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So, I'm getting paid friday. And am going to grab a Get Started skitarri box. I wanted to ask more experienced players where I should go from here.

First off, I pretty much -need- to get the Admech book to play a full Adeptus Mechancium themed army right? I like both ranges. And the Forgeworld stuff is divine, seriously their super heavy is just a big Death ray on Treads.

I wanted to inquire about list building, for say. A 1500 point force. And a formation I hear about, the one with the Knight Titan? I forget it's name Mandible or something to that effect? I'm thinking I'd run a Battlecannon Knight, seeing as the Skittari armory is short on blasts. And it's a good general weapon.

A new forgeworld book is coming out next month that will bring a bunch of the 30k mechanicus units over to 40k. Also the War Convocation includes all three, Cult Mech, Skitarii, Imperial Knights. It lets canticles work on all units in the detachment, and gives free upgrades to them all. They also have a new one in Fall of Cadia but IDK what it does.

To anyone starting AdMech I'd say make a list using the Adeptus Mechanicus War Convocation and work towards that, it uses Sitarii, Cult Mechanicus and Imperial Knights (I believe there is also some form of Maniple detachment that allows Knights, but I didn't find it to be so effective). The War Convocation is the most feared Mechanicum list in 40k since Drop Pod mounted Vanguard got FAQ'd out. It's incredibly flexible and grants a vast range of models.

For a 1500 point list I'd get another box of Skitarii for starters. A unit of five Rangers with Transuranic Arquebi will be a great sniper unit, build the rest as Vanguard with as many Arc Rifles as you can, failing that Plasma Calivers are good too. Another Onager is good too, I find the two most useful weapons for them to be the Neutron Laser and Icarus Array. A unit of Infiltrators will also be able to find it's place well under 1500 points - equip them however you like but I prefer the Taser Goads with Flechette Blasters. You'd also probably be able to throw in a Syndonian Dragoon, for the giggles and charging capability it offers.

Then the Knight (this is the really fun part). When you say the Rapid-Fire Battle Cannon knight do you mean the Paladin (Battle Cannon and Reaper Chainsword) or the Crusader (Battle Cannon and Avenger Gattling Cannon)? Both will be excellent additions to your AdMech and whichever you take will depend on what model you have and how you calculate out your points. I find the Paladin is just fine without upgrades, but a Stormspear Rocket Pod will never be amiss atop it (the Twin Icarus Autocannon is also a decent choice if you didn't take the [in my opinion vastly superior] Icarus Array). The Crusader benefits greatly from the addition of carapace weapons as it's more designed for sitting back and blasting away while the Paladin can be much more aggressive due to it's Chainsword giving it great combat potential if it's ever charged by a high-value unit. Avoid tarpit units at all costs, let your Infiltrators or Vanguard take them.

I know that is a lot of stuff going at a million miles an hour but I really love all this AdMech glory and wanted to get as much information out as possible. Hope something in there helped!

P.S. No matter how Fall of Cadia and the new FW book turn out I still think it's a good idea to get your hands on the Mechanicus.

I'd suggest another getting started box and then a box of infiltrators/rust stalkers. The skitarii getting started box is an amazing deal, especially since GW never discounts anything. That'll give you about 1000 points.

I'm going to have to disagree with everyone suggesting the war convocation, it's a really BS detachment that gives you hundreds of points of free gak but with no flexibility in building. Because of all the upgrades being free you'll end up modeling your miniatures completely differently than you would if you were using standard list building. So if you ever want to play anything but the same exact list your miniature will be built in ways not conducive to this.


Then decide how you want to go up from 1000, but I wouldn't worry about this until after you've got 2 getting started boxes and either infiltrators or rust stalkers built.
You could go pure skitarii, perfectly viable
Or ad cult mech which rules wise don't interact, but fluff wise they're the same army. (So dumb that GW split them up)
Other choices to flesh out are imperial guard, militarum tempestus, or space marines.

Hmm. Yeah, Another box, infiltrators. And maybe a few of those large robots, Destroyers I think they are called? To pass into 1500-1850. I definately don't want an apocalypse force like my Death Guard, but something new to play on game night Thursday evening.

 Shadowbrand wrote:
Hmm. Yeah, Another box, infiltrators. And maybe a few of those large robots, Destroyers I think they are called? To pass into 1500-1850. I definately don't want an apocalypse force like my Death Guard, but something new to play on game night Thursday evening.

That sounds perfect and i think you've got a good path there to a nice army build. The good thing about the robots, i think you may be talking about the kastelan robots, is that if you do the cohort cybernetic formation of them it's so expensive points wise you can easily do an 1850 army with just 2 getting started boxes, 2 infiltrator boxes, and the robots(2 boxes to make the formation). Overall a fairly cheap army by GW standards to buy, with the benefit of beautiful models.

Plus then if you decided to try out different lists it's all pretty modular and you've got a solid core you can swap things in and out of.

I would also recommend building towards the War Convocation list since it seems like you the models spread across the three books. As mentioned it is a pretty expensive formation even with the freebies so it doesn't leave much flexibility, but honestly the army itself is lacking in that area anyway (no transports, low toughness on dedicated CC for Skitarii, weak armor, etc.). This makes it a bit harder to add to squads, but most will be run minimum anyway since they already hit pretty hard in their own way. This army can be used as you are building up a force too if you start with Skitarii purchases. I regret modeling up ten Rangers to meet the SC Formation, and would have preferred to run a max squad of Vanguard with a minimum squad of Rangers to camp from afar. Also keep in mind that the special weapons are in short supply so plan ahead for what you want to use.

For me the benefits outweigh the cons, as even just the Armywide Cult Mechanicus Canticles is huge. Too bad the Skitarii cannot share their +BS... Hello Grav shots always landing.

Yeah. As someone who mains Chaos. It's really not the end of the world if I need to use multiple books in a game.

I think I refer to at least 2 books. 3 If it's over 2k points.

Kastellans is the proper name for them. Yes.

That t7 on those castellan bots is absolutely horrible to deal with and those fnps kill me now

The kastelans are awesome, but you kind of have to plan your army around them if you're taking them. They're about 770pts min.
That's what blows about the stupid way our books were written as 3 separate books, you can't just add in a kastelan squad, you need 2 plus a dominus.

The thing I learned when building my army is as someone else said planning for special weapons. You only get 1 of each in each box. So for example I got 3 boxes, 3 plasma calivers on a 10 man vanguard, a naked 10 man vanguard, and 2 arc rifles each in 2 min ranger squads. Not saying that's best, but that meant I only needed to buy 1 arc rifle from a bits site.