Tech Guard in Horus Heresy

I was excited to see Warhammer Community post an Exemplary Battle featuring Tech Guard today! And for a moment, I thought we could finally field Skitarii in Horus Heresy.

Unfortunately, nope.

Instead, all we get are three provenances for Imperial Militia. The PDF looks cool with all the lore, and apparently, it's about the battle for Constanix II as featured in the Corax short story, Soulforge. Cool.

There are, of course, a few problems with them. Firstly, astute readers will notice that despite these militia forces having ties to the Mechanicum, they do not make your Imperial Militia Sworn Brothers with the Mechanicum, unlike the Cyber Augmented provenance. Obviously, we're going to house rule it, but c'mon.

Secondly, though you can give your Grenadiers arc rifles and call them Skitarii, they seem a bit, uh, weird. Doesn't seem like we're getting any galvanic rifles, though your Force Commander or Skitarii Marshal certainly gets access to his radium pistol and corposant stave. Then you have Forge Remnants that give you Krios squadrons for tanks, which is cool and all, but...I dunno, you might as well take Tech-thralls and Krios in a primary Mechanicum detachment.

I believe Augmented Levy basically allows you to use Adsecularis Tech-thralls as Troops. However, take note you cannot take more non-Levy units (except HQ or Characters) than Levy units, so no taking 2 Levy units, then taking 3 Grenadiers or something like that.

It feels a bit lackluster, and doesn't even seem like a good holdover for Skitarii. I really think Skitarii deserve their own datasheet. We don't need the Ironstriders or vehicles or even winged Ptexarii. We just need Skitarii as Line Troops, with their galvanic rifles or radium carbines, like depicted in the Horus Heresy novels and Siege of Terra. C'mon! Please. If this Exemplary Battle was about taking Skitarii as Troops for Mechanicum, that would be awesome. Or, if you really want to, since technically Taghmata Mechanicum was different from the Skitarii Legions, give us a free PDF army for Skitarii or something!

Oh, well. Anyway, I don't know what else to say other than that I'm disappointed. I'll be sticking to my volkite Household Militia for now.