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Hey all, this being friday I decided to post this:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/12DkLy54IxCW5Zw4srsbNxy0Sm8wrZJd6/view?usp=sharing

they're the rules from white dwarf 218-219 and an article from 220 on the origonal Necrons.

Looking through this some of you might be asking where the old Necron Immortal rules are. Well the Necron Immortals were actually released along with a complete minicodex in White Dwarf 230 just after 3rd Edition was released, making them 3rd Edition, not Second Edition models.

To be honest I personally think that the old Necron models were pretty fugly, though I do like the scarabs.

I can't say I was around the 40k community back then (Although I do have one of the old lord models and a few legs from the origonal Necrons around the place) but does anyone remember this stuff? Anyone owned a 2nd Edition Necron army?

I wonder... could the 2nd Ed WBB rule be transitioned over to current necrons?

such as
Regardless if a unit is wiped out in the shooting phase, roll a dice for each model slain.
1 - the model is removed from play and can make no further WBB rolls
2-5 - Nothing happens, roll again at the start of next turn
6 - the model returns within 2" coherency of the unit that made the WBB roll.

perhaps, just out of question. Do you miss the old 3rd edition necrons. It seems to me that they lost a lot of flavor when they transfured over to 5th edition with suddenly having proper personalities and all that jive.

Just purchased an attic find box of figures. There were 6 warriors and 2 scarob. I had wondered at the age of them, so thanks for posting it

Still have my old metal white-dwarf cron.

 jobalisk wrote:
Do you miss the old 3rd edition necrons.

They were distinct but quite limited as a faction. 5e in particular started to put a lot more cheap heavy weapons on the table that cut into their resurrection capabilities and made it easier to nudge them over the phase out line - which was an automatic win no matter how badly you were doing against them. In the latter years crons were pretty much stuck running blocks of infantry and recycling them through WBB just to avoid losing by default.

The 5e crons were vastly more powerful, in the same ballpark as the 5e GK codex and written to benefit from the later 6e rules. Aside from phase-out one of the most notable changes was that reanimation protocols could no longer be countered by using double strength or power weapons, instead it became a question of wiping out whole units.

 jobalisk wrote:
they're the rules from white dwarf 218-219 and an article from 220 on the origonal Necrons.

218 had the battle report against the sisters as well didn't it?
As I recall the crons were effectively immune to the sisters weapons, losing an average on one model, and would have swept them in 2-3 turns if not for the cron player accidentally blowing up his own scarabs charging the immolator. The post-battle report was something along the lines of "I didn't think to charge them in until the destroyer pilot resurrected itself and began to single-handedly punch the sisters army to death"

The battlefleet gothic crons were just as bad from what I understand.

I had an army of 2nd/3rd edition Necrons. The plastic Necrons were 3.5 edition. The 3rd ed versions were a lot of fun. The destroyers came back as warriors if killed. Scarabs weren't swarms and could self detonate.
The army was only:
Lord
Warriors
Immortals
Destroyers
Scarabs

I also had a Next oh BFG fleet. 90% winning average before the nerf... Which only knocked them down to a 60%. As much as I loved using them on the table, they just didn't translate well into BFG: Leviathan.

Flash Back Friday: 2nd Edition Necrons

My copyright lawyers will be in touch soon.....

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/617492.page

 jobalisk wrote:
perhaps, just out of question. Do you miss the old 3rd edition necrons. It seems to me that they lost a lot of flavor when they transfured over to 5th edition with suddenly having proper personalities and all that jive.

Really? I prefer the new - that idea that the more the Necrons are revived the more of their personality flakes away (something that was carried over to the Stormcast Eternals in AoS). The Warriors are expendable drones for the most part, but the Lords still remember when they lived - and want that back. It's like a twisted Pinocchio, and a mirror to the Adeptus Mechanicus. The Magi of the Mechanicus replace more of their flesh with machinery, and believe that becoming one with the machine is the point when they'll reach apotheosis. The Necrons achieved that eons ago - and have found it to be horrifyingly lacking. That explains, to me, why their vehicles are piloted by Necrons, rather than being autonomous - a Necron could be built into the form of a Raider or a Monolith, but that would strip away even more of what remains of their mortal essence, and that's their biggest fear.

Anyway, here's a mighty force; all the 2nd edition Necrons. I also have one of the initial 3rd edition Immortals (probably sculpted alongside these) but not the other.

I particularly liked the conversion and modelling parts of the article. Sigh I miss how much GW used to push the creative side of the hobby. It's still there, but I feel it has been neglected in the name of sales.

I love those old intros, thanks for posting.

