Detachment Focus: Cryptek Conclave

As the struggle for the 500 Worlds hots up, Necrons receive three new Detachments that provide new ways to strike terror into the heart of mortals. This guide covers the Cryptek Conclave Detachment.

Necrons already sort of have a Cryptek-themed detachment to play with in Canoptek Court, but that’s fairly firmly centred around their monstrous creations rather than the mad scientists themselves. The new Cryptek Conclave fills that niche - it’s a shooting-themed Detachment that centres Crypteks and their cackling schemes. The result is… kind of mid, but there are a few cool combos, so let’s have a look.

We’d like to thank Games Workshop for providing us with a preview copy of these rules for Review purposes. Please note that any of these rules are subject to change until the App and WarCom update with the full details.

Detachment Overview

This Detachment wants you to shoot stuff with CRYPTEK units, so in practice that’s going to result in a fairly horde-like setup of Warriors, Immortals and a few Wraiths scattered in. You can also hand out the CRYPTEK keyword temporarily via Stratagem, so you can pack a few other supporting tools as well and still have them thrive.

The Video Version

If you'd rather watch this review than read it, or if you'd like a quick primer before you dive in, we've got you covered here.

Detachment Rule: Technosorcerous Augmentations

All CRYPTEK models get Assault on their weapons. Each time a CRYPTEK unit is chosen to shoot (in your Shooting Phase), you can pick one of the following abilities for the unit’s ranged weapons to gain for the phase:

Anti-Infantry 3+
Anti-Mounted 4+
Assault
Heavy
Ignores Cover

At baseline here, any unit with a Cryptek in it can have Assault all the time. Giving Assault to the Cryptek models as a baseline effect is smart, because it means a unit with one is always eligible to shoot after Advancing, giving you the window to select the Assault ability for the rest of the unit if needed. You can thus scoot Necron Warriors and Immortals around to your heart’s content, blasting away. The problem with that is that those units don’t do nearly enough damage without additional supporting buffs, and here we fairly quickly get to the problem with this Detachment. There’s loads of flexibility in the effect you choose, but nothing in here adds up to anywhere near enough oomph to compete with the average list in 2026.

The narrow exception to this is that anything with Devastating Wounds becomes quite comical into enemy Infantry with the Anti 3+ pick. You can do this at baseline with Canoptek Wraiths for a cool average 6 Devastating Wounds, and via Stratagem you can drop it onto either particle beamer Tomb Blades or particle caster Praetorians to drop an even bigger hammer. This is very funny and gives you some hilarious spikes in some matchups, but it’s still not a reliable foundation to build a whole plan on, and melts the second you encounter a monster mash or Knights build.

Chronomancer. Credit: Wings

Enhancements

Much like Crypteks themselves, these are kind of all over the place, but do offer some helpful boosts to the big Infantry blocks this Detachment encourages.

Quantum Abacus (TBC pts): Each time you target the bearer’s unit with a Stratagem, gain 1CP on a 4+, or a 3+ if it’s in range of an objective. OK if it’s cheap - there are Stratagems you’ll want to spam from a Cryptek sitting in a Warrior unit, so this might let you skimp on buying Imotekh
Atomic Disintegrators (TBC pts): Gives a Cryptek the option to select Anti-Vehicle 5+ or Anti-Monster 5+ as their Adaptation instead of one of the normal options. Probably an auto-take with a unit of Tesla Immortals; you need something to chip damage onto big stuff, and with their Wound re-rolls this makes a real difference.
Gauntlet of Compression (TBC pts): Adds 6” to the range of models in the bearer’s unit. Surprisingly not actually CRYPTEK locked, so you could double this up with the Abacus in a unit of reaper Warriors, which is definitely the place to consider this.
Gravitic Bolas (TBC pts): CRYPTEK only. After the bearer has shot, pick one enemy they hit to be pinned, giving them -2” to Move and Charge till your next turn. Sadly garbage - Crypteks are generally short ranged, and also have few enough shots on 4+ that outright missing is very realistic for them.

Psychomancer. Credit: Rockfish

Stratagems

There are two key Stratagems here - one powerful defensive boost, and one critical enabling tool that lets you share the Detachment's buffs more widely.

