Kitbashing Necron Crypteks

The GW Cryptek model didn't blow me away. It was a decent model, but I didn't fancy having 5 of them in my Royal Court so I had a go at creating some alternative ones. Here's what I came up with. (All thumbnails can be clicked to embiggen)


Group photo



These are all made using parts from the current Necron kits. I really didn't have a theme in mind when I started, I just wanted to dig into m...

The GW Cryptek model didn't blow me away. It was a decent model, but I didn't fancy having 5 of them in my Royal Court so I had a go at creating some alternative ones. Here's what I came up with. (All thumbnails can be clicked to embiggen)


Group photo



These are all made using parts from the current Necron kits. I really didn't have a theme in mind when I started, I just wanted to dig into my bits box and see what I could come up with. I figured that while most of a Necron army is going to look quite uniform the Crypteks would have been quite likely to have modified their bodies with all kinds of fancy super-tech, so I could go to town on weird combinations.

I didn't completely cannibalise a single set. I bought a box of Lychguard and one of Warriors to provide legs and torsos. The legs I used came mostly from the Warriors, with the bodies mostly Lychguard. This left me with some mis-matched parts left over (Warrior bodies look silly on Lychguard legs) so I added a box of Immortals and was able to build 12 good looking Warriors, 5 Immortals and my 5 Crypteks out of these 3 kits plus bits. Not a model wasted.


Priestly



This first one has a damaged body from the under repair warriors in the Ghost Ark kit. I liked the folded arm, and just had to saw off the damaged stump and replace it with the Lychguard staff arm. The staff head is a chopped down Warscythe and the back headdress is from a Voidblade with the blades removed. Legs are warrior legs with bits from Lychguard / Triarch Praetorians. The Bruce Forsyth chin is a spike from the back of a Triarch Praetorian.


The Scorpion King



This one has a sort of scorpion theme. I made the extended spine out of one of the supports from the Ghost Ark, with a Praetorian jump pack power node on the end. The punch dagger / pincer is a cut-down Voidblade. You can't see the staff very well, but it's a barely modified Rod of Covenant.


When 60 million years old you are, look this good you will not



This Cryptek is showing every one of his 60 million years.... He's broken his staff in two and uses the shorter half as a walking stick. The other hand holds a Hyperphase Sword which forms the top half of his staff. His headdress is made from a Voidblade blade and his spine ends in the muzzle from a Deathmark rifle. Even with the larger area offered by the resin base I still needed to bend his warrior legs together to make him fit without his walking stick hovering in mid air!


Gnarly



This one was an attempt to use up one of the 20 or so spare Dispersion Shields that I have. I love the look of the shields, but so far none of my Lychguard kits have been built using them.... I drilled a hole in the bottom, mounted it on a spare short rod from a flying stand and turned it into a hoverboard. I think I'll use it to represent a Veil of Darkness in the game.

The right arm is a spare from the Finecast Cryptek. The left is made using a Voidblade and a couple of bits of rod chopped out of other bits (I think the handle of a Hyperphase Sword and barrel of a Deathmark rifle, but I'm not 100% sure now). His headdress is the top of a Rod of Covenant.


Lord of Chins



After all those Crypteks I decided to build a Lord with Resurrection Orb, though I could still use it as a Cryptek I guess. The chin is another Praetorian back spike, the staff head is a Hyperphase Sword and the Res Orb was a spare arm from the Command Barge kit.


And that's that folks.

All told I'm pretty pleased with how these turned out. The real test will be how good they look when painted. There was nothing clever or difficult here, just digging through my left over sprues and looking for interesting shapes.

I think they'll give quite a nice level of variation in my unit commanders and cover for a lack of variety in the GW Cryptek model. That's a good thing - if there's one unit in the Necron codex that lends itself well to visual experimentation it would be the Cryptek.

A nice side effect is that each Cryptek was quite a bit cheaper than the Finecast one - handy as I think about working my way up to ten of them!