It's a bit of a disappointment I haven't had the chance to use my 20 Fulgerites, 2 Drills and extra Dragoons yet and now won't get much mileage out of them. Got my first 4 Kastelans on the way though at least, those plus three Onagers are now less vulnerable to turn 1 melee from Fly and infiltrating units. Skitarii have got better at screening the Mars gunline as well and are less of a downgrade from Imperial Guard considering the CP regeneration limitation. It seems the Ad Mech melee lists have got a lot worse and we're pushed more towards a static-ish Mars artillery list. Compared to other armies going 2nd we can save 2CP via Shroudpsalm.
Considering I got into this army for the mobile shooting aspect we had last edition it's a bit disappointing for me but I love these models enough to still be fairly enthusiastic about the army. Trying to remain hopeful about further points tweaks.
Whoa there. Let's be clear: AdMech did not get worse. It simply got less diverse. Shooting as a whole got better, and we have gotten a huge boost from all the nerfs to flying (which hurts Eldar and Tau's ability to shove Shining Spears and Battlesuits down our throats) and Knights.
Anyhow, I am considering more Blood Angels now. Basically, I am thinking of a beta strike list where I try to deep strike on round two and use my shooting to remove their screen before the charge.
Anyhow, I am considering more Blood Angels now. Basically, I am thinking of a beta strike list where I try to deep strike on round two and use my shooting to remove their screen before the charge.
Wanna share your thoughts / ideas? I started Blood Angels as my second to complement my AdMech and would really like to hear what you have in mind. The new FAQ seems to make BA pretty bad imo...
My intention was to express my disappointment at becoming a more linear faction, I understand that we gained power and mentioned some of the ways in which that happened. I just don't like that we've been pushed more towards a static army - I liked that we had those in-house melee and in-your-face options. Regardless, I expect we'll all be experiencing some greater success and will probably see more Ad Mech contingents in lists.
My thinking is that the pure BA Deathball was semi-competitive before and is garbage now. Their shooting is pretty much confined to expensive and vulnerable flying vehicles. They simply just can't compete now without mixing with a shooting Imperium army to remove the screens that they now cannot charge through.
On the other hand, we need a melee component. Dragoons have a lot less reach now that we have to move them through a screen. Gallants have always had a similar problem.
So it's Custodes or BA. I think BA is the better choice because they have Scouts. Denying area on turn one is now more important than ever because you need to create space for your Kastelans. I like choppy Scouts for this purpose because they're BA and get great bonuses, and I like having the option to counter-charge with Scouts.
We bring Smash Captain and Mephiston because they are clearly heads and shoulders above everything else. And we bring a ball of Death Company, maybe with Lemartes. A second Smash Captain can bring Vitae, but with a 1 CP cap per turn, I don't think this is efficient any more. And we don't have nearly as much CP to burn as we used to. Furthermore, DC can be buffed by the Mephiston for removing enemy infantry.
Spend round one setting up positions with your Kastelans and Crawlers. Gun down threats to your army or try to create an opening for your BA. Force your opponent to play more defensively or commit to an aggressive strategy; once your Kastelans are rooted, they know they have to get rid of them or they will lose. Round two, drop your BA where they are needed. Drop them to attack their backline or flank, to counter-charge or intercept enemies, etc. Have your shooting support this beta strike.
EDIT: Here is a list. Not sure if it's any good yet, but it's along the lines of what I am thinking:
Looks interesting indeed. I'm not quite sure about the DC though. I think the lost ability to charge / pile in over models really hurts them (you know for wrapping around a unit and so on)
Mephiston is really nice because he is a beatstick with 2 denies. Maybe I would remove Lemartes + DC and add an another Captain + a small team of Devs so you can spam some more mortal wounds? (3 x D3 MW first turn is nothing to sneeze at).
Changed list at the last minute and went Mars dakabots for a turn 1 gut punch.
......it didn’t go well. Regretted swapping the list. The end
LOL. What went wrong? Ran out of CP? Didn't have enough dudes to screen?
lash92 wrote: Looks interesting indeed. I'm not quite sure about the DC though. I think the lost ability to charge / pile in over models really hurts them (you know for wrapping around a unit and so on)
Mephiston is really nice because he is a beatstick with 2 denies. Maybe I would remove Lemartes + DC and add an another Captain + a small team of Devs so you can spam some more mortal wounds? (3 x D3 MW first turn is nothing to sneeze at).
DC are still really devastating if they connect; they also have a role as anti-infantry fighting. The problem is that they're glass cannons.
Lemartes is sort of key to the beta strike though. He lets you reroll the 3D3 to guarantee the charge. Remember: Fly does not move over units when you Forlorn Fury now, so the old way of just bypassing the screen no longer works. You have to drop them in front of a target and charge.
I don't think this list needs Devastators in the shooting phase. I mean, if I really need more shooting, it will be Icarus Crawlers or something to deal with -2 to hit.
Changed list at the last minute and went Mars dakabots for a turn 1 gut punch.
......it didn’t go well. Regretted swapping the list. The end
Usually it's better to go with what you are familiar and have experience with rather than using netlists the internet wants you to play. Especially if it's full of soup units everyone will be expecting.
Especially all-in Cawlstars that are pretty easy to dismantle.
Hoping that this thread won't end up with yet another multi-page discussion of non-Admech/Knights units/relics/warlord traits to slot into some Cookie-Cutter Cawlstar list, what do you guys think of a Skitarii infantry heavy lists?
Vanguard with Calivers are good and Rangers are super point efficient. For someone playing Fire Warrior heavy Tau lists on the side, especially rangers have less maximum potential, but with the Stygies -1 to hit (or alternatively FnP or AP -1 immunity), BS3+, shroudpsalm and the AP -1 on 6s on 15" S4 rapid-fire they are very self-sufficient and strong without needing mandatory buff characters. In small 5-7 dude Ranger squads or especially in 8 men squads for Vanguard with data-teether (IMO the best compromise between LD precaution and protecting the two Caliver guys who are as expensive as 5 1/2 regular Vanguards), 40 or 50 of them should not only be able to efficiently push the midfield and move their butts on objectives, but also add a ton anti-infantry firepower that outranges most other infantry small-arms. Even better if you throw in two or three vanguard moving Dragoons as extra distraction Carnifex.
IMO it also solves the issue of most Admech lists (especially Mars), which is basically an almost immobile firebase that not only falls apart as soon as someone manages to get past the lousy 15 rangers most pure Admech lists run and manages to get something fast or cheap into close-combat with the dakkabots (which in most Cawl lists is like 50% of a 2000 pts. list in one easily tied down unit), or gets completely outmanoeuvred thanks to awful board control. Having a bunch of dangerous and very tanky point efficient Skitarii should do quite nicely to give the Kastelan and Onagers more breathing room.
Probably nothing that will win Nova, but should still be pretty good considering most of us are probably not utterly focused on nothing but hyper-competitive US tourneys, and is something different for a change.
Throw in to be expected point increases to guardsmen (and the other currently on vogue guard, BA, Castellanos and other meta soup crap) and it being as good as guaranteed that Rangers and Vanguards stay exactly where they are now, taking a look at them for infantry spamming rather than discussing tiny variations to Suzuteo's run of the mill Cawlstar soup or being depressed about the FAQ for another 10 months.
Sure that you need Lemartes if you include DC. But what is the purpose of them? They are chaff killing with bolter and chainsword, but do you really need that with 6 Dakkabots?
Changed list at the last minute and went Mars dakabots for a turn 1 gut punch.
......it didn’t go well. Regretted swapping the list. The end
Usually it's better to go with what you are familiar and have experience with rather than using netlists the internet want you to play. Especially if it's full of soup units everyone will be expecting.
Especially all-in Cawlstars that are pretty easy to dismantle.
Hoping that this thread won't end up with yet another multi-page discussion of non-Admech/Knights units/relics/warlord traits to slot into some Cookie-Cutter Cawlstar list, what do you guys think of a Skitarii infantry heavy lists?
Vanguard with Calivers are good and Rangers are super point efficient. For someone playing Fire Warrior heavy Tau lists on the side, especially rangers have less maximum potential, but with the Stygies -1 to hit (or alternatively FnP or AP -1 immunity), BS3+, shroudpsalm and the AP -1 on 6s on 15" rapid-fire they are very self-sufficient and strong without needing mandatory buff characters. In small 5-6 dude Ranger squads or especially in 8 men squads for Vanguard with data-teether (IMO the best compromise between LD precaution and protecting the two Caliber guys who are as expensive as 5 1/2 regular Vanguards), 40 or 50 of them should not only be able to efficiently push the midfield and move their butts on objectives, but also add a ton anti-infantry firepower that outranges most other infantry small-arms. Even better if you throw in two or three vanguard moving Dragoons as extra distraction Carnifex.
IMO it also solves the issue of most Admech lists (especially Mars), which is basically an almost immobile firebase that not only falls apart as soon as someone manages to get past the lousy 15 rangers most pure Admech lists run and manages to get something fast or cheap into close-combat with the dakkabots (which in most Cawl lists is like 50% of a 2000 pts. list in one easily tied down unit), or gets completely outmanoeuvred thanks to awful board control. Having a bunch of dangerous and very tanky point efficient Skitarii should do quite nicely to give the Kastelan and Onagers more breathing room.
Probably nothing that will win Nova, but should still be pretty good considering most of us are probably not utterly focused on nothing but hyper-competitive US tourneys, and something different for a change
Throw in to be expected point increases to guardsmen (and the other currently on vogue guard, BA, Castellanos and other meta soup crap) and it being as good as guaranteed that Rangers and Vanguards stay exactly where they are now, taking a look at them for infantry spamming rather than discussing tiny variations to Suzuteo's run of the mill Cawlstar soup or being depressed about the FAQ for another 10 months.
I love admech infantry lists and while Stygies sure is a great choice I love to play Ryza with them.
Here is a small list I made for fun battles that uses Ryza and packs a decent enough punch.
Dedicated transport 1x Termite Drill
1x Termite Drill
Elites 5x Infiltrators
5x Infiltrators
Fast Attack 4x Dragoons
Heavy Support 2x Kastelan Robots, phosphor
The plasma in the Vanguard can be used as an alternative to use the strat on incase my Destroyers are dead or locked in combat. Furthermore the Robots provide a +1 to hit bonus on the Destroyers with the elimination volley strat. Making overcharged plasma safe on everything without a modifier. S8 plasma with Damage 3 and +1 to wound is quite tasty.
Also 2 squads of infiltrators are quite nasty, they got enough shots to clear away chaff and hit hard enough to kill of anything that is not dedicated to surviving CC.
Dragoons with their S8 and rerolls ones for to-wound in CC is also grand.
Ragnar Blackmane wrote: Hoping that this thread won't end up with yet another multi-page discussion of non-Admech/Knights units/relics/warlord traits to slot into some Cookie-Cutter Cawlstar list, what do you guys think of a Skitarii infantry heavy lists?
Vanguard with Calivers are good and Rangers are super point efficient. For someone playing Fire Warrior heavy Tau lists on the side, especially rangers have less maximum potential, but with the Stygies -1 to hit (or alternatively FnP or AP -1 immunity), BS3+, shroudpsalm and the AP -1 on 6s on 15" rapid-fire they are very self-sufficient and strong without needing mandatory buff characters. In small 5-6 dude Ranger squads or especially in 8 men squads for Vanguard with data-teether (IMO the best compromise between LD precaution and protecting the two Caliber guys who are as expensive as 5 1/2 regular Vanguards), 40 or 50 of them should not only be able to efficiently push the midfield and move their butts on objectives, but also add a ton anti-infantry firepower that outranges most other infantry small-arms. Even better if you throw in two or three vanguard moving Dragoons as extra distraction Carnifex.
IMO it also solves the issue of most Admech lists (especially Mars), which is basically an almost immobile firebase that not only falls apart as soon as someone manages to get past the lousy 15 rangers most pure Admech lists run and manages to get something fast or cheap into close-combat with the dakkabots (which in most Cawl lists is like 50% of a 2000 pts. list in one easily tied down unit), or gets completely outmanoeuvred thanks to awful board control. Having a bunch of dangerous and very tanky point efficient Skitarii should do quite nicely to give the Kastelan and Onagers more breathing room.
Probably nothing that will win Nova, but should still be pretty good considering most of us are probably not utterly focused on nothing but hyper-competitive US tourneys, and something different for a change
Throw in to be expected point increases to guardsmen (and the other currently on vogue guard, BA, Castellanos and other meta soup crap) and it being as good as guaranteed that Rangers and Vanguards stay exactly where they are now, taking a look at them for infantry spamming rather than discussing tiny variations to Suzuteo's run of the mill Cawlstar soup or being depressed about the FAQ for another 10 months.
I think a horde of Skitarii would make for an excellent list as far as my games go and I'm slowly building up to being able to one, the main issues I see are relatively short range and having to buy so many of the same unit for those that prefer some variety. Skitarii can make decent use of a lot of the Forgeworld traits we have and have some nice firepower with our decent special weapons. Graia or Metallica Vanguard up front for some Deny The Witch or Fall Back and shoot, Lucius plasma Vanguard for turn 2 objective grabbing, Stygies VIII for Arquebus Rangers etc. Skitarii are quite aggressively pointed and it seems to go mostly unnoticed because of IG Infantry and our expensive HQs. It's something I've been keen to try but I already play one predominantly horde army and wanted to build a fairly complete collection of Ad Mech before really increasing the amount individual units I have.
If you try it, I'm sure there would be a lot of interest in how it works out.
The danger you have with a skittarii hoard is that now you have lost mobility an am hoard does it better and if your truelly competative you use the best tool available
Still a blend of the two might work and im trying it in a tourney Nov.
U02dah4 wrote: The danger you have with a skittarii hoard is that now you have lost mobility an am hoard does it better and if your truelly competative you use the best tool available
Still a blend of the two might work and im trying it in a tourney Nov.
Yeah, I definitely wouldn't run more than 50ish, max 60 rangers or vanguard, unless I could actually fill two battailon detachements with HQs that I actually need (there is no reason to pick more than two Dominuses (I mean a second one is already situational) and 3 Enginseers would leave one or even two of them being dead weight on the table as they can literally do nothing but repair), though a Battalion + Spearhead with 9 troop slots leaves more than enough room to run the units at sizes of 5-8 dudes.
You are right that running nothing but Skitarii (along the lines of spamming Boyz) wouldn't work, Admech armies do need Kastelans and Onagers, they just make up the largest chunk of our firepower. But complementing that with several dozen infantry plugs several holes in most current Admech lists, most importantly no longer being forced to castle up with almost your entire list and all of the weaknesses inherent to that (something gets inside the castle and you are done and you effectively give up board control).
Mobility for Skitarii isn't that much of an issue as what you want to do with semi-hordes is move them up the midfield, put up pressure and move them right on objectives, forcing the other player to get rid of them. If you put the units pushing forward on the edge of the deployment zone then the long range of rangers (they can move and fire until they get into rapid-fire range) as well as the ability of Vanguard to move, advance and still shoot (with full accuracy and no risk of overheating to boot if you pop Protector doctrina on them and if you gave them a very worthwhile data-teether) really helps with that. The former is what I do with Fire Warriors and it works really well, aggressively deploying them and making sure that objectives are not all sitting in corners as far away as possible (if playing against another shooting army you want them close together near the middle with this sort of list) really helps, as most lists struggle to effectively get rid of massed cheap 4+ save infantry quickly, especially if you throw in additional defensive bonuses like cover via Shroudpsalm (hordes of 7PPM 3+ save infantry are nasty), the Stygies -1 to hit or even just the Graia FnP.
You don't need to be fast if you got table control and are able to dictate the flow of the battle (forcing the other player to play reactionary. and especially if he plays a gunline. to deal with a shooting list grabbing board control and pushing aggressively instead of playing the expected and predictable gunline vs gunline game), especially against other shooty lists that don't have units capable of directly engaging a horde like that in close comat or are unable to pull away their troops because they need them for screening. And if you are playing Graia then you even move your pretty solid 4+ insta-psy-deny right in their face.
Finalizing a list with ~43 rangers/vanguard right now myself, would you be willing to share the list you are bringing to that tournament ?
I've put it on the army list page under ES/AM/AdM.
The admech portion is
2 enginseers for cost effectiveness 1 with omniscient mask
5 vanguard units cheap anti-infantry
2 corpuscarii units - little stronger than the vanguard and can flank through terrain.
3 hoplite units + data teather cheap survivable good anti medium vehicle
1 unit 3 dragoons disraction carnifex
The list is focussed on objective control and survivability
U02dah4 wrote: The danger you have with a skittarii hoard is that now you have lost mobility an am hoard does it better and if your truelly competative you use the best tool available
Still a blend of the two might work and im trying it in a tourney Nov.
Yeah, I definitely wouldn't run more than 50ish, max 60 rangers or vanguard, unless I could actually fill two battailon detachements with HQs that I actually need (there is no reason to pick more than two Dominuses (I mean a second one is already situational) and 3 Enginseers would leave one or even two of them being dead weight on the table as they can literally do nothing but repair), though a Battalion + Spearhead with 9 troop slots leaves more than enough room to run the units at sizes of 5-8 dudes.
You are right that running nothing but Skitarii (along the lines of spamming Boyz) wouldn't work, Admech armies do need Kastelans and Onagers, they just make up the largest chunk of our firepower. But complementing that with several dozen infantry plugs several holes in most current Admech lists, most importantly no longer being forced to castle up with almost your entire list and all of the weaknesses inherent to that (something gets inside the castle and you are done and you effectively give up board control).
Mobility for Skitarii isn't that much of an issue as what you want to do with semi-hordes is move them up the midfield, put up pressure and move them right on objectives, forcing the other player to get rid of them, if you put the units pushing forward on the edge of the deployment zone then the long range of rangers (they can move and fire until they get into rapid-fire range) as well as the ability of Vanguard to move, advance and still shoot (with full accuracy and no risk of overheating to boot if you pop Protector doctrina on them and if you gave them a very worthwhile data-teether) really helps with that. The former is what I do with Fire Warriors and it works really well, aggressively deploying them and making sure that objectives are not all sitting in corners as far away as possible (if playing against another shooting army you want them close together near the middle with this sort of list) really helps, as most lists struggle to effectively get rid of massed cheap 4+ infantry quickly especially if you throw in additional defensive bonuses like cover via Shroudpsalm (hordes of 7PPM 3+ save infantry are nasty), the Stygies -1 to hit or even just the Graia FnP.
You don't need to be fast if you got table control and are able to dictate the flow of the battle (forcing the other player to play reactionary. and especially if he plays a gunline. to deal with a shooting list grabbing board control and pushing aggressively instead of playing the expected and predictable gunline vs gunline game), especially against other shooty lists that don't have units capable of directly engaging a horde like that in close comat or are unable to pull away their troops because they need them for screening. And if you are playing Graia then you even move your pretty solid 4+ insta-psy-deny right in their face.
