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I don't find the new or revamped Necron fluff or lore particularly good. Since it's nothing to impress, I prefer the old fluff (or lack thereof). The stuff you don't understand is often far scarier than the stuff you do. It also lends itself more to people who want to create their own narrative of why the Necrons are rising and what they actually are. Not to mention they were generally much stronger than the Necrons now. Nigh unstoppable depending on what your army build was. I'm speaking of the 2nd edition lore. Also, I generally dislike GW's continuing passion to link every single race somehow to eachother. It's unnecessary in something the size of the galaxy/universe and is just...lazy. It doesn't add anything trying to justify why Orks or Eldar or Necrons were created. It's even worse trying to shoe-horn them all in together. It doesn't add anything to the fluff or lore, it diminishes it in fact.

But they're not human, they should have no humanity.

They only have the form they have (hence the models when they came out) because the Nightbringer chose it as it most terrified their enemies, the creations of the Old Ones.

That throws the true form of the Necrontyr into doubt, assuming old lore. And I personally love that far more that the arrogant nobles they are now.

 Blndmage wrote:
But they're not human, they should have no humanity.

They only have the form they have (hence the models when they came out) because the Nightbringer chose it as it most terrified their enemies, the creations of the Old Ones.

That throws the true form of the Necrontyr into doubt, assuming old lore. And I personally love that far more that the arrogant nobles they are now.

"
Humanity" meant any sort of understandable human feelings. The necrons seem to have ther negative ones, not the poisitivce one/s

CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 Charistoph wrote:

 Arachnofiend wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
And there's still not enough customization for Necrons. Seriously, it's ridiculous how little choices they have.

I feel like a measure of uniformity is important to the theming of the army. I certainly wouldn't want the tenth guy in a Warrior squad to have a special weapon.

Oddly enough, some of the customization has changed since 3rd Edition to 5th Edition, and I'm not even talking about what the Lords could do.

Spyders gained new gun options.

.

Not quite. They gained twin particle beamers, but they lost the particle projector

3rd Ed, Wraiths only had claws and tail without even the option for the Disruption Field. 5th Ed, they could take a Particle Caster or a Transdimencional Beamer. That classifies as "new" in my book.

Arachnofiend wrote:

 Charistoph wrote:

 Arachnofiend wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
And there's still not enough customization for Necrons. Seriously, it's ridiculous how little choices they have.

I feel like a measure of uniformity is important to the theming of the army. I certainly wouldn't want the tenth guy in a Warrior squad to have a special weapon.

Oddly enough, some of the customization has changed since 3rd Edition to 5th Edition, and I'm not even talking about what the Lords could do.

Immortals changed to Troops, now there is a choice of Troops.

Warriors and Flayed Ones lost Disruption Field options.

Immortals, Wraiths, and Spyders gained new gun options.

Pariahs downgraded from their anti-psyker role and converted to Lychguard who can choose between Halberds and sword and board.

And that's just what existed from before. The addition of the Praetorians, Blades, Scythes, Crytpeks (who lost customization in 7th), Deathmarks, Stalkers, Arks, and Barges helped provide considerations as to what to include in each slot.

Sure, it doesn't match what options a Space Marine Squad can do internally (nor should it, unless we go Eldar and have adding Lords/Crypteks to units as sergeants/champions), but it is a far improvement of customization over their early beginnings.

This isn't really the type of customization I'm talking about; it's more the "four of your dudes have a crappy gun so the fifth guy has a really good gun" most other armies use. Lychguard can choose to have the shield or the warscythe, but you can't give your fifth lychguard a voidscythe. Necrons don't have sergeants and you're generally encouraged to use the same wargear on every model in a unit, which is a mechanical choice that leads to a distinct aesthetic that is very different from most other armies in this game that I really like.

I know it isn't the customization you're talking about. What I was saying is that they had a LOT more customization that they used to have. In addition, with the introduction of the Overlords and Crypteks and the devaluing of Necron Lords, they actually had something similar to that until they removed the IC options from the game.

DudleyGrim wrote: While Oldcrons had cool lore and models, the lore really couldn't GO anywhere, there is only so much that cold, emotionless, robots bent on harvesting souls for their ever-hungry star gods could actually do. TBH it was a boring faction that was pretty much the same as Tyranids in goals. Terminators are cool, don't get me wrong, but even Skynet had more personality than the Oldcrons did.

Tyranids had as much personality, but they were quite favored up to their 5th Edition book. Do you know why? Because customization and options were rampant in those books while Necrons didn't have spit until their 5th Ed book. The Tyranid 3rd Ed book was so customizable that it was like you were role-playing Abathur from Starcraft 2. Their 4th ed book as a bit more limited, but you could still play around with things. Their 5th Ed book was actually extremely dry and boring in comparison. Quite an interesting comparison in army design between these two.

