Retrospective: Adeptus Mechanicus War Convocation and Formations

After yesterday's post on my memories on when the first Adeptus Mechanicus codexes were released as Skitarii and Cult Mechanicus separately, I thought I should do another "Blast from the Past" article because I felt a sense of nostalgia. Now, I think 7th edition was okay, but I prefer 8th edition, and now 10th edition to 7th, though I do have some fondness for the old blast templates and armored value facings that we still have in Horus Heresy. That's why I play Horus Heresy a lot too. But I really like 10th edition too...unfortunately, it seems like most people don't really like playing against my Knights. Oh, well.

Aside from Knights, though, I think it'll be fun to talk about what happened when Adeptus Mechanicus first burst into the scene in 7th edition. To do that, I'll need to talk about Formations.

Formations? What are Formations? Simply put, back in 7th edition, you usually have to put together an army via the standard Force Organization Chart, which looked something like this - if it looks familiar, that's because it's the very same one we use in Horus Heresy.

Yeah, apparently, it's taken from XVI Legion.com

You have a Combined Arms Detachment, with an optional Allied Detachment. Minimum is 1 compulsory HQ and 2 compulsory Troops, then add whatever you want. There are special detachments for Imperial Knights, who can take 3-5 Lords of War (same as the Super-heavy Detachment in 8th edition). And then you have the weird "unique" Detachments for smaller armies such as Skitarii, who are obviously missing the HQ, and Harlequins who also didn't have HQ.

Yeah, it was a wild time. I'm glad they recombined Skitarii and Cult Mechanicus into Adeptus Mechanicus and gave us a Skitarii Marshal. The weird detachments just made things more confusing. To top it off, with the release of the Necrons codex in 2015, we had something called Formations. Unlike the Combined Arms Detachment or normal Force Organization Chart that you used for your armies, Formations instead are comprised of specific units that are based on a theme, are subjected to restrictions, but in return they gain powerful, "thematic" rules. An example would be the Skitarii Battle Maniple.

The Restrictions may say none, but it's actually more rigid than it looks like. For example, in the Battle Maniple, you can only take exactly 1 squad of Skitarii Vanguard and 1 squad of Skitarii Rangers. The customizability lies in the size of squads, and back then you can take 5-men squads. And 5-men squads can take 2 special weapons (e.g. 5-men Vanguard can take 2 plasma calivers) and a 10-men squad can take 3 special weapons (10 Rangers can take 3 arc rifles or 2 arc rifles and 1 transuranic arquebus). Oh, those were the days. However, you can't take 2 squads of Skitarii Vanguard. Just 1. And if you take 1, you must take 1 squad of Skitarii Rangers, because that's what the Formation requires. Obviously, according to the Formation, you're required to take one of every datasheet available to the Skitarii at the time, with the only exception being Sydonian Dragoons or Ironstrider Ballistarii, but they're from the same kit anyway. The issue, of course, is that you can take up to 6 of each per unit, so you ideally would have to buy 2 boxes of them. And for the rest, you need to buy 2 boxes of each, such as the Skitarii Vanguard/Rangers and Sicarian Ruststalkers/Infiltrators. Yeah, clearly Games Workshop is trying to milk us.

Anyway, your basic Skitarii Formation would look something like this:

Don't think the Battle Maniple is enough? You want to run more than 1 of each unit? Well, then you'll have a Super Formation that's made up of several Formations. I introduce to you the War Cohort.

Yeah...Formations are designed to milk the players of their cash. But I don't think anyone cares about the War Cohort. Most people go with the Battle Maniple because it's simply part of one larger Adeptus Mechanicus army. Instead, the Battle Maniple is a prerequisite to the super popular (at that time) super Formation, the Adeptus Mechanicus War Convocation.

Yup. That's the Adeptus Mechanicus War Convocation. The Skitarii Battle Maniple is just one Formation within it. You also need a Cult Mechanicus Battle Congregation Detachment, which is this:

There's obviously a typo (probably because of the Skitarii codex), the skull is meant to be the HQ, not Troops. But yeah, this was back when the Tech-priest Dominus was your only HQ, and you can only ever take one for your army. Now, we're encouraged to spam Characters to attach them to units for buffs, but back then, Characters were Independent Characters that you also attach to units, and if they're your Warlord, well, you get Warlord Traits.

The Oathsworn Knight Detachment is just 1-3 Knights. Back then, people played 1,850 points instead of 2,000 (I don't know why). With the steep requirements of the Skitarii Battle Maniple costing almost half your army, most people can only take 1 Knight anyway. But the Adeptus Mechanicus War Convocation was ridiculously powerful. As you can see, all weapons and wargear upgrades are free - you can guess how powerful that is. And plasma weapons don't get hot! So plasma caliver spam, as well as plasma Kataphron Destroyers. Needless to say, this was 7th edition at one of its finest, except that the Space Marines took the cake with their free Dedicated Transports (Rhinos and Razorbacks) when they took the Super Formation known as Gladius Strike Force.

Point, though, is that you can tell that Skitarii and Cult Mechanicus are meant to be one combined army. Ideally, the War Convocation was supposed to be how Adeptus Mechanicus was run, and you were encouraged to combine them all together like that. Hence the benefits and free stuff. It also got people to buy all the shiny new models from the Skitarii and Cult Mechanicus line. I know I fell for it, hook, line and sinker, though...I would have done something similar anyway. I always wanted to play Skitarii, I loved robots, and I already had Knights - Imperial Knights were my first army. But would I have built the Kataphron Destroyers as plasma? Would I have bothered with the Sicarian Infiltrators or even the Ironstriders? Maybe not. But for the Formation, I ended up assembling the Infiltrators, the Kataphrons and Ironstriders that I might otherwise not have gotten.

