Game 11: Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus

I'm not a huge fan of the standard Warhammer miniatures games (In no small part because I don't enjoy painting miniatures), but I do enjoy it's testosterone-soaked universe and I'm happy that it has produced enjoyable games like Space Hulk and Blood Bowl, as well as a variety of video games. I played a demo of Mechanicus a couple years ago and it didn't click with me on that initial encounter, but a friend has recently recommended the full game to me so here we are.

The last transmission of Reshak indicates there's a tech-priest that he found a really cool world, Silva Tenebris, but it's also dangerous.

This planet is super awesome and it sucks here

Our journey there seems to have gone fine.

We're gonna need someone who knows binary to figure out where the oil leak is.

We start exploring a tomb we found on planet for the tutorial. I'm guessing that I'm playing as Faustinus?

We have a motley crew of tech-priests here that disagree about how to do things.

There's Scaevola who speaks like a programmer, I like him.

let problems = 99, let bitches = 0

Khepra who seems to have some sort of role commanding the troops.

I guess I don't need to give her orders, she just takes care of it.

The ever-present in WK40K 'destroy all alien heresy' Crusader-type Videx.

Who I will probably be pissing off a lot because alien toys seem like fun to me.

It looks like we're exploring a discrete 'dungeon' with connected rooms. As you enter rooms you sometimes get interesting choices about how to react to encounters.

We've found Necrons here, I think this is may be first WH40K game I've played where I'm fighting the 'space undead'.

They're... oddly cute?

Just look at his little green eyes! Grr!

Also looks like we can add Rho to our cast of Mechanicus characters, not sure what their deal is but Rho has a cool hat.

And curious Tiresus!

It's like Game of Thrones on this ship.

Add Captrix to the list!

She looks vaguely like Santa with tits.

Scaevola helpfully informs me that Necrons will re-animate if we let them.

He's my favorite so far. More characters who talk in program-ese, please.

Oh and I forgot about Reditus, he's a Servo-Skull.

Or at least some variety of floating skull, maybe he's a Managerial Skull. 

Battles seem to involve significant resource management (albeit of one resource, cognition points). You get CP from these green pillars and other various sources, and they're used to summon in your servitors, move a unit further, and even just to fire certain weapons.

Thank the Omnissiah that the Necrons left all these green pillars around for us to think about.

One cool thing is that you don't know the enemy stats by default, but you can use your servo-skull ability (with a cooldown) to analyze them and find out.

You can summon non-tech priest Servitors into combat to help you, they're not as good as the tech priests but they can take hits and melee enemies - and they have an additional purpose. If the enemy hurts them you get CP!

Having my servitors being hit be interesting enough to generate CP is great.

They're both cannon fodder AND educational!

Sadly HP does not regenerate between fights within a dungeon, so in a longer one I could see my force being worn down across encounters.

Combat is fairly different than other tactical games, there's not a cover system that I can discern at this point, and I don't think attacks ever miss, they just do variable damage. Attacks that never miss is something I'm going to have to get used to.

There IS an intriguing melee / ranged interaction in that if you're in melee combat you can't use a ranged weapon, and that goes for the enemy too - plus if you move out of melee range you take an attack of opportunity.

Oops, we woke up someone we should not have.

This multi-thousand-year old undead admiral has awoken after millennia, and he's easier to understand than my co-workers.

I've got two tech-priests in this tutorial battle and we're gonna run like hell to try to escape, we're already beat up from the earlier battles.

I have nothing but encouragement for you Servitor, you got this!

He uh.... he did not got this.

But the two Tech priests successfully escape! Albeit with none of their servitors, but they're expendable!

If running in abject terror is a victory then I am a great General.

Tutorial over, it's time to see the Strategic layer of the game.

The Necrons are waking up, so I have a limited amount of time to complete missions and win the game.

Looks like the gameplay loop is I'll select dungeons and try to complete them and make as much progress as I can before all the Necrons wake up.

The missions tell you the rewards and I think this healing claw thing looks extremely valuable.

I could have really used something like that to keep the party in better shape.

There's a bunch of stuff to unlock!

How does the Adeptus Mechanicus know so little? 

The game also says that if I spend more time on a given mission then I'll have time for fewer missions overall, so there's a penalty for thorough exploration. I'll have to evaluate how worthwhile exploration is vs. trying to complete missions as quickly as possible.

Looks like there's six skill poles for tech priests.

You can choose your class but those skill trees don't branch.

You can customize your tech-priest colors.

White hooded robes is maybe not the best choice here.

