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I've got a game arranged this week against a 30k mechanium army (I will be using my 40k Dark Angels).

I have never played them before (or played 40k mechanium) and I was wondering what to expect? Can anyone played them or uses the army help out?

They are extremely durable, and extremely low model count for the most part.

Grav will be the top answer against his heavy robots (which are similar to the new Kastelan robots, and the other is like an old Wraithknight before the gargantuan rules) either that or instant death style weapons.

His vehicles will be expensive but high AV so the best answer is melta.

His infantry will be AV4+ and are very unlikely to be in a transport. They will either be T5 3W or T3 and numerous.

Lots of high toughness multi wound models, some monstrous creatures if you have a bunch of plasma or grav you should be fine, they have a sort of synapse rule but it is far less punishing than the nid one so don't focus on it. The massive automata has a large blast that makes you reroll cover saves but that shouldn't matter if you have a 2+ rerollavle or not.

Some people use little blobs of fearless conscript like models.

Just jink away pie plates and grav/plas the castellax and thanatar (big guys).

40k armies have a much easier time due to how common grav is.

Offensively they do pack a good amount of AP3 fire, so beware of leaving dudes out in the open.

Thanks for the advice! (keep it coming). I will let you know how I get on.

Mauler Bolters will wreck your standard marines
KEEP YOUR MARINES AWAY FROM THE MEDIUM SIZED ROBOTS!

Youre going to be playing at an approximately 500 pt deficit, relatively speaking. To put things in perspective, a standard 30k marine is 10 points per model, while there are some differences with 40k marines in terms of special rules, a bolter is still a bolted and a marine is still a marine. 30k armies are balanced around that paradigm and really arent balanced for play with 40k. Thats not to say you cant get a decently balanced game by playing them against eachother, buuuuuuuut its unlikely. If I were you I wouldnt expect to have a good time.

Ignore the above post, lots of inaccurate information.

A marine in 30k is 15pts, 150 for ten and then 10pts per marine after that, they only have bolters and no special/heavy weapons, no atsknf (massive difference alone), so on the whole if you can kill a few in cc you will most likely run them down, but that's just the marine tac sqaud.

With mechanicum you will likely be facing a few thanatars, t8 models with a decent save, plenty of wounds, space out as they have a Str8 ap2 large blast attack that forces you to re roll passed cover saves.

They also have a mymadon unit that can spam grav, bs5 and preferred enemy, these are true grav as opposed to the normal grav in 30k so be wary.

The core of the army will usually be t5 3 wound units with str7 rending guns, they are not great but can be deadly if ignored, they are also jet pack infantry so take that into account.

The vehicles are NOT expensive, very cheap for what they can do infact, 14/13/12 if memory serves, 130 ish pts and can load bulky, jet pack etc units too, so expect mymadons inside.

Mech mc units are very expensive and can be hard to kill, as others have said grav is your best bet, plasma simply won't cut it, neither will melta, neither have high enough rate of fire to kill them before your charged for being too close, it will be a tough match as mechanicum are very good, try to assault them if possible as long as you can actually hurt them.

Good luck.

The "difference" that he helpfully glossed over is: a 30k Marine squad has 20 bolters and zero special weapons, and lacks the ATSKNF rule.

I have never seen 30k marines beat 40k marines. They're not on the same level.

Any time people whine I offer my opponent an equivalently-priced 40k knight to offset my Primarch and keep track of what they personally accomplish throughout the game. I've never seen the primarch outperform the knight.

First, he's not playing against Legion.

Second, let's correct your misinformation right now.

A 30K marine is NOT 10 points a model. A tactical squad of ten starts at 150 points (do the math). Yes, up to ten more can be added to that squad at 10 points each. They do not have ATSKNF. Other squads start with even higher premium costs. Because of those higher premiums, games of 2000 points or less means the average Legion is actually paying as much as or MORE per marine than their 40K counterparts.

Edit: ninja'ed by scotsman

Basically, the gist of it is: don't let Adsecularis tarpit you (think fearless guard conscripts), do instant-death Thallax with any Strength 10 you may have (heavy jetpack infantry), do grav the crud out of Castellax and Thanatars. Do melta vehicles particularly the "poor mans land raider" that is the Triaros. Don't leave marines standing out in the open where plasma weapons and maulers can eat them.

