Space Marine Review: HQ: Techmarine

The Techmarine walks the line between the Adeptus Astartes and the Adeptus Mechanicus, tending to the Chapter’s vehicles and arsenal. On the tabletop, he is  decent fighter with some very useful special rules for supporting the army, particularly any vehicles in the army. For more reviews, analyses and battle reports, check out the Tactics Corner.

Overview:

The Techmarine is an interesting mix of utility, combat ability and force multiplier in one model. For a relatively cheap cost, he comes armed with a decent array of combat weapons and can boost the defences of parts of your army and increase the durability of your army’s vehicles. The Techmarine has a Space Marine Librarian stats for the same cost, but with BS5, WS4 and a 2+ armour save. He also has the option to take up to 5 Servitors, each costing the equivalent of a combi-weapon.

Wargear:

Techmarine:

• Bolt Pistol
• Power Axe
• Frag and Krak Grenades
• Servo-arm- An AP1 Power Fist.
• May replace Servo-arm with a Conversion Beamer- Blast weapon. 0-18″ S6 AP-, 18-42″ S8 AP4, 42-72″ S10 AP1
• May replace Servo-arm with a Servo-Harness- a harness fitted with two Servo-arms, a plasma cutter (a twin-linked plasma pistol) and flamer. May fire two of the Servo-harness weapons in the shooting phase or one servo-harness weapon and one other weapon.
• May take Melee Weapons, Ranged Weapons, Special Issue Wargear and/or Chapter Relics.

Servitor:

• Servo-arm
• May replace the Servo-arm with a Heavy Bolter, Multi-melta or Plasma Cannon.

Special Rules:

Techmarine:

• ATSKNF
• Chapter Tactics
• Independent Character
• Blessing of the Omnissiah- Instead of shooting, the Techmarine can choose to repair a vehicle he is in base contact with or embarked on. On a D6 roll of a 5 or more, you may repair a weapon destroyed or immobilised result or restore a hull point that the vehicle had lost. Each Servitor with a Servo-arm gives you +1 to the roll.
• Bolster Defences- After deployment, you may nominate a single piece of terrain in your deployment zone (cannot be one you have purchased). The cover save of that terrain piece is increased by one (to a maximum of 3+).

Servitor:

• Mindlock- If the unit does not contain a Techmarine, roll a D6 at the start of the turn. On a 1-3, the unit is mindlocked. The unit may not voluntarily move, shoot or assault, but can perform compulsory moves.

Tactics:

The Techmarine provides some utility to a Space Marine army, especially any vehicles in the army.

He is a moderate combat character. Armed with the Power Axe and Servo-arm, he can either put out three S6 AP2 attacks or two S8 AP1 attacks. When equipped with the Servo-harness, this increases to three S8 AP1 attacks. The Techmarine will hit hard against standard infantry lacking an invulnerable save and against enemy vehicles. The 2+ save should help keep him reasonably safe in combat against anything but Power Fist equivalents, which is good as he lacks an invulnerable save and only has 2 wounds. This is important as all his attacks will be striking at initiative 1.

His BS5 is useful if you wish to arm him with a Ranged Weapon or with the Servo-harness, as a twin-linked Plasma Pistol hitting on 2’s can be potent. He can take a Conversion Beamer, but I generally wouldn’t bother with it. For just 15 points more you can take a Techmarine with a Thunderfire Cannon, which will generally be more useful with more shots. The Conversion Beamer is useful at longer ranges, going up to S8 or S10, but is still a single blast.  If you are going to take the Conversion Beamer you take the Bike, too. No ifs, and or buts about it. You need the mobility of the bike to make the most of the Conversion Beaker, which gets more powerful the further away from your target you are. The Bike allows you to do this. Played right, possibly taking two Techmarines with Conversion Beamers, each in a corner of your deployment zone, they can form two powerful skirmishing units that fly around blasting enemy units and then provide solid counter assault.

He will not stand up too long against any dedicated combat units, but should do well against many units in the game. However, his utility in the army is not really geared towards his combat ability (for that, take a Captain or Chapter Master). Instead, he provides some useful buffs to the army.

Bolster Defences is great for holding a deployment zone objective. You will generally place an objective and bolster the defences on a set of ruins, giving you a 3+ cover save on any unit holding the objective. You can go even further. putting a unit of Scouts with Camo Cloaks for a 2+ cover save (or you can go to ground for a 2+). This can make a potent shooting unit in your army very difficult to shift outside of assault. You could even add the Techmarine to the unit and use his 2+ armour save as a pseudo-tanking character. However, there is a lot of Ignores Cover floating around the game at the moment, so you can’t always count on this.

The other boost he provides is the ability to fix the vehicles in your force. With a Bike, the Techmarine can keep up with most of the vehicles in your army and try to keep them going (though only on a 5+). This is particularly useful for vehicles such as the Vindicator or Whirlwind that rely on their main gun for their usefulness on the battlefield. Adding Servitors to the Techmarine serves to improve the roll to fixing vehicles, making their inclusion useful. Armed with a Servo-Harness and 3 Servitors (or only 4 Servitors) will allow the Techmarine to automatically repair a hull point or damage to one of your vehicles, though this starts to really increase the cost of the Techmarine.

Chapter Tactics

The Techmarine can gain benefit from a lot of the Chapter Tactics available, but the Iron Hands Chapter Tactics are obviously a big boost for them. The Iron Hands Chapter Tactics give the Techmarine +1 to his Omnissiah rolls. Arming him with a Servo-harness allows an Iron Hands Techmarine to repair on a 3+, which is a great bonus. In addition, you also gain a 6+ Feel No Pain and It Will Not Die on the Techmarine, further boosting his durability.

Formations

The Techmarine is part of the Armoured Task Force. The Techmarine boosts this task force, allowing vehicles in the formation to ignore Crew Shaken and Crew Stunned results when within 6″ of the Techmarine. In addition, he also gains +1 to his Omnissiah rolls, allowing him to repair on a base 4+ (or 3+ for Iron Hands Techmarines). This is great for allowing the Techmarine to keep the vehicles in the formation going, so you will probably want to upgrade him with a Servo-harness and/or Servitors for maximum effect. For more info on the Armoured Task Force, check out the review in the Tactics Corner.

That’s about it for the old Techmarine. He’s a solid, versatile, low cost HQ choice that has a place in a wide variety of Space Marine lists. The only real question you have to ask yourself is why would you take him over the other HQ choices? For me, the answer to that question would be that you are running a mechanised army where he serves as a force multiplier by keeping the vehicles running longer. That or as a cheap-as-chips HQ that serves as a light combat character and fulfils the HQ requirement for minimal points, while still adding a lot to a list that doesn’t need a heavy hitter in combat.

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