I'll eventually get six tech-priests and there's six classes so I'll probably do one each to try them out, but with two to start with I start one as a Secutor (troop leader) Manarius and the other as an Enginseer (healer) Jeremiah. A couple missions in and the first battle in this 'easy' dungeon I get into initially has a 'survive three turns' objective where it pours enemies in. I survive three turns just fine but the objective then shifts to kill all enemies, which if I'd known about I would have played differently.

I manage it but this party is shattered, three servitors down and one of the two Tech-priests is a single hit away from dying.

If I could simply abandon this mission now I would do so, but it seems I must press on.

Thankfully there is no more combat and I still manage to complete the mission.

This upgrades my Servitors to level 2, gaining a hitpoint and a taunt / armor ability.

It feels like there's no clue for these 'choose a symbol' events and I just have to guess.

I chose the left symbol.

I chose poorly.

Taking on a Necron Destroyer which is a beast of an enemy with good armor, I made a mistake in splitting up my guys to get a terminal that was worth some blackstone, believing I had a good enough plan to kill the destroyer with the remaining tech-priest plus Servitors.

Blackstone is a between-mission currency that you can use to level up your guys so you want as much of it as possible.

This plan went haywire when the Destroyer mashed Jeremiah before I put all the servitors out.

Oops, I really needed Jeremiah to survive for this to work...

The remaining Priest Manarius got the guy down to 1 HP before dying, and I failed the mission.

Here's Manarius rolling the lowest possible value on his damage and leaving the Destroyer at 1 HP.

These missions are not randomly generated as I originally assumed. They have their own failure message.

Oh hey, the tech-priests that died are still alive! Looks like the consequence of mission failure is suffering additional progress on the Necrons waking up rather than permadeath.

Welcome back guys I guess it's fine if I get you killed!

I can't retry the failed mission, so we move on to other missions regardless of failure - I'm down with that though it means I've missed out on the mission reward.

Khepra gives me a mission that will get me an additional Tech-priest!

I better not fail this one!

Success! Leonardus, welcome to the team.

Let me tell you the story of the three little tech-priests.

So far in the campaign I've completed five missions, failed one, and the Necrons are at 11% awake.

Fun game so far, I'm definitely failing at optimal tactic for these battles as I keep forgetting to always shoot BEFORE I walk into melee - if you don't shoot first then you can't do it in melee range.

Characters don't actually have 'action points', because as long as you still have CP you can keep doing things, though most weapons are once-per-turn I think the game will let you move as much as you want if you have CP to burn.

Ugh, this whole time I didn't realize that I had to actually equip the 'body augments' I was unlocking in the skill menu.

This probably would have made the difference in the Destroyer mission that I failed.

The most important thing I’ve learned about this game is that the mission objective is actually almost always ‘Kill everything’. If the mission objective says ‘Survive X rounds’ or ‘Kill target X’, it is lying to you because as soon as you accomplish those the objective will change to ‘Kill everything’.

The only time I didn’t have to kill everything was an escape objective in the tutorial mission - since then the game has fooled me several times with this bait and switch. We're going to make Leonardus a Lexmachanic since that seems it'll help with the resource economy.

CPs are what wins battles, and Lexmechanics generate CPs.

Oooh, an armor ignoring pistol that requires no cognition to use?

This is a good find.

I've discovered a new sector that I can do missions in, the 'Ubjao' sector.

I'm not clear on how I'm discovering these sectors, maybe missions are just progressing until I stumble on them?

Optimizing the party in this game is going to be a matter of making one that obtains significant amounts of cognition points and then finds efficient ways to spend them, so I'm on the lookout for 'damage per cognition point' weapons. This looks like a solid candidate for something big. I've been neglecting to mention some of the interactions of the bridge crew that are adding a lot of flavor to the game. There hasn't been as much conflict between Videx (Destroy all this heretical stuff!) and Scaevola (Capture and research all this fun Xenos tech!) as I originally anticipated, and as it turns out there are actual consequences to trying to understand the Necrons too much. I've found that trying to gaze at their star charts tends to have negative consequences, like morale / initiative hits or alerting the Necrons more on a mission, so rather than my usual inclination in a game to investigate everything I'm now actually concerned about possibly learning too much. At this point in events I'm generally choosing options that seem to favor haste and getting the missions done quickly. I'm also not thoroughly exploring the dungeons and visiting all the rooms - the more time you spend on a mission, the more the Necrons wake up, and the rewards I've seen from going on detours haven't been worth more than the mission rewards.

Videx's mission rewards are very good, this weapon looks like a great CP to damage tradeoff.

