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Hey there folks. As the title suggests I'm trying to decide which army to start collecting to get back into the game. I like the look of both armies and the fact they have Get Started! Boxes is great!

Does anyone have any advice on the biggest differences / issues between the two to help me narrow it down?
Thanks

Tau like to shoot.

Skitarii like to shoot.

Tau suck in CC.

Skitarii generally suck in CC, but have some pretty nice CC units.

Tau will earn you ever-lasting hatred for merely playing them.

Skitarii won't.

...

Okay, that last bit is entirely dependent on your meta. But Tau are, in general, a more powerful army than Skitarii. To the point where, if you build for nothing but tournaments, you WILL steamroll most opponents.

Tau is a more complete army

Skitarii feels like half an army, because it is.

Why they split up the Ad Mech codex, I'll never know

I highly doubt I will be going to any tournaments unfortunately. I'm almost leaning toward Skitarii for the visual purposes, I've always been a sucker for playing something that isn't super popular.
What would a decent 1000 points Skitarii army involve? Just a general overview ?

Dem crisis suits doe... =[

Vanguard.

With Arc Rifles.

Is there even really a choice? Tau need their robots and suits, Skitarii are part robot. Tau are filthy xenos, Skitarii are the legions of the Omnissiah's faithful. Tau fire warrior plasma guns are weaker, skitarii plasma guns are the the shootiest of all imperial plasma guns!

I could go on for day, but deep down you know that your emotional centers should be surgically removed and replaced with cogitators so you may fully process the approximate margin by which the armies of Mars out strip some miniscule xeno race.

Biadetic wrote:
I highly doubt I will be going to any tournaments unfortunately. I'm almost leaning toward Skitarii for the visual purposes, I've always been a sucker for playing something that isn't super popular.
What would a decent 1000 points Skitarii army involve? Just a general overview ?

Dem crisis suits doe... =[

go with what looks most fun and interesting to you. personally i regret not dropping my bonus from work into skitarii myself - i think i would of really enjoyed painting them and making the martian themed bases and terrain, not to mention playing them. i would start with the start collecting box, and off ebay you can usually find them a little cheaper (at least on american ebay) - that is if you have no qualms about having to use two codex for to use the entire set (my understanding is start collecting you need both skitarii and cult mechanicus - maybe I am wrong? also i think the start collecting box comes with its own formation, negating need for cult mechanicus? but in my mind having the options to field the two martian armies isnt a bad thing lol plus i enjoy reading them. for the general 7th ed. war40k rule book in case you dont have already, you can get off ebay the mini version from dark vengence much cheaper, same as regular rulebook just minus the 2 and a half books of needless fluff)

as for what ironjack said - 01101001 00100000 01100001 01100111 01110010 01100101 01100101 00100000 01100011 01101111 01101101 01110000 01101100 01100101 01110100 01100101 01101100 01111001 00101110 00100000 01100101 01101001 01110100 01101000 01100101 01110010 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01100011 01100001 01101110 00100000 01100011 01101111 01101101 01101101 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01101100 01100101 01100111 01101001 01101111 01101110 01110011 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01001101 01100001 01110010 01110011 00100000 01101001 01101110 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01110011 01100101 01100001 01110010 01100011 01101000 00100000 01100110 01101111 01110010 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01001111 01101101 01101110 01101001 01100011 01101111 01110000 01100001 01100101 01101001 01100001 00100000 01101111 01110010 00100000 01110000 01101100 01100001 01111001 00100000 01100110 01101111 01110010 01100101 01110011 01110100 00100000 01111000 01100101 01101110 01101111 01110011 00100000 01110111 01101001 01110100 01101000 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100010 01110101 01101110 01100011 01101000 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01100001 01110010 01110010 01101111 01100111 01100001 01101110 01110100 00100000 01101011 01101110 01101001 01100110 01100101 00100000 01100101 01100001 01110010 01110011 00101110

Damn, I was hoping someone wouldn't say go with what I think looks best, I like everything ! Haha Hmm I am leaning toward Skitarii now though.

Why would I need both army books though?