Finalizing a list with ~43 rangers/vanguard right now myself, would you be willing to share the list you are bringing to that tournament ?
I use 60 Skitarii myself ever since the Drills were released.
I regularly play using 30+ Vanguard and 30 Rangers, and I've lately begun bringing 20 Peltasts. I lose regularly. Toughness 3 simply does not last long on a board, and against anything other than Eldar and Guard, Strength 3 guns do jack squat (tanks are an exception, due to the 2 damage rule). Also, turn 1 sucks big time for Vanguard, since they have to advance on the first turn just to have a chance to shoot. That means plasma guns can't target anything big turn one. Sure, we essentially have FRFSRF baked into our units without orders on the Vanguard, and a decent 4+ save, but it simply isn't enough for a T3 model.
Against Guard soup, I have pulled off some amazingly ridiculous wins. Against Necrons, I died horribly (Neutron Onagers are useless against Quantum Shielding, T4 troops don't die to vanguard, and their Doom Ark cannon things have Rapid Fire 10 (!) guns that eat light infantry that have to close in). Against unbuffed Space Marines and Chaos, I can hold my own. Against any netlists or Girlyman, I get completely stomped. Harlequins are the bane of my existence with across the board 4+ invuls, and they have insane movement and charges that AdMech simply doesn't have a way of recovering from (although the charges MAY be nerfed now, we still have no way of falling back from combat and still shooting).
Without any indirect fire weapons, we really don't have a way to compete by staying in the backfield. Guard have Basilisks and Manticores and mortars. We have direct fire Onagers and Bots and Ironstriders. I don't know about every other army and their ability to reach our lines, but the longer Vanguard try to camp in the deployment zone to goad the enemy into advancing, the more firepower they lose. The more Vanguard advance, the more vulnerable they become to every basic gun in the game. They want to first strike, without a real ability to do it.
Honestly I wouldn't be worried about Quantum Shielding because none of the vehicles using it are any good outside the D Ark, and that's only okay at best.
I think the Red Tide idea is very optimistic. But if you are going to do it, I think Graia and loading a full half of your army's PL into Drills (MSUs of 6x Vanguard) would be best.
lash92 wrote: Sure that you need Lemartes if you include DC. But what is the purpose of them? They are chaff killing with bolter and chainsword, but do you really need that with 6 Dakkabots?
There are many -2 to hit threats. Fighting bypasses that and has inherent defensive value as well. Furthermore, all BA fighting is a threat. Chainswords wound everything up to T7 on 4+ or better on the charge; 5+ to ANYTHING. And 10 DC pack 40 attacks; 50 with Unleash Rage; up to 100 if you Honour the Chapter.
I would be backing stygies still for footslogging the -1 to hit is strong defensivily
To with the new cover rules every model in a tide list is likely in cover for the first 2 turns.
Mars shooty lists are fine with onager but the truth is if your spliceing into an imperium list as has been pointed out AM does artillary better
Sure individual squads are squishy but collectively they can still output a lot of fire 9 vanguard models will still W/2W a knight and with enough squads they are very hard to remove.
What they wont do is table a knights list but they don't need to in order to win just kill the stuff assisting the knights then take the objectives
Sure it's better than a 6+++ defensively. But you lose out the Graia WLT which let's you shoot into melee, which so nice to have against other cqc armies.
U02dah4 wrote: True but if your aim is to board control then survival is key. Shooting into combat is nice but very situational.
I disagree because people will charge into Vanguard to stop them from shooting. It's a really good defensive tool at the cost of having your Warlord a bit close to the enemy.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Also their Stratagem is super clutch. I'm thinking Graia Vanguard and Stygies Rangers.
In a world where we could run 2 Batallions without gimping ourselves... A TPE is so useless and a TPD (let alone multiple) are so freaking expensive, especially in a Skitarii list...
Don't put up your hope on Graia's dogma too much. While it might be a good tool to withstand, it is also very moody. 1/6 chance is something that can't be really relied on as a srvivability tool when opponent can easily focus down any Skitarii squad. As someone previously noticed, T3 without a solid inv (like Harlequins 4++) is punishing no matter what kind of an after rule you will bring.
dadamowsky wrote: Don't put up your hope on Graia's dogma too much. While it might be a good tool to withstand, it is also very moody. 1/6 chance is something that can't be really relied on as a srvivability tool when opponent can easily focus down any Skitarii squad. As someone previously noticed, T3 without a solid inv (like Harlequins 4++) is punishing no matter what kind of an after rule you will bring.
It's still better than Stygies for a unit that wants to be close though.
dadamowsky wrote: Don't put up your hope on Graia's dogma too much. While it might be a good tool to withstand, it is also very moody. 1/6 chance is something that can't be really relied on as a srvivability tool when opponent can easily focus down any Skitarii squad. As someone previously noticed, T3 without a solid inv (like Harlequins 4++) is punishing no matter what kind of an after rule you will bring.
T3 with a 4+ save is more survivable against S3 and S4 fire than a T4 6+ save Ork boy that is only 1 point cheaper than a Ranger. And T4 and 3+ save troops are with few exceptions completely overpriced. And that's before factoring in the guaranteed cover bonus from Shroudpsalm/Prepared Positions during the first two turbs (2 CP well spent) or the Stygies -1 to hit (and to a much lesser extend the Graia FnP or Ap -1 immunity from Lucius). That's the thing with 7 PPM Scion equivalents: good firepower, hilariously tough for their points with some defensive buffs and still utterly expendable
4++ or 5++ saves on infantry are overrated IMO, unless they got several wounds or a 2+ or 3+ save as well. It's not like you are shooting lascannons or plasma at them. They keel over easier under small arms fire than 3+ save Skitarii and are also more pricy, while still being T3. Pop their transports, start tossing a bunch of dice their way until they keel over and catch the assault of the surviving Troupes with cheap 35 point ranger or 40 point vanguard units spaced apart so they can't use their 3" move to consolidate into more units.
I've had great luck with Metallica vanguard at 500-1000pts, but I seriously doubt their viability as points go up. Especially with the fact that now anything more than a 5 man squad gives up an ITC secondary (marked for death, or whatever it's called) they're 7pl and easily give up the 4 points for it on top of easy kill points and the new "kill two units a turn" objective.
Metallica works well for keeping them mobile but with the 18" range you either have to be stupid aggressive with deployment or hide them for a counterattack. The warlord trait is good, although I rarely use it with vanguard specifically, usually it's what I use to rescue my Onagers and other fire support units.
Red tide would bleed serious points for ITC no matter how you outfit them, but it works fine for casual games. To give you an idea of my league list I'm using at a 1,000pts, this has managed to beat Altaoic Eldar, Smash captain blood Angels with death company/scouts alpha strike, and a few other nasty lists but it's hardly like 1000pts is a good example of what they'll accomplish at 2000. As points go up I'm planning on a castellan, perhaps another Onager, and maybe some Dragoons, Dakkabots, or even more Armigers. The one thing I don't plan on adding more of is the vanguard or rangers, they just can't hang on very long so other than some barebones squads for screening and grabbing objectives I'm not committing to them.
Spoiler:
Dominus-phosphoenix/volkite WLT - ordered efficiency or canticle reroll depending on opponent
Enginseer
X4 Vanguard- x8 men w/2 plasma
Icarus Onager
Super heavy auxiliary
X2 Armigers Warglaives w/stubbers
If you really wanted to commit to them I think you'd need at least 8-10 full squads to have a shot. Anything less is going to get whittled down too fast. If you can hit a tipping point in the 100 model range I think they'll be very difficult to drop with two turns of +3 armor or a first turn strike followed by forcing a shift to shroudpsalm. Whatever you do, they will desperately need support from Icarus Onagers and something designed to kill tanks like a castellan. The plasma vanguard gets is great, but it's not something I would hunt heavy armor with.
BTW stygies is likelly to disappear from competitive completely because the "maybe leak" is that all -1 to hit subfactions are becoming "in cover" instead in CA.
Source: on FLG stream Reece mentioned only the -1 subfactions as "not getting the benefit from the new cover strat as they already have cover always". It's a very weird mistake to make because those subfactions are the most important subfactions from their respective armies. I called him out on it and he stopped midsentence and changed topic.
I mean it makes sense. -1 destroys all the 4+ BS armies and 6+ to hit bonus abilities. And cover affect everyone more or less equally. Finally becuase of how strong those subfactions are you rarelly see other ones.
rvd1ofakind wrote: BTW stygies is likelly to disappear from competitive completely because the "maybe leak" is that all -1 to hit subfactions are becoming "in cover" instead in CA.
Source: on FLG stream Reece mentioned only the -1 subfactions as "not getting the benefit from the new cover strat as they already have cover always". It's a very weird mistake to make because those subfactions are the most important subfactions from their respective armies. I called him out on it and he stopped midsentence and changed topic.
I mean it makes sense. -1 destroys all the 4+ BS armies and 6+ to hit bonus abilities. And cover affect everyone more or less equally. Finally becuase of how strong those subfactions are you rarelly see other ones.
And all the game really needs is a natural 6 always being a hit...
EDIT: After an afterthought the -hit shenanigans could really take a nerf. But, if that rumor is correct, then Admech really needs a grounds up rework as there are close no tools left for us - in either survivability or being a threat. A faction whith the only strength of looking good.
There’s no way -1 to hit or -2 to hit will be changed to always in cover. How about melee? In cover again instead of -1? There’s at least a dozen rules that wouldn’t make any sense if that was true. A game with only positive modifiers to hit, while all negative modifiers just count as cover even if you have 3 stacks? And Orks get a special rule that doesn’t actually do anything?
I can explain Reece’s slip: It was a brainfart. Not the first one he’s had, by the way.
Remember Castellan was supposed to go to 700 points in this FAQ and we get ”warlord’s stratagems only” ? Yeah, people have no clue what they’re talking about.
I think just the -1 to hit subfaction trait, e.g. Stygies or Alpha Legion, is targeted with that. These don't apply in melee anyway. Things like Dragoons -1 or flyers -1 would still apply in my opinion.
But it would be such a useless trait for us tbh... There is the new stratagem fror first turn cover if going second and there is shroudpsalm.
If that becomes true it will be once again Mars only...
Yeah, it's just the subfactions. All flyers will still have their -1. And yeah, the -1 never aplied to melee to begin with - it's only outside 12''.
And those subfactions ARE supposed to get a lot worse. Right now the choice is either "the -1 to hit faction" or the "we have the unique character faction":
Ravenguard or Ultramarines
Stygies or Mars
Alpha legion or Black Legion
Alaitoc
Do you see any other ones??? If not - why shouldn't all those -1 to hit get nerfed?
I´m not very familiar with Eldar but I think you see Ultwhe from time to time with their Guardian Bomb, but yeah in all those other cases you are right.
Is just sad that we won´t have a choice anymore... It´s either Mars or go home.
I mean admech SHOULD be a melee dominant army. But they're not. Look at all the canticles. 1 buffs shooting, TJHREE buff close combat. We have:
techpriests who are actually almost better in melee than shooting
punchy bots
vanguard with their -1T in CC aura
breachers
ruststalkers
infiltrators
corps priests
fulg priests
Dragoons...
Purelly shooting wise we only have:
rangers
onagers
destroyers
Dakkabots
balistarii
But all our melee dudes are too slow, too fragile, don't do enough damage...
BTW, I do not consider 12'' range as a shooting unit. I do not consider vanguard a purelly shooting unit either as they have a melee aura and only 18'' range.
dadamowsky wrote: Don't put up your hope on Graia's dogma too much. While it might be a good tool to withstand, it is also very moody. 1/6 chance is something that can't be really relied on as a srvivability tool when opponent can easily focus down any Skitarii squad. As someone previously noticed, T3 without a solid inv (like Harlequins 4++) is punishing no matter what kind of an after rule you will bring.
T3 with a 4+ save is more survivable against S3 and S4 fire than a T4 6+ save Ork boy that is only 1 point cheaper than a Ranger. And T4 and 3+ save troops are with few exceptions completely overpriced. And that's before factoring in the guaranteed cover bonus from Shroudpsalm/Prepared Positions during the first two turbs (2 CP well spent) or the Stygies -1 to hit (and to a much lesser extend the Graia FnP or Ap -1 immunity from Lucius). That's the thing with 7 PPM Scion equivalents: good firepower, hilariously tough for their points with some defensive buffs and still utterly expendable
4++ or 5++ saves on infantry are overrated IMO, unless they got several wounds or a 2+ or 3+ save as well. It's not like you are shooting lascannons or plasma at them. They keel over easier under small arms fire than 3+ save Skitarii and are also more pricy, while still being T3. Pop their transports, start tossing a bunch of dice their way until they keel over and catch the assault of the surviving Troupes with cheap 35 point ranger or 40 point vanguard units spaced apart so they can't use their 3" move to consolidate into more units.
It depends on your army comp yes if you mix tanks and infantry they will lascannon the tank but in a pure infantry list they have to shoot at infantry
So I think this list is competitive now. The FLY charge nerfs are huge. That you can't deepstrike in your best shooting turn 1 is huge. That the best kastelan killers (castellans and smashes and dark eldar) got directly nerfed is huge. Gun castles are back in a big way.
Icarus only got better because you know Eldar flyers will be everywhere in competitive. Dakkabots are safer than they ever have been. Sure, smash captains are nerfed, but they are still the best of the best counter charge option in the IMPERIUM. And daemon primarchs, the deadliest things against kastelons, are now much more manageable. This list is afraid of a castellan or a porphyrion, but it has the tools to wipe the screen in 1 turn and smash captains are still dangerous to castellans.
I would happily run this list against Eldar or Tau. Tau shooting is actually 36" (Riptide). Eldar can't hide their best stuff as well they used to. And dakkabots just love guard brigades. Also lol to chaos man spam. Bring it doofuses. The bloodletter bomb is nerfed and will have to deepstrike at scout screen range on turn 2. Go ahead and eat those scouts. Dakkabots will erase those swarms.
EDIT: RIP staff priests. Glad I didn't put $500 into that army.
I'm looking for a feedback on an idea of the 2k mobile Admech list. It was created as I was fed up with the static and reactive nature of the Cawlstar and I'd like to try a proactive approach for a change. The general idea is the Admech with mid ranged kiting/mobile LoS seeking/objective grabbing firepower and a crawling threat in the TPD mini Vanguard plasma castle. With support of the Armigers - Warlglaives for heavy shooting/melee, and Helverins for a backfield capping and 60" easy to reposition (thus Raven) long range snipers. Two single Balistarii could be a midfield flank supportive and table control force. As Ironstriders suffer a moving penalty the main 5 Ironstrider body would have to be supported with a PDI.
Options I'm considering - swapping Ranger snipers for Icarus Onager (at the expense of a few Skitarii bodies). Switching one of the Armigers to Dragoons for combat abilities. Or ditching the plasma castle altogether (keeping the minimum tesco Rangers squads) and swapping it for Onagers. No, I do not accept Guards in my lists... for reasons
The most prevalent problem I see is -1AP of the Autocannons. 1k Sons will laugh at my face, and all Lucius like dogmas. Most guards/SM/CSM vehs will save a lot of shots. Apart from that there's a problem of cost-efficiency which may not be... optimal in the math-hammer. While a double shot lascannon surely is cooler than D3 shots, it still require a lot of dice luck to connect. Fast combats are also a threat - the cognis overwatch might help to mitigate but I'm not sure what to expect from it yet.
Your thoughts?
Spoiler:
++ Outrider Detachment +1CP (Imperium - Adeptus Mechanicus) ++
rvd1ofakind wrote: BTW stygies is likelly to disappear from competitive completely because the "maybe leak" is that all -1 to hit subfactions are becoming "in cover" instead in CA.
Source: on FLG stream Reece mentioned only the -1 subfactions as "not getting the benefit from the new cover strat as they already have cover always". It's a very weird mistake to make because those subfactions are the most important subfactions from their respective armies. I called him out on it and he stopped midsentence and changed topic.
I mean it makes sense. -1 destroys all the 4+ BS armies and 6+ to hit bonus abilities. And cover affect everyone more or less equally. Finally becuase of how strong those subfactions are you rarelly see other ones.
I would be happy as a clam if they got rid of -1 to hit. That stuff is distorting the metagame in a ridiculous way. In addition to your points on 4+ and 6+, plasma is way too risky, and flamers are way too useful. I do think the infiltration nerf was some serious BS though. No tier 1 armies were infiltrating at all. Oh well.
I hope they errata the second turn stratagem to something like: "Units in cover get +1 to save; units not in cover gain cover." Basically, cover and armor saves as a generic. This way, +1 to +2 armor saves replace minus to hit. Thus AP and non-invulnerable saves become valuable again.
Wulfey wrote: So I think this list is competitive now. The FLY charge nerfs are huge. That you can't deepstrike in your best shooting turn 1 is huge. That the best kastelan killers (castellans and smashes and dark eldar) got directly nerfed is huge. Gun castles are back in a big way.
Icarus only got better because you know Eldar flyers will be everywhere in competitive. Dakkabots are safer than they ever have been. Sure, smash captains are nerfed, but they are still the best of the best counter charge option in the IMPERIUM. And daemon primarchs, the deadliest things against kastelons, are now much more manageable. This list is afraid of a castellan or a porphyrion, but it has the tools to wipe the screen in 1 turn and smash captains are still dangerous to castellans.
I would happily run this list against Eldar or Tau. Tau shooting is actually 36" (Riptide). Eldar can't hide their best stuff as well they used to. And dakkabots just love guard brigades. Also lol to chaos man spam. Bring it doofuses. The bloodletter bomb is nerfed and will have to deepstrike at scout screen range on turn 2. Go ahead and eat those scouts. Dakkabots will erase those swarms.
EDIT: RIP staff priests. Glad I didn't put $500 into that army.
100% in agreement with how the meta moved. 2x4 Kastelans though? I worry that might be over-investing in a unit that fundamentally has 4+ shooting. I have been thinking DC or Ballistarii.
Sigh... RIP my half-painted Drills and Fulgurites.
New list without the DC, if anyone is curious. Much more a shooty list:
Spoiler:
Blood Angels Battalion Detachment - 439
HQ - 274 1x Captain w/ Jump Pack - Thunder Hammer, Stormshield, Relic: Angel's Wing, Death Visions of Sanguinius
1x Mephiston - Powers: Quickening, Shield of Sanguinius, Wings of Sanguinius
We are almost thinking the same thing here Suzuteo. I would be with you on the rangers if i thought they did anything. When I brought them they were easy kill points. I like how they give CP, but be damned if they aren't incidental bolter fire bait. The deltas between what we are thinking are:
(1) enginseer, 3x ranger squads, 2x mortars, mephiston, and +4CP
(2) 2 more dakkabots, 1x icarus, second smashCap
I have gotten so burned bringing skitarii footmen. I like mortars for backfield board control, but they are so many drops and feed killpoints if your opponent can target them. The +4CP is good, but I think with all those infantry you don't have that many threats to spend it on. A second smash captain is more threat to bigger things than mephiston (meph has a better profile for weaker targets with his d3 damage).