Don't worry guys, already covered the inaccurate info in my post haha

I was thinking of running Ravenwing again. I can equip them with Grav guns and melta (plus plasma talons on the command and black knights). That should give me a lot of speed on the field, as well as hit and run to stop being tarpitted.
Jinking should help against the enemy grav weapons and low AP firepower (though having to re-roll successful saves is annoying), but will reduce my firepower in return.

Another important note, some models, like the Thallax, will also reduce your cover save, so you can't rely too much on jinking.

Anyway, if your opponent doesn't use much in the way of Myrmidons, then he won't have high amounts of shooting, but will instead probably have quite a few of the MCs like Castellax and Thanatars. Myrmidons being the volume of fire aspect for the Mechanicum.

If its 30k mechanicum versus 40k chances are you are gonna get swept.

They are nothing but multiwound high toughness, gun platforms. Its probably the only warhammer army i activley avoid playing against.
Better then tau and eldar shooting, high str low ap, tough in CC. The only downside is the model count but it starts to not matter after a certain point

Thallax only reduce your cover save against them (they have an ability called djinn sight). But their setup is usually 1x Multimelta, 2x Lightning Gun, which is medium strength, high AP Rending with a single shot. The Thallax are basically 3-man squads made to tote a melta around they won't be targeting your bikes for the most part.

The Thanatar is the only thing with re-roll cover. His Grav-weaponry is on a platform that is basically point-for-point worse than Centurions in every way. Similar, but 3+ armor FNP vs 2+ armor, no Amps, 18" range guns, 1 less shot.

People rage hardcore about powerful forgeworld stuff, but honestly most of the stuff he has is so expensive it more than pays for it's power. It's like, sure, you got S8 AP2 pie plate on a tough robot that makes you reroll cover, that's nasty. But a Riptide that's gonna do the same thing but ignore cover with a marker light, it's 120 points cheaper. And the Castellax? It's crazy just how many more goodies the 40k versions, the Kastelans, get.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
"High T multi wound gun platforms" -Yep. Absolutely. The cheapest trooper starts out at 40 ppm, and it goes up from there.

You want a 3-shot, S5 AP3 24" range gun with a BS4 platform? You pay 95 points base. Compare to a Broadside Suit at 50.

"Better than tau/Eldar shooting" yeeeeeeeeah no. Like, even remotely.

Compare a Thallax to a Crisis Suit, or heck, a Wraithguard.

Compare a Castellax to a Broadside or a Wraithlord.

Compare a Thanatar to a Riptide or Wraithknight.

You know what's gonna put out more fire per point in all those cases? The tau and Eldar gak. Hands down.

The Krios Venator is undeniably a gnarly little Anti Tank platform. It's got a gun that's basically 4 Lascannons for around 140 points. So take a Vindicator Laser Destroyer and get exactly the same thing.

all the MC can take enhance targating it increases there BS and reduces your Cover also they can take basicly little Servo skulls that also reduce your cover if they are within 12 in these abilitys stack so if done right they will make yuor jink a tshirt save (gone with the thallax) but we suck in CC yea AP 2 on most attacks but we are slow and we have low CC attacks. there are a few lists that the lowest T in the army is 6 and that is the HQ (dont be fooled he can be tooled into a power house) also the MCs have a 5++ normaly so take that as you will. you will be faster than them normaly so jsut kepp around cover and press them down with volume of fire

Yes, I "conveniently" forgot to mention that they dont have ATSKNF, just like you guys failed to mention "Legiones Astartes" and "Fury of the Legion" , and ROW, and the various means by which you can make squads fearless, or the existence of support squads, etc. As for not being 10 pts per model, thats splitting hairs. I look at 150 pts for 10 +10 pts per model as meaning 10 pt marines plus 50 pts for the sergeant, Legiones Astartes, and Fury of the Legion rules. Generally speaking, certain upgrades in 30k are pruchased per unit rather than per model (specifically, grenades/bombs, bolt pistols, chainswords, etc.)