Yes, I know wraiths could only take claws. I was talking about and specified spyders.
In 3rd ed spyders could take a particle projector, which was a basically a staff of light.
In 5th ed and onwards that was replaced by the twin particle beamer.
Spyders always had a ranged option.

Having ranged options on wraiths is completely new though. Keep in mind that 3rd ed wraiths are not at the all the same as the current one.
3rd ed wraiths were pure necron, 5th+ wraiths are canoptek.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Yes, I know wraiths could only take claws. I was talking about and specified spyders.
In 3rd ed spyders could take a particle projector, which was a basically a staff of light.
In 5th ed and onwards that was replaced by the twin particle beamer.
Spyders always had a ranged option.

Apologies, I read Wraiths in there.

But that doesn't change that it was a new gun for the Spyder, and therefore a new gun option.

Oldcrons. I liked the mystery/facelessness with their lack of named characters and the dynasties, and many of the older models, wraiths in particular, just looked great.

I feel like this poll should have four options, two for each choice indicating whether you do or do not collect Necrons. I know some Necron players prefer Oldcrons but I'd be curious to see how many of the ardent Oldcron supporters are Imperium players who think they made a cool antagonist.

I'm torn. I wish that they would have went half as far as they did. Virtually no information of the Oldcrons obviously needed to be developed a bit further to encourage people to customize their armies, get into the faction, etc., as so many other posters have said. I wish that they had expanded the model line (most of which I personally find fantastic) and given some information about the waking up process, then provided human/inquisition/whatever theories on their origin, goals, and motivations, without actually committing to such a bland story. You could elude to the war in heaven, the possibility that they fought against the Old Ones, develop some special characters about which the imperium has collected information on. Basically, walk the line between providing information so people can sandbox and develop their own head cannon without destroying the mystery.

I don't really get what people are saying with the Necrons having bland motivations and whatnot. The Necrons don't... have a unified motivation? That's kinda the whole point, the dynasties are so fractured that nobody can agree on what the Necrons should be doing right now. Szarekh wants to eradicate the Tyranids. Imotekh wants to expand the Sautekh's territory to the galaxy-spanning Necron army of old. Trazyn wants to ensure the younger races don't destroy everything of significance in their stupidity. Xun'bakyr has essentially the same "destroy all life" motivations as Oldcrons, it's just that she's in charge rather than some gakky star god.

 Arachnofiend wrote:
I feel like this poll should have four options, two for each choice indicating whether you do or do not collect Necrons. I know some Necron players prefer Oldcrons but I'd be curious to see how many of the ardent Oldcron supporters are Imperium players who think they made a cool antagonist.

I was building an Oldcron force to fight my High Eldar, essentially forces that were trapped outside the Galaxy since the War in Heaven. I used Tomb Kings parts even though I'm not a fan of Newcron Tomb Kings fluff. I bought a plastic banshee to convert into the Deceiver, but later upgraded to a Necro Sphinx to use as my own C'Tan, The Sphinx. I love the newer plastics for the most part, but really miss the bigger scale of the old fluff, the feeling of inevitability.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I also bought a BFg force for them.

 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.

Ok firstly, have you read the codex. The first part about personalities is in there. Although it is also mentioned in several white dwarves. Unfortunatly the new zealand and Japanese white dwarves often Have different articles so even if I could remember which ones it wouldnt help much. I'm almost dead certain it says something about it under the lord description in the codex though. As for nicely customized, ever heard of google bro. I mean honestly, have you ever even read the codex? Did you even play / play against oldcrons? If not, why are you even in this discussion?

There were plenty of stories about Necronlords with personalities. Xenology, That Gav Thorpe story with Neoggeddon, Dead Men Walking to some extent, and blurbs in white dwarf and various rule books. They were about as well (sporadically) represented in BL fiction at the time as the Tau or Tyranids, and no one complains about those factions.

 Arachnofiend wrote:
I don't really get what people are saying with the Necrons having bland motivations and whatnot. The Necrons don't... have a unified motivation? That's kinda the whole point, the dynasties are so fractured that nobody can agree on what the Necrons should be doing right now. Szarekh wants to eradicate the Tyranids. Imotekh wants to expand the Sautekh's territory to the galaxy-spanning Necron army of old. Trazyn wants to ensure the younger races don't destroy everything of significance in their stupidity. Xun'bakyr has essentially the same "destroy all life" motivations as Oldcrons, it's just that she's in charge rather than some gakky star god.

