After a long journey I am almost caught up on my narrative reviews for the Crusade system! Today we dust off the STC that is the Ad Mech Crusade rules.
Army Specific Rules:
During crusade campaigns these adventurous little toaster-humpers are after rare technology. As you gather archeotech, you roll off to see if the piece you found was a power-source, weapon, force field or techno-arcana. Each of the non-power source parts can be combined with a power source to create a new artifact that your force can use for the rest of the campaign. Each artifact is assigned to one Tech Priest and can only be used by that unit. Any unit cannot have more than 1 weapon, forcefield or techno-arcana in a battle. As you can guess, there is a staggering amount of options and combinations available. These rules are the only crafting mechnaics currently in the game and work pretty well. It’s also interesting that they linked the arcana with the specific canticles determining when they trigger.
Agendas and Relics:
The Ad Mech agendas can be divided into two categories: find archeotech or kill stuff. The most useful agenda is one that awards a unit 3 experience points for killing the enemy vehicle with the highest power-rating. After this done you place an objective down where the enemy model was removed and can complete an action which grants you a free archeotech item if completed. Your second option is to randomly determine an objective at the start of the game. If you complete a specific action near this objective you gain an archotech piece on a 5+. I feel the second option is very lackluster. While you don’t have to worry about your opponent placing an objective for you to capture, you might end up nominating an objective deep in their deployment zone. All that for only getting a reward on a 5+ is a bit much. The kill-focused agendas are profoundly mediocre. The first awards 1 exp to every Tech Priest and unit that killed a unit during a canticle you select (so long as at least 3 units total were killed). The other tasks your Skitarii to do a variety of tasks but you only get 1 experience each for the top three performing Skitarii units. These agendas are so lack-luster that they are almost never going to be worth taking.
Aside from the Build-A-Relic workshop you also have a set of specific crusade relics to choose from. The artificer relics are both aura abilities, one allowing core units to heroically intervene and the other gives Skitarii units +1 adv. and charge. Both are neat, and mesh well with the Ad Mech play style. The artificer relic gives you the ability to phase through walls, fall back and shoot, and advance and charge. All of these are useful choices, but I am not sure how many close combat characters you will want to make as it’s a bit risky. Although, as you get pieces of tech you can build a decently beefy fighter. Lastly the legendary relic has the troll-tastic ability to revive any <ForgeWorld> model on a 3+that was killed and give it 6 wounds back. It’s a little risky given that it will fail 1/3 games but free revives are always fun!
Army Traits and Requisitions:
The Ad Mech get four bespoke tables, one full table for Tech Priests, and three-option tables for Skitarii Marshalls, Core and Kataphran models, and vehicles. The Tech Priest table is the best with some options to teleport once per game, get a 5+++ or get a Skitarii warlord trait. The Marshall’s table has an option for a 4++ but little else of note. The other tables are also very bland. They also get access to seven tables of weapon enhancements based on the type of weapon (i.e. radium, arc, phosphor, etc.) but these tables only have two choices. This is a nice touch to give you the feel of having a host of custom weapons as you go through the campaign even if your options are limited.
Ad Mech requisitions consist of five options. The first is the option that allows you to combine your archeotech pieces and costs one RP. The second is the fairly standard option that unlocks the Ad Mech Holy Orders, as you can’t start a character with any of them when you build your roster. The Body Donor option allows you to pay one RP to swap your Tech Priest model for a different one, keeping your battle honors but losing any battle scars. Unorthodox Acquisition is an expensive 3/5 RP option. You can randomly determine a piece of archeotech for three RP or pick one for 5 RP, a great choice later in a campaign when you have more RP to use! The last option allows you to apply one of the aforementioned weapon enhancements to an entire unit for the cost of 1-2 RP and several archeotech power sources and parts. While you won’t get to use this until the midpoint of a campaign you can make some very powerful units, especially plasma units that ignore mortals wounds inflicted by their own weapons!
Conclusion:
Like the Adepta Sororitas, the Ad Mech do best in a longer campaign, preferably against enemies with many vehicle units. While they do have a very fun campaign mechanic they are limited by their agendas, especially against enemies not using vehicles. At the same time they have some decent weapon enhancements and can create very powerful units, with bespoke guns and abilities. Overall, I think their rules are great, I just think they suffer from being released before the writers realized you could give multiple units more than one exp. from an agenda.
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