June 14, 2012

Conversion: Crypteks

I've been experimenting a lot with Crypteks in the last couple of months. I was when the 5th Ed Necron codex first came out, but it was more of a getting-the-feel of what they can do rather than what they're capable of strategy-wise. Anyway, long story short, each one has a purpose through my playtesting experience. It will typically require your army built around a couple of them for them to see any use, but really...that's all this codex really is. Picking one of numerous viable strategies and working everything else around a unit or two (something that seems to baffle tournament-grade list builders.) So, with this knowledge I wanted at least one of each type of Cryptek. The problem being GW only makes one kind that...well, leaves a lot to be desired. This is where I come in.

First up is the Harbingers of Destruction Crypteks. I stole the idea and gave it my own personal touch from Zen 40k whose Necron conversions are quite captivating; I suggest to you check out their blog. Anywho, for this I used a box of Immortals/Deathmarks, a box of Praetorians/Lychguard and some spare parts from the Annihilation/Catacomb Command Barge.

Using the Deathmarks' bodies:

The Lychguards' legs:

Half of the staff from the Praetorians and the back piece from the Annihilation Barge's console 'crons I think look ridiculous and thus refused to use:

From that back piece on the AnnBarge, I cut the ends off of the middle section and flipped them around:

Glue in place, toss on a Deathmark head and Praetorian arms and voila. Some of the "arms" of their weapon itself are spread apart or closer together to indicate that S8 AP2 shot being fired:

This conversion will provide you with five of these little guys:

Next is the Harbinger of Eternity. I took a spare Overlord Warscythe from one of my AnnBarge kits and hacked off the blade (but I kept it for use later on in this post):

And also cut off the bottom blades, also for use later in this post:

Next I took to barrel-ends of the Immortals Tesla weaponry:

And combined them together to create the Chronometron he'll be holding (The book doesn't really say what it is, so I took a guess):

Finally I constructed the spare Overlord's body with a Deathmark head, the Chronometron, the staff and I took those bottom-blades from the staff and put it around his collar for a more "Count Dracula" kind of look:

For the Harbinger of the Storm I simply used the basic Finecast model for a Cryptek:

The Harbinger of Despair is another take on a conversion by Zen 40k. For mine, I took that spare Warscythe blade from the conversion earlier and slapped it on the other side of a Warscythe like so:

And with a WHFB Vampire Counts Wraith, a Cryptek head, a couple of Overlord arms and a crap-ton of filing we have the body for the Cryptek:

Combine the two and toss on one of the creepy Overlord hands and there we have it:

For the Harbinger of Transmogrification I had to wait a bit since I wanted to use the Illuminor Szeras model with it's multiple legs to get through that difficult terrain they force to pop up all over the place.

As for the other four kinds of Crypteks:

Finally, within a month the Illuminor Szeras model came out and the Cryptek family is complete:

Until next time!

5 comments:

  1. That is brilliant! I really like the way yours look. Mine were made with the preatorian box, like many other, which isn't bad, but they look a little huge for teks.

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  2. Fit. I like that you've gone to the trouble of building the whole set - that's a nice touch.

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  3. Thanks to you both, it was a really fun conversion to do.

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  4. Really enjoyed the fact that both you and your conversions were dressed in their Sunday Best. hope you don;t mind the shout out over on my weekly themed top X. Cheers and thanks for sharing.

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  5. Glad you enjoyed it, and thanks much for the shout out!

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