...I was new to the hobby back then, so even with this supposedly overpowered, cheesy super Formation, I couldn't win any games with them. Oh, well. All a learning experience. But yeah. You'll notice the theme here. They were designed to be one combined army.

Then 8th edition hit.

Yup, no longer Codex: Skitarii. It's Adeptus Mechanicus now, with both Cult Mechanicus and Skitarii rolled into one. No longer do we need to have unique detachments without any HQ, the Tech-priest Dominus is our HQ now! I think they added the Tech-priest Enginseer here too, and this was the first time he moved from an Elite to a HQ role because they realized that Adeptus Mechanicus had too little HQ options. Not only were Cult Mechanicus and Skitarii combined into one book, guess what? We have Questor Mechanicus - or Mechanicus Knights datasheets in the book!

Speaking of which, even before 8th edition, there was a precedent that showed they were meant to be the same army. We had Start Collecting! Skitarii where...you guess it, the HQ was the Tech-priest Dominus.

It had its own special Formation rules if you field them together like that. It was called the Dominus Maniple Formation. Apparently, you can pick an enemy unit within 18" and in line of sight to the Tech-priest Dominus, then all units in this Formation re-roll hit rolls against it during the shooting phase. Cool. But yeah, the Tech-priest Dominus is clearly meant to be the HQ for Adeptus Mechanicus, so it was silly to split the codexes.

So we come back to...yeah, the Adeptus Mechanicus War Convocation. But hey, did you think the War Convocation wasn't enough? Did you want something more...uh, excessive? Well, during the Gathering Storm campaign, particularly in Fall of Cadia, we have something even more extravagant! Introducing the Conclave Acquisitorius!

The...what now? Yeah, Belisarius Cawl, 1-2 Battle Maniples or 1 War Cohort (3 Battle Maniples), 1 Holy Requisitioner (I believe that's a Formation that requires a Tech-priest Dominus and a couple of Kataphron Breacher units), 0-1 Cohort Cybernetica if you like your Kastelan Robots, the Electro-priests which are thankfully optional, and even a Baronial Court of Imperial Knights (3-5) if you think 1-2 aren't enough.

Obviously, nobody fielded this because it was too much. It was impossible to field this in 1,850 or 2,000 point games, you'll need...a lot. So everyone stuck to the War Convocation instead.

But hey, what if you just want to play Adeptus Mechanicus normally as they were intended, instead of being forced to split them between Skitarii and Cult Mechanicus? Well, Fall of Cadia has you covered too!

F the fancy "Grand Convocation Detachment" name. This is simply a normal Force Organization Chart (or Combined Arms Detachment) for Adeptus Mechanicus. Obviously, if you really want to min-max for the benefits, you try to max out the units in the Detachment, but...again, nobody did that because it was highly impractical, and you couldn't fit them all under 2,000 points. So forget it. Furthermore, this only increased the number of books you had to cart around. Like, c'mon. First, we had to get Skitarii codex. Then Cult Mechanicus codex. That's 2 books. Oh, and the White Dwarf issue (for the sake of completeness, it was issue 69, released on May 23rd, 2015) for the Adeptus Mechanicus War Convocation. Wait, that's not all...if you want to field your Knight, you need the Imperial Knight codex too! So you're carrying around three codexes and a White Dwarf magazine just to play a single army. And now you're asking us to maybe swap that White Dwarf magazine for a fourth book in the form of Fall of Cadia? So in addition to the bulky army case, we had to find space for four books and potentially a magazine. Yikes.

Another thing. Considering that the rules are all over the place, you have to flip around. Knight datasheets are in the Imperial Knight codex, along with the Baronial Court rules, the Warlord Traits and other upgrades (I believe the Warlord goes up to BS5 and WS5, plus have a 3++ invulnerable save). Then you need to refer back to Fall of Cadia for the overall super Formation benefit, which is It Will Not Die for vehicles. Or Master-crafted. Or something. So you'll be flipping back and forth around the codexes, trying to search the relevant rules and datasheets. Yeah, as fun as theorycrafting was, doing all that book keeping in the middle of a game was not...practical or enjoyable. Not to mention the look on your opponent's face as he impatiently waits for you to look up your needlessly complex rules.

Thankfully, Games Workshop realized this was a bad idea, and...said screw it, virus bombing 7th Edition and Formations to oblivion and resetting everything. 8th edition was much better (at least until the mess that was Psychic Awakening, but I think even Psychic Awakening was better than the catastrophe that was Formations). Like I said, the 8th edition Adeptus Mechanicus codex wisely combined Skitarii, Cult Mechanicus and even the Oathsworn/Questor Mechanicus (Mechanicus Knights in low Gothic) into a single book, which clearly illustrates that that was the intention all along. The Knights were taken out of the 9th edition codex, but they already had their own Imperial Knight codex, which was further expanded upon with the addition of Armigers and the Dominus chassis, so you could argue that they didn't really need them anyway. But 9th edition did accommodate for Knights via the Knight of the Cog, which was cool. But back to 7th edition - at the end, the rules team was trying to put Skitarii and Cult Mechanicus back together as a single army either through Formations or even fluffy Detachments like the Grand Convocation, but that only contributed to making 7th edition even more of a convoluted mess. With the destruction of Cadia and Roboute Guilliman's resurrection, however, 7th edition came to a close, along with all the ridiculous Formations and bloated rules and dozens of books needed to play your armies. And thus ends a page of Games Workshop and Warhammer 40,000 history.

