So the new necron codex has been released, along with some pretty sweet looking new models and it got me wondering. So far, the game I'm in has used primarily chaos, xenos, and tau (which makes sense) but I wanted to know if there are any rules for necrons out there? Homebrew/official doesn't really matter to my group. Thanks

!SPOILERS!

"The Emperor Protects". It's a pre-newcrons book though.

Alex

Black Crusade has a few Necron profiles in the Core Rulebook as well.

BYE

I love what they did with the Pariahs in the new Codex!

Mind tellings us un-initiated what they did do with the Pariahs?

Gurkhal said:

They're gone, and everybody pretends they never happened.

woah! they got deleted? or just replaced? and, ummm, how come?

I'd like to say something like "Because of Matt Ward", but that's too simple.

They were removed because the Necron fluff got ret-croned (see what I did there? ). Now they enslaved and destroyed the C'Tan, they're afraid of the Eldar (for some reason), they have personalities rather than being automatons and Pariahs don't fit into that new groove.

BYE

H.B.M.C. said:

W

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Siranui said:

Seems like they took all the Necrons personality and tossed it out the door so they could make more "interesting" stories to draw new players.

Lotta hate for the new/revised Necrons around these parts, but I have to say I really think the fluff is a vast improvement over the dreadfully dull Necrons of before.

Siranui said:

Alas, this thread, like all threads dealing with Necron background in the past three months, is plagued by rampant hyperbole, wherein the changes are only explained in a way as to provoke an incredulous response rather than actually discussing them.

ItsUncertainWho said:

Quite frankly, the "personality" of the old Necrons would easily have fitted through a small cat-flap; I personally don't see it as being that much of a loss.

Now, while Matt Ward seems these days to be the Michael Bay of miniatures wargame design, the Necron background as it exists in the new book isn't actually that bad, IMO. It appears worst to those who had a vested interest in the single background concept that they had, which was essentially mindless automaton legions led one of two predefined and vaguely Cthulhu-esque gods. The old Necron Codex basically had no actual background on the Necrons themselves, only a brief explanation of who they once were, accompanied by material that placed their gods as being behind every other conspiracy in the 40k setting.

It was, in a word, boring, at least as far as I'm concerned. Actually employing the Necrons in any sort of RP scenario as anything other than faceless enemies was like trying to recreate the entire score of Star Wars: A New Hope using only a Triangle - ineffective and ultimately frustrating.

The new background brings the Necrons themselves to the forefront, and sidelines the C'Tan to an extent. The origin story begins much the same - the Necrontyr, a sickly and frail species with impossibly advanced technology, warred with the Old Ones, and stumbled across the C'Tan during this ancient war. The C'Tan gave the Necrontyr immortality in the form of potent metal bodies, creating the Necrons, who fought at the feet of their new gods.

Here's where things change up a little. The rulers of the Necrons, as had long been established, retained much more of their self-identity than the commoners (the current background has this as a more gradual distinction - warriors are essentially mindless, Immortals have enough self-awareness to act autonomously and even speak, while the most powerful retain personalities and identities, though damaged by millions of years of dormancy and system malfunctions), and looked with horror at what they had been turned into (this was actually presented before the Necron Codex was released, in the novel Fall of Damnos - the Necron Lords in there demonstrate a good deal of personal body horror). At the end of the War in Heaven, with the Old Ones defeated and the C'Tan at their weakest, the Necrons struck back, turning their weapons upon their gods, shattering their forms and hiding the pieces in pocket dimensions. These shards of C'Tan are enslaved to the Necrons' will, and only contain a fraction of their original power (a true C'Tan can slay a solar system... a C'Tan Shard can lay waste to a small army). We don't actually know how many C'Tan shards there are, nor how many true C'Tan fled and hid rather than be sundered by the Necrons or slain by the Old Ones.

Their numbers depleted from revenging themselves upon their former gods, and with the foremost servants of the Old Ones - the Eldar - in ascendance, the Necrons chose hibernation, to wait out the millions of years until their foes were long gone, at which point they would emerge and rebuild the empire they had ruled before the C'Tan.

Sixty million years later, give or take a few million, the Necrons begin to emerge, in the latter centuries of the 41st Millennium. Some select groups remained awake in the intervening time. Others are irrevocably damaged, such as the accursed Flayed Ones, whose minds have degraded to the point of feral savagery, cladding themselves in the shredded remains of the living and 'drinking' their blood (they don't actually drink - they can't, it just runs down their bodies... but they're too crazy to care), or the nihilistic Destroyers who seek nothing less than the absolute annihilation of all life. For their own part, the Lords and Overlords seek dominion over the galaxy, but they are far from a unified force. Younger species are barely worthy of consideration, at least in the eyes of most, and are butchered without the same honourable conduct that characterises their internecine wars when they intrude upon Necron territories. The Eldar are still the enemy of old, though much depleted, and some Eldar forces have devoted themselves to the war against the returned Necrons (such as Alaitoc, which has apparently been waiting for their reemergence even as other Craftworlds forgot about the Necrons).

