Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I saw the title, and thought Necrons were getting Pariahs back for a minute there.

 Manfred von Drakken wrote:
That Guardswoman is spouting some serious Heresy to that Sister. If she wants, I've got a spot for her in my CSM army.

The Sister isn't terribly bothered by it. Maybe you need two spots.

That's a cool trailer, but I preferred when Necrons were inscrutable. Maybe if they didn't speak English/Gothic, they'd seem scarier?

That's a mostly minor nitpick I guess. The art is beautiful.

Kind of defeats the purpose of having a non-Human POV if you can't understand it.

It's clearly about the Sororitas and her guard chum, and yet the WHC site still has blurb on the frontpage describing it as "Space Marines clash with Necrons"!

 Gert wrote:
Kind of defeats the purpose of having a non-Human POV if you can't understand it.

I think that's just it; I liked them better when they didn't have a POV.
Probably because I'm nostalgic for their 2nd Edition incarnation.

 KidCthulhu wrote:

 Gert wrote:
Kind of defeats the purpose of having a non-Human POV if you can't understand it.

I think that's just it; I liked them better when they didn't have a POV.
Probably because I'm nostalgic for their 2nd Edition incarnation.

You're not alone in that. I'm all for getting more Sisters action, but I'm not sure I'm actually looking forward to this animation because of the Tomb Kings in space. It'll just be more Saturday morning cartoon villainy like anything Necron from the past fifteen years, and that just isn't for me.

 KidCthulhu wrote:

 Gert wrote:
Kind of defeats the purpose of having a non-Human POV if you can't understand it.

I think that's just it; I liked them better when they didn't have a POV.
Probably because I'm nostalgic for their 2nd Edition incarnation.

When their entire concept boiled down to, "The Terminator, but with less personality"?

I'm also not a huge fan of them just being Tomb Kings in Space (TM), but we really don't need more than one army without a personality (the other being Tyranids).

The Infinite and The Divine(Aka Trazyn and Orikan's Excellent Adventure) sold me on Necrons with personality

One of the best novels I've ever read.

 Manfred von Drakken wrote:

 KidCthulhu wrote:

 Gert wrote:
Kind of defeats the purpose of having a non-Human POV if you can't understand it.

I think that's just it; I liked them better when they didn't have a POV.
Probably because I'm nostalgic for their 2nd Edition incarnation.

When their entire concept boiled down to, "The Terminator, but with less personality"?

I'm also not a huge fan of them just being Tomb Kings in Space (TM), but we really don't need more than one army without a personality (the other being Tyranids).

Just like the Terminator, the OG Necrons had absolutely no personality, but a really strong presence nonetheless. That being said, even if that presence was strong, it pretty obviously is a one-trick pony, and grew old very fast in the same vein as the Terminator franchise. There's only a handfull of stories you can tell with that concept, and they've been told. Necrons with personality are more suited for a wider range of narratives, and you can have the old Killbots as subfaction or corrupted dinasty anyway if you want to.

If Old-Crons were a one trick pony, what is there to say about Nids, or Dark Eldar?

I always thought the cosmic horror of the C'tan was more interesting from a setting perspective that funny robot Trazyn. Chaos and Nids are familiar in their terror, the C'tan were alien in a very Lovecraftian, uncaring way.

 Geifer wrote:

 KidCthulhu wrote:

 Gert wrote:
Kind of defeats the purpose of having a non-Human POV if you can't understand it.

I think that's just it; I liked them better when they didn't have a POV.
Probably because I'm nostalgic for their 2nd Edition incarnation.

You're not alone in that. I'm all for getting more Sisters action, but I'm not sure I'm actually looking forward to this animation because of the Tomb Kings in space. It'll just be more Saturday morning cartoon villainy like anything Necron from the past fifteen years, and that just isn't for me.

Players wanted 40k be saturday cartoon, they got it

 His Master's Voice wrote:
If Old-Crons were a one trick pony, what is there to say about Nids, or Dark Eldar?

I always thought the cosmic horror of the C'tan was more interesting from a setting perspective that funny robot Trazyn. Chaos and Nids are familiar in their terror, the C'tan were alien in a very Lovecraftian, uncaring way.

Oh, i personally liked the lovecraftian murderbots, but GW clearly wasn't, and wasn't smart enough to write them anyhow.

Also Tyranids kinda had that whole Mysterious thing we can't understand bit going on and Necrons were getting in on their turf!

Personally I don't see Necron lore so much as changing as evolving for the most part. I know their relationship with the C'Tan changed in the lore, but otherwise its almost like a natural evolution of their status. Starting off with a few tombs awakening and almost running on auto-pilot. Killing and destroying and awakening others, but even the lords were mostly just Terminators in all but name.

Then we steadily saw them awakening properly; greater lords and Tombs that were less damaged awakening; resulting in Necrons who had a shred of personality.
They are 100% still murderous killing machines who are half insane. They still hold dinner parties for their foes when their foes have no concept of what is going on and when the necrons don't even eat at the dinner party!

If anything it adds layers to the sinister nature of them because you can sort of just understand them, and yet not because they are partly deluded; or if they aren't they are driven mad by their condition.

It also allows them to have stories about them. Something that Tyranids don't really have and its a huge shame they don't; but without a "voice" of their own you need a really talented author to write stories about Tyranids that don't just feel like a battle summary.

Now don't get me wrong I love Tyranids and I don't want them to change, but their position story wise is a bit weak in that whilst they have huge victories and have done some massive things; they don't really have heroes or characters or character or agents or elements for people to latch onto. Even the Swarm Lord is kind of a "ok so everyone big and powerful goes to fight him one on one and most of them manage to kill him which - doesn't change Tyranid lore one bit and shows how super hard those characters are.

