Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

We never knew exactly what the 3rd edition codex was referring to - phase teleportation? That's near instantaneous, but requires infrastructure at the destination, so can't be used to go somewhere new.

Direct C'tan intervention?

Simple hyperbole? If Necrons could actually relocate across the galaxy almost instantly, their naval engagements should always involve loads of ships appearing to help out, yet we never saw that happen.

Even in the 5th edition book, Necrons (and by extension their ships) retained the ability to phase out and teleport, so they still could cross huge distances almost instantly - it's just not a particularly useful method of travel unless you're going 'home'.

The Battlefleet Gothic Magazine battle report 'The Orphan World' described a Necron fleet 'decelerating from hyperspeed' periodically in order to use their scanners. If their realspace FTL was just them blinking from point to point, they wouldn't really be decelerating in any meaningful way.
The various times that their hyperspeed' has been described, we also don't see them just instantly appearing at their destination, further suggesting that the 'blink of an eye' quote is either hyperbolic or referring to some other method of travel.

 BertBert wrote:

 Abanshee wrote:
Does the lore really even matter? With the recent dip in lore quality and the more recent lore additions, I'm honestly left asking what's the point anymore? It's like the deeper I dive into the novels, games, pre-history of 40k, and sourcebooks that my appreciation for the setting drops. I know that this is primarily a setting designed around selling miniatures and at the end of the day, that's GW's top priority. However, that just led me to question as to why so many people are even invested in such an expensive hobby or more so what's the point?

Same as with every other fictional setting: headcanon. Ignore the stuff you dislike, you will not receive a badge for staying trve to canon. I mostly ignore NuCrons, but I really liked that new Szeras sculpt so I just bought it as a modelling project and future display piece. I tried to get into The Infinite and the Divine, but I just couldn't make it work in my slice of 40k, so I refunded the audiobook.

Earlier this year, my old Death Guard bug bit me and I bought a box of plague marines to salvage convert them into properly scaled and less mutated versions. I also got around to listening to a couple of novels from the past Indomitus era because of the DG's involvement, and they were fine. Not amazing, but fine to catch up on some of the more recent developments. Mortarion I just cannot stand as he is portrayed in the novels, but the miniature is one of the best GW ever produced, so I'll likely get it at some point.

Lastly, I was very hesitant on the new Leviathan stuff, so I got the novel on Audible and some choice miniatures from the big set off eBay. The best way to avoid bad feelings about 40k is to not overcommit. Pace yourself and your purchases, engage only with whatever makes you happy and ignore the rest. Cur your losses, both in terms of time and money. Don't like a novel? Refund/resell it. A kit hasn't turned out to be as fun to build as you had imagined? Sell it online at a decent discount. I've had this approach for several years now and I've never been happier about my hobby.

The Infinite and the Divine was garbage. I read like half of it before I went into a longer sleep than the Necrons themselves did. I really don't know why people say its up there with books like Scars, Eisenhorn, or Gaunt's Ghosts. Same goes for any
books by Mike Brooks. I love how his attempt at making the Alpha Legion interesting/understandable was too make them even more confusing. Easily the new Matt Ward of GW, but at least Ward could write cool things from time to time.

Also, nobody knows how to portray a major depressive with a penchant towards fatalism. Mentally ill characters are some of the hardest characters to depict in fiction and Mortarion was most certainly that. Even Konrad suffers from just being seen
as "another crazy man killing people". It's a gross over-simplification of actual problems that people deal with on the daily. Unremembered Empire and his Primarch novel are great examples of a gakky depiction of Konrad. Unfortunately, in the DG's
case they've just been as badly neglected as the Iron Hands in lore, so they don't have a lot of great depictions to choose from.

Judging by recent responses, this seems to have evolved into a thread of general complaints now. Adding my due, I must admit I've always hated Necrons, found their inclusion into the setting to be badly written, found their rework ca. 2012 even more baffling and in general I've come to conclusion they are by far the worst race in the setting from my perspective.

