From the humble lasgun to mighty battle tanks, Humanity’s survival is guaranteed by the power of its technology. Though the age of scientific enlightenment and innovation has long since passed into myth, there are many weird and wonderful technologies that survive into the 41st Millennium. Those devices that remain are hardly understood and held in reverent superstition, reproduced and maintained by a galaxy-spanning priesthood of cyborg engineers headquartered on the red sands of Mars.
This is the Adeptus Mechanicus – devotees of the Omnissiah, jealous custodians of the Imperium’s vast and ancient arsenal, and fervent seekers of lost technology from across the stars. Here’s everything you need to know if you’re thinking of starting an army of these biomechanical Tech-Priests.
New to the world of Warhammer 40,000? This quick-fire primer will get you up to speed on the arcane technological wonders of the Adeptus Mechanicus – what they are, how they look, and the way they play on the tabletop.
The Adeptus Mechanicus are responsible for producing almost every weapon and suit of armour that passes into the hands of the Imperium’s soldiers. They turn entire planets into vast industrial complexes known as forge worlds, manufacturing arms in prodigious quantities to feed the endless Imperial war machine.
They are afforded a great deal of independence within the Imperium, effectively a separate entity granted the unusual right to administrate their own worlds as they see fit, and even worship their own god. The Omnissiah – the Machine God – is held by the main Imperial Ecclesiarchy as another aspect of the God-Emperor, if only to keep relations cordial…
Humanity would not survive without the tireless work of the machine priesthood, and all maintenance of technology is wrapped in a pall of incense and dogma. It is a commonly held understanding that vehicles which aren’t sanctified by the appropriate rites and anointed with the correct unguents may be truculent in battle or even refuse to start at all, while weapon misfires and armour malfunctions are the fault of inadequate reverence.
These rites have been repeated unchanged for more than 10,000 years. For the Tech-Priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus, innovation is heresy, as the Omnissiah’s creations may not be corrupted by mortal hands. The only acceptable way to advance is to recover other long-lost artefacts from Humanity’s golden age – the Standard Template Constructs.
This quest for scattered knowledge drives the Tech-Priests to deploy legions of augmented cybernetic soldiers known as Skitarii – fusions of man and machine who fight with clockwork precision and obey orders without question. Their weapons are esoteric devices whose function is jealously guarded by the Priesthood of Mars, firing arcs of electricity, searing heat beams, and radioactive blasts that annihilate the flesh they hold in such contempt.
These soldiers tend to prefer accurate ranged combat over the maelstrom of melee, but the Adeptus Mechanicus does maintain specialised close combat troops for infiltration and shock assaults. Many armies are heavily focused around ordered cohorts of infantry and mobile skirmishers, though their vehicles also pack terrifyingly powerful weapons to support the advance.
A Skitarii cohort is made up of Ranger and Vanguard squads – foot soldiers fully committed to the Cult Mechanicus and modified with martial protocols uploaded directly into their brains. They are often joined by many different fast-moving reconnaissance troops, from flying Pteraxii scouts to mounted Serberys Raiders – whose mechanical mounts traverse the irradiated dunes that surround their forge complexes more efficiently than wheel or track can manage.
Not all of the Adeptus Mechanicus’ forces come from the Skitarii legions, however. Tech-Priests employ servitor bodyguards – mind-wiped servants modified to carry heavy weaponry – and ancient mechanised troops like the mighty Kastelan Robots. These faceless automata are directed by specialist Datasmiths who modify their programming to match the battlefield need – Abominable Intelligences are the direst of heresy, so these relentless metal warriors are rigidly controlled through the careful use of archaic doctrina wafers.
Combat Patrol is a game mode perfect for beginners and veterans alike, in which smaller forces clash in fast-paced and balanced games. Unlike the swarm-focused Tyranids or the elite Space Marines, the Adeptus Mechanicus sit somewhere in the middle – balancing firepower and durability with a respectable number of miniatures – which gives them flexibility and the option to spread powerful units across the battlefield.
Purge Corps Deltic-9 draws from the disciplined Skitarii legions to deliver a strong knockout blow with two lightning-fast scout units. The winged Pteraxii Sterylizors and mounted Serberys Sulphurhounds can both move a huge 12” – twice as fast as the average warrior – and they have significant firepower to lay down once in position.
