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The Retrofuturism of the Adeptus Mechanicus

The retrofuturism of the Adeptus Mechanicus has to be, hands down, my favorite aesthetic in the Warhammer 40k universe. There are a lot of Warhammer 40k armies with a lot of different looks and appearances, from the spiky, sleek Drukhari to the working classing miners of the Genestealer Cults to the World War One aesthetic of the Death Korps of Krieg, but nothing gets me as excited as the retrofuturism of the Adeptus Mechanicus. There’s only one problem–there’s not enough of it.

What is Retrofuturism?

Retrofuturism is the aesthetic movement to look at the future through the lens of what people long ago thought that the world would be like in the future. To some extent Jules Verne fits into the retrofuturism category, as does steampunk, dieselpunk, atompunk, and Ray gun Gothic.

Most people are familiar with steampunk, which envisions a world of the past–very often Victorian–where they have “modern” or “futuristic” vehicles and weapons. These are things that the people of the Victorian era would have thought would be the future: airships and massive moving factories and analogue robots covered in cogs and gears.

Dieselpunk is much the same, although it moves the time period up a little bit, getting more into diesel locomotives and tanks. Atompunk is the age between the 1945-1955 range–the Atomic Age, the Jet Age, the Space Age.

But when we say that the Adeptus Mechanicus of Warhammer 40k is retrofuturism, I think we’re looking at a bit of a hodgepodge of all of these, with a heavy does of Ray gun Gothic, and I personally think that it’s an aesthetic difference that the Adeptus Mechanicus sorely needs to stand out from the rest of the Imperium. The Ad Mech are, it needs to be noted, a whole different breed of the Imperium, who has different beliefs, who has truces of mutual convenience, who is the driving technological force behind everything in the Imperium, but who dabble in things that the rest of the Imperium would find anathema.

The Retrofuturism of the Adeptus Mechanicus

Let’s look at some of the units that most exemplify this aesthetic. And for these examples I’m going to mostly use models that I have painted, so they’re not ‘Eavy Metal by any means, but I’m pretty proud of them.

The Skorpius Disintegrator

The Skorpius Disintegrator is the most recent addition to my Adeptus Mechanicus force, and I absolutely love it. (Buy on Amazon | Buy on Element Games)

Let’s look at the pieces in turn. Compare the main weapon to the ray guns of the time. It’s an interesting blend. It has the vertical discs along the barrel that are so common in the Ray Gun aesthetic. But it also has the muzzle break that was becoming a prominent feature of large tank and anti-tank guns in WWII and the Korean War.

But I think the most telling part of this Skorpius Disintegrator is the comparison to this 1950 Oldsmobile. Look at the lines and styling of the front end of each vehicle and tell me that the one didn’t inspire the other. In 1950 this was considered the height of modernity, and the designers of Adeptus Mechanicus have drilled down into that look to find the core of what it means to live in the 1940s and 1950s and imagine what the future of space travel would look like.

But the similarities don’t end there, because the variant of the Skorpius Disintegrator is the Skorpius Dunerider, which is 100% a D-Day landing craft that has been brought forward into the 41st Millennium. Totally impractical as an open-topped transport if we’re being honest, this thing is beautiful in how faithfully it recreates the LCVP or Higgins Boats. Complete with a driver in the back, someone manning a heavy machine gun, and a crew compartment full of troops who are about to eat it as soon as the shield door drops, the Skorpius Dunerider is a retrofuturistic view of World War II. They nail it perfectly.

Pteraxii

The Pteraxii go back in time a little while earlier, back to the days of Jules Verne and steampunk, when it was believed that, like Icarus, you could build a suit of wings and fly. The Adeptus Mechanicus managed to pull it off whereas the early inventors of flight never could.