That's fine, then I'm thinking of Space Marines as 100 for 10 plus 50 for the sergeant, ATSKNF (the best LD rule in the game) chapter tactics, combat squads, and access to special weapons

chaos0xomega wrote:
Yes, I "conveniently" forgot to mention that they dont have ATSKNF, just like you guys failed to mention "Legiones Astartes" and "Fury of the Legion" , and ROW, and the various means by which you can make squads fearless, or the existence of support squads, etc. As for not being 10 pts per model, thats splitting hairs. I look at 150 pts for 10 +10 pts per model as meaning 10 pt marines plus 50 pts for the sergeant, Legiones Astartes, and Fury of the Legion rules. Generally speaking, certain upgrades in 30k are pruchased per unit rather than per model (specifically, grenades/bombs, bolt pistols, chainswords, etc.)

Ok I'll bite.

Ok legions astartes, can regroup regardless of casualties, that's pretty nifty, but not amazing.

Fury of the legion, ok so if I don't move I get to shoot twice, average sqaud for me is 15 men, that's 30 bolt shots or 60 at rapid range, but I cannot shoot next turn, also good luck getting to use it as tanks exist and str 4 doesn't do sqaut to a rhino or any transport worth its salt.

Support sqauds: 100pts for 5 flamers... Yeah, then 15pts per man after that, 15pts per plasma gun, so 10 plasma is 300pts for a 3+ save t4 unit with a fair amount of dakka true, but very very veeeeeeeeeeeeery easy to kill for 40k units.

10pts per model is not splitting hairs, tacticals are 15 each initially, then the sarge is free, not 50pts ?, all the other rules are straight swaps for the better 40k rules, including weapon variations.

Rites of war are pretty decent and are 30ks equivalent to 40k formations except, you know, downsides, like not being able to take tanks etc. Also no awsome rules like free auto 6" runs, transports, free upgrades, so.... What's your point here?

Fearless is very rare in 30k, only expensive very elite units get it and the primarchs.

All in all I strongly suggest you read (admittedly a bit out of date now) legion army list review, as you quite clearly don't know what your talking about, so please stop spreading bad information.

Most stuff has been fairly well covered.

Just be careful you don't get trapped into repeatedly jinking and thus snap firing your units. If he can close the Castellax on your bike units then they will beat your bike units up in melee. I have been pulling this trick on ravenwing players since the new codex got released and honestly RW players seem to not realize that jinking may not be the best answer every time. You are also liable to loose the dark shroud faster than you might have planned due to the anti tank weapons with reduce cover save on the units. If you have played ad mech 40K you are familiar with most of the abilities just the 30K versions tend to be a bit less powerful and have nuances.

The hardest part of this match up will probably be ObjSec Castellax shooting at your bike units, tricking you into jinking, and then you failing to shoot the Castellax thus necessitating you into either charging them (usually a mistake) or letting them score the objective. Don't forget your overwatch at BS2 rule BTW it is going to make a huge difference with your grav and plasma talons.

 Formosa wrote:

Fearless is very rare in 30k, only expensive very elite units get it and the primarchs.

Uh, Legion Command Squads with a Standard Bearer? I know a 6" fearless bubble doesnt sound like much, but ask anyone who played Necrons during 4th edition how much you can fit in that area and they'll show you how to get coverage for your whole army.

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Formosa wrote:

Fearless is very rare in 30k, only expensive very elite units get it and the primarchs.

Uh, Legion Command Squads with a Standard Bearer? I know a 6" fearless bubble doesnt sound like much, but ask anyone who played Necrons during 4th edition how much you can fit in that area and they'll show you how to get coverage for your whole army.

Again on a very easily killed unit, 2+ saves and 5 models, also expensive, how long do 2+ saves last in 40k, tau would laugh at this unit, eldar too, same as marines, guard no issues either, then bam that 6" bubble of fearless is gone.

Put them in a land raider and they become slightly harder to kill, rhino is laughable, spartan and your winning the game for me for totally wasting your Spartans potential.

Keep em coming, I'm enjoying the debate.

 ansacs wrote:
Most stuff has been fairly well covered.

