Oldcrons VS NewCrons. Poll.

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**Giantwalkingchair**

Oldcrons all the way. For pretty much all the reasons so far.
The best analogue i can give is to compare oldcrons and new crons to the Borg in Star Trek TNG and Voyager.

In TNG, the Borg were terrifying. Unstoppable, a genuine threat to everyone and it was only through sheer plot armour that anyone came through but even then, main characters were getting wrecked and permanently scarred in every way.
Their strength was that they were not individual, they were a collective, the sum of all knowledge of everyone assimilated into it and thats what made them strong.

In Voyager....ugh...we have the Borg Queen. Not a collective, but an individual. A named face. Problem here, individuals are flawed and they can be beaten. Voyager didnt face the terrifying unrelenting Borg; they faced a single person. All the strength of the Borg and terror, stripped away for an understandable and beatable face.
This is newcrons. All the terror and mystery stripped away in favour of completely not alien aliens with flawed characters and individuals that can be beaten. Theyre not a threat.

**Grimtuff**

vipoid wrote:

Duskweaver wrote:

But hardly anyone wanted to collect and play them. Their sales figues were abysmal. When I worked for GW in the 3rd/4th edition days, I don't think I encountered anyone who denied that the Necron fluff was awesome, but nobody I knew actually played them as an army. There was no real room for thematic customisation, since the entire faction had exactly two properly sapient characters that you could include in your army. You either played the Deceiver's mindless puppets, or the Nightbringer's mindless puppets, or just a bunch of mindless puppets out on their own for some reason. And the people who didn't mind playing an army of mindless puppets already had perfectly good Tyranid armies. The old Necrons and C'tan were fantastic as part of the setting's background. They utterly failed as a playable faction.

Do you think the issue might have been less with their fluff and more with their mechanics? Their model range was tiny and they had virtually no customisation (1 HQ choice, 1 Troop choice, basically no wargear outside of the Necron Lord), they were so ludicrously expensive that most of your points were gone by the time you'd bought your mandatory troops and HQ, and they could never make any sort of last stand because their army just vanished if they lost too many models.

Was about to say the same thing. That was the problem I always saw on Sunday beginners- Necrons didn't get interesting up until big (well, big for beginners) games of 1000pts+. By the time you'd bought your HQ and 2 troops for the usual 500pt game that was the norm at the time, Necrons had a paltry 40pts to spend on other stuff. Compared to everyone else Necron players seemed like they got left behind a bit.

**Inquisitor Lord Katherine**

I'm not a necron player, but I like the newcrons more. They're more interesting.

Mindless endless hordes of robot zombies isn't particularly cool or interesting to read about. The egyptian robots have personalities and objectives.

Also, I think the pokegods are funny. "Nightbringer! I choose you!"

**BobtheInquisitor**

I love the Oldcrons and consider Xenology to be canon and everything post 5th Ed noncanon.

changemod wrote:
As someone who got into 40k briefly in third then properly at the tail end of 6th, both times collecting necrons to start with, this is a misleading question at best. There’s little to no difference other than more of a light shone on the aristocracy who still have minds, a disappointing lack of pariahs and a bit of a clash between monolith style vehicles and boat vehicles.

The -real- retcon was on the C’tan, and whilst they went a bit far with it in my opinion, having more actual characters to focus on than just having the deceiver show is a plus.

In conclusion, oldcrons and newcrons are the same thing, pariahs should come back and my ideal stance on the C’tan would be to find a middle ground between their two incarnations.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Trickstick wrote:
As an old BFG player who had a large Necron rivalry, I hated what they did to their FTL. The Dolmen gates were nonsense. Did they ever retcon the retcon and give Necrons back proper FTL? Can't say I have kept up with Necron fluff.

FTL travel is the most important part of 40k empire building. Look at Tau. It doesn't matter how powerful their armies are, without decent FTL they are a joke race on the galactic scale.

Yes, the Inertialess Drive is back, it getting briefly retconned out was the result of some guy in the lore department who was trying to push for there being no non-warp way to break the speed of light.

They still have the dolmen gates too though, for the convenience of hacking into the webway when they were hunting down the Old Ones.