Necrons get to have characters; they get to have stories that are more than just "Murder bot murder". They have intelligent command of vast technologies and powers beyond the other races; they have a vision that extends beyond the other races; they have desires or at least the vestiges of desires.

 Platuan4th wrote:
The Infinite and The Divine(Aka Trazyn and Orikan's Excellent Adventure) sold me on Necrons with personality

It was good fun

Cool trailer.

But can you imagine how much cooler it would have been if they'd had this ready when the Pariah Nexus stuff was still a thing in regular 40k, rather than a year and a half after the fact?

I dig it.
One of my first reactions was 'how is that sister not shooting the guardsman for heresy?' but I remembered a few things.

Summary executions are the job of commissars and higher ranking officers, Inquisitors and others that carry the weight of judge, jury, and executioner, and a regular sister wouldn't necessarily have that authority in a larger multi-force war. It'd be her job to -report- it, definitely.

She likely needs all the help she can get to get through whatever struggle they're facing and survive.

She possibly sees (and it makes narrative sense) for the guardsman to be a trial of faith, the devil on the sororitas' shoulder.

The Guardswoman also helps answer a lot of a potentially new audience's questions: where are the lines between faith, duty, and preservation of life? It shows a few great things, like the Imperium not being so monolithic, that guardsmen aren't hyper-indoctrinated like Sisters or Marines are and have much more human opinions and emotions.

They put some serious effort into this, and while hobbyists are looking forward to Arks of Omen, I think the timing of this is fine. Should the Harry Potter movies come out at the same time as the books? It's pretty common everywhere else that source material gets adapted to animation and film well after that source is written.

It's also important to note that the Sisters and Marines know about Chaos. Imperial Guardsmen might have very little to no understanding about Chaos or Xenos until they end up in combat situations and even then there's a vast difference between "Chaos Cultists like to kill people and worship demons" to actually seeing demons or psy powers and such.

A guardsman having a crisis of faith and having to work through it is very lore appropriate.




And yep just because you can execute almost anyone lower ranking for heresy, doesn't mean you should every time. Indeed sometimes commissars who too free with executions can end up rather dead when their troops, maybe don't kill them, but certainly doing fight their best to protect them. The key with a grim dark setting is to realise that the dark bits CAN happen and DO happen, but that they do not happen every single time without fail and perfectly. Otherwise it stops being a grim setting and becomes more of a weekend cartoon with over-the-top elements.

 Overread wrote:
And yep just because you can execute almost anyone lower ranking for heresy, doesn't mean you should every time. Indeed sometimes commissars who too free with executions can end up rather dead when their troops, maybe don't kill them, but certainly doing fight their best to protect them.

A single guard speaking heresy has no threat of spreading it to others, so let them fight alongside you to kill the enemy, then shoot them in the face morally correct them once the physical danger is over.

Plus lets not forget some Sisters fall - heck even Marines can fall!

Maybe these are the whispers that leads her down a path of potential corruption and her fall. Or she'll recover and restore her faith. Maybe she'll restore the guardsman's faith too.

Anyone else wondering if Guilliman might actually try to get rid of the whole 'faith' thing? After all, the Emperor never wanted to be worshipped as a god, and Guilliman would know that.

Except “faith” is an actual “thing” in the setting that works and has power. Not sure how he would even begin to get rid of it.

To be fair for the Third Edition times, there are the “Severed” Tomb Worlds where the inhabitants have become mindless robot zombies controlled by the world’s computer or C’tan and it freaks out even the Necrons with with personalities.

He’s also said in the lore that basically it is what it is.
A necessary part of he Imperium now.
He stopped short of saying he believes it’s all true. But he did speak to the Emperor after all. So he knows..

 Manfred von Drakken wrote:
Anyone else wondering if Guilliman might actually try to get rid of the whole 'faith' thing? After all, the Emperor never wanted to be worshipped as a god, and Guilliman would know that.

When faith conveniently turned out to be the only thing able to counter the effect of the Pariah Nexus, Guilliman probably took the pragmatic approach. Sure was lucky for the Ecclsiarchy that the Necrons chose that moment to unleash a weapon that required their particular expertise!

The space pope is in league with killer robots!

You can't just stop Imperial Faith. In some ways its the only thing holding the Imperium together as a single operating functional body of humanity.

Meanwhile at the top end there is a LOT of power behind that faith. You can't just sweep it under the carpet in one go. Remember in this setting the Faith is very tightly bound to the military on many levels even to having their own women at arms (Sisters of Battle).
If you declared the faith in the Emperor null and void you're trying to go against 10 Thousand years of training and indoctrination, power bodies and more.


He might be almost second to the Emperor in theory, but don't forget his brothers fell to darkness and him denying the divinity of the Emperor would be just the kind of thing a fallen one would say.

He has to play within the politics of the age he is in now. To do otherwise would run the risk of causing the Imperium to suffer a second civil war

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Cool trailer.

But can you imagine how much cooler it would have been if they'd had this ready when the Pariah Nexus stuff was still a thing in regular 40k, rather than a year and a half after the fact?

A lot of the stuff with WH+ was down to Covid it seems. The project overall was underestimated in its workload and then when office work became unviable it threw more problems on top.

It's more commentary on GW is exceptionally good at striking whilst the iron is frozen...

Just classic mismanagement of a project TBH. Obviously, Covid isn't something the company could plan for in a serious way but apparently shows like BatRep especially were just "How hard can it be?" and then it turned out that it was in fact, not simple.