Your squad of Skitarii Vanguard keeps Tech-Priest Manipulus Skand safe from enemy fire while their leader blasts enemies apart with his transonic cannon. Attaching Skand to the squad powers up their radium carbines and allows them to take on larger tanks and monsters through sheer weight of fire.
All you need to deploy Purge Corps Deltic-9 is a few dice, a ruler, and the downloadable rules below – the Core Rules show you how to play the game, the Combat Patrol Datasheets provide a balanced army that’s ready to play, and the Combat Patrol Missions give you some thrilling objectives to fight over!
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The ancient technology the Adeptus Mechanicus wield is decorated with fine filigree and intricate brass details, and no Tech-Priest would be seen dead without the preferred colours of their Forge World adorning everything from their robes to the plating on their servitors.
The red colours seen on the box art and throughout the miniature range are a great place to start, as they signify your troops as coming from Mars – the historic home of the Cult Mechanicus – or one of the many Forge Worlds closely affiliated with it. This is the most iconic image of a typical Tech-Priest, and the Citadel Colour Team have recommended a set of paints for getting that rich crimson and shining metal looking its best.
You can use these paints in many of the following steps to get your Combat Patrol ready to dig up new gadgets and irradiate those foolish enough to try and claim their prize. The flowing robes over intricate augmetics may look intimidating at first, but you’ll soon get the hang of them with patience and practice.
For those who want to get their miniatures onto the tabletop as quickly as possible, the Warhammer Painting team have also concocted a quick how-to guide using a minimum of paints and simple techniques to get yours Battle Ready.
Once you’ve played your first few Combat Patrol games and have a taste for the 41st Millennium, you will find yourself wondering where to go next.
Your first port of call is Codex: Adeptus Mechanicus. This essential tome contains background lore and wonderfully painted miniatures, as well as rules for 30 different units and plenty of different ways to play them. Together with a copy of the Warhammer 40,000 Core Book, you’ll have all of the rules you need to start playing larger games of Warhammer 40,000.
Combat Patrol: Adeptus Mechanicus gives you a solid core to build your army around. You can reinforce your firing line with more Rangers and Vanguard, or branch out into the more terrifying weapons on offer. Few vehicles reflect the weird and wonderful aesthetic of the Adeptus Mechanicus quite like their Archaeopters, which can be built in three different varieties to cover ground attack, bombing, and transport duties as required.
Onager Dunecrawlers are sturdy walking tanks that can carry the mightiest weapon in your arsenal – the neutron laser. This armour-busting beam weapon crumples the toughest enemy vehicles like paper, and they double up as a great way to practise painting glowing weapon effects.
Kastelan Robots are an excellent way to up the durability of your front line, with thick armour and options for ranged or melee combat. You’ll definitely want a Cybernetica Datasmith to lead them, as their preprogrammed doctrines often need careful adjustment mid-battle to operate at peak efficiency.
Speaking of melee combat, although the Adeptus Mechanicus prefers to fight at range, they have a variety of fast assault forces to tie up dangerous enemy targets and wrestle control of objectives away from dug-in defenders.
Sicarian Ruststalkers and Sydonian Dragoons burst from unexpected quarters with taser lances crackling. The lightly armoured Fulgurite Electro-priests are used to knock out enemy elites with wide sweeps of their electroleech staves on the charge, trusting in protective fields of the Motive Force to shrug off enemy firepower.
The Adeptus Mechanicus plays a supporting role in many stories surrounding the Imperium and the Indomitus Crusade, like the Dawn of Fire series, as the gears of war simply don’t turn without their careful, constant ministrations. For stories centred around the Tech-Priests, however, it doesn’t get any better than the Adeptus Mechanicus omnibus by Rob Sanders.
This collection of two novels splits the action between the two halves of the Omnissiah’s coin – the Cult Mechanicus and the Skitarii. Each story presents a different perspective on the trials and tribulations of the Martian Tech-Priests, painted across a backdrop of planetary invasion when the forces of Chaos get a little too close to some highly coveted technology.
No Tech-Priest is more notorious than Belisarius Cawl – architect of the Primaris Space Marines and many more innovations his peers consider heretical. As one of the most pivotal characters in the current Warhammer 40,000 story, he’s definitely one to keep tabs on, and his motivations and mindset are on full display in Belisarius Cawl: The Great Work by Guy Haley.
Better yet, once you’ve gotten well-acquainted with arguably the most important Tech-Priest in 10 millennia, you can add him to your army with his own beautiful(ly grotesque) miniature!
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