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Hi there, looking at the Scions range I found them really nice looking and I had a look at their codex and tactics to see what was up with them. Now it seems they are a fast skirmishing army, being able to deep strike with almost all of their models, and I read that the Taurox Prime is even decent.

I was wondering if adding some to my army for future bigger lists (like 1500+) would be a nice choice ? I'm confused as to what I would gain from them. Deep striking is really nice to have or no ? Would it be nice to have a Taurox to transport my Vanguards ? I'm paranoid having it exploding honestly, but in all cases they could get shoot at anyway, even if their chances to get cover are slightly better than in a big truck.

For a taste of what I'll play in my 1000 pts list, there's:

10x Vanguards (HQ)
5x Rangers with Arquebii
5x Rangers
3x Grav Destroyers Servitors

1x Dragoon
1x Kastelan Maniple

1x Techpriest

Any advice ? I'm not going to go on a frenzy buying spree no worries haha.

Thanks in advance !

Same thing I tell everybody: use the Start Collecting formation or two, and get as many Taurox as you can to steal for your Skitarii. Hide the Commissary in a squad or in reserve, and keep DEEP striking the regular squad (which you'll get back) and then the command squad (which you won't get back, but use it suicidally anyway).

Having some Deep-Striking Scions and transports for your Skitarii could supplement your list pretty well. There's also a handful of other things that you can do to refine your Skitarii to make them more effective.

I'd take a Command Squad with a medi-pack and Plasma Guns - this will satisfy the modern need for Ap2 and allow your Admech to take Arc weaponry (which is much more effective for them). Infantry squads can then do whatever you need them to - Flamers for infantry, Melta for Vehicles, Volleyguns if you want to defend an objective in cover. One thing the AdMech lack is conventional weaponry, so bringing in some good old traditional death is nice. But you'll probably not want to spend too much on Scions to get more Admech goodness.

And don't get me started on how amazingly amazing the Taurox is. They've got a healthy capacity of 10, an Autocannon stat-line blast, the ability to take regular Autocannon and four (FOUR!) firepoints for your Arc rifles or whatever, okay it's flimsy but it's certainly better than walking most of the time - and as Sayer-fan said, they are a steal considering how well it can defend and support your Vanguard (All that Str7 is nothing to sniff at, and the other weapons are great too).

I've been considering adding scions to my skitarii as well. Becuase they look amazing, taurox prime's to transport vanguard would be really nice, and deep striking some 2xmeltagun min scion squads into the enemies backfield might distract them long enough to get my skitarii up the board and in range.

Most options for adding in allied transports to skitarii you seem to waste points on tax. you end up taking a unit as a tax, which then meanders on foot in your back field with anti infantry guns, adding nothing that the skitarii can't do really well themselves. Where as using scion allies to add transports, the 'tax' of the scions seems like it would actually bring something useful to the table that the skitarii can't do themselves, deep striking disruption. They're a useful tax, not a wasted one.

The taurox being fast also helps a lot with not being able to deploy inside allied transports.

Seems like a pretty good fit to me.

TheManWithNoPlan wrote:Having some Deep-Striking Scions and transports for your Skitarii could supplement your list pretty well. There's also a handful of other things that you can do to refine your Skitarii to make them more effective.

I'd take a Command Squad with a medi-pack and Plasma Guns - this will satisfy the modern need for Ap2 and allow your Admech to take Arc weaponry (which is much more effective for them). Infantry squads can then do whatever you need them to - Flamers for infantry, Melta for Vehicles, Volleyguns if you want to defend an objective in cover. One thing the AdMech lack is conventional weaponry, so bringing in some good old traditional death is nice. But you'll probably not want to spend too much on Scions to get more Admech goodness.

And don't get me started on how amazingly amazing the Taurox is. They've got a healthy capacity of 10, an Autocannon stat-line blast, the ability to take regular Autocannon and four (FOUR!) firepoints for your Arc rifles or whatever, okay it's flimsy but it's certainly better than walking most of the time - and as Sayer-fan said, they are a steal considering how well it can defend and support your Vanguard (All that Str7 is nothing to sniff at, and the other weapons are great too).

I think I'd stick to the plasma squad on my leader's unit to benefit from the Preferred Enemy to prevent getting them blown up (and having 3 shots/guy is nice) so a part of my AP2 would be there. I don't remember if the Gravguns from the Kataphrons have a low AP or not, I'll check later, but they could be useful too. I don't really fancy the full arc rifles squads I see everywhere, maybe I'll change my mind later, but there's enough anti-armor weaponry as it it in an AdMech army I feel.