How has Meph done in your games? EDIT: I could for sure see dropping my second smash cap for Meph since I am short on CP relative to your list. Also I think you are right on sticking with GS/Kurov's for the extra 5-6 CP over the course of the game.
The reason infiltration was removed was because they created unwinnable games for a lot of armies if you went first. Did they threw the baby out with the bathwater, though? Yes.
rvd1ofakind wrote: The reason infiltration was removed was because they created unwinnable games for a lot of armies if you went first. Did they threw the baby out with the bathwater, though? Yes.
They could have just changed our stratagem to 1/3CP to infiltrate one or two units. 9" scout move is a joke.
Wulfey wrote: We are almost thinking the same thing here Suzuteo. I would be with you on the rangers if i thought they did anything. When I brought them they were easy kill points. I like how they give CP, but be damned if they aren't incidental bolter fire bait. The deltas between what we are thinking are:
(1) enginseer, 3x ranger squads, 2x mortars, mephiston, and +4CP
(2) 2 more dakkabots, 1x icarus, second smashCap
I have gotten so burned bringing skitarii footmen. I like mortars for backfield board control, but they are so many drops and feed killpoints if your opponent can target them. The +4CP is good, but I think with all those infantry you don't have that many threats to spend it on. A second smash captain is more threat to bigger things than mephiston (meph has a better profile for weaker targets with his d3 damage).
How has Meph done in your games? EDIT: I could for sure see dropping my second smash cap for Meph since I am short on CP relative to your list. Also I think you are right on sticking with GS/Kurov's for the extra 5-6 CP over the course of the game.
You could be right. The list does feel a bit light on threats. Maybe I can drop the Mephiston, Enginseer, Rangers, and Mortars, add in Lemartes+DC.
Heavy Support - 920 6x Kastelan Robot - 12x Heavy Phosphor Blaster
1x Onager Dunecrawler - Icarus Array, Broad-Spectrum Data Tether
1x Onager Dunecrawler - Icarus Array, Broad-Spectrum Data Tether
Total: 1998 points 14 CP (-2)
I feel the second Smash Captain is a lot less valuable now that you can't recycle more than 1 CP a turn. I think Mephiston or Lemartes + DC is a better choice.
Mephiston is basically a Smash Captain with Deny and lower saves. But I think he's a lot weaker now with the fly nerf. You just don't get the same flexibility with his psychic phase moves. You could pull off a lot of crazy strategies before that I doubt you can do now.
Eh... That still leads to first turn charge/RF range with 40 fulgs/80 cultists. The problem wasn't the number of units. It's what you could do with them when going first.
rvd1ofakind wrote: Eh... That still leads to first turn charge/RF range with 40 fulgs/80 cultists. The problem wasn't the number of units. It's what you could do with them when going first.
Well, the pendulum has swung way toward the other direction. We can shoot dead virtually everything in a BA list that isn't in reserves on turn one now.
The list i'm still trying (and failing) to come up with is one that involves admech and Knight/s of some description. Seems tough to squeeze into 2k and have enough CP to do anything worthwhile even with a bare bones guard bat in there too
I guess the value of phosphor went up significantly. With everyone excited over the turn 2 +cover (2CP strat) we have a very good counter in the dakabots
Knights and admech work much less effectively than you might think. You can imagine a list has having three basic parts:
(1) payload, threats, and damage (2) troops for CP (3) HQ taxes
Knights are pure (1) payload, threats, and damage. But the admech codex (2) and (3) are junk. So competitive admech focuses on (1) units from the codex: Dakkabots and Onagers. And running dakkabots also has a huge tax with (3) Cawl. And if you want (2) CP troops from admech then you need a bonus (3) enginseer tax. So adding anything admech to knights devours the points that ought be going into (1) knight payload. As soon as you add 1 knight, you lose (1) 4 dakkabots and make the (3) Cawl tax even more punishing.
Thus, I think the best admech pairing with knights is actually just some STYGIES enginseer + ranger battalions for CP and basic infantry screening. Enginseers can fix knights, get you the 6+/6+ WLT, and STYGIES rangers are point for point competitive screens with guardsmen, it is just the enginseers who have a tax over the commanders.
EDIT: why do you think BLANGELS and GUARD battalions are so good? The (2) troops are cheap for the CP (and scouts are/were the only defense against hardcore deepstrike stuff). And the (3) HQ taxes aren't even taxes! 30 point commanders are amazing, they can run 20 inches a turn. 129 point smash captains are the hardest hitting 129 points in the entire game. Contrast that with 240 point (3) Cawl. Cawl has never killed more than 60 points of model in his career. But his aura probably is worth 200 points.
EDIT2: this is also why every admech list is made better with a BLANGELS and GUARD battalion. These are the two least-tax options for CP. This lets you focus your admech detachment purely on (1) payload, threats, and damage.
How would such a Guard / BA / Admech list look like at 2000? The FAQ hit the BA + Guard elements to some degree, on the other hand less alpha strikes makes the Ad Mech elements probably better as well.
Barnie25 wrote: How would such a Guard / BA / Admech list look like at 2000? The FAQ hit the BA + Guard elements to some degree, on the other hand less alpha strikes makes the Ad Mech elements probably better as well.
Just look a few post above, Wulfey and Suzuteo made some suggestions
Regarding AdMech + Knights. I also think Stygies would be the way to go. You could also expand that Batallion with units which don't really requite support and are good by themselves, namely:
- Dragoons (maybe not that good anymore with the infiltration nerf but still not a bad unit)
- Icarus Crawler if your meta is fly heavy (hello pesky eldar and tau)
Dragoons are in a tough spot. Dark Reapers just erase them for free. And Gallants can do their job just as well as they can. But then there are all the difficulties of playing assault models that are ground based VEHICLES in an environment with ''good'' terrain. Half the reason I don't bring dragoons is because i don't want to have a 5 minute argument over terrain features every assault phase. At least the gallants have that one hokey strategem to allow them to swing up 6". Dragoons just sit there with their lances literally in the eyes of the dark reapers but they can't possible swing because the terrain is 1.2" tall.
EDIT: but, against a lot of opponents, they will be a great unit and really should be in every 80%+ admech force. Even with the STYGIES nerf.
Yeah I’m probably expecting to be able to do too much and should just double down on Admech. Although If I do a tournament later in the year I might try some knights with a stygies bat
So I'm atm building a semi competitive Mars / BA list and I wanna include some destroyers for the combo with my Bots. Did anyone do the math on Grav vs. Plasma? At the first glance Plasma seems to be better, but I like the fixed 15 shots.
My buddy convinced me that Meph is the way to go. He costs less CP and brings a different flavor of threat (-4, hits on 2s, str10). Skitarri footmen are just rotten, so no reason to bring them. THis is a flavor of lists I have run in the past, but I think the various nerfs to FLY charges and FAQs will bring this list back to glory.
Eldar? Tau? Chaos hordes? Yeah, bring it on. Eldar deepstrike is much weaker and icarus loves eldar. Icarus and dakkabots are much better against tau now that stealth suits can't hop my guardsmen. Chaos hordes? They are now slower than ever. They can't make a turn 1 charge and reach the dakkabots anymore. And I Have the firepower to rinse 60 models a turn, and icarus crawlers to meatshield swarms.
Big BUT here: this list can't quite kill a castellan knight in 1 full round of shooting. Expected dakkabot volley is 20 total wounds. I just can't shoot titanic models off the board. Smash captain needs to take down the big stuff.
30coins wrote: Super stoked about the 3 drills I just spend hard $ on.
Could you use the stygies stratagem on more than one drill?
Anyway imo the Stygies infiltrate was vastly overrated for drills - if you didn’t get first turn, you just removed that drill’s ability to do a normal infiltrate and now set it up in some stupid position to keep it safe turn one, or else get it shot to bits (and pay CP for the privilege). Seemed like a typical case of the internet overrating a tactic that explodes when it works but doesn’t reliably work.
Now just infiltrate the drill using its own ability full of priests or hoplites, then use the new strategem on dragoon’s you’ve deployed on the front line - either forward to get that turn 1 charge or else to some safe and smart position to weather an enemy’s first turn.
This change has hurt us when we go first but helped us when we go second, and made for a more reliable set of strategic options rather than a risky gamble.
My buddy convinced me that Meph is the way to go. He costs less CP and brings a different flavor of threat (-4, hits on 2s, str10). Skitarri footmen are just rotten, so no reason to bring them. THis is a flavor of lists I have run in the past, but I think the various nerfs to FLY charges and FAQs will bring this list back to glory.
Eldar? Tau? Chaos hordes? Yeah, bring it on. Eldar deepstrike is much weaker and icarus loves eldar. Icarus and dakkabots are much better against tau now that stealth suits can't hop my guardsmen. Chaos hordes? They are now slower than ever. They can't make a turn 1 charge and reach the dakkabots anymore. And I Have the firepower to rinse 60 models a turn, and icarus crawlers to meatshield swarms.
Big BUT here: this list can't quite kill a castellan knight in 1 full round of shooting. Expected dakkabot volley is 20 total wounds. I just can't shoot titanic models off the board. Smash captain needs to take down the big stuff.
There is no point in Kurov's Aquilla when Grand Stratagist will get you your 1 CP per round (assuming beta rules are in effect). I'd probably bring Laurels of Command instead.
My buddy convinced me that Meph is the way to go. He costs less CP and brings a different flavor of threat (-4, hits on 2s, str10). Skitarri footmen are just rotten, so no reason to bring them. THis is a flavor of lists I have run in the past, but I think the various nerfs to FLY charges and FAQs will bring this list back to glory.
Eldar? Tau? Chaos hordes? Yeah, bring it on. Eldar deepstrike is much weaker and icarus loves eldar. Icarus and dakkabots are much better against tau now that stealth suits can't hop my guardsmen. Chaos hordes? They are now slower than ever. They can't make a turn 1 charge and reach the dakkabots anymore. And I Have the firepower to rinse 60 models a turn, and icarus crawlers to meatshield swarms.
Big BUT here: this list can't quite kill a castellan knight in 1 full round of shooting. Expected dakkabot volley is 20 total wounds. I just can't shoot titanic models off the board. Smash captain needs to take down the big stuff.
My concern here is that there are few options to deal with -2 to hit, and some of this stuff really struggles against -1 to hit. In any case, there is the high possibility of running into another rogue list like we saw at BAO. Maybe an elite army like Space Wolves, Death Guard, or 1K Sons. Nobody is paying any attention at all to middle toughness elites.
Ordana wrote: There is no point in Kurov's Aquilla when Grand Stratagist will get you your 1 CP per round (assuming beta rules are in effect). I'd probably bring Laurels of Command instead.
You want both Kurov's Aquila and Grand Strategist for redundancy. Knights can and will snipe your Company Commander right off the board.
That being said, maybe we're just too used to worrying about this. Maybe they will start sniping other characters instead now that we can only gain a maximum of 6 CP per game.
If so, we can either do Grand Strategist + Laurels of Command + Angel Wing (1CP) or make the Smash Captain our Walord and go Artisan of War + Angel Wing + Kurov's Aquila (1CP). Hm...
30coins wrote: Super stoked about the 3 drills I just spend hard $ on.
Could you use the stygies stratagem on more than one drill?
Anyway imo the Stygies infiltrate was vastly overrated for drills - if you didn’t get first turn, you just removed that drill’s ability to do a normal infiltrate and now set it up in some stupid position to keep it safe turn one, or else get it shot to bits (and pay CP for the privilege). Seemed like a typical case of the internet overrating a tactic that explodes when it works but doesn’t reliably work.
Now just infiltrate the drill using its own ability full of priests or hoplites, then use the new strategem on dragoon’s you’ve deployed on the front line - either forward to get that turn 1 charge or else to some safe and smart position to weather an enemy’s first turn.
This change has hurt us when we go first but helped us when we go second, and made for a more reliable set of strategic options rather than a risky gamble.
You got it wrong. The Drill deep strikes. It does not infiltrate. The difference being that you can disembark Fulgurites after infiltrating on turn one. If you go second, you infiltrate them aggressively anyway and force them to shoot the Drills.
We don't benefit very much from the new stratagem, given we have Shroudpsalm. They don't stack.
So Icarus is a good answer to -2 to hit. Most of the -2 to hit has FLY and Cawl is one of the few things that gives you rerolls through modifiers. I can't think of another shooting list that could handle -2 to hit better than this list in the IMPERIUM. You would need one of the ignore modifiers MORTAN or SPACE_WOLVES strategems.
I really don't see the new CP Regen mechanic being that useful. At least, not to the point that I'd be building a strategy around it.
I mean think about it, AT BEST it's getting 6 over the game. In order to do that you and your opponent need to be spending points every turn. If you go bust turn 3, your odds of getting anything after drops massively, as kurovs Aquila is less effective. Same for if your opponent blows his points turn 2. Or alternatively, your points will slow down toward the end. If you and your opponent are only popping one or 2 strategems toward the end your odds aren't guaranteed to even give you the point.
Considering IG has warlord traits like old grudges, extra orders, or heck even the guaranteed 6" advance one all have way more utility and are always working. And that's ignoring relics too, Cadians for example want the lost relic, or if you just want a screen/objectives holder Valhallans for the mk 45.
I just don't see the CP Regen being something I'd be focused on at the absolute tip top level if I was going all out. There are other warlord traits for Blood Angels especially that will have more guaranteed impact game to game.
I would look at it like this
1) whats your CP pool you need to spend 3 to get an expectancy of 1 back if you only have 5 CP grand strategist is not worth the investment if you already have 18 and your mono guard do you need more (I certainly ran a mono guard army at an event decided I had more CP than I needed so old grudges all the way far better to executioner a castellen). Certainly though it remains a strong choice in CP hungry imperium armies.
2) What your opponents CP pool if your opponent has 5 chances are aquilla will only just return your investment at best. If he has 20 happy days the aquilla will likely be as good as grand strategist.
3) Both generally a weak choice the only real argument for it is to split them across two models to prevent character sniping removing your CP regen. Most games though good positioning will do that. Now that regen is capped most of the time you wont be getting benefits from one of the options where as old grudges or relic of lost cadia would benefit you.
Conclusion
Sometimes neither based on build
Mostly either option but not both(unless you are really desperate for CP but then you probably need to increase your starting CP)
which means you can consider a warlord from another army and then pay 1CP for aquila if you opponent has a good CP pool.
If you are only going to talk about Blood Angels and Guard then please do it in the respective threads, then me and others that would like to read about and discuss Mechanicus units/relics/warlord traits can actually find that content here in the Mechanicus tactica.
If you actually read the thread you'll find the discussion started with post faq Astra militarum and admech then went into Astra militarum + blood angels + admech.
You might not have noticed but given the faq nerf's to stygies admech is either cawl bot spam (tier 2) or a soup faction now. A discussion of which components of other factions to adopt in admech soup and why is perfectly valid.
lash92 wrote: Also look at the proposed list, e.g. Wulfey´s on this page. AdMech is by large the biggest faction of the soup.
Doesn't change the fact that the two big wall-of-text posts above mine had exactly 0% Admech related content.
If you guys were at least discussing Admech warlord traits, relics or units in those posts that would be one thing, but as is I don't see why that discussion couldn't be done in the guard tactica, with the added benefit that other guard players can throw in their knowledge as well considering the posters are already decided on picking guard relics and warlord traits.
You might not have noticed but given the faq nerf's to stygies admech is either cawl bot spam (tier 2) or a soup faction now. A discussion of which components of other factions to adopt in admech soup and why is perfectly valid.
And? You don't see Grey Knight players spamming their own tactica (or as another good example: both the Index and Codex Space Wolves Tacticas) with pages of discussion about entirely different armies with entire posts not even mentioning the army the tactica is about.
I'd rather wish people would discuss less competitive (or rather unusual) Admech lists and models when the alternative is pages of off-topic content. I mean if playing in and winning hyper-competitive events is so important that it doesn't even merit discussing Admech stuff in an Admech thread why not switch to playing without any Admech units at all rather than forcing yourself to cram them into lists ¯\_(ツ)_/ ¯?
I guess we need to have the "why aren't we talking about more admech stuff as much as we could be?" discussion again. If we go back to when the codex dropped, it was instantly obvious what the strong stuff was: Cawl, Dakkabots, Dragoons, Onagers, MARS, STYGIES. It was also instantly obvious what stunk: sicarians, kataphrons, skitarii foot troops, TPDs, etc. Some things have changed after FAQ and Chapter Approved.
The initial FAQ made dakkabots weaker, but they were still the best.
CA made skitarii foot troops more viable, but the even with points drops the rest of the codex was ass.
Eldar/Ynnari dominance made dragoons relatively weaker, but they still rocked hard if you got a first turn STYGIES charge.
THere was a window there where we had some real discussions about STYGIES, drills, and electropriests becoming a thing. THen FAQ2 just erased that army from the game.
So now we are left with Cawl, Dakkabots, Onagers, and sometimes dragoons at the competitive level. If you want to take a dump on us for talking about what best to supplement that army, sure, go for it i guess. But at least try to know the history of how we got to the point where the only things work debating are (1) what WLTs on our soup detachment, (2) what blangels HQs are best to protect our bots, and (3) how or if we should be bringing dragoons.
Dragoons in a mars list? Anyone tried a blob off them to divert away from Cawls castle or do they suffer from lack of range to targets? (#old stygies or go home)
I was considering trying a blob of them as a distraction/bullet magnet. Just wondered if the better players amongst you had tried such a thing.
I ran dragoons in a MARS list at the last SoCal open. I went 4-2. But I also had unnerfed celestine, conscripts, commisars, astropaths, and was against people who didn't have their codex yet. Both losses were to YNNARI. MARS dragoons are flatly worse. But, they have 1 trick I got once. You can occasionally get both the +1 str canticle and the RR1 in melee canticle. That is a big jump in their output on certain targets. Specifically, the RR1 in fight phase is a huge jump in power and should be fished for.
They are worse yes but not bad imo. They still got their natural -1 to hit and are maybe the only unit which really benefits from the Mars dogma. I wouldn't run 6 of them, but a small to middle sized unit can also be a pretty good screen imo.
lash92 wrote: Also look at the proposed list, e.g. Wulfey´s on this page. AdMech is by large the biggest faction of the soup.
