It has finally arrived, about 10 years late but at least its here. The Necron codex was released over the weekend, which is pretty good news for the toasters who were pretty tired of their outdated rules and limited fluff. As you can guess the newcrons (the good jokes don’t last forever) will be the subject of this issue.

Old Fluff

Everyone was talking about the new fluff, or rather arguing over whether it was better than the old fluff or sacrilegious to the old fluff. The basics are that in the old codex the necrons were pretty much slaves to the C’tan (powerful race of god-like beings born from the power of a star) who go about eating souls and stuff. The necrons themselves were totally silent and subserviant to the C’tan. After some intense soul devouring the galaxy was pretty barren so they slept for a few million years. That was pretty much it, it is mentioned that the necrons were once the nectroyr and they opted for immortality and got their hard cases but still not very much to go on. So as you can see the fluff meant that the necrons were… boring, they just hated everyone because they were told to and that was that.

New Fluff

For the new fluff to make sense you have to kind of pretend that the old fluff never happened. The new fluff goes like this:

• A race called the necrotyr. They had this huge empire but people got greedy/bored and so they started fighting. The silent king who was pretty much the ruler of all the necro-people decided that the only way to save his race from wiping itself out would be to unite it against a common enemy – the old ones, the creators of races such as the eldar and orks (I think)
• The Silent King’s plan succeeded his race put aside its differences and rallied to fight the elderly ones. The only problem was that the old ones were pretty good at busting necro-people ass
• With the necro-people getting a beating from the old ones the Silent King entered into a deal with a C’tan known as the Deciver. The Deciver promised immortality and a way to defeat the old ones, the king accepted
• Surprisingly the Deceiver deceived the necro-people. Trusting someone known as the Deciver would seem like serious lack of judgement on the part of the Silent King but in his defence the Deceiver used another name (he was pretty sneaky). The promise with the Deceiver resulted in the entire necro-race being converted into toasters, the Deceiver did this so that the C’tan could eat their souls.
• Higher ranking individuals got better bodies and retained their personalities (robots with feelings), lower ranking individuals which was bulk of the population were converted into mindless automatons (toasters with green guns)
• The Silent King realised his mistake and succeeded in achieving the most dramatic face palm of all time
• The toastsers (now known as necrons) managed to completely decimate the old ones after toasterfication
• After the war the Silent King decides to get some revenge and the necrons turn on the C’tan shattering each of the beings into thousands of shards which they then imprisoned. After defeating the C’tan the necrons had taking a beating and were scared of the eldar avenging the old ones. So the Silent King commanded all his forces to sleep for 64 000 000 years. He then severed the link that allowed him to have total control over all necrons and loyalty from his followers (yet another mistake from this idiot). He ran away in shame
• Now 64 000 000 years later the crons are starting to wake up, but things arent good. The sleep made them rusty and many are mentally damaged or just destroyed. Since the Silent King allowed everyone to be independant all the necrons are fighting with each other (which is what started the whole mess 64 000 000 years ago).
• The silent King return in a huff, ranting about some tyranids and that no one will take him serial, even though he is super serial.

The purpose of that long and rather boring history of toaster was just to point out how things have changed. The result of this new fluff is that the necrons are like any other race now, they get angry, they hate the eldar, and from time to time they actually act with honour.

The new fluff when considering the finer aspects of the codex is just brilliant much of it is over the top and completely ridiculous but it makes it interesting and quite amusing at points. My favorite:

• One of the special characters is a historian and is obsessed with collecting everything, he is the guy that supposedly has a primarch hidden away somewhere. What makes his fluff so awesome is that it is tuly ridiculous. He doesnt care about battles and the necrons getting their bodies back he just wants more stuff and he doesn’t understand why nobody else agrees with him. Its difficult to put into writing so im going to add a little quote from the codex.
• Weapon names like death-ray and the doomsday cannon
• One toaster doesnt know he is a toaster
• The necrons have a device that lets them cause any star in the galaxy to go supernova and thereby destroy all neibougring planets just by snuffing the little representation in said device. Just take a moment to think about that, they could just snuff out the sun (which is our sun if anyone is confused) over Terra and take out Terra and the Emperor. Thats just over powered
• The necrons and blood angels team up. Nuff said.
• A necron lord manages to beat a Chapter Master in hand to hand and then lets him go, after cutting off his arm to reming him not to underestimate the toasters. This was Marshal Helbrecht

Love it hate it, the choice is yours. I think its brliant to have some new dynamic fluff and it doesnt stray to far away form the old stuff since the bulk of the race is still just a bunch of automatons.

The Rules

Well, its different. Loads of interesting new mechanics like entropic strike which eats armour, literally.

• Scarabs which have 5 attacks on the charge have entropic strike if they hit a vehicle on a 4+ (one for each hit) the vehicle immedately loses 1 pt of armour on every facing for the remainder of the game, after that you still get to try and penetrate the vehicle which is now made of paper with you scarabs. Crazy stuff.
• Lots of deep strike and deep strike shenanigans. Also a peculiar mechanic which seems to pop up is being able to deep strike in your opponents turn, which obviously has no advantage which does seem to indicate a change in the deep strike rules in the new edition due next year
• The DEATH RAY. Basically this is carried by a jet, roll 3d6 and make a line that long every unit takes a S10 Ap1 hit for each model under the line! Sounds fun. There is however alot of debate because of how this rule is explained, it can be interpreted like I explained it or that the unit takes a hit for each model in the unit. Im pretty sure the faq will fix that because the latter situation just seems ridiculous
• Terrible close combat ability, in fact there is only 1 unit I can think of with an I higher than 2
• Options seems to be very expensive, like 60pts for a heavy destroyer which is pretty much a lascannon on a relentless jump infantry
• DOOMSDAY ARK S9 Ap1 range 72’ large blast. Sounds awesome, to bad it cant fire if it moves
• TESLA WEAPONS. These are fun, there are a few variants which differ in S and number of shots but the fun part is that for every 6 you roll when rolling to hit you automatically get another 2 hits! And the biggest version even has a chance of ‘arching’ and hitting any nearby units to the original target. Unfortunately Ap – means that its not killing much
• The STORM LORD. He makes it possible to play the entire game in nightfight and while this is happening there is a chance that your opponents units take d6 S8 hits! What I dont understand is why you would want nightfighting with a shooting army. Although there are nice ways to get around that

Those are really the noteworthy things I can think of right now. I think the codex will play completely directly to anything the meta game is used and for that reason I think its a great change. Im pretty sure anyone who goes to tournaments often enough is tired of IG leafblower lists, dual lash, or draigowing (people who play draigowing are cheesy, although very clever). Their awesome shooting troops (warriors and immortals) will have a huge impact I think, warriors are 13pts and have bolters that glance vehicles on 6s, 4+ save, with the chance to just get back up again after being killed. A horde of cheap, resilient, shooty troops like the warriors could be quite a pain. Unfortunately I don’t think its going to dominate competitively speaking don’t get me wrong I think it will be scary to face on the table but nothing compared to IG, grey knights, wolves or BA

Well thats all I have to say about that. I suggest you all go out and buy the codex, its really a great read. I dont know how I can write 1600 words in 40min on this but when I have to do 3 lines on some contractual law I fall apart. Next time I think I will do something on tournaments

P.S. Always good to hear you comments, please leave me something. If you know someone who will be interested in reading my poor language get them onto our blog!

‘Dear lady, let me express my fulsome appreciation for
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another of my own kind that appreciates my work,
therefore to find understanding amongst a member of
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I realise that you briefly trod my galleries, but the fact
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War collection was lacking three regiments of Catachan
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If I might level a minor criticism, the instructions
issued to your gift were manifestly not as clear as you
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