Codex: Necrons

Warhammer 40,000 5th Edition

by Matthew Ward

In the darkness of the ancient past, the Necrons ruled the galaxy. Such was their mastery of technology and drive to conquer that not even the Old Ones of legend could stand against them. Yet such unremitting war left the galaxy ravaged. Knowing that the recovery would take millions of years, the Necrons took to their stasis-crypts, there to sleep away the aeons until the galaxy was fit to reclaim. In the long millennia since, the younger races of the galaxy have gone about their petty affairs, little realising the peril slumbering beneath their feet.

Now the hour of awakening has come at last. Let the galaxy beware - the Necrons are rising.

'Their number is legion, their name is death.' - Eldrad Ulthran

Genres: 40k, Fiction, Science Fiction

96 pages, Paperback

Published November 1, 2011

About the author

Matthew Ward is a writer, cat-servant and owner of more musical instruments than he can actually play (and considerably more than he can play well). He’s afflicted with an obsession for old places – castles, historic cities and the London Underground chief amongst them – and should probably cultivate more interests to help expand out his author biography.

After a decade serving as a principal architect for Games Workshop’s Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 properties, Matthew embarked on an adventure to tell stories set in worlds of his own design. He lives near Nottingham with his extremely patient wife – as well as a pride of attention-seeking cats – and writes to entertain anyone who feels there’s not enough magic in the world.

Reviews

[Callum Shephard · Rating 1 out of 5]

Warhammer 40,000 is dead to Games Workshop.
I wish the Black Library and Fantasy Flight Games the best of luck with the franchise, because it seems the company who created it do not simply "not care" about it any more, they're out to kill it off.

Yes, the fluff looks like it's bad. The Old Ones were beaten by the C'Tan without the Chaos gods being remotely involved, the Necrons easily killed them despite being weaker than the C'Tan, and the Necron Empire lasted much longer than the Eldar one. The Eldar also only had one because the Necrons allowed them to. Oh yes, and apparently some Necrons are now benevolent, lawful characters who are "good".
There are so many plot holes here and contradictions to other Codexes that it might well have destroyed the entire basis for the game. Heaven help us if Ward feels the need to try and top Draigo's fluff.

[Matthew Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Following the excellent 4th Edition, which added the C'tan star-gods to the Necrons and went some quite considerable way to giving this "unknown horror" and/or "space undead"* a unique character of their own in keeping with the Warhammer 40,000 techno-barbarian gothic universe, this 5th edition Codex went full out on new lore and came up with the brilliant idea of making the character of necron armies - who are generally faceless terminator robots - reliant on the character of their leaders, allowing for a great range of possiblities for the imaginative gamer. Good concepts proliferate in this codex, though sometimes feel a bit rushed or reliant on exciting individual words rather than a strong idea, making it quite an up-and-down read.


*Tomb Kings, to use the former Warhammer Fantasy army name

[Fabian Scherschel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this to remind me of the good old days of 40K and to compare it to the new codex. And then I never read the new one... LOL!

[Dustin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fine and balanced codex without a real "I win button" as compared to some of the others.