No non-warp ftl travel? But 5th was the same edition that introduced the Tyranid Narvhal, a non-warp ftl. So the advanced super-science robots had to use warp travel and the psykic warp-based hive mind had to use non-psykic super science for FTL. Sigh.

**Crimson**

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
You're asking the ultimate forum of no fluff changes/progress how they feel on a drastic fluff change.

Here's a 'no fluff change' opinion: they should have never added the Necrons. They butchered the Eldar lore and shoehorned a boring, contrived robot faction in the setting. If they wanted a robot faction, there would have been a perfect, already existing, hook in the setting for that, the Men of Iron!

**BobtheInquisitor**

Before the Oldcron codex, the Eldar were like Season 1 Minbari, haughty space elves which appealed to few people. The Oldcron Codex enriched the Eldar like the injection of Shadow and Vorlons lore improved the Minbari through the rest of the series; directly, they put the Minbari down a peg and made them seem relatively smaller, but at the same time integrated them into a much larger and more satisfying story with a rich background that transformed a collection of Sci Fi tropes into a classic, beloved setting.

**Voss**

That...doesn't jive with anything I remember. Eldar pirates were boring, but the Craftworlds background made them interesting.

The fanon mindcaulking around the few tiny pieces of necron 'background' didn't make the eldar more interesting, it made them less. Just another gun in the hands of the non-entities that were the 'Old Ones'. (Who were more interesting in 40k and Fantasy when they were Slaan)

**Arachnofiend**

Crimson wrote:
Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
You're asking the ultimate forum of no fluff changes/progress how they feel on a drastic fluff change.

Here's a 'no fluff change' opinion: they should have never added the Necrons. They butchered the Eldar lore and shoehorned a boring, contrived robot faction in the setting. If they wanted a robot faction, there would have been a perfect, already existing, hook in the setting for that, the Men of Iron!

Bold of you to claim that the Necrons are the boring faction and not Eldar.

**123ply**

Duskweaver wrote:
The Oldcron fluff was massively superior. Unfathomably ancient cosmic horror beats Tomb Kings In Space every time.

But hardly anyone wanted to collect and play them. Their sales figues were abysmal. When I worked for GW in the 3rd/4th edition days, I don't think I encountered anyone who denied that the Necron fluff was awesome, but nobody I knew actually played them as an army. There was no real room for thematic customisation, since the entire faction had exactly two properly sapient characters that you could include in your army. You either played the Deceiver's mindless puppets, or the Nightbringer's mindless puppets, or just a bunch of mindless puppets out on their own for some reason. And the people who didn't mind playing an army of mindless puppets already had perfectly good Tyranid armies. The old Necrons and C'tan were fantastic as part of the setting's background. They utterly failed as a playable faction.

GW didn't change the Necron/C'tan fluff because people disliked the old fluff. They changed it because the old fluff didn't encourage people to collect and play Necrons. And that's the only reaason for fluff to exist, as far as GW is concerned. It's just marketing for the minis.

Newcron fluff is naff. It's as lame as if GW had actually gone ahead and introduced the Hrud as just Skaven In Space (as they briefly flirted with in 3rd edition before thinking better of it). But at least it works as the background for a playable army. It therefore better fits GW's purposes than the old version.

The hilarious irony is that the new fluff ended up making the Necrons more popular than the fantasy army they had ripped off. You could almost say that the Necrons killed the Tomb Kings and took their stuff.

Exactly this. I liked Oldcrons much more but Newcrons give people more reasons to play them

**Techpriestsupport**

Yeah, as to necrons being boring. Well, rev up the chainaxes and get ready to scream in rage but personally I think the 4 chaos gods are generally boring, and the most boring ones are the khorne followers. Khorne is the most boring force in the universe. "BLOOD THIS! BLOOD THAT! BLOOD THIS! BLOOD THAT! BLOOD! BLOOD! BLOOD! BLOOD! BLOOD! BLOOD! "

Yawww-aaaawn.

Other chaos god forces can be not as boring but monotonous enough. With all the "Decay disease rot! Rape torture Rape! All according to plan. " Yeah Tzeentch can be surprising in the hands of a clever writer.
.

