George Labour said:

Makes me look at their involvement in Lady Malys' plans in a different light.

George Labour said:

Wait, what?

Blood Pact said:

There are reasons both for the Tyranids to avoid Necron Tombworlds (Necron technology that protects their worlds from psychic observation/attack) and for the Necrons to actually attack the Tyranids (the Tyranids threaten to destroy everything that the Necron Overlords seek to dominate - indeed, the threat of the Tyranids is what drove the long-exiled Silent King of the Necrons back to the galaxy, only to find that his people hadn't yet fully awoken).

See? The motivations of the Necrons are all too apparent. As soon as you can understand a faction's reasoning, they become substantially less scary because you don't have deduce a pattern to predict their course of action anymore.

Alex

N0-1_H3r3 said:

So nobody noticed -in the history of the Imperium- that a whole slew of Imperial worlds had a psychic null-field over them? And the Eldar didn't at any time cotton onto this, either?

ak-73 said:

The problem with this line of reasoning is, new Necrons are hardly a faction. They have highly personal motivations, flavored by various kinds of insanity, and predicting their moves on the galactic scale is going to be rather difficult. Dealing with a "get the f*** off my lawn" Overlord is going to be substantially different from dealing with a "I got the Flayer disease and wish to wear your Governor as a night gown" Overlord, or the "I want to be flesh again, so I'm going full Alien Body Snatchers on your planet" Overlord. And many, many more.

The Necron Overlords are insane, slaves to their obsessions, delusions and aeons-old ploys and vendettas. Some can be appeased, in some way that you're bound to not like, most won't hear any of your nonsense. Each of them commands legions of self-repairing, Astartes-hard battle cyborgs and arcane technology that defies all laws of reality you know. And now they're standing just outside your city.

How is that not pants-shitting terrifying?

Siranui said:

Given that a significant portion of the early history of the Necrontyr involved a war against the psychically-powerful Old Ones and their Eldar armies, I imagine that eventualities like this were considered, particularly as part of the reason the Necrons went into hibernation was to wait out and essentially sleep through the rise and fall of Eldar civilisation undisturbed. We know that while the ancient Eldar did seek out and destroy much of what the Necrons had built, there was a lot of it that they simply couldn't find, so clearly the fields were both fit for purpose (hiding the presence of the Necrons from their psychic enemies) and quite effective (because said psychic enemies didn't find them), even if age and decay has seen some of them fail.

Regarding known motivations... the problem with keeping a faction's motivations secret is that it actually makes it quite difficult to present them as a force that people will want to use in a wargame. Beyond that, the old Necrons (after the Codex was released) weren't mysterious either - we knew their motivation: they sought (in as much as a mindless robot can pursue any goal in this way) the annihilation or enslavement of all life in the galaxy. What has changed is that this is no longer the only motivation they can have.

Morangias said:

Because as soon as players understand how an npc or faction ticks, they become a set of statistics mostly.

Alexex

Except if you put it like that, there isn't and won't be a scary enemy in any traditional game medium, ever.

You can have a mysterious, elemental evil in a video game, because the player only knows what the authors want to make known.

RPG and TT gaming are interactive mediums where you create your own stories. You can't tell a story about X if you have no idea what X is.

The players don't need to understand in full what's going on. Discovery and slowly unravelling some of the mysteries is part of the fun. Ever played Dark Conspiracy RPG? Loads of fun it has been.

Alex

ak-73 said:

Here's the thing: if you use anything that exists in game world's canon, the players will know how it works. If they're good, they'll act surprised, if they're not, they'll start metagaming. Old Necrons or new Necrons, the players will know what Necrons are. Except with the old Necrons, once they figure out it's 'Cronz, that's pretty much it. No way to reason your way out of this, it's just zombie apocalypse on steroids, survive or die trying. This may be fun once, but the next time it happens, you're repeating yourself.

Compare the new 'Cronz, who may have appeared for virtually any reason. Maybe some Lord got pissed at humans infesting his perfect dead world and lo, it's metal zombie apocalypse again. But what if his motives are different? Is there a way to stop the massacre? What does the crazy sucker really want from this world? Now, instead of just playing hide and seek with the horde of terminators, the players can think - analyse the patterns, scan vox frequencies for weird transmissions, frantically try to recall local legends, or maybe just storm the Tomb guns-blazing and ask the goddamn Overlord directly. Whatever they choose, with new Necrons, it makes sense to do anything else than just kill as many suckers as you can while staying alive. And whatever they choose, it can be a different story each and every time. And most importantly, it's the story you, the GM, cooked up specially for them. Which means no metagaming - no matter how thoroughly the players parsed and memorized the new Necron codex, they won't find the answer to your riddle there, so they have to figure it out on their own.

Morangias said:

Which is why several people here have raised an interest in the minor xeno races.