I rather feel the same way. In fact, I feel it gives more opportunities to sand box a dynasty than the 3rd Edition Codex did because it gave you a set of personalities you could bounce off of.

I started collecting Necrons about six months before their 7th Edition book was released, but I had been fascinated them since started studying about 40K to collect roughly around 4th Edition's launch. My approach was as a dynasty whose awakening tended to view races not around during the War in Heaven as citizens of the Necrons who were fighting against their upgrade, and set about collecting them for conversion to feed the War in Heaven. As a joke, I even considered painting the Ghost Ark as a Yellow Taxi and the Doomsday Ark as a Domino's pizza delivery vehicle.

Tau or Tyranids, and no one complains about those factions.

Yeah... about that...

Done issue that doesn't matter to me is that the necrons are just WFB's tomb kings in space. Since I don't play WFB that's not an issue to me.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
There were plenty of stories about Necronlords with personalities. Xenology, That Gav Thorpe story with Neoggeddon, Dead Men Walking to some extent, and blurbs in white dwarf and various rule books. They were about as well (sporadically) represented in BL fiction at the time as the Tau or Tyranids, and no one complains about those factions.

Those personalities outside Xenology are frickin vague though.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
There were plenty of stories about Necronlords with personalities. Xenology, That Gav Thorpe story with Neoggeddon, Dead Men Walking to some extent, and blurbs in white dwarf and various rule books. They were about as well (sporadically) represented in BL fiction at the time as the Tau or Tyranids, and no one complains about those factions.

Those personalities outside Xenology are frickin vague though.

Yes, but that was because no one in GW or BL wanted to devote much time to them. The potential was there. There were story hooks about crazy Necronlords wanting to fight the C'Tan or regain their flesh or rebuild their empires or enslave humanity and convert them into Necrons, but you had to sort through a lot of sources to find them. If they had been in a quarter of the stories that Chaos got in the same period, those Necrons would have been pretty well fleshed out.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And that's ignoring the C'Tan. The Deceiver was fun. The strange relationship between him and The Laughing God bore years of fruit for fan theorists, as did the Dragon buried on Mars playing the Machine God, inspiring the Mechanicus, the DAOT and the Men of Iron.

I picked newcrons but I really wish they would start acting like a semi intelligent race. They are frequently outnumbered and ill prepared for conflict. An intelligent being would look at his situation and conclude that military action is probably unwise at this time. So what do they do? Oh, stupid aliens are on my rock. Gotta fufill my kill subroutine protocol. Or how about attack their equally ill prepared neighbor in the hope that your forces won't be pounded into scrap even in the event of your victory. Or monolog like some bond villan right before suisiding into Ultramar or some equally stupid and arbitrary target.

in a galaxy filled to the brim with potential cannon fodder who are poorly treated and usually looking for an excuse to revolt. Where is the overlord that's just murderizing the hell out of imperial planetary governors and using the humans to fortify his domain. Hell, best thing would be to make him really good at it. Like he's just extremely good at running and defending the world's he conquers. To the point that his new subjects prefer slavery under their new zenos overlord to citizenship in the Imperium. Would be hilarious if a few dozen world's killed their own governors and willingly submitted to Notamorontehp the Practical

Or how about a bunch of overlords banding together because that's just a good survival strategy and that really should be the name of the game.

Or how about just bideing your time and rebuilding your forces untill Ultramar can't stop you. I mean, they are immortal. It's not as if they don't have time in overabundance. Do they HAVE to go all "get off my lawn!" The second they realize there is an intruder nearby?

Point is, they aren't behaving like arrogant bastards. They are acting like idiots by and large. And that makes their current lore meaningless. I chose newcrons because it has more potential than a gang of rampaging killbots. But all the potential in the world won't save them from writing that makes them seem incompetent.

Merkabah wrote:
I chose newcrons because it has more potential than a gang of rampaging killbots.

Rampaging, hyperintelligent, super-efficient killbots, filled with a hatred of all other forms of life that would put a dalek to shame, with the patronage of cthulu-esque monsters that make the chaos gods look like gretchin in comparison. Yea I really miss the old lore.

w1zard wrote:

Merkabah wrote:
I chose newcrons because it has more potential than a gang of rampaging killbots.

Rampaging, hyperintelligent, super-efficient killbots, filled with a hatred of all other forms of life that would put a dalek to shame, with the patronage of cthulu-esque monsters that make the chaos gods look like gretchin in comparison. Yea I really miss the old lore.

Still feels a lot like Tyranids but chrome. But whatever floats your boat man.