Doesn't change the fact that the two big wall-of-text posts above mine had exactly 0% Admech related content.
If you guys were at least discussing Admech warlord traits, relics or units in those posts that would be one thing, but as is I don't see why that discussion couldn't be done in the guard tactica, with the added benefit that other guard players can throw in their knowledge as well considering the posters are already decided on picking guard relics and warlord traits.
You might not have noticed but given the faq nerf's to stygies admech is either cawl bot spam (tier 2) or a soup faction now. A discussion of which components of other factions to adopt in admech soup and why is perfectly valid.
And? You don't see Grey Knight players spamming their own tactica (or as another good example: both the Index and Codex Space Wolves Tacticas) with pages of discussion about entirely different armies with entire posts not even mentioning the army the tactica is about.
I'd rather wish people would discuss less competitive (or rather unusual) Admech lists and models when the alternative is pages of off-topic content. I mean if playing in and winning hyper-competitive events is so important that it doesn't even merit discussing Admech stuff in an Admech thread why not switch to playing without any Admech units at all rather than forcing yourself to cram them into lists ¯\_(ツ)_/ ¯?
Guy asked a question of how the guard trait would do with the Nerf, as a guard player I gave a response to it. As much as I hate it IG can still Regen CP's for other armies and admech desperately needs those to function. That said with the Nerf to Regen I figured it was prudent to point out that it's probably not getting 6 CP a game, which matters for admech. I may never have explicitly stated admech in the post, but it was absolutely relevant. I didn't post it in the guard thread because any pure guard player stopped bothering with that a while ago. We get so many CP as it is that there's no point in trying to regenerate, I've had games end where I still had 5-6 CP easy with pure guard.
If you'd gone back a ways you'd notice I talk a lot about running very "off" admech lists. For omnissiahs sake I run Metallica, which is in serious contention for one of the worst traits in the game period thanks to how it interacts with maybe 4 units in our entire codex. That said they're not super competitive and while I am doing well in my local league using ITC, I have no illusions that Metallica could even crack top 20 at a serious event. So when he asked for competitive advice, I left my army out of it.
Suzuteo wrote: You got it wrong. The Drill deep strikes. It does not infiltrate. The difference being that you can disembark Fulgurites after infiltrating on turn one. If you go second, you infiltrate them aggressively anyway and force them to shoot the Drills.
We don't benefit very much from the new stratagem, given we have Shroudpsalm. They don't stack.
By “new strategem” I meant the new Stygies VIII pre-game movement of 9”.
Yes turn one is gone, but turn one was a 50/50 or worse gamble with the old way around anyway, and if you lost that gamble then you were forced to deploy pretty sub-optimally and weather a turn of shooting before doing anything. I’d rather come in reliably turn 2 or 3 and shoot and charge right away than spend a CP to gamble away so many points.
It’s hurt non-drill infiltration more imo - no more infiltrating punchbots or whatever, gotta lucius deepstrike them or footslog them.
On another topic - anyone tried a 6” castle with Graia’s “shoot into CC” warlord trait against purely or almost purely CC armies? One where you can out-shoot them so they’re forced to come to you, but will be aggressively punished for doing so? Maybe do some Hoplite bubble wrap around the 6” then shoot at whoever charged them. Not competitive since it’d only work vs total CC lists, but does it work in trollisj casual play? Any big reasons it doesn’t?
Suzuteo wrote: You got it wrong. The Drill deep strikes. It does not infiltrate. The difference being that you can disembark Fulgurites after infiltrating on turn one. If you go second, you infiltrate them aggressively anyway and force them to shoot the Drills.
We don't benefit very much from the new stratagem, given we have Shroudpsalm. They don't stack.
By “new strategem” I meant the new Stygies VIII pre-game movement of 9”.
Yes turn one is gone, but turn one was a 50/50 or worse gamble with the old way around anyway, and if you lost that gamble then you were forced to deploy pretty sub-optimally and weather a turn of shooting before doing anything. I’d rather come in reliably turn 2 or 3 and shoot and charge right away than spend a CP to gamble away so many points.
It’s hurt non-drill infiltration more imo - no more infiltrating punchbots or whatever, gotta lucius deepstrike them or footslog them.
On another topic - anyone tried a 6” castle with Graia’s “shoot into CC” warlord trait against purely or almost purely CC armies? One where you can out-shoot them so they’re forced to come to you, but will be aggressively punished for doing so? Maybe do some Hoplite bubble wrap around the 6” then shoot at whoever charged them. Not competitive since it’d only work vs total CC lists, but does it work in trollisj casual play? Any big reasons it doesn’t?
I'm intrigued; How do you 'reliably' deep strike on turn 2 or 3? Your opponent knows you have units incoming and can still prevent the same deployment as you would have done turn 1. Also given you can't move after disembark/deep strike you're either a risky 9" charge with no charge bonus or re-rolls or with a drill a 6" charge. Neither of those options are as reliable as the pre-nerf infilatret, move and charge within 1-3".
Graia is fast becoming my next Forgeworld of choice I think. At least the strategm and dogma are both useful, which was only something Stygies could boast previously.
Essentially the admech portion of my army is
1enginseer 3 vanguard 1 x 3dragoons 1x 7 corpuscarii 3x hoplite allied to AM and starstriders With the Admech footslogging supported by allied deepstrikers and artillary
Now im not going to take a warlord in admech so warlord trait doesn't matter and the only relic I will take is the omniscient mask as the best buffer.
So it comes down to doctrine and stratagem
Stygies strat will speed boost my dragoons but thats probably all maybe corpuscarii in the right circumstances but I can also see matchups where I do neither. Useing the strat can also backfire by getting you in a position where your not close enough to fight but close enough to lose your -1 so not essential and very situational
Graia strat denying psychic powers can be a nice option but 50% of the time it fails and I already have 2 deny witches. I can certainly think of circumstances where it sees use but in lots of match ups it wont see play because i dont mind you smiteing 3 guardsmen enough to waste a for only a 50% chance to save them. So I nice option but again not essential and very situational.
Graia doctorine prevents a flat 1/6 damage always good but not that good
Stygies prevents nothing within 12" and 1.5/6-3/6 against most enemies at range based opponents BS. so it certainly can be more effective but it can also do nothing. A skilled opponent can also target my non-1 to hit units at range T1 and then shoot the -1 stuff without penalty T2. I can mitagate this a bit by flanking as then i can be in range of part of his army but not all but that limits my ability to counter deploy. Draggons of course really benefit with their stacked -1 but they are a bit of a distractioj carnifex without the preBFAQ2 steat and can be ignored.
Idea:
Lucius deep strike to counter something.
Metalica moves forward and take objectives. Like the idea of fast moving skitariis.
Mars builds the fire base and the Infiltrators deep strikes.
Concern is anti tank (has thought the Robots with WoM Gem) and survivability, specifically if i go second.
Why arc rifles on the Metallica vanguard? For Metallica I'd say they're not as good as just regular rad carbines. Remember you're going to be advancing a lot, which means they'll be assault 1. Rad carbines are going to be far more useful or even just take some more plasma. If you can, I'd trade omnispex on the Metallica vanguard for data tethers. You'll need them to stick around on objectives and it let's them use protector doctrina.
Other than that, what's your plan for eldar? Some Icarus Onagers would help a lot. As it sits you have little that would be able to hit them at range, and the eldar will keep an army like this at range.
Thanks for the hint, but it is better to shoot with one shoot as i can't shoot after advance.
However, I play around with a Stygies instead of Metalica because of the hit modifier ( saver 1T shooting) and the “scout move gem“. Does the Gem count as Reserve?I don't think so.
No but it has been faq'ed to be only 9" move now and so of questionable value. I take a 9" move and even my dragoons might not get to a back deploying opponent. T1
Stygies used to be strong because it protected your back stuff while portalling your forward stuff. Now an artillery list might be better with mars and an infantry list graia or agripinaa
Maxamato wrote: Thanks for the hint, but it is better to shoot with one shoot as i can't shoot after advance.
However, I play around with a Stygies instead of Metalica because of the hit modifier ( saver 1T shooting) and the “scout move gem“. Does the Gem count as Reserve?I don't think so.
I'm talking about your detachment of Metallica vanguard. Arc rifles elsewhere is fine, but they're really bad with Metallica.
What I mean is I think the vanguard rad carbines usually will do more damage than a single arc rifle shot, even against vehicles. Rad carbines get 3 shots to the arc rifles one. Arc rifle gets -1 AP to rad carbine none. Against most serious vehicles rad carbines wound on 6 while the arc rifle will usually wound on 5 or maybe 4. Then the ultimate insult, the rad carbine will always be a flat 2 damage while the arc rifle is d3. That means after all that effort it can still do less damage.
Unless you already have all these arc rifles built in Metallica scheme (if you do I'm so sorry) I would heavily argue against it. I've got 3 for my vanguard and they feel completely useless with Metallica trait. Either go with plasma, which works excellently with them, or keep them with just rad carbines, which are great weapons too in my opinion. Metallica needs to go balls to the wall advancing every turn to make the vanguard shine, and youre much better dumping those 72pts spent on arc rifles elsewhere for AT that will actually do something. Having half the vanguard be barebones and half have plasma for example could work.
U02dah4 wrote:
Stygies used to be strong because it protected your back stuff while portalling your forward stuff. Now an artillery list might be better with mars and an infantry list graia or agripinaa
Why should an infantry based list with agripinaa better then Stygies?
How should an infantry based list looks like?
MrMoustaffa wrote:
Maxamato wrote: Thanks for the hint, but it is better to shoot with one shoot as i can't shoot after advance.
However, I play around with a Stygies instead of Metalica because of the hit modifier ( saver 1T shooting) and the “scout move gem“. Does the Gem count as Reserve?I don't think so.
I'm talking about your detachment of Metallica vanguard. Arc rifles elsewhere is fine, but they're really bad with Metallica.
What I mean is I think the vanguard rad carbines usually will do more damage than a single arc rifle shot, even against vehicles. Rad carbines get 3 shots to the arc rifles one. Arc rifle gets -1 AP to rad carbine none. Against most serious vehicles rad carbines wound on 6 while the arc rifle will usually wound on 5 or maybe 4. Then the ultimate insult, the rad carbine will always be a flat 2 damage while the arc rifle is d3. That means after all that effort it can still do less damage.
Unless you already have all these arc rifles built in Metallica scheme (if you do I'm so sorry) I would heavily argue against it. I've got 3 for my vanguard and they feel completely useless with Metallica trait. Either go with plasma, which works excellently with them, or keep them with just rad carbines, which are great weapons too in my opinion. Metallica needs to go balls to the wall advancing every turn to make the vanguard shine, and youre much better dumping those 72pts spent on arc rifles elsewhere for AT that will actually do something. Having half the vanguard be barebones and half have plasma for example could work.
Yeah, I have understood you, but thanks for the deep insides. I think also that the rad carbines are execellent weapones.
However, I don't feel confident with Metallica because of there weakness against shooting. I feel that here is Graia or Stygies better.
And, no, my AdMech hasn't a specific painting sheme.
Agrip helps with Overwatch, which isn't bad when you're that close to the enemy. However, the Relic is lame, and the Stratagem only affects Kataphrons. The Warlord trait ain't half bad though. Not better than even Metalica though if you're planning to be at the front, in which case the important part of Fly is better.
Given most of our playable infantry is 12-18inch in range if your close enough to shoot your close enough to get no benefit from stygies and your vulnerable to being charged. Agripinaa boosts your overwatch helping you against their counter charge. Plus with vanguard/corpuscarii/infiltrators your firing enough shots that something will stick. All the faction specific relics are lame exept agripinaa (now it does depend on your opponents list because it only targets vehicles but having your whole admech reroll 1's to W is strong if your heavy admech particularly vs say knights)
Stygies is great T1 after that its benefit is minimal because your too close. The stygies strat at a 9" move isnt enough to get you a turn 1 charge against a competant opponent with most units. Its not awful but you wont use it muh. If your playing with allies your opponent focusses your non -1 units T1 and ignores your stygies
Graia is more consistent throughout but provides no benefit to priests and minimal to multi W models. The graia strat is a nice option but its only effective 50% of the time and plenty of armies have no psykers
As to metalica rangers dont need to advance and loseing a shot for advancing is not great. For the rest of your infantry it pretty much reads no BS penalty T1. After T1 your probably not advancing. You also acheive the same thing with a longer movement distance by just useing the stygies strat and not advancing.
MrMoustaffa wrote:Maxamoto, are you not using Metallica period then? Your list you posted had a big fat batallion of them so I'm kind of confused
Sorry for confusing. Yeah, the list I have posted has a big Metallica Detahcment but that was more of an idea. I'm not sure about to use it because I'm wooried about T1 shooting survivability.
My painting sheme doesn't follow strictly a Forgeworld, so I'm here total free to choode.
U02dah4 wrote:Given most of our playable infantry is 12-18inch in range if your close enough to shoot your close enough to get no benefit from stygies and your vulnerable to being charged. Agripinaa boosts your overwatch helping you against their counter charge. Plus with vanguard/corpuscarii/infiltrators your firing enough shots that something will stick. All the faction specific relics are lame exept agripinaa (now it does depend on your opponents list because it only targets vehicles but having your whole admech reroll 1's to W is strong if your heavy admech particularly vs say knights)
Stygies is great T1 after that its benefit is minimal because your too close. The stygies strat at a 9" move isnt enough to get you a turn 1 charge against a competant opponent with most units. Its not awful but you wont use it muh. If your playing with allies your opponent focusses your non -1 units T1 and ignores your stygies
Graia is more consistent throughout but provides no benefit to priests and minimal to multi W models. The graia strat is a nice option but its only effective 50% of the time and plenty of armies have no psykers
As to metalica rangers dont need to advance and loseing a shot for advancing is not great. For the rest of your infantry it pretty much reads no BS penalty T1. After T1 your probably not advancing. You also acheive the same thing with a longer movement distance by just useing the stygies strat and not advancing.
Damn, are WoM+Cawl+Dakkastelans the strongest ranged anti-tank in the game for their pts? They beat even Veterans, 2+ BS full re-roll, double shooting obliterators with 3 3 3 for stats.
I think it depends who your allies are an admech/AM pure infantry list is pretty hoardy. I am running an admech/AM/ES hoard at a gt in October admittely I take 9 tarrantulas but thats it for non infantry
As to how many vanguard well if your running an infantry list your not running a brigade so that caps you at 6 and a double batallion forces you to take a dominous and your probably not making the most out of a dominous in an infantry list.
U02dah4 wrote: Given most of our playable infantry is 12-18inch in range if your close enough to shoot your close enough to get no benefit from stygies and your vulnerable to being charged. Agripinaa boosts your overwatch helping you against their counter charge. Plus with vanguard/corpuscarii/infiltrators your firing enough shots that something will stick. All the faction specific relics are lame exept agripinaa (now it does depend on your opponents list because it only targets vehicles but having your whole admech reroll 1's to W is strong if your heavy admech particularly vs say knights)
Stygies is great T1 after that its benefit is minimal because your too close. The stygies strat at a 9" move isnt enough to get you a turn 1 charge against a competant opponent with most units. Its not awful but you wont use it muh. If your playing with allies your opponent focusses your non -1 units T1 and ignores your stygies
Graia is more consistent throughout but provides no benefit to priests and minimal to multi W models. The graia strat is a nice option but its only effective 50% of the time and plenty of armies have no psykers
As to metalica rangers dont need to advance and loseing a shot for advancing is not great. For the rest of your infantry it pretty much reads no BS penalty T1. After T1 your probably not advancing. You also acheive the same thing with a longer movement distance by just useing the stygies strat and not advancing.
Actually Graia helps Priests a lot. It states when the model is slain, so after their FNP, and THEN they might die, and then you get to roll for Graia.
rvd1ofakind wrote: Damn, are WoM+Cawl+Dakkastelans the strongest ranged anti-tank in the game for their pts? They beat even Veterans, 2+ BS full re-roll, double shooting obliterators with 3 3 3 for stats.
Well yes apart from leman russes (executioner+harker) cyclopses the neutronaga (vs non knights) .... The problem is for their points cawl is a humongous tax especially if your not all in. Plus given your medium S vs the most common tank the imperial knight you fail to W a lot. Youll also find a lot of non ranged units very good at the job
rvd1ofakind wrote: Damn, are WoM+Cawl+Dakkastelans the strongest ranged anti-tank in the game for their pts? They beat even Veterans, 2+ BS full re-roll, double shooting obliterators with 3 3 3 for stats.
Well yes apart from leman russes (executioner+harker) cyclopses the neutronaga (vs non knights) .... The problem is for their points cawl is a humongous tax especially if your not all in. Plus given your medium S vs the most common tank the imperial knight you fail to W a lot. Youll also find a lot of non ranged units very good at the job
You'll get enough mortal wounds to cripple the knight and at least a few of the shots will sneak through and deal more damage. If they're also with destroyers for the +1 to hit strat the knight is probably going to go down or at least not do much for the rest of the game unless they're questor mechanicus.
rvd1ofakind wrote: Damn, are WoM+Cawl+Dakkastelans the strongest ranged anti-tank in the game for their pts? They beat even Veterans, 2+ BS full re-roll, double shooting obliterators with 3 3 3 for stats.
Well yes apart from leman russes (executioner+harker) cyclopses the neutronaga (vs non knights) .... The problem is for their points cawl is a humongous tax especially if your not all in. Plus given your medium S vs the most common tank the imperial knight you fail to W a lot. Youll also find a lot of non ranged units very good at the job
You'll get enough mortal wounds to cripple the knight and at least a few of the shots will sneak through and deal more damage. If they're also with destroyers for the +1 to hit strat the knight is probably going to go down or at least not do much for the rest of the game unless they're questor mechanicus.
lash92 wrote: I really would like to see some use for them, because the models look really great. But I can´t see it and the FAQ did imo nothing for them.
I think Hoplites make quite a decent screen for all the dakkabots we have to take now. I am not sure about the peltasts...they have to be midfield to do anything. And they really dont belong in no mans land.
yeah, priests are out of the question for me. At least the melee ones.The Stygies nerf is way to massive and honestly: I dont buy a couple of freaking drills to make a bottom tier faction become a lower mid-tier faction.
Ideasweasel wrote: @RVD what was your formula? Do you mean dakabots dont look as tasty as you thought?
It just got the wrong row when copying stuff. Here are some of the best ranged anti-tank. Feel free to tell me what I should add. (Take Castellan with a sack of salt as that's all weapons (except meltas) into the same target(So he's even BETTER actually).
Iago40k wrote: so guys, after this FAQ. Hoplites and Peltasts. yeah or nay?
Peltasts would need to be troops to even have a role imo, they're not in any way filling any elite roles.
