Dawn of War 4’s Necrons Can Summon a Shackled God, and It Despises Every Order You Give
There’s something deeply unsettling about commanding a fragment of a dead star god to fight your battles for you — and knowing it resents every second of it.
Dawn of War 4 is leaning hard into the Necron faction’s darkest chapter, and the studio behind it just pulled back the curtain on what might be the most narratively compelling unit in any Warhammer 40K RTS. The C’Tan Shard of the Void Dragon isn’t just powerful. It’s a prisoner. And it wants you to know it.
For the uninitiated, the Necrons are ancient aliens who traded their flesh for immortality. Millions of years ago, they served the C’Tan — literal star gods who manipulated them into doing their bidding. When the Necrons finally revolted, they shattered the C’Tan into fragments and bound those fragments into machine bodies. It’s a revenge story told across eons, and Dawn of War 4 is bringing it to life in a way the tabletop never quite could.
“When you give the Void Dragon orders, it does this with no real pleasure,” senior game designer Elliott Verbiest explained. “It feels like it is in control but it is still chained. It is forced to act.” That tension — between raw cosmic power and enforced servitude — is exactly the kind of detail that elevates a unit from a stat block into something you actually think about while playing.
The C’Tan Shard can fly, hurl its spear to obliterate clusters of enemies, and emit green lightning that damages vehicles while slowly regenerating its health. But the real hook is how it interacts with the world. When facing enemy Necrons, the Shard is the only unit that refers to them by their old name: Necrontyr. It’s a small touch, but it speaks volumes about the hierarchy of contempt running through this faction. The other Necrons serve their dynasty. The C’Tan Shard tolerates yours.
King Art Games is clearly banking on these character moments to make the Necrons feel distinct beyond their mechanical abilities. And honestly, it’s working. In a genre where endgame units often reduce to “big thing hits hard,” the Void Dragon Shard is a reminder that the best units in an RTS are the ones that make you feel something when you deploy them.
Dawn of War 4 launches September 17. If the Necrons are this richly realized, I can’t wait to see what the other three factions bring to the table.
Lena Nakamura is a reviewer at SteamGamer.net. She approaches every game by asking whether it does something new. She has a soft spot for roguelikes, narrative experiments, and anything with a strong art direction.
Comment here