Fandex: Adeptus Mechanicus - A Review

Lantz McDonald's meisterwork, Fandex: Adeptus Mechanicus, has just received a major overhaul and has been re-posted on his website here. It is of course this magnificent work that is my major inspiration for my own Codex: Squat Stronghold. If my book is even half as good, I'll have done a great job (and, probably spent more time than I really should have).

The latest version of the Codex features pictures, model photographs, a few new units and rules, but most importantly lots of background information, stories and fluff.  The previous version of the book was great, but was largely a collection of unit descriptions and army list entries. This latest release goes a step further, and the result is a fully rounded book worthy of the word Codex.

THE BIONIC MEN

In general, the army has the feel of the Imperial Guard to me, in that most of the infantry - HQ choices included - have roughly human statistics (that is, low-to-medium stats across the board) and a decent save (4+ or 5+ on infantry). However, the Ad Mech have a big surprise up their sleeves - Cult Bionics. In addition to an armour save, the vast majority of infantry models also benefit from a second save of 5+ which, if passed, ignores the wound altogether. It is not dissimilar to Feel No Pain in this respect, and observes the same limitations (ie does not count against hits from power weapons, AP1 and AP2 shots et al).

COMPLEXITY RULES 

The other major trick in the AD Mech's armoury, and my favourite invention of Lantz's, is something called Complexity Value. Every vehicle in the army has a value ranging from 1-4 (apart from the Warhound Titan, but that's a whole other kettle of fish!). Each point of complexity value allows the owning player to reduce a roll on the vehicle damage table by one, however once the complexity value points have been used up, they are gone for the remainder of the game! This makes the vehicles of the Ad Mech much hardier than a typical tank, and all but guarantees that they will survive until at least turn two.

NEXT TIME...

So, Lantz has certainly spent a large amount of time developing unique units for his codex, and every slot in the army list is filled with well thought-out and fully rounded choices. Tune in again tomorrow for the start of my section-by-section review of the army!