Hoplites arent a main means of attack, they're a screen and charge protection. You don't need to 'get' them in to combat. Either someone spends time shooting them (which is good) or they send a bunch of assault into them (also good). I cant think of a better melee/shooting unit for 9pts off the top of my head.
Ideasweasel wrote: @RVD what was your formula? Do you mean dakabots dont look as tasty as you thought?
It just got the wrong row when copying stuff. Here are some of the best ranged anti-tank. Feel free to tell me what I should add. (Take Castellan with a sack of salt as that's all weapons (except meltas) into the same target(So he's even BETTER actually).
Ideasweasel wrote: @RVD what was your formula? Do you mean dakabots dont look as tasty as you thought?
It just got the wrong row when copying stuff. Here are some of the best ranged anti-tank. Feel free to tell me what I should add. (Take Castellan with a sack of salt as that's all weapons (except meltas) into the same target(So he's even BETTER actually).
This is a great resource, thank you! I've recently briefly tried something similar but I'm not sure my maths was correct and I'm no good with spreadsheets. I'd love plasma and grav Kataphrons as well as neutron and Icarus Onagers to be on there with the addition of various targets with 3+, 4+ and 5+ invulnerable saves, -1 and -2 modifiers and Fly.
Maxamato wrote: Ok, thaht means, that according the table double shoot max. buffed Obliterators is best in class against IK?
That's their maximum potential. To get that they need:
Veterans, Prescience, Re-rolls to hit, roll 3 3 3(or just the relavant ones, like who cares about your AP vs a 3++ knight) on their stats and shoot twice(that's rolling optimal stats AGAIN)
And yet with a 0.0657 the cadian guardsman with frontrank fire second rank fire old grudges in rapid fire range comes in first so all hail the lasgun of knight killing.
The problem with just looking at damage values is it tells you nothing of reality.
In real game survivability and positioning matter. For the guardsmen of knight killing you need a perfect board state and you wont see it often if ever
Do you not understand the concept of using damage and durability mathhammer to help evaluating units?
That is not the be all and end all. You evaluate using similar units. You compare their movement, damage, durability, special abilities, utility, stratagems, combos to find the most optimal combination.
Octovol wrote: I'm intrigued; How do you 'reliably' deep strike on turn 2 or 3? Your opponent knows you have units incoming and can still prevent the same deployment as you would have done turn 1. Also given you can't move after disembark/deep strike you're either a risky 9" charge with no charge bonus or re-rolls or with a drill a 6" charge. Neither of those options are as reliable as the pre-nerf infilatret, move and charge within 1-3".
More reliably than a gamble for going first that if you lose, you end up in a way worse position than deepstriking turn 2 or 3 - and have paid a CP for the provilege of shooting yourself in the foot!
You can’t only compare deepstriking to infiltrating when the first turn gamble pays off - you also have to compare it to the times you fail to get first turn. In which case this is a safer tactic, imo. The internet likes to overrate gambles with big payoffs and ignore the downsides when they don’t pay off, imo, and it results in a preferance towards risky unreliable tactics. So I’m not too surprised people are calling Stygies dead now that their favourite gamble has been taken out, even if I think tactically it makes them more reliable (though obviously not as effective as getting turn 1 with the old strategem, risk is no longer involved).
Exalted Court: Exalted Court: 1 Extra Warlord Trait (-1CP)
Heirlooms of the Household: Heirlooms of the Household: 1 Extra Heirloom (-1CP)
Household Choice: House Raven, Questor Mechanicus
+ Lord of War +
Knight Paladin [23 PL, 423pts]: Character (Exalted Court), Character (Heirloom of the House), Heavy stubber, Heirloom: Sanctuary, Reaper chainsword, Warlord Trait: Ion Bulwark
. Rapid-fire battle cannon w/ heavy stubber: Heavy stubber, Rapid-fire battle cannon
++ Total: [120 PL, 1968pts] ++
32 points left =/
Tactic: the infantry should hold objectivs or the stygyies ranger screen the bots and onagers.
The mars detetchmant, i gues no need to explain what they should do^^
you guys know how to fill or what to replace? Or change the whole list XD
These modells i got left in my collection:
1 dominus
1 datasmith
4 ranger with arkebuse
3 ranger with arc rifle
6 vanguard mit plasma
3 destroyer
10 fulgurites
5 ruststalker
15 infils with taser
Pomguo wrote: ...people are calling Stygies dead now that their favourite gamble has been taken out...
I agree, I don't get why people are calling Stygies dead. Stygies doesn't have brokenly good alpha strike now, but it remains a competitive choice. I've only ever run my Admech as Stygies or Lucius, and I only ever used the Stygies infiltration stratagem once to put some rangers on an objective — something that is still facilitated by the reworked stratagem.
IMO they are still a very strong Dogma, an army that gets -1 to hit all their units AND can start with army wide cover is much harder to kill than people tend to assume. I played my first tournament of 8th edition with them and did reasonably well without once using their stratagem and at no point did I feel like the Dogma wasn't helping. If anything I can put my mind to ease no longer being tempted to buy 20 electropriests.
--
Also, advice on the list above in terms of using the 32pts remaining: I would buy 2 plasma calivers for the vanguard (in separate squads for redundancy), and either an arc rifle for a ranger squad or a phosphor serpenta for a dragoon.
Stygies protected your artilery and let you Alpha it didnt have big cawl taxes so you could soup effectively
Mars maximises a pure artilery admech list but requires big cawl taxs so your running a pure list.
Stygies still protects your artilery but a pure artilery list will be better in mars.
As to the -1 being good well it gets shut off if the enemy get close so in a soup army now your enemy just targets your ally while you spend two turns running your fulgurites up then shoots the fulgurites without a -1. Point is ot doesn't help your infantry which is why you took stygies.
Having done some testing im thinking agripinaa or graia for an infantry soup component.
Also, advice on the list above in terms of using the 32pts remaining: I would buy 2 plasma calivers for the vanguard (in separate squads for redundancy), and either an arc rifle for a ranger squad or a phosphor serpenta for a dragoon.
Hey thx for reply, sorry my english is not sooooo good =P
so you mean replace 1 vanguard in two units for an plasma, so they are still 5?
Yap if i would give one ranger an arc rifle and 2 vanguards plasma, its on point 2k ^^
It wasn't just that Stygies got nerfed. Mars got buffed indirectly by all the nerfs to flying.
Anyhow, Stygies is not dead, but merely being harder to hit just doesn't cut it for us. AdMech needs a raison d'etre. Why play them over some other shooting army in competitive? There are two good reasons:
1) Kastelan Robots are still some of the best artillery around.
2) You can do Imperium Soup, which gives us access to a large variety of options to shore up our weaknesses.
Perhaps a bit less amazing point 3, almost no other shooting in the imperium that I'm aware of can guaranteed hit any flyig target in the game with a 2+ rerolling 1's like an Icarus Onager can. Not super important for some people but in my area negative hit mods are super common and it's about the only way I have to shut down things like altaioc flyers. With protector doctrina it hits a flyer on -1's on a d6 and non flying unit on 2's, before other modifiers. Thats a really nice bit of utility for something like IG or knights that don't have a lot of ways to get around hit mods.
I know it's not super flashy but my Onagers are consistently MVP's and I'm running Metallica of all things. I can only imagine Mars or Stygies Onagers blow them away.
Heavy Support - 66 3x Heavy Weapon Squad - 3x Lasgun, 3x Mortar
3x Heavy Weapon Squad - 3x Lasgun, 3x Mortar
Mars Spearhead Detachment - 1295
HQ - 240 1x Belisarius Cawl
Heavy Support - 1055 6x Kastelan Robot - 18x Heavy Phosphor Blaster
1x Onager Dunecrawler - Icarus Array, Cognis Heavy Stubber, Broad-Spectrum Data Tether
1x Onager Dunecrawler - Icarus Array, Broad-Spectrum Data Tether
1x Onager Dunecrawler - Icarus Array, Broad-Spectrum Data Tether
Total: 1998 points 14 CP (-2)
I think Eldar and possibly Tau will be the armies to beat. They had already been strong before, especially Eldar, but all the nerfs to Knights and flying assault will make them a lot stronger.
Mortars to clear enemy chaff, Crawlers to remove flyers, Kastelan Robots for general-purpose shooting, Mephiston and Slamguinius to help kill Knights. You can take Soul Warden over Artisan of War if you are up against Eldar to get lots of solid Denies in. For most situations, you will want to deploy aggressively in the center and castle with Guardsmen. Forward deploy or screen with Scouts, who essentially have S8 attacks with Red Thirst.
1. Is the morale bonus from Admech's Broad Spectrum Data Tether stacking?
2. When is the morale bonus from BDST applied in relation to the Inquisition Ld aura?
" Unquestionable Wisdom: All Friendly IMPERIUM units within 6" of an Inquisitor can use the Inquisitor's Leadership characteristic instead of their own."
1. Is the morale bonus from Admech's Broad Spectrum Data Tether stacking?
2. When is the morale bonus from BDST applied in relation to the Inquisition Ld aura?
" Unquestionable Wisdom: All Friendly IMPERIUM units within 6" of an Inquisitor can use the Inquisitor's Leadership characteristic instead of their own."
1. No, it just says infantry within a broad spectrum Data tether's range. This is similar to IG's flags, they don't stack either.
2. Using IG as precedence, no, they would not stack. We had a similar situation with commissars and abilities like standards and Catachan/mordian. The BSDT does not boost the Inquisitor's ld so you either get the Inquisitor's ld or the BSDT, not both. That's why it says instead of their own. That means either ld 8 through data tether's or ld 9 through the Inquisitor
Well you're paying 80pts or so to reroll 1's, have a tougher character, actually be able to contribute a little with fighting, and Regen wounds. If that's your main firebase he'd free up your canticles to be used on melee stuff like Dragoons, and he ensures you have it every turn so you don't need to spend CP on keeping the reroll shooting canticle. I'd say that's usually worth the points.
For a pure or mostly pure force he's not a bad unit. Yeah I wouldn't be in a rush to take more than one but he works pretty well as a warlord. Never got all the hate he gets, mine have served me well. Especially in small games with the phosphoenix he can get a lot of work done. He's not super flashy but he reroll 1's for shooting and repairs my shoot stuff while being tough to kill, that's good enough for me.
I think my math said you needed 300 points or so of BS4+ shooting to make the TPD's RR1 aura worthwhile? 700 for Cawl. (Reduce the point values of BS3+ shooting accordingly.)
Thanks for the feedback, I will include him.
But he does feel pricy, like SlayerFan pointed out. It´s like paying for a Captain and a Tech Marine combined into one unit..
lash92 wrote: Thanks for the feedback, I will include him.
But he does feel pricy, like SlayerFan pointed out. It´s like paying for a Captain and a Tech Marine combined into one unit..
Well I mean that's basically what he is, he's essentially a Terminator.
So like a terminator nice ib theory but priced out of usefullness
If you have enough artillery to make ot work your better off with cawl if you dont stick to an enginseer. The only other reason would be a fringe double battalion but im not keen on that.
Well, that, or you don't run Mars, so Cawl isn't an option. For all the other forgeworlds, the dominus is your only option and if you're going to run Dakkabots or Onagers for fire support, you probably should have 1 hanging around to give you the rerolls.
That, or you have a smaller firebase that doesn't quite justify Cawl but you know you'll still want those rerolls. I'm not saying the guy is perfect, he could definitely stand to be a smidge cheaper, but he does have genuine uses. He's more useful than enginseer are, which are almost always purely a tax unless you can get some repairs off.
Unrelated question, but for people running FW other than Mars, how have the Dakkabots done for you? Was debating on picking some up but not sure what a good number is when you're not running Cawl and that crazy firebase. I was thinking 3-4 maybe, just to give me some weight of fire for hordes and to help deal with that new prepared positions strategem
Personnally I wouldnt run them but I tend to run admech in soup and wouldn't touch the artillery (theres better in other factions unless your going full mars and if your going full mars you don't have there spare points to soup).
The problem for me as well is what forgeworld to take stygies benefits the artillery but is of minimal benefit to your infantry graia and agripinaa and possibly lucious for the DS benefit your infantry but dont benefit your artillery.
MrMoustaffa wrote: Well, that, or you don't run Mars, so Cawl isn't an option. For all the other forgeworlds, the dominus is your only option and if you're going to run Dakkabots or Onagers for fire support, you probably should have 1 hanging around to give you the rerolls.
That, or you have a smaller firebase that doesn't quite justify Cawl but you know you'll still want those rerolls. I'm not saying the guy is perfect, he could definitely stand to be a smidge cheaper, but he does have genuine uses. He's more useful than enginseer are, which are almost always purely a tax unless you can get some repairs off.
Unrelated question, but for people running FW other than Mars, how have the Dakkabots done for you? Was debating on picking some up but not sure what a good number is when you're not running Cawl and that crazy firebase. I was thinking 3-4 maybe, just to give me some weight of fire for hordes and to help deal with that new prepared positions strategem
If Dakkabots weren't BS4+ I'd be willing to try them as other Dogmas, but otherwise they need full rerolling to hit anything.
Yeah, Kastelans need rerolls to be good. But if you were to take them Stygies, you can split them into smaller units and move them around with a Datasmith or two.
So I need help finishing a list for a local tournament in 2 weeks.
The rules regarding list building are:
- 1750 points
- max 2 detachments
- max 2 times the same unit (except troops / transports)
- max 1 LoW
To counter spam there is also a restriction regarding units with the keywords vehicle / monster / battlesuit which can contain more than 1 model per unit:
- base cost of the model is 61 or lower: The unit can contain 1-3 models
- base cost higher than 61: The unit can contain only the minimum amount of models
That means: Dragoons max in units of 3 and Bots max in units of 2.
Most of the opponents play either:
- Elder / Dark Eldar of some varity
- Knight Castellan with Guard Tanks and infantry screen
- Tau Riptide / Yvahra
- Nid hordes
I wanna take my Admech paired up with some Blood Angels, most likely something along the lines of:
Stygies Battalion:
- TPD + TPE
- 3 x 5 Skitarii
- 1 x 3 Dragoons
- 2 x Icarus
- 1 x 2 Bots
BA Batallion:
- Smash Captain
- Mephiston
- 3 x 5 Scouts
That leaves me with around 340 points to play with. Ideas:
- Add in Lemartes + DC with B&C
- Swap 1 Skitarii squad to 6 Plasma Kataphrons and change my forgeworld to Ryza. That would give me some serious ranged punch, but I would lose the -1 from Stygies. Not quite sure about that one.
Anyone some experience with them?
So lets hear your feedback and ideas
Automatically Appended Next Post: Also what was again the verdict on a Mars infiltrator bomb for WoM?
I could use it as an option for MW spamming, since I'm not really able to spam Bots.
Yeah RIP e-priests. They were nerfed out of competitive play. 2-3 deployment types have 24" gaps between deployment edges. It isn't out of the question to end up with a turn 3 charge against an opponent who moves his models away from the priests.
EDIT: my experience with counter charging units has been (1) I lose to shooting armies cause i get out shot, (2) I lose to real assault armies that roll over my elite models with 100 boyz gaunts plaguebearers etc. If everyone had to bring bring balanced armies, then yeah I could see having a sprinkling of melee that isn't an HQ slot. But that force org chart gives immense CP rewards to people who spam HQ + troops.
I actually am wary of elite armies making a comeback. Death Guard, 1K Sons, and Space Wolves especially. The first two armies people are familiar with. The last one is recently becoming a thing. The usual strategy is to load up Wulfen or other assault units into transports, move them up the board, smoke and Eye to get the -2 to hit, then just slamming into your lines the next turn. Nobody is really prepared to fight mid-toughness at all.
In this environment, maybe screening Dragoons might make a comeback. Hm. 2x4 or 2x3 Dragoons?
I'm about to buy the following Adeptus Mechanicus amry from a friend. For roughly 400 dollars I'd get:
Cawl
2 Techpriest dominus
20 skitari rangers
20 skitari vanguard
5 sicaran infiltrators
5 sicaran rust stalkers
2 cybernetica datasmith
4 Kastelan robots(2 of them with magnetized weapons)
3 onager dunecrawer
codex and cards, KR cases
Everything is already painted according to Mars color scheme (he commissioned the whole army somewhere in England can't recall where from though)
I have absolutely no clue how to play them but for what I pay I think it s a nice way to get a second army already available to be used (this should be roughly 2000 points right?) all alone
or with some BA allied (my main army).
Looking forward for your suggestions, keep in mind I don't know this army so any help would be appreciated.
For 400 Dollars that sounds like a very good deal! If you wanna include some BA your AdMech part could consists of a Mars Batallion with a big units of bots, 1-2 Icarus Onagers and some cheap Skitarii.
This will just blow your enemies screen open for your CQC characters and units like Captains or Mephiston.
Wulfey wrote: Flip it for $800 post CA when Admech is FOTM?
Are there any rumors to that effect? I've been buying an Ad-Mech army specifically because I wanted to add a less power-gamey option to my collection... and at a glance, it feels like Bro-Bots are the only vaguely competitive option (paired in larger numbers with Cawl).
I'd love to see the more fun toys in the Codex actually become competitive though!
lash92 wrote: There was a "rumour" on Spikeybits.com that factions like AdMech or Necrons are getting a buff, but take that for what it is.
I fully expect point drops for some units (e.g. Kataphrons), but we'll have to be patient for another month or so.
I’d like to see some of our units get a PRICE drop, nevermind a points drop
Kataphrons are surely due a price drop if anything is due to get one. Ruststalkers too. Both massively over pointed, mainly due to GW over valueing multiple wounds (see: primaris) and under valuing Fly. Even without the ability to ignore terrain and other units when charging, being able to jump in and out of combat with no penalty is about as strong as a generic keyword-based rule gets.
Though it may balance out because robots are almost assuredly going to get a points increase. Might just be the HPB that takes the brunt, be nice if the kastellan fists were cheaper, 35 points seems like a lot for a straight 3dmg powerfist. Surely the fact that they have a pair should mean they get +1 attack or rerolls or something too; as if not having that unvuln in combat was bad enough. I imagine warglaives suffer from the same thing, except they’ve double the wounds >.>
Admech will get points drops for sure. It's possible CA makes drastic changes to Matched Play or introduces a new Competitive Play format. (Geoff Robinson kinda hinted at this.) That would reshuffle the meta completely.
I REALLY hope bots don't see a points increase, unless many things get dramatically large changes. As it stands, penalizing the one objectively excellent unit (even if it is a big too good) and only marginally recosting very mediocre units, does not a competitive army make.
Also, Bro-bots are only "too good" when people use too little terrain, as is so often the case. Hitting on 5+ even with re-rolls and volume of fire, because of needing to reposition isn't too strong at all.
