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Cyel wrote: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.

I do find that whole story weird, though not necessarily for the reasons you'd think. Not sure if you've actually read the relevant short story. It's not so much that the BA and necrons sat down around the war table and coordinated plans together. It was more that they agreed to stop fighting each other until the necrons were dealt with so that there would still be a planet to fight over. And of course, both factions were fully planning to betray the other.

That much seems fine. Necrons not being able to automatically delete a hive fleet is fair enough, and opting to let a bunch of humans die instead of wasting finite necron resources seems like a decent plan if it's doable. The weird part is the bit where the Silent King opts to break probably the biggest taboo associated with his status and talk, and he talks to a non-cron. I guess... maybe he thinks so little of humans that it doesn't count as breaking his silence because humans don't count as people? The equivalent of talking to himself in an empty room?

Insectum7 wrote:
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.

Can't you still do that in your army's fluff though? Like, you can still include a C'tan, fluff him as being in charge, and then field nothing but classic 'crons if you want, right? Seems easy enough to say that a Deceiver shard got loose and is enjoying tormenting/using the tomb world he overpowered.

Part of it, I think, is just choosing to limit the audience perspective. Like, Cthulhu 'crons may have been mysterious, but there was presumably always an in-universe reason for their actions even if it wasn't made clear and canon to the audience. I get that the mystery is spooky and adds atmosphere, but you functionally end up with the same thing if you just opt to limit your own units' personalities. (Possibly because of the aforementioned C'tan thing.)

 Wyldhunt wrote:
The weird part is the bit where the Silent King opts to break probably the biggest taboo associated with his status and talk, and he talks to a non-cron.

I dunno, for my money the Silent King wearing a mask of Sanguinius' face while meeting Dante was probably weirder...

Just a point but the mindless Necrons operating on automatic do still exist. They were never written out of the lore. Indeed the bulk of their forces are mindless, or better put they are lacking of will. It's really only the very upper elite of their forces that have a "mind" to them.

So you can get Tomb worlds here the leading ranks don't awaken - disaster destroys their tombs or they fail to awaken etc...


There's also the Canoptek which are fully automatic machines.



Also the whole unknowable unstoppable eldritch horror from space (with tentacles) is kind of already done by Tyranids. Sure they are living not mechanical, but they were doing what the old crons were doing before the old crons were a concept.

So I rather welcome the divide and the evolution of the Necron forces and lore. I also think that it does give you more scope for writing your own stories with your own Necrons. Are they a tomb world that's damaged and essentially a mindless force marching to the beat of war from an eternity ago; are they led by a smart leader who knows what's going on and wants to rebuild his empire of old and wipe the slate clean from all these upstart young races; is the leader slightly nuts and envisioning things of old;etc... There's a lot of scope there for which way you want to go and all of them are valid.

 Overread wrote:
Just a point but the mindless Necrons operating on automatic do still exist. They were never written out of the lore. Indeed the bulk of their forces are mindless, or better put they are lacking of will. It's really only the very upper elite of their forces that have a "mind" to them.

So you can get Tomb worlds here the leading ranks don't awaken - disaster destroys their tombs or they fail to awaken etc...


There's also the Canoptek which are fully automatic machines.



Also the whole unknowable unstoppable eldritch horror from space (with tentacles) is kind of already done by Tyranids. Sure they are living not mechanical, but they were doing what the old crons were doing before the old crons were a concept.

So I rather welcome the divide and the evolution of the Necron forces and lore. I also think that it does give you more scope for writing your own stories with your own Necrons. Are they a tomb world that's damaged and essentially a mindless force marching to the beat of war from an eternity ago; are they led by a smart leader who knows what's going on and wants to rebuild his empire of old and wipe the slate clean from all these upstart young races; is the leader slightly nuts and envisioning things of old;etc... There's a lot of scope there for which way you want to go and all of them are valid.

I am amazed at how much better you explained what I tried to and probably miserably failed to exalted for the cause of the blasphemous nu-crons fans

I like the "new" Necrons (normal for me because I joined the hobby 2018, well after the change).
They are a great outlook on what can go wrong in the pursuit of immortality.

