It's often said that you can't throw a mining facility into the deep space of Warhammer 40,000 without hitting some ancient race of murderous machines—and that's very much the problem facing the Imperium's tech-priests in turn-based strategy game Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus II.

"The Mechanicus create forge worlds that generate vast amounts of industry and resources for the Imperium as a whole," says Kasedo Product Manager Tony Cross. Mechanicus II begins with the settling of a new planet. "Unknown to them," Cross adds, "This world is a Necron tomb world."

The Necrons, a race of hyper-advanced androids who gave up their fleshy bodies for immortality, have been slumbering underground for millions of years. When they hear the hammering and drilling of the tech-priests above, they take it upon themselves to evict the interlopers. Murderously.

Unlike the first game, where you could only command the human tech-priests in battle, Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus II features both an Adeptus Mechanicus and a Necron campaign, letting you lead both sides of the conflict.

But wait—the latest news from the Warhammer Skulls event is that a new threat will be joining the party. The big reveal at this week's Skulls event was that Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus II will feature the Leagues of Votann.

In a league of their own

Released for the tabletop game at the tail end of 2022, the Leagues of Votann is an army of AI-worshipping space dwarves. They're still a relatively new faction in Warhammer terms, and Mechanicus II will mark their first major appearance in a video game.

While these squat soldiers won't be a playable faction, they may play a significant threat in both campaigns. "The subfaction we've picked from the Leagues of Votann has a history of fighting Necrons," Cross explains, "and the faction's use of artificial intelligence will make the Adeptus Mechanicus furious."

The Adeptus Mechanicus consider creating AI—or “abominable intelligences” as they call it—one of the greatest sins you can commit. After all, it was the abuse of AI that almost brought about humanity's end, long before the Imperium. It's safe to say they won't be pleased with the Votann. "There's a lot of tension we can draw on," Cross says.

Cross wouldn't reveal too much about the Leagues of Votann, as he doesn't want to spoil too much about them before release, but they will add further complexity to a game already making significant changes to its predecessor.
 

Changes in the deep

While Mechanicus II may look familiar on the surface, there have been significant changes to how it plays.

In the original game, you played as tech-priest Magos Dominus Faustinius. Other Adeptus Mechanicus leaders advised you, including Lector-Dogmatix Videx, Sub-Domina Khepra, and Quartermaster Rho. These talking heads from different parts of the faction would bicker over the right way to serve the Machine God. In Mechanicus II, they all return as playable characters, each with their own set of abilities and unique playstyle.

"Videx is this ultra-religious, zealous guy," Cross says. "His playstyle is all about buffing his units," more of a leader from the rear. Khepra, a veteran soldier, prefers to fight alongside her troops, assigning them priority targets, while Prefect-Ordinant Rho, a hulking tech-priest armed with a giant axe, is more of a tank. He can get into the thick of battle and draw attention while you direct your other units to flank the enemy.

The Necrons have their own leaders, too, pushing you to wield your army differently from mission to mission.

It will pay to learn the ins and outs of your faction, particularly when playing as the Adeptus Mechanicus, because developer Bulwark Studios has overhauled the Cognition system of the original game. This action point system is how you pay for your leader's special abilities.

In the original Mechanicus, you earned Cognition in battle by analysing Necron beacon towers and killing enemies. In Mechanicus II, you gain Cognition points when your troops perform behaviours that fit their role. Servitors, for example, earn you Cognition when they take damage. They are the Adeptus Mechanicus's frontline troops, formed of vat-grown clones and former convicts transformed into dull-witted cyborgs, meant to do the priests' heavy lifting. Meanwhile, your elite snipers, the Skitarii Rangers, earn Cognition points by dealing long-range damage.

Whereas in games like XCOM, you develop a relationship with each soldier and upgrade them across a campaign, Mechanicus II takes an appropriately dark approach. "To a degree, your troops are all expendable," Cross says. "They're there to make sure your leader can have these super powerful activations." The Imperium has a population of trillions. The rank-and-file exist to throw down their lives in the service of the Emperor.

Unlike the mortal soldiers of the Imperium, the Necrons are undying. If they are downed in battle, they will eventually reanimate and continue fighting.

To reflect their unstoppable nature, Bulwark opted for a different power system than Cognition for the Necrons. The Necron forces earn Dominion points for every turn they remain in battle, like an ancient computer slowly booting up. "The longer you remain in a skirmish, the more upgraded abilities activate for the Necron side," Cross says.

As a Necron commander, you can draw out battles, unlocking new abilities from turn to turn. When facing them in the Adeptus Mechanicus campaign, you must act quickly, knowing your enemy will only get stronger the longer you face them.
 

Taking ground

While the focus for both factions is on building experience with your commanders and unlocking new gear and abilities, the new campaign map also lets you develop your frontline troops.

The campaigns play out almost like a grand strategy game, with the planet's surface carved into different regions. Story missions and other skirmishes dot the map, and completing them allows you to seize control of a district. Once an area is in your hands, you can build facilities that unlock upgrades for your entire faction.

Cross points out that the upgrade paths are more balanced this time around, too. "In the first game, there was such a vast range of different upgrade options and combinations that, while cool, made it hard to balance," Cross explains. He admits that the original Mechanicus became easier in the later missions because your troops had amassed such powerful upgrades. "We have a much more controlled approach to how these characters upgrade and improve."

This larger planetary scope also allows for much more battlefield variety than the first game, which was confined to dark tombs and the corridors of dank spaceships. In Mechanicus II, you will fight across swamps filled with poisonous flowers, snowstorm-swept ice fields, and the streets of Imperial forge cities.

When playing as the Necrons, you will battle for the same territory but see the conflict from the other side. While the Adeptus Mechanicus campaign is about ridding the forge world of the machines that live beneath them, the Necron campaign is a story of reclaiming their world from the human invaders.

"The stories between the two campaigns line up," Cross says. "By playing both, you're getting the full story, filling in the gaps from one campaign in the other, seeing the same critical battles from the other perspective."
 

Duck and cover (or don't)

The most significant difference on the battlefield in Mechanicus II is the new destructible cover system. Adeptus Mechanicus troops can now duck behind walls to shield themselves from the Necrons' laser fire. This gives fragile units like Skitarii Rangers a chance against the Necrons' marching death machines.

As a race of reanimating killer robots, of course, most of the Necrons' forces are happy to ignore cover. Instead, they will blast away the shelter as they advance on the enemy. However, you need to be careful where you fire because it's not just the cover that's destructible. A stray shot can destroy scenery and terrain, creating new rubble piles for your enemy to cower behind.

"It opens up a nice asymmetry in gameplay," Cross says.

The cover system presented an unusual challenge for the designers regarding the freshly revealed newcomers to this planetary brawl, though. "We're still working out cover for the Leagues of Votann. To be perfectly frank, we weren't quite sure how tall they are compared to the cover..."

From the new trailer (and from hearing Cross talk), it's clear that Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus II is an evolution of everything the original game did, and more. And with the addition of the Leagues of Votann, Mechanicus II also introduces foes you won't find in any other Warhammer 40,000 video game. Surely that's worth the risk of scratching beneath the surface of a tomb world…

Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus II is coming soon to the Epic Games Store.