Points reduction alone would be ok but not great. I’d like them to redraft some rules. (Wishful thinking though) We all can agree the codex seemed a bit rushed and ill thought out.
Ideasweasel wrote: Points reduction alone would be ok but not great. I’d like them to redraft some rules. (Wishful thinking though) We all can agree the codex seemed a bit rushed and ill thought out.
Agreed. No point reduction on the planet is going to make Priests (either flavor) not complete trash, in an army utterly devoid of transports... for just one example.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: Well the Drill from FW exists to fix that problem. I feel that alone made other Dogmas into an option.
I'd be more inclined to agree if Deepstrike, etc... rules didn't mean the units inside were unlikely to be relevant until Turn 3 at the soonest... and also if it could transport Electro Priests, etc...
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: Well the Drill from FW exists to fix that problem. I feel that alone made other Dogmas into an option.
I'd be more inclined to agree if Deepstrike, etc... rules didn't mean the units inside were unlikely to be relevant until Turn 3 at the soonest... and also if it could transport Electro Priests, etc...
I'm strictly speaking as someone that used it for Skitarii only. Being able to beta strike that hard has made Graia awesome for me.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: Well the Drill from FW exists to fix that problem. I feel that alone made other Dogmas into an option.
I'd be more inclined to agree if Deepstrike, etc... rules didn't mean the units inside were unlikely to be relevant until Turn 3 at the soonest... and also if it could transport Electro Priests, etc...
It can transport Electro-Priests, it can also be Stygies VIII if you prefer a scout move to the deepstrike. I'm not saying it's great as I haven't even had a chance to use mine yet, I'm just letting you know.
I just wish our only transports werent $117 apiece as the only "legal" way to get them. Not to mention they're FW which means some people can't even run them period. Admehh desperately needs that thing in plastic. It'd be a great seller and really help us out.
Otherwise you're stuck buying crappy knockoff models, scratch building, or buying "used" FW off of eBay.
I'm also curious if GW planned to get us a flyer. When Forgebane dropped I don't know if anyone else noticed but there was a named lander type ship that got mentioned in the Fluff booklet several times for Admech. Usually something like that doesn't get a name unless a model is coming down the line. Maybe it's something planned from FW, since it could carry two Armigers and infantry, but at least it's a faint glimmer of hope.
Ideasweasel wrote: Points reduction alone would be ok but not great. I’d like them to redraft some rules. (Wishful thinking though) We all can agree the codex seemed a bit rushed and ill thought out.
Agreed. No point reduction on the planet is going to make Priests (either flavor) not complete trash, in an army utterly devoid of transports... for just one example.
I do think thats a bit extreme I am running two 5 man agripinaa corpuscarii squads at a GT in a horde in 2 weekends and while they are not an auto win unit and are not an include in every list they certainly can shoot infantry and even noticably wound a chaos knight (thanks to the eye of xi relic). Their effective range includeing movement being 21.5. You don't have to DS them like fulgurites. Sure they could be 1-2pt cheaper but any more and they would be too good.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: I'm strictly speaking as someone that used it for Skitarii only. Being able to beta strike that hard has made Graia awesome for me.
How are they anyway? I always feared that they would be too fragile and not mobile enough for competitive play.
I don't know if that would be legal in a tournament setting but I saw a really nice pictures on Facebook today, which cut help us to cut the costs for drills.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: I'm strictly speaking as someone that used it for Skitarii only. Being able to beta strike that hard has made Graia awesome for me.
How are they anyway? I always feared that they would be too fragile and not mobile enough for competitive play.
It's all about that Beta strike. Typically this is an army that has no issues with chaff killing. Infiltrators and Rangers have enough shots to kill things like that, and while I don't want to ally I've found allied Mortars help a lot too. I've found I deep strike T2 a lot anyway, so I don't really feel my list was nerfed so to speak. I can post my example army later that uses the Skitarii method a lot.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
lash92 wrote: I don't know if that would be legal in a tournament setting but I saw a really nice pictures on Facebook today, which cut help us to cut the costs for drills.
lash92 wrote: I don't know if that would be legal in a tournament setting but I saw a really nice pictures on Facebook today, which cut help us to cut the costs for drills.
Spoiler:
LOL. Maybe I should do this... can someone make a YMDC and see what people think about tournament legality?
lash92 wrote: I don't know if that would be legal in a tournament setting but I saw a really nice pictures on Facebook today, which cut help us to cut the costs for drills.
Spoiler:
LOL. Maybe I should do this... can someone make a YMDC and see what people think about tournament legality?
No one can give you the answer because it is "TO discretion".
lash92 wrote: If the Drill doesn't get a point increase with CA I really might try to build a Skitarii heavy list.
Anyone tried something this way?
The drill is really good against knights if it can get off the charge, but a lack of invul save makes them very, very squishy to ranged fire. Kind of a one hit wonder, but a nice option if you fight that kind of meta.
The chance of pulling off a Deep Strike charge suck though. They were only good because Infiltration let them move and then one-inch punch. =\
You guys should all complain to FAQ about infiltration. Maybe they will drop the rule change; it's incredible that they essentially replaced an entire stratagem with a strictly worse version.
Ever thought maybe they did it because that stratagem was incredibly overpowered, especially for 1 command point and especially because you can do it more than once?
Suzuteo wrote: The chance of pulling off a Deep Strike charge suck though. They were only good because Infiltration let them move and then one-inch punch. =\
You guys should all complain to FAQ about infiltration. Maybe they will drop the rule change; it's incredible that they essentially replaced an entire stratagem with a strictly worse version.
On the flip side no one can do that to us either, which means non stygies FW's have a snowball's chance in hell now. That's easy for me to say since I never ran stygies of course but on the other hand at least when I lose these days I get to actually move out of my deployment zone before I die. I never got that chance against the infiltrate armies if I lost first turn, especially since even if you siezed they just hid them out of the way, so there were no downsides to the plan. If they had to place infiltration units before knowing who was going first that would be one thing, but as it sat it was almost no risk, all reward. It really did need some sort of Nerf. I don't think they needed to be so heavy handed though, like I mentioned making it more of a gamble where you don't know who's going first until after they were placed would've at least put some risk into it.
Back before the infiltrate Nerf I pretty much felt like I had to run some guard to screen at all times if I wanted a chance. Nowadays they still don't hurt to bring but I don't feel like I'm going to auto lose turn 1 if I leave them behind. I feel like that's a net gain for admech in the long run.
Suzuteo wrote: The chance of pulling off a Deep Strike charge suck though. They were only good because Infiltration let them move and then one-inch punch. =\
You guys should all complain to FAQ about infiltration. Maybe they will drop the rule change; it's incredible that they essentially replaced an entire stratagem with a strictly worse version.
True, that's why I'm really interested in Slayers Graia list.
Im not sure about graia its got its upsides with infantry hordes but a lot of units electro priests/vehicles/characters/multiwound models get nothing or very little out of it.the strategem is ace but situational to your opponents build. It feels like a good secondary detatchment to another primary army/forgeworld rather than the core itself.
ultimentra wrote: Ever thought maybe they did it because that stratagem was incredibly overpowered, especially for 1 command point and especially because you can do it more than once?
lash92 wrote: I think Electro Priests benefit from it, because it's not a classic FnP.
Its a 6+ fnp on death rather than the normal 5+fnp where you have to save each W. Now you are not allowed to do both you have to choose which fnp to apply.
Vs D1 a 5+ is always better
vs D2 you survive 11% with a 5+ and 16% 6+ fairly close but graia will save one priest more for every 20 2 dam wounds not a meaningfull difference
Vs d3 you survive 4% with a 5+ vs 16% with the 6+ finaly a noticible difference
(Now if only get my opponent to fire all his 3+ Damage shots at my priests that would be awesome.)
lash92 wrote: No its not a FnP. A FnP is against the damage you take (like you said) while the Graia Dogma against the wound you lose.
Its still an FNP
ABILITIES WHICH IGNORE WOUNDS
Some units have abilities that allow them to ignore damage suffered, and it is possible for some units to gain more than
one such ability. These abilities have stacked in an unintended way, and as a result we have changed their interaction
such that if a model has more than one such ability you will now only be able to use one of them against each lost
wound
Roll a d6 whenever a model with this dogma is slain or flees. On a 6, that model refuses to yield and either the wound that slew it is ignored or does not flee.
Does it ignore a wound yes therefore it clearly fits into the above fnp category even if the trigger is different
And under a very strict RAW you dont even get a choice because the priest FNP triggers on the W not the death and technically its mandatory to FNP so by the time graia triggers its no longer useable.
I am with Slayer-Fan123. Graia models do not trigger on wounds. They trigger on death and you roll one dice per attack (because all damage is applied at once).
So if a model deals 5 damage to a Skitarii, and he refuses to yield, you roll one dice and you ignore the other 4 damage.
Suzuteo wrote: The chance of pulling off a Deep Strike charge suck though. They were only good because Infiltration let them move and then one-inch punch. =\
You guys should all complain to FAQ about infiltration. Maybe they will drop the rule change; it's incredible that they essentially replaced an entire stratagem with a strictly worse version.
True, that's why I'm really interested in Slayers Graia list.
Sorry I started a new job this week! I'll make time to post the list tomorrow or Wednesday, but rest assured you'll get it!
I would love it to be otherwise but I'm not convinced Graia stacks with Electro-Priests. The restriction limiting models to one FNP, Graia and the Electro-Priests datasheet all talk about ignoring wounds. I don't think it matters when each roll is triggered because they are both ignoring wounds which is restricted by the FAQ/Errata.
U02dah4 wrote: This should be a simple question does the rule ignore w if yes =fnp
However its clearly become a bit of a rules discussion so im opening it in the ymdc rather than having it clutter the tactica thread.
Good call. Someone on the thread you made over there pointed out the rewording of the FW trait that happened in an FAQ I had forgotten about, so I'll be changing my stance on it.
Regardless, I'm very interested in seeing this Graia list from Slayer-Fan.
lash92 wrote: If the Drill doesn't get a point increase with CA I really might try to build a Skitarii heavy list.
Anyone tried something this way?
The drill is really good against knights if it can get off the charge, but a lack of invul save makes them very, very squishy to ranged fire. Kind of a one hit wonder, but a nice option if you fight that kind of meta.
With a decent board setup with good terrain blocking and a favourable deployment I would even consider the Drill using the Stygies pre-game 9" move. Then follow up with a 8" move, average advance roll of 3 or 4, that could get you 21" from your deployment zone turn 1. As long as you ended somewhere where you could avoid facing the full force of your opponents guns, you could be in a good position for turn 2.
lash92 wrote: So which knights do you find guys find worthwhile allying to your AdMech (including FW)?
A Castellan will want to hang-back and shoot anyway, so its the obvious choice. It a few cases now, having a random nobody be Warlord with the "heals an extra wound on Imperial vehicles" trait, has been a nice little "value added" extra to keeping him in a higher bracket, or alive, a hair longer.
I've had good luck with House Raven backing up my Metallica. The Castellan is obvious, but ive got a pair of Warglaives backing it up and they've been surprisingly good. I'm not entirely sure why, they don't kill much, but I find they usually do a good job harassing flanks, stealing objectives, tying up units, and just being really annoying for the opponent to deal with. They're one of the units that are just hard enough to kill an opponent usually has to devote something decent to killing them, which they'd rather have shooting at the Castellan.
Other than that, I've found myself leaning toward knights that have really high firepower anti vehicle/monster weapons. Maybe it's just because I'm limited to skitarii, but I've found my admech can murder everything but heavy vehicles at range with little issue between a horde of vanguard and Icarus Onagers. The knights fill in the gap and the admech cover their weaknesses so it works pretty well. This is my 2000pt list I'm building toward in my local league to give you a rough idea of what I'm doing. It's not going to go undefeated at a major event but it does quite well in local pickup games and looks cool which is good enough for me.
Spoiler:
Metallica Batallion
Dominus: Phosphoenix, volkite blaster, WLT shuffles between chorister technis, ordered efficiency, and sometimes the CP Regen if my opponent plans to burn a lot of strategems
Enginseer
X7 rangers, data tethers
X9 vanguard, data tether
X9 vanguard, data tether
X9 vanguard, data tether
X9 vanguard, data tether
X4 sydonian Dragoons
Icarus Onager
Icarus Onager
Raven super heavy detachment
Armigers Warglaive w/stubber
Armiger Warglaive w/stubber (character)
Castellan with the classic cawls wrath/ion bullwark loadout
I'm heavily debating dropping 2 vanguard models and putting phosphor blasters on the Dragoons. Yeah the Dragoons probably aren't shooting every turn but 4 heavy bolter shots a turn that ignore cover may be the better choice than two random rad carbine guys. Probably does more good toward the end of a game but I'm not really sure if Dragoons tend to live that long, not used them much yet. Like I said this isn't meant to be a tournament quality list, if I wanted to really curbstomp a local event the list would need lots of changes.
Yep, I found I just wanted more anti horde firepower with this setup. I ran vanguard squads with x2 plasma quite a bit in smaller games and they hit like a truck with Metallica (no one expects you to advance and reroll 1's with the whole army for some reason) but in larger games I'd rather put the pts in plasma towards the knights, Dragoons, etc. At about a 1000pts or less though, having a solid brick of plasma toting vanguard works surprisingly well as long as you have an Icarus Onager to deal with flyers and something that can deal with hard targets like neutron Onagers, Dragoons, or Warglaives.
Honestly I don't know if gw can Nerf the Castellan enough to make it useless with the Raven trait. That thing is just monstrous. I do worry they'll Nerf it to the point where Raven is the only house that can make it worthwhile, but they'd need to make it 700pts and order of companions cost something stupid like 4 cp to really make me second guess it.
The Raven Castellan really is the biggest argument for why certain traits should have different points costs for some units. The difference between a Raven Castellan and any other house is nuts. If they wanted to balance it fairly, I'd make it where it costs one price for every other house, and then have it's cost go up for specifically Raven. It's that, or you just keep cranking up the costs of a couple of the key strats it needs to the point where you can only realistically get off one companions volley a game.
I cannot upvote this enough. This is exactly my concern with how GW tends to nerf things in a reactionary manner.
I play Tanaris and am looking forward to finally running a Castalan soon. By the time I do and get one on the table top it may well be nerfed into the ground.
Let’s hope they balance it in a sensible way. A limit on the number of times OOC can be used could be a good shout. Limit it to once, maybe twice Maybe a price hike of 50 max. Something like that
I think AdMech best utilizes lone Knights to kill the things that Kastelan Robots struggle against. This usually means other Knights, minus to hit elites, and tanks. So...
Styrix is a hidden gem for AdMech in my opinion. Knight vs. Knight matchups devolve into who has more Knights on the board and who can kill the other's Knights first. You can run Styrix as a lone Knight without any problem, since he has built-in defensive relics and WLT, so you can invest in Titan-killing power, and a mostly redundant Tradition. The Volkite deals comparable damage to the Volcano Cannon, but the Styrix much stronger at CC and anti-elite shooting.
lash92 wrote:The Stryx looks interesting, but I'll have to do the math on it. I suppose you give him Krast relic + WLT?
Also claw or sword?
Ideasweasel wrote:I believe your best taking the claw.
Right. Lone Styrix with Krast WLT, Krast Relic, and Claw. No need for the Tradition; you are paying a lot for Armigers to get the CP and to change RR1s to RRFs; though if you plan to take them anyway, sure, why not.
Also, don't forget the Krast stratagem. 2x melee hits on hit rolls of 6; 3x for Chaos units.
Yup haven't forgot about that one. Also synergieses quite good with the reroll 1's.
For those of you running drills + Sktarii: Could you give me a quick roundup about how you play them? Do you deploy the Drill T1 and hop out of it or do you deepstrike it T2?
Also Forgeworld choices for that one?
15 Dragoons seems a little bit excessive tbh ^^ I don't know on what kind of boards you are playing, but I wouldn't even have the space to move usefully.
I should also say, that while it may seem obvious, I am running it as stygies.
I had a game the other day against castellan/double crusader knight list and I just lined up at -2 to hit and won on objectives so I think it would also be a good board control list.
Not to mention if you saw any enemy fliers you would be boned, 3 jump captains are not enough to be reliable AA. If you can't catch the plane or they bite it early then you're just stuck with the enemy fliers being practically untouchable.
I'd say the second list is probably better, but yeah 15 Dragoons seems excessive. If you really want to run 15 you'll need a lot of fire support to deal with units in buildings, fliers, and anything you're not fast enough to chase down (eldar). Some Icarus Onagers wouldn't hurt for example, or something that can dig infantry out of cover, especially if you plan on ITC.
Suzuteo wrote: I think the right play now is to beta strike with Drills.
How so? While the Drills are decent units in their own right, using their subterranean assault means that their cargo won't be impacting the game until turn 3. I had imagined deploying them turn 1, then moving up the board and disembarking plasma Vanguard/Hoplites/Fulgerites on turn 2. This also adds to the target saturation of Dragoons, Dunecrawlers and Kastelan robots.
You can disembark after the deepstrike, so they would could come in turn 2. But I'm kind of worried that this is a littie bit too late, given how brutal the game is atm.
lash92 wrote: You can disembark after the deepstrike, so they would could come in turn 2. But I'm kind of worried that this is a littie bit too late, given how brutal the game is atm.
I thought that subterranean assault happens at the end of the movement phase, at which time it's too late to choose the embarked unit to move and disembark? I'm not with my books right now though.
lash92 wrote: You can disembark after the deepstrike, so they would could come in turn 2. But I'm kind of worried that this is a littie bit too late, given how brutal the game is atm.
I thought that subterranean assault happens at the end of the movement phase, at which time it's too late to choose the embarked unit to move and disembark? I'm not with my books right now though.
"Subterranean Assault
During deployment, you can set up this model, along with any units embarked within it, underground instead of placing it on the battlefield. At the end of any of your Movement phases, this model can perform a subterranean assault – set it up anywhere on the battlefield that is more than 9" away from any enemy models. Any units embarked inside can then immediately disembark, but they must be set up more than 9" from any enemy models. Any models that cannot be set up because there is not enough room are slain."
TLDR: You can disembark immediately, but not closer than 9"
I happily stand corrected, thanks very much. Not sure how that escaped my attention. So that's great for Vanguard, not terrible for Hoplites but not great for Fulgerites. I need to put some thought into what sort of a list supports a couple of Drills nicely as well - Dragoons for sure, and not a Cawl gunline, but other than that I'm uncertain.
lash92 wrote: They have got 18" guns, which is more then enough most of the time.
Depends on what is happening. If the enemy is holding an objective you want to deploy closer and attempt to charge to grab it.