Merkabah wrote:

w1zard wrote:

Merkabah wrote:
I chose newcrons because it has more potential than a gang of rampaging killbots.

Rampaging, hyperintelligent, super-efficient killbots, filled with a hatred of all other forms of life that would put a dalek to shame, with the patronage of cthulu-esque monsters that make the chaos gods look like gretchin in comparison. Yea I really miss the old lore.

Still feels a lot like Tyranids but chrome. But whatever floats your boat man.

By that measure, the Newcrons are just metal Eldar. If you refuse to engage with the material, any army can be summed up in one pithy line.

Merkabah wrote:

w1zard wrote:

Merkabah wrote:
I chose newcrons because it has more potential than a gang of rampaging killbots.

Rampaging, hyperintelligent, super-efficient killbots, filled with a hatred of all other forms of life that would put a dalek to shame, with the patronage of cthulu-esque monsters that make the chaos gods look like gretchin in comparison. Yea I really miss the old lore.

Still feels a lot like Tyranids but chrome. But whatever floats your boat man.

Yeah, and newcrons are chrome humans with an Egypt fetish. I can be dismissive too, its not hard.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

Merkabah wrote:

w1zard wrote:

Merkabah wrote:
I chose newcrons because it has more potential than a gang of rampaging killbots.

Rampaging, hyperintelligent, super-efficient killbots, filled with a hatred of all other forms of life that would put a dalek to shame, with the patronage of cthulu-esque monsters that make the chaos gods look like gretchin in comparison. Yea I really miss the old lore.

Still feels a lot like Tyranids but chrome. But whatever floats your boat man.

Yeah, and newcrons are chrome humans with an Egypt fetish. I can be dismissive too, its not hard.

You act like that's a bad thing

It is if you wanted aliens.
If I wanted chrome humans, I would have gotten Iron Hands, because Ad Mech didn't exist in 2004.

I hate necrons because i am still butt hurt of the 6th/7th ed Decurion detachment formation.

 CadianGateTroll wrote:
I hate necrons because i am still butt hurt of the 6th/7th ed Decurion detachment.

As bad as the Decruion from 7th was, the Marine's Gladius was far far worse.

Merkabah wrote:
I picked newcrons but I really wish they would start acting like a semi intelligent race. They are frequently outnumbered and ill prepared for conflict. An intelligent being would look at his situation and conclude that military action is probably unwise at this time. So what do they do? Oh, stupid aliens are on my rock. Gotta fufill my kill subroutine protocol. Or how about attack their equally ill prepared neighbor in the hope that your forces won't be pounded into scrap even in the event of your victory. Or monolog like some bond villan right before suisiding into Ultramar or some equally stupid and arbitrary target.

in a galaxy filled to the brim with potential cannon fodder who are poorly treated and usually looking for an excuse to revolt. Where is the overlord that's just murderizing the hell out of imperial planetary governors and using the humans to fortify his domain. Hell, best thing would be to make him really good at it. Like he's just extremely good at running and defending the world's he conquers. To the point that his new subjects prefer slavery under their new zenos overlord to citizenship in the Imperium. Would be hilarious if a few dozen world's killed their own governors and willingly submitted to Notamorontehp the Practical

Or how about a bunch of overlords banding together because that's just a good survival strategy and that really should be the name of the game.

Or how about just bideing your time and rebuilding your forces untill Ultramar can't stop you. I mean, they are immortal. It's not as if they don't have time in overabundance. Do they HAVE to go all "get off my lawn!" The second they realize there is an intruder nearby?

Point is, they aren't behaving like arrogant bastards. They are acting like idiots by and large. And that makes their current lore meaningless. I chose newcrons because it has more potential than a gang of rampaging killbots. But all the potential in the world won't save them from writing that makes them seem incompetent.

Necrons can fight in a different strategic paradigm than other races. They engage, maybe "lose" the battle in a tactical senses take some casualties, inflict some casualties, phase out, then return shortly while he nemey is still missing the troops he lsot and the necron casualties have Ben repaired and restored.

That was perhaps the most contraversial part of the Oldcron lore: the Necrons were an Outside Context Problem in both quality and scale (FTL, no actual losses, perhaps raw numbers), hinted at becoming an enemy an order of magnitude more dangerous than any other foe for the Imperium (with the possible exception of Tyranids). At the "present" time of the codex, the Imperium was sending their soldiers and superhuman marines to fight while the Necrons were sending their farmers with varmint guns.

For understandable reasons, people who thought Chaos or Orks should have been an existential threat were peeved at their armies' place-putting. Now GW is catering to them, and my opinion of the current fluff is that it's horrible.

Decurion was a great.
The new Necrons are low tier if you ask me.