There is not enough hate for the Necrons in this fandom.

The Infinite and the Divine was garbage

I've had The Infinite and the Divine on my shelf for ages, but I haven't got round to reading it yet.
People say that it's the best 40k book in years, but having read a LOT of Necron material, and all of Trazyn's previous appearances, I'm expecting to be disappointed by Necrons who are essentially wacky tomb kings in spaaace, basically indistinguishable from human characters, and Trazyn being an idiot who gets his museum trashed for the umpteenth time...

 Abanshee wrote:
Does the lore really even matter? With the recent dip in lore quality and the more recent lore additions, I'm honestly left asking what's the point anymore? It's like the deeper I dive into the novels, games, pre-history of 40k, and sourcebooks that my appreciation for the setting drops.

I dunno it's a mid-life wargaming crisis or what? It just sucks I can't enjoy the lore anymore the way I used to without finding something blatantly wrong about it and writing it off as gak. How did you stop hating the lore, if you ever have? Or is it time to look for greener pastures?

One of my favourite writers - Matthew reilly (and others, probably...) -once said it's not the lore that changes, it's you. You get older. I went through the same thing 10 years ago when I felt 'the old lore is better, nu-lore is rubbish' and re-read some of the 'better' old 2nd Ed stuff I loved as a teenager. I was quickly disabused. Older lore was just as cheesy. :p whst changed was I was no longer the target demographic.

The lore has always been this cheesy/dreadful/weirdly engaging since day 1. And its always been targeted at younger folk. Its just you were also younger then too and had a completely different perspective on what you liked and what was 'cool'. If young-you could jump forward in timeto now and read the things old-you is all miserable about now, young-you would probably disagree and think its all pretty cool. Old-you going back would realise pretty quick what you're remembering as awesome and better is just rose-tinted nostalgia.

As to how to deal with it - I first took a step back (being too close for too long isn't healthy) and took a break and did different things (gym, running etc). In the meantime i realised i was too invested in this 'fishbowl' and just kind of changed perspective, stopped scrutinising the lore so hard and being determined to be miserable/find fault about it, and just embraced the light-hearted over-the-top cheese and utter silliness of it. It saved my hobby.

 Abanshee wrote:
. Also, I'm immensely depressed right now, so it ain't helping my writing or self-esteem.

I have a tendency to let things get to me and bad lore is one of them.

I think this is a much bigger issue and a bigger impediment to your mental well being/enjoying life than the lore being awful. I hope you're speaking to someone.

Necrons are a good example for what I said about not digging too much into the lore. Early they were just this menacing outline of an incomprehensible lovecraftian cosmic horror (just with living metal instead of tentacles) and they were cool.

Then someone decided to explain as much as possible about them, their chatacter and motivations and all the mystery went POOF! and it turned out Necrons are just dudes like you and me, but robots. Arrrgh!

Just stay with the outlines and you'll be ok. No need to delve into what writers have to produce out of their asses to get their monthly paychecks.

 Lord Damocles wrote:

The Infinite and the Divine was garbage

I've had The Infinite and the Divine on my shelf for ages, but I haven't got round to reading it yet.
People say that it's the best 40k book in years, but having read a LOT of Necron material, and all of Trazyn's previous appearances, I'm expecting to be disappointed by Necrons who are essentially wacky tomb kings in spaaace, basically indistinguishable from human characters, and Trazyn being an idiot who gets his museum trashed for the umpteenth time...

You're...not wrong, sadly. Complaining that something is "Marvel-ified" is overdone to the point of meaninglessness (and far too often comes with a healthy side helping of "ulterior motive"), but in this case it feels somewhat justified - it really felt like Doctor Reverso and Klepto-Man having their yearly "team up to fight The Biggester Evil" episode.
(Also, and this is probably a me thing, I really liked the title up until I realized that it's literally just the names of the main characters.)