More than anything, this reminds me of a suit that Wile E. Coyote would wear while he’s trying to chase down the Roadrunner, and I don’t think that’s any accident. The retrofuturism of the Adeptus Mechanicus owes as much to Looney Tunes (think Marvin the Martian) as it does to Walt Disney’s Tomorrowland. (Buy on Amazon | Buy on Element Games)

The Serbyrys Raiders

This one is more of a stretch, but stay with me. There’s no doubt that horse cavalry went quickly out of style in World War One when all of the horses were mowed down my machine gun fire. But horses were still used, mostly behind the lines. They pulled artillery, they pulled food wagons and ammo wagons. Horses near the front lines of the war were a staple.

Horse cavalry even made a few appearances in World War Two, and those were even less successful, but the point is that they still tried it–partially because they were desperate, and partially because there were soldiers–generals!–in the army who had trained their whole lives for cavalry charges.

So the fact that the Adeptus Mechanicus have brought back the horse, even though it is a cybernetic horse that is more machine now than horse, is a perfect example of retrofuturism in the Adeptus Mechanicus. (Buy on Amazon | Buy on Element Games)

The Onager Dunecrawler

The Onager Dunecrawler is everything about retrofuturism in the Adeptus Mechanicus. It’s a walker, for one thing, which is very much an invention of the past. War walkers have been a staple of science fiction since at least War of the Worlds, and seeing one reappear here, which also has the ray gun appearance of its main battle cannon, is beautiful.

Everything about the Onager Dunecrawler screams retrofuturism. (Buy on Amazon | Buy on Element Games)

The Archaeopter Stratoraptor

If ever there was an aircraft that looks like it was built pre-Wright Brothers, it’s the Archaeopter Stratoraptor (and its variations, the Archaeopter Transvector and Archaeopter Fusilave) (Buy on Amazon | Buy on Element Games). With their wings that look like a cross between a bat and a hang glider (and again, owing a lot to Wile E. Coyote) the Archaeopter is a gorgeous model that, of all the weird flying units in Warhammer 40k, looks like it might actually get off the ground. (It certainly has more potential for aerodynamics and lift than the Stormraven, the Stormtalon and the Stormhawk.)

Skitarii Rangers

Now, the Skitarii Rangers are nothing to write home about when it comes to retrofuturism in the Adeptus Mechanicus, with one exception: their weapons. The weapons used by the Skitarii–the arc rifle, the plasma caliver and especially the tranuranic arquebus–are classic examples of what someone 70 years ago might think the weapons of the future would look like. (The tranuranic arquebus is even more retro, with the stabilizing stand that it sits on looks like something out of early black powder warfare.) (Buy on Amazon | Buy on Element Games)

The Skitarii Rangers themselves are not extremely in fitting into the same aesthetic, and I think that’s where this all starts to break down.

Where the Retrofuturism of the Adeptus Mechanicus Breaks Down

Sadly, as beautiful as so many units in the Adeptus Mechanicus are (and they are) there are many units that lose the aesthetic of retrofuturism and are just… bad. The Tech-priests I can forgive because they have a certain look all their own that has been established for a long time and is very nice, even if it doesn’t mesh with the retrofuturism. But the Sicarian Infiltrators are taken from an entirely different textbook, as are the Ruststalkers, and especially the Kataphron Breachers and Destroyers. The Electro-Priests are good looking models, but they’re just not in the same aesthetic. The Ironstrider yes, and even the Kastelan Robots. But Belisaurius Cawl, no matter how great of a model he looks, abandons the retrofuturistic look.

It may very well be that the leaders of the Adeptus Mechanicus–the various Tech-Priests (Manipulus, Dominus, and Enginseer) and the Skitarii Marshal are all about are their weird Tech-Priest selves and they just simply create things that have a retrofuturistic look, which is why all of the vehicles and Pteraxii and Serberys Raiders and Kastelans are all in this design aesthetic. That may be the case.

But that does not excuse the fact that Sicarian Infiltrators and Sicarian Ruststalkers are some of the crappiest models in Warhammer 40k, and that the Kataphrons look abhorrent.

Still, for the collector like me who is less concerned about building a list with the best meta and is happy to collect the various vehicles and units that look amazing, you can’t beat Adeptus Mechanicus for retrofuturism.

What do you think? Do you agree with us about these models? What do you like and why?