Oh there's a new twist- the Necrons just used this thing to obtain cognition points for themselves! That denies them to me, do they also use them for more powerful attacks?

You bastard, I wanted my tech-priests to think about the green glowing pillar!

In a mission you have a mix of Magos Tech-Priests which are your characters and Troops which are disposable minions (Though better troop types do cost some Blackstone to deploy, the currency you spend to improve your characters, so I'm being cheap and still employing the free Servitors as my troops.)

In a battle your Tech-Priests start on the map, but you have to spend Cognition Points to summon in your troops during the battle. Against ranged Necrons I've found that I can charge a Tech-Priest up to them and then summon in these melee Servitor troops to surround them, which screws them over - the Necron can't fire his ranged weapon in melee combat and when he moves all three of us will get an attack of opportunity.

He's in for a beating!

This is well worth doing because the Servitors move pretty slowly, if you summon them at the start of the battle they're probably not going to help with the end of it. Also I've figured out that you get a significant refund on the cost of summoning the fancier troop types if you keep them alive and unharmed, I brought in a Skitarii ranger for 17 and was refunded 14 so I'll be less reluctant to take the troops that cost something for future missions. Captrix's missions appear to be the boss fights - I'm guessing that to beat the game I'll want to beat all the bosses. We're going to try to the first one now.

Captrix has his eye on the prize.

The team is starting to feel pretty powerful. I've upgraded both Jeremiah and Leonardus to top-level Engiseer and Lexmechanic, giving Jeremiah a ridiculously strong 'Heal all tech-priests or troops to full HP' ability and Leonardus is a CP-generating fiend. Manarius the Secutor is still mid-level but he still has a worthwhile 'make all troops attack a target' ability, I'll be taking three Skitarii Vanguard troops which have a ranged attack which does 4-6 damage, so if I can get them positioned to hit the Lord Astronomer he'll be feeling it in the morning.

Unlike other missions this is a long no-branch path to the end.

Jeremiah has several healing abilities now so I think we'll be able to sustain the party pretty well. Everyone's still alive when we reach the boss chamber.

Things don't go 100% according to plan since the Astronomer has four bodyguards that he auto-swaps with when you shoot at him, but they're slow and melee-only so eventually all the enemies get gunned down.

The boss' gimmick only serves to slow their defeat.

Moving on to the next sector, enemy composition is different for different areas of the game. The Ubjao sector has a lot of the melee-only 'Flayed Ones'.

The Flayed Ones threaten me with long fingernails.

I'm now taking a firing squad of three Skitarii Vanguards with my Tech-Priests on pretty much every mission and they're gunning everything down, great range and firepower, and the Tech-Priests are sufficiently tanky that they can take the hits and Jeremiah can heal them to full.

I've definitely out-classed the enemies at this point in the game and I suspect there are some multi-class builds which could get even more obscene.

I'm doing one of Khepra's missions when these red guys show up on the dungeon map:

An evil Necron squad? Let's go say hello.

It turned out to be a relatively trivial encounter (3 enemies and an escape mission) and the reward was a massive -4 Necron awareness!

Please send more evil Necron squads!

This game has a huge amount of customization available to your party. You can mix and match classes and their respective armor pieces in a character build, and then take a variety of troop types with you on missions to compliment them - and a lot of the fun of this game is in that customization as the 'kill everything' missions are starting to be a bit repetitive. The downside of this customization is that you can relatively easily blow out the game's difficulty curve - I haven't done this but I could have made three full-level Engiseers at this point who's top-level ability is a 1-cognition 'heal all Tech-Priests to full', which with a 3-turn cooldown means your party can fully heal itself every turn.

I've gone in favor of a party that kills everything as fast as possible, because the longer you take even within battles, the more the Necrons wake up and increase the waking percentage.

Say hello to Tech-Priest #4, Magos Oriocus.

Hello!

He just joined and hasn't fought yet but I've been saving up Blackstone for him, so he's already a full Dominus (ranged damage) and a bit of Explorator (melee but also speed and has an 'avoid opportunity attacks' which will pair nicely with not wanting the Dominus to have a melee weapon). He'll go ham on ranged energy weaponry.

There two damage types in the game, energy and physical, and both your troops and enemies have separate energy and physical armor values that you don't see until you analyze the foe. Most enemies have one or the other number at a low value so being able to hit them with the right kind of attack helps kill them faster.

Oriochus can dish out the ranged energy damage and I've got the Skitarii vanguard for ranged physical damage, so as long as I can figure out which one is better for a given target I've got the firepower in the party to bring it down. You get to kit out your tech-priests on this screen, where you can install any of the equipment you've unlocked plus their class armor.