 Lord Damocles wrote:
We never knew exactly what the 3rd edition codex was referring to - phase teleportation? That's near instantaneous, but requires infrastructure at the destination, so can't be used to go somewhere new.

Direct C'tan intervention?

Simple hyperbole? If Necrons could actually relocate across the galaxy almost instantly, their naval engagements should always involve loads of ships appearing to help out, yet we never saw that happen.

Even in the 5th edition book, Necrons (and by extension their ships) retained the ability to phase out and teleport, so they still could cross huge distances almost instantly - it's just not a particularly useful method of travel unless you're going 'home'.

The Battlefleet Gothic Magazine battle report 'The Orphan World' described a Necron fleet 'decelerating from hyperspeed' periodically in order to use their scanners. If their realspace FTL was just them blinking from point to point, they wouldn't really be decelerating in any meaningful way.
The various times that their hyperspeed' has been described, we also don't see them just instantly appearing at their destination, further suggesting that the 'blink of an eye' quote is either hyperbolic or referring to some other method of travel.

^All fair. I tend to chalk it up to some mix of the above. I still got the sense that they could non-teleport their way around way faster than "galaxy crossing in months" though. As for why fleets aren't just constantly popping in out of nowhere, there's room for it to be a power-resource related thing.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 SgtBANZAI wrote:
Judging by recent responses, this seems to have evolved into a thread of general complaints now. Adding my due, I must admit I've always hated Necrons, found their inclusion into the setting to be badly written, found their rework ca. 2012 even more baffling and in general I've come to conclusion they are by far the worst race in the setting from my perspective.

There is not enough hate for the Necrons in this fandom.

I did not like them when they first showed up in the lore in the way that they did. I totally get the dislike for them. I only originally bought the army because I had the opportunity to get a bunch of stuff on store credit, and I had just been watching the Terminator movies. I sort of bought them as a joke. But the more I read into their 3rd ed book, the more I liked them, and now that's honestly one of my favorite codexes ever now. I loved how that army was designed and played, and I think now that the Oldcron lore is some of the best.

For GW to release "Pariah Nexus" or whatever that expansion was called, but not bring back Pariahs as a unit, is just salt in the wound.

Generally speaking, the trick to stop hating the lore is to remember that it isn't real. By that, I mean remembering the process that created it is mostly retroactive and not based on how reality works.

Generally speaking, the lore is about making cool things happen. The lore you love was built the same way. The rules behind the world were created later by people who need that kind of consistent logic, but it wasn't in the original author's mind and how "real" it is for subsequent authors is very hit or miss.

This is pretty inevitable with any long form storytelling that doesn't have a central author. On the plus side, it means sometimes you get incredible new ideas the original wouldn't have thought of and on the negative it means you get regular bouts of hack jobs.

Generally speaking, rule one for enjoying anything of the sort, whether its movies or novels or games or comic books, is to follow the talent and not the IP. If you love a specific work, you're probably not going to get the same love out of someone else's version of it. You are very likely to love that author's take on something entirely different though.

Canon isn't real. A bad story that no one references doesn't have any bearing on a good story later told. Power levels are nonsense. They have no bearing on the outcome of future battles because those battles will do whatever makes them most interesting. Never let new stories ruin what makes the old ones great and never let bad rules get in the way of a good story.

 LunarSol wrote:
Power levels are nonsense. They have no bearing on the outcome of future battles because those battles will do whatever makes them most interesting.

Reddit users hated him, for he spoke the truth.

@OP:

Ignore what you don´t like.

I did not like them when they first showed up in the lore in the way that they did.

