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Hey Guys,

I wanted to buy some Mechanicus guys for my Grand Imperium army. I was considering both Skitarii and Cult Mechanicus. Im having a difficult time deciding between them. I was thinking of buying two boxes of Kataphrons and a Techpriest Dominus so that I could run them as Battle Congregation. If I went with Skitarii I would buy two boxes of skitarii vanguard and run them as a skitarii maniple. My army is lacking at capturing objectives that are farther out because at the moment im running a gunline arrangement. For this reason I was thinking of having the Skitarii move up in rhinos and capturing objectives. I also thought of getting a box of Skitarii vanguard and a box of Kataphrons so that I could get both Mechanicus factions. I would like to hear the community's opinion on my dilemma. Do you guys think I should go with one of my ideas or do you have an idea of your own that you think would work better. All replies are appreciated.

I really think the best answer is "yes" they blend very well together

Kataphrons are similar to Chaos Obliterators in that they can do gunline WHILE moving up. So you can have a constantly advancing line. It won't help you actually getting to the objectives, but it will help cover other units that rush out to get them. So I'd make adjustments to the rest of your army and include some faster or atleast some more mobile units, with Obj Sec if you can, to get to those and use the Kataphrons as the long range punch that faster squad might lack.

It depends on whether you play Maelstrom or Eternal war imho.

For Maelstrom I'd say skitarii are better suited.
Skitarii have some very mobile units, namely the Sicarians, adding 3" to move, run (which they can re-roll) and charge distances. On paper, they're rather durable with a 4+/6++, 2W and 5+FNP altough from my experience, you shouldn't rely on the 2W and FNP too much because their T3 is doubled quite easily by most armies. Infiltrators can mitigate that a bit because they have stealth.
If you can get bigger threats on the board (which is hard, believe me people want those units gone), and they have to use their small-arms fire to deal with your Sicarians, they'll probably cause a lot of trouble. Infiltrators will kill most units (or at least severely dmg them) in one turn. However, it's still a good idea to evade dedicated CC units that have Str 6 or higher, especially if they're durable (like thunderwolf cavalry). The Sicarian killclade (1 unit of infiltrators and 3 units of ruststalkers) might be a very good (but pricey) formation for the purpose of objective grabbing.

On the other hand we've got the Cult mechanicus, which I think'll be better for eternal war. They've got a nasty formation consisting of 2 units of katahprons and a dominus. They're kept in reserves and have to deesptrike. I think you roll 1 die for both (although I'm not 100% sure, don't got the book atm). The dominus deepstrikes first and if he deepstrikes within 6" of an objective, he doesn't scatter. Then if the kataphron breachers deepstrike within 6" of the dominus, they don't scatter either.

Now I haven't exactly run the math on this but I'm pretty certain (at least) 6 Str8 AP1 shots (which cause D3 wounds/HP) + a Str8 AP1 blast is going to remove a wide array of units even though most of the shots'll be BS3, because canticles. On top of that they're a very durable unit, sporting T5, 2W and a 3+ armour save. They can easily hold an objective for a few turns (maybe even 2 if they're 12" apart because they're still 3 units).

Now I'm not saying that skitarii can't perform well in eternal war or that Cult mechanicus can't play maelstrom well. This is just my view on the matter and I certainly have experienced one is better than the other depending on the type of mission.