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I play against my buddies AM a lot and I only win about 30% of the time. He usually fields pask and some base Lemans Russes with tons of bubble wrapped guardsmen. What usually happens is my anti tank wipes the Russes but I lose all my troops to sheer weight of Las fire. My anti tank units can't hope to kill all the guardsmen as they sit on objectives with objective secured from the CAD.

I usually run two units of 10 vanguard 1 dune crawler with neutron. 3 sydonian dragoons. And 1 kastelan robot squad. We play at 1k usually.

Thoughts?

You could try running the Eradication Ray on your Dune Crawler for that large blast S6 AP5 shot. Other than that I really am not sure, maybe play for objectives? Admech can really suffer at low point values with expensive units, I would perhaps suggest swapping the Kastelans for more Skitarii units but then you would be losing a valuable meat shield. It's hard because I play both armies haha.

Which special weapons are you running on your Vanguard? Run a squad with all Radium Carbines and one Omnispex. Hit the squad with a Heavy Phosphor Blaster, point the Vanguard at them, and eradicate with Radium Carbines. Repeat as necessary. Put more cover on the board, always.

 Verviedi wrote:
Which special weapons are you running on your Vanguard? Run a squad with all Radium Carbines and one Omnispex. Hit the squad with a Heavy Phosphor Blaster, point the Vanguard at them, and eradicate with Radium Carbines. Repeat as necessary. Put more cover on the board, always.

this, just bare carbines and a spex is so so cheap and wonderful and will eat guardsmen

Go with more cult mech and use your longer range to your advantage. Get rid of the tanks as soon as, then keep 30" away to force the blobs out from behind their aegis lines. Once they are out, they are going to have to advance on you, and then your cognis flamers and promethium pipes go to work. Worth a try if you have the models.

I am running my vanguard with plasma. The problem is that his tank's pie plate my vanguard before they get close with the carbines then he sits guardsmen on objectives while I try to kill them all one by one. I'm Def going to use flamers next time on the robots. I usually wipe the tanks fairly easily.

 thekerrick wrote:
I am running my vanguard with plasma. The problem is that his tank's pie plate my vanguard before they get close with the carbines then he sits guardsmen on objectives while I try to kill them all one by one. I'm Def going to use flamers next time on the robots. I usually wipe the tanks fairly easily.

Don't bother with the plasma, especially at 1000 points. It's hideously, hideously expensive (you can almost get 2 full squads of Vanguard for the cost of a single squad with plasma) and they tend to kill themselves pretty easily too. The only time I take plasma is with the War Convocation because 1) it's free and 2) no Get's Hot, but the lowest point value you can run that is 1,500. The only upgrade I do give them is an omnispex for 10 points. -1 to cover saves is invaluable, especially against IG, since they'll make a bee-line for 4+ cover ruins.

If you must take the Castelan robots (they're also a big point sink at 1K), stick with the flamers and use them aggressively. Remember that you can have those carapace torrent templates fire twice with the battle protocols so long as you don't move. I tend to put the Datasmith out front to soak wounds with his 2+ (so long as they're not S8) and give him a 4++ upgrade.

Dragoons are awesome and really shine as speedy vehicle busters. Not much can hide from the 9" movement and 5-15" charge. Remember the +strength canticle stacks with the +Str from the lance so you can do a lot of damage very quickly.

Also, don't forget Scout on the Skitarii units. With no transports that can be an invaluable movement to try and get into that sweet 18" range for radium slaying goodness. All praise the Omnissiah!

DoW

Sounds like flamer on the bots, less plasma, more vanguard, pie plates on the dunecrawler, and scout moves to get closer.

Thanks for the help!

 DogOfWar wrote:

 thekerrick wrote:
I am running my vanguard with plasma. The problem is that his tank's pie plate my vanguard before they get close with the carbines then he sits guardsmen on objectives while I try to kill them all one by one. I'm Def going to use flamers next time on the robots. I usually wipe the tanks fairly easily.

