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That means I could add something like:

another dunecrawler
10 more guys to fill out the skitarii units
2 more chickenwalkers
a culexus assassin
inquisitor coteaz

and still have 10 points left over. Or other silly combinations. In a 1850 point list.

I was really hopeing GW thought ahead for those of us who would like to play a balanced game and not feel like dirt for playing our army, like the eldar and necron players often do now. Oh well, I will probably run the combined detatchment just to be able to run eveyrthing I want together in one formation, but not use the free wargear. Its just too much. And I am sure I would have some upset opponents.

Here it is btw. So the minimum is 1330 with everything you have to take. But if you want a knight with guns, your going to spend at least another 50 points, since the original math was done with the all meelee one for 325.

Welp, I play pure Skitarii, so I won't be doing that to anyone.
Guess GW found a way to sell more knights, because I doubt every new admech player already owns one of them.

Yes, and the skitarii element of your formation ALSO benefits from the doctrina. Its just so stupidly broken. Eventually the major tournaments are going to have to step up and say no.

 Orock wrote:
Yes, and the skitarii element of your formation ALSO benefits from the doctrina. Its just so stupidly broken. Eventually the major tournaments are going to have to step up and say no.

Say no to what? Formations? Skitarii? Army-wide rules?

Also, you're sure it's not actually 1337 points default?

All jokes aside, formations are now an integral part of the game. We saw it with Harlequins, Necrons, Eldar, and others. This does look powerful, but no more so than the Decurion. At that kind of points cost, I'd expect some sort of powerful bonus.

Fitting in units from factions outside the formation will also be more difficult because the'll have to take a full Allied Detachment unless they have a formation.

I hate to complain but my armies just got their makeover and they are nowhere near this power level. This is just ridiculous

Naw wrote:
I hate to complain but my armies just got their makeover and they are nowhere near this power level. This is just ridiculous

What armies would those be?

GW somehow always finds a way to outdo itself.

I can't even imagine the conversation when someone wrote this. I can't imagine that someone looked at this, smiled and nodded, patted themselves on the back and whispered, 'Yeah, that's perfect', before hitting print.

In a world with scatbikes daemon summon factories and rp wraiths is it really really broken? This army can't take as much of a punch.

 lazarian wrote:
In a world with scatbikes daemon summon factories and rp wraiths is it really really broken? This army can't take as much of a punch.

Well, 500+ points off free gear (basically a Knight and a half for free) at 1500 pts. got to have some impact. Is another 33% of army-size on top.

Either Skitarii/CM without the free gear are balanced, in which case the Formation is OP, or the Formation is fine, in which case the books are significantly under-powered without this formation.

Can't be both.

 Kanluwen wrote:

Naw wrote:
I hate to complain but my armies just got their makeover and they are nowhere near this power level. This is just ridiculous

What armies would those be?

The Bloody Taxi Service and the Green Tide. I only have three pods and not nearly enough boys (or will to paint them) to field the tide


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 lazarian wrote:
In a world with scatbikes daemon summon factories and rp wraiths is it really really broken? This army can't take as much of a punch.

Recently on a holiday trip I could buy four bottles of whisky for the price of three. It made sense. With a game where I agree to spend 1500 pts to get an army worth 2000 doesn't.

Edit: Thanks, autocorrection..

Naw wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

Naw wrote:
I hate to complain but my armies just got their makeover and they are nowhere near this power level. This is just ridiculous

What armies would those be?

The Bloody Taxi Service and the Green Tide. I only have three pods and not nearly enough boys (or will to paint them) to field the tide

The first one tells me nothing. Are you talking about Khorne Daemonkin? Daemons? Chaos Space Marines? Because if you're talking about Daemonkin, I can tell you that Daemonkin does fairly well against Skitarii.