I'd use the Taurox to transport my Vanguard so their 18" range could close to the enemy, to transport my leader squad that would be nice I think.

Danny slag wrote:I've been considering adding scions to my skitarii as well. Becuase they look amazing, taurox prime's to transport vanguard would be really nice, and deep striking some 2xmeltagun min scion squads into the enemies backfield might distract them long enough to get my skitarii up the board and in range.

Most options for adding in allied transports to skitarii you seem to waste points on tax. you end up taking a unit as a tax, which then meanders on foot in your back field with anti infantry guns, adding nothing that the skitarii can't do really well themselves. Where as using scion allies to add transports, the 'tax' of the scions seems like it would actually bring something useful to the table that the skitarii can't do themselves, deep striking disruption. They're a useful tax, not a wasted one.

The taurox being fast also helps a lot with not being able to deploy inside allied transports.

Seems like a pretty good fit to me.

Yeah I don't really like the Imperial Guard units, I'd at least wait for the next range, which may come soon with Fall of Cadia. I love the fluff combination we can do with Scions, in their codex there's even a famous regiment who's reputed for their work with the Mechanicus. I feel like they could be really easily converted to more Mech units !

How is the Taurox Faster than another vehicle ?

What I'm afraid of is their not-so-high Ld, but I think it's easily upgradable, and they're not meant to last long anyway. My main force will remain as Skitarii/Cult Mechanicus.

They're faster because they have he "fast"rule.

So they can fire both weapons at full BS after going cruising speed, and they can flat out 12 instead of 6 inches.

Oh now that's interesting. I'll really consider using them in the future, in small quantities. I still want to go full AdMech/Skitarii.

One thing to note, you wrote that you're taking a kastelan maniple, you unfortunately can't in that list due to the dumb double book issue.
To add robots to a skitarii list you have to take an ad mech formation, which means min 2 units of destroyer/breachers to get you the elite slot. Or take the cohort cybernetica.
I also wanted to add the robots to my army and ran into that problem.

The cheapest way I've thought of is taking an allied detachment of ad mech instead of their cad, but you still need 1 unit of destroyer/bleachers as a tax and since it's an allied detachment the dominus can't be your warlord. With imperial agents you could take an engineer in place of the dominus in the allied detachment to make the tax a little cheaper still, but then you don't have a place for your dominus.

Our formations are kind of a mess.

Danny slag wrote:
One thing to note, you wrote that you're taking a kastelan maniple, you unfortunately can't in that list due to the dumb double book issue.
To add robots to a skitarii list you have to take an ad mech formation, which means min 2 units of destroyer/breachers to get you the elite slot. Or take the cohort cybernetica.
I also wanted to add the robots to my army and ran into that problem.

The cheapest way I've thought of is taking an allied detachment of ad mech instead of their cad, but you still need 1 unit of destroyer/bleachers as a tax and since it's an allied detachment the dominus can't be your warlord. With imperial agents you could take an engineer in place of the dominus in the allied detachment to make the tax a little cheaper still, but then you don't have a place for your dominus.

Our formations are kind of a mess.

Ah that's what I did, my Warlord was going to be the Vanguard Alpha anyway, and I run the Priest, Servitors and Robots in an Allied Detachment. Indeed, I already asked around about that and got answered that the Allied Detachment was the best for that.

Still don't understand this system... After all it should be one codex, there's even "Codex: Adeptus Mechanicus" on the cover for both codices, so I should be able to run them all in a regular Battleforged list, isn't it ? With all the different units from both codices filling the slots as a whole, not separately.

 Aaranis wrote:


Still don't understand this system... After all it should be one codex, there's even "Codex: Adeptus Mechanicus" on the cover for both codices, so I should be able to run them all in a regular Battleforged list, isn't it ? With all the different units from both codices filling the slots as a whole, not separately.

You can still have a Battleforged Army with Skitarii and a CM Allied Detachment if your Warlord is an Alpha. You could run other IoM factions and still be Battleforged, they just have to be a part of a CAD, AD or Formation. The book breakdown is silly though as you can't even take a Techpriest for a pure Skitarii Army (outside of the SC Formation), even though they play a huge role in the fluff. Unfortunately there are similar limiting issues with the MT, as they have no access to Vendettas unless you run AM too or the new Cadia Formation. Even still there is the issue of not being able to start in another faction's transport, which is pretty lame for them of all Armies.