The cogs are turning, and the battlefields of the Age of Darkness are about to churn with iron feet, as a renewed assault by the Cult Mechanicum sees their first range of plastic miniatures for Warhammer: The Horus Heresy.
Fans of the Priesthood of Mars have been able to marshal a force of clanking robots and arcane technological wonders in resin for some time, but the new Mechanicum Battle Group box is the first chance to deploy some of your favourite Martian cybernetics and robotics in plastic.
The core of the box is a cohort of six Thallax, armed with vicious lightning guns and a variety of special weapon options. They’re surprisingly nimble, pairing their durable chassis with a highly responsive Inculabulan jet pack.
Despite looking decidedly robotic, the Thallax are actually cyborgs. Their major organs, nervous system, and cerebrum are all encased within armour-bodies known as the Lorica Thallax – an agonising process that strips away pain centres and emotions, but leaves a measure of independent human thought not found in automata.
Behind these Ordo Reductor shock troops is a shambling covenant of 20 Adsecularis Tech-thralls. These augmented once-humans are often the result of punishments for a Tech-Priest’s menial labourers – unlike servitors, their personalities and thoughts are not removed entirely, merely overridden by implants – but when war looms, they are refitted as expendable troops in hasty musters.
Although they lack much in the way of skill or advanced equipment, these ghoulish puppet-conscripts are utterly indefatigable and often overwhelm far superior troops through mindless determination and weight of numbers.
A Triaros Armoured Conveyor is a beast of a transport that can ferry either of your two core units around, with a huge capacity of 22 – so even your Thallax, with their Bulky (2) special rule, can fit inside. The armoured prow protects the front from all but the worst anti-tank weapons, and doubles up as a destructive shock ram for smashing straight into targets too big for your mounted volkite and bolt weapons. Factor in the built-in flare shield, and your cargo will be making it to the front lines intact.
Finally, a pair of lumbering Castellax Battle-automata bring up the rear, offering plenty of heavyweight ranged and close combat power in a highly resistant package. Each one of these robust robots has a range of weapons to choose from – including power blades or shock chargers with built-in bolters or flamers, plus a shoulder-mounted bolt cannon, multi-melta, or sinister darklight cannon. They’re a mainstay of the Legio Cybernetica, with particularly aggressive machine spirits that lend them well to blunt front-line attacks and shock assaults.
The Mechanicum Battle Group comes with two new Mechanicum Constructs transfer sheets, each with loads of useful markings and decals for your smaller units, as well as a new Macro Construct sheet full of extra-large transfers for your vehicles.
That’s not everything coming to the Mechanicum range – shortly after the Battle Group is released, two more units will also make their plastic debut. The thunderous Thanatar-Cavas Siege-automata mounts a giant plasma mortar to lob blazing spheres of destructive energy over walls and fortifications, and at twice the height of a Castellax it’s a truly terrifying figure to behold.
All of these cyborgs and automata might be powerful fighters, but they lack the intelligence – nay, genius – for the mantle of Mechanicum leadership. Luckily, the Archmagos Prime has such mental acuity in spades, and they’ve brought a conversion beamer, a volkite serpenta, and a corposant stave to disintegrate anyone foolish enough to get between them and a cache of juicy tech.
That’s still not everything you can expect to see in the coming months, and we’ll have more announcements soon. In the meantime, head back to our Preview hub to see everything else revealed today.