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I hear what you’re saying, and I don’t disagree that the Necron redesign pushed some boundaries—especially in terms of power scale. I initially hated that my murder robots were weird sentient but not sentient? But I think there’s room to see the C’tan situation as less about Necrons outgodding gods, and more about vulnerability and opportunism.

Even in older lore and tabletop gameplay, C’tan shards could be defeated—not because they’re weak, but because they’re fractured. The concept of splitting these godlike beings into shards is what makes their containment plausible. Necron technology didn’t enslave whole gods; it trapped broken remnants. That distinction feels important.

And from a narrative angle, it offers the Necrons agency. Their sentience emerging from beneath oppressive control adds emotional and strategic depth. They’re not more powerful than gods—they’re survivors who fought their way out of bondage using intellect, betrayal, and high-risk tech. Hiding behind the guise of mindless automata waiting to make their move.

It’s the mythic archetype: Prometheus outsmarting Zeus, not overpowering him. That shift doesn’t have to break the setting’s power balance—it could enrich it if explored carefully. There’s a lot of tension still to mine between dynasties, C’tan shards, and the Silent King’s vision.

Except no one else can do this, so having one faction you can play a wargame with being able to undermines the point of the game.

They used tech to break the c'tan and then used tech to trap them. They shouldn' have had that tech in the first place.

 Hellebore wrote:
Except no one else can do this, it's only mythic if it's achievable by anyone, not specifically the one alien race necrons.

They used tech to break the c'tan and then used tech to trap them. They shouldn' have had that tech in the first place.

Humans could do it... If they were still innovating.
Eldar could do it... If they had a cohesive and forward-thinking society.
Tau could do it... Just give 'em time and safety.

Necrons are oldest faction that uses tech. Nids are possibly older, but they're biological.

Totally hear you—but I’d argue it is mythic precisely because it’s rare. The Eldar weren’t just “another race with Webway tech.” Myth doesn’t mean universal—it means exceptional, legendary, the kind of feat that gets whispered across millennia.

And the Necrons were uniquely positioned. They were ancient, desperate, and had access to the science of a time before most factions were even a twinkle in the Materium. That desperation—the deal with the C’tan, the biotransference, the eventual rebellion—is their myth. If anyone could’ve pulled it off, it wouldn’t have been nearly as compelling.

Plus, the tech used wasn’t out of nowhere. It came after they were already enslaved and fragmented by the C’tan—driven by survival and vengeance. It's a story of a species clawing back agency in the face of cosmic horror, not just flexing overpowered tech.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
Except no one else can do this, it's only mythic if it's achievable by anyone, not specifically the one alien race necrons.

They used tech to break the c'tan and then used tech to trap them. They shouldn' have had that tech in the first place.

Humans could do it... If they were still innovating.
Eldar could do it... If they had a cohesive and forward-thinking society.
Tau could do it... Just give 'em time and safety.

Necrons are oldest faction that uses tech. Nids are possibly older, but they're biological.

The necrons did it when they WEREN'T old. They encountered the old ones, lost a war, encountered the c'tan and in some mysterious way their combined power defeated the old ones and doomed the necrons, and then somehow their technology that couldn't defeat the old ones now could subsequently defeat their c'tan gods who they originally needed to defeat the old ones they previously couldn't defeat with their technology.

The lovecraftian primal nature of chaos and c'tan sits as an ever present threat because they can't be defeated. They are primal forces built into the fabric of reality a fact of life. Chaos a product of the existence of life and the warp, c'tan because of energy and entropy in reality. That's how its been for decades. If we are retconning them into just aliens that can be super punched into submission then 40k has degraded far further than I thought.


The only thing gained by giving necrons super god punching technology, is to make that faction look cool. It does nothing but negative things to every other faction and the setting as a whole. I don't think making necrons ROXXOR is worth the issues it causes for everything else.

Ah yes, I forgot that we had the detailed timeline of Necron history pre-transference, and can safely say they were only thousands of years old and not millions.

What about the ancient enemy? The enslavers.

Everyone feared them and they are still around.

They have to be a threat, if everyone mentions them with, "Oh gak, them!"

 Hellebore wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
Except no one else can do this, it's only mythic if it's achievable by anyone, not specifically the one alien race necrons.

They used tech to break the c'tan and then used tech to trap them. They shouldn' have had that tech in the first place.

Humans could do it... If they were still innovating.
Eldar could do it... If they had a cohesive and forward-thinking society.
Tau could do it... Just give 'em time and safety.

Necrons are oldest faction that uses tech. Nids are possibly older, but they're biological.

The necrons did it when they WEREN'T old. They encountered the old ones, lost a war, encountered the c'tan and in some mysterious way their combined power defeated the old ones and doomed the necrons, and then somehow their technology that couldn't defeat the old ones now could subsequently defeat their c'tan gods who they originally needed to defeat the old ones they previously couldn't defeat with their technology.

