All Hail Mars!: Adeptus Mechanicus: First Look

This week sees Games Workshop releasing the first waves of releases for a new factions for 40k, the Adeptus Mechanicus, which are one of my favourite in the fluff and something I've been looking forward too since their were rumours about this release several months back. The Mechanicus are a part of the Imperium of Mankind, basically being scientists and engineers who are responsible for the production of all technology, regulation of technology and seeking out lost technology but are very much not like modern scientists and engineers.  The members of the Mechanicus worship the Machine God and the Emperor as the Omnissiah (its physical manifestation), and believe that a small part of it lives in each piece of technology called a machine spirit.

The Mechanicus have been missing from Warhammer 40k for a long time, despite their reasonably regular appearance in the background material and novels.  This weeks sees two kits up for pre-order with their rules in White Dwarf, one infantry box and one walker box which both contain two different choices of what to make with it.  With the rules out in White Dwarf yesterday, I though I'd have a quick look at the rules for the infantry and give my opinion on what they're like.

The first unit is the Skitarii Rangers, they are consummate hunters who stalk their prey until its destruction has been achieved.  Squads start at 5 and can go up to 10. They have a profile similar to scions with 4+ armour, a 6+ feel no pain, relentless and move through cover.  Their weapons are 30" range S4 ap4 rapid fire with precision shot, so they're very good at picking out things like heavy weapons etc.  The can also take special weapons, 2 normally or 3 if the squad is ten models.  The special weapons they can take is an arc rifle, transuranic arquebus and plasma caliver, which I'll have a look at later as they're shared with the other squad.  The rangers look like your back field objective holders who are very good at taking the teeth from guard veteran squads etc or killing anything space marine scout or lower.

The other unit the infantry box makes is the Skitarii Vanguard, who are rad-troopers equipped to fight in the worst environments using radiation as their weaponry.  They have the same profile as the rangers but swap move through cover for Rad-Saturation, which reduces the toughness of models locked in combat with the vanguard (to a min of 1).  This helps to make up for their strength 3 in combat but you'll still need to watch out as you're ws 3, t 3 and i 1 so you're outclassed by space marines in a one on one fight.  The vanguard have radium carbines as their weapon which is a 18" s3 ap5 assault 3 weapon with another interesting rule called rad poisoning which means that on to wound rolls 6s auto wound and cause 2 wounds rather than 1.  They can also take the same special weapons as the rangers in the same proportions.  My take on the vanguard is they're your assault/close shooting troops who are good anti-horde and can have a go at high toughness monstrous creatures with their auto wound on 6s causing two wounds.  The special weapons can really help with squad more than the rangers as they have to get closer so get more use out of the arc rifle and plasma caliver.

The special weapons these guys have access to are interesting and unique to their faction and they are the arc rifle, transuranic arquebus and plasma caliver.  The arc rifle is where the majority of these guys anti-tank will come from its a 24" range s 6 ap5 rapid fire weapon but the best part it is haywire so will easily strip hull points from any vehicle especially if you get within 12" for two shots.  The transuranic arquesbus is a 60" ap 3 heavy 1 sniper with armour bane so my thoughts are that it fits best with the rangers, improving their ability to hurt models with a better save and give them some anti-tank capability plus with reltenless you don't have to worry about moving with it.  The plasma caliver is your terminator killer as an 18" s7 ap 2 assault 3 gets hot weapon so it can do some tank busting too but you need to be careful as three shots give more chance of killing yourself with it.  The way I'm thinking of using the special weapons would be mostly in smaller squads so not to make them too expensive as the arquesbus and the caliver are equivalent to ~3 and ~4 vanguards in price so quickly stack up and bring your model count down.

These are my current thoughts on the new skitarii infantry, I should have a smilar post on the walkers coming soon.  What do you think of them? Post in the comments below.