Still, despite the clear flaws and problems, it's fun to look back at history and all the cool stuff. There's definitely potential there, especially in seeing an army as thematic as the Adeptus Mechanicus War Convocation. Just as long as you don't min-max them. Giving benefits to encourage people to run thematic armies was a good start, but when everything started becoming free and...uh, excessive, that's when it got way out of hand.

I don't know if anyone is going to enjoy reading this series, but if you guys like more of this retrospectives or blasts from the past, I might write more. Maybe I'll pick Wrath of Magnus and look into the Thousand Sons Cabal Formation thing next, but only if you guys want to read about it. Till then!

Ever wondered why Codex: Skitarii and Codex: Cult Mechanicus were split in 7th Edition?

Ah, this takes me back. I wrote a stupid post about this back then, but it was more of a rant about how I hated Cult Mechanicus than an actual proper article. Oh, well. Anyway, old timers might remember how the Adeptus Mechanicus faction was split into two codexes (codices?) in 2015. I dunno if I can be considered an old timer - strangely enough, I'm older than many of the youngsters who have just newly come into what is an increasingly expensive hobby, but there are way more experienced veterans than me who have played 3rd, 4th and 5th editions, while I only started at the late tail end of 6th or maybe early 7th edition?

Hell, I think this blog started just a couple of months before the release of Codex: Skitarii, and I ended up jumping on the bandwagon. Not because I'm a fan of all things new or a slave to the new hotness or a meta-chaser or whatever, but I had always been a fan of the Adeptus Mechanicus, thanks to the Ciaphas Cain novels. You know, back when Skitarii were known as Tech Guard (the Forge Worlds' version of the Imperial Guard), and were nothing more than cyborg Guardsmen wielding hellguns. You could essentially represent them as kitbashed cyborg Guardsmen with storm troopers rules. And there was this old fluff where the Skitarii of the forge world Ryza possessed armored columns of Leman Russ Executioner tanks. Really awesome stuff. Oh, not to mention Graham McNeill's Mechanicum, which really cemented my love for Imperial Knights, his Priest of Mars trilogy (now known as Forge of Mars, time really flies), and Ben Counter's Dark Adeptus.

Oh? Are you lost? Sorry. But I think this is kind of important because it illustrates just how in flux the fluff and lore of Warhammer 40,000 armies are. Before we had a codex, Games Workshop - a company that focuses on miniatures - basically left it up to individual Black Library authors to imagine the Adeptus Mechanicus and the Skitarii however they wanted. There was a consensus, though. A common thread. Most of the Black Library novels that mention Skitarii before the advent of their codex always represented them as cyborg guardsmen with hellguns. You do have variety - Dan Abnett's Titanicus had berserk Skitarii warriors with access to chems and drugs, as well as some wild uniform that made them look barbaric. Graham McNeill's Skitarii in the Ultramarines omnibus also mentioned the same chems, paired with augmetics, mechanical limbs and even close-up melee weapons. In Graham's Priest of Mars series, you had this awesome Skitarii Secutor who commanded the Skitarii legions, and they were riding in modified Rhinos and had access to commonly recognized Guard tanks like Leman Russ and Chimeras. Sandy Mitchell and Ben Counter, though, had Skitarii being guardsmen with cybernetics and hellguns.

Then came this in early 2015 (I believe announced in March, and just a couple of months after I started this blog in December 2014).

Suddenly, we had a bunch of new lore based on the new miniatures designed and invented by Games Workshop. Radium carbines? Huh? Radioactive infantry? Hellguns were replaced by galvanic rifles. To be fair, a lot of the designs, particularly the Skitarii Rangers' hoods and rebreathers and goggles, were inspired by already existing artwork, such as the cover for Mechanicum, written by Graham a few years prior.

Yeah, you can see the similiarities and inspirations. The Skitarii finally had an army and model range of their own, having been mentioned in the lore for decades, but not having a representative on the tabletop. That all changed, and I was eager to collect an army of my own. Yikes, I can still see the early 2015 articles in my blog as I assembled and painted them. They looked horrible back then, I never bothered with the Martian red, and instead did some boring combination black and gold to match my Knights. That...didn't work out.

Anyway, shortly after Codex: Skitarii, we had this:

What the hell? Yeah...I was just as confused as everyone back then. I was happy with Skitarii. Why did we need another codex? Well, back then, I didn't really care too much. I was more than eager to run the Adeptus Mechanicus War Convocation in White Dwarf, which allowed me to run both my Skitarii and Knight together, and I like robots, so I was happy to collect a bunch of Kastelan robots.

I was new to the hobby back then, so despite what everyone claimed about the Adeptus Mechanicus War Convocation being cheesy and overpowered, I could never win a game with them. That's not important. The real question is...why the hell did they separate the codexes/codices? Couldn't they have just combined them into Codex: Adeptus Mechanicus, like they did in 8th, 9th and now 10th edition? Hindsight is 20/20. There was no way I would have anticipated them combining both codexes in future editions back then. Hell, I didn't even know there was a new edition on the horizon, about 2 years after the release of this codex. Even back then, I remember writing about how I didn't think Codex: Cult Mechanicus was necessary. I didn't like the models in there, I hated the Electro-priests, I wasn't fond of the Kataphron aesthetic, and I thought the Kastelan robots were inferior to the Forge World range of Castellax battle-automata and Thanatar siege-automata. I loved the Skitarii codex, but I couldn't say the same for Cult Mechanicus.