( Also maybe I should add, I'm looking to not have to spend massive amounts of money, so trying to steer clear of mass vehicle armies.)

Hi man, when I got back into 40k I had exactly the same dilemma as you. I always loved shooty armies and so hesitated between Tau and Necrons at first. My wife took Necrons so I considered Tau.

Then my eyes catched a sparkle of heaven from another shelf.

And before me, towering above the other Start Collecting packs, was the Skitarii box.

I fell in love, instantly. At first it was visual, the aesthetics. The Steampunk feel, the baroque cyborgs, their brass guns, and most of all their goddamn coats above armour. Then I asked to see the codex of this godsend army, what are they about ? Are they here to bring peace and prosperity to us through radioactive weaponry ?

And what I saw was that they were made for me. They are among the shootiest armies out there, they own some of the best weaponry of the Imperium, almost all of them have Relentless, so they can always march forwards while shooting their heavy guns, they have guys that are literally radioactive and their vehicles are so great I can't even.

No honestly, in terms of comparison, Tau have a really devastating firepower but require constant movement and planning to not get wrecked in close combat or by anything that can shoot who gets a little bit close. Thing with Tau is that there's some really cheesy lists possible because they have some arguably OP units like the Riptide that can be spammed in a ridiculous way. Of course most people play casually and won't use lists like these, but a feeling of overpower should be felt while playing them I think.

Skitarii on the other end play a little differently. They don't have any transports whatsoever, so they must footslog across the board to get in range with most of their units. The good news is that they're somewhat resilient and can have a nice mobility depending on which units you chose, Rangers for exemple have S4 AP4 30" rapid fire guns and Move Through Cover, allowing them to pack a punch that outrange the enemy's guns most of the time while being able to move wherever they want. Vanguards are their cheaper alternatives that most people use, they shoot S3 AP5 18" Assault 3 guns that inflict TWO wounds on 6's, whatever the Toughness of the target. They're the awesome-looking radioactive guys with 15th century helmets by the way. And in these squads you can upgrade some of them with powerful weaponry, like the very loved Arc Rifle who is the bane of all vehicles, or the highly dangerous but expensive Plasma Caliver who can deal with anything heavy-armoured. And let's not forget your Transuranic Arquebii who allow you to pop up light vehicles or anyone giving you trouble from 60", best used in pairs in a single 5-men Rangers squad.

As of their vehicles, the Dunecrawler (the one in the Start Collecting pack) is a terrifying mobile artillery who can be mounted with a nice choice of weapons to deal with anything. Literally anything, there's anti-horde or anti-terminators weaponry in there, as well as maybe the best anti-air gun of all. You could go with the Sydonian Dragoon too, because you always wanted to reenact a charging knight with a Tesla lance in the grim darkness of the 41th millenium.

They have access to some melee units that require a bit of thinking to use correctly, as they are still quite fragile, tough they are fast and when in melee they can kill a lot.

The reason people say you'd need both books is because the Adeptus Mechanicus is split in codex: Skitarii and codex: Cult Mechanicus. Whereas the Skitarii book is the one we're talking about, all about fast and subtle playing to triumph, the CUlt Mechanicus is all about all guns blazing with highly resilient units that shoot with the powers of hell. At higher points list it just may be best to include some Cult Mechanicus units in your list, just because as Skitarii are a new army they don't have a lot of diversity and so may be ill-prepared against some lists, whereas the Cult Mechanicus may fill these strategic holes. You should look up about them too, they have cute robots of mass destruction (my avatar). Seriously.

If you search a bit on the forum you may be able to find some lists to see, but I could design you one quickly if you want, I wouldn't mind. As you may have deduced I really love the Mechanicus so I hope I helped you. Maybe a Tau player could give an equally passion-filled answer to your question

Awesome reply thanks man ! You have heavily swayed me to your side at the moment ! Got to love that steampunk!