I have no way to prove this, but I've come to suspicion that introducing Necrons (and especially re-introducing their new designs in 2012) probably had unintended consequences of GW eventually deciding they can make up as much over-the-top, galaxy-destroying, reality- and gravity-defying technology as they want, constantly trying to one up their own inventions with each edition change and new background info, and no one will really object to any of that. Of course, Warhammer was never "scientific", it's space fantasy about giant power-armoured knights riding wolves and fighting 50 meters tall robots, but the sheer scale of "press the button, remove reality" powercreep has gone absolutely out of control, I THINK (don't quote me on exact date) roughly when GW decided to redesign the Necrons and also shed some light on technological level of DAOT humanity and old Eldar empire. Since then it's an unending parade of "But wait, there's something even more cool than that!". It becomes tiring for me personally.

There was a short story published in the late 90s about the Eldar trying to dissuade humans from digging up old weapon systems of their destroyed empire on a remote, now-uninhabited planet. In the end the Eldar are forced to activate the weapon themselves just in case it won't get into the bad hands. They make a big deal out of how absolutely, insanely destructive it is and how it's totally worth it to wage war on humans with heavy casualties to stop them from digging it up, and by description it's just a fancier version of Exterminatus that destroys the planet's biosphere and turns it into smoldering rock. Now compare this "unimaginable weapon of old that is so important we've been keeping guard on it for millenia" with this thing from 5th edition Necron codex:

The Celestial Orrery is a device located at the heart of the Necron Crownworld of Thanatos and is considered one of the galaxy's greatest treasures. It was crafted by the artisans of the Oruscar Dynasty long before the War in Heaven and is beyond any price in artistic value alone. This machine consists of a web of holograms and Necrodermis with the various tiny, floating, glowing lights representing a star in the galaxy. Each of these are recorded in an intricate matrix record that contains the locations of every star in the cosmos. An act that snuffs out any of these lights leads to its physical counterpart undergoing a supernova millennia before its time that destroys all the nearby worlds that circle it. Despite this great power, the Royal Court of Thanatos see themselves as gardeners of creation who dispassionately use the Orrery in a precise but sparing manner. They believe in only pruning the galaxy to prevent it from becoming overgrown and wild.

These guys can quite literally push a button and kill everybody in the setting, they just choose not to.

As an OG 2nd edition Necron enjoyer, people referencing them like they just showed up in 3rd edition makes me feel sad :(

 Lord Damocles wrote:
As an OG 2nd edition Necron enjoyer, people referencing them like they just showed up in 3rd edition makes me feel sad :(

Haha, fair.
They were like Custodes introduction in 2nd though. So few units, but each one was top tier. I think the issue is that awareness of the Necrons was not very high in those days. I think awareness was much higher after some initial battles against mass ressurecting Warriors in 3rd, seeing how many rules the Monolith avoided, and seeing that the Nightbringer could carve a Bloodthirster in half with relative ease. And I definitely remember at least a decade of ire from Eldar players who were offended at Necron lore.

Do you remember when GW did that super metal Necron offer in late 2nd/early 3rd? I recall almost buying that at the time.

I remember getting a free necron on the cover of white dwarf, I think the issue with the Sanctuary 101 batrep. Were necrons around before that?

 Trickstick wrote:
I remember getting a free necron on the cover of white dwarf, I think the issue with the Sanctuary 101 batrep. Were necrons around before that?

I don't think so. There was the old Chaos Android, but the concept of Necrons didn't exist to my knowledge.

This thread is interesting, as the usual suspects for topics like these are Cawl, Primaris, Tau, that thing that made the Tyranids come to the Milky way and something something Horus Heresy was cool when we didn't know anything about it but names.
Instead it's mostly about Necrons for a change

Dead Men Walking is best Necron book, and also best Krieg book. Well, unless you count the Vraks trilogy...

Dead Men Walking had the absurd throwing melta guns from one guy to the next like a grimderp game of hot potato..

Also Scarabs full of goo...

 Lord Damocles wrote:
Dead Men Walking had the absurd throwing melta guns from one guy to the next like a grimderp game of hot potato..

Also Scarabs full of goo...