In general I ind the chaos gods kinda boring but I do run a chaos undivided army with some surprising motives. When the alpha legion cries "For the emperor! " in battle is it really
mockery? They might just want you to think that...

My chaos undivided army does have a unit of blood letters it views as a field deployable fire 'n forget weapon system to be used and discarded. They see chaos gods as powerful bit dangerous resources to be used for their own ends. Just like their daemons.

Necrons are kinda cool in that they are varied in motivations and attitudes. Also they can be kind of funny at times. That one who can't remember he's a machine and that he's not fighting other necrons kinda reminds me of Commander McBragg if you ever saw those cartoons in reruns. They're not as boring as khorne boys for certain.

**Sir Heckington**

I prefer newcrons.

Why?

'Your dudes.'

You can still have a menacing scary horde of undead robots who don't think and only wish for wiping out life, that's still a thing you can do.

But now you can do so much more! You can make your army so many different things!

(Also the reason I hate tyranids)

**BlaxicanX**

My answer is both or neither. Oldcrons were sues and were thematically just robot-tyranids. NewCrons have much more character, but swung too far in the opposite direction with Necron Lords basically being mustache-twirling bond villains who literally talk like English noblemen.

I think what a lot of people who are fans of the OldCrons don't appreciate is that OldCrons were basically Slaugth/H'rud tier. They're fine as NPC bad guys that you read about in brief paragraph-long blurbs on the bottom of a codex every now and again, but they were ass as a Your Dudes type force with customization and player-expression.

**buddha**

As someone who has played Necrons since third I say newcrons. The personality given to the lords gives them so much macabre flavor. They are still unknowable, but I just love the average lord's arrogance is often matched by their skill and power but with level of insanity. These are truly the galaxy's rightful rulers rather than what I found very boring faceless horde.

Why the hate for newcrons I don't understand as the old fluff still exists as cannon. Indeed, beyond the fact you can still play your army as a mindless horde fluffwise all that still exists in the books and codexes. Newcrons improved the quality of the threat IMHO as the idea of enemy having reasons and animus for their nefarious acts is so much more powerful than just "kill all humans." (no offense to Bender of course)

Also, if you want a flavor for how wonderful the newcrons are as villains, play the new Mechanicus game.

**jobalisk**

A lot of you are arguing that there was no room for customisation and personality. Both of these are incorrect. I've seen some very nicely customized oldcrons and as for personality the lords were explicitly explained as still having a personality so there was plenty of room to expand them in that direction.

**BlaxicanX**

Vague anecdotes like "they were nicely customized" and "they had personalities" with no examples given to quantify those statements isn't very meaningful.

**Vaktathi**

The "Newcrons" just come off as a lazy copypasta of Tomb Kings in Space to me, and vested all the personality they have into a small handful of all-too-human characters and renders them far too knowable and mundane, and in too many instances they just come off as generic mustache-twirling mad scientist types in egyptian-themed robot bodies. It was a really wasted opportunity that I have zero interest in.

The "oldcron" stuff was much more interesting, if far more vague. There was a lot more they could have done there.

**JohnU**

Oldcrons. Having to only deal with 75% of the army was great.

**Slayer-Fan123**

BlaxicanX wrote:
Vague anecdotes like "they were nicely customized" and "they had personalities" with no examples given to quantify those statements isn't very meaningful.

We have a winner!

**Grimgold**

I voted for newcrons, but my real answer would be why not both? I mean C'tan worshipping necrons who somehow never escaped the command codes would be a cool subfaction. Without the newcrons disgust for the lesser races, they could be practicing transference on the mortal races of today to boost their numbers. Which would be a cool way to bring back pariahs, and add a few new units to the roster. The piece de resistance would be a full powered C'tan leading them whose ultimate goal is to eat the now bite sized C'Tan shards and become an unstoppable power.

