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Necrons
August 6, 2026 at 09:50 PM
Embedded four official Necron battlefield screenshots
The Necrons are one of the four launch Factions in Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War IV. They are ancient, deathless beings who awaken to the unwelcome intrusion on Planet Kronus and move to reclaim the world as their own.
According to the game's official faction description, the Necrons long ago traded their mortal bodies for mechanical supremacy, paying for that power with their souls. Now they are stirring from a 60-million-year slumber and seeking to reclaim their lost galactic empire, beginning with the world they find occupied. As an awakening force they enter the conflict not as newcomers but as something that was already there, rising again to drive intruders out.
The trigger is a signal. The Necrons picked up a mysterious transmission originating from Planet Kronus, a world they had long assumed held nothing more of interest for them. Kronus is a dormant tomb world, and wherever there are hidden tombs there are Necron units and war machinery of immense power waiting under the surface. That is what turns a forgotten planet into the centre of a four-way war.
Their awakening is tied directly to the game's central mystery. The Necrons stir in response to what an Adeptus Mechanicus expedition uncovers buried on Kronus, which is what draws every faction to the planet. See Story and Setting for how that thread runs through the Campaign.
The Necrons' named figure is Thothmek the Chronomancer, a time-bending Chronomancer revealed as the leader of the Necron host on Planet Kronus. A Chronomancer is a Necron schemer who bends the flow of time, and Thothmek is described as warping time around nearby Necrons to shield them while loosing raw energy to suppress enemies that close on him. It is his stirring that rouses the long-undisturbed tombs beneath Kronus, setting the Necrons against the Adeptus Mechanicus expedition that is hunting the same buried technology.
The second playable Necron Commander is Ahmnok, once the ruler of Kronus and now consumed entirely by the urge to annihilate all life. Where Thothmek manipulates the battlefield from a distance, Ahmnok is far less inclined to do so: the developers describe him as more than happy to let his bloodied claws do the talking instead. Between the two, a Necron player picks either a controlling, time-warping leader or a direct and violent one.
The Necron economy is built on territory rather than on capturing points the way other armies do. Your centre of operations is the Tomb Citadel, an immensely powerful and upgradeable structure that doubles as the production engine for your units. As the base grows it spreads the Power Matrix, an energy field that most Necron buildings must be constructed on top of, and that every new building pushes further outward. The larger the Matrix, the more Dominion resource the faction earns. Expansion and income are therefore the same action, which is why the army is described as a slow but steady threat that snowballs.
The Matrix is not only an economic layer. Necron units standing inside it fight better: they already benefit from out-of-combat healing, and imbuing themselves with the energy of the Matrix makes them heal more quickly, grow tougher, and become harder to kill. Fighting a Necron player on their own ground is meaningfully different from catching them away from it. See Base Building and Resources for how the wider economy works.
Necrons can build Resurrection Galleries, structures that bring fallen units back for free. Once one is constructed you nominate a preferred unit type, and whenever a unit of that type falls in battle it returns at no cost. Combined with the healing from the Power Matrix, this is what gives the faction its reputation for attrition: losing a tough unit does not necessarily mean losing it permanently.
The following Necron units have been named by the developers. Exact stats and costs have not been published, so none are listed here.
Unit | Role |
|---|---|
Scarabs | Very cheap, very small swarms of insectoid constructs, and among the faster Necron units. Used to engage enemy ranged units in melee so they cannot use their strongest weapons |
Deathmarks | Snipers capable of outranging and eliminating enemy Commanders and elite infantry from a safe distance |
Doomstalkers | Colossal constructs armed with Doomsday Blasters that roam the battlefield |
Canoptek Spyders | Support constructs that can build Tomb Pylons anywhere on the map |
Tomb Pylons | Structures built by Canoptek Spyders that spawn a fresh patch of Power Matrix and act as a translocation target |
Monolith | An imposing vehicle whose Eternity Gate acts as an exit point for units held in reserve at the Tomb Citadel |
Tomb Citadel | The faction's upgradeable headquarters and unit production engine |
Resurrection Gallery | Structure that returns a nominated unit type for free when one falls |
Necron units are, with a few exceptions, deliberately slow compared to the other factions' armies. To stop that becoming a liability in the late game, when battlefield hotspots move quickly, the faction leans on teleportation rather than speed.
Canoptek Spyders plant Tomb Pylons anywhere on the map, which both extend the Power Matrix and let units entering the Tomb Citadel arrive there.
The Translocation Science Stratagem teleports up to five units from anywhere on the battlefield to any other visible part of the map.
The Monolith can be moved behind enemy lines, after which its Eternity Gate delivers even the slowest units from the Tomb Citadel straight to the front.
Necrons are also the one faction that does not use cover at all, and they have their own variant of on-field reinforcement that works better in combat than the standard version. Both details come from the developers' Multiplayer briefing.
The Necrons have now been detailed at the same level as the Orks and the Adeptus Mechanicus. What is still missing is numbers: no unit stats, costs, build times, or upgrade values have been published for any faction, and the full Necron roster beyond the units named above has not been shown. The Space Marines are the one faction still awaiting their own deep dive, which the developers have confirmed is the next one planned.
