I dunno much About the rest of the fic, but I can say that the old Necrons were just soooooooooooooo boring.
Extremely boring. And everyone knew their goal. Kill all life to feed their C'Tan masters. Generic Doomsday Villainy at its finest. And their tactics were just "move and shoot, move and shoot, move and shoot, rinse and repeat ad infinitum." There was no variety, no reason to come up with any strategy. They were too Tyranid-like in their goals.
Blue-collar mad scientist, at your service!
And I think the new Necrons are boring because they're invincible (can regenerate from absolutely anything, immune to Chaos, immune to Tyrannids, etc). No weaknesses, nothing stopping them from doing anything they want. And they're good guys all of a sudden. Invincible good guys. I would accuse them of being colossal Mary Sues, but... actually, I'll go with that. Colossal Mary Sues, yup.
They're only unstoppable as they were before. I barely tolerate the Necrons now, aside from thinking some of their models are cool. As for good? That's kind of like saying the imperium is "good". The C'tan are boring as hell too. They're just another face of EEEEEVVVVVVIIIILLLL gods in a setting (and a company) full of one dimensional evil gods who do evil things for evil's sakae.
The only more boring than the Necrons are the Nids. And that's only now that the Necrons got some actual 'personality'.
Utterly generic saturday morning cartoon villain personality (either that or they're generic, noble misunderstood sparkly good guys like Szaarekh the Silent King). Yeah, no thanks.
Maybe I was imagining that the old Necrons as "near-mindless, implacable horrors, acting in accordance with utterly alien, unknowable goals". They were pretty much a blank slate that it was easy to *imagine* something interesting about them. Anyway, their new 'personality' *really* isn't an improvement.
They were completely generic before, and they're slightly less generic now. They were just the Nids made of metal then, and now...well, I don't know, but they're still the second most boring army in the game. I think you misunderstand me. I do not like Necrons. I think some of their models are cool, but they are a PAINFULLY boring army with nothing interesting about their backstory or play style. I only say their less boring than Tyrannids because the Nids have literally NOTHING to them other than "EAT EAT EAT".
So why are we arguing? Neither of us like the Necrons, so why quibble over semantics? *Shrug* Maybe I didn't express myself as well as I should have done.
I dislike the new version of the Necrons more than the old version because at least with the old version I could *imagine* there was something interestingly different about them. But either way they're still one of the 40K armies I dislike most.
I had gotten the impression that you thought I liked the new Necrons, sorry.
I kinda understand what you mean, but I honestly feel the new ones are just a little less boring. At least because now they have a goal that's sorta different from the Tyrannids. Though, what that goal IS isn't entirely consistent.
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I hated it. It's not as bad as any of Matt Ward's stuff, but still.
Most of the fic reminds me of a bad comic book where everything is based around the next big fight scene - doesn't matter if it makes no sense - doesn't matter if it's wildly out of character for everyone involved - the "awesome" fight scene is going ahead whether or not it makes any sense whatsoever.
For me, this story was wallbanger after wallbanger. I think the worst was when it turned out that Kage of the Last Chancers was the father of the reborn Emperor. I was like, "No! Kage is an unrepentant psychopathic mass murderer with latent psychic powers and a cacodaemon infesting his brain. Also, he's dead. He committed suicide in order to A) repent for his actions while he was being mind-controlled by the cacodaemon and B) bring down Herman von Strab. Yeah, Kage is a fun character and I like him as well, but you can't turn him into Space Jesus!"
Also, I hate what this fic did to Isha, Fulgrim, the Eldar in general (yeah, they get some badass fighty moments, but considering that they're supposed to be fairly cunning and intelligent and able to see into the future, they behave utterly stupidly - for example: what kind of moron would trust Trazyn the Infinite?) Also, I hate this version of the Necrons but I'm not sure the author of The Age of Dusk can be blamed for that - I miss the days when Necrons were near-mindless, implacable horrors, acting in accordance with utterly alien, unknowable goals. It made them different from every other 40K bad guy race. Nowadays, they're cackling cartoonish villains (Trazyn the Infinite reminds me horribly of Skeletor) just like every other Chaos Space Marine special character. Or they're misunderstood noble but ruthless, super-powerful good guys (Szaarekh the Silent King), which I hate because it seems so out of place in the Warhammer 40k setting. But, that's canon. I can't fault the author of The Age of Dusk for trying to work with canon. Even if it is bloody stupid canon. (I just don't like the almost-human version of the Necrons.)
Your mileage may vary. The battle scenes are pretty good (yeah, they're hilariously overblown, silly and faux-heroic, but that's Warhammer 40K for you). I like the multiple Take That's to the worst of Matt Ward's Marty Stu characters. But the good bits are surrounded by so much crap that I just can't stand to continue reading this fic.