Except for C'tan getting pwned I like it. The antagonism to the Eldar (as the old races) is good, that the leaders have personalities but warriors are zombies is in true undead style. There is not supposed to be great interaction with basic crons - just as with animated skeletons. But leaders need personalities, just as a Lich King or Vampire Count.

Just keep the fate of C'tan and the motivations of the crons shrouded in mystery, consider the shards mystic/magic items and I'm totally fine with it.

Alex

Yeah... not keen on the C'Tan being spanked, either. They were a very interesting facet to the game universe. That's ten years of interesting and promising plot teasers and hints out of the window, due to an author's ego, to my mind.

What of all those hints of the Dragon on Mars? Gone? Never happened?

As to lack of personality: Undead armies (which the Necrons are) have always had that to a degree. That's what you get for playing empty husks devoid of personality. It's avoided by piling a bit of personality onto the leader-types. Or not... because some people WANT to play an army of automatons, which is why they are playing Necrons.

Why would they be afraid of the Eldar to such a degree? Just because they lost? Is there more to it, or are all bad guys who lose now subject to fear against whoever spanked them?

Ultimately, I don't mind new canon. What I'm not keen on is when it seems to needlessly roughshod over old canon. It's like the author is peeing up a wall and marking territory. I'm fairly sure that new background could have been developed in concert with the old, instead of ignoring it and pretending that it never happened.

Maybe it's my bias for the Tomb Kings showing, but I really like the new 'Cronz. Especially since I'm a roleplayer and not a TT-player, I find the new fluff ripe with potential for interesting interactions. On that note, the Necrons (or at least some factios) seem to really, really hate Tyranids now, so if any Deathwatch team wants to repeat Blood Angels' stunt and gang up on 'Nids along with a silent army of aeons' old cyborgs, it's now within the realm of possibility.

As a guy with only the most basic understanding of the Necrons, old and new, this new background seems alot more interesting to me than the old one. In fact I think that with the new Necrons I have found something that will work wonderful for my metaplot in my own campaign.

Thanks for the summery!

Anybody else who wants to see Quantum Shields and Living Metal in DW? Not to mention Reanimation?

Alex

I think that way to many faceless evils in different genres are lessened by the touchy-feely need people have to put personalities to them. The Necrons were a nightmarish, uncaring, unfeeling horde of mechanical zombies. No personality, no feelings, no humanity. You didn't feel a connection or kinship to them. They were the perfect bad guy. When you start making them just as petty and emo as everyone else in 40K you end up with nothing but a bland, homogenized re-beating of the same dead horse.

ItsUncertainWho said:

Since the characters will mostly have to do with lower ranks, it'll still be the same. At least in my campaign. I'm going to run them like classical undeads. Including evil overlord.

Alex

ItsUncertainWho said:

Couldn't agree more. Well said.

I guess it is inevitable (and desirable to a degree) that a greater emphasis be placed on the personalities of individual Necron Lords for the purposes of making the Necrons attractive as an army to TT players. After all, the major attraction of 40k tabletop gaming is that you are painting up your army, a unique group of individuals operating within the setting. Necrons have up to now not really had the personality that other armies have had.

But I totally agree that giving them "petty and emo" motivations trivialises them completely, making them cartoonish and implausible.

I would tentatively suggest that as roleplayers we're all hugely influenced by Call of Cthulu, and that the Necrons and the C'Tan have been the closest thing to Great Old Ones in the 40k setting. As RPGers, we're confortable with HP Lovecraft's underlying thesis - that there are immeasurably powerful beings out there, to whom we are less than insects, who regard us with disinterest at best or active malign intent at worst - so the "Old School" Necrons seem attractive in those terms, certainly more than the updated versions.

I think that if anything, 40k already had too many Lovecraftian horrors lurking out there - Chaos Gods, Tyranids, Enslavers, Old Ones (in a way), Slaught... whether the C'Tan make it to that list doesn't change much IMHO.

If the old 'Cronz were unique in any way, I'd be all for keeping them. But they were just like Tyranids, except made of metal rather than flesh, and driven by antropomorphic metal gods rather than a disembodied warp presence. And they're pretty dull at replacing Tyranids, because those at least come in a myriad shapes and color schemes, and can even use a form of subterfuge to ready the world before the devouring begins. Necrons? Monoliths appear, endless metal hordes zap everything until the planet cries uncle, then they disappear without a trace, rinse, repeat.

