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!
No comments:
Post a Comment