Hi All,
It’s time for our next Crusade system review. In 9th ed the Ad Mech had a maze of rues that were fun, but byzantine in their construction. How has this changed in 10th ed? Let’s find out!
Faction-Specific Rules:
Like in their 9th ed book the Ad Mech are still looking for tech to build new gear. Fortunately, the process has been massively simplified. Rather than having a huge table showing all the potential combinations, now you use a requisition and roll on a single table per type of tech.
- Weapons
- Lots of great items including a D6+3 flamer or a D2 2-shot anti-vehicle 3+ gun. You can make your character extremely annoying.
- Forcefields
- These are all pretty goo, a 2++ one turn, or a permanent +1 W and save. YOu can also improve your melee weapons with Devastating Wounds or get +1 S and AP on your ranged weapons.
- Techno Arcana
- Lots of weird choices, you can get some buffs to leadership and OC, re-roll this against 1 unit, or get re-roll charges and advance of a 1. There are fewer auto-take items here, although you can have one of each type of gear.
In addition, you also have a new campaign mechanic call legendary archaeotech. You do this instead of getting new parts after each battle, instead you gain location clues. To gain the artifact you can scan the battlefield before every game by rolling a D6+ the number of clues you have. On a roll of a 10+ you get a new agenda to claim it. Be warned! If you fail to roll a 10+ you lose a point of location data instead.
The agenda is pretty simple, it is an opponent-paced objective that is in their deployment zone. You will need to get an admech character to control it to get the tech, but your opponent gets +3 exp if they have a character holding it at the end of their battle. You also lose all your location points whether you complete the agenda or not.
They are obviously worried about the legendary archaeotech devices warping the game as they require requisition points to use. Furthermore, you cannot use the same tech two battles in a row.
- The Doom of Thorantus – This hits melee vehicles making them take mortals if they move and causing them to lose attacks. One use only.
- Syntaxik Charger – 8-shot devastating wounds against infantry on a 2+ that also drops their WS by 1 for a turn. The downside is it is 1 use only
- Augur of the First Reclamation – The standout winner, you get a bonus to your OC and you get bonus CP if you control an objective outside your deployment zone. You also get a bonus part after each battle on a 4+.
Agendas:
As you would expect, the Ad Mech get four Agendas.
- Cold Logic: Skitarii get up to +3 experience each when they kill an enemy unit in your deployment zone while the Protector Imperative is active. Or if the Conqueror Imperative is active and the enemy unit is in your opponent’s deployment zone.
- Tech Scavengers: A revised version from the last codex, this agenda has you pick the enemy vehicle with the highest point value. If you kill it the unit that did so gets +3 exp and then an objective spawns. If you hold the objective at the end of the game you get an extra piece of tech!
- Omnissiah’s Will: Once per game, each unit gets +1 exp for each enemy unit they kill, and your Tech Priests all gain +1 exp as well.
- Break the Seals: This is an action agenda. You pick an enemy objective to target for an action by one of your characters. If you complete the action with a character, you roll a die at the end of the turn, if you roll a 3+ that character gets +! exp, if you roll a 6 you get an extra piece of tech too! There is no limit to how many times you may do this.
Overall, this is a very strong set of agendas. Break the Seals and Tech Scavengers are good choices, especially with vehicles in vogue. Many of these agendas are just slightly tweaked versions of the 9th ed rules.
Like the agendas most of this book represents a tidying up and simplification of the 9th ed rules. The legendary archaeotech rules are a nice touch and a little more robust than just the standard tech creation rules. We will explore their relics and requisitions in our next articles!
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