But...apparently, there was a reason why they separated the two. The answer lies in Goonhammer's interview with James Hewitt, who used to work for the rules team in Warhammer 40,000 before joining the team for specialist games.

The cynic might claim that Games Workshop separated Skitarii from Cult Mechanicus to sell two different books, and therefore make more money. That it was a profit orientated decision. That didn't really make sense because it was unlikely that they would make more money from selling two separate codexes for a single army. Firstly, books didn't have a high profit margin - Games Workshop relied more on selling miniatures for profit than books and codexes. Secondly, your expenses will increase because you'll have to pay double for binding, color printing, and other overheads, only to sell them slightly cheaper.

Nope. It's nothing as insidious as greedy, money-grubbing capitalists. Instead, the answer turns out to be strangely mundane and...silly.

James: The Skitarii and Cult Mechanicus [back in 7th] which should have one combined set of rules, they got two sets of special rules, because otherwise you don’t sell two books of special rules, you sell one.

Lupe: And interestingly they got combined back together in 8th.

James: And they should have been, they always should have been. The reason they were split was because of a logistics thing. It was when White Dwarf was weekly and they could only show one week’s releases at a time, and if you put out an army book in week one then you’ll show off the releases for the next one, and “secrecy is paramount” , you can’t show off the future releases. If you put it out in week two, it looks like the releases in week one were coming out without an army book, and that doesn’t make sense. And it was this whole ridiculous… the tail has often wagged the dog in Games Workshop in different ways, and this was a fantastic example of that.

Lupe: OK, sorry, can I just clarify: the reason that in 7th edition they were two separate armies was publishing requirements of White Dwarf?

James: There you go. It was like the Skitarii didn’t have any characters. I had to write that codex. There were no HQ choices, so how do we do it? We had to make up a new detachment for them. Similarly things like the Skitarii didn’t have any transport options.

Lupe: So you worked on 40k as well?

James: Oh sorry yeah, I did, did I not say that?

Lupe:  [Laughs] No you didn’t mention that at all.

James: The rules team worked on everything, 40k was just ubiquitous. It was always just there in the background. It was probably the least exciting part to me – churning out codexes that are 80% the same as the previous edition of the codex, with a few new bits. The Skitarii book was a rare exception, a chance to do a whole new army from scratch. But yeah, the transports thing. We’d had to come up with this whole thing because they didn’t have any transports. And this comes back to the thing I was saying earlier and how it goes miniatures, then background and then rules. The miniatures stuff is so closed off, we didn’t get to know what was happening in the future. So when the background was written for them, the background stuff was emphasising how they’d walk everywhere. And we wrote rules around the idea of them not having transports. So when I saw the transports come out a couple of years later I went “Oh come on!”, that’s just rewritten a huge chunk of stuff. But hey.

Lupe: Wow that is just bizarre.

Yeah. The reason that they separated Skitarii from Cult Mechanicus as two separate codexes was because of logistics...to adhere to the publishing requirements of the then weekly White Dwarf. And the bit about the transports - which we later know thanks to hindsight that they are Archaeopter Transvector and Skorpius Dunerider - brings me back to my original point about the lore and fluff being in flux. In the beginning, before Codex: Skitarii and later Codex: Adeptus Mechanicus were a thing, the authors had to come up with their own idea of what Skitarii do and have.

So we had hellguns, modified Rhinos, Leman Russ Executioner tanks, servo-arms, chems and drugs, and basically cyborg Guardsmen that could be easily represented by Storm troopers with a bit of kitbashing.

Then the codex came out, and all of that became invalid. No longer was previous fluff accurate. Nope, the Skitarii had to be depicted according to the codex and miniatures released by Games Workshop. Hell, not even the codex, just the miniatures. No more hellguns, say hello to radium carbines and galvanic rifles. Rhinos? Nope! We march on foot now! Leman Russ Executioner tanks? Who needs them, we have Onager Dunecrawlers! They admittedly look cooler. Oh, wait! Remember all those cool robots from the 1980s and 1990s that used to fight alongside Space Marines, had their own complicated programming ruleset, and maybe even Epic models (I might be wrong here)? They make a comeback in Kastelan robots (and the Forge World's then new Horus Heresy series). The fluff/lore had to be updated too, and Rob Sanders wrote two awesome novels about the new Adeptus Mechanicus, which rewrote all previous iterations of Skitarii and battle-servitors, and featured all the new models in their full glory as they fight against the Iron Warriors. Skitarii Alpha-Primus Haldron-44 Stroika as his Skitarii forces are first decimated by Iron warriors on a fallen forge world where the Mechanicus tests out a new gellar bomb constructed by a recently discovered Standard Template Construct, and then Magos Explorator Omnid Torquora as he picks up the fight and struggles to outwit the superior Traitor Legion with his dwindling Skitarii forces and Titan support.

No, seriously. Rob Sanders's novels about the Adeptus Mechanicus are amazing. I know some people complain about them being...uh, product placements to promote the new Skitarii and Cult Mechanicus models, but it's an amazing story in its own right, and there are a few twists and turns that make reading both novels engaging to the very end. The ending is also awesome and a great f you to the Iron Warriors (you can tell that my son of Dorn bias is showing). Both books have been collected as the Adeptus Mechanicus omnibus. Anyway, as I said, the Skitarii lore, wargear, weapons and equipment have been rewritten. Gone are the hellguns. Now we have arc mauls, arc pistols, radium carbines, galvanic rifles and plasma calivers. Oh, man. The plasma calivers, especially. And then the Kataphron Destroyer makes an appearance. The Elecro-priests feel kind of forced and shoeshorned into the narrative, admittedly, but the rest of the two books are great.