Nobles (the rich) keeping most of their intellect and gaining additionally capabilities, while the masses lose everything but the most basic functionalities is such a bleak outlook. Adding in the constant risk of tiny errors escalating in the perpetual reconstruction of the Necron body, each "death" carrying the risk of being the final one. It's a dark outlook where we as humans living right now could go wrong in the future, and 40k for me is full of such warnings. It's definitely more interesting to me then "robots with no known goal that can't be ever beaten".

I count lore (FLUFF) different to the stories. The lore/fluff is the 'what they are' and these are descriptions of what the units are, their place in their faction and the factions place in the overall universe; their culture, what makes them who they are from the background; what event shaped these space marines to be what they are like now? how do the aspect warriors ritualise before battle? what's the reason for why this guard regiment is uniformed in such way and why they prefer certain tactics? What is this character's role and position in their faction and the world at large?

That was the interesting part of the background. Stories (at least post 3rd edition) and novels tended to fall flat for me.

 Insectum7 wrote:
And I definitely remember at least a decade of ire from Eldar players who were offended at Necron lore.

Two decades now and counting!

Though funnily enough, I kind of like the new Necrons.

 Overread wrote:




Also the whole unknowable unstoppable eldritch horror from space (with tentacles) is kind of already done by Tyranids. Sure they are living not mechanical, but they were doing what the old crons were doing before the old crons were a concept.

Hmm, I absolutely don't see Tyranids like that. They are animals, a natural disaster, a river of instinct driven fire ants or locust but on a galactic scale. Something very different from ancient gods that fed on stars and make you mad if you even try to comprehend them.

Brickfix wrote:
It's definitely more interesting to me then "robots with no known goal that can't be ever beaten".

If your author can't write them with a known goal in mind then they do not actually have a goal and any mystique that you get out of them is empty mystery box garbage that will ultimately disappoint.

For a long time, the 40k fluff was centered around the concept that in a super fast galaxy, whatever you do doesn't matter one whit.

That's terrific and terrible- it allows players to create their own force with their own personal lore and have it all fit somewhere within the setting. They made sure to leave holes for you to fill in.

But the issue with that is still the "nothing you do matters" meaning that by definition your games are always for low stakes and none of the characters you make up can actually accomplish anything because the universe is too big and individuals are too small.

But when they write fiction, they feel a need to make space marines into the most absurd action heroes and the setting seems to revolve around them.


- It also seems like they spend a lot of time building up threats that never actually win any conflicts. When they introduced Tyranids, it seemed like this inevitable force eating its way from world to world- but they've nearly lost every major conflict with the Imperium.

 LunarSol wrote:

Brickfix wrote:
It's definitely more interesting to me then "robots with no known goal that can't be ever beaten".

If your author can't write them with a known goal in mind then they do not actually have a goal and any mystique that you get out of them is empty mystery box garbage that will ultimately disappoint.

Sure. If I would write a story about "mindless automations without known goal" I would of course know the goal, just not disclose it to the reader, for the mystery. Any halfway competent writer would have the same idea, as it is not very hard to either get that idea on your own or get it from someone else.

But it is off course difficult to write a story from the Necron perspective if they are all mindless automatons controlled by star gods. I liked the recent Necron novels because their characters seemed deep and complex enough to entertain me. And that's really all I need from these novels, a little bit of escapism and inspiration for my own homebrew ideas.

Brickfix wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:

Brickfix wrote:
It's definitely more interesting to me then "robots with no known goal that can't be ever beaten".

If your author can't write them with a known goal in mind then they do not actually have a goal and any mystique that you get out of them is empty mystery box garbage that will ultimately disappoint.

Sure. If I would write a story about "mindless automations without known goal" I would of course know the goal, just not disclose it to the reader, for the mystery. Any halfway competent writer would have the same idea, as it is not very hard to either get that idea on your own or get it from someone else.

But it is off course difficult to write a story from the Necron perspective if they are all mindless automatons controlled by star gods. I liked the recent Necron novels because their characters seemed deep and complex enough to entertain me. And that's really all I need from these novels, a little bit of escapism and inspiration for my own homebrew ideas.

That can definitely be done by a single writer in control of the entire narrative. It just doesn't work when you have a bunch of different writers working on it. Granted, I don't think anyone had a plan in mind for what the Necrons were after when they were created. Unknown goals were very much a placeholder.

Cyel wrote:

 Overread wrote:




Also the whole unknowable unstoppable eldritch horror from space (with tentacles) is kind of already done by Tyranids. Sure they are living not mechanical, but they were doing what the old crons were doing before the old crons were a concept.