Don't bother with the plasma, especially at 1000 points. It's hideously, hideously expensive (you can almost get 2 full squads of Vanguard for the cost of a single squad with plasma) and they tend to kill themselves pretty easily too. The only time I take plasma is with the War Convocation because 1) it's free and 2) no Get's Hot, but the lowest point value you can run that is 1,500. The only upgrade I do give them is an omnispex for 10 points. -1 to cover saves is invaluable, especially against IG, since they'll make a bee-line for 4+ cover ruins.

If you must take the Castelan robots (they're also a big point sink at 1K), stick with the flamers and use them aggressively. Remember that you can have those carapace torrent templates fire twice with the battle protocols so long as you don't move. I tend to put the Datasmith out front to soak wounds with his 2+ (so long as they're not S8) and give him a 4++ upgrade.

Dragoons are awesome and really shine as speedy vehicle busters. Not much can hide from the 9" movement and 5-15" charge. Remember the +strength canticle stacks with the +Str from the lance so you can do a lot of damage very quickly.

Also, don't forget Scout on the Skitarii units. With no transports that can be an invaluable movement to try and get into that sweet 18" range for radium slaying goodness. All praise the Omnissiah!

DoW

I like your insights. Would you ever take fists on the robots?

Volume of fire will erase Guard squads - blasts and anything that can easily remove a commissar (forcing a leadership test) will be HELL on the massed Guard squad.

Also, massed Guardsmen can do exactly NOTHING against armor, unless they paid for melta bombs or krak grenades, which most players never do (unless they've got the spare points, but generally the blob is meant to slow things down). Put some of those scary robots in their faces and you'll walk through them.

As as a Guard player, I worry about my leadership and close combat. I have no real way to deal with fast moving threats outside of massed Leman Russ fire and even then that's not a guaranteed deterrent (and it's expensive). Get something quick or tough to get the attention of his Russes and assault them. The blob? Any decent return fire will erase it quick enough, just keep an eye out for a way to kill any Leadership buffing elements.

Exalbaru wrote:
I like your insights. Would you ever take fists on the robots?

I've always run them with the twin-linked phosphor arm weapons, so my only real decision is whether to keep the flamers or just max out phosphor and hope I can get in a good position to take advantage of the "no move, double fire carapace" battle protocol.

They're decently beefy (what with the high Toughness and multi-wounds), but I think the lack of an invulnerable in melee (and only a 3+ armour) kinda hurts if you're going up against anything with a powerfist (or similar). They're also not very quick (no dunestrider for them) so I'd probably spend half the game just getting across the board, while taking a few pot-shots with my 200+ point unit. If you do the double attacks protocol, that can be pretty good, but their WS isn't great and now they don't have FnP either.

Honestly I think the trade-off is too great when it comes to trying to kit them out as a melee/counter-charge unit. They are a very powerful (if expensive) firebase of lots of S6 AP3 or good ol' fashioned guardsman roasting. Shooting both of those torrent templates twice into a blob of Guardsmen is just glorious...

Nothing wrong with giving it a try and seeing how they do though! We can theoryhammer all day, but who knows what the tabletop will bring. Best of luck!

DoW

So I got a game coming up tomorrow and I have made these changes. Reduced my vanguard to omnispex and just Radium Carbines. I have added a unit of infiltrators with the flechette blasters for tons of shots when I come in on a board edge. I took away the neutron laser and left the onager with the default gun.

Now I am worried about the tanks. Maybe my dragoons can pop the russes but thats about it.....

Also my robots have the flamers this time.

Infiltrators are a huge threat unit, they will wipe whatever they get into combat with, especially against guard.

So here is it how it went down. I wiped 50ish guardsmen the first turn with flamers and radium weapons. That double shooting protocol for the robots is awesome. However I didnt do well vs his two tanks

Pask and his punisher made mincemeat out of my vanguard and his regular russ killed my dunecrawler. So most of the end game was me and him scrambling around fighting for maelstrom objectives. Game ended up in a draw unfortunately.