Morangias said:

It's not so much a matter of choices but of perception.

Morangias said:

It's a matter of hinting at underlying motives, hinting at a truth beyond what can be discerned from the outside. That's easier with old crons, I guess.

Morangias said:

As they could try to do with Tau, Eldar, Chaos, etc. Old hat.

Morangias said:

To me it sounds rather like more of the same, as if you could run pretty much the same plot with about any other faction.

Alex

There are no underlying motives with the old Necrons. They came here to kill everyone, and that is all.

The only difference between old and new Necrons is, with new Necrons there is some reason behind the event. A dark, insane, cryptic reason, but it's there and players have something, anything, to work on beyond the immediate "I'm being blasted to atoms by a metal skeleton!".

I've got to agree that the Necrons need a lot of work coming into this codex. Mysterious unknowable enemies work fine RPG's hell, compared to a lot of badguys in RPG's the background in the first necron codex was pretty **** extensive. But sadly they aren't just unknowable badguys, people are going to be 'playing' these guys and for enjoy narative campaigns, battle's with objectives, larger games with allied forces etc. There's a number of things that now makes sense for the wargame that didn't before (and you'll have to excuse GW of

• Think of all of those games where a Necron player has had to side with another, non necron player, under previous codex 'bullsh!t' never happens (as unlikely as it is at least you can stretch it a bit).
• Imagine another video game with the Necrons as a playable race, they'd have to add some talking at that point to add somekind of narative, you can hardly not allow necrons to be playable in video games because they are only ever badguys.
• Even converting and deviating from the standard colour scheme didn't really make any sense in the previous codex.
• Necrons fighting necrons.

Did Matt Ward succeed with the new codex background? I think so, to one degree or another. Retconing the background has been a staple of 40K for a very long time. Mr Ward is as subtle as a carpet bombing when he does it though, which IS rare in GW circles. The c'tan were themselves a limiting factor for the necrons rather than a bonus, they've imediately gone from two models to any number of potential conversions and that alone is good thing, as is allowing the Necron characters themselves a chance to shine and be complete individuals. I like to imagine that the previous codex is what the perception of the Necrons was for the Imperium at time of the early awakenings, and after numerous battles and horrible rinsings that they now realise that they have never even seen a C'tan. If anything it makes the C'tan even better and more mysterious now that we know there could still be some out there in hidding manipulating from the shadows (without just appearing on battlefields to blow up a tank).

The downsides are that the characterisations of the Necron overlords is pretty bad, a direction i would have preffered (again they didn't even ask me, go figure) is that when they awoken they immediately started seizing land for their own Empires with which to battle each other for supremacy of the galaxy completely overlooking all other races.

The worse thing about the codex is the actual rules, urgh. Nothing says 60million year old god killing imortals like a string of flaws with everthing they have or use. Flaws that aren't even unique to the necrons, I know that MW was going for a Tomb King style army of rubbish but implacable hordes bolstered directly by powerful characters but that's not even new to the 40K line up.

From what I understand, many Necron Overlords are doing just that - launching attack after attack at everything they ever considered to be their dominions, and reclaiming ground like it's going out of style. But, and that's what I think is the biggest strength of the new Codex, it's just a trend, not a species-wide direction. Which is good, because if there's one thing 40k universe needs badly it's more nuanced handling of all the factions. Right now, Necrons can be used to make truly individual villains with complex motives.

I must admit, I have taken a bit of a 180 degree turn with my opinions of the new necrons.

Firstly, I will admit I don't give two hoots about what makes for a good TT army, I'm in this for the RPG aspect!

The one thing that has changed my opinion from overly negative to slightly positive is that the new "chatty" necron overlords with personality are not essential to using necrons in an adventure. So I can still have my "mechanical zombie appocalypse" with freshly awakened, no-overlord Necrons, but I can also do the inscrutable plan style of adventure with a necron overlord at the heart of the web.

Indeed I can even see an adventure where the party deliberately tries to awaken an overlord, so they have a chance of stalling the oncomming horde of cyber-anihilation!

I'm suddenly wondering how the depiction of the Necrons will change in any future Ciaphas Caine books.

Though I suppose nothing about the new Necrons precludes him from being scared to death of them, or them anihilating virtually everything they go up against.

Blood Pact said:

I would risk a guess that nothing will change. After all in all their appearances the necrons in Cain's adventures were freshly awakened and not really what I would call "coherent". And aren't his adventures placed during the period in which the necrons were just starting to awaken?

Due to various circumstances beyond my control (work, Christmas, birth of my son etc) I wasn't able to read the new Necron Codex until recently. This will, of course, make me appear rather ridiculous, as I was sounding off from an early stage about my concerns about the book despite not having read it yet.