The lovecraftian primal nature of chaos and c'tan sits as an ever present threat because they can't be defeated. They are primal forces built into the fabric of reality a fact of life. Chaos a product of the existence of life and the warp, c'tan because of energy and entropy in reality. That's how its been for decades. If we are retconning them into just aliens that can be super punched into submission then 40k has degraded far further than I thought.


The only thing gained by giving necrons super god punching technology, is to make that faction look cool. It does nothing but negative things to every other faction and the setting as a whole. I don't think making necrons ROXXOR is worth the issues it causes for everything else.

The lore doesn’t actually support the notion that the Necrons casually overpowered the C’tan with some sudden tech upgrade. It was a long game of betrayal, not brute force.

The Necrontyr were indeed a younger race when they encountered the Old Ones, and they lost that war. But after biotransference, they became the Necrons—immortal, soulless, and enslaved to the C’tan. The C’tan themselves were empowered by consuming the life force of the Necrontyr. So yes, the Necrons needed the C’tan to defeat the Old Ones, but that victory came at the cost of their autonomy and souls.

The rebellion against the C’tan didn’t happen overnight. It came after the War in Heaven, when the C’tan were glutted and weakened from their cosmic rampage. The Necrons didn’t destroy whole gods—they shattered them into shards using weapons that focused the energies of the living universe. These weapons were so dangerous that the Silent King erased all knowledge of them from Necron memory. That’s not a power fantasy—it’s a cautionary tale.

And the C’tan are still primal forces. They’re not “just aliens”—they’re sentient embodiments of physical laws. Killing one damaged reality itself. That’s why they weren’t all destroyed, but shattered and imprisoned. The Necrons didn’t become stronger than gods—they became desperate enough to risk annihilation to escape them.

So the narrative isn’t “Necrons got cool tech and broke the setting.” It’s “Necrons were broken, used, and betrayed—and in their moment of rebellion, they shattered their gods and paid the price.”

 Hellebore wrote:

The necrons did it when they WEREN'T old. They encountered the old ones, lost a war, encountered the c'tan and in some mysterious way their combined power defeated the old ones and doomed the necrons, and then somehow their technology that couldn't defeat the old ones now could subsequently defeat their c'tan gods who they originally needed to defeat the old ones they previously couldn't defeat with their technology.

The texts suggest that the Necrontyr were outmatched by the Old Ones for various reasons, such as the use of the Webway and partially the Old Ones' psychic powers. I think it is reasonable that this could be an insurmountable obstacle to the Necrontyr at the time. With the aid of the C'tan, the Necrontyr then somehow became strong enough to overpower the Old Ones. Exactly how this works has varied through the editions (I'm pretty sure at one point the C'tan were described as empowered by eating Necrontyr life force - it wasn't just delicious snacks - and this made them strong enough to crush the Old Ones), but I think it is not actually important exactly how it happened. One plausible explanation is that the material mastery of the C'tan helped the Necrontyr develop their technology to the quasimagical superscience they are now known for. This could then be turned on the C'tan, which operate by the principles that the Necrontyr had been taught. It all happened long ago, the witnesses are known to have faulty memory, and the whole business was orchestrated by someone literally called The Deceiver, so at least the in-universe narratives are extremely doubtful.

As others have mentioned, it is also likely that an enormous period of time (and technical and cultural development) passed between the Necrontyr initially losing to the Old Ones and the Necron and C'tan winning the War in Heaven, and subsequently turning on the C'tan.

I'd also like to remark on the inassailability of gods. Obviously, Chaos gods (or C'tan) don't work narratively if they are not extremely potent threats. However, I don't mind so much that they can be broken or bound, particularly when the powers involved have just fought something literally called the War in Heaven. It just serves to underscore the true cosmic potency of the factions involved. It's also important to remember that at least as far as the Warp is concerned, the "gods" are not really capital-G omnipotent gods, but more like extremely powerful manifestations of emotional archetypes. (Let's leave aside the silliness of something called "Chaos" being neatly divided into four neverchanging categories.) In the Age of Sigmar universie, Slaanesh has been imprisoned by lesser entities, and I don't think this is narratively disappointing (leaving aside what one may think of the AoS setting in general). I think the key is that such binding must either have happened back in mythic times (as with the C'tan), or be part of some prophesised distant future (as with Ynnead), as it becomes narratively silly when beating a god is a strategic option.

It's easier to win a war when none of your soldiers are crippled by mega-cancer and never actually die.

The main boon was Self Repairing Bodies. Wars of attrition tend to get tricky when your foe Just Won’t Stay Dead.

With the infrastructure supporting that little trick being, presumably, at its absolute zenith? Even a series of crushing defeats won’t erode your opponent’s forces.