I much preferred the Necrons when the individual Warrior was better than a Marine. I don't like how they've degraded in value since 3rd Ed.

As a side note I got the impression that the design team was digging the Stargate series

I loved that excavation terrain when that article came out. So characterful. Thanks for the memories.

I had compiled the "meat" of those articles for 2nd edition players here on a blog of mine:

http://projectanvil.blogspot.com/2017/01/resources-necron-raiders.html

I vastly prefer the old nigh-unstoppable, unexplained nature of Necrons.

Interesting reading the first version of the WBB type rule. The current one seems to be a cross between 5th ed and that one.
I like the caveat where if you roll a 1 it stays dead.

Also interesting to see that they are fearless, but have the 25% phase out rule that would later be used in 3rd in.

A.T. wrote:
Still have my old metal white-dwarf cron.

 jobalisk wrote:
Do you miss the old 3rd edition necrons.

They were distinct but quite limited as a faction. 5e in particular started to put a lot more cheap heavy weapons on the table that cut into their resurrection capabilities and made it easier to nudge them over the phase out line - which was an automatic win no matter how badly you were doing against them. In the latter years crons were pretty much stuck running blocks of infantry and recycling them through WBB just to avoid losing by default.

The 5e crons were vastly more powerful, in the same ballpark as the 5e GK codex and written to benefit from the later 6e rules. Aside from phase-out one of the most notable changes was that reanimation protocols could no longer be countered by using double strength or power weapons, instead it became a question of wiping out whole units.

 jobalisk wrote:
they're the rules from white dwarf 218-219 and an article from 220 on the origonal Necrons.

218 had the battle report against the sisters as well didn't it?
As I recall the crons were effectively immune to the sisters weapons, losing an average on one model, and would have swept them in 2-3 turns if not for the cron player accidentally blowing up his own scarabs charging the immolator. The post-battle report was something along the lines of "I didn't think to charge them in until the destroyer pilot resurrected itself and began to single-handedly punch the sisters army to death"

The battlefleet gothic crons were just as bad from what I understand.

Lol yes, just read that battle report yesterday, there's an archive of old white dwarfs here:

https://www.mediafire.com/folder/tx4hcy4u487pv/WD#9feoktxmvm8xz

thats from white dwarf 219.

I remember the Necrons were initially designed for 3rd, but the WD rules were 'get you by' rules so you could use them straight away. So the 3rd edition rules were made before there 2nd edition rules.

Yes, I remember my 2e/3e Necrons & their battles quite fondly.
And although I eventually sold all but 1 of my original Destroyers off to a friend, I still have them. They form the core of my Necron army - because I love my goofy looking robot skellies. This was the 4th 40k army I built (1st = RT/2e SW, 2nd = 2e IG, 3rd = 2e Squats, then built 2e/3e Necrons. & 5th would be 3e Adeptus Arbites from the journal ).
All of the original pre-codex rules & articles are collected in a cheap folder in page sleeves at the bottom of my Necron case.

I built them as a surprise entry in a campaign/league. Everyone - accept the organizer (who only knew "I'm bringing something completely new".) - was certain I'd be playing my IG. Few of the players bothered reading WD at the time, so the mere existence of this army was quite a surprise. Let alone the fact that I 3k pts of it bought, completely painted (that was an even bigger surprise to everyone) , & ready to go.
They were a fun, though very limited, army to play. Thanks to the super limited list & that Phase Out rule it was a real challenge to win games with them. Especially as the campaign wore on & people became more & more familiar with my stuff. Like I said, they were pretty limited. There wasn't any changing things up to surprise or counter my opponents after the initial shock.
But I had a lot of fun though and won plenty of games with them (not the overall campaign :().

And until the 3e codex & plastic kits came along I was the only Necron player in my area.

One of my favorite things relating to this army? The "WTF is that?" reaction upon deployment. It just never gets old. {thinking of that, I should re-make an original Destroyer squadron} At first few were even familiar the army, let alone the figs. Then it tapered off a bit after the actual codex arrived. But by 4th+ once the plastics imagery had been well established & the goofy metal figs had faded from sight/use/sale it returned. And the newer the player, the stronger that reaction as 4th turned to 5th, turned to 6th, 7th etc.
I'm positive there's currently only 1 person at the local shop (the owner) besides myself who's ever seen an original Necron model. So I expect that reaction will be quite strong when I get around to dusting off this army....

I actually really like the old 2E Necron stuff.

I did find it super amusing that the Destroyer was originally a jetbike, they updated in 3E along broadly the same original concept but then fuddled with the mechanics and eventually just came out with Tomb Blades in 5E to duplicate what the Destroyer already was

Scarabs with T8 and 2+ , nice!