It would hit all of the notes of the old crons, a growing threat, cosmic horror, and forced assimilation. If the C'Tan in question is the void dragon, it can even take over the old fluff of having infiltrated the adeptus mechanicus and officio assassinorum. It also enhances the newcrons by giving them a reason they haven't taken over the galaxy with their absurdly superior technology, they are in the midst of a civil war, and probably one that is not going terribly well.

**123ply**

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
BlaxicanX wrote:
Vague anecdotes like "they were nicely customized" and "they had personalities" with no examples given to quantify those statements isn't very meaningful.

We have a winner!

Oh sure, like he needs to give proof for everything he claims but nobody else has to.

What if he's referring to some local players and cant give any "examples?" You want me to fax a reference sheet for you?

**Grimgold**

123ply wrote:

Oh sure, like he needs to give proof for everything he claims but nobody else has to.

What if he's referring to some local players and cant give any "examples?" You want me to fax a reference sheet for you?

Hitchens razor “That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”

**Techpriestsupport**

Insectum7 wrote:
Avatar 720 wrote:
Coming from a fiction-writing background, New is far and away the best in terms of character and scope. Old was certainly tighter, but it's difficult to have lore issues with a race whose only concern is getting from A to B and reducing everything between that point into very very small little bits, preferably without missing a step. There's so much more you can do with Newcrons, even if the official lore is now more spotty and inconsistent as a result.

I'll half disagree. I like that there is the availability for personality between lords, although I'd argue there was room for that in Oldcron lore. I find the Newcron personalities disappointingly anthropomorphic and comic-bookey.

Most races in 40k, sans tyranids, are aranthropomorphic. Eldar are arrogant aristocrats, Orks are violent thugs, tau are essentially humans indoctrinated to accept the state as the greater good, etc.

**Ratius**

Oldcrons all the way. For pretty much all the reasons so far.
The best analogue i can give is to compare oldcrons and new crons to the Borg in Star Trek TNG and Voyager.

In TNG, the Borg were terrifying. Unstoppable, a genuine threat to everyone and it was only through sheer plot armour that anyone came through but even then, main characters were getting wrecked and permanently scarred in every way.
Their strength was that they were not individual, they were a collective, the sum of all knowledge of everyone assimilated into it and thats what made them strong.

In Voyager....ugh...we have the Borg Queen. Not a collective, but an individual. A named face. Problem here, individuals are flawed and they can be beaten. Voyager didnt face the terrifying unrelenting Borg; they faced a single person. All the strength of the Borg and terror, stripped away for an understandable and beatable face.
This is newcrons. All the terror and mystery stripped away in favour of completely not alien aliens with flawed characters and individuals that can be beaten. Theyre not a threat.

Great post, sums up my view nicely.

**Tyel**

I disliked Oldcrons for the reasons other people seem to like them.

They were initially fine. A strange menace far, far away. A threat - but a hidden one.
Then slowly but surely the fluff got developed and became stupid. The C'Tan were built up to be ludicrously powerful and were behind almost everything - to the point where they were probably more fluff important than the Chaos Gods. Now I don't mind people saying the Chaos gods are boring - I wax and wane on that - but for 2nd ed at least they were the setting. These quiet retcons to insert the Necrons into everything grated on me.

It would be like if GW brought out the H'rud and then had to explain how they were secretly behind the Horus Heresy because you know, these guys are cool, buy them, go on, pls.

I agree though that Newcrons have arguably gone too far the otherway. At a fundamental level they are not alien enough. Most of the talking Necrons - stripping out the accents - could easily be human, Eldar, Tau or even Orks. Their ambitions just amount to "I like stuff". This is often a problem with the Xenos races but it comes across really clearly here given the "alieness" of the physiology and society which should inform their world view. On the analogy with the Borg Queen - its not so much that this figure can be "beaten", its just that its like all the other star trek aliens that amount to humans with some slightly different forehead bumps to the 20+ other races we met before. In TNG these were clearly a level up over what had been encountered before. By Voyager (or really mid-way through First Contact) they weren't. They were being gunned down like everything else.

**CthuluIsSpy**

BlaxicanX wrote:
Vague anecdotes like "they were nicely customized" and "they had personalities" with no examples given to quantify those statements isn't very meaningful.

