New Adeptus Mechanicus miniatures are on the way, so we got in touch with the current Warhammer 40,000 World Champion and well-known Martian enthusiast Richard Siegler to find out what he thinks about the new units.
Richard: The raging battle for control of the Eye of Terror enables access to essential new units for any budding Tech-Priest and their forge world. Thulia Ghuld, Archmagos Terminus of Mars, is a brand new Supreme Commander to lead your forces on the battlefield and offers Belisarius Cawl some stiff competition for leading your army.
Alongside Ghuld are the Hastarii Exterminators and Fusiliers, elite infantry units with devastating firepower that fill a role which the Adeptus Mechanicus previously did not have on the tabletop. How do these units enhance the power of your Adeptus Mechanicus army, and what combos will help you get the most out of them in your games?
Let’s start by examining Thulia Ghuld and her rules. She’s similar to Cawl in her statline, but much better in melee and a little bit less powerful in shooting. She can potentially destroy a wounded vehicle with mortal wounds, which will be situational, but her real strength lies in the Rod of the War Forge ability.
The three options available to a nearby Skitarii unit or Ghuld herself are:
Shoot and charge in a turn in which the chosen unit Advanced
Shoot and charge in a turn in which the chosen unit Fell Back
The chosen unit benefits from both the Protector and Conqueror Imperatives from the army rule
The ability to shoot and charge in a turn in which your unit advanced is highly synergistic with Sicarian Ruststalkers, who gain +1, or +2 if near battleline, to their advance and charge rolls. This allows them to get deep into the enemy lines and start targeting characters and enemy infantry. It also allows shooting platforms like the Skorpius Disintegrator and Onager Dunecrawler to match the speed of the Ironstrider Ballistarii that can advance and shoot thanks to their Elevated Strider datasheet rule.
While the ability to advance and shoot can be achieved in Conqueror Imperative, you can keep your army in Protector and single out specific units to advance and shoot. Advance and charge is a rule available in Haloscreed Battleclade through the Noospheric Transference rule or in Skitarii Hunter Cohort via the Expedited Purge Protocol stratagem, but it is otherwise rare and allows Sicarian units to shine without using the Halo Override selections or Command points.
Similarly, the ability to fall back, shoot, and charge offers a safety net in case your opponent engages one of your units that you did not expect. A Skitarii Hunter Cohort, in particular, can have its core game plan of continuously contesting the opponent’s objectives fall apart if the next layer of your Mechanicus units are engaged in combat and unable to fall back and utilize their best rules. A shooting platform like the Onager Dunecrawler with the eradication beamer, which has to get close to an enemy to deal devastating firepower, takes a major risk of being engaged in combat during the opponent’s turn and being unable to fire back with its powerful [BLAST] weapon. But now, Thulia can helpfully solve this issue while posing a devastating heroic intervention threat to unsuspecting enemy forces!
Finally, the ability to grant a unit both Protector and Conqueror Imperatives means that you can better mix melee units with shooting units , allowing a Protector list to send out efficient Sicarian or Fulgurite damage benefitting from the Conqueror Imperative, thanks to Thulia Ghuld. The Skitarii Hunter Cohort has the Cantic Thrallnet enhancement, which offers a similar rule – but that one is chosen at the start of the battle round, whereas Ghuld’s version is in your command phase, offering much greater flexibility. Firepower, such as the Ironstrider Ballistarii, also benefits tremendously from the army being in Protector, while Ghuld’s Rod of the War Forge allows them to also benefit from the increased AP of Conqueror, dealing devastating damage to 2+ save enemy units.
The Hastarii, on the other hand, offer heavy firepower on an infantry platform – something the Adeptus Mechanicus were desperate for – with many rules that enhance infantry-based shooting. In particular, the humble Skitarii Marshal, who can now lead Hastarii, grants re-roll hits when leading a unit of Hastarii. The most powerful Marshal in Admech is the Battle-Sphere Uplink-wielding Marshal in the Skitarii Hunter Cohort, whose unit can shoot and then make a normal move, allowing it to re-embark back into a Skorpius Dunerider.* The Dunerider also provides an incredible buff, whereby if the tank hits the desired target, any units that disembarked from the Dunerider gain re-roll wounds against that enemy unit for the phase.
What does all this mean? Well, it is quite easy to have Hastarii units with re-rolling hits and wounds against enemy targets. Not only is this incredibly efficient damage, but it also means these units are much less reliant on Belisarius Cawl’s Invocation of Machine Vengeance rule, allowing the Hastarii to devastate other enemy targets. Other powerful tools include the Haloscreed Battleclade stratagem Analytical Divination, which can allow a Hastarii unit to embark into a Dunerider behind a ruin after an enemy unit ends a normal, advance, or fall back move within 9”. The Sanctified Ordnance enhancement in Haloscreed will also mitigate the 24” range of the Fusiliers’ neutron fusil by extending it to 30” range. The Mechanicus have been sorely missing a mid-range anti-tank unit that can be used to destroy smaller tanks and transports, without being forced to utilise the much more valuable unit of Ironstrider Ballistarii or Skorpius Disintegrators that are needed for the enemy’s heaviest armoured units.
Overall, Thulia Ghuld brings an incredibly flexible and synergistic commander to the battlefield to provide more options for Mechanicus players to express their skills each turn. Meanwhile, Hastarii offer a shooting unit that can dominate the middle of the battlefield, supported by an excellent, efficient set of rules. I’m excited to get these new models on the tabletop, and I hope that you are too! I need to head back to my Ark Mechanicus now so I can create new strategies that make the most of Thulia Ghuld and her Hastarii reinforcements!
Thanks, Richard! Thulia Ghuld and the new Hastarii are up for pre-order this Saturday, alongside a host of releases coinciding with the Eye of Terror – Reign of Iron expansion. Join the defence of forge world Agripinaa and show those Iron Warriors not to mess with the Ordo Reductor!
* The restriction on embarking units is locked to once per phase.
