The Adeptus Mechanicus Problem: What Options Exist?
Getting back into 40k has certainly been an adventure for me, although there’s been one hiccup: The faction I’ve chosen to play is generally regarded as missing the “fantasy” and competitive teeth it’s had in previous editions. I could be talking about Drukhari, prior to their new detachment, or Harlequins, who now exist only as an Aeldari tumor, but of course I’m speaking about the noble techno-zealots of the Adeptus Mechanicus. I started Admech in 10th, right after their book launched, because I try to make a habit of playing bad armies well, and I have a bit of history with the army on the whole. It released during a period when I was playing a ton of 40k, as Skitarii & Cult Mechanicus, before being folded into one army next edition. Admech has worn many hats throughout its lifespan, with one constant — You were forced, and rewarded, for hard pivoting offense vs defense each Battle Round.
Via Imgur
This began in the form of the Doctrina Imperatives which provided varying Ballistic Skill/Weapon Skill buffs/debuffs, each used once per game. This worked in a schema of +3BS/-2WS, +2BS/-1WS, +1BS/-0WS, and the same but inverted to fill out the sheet. Due to this, you could often achieve huge blobs of Vanguard & Rangers with BS7, meaning you’d be sure to hit your mark. There was a sense that Skitarii were the army that could choose to do one thing extremely well, each turn, at the expense of other options, which was divisive to say the least.
The army launched as two different factions, which had to be done to meet the release schedule, meaning you had two micro-factions like Age of Sigmar 1.0, one without any HQs, and the other without vehicles. I remember this period fondly, because my best friend of many years picked up Skitarii on release, and caused me to still fear Onager Dunecrawlers, despite how mollified they’ve now become.
Via Games Workshop
Throughout 8th & 9th, Admech were tuned-up, becoming a horde faction with Lucius, and receiving a fantastic second wave which culminated in two periods of overwhelming dominance, the first with buckets of basic Skitarii, and the second with Sulphurhounds aplenty. Planes also made up a chunk of these lists, albeit more rarely, but genuinely most things were competent options, with Ryza’s subfaction even presenting a melee variant of the army.
That all changed in 10th, with the move towards becoming overwhelmingly focused on deployment zones, releasing with the “current” Doctrinas, and the Rad-Zone detachment. This was a rough time to play the army, as the point costs were already low, and essentially only Breachers did any damage. The codex, expected to fix some of these issues and breathe some fresh air into its options, doubled-down on the infantry heavy variants of the army, with Skitarii Hunter Cohort becoming dominant almost immediately, yet still lagging behind the competitive pack.
Via Dakkadakka
As I said above, how Doctrinas work now is contingent largely on deployment zones — You get your choice of [Assault] and +1 AP against enemies in their deployment zone (with ranged weapons), or [Heavy] and -1 AP for attacks targeting units in your deployment zone. This lackluster baseline, coupled with about half of the army’s models still lacking Doctrina Imperatives on their datasheets, leads many to argue the faction is poisoned from the roots-up, by this rule. I would tend to agree.
Luckily, as was stated in the most recent dataslate, Games Workshop is finally planning to address these issues with more than just point changes, next fiscal quarter. Given the history, general feeling, and ways that GW has altered rules like this in the past, I’d like to take a quick dive into ways this rule could be altered to best-help the army in a realistic way.
Via Wild Boar Blog
First up, and most common: Get rid of “Deployment Zone” in the Doctrina text. This option is a bit of a bludgeon, but bluntly solves the finicky nature of our arm rule, and relaxes the complexity of dealing with this highly situational condition. Moreover, many people couple this change with “Add Melee to Doctrinas”, and I think that’s also quite understandable. Ryza armies of years past were a popular way to play Admech, and with the dawn of detachments there’s not been an adequate way to crunch opponents in close combat for the robots in 10th.
As a twist on the above options, there’s “Change the wording to ‘Outside your/their deployment zone”, which broadens the range of these Doctrinas’ effectiveness to around 75% of a given game board, rather than ~25%. This would allow for more powerful tweaks, and incentivize the opponent to get up in your face with deepstriking units, as well as discourage you from blindly entering their home turf.
My preferred proposition takes a more radical stance, and turns the dial up to 11: “Change the AP alteration to 2, for both Doctrinas”. Taking a page out of the book of my favorite faction, AoS’ Beasts of Chaos, ramping up the armor-interactive potential of this faction would be a truly interesting way to revitalize its units. Suddenly, you’re acting like pre-Codex Custodes around your home objective, or winning the roll-off and blasting opposing forces as soon as the game opens. This would likely widen the gap of playability of some units, such as making Skorpius Disintegrators heinous with their [Indirect Fire], but that could of course be adjusted for.
Another option is to bundle BS/WS buffing into the Doctrinas, like the army initially did, in order to make up for the oft-joked-about shooting nerf received armywide in Warhammer 40k 10th edition.
Via Miaow on Deviantart
One thing that was immediately apparent to longtime players of the army was the dropping-down of base BS from 3+ to 4+, resulting in a ~16% loss of accuracy, which gets even worse when rerolls are factored in. This isn’t necessarily a 16% loss in damage, but did mean the point cost for every unit kept going down, until the Adeptus Mechanicus held the title of ‘A 2000pt army that costs more than 2000USD’. To combat such a dropoff in damage, perhaps making the Data Tether (5+ CP Refund) armywide could assist in making something like Grenades viable as a means to shove damage forward.
There’s a chance GW has waited for this sweeping update in order to reinstate the army’s 3+ shooting, and change points across the board, or they have a new rule in store for us. I wouldn’t be shocked if they bundled BS/WS scaling into the Protector & Conqueror Imperatives, respectively, but it’s anyone’s guess at this point. Realistically speaking, the army actually has a reasonable winrate at all but the highest levels, because you can bring 50+ infantry and 6-18 Ironstrider chassis, and play so-called ‘worker placement’ Admech, where you’re clogging up the board with annoying bodies such that the opponent isn’t given a real game to play. After all, 40k is won on points, not damage done.
Via Svet
Ultimately, the reason Admech needs changes is not because the army is necessarily bad, but because it is a bad experience for players not playing extremely tailored lists, extremely cautiously. If you want to bring something like 30 Sterylizors or Infiltrators, 18 Dragoons or 80 Vanguard, these skew lists can absolutely do decently at RTTs and maybe even GTs, but for the average player a combined arms force is going to underperform at every turn. Due to this, in the most recent point update, none of the units that actually saw play received a decrease, as there’s a ‘race to the bottom’ in points currently going on within Admech. What a unit does is less important than the body it’s on, so even dropping Infiltrators by 5pts might cascade into a standard 3x10 set in every list. The goal of these changes is likely to justify increasing the points on these models, to combat surging army sizes & prices, and what that might mean remains a mystery, at least until this autumn.
I hope this sheds some light on Admech’s past, present, and future! I’m excited to see what they do, as someone who’s shockingly enjoyed the army in the current codex, as it’s not often I get to play a good army! Let me know what you think Games Workshop should do in the comments below!
