Don' t know if this is the right forum, but I was going to buy a 40k novel and I was interested in the Necron faction as an outsider wishing he was playing 40k. I was also interested in the Tau. Any suggestions?

The Ciaphas Cain omnibus contains a short-story and a novel involving Necrons.

That's all I've read about them in the novels I've read so far.

As for Tau, one of the Novels in the Ciaphas Cain omnibus contain one novel involving Tau. Also "The Last Chancers" omnibus by Gav Thorpe contain yet another novel involving the Tau.

The Ciaphas Cain omnibus contains a short-story and a novel involving Necrons.

They also make a short appearance in

SPOILER!SPOILER!
SPOILER!
cain's last stand
SPOILER!

The novel Dark Apostle has Necrons in as well, but only towards the end. Mostly it's Imperium vs Chaos, with a lot of Mechanicus involved on the Imperial side.

sepayne7l said:

The Necrons appear in the Ultramarines Omnibus (in what was the novel, "Nightbringer"). There's not a ton of info about the Necrons, and the info on the Ultramarines is of rather mixed quality if you are a fan of the Ultramarines. I couldn't really recommend the Ultramarines Omnibus unless you didn't like the Ultramarines & any other "spess mariens", although there's a good bit of Tyranids in there (aside from the silly Uriel Ventris saving the day & somehow making Lord Macragge mad at him in the process).

Really, the best places would be the Tau & Necron Codexes for your particular questions, along with some of the Forge World stuff. There's also the free Tau Fleet stuff for Battlefleet Gothic on the Games Workshop site... and did I mention that Battlefleet Gothic rules are free to download from GW?

I really like the Tau faction. There is a Tau supplement on the Dark Reign site (minus all the flavor/fluff about the various Fire caste ranks), and there are Kroot mercenaries in the Rogue Trader RPG, as you are aware. The Tau are just too insignificant and on the other side of the galaxy from the Calixis Sector & the Koronus Expanse, so I don't think these RPG books will ever go there.

Thanks for the amazingly quick responses. I'll be checking some of these out.

I hope it's not too much of a spoiler to note that Rogue Star and Star of Damocles feature the Tau (and Rogue Traders!)

The short story Deus Ex Mechanicus is set on a Necron Tombworld too, features some Explorators getting up to no good. It's rather enjoyable! (Can be found in Let the Galaxy Burn ).

Best suggestion at present is to download the Battlefleet Gothic stuff on them. It's not terribly in depth, but it does give a nice feel for the faction without being too much effort (or pricey). (It does well for broadly all factions and is nice and general about '40k' too)

you also can find necron in words of blood in deus ex mechanicus news p 131(29 pages lenght on tech-priest encounter a necron monolyth)