And Orks can do fairly nasty things to Skitarii and Cult Mechanicus. Knights fare better against Orks--until they can get large numbers into CC.

the image posted didn't give me any information as to what this formation is. Also, could you give a rundown of what kind of free upgrades you are referring to?
I haven't really been following the admech stuff too closely but I think a combined mech/skitarri/knigh list is interesting.

bullyboy wrote:
the image posted didn't give me any information as to what this formation is. Also, could you give a rundown of what kind of free upgrades you are referring to?
I haven't really been following the admech stuff too closely but I think a combined mech/skitarri/knigh list is interesting.

There is a formation in White Dwarf Weekly which came out yesterday.

It consists of:
A Skitarii Battle Maniple(One of each unit; with the exception of Ironstriders and Dragoons which are either/or)
An Oathsworn Imperial Knight Detachment
A Cult Mechanicus Battle Congregation Detachment(1 HQ and 2 Troops minimum)

That grants ALL of your units Canticles of the Omnissiah, removes "Gets Hot" from any weapons which have it, and makes it so that any Relic or unit upgrades cost you no points.

interesting.
So skitarri includes 1 of each unit, then admech HQ and Troops (what Troops do they get and where do the robots fit into this?) and a knight. I haven't seen any transports for these warriors so I'm assuming this is a footslogger army. I do like some of the skitarri models and the tracked weapons of the CM, plus I like having a mix of units instead of having to get multiples of the same.

The Skitarii will, overall, have "Crusader"(meaning an additional dice when Running and choosing the highest) and Scout(but no Outflank except on the Sicarian Infiltrators) across their formation.
You're looking at for Skitarii:
1 unit of 5-10 Rangers
1 unit of 5-10 Vanguard
1 unit of 5-10 Sicarian Infiltrators
1 unit of 5-10 Sicarian Ruststalkers
1 unit of 1-3 Onager Dunecrawlers
1 unit of 1-6 Ironstrider Ballistarii OR 1 unit of 1-6 Sydonian Dragoons

Cult Mechanicus would be:
(HQ)Magos Dominus
(Troops)Kataphron Destroyers or Kataphron Breachers
Then add in some Electropriests(Elites) and Kastelan Robots(Heavy Support) if you want to.

I agree free things in an army is powerful. Daemons can get easily 2-3 hundred extra points a round. Tyranids have tervigons and units which recycle. Necrons simply bounce off more firepower than other armies. Playing with more than your points is quite frankly the new norm. Blood Angels and Eldar already feature formations that give out free wargear to boot.

 TheNewBlood wrote:

All jokes aside, formations are now an integral part of the game. We saw it with Harlequins, Necrons, Eldar, and others. This does look powerful, but no more so than the Decurion. At that kind of points cost, I'd expect some sort of powerful bonus.

While formations (aka free benefits if you agree to forced composition rules) are part of the game, I still think there's a valid question as to when the free rules benefits outweigh the strictures of the formation's mandatory composition.

As an analogy, if you ordered a hotdog with mustard, and someone put a single mustard seed on it, or a quart of mustard, you might rightly be annoyed, even though you did ask for mustard.

I'm not a fan of the formation idea at all, as it seems to be GW further shrugging their shoulders at the whole idea of competitive balance. "We can't figure out the points costs in a game we have been revising for 20+ years, so take these things and you get this for free!" However, even ignoring my complaint, the WD formation seems to grant a huge amount of benefit to an army which can easily fit within a standard 1850 list. Yes, you are required to take a bunch of things that you might eschew in favor of other units, but free upgrades for everything within the detachment (by itself) is a hugely beneficial boost.

Given how many options and upgrades are available with in the Knight/Skitarii/Mechanicus units, this gives you LOTS of more points to spend on other units. It also completely removes the drawback of upgrading units--namely the risk that a more expensive unit will die just as easily. There's no reason not to upgrade each unit as much as possible, as there is no cost or risk associated with doing so. You can, in effect, pay for a bare-bones 1850 army with no upgrades at all, and then take all the upgrades you can for free.

It's also a formation benefit that you can directly quantify, unusually. You can build the formation and tell your opponent exactly how many free points you have over his list.