So on the topic of the Start collecting box... what is the point in putting the Tech mage in it? I would have to ally with another codex? Which I wouldn't mind later like you mentioned but it just seems a strange thing to include if I'm not really going to be using for that reason. I'm assuming the box is still good for its price regardless. Do Skitarii not use HQs at all?

if you could do a sample army list I definitely wouldn't say no. Would be highly appreciated.
I did see a sample list on the Lower point side of things that was basically
4 x 5 man vanguards.
10 infiltrators.
Onedager.

Would that be a reasonable force for all comers? (I don't like tailoring lists but let's just say Marines are rife ! Lol )

Would 2 boxes of Start collecting suffice or would it be cheaper to buy different boxes?

Thanks

 IMMORTAN_AL wrote:

as for what ironjack said - 01101001 00100000 01100001 01100111 01110010 01100101 01100101 00100000 01100011 01101111 01101101 01110000 01101100 01100101 01110100 01100101 01101100 01111001 00101110 00100000 01100101 01101001 01110100 01101000 01100101 01110010 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01100011 01100001 01101110 00100000 01100011 01101111 01101101 01101101 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01101100 01100101 01100111 01101001 01101111 01101110 01110011 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01001101 01100001 01110010 01110011 00100000 01101001 01101110 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01110011 01100101 01100001 01110010 01100011 01101000 00100000 01100110 01101111 01110010 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01001111 01101101 01101110 01101001 01100011 01101111 01110000 01100001 01100101 01101001 01100001 00100000 01101111 01110010 00100000 01110000 01101100 01100001 01111001 00100000 01100110 01101111 01110010 01100101 01110011 01110100 00100000 01111000 01100101 01101110 01101111 01110011 00100000 01110111 01101001 01110100 01101000 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100010 01110101 01101110 01100011 01101000 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01100001 01110010 01110010 01101111 01100111 01100001 01101110 01110100 00100000 01101011 01101110 01101001 01100110 01100101 00100000 01100101 01100001 01110010 01110011 00101110

What? Since when do Tau have knife ears? They don't even seem to have any ears at all! You are confusing them with Eldar.

 WrentheFaceless wrote:
Tau is a more complete army

Skitarii feels like half an army, because it is.

Why they split up the Ad Mech codex, I'll never know

This.

Skitarii are my favorite, i love my ad mech army so i'd personally suggest it, with the caveat that know you're getting into an army where you need to buy two codexes and deal with writing lists in a funky way since your army is really two half armies separated. You'll need skitarii and cult mech to build a complete army.

The reasons to go ad mech,
The miniatures are some of the most detailed and gorgeous they've ever made. (personal opinion)
It's not often played, so opponents won't be going "ughhh, another eldar"
steam-punk cyber men with radiation guns, yes please.
The getting started box is actually an incredible discount.

You asked for a 1000 point list, so here's how i started mine, your mileage may vary.

10 man vanguard with 3 plasma calivers
2x 5 man ranger squads with 2 arc rifles each
2 dunecrawlers (neutron laser or eradicator beam)
1 dominus
5 man unit of infiltrators

the way you list it out is you use the dominus maniple as one formation with the vanguard, dominus and 1 onager
Then a 2nd formation of skitarii maniple that has the rest in it.
It comes out to about 995 points depending on your upgrades, I would avoid giving the pistol and cc weapons to alphas though. seems like a waste.

And the cool part is you can build it with 2 get started boxes (as I mentioned they're a big discount) plus one infiltrator box, and you get a good mix of units plus a real HQ. From there you can expand by moving the dominus to an ad mech formation and adding some ad mech models, or add more skitarii, or whatever you want to plug in on top of this 1000 points. Depending on where you buy you're looking at only about $180 plus tax for that, plus the bits mentioned below.
The only think you'll need to source outside of that is an extra plasma caliver, and 2 arc rifles. Each kit only comes with 1 of each. so that is a pain, and they're not exactly cheap on e-bay at the moment with not many sellers selling skitarii bits.


*Sorry one more tip, magnatize your onagers. It's super easy with how that kit is designed and will be very cost effective because you can swap it to any weapon loadout you want to try without needing to buy more.

A further question on Tau, are they OP only because of certain lists? If I didn't include any Riptides would they still fare well?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
DannySlag thanks for a great long post! Very insightful and appreciated.