Hmm, I absolutely don't see Tyranids like that. They are animals, a natural disaster, a river of instinct driven fire ants or locust but on a galactic scale. Something very different from ancient gods that fed on stars and make you mad if you even try to comprehend them.

And there in you've made the first mistake - thinking of them as simple animals

The Tyranids are far more than simple bestial instinct. what they actually want, what their driver and interest are is totally unknown. Domination, conquest, food, flight, whatever it is that drives them is unknown. All we know is what they do - which is feed and even that isn't mindless feeding like ravenous locusts. They plot, scheme; their feeding is tactical, driven by an unknown, unfathomably will of the Hive Mind. Heck even we as players don't even know how things like the Hive Mind truly work.

We've more understanding of the C'tan and Necrons even in the old lore than we do of the machinations and wills of the Hive Mind and Tyranids.



Tyranids are the true horror from space. The true unknown, unstoppable, unflinching terror. Where one dies a billion more rise to replace; where any weakness is bred out; where any new challenge is surmounted by a fearsome intelligence that directs from the shadows

Anyway- back to the OP

- The way that you "stop hating the lore" is the same as with Marvel or DC comics.

No matter who your favorite comic hero is, they've had a bad writer at some point, or a bad run or some horrendous retcon that completely destroys the character, or even just a writer that simply has a different idea about a character..

Well, just ignore the bits you hate.

(For example- that time Cyclops abandoned his wife and child to go hang out with his ex-girlfriend who had returned from the dead and didn't even call and check up on his actual family or tell his dead ex about his married life- and years later they made his abandoned wife into a super villain clone in order to justify his nonsense, but it doesn't really justify it because Cyclops didn't know any of that stuff that they hadn't written yet. Yep, wouldn't be awful to ignore that bit of official continuity when reading about Cyclops in later stories)




I personally take issue with the scale creep of primarchs. Back in the day, marines weren't crazy huge monsters and primarchs could pass as unaltered humans except to the point that the Emperor recognized them all based on their heroic accomplishments.

Making them all into ten foot tall behemoths looks good on the table, but it makes one's head scratch at the thought of Night Haunter having a secret identity or Alpharius being indistinguishable from his legionnaires.


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- By the way, I think it is quite clear that GW writers intentionally leave holes in the lore to be used later on. A lot of their ideas definitely aren't "this was the plan from the start" so much as a sort of emergent creation.


I think that the lore about the Necrons might have started emerging with the Eye of Terror- specifically the battle for the Black Library which was primarily between Thousand Sons and Eldar, but necrons could participate.

GW commented on how necrons overwhelmingly were protecting the library (ie- necron players fought against chaos a lot)

Comic books - or at least DC/Marvel superheroes - I feel are in a league of their own because they get repeated and adjusted so often its almost insane. Some of the big names are retold so many times over that you really can pick whatever flavour you want and there's probably a Batman out there that fits.

Heck its one reason I avoid DC/Marvel because I'm the kind of person that likes to know the whole story and those comics just present such a VAST amount of material that it would cost a fortune to catch up (not to mention be super super messy working out what order to read it all in)

 odinsgrandson wrote:
But when they write fiction, they feel a need to make space marines into the most absurd action heroes and the setting seems to revolve around them.


- It also seems like they spend a lot of time building up threats that never actually win any conflicts. When they introduced Tyranids, it seemed like this inevitable force eating its way from world to world- but they've nearly lost every major conflict with the Imperium.

Yep. If you have a main space marine chapter you know they're at worst going to earn a draw and they're usually going to have a heroic victory against whatever NPC faction they're fighting. No stakes, no development of the setting, only bolter porn for 14 year old boys to fantasize about. GW needs to tone down the marine focus and let them lose sometimes. Let the entire Ultramarines chapter be wiped out by a GSC uprising. Let the Black Templars have to choose between humbling themselves and begging for help from a guard regiment and their psyker support or fighting a last stand that permanently ends the chapter's existence in the setting. Have the Salamanders tell Daddy Ultrasmurf exactly where he can shove his primaris abominations, execute Cawl for tech heresy, and drag the Imperium into civil war. Have most books not include even a single marine.

But alas bolter porn sells and you can have any random hack author put out a whole Black Library series in a month or two for minimum budget and GW doesn't have enough ambition to challenge the easy status quo.