Dropzone Commander: Jump-Off Point

Hi all, recently I have been looking at dropzone commander which is a game that i have glanced at in the past and even bought the starter set for but never done anything with this.  I have been motivated by the pictures that have started to appear of the next wave of released coming out of  Hawk wargames, so I'm going to start to actually build-up a force and play some games so I thought I'd start a series on this.  This first post will give an overview the game world and the factions currently available.

The setting for the game is a "hard sci-fi" one, so theres no space wizards rather lots of cool future-tech.  Its set in the year 2670 where mankind has colonies the stars initially with the help of an alien race called the shaltari, who showed them a set of earth-like habitable worlds and discovered on their own a set of more hostile world with large amounts of resources.  The humans and shaltari fall out after it comes to light that the shaltari want to use humans in foot soldiers in their war against another shaltari faction.
Some time after this an alien device falls to Earth, a White Sphere made of unknown material that seems to defy measurement.  This alien device disappear, seemingly liberating itself after being connected to the internet and broadcasts a warning that something is coming and that humanity should run.  In the message a date and place are given where all those who wish to should meet it and on that date a large rag-tag fleet of ex-military and civilian vessels assembles to do what the White Sphere told them to.  The military opposes them and after a destructive battle the military fleet is left battered and the others leave eventually forming the Post Human Republic (PHR).  Two days later the Scourge, an advanced aggressive alein race, show up over humanity's best world and invade them shattering humanity's defences, though the majority are captured or killed, some people are able to flee to the frontier worlds and proceed to make sure they can't be followed.  The survivors form a new government the United Colonies of Man (UCM) and rebuild and prepare for retribution.
The game picks up on the opening day of Mankind's reconquest letting you take any of the factions and fight to decide the fate of humanity's future.

Currently there are five playable factions, the UCM, the Scourge, the PHR, the Shaltari, and the Resistance.

The UCM are a faction that has no particular weaknesses with units to cover all bases without being to expensive but their units are never as effective as other faction's specialists.  The area in which the UCM do excel is their fast moving aircraft, they have access to two different fast movers with one being a dedicated interceptor and the other a heavy bomber.

The Scourge are the primary antagonists in the Dropzone story and are a parasitic alien race that invade humanity's world in search of hosts.  In game scourge are a very fast, short ranged, high powered army but they lack long ranged fire-power on a large scale and are in general quite lightly armoured.

The PHR are cyborg who descended from the humans who left before the Scourge invasion, in game they have lots of hard-hitting and heavily armoured units as well as lots of specialist units but they are also the slowest faction, going no where fast on the battlefield without using drop-ship relying on them more than any other faction to get around the battlefield.

Th Shaltari are an alien race who showed humanity the majority of its best world and are the most advanced race in the game.  They employ anti-gravity tanks as well as massive war-walkers to dominate the battlefield.  They are also the only faction not to use drop-ships per say, rather they use teleportation gates and this allows them to move across the battlefield in a unique manner going from one gate to another and therefore moving across the battlefield the fastest of all.  On the battlefield their units are either fast with weak armour or slower with high armour but all have energy shields which give them usually a 5+ save against all damage, this movement capability and saves makes they a tricksy race with lots of movement shenanigans to pull.

The last faction, the human Resistance are a rag-tag bunch of survivors of the Scourge invasion who use a mix of old military equipment and converted civilian tech.  They are the only faction that don't have passive countermeasures on all their vehicles and are often more fragile than the other races but these vehicles are cheap, very cheap so if you wanted to run a horde of vehicles then this is the faction for you.  While their civilian technicals are cheap and flimsy, the old military tech is very survivable with high armour and good damage points.  Resistance are also unique in that there are two sub-factions, allied and feral, where the allied are those that help the UCM and get special praetorians and archangels to add to the army while the feral are those that oppose and get berserker infantry and the barrel bombers.


I hope this overview is helpful, I may do more in-depth faction reviews as I play the game more and also as I play I'll do things like review the game mechanics and some tactics that I learn.