Just be careful you don't get trapped into repeatedly jinking and thus snap firing your units. If he can close the Castellax on your bike units then they will beat your bike units up in melee. I have been pulling this trick on ravenwing players since the new codex got released and honestly RW players seem to not realize that jinking may not be the best answer every time. You are also liable to loose the dark shroud faster than you might have planned due to the anti tank weapons with reduce cover save on the units. If you have played ad mech 40K you are familiar with most of the abilities just the 30K versions tend to be a bit less powerful and have nuances.

The hardest part of this match up will probably be ObjSec Castellax shooting at your bike units, tricking you into jinking, and then you failing to shoot the Castellax thus necessitating you into either charging them (usually a mistake) or letting them score the objective. Don't forget your overwatch at BS2 rule BTW it is going to make a huge difference with your grav and plasma talons.

I'm still trying to find that sweet spot between Jinking for survivability and needing decent firepower in the next turn. I guess it depends on the opponent and the situation, but in my last game I kept getting an amazing number of hits on overwatch even when jinking (though obviously this can't be relied on every game).

What sort of saves am I looking at facing? I know there has been a lot of mention of high toughness, multi-wound models. Is 3+ standard in the army or is it lower?

2+ basically only on commander and Thanatar.

3+ on Castellax

4+ on most everything else.

There's not a ton of great saves, AP4 actually performs pretty good against Mechanicus.

Something you may find useful if you are dealing with thallax (ordo reductor ftw etc..) they only have a 4+ so a HB wounds on 4's and denies thier armour save. They still get thier FNP but it's a 6+

Bikes and speeders wilt in the face of thallax, mind.

A good call is to take out the leadership - a bit 16th century, i know, but a lot of the functionality of a taghmata force is the buffs and control elements held by the magos and various adepts. Take out all the cortex controllers in range and the automata will just go for whatevers closest - they have to try a charge on enemies within 12" so you could have some fun with that.

A word of caution; automata with a cybernetica cortex can fire three weapons in the shooting phase if seperated from a cortex controller.

Successful wounds against a cybernetica cortex equipped automata using the fleshbane or poisoned rule have to be re-rolled.

Cybernetica equipped automata you may meet; Castellax, Vorax, Thanatar, Thanatar-Calix.



edit; just had a thought - take a bastion and put a unit inside to man the HB's - i find the sneaky shots on my thallax really irritating, so maybe that could help you?

 Formosa wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Formosa wrote:

Fearless is very rare in 30k, only expensive very elite units get it and the primarchs.

Uh, Legion Command Squads with a Standard Bearer? I know a 6" fearless bubble doesnt sound like much, but ask anyone who played Necrons during 4th edition how much you can fit in that area and they'll show you how to get coverage for your whole army.

Again on a very easily killed unit, 2+ saves and 5 models, also expensive, how long do 2+ saves last in 40k, tau would laugh at this unit, eldar too, same as marines, guard no issues either, then bam that 6" bubble of fearless is gone.

Put them in a land raider and they become slightly harder to kill, rhino is laughable, spartan and your winning the game for me for totally wasting your Spartans potential.

Keep em coming, I'm enjoying the debate.

You really arent. One can argue any unit x is easily killed by unit y, doesnt make it true or relevant or realistic.

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Formosa wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Formosa wrote:

Fearless is very rare in 30k, only expensive very elite units get it and the primarchs.

Uh, Legion Command Squads with a Standard Bearer? I know a 6" fearless bubble doesnt sound like much, but ask anyone who played Necrons during 4th edition how much you can fit in that area and they'll show you how to get coverage for your whole army.

Again on a very easily killed unit, 2+ saves and 5 models, also expensive, how long do 2+ saves last in 40k, tau would laugh at this unit, eldar too, same as marines, guard no issues either, then bam that 6" bubble of fearless is gone.

Put them in a land raider and they become slightly harder to kill, rhino is laughable, spartan and your winning the game for me for totally wasting your Spartans potential.

Keep em coming, I'm enjoying the debate.

You really arent. One can argue any unit x is easily killed by unit y, doesnt make it true or relevant or realistic.