It's not just Rob Sanders's two books. In the latest Ciaphas Cain novel, Vainglorious, Kastelan robots make an appearance in the forge world he's visiting. In The Warmaster and The Anarch by Dan Abnett, upon the forge world of Urdesh, the Skitarii now wield galvanic rifles instead of hellguns. Gav Thorpe's Imperator: Wrath of the Omnissiah, also features modern Skitarii and even a Kastelan Robot that is supposed to defend the Imperator Titan from boarding Traitor Marines. I also need to mention the Horus Heresy and Siege of Terra novels that were published after the codexes' releases. Aaron Dembski-Bowden writes about Skitarii using radium carbines in Echoes of Eternity, not to mention more codex-like Skitarii in The Master of Mankind when they fight alongside the Legio Custodes and the Emperor in the War in the Webway. Hell, a Sicarian assassin even shows up in The Master of Mankind. And we have that in Rob Sanders's Cybernetica as well, with Skitarii Rangers wielding galvanic rifles rappeling out of a freaking Valkyrie. Yeah, an Imperial Guard Valkyrie. Again, this was back in 2015, before the release of the Archaeopter kit, so it'll probably be retconned now. Oh, and I almost forgot Guy Haley's Wolfsbane, though I believe that featured more Forge World models such as the Myrmidon, Thallaxi, Cybernetica automata and Tech-priests of the Mechanicum as opposed to the orthodox Skitarii that we see in the 41st Millennium.

In fact, I've seen arguments from older Mechanicus fans that the Thallax is closer to what they imagine the Skitarii line infantry would be, as opposed to the Vanguard and Rangers. Tougher cyborg warriors, more nightmarish, and more of the Gothic and grimdark aesthetic. I don't blame them for that, though I sometimes wonder if they are more caught up in the heydays of Forge World's Horus Heresy's new beginnings. I mean, when I think of Skitarii, I imagine the kind of robed cyborg infantry as depicted in the cover of Graham's Mechanicum as opposed to the Thallax.

Interestingly enough, I haven't actually seen Graham McNeill write any new Mechanicum/Mechanicus or Skitarii stories after the codex, though he has been often called upon to pen Thousand Sons stories set during the Horus Heresy, such as The Crimson King and The Fury of Magnus. I wonder what his take on the now official codex Skitarii and Mechanicus would be.

Even the codex is not immune to retcons and changes (which is kind of ironic, given that codex is kind of a meta-reference to Roboute Guilliman's codex, which most Space Marine Chapters adhere rigidly to). About 5 years later, new models and miniatures are released. Did James mention how the Skitarii march on foot because they don't have transports? Well, now they have Skorpius Duneriders and Archaeopter Transvectors to ferry them around!

Psychic Awakening: Engine War essentially expanded the range for Adeptus Mechanicus in May 2020 - or to be precise, the range for Skitarii, because we didn't really have much for Cult Mechanicus. I won't go over the lore here - that's for another article - but we basically had 9 new units for Skitarii, including the Serberys Raiders and Serberys Sulfurhounds (the Serberys Corps), the Pteraxii Sterilyzors and Pteraxii Skystalkers, the Skorpius Dunerider and Skorpius Disintegrator, and the Archaeopter that had three variants: Transvector, Fulisave and Stratoraptor. Am I forgetting anyone else?

The Tech-priest Manipulus, who first appeared for Kill Team, was finally incorporated into the Adeptus Mechanicus codex for 9th edition in May 2021, along with the newly released Skitarii Marshal who was the Mechanicus's new Character model for that edition. The Technoarcheologist, who was originally Daedalosus of Blackstone Fortress (the board game) fame, also received rules in the 9th edition codex, and these two Tech-priests were retroactively added to the Adeptus Mechanicus range to double the HQ choices for Cult Mechanicus (with the Skitarii Marshal giving us a total of 5 HQ choices, up from 2 in the 8th edition codex). But you'll notice that aside from the Character/HQ models, the new models are all Skitarii. Even the Skitarii Marshal, and the Sydonian Skatros - added in the 10th edition codex in November 2023, are Skitarii. Except the Tech-priests (which were released for separate game systems), there are no new Cult Mechanicus models since their first release back in 2015.

Unfortunately, this division kind of remains in the new, upcoming codex. Skitarii have the Skitarii keyword, and the Cult Mechanicus, with the exception of Kastelan Robots (who have the Legio Cybernetica keyword - and I do hope we'll be getting new Cybernetica or robot models in the future, c'mon, Games Workshop!), have their own keyword...and the army rule only benefits Skitarii units. So unless you take the Data Psalm Conclave, you probably wouldn't be getting much out of your Electro Priests. Thankfully, the Kataphron Servitors have access to Doctrina Imperatives like the Skitarii, so it's just the Electo-priests and Kastelan Robots (unless you run Cohort Cybernetica) who don't. Also, if you're astute enough to attach your Tech-priests (not Electro) to Skitarii squads or even Kataphron units, they also get Doctrina Imperatives. A holdover from when they are separate in 7th edition? At least they ensured that Tech-priests and Kataphrons have access to Doctrina Imperatives (and these are kind of pointless for the Kastelan robots, anyway).