Lol I guess I just remember the good parts, which is kind of apt for this thread I suppose...

 waefre_1 wrote:
(Also, and this is probably a me thing, I really liked the title up until I realized that it's literally just the names of the main characters.)

Oh no. I've only just realised that. :(

More seriously, I liked the Infinite and the Divine. It reminds me of some of the more high concept yet 'pulpy' sci-fi novels out there.
Take an interesting concept, add good point of view characters and see how wild the setting gets.
Think "A Mote in God's Eye", "Ringworld", "The Way", even "The Long Earth".

While it's no Eisenhorn, it definitely feels like a book with good ideas in it if you are willing to ignore the weaker points in the story.
However *I* have no emotional attachment to the Oldcrons, so the wacky hijinks of Doctor Reverso and Klepto-Man weren't a turn-off for me.

 Lord Damocles wrote:

The Infinite and the Divine was garbage

I've had The Infinite and the Divine on my shelf for ages, but I haven't got round to reading it yet.
People say that it's the best 40k book in years, but having read a LOT of Necron material, and all of Trazyn's previous appearances, I'm expecting to be disappointed by Necrons who are essentially wacky tomb kings in spaaace, basically indistinguishable from human characters, and Trazyn being an idiot who gets his museum trashed for the umpteenth time...

The Infinite and the Divine is 99% a Spy vs Spy cartoon with whacky necrons. If you don't love that concept, you're probably not going to enjoy the book. And yeah, their motivations and personalities are pretty human-like. I'm not sure any xenos in 40k with the capacity for speech has ever actually been all that "alien" in terms of personality.

To those who prefer the faceless horde of mysterious old school 'crons, I feel like you can absolutely still lean into that even with the modern fluff. You just frame your army's lore, battle reports, etc. from the enemy perspective and lean into non-verbal units like warriors and canopteks. From the point of view of the imperial colonists they're disintegrating, these are still mysterious, unspeaking aliens made of metal with eerily inhuman proportions and strange weapons. It's just that there's room for personality, internecine conflicts, etc. for those who want that sort of thing.

I will say that “The Infinite and the Divine” was more enjoyable as an audiobook. The reader does an amazing job capturing the petulance of two very irrational near immortals. It’s a fun book and for the most part not that deep. I’d argue though that there isn’t a deep 40k book. These are for pure entertainment.

Personally I prefer a little bit of character to the necrons. It’s far more fun for me to see eccentric litches that came back just a bit off. Plus you can always make your tomb world in line with the old lore. There’s plenty of worlds running basically just on programming. It just gives other options beyond undead silver tide.

Cyel wrote:
Necrons are a good example for what I said about not digging too much into the lore. Early they were just this menacing outline of an incomprehensible lovecraftian cosmic horror (just with living metal instead of tentacles) and they were cool.

Then someone decided to explain as much as possible about them, their chatacter and motivations and all the mystery went POOF! and it turned out Necrons are just dudes like you and me, but robots. Arrrgh!

Just stay with the outlines and you'll be ok. No need to delve into what writers have to produce out of their asses to get their monthly paychecks.

No, they're a good example of how being a wargame necessitates you give your armies more opportunity for flair and individual personality.

Because it was the fans themselves who clamored for this change. The third edition Necrons were one of the most derided major factions of the game, for their uniformity, blandness, and perceived fluff overpoweredness.. You probably don't remember it, but I was on this site and others when the fifth edition codex came out. And the reaction was largely positive, people were happy they could not characterize their Necrons the way they wanted. And I remember this because I was a diehard butthurt oldcrons defender at the time who hated Ward's fluff. I hated the gutting of the C'tan, hated the more outwardly expressive and at times comical personalities of the Necrons.

