Rantette: Necron Reception

And we interupt your regular programming (which would have been another Terrain THoughts post about WarmaHordes) to bring you Incarias' (only somewhat late) rantette about the Necron Codex' reception.

And, since I'm lazy, I'll just sprinkle the whole thing with pictures taken straight from the GW webstore.

So, Necrons got a new Codex. At last. It added a lot of diversity, changed a goodly part of the background, and annoyed a lot of people.


I suggest you read DarkWynn's commentary here, to know what I mean.

I think he's at least half full of crap.

First, you all know I'm not a fan of the competitive crowd. Which is probably why this statement bugs me: 'There isn't one thing in the book that screams, "you need to take this!"'. I agree with Darkwynn on this statement, on its own. But he's using it as a negative.

Let's be clear here, the best possible Codex (from a gameplay perspective, not an I'll-beat-the-living-snot-out-of-you-(and-dang-did-this-hyphenation-thing-run-away-with-me) kinda perspective) is one where every single option is worthwhile, adds something to the army and is on an equal footing with everything else from a selection point of view. When one unit shouts 'you must have me, or you'll lose!', that's a failure. When the three choices from one FOC section are always the same, something's wrong.

Which to me says that the Necron Codex works well, internally, i.e. the balance between Necron choices is good. It's external balance and performance in 'the real world' has yet to be tested. Ask me in a year.

Admit it, Necrons would make brilliant snipers. No breathing, no muscle fatigue, no watering eyes...

The next thing DarkWynn rages about that bugs me, is what he calls gimmicks. These are things that he feels are fun but useless, except he doesn't actually call them fun. A book needs useless stuff. This clashes horribly with what I said above, but hang with me. I want every single unit to be viable. I do not require every single piece of equipment to be good. I'm perfectly fine with that one piece of weaponry that does nothing but sparkle prettily for ten games in a row, only to cause the battlefield to turn inside out, transform the enemy commander into a turtle, and wipe out his prize unit in the eleventh. Because this is fun (if it happens rarely enough that the weapon is generally just a waste).

See, most of us don't play this game to win tournaments. Most of us play it for the little men (or whatever your flavour of plastic, metal and resing is) and for the fun. Outrageous moments are fun, if both players have the right attitude ('win or lose, that was fun'), and outrageous moments require a few outrageous pieces of wargear. When's the last time your Tactical Marines did anything truly spectacular?

Let's face it, this guy is supposed to replace the Necron Warrior. I'm fine with this.

I'm going to leave DarkWynn alone for now, 'cause I'm a rather crap bully.

The final thing that has been brought up is the immense changes to the Necron background.

Yes, there are holes in the new stuff. There were holes in the old stuff.

Yes, there are things I might miss. But there's so much more that's been added.

In all, the Necrons have been moved from where they were, to somewhere else. It's a change, and it will take a while for us all to settle in (and some never will) but let's all be honest, where they were was boring. It was a well-lit back alley in the boring parts of time with not so much as a blue dumpster to make it interesting. There was an electric box, a few drain pipes and a couple of units no one used.

I like the new Necrons. They could have been done differently. Better even (do we really need more pseudo-Marines in pseudo-Rhinos?). But I like them.

And that's that for me.

Ta.