I think I'm going to have to eat some humble pie: I think the new Necron Codex is really good.

(Please note I'm not getting in to the TT rules in this min-review: I have a small Necron army, but haven't played with the new codex yet, so I'm not well placed to comment on the rules - this is a setting/background review, really.)

I was a huge fan of the original Necron Codex book, and must admit I was worried when I heard Matt Ward was writing the follow up. I'm not a Ward hater - I actually liked the Blood Angels book, and couldn't really see that he deserved the vituperative bile thrown at him for it. However, I didn't (and still don't) like many of the features of his Grey Knights codex. It seemed (and seems) to me to trample on many of the key background features of the Grey Knights, and frankly to seem a bit overegged and...well... lame in places.

So I approached the new Necron Codex with trepidation. Necron Lords rubbing their hands with glee and cackling away like **** Dastardly in the white dwarf battle report didn't assuage my fears, either.

All in all though, I needn't have worried. it's a good book.

It actually addresses neatly my major concern about Matt Ward's writing: that he's prepared to trample all over other earlier writer's work to get across his own interpretation of the setting. There's not a huge amount of this in the new codex. Instead, he seems to be adopting the 40k "house style" a lot more. The 40k house style (as I read it) involves adding layers of complexity and nuance to existing canon by allowing multiple interpretations of the same event, and by adding ambiguity where possible; taking nothing away from previous works, while adding detail to the setting all the time.

The underlying tone of the earlier Necron Codex has changed, but although I worried hugely about this in advance, I now don't necessarily regard this as a bad thing. Before, the Necrons were mysterious ancient, evil and devoted to the destruction of all living things. Now they're most of these things, but with a wide variety of conflicting and/or insane agendas basd upon degraded programming.

Ward has actually skillfully adapted the codex to favour players who want an individual and unique army. I knew in advance that this needed to be done, (the one legitimate criticism of the "old" Necrons was that they were ciphers without any character) but worried Ward wasn't up to it.

He was. He's provided an updated background that slots in well with the original codex that not only allows for a wide variety of play styles and armies, but which hangs together well within the 40k setting. The book makes sense from a setting perspective. It is internally consistent. There are no real glaring contradictions between the two codexes in terms of setting: what conflicts there are can be read as differing interpretations of the same (incredibly ancient, almost mythical) events.

As a big fan of the C'Tan, I was worried in advance abut the idea of them being "neutered" by degrading them into prisoners/slaves of the Necrons. In fact, the way Ward has dealt with the C'Tan is neat and really opens them up as a race of malign entities that can be exploited on both thetabletop and in 40kRPG. What's not to love about puissant malign demigods imprisoned by their slaves and angling to be released? That's the basis of a whole 40kRPG campaign right there! And Ward has sensibly left 40k some room to paint with by hinting that there are still some true C'Tan out there active in the galaxy, in a neat piece of 40k house style ambiguity.

I like the new trrop types and vehicles, and although I find a few of the characters rather overdone and cheesy, on the whole they're a lot more fun than I expected.

In fact from a setting point of view, the only thing I'm baffled by is the absence of the Pariahs, an elites choice who appear to have vanished completely. (Let me know if I'm wrong on this, I'd be delighted to be mistaken about this!) It drives me MAD when GW do this: create a whole class of minis that you rush out and buy for your army, which are then totally abandoned in a later iteration. Very frustrating.

All in all, the Necron Codex has been a really pleasant surprise. After the Grey Knights Codex, I began to dislike the Grey Knights. After the Necron Codex, my love of Necrons is rekindled. And I now find myself thinking of ways to bring Necrons in 40kRPG, - which can only mean that the codex works as an addition to the setting!

Lightbringer said:

This cannot be a one-man decision. This must be business policy.

Alex

WittyDroog said:

Your not suggesting the Therians originated from before the Necrons are you? That's just a siggestion of "Better", rather than "Before and better" yes? Necrons pre-date AT-43 by quite some bit, and their look originates from the earlier "chaos androids" of 40k (which were quite clearly terminator rip-offs).

"This cannot be a one-man decision. This must be business policy."

Hmm... Well there must be some sort of checking but there are some rumours that suggest Matt Ward has in fact tried to make background other people had written un-canon by explicitly contradicting events written about by other authors (stating characters are at opposite ends of the galaxy than where other sources say they were etc). Whether it is true or not, generally what fluff he has written has been balls.

borithan said:

See, I think that's unfair. Matt Ward is far from my favourite writer in 40k, but he really doesn't deserve that kind of criticism. I'll admit, I have described some of the stuff in the Grey Knight Codex as "lame." I stand by that - the whole thing about Grey Knights killing Sororitas to get their blood leaves me cold, and the overblown Kaldor Draigo stuff makes my toes curl - but the Blood Angels Codex was (in my opinion) a nice piece of work, and I really like the Necron Codex. Like I say in my review, given my feelings about the Grey Knights Codex, I didn't have high hopes going into the Necron codex, but as far as I'm concerned, Matt Ward knocked it out of the park and did a really good job.

