Goatboy’s Warhammer 10th Ed. 40K Codex Adeptus Mechanicus – The Good, Bad, and The Ugly
Goatboy here with Codex Adeptus Mechanicus. Here’s the good, the bad, & the ugly for Mars in 40K 10th Edition.
Today will talk about the Adeptus Mechanicus book – another army ruled by robotic thought, mechanical nonsense, and beep boops for days. Unlike Necrons – who I love aesthetically – the AdMech army is always a weird set of units for me. I just never got into their weird mini design. I think it was due to all the antennas that seemed always to break.
I just was never really a fan of the look of the army nor it’s every shifting playstyle. Every time I would face Ad Mech, I would either be goaded to oblivion or just question if the rules they told me were correct. The army in 9th Edition set up a ton of rules layering that seemed not that exciting to play with or against. I always just wondered if they made a Dark Mechanicus book would it be this annoying to play against?
So why even bring this up? Well, I just want to say my review will probably be tainted by how I feel about the past nonsense with this faction. I get the feeling a lot of 10th Edition Adeptus Mechanicus is paying for sins of their past. They are also a faction that is challenging for GW to build interesting rules around that isn’t just – “we’ve got all the guns in the world – BANG!”
As usual I will go over the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly I saw when reading thru this book. We’re a taking a quick pass to get you the biggest takeaways you will need to know.
Codex Adeptus Mechanicus – The Good
Well, the big thing is it is a new book with new detachments, which is a good thing. Overall they didn’t tweak as many of the dataslates as they did with Necrons, but GW did move some rules in stratagems over to units as a whole. The Dragoons can advance and charge now when before they had to use a stratagem. This is a good thing, as there was obviously a thought on how to clean things up and make units good. One of these weeks my talks will be about the power of advance/charge and how it makes or breaks an assault army. But still this Codex had some thoughts on its units and how they should work – which is a good thing.
Meet the Martian Detachments
Overall they had five different detachments, and while they don’t feel so much as Forgeworlds like the Marine detachments felt like Chapters, they do really push armies to be built in specific ways. The original Rad-zone Corps detachment got an update to their Bombardment rule that lets things work a bit better. You always have a chance at mortal wounds, and the fallout causes Battle Shock tests from that point on. So there will be a good chance of just losing those precious primary points. This detachment feels very CP heavy with lots of overlapping stratagems to cause better shooting, better protection, and then relics to cause even more damage in shooting. It isn’t exciting but it seems it will do the work better than before so that is a good thing.
We have four other detachments with a Skitarii Hunter Cohort that seems to push your Skitarii into a better set of options with counting in cover if over 12 inches away. It even has an Enhancement that lets you grant a unit you are leading with Scout 6” and Infiltrate, which is always a good set of bonuses. Heck, it even has one of the best redeploy abilities in the game, where it happens after you know who is going first too. Its stratagems seem good too, with a mixture of movement options and protection abilities that act like the Nurgle one from CSM.
You’ve got the Data Psalm detachment with the Priest base detachment. They always feel like a weird unit where they could be paying for the nonsense they did a few editions ago. I don’t expect to see this one used that often but watch one will pop up that will wreck my Chaos guys. There is the Explorator Maniple detachment, that is obsessed with an Objective marker, too which feels fluffy, but the rules seem off.
The final one, and probably the one I like just for the sheer nonsense of the units within, is the Beep Boop – aka Cohort Cybernetica army. I just like these weird robots, and while their rule is kind of meh – it is still an extra rule that grants all the robots the Doctrine Imperatives you get from just being an Ad Mech army. Their stratagems all just make their robots/vehicles better so if you are into rolling around with vehicles and robots this is the detachment for you.
Oh and on the good front – say hello to the Sydonian Skratos, the new model for the army. That’s right just one new model is actually a good model for the army to have. A Lone Operative unit is powerful to have in an army. You can easily have it “out ahead” and scoring you points as the rest of the army shuffles into play. It isn’t a bad kit to build and hopefully it isn’t too expensive to grab a few of. Of course, I expect a lot of conversions to show up either on really tall rocks or some other kind of cybernetic legs.
Codex Adeptus Mechanicus – The Bad
I don’t like there are only two robot units in the army. That seems bad to me, and while I have no clue what they would put in there, it just feels off? IN 30K there are a ton of robots, and you know how GW loves to move things over from resin to plastic. the lack of robots in the Ad Mech army just makes me sad.
I also feel like the army just kinda feels like three different pieces. Is that how we are going to see Dark Eldar? Are we going to have a bunch of weird interlocking parts? Could this be better with some kind of combo detachment that gives little rules to everything? Is every army going to be Kataphron models wrecking stuff? It just feels weirdly mixed together.
Codex Adeptus Mechanicus – The Ugly
We only got one new model. One new model. I don’t think we need a new HQ, but something else new would have been neat. Maybe a cool combat robot-dreadnought thing? Thanatar maybe-please? Or how about a larger Skitarii combat machine? Instead, we got a good-for-your-army Lone Operative that doesn’t do a whole lot for the army other than being in the back where it can’t get shot.
Until next time – let’s hope we get more beep boops.