Actually it does, if unit x costs y points and is easily killed by a majority of units in a meta, that means those points are either a: wasted or b: better spent elsewhere, for the cost of the legion command sqaud with banner and required transport to keep them alive, you can get more efficient units elsewhere, in a bubble the unit looks good, in actual play, it's not great, also add to the cost of the command sqaud the required master of the legion and it's even worse.

Of the top of my head the only fearless units in 30k are
Red butchers
Banner sqaud
Deathshroud (not sure on this one)
Primarchs and angron 12" bubble

I'm sure there are a couple more, but all are expensive, same as stubborn, compare this to 40k where it's handed out like candy for FREE in most cases (stubborn specifically)

corrm wrote:I'm still trying to find that sweet spot between Jinking for survivability and needing decent firepower in the next turn. I guess it depends on the opponent and the situation, but in my last game I kept getting an amazing number of hits on overwatch even when jinking (though obviously this can't be relied on every game).

Yeah, the decision on whether to jink or not is actually pretty complex as long as the opponent has units better in melee than a black knight, ignore cover, and/or units you cannot catch in melee.

My rule of thumb is to only jink if I either plan to charge with the unit, won't have any valid targets in range, or the incoming attack(s) will render the unit ineffective.

the_scotsman wrote:There's not a ton of great saves, AP4 actually performs pretty good against Mechanicus.

This is actually surprisingly true for most admech 30K armies. Many of their best firepower or body count units are 4+ saves. 30K admech armies are however rather varied. There is a considerable amount of freedom in list building and thus you could find yourself facing all 3+ and 2+ MC models or a swarm of 4+ jetpack models or anything in between. The army list is fairly well balanced and so all of those options are good.

SirDonlad wrote:Something you may find useful if you are dealing with thallax (ordo reductor ftw etc..) they only have a 4+ so a HB wounds on 4's and denies thier armour save. They still get thier FNP but it's a 6+

Bikes and speeders wilt in the face of thallax, mind.

A good call is to take out the leadership - a bit 16th century, i know, but a lot of the functionality of a taghmata force is the buffs and control elements held by the magos and various adepts. Take out all the cortex controllers in range and the automata will just go for whatevers closest - they have to try a charge on enemies within 12" so you could have some fun with that.

A word of caution; automata with a cybernetica cortex can fire three weapons in the shooting phase if seperated from a cortex controller.

Successful wounds against a cybernetica cortex equipped automata using the fleshbane or poisoned rule have to be re-rolled.

Cybernetica equipped automata you may meet; Castellax, Vorax, Thanatar, Thanatar-Calix.



edit; just had a thought - take a bastion and put a unit inside to man the HB's - i find the sneaky shots on my thallax really irritating, so maybe that could help you?

Going after the leadership is a good move assuming you can do so without wasting too many resources. The HQ models in these lists tend to be fairly squishy as compared to most 40K lists as they often come in command units or without the independent character rule.


IMO winning this game is probably going to come down to;
1) killing the reduce cover save AP3 high rate of fire units
2) recognizing the units you can punch to death and what you need to shoot to death; ie jinking then charging black knights into thallax should be win while doing the same against Castellax is probably going to be bad for you.
3) How much 4+ area terrain you play with. A lot of cover will benefit the admech player greatly as he will get saves against your plasma and grav whereas you already came with your own optional cover and so needed it less.
4) Mexican standoffs. There is actually a kind of weird gridlock that can happen between black knights and units better at melee than them with similar shooting. The castellax units are a good example. It is quite possible if your opponent has some cover reducing abilities that they will sit their ObjSec Castellax units with their Str6 AP3 guns on objectives and just shoot enough shots at your black knights to keep them jinking. If you don't have a way to upset the balance of such a situation then you will almost assuredly loose as long as you continue to jink. You will need the other player to either charge with the castellax (BS2 overwatch, yay) or stop jinking for a turn so you can shoot properly (or I guess get ridiculously lucky with snap shots).

Thanks for all the advice and analysis. I have posted the battle report.

Dakka: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/659204.page#8035773

My blog: http://standwargaming.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/battle-report-15-1500-pts-dark-angels.html