In Xenology you had a necron lord who spoke, and in the 3rd codex its implied that necron lords had some of their personality left.
Its subtle though, and isn't at all like post 5th ed's "Oooh look how quirky I have! Look at me charge windmills and steal gak! I have so much personality"

As for customization...its possible, but only if you really worked at it. I personally never bothered.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

buddha wrote:
As someone who has played Necrons since third I say newcrons. The personality given to the lords gives them so much macabre flavor. They are still unknowable, but I just love the average lord's arrogance is often matched by their skill and power but with level of insanity. These are truly the galaxy's rightful rulers rather than what I found very boring faceless horde.

Why the hate for newcrons I don't understand as the old fluff still exists as cannon. Indeed, beyond the fact you can still play your army as a mindless horde fluffwise all that still exists in the books and codexes. Newcrons improved the quality of the threat IMHO as the idea of enemy having reasons and animus for their nefarious acts is so much more powerful than just "kill all humans." (no offense to Bender of course)

Also, if you want a flavor for how wonderful the newcrons are as villains, play the new Mechanicus game.

Its probably because most of the focus is on the quirky lords and the dynasties. There was a nice bit of fluff about the Empire of the Severed which is supposed to be a serious threat, but they never expanded on it.
Which is a pity, because that Empire sounds great.

**Insectum7**

Techpriestsupport wrote:
Insectum7 wrote:
Avatar 720 wrote:
Coming from a fiction-writing background, New is far and away the best in terms of character and scope. Old was certainly tighter, but it's difficult to have lore issues with a race whose only concern is getting from A to B and reducing everything between that point into very very small little bits, preferably without missing a step. There's so much more you can do with Newcrons, even if the official lore is now more spotty and inconsistent as a result.

I'll half disagree. I like that there is the availability for personality between lords, although I'd argue there was room for that in Oldcron lore. I find the Newcron personalities disappointingly anthropomorphic and comic-bookey.

Most races in 40k, sans tyranids, are aranthropomorphic. Eldar are arrogant aristocrats, Orks are violent thugs, tau are essentially humans indoctrinated to accept the state as the greater good, etc.

That's why it's dissapointing.

**Crimson**

Tyel wrote:

They were initially fine. A strange menace far, far away. A threat - but a hidden one.
Then slowly but surely the fluff got developed and became stupid. The C'Tan were built up to be ludicrously powerful and were behind almost everything - to the point where they were probably more fluff important than the Chaos Gods. Now I don't mind people saying the Chaos gods are boring - I wax and wane on that - but for 2nd ed at least they were the setting. These quiet retcons to insert the Necrons into everything grated on me.

It would be like if GW brought out the H'rud and then had to explain how they were secretly behind the Horus Heresy because you know, these guys are cool, buy them, go on, pls.

Yeah, this is a big part of why I dislike them being shoehorned in the setting.

**BertBert**

I liked the general concept of the Oldcrons better, being an obscure menace with unknown motivations.

Newcrons got some nice characters and designs, but just as much - if not more - terrible stuff. The general aesthetic shift towards an emphasis on oriental designs is hit and miss, and some units just look plain silly (Tomb Blades, both Barges with their silly little pilots).

Lore-wise, Newcrons ruined all the mystery the Necrons once had and turned them into a fairly generic "former galactic overlords fallen from grace" kind of deal. I appreciate the characterization for some of their special characters and I think they would have been enough to keep the balance between providing more context and keeping the ominous nature of the Necrons.

**Cryptek of Awesome**

NoiseMarine with Tinnitus wrote:
Oldcrons all the way - but if they were to retcon them I would keep Trollzyn, he is hilarious.

"I don't like the new fluff, but if they were to change them back I'd keep the one character who most epitomizes everything they changed about the fluff because he's awesome".

**Slayer-Fan123**

Cryptek of Awesome wrote:
NoiseMarine with Tinnitus wrote:
Oldcrons all the way - but if they were to retcon them I would keep Trollzyn, he is hilarious.

"I don't like the new fluff, but if they were to change them back I'd keep the one character who most epitomizes everything they changed about the fluff because he's awesome".

Another winner of this thread!