Well, enough of this blast from the past. I just thought it would be interesting to revisit a trip down memory lane and indulge in nostalgia. Has it really been over 8 years now? Wow. Maybe 9, since I started this blog around December 2014. I can't believe I've been doing this hobby for this long. Even more surprising that my blog has persisted for almost 10 years too. I've seen many blogs come and go. Hopefully, Gary Natfka is all right, though his Faeit212 blog hasn't been updated for six months now. Maybe he's caught up in real life. Not to mention CadiasCreed blog, but I think he sort of gave up on the hobby when 8th edition hit. Hopefully, this blog will remain updating even after another 10 years, and I'll once again write about how much the Adeptus Mechanicus has changed over two decades.

Till then!

Tanksgiving

We had a Tanksgiving event at Dreamers Vault today! Quite a few people participated, and we had a good range of tanks, ranging from a Gladiator Lancer, a Repulsor Executioner, Hekaton Land Fortress (is that how it's spelled?), an Onager Dunecrawler, a Ravager, a Leman Russ Vanquisher, and even a Monolith! That's quite the variety!

I originally wanted to bring my Stormblade, but I ended up bringing my Rogal Dorn tank instead. Oh, well. That's fine. I think...anyway, it was cool.

Um, I can't remember what happened, but we were shooting at each other and blowing up tanks left and right. The Monolith showed up in the late game and blew more stuff up. I probably lost my Rogal Dorn 3 or 4 times, but we were allowed to respawn.

It was great fun!

Anyway, after Tanksgiving, I painted my Kasrkin Lieutenant and the Skitarii Marshal. I can't wait to field my Adeptus Mechanicus Hunter Cohort soon! I think. Anyway, we'll see!

New Skitarii Marshal and Pariah Nexus Crusade

I assembled a second Skitarii Marshal for my Skitarii. Yay!

Wait, what? That's not a radium serpenta or radium gun. That's right. It's not. It's a volkite charger. I thought it was a good idea since the Skitarii Marshal now has an archeotech pistol anyway. So why not swap it out for a volkite? Not a fan of radium weapons, after all. Might be able to use him for Horus Heresy too! Yay! We will see.

Why did I acquire a second Skitarii Marshal, by the way? Well...because of this:

Warhammer Community has given us more details on the Pariah Nexus Crusade, and I can't wait to create my own narrative and Crusade regarding what's happening there! The forge world of Draconis IV will be sending their own Skitarii Legions and Tech-priests to collect blackstone and stuff from the Pariah Nexus, fighting against Necrons and doing all sorts of sneaky Mechanicus shenanigans! Needless to say, several Imperium factions, particularly the Adeptus Astartes, aren't happy about the, uh, shall we say xenarite tendencies of the Draconian priesthood, and they seek to stop them. That's probably where the Borealis Swords Chapter comes in, if my friend is willing to accept a revenge match after the last time he beat up my Skitarii. Yikes. We're ferrying blackstone from the Pariah Nexus back to our newly found forge world, and they aren't reacting well to this intelligence. Other Imperium factions might join the fray, but we'll see. For now, I would prefer to focus on the Adeptus Mechanicus versus Necrons conflict in the Crusade.

Oh, and here's the new lore for Pariah Nexus.

"Battle Group Kallides was the first sent to investigate the worrying Silent Zone, only to be immediately set upon by its Necron custodians. Unable to evacuate through the doldrums of the Nexus-stilled warp, the Imperial Fists instead sought a way to request aid from the wider Imperium.

Their gambit has paid off, and reinforcements are inbound – including Battlegroup Hephaestus, composed primarily of a large Adeptus Mechanicus fleet led by the Archmagos Belisarius Cawl. Perhaps predictably, rescue plans have taken a low priority in Cawl’s stack of tasks. His cogitators are instead dominated by schemes for acquiring and processing vast quantities of noctilith – better known as blackstone – to manufacture his new liminal abraisers. These devices, he believes, will allow his fleets to precisely modulate the energies of the warp – grinding away at the strange xenos-crafted field dominating the Pariah Nexus.

Unbeknownst to the self-proclaimed greatest mind of Mars, the Necrons have become embroiled in a civil war. Dynasties loyal to the Silent King are locked in combat with those who have aligned themselves with Imotekh the Stormlord – who has denounced the authority of the mute monarch.

Even with these undying armies distracted by a disagreement over sovereignty, Cawl and his allies have a bloody battle ahead of them. Fortunately,* the Tech-Priests drawn to his banner include some of the most radical and ambitious minds in the Machine Cult, each more than willing to smuggle esoteric, experimental, or forbidden superweapons into the Nexus. These devout followers of Cawl are now poised with their fingers on the triggers of an arsenal of apocalyptic armaments that overshadow the destructive prowess of any other Indomitus Crusade Battle Group.

Escalating chaos is unleashed when ancient kings lock horns and Tech-Priests pull reality-twisting super weapons from beneath their robes..."

As a Mechanicus player, I can't wait to join the conflict and field my Skitarii Legions (and Knights) against the Necrons! It's a reenactment of the turn based tactics game Mechanicus all over again, only this time, it's on the tabletop, with my own Skitarii, forge world and Knights carrying out their agendas! This will be fun!

Unfortunately, it seems like we'll have to wait a bit before the Crusade book comes out, because it'll only be released next year? OH NO!!!!

2nd Deredeo Dreadnought

I assembled a second Deredeo Dreadnought for my fledging Dark Angels force. Again, with all the plasma. Heh.

Not much else to say other than I will start painting them all in the near future. Let's see how it works out. I do want to get the new Adeptus Mechanicus codex and try out my Skitarii force. I have tons of Rangers, and so I think the Hunter Cohort is the best for me. I'm not buying any new Skitarii stuff because the Skratos doesn't appeal to me, but I have a lot of Skitarii that might benefit from the new detachment. Let's see.

