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So long story hopefully short. I got to pondering life and it's magical ways and this lead to thinking of Necrons. For a very long time and up to just about this evening I always brushed their fluff aside as boring because they were just mindless robots. Which I thought was silly. Then I started thinking, hold up, isn't this how Vampires and Tomb Kings rock up, and I thought they were awesome ! Like no one ever really looked down on a vampire Lord running a horde of skeletons and controlling them to do his bidding ! So why did this not click on my head as to how Necrons are basically the future robot vampires !

Is this how you guys view them? Does their fluff appeal to you? As weird as this sounds but this revelation to me tonight has opened up my whole mind to this choice of an army !

Thanks for reading !

I prefer to think of them as a slow but implacable army of mindless automatons led by ruling class of sentient Victorian era-esque military generals. The inclusion of scythes and tomb blades tarnished that a little but they're cool enough that I can abide them.

C'tan shards are pretty neat too.

I preferred the old, 3e fluff, where every Necron was basically either a hollow shell or living their own personal version of I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.

I know someone whom plays 'crons because he absolutely LOVES their fluff

I play Necrons because I enjoy their fluff (both old and new) and really enjoy the models.

They also give me a comedy outlet

I loved the old fluff. I remember reading the old dex before they were given personalities. Everything was written from the imperial view; silent killers rising from the sand, slaying everything in their path. It creeped the hell outta me so much that I didn't actually finish reading the dex. They were foreboding and heralds of doom.
After a couple of years I wanted to start a new army; one that was advanced technologically and felt sci-fi but I loathe tau. I looked into crons and learned more of their tech and how ridiculously advanced it is and I loved it- and I loved that their capes weren't cloth but in fact fabric of time XD

I started crons after the personality dex came out and I hated it, they were humanised, so I always fluffed my guys as old crons.

Part of the fluff I had for them was having a Cryptek staying awake during the long sleep tinkering with a bio-transference machine and after a few million year, figuring out how to make it work on non-necrontyr so the consciousness of captured victims could be moved into empty warrior shells and they could fill out the ranks of their devastated army. The souls of those captives were ripped into the warp where daemons would have a feast- eventually leading to a greater daemon claiming the feasting grounds and starting to make the warp a bit not nice even by warp standards.

I like the idea of these silent, unknowable machines coming in and laying waste and what they don't kill, they repurposed to make themselves stronger and stronger. Yeah, I stole a few pages from the Cybermen and the Borg.

TL;DR
Yes, I play for fluff.
Well, I didn't until I sold them :( didn't want to, but needed space and money.

That is one of the reasons why Newcrons are so fun. You have so much freedom when it comes to fluffing your army because the race is so diverse in terms of culture.

You want a race of mechanical zombies? You got it.
You want an unrelenting army that uses intelligent tactics and super advanced tech? Imotekh's got your back.
You want a force that appreciates the art of honourable conquest? Zahndrekh's there for you.
You want to ally up with the Imperium for some reason? Trazyn, yo.

I picked them because of their fluff. My army has its own fluff with a tomb world and mini stories.

I really do appreciate that the new version allows you to personalize your Necrons, given how every other army encourages you to go completely nuts yet this one is basically locked onto one specific way. But it's still such a drastic change in just about every regard.



The 3e codex really captivated me with it's psychological horror elements and it's vagueness. I like to wonder if the "biotransference" actually DID anything, or if the C'tan just gave the poor Necrontyr false hope. Of course, there's also the idea that it did work, sorta, but the Necron is just a "copy" and the original still lived for a time. But then even assuming it all went as they wanted, the whole thing raises questions of self and life itself and makes you wonder if it was a 'success' or not. Are you even alive if you don't have a living body, an identity, or the capacity to think of thinking?

And then there's cases like the Flayed Ones cloaking themselves in skin because they have the dread sense that SOMETHING about them is missing. The notion that the Necrons are only mostly brainless has a lot of potential.


And then of course you had things like madness-inducing Dyson Spheres and human genome tampering and grave hints as to the Omnissiah's identity...

I have to admit, I wanted to play Necrons for a while, but thought of them too serious...

Until I read 1dchan's Necron character, Assholetep. I literally had my eyes watering from laughter. And thus, my love for Necrons was born. But their fluff is pretty badass too, can't deny that!

 Rootbeard wrote:
I really do appreciate that the new version allows you to personalize your Necrons, given how every other army encourages you to go completely nuts yet this one is basically locked onto one specific way. But it's still such a drastic change in just about every regard.