I guess I have to hold my hands up and say I've complained and had the odd dig in the past about Matt Ward's writing too...But I'm amazed how far some of the attacks on him go. It's gotten to the point where criticising Matt Ward's writing has almost become an internet meme. The quantity and degree of criticism is astonishing, and in my view totally undeserved. Some of the stuff out there is horrible ...It wouldn't surprise me if the poor guy's received death threats. He doesn't deserve that, or the casual personal insults that seem to get thrown at him every time his name crops up.

I would point out that it's HARD to write well for 40k. It's easy to criticise and nitpick, but it's hard to write consistently good quality stuff that doesn't conflict with earlier canon. It's a multi author setting going back 25 years with a convoluted history, and everyone makes mistakes.

I've made serious canon errors myself when writing fan material for 40k. I consider myself to know the canon pretty well - I've been into 40k since the very start, own every codex, virtually every 40k book etc etc. A while back I wrote up complete rules for the Marines Malevolent in Deathwatch. I spent a long time on them, and felt pretty pleased with myself - until I posted them and someone casually pointed out that my interpretation totally conflicted with the marines malevolent as set out in the Salamanders series of books - one of the few 40k series I hadn't read. I felt like throwing my laptop through the windscreen of a passing car!

Lightbringer said:

This makes me glad I haven't read that codex.."WTF?" doesn't justify the lack of comprehension I feel right now. Found it, read it, and was blown away.

I agree that some people get their panties in a bit of a twist simply hearing his name is associated with a bit of work- and some people insult him because the community does, but I'm pretty sure the BA codex had them allying with Necrons at one point? And made every Chapter of marines worship the Ultramarines? In addition to having him kill Sisters of Battle because they needed some clear coat on their armor. When you blow away not just bits and pieces of canon, but whole universal themes it's bound to get people enraged. In something like 3 years the guy has taken the universe people knew and loved, and turned many facets of it on it's head.

But at the same time, if it was having a significant negative impact on GW's sales, perhaps they'd remove him from his position. I would suspect (though have no real insight into GW business policies) that if his writing was losing them money, they'd put him back on Lord of the Rings. I agree with Alex here, there is at least some sort of corporate buy in to his changes. Having new codicies with all new models and all new powers makes money. And without power creep, you don't sell new stuff as fast.

I don't have a problem with the Grey Knights sacrificing the battle sisters. It underlines the grim, no-holds-barred attitude of the Grey Knights.The effect would have been greater if they had sacrificed/killed regular Astartes but I guess that lacks a fetish component.

What bothers me is the shedding of innocent, pure blood to protect one's self from khornate daemons. That works? Seriously? You just have to take over their work, I guess. And I don't like Draigo wrecking stuff in the warp with impunity. He is able to locate all kinds of major locations, travel to that place and mess things up, then move on. Without any overwhelming opposition by warp entitites/daemons. Well, I would assume that someone stuck in the warp would be utterly lost without sense of direction or rhyme or reason but I guess I was wrong. But that's just stuff I don't like, nothing that makes me rage. What I consider a serious blunder though is his making 98% of marines Ultramarine wannabes in the vanilla codex. I believe that is where his bad rep truly comes from in 40K.

Overall his fluff isn't that ZOMG terribad. It is bad on occasions and very bad on some occasions. And his crunch is solid. Plus I don't think at all that it comes down to his authorship. He surely writes the stuff in coordination with others and there is other people who give their okay or who tell him "Nah, you gotta change that". In todays business environment practically everything is a collaborative effort, rightly so.

Alex

ak-73 said:

True, but I'd venture a guess and say you rarely become rageful when it comes to things such as a game . But agreed, Draigo is just a little too uber for my taste.

As for the ultramarines, I think that's why the chapter has a bad rap (and basically created your other thread about fixing them)- people have a bad taste in their mouths from the codex.

Charmander said:

From what I recall, that's an overstatement. BAs were fighting Necrons on some planet, both sides caught up in a long war of attrition, when the Tyranids came. Both sides then ceased hostilities to deal with the more immediate threat that the Nids posed, and when they were finally done with them, neither side had the strength to keep on fighting, so they both retreated. Not the most glorious day in the annals of the Blood Angels, for certain, but neither was it as stupid as the /tg/ makes it sound. There weren't any negotiations or official cease fire orders on either side, it was a simple common sense of ignoring each other until the mutual threat was managed.

It makes even more sense now that we know the particular Necron Overlord the Angels were facing is a guy who never passes up an opportunity to kill him some 'Nids.