If it doesn't work out, then I will return to playing Horus Heresy.

Astracide 2

And so the second day of the Astracide campaign continues! And said in the description thing yesterday, there's a Scorched Earth policy being adopted, and both Loyalists and Traitors have been destroying entire swathes of infrastructures and cities wholesale just to deny each other the invaluable resources. Opheloon Airbase and Interstellar Spaceport had been nuked to oblivion by the Loyalists to deny the Traitors landing forces and impede their anti-air batteries, so that the Blood Angels can land. Starbase Abu-Aku, known as the Eye in the Sky, has been demolished by a lance strike by the Traitors, the Traitor fleet moving in to strike at the fleet asset to deny the Loyalists' intelligence and information gathering. Finally, Ophelion Hive-Primus has been leveled by phosphex bombs by the Loyalists, the Dreadwing of the Dark Angels Legion incinerating the underhive with phosphex weapons and turning it into an infernal inferno of crawling death and agony. Apparently, they were ordered to do so by the unfeeling and callous Iron Hands, the Xth Legion having taking command of the Loyalists.

With three rounds gone, the Loyalists and Traitors have traded blows and are fairly even. Oh, and I should post pictures of everyone's armies while at it. They are really beautiful! There were Dark Angels, Night Lords, Blood Angels, Thousand Sons, Sons of Horus, Iron Hands, Iron Warriors, Raven Guard, and more! Well, the "more" is probably just my Imperial Knights and Imperial Militia. I think I'm the only one who played a non-Marine faction this Renegade. Heh.

Oh, yes. Speaking of which, I was able to field my Knights this time! For some reason, a couple of the Loyalists didn't show up - a Blood Angels player, and a Dark Angels player was late, so we now had 4 Loyalists versus 6 Traitors. I volunteered to switch sides quickly, and I was finally Loyalist again! YAY! Basically, my Thousand Sons pulled out after the beating by the Blood Angels, having secured the data caches and knowledge they wanted. And now my Knights - fresh from their victory in Aleph-1110 - march forth in defense of Ophelion. For the Emperor!

For the final round, I played against Iron Warriors with a small Night Lords detachment. Oh, no! That's bad because Night Lords are Distruted Allies with Iron Warriors. Oh, well...

My opponent actually had the Strategic Advantage and he deployed a bunch of tanks. Um, I think he had a Praetor with Thunder hammer attached to a 20-man tactical squad, a Primus Medicae (or a couple of apocetharies?), 2 10-man tactical squads in Rhinos 1 10-man tactical squad on foot, a Legion Baneblade, a Kratos with the melta blastgun, 2 Vindicators, 10-men heavy support squad with lascannons (of course) for the Iron Warriors, and a Master of Signals, a 10-man tactical squad, 4 laser-destroyer rapiers, and a Leviathan Dreadnought for the Night Lords. Nice.

I could finally field my Knights! But since this was a 4,000 point game (well, we both went up only to 3,900 points), I decided to just bring more Knights. So I had 4 Armiger Warglaives, 4 Armiger Helverins, 1 Cerastus Knight Crusader with the Aceutier upgrade, 3 Questoris Knights - an Errrant with Thunderstrike Gauntlet and the Seneschal upgrade, an Errant with the Dolorus upgrade (that's Tanaka), and a Preceptor with a las-impulsor and Avenger Gatling cannon. Backing them up is a small squad of Imperial Militia. Yeah!

Unfortunately for my opponent, after we deployed, I...rolled a 6 and seized the Initiative. And that changed everything forever.

The Armiger Helverins wiped out the Heavy Support squad, though the first Armiger took 2 or so wounds in the return fire, I'm not sure how. I rolled like 4 5+ saves or something. That was incredible. I was rolling hot, including the 6 from seizing the initiative. Moving all my other Knights forward, I wrecked a single Vindicator, did a bunch of damage to the Kratos but failed to kill it, though I did destroy its co-axial autocannon. The Baneblade took a beating from my Knight Lancer, but survived with 5 hull points. I also took out 7 tactical squads, damaged the two Rhinos, but First Strike was secured with the massacre of the heavy support squad. I think that's it, but that was brutal. Taking out the heavy support squad was absolutely game changing.

He did retaliate with the laser rapiers, Leviathan Dreadnought and Baneblade to destroy my poor Knight Lancer, who proceeded to explode and destroyed a Rhino or something. The Knight Errant Seneschal took a wound from the Kratos, who unfortunately, did not roll an Explodes! result for his one penetrating hit (I think I saved the rest with the front arc 4++ invulnerable save from his ion shield). I did manage to destroy a Rhino from the explosion of my Knight Lancer, and the tactical squad inside poured out and began to shoot the Imperial Militia to death. In the end, just a single soldier and the force commander survived, and they passed their Leadership because...Warrior Elite. Wow, that's a good provenance. Heh.

Um, I can't remember what's next. I did lose a Knight, so that's very painful. Oh, right. The Armiger Warglaive took damage from the Vindicator, and the Baneblade struck at a lot of stuff. The Armiger Warglaive did return fire and destroy the Vindicator with his melta, and the Seneschal also returned fire (thanks to his Warlord Trait), and did more damage to the Kratos and basically wiped out another 5 guys in the 20-man tactical squad and killed the Warlord. Yikes. Poor guy.

With the Knight Lancer destroyed, the Leviathan Dreadnought couldn't charge, and so...that's it for turn 1, with both of us scoring 1 point each. And he scored 2 points for Giant Slayer (or Price of Failure, we sort of used altered Heresy rules for Renegade for secondary objectives). Oh, I did score Slay the Warlord, though!