The game already has a lot of 'unquantified/unquantifiable' rules benefits (how much benefit do you get out of daemon summoning, exactly, vs. the cost of the psyker model?), but I don't think it argues for adding more of them.

It's also kind of cheap that one player, who wants to buy and paint certain Mechanicus models, gets free rules bennies, and another player, who might like and prefer to buy other Mechanicus models, can't get them. It's not even about being a power gamer. You might discover that you qualify for the GW Formation sweepstakes, or that you don't. GW keeps telling us to 'forge the narrative', and keeps saying that things like Unbound are there to 'free players to play the games they want to play', and then they offer in-game rewards to people who buy and play the models they want you to buy. Pick one, guys.

I would agree that these upgrades would be crazy broken...if they weren't on T3 models with a 6+ FNP and a 4+ armor save.

Even on the Ruststalkers/Sicarians, which get a 5+ FNP, 4+/6++, that T3 hurts when you're talking about how expensive the models are pointswise in the first place.

To put it rather bluntly, this formation is going to be a big godsend for Skitarii heavy players who were already planning on adding a Knight to their army. For the cost of a Magos and 2 units of Kataphrons, you gain Canticles of the Omnissiah--which is arguably something which should have been in the Skitarii list alongside of Doctrina Imperatives.

Da Butcha wrote:

 TheNewBlood wrote:

All jokes aside, formations are now an integral part of the game. We saw it with Harlequins, Necrons, Eldar, and others. This does look powerful, but no more so than the Decurion. At that kind of points cost, I'd expect some sort of powerful bonus.

While formations (aka free benefits if you agree to forced composition rules) are part of the game, I still think there's a valid question as to when the free rules benefits outweigh the strictures of the formation's mandatory composition.

As an analogy, if you ordered a hotdog with mustard, and someone put a single mustard seed on it, or a quart of mustard, you might rightly be annoyed, even though you did ask for mustard.

I'm not a fan of the formation idea at all, as it seems to be GW further shrugging their shoulders at the whole idea of competitive balance. "We can't figure out the points costs in a game we have been revising for 20+ years, so take these things and you get this for free!" However, even ignoring my complaint, the WD formation seems to grant a huge amount of benefit to an army which can easily fit within a standard 1850 list. Yes, you are required to take a bunch of things that you might eschew in favor of other units, but free upgrades for everything within the detachment (by itself) is a hugely beneficial boost.

Given how many options and upgrades are available with in the Knight/Skitarii/Mechanicus units, this gives you LOTS of more points to spend on other units. It also completely removes the drawback of upgrading units--namely the risk that a more expensive unit will die just as easily. There's no reason not to upgrade each unit as much as possible, as there is no cost or risk associated with doing so. You can, in effect, pay for a bare-bones 1850 army with no upgrades at all, and then take all the upgrades you can for free.

It's also a formation benefit that you can directly quantify, unusually. You can build the formation and tell your opponent exactly how many free points you have over his list.

The game already has a lot of 'unquantified/unquantifiable' rules benefits (how much benefit do you get out of daemon summoning, exactly, vs. the cost of the psyker model?), but I don't think it argues for adding more of them.

It's also kind of cheap that one player, who wants to buy and paint certain Mechanicus models, gets free rules bennies, and another player, who might like and prefer to buy other Mechanicus models, can't get them. It's not even about being a power gamer. You might discover that you qualify for the GW Formation sweepstakes, or that you don't. GW keeps telling us to 'forge the narrative', and keeps saying that things like Unbound are there to 'free players to play the games they want to play', and then they offer in-game rewards to people who buy and play the models they want you to buy. Pick one, guys.

I don't think I'm quite following your analogy. IMO a better one would be the choice of either getting a plain hotdog and adding toppings for a price, or getting a hot dog with lots of prechosen topics for a slight discount than if you made it yourself.

