The Necrons Return

Okay, we should probably start at the beginning, which, for the Necrons anyway, was 64 million years ago. Yes, you read that right, 64 million years. That's before human beings existed, before Orks started rampaging across the galaxy, and even before the Chaos gods were born. In the grand scheme of things, the Necrons are pretty old. To command this ancient race is to lead an army of virtually immortal warriors into battle. They are implacable, unstoppable and utterly without fear. Sure, they will retreat if they're confronted by a bad tactical situation, but essentially you've got an unbreakable, indefatigable army of soulless metal androids at your fingertips. Pretty cool, eh?

The other thing you'll notice is that they tend to have a lot of very large guns. The Necrons pride themselves on having the best technology in the galaxy - they don't need unstable plasma weapons or solid shell cannons - they're just not good enough. They rely on gauss weapons, which can flay a person alive atom by atom, or tesla weapons, which will simply electrocute you to death with a huge bolt of lightning. Their weapons are efficient, accurate and very powerful, and there will normally be a lot of them, too. A firefight with a Necron army can only end badly (and messily).

So are they robots? No, far from it, in fact. Your basic Necron Warrior is, admittedly, little more than an automaton - their mind is programmed to obey the Overlord, but the higher up in rank you go, the more independent they become. They also become a little eccentric too, as you'll find out next week when we take a more in-depth look at this curious race. Suffice to say, a Necron Overlord is entirely in charge of his own mind, and with thousands of years of battlefield experience (before a long nap in a Tomb World), he is a force to be reckoned with.

We've barely scratched the surface of the Necron race, but there will be plenty more to read over the next week or so. In the meantime, if you're new to Necrons and you want a few useful tips about starting an army, then head over to this Getting Started article to get you in the mindset of a Necron Overlord. Alternatively, if you already know what you're doing with Necrons, or you're just desperate to get your hands on them, then you can advance order all the new kits here (with more towards the bottom of the page). If you order them before the end of the weekend and have them sent to your local Games Workshop, they will be sitting there waiting for you on Saturday 5th November when they're released. Alternatively you can choose to have them sent to the address of your choice (perhaps a Tomb World or a trans-dimensional gateway), in which case they will arrive on the week commencing the 7th November. Why not check them out and then come back here to find out a bit more about them in a few minutes.

So we've talked a bit about the Necron race, but so far we haven't really shown off many of the miniatures and, as we all know, this hobby is all about the models. So we got together with the technical wizards in the Studio and compiled this video gallery of all the new units. Every squad is shown and fully rotated on screen, so you can see every aspect of each of the new sets.

That video should be more than enough to whet your appetite, but as we all know, you can never get enough of a good thing. In our eternal quest to revamp and improve our website, we've added 360˚ rotations of all of the new Necron units to their product categories. So if you're wondering what the engines on the Catacomb Command Barge look like, or you want to see the back of a gory Flayed One, then now you can. Simply head over to the product pages and click on the picture that has '360˚' written on the top corner. It'll spin around once as the page loads, then you can turn it round as much as you like. Just don't do it too fast, or they'll get dizzy. Click on the Ghost Ark below to see the magic in action.