Paradoxically, if your enemy specializes in melee, you should also deploy closer and charge them. Not only because you might as well attack first if they are going to charge you the next turn anyway. But because it will be much, much worse if they get to choose how to pile in and consolidate. If you charge them and go base to base, they can no longer do any combat sliding. (Because you can only pile in and consolidate closer to the closest enemy model. If you are at 0" away, they literally cannot be closer and thus cannot make those CC moves.)
That being said, 9" charges are tough to pull off. 27.78% chance; 52.3% chance with a command reroll.
why the Gallant for Taranis? wouldnt be the Krast stratagem better?
Is it worth for the Crusader the Raven gem with the gatling and RFC? On the Castellan of course dunno if its better for a single crusader with House Vulker
Suzuteo wrote: Paradoxically, if your enemy specializes in melee, you should also deploy closer and charge them. Not only because you might as well attack first if they are going to charge you the next turn anyway. But because it will be much, much worse if they get to choose how to pile in and consolidate. If you charge them and go base to base, they can no longer do any combat sliding. (Because you can only pile in and consolidate closer to the closest enemy model. If you are at 0" away, they literally cannot be closer and thus cannot make those CC moves.)
That being said, 9" charges are tough to pull off. 27.78% chance; 52.3% chance with a command reroll.
OTOH that is giving extra round of attacks to the enemy which could also mean death of your unit so lose 2 for price of 1.
Also I think your math on charge is off. Command reroll allows rerolling single dice. Not both. If you roll 6 and 1 you can roll the 1. If you roll 1 and 1 you are screwed.
Exalted Court: Exalted Court: 1 Extra Warlord Trait (-1CP)
Heirlooms of the Household: Heirlooms of the Household: 1 Extra Heirloom (-1CP)
Household Choice: House Krast, Questor Mechanicus
+ Lord of War +
Knight Gallant [20 PL, 367pts]: Character (Exalted Court), Character (Heirloom of the House), Heirloom: The Paragon Gauntlet, Meltagun, Reaper chainsword, Thunderstrike gauntlet, Warlord Trait: Ion Bulwark
Exalted Court: Exalted Court: 1 Extra Warlord Trait (-1CP)
Heirlooms of the Household: Heirlooms of the Household: 1 Extra Heirloom (-1CP)
Household Choice: House Krast, Questor Mechanicus
+ Lord of War +
Knight Gallant [20 PL, 367pts]: Character (Exalted Court), Character (Heirloom of the House), Heirloom: The Paragon Gauntlet, Meltagun, Reaper chainsword, Thunderstrike gauntlet, Warlord Trait: Ion Bulwark
may you guys got tipps for both lists or thougts what list run better? In list 1 i decided to go full Mars beacuse the last games i run a Stygies Battalion with 3 Dragoons but mhhh meh maybe i was playing worng but the dragoons died to early and did nothing....
In list 2 i got 67 point free, may you guys know how to fill?
tneva82 wrote: OTOH that is giving extra round of attacks to the enemy which could also mean death of your unit so lose 2 for price of 1.
Also I think your math on charge is off. Command reroll allows rerolling single dice. Not both. If you roll 6 and 1 you can roll the 1. If you roll 1 and 1 you are screwed.
Assuming the enemy is going to kill your unit anyway, there are two scenarios:
1a) You move and charge them. You attack first. They attack you with reduced numbers (maybe). Your troops die. They move next turn into the space your unit previously occupied.
1b) You move and charge them. You attack first. They attack you with reduced numbers (maybe). Your troops survive. They fight the next turn to finish them off.
2) You do nothing. They move and charge. They attack first. Your troops die.
Obviously, if you're backed up against your Robots, don't do #1. But in almost all other circumstances, it is best for your screening units to charge the enemy instead of waiting for them to come to you.
Please do the calculation yourself and tell me what the chance is then.
EDIT: Okay, sorry, that was a bit passive-aggressive. My educational background is in applied mathematics, especially stochastic math and computing, and I have been having a bad day.
There are 36 possible 2D6 rolls.
10/36 of these rolls are 9+
Of the remaining 26 failures:
1/36 have higher roll of 1, 0/6 chance to reroll 8+
3/36 have higher roll of 2, 0/6 chance to reroll 7+
5/36 have higher roll of 3, 1/6 chance to reroll 6+
7/36 have higher roll of 4, 2/6 chance to reroll 5+
6/36 have higher roll of 5, 3/6 chance to reroll 4+
4/36 have higher roll of 6, 4/6 chance to reroll 3+
Also, just saying, IMO, you never reroll a 3 or 4 when you want to make 9. AdMech is nice because you don't need to memorize that many odds for your Psychic table.
Suzuteo, you're missing the scenario where you charge your opponent, they mulch your unit, and get anywhere from 3-9" free movement out of it (some units/armies get 6" consolidate abilities)
There are absolutely moments where you do NOT want to charge. I lost a game doing just that against an opponent Monday. Had a mild case of brain malfunction and ended up giving a unit of space wolf bikers the movement they needed to reach my knight easier and killed one of my main screening units for it at the same time.
I don't care if the screening unit lives or dies in and of itself. I care about the unit living long enough to screen something more important, which means usually the screen dies instead. Charging your opponent gives him a free phase to attack you that he normally would not have. By standing your ground you instead force him to shoot you and charge you braving your overwatch.
MrMoustaffa wrote: Suzuteo, you're missing the scenario where you charge your opponent, they mulch your unit, and get anywhere from 3-9" free movement out of it (some units/armies get 6" consolidate abilities)
There are absolutely moments where you do NOT want to charge. I lost a game doing just that against an opponent Monday. Had a mild case of brain malfunction and ended up giving a unit of space wolf bikers the movement they needed to reach my knight easier and killed one of my main screening units for it at the same time.
I don't care if the screening unit lives or dies in and of itself. I care about the unit living long enough to screen something more important, which means usually the screen dies instead. Charging your opponent gives him a free phase to attack you that he normally would not have. By standing your ground you instead force him to shoot you and charge you braving your overwatch.
No, I haven't. They would have gotten that free move anyway. At least that free move would not be toward your Kastelans if you position the charge correctly. Furthermore, consider that you are denying them charge bonuses, the ability to pin a screening unit at 3 "corners" to prevent you from falling back, and the ability to "slide" around with pile in and consolidate. If you don't control the circumstances of the fight, there are so many more options available to your opponent.
Does it really need to be said that you shouldn't charge if it's clearly a bad idea? My point is that being aggressive with your screen is very often more beneficial than being passive because our Kastelans cannot move.
lash92 wrote: Sure, but why would you want to deploy your Skitarii closer?
We are not talking about Electro-Priests or other CQC units here...
Because Hoplites have 12” range on their guns, or to drop four plasmas exactly where you want them while shielding them turn 1.
but they move 6 and have assault weapons so you can advance and fire for 21.5" AVG
That doesn’t shield them first turn, however. Sometimes it’s more useful to have something off the board and ready to jump out and blast on request. 21.5” isn’t always enough either, especially when their intended target is behind LoS-blocking cover.
Well if you get T1 and go first you need atleast 24" to hit your target. My point isnt that they are perfect just that functionally their range is lot better than 12"
Moving this out of Army Lists and back into this thread.
Been doing a lot of thinking, and I keep hitting on lists that basically combine a Cawlstar, a Guard screen, and a modest anti-tank component. This is because we're in a really scary high-slow situation. You have ridiculously tough big units like Castellans and tellyportin' Nauts, but also swarms of Nids and Boyz.
First idea is to cut one Kastelan to introduce Straken, Mini Priest, and a fourth infantry squad. It probably handles swarms well, but it doesn't have the ability to reach out and threaten your opponent.
Spoiler:
Blood Angels Battalion Detachment - 439
HQ - 274 1x Captain w/ Jump Pack - Thunder Hammer, Stormshield, Relic: Angel's Wing, Death Visions of Sanguinius
1x Mephiston - Powers: Quickening, Shield of Sanguinius, Wings of Sanguinius
Heavy Support - 810 5x Kastelan Robot - 15x Heavy Phosphor Blaster
1x Onager Dunecrawler - Icarus Array, Broad-Spectrum Data Tether
1x Onager Dunecrawler - Icarus Array, Broad-Spectrum Data Tether
Fast Attack - 204 3x Sydonian Dragoon - Taser Lance
Total: 1997 points 14 CP (-2)
Second idea goes with a BA deathball.You have the Smash Captain, the DC, both of which are massively improved in terms of both wound output and CP efficiency by the Sanguinary Priest and Lemartes. This means you don't have to rely too much on the Kastelans to kill Castellans; you can actually focus on removing their ability to score by gunning down their Helverins, Gallants, etc. I also like the flexibility with how it has multiple ways to threaten a Castellan while still having an anti-swarm option.
Would I be correct in my reading of the Stygies infiltration strat(under FAQ2. You pay the CP to deploy. So you cant stick a blob of dragoons down, roll poorly and not get first turn, and then decide you don't want to move the 9" now. And in fact you dont want to waste the CP and do the move. its already done yeah?
Is that correct? If so it would be so much better if it allowed for you to assess if you want to deploy forward or not.
You deploy them in your DZ like a normal unit, but if you want the option for the infiltration you have to spend a CP when you set the unit up.
After this the player who is going first is determined and now you can (=! must) make use of a move up to 9".
Use this Stratagem when you set up a Stygies VIII unit from your army during deployment. At the start of the first battle round but before the first turn begins, you can move that unit up to 9". It cannot end this move within 9" of any enemy models. If both players have units that can move before the first turn begins, the player who is taking the first turn moves their units first.
You pay when you deploy the unit. If you decide you don't want to move, you just don't move. No refunds.
Thankyou. It’s just so much worse than before, I hoped I was reading it wrong. If only you could do it ‘after setup’ once you have assessed options to see if it’s worth it
I dont want to be a pessimist, and who knows how big points drops might change things....but (and there is always a but haha)
The core rules seem to be a bigger problem than the actual points. I really hope in addition to a drop in points there are shiny new toys to purchase next year. That is far more likely to happen imo than the much needed rewrite of the rules.
No concrete information on AdMech unfortunaly, but I think Weasel is right, that the problem we face lie more in the core rules. But sure some point drops wont hurt us ;-)
Lets theorycraft and assume that Kataphrons get a points drop:
Would you consider including them? Which variant? And which Forgeworld do you think works best for them?
They need different weapons for me to consider them, or the current ones but be BS3. BS4 works on robots because they have 5 times as many shots as anything, they dont work on something that only has a few shots. So either more shots and stay at BS4 or a move to BS3 or they benefit from the mind lock buff that regular old servitors get. That would be much better, give them BS3 by having a tech-priest near them.
I actually think a lot of the changes can have cumulative improvements on AdMech. Enough to maybe see pure AdMech, actually.
Cheaper Skitarii and Kataphrons mean cheaper AdMech Battalions. Means cheaper heavy weapon choices.
Actually having Kataphrons mean Kastelans become 3+ through Elimination Volley.
Changing -1 to hit past 12" to cover saves buffs Kastelans (as well as anything with a phosphor weapon) because they ignore cover. It also improves Dragoons and Skitarii because they become relatively tougher choices.
I can see a Mars Battalion with 3x3 Destroyers and 6x Kastelans combined with a Lucius Battalion with tricked out Skitarii MSUs to beta strike. It will look like what we saw in the Index days with Scions. Except our Scions will have 2+ saves in the open and ignore AP-1 (bet you all forgot that that was the Lucius dogma, eh?).
More deep changes I would like to see include changing Rage of the Machines to vehicle units instead of vehicles; Canticle reform, including changing Benediction to RR1 for wounds and changing Electromancer to trigger after a successful charge; and giving us rules for 30k models.
But I will settle for cheaper Skitarii and Kataphrons, along with the cover save change.
How will Lucius Skitarii have a +2 in the open? The cover save for being over 12" away would only apply to Stygies models.
Some problems I could see with your idea (I generally like I though):
- MSU Skitarii means higher cost for deepstriking
- 2 x Batallion means 2-3 useless HQs
I really hope for some kind of Skitarii HQ some day. The HQ tax is just such an incentive not to play solo AdMech..
I can't see Skitarii getting any cheaper (my guess would be that cheap infantry will get more expensive in CA) but Kataphrons definitely need it, the Tech-Priest Dominus could do with a modest decrease and Sicarians would be another obvious one.
lash92 wrote: How will Lucius Skitarii have a +2 in the open? The cover save for being over 12" away would only apply to Stygies models.
Some problems I could see with your idea (I generally like I though):
- MSU Skitarii means higher cost for deepstriking
- 2 x Batallion means 2-3 useless HQs
I really hope for some kind of Skitarii HQ some day. The HQ tax is just such an incentive not to play solo AdMech..
Good point. 3+ and ignore AP-1 then. 2+ if you do Stygies.
Well, you would be taking Cawl+Enginseer for Mars and Dominus+Enginseer for Lucius. The Dominus can get the teleporting relic to join in the beta strike. I actually don't think Dominus is too overcosted if you are going to use him in close combat; it's that if he's just an aura caddy, he definitely needs a points reduction. Indeed, I remember back in the days of the AdMech codex's impending release, and I was hoping that we would be able to take more toys, just like the 7E days. If AdMech could do 1/2/3/4 CP for up to 4 relics, that would be lots of fun.
EDIT: Also, something I was thinking about: If we do decide to do Lucius Skitarii, we should look into Custodes allies. Think about it. Turn two, drop 5x5 Vanguard along with one 10x unit with 3x Plasma Calivers. Deep strike a Vexilus Praetor Terminator and maybe a Custodes squad in front of them (Vexilla Teleport Homer lets you drop them within 3"). Skitarii have 3+/5++, ignore AP-1; turn on CPI and hose them with exploding 4s and OC plasma. The front Custodes absorb overwatch, and you have 5 tries to make a 9" charge with the Vanguard to provide their -1T aura, which improves Guardian Spears against T4, T6, and T7 enemies. I think that costs 9 CP altogether though. Haha.
If I have 18 CP, I am going to be burning through it on turns one and two. I doubt we can spend it all in time otherwise.
xlDuke wrote: I can't see Skitarii getting any cheaper (my guess would be that cheap infantry will get more expensive in CA) but Kataphrons definitely need it, the Tech-Priest Dominus could do with a modest decrease and Sicarians would be another obvious one.
I think Guardsmen should cost 5 and Skitarii 6 (both types). They really are awful due to their lack of synergy and tactical flexibility. I mean, Guard have the advantages of bodies, mobility, both HWTs and special weapons, access to transports, auras from various officers and named characters...
Sicarians should just be given their attacks back. Lol.
I don't think so. Again, Guard have way more synergy than Skitarii. Catachan with Harker, Mini Priest, and Straken is disgustingly versatile in both shooting and melee. Skitarii also have garbage mobility, weapon range, and our only transport is pretty slow as well.
Suzuteo wrote: Skitarii have 3+/5++... turn on CPI and hose them with exploding 4s and OC plasma.
Maybe I’m having a brainfart but don’t Skitarii have 6++, and cover doesn’t increase invulnerable saves? Also they don’t have anything that can explode on 4s because both Vanguard’s radium carbines and Rangers’ Galvanic Rifles trigger their respective +1dmg and -1 AP effects on the wound roll while CDI only affects the hit roll, iirc.
So nah I probably wouldn’t spend a CP to move 5 dudes into range even with two plasmas apiece. I certainly wouldn’t spend 5 CP doing so for 5 such squads. Turn 1 I’d rather spend 5 CP switching Kastelans to Shooty Mode, Boosting them and the Kataphrons’ to-hit roll, and dumping Wrath of Mars on them - the remaining CP would be for exploding chicken tasers, WoM again on Kastelans and/or on Infiltrators if they get a points drop, and whatever Custodes you wanted squeeze in - they’re CP hungry too.
But we’d need to see significant points drops to fit in a Custodes Vanguard as well as a half-decent low-waste Ad Mech Brigade, I would think. And if you go Patrol then you’re lower on points than you’d said.
Ah, wasn’t thinking about the defender banner. Given that math Stygies is still stronger and obvs cheaper on CP, but obviously not protected against enemy shooting turn 1 and you’d have to footslog them into position. Could go with either.
But still, radium carbines procs aren’t affected by +1 or +2 to hit from CPI, because their proc occurs on the wound roll and CPI only affects the hit roll - or am I misremembering? It was wound rolls for procs in the codex anyway, dunno if t was errata’d.
Pomguo wrote: Ah, wasn’t thinking about the defender banner. Given that math Stygies is still stronger and obvs cheaper on CP, but obviously not protected against enemy shooting turn 1 and you’d have to footslog them into position. Could go with either.
But still, radium carbines procs aren’t affected by +1 or +2 to hit from CPI, because their proc occurs on the wound roll and CPI only affects the hit roll - or am I misremembering? It was wound rolls for procs in the codex anyway, dunno if t was errata’d.
Right. If you need a wall, then Stygies or Graia with Custodes might be idea. If you want to attack with special weapons, Lucius.
No, I was the one misremembering. It was only Dragoons that proc on hit. (I haven't used Skitarii in awhile, I guess.)
lash92 wrote: So with Stygies we would basically have Terminator saves on our Skitarii lol.
I know, right? This could be fun. They just need to be cheaper.
Dont overlook agripinaa for a wall vanguard corpuscarii and infiltrators hugely benefit from the 5+ overwatch and the stygies bonus is questionable on your frontline units because many opponents will ignore it by being to close assuming they dont also get rid of the range requirement its not all about SV
U02dah4 wrote: Dont overlook agripinaa for a wall vanguard corpuscarii and infiltrators hugely benefit from the 5+ overwatch and the stygies bonus is questionable on your frontline units because many opponents will ignore it by being to close assuming they dont also get rid of the range requirement its not all about SV
Not sure if the cover save will have a 12" rule. But if you bring along a Custodes unit to counter charge; Vanguard -1T aura plus a S6 or S7 weapon is nuts. Or yeah, Corpuscarii.
There's so much that needs to change to have a viable mono-faction codex. I'll copy some of the text I've written in the 50+ pages long CA thread to express my opinion.
Spoiler:
Aaranis wrote: As for wishlisting I'd like a good sweep of the Adeptus Mechanicus codex by the writing team so that they can read everything that is wrong with this codex. The more I read it the more I say "Why would you write that for this rule ?". There are maximum 5 relics out of 15 who are relatively useful, the others are just a waste of relic slot. 6 Warlords traits out of 13 that are good enough for casual play. Competitively that's 2 good relics and 3 traits. For some reason GW expect us to go vehicle-hunting in CC with our Warlords given that there are quite a handful of stuff to "help" him do that, and it shows they have no idea how the army plays.
There's a few useless stratagems but the worst are some of the Forge-World specific ones, namely Metalica and Ryza. Ryza's one is powerful but it's limited to two units, and only one is truly good to use on. The problem is that we have a Ryza trait (reroll 1s to Wound in CC) that has nothing to do with its stratagem.