So is the Dominus the only HQ and I basically always will have to take him? I don't think I'll mind in the long run adding in Cult Mechanicus.

But your skitarii example list seems like a great base for me to work upon. Is the vanguard and ranger load outs you listed how you personally run yours in bigger games?

Biadetic wrote:
Awesome reply thanks man ! You have heavily swayed me to your side at the moment ! Got to love that steampunk!

So on the topic of the Start collecting box... what is the point in putting the Tech mage in it? I would have to ally with another codex? Which I wouldn't mind later like you mentioned but it just seems a strange thing to include if I'm not really going to be using for that reason. I'm assuming the box is still good for its price regardless. Do Skitarii not use HQs at all?

if you could do a sample army list I definitely wouldn't say no. Would be highly appreciated.
I did see a sample list on the Lower point side of things that was basically
4 x 5 man vanguards.
10 infiltrators.
Onedager.

Would that be a reasonable force for all comers? (I don't like tailoring lists but let's just say Marines are rife ! Lol )

Would 2 boxes of Start collecting suffice or would it be cheaper to buy different boxes?

Thanks

The reason they put the Techpriest in it is highly likely to make you want to buy the Cult Codex I guess. Just business stuff sadly. But like all Start Collecting packs you get a free rulesheet that details a detachment with the units of the box, which in this one include the Techpriest. Skitarii don't have any HQ units, their Warlords must be chosen from the Alphas of the Rangers or the Vanguards, or the Princeps of the Infiltrators or Ruststalkers (so, the sergeants). This allow you to field more units as HQ units are generally expensive, but your Warlord won't be as butt-kicking as the other armies. He still gets to roll for nice traits though.

Having two of these boxes will get your far enough in the meantime. You'll have a second Techpriest that you could keep or sell if you want, but most of all you'll have two Onagers and 20 Skitarii for cheap. To compare (price in € sorry), the Start Collecting box costs 65€, in it you have the Techpriest who's normally sold at 31€, 10 infantrymen at 33€, and one Dunecrawler at 51€. It's almost half the price, so you'll make a great deal with that, and two Onagers are enough to keep going in average size lists, depending on how you build you list of course.

The list you showed me builds up to 670 pts, barring any upgrades. You could climb to a 750 pts (a conventional cap) with a few welcomed upgrades and do your first games with that, and that list is quite decent, you'll have a very agressive list where you'll try to close the distance with the enemy as fast as you can to engage in melee with the Infiltrators, while you Onager deals with big threats. All in all it depends on your playstyle, but I guess if you hesitated between Tau and Skitarii it's because you prefer the dakka to the choppa

I'll write you a 1000 pts list, It's the point cap I personally prefer, because in smaller games it tends to be quite unbalanced due to the small number of models, that can die in one or two good shooting turns due to the concentrated fire (because of the lack of said models). I'll use the units you would have with two Start Collecting boxes to make it simpler.



Here you go, I made it quickly so it's not the best optimized list ever but it can give you an idea. You seems to like Infiltrators so I put some in there

If you're worried about assembling the wrong special weapons to your guys, don't. Most people won't complain about it if you tell them beforehand and most people don't know what their special weapons look like anyway haha.

if you have anymore questions I'll be glad to answer them.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

Danny slag wrote:

You asked for a 1000 point list, so here's how i started mine, your mileage may vary.

10 man vanguard with 3 plasma calivers
2x 5 man ranger squads with 2 arc rifles each
2 dunecrawlers (neutron laser or eradicator beam)
1 dominus
5 man unit of infiltrators

the way you list it out is you use the dominus maniple as one formation with the vanguard, dominus and 1 onager
Then a 2nd formation of skitarii maniple that has the rest in it.
It comes out to about 995 points depending on your upgrades, I would avoid giving the pistol and cc weapons to alphas though. seems like a waste.

