Goonhammer Reviews: The New Nightbringer Model

Games Workshop first revealed the new Nightbringer sometime in late 2025, showing off a model boasting an increased stature to rival the Shard of the Void Dragon. Since then we’ve been struggling with the wait for an updated version of the most fearsome C’Tan and it was worth the wait. In this article we’re going to cover the new model, from assembly to painting, and talk about what you need to know when you’re working on your own.

We’d like to thank Games Workshop for providing us with preview copies of this model.

Credit: Blake Law

Blake Law

The new nightbringer is an insanely dynamic sculpt. If you had asked me a year ago, I would have said there was no need for a reboot - that old sculpt is cool and classic. The thing I love the most about the new Nightbringer is that it pays homage to the original, and adds much needed size to be on scale with the new(ish) Void Dragon.

Assembly on this guy is a bit of a pain in a way similar to most modern kits Everything is well done, and fits together well. HOWEVER, it has the same problem as the Yncarne: The fiddly bits have to sit and hold perfectly to not get some slippage. You can do it, but it takes some forethought when gluing the model together (I had to rip it apart and reglue twice).

For my paint, I went with the classic dark blue/magenta. Necrons want to glow, and magenta is such a great saturated color to achieve that kind of OSL. The blue is a progression of black blue to blue from the monument line. The magenta is liquitex ink at the center, with Reaper magenta as the edge highlights.

To get the OSL, I did a prespray with white ink to map out where the glow would be brightest. Gold is the monument ones worked up to bright gold, then with I worked in some very light magenta and sepia ink into the shadows.

Credit: Sky Serpent

Sky Serpent

Necrons hold a special place in my Commorrite heart: My very first Warhammer 40,000 model was a metal Necron Warrior (courtesy of White Dwarf) from when they were first released at the back end of 2nd edition and I fondly remember the first Codex in the following edition with some incredible models with a certain Nightbringer among them. I still think the original sculpt is great for its time but oh what a Tesseract Glow up!

It’s a great sculpt which builds on the original with a blend of the modern Necron aesthetic and a phenomenal pose, I found it relatively easy to stick together but like most of these larger, intrinsic models I would always advise to take your time; it’s really clever how they use the pixelisation at times to hide the joins.

Before painting I did some research into how I would approach the Nightbringer and settled on a colour palette which would include shades that I had used before on previous Necron models as well as other ideas more befitting of the C’tan.

The first part I decided on was a pale face which mimicked the ceramic armour of the Necrons I painted before and was in homage to Bengt Ekerot’s portrayal of Death from the 1957 film The Seventh Seal, this was one of the last parts I painted but was basecoated in Ulthuan Grey, washed with a mix of Fenrisian Grey and Lahmian Medium and highlighted back up with Ulthuan Grey with increasing amounts of White added.

For the pixelated parts of the robe I worked up through Incubi Darkness, Kabalite Green, Sybarite Green and Gauss Blaster before ending on White dot highlights while the lightning was Sotek Green, Temple Guard Blue and Baharroth Blue.

The Robe was painted with Dark Reaper before being washed back down with Nuln Oil and Corvus Black before some highlights were made with Skavenblight Dinge and Dark Reaper, I also added some washes of Barak Nar Burgundy to add some further depth.

I painted the bronze skin with several GW bronzes, using Castellax Bronze, Runelord Brass, Sycorax Bronze and Canoptek Alloy.

Finally I opted for a Martian base to contrast with the green in the cloak and painted the entire base in a Vallejo texture paste and sprinkled some watch parts onto it in patches. Next up I applied Martian Ironcrust followed by some watered down applications of Doombull Brown. I highlighted this by adding increasing amounts of Wild Rider to the latter and drybrushing this across the ground.

James "One_Wing" Grover

The Nightbringer. Credit: Wings

I went for a relatively classic scheme for my Nightbringer, incorporating some tricks I picked up doing the Void Dragon and Yncarne.

Build-wise, the model came together pretty well, with the only oddity being that I couldn't quite get one of the shoulders to line up as precisely as the instructions showed. However, this join ends up invisible below another layer of robe, so it didn't really matter. I was impressed by the sturdiness of the lightning matrix below the model too - once assembled, it's very stable, providing very reassuring support. I will say that you basically have to fully assemble the model to paint it though - it goes together a bit like a jigsaw, and I didn't see many opportunities for sub-assemblies.

Paint-wise, I wanted to try doing something like the fade effect between the robes and the glowing necron-ness that the box art had, and used a contrast wet blend to do this. My process was to spray the whole model Leadbelcher, then fill in the purple down as far as I wanted it to go with a normal Naggaroth > Druchii violet recipe.

Preparing the edge of the purple for the blend with a drybrush.

I then drybrushed leadbelcher on top of the border to create an area in which I could use Contrast to take the purple into the fade. I then did the glowing green (Stormhost Silver > Tesseract Glow all over > thinned Ork Flesh) in from the other end till just this border was left, then used wet blending of Contrast Medium-thinned Leviathan Purple into Ork Flesh to create the smooth fade in the transition zone. This worked pretty well - I had to re-apply some lighter purple in a few places where the contrast had pooled, but the effect fundamentally worked.

The other main important surface is the body, which is dead easy - it's Grey Knights Steel > Aethermatic Blue > re-drybrush Grey Knights Steel, which gives a lovely blue-tinted chrome effect. Used various contrasts and metalics to do the scarab swarms, and matted down the lightning with Moot Green/Contrast Medium followed by washes, and we're done.

I also took some family shots, because why not.

Nightbringer Old and New. Credit: Wings

Nightbringer and Void Dragon. Credit: Wings

My booth setup is fully not large enough to handle both of these together.

Have any questions or feedback? Drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com. Want articles like this linked in your inbox every Monday morning? Sign up for our newsletter. And don’t forget that you can support us on Patreon for backer rewards like early video content, Administratum access, an ad-free experience on our website and more.