Molecular Targeting (1CP): Lets a Necron unit ignore hit/BS/WS modifiers, and Wound modifiers too if it’s a CRYPTEK unit. Depressingly, without many re-rolls you will sometimes need this.
Microscarab Swarm (1CP): Gives a CRYPTEK Necron Warriors unit a 5+ Invulnerable save for a phase, or an Immortals unit a 4+ Invulnerable. This is pretty good - it gives you the option to run Warriors without Orikan, and can seriously mitigate an opponent’s attempt to alpha strike a key Immortals unit.
Animus Curse (1CP): After a Cryptek is destroyed, the rest of your army gets re-rolls to hit against the culprit for the rest of the battle. This is legitimately a potent buff, and helps with some of the matchups this build struggles with.
Synergistic Empowerment (1CP): At the start of your shooting phase, pick a Necron model (excluding Monsters and Vehicles) within 12” of a Cryptek. That model gains the CRYPTEK keyword till the end of the phase. This is what lets you apply some of the Cryptek juice to other units, and as called out up top, the obvious route to go with it is either Tomb Blades or Triarch Praetorians with particle weapons, going for that sweet, sweet Anti-Infantry 3+ Devastating Wounds. Dropping it on a full Triarch squad is 13.33 average Mortals before applying any other buffs, which is pretty cool. Just hope the enemy hasn’t brought anything with any other keywords.
Untapped Power (1CP): Pick a Cryptek unit that hasn’t shot yet this phase, and when they do you can pick two upgrades rather than one. The most common options will be Assault and one of the force multipliers, or Ignore Cover to stack on top of something else. Not terrible, but quite honestly it almost feels like you should get two picks at baseline.
Potentiality Syphon (1CP): In your Opponent’s Command Phase, activate the Reanimation Protocols of one Necron unit that’s in range of an objective. Add 1 extra wound if it’s a Cryptek unit. This is legitimately sweet, as it’s both generically useful to be able to heal with minimal hoops, and can also deny Primary if the extra models flip an objective.

Playing This Detachment

Credit: Robert "TheChirurgeon" Jones

Really, really hope your opponent hasn’t brought lots of Vehicles or Monsters. If they haven’t then great - start blasting, have fun. If they have...use whatever you can to try and chip wounds away, and lean on the relatively horde build you’ve likely brought to try and get things over the line. This Detachment can do some cool spikes of damage into Infantry, but otherwise feels like it makes you jump through a lot of hoops to achieve a normal level of output, and doesn’t do anything to push you over the top. With that in mind, I think you have to build for as much damage as you can within the constraints it gives you, so lots of Plasmancers to try and push as much pain through as you can.

Strengths

Great at killing Infantry.
Diversifies your options for setting up Warriors beyond just Orikan.
Can be quite mobile for a Necron horde thanks to Assault everywhere.

Weaknesses

Very weak into Vehicles and Monsters.
Requires lots of expensive unit setups.
Weak in melee.

A Sample List

The plan? Try and squeeze as much damage out of your horde pieces as possible, and hope the enemy just low key doesn’t notice they can rush and body you.

Robot Horde - click to expand

Characters

Silent King

Illuminor Szeras

Plasmancer, Atomic Disintegrators

Plasmancer

Chronomancer, Quantum Abacus

Royal Warden

Royal Warden

Royal Warden, Gauntlet of Compression

Battleline

20x Warriors

10x tesla Immortals

10x tesla Immortals

Other

Canoptek Crawlers

Canoptek Crawlers

Canoptek Crawlers

Canoptek Reanimator

10x Triarch Praetorians, sword/pistol

Lokhust Destroyer

Flayed Ones

Deathmarks

The Silent King’s re-rolls, Plasmancers for both Immortal units plus Crawlers in all the big Infantry squads aims at maximising the amount of chip damage you can throw out and while providing the best possible shot at tanking some amount of vengeance. A big Warrior unit with a Chronomancer is also fairly hard to put down, especially as you can either use Go to Ground or Microscarab Swarm to ward off damage from anything that can punch through Szeras’ AP reduction. Finally, if your opponent has brought some high value Infantry, you can enjoy the safe and legal thrill of mag dumping a whole bunch of Mortal Wounds on them from the Triarch by dropping Synergistic Empowerment on them.

Final Thoughts

This Detachment is a weird one, because it’s not super clear who it’s for; Canoptek Court is already a pretty solid Cryptek Detachment, and there’s plenty of support for horde builds as well. If you really, desperately want to ruin some Infantry’s day, however, you can give it a shot.

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