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I am not sure how to approach this project. I know it is going to be expensive, but I wanted to field some opinions about the different ways to build a mechanicum army. I have read the army rules but I really don't know where to start. Any advice would be most helpful.

I'm doing the same thing!

My experience is actually pretty the opposite-it wasn't expensive at all compared to other 40k armies. But then again, I am an avid custom-builder/sculptor.

I took A Space Marine Techpriest+Servitors box, along with a Dark Angels veterans box, green stuffed shoulder pads and a few other bits to create an Archmagos+conversion Beamer and 4 techpriests modeled to be 1 Lachrymae, 2 Reductor and 1 Enginseer.

I then took a lot of 50 imperial guardsmen from eBay, replaced their heads with faceless masks and mounted their lasguns to their shoulders. With some re painting, these became 50 Servo Thralls/Adsecularis.

Then I went to eBay for the heavy hitting deal hunting. So far I've got a unit of Myrmidon Destructors for 25$ and 8 Thallax+Magos Dominus for 80, which is pretty good if you equate Thallax to Ogryn and the Magos to a FC character. That got me to around a 1250 list. To wrap it up, I grabbed a Castellax for 30 (compare to the price of a dreadnought) and a Krios for 65 (see Predator tank). As 40k armies go, I'm doing fairly good at a 325$ investment, and I'm going to be getting another set of servitors for my Reductor unit and I'll be shooting for 75$ for a Triaros if I can get my hands on that.

So my list looks like this:

Myrmidons with Volkites to deal with massed infantry
Thallax to hit MC's
Castellax and Krios to pen MEQs
Adsecularis blobs to bog down melee infantry
Two units of support Techpriests for the adsecs and vehicles
Magos Dominus proooobably as a waste of points but I basically got him as a bonus, may run him as the Magos prime
Magos Prime Ordinator for a bit more firepower
And hopefully a squad of Reductor in a Triaros with a couple melta thralls, just for fun.


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I think in general, the cheapest mechanicum army is kind of like a Tyranid Nidzilla list, but shootier. Run small units of Thallax, Castellax and support with Magos Dominus and Techpriests with Cortex Controllers to keep them in line and repaired. Take a Thanatar for siege power and your army is gonna be small in models but scary in power.

Also, use ebay 100%. 30-40% savings on FW prices, easy.

The Magos Dominus is okay but is much, much better in a Legio Cybernetica force where he can be an archmagos with better toughness and more wounds.

There are three Mechanicus forces, really.

Ordo Reductor: theoretically only an allied detachment, but you can easily build a force that's mostly allied detachment.

Pros:
~ Your Thallax can take upgrades without pogo-ing around the force organisation chart. Special weapon-heavy thallax are really, really scary
~ Legion Artillery Batteries. Don't underestimate basilisk batteries in this game - you'll face lots of large marine squads and lots of AV14 vehicles which are all but immune to melta shots. Earthshaker cannons kick serious buttock in these situations, especially with Caleb Decima standing nearby

Cons:
~ Very few options
~ No battle engines

Legio Cybernetica - It's all about the robots.

Pros:
~More and tougher monstrous creatures than anyone else, 30k or 40k.
~ Awesome anti-infantry firepower in the form of mauler cannons
~ Cybertheurgy allowing you to fire a unit twice in a turn
~ Cortex controllers aren't that big a deal - it only matters if the enemy are within 12" of you and the engines have enough sense only to fire at things they can actually hurt.

Cons:
~ Without the full taghmata suite of upgrades, adsecularis are expensive garbage.
~ Without a lot of automata power blade upgrades, the automata aren't all that good in close combat. Most of your points are going into ridiculous durability.
~ Handling heavy tanks is an issue unless you take a lot of multimelta upgrades (or convert darklight cannons). The Thanatar's main gun, despite its size, struggles with land raiders and similar.
~ Always, always take a maxed-out archmagos dominus because anything less is a 'slay the warlord' point waiting to happen; not having independent character is asking to eat a legion support squad's fire turn one.

Taghmata Omnissiah

Pros:
~ With a full set of upgrades bolted on, laslock adescularis can actually engage marines with a reasonable chance of success. Mitrelocks are still a pile of rubbish, though.
~ Far more flexible and capable HQ choices who actually have the independent character rule
~ Tanks with a lot of flexible weaponry

Cons:
~ Must take thallax and/or adescularis for compulsory troops before you can start taking those tasty battle engines. Not a bad thing; as fusil or thruster armed thallax are great at winkling marines out of cover.
~ ...That's about it.


Essentially, the battle engines pummel people, the adsecularis keep nasty assault units away from them (hence armour and morale upgrades), and the thallax bounce around sniping people out of cover (always, always take weapon upgrades. Photon thrusters or phase-plasma fusils are stupidly, stupidly good weapons).

I'd still recommend a small allied reductor contingent, because siege batteries are so damn good.

locarno24 wrote:

~ Without a lot of automata power blade upgrades, the automata aren't all that good in close combat. Most of your points are going into ridiculous durability.

.

Not sure about that - all the power blades will give you is Rend. Because automata are monstrous creatures they get Smash which gives all their close combat attacks AP2 by default. Great for squishing Terminators!

Yes. But you swap "shock chargers" (which aren't actually a weapon, they just give you concussive) for two "battle automata power blades" - hence you get an extra attack into the bargain.

It's the relatively low number of attacks that let battle-automata down in a melee - the Machine-God's Pizza Cutters Of Doom are your preferred choice if you actually plan on getting up close and personal.