The surviving Knights continued to move up, and I wasn't able to destroy the Baneblade, but only took a few more hull points off it. The Knight Errant did manage to destroy the Kratos this time and wipe out more of the tactical squads. I think I managed to wipe out the 20-man tactical squad in this turn with the Avenger gatling cannon and the Armiger Helverins, but I can't remember. I also destroyed the second Rhino, and my Armiger Warglaives moved up to shoot and charge the first tactical squad, wiping them out in melee. I think that's about it? By now, the table was thinning.

He retaliated by moving his Leviathan Dreadnought forward, and his Baneblade slew my Armiger Warglaive, but not before I retaliated with Return Fire, destroying the Baneblade once and for all! With an explodes! result too! WOOHOO! The Seneschal took fire from the laser rapiers, and he used his special Warlord Trait to return fire, and though he died from that (and probably the Leviathan Dreadnought's meltaguns), he took out a bunch of tactical marines and 1 rapier gun. Yikes, those things are dangerous. Hmm, I can't remember what else, but I think nobody charged? We were still somewhat tied on points, with 8 to him, I think because he scored 2 points on primary, 4 for giant slaying and First Strike. Oh, and Slay the Warlord, which meant he had 8. As for me, I had 2 for primary, 2 for giant slaying, First Strike and Slay the Warlord, which brought me up to 6, so I was behind by 2 points even though I did destroy more.

In my third turn, I finally took out the rapiers through a combination of firepower from my Armiger Helverins and the Knight Crusader with las-impulsor. The Leviathan returned fire when my Armigers and surviving Knight Errant fired at him, and I think by the time shooting was done, the Rapiers were destroyed, and there were only two tactical squads and a Rhino left for the Iron Warriors, and the tactical squad, Master of Signals and 1 dude from the rapiers, and the Leviathan for the Night Lords. My Knights charged the Leviathan, and though my Knight Errant took a couple of hull points from his siege drills, he and an Armiger Warglaive finally slew the Leviathan Dreadnought. Excellent! His explosion did little to either of my Knights, and we continued. Oh, the Armiger Warglaives moved in to contest the objective, and I managed to kill 1 tactical squad with them. However, the Rhino denied me the objective, so I only pulled ahead 7 to his 8. Yikes. It's a very close game.

He decided to charge me with his infantry squads, and I killed the Master of Signal and the other guy with overwatch, ha ha! The Night Lord squad did get in and smacked the Armiger Warglaive around, and he lost combat before failing morale and running away. He didn't get swept because we tied on Initiative. Oh, well. Fortunately, he regrouped the next turn. The other Armiger Warglaive fared better, but they were still tied in combat. I did deny him the objective, so it's still 7 to his 8.

The fourth and final turn! I destroyed the Rhino with my Knight Crusader, then proceeded to shoot the Night Lord squad until there was just the Sergeant in relic armor remaining. He then made his special Night Lords reaction to run away to avoid getting charged by my Armiger Warglaive. My Knight Errant charged into the last remaining Iron Warriors tactical squad, and between him and the Armiger Warglaive, killed a bunch, leaving maybe 3 or so? They failed morale and ran away because we tied in initiative again, so goodbye. And the objective is now mine, giving me 3 Victory points. That means I finally pulled ahead 10 to 8.

My opponent spent his final turn running away because, quite frankly, there's no way his surviving guys can hurt my Knights, and he risked getting a Return Fire that would see the Sergeant obliterated by melta. So, yeah. Oh, well. Anyway, that's it! I won in the end, and that's what matters, I guess? That means I won 10 to 8, but I did also score Linebreaker or whatever that secondary objective is (Renegade only), which brought me to 13 to 8 or something, but I didn't really count. The result was what mattered.

It was a really close and fun game! I did lose a bunch of Knights, but I also wreaked havoc in the Iron Warrior lines and slowly whittled them down to pull ahead. My opponent was way ahead in Victory Points at first, especially when he killed two Super-heavy Knights (ouch), but somehow I managed to claw my way back (okay, by destroying lots of stuff).

That meant I scored a win for the Loyalists, and...with the other battles coming to a conclusion, it came down to Dark Angels versus Thousand Sons on another table. I'm not sure what happened, but I think the Dark Angels won or something. Fortunately, the Loyalists pulled ahead for this round, and when we tallied up the scores...it was a draw!

Whoa! A draw! Nobody lost this campaign! I guess we denied each other the resources, and achieved what we wanted. Ophelion is left burning in its wake, with neither force having any acccess to its ruined infrastructure and vast resources. The Thousand Sons have fled with their precious data caches, knowledge stores and information, while the Knights of House Yato have successfully defended the relic and archeotech, allowing them to defend the Imperium better. That was a great campaign! YAY!

I think that's about it, I think? I don't know. It was fun, I'm a bit exhausted, and I'm still over the moon regarding my win with the Adeptus Titanicus campaign. My Knights have rested a day after slaying Titans, and they marched out in the last day to successfully deny the Traitors the resources on Ophelion. Pretty awesome narrative twist, and one more for the archives of House Yato to record. Another mark of victory leading to the Siege of Terra. Awesome! Not only that, I received Mark III Marines after all that is said and done. So yeah! I don't know what to do with them...yet, but I suspect I'll just purchase a bunch of Achaean heads, assemble a squad of Despoilers so that I can make them Pyrae, and use them as replacement for one of the tactical squads. We'll see. Anyway, that's all I have for now, so yeah. Till then!