But as I've grown older I've realized something. Not that I now prefer the newer lore, oh no. It's that at that time unlike the vast majority of the fanbase my primary interaction with the setting wasn't with the tabletop itself, it was in the stories (both codex and BL), and more importantly the tabletop games. I was okay with the Necrons having a much narrower range of emotions and characterization than all of the armies at the time sans Tyranids (and no I did not and still don't particularly understand why Tyranids escaped this criticism other than maybe being grandfathered in compared to the Necrons). I didn't view them as a vehicle for me to explore a narrative on the battlefield (and indeed, even now I still don't find forging a narrative through the actual wargame especially compelling and much prefer the pen and paper games) and thought they were perfectly compelling as a chillingly logical and dead alternative death to the one you find from the horrifyingly alive and emotive Chaos.

To put it simply, they were fine for me but for someone who might want to play the army and make them yourdudez? The old fluff didn't give you much to work with. It sucks for me but I kind of get where people were coming from then. My point is basically that it seems a little weird to blame it on the writers when it was really the fans themselves who were clamoring for it and the newcrons are considerably more popular than the oldcrons ever were. Oh well.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Lord Damocles wrote:

Why shouldn't I?

Presumably because you're an adult who could make better use of your time than devoting it to reading a children's 40k novel, a combination of two things that are disproportionately bad and not worth reading, making it double as likely that you'll hit a dud.

Why don't you think that children deserve good writing?

So let's get one thing out of the way: what you are complaining about is pedantic nerd gak. There is not a child alive that gives a single gak that a child was able to pilot a Tau battlesuit despite it being logically highly improbable. They read that and say "Hell yeah I have the power of God!" because it's just goofy childish wish fulfillment. Just like how no child complains about Billy Batson being an effective and competent hero despite being a child as Shazam, or about four literal children becoming kings and queens of Narnia at the end of the first book. Or Ender becoming the savior of humanity by destroying the Formics in Ender's Game. None of these stories depict a "realistic" level of competence for the child characters but the child to young teen audience don't care and think it's awesome.

So no, you can not hold a work explicitly aimed for literal children whose brains are not fully developed yet to the exact same standards as one written for adults. Which isn't to say you can't criticize a children's work. If one of the Warhammer Adventures books has a morale at the end that extols the virtues of xenophobia that might be worth complaining about because it sends a bad message to children. From what I understand there in fact is a WA book that does have this morale incidentally, and though certanly "lore accurate" for the setting it is by no means "good writing" considering the audience and really just indicates to me that children's 40k novels were a bad idea from the start.

But nerd gak like "oh well that's ILLOGICAL considering the ESTABLISHED LORE"? No, not an interesting critique of this literal children's work, just like all the bad faith criticisms of Disney's Beauty and the Beast weren't interesting then. Get over it.

I disagree, new Blood Angel high-fiving, relatable, dudes-with-quirks Necrons are a huge step back from incomprehensible lovecraftian cosmic horror in my opinion. But I also find Call of Cthulhu or Dark Souls more compelling than D&D or Fortnight so of course preferences may vary.

 Void__Dragon wrote:
d the newcrons are considerably more popular than the oldcrons ever were. Oh well.

Nothing to do with the expanded model line or anything? 40k had plenty of room for Your Dudes outside of necrons, the cool cosmic horror faction didn't have to die for that.

Not that pre-5th ed. Necrons actually were devoid of personalities - we had many examples of Necrons talking, Lords persuing their own agendas, and numerous different colour schemes...

That whole rant reminds me of some quote like "Childeren's literature is too often used as a sanctuary for bad writers."

Like the ol' "Those who can't, teach." Similarly "Those who can't write, write YA fiction."

Just because something is aimed at a less sophisticated audience, doesn't mean it's shielded from critique. Besides, this is a nerd forum. Therefore it's the appropriate place for "pedantic nerd gak."

. . .
As for Necrons, meh Newcrons suck. At the very least Oldcrons could have retained support while "personality options" (blech) were added in. Make a distinction between forces that were controlled by independent Necron Lords and free from the C'tan, and old-school forces that were still loyal to/controlled by the C'tan. You get even more options for "your dudes" that way.