Cyel wrote:
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.

You disagree with what? It's not my opinion that newcrons were immediately more popular than oldcrons ever were it's a fact. I vastly preferred the oldcrons as well but that doesn't change the fact they were one of the least liked armies, particularly from a fluff standpoint.


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 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.

But they did. And most players prefer it that way I'm sad to say.

Good gravy the amount of angst and edge in this post is insane. I agree with the wider point that 40k needs to be less Astartes-centric but damn dude take it down a notch.

Let the entire Ultramarines chapter be wiped out by a GSC uprising. Let the Black Templars have to choose between humbling themselves and begging for help from a guard regiment and their psyker support or fighting a last stand that permanently ends the chapter's existence in the setting. Have the Salamanders tell Daddy Ultrasmurf exactly where he can shove his primaris abominations, execute Cawl for tech heresy, and drag the Imperium into civil war.

Why stop there, let's just kill every single Space Marine in the setting while you're at it.

 Gert wrote:

Spoiler:

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:
Yep. If you have a main space marine chapter you know they're at worst going to earn a draw and they're usually going to have a heroic victory against whatever NPC faction they're fighting. No stakes, no development of the setting, only bolter porn for 14 year old boys to fantasize about. GW needs to tone down the marine focus and let them lose sometimes. Let the entire Ultramarines chapter be wiped out by a GSC uprising. Let the Black Templars have to choose between humbling themselves and begging for help from a guard regiment and their psyker support or fighting a last stand that permanently ends the chapter's existence in the setting. Have the Salamanders tell Daddy Ultrasmurf exactly where he can shove his primaris abominations, execute Cawl for tech heresy, and drag the Imperium into civil war. Have most books not include even a single marine.

But alas bolter porn sells and you can have any random hack author put out a whole Black Library series in a month or two for minimum budget and GW doesn't have enough ambition to challenge the easy status quo.

Good gravy the amount of angst and edge in this post is insane. I agree with the wider point that 40k needs to be less Astartes-centric but damn dude take it down a notch.

Nah sergeantbob is not going to do that.

And neither is gw going to burn money doing what he suggests. Shows bob has zero business sense.

(also if you are faithfull to fluff ultramarines are practically impossible to kill off without killing off imperium which is game over. Apart from Guillimann(warp powered creature needing basically warp to kill off) allowing recreation if needed imperium has enough ultramarine geneseed they can recreate ultramarienes over several times)

Tyranids DID eat their way to the Ultramarine homeworld and tore a huge chunk of them up. Granted the marines survived, but they paid a heavy price for it!

 Overread wrote:
Tyranids DID eat their way to the Ultramarine homeworld and tore a huge chunk of them up. Granted the marines survived, but they paid a heavy price for it!

And Battlefleet Bakka saved the day, but barely anyone even remembers them...

 Gert wrote:
Good gravy the amount of angst and edge in this post is insane. I agree with the wider point that 40k needs to be less Astartes-centric but damn dude take it down a notch.

GW destroying marine factions: "oh god edge stop it".

GW destroying NPC factions: "excellent way to advance the plot".

Nothing I suggested there is any worse than what GW has done to non-marine factions, if you object to it that strongly you should question your marine bias.


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 SgtBANZAI wrote:
Why stop there, let's just kill every single Space Marine in the setting while you're at it.

I love how "marines should suffer losses like every other faction" is treated as equivalent to GW killing off all marines in the setting. Do marine fans genuinely not read any non-marine fluff and see examples of non-marine factions losing or are they so used to winning that anything less than total victory is an attack on their beloved faction?

The main difference is Tyranids have 1 model set - Tyranids. Same for every other faction. So if one subfaction dies out or takes critical losses, the faction remains identical on the tabletop.

Marines are different. Their subfactions have unique models and subgroups of their own. If you destroy all Ultramarines then that's actually a dedicated set of models GW produces and sells and markets and a selection of specific players who are cut out.

Marines are the only army this applies too - Imperial Guard are a "bit" similar but since there's really only one core force (cadian) and then one unit box or so per sub-group as flavour, its not quite the same. You destroy all Catatchans and the IG player only loses 1 box of models. Still a loss and not one I'd want them to have, but its vastly different to wiping out a key marine subgroup.

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:

GW destroying marine factions: "oh god edge stop it".

GW destroying NPC factions: "excellent way to advance the plot".