You can’t destroy the C’Tan, only shatter them. Given the shards were carefully imprisoned, one can easily imagine an T-1000 style resurrection, given time. And destroying even a single Necron Warrior is a massive task in itself.

Even silly stuff, like the Celestial Orrery is a war winning or at least altering development. Opponent got series military infrastructure deep behind its line, heavily defended? Well, that took a lot of resources to create, and more to maintain. Whooops it’s local Sun just went nova, get out of that you swines. Even if used only once before the Necrons reckoned “Whoa, OK lads. Let’s maybe not do that again, because of all the fallout of removing a major gravity well” it could still change the shape of a galaxy wide war. And we by no means know it was only used the once. If even half a dozen stars were detonated, each with significant enemy resources around them? That’s a massive blow. And because you knew it was coming? You’re well poised to press the immediate advantage.

The problem with the Necrons that isn't shared by the otherwise similar Eldar is that there isn't any coherent reason for them to be less powerful now than they were when they won the War in Heaven. They just left and went to sleep until Warhammer 40k because Ward wrote himself into a corner. All of their stuff is still around and "they don't want to use their full power because they're afraid of how powerful they are" is not valid weakness, that's an anime fanfic character.

Also it doesn't really seem like they "paid the price". They're in a setting where the vast majority of people live under horrible violence and oppression and their biggest problem is existential angst and being bored with how non-threatened they are. They're super powerful and immortal and independent and can do pretty much whatever they want whenever they want. The only thing "grim dark" about them is looking scary. They aren't even real skeletons they're just skeleton-shaped robots, and they only attack people who go into their homes and mess with their stuff. They're the biggest Mary Sues in the game and it drives me crazy that people will complain about Tau or Ultramarines instead of them.

The reawakened Necrons have launched like so many wars of conquest.

That's their deal, the galaxy is there's from millions of years ago and the other races have taken it over.

The "grimdark" comes from the fact that they were of flesh and soul but sold this to win a bitter feud without truly thinking about the cost.
Now they exist as hollow shells and representations of themselves with no way to ever become mortal again, doomed to live for eternity, never dying, never evolving, slowly being driven mad by the weight of eons of stangnacy.
Those that remember their flesh or what they did during the Biotransference often go insane on the spot. Case in point the wife of the Skorpehk Lord from Indomitus. When they regain their free will after the War In Heaven, she realises she turned her children into mindless Warriors, deletes her reanimation protocols and obliterates herself. Her husband, the Lord in question, then goes mad from the realisation that he too destroyed his children and now the love of his life.

 Orkeosaurus wrote:
The problem with the Necrons that isn't shared by the otherwise similar Eldar is that there isn't any coherent reason for them to be less powerful now than they were when they won the War in Heaven. They just left and went to sleep until Warhammer 40k because Ward wrote himself into a corner. All of their stuff is still around and "they don't want to use their full power because they're afraid of how powerful they are" is not valid weakness, that's an anime fanfic character.

Also it doesn't really seem like they "paid the price". They're in a setting where the vast majority of people live under horrible violence and oppression and their biggest problem is existential angst and being bored with how non-threatened they are. They're super powerful and immortal and independent and can do pretty much whatever they want whenever they want. The only thing "grim dark" about them is looking scary. They aren't even real skeletons they're just skeleton-shaped robots, and they only attack people who go into their homes and mess with their stuff. They're the biggest Mary Sues in the game and it drives me crazy that people will complain about Tau or Ultramarines instead of them.

Huh?
The Necrons had the C'Tan during the War in Heaven—and that’s exactly why they aren’t as powerful now. They shattered their gods. That wasn’t a clean divorce—it was a cosmic bloodbath that cost them billions of warriors and the loss of reality-warping allies who could casually supernova stars for fun. The shards they wrangled afterward are barely sentient fragments, not the full pantheon they once served.

And yeah, they went to sleep. But they didn’t wake up fresh and ready to conquer. They woke up fractured, memory-corrupted, and in many cases, insane. Entire dynasties are still dormant, others are feuding, and some are so degraded they’re basically haunted tombs with a kill switch. The Silent King didn’t hit snooze—he hit reset on a civilization that had just nuked its own gods and watched the galaxy collapse into warp-fueled madness.

As for the “existential angst” angle—have you read Twice-Dead King? These guys aren’t bored, they’re broken. They’re grappling with lost identities, corrupted engrams, and the horror of remembering they once had lungs and families. Their immortality isn’t a gift—it’s a slow erosion of self. They’re not Mary Sues, they’re cosmic revenants trying to claw meaning out of a galaxy that moved on without them.

And let’s not pretend they’re just passive skeleton-shaped Roombas. They’ve got planet-killer tech, time-warping weapons, and the ability to snuff stars with a flick of the Celestial Orrery. They choose not to use it all because they’re fractured, not because they’re afraid of their own power like some anime protagonist with glowing hair.