Games Workshop released a new range of plastic models for the Horus Heresy Mechanicum faction this year, including some excellent big stompy robots, but to the frustration of Adeptus Mechanicus players, there are no official rules to use them in Warhammer 40k. Aspiring techno-adept Warren Roberts has bridged the gap with a set of unofficial datasheets to bring these venerable war machines into the grim darkness of the 41st millennium.
So far Roberts has made datasheets to use the jet-pack equipped Thallax Cohort cyborgs, the ram-hulled Triaros Armored Conveyor, lumbering Castellax Battle Automata, and truly colossal Thanatar-Calix and Thanatar-Cavas Siege Automata, in games of Warhammer 40k.
We’ve uploaded the most recent version of Roberts’ data sheets here. As he’s accepting community feedback, you may find more up to date versions in the Adeptus Mechanicus 40k Facebook group.
During eighth and ninth edition 40k, tournament legal ‘Imperial Armor’ rules were given for many models produced by Forge World. This resulted in some very unusual balance situations, including competitive Space Marine armies dominated by Horus Heresy era dreadnoughts. For 10th edition, Games Workshop has been much more circumspect, and the new Mechanicum models don’t even have ‘Legends’ datasheets for use in casual play.
The lore differences between the Adeptus Mechanicus Warhammer 40k faction and the Mechanicum Horus Heresy faction are subtle, notwithstanding the 10,000 year time gap. They’re both technocratic priesthoods that abhor science, and only trust designs from mankind’s distant past.
The Mechanicum was a parallel (post) human empire to the Imperium of Man, which claimed all the galaxy’s Forge Worlds as its dominion. Its alliance to the Imperium was secured via the Treaty of Olympus, and the Mechanicum’s belief that the Emperor of Mankind was the Omnissiah, an avatar of the machine god.
After the outbreak of the Heresy, the Mechanicum split into loyalist and rebel factions, with the loyalist leadership forced off their homeworld and onto Terra. To secure greater political leverage within the parlous politics of the Imperium, the Mechanicum’s leaders had to surrender political autonomy. A new Adeptus was formalised within the political bureaucracy of the Imperium, the Adeptus Mechanicum, with the Fabricator General assuming a seat as a High Lord of Terra.
Want to read more about it? We have a whole section in our guide to the Horus Heresy books explaining all the novels and short stories you’ll need to understand how the Mechanicum became the Adeptus Mechanicus.
Source: Wargamer