Every single 7th edition codex release so far has featured some sort of formation/special detachment. GW hinted that this was their plan when 7th edition first came out. Like it or not, this is the way the game is going. And at GW's pace of releases, your faction might get an update sooner than you think!

For the fairness complaint, I can see factoring in the "free" upgrade points into your opponent's point allowance, similar to how I've seen it done with Daemon-summoning lists. But I disagree that the Skitarii/Admech player will pay for all the upgrades/relics. As others have pointed out, these are models that have T3 and 4+/6++ outside of cover. They will die to a stiff breeze, much less enemy fire. And with no transports in the formation, this is an army that will be very vulnerable to enemy fire.

Being forced to use certain units in a formation is something that every other 7th edition book has done too. It's a unit tax for the benefits of the formation (some armies are taxed more/less than others). Going back to the analogy, it's like if the large hot dog with all the toppings had some you didn't like and couldn't change. That's the price you pay for going with the bulk deal formation/sausage.

Have any of the rest of you noticed that every new codex release have had something that a portion of the community is convinced will break the game and cannot be beaten? BA: assault from DS formation, Necrons: Decurion, Skitarii: unlimited haywire in BA drop pods, CWE: D weapons and scatbikes, Cult Mechanicus: Grav weapon troops en mass, and now the combined formation with a significant amount of free wargear. I still am able to play my IG army and win, people really need to relax and have a calm discussion rather than using charged rhetoric.

As for how OP this formation is. I would say powerful but not top tier at anything 1850 pts and below. This army spends so much on the base formation and the absolute minimum fleshing out of units that you don't have enough points to fix the primary weak points of the armies involved; 1) low mobility, 2) huge vulnerability to alpha strikes, 3) non matching profiles (ie a mix of T3, T5, and AV13) which leaves all your opponent's firepower effective all the time, 4) range issues (this is usually fixed with drop pods, good luck getting enough in while still expanding your units to be effective), 5) lack of AA, 6) no ObjSec, 7) poor melee ability (combines with no ObjSec to make objective games rough), and 8) extreme fragility (especially true due to low ranges, morale issues, and no fortification slot). With the remaining 170-520 pts you can fix some of these issues to a degree but the more you try to fix any of these issues the worse it gets for the others. In reality this formation is going to cost ~1500 pts to flesh out the units to be even remotely effective. You will also probably have to take an additional detachment as unless there is more to the cult codex than I have seen as you will really need some stuff that you cannot get from the formation's subsets.

Overall this formation makes the mechanicum foot based army in the fluff on the same tier as drop pod SM, white scar bikers, and biel-tan CWE, I am actually looking forward to playing against this. BTW this is mostly due to synergy. Straight up comparison of the individual units and upgrade pts costs will not show this. It is like when people said waveserpent where meh and wraithknights were overcosted last edition, they didn't think how the units combined together into an army and played the actual game.

I don't see the problem.

there are other formations that get free upgrades.

Theres a BA one where all the vanguard vets can have free power weapons, and all the sternguard can have free combis. that's 250pts of free upgrades if you take 2 ten man units. so less than 400pts base cost and 200pts of free upgrades, aka more than 60% free points.

as there are no limits in the base rules on formations, you could take 3 of these and have 750 free points of upgrade and still only be spending about 1150pts for the models so far. you could easily give them pods and still have points leftover to pick up a CAD/detachment for some hqs and other units in 1850.

Most formations these days get layered bonuses like the decurion/daemonkin/craftworlds [+probably every code going forward from here] where they have the base formation bonus plus the main required one. how many points do you think those are worth?

less qq

What a great argument.

The fact that other books get free stuff or crazy bonuses doesn't mean this is any less ridiculous.

Less nonsense.

 Blacksails wrote:
What a great argument.

The fact that other books get free stuff or crazy bonuses doesn't mean this is any less ridiculous.

Less nonsense.

Actually it sort of does. If everyone has some powerful upgrade or other "ridiculous" power spike, then it levels the playing field.
It might be that the whole Necron->Eldar debacle was just the start of a reset-button where GW were planning on resetting all the power in the game.

