All Hail Mars! Adeptus Mechanicus: Skitarii Rangers and Vanguard Kit

On the 5/4/15 I got my first wave of skitarii for my army, which was three boxes of the infantry.  These models are great and really easy to put together coming in 7 pieces, legs, torso front, torso back, two arms, head and backpack.  There are 5 different poses of leg, torso, arms that could be put together in combination to give lots of different overall poses.  There are two different sets of heads to make either hooded rangers or helmeted vanguard plus the two sets of guns for them and one of each special weapon.  The squad leader has all the options for pistols and melee weapon plus some special heads.  The only thing I think the box is missing is more of the special weapons as a squad of 10 can take three, which can be three of the same.

Painting-wise they are very nice models with loads of nice details all over.  The standard martian paint scheme of red and silver really looks good on these models and the martian ironearth paint makes for an excellent base.  My first squad of rangers are below to show how they look painted.

I also recently had a chance to play a small 750 point maelstrom game with them as well and these new units are good, I was only using the rules from the white dwarf as it was before the codex release so I wasn't able to use the doctrine imperatives.  The rangers work really well as back field units with their extra range over most standard units and their ability to pick you special weapons and characters being very useful, while the vanguard proved their worth as a support unit for dragoons, allowing them to take down a chaos lord easier by lowering toughness.  The additional rules available for the codex allows you to improve either BS or WS (sometimes to the detriment of the other) and if using the special formations and battle-forged force organisation chart gives them crusader and scout (without outflank).

This is just a little look at them, I'll do a more in-depth tactica and review when I've played more games with larger forces.  I will also do posts on the other types of units when I have made them and had a chance to play a game with them.

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.