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Honestly, I don't do apocalypse battles, so I really don't keep up with the new units that were realeased recently. However, the obelisks looked wicked. Could anyone explain to me what they do?

In a nutshell - screw over anything that flies and rain Meteors down on people.

Other than that, I cant help you

Okay, the Obelisk is a superheavy skimmer with 4 tesla weapons which have the same strength as tesla annihilators but +1 shots each.
Moreover, it has a 3+ inv save when its inactivated. After it has been activated it cannot be inactivated again. Additionally if it deep strikes, it becomes activated.
Finally, another special rule says that it can shoot each skimmer in range of 24''. Same strength and AP as a blastmaster. Not sure if each skimmer will get an automatic hit.

Well, it's the "closed" tesseract vault. It's AV12 all round, 6 HP (as opposed to the tesseract vault which is AV14 9HP despite being the open version). For 335 points, it hits all enemy flyers/skimmers within 24" at S8 AP4 on their side armour automatically. It also has 4 immobile "tesla spheres" which fire 5 S7 tesla shots each. On top of that, it gets deep strike and if it chooses to do nothing, plus is deployed on board (no idea why it would) it has a 3++. If it does anything at all, it leaves that state and cannot go back into it.

The problem? It's weaker than 4 Annihilation barges by miles and costs almost as much. It has lower AV, less total HP, worse shooting (because you can't realistically use all of your tesla spheres due to their 45 degree LOS) and S8 AP4 is not amazing. It doesn't even get jink because it's a super heavy. It's a massive waste of potential and as far as I can tell there's no reason it's not AV14 which, whilst still not great, would make it playable. As it is, it's a liability even in Apocalypse because it's just free VP. In escalation I don't expect it to fare any better - it's as hard as killing 2 chimeras from the front (aka not hard at all). The kit also makes Tesseract vaults which are awesome and Transcendant C'tan which are broken even in Apoc, but the Obelisk is a waste of space.

Yeah, I have to agree with the implied value statement in Eyjio's post - its not that good.

One of them is fairly easy to avoid, and an AV12 6hp skimmer is VERY dead in APOC games with the volume of shots flying around.

I do agree....it LOOKS really cool, but just like a few many other models out there - its pretty bad.
(oh gw, please get a little better consistency....).

It looks good, but it is not that good on the Tabletop.

You have much better options in the Tesseract Vault, C'tan, and Pylon.

The only benefit to a Obelisk is that you get the C'tan figure.

So what does the tesseract vault do?

The vault has a variable statline depending on how you kit it out.

Its actually mainly anti-infantry and anti-medium vehicle on the table and very easy to spend too many points on it.

While not as useless as the obelisk, and slightly more durable than the ctan gargantuan....well, its no plyon thats for sure.

For more info, check out the apoc book, its in there.

Well, I'm using the Obelisk in two ways, as Monolith in normal games and as Obelisk holding an objective with its 3+ inv save in apoc games. Moreover, in apoc games my DE opponent doesn't really like it as it can target his skimmers if in range.

I've tried using an Obelisks in an Apoc and while it was useful to auto-hit some flyers, it didn't last long. In Apoc, The Vault is better in my opinion.

That said, I can see an Obelisk being pretty mean in an Escalation game if it can be used as the Lord of War or whatever the special rule will be. Keep it in reserves and then drop it in your opponent's backfield and see how they react. Against any any Xenos army (i.e tau, eldar, dark eldar, other necrons) it's going to be pretty vicious given how the majority of these armies' vehicles are skimmers.

davethepak wrote:
The vault has a variable statline depending on how you kit it out.

Its actually mainly anti-infantry and anti-medium vehicle on the table and very easy to spend too many points on it.

While not as useless as the obelisk, and slightly more durable than the ctan gargantuan....well, its no plyon thats for sure.

For more info, check out the apoc book, its in there.

The Tesseract Vault, IMO, is actually a good super heavy, for it's role. It's great at knocking out large swathes of models from the board. I think the comparison to the pylon is a bit unfair, as it serves a completely different role than the TV. It's there to kill Titans, which it does very well.

 Sasori wrote:

davethepak wrote:
The vault has a variable statline depending on how you kit it out.

Its actually mainly anti-infantry and anti-medium vehicle on the table and very easy to spend too many points on it.

While not as useless as the obelisk, and slightly more durable than the ctan gargantuan....well, its no plyon thats for sure.

For more info, check out the apoc book, its in there.

The Tesseract Vault, IMO, is actually a good super heavy, for it's role. It's great at knocking out large swathes of models from the board. I think the comparison to the pylon is a bit unfair, as it serves a completely different role than the TV. It's there to kill Titans, which it does very well.

Well said Sasori, I cannot disagree with your assessment - I was too vague in my point.

My friends and I play a lot of apoc - we have found that while there are a lot of ways to knock out large swaths of models (this is very fun, btw!!!) there are actually few ways to deal with big gargantuan creatures of titan class super heavies.

The tesseract valut is decent for killing a lot of smaller stuff, its just plain fun in the regard (kind of like a bane blade).
(of course, doing a point comparison - could it kill more or less than what it cost - no, but to be honest, if you are trying too hard for point efficiency in apoc, I think you are missing the point (killing large swaths of models in single big attacks)).

But if you have to deal with a hierophant, or a wolfhound - its just not very effective.

The necron pylon on the other hand is perhaps one of the most points efficient means to D weapons in the apoc arsenal.
It has tremendous range, resiliency, good bs, incredible stats (the interceptor is just nasty) and for what it does..is dirt cheap.
(the apoc one, the other one in the damnos book, is terrible...great job GW).

So, while I love the vault (played one about a month ago) players have to be aware at what it is good (killing large swaths of models...that is a great phrase btw) and what it is not (fighting other super heavies).

The plyon is so good ....well, lets just say my group is considering house rules on the best ways to tone it down (if you have thoughts, lets start another thread to not hijack this one) - which regrettably I agree with - just a bummer as I have one (I have three actually, but two are old scratch builds that look like crap, one is genuine FW - I am not sure if I will replace the second scratchbuild one however....).