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One weakness of the kastelan maniple is that the priest is rather vulnerable. You'll want to deploy near your table edge so no one can get behind your robots.

Alternatively you could take a third robot and then they could be a rather effective mobile force. They are Cool chilling in the back in kill mode, but they don't get to convert to kill mode until your second turn. If you go first the side of the board with these bots will be a dead man's land. At turn 2 they put out 11 wounds a turn at ap 2 if my math is right. That's a squad of marines a turn, and more than half the wounds will be -1 cover because you can shoot the carapace mounted weapon first to my understand; seeing as how it isn't twin linked etc.

The hope is that the Kataphron are rather quick so they can get out and get objective, and they will definitly be very beefy as well. The breacher deep strike will be interesting even more so if the big guys, but the fear here is that your just gonna be waiting till turn 4 for them to come from reserves. Seeing as how they are melee they wont assault until after they deep strike. So, they'll only get to use their special weapons and chill out another turn. If they don't come out till turn 4 it wont be turn 5 until you get any effectiveness out to your 150+ points. So if they are quick enough most likely you wont want to deep strike them at all.

 Yodhrin wrote:
The Datasmith can be vulnerable, but remember he has a 2+/5++, 2W, and he's T7 thanks to majority toughness. Plus you can take extras for redundancy if you're really worried.

That's very true, how would you run them??/ i've bene thinking of running 3 robos and the datasmith, but eh seems way to expensive for 1500 takes up a third of the list, and when you activate super mode they start over killing units, but 3 lets you move the formation to get some objectives with out having to stay in unmoving kill mode all day.

2 is good and comes in nice at ~300 points which is very reasonable and in super shooter mode does enough wounds to whipe a squad of marines off the map a turn, but in regular mode they aren't quite as effective. So if you ever need to move them your not gonna be whipping a unit out.

 Orock wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:
The Datasmith can be vulnerable, but remember he has a 2+/5++, 2W, and he's T7 thanks to majority toughness. Plus you can take extras for redundancy if you're really worried.

He is T7 to wound him, but he still dies outright to a meltagun because his toughness is 4 and it doubles him out.

Look at that another good point, but he also can get look out sir if i'm not mistaken? Plus if you run the 3 big guys as i was saying before its not an issue because you just make a nice triangle and he's all good. Plus he's only really important if the robots are in stand still shooty mode because it means they can't move. The dude actually doesn't matter if you have them running around in FNP mode. The two robots just turn around and melt the melta squad like their made of butter.

edit: and you put your unit in a tiny bit of danger of getting their shot reflected on them. The big guys can take a melta shot a lot better than most.

Hey decay its hard to stick harli ad skit together, but it's not so bad. Dragoons are your CC unit and they are pretty good. The only thing is they allow for targets for your enemy's anti vehicles weapons. If you could get a better on foot CC unit out of harli it wont to give it a try... well your wallet might not like it.

 Kommissar Waaaghrick wrote:

 Fezza213 wrote:
a min sized unit comes with 2 robots and a datasmith, you can upgrade the robots powerfists with TL phosphor blaster (not sure on the stats on this but assuming S6 Assault 1 or Heavy 1), they can also replace their flamer (incendine Combustor) with a Heavy phosphor blaster S6, 3 shots, luminagen.

So thats 6 Str6 shots for a min sized unit (more depending on the str of the phosphor blaster). Sounds alright but the Kastellan Battle protocols DOUBLE the amount of shots at the expense of movement. So you could move a squad into place, switch protocols and next turn shoot 12 S6 shots at whatever didn't scurry away. Combine that with being a MC and 3+ saves and I think they look good.

Dont get me wrong, the lack of mobility in shooting may be a problem if you stick them in the open. To top it off add the new elimination formation which gives +1 BS and ignores cover and suddenly they become very strong in shooting (http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2015/05/cult-mechanicus-formations-latest.html), not to mention that the luminagen reduces the targets cover save to other units not in the formation so shooting at that wraithknight and you dont quite kill it at least you have luminagen applied so other units can finish it off for you.

Those are my thoughts from what i have seen so far.

Fez

Thanks for sharing those thoughts because I want to use these Robots, got the WD, didn't see what to do with them really until you mentioned it.

I was just on the phone with a friend, he was telling me they're not worth it. But I'm guessing he didn't see the combination of Robots + Protocols + Formation; it's not his fault, as he hadn't see the Elimination Formation rules yet as we're still waiting on the Codex. But I can totally see the value in this.

THey are pretty strong i think most folks who are interested in playing an army usually poo poo new units that come out. this is because thier instinct is to thinking about countering and kill them.

These robots bring 7 MEQ wounds a turn and 11 when they are in shooter mode. The more i think about it the better i think they'll be in mobile mode because these units are no sneeze in melee even without the fist. They hit like the trucks they are. I think when you stop them for moving you have 300 points of a very elite army (thier troops are 50 points a pop) than you just gave up a large fraction of your objective holding force.)

I think shooting and combat mode will actually be best used on turn at a time then swapping back to normal operations to capture objectives of quire new targets. Plus in shooting mode they can't charge. These guys can pump out 7 MEQ wounds then charge. By doing this you double their mobility because they are basically running and shooting every turn.

Canticles, formation, and so on only make them better. Dont forget you have wargear that the smith can wear and special weapons.

What do you folks think of the destroyers with the plasma cannon things??? Ignoring skits so we can have some actual tactical talk about the unit

The plasma could be a strong option against horde type armies, and also does a number of vehicles (abit better than grav guns)