Still sucks for the armies that got released just before the Necron and didn't get to be a part of it.

 Blacksails wrote:
What a great argument.

The fact that other books get free stuff or crazy bonuses doesn't mean this is any less ridiculous.

Less nonsense.

The new direction for books is powerful bonuses based on formations. We already have seen other forces being able to field more points through upgrades and summoning so this boost for the Skitarii isn't game breaking by comparison. So, I can get a lot of free upgrades. Does that beat a Space Wolf formation that gets an assload of rerolls across the whole army (I just played against this list and it was...ugly) or a daemon factory? In my opinion, no. Plus, the Mechanicus troops aren't very awe inspiring to this point. When the new book is released there may be some more impressive options, but T3 and low armor severely limits their impact. The free upgrades may be the best way to even the playing field for them. I'm sure when the next couple books are released that there are other formations and units for people to get mad about.

After having played with this formation, I really think that just running this list isnt going to have you dominating tournaments.

First of all, the battle maniple was not played nor seen as competitive for a good reason: 2 units of sicarians. Its about 300 points that you might as well not put on the table in competitive games. Ruststalkers suffer from the harlequin problem of being melee oriented infantry...that are toughness 3 with a 4+. The infiltrators definitely have their uses (that aura is pretty nice) but are likely something you would not add in your list.

You have to take a unit of rangers over vanguard. Vanguard are just...better. They are cheaper with a more versatile gun. This isnt something to really complain about.

Most of the upgrades that you can take for free are not really going to matter all that much. The upgrades that really matter are giving your SGTs a 4++ and +1 leadership/-1 cover, upgrading the dunecrawlers to have neutron bombs and IWND, three special weapons in each of the vanguard/ranger squads and giving a carapace weapon to a knight.

Yes you can give your Ranger alpha a digital weapon, arc pistol and arc maul for free...but if he is rolling around in melee needing that +1 attack at str 5 with a reroll to wound...you are probably in trouble anyway because that isnt going to stop those wraiths/thunderwolf cav/flesh hounds or whatever assault unit just got into its face. Thats the case with quite a few of the upgrades.

Really, the amount of meaningful upgrades probably ~450 points.

So in essence, you can say that taking this formation is like giving you a free 5 man squad of infiltrators and ruststalkers and giving your dunecrawlers IWND and the neutron blaster.

the42up wrote:


So in essence, you can say that taking this formation is like giving you a free 5 man squad of infiltrators and ruststalkers and giving your dunecrawlers IWND and the neutron blaster.

Agree. If you could take the Skitarii detachment rather than the maniple, this formation would then be much more powerful (no vanguard spam allowed). As it stands you are stuck just getting one of each, with some of the units being decidedly sub-optimal. As mentioned, sure you can load up your alphas and princeps with gear, but they are just one S6 hit and a missed 4++ save away from death.

The heart of most tournament lists center around spam or hard to kill deathstar units, and this formation basically makes it impossible to take either of those. With only 170/520 pts left over to spend at the 1500/1850 point levels respectively, you don't have much left over to flesh things out. Maybe you can take a Kastelan unit, boost your unit sizes, and then you are done.

Honestly I think this will be prove to be an interesting formation to play with and against due to the large amount of unit variety. Not a mindless list at all, as you will have to think very carefully how to protect the large amounts of fragile infantry you have.

Purifier wrote:Actually it sort of does. If everyone has some powerful upgrade or other "ridiculous" power spike, then it levels the playing field.
It might be that the whole Necron->Eldar debacle was just the start of a reset-button where GW were planning on resetting all the power in the game.

Still sucks for the armies that got released just before the Necron and didn't get to be a part of it.

The problem with that is, as you mentioned, some books either missed it by being early, or have to deal with it for months, if not years before an update. Further, GW's consistency is very lacking, and there's no reason to assume this trend of powerful formations will continue. There could easily be a wave of incredibly poor books, where people will claim anew that GW is resetting the power.