I enjoyed making up my own Necron dynasty. Basically I set them up to have acted as the judge and executioners of the Triarch in the ancient past. So praetorians would hunt down those the triarch decided broke whatever law and would deliver them to my dynasty's worlds where they would be tried and judged.

When their tomb world was awoken many necrons who were still faithful to the silent king and the Triarch saw their return as a potential force for unification. A return to past glories. Unfortunately the long eons has driven the Phaerakh mad. She judges every slight as guilty and punishes with execution or worse. None are safe. She hunts xenos for the audacity of existing on Necron worlds. She judges Necrons for not keeping their worlds clear of the xenos filth. The dynasty bolsters it's forces by taking the forces of lords judged guilty as repercussions for crimes real or imagined. I picture it a lot like the Quintesson judge from the Transformers cartoon movie. "Innocent! ::pulls the lever to execute them::"

To answer the OP. I play necrons for the fluff.

A friend of mine loves their fluff so much that he dismisses everything else in 40K as stupid, the primarchs, the warp, Daemons, Orks, Space Marines. For him the Necrons are the most important faction in all of 40K.

As I remember they just "kill"

I play Necrons running a bunch of destroyers, heavy destroyers and the Nightbringer. I call my list Cult of the Nightbringer because it feels really fluffy with both destroyers and the Nightbringer having a shared purpose, eradicate all life! Plus, I pretend that Orikan is the high priest of the cult and is thus granted supernatural powers from his Deathly master each game. It's lots of fun.

I play them for their fluff. I love my metallic tomb people. Even if they get nerfed to the ground next codex I will still be playing them

Well, for starters the whole mindless robots thing is a bit out of date. They have dynasties and honor now and...I'm not a fan. Trazyn is pretty cool, and that messenger guy is an interesting concept, but everyone else...meh. The newer fluff isn't very consistent and that well written to me. It comes across as amateurish, really.

As for the whole mindless robots thing, you're missing the point; the focus in the old fluff was not on the necrons, but on how everyone else is going to deal with them.
Think of a zombie movie; is the movie about the zombies, or about the people trying to run away from the zombies? That's what the old necrons were like; they were 40k's robot apocalpyse horror movie, with a healthy dose of Lovecraft and despair, and it was awesome.

I started in 3rd ed and liked it then. It was, as stated before, eerie, and had a powerful sense of dread to it.

However, it was quite narrow.

I enjoy the newer fluff a lot more, even though many things make me roll my eyes. I don't understand the obsession with explaining every bit of technology. I'm not going to pick on every single one of them because that would take way too long. And the C'tan. Oh sweet merciful Aza'gorod, the C'tan.

So yeah, I play for fluff; the older one was awesome as a story from a human centric point of view, but the newer one gives the player more leeway and as such works better in the setting.

I'm thinking about starting necrons partially for the fluff. I enjoy the seemingly endless tomb worlds for the open possibilities.

Im a big fan of the necron fluff, from endless legions of almost indestructible warriors to their ruthless and often eccentric overlords who lead them. They are high tech with a mix of mad scientist thrown in and all of the weapons have ridiculous names. Definitely an army you can dive into the backstory now and play how you want if you like narrative games. I wish they had more forgeworld support but you cant win them all.

Ive read every bit of necron fluff I could and have read and re read all three codexs multiple times. I wish they still made codexes like the 5th edition version with a drawn picture and a full page of fluff for each unit. 7th's big pictures with a paragraph really doesnt do it for me.

Fall of Damnos is great because its a blending of old and newcron fluff and spoiler alert! The necrons beat the filthy ultramarines

I've had Necrons since you got the free metal warrior with White Dwarf. I liked the old fluff much better. I never use the named characters except the C'tan, just seems wrong.

My armies fluff:
Unidentified Xenos Fleet
Name: Unknown
Current Location: Unknown

 Dumah12 wrote:
Ive read every bit of necron fluff I could and have read and re read all three codexs multiple times. I wish they still made codexes like the 5th edition version with a drawn picture and a full page of fluff for each unit. 7th's big pictures with a paragraph really doesnt do it for me.

That is because it's less clicking for GW writers to copy/paste or create new fluff when the bigger pictures take up more space for less writing.

That said, I almost want to start collecting Necrons now after reading this thread.

Wouldn't the 40k universe be so much nicer if the Necrons had destroyed the bloody Eldar?

*Ahem* Personal feelings aside I dig the Necron fluff. Forced into a more advanced Dreadnought existance by curse, becoming a killing machine hellbent on domination true equality!