Oriochus is going to try out these arc-pistols which only do 1-2 damage, but they turn into an AOE and they don't cost cognition to use.

He has a pair of back-canisters that for 1 cognition each will boost his energy damage by 2, as well as gloves and a class ability that boost it by 1, so I'm hoping these pistols are blasting out 3-4 AoE damage for no CP and up to 7-8 damage each if I spend 4 CP (Enemies tend to have around 6-14 health plus 1-3 points of physical or energy armor). Weapons have a 'machine spirit' that works when you fire them X times (not sure what X is for these pistols) and he has an ability that will boost that by another 2 damage when that happens (and we'll make that boost 4 when I can get the same ability from Explorator when I can afford it.) Bottom line, he's designed to kill things faster than I already am.  First time in combat I discover he's an utter terror - to both sides, as it turns out I didn't understand friendly fire or the placement of these cones... but hey, I can heal all my damage.

The new guy probably isn't going to get on the squad's good side.

Through pain, we find wisdom. And we are certainly dishing out of a lot of pain. Agrolekh, the second boss and original tutorial terror, is dead in 1 round.

Agrolekh was not prepared for a party that's figured out the game mechanics.

Boss #3, Ubjao, also falls in a single round - I think you're meant to slowly work your way up to him killing his minions on the way which each increase his HP by 4, but after I killed one and saw the effect I just used all my CP to summon one vanguard and run a single Tech-Priest up to him and blap - you get one-use 'Canticles' per mission like +9 energy damage, so if you use them all on the boss you can inflict a lot of pain. The Necrons are at 45% awake and I've killed three out of likely six bosses, so I'm making good enough time. The next sector features these guys who I like a lot, they have huge physical armor and when you attack them they auto-walk to you and counterattack, making them a special tactical challenge.

Learning how these sword/shield Necrons work was painful for the squad.

Houston, we have broken through the 4th wall.

The Final Mission has unlocked!  It looks like you have to fight the final boss plus every other boss you haven't defeated yet.

With my current party I might be able to beat this right now but I don't want to stop playing yet.

4th boss Mhelob is at the end of a long corridor with these shield-walls that prevent you from progressing very far each step, plus he has a badass hologram.

The walls delay me enough that the fight lasts a whole 2 rounds.

Videx is growing on me as a character, in no small part because his 'religious rites' actually have positive effects, like deploying censers to clear out some toxic air. I unlocked a big ass robot to show to the Necrons.

They are not going to like it.

One of the things that the game could have done a bit better is the mission variety, for example story-wise I just went to rescue a group of Skitarii trapped behind enemy lines. The 'dungeon' events reflect this but the end of the mission could have culminated in a battle where you actually try to fight through Necrons to reach some AI-controlled troops that are holding a position, but instead it's another 'scan the things, kill the Necrons' mission - which are still tactically interesting to be sure, but it feels like a missed opportunity.

I've acquired two more tech priests and unlocked all the troop types, and there's only two bosses remaining, and I have gobs and gobs of blackstone to upgrade the new trooper with.

The endgame approaches!

Architect Netfusk falls in two rounds - the Netfusk sector started to ramp up the challenge with its levels and you'll need a decently powerful team to beat them, but this group is still well ahead of the power curve.

Time to take on the big guy.

Hey big guy, I see you just woke up, wanna get coff....

OW FUCK OW

Szaergon opens the battle by taking two turns in a row and dropping 2 of the 6 tech-priests before they can act at all, including the healer. The remaining 4 members (plus a robot) distinguish themselves by inflicting over a hundred damage and dropping him in one round anyway. Bye bye Silva Tenebris, we out.

When will evil aliens stop inextricably linking themselves to one badass guy?

The ending screen mentions that both Videx and Scaveola are pissed at me, I assume because I didn't complete their mission chains - I didn't see the need to get any more powerful than I already was.

This was a solid game, thanks for the recommendation! I would play another made by this studio, it was an unusual take on the tactical genre and had a lot of customization, the tradeoff being that it's probably a bit too easy to customize yourself into making Necron-stomping trivial.

By the end of the game the thing that slowed me down the most were these artificial forcefields that prevented me from walking all over a mission rather than the quality or number of the enemies I faced, and that's mainly because I had powers like 'heal the entire party' that were just too powerful. I also really liked the look into the world of the Adeptus Mechanicus, and their role within the Imperium - I don't think I commented enough about it but it was very well done.