“The soulless ones shall be the harbingers of dark fate. Then shall come the living dead, the progeny, then the thirsting ones, the forever damned, and the galaxy shall run red as the blood of Eldanesh.”

–Translation of an Eldar artifact, Codex Necrons

Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce Legions of Death, the second deluxe expansion for Warhammer 40,000: Conquest!

From the ancient depths of time before the galaxy was consumed by war, a new threat now emerges from its aeon-long slumber: the Necrons have begun to awaken once more. No loyal servant of the Imperium could fathom how many Tomb Worlds still lie dormant, only awaiting some mysterious signal to rise and spread doom across the civilised worlds. Now, as the Necrons ascend and swell their armies with slaves, all the Traxis sector will learn to fear these mechanical terrors.

Legions of Death introduces the Necrons as a new playable faction for Warhammer 40,000: Conquest. Two new warlords lead the Necron forces in the Traxis sector, and new mechanics evoke the theme of a Necron invasion whenever you lead them into battle. As the Necrons, you can enslave the peoples of the galaxy, filling your deck with units from other factions that are forced to fight alongside you. Although the Necrons hold the spotlight in this deluxe expansion, you’ll also find a new unit for each of the other eight factions alongside new neutral cards that promise to impact the game in entirely new ways!

Their Number Is Legion

As the Necrons awaken and begin to establish their hold on the Traxis sector, you’ll notice that a Necron army looks very different from their opposition. Most factions in the game sit on the alignment wheel, and you can choose one of two neighboring factions as your ally, which allows you to include common cards from that faction in your deck. The Tyranids, first introduced in The Great Devourer, sit outside the alignment wheel, unable to ally with any of the other factions. Now, the Necrons introduce yet another new approach to alliances and the alignment wheel.

The Necrons find their place at the center of the alignment wheel, and as such, they are perfectly poised to enslave units and take advantage of any faction’s strengths. When building a Necron deck, you can include common units from any other factions on the alignment wheel in your deck, potentially giving you access to a vast variety of tactics and abilities. You cannot include non-unit cards from the factions on the alignment wheel, but you can still use the neutral cards as you wish.

Obviously, these deckbuilding rules invite you to potentially fill your deck with common units from an assortment of factions, but you can’t simply play units of a non-Necron faction from your hand. Every Necron player has an enslavement dial that shows the faction symbols of the seven factions on the alignment wheel. When the deployment phase begins each round, you can set your enslavement dial to any faction, allowing you to play units of that faction this round. If you have units of two different factions in hand, you’ll have to choose which ones you need in play and set your enslavement dial accordingly.

Many of the Necrons’ own cards trigger off of the enslavement dial or require you to have non-Necron units in your armies. For instance, the Mandragoran Immortals (Legions of Death, 18) bear the ranged keyword, and you can sacrifice a non-Necron Soldier unit at the same planet to ready the Mandragoran Immortals. Sautekh Complex (Legions of Death, 42) allows you to gain a resource or draw a card after you deploy a unit from any non-Necron faction, provided you control no other units of that faction. You may even use the Mind Shackle Scarab (Legions of Death, 38) to take control of an enemy army units for a phase, provided that unit matches the faction symbol on your enslavement dial. However you bring other factions’ units into your armies, the Necrons excel at taking slaves and forcing them to join them in their conquest of the galaxy.

Their Hate Is Immortal

In the days before their long slumber, the Necrons had created hyper-advanced technology that’s still beyond the modern capabilities of the other factions. Each Necron possess a self-repairing mechanical body that can make it worryingly difficult to kill. Whether you wield a Resurrection Orb (Legions of Death, 37) to bring Necron units back from the discard pile, remove damage from your Necrons with Reanimation Protocol (Legions of Death, 29), or call upon the nearly-impossible-to-kill Reanimating Warriors (Legions of Death, 20), the Necrons are much more difficult to ultimately kill than any other faction.

Even when a Necron card is discarded, it can still help you conquer the galaxy from your discard pile. The Canoptek Scarab Swarm (Legions of Death, 11) can return Necron units from your discard pile to your hand and the Harbinger of Eternity (Legions of Death, 24) allows you to play Necron event cards from your discard pile as though they were in your hand. You may even use a Particle Whip (Legions of Death, 44) and shuffle unit cards from your discard pile back into your deck in order to deal potentially crippling damage to an enemy army unit.

The Necron’s hyper-advanced technology also allows them to bypass enemy shields in order to destroy their foes. Many Necron cards lower an enemy unit’s hit points, and if that unit’s HP reaches zero, it’s automatically destroyed. Best of all, lowering a unit’s HP gives your opponent no opportunity to play shield cards, which makes destroying a unit much easier than it might be otherwise. Playing Extermination (Legions of Death, 33) at the right time could even completely wipe out your opponent’s forces at a planet!

Their Advance Is Unstoppable

Of course, although the Necrons are the focus of Legions of Death, you’ll also find a new common unit for every other faction. Unlike other army units, these units grow more powerful when their warlord belongs to a different faction. The Standard Bearer (Legions of Death, 50), for example, allows you to ready an army unit when it enters play, and if you have a non-Astra Militarum warlord, you can deploy the Standard Bearer from your hand as if it had ambush. You may take command of these units with the Necrons or simply ally with their faction in the conventional way, but in either case, these new units are potent warriors for your cause.

Legions of Death also introduces four brand-new neutral cards that boost the power of Elites and other high-cost units. Backlash (Legions of Death, 46) allows you to cancel the effects of any ability that targets one of your Elite units, and if the ability was triggered by an army unit, that unit is destroyed! With these new neutral cards available to every faction, your Elites will quickly become more dangerous than they ever were before.

Their Name Is Death

Across the Traxis sector, the Necrons have awoken from their Tomb Worlds. Take command of terrifying mechanical armies, enslave your foes, and use your superior tactics and advanced technology to bend the galaxy to your will!

Look for Legions of Death at your local retailer in the first quarter of 2016.