I think if he had not gotten lucky by killing my onager It would of been much better. Infiltrators worth their weight as they killed some guardsmen on other objectives. However they came in on opposite sides vs his tank and I am sure would of glanced it to death with taser attacks.

Thanks for the help guys!

 thekerrick wrote:
So here is it how it went down. I wiped 50ish guardsmen the first turn with flamers and radium weapons. That double shooting protocol for the robots is awesome. However I didnt do well vs his two tanks

Pask and his punisher made mincemeat out of my vanguard and his regular russ killed my dunecrawler. So most of the end game was me and him scrambling around fighting for maelstrom objectives. Game ended up in a draw unfortunately.

I think if he had not gotten lucky by killing my onager It would of been much better. Infiltrators worth their weight as they killed some guardsmen on other objectives. However they came in on opposite sides vs his tank and I am sure would of glanced it to death with taser attacks.

Thanks for the help guys!

Sounds like a good match-up and a fun game!

I don't think I noticed this before (apologies if this is already addressed above), but are you playing an unbound list? The reason I ask is that the Kastelan robots aren't in the Skitarii codex, they're actually a Heavy Support choice in Cult Mechanicus. To 'unlock' them you'd need a Battle Congregation (1 HQ and 2 Troops minimum), which usually consists of a Techpriest Dominus and two squads of Kataphron breachers/destroyers.

With this in mind, the Kataphrons are pretty good anti-tank platforms. The Destroyers have 6 shot grav guns (no grav amps, unfortunately) and the Breachers have 2 shot haywire guns, both of which can do nasty things to Leman Russes.

DoW

 DogOfWar wrote:

 thekerrick wrote:
So here is it how it went down. I wiped 50ish guardsmen the first turn with flamers and radium weapons. That double shooting protocol for the robots is awesome. However I didnt do well vs his two tanks

Pask and his punisher made mincemeat out of my vanguard and his regular russ killed my dunecrawler. So most of the end game was me and him scrambling around fighting for maelstrom objectives. Game ended up in a draw unfortunately.

I think if he had not gotten lucky by killing my onager It would of been much better. Infiltrators worth their weight as they killed some guardsmen on other objectives. However they came in on opposite sides vs his tank and I am sure would of glanced it to death with taser attacks.

Thanks for the help guys!

Sounds like a good match-up and a fun game!

I don't think I noticed this before (apologies if this is already addressed above), but are you playing an unbound list? The reason I ask is that the Kastelan robots aren't in the Skitarii codex, they're actually a Heavy Support choice in Cult Mechanicus. To 'unlock' them you'd need a Battle Congregation (1 HQ and 2 Troops minimum), which usually consists of a Techpriest Dominus and two squads of Kataphron breachers/destroyers.

With this in mind, the Kataphrons are pretty good anti-tank platforms. The Destroyers have 6 shot grav guns (no grav amps, unfortunately) and the Breachers have 2 shot haywire guns, both of which can do nasty things to Leman Russes.

DoW

Yes we are aware. Since we both only really have about 1k points available to us we are fudging. Were not playing unbound but are counting the Kastelans as being in the skitarii codex until I get more admech. To make it fair, they dont receive any of the Skitarii army bonuses though. They are just there kinda.

Be aware that you can't use the Protector protocol (which lets robots fire their carapace-mounted weapons twice), on the first turn.

 thekerrick wrote:
Yes we are aware. Since we both only really have about 1k points available to us we are fudging. Were not playing unbound but are counting the Kastelans as being in the skitarii codex until I get more admech. To make it fair, they dont receive any of the Skitarii army bonuses though. They are just there kinda.

Ah, I see. That's actually a pretty big point sink then. Losing Canticles is like losing Chapter Tactics! Hopefully you'll be able to snag some Kataphron. Skitarii almost need to ally with Cult Mech to have effective anti-tank. But, like you said, that's tough to do at 1k.

DoW