Now concerning points there's quite a handful but I'd like them to change the most iconic unit in priority.
The Kastelan Robot. It's easily the number one in our top 3 units because of it's devastating mid-range firepower with the triple Heavy Phosphor loadout. A Robot (65 pts) costs 110 pts this way. Now the base loadout are the Fists (35 pts) and a 12" Heavy Flamer (21) which brings it to 121 pts. We're paying more for a loadout that is harder to use while sacrificing our best weapons and we shouldn't be punished for wanting to play with the Fists.
My solution would be to either give the Kastelan his invul. in CC as well when equipped with Fists (limited to shooting actually) to add some survivability to fill his role of CC smasher and we can keep the costs as it is, or if no changes to the save are made, lower the Fists to 20 pts. That would make a punchy Kastelan 65 + 20 + 21 = 101 pts for a Vehicle that moves 8", has not invul. in CC and hits on a 4+ with only the 1s rerollable with a Canticle. We could even lower the cost of the flamer to 15 because he'll get to fire it once or twice anyway before switching to Punching Protocols to fight twice in CC and by doing so preventing him from shooting. Hardly game-breaking seeing as the only ways to make him go faster would be with Lucius to DS them with a stratagem or Stygies' Infiltration that is on its way to a nerf (glad it's a beta rule so that I can still use it at my LGS.
Concerning the replacement for the Stygies VIII trait, do you guys have a source for this ? You're all talking about +1 to save after 12" but that seems highly unlikely. You really want 1+ Dark Reapers in cover ? We're probably getting a "counts as cover after 12" " and that's it. For the stratagem it's currently a BETA RULE and so can be complained about to death if we want changes. From my point of view it should be given no change, or just say "limited to 3 units" and done. It's already a dangerous stratagem to use, as it requires to have 1st turn and not having it seized after placement.
About Kataphrons, the Destroyers need to be cheapened, 65 pts per model is huge and it's the cheapest option (plasma + phosphor). If given BS3+/WS4+ that would justify the cost a bit more, and I'd reduce their base cost to 25 pts, flamers to 8, grav to 27. That's make all loadouts at 60 pts/model while having BS3+/WS4+.
For the Breachers they're already fair priced I believed, it's just that their weapons are slowed. For starters, all Arc weaponry should be given the Haywire treatment (4+ to Wound on vehicle = 1 MW, 6+ =1d3) so that we can actually hunt vehicles with it (for some reasons the writers of the codex believed the average vehicle to be T5) while keeping the S6. No point changes, they'd be a nice polyvalent weapon and Breachers could be useful for breaching. The torsion cannon is just wrong from the very beginning, it needs to be D3 shots or something and not cost 20 pts for a single shot weapon with 24" range. It could have a nice rule that procs more wounds the tougher the target is or something.
Their CC weapons are also big jokes, same problem with the Arc claw than with other Arc weapons, and seriously, paying extra for the hydraulic claw while it's a D3 damage weapon that hits on 5+ (with AP-1 for some reason) is insane. Make Breachers BS4+/WS3+ at least.
You know what would be great? Adding Holy Requisitioner back in. Ideally, as an ability on Breachers. It would allow them to deploy into reserves and deep strike any time within 6" of a Dominus; this works turn one even if the Dominus is not inside the deployment zone.
So you can Solar Flare onto an objective, then Holy Requisitioner your Breachers in.
Suzuteo wrote: You know what would be great? Adding Holy Requisitioner back in. Ideally, as an ability on Breachers. It would allow them to deploy into reserves and deep strike any time within 6" of a Dominus; this works turn one even if the Dominus is not inside the deployment zone.
So you can Solar Flare onto an objective, then Holy Requisitioner your Breachers in.
Oh yeah that would fit nice and fluffy. And that would give you a reason for using the 2CP strat that gives 1A and +1 to saves while near an objective from the end of your turn to the start of your next.
Did you know you could have 2++ Fulgurites with this strat ? With 3A each ?
Still works as long as you don't play where beta rules are applied, but as I understand it most tournaments apply them, which is a shame because they're beta rules and so are not really optimised.
I played a Drill with 11 Fulgurites and my Dominus Warlord with the reroll hits in CC trait and it was really fun seeing the Priests punch everything out of existence.
Fun fact: I actually have enough infantry to do this. My Secutarii will just stand-in for Plasma Calivers. I also will need to borrow some Custodes, which seems like a minor issue.
Great summary Aaranis Really there are so many design issues which I doubt will be fixed until our next new codex. I'm actually even considering to shelve my AdMech for competitive play, until those issues are fixed....
I actually wouldn't even care if Reapers would be +1 in cover since robots ignore cover :p
As for the use of beta rules: I can't speak for other countries but at least in Germany both of our big tournament series are including them, so no way around for competetive play.
Thanks, I know I get lengthy when I write about something, sorry for the wall of text.
I've never been to a tournament so honestly my knowledge of the meta comes from forums and discussion with fellow hobbyists at my LGS. Still, I think we need to think about balancing AdMech within its own codex first before thinking about synergies with other armies, and that we do no need to compare our roster to other armies. For example, and I don't mean to start a debate, I believe Rangers are fine at 7 pts, that's what they're worth. Vanguards should cost the same. But yeah, if you compare to a 4 pts Guardsman, it is his cost that is too low and not the Ranger's who is too high. Same for Kabalites, they should be 7 pts.
40 pts for a Breacher is not far from its real worth. Forget about his weapons for a second and just look at it for its statline. 3W, T5, S5, 3+/6+, WS4+/BS4+, 3 A, Ld7. It is a tough nut to crack, and morale will rarely be an issue given the small unit sizes. The problem is we have no reason to take them because they're not a threat. We could place them on an objective in cover and they'll be hard to remove but they'll just be annoying as their damage output is risible.
Hydraulic claws need to have a chainfist profile if we want to justify the cost. No reason to pay 4 pts more than an Arc claw just to hit at S10 if it's to keep AP-1 and minus 1 to Hit and the inconsistent D3 damage. Arc claws need to be reworked like all Arc weapons as I wrote in my earlier post. I wish they'd give the Torsion cannon a special rule like the Termite Drill, where you roll successive dice rolls to try to keep inflict additional MWs if you successfully wound, first on a 2+, then 3+ etc. Now we have a threatening weapon and Breachers are good at breaching. It wouldn't be busted given the cost and the 4+ to Hit with a single shot, at 24".
I liked the idea of the Mindlock rule coming back giving them BS3+/WS3+ when near a Tech-Priest. Could give them the Ld9 too while we're at it, I still don't understand how Servitors can freak out anyway. They'd need to be near an HQ so I think it would still be fair. About Destroyers they could hit on a 2+ if used with Elimination Volley so I wonder if that might not be a bit much.
Servitors could be fixed if they gave a +1W repaired by a friendly Tech-Priest when he fixes a Vehicle while within 3" of him. Wouldn't be busted neither as you can easily shoot them, and it gives us a better staying power. Maybe limit it someway as you could have a +4 from the 4 Servitors (56 pts), a +1 from Necromechanic and fix twice stratagem. Though I'd sure love the look on my opponent's face when I tell him I just healed 10 wounds on my Dunecrawler.
Arquebuses could easily be lowered to 15-18, Rangers ain't so hard to kill.
Ruststalkers should have AP-1 base on top of their transsonic rules.
And I'd love for Onagers to be able to shoot twice if they didn't move more than half their move characteristic but that's a far away dream I guess
Tech-Priests Dominus's aura should be "Reroll all 1s to Hit for <Forge-World> units within 6" "that way Ryza could start being relevant, and so buff the Omniscient Mask to give full rerolls to Hit for friendly Skitarii in CC.
I think you touched on the core problem. It's not really points so much as the complete lack of synergy within our codex. Our units, dogmas, stratagems, WLTs, relics, etc. have rules that clash with one another or are totally useless.
If we fixed that, a lot of the point costs make sense. I mean, Guardsmen are amazing because they have a wealth of complements to choose from. I currently like running Catachans with Mini Priest and Straken because of the horde problem.
It's also a huge problem that all of our HQs are essentially the same unit, which come in S/M/L sizes.
Yes I'm quite sad at the HQ department. If you want to save points in a Batallion you run two Enginseers that cost 42 pts each you have HQs that only heal your units and will die to the first guy charging him. Then it's a bump to 125 for quite a polyvalent HQ that gives rerolls, is resilient, shoots well and fights decently, and Cawl at 240 pts that only helps Mars, shoots better, fights better and is more resilient than a Dominus.
I'd love for just a Skitarii Subdominus that gives rerolls 1s to Wound or something and costs 45 pts. He could have 3W, WS3+/BS3+ and equip Skitarii's weapon choices.
Honestly I'd just be happy to see Metallica's trait affect more than 4 units in my entire codex. Pts reductions are welcome, especially for things like arquebuses and sicarians, but that still does nothing to address the fact that whoever wrote our codex had no idea how our army worked or even what the hell was in the book they were writing!
Why give me a trait that let's me fire assault and rapid fire weapons with 0 penalties when advancing if there are only 6 weapons in the entire codex (one being a relic) that can even use it? Why would I take the Adamantine fist for my Dominus if I can only get one swing from it when the relic axe does just as much damage with one less AP but swings 3 times? What is the point of servitors, who are supposed to be an iconic unit for us? In what world would you even consider the jezzails on Dragoons over the Lance? What would possess you to even consider taking arquebuses on vanguard when they can't even move and shoot, when last edition we could move and fire them with 0 penalties?
It just goes on and on. It's particularly frustrating when my other two main codexes I use are IG and Knights, codexes where you can tell the writer clearly played that army and understood what made it tick. When you open the IG codex, I can count on one hand the units that are so bad I ask myself "why on Earth would I take this?" And even then they're just bad for competitive and often fine for casual or narrative play where you can see what they were going for. With admech I'll look at entire units and struggle to come up with a scenario where I would actually run it.
On a completely different note, if the Onager is going to get thrown into every single box set we get, we really need rules for squadrons. That's how they could be taken in 7th and they're cheaper than Russe's. Considering they're one of our only true choices for anti armor and anti air in the codex it's ridiculous we can only take 3 of them.
Come to think of it, I'm starting to think whoever made this codex didn't even read the 7th Ed one. There are so many options and abilities we had in 7th that got removed for seemingly no reason. We can't even take a pure skitarii army anymore since we lost the option for a skitarii alpha, which are even stated to exist in the 8th Ed codex! I would definitely agree that our issues are far more deep-seated than points can fix. There are just so many little issues that make no sense.
Wish list
Spoiler:
-Onagers get squadron rules
-Metallica trait affects heavy weapons minimum, ideally pistols as well
-jezzail can be taken in addition to tazer lance on Dragoons
-arquebus can now move and fire
-skitarii alpha HQ -some sort of reason for servitors to exist
-the canticle where on a 6 enemy units in combat with us take mortal wounds dies in a fire and we get something useful instead
-completely revamp our relics so I have a reason to take something other than the phosphoenix, the mask, and the pimp cane of repair
-Dominus get some sort of improved invuln option and a points decrease. If you really want to spoil me let us reroll 1's in combat as well
I'm sure there are plenty more but that's off the top of my head
I was all set to save up for a styrix, after all it looks like an admech knight, has cool weapons and rules. Then i realised for the points and half the money i can get 3 warglaives now im not so sure lol
Suzuteo wrote: You don't need to buy the entire Styrix. Just buy the upgrade kit.
I don’t have a knight at all though lol. Imdont recall seeing an upgrade kit though, must have missed it. But still 500 points is 3 warglaives, am i getting 3 warglaives worth of knight? I mean i need to hold off until the 15th til i do anything but its something i feel i need to consider. Though the styrix does look awesome as well compared to the other more mundane looking knights lol
Does anyone have any of these? because an officially legit bought full plastic knight is like 60 quid, but a legit bought styrix is 125. I dont see where the extra cost comes, so i'm less bothered about prucuring parts elsewhere if you cant tell the difference.
Octovol wrote: Does anyone have any of these? because an officially legit bought full plastic knight is like 60 quid, but a legit bought styrix is 125. I dont see where the extra cost comes, so i'm less bothered about prucuring parts elsewhere if you cant tell the difference.
Octovol wrote: Does anyone have any of these? because an officially legit bought full plastic knight is like 60 quid, but a legit bought styrix is 125. I dont see where the extra cost comes, so i'm less bothered about prucuring parts elsewhere if you cant tell the difference.
Forge World premium. Pay more for less and worse.
Although the alternative is having viable FW units and everyone complains about a useful part of their list being locked behind an absurd paywall, Warhammer being pay-to-win, FW units needing to be blanket banned, etc.
I dont mind paying more, but when the styrix is essentially the same thing but with a different carapace and weapons even if everyone one of those weapons cost double that of the plastic ones to produce it all still sat on the same plastic base. £100 would be more reasonable but still a premium item.
Anyway, i’m probably going to get one. Just sticks in my throat a little when i can essentially get 4 warglaives/helverins for half the cost of a styrix and 3 of those warglaives are the same points value as a styrix.
Suzuteo wrote: I might be misremembering, but did Ruststalkers lose an attack apiece or was it only Infiltrators?
I have been editing my PDF copy of my AdMech codex and just realized that the attack values are correct.
I'm fairly sure it was only Ruststalkers and their Princeps that lost an attack, going from 3/4 respectively to 2/3 but now I'm looking for it in our FAQ I can't seem to find it.
Octovol wrote: Does anyone have any of these? because an officially legit bought full plastic knight is like 60 quid, but a legit bought styrix is 125. I dont see where the extra cost comes, so i'm less bothered about prucuring parts elsewhere if you cant tell the difference.
Plastic is mass produced automatically. You press a button and wait and hey presto you have bunch of sprues with essentially free material. Resin is hand cast from more expensive material. They actually have to pay for worker time(I presume you don't work for free either) unlike with plastic where nobody is actually doing any casting by hand.
Aaranis wrote: It was the Index: Imperium 2 FAQ if I remember right, and they corrected it when printing the codex.
Thanks, you're absolutely correct. I've had it in my head the whole time we've had a codex that Ruststalkers have one less attack than their datasheet shows. Thankfully it's never mattered because they haven't seen the fight phase once this whole time
xlDuke wrote: Thanks, you're absolutely correct. I've had it in my head the whole time we've had a codex that Ruststalkers have one less attack than their datasheet shows. Thankfully it's never mattered because they haven't seen the fight phase once this whole time
Yeah I tried playing them at first, even with Ryza they're terrible. Only one game where I got lucky and they were killy. Otherwise I ran the maths and for a min unit with chordclaws + razors they dish an average of 2 MWs with all their attacks, with rerolls of 1 to Hit. The 8-ish wounds remaining have to go through armour saves. If you roll all 5s to Wound you essentially have wasted your Fight phase with them.
They really need AP-1 and a slight point reduction.
xlDuke wrote: Thanks, you're absolutely correct. I've had it in my head the whole time we've had a codex that Ruststalkers have one less attack than their datasheet shows. Thankfully it's never mattered because they haven't seen the fight phase once this whole time
Yeah I tried playing them at first, even with Ryza they're terrible. Only one game where I got lucky and they were killy. Otherwise I ran the maths and for a min unit with chordclaws + razors they dish an average of 2 MWs with all their attacks, with rerolls of 1 to Hit. The 8-ish wounds remaining have to go through armour saves. If you roll all 5s to Wound you essentially have wasted your Fight phase with them.
They really need AP-1 and a slight point reduction.
They're a far cry from their 7th edition incarnation (which also wasn't great), we could definitely do with getting some AP back on their attacks in addition to the mortal wounds, even if only when they charge/are charged. I've found that at least the Infiltrators can deepstrike for no CP cost and get a round of flechette blasters off or easily capture an objective. The only thing they have going for them is a decent move stat, but advancing Vanguard are similarly mobile and have the advantage of assault ranged weapons.
Admech are definitely getting a formation in the new Vigilus book, would something similar to what orks got (mostly ways for them to be more effective in and against vehicles) be enough to make them a little bit more effective or will it be a useless buff?
kastelen wrote: Admech are definitely getting a formation in the new Vigilus book, would something similar to what orks got (mostly ways for them to be more effective in and against vehicles) be enough to make them a little bit more effective or will it be a useless buff?
Hard to say, I believe we don't really know what kind of bonus it will give yet ? I don't know what the Orks got.
We need core changes to the book and point adjustments, there's basically 2 kinds of lists to play AdMech seriously and none of them are made with Kataphrons. I'm really more and more eager to see CA2018 and the lack of leaks lately gets me more and more frustrated. I'm tired of losing games because I play the best out of my collection but still lose to regular Guard lists or optimised Tau. And I'd like to be able to play something else than 5 Kastelans because I only own 2 so far, and I'd love a CC list with punchy bots.
kastelen wrote: Admech are definitely getting a formation in the new Vigilus book, would something similar to what orks got (mostly ways for them to be more effective in and against vehicles) be enough to make them a little bit more effective or will it be a useless buff?
Hard to say, I believe we don't really know what kind of bonus it will give yet ? I don't know what the Orks got.
We need core changes to the book and point adjustments, there's basically 2 kinds of lists to play AdMech seriously and none of them are made with Kataphrons. I'm really more and more eager to see CA2018 and the lack of leaks lately gets me more and more frustrated. I'm tired of losing games because I play the best out of my collection but still lose to regular Guard lists or optimised Tau. And I'd like to be able to play something else than 5 Kastelans because I only own 2 so far, and I'd love a CC list with punchy bots.
I sometimes use kataphrons for elimination protocol and because their plasma can be really good if you roll well.
Yes I have one unit with plasma that I use the same way with my two bots, it's great to kill a specific unit with safe plasma if you get lucky on the number of shots. But it's hardly competitive. Against the 3 Riptides list I faced the other day (though it was with my Dark Angels) the Riptides would have laughed at it with their 3++ and billions of drones.
Octovol wrote: Does anyone have any of these? because an officially legit bought full plastic knight is like 60 quid, but a legit bought styrix is 125. I dont see where the extra cost comes, so i'm less bothered about prucuring parts elsewhere if you cant tell the difference.
Plastic is mass produced automatically. You press a button and wait and hey presto you have bunch of sprues with essentially free material. Resin is hand cast from more expensive material. They actually have to pay for worker time(I presume you don't work for free either) unlike with plastic where nobody is actually doing any casting by hand.
I dont believe for one second that they hand pour the resin into moulds for every FW model. They wouldn't be in business still if that were the case, the cost would be way way higher than currently. Again I can justify an extra cost for manufacturer and material differences, but the difference is just so out of whack in some cases it's hard to swallow.