What "NPC" factions or subfactions has GW actually destroyed? Totally destroyed? Like you propose to completely destroy the most famous Space Marine chapter?

 SgtBANZAI wrote:
What "NPC" factions or subfactions has GW actually destroyed? Totally destroyed? Like you propose to completely destroy the most famous Space Marine chapters?

Hive Fleet Behemoth: totally wiped out.

Cadia: homeworld destroyed, all but a few off-planet survivors killed.

The marine favoritism is obvious given that the destruction of Cadia is a very recent piece of lore, not some barely-remembered thing from 2nd edition.


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 Overread wrote:
Marines are different. Their subfactions have unique models and subgroups of their own. If you destroy all Ultramarines then that's actually a dedicated set of models GW produces and sells and markets and a selection of specific players who are cut out.

This is exactly the problem though. Every marine chapter gets to be treated as its own separate faction, while NPC factions have all their regiments/hive fleets/etc be treated as interchangeable color schemes. Ultramarines vs. Salamanders shouldn't be any different from Cadians vs. Catachans.

But aside from that there's no reason models from dead factions can't be kept in production for use in "historical" games set before the destruction of the faction, or to represent isolated survivors who were not present for the final battle. It's fine for Cadian models to represent the last dying remnants of the faction after Cadia was destroyed, why can't Ultramarines players deal with the same treatment?

The thing is lore tends to advance along one rough timeline. If you destroy a faction in lore then why should that faction ever get any new models? They won't do anything to advance with the story so they are off to one side.

This means its very likely the firm won't tell new stories; won't advance hteir plot; won't give them new models or updated sculpts.

Gamers don't like playing armies that get nothing new because armies with nothing new are often armies that slowly get left out. They don't get the same balance/rules passes; they don't get production perks; they don't get the lime light or attention and they often drift to the side for ages or are just flat out removed from the game.



In the end the lore always serves the product

If you want stories where whole factions and races and such die off - read regular books.

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:
Hive Fleet Behemoth: totally wiped out.

Cadia: homeworld destroyed, all but a few off-planet survivors killed.

The marine favoritism is obvious given that the destruction of Cadia is a very recent piece of lore, not some barely-remembered thing from 2nd edition.

Behemoth is very explicitly not gone because the Imperium has never been able to wipe it out. The main tendril into Macragge was destroyed along with others but the whole fleet was never eradicated, hence why Behemoth got sub-faction rules when they were introduced. Weird that for a Hive Fleet that supposedly got wiped out.

Cadia is a sector not just a planet and there are millions if not billions of Cadian Guardsmen running around the wider galaxy. They also got an ongoing book series specifically centered around a survivor of the destruction of their home planet and got a bunch of new models as well. Again, very hard to see how Cadian's specifically have been thrown under the bus. Catachans or any other Regiment that previously got models? Absolutely but Cadians? Not a chance.

It brings me many chuckles when people claim the background is terrible now and then just don't know what they're on about.

 Overread wrote:
If you want stories where whole factions and races and such die off - read regular books.

Except in 40k factions do die off, as long as they're only NPC factions and not marine chapters (other than expendable minor chapters that die in the book they were created for).


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 Gert wrote:
stuff

A faction is still destroyed to advance the plot even if GW throws in a token "there were a few survivors who weren't at the final battle" so you can continue to use your existing army.

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:

Hive Fleet Behemoth: totally wiped out.

The main body of the fleet was destroyed, but it was not totally wiped out, as multiple fragments survived, often even bearing the same colours. Behemoth remnants broke free out of Anphelion project, for example.

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:
Cadia: homeworld destroyed, all but a few off-planet survivors killed.

Define "a few". There were multiple Cadian regiments throughout the galaxy at the time of its destruction. We also know it is possible for the regiments to claim the planets they've liberated as special reward for their services; if said planet was previously uninhabited, majority of its population will be Cadian descendents. After Cadia's destruction, some of its original population founded another colony:

Imperial forces escaping Cadia's destruction would later arrive in the Agripinaa System, however, and they fought the invaders. Among them was the Cadian General Isaia Bendikt and, after the System was cleansed, he declared Chaeros was to be renamed as New Cadia.

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:
A faction is still destroyed to advance the plot even if GW throws in a token "there were a few survivors who weren't at the final battle" so you can continue to use your existing army.

That's a lot of words for "I was wrong".