Gridge wrote:
The new direction for books is powerful bonuses based on formations. We already have seen other forces being able to field more points through upgrades and summoning so this boost for the Skitarii isn't game breaking by comparison. So, I can get a lot of free upgrades. Does that beat a Space Wolf formation that gets an assload of rerolls across the whole army (I just played against this list and it was...ugly) or a daemon factory? In my opinion, no. Plus, the Mechanicus troops aren't very awe inspiring to this point. When the new book is released there may be some more impressive options, but T3 and low armor severely limits their impact. The free upgrades may be the best way to even the playing field for them. I'm sure when the next couple books are released that there are other formations and units for people to get mad about.

My point is that all these crazy formations are not good, and using other broken combinations doesn't justify more broken combinations. It also sets a bad precendent for further releases. I dread a game where upgrade costs are irrelevant because formations exist to ignore them. Part of the aspect of balance is assigning appropriate costs to upgrades, and formations that allow for free upgrades of all sorts completely ignores that.

I'm not arguing this is going to break the game at the competitive level, but its another contribution to GW's growing incompetence of rules writing.

the42up wrote:
After having played with this formation, I really think that just running this list isnt going to have you dominating tournaments.

First of all, the battle maniple was not played nor seen as competitive for a good reason: 2 units of sicarians. Its about 300 points that you might as well not put on the table in competitive games. Ruststalkers suffer from the harlequin problem of being melee oriented infantry...that are toughness 3 with a 4+. The infiltrators definitely have their uses (that aura is pretty nice) but are likely something you would not add in your list.

You have to take a unit of rangers over vanguard. Vanguard are just...better. They are cheaper with a more versatile gun. This isnt something to really complain about.

Most of the upgrades that you can take for free are not really going to matter all that much. The upgrades that really matter are giving your SGTs a 4++ and +1 leadership/-1 cover, upgrading the dunecrawlers to have neutron bombs and IWND, three special weapons in each of the vanguard/ranger squads and giving a carapace weapon to a knight.

Yes you can give your Ranger alpha a digital weapon, arc pistol and arc maul for free...but if he is rolling around in melee needing that +1 attack at str 5 with a reroll to wound...you are probably in trouble anyway because that isnt going to stop those wraiths/thunderwolf cav/flesh hounds or whatever assault unit just got into its face. Thats the case with quite a few of the upgrades.

Really, the amount of meaningful upgrades probably ~450 points.

So in essence, you can say that taking this formation is like giving you a free 5 man squad of infiltrators and ruststalkers and giving your dunecrawlers IWND and the neutron blaster.

To be honest, I would rather have something that gave them all a nudge in the survivability column. Like an army wide +1T (Hey, if Necron can get 4+ RP, then +1T wouldn't be brutal.) I mean if I wanted to get it to be very competitive. I think the current rule is very flavourful at low level games.

The problem, I feel, is if you play a 5000+ game, as this bonus scales WAY too well with an increase in points. But how often do you actually do that?

The real winners in the formation are the Dunecrawlers, and maybe the knight? I have never played with a knight as my group aren't into that escalation.

 Blacksails wrote:
What a great argument.

The fact that other books get free stuff or crazy bonuses doesn't mean this is any less ridiculous.

Less nonsense.

so you feel new codexes should have less powerful free things than about the 4 other codexes that have been put out recently? BA/Necrons/Eldar/Daemonkin

and you think getting special bonuses that affect the game is of a lesser value than not getting special bonuses and then being given free points?

The upgrades are wargear items only, the base cost of the models and additional models have to be paid for. any character upgrades have to be paid for.

people say the min cost for a knight with no ranged for this is 1330 but keep in mind you get less free bonuses by going the min cost as you are not hitting break points in unit size for certain models, and honestly a lot of the skitarii/admech models do not have a lot of upgrades. its no where the same as say giving unlimited wargear/relic upgrades to a sm army.