I still own an all-metal necron army. 4 ten man warrior squads, a pair of 5-man Immortal squads, about 20 scarabs, a Lord and six Destroyers. I also have a pair of dreadnought sized scorpions that were garage castings made by someone who was a friends of the guy that ran my local game shop back in the day. The are used as Tomb Spyders.

I've also got a 5 man squad of Pariahs in metal and a couple of old metal lords from 3rd/4th edition.

Been thinking of pulling them back out and adding some plastic additions, like Wraiths (I hated the old metal Wraith models).

Yeah, new wraiths are pretty nice. They are also like twice the size of their predecessors.

 jobalisk wrote:
perhaps, just out of question. Do you miss the old 3rd edition necrons. It seems to me that they lost a lot of flavor when they transfured over to 5th edition with suddenly having proper personalities and all that jive.

God yes. Oldcrons were the faction that got me into 40K.

Hilariously, today the Necrons have probably the least grimdark motives of any of the factions

The new Necron fluff works at least though, where you have the Lords with their own motives, and some still under the impression they're slaves to the CTan.

As well, no matter how you feel, Trazyn is like the best piece of fluff to exist in this game and anyone that disagrees is wrong.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
The new Necron fluff works at least though, where you have the Lords with their own motives, and some still under the impression they're slaves to the CTan.

As well, no matter how you feel, Trazyn is like the best piece of fluff to exist in this game and anyone that disagrees is wrong.

I've always found Trazyn to be really stupid and the liking for him just goes over my head. But then I like Space Wolves so apparently I'm weird.

pm713 wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
The new Necron fluff works at least though, where you have the Lords with their own motives, and some still under the impression they're slaves to the CTan.

As well, no matter how you feel, Trazyn is like the best piece of fluff to exist in this game and anyone that disagrees is wrong.

I've always found Trazyn to be really stupid and the liking for him just goes over my head. But then I like Space Wolves so apparently I'm weird.

He's just a meme. It got old.

pm713 wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
The new Necron fluff works at least though, where you have the Lords with their own motives, and some still under the impression they're slaves to the CTan.

As well, no matter how you feel, Trazyn is like the best piece of fluff to exist in this game and anyone that disagrees is wrong.

I've always found Trazyn to be really stupid and the liking for him just goes over my head. But then I like Space Wolves so apparently I'm weird.

He has been memed to death somewhat but he is definitely an interesting character that fits well with the Necrons, both old and new. He is preserving history (or as he puts it "collecting time"), the grand curator of the galaxy's most significant events and individuals preserved for all time by him.

This is great with the unknowable foe of the Oldcrons as I suspect we would get no greater insight as to why he is on this quest? To appease his C'tan masters? Because his programming said so? Some more sinister reason? So the Oldcrons are harvesting you atom by atom, but there's this one guy who wants one specific person. Why? The horror element that can come from that is wonderful

As for the Newcrons. The same. But he has a certain... majesty about him that his quest is somewhat noble in his own head. He is preserving all this for the benefit of his own species, for when they all finally reawaken. His meeting with Bile in Clonelord highlights the horror element again. Trazyn appears to study his targets for some time before "preserving" them. Bile even in a way calls out the meme

“Madness,’ he said flatly. ‘All of this – madness. You boast of power, but you are nothing more than a thief. And perhaps not even that.’
Trazyn stiffened.
‘Are you the being you were, before you were poured into the metal sarcophagus, or are you merely the ghost of who and what you once were?’ Fabius turned slowly, keeping the pacing metal figure in sight.
‘The same might be said of you – are you even yourself, or are you merely a copy of a copy of a copy, the faded imprint of a thing long dead?’ Trazyn said.
Fabius froze.”

That seems a little terrifying to me, an eccentric; somewhat unstoppable alien being that has intel on his target well before he goes in. How long has he been watching you for?

The issue with trying to make Trazyn more of an ancient horror is it doesn't fit with the newcrons current theme which is TK in space. He and most of the necron characters seem like crazy old people more than anything.

Yeah, as much as a hate the new necrons I do like Trazen. Also, just got my hands on a 2e lord, metal pariah and 1 2e warrior off ebay for my army, looking at some 2e scarabs next.

Yup, lots of fond memories of Necrons in 2nd edition. Explodey scarabs were all sorts of fun. One of my regular 2nd edition opponents had a vehicle-heavy guard army, so having bunches of scrabs flitting about chewing on his armour and blowing holes in his troops was a constant irritant for him

That's both hilerious and diaobolical,

Had forgotten those original Necron models. You can really see the evolution from the Space Crusade 'chaos android' model...