Then we had the C'Tan themselves... the idea of pure energy beings was pretty cool, but the execution was horrid, especially the way GW tried to shoehorn them into all the plots ever written. And, unlike the Chaos Gods or Tyranid Hive Mind, they were those godly, unstoppable beings that nevertheless intervened directly, which is a poor storytelling device. Call of Cthulhu isn't a great game because you get to see Cthulhu with your own eyes, it's because you know he's out there, and you better stop those insane cultists before they wake him up and the whole world goes down the crapper. No such dilemmas with the C'Tan, because they can just pop in any minute, which is when all you can do is sit back and enjoy the ride. Where by "sit back" I mean "engage in a futile struggle with beings you can't even scratch" and by "enjoy the ride" I mean "rage impotently at the violent deus ex machina".

Compare the new Necrons, who make actual characters, rather than yet another unstoppable force of nature. They are still extremely dangerous thanks to their robust physiques and technology so advanced, it might as well be magic. But now, instead of being this methodical force, they are driven by mad whims of their overlords. Some of them can be reasoned with, some can even become temporary allies, but overall, you're dealing with an ancient force operating on incomprehensible motivations. Your cosmic horror is still there, it's just that now it comes in more flavors.

By the way, one of the things I don't actually like about the new Necron codex is that it seemed to retcon the Enslavers' invasion out of existence. Which is sad, because Enslavers are cool.

You sum up my main issue entirely with your last paragraph: Retcon.

Why the need to retcon, instead of *developing*. There was an idea: They could have developed in and modified it, rather than wiping their a$$ on it and expecting a million fans to pretend it never happened.

Reconning is the sign of either an inept one, or one with an overinflated ego. In Matt Ward; we have both.

Morangias said:

By altering them from unfeeling, unknowable machines into a crazy character leading a force of mindless shells of metal they start treading onto Thousand Sons rubric territory. This, to me, detracts from the uniqueness of the Thousand Sons.

The "incomprehensible" motivations are laid out pretty clearly by NO-1's post. Flesh beings, turned to metal, gone crazy from living or sleeping too long. They are nothing more than crazy leaders with a mindless army that does what they say. This is no more incomprehensible than all the xenos who operate with very human motivations.

I don't see this new background as cosmic horror. I also never saw the Tyranids as a cosmic horror either. Tyranids are a biological horror, not a Chuthulian cosmic horror.

White Wolf had a "no retcons" rule when it was going from 2nd edition to Revised. That's how we ended up with the sh*tty dregs of Dirty Secrets of the Black Hand, and a few other atrocious books, still clinging to the game, despite some clever attemps to excise them.

So I say fie to your 'retcons are bad' nonsense.

Especially when people are too pie in the sky about the old Necron codex.

The new one still includes the possibility of soulless metal monstrosities, in fact anything less than a character has the barest vestiges of a personality at best, so I'm having trouble seeing what the problem here is. No, the problem is with the last codex, where this exact same thing was in the fluff (more or less), and completely ignored

While the C'Tan were ******* lame back in last edition. Attributing virtually everything to these walking godlings was not just dull, but also just plain ruined the feel of the game. And that's not even getting to the part where you could field them on the table, which was akin to being able to field one of the Primarchs. I'll admit I'd like the cthulhonic angle to things, and will miss it a little, but 40K is also a setting where someone can punch out Cthulhu if they're badass enough in their own right (though the Imperium has had a shortage of demi-gods lately).

ItsUncertainWho said:

There is some overlap here, especially considering both have vaguely Egyptian elements in their design. Still, they are pretty distinct in that Thousand Sons are cunning, conniving conjurers of Chaos, whereas Necrons are fiercely anti-Chaos and mostly just downright crazy.

ItsUncertainWho said:

Just acknowledging they are crazy doesn't really mean you understand them. And I'm talking about IC incomprehensibility. OOC, we may know that a certain Overlord regularly sends raids to the same location because that's how he had always done it, but IC, the Imperium is none the wiser. And that's scary as hell when you consider the sheer might of the Necrons compared with their specific kinds of insanity and them not really caring about other races at all?

ItsUncertainWho said:

I think you meant Lovecraftian. I also don't think it means what you think it means. Per the definition , the main principle of cosmic/Lovecraftian horror is "that humans are particularly insignificant in the larger scheme of intergalactic existence, and perhaps are just a small species projecting their own mental idolatries onto the vast cosmos, ever susceptible to being wiped from existence at any moment."

How does an aeons-old race that once ruled the Galaxy and now treats humanity as a vermin infesting their rightful domains not bring that idea across?

Onto Tyranids. They are creatures from beyond the galaxy, equally alien to all inhabitants of the milky way, driven by an intangible psychic presence that connects them all into a single-minded superintellect, and they show no regard for whatever form of life they encounter on their way. That's cosmic horror par excellence. And they don't have to be gods proper to fit, Lovecraftian "gods" were just "sufficiently advanced aliens" themselves.