Robots were dropped because as the Warhammer 40,000 background evolved, they created the idea that Imperial AI's were unreliable and tended to fall to Chaos, so pure 'robots' had to go and they were replaced by heavily augmented biologicals: Praetorian Combat Servitors.

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-Vaaish

Thank you for your interest in this topic

To make a general response >

From my point of view, praetorians are ok but just reflect the characteristics of robots, but not their organization. As AM, is not it exciting to command legions of robots organized as in the days of Rome ?

In terms of background, as some have already said, the current background does not all the features of the Imperium. Also, why the old background it would be worse than the new one ? Epic players continue to put the original markings on their Titan ! And many example !

I maintain the robots havent turned chaos, only their servant, TL background is clear about That !

I maintain that the robots, especially the Legio Cybernetica deserve a place in the list ! Definitively !

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If you like you can create an army list composed of nothing but Ordinatus vehicles and Praetorians/Imperial Robots... I can't really see a Mechanicus army list which placed more emphasis on the Robots than that.

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That's the problem !

Make a list focused on the robots is not "backgroundly" right. The Legio Cybernetica is a branch of the Adeptus Mechanicus like the Centurio Ordinatus or the Legio Titanicus. Legio Cybernetica detachments, called "Cohort", are dispatched in armies, rarely an army themselves.

On this principle, I think we can easily add them as support formation or core formation, depending on the list.

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I believe there is talk of this in the Horus Heresy Book 'Mechanicum'

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In "Dark Adeptus" there is an Ordinatus Mars playing a major role. Ordinatus Minoris are mention there too.
4 Ordinati are listed in Codex Armageddon.

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Ok ok, my bad, Ordinatus is a Bad exemple regarding Dark Mechanicus. Anyway, DM remains a novel and an interpretation of the background which does not cover everything ... like all novels. As I say, the background is not etched in stone and the "old" background is as well as new. A bit strange way of thinking when we see how changing the background in time and the many contradictions.
It is not because we no longer speak of a historical fact that he never existed, we are not in Soviet Union, even with GW ...

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Did some of the BL novels talk about the use of AI as a contributing factor to the Age of Strife? I seem to recall something about the "Iron Men". I also heard something about how the Admech considers true AI to be an abomination, which is why servitors and such are all based on human brains.

Iron Men come from the point where the AI's went all Dune on humanity and are part of the reason that true-AI is such a hated thing.

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Lord of Worms: That's about my impression, yes.


Just got finished reading 'Fallen Angels' the other day, the newest book in the ever-extending Horus Heresy series. It features the Dark Angels versus the forces of a Forgeworld.

Those forces include:

- Skitarii
- Praetorians
- 6 Ordinatus type Siege Engines, which seem to fire nuclear artillery shells.

So that's now two Horus Heresy books with a heavy emphasis on the Adeptus Mechanicus, and no robots to be seen.

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The Kaban machine in Mechanicum is a true AI, and the bodyguard robots given to Kelbor Hal and Kane by Lucas Chrom (see page 109 of Mechanicum) are robots.

There are also a lot of mechanical defences in Mechanicum.

I had also been assuming that because of the Iron Men and their role in bringing about the Age of Strife the AM used brains from living creatures in autonomous machines (like land raiders, combat robots, sentinels) and chip based AI in simpler machines (escape pods, doors, etc).

I plan on using robots in my AM army, but I'll just be using the Praetorian rules, which fit perfectly.

To my knowledge the mechanised defences of the Imperium were servitor-controlled, that at least seems to be how most of them are modeled.

As far as we know, the only limited AI that exist are the MIU's of Titans and other Imperial Machines. To my knowledge there is evidence for not-AI OS's in the background of 40k - which is why they use them in smaller craft.

Intelligent machines on the other hand are non-existant.

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AIs do turn up though.

The STC in Dark Adeptus is a self aware machine.
The Kaban Machine in Mechanicum is an AI.
There are also Iron Men in one of the Gaunts Ghosts novels I believe (they find an STC that makes them, but it's been corrupted by Chaos). I can't remember which one though.

The AI in Dark Adeptus is a STC thats become corrupted by Chaos, and certainly isn't Imperial

The Kaban Machine, forgive me if I'm wrong, is ALSO a heretical piece of material

And the Iron Men are...well heretical pieces of material.

All of the above are Dark Age technology which isn't Imperial Technology, its pre-Imperium Human Technology - the Iron Men in particular are very much one of the main causes of the Imperial fear of AI, it was those machines that turned on man back in the yonder days of lore and well, are in part responsible for the Age of Strife for their attempt to conquer humanity (or so I remember).

AI's in general are considered to be bad voodoo, for the above reason, not to mention they seem to have a tendency to wander off and start hugging demons in most of the plot - the Dark Mechanicus does seem to be willing to field these things, hense why we have old fluff of Chaos Androids - but even they seem to have been phased out in recent time (well, I say phased out but I meen, got a whole injection of Egypt and Lovecraft and wandered off to be Necrons) - in exchange for more and more Daemon-controlled tech.

There is definatley a slant towards AI not beeing Imperial - from what we know of the MIU's/Spirits of Titans thus far they aren't true AI, but do, over time, end up implanted with the personalities of their princeps giving them some sort of pseudo-intelligence/ghost in the machine, effect (for instance the Titan in the Titan Comics using the personality of its prior Princeps to defend Hecate and submit its own desire to have him remain as its Princeps despite him beeing inexperienced) - but the Mechanicus seems to get around this breach of its taboo with scary ghost wiggy techno mystical talk.

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Its a load of ******** the whole 'iron men' rubbish. Awful background. Everyone always knew the age of strife was caused by the sudden emergence of mutation and psykers, with only intolerance societies surviving - those that tried to help or understand suffered horrible uncontrolled related psyker begotten fates.

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