 Void__Dragon wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:

Why shouldn't I?

Presumably because you're an adult who could make better use of your time than devoting it to reading a children's 40k novel, a combination of two things that are disproportionately bad and not worth reading, making it double as likely that you'll hit a dud

Cool. I'll spend my time doing as I please, thank you.

You could be out there finding a cure for cancer, but instead you're complaining about people engaging in 'pedantic nerd s**t' instead, so..?

 Void__Dragon wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
Why don't you think that children deserve good writing?

So let's get one thing out of the way: what you are complaining about is pedantic nerd gak.

Cool. Don't care. Irrelevant.

 Void__Dragon wrote:
There is not a child alive that gives a single gak that a child was able to pilot a Tau battlesuit despite it being logically highly improbable.

Cool. Don't care. There's no reason a childrens' book shouldn't ALSO be able to be consistent with the universe which it's set in.

 Void__Dragon wrote:
Which isn't to say you can't criticize a children's work. If one of the Warhammer Adventures books has a morale at the end that extols the virtues of xenophobia that might be worth complaining about because it sends a bad message to children. From what I understand there in fact is a WA book that does have this morale incidentally, and though certanly "lore accurate" for the setting it is by no means "good writing" considering the audience and really just indicates to me that children's 40k novels were a bad idea from the start.

I assume that you're referring to Talen in Secrets of the Tau (a plot point which goes nowhere, by the way).

It is 'good writing' in so far as it is logically consistent for the character(s). Within the last couple of weeks, Talen has had his home planet blown up by Necrons, presumably resulting in the deaths of his entire family; he's had a genestealer try to hypnotise/kill him; an ambul tried to turn him into paste; a kroot just came within a hairs breadth of murdering him; and the only 'friendly' alien that they've encountered has almost gotten him and his friends killed multiple times through inaction. He should be xenophobic as all hell.

Besides which, in the more detailed critique from the post(s) I linked to earlier, I point out multiple other non-lore problems with the Adventures books - illustrations not matching the text, events being described which didn't actually happen, the moral messaging around stealing being... problematic, etc.
It is possible to complain about one thing without also having to complain about every other possible thing at the same time.


If one of the Adventures books does extol the virtues of xenophobia though, you can't complain about it can you though. Because they're books for children - they're not for you.
And you're a Chad, not some sort of turbo-nerd who would stoop so low as to complain about a children's book...

 Sim-Life wrote:

 Void__Dragon wrote:
d the newcrons are considerably more popular than the oldcrons ever were. Oh well.

Nothing to do with the expanded model line or anything? 40k had plenty of room for Your Dudes outside of necrons, the cool cosmic horror faction didn't have to die for that.

I would believe the commercially driven argument for this.

I, as a necron player, actually sort of prefer the necrons in their newer iteration without accepting it wholesale, as said above, picking what I like, and leaving what I don't, kind of merging both.

However, overall, I'm leaning toward newer necrons because them being more developped allows me to flesh out stories easier I think.
But I'm still somewhat on the fence, because the necrons as eldritch, enigmatic cosmic horrors that don't seem to reason nor explain themselves is great also because it, like the tyranids, makes them another truly alien race. But stories are not as varied from that starting point I believe. That's only an opinion.

In my personnal head canon for my necrons, while some politics and planning happen, and with more stratas of their society showcased, they do not communicate with others if not to force them into their bidding or threaten them with death if they don't leave an area, without explaination. Somewhat as Dawn of War used to portray them in Dark Crusade. And their Goal IS to wipe anyone else out. Middle of the road.

The beauty of it all is still that it is not real, so you do whatever pleases you, and nothing stops you from collecting a necron army revolving around 3rd edition (or 2nd for that matter) units and sticking to 3rd edition lore. Who cares after all.