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!