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As the topic title says, I am thinking of playing Mechanicum.

I wanted to mirror the Imperial Guard, so I was going to have a Lachrimallus Archmagos, with squads of flamer-equipped Tech-Priests with FnP and masses of disposable troops. How viable is a Mechanicum force like this? Obviously heavier weapons such as Myrimdoms are required but what sort of list could I develop?

Thanks.

Kiss your bank balance farewell.

hobojebus wrote:
Kiss your bank balance farewell.

Aha, Luckily I have my own forge guard that I'm using for the tech-thralls - converted from cadian bodies and arms, rad carbine arms from the skitarii and Pig Iron Kolony Militia heads. I have around 80 of them, maybe more.

You have 80 thralls so far? Good, that's about 400pts when fully loaded up.

Realistically, you will need some of the tanks and/or stompy robots to do your heavy lifting. Thralls can die horribly fast, and have relatively little damage output. They're meant to camp on an objective or tarpit the enemy for a turn or so, and not much else.

You can effectively go heavy on the thralls, you'll just need to make up for their lack of damage output elsewhere.

I've played Guard before, I don't mind having infantry to camp and tarpit, and seeing as I'm giving them induction chargers, Rite of Pure Thought and carapace armour, I'm hoping they can function a bit better than my militia.

I like them not running away.

Still, Myrimdoms and Krios battle tanks are my next purchase I think. Get some excellent damage ability. Even a Reductor tech-priest squad with multi-meltas.

You need to decide between Taghmata, Reductor or Cybernetica first. Once you have done so, the choices thereafter will be partially decided by that choice.

Best evidence I have that tech-thrall overdose works is winning a match with 60 of these guys up against a tank line.
But, I did have them backed up with 4 Vengeance batteries. (Although it still took me until turn 5 to get past the half-way mark, on a 48"x48" table)

You can fit the Lacyraemara lot with any flavour of Mechanicum, sortof as a funny supplementary army, or, as you quite rightly suppose, backing them up with tanks.
However, I strongly suggest bringing in some "Distraction Carnifexes"; things to draw fire away from the techies, otherwise they'll take absolutely ages to get anywhere; remember that when you manage to respawn a unit with the Lacryrimallus magos, the unit comes on right on your table edge, effectively costing 2 turns to get them to the other side of your deployment zone.

Put the Tech-preist Auxilliia units in triaros because the FNP boost to the thralls is not stopped by being in a vehicle but stops the enemy taking out the adepts with precision shots - kit their thralls with assault weapons for when you want to bail out and punish some nearby infantry (flamers o'clock!).
Same goes for the HQ, put him/her/it/they into a macrocarid explorator to make sure you don't lose the unit recycling ability.

The best way to see how you like the army is to have some proxy battles using your existing guard models - my personal opinion is that it's a fun army to set down and watch the opponents face as they try to take it all in.
You can also integrate it into legio cybernetica and Ordo Reductor lists since the Lachrimallus doesn't stipulate being the archmagos or even being the compulsory HQ choice; it's easier to do it with Legio Cybernetica (limits you to 4 units of thralls because of the compulsory troop requirement) because the Ordo Reductor has the same but also a compulsory heavy support requirement too but for that you get to ignore most terrain effects and their penalties as well as ignoring the 'pinning' rule army-wide.

I think there is a curious combo for the Taghmata in having an Archmagos Prime Archimandrite and a secondary Magos Lachrimallus: put 4 basic units of thralls in a basic triaros each and include the two HQs in two of the triaros - that can be done in a 1000point game!

I love the robots myself but they don't fit with wolves they way they do with thousand sons or iron warriors.

Ironically Iron Warriors and Thousand Sons are my choice for allies. I am thinking of running TSons as Iron Warriors until Inferno comes out. As my Grey Brotherhood - the TSons but loyalist, even in the 40th Milleniium are hateful and rugged as the Iron Warriors.