recently they increased the amount of them in fluff and also gave them a lot more personality which i disagree with kinda.

*Cough* Tyranids Syndrome *Cough* haha. Tyranids suffer the same problem. There's too many of them. But as far as Necrons go, I think (at least part of) GW's attempt to counter act things like lots of Necrons coming to life was the insanity of their lords (has that been ret-conned?) and the different dynasties who will fight each other because said insanity (or some other reason(s) I can't remember).

 IllumiNini wrote:
But as far as Necrons go, I think (at least part of) GW's attempt to counter act things like lots of Necrons coming to life was the insanity of their lords (has that been ret-conned?) and the different dynasties who will fight each other because said insanity (or some other reason(s) I can't remember).

The Silent King is returning though, which will hopefully stop any infighting. He seems dead set on stopping the Tyranids too, and has proven willing to ally with other races.

Would be funny if, despite what the Eldar claim, Necrons turn out to be the galaxy's best hope .

I don't mind the fluff regarding their numbers, especially since an alarmingly high % have gone completely mad and could still go mad. Destroyers, flayed ones, those just waking up without their "souls/personality" intact etc. Necrons, themselves, are fighting against extinction in the sense that there are only a minuscule number of them (compared to their total) that still have their mind entirely intact (given that all the foot soldiers are basically zombies). I think it would be a really cool way to advance the fluff by having some Necrons discover a way to 'reverse' the biotransference and regain mortal bodies, albeit likely genetically enhanced. The rest of the Necrons would remain and serve as bodyguards for a few hundred thousand of their new race.

I can see a tomb world being taken back (kind of a weird thing to say considering the crons were there first) by the imperium. The crons are tough, numerous, and more than a match for most imperium forces in a straight up conflict, but with only a limited number of free willed crons at the top of the food chain, a clever imperial commander could eliminate the threat a piece at a time after taking out the top of the food chain. If the silent king returns though that becomes less possible, because now they have a chain of command that extends off world.

The Necrons just got a straight up beat down on Damnos, Tomb Worlds can be taken.

Animus wrote:
The Necrons just got a straight up beat down on Damnos, Tomb Worlds can be taken.

I agree tomb worlds can be taken, but Damnos is a bad example. Damnos has been invaded by the ultramarines twice and been the target of exterminatus and the necrons are still there. If you want proof, look at the map of active Necron tomb worlds in the Necron codex or the bit in the brb about how Marneus Calgar is preparing yet another invasion of Damnos in 999 m41 because of the enduring Necron threat.