I view Necrons as the result of a galaxy-spanning civilization going into stasis for long enough that their computers then need to replace their organic bodies with mechanical ones to keep them alive... and then being turned into Tomb Kings in Space because the developers forgot their own lore.

Giantwalkingchair wrote:

Spoiler:

I loved the old fluff. I remember reading the old dex before they were given personalities. Everything was written from the imperial view; silent killers rising from the sand, slaying everything in their path. It creeped the hell outta me so much that I didn't actually finish reading the dex. They were foreboding and heralds of doom.
After a couple of years I wanted to start a new army; one that was advanced technologically and felt sci-fi but I loathe tau. I looked into crons and learned more of their tech and how ridiculously advanced it is and I loved it- and I loved that their capes weren't cloth but in fact fabric of time XD

I started crons after the personality dex came out and I hated it, they were humanised, so I always fluffed my guys as old crons.

Part of the fluff I had for them was having a Cryptek staying awake during the long sleep tinkering with a bio-transference machine and after a few million year, figuring out how to make it work on non-necrontyr so the consciousness of captured victims could be moved into empty warrior shells and they could fill out the ranks of their devastated army. The souls of those captives were ripped into the warp where daemons would have a feast- eventually leading to a greater daemon claiming the feasting grounds and starting to make the warp a bit not nice even by warp standards.

I like the idea of these silent, unknowable machines coming in and laying waste and what they don't kill, they repurposed to make themselves stronger and stronger. Yeah, I stole a few pages from the Cybermen and the Borg.

TL;DR
Yes, I play for fluff.
Well, I didn't until I sold them :( didn't want to, but needed space and money.

 Rootbeard wrote:

Spoiler:

I really do appreciate that the new version allows you to personalize your Necrons, given how every other army encourages you to go completely nuts yet this one is basically locked onto one specific way. But it's still such a drastic change in just about every regard.



The 3e codex really captivated me with it's psychological horror elements and it's vagueness. I like to wonder if the "biotransference" actually DID anything, or if the C'tan just gave the poor Necrontyr false hope. Of course, there's also the idea that it did work, sorta, but the Necron is just a "copy" and the original still lived for a time. But then even assuming it all went as they wanted, the whole thing raises questions of self and life itself and makes you wonder if it was a 'success' or not. Are you even alive if you don't have a living body, an identity, or the capacity to think of thinking?

And then there's cases like the Flayed Ones cloaking themselves in skin because they have the dread sense that SOMETHING about them is missing. The notion that the Necrons are only mostly brainless has a lot of potential.


And then of course you had things like madness-inducing Dyson Spheres and human genome tampering and grave hints as to the Omnissiah's identity...

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

Spoiler:

Well, for starters the whole mindless robots thing is a bit out of date. They have dynasties and honor now and...I'm not a fan. Trazyn is pretty cool, and that messenger guy is an interesting concept, but everyone else...meh. The newer fluff isn't very consistent and that well written to me. It comes across as amateurish, really.

As for the whole mindless robots thing, you're missing the point; the focus in the old fluff was not on the necrons, but on how everyone else is going to deal with them.
Think of a zombie movie; is the movie about the zombies, or about the people trying to run away from the zombies? That's what the old necrons were like; they were 40k's robot apocalpyse horror movie, with a healthy dose of Lovecraft and despair, and it was awesome.

This.

I absolutely adored the old Necron fluff. So full of dread and lovecraftian terror. They really felt like a horror rising from the depths of the past that even the Eldar barely remember.

The new fluff, despite everyone's best efforts to help me like it, just flat-out doesn't live up to how beautifully crafted the earlier fluff is.

I get that it lets you personalise your army and stuff like that, but it goes a long way to humanise them which just sucks all the fear out of them as a threat. There were plenty of options to personalise Oldcron armies, you just needed a little imagination (like Giantwalkingchair above).

I suppose it's less the change to the fluff to give ideas for personalisation that irks me and less that the mysterious fluff has been expanded. What bugs me is how ham-fisted the new fluff feels compared to the old. It's the old Space Wolf problem again. With a whole universe of nordic inspiration to draw on, they've picked 'Wolfy McWolf Lords' and jammed that into everything.

With a whole universe of inspiration to draw on, they've decided on 'Space Tomb Kings' and left the nuance at that. There's so much potential with just a slight bit of tweaking back towards the 'unfathomable dread' side of things, but as it stands their fluff lacks nuance and their defining traits feel either underplayed or scattered/unco-ordinated.