And the cool part is you can build it with 2 get started boxes (as I mentioned they're a big discount) plus one infiltrator box, and you get a good mix of units plus a real HQ. From there you can expand by moving the dominus to an ad mech formation and adding some ad mech models, or add more skitarii, or whatever you want to plug in on top of this 1000 points. Depending on where you buy you're looking at only about $180 plus tax for that, plus the bits mentioned below.
The only think you'll need to source outside of that is an extra plasma caliver, and 2 arc rifles. Each kit only comes with 1 of each. so that is a pain, and they're not exactly cheap on e-bay at the moment with not many sellers selling skitarii bits.

Haha got Ninja'ed by Danny Slag who already gave you a list Well you have two now !

I'd just like to add that to run your list Danny you'd have to place your Onagers in two separate units, as the Dominus Maniple rule clearly says "ONE Onager Dunecrawler", not one unit :/ So you wouldn't benefit from the 5++ coming from the unit.

Can't say I understand the current obsession with Arc Rifles these days, it's probably highly effective but I just don't see why you'd need that much disruption.

Biadetic wrote:
A further question on Tau, are they OP only because of certain lists? If I didn't include any Riptides would they still fare well?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
DannySlag thanks for a great long post! Very insightful and appreciated.

So is the Dominus the only HQ and I basically always will have to take him? I don't think I'll mind in the long run adding in Cult Mechanicus.

But your skitarii example list seems like a great base for me to work upon. Is the vanguard and ranger load outs you listed how you personally run yours in bigger games?

You're welcome, if you go skitarii I hope it's helpful. Sorry I can't speak to tau, i've never played them.

There is another HQ, techpriest enginseer, but i wouldn't worry about that one. It's from the codex imperial agents, not really that great, and just kind of an odd-duck. In a pure skitarii list you have no HQ, you designate a squad leader as your warlord instead. So the three ways to get a cool HQ into your army (and the dominus is definitely a cool model and great rules) are:
The dominus maniple formation that comes with the getting started box
A cult mechanicus battle congregation which has an HQ slot
one of the two cult mechanicus formations that includes it, cohort cybernetica and holy requisitioner squad.

Yep, that loadout is what I use in bigger games too. i kind of nerded out on designing a 1000 pt, 1250pt, 1500pt, and 1850pt lists that each builds on the prior and whos loadouts would be effectivefor all those point levels that way i wasn't needing to buy extra miniatures or have waste on the way up in points, simply adding on.

If you're curious where i went after that 1000 points was, this is where it really comes into personal taste though.
adding 2 units of katephron destroyers from cult mech (so then everything listed earlier goes into a skitarii maniple, and the domins plus katephrons become a cult mech battle congregation detachment)
adding 1 unit of castelan robots
adding 1 unit of ruststalkers
And that puts the whole lot at 1850 points.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Aaranis wrote:

Haha got Ninja'ed by Danny Slag who already gave you a list Well you have two now !

I'd just like to add that to run your list Danny you'd have to place your Onagers in two separate units, as the Dominus Maniple rule clearly says "ONE Onager Dunecrawler", not one unit :/ So you wouldn't benefit from the 5++ coming from the unit.

Can't say I understand the current obsession with Arc Rifles these days, it's probably highly effective but I just don't see why you'd need that much disruption.

The more the merrier, there's a lot of effective ways to build them.
I think i mentioned the onagers being split into two different units, one with the dominus and one in the skitarii maniple, but if not thanks for catching that because you are correct. When I run this at 1000 points that's how I do it.

As for the arc rifles, there are a lot of opinions on special weapons, and mine certainly isn't the most experienced or necessarily the best, But i like arc rifles not necessarily because of their AV use, but because they tend to force a lot of saves from your opponent even on infantry, so they're a good general purpose special weapon that doesn't break the bank.

Yes the Arc Rifle is still a powerful weapon who can ID T3 enemies. I think I understand why you would use some, but most people include 3x Arc Rifles per squad and that forces you to buy it separately or to ignore WYSIWYG.

As for the ways to run the Techpriest, you can do like I did in my own 1000 pts list (not the one I shared here), and used him as an allied detachment, simply. It requires one HQ and one Troop (so, Kataphrons) and gives you Objective Secured with your Kataphrons. It's a way to run a Techpriest without too much "taxes".

God darn it, I think I might just go Ad-Mech now, thanks guys ! lol.
The only real thing drawing me to tau is the Suits! I don't think I can be bothered with drones, I just don't like them, not rules wise, just in general.

This has all made me look into the Cult Mech stuff and I've started liking the look of it a lot more now !

I think you should be happy with it. They have some neat FW stuff as well.

https://www.forgeworld.co.uk/en-CA/Mechanicum-Secutarii-Hoplites-Upgrade-set

Noo don't show me cool upgrades ! Im trying to keep it cheap haha. A little disheartened that the Dragoons are only sold as 1. Not sure why I thought other wise !

Do you think they will release a cult mech force?

The only lingering doubt in my mind about the Tau is how cool the crisis suits and bigger suits are. I'm guessing Skitarii can handle them okay though?

They recently released an Adeptus Mechanicus Battleforce which was at 130€ and contained 3 Kataphrons, 1 Kastelan Robot Maniple, 5 Sicarian, 5 Electropriests and 1 Ironstrider. I got one quickly and I did well because they're sold out and may not be made again. It was a really nice bargain but you had to have the money ready for this.

EDIT: As for dealing with the suits, I think the AdMech have an answer for everything honestly, for high Toughness just drown the enemy in Vanguard shots really.

I would say go Tau only because the mechanicus stuff is still Imperium and it is likely that 90% of the people you play against will be Imperial armies. It is very hard to feel like there's a narrative when everyone playing is part of the same faction in the lore.

Imperium fights itself all the time.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Imperium fights itself all the time.

Since when? Usually having Space Marines fight each other is a large-scale event such as the Badab War. When does the Imperial Forces fight against each other otherwise? I'm genuinely curious because that's the main thing that keeps me from playing any Imperial faction because so many people already play Imperial Army and I can't justify fighting against them

You know, I can't actually think of any particular instances. I'm not that well-verse in the fluff.

See this is my other issue. I'm a sucker for this too. My small gamijg group will all be playing imperial too. So i dont want to do myself out of a good army just for narrative, but at the same time I would rather do something to help the narrative.


I had looked at potentially doing Thousand Sons but didn't seem like many people were talking shout them. Are their guns still SO 3 out of curiosity?

Well of course if you want to play the real narrative aspect nobody should play Imperium then, but who cares ? There's always a reason to battle against your supposed brother, especially with the greedy Mechanicus.

Let's say a group of Guards find an ancient technological artifact, the Mechanicus is called at first but the local Commissar now suspects Chaos corruption about the artefact, and won't let them have it and prefer having it destroyed to prevent heresy. The Magos-explorator won't let that happen anyhow and so unleashes his Skitarii Legion upon the foe, conditioning them so that they see the Guards as techno-heretics who want to destroy the Omnissiah's knowledge, and so here you go: A full Skitarii legion assaulting the Imperial positions to get the item back.

The Commissar sends a call for reinforcements and it just happened a Black Templars ship was the closest. Upon hearing about possible heresy they go crazy and drop-pod into the Skitarii lines to do their crazy stuff. The Magos gets overwhelmed and sends the rest of his explorator army with Kataphrons and Kastelans in the fight.

And there, a full-scale conflict sparkled by dumb reasons. It's fully conform to a 40K conflict so here you go, you have a scenario for a game involving 3 or 4 players.

Just to say, the only limit is your imagination. There's tons of narrative "nonsense" among players, people who play Tau and ally with Orks or Blood Angels fighting alongside Necrons. Just play what you want and find a way to include a narrative if you want, 40K allows a wide range of freedom to build your own armies with their own motives.

Dang it Aranis. You just made it sound awesome. Slightly off topic from my OP but how are the mechanicus viewed by the rest of the Imperium? Friends to call in times of need or only necessity? Do the mechanicus govern themselves to a degree?

Biadetic wrote:
Dang it Aranis. You just made it sound awesome. Slightly off topic from my OP but how are the mechanicus viewed by the rest of the Imperium? Friends to call in times of need or only necessity? Do the mechanicus govern themselves to a degree?

I'm pretty sure they are autonomous mostly. Which can also factor into the narrative as there are/have been basically rogue Mechanicus that aren't heretics (i.e. not Dark Mechanicus) that have no qualms about showing up and fighting anyone who stands against them, Marine or Guard or otherwise, but are loyal to their own agenda. The problem I have with that is it makes no sense to me why they would be allowed to remain afterwards; like if a Mechicus force showed up and slaughtered some guard, then some Marines show up and they beat them up too, why wouldn't they be declared heretical right after and wiped out for it? Like, I've often thought myself of doing a Skitarii/Mech force and theme it as being self-serving and outright ruthless when it comes to what they do, but I can't justify it beyond what feels too much like Mary Sue handwaving, so I can't bring myself to do it.

Wayniac wrote:
I would say go Tau only because the mechanicus stuff is still Imperium and it is likely that 90% of the people you play against will be Imperial armies. It is very hard to feel like there's a narrative when everyone playing is part of the same faction in the lore.

Unless you're ad mech who follow the true machine god instead of that corpse in a box emperor.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Wayniac wrote:

Biadetic wrote:
Dang it Aranis. You just made it sound awesome. Slightly off topic from my OP but how are the mechanicus viewed by the rest of the Imperium? Friends to call in times of need or only necessity? Do the mechanicus govern themselves to a degree?

I'm pretty sure they are autonomous mostly. Which can also factor into the narrative as there are/have been basically rogue Mechanicus that aren't heretics (i.e. not Dark Mechanicus) that have no qualms about showing up and fighting anyone who stands against them, Marine or Guard or otherwise, but are loyal to their own agenda. The problem I have with that is it makes no sense to me why they would be allowed to remain afterwards; like if a Mechicus force showed up and slaughtered some guard, then some Marines show up and they beat them up too, why wouldn't they be declared heretical right after and wiped out for it? Like, I've often thought myself of doing a Skitarii/Mech force and theme it as being self-serving and outright ruthless when it comes to what they do, but I can't justify it beyond what feels too much like Mary Sue handwaving, so I can't bring myself to do it.

From what I've read in 40k novels and fluff it's pretty common. Mostly because the empire is so insanely vast, not really cohesive but more of a loose republic, and communication and travel so strange. There's lots of stories of segments of the imperium fighting decades long open wars with each other on planets and the overall empire giving it no mind. Imperial guard and eclisisatory (sp) armies fighting over a world, inquisition and mechanicus skirmishing with each other. IG from one sector trying to take over another sector from a different IG arm.

Heck, by most definitions the Ad mech are heretics, but they're so vital, the entire imperium would crumble without them, that they're allowed to be.

In fact it's been described that the Mechanicus constitutes half of the Imperium, hence the two-headed aquila. Back when Big E was conquering Terra with his Thunder Warriors, he eventually finished his conquests and set up on conquering Mars and their inhabitants, the Mechanicum, so has to have access to all their forges and technology. He beat the crap out of them in a spectacular battle and they surrendered, only to see that he was the Omnissiah of the prophecies, the one master of Science and Technology, so they started revering him and accepted to work in the new Empire of Man, now consisting of two planets: Terra and Mars.

Little did the Mechanicum knew, it was the Emperor who imprisoned ages ago the Void Dragon, the C'tan who masters all that is technological, in the core of Mars. Thus creating the prophecy that the Omnissiah will come back again. I'm taking really big shortcuts in that story because I'm not that familiar with it but it sounds like that.

So yeah they're autonomous but it's more of a symbiose than a total autonomy. The Adeptus Mechanicus builds all that is necessary in a war for the Imperium, as well as machines destined to civilians, and in turn the Imperium gives them the supplies and the support of the Astra Militarum to defend their world and sometimes assist them in their crusades to find a nice piece of STC. The Ecclesiarchy don't really know if they venerate the Emperor or the Void Dragon or just the Machine Spirit, but they tell the masses they venerate the Emperor under the aspect of the Omnissiah so no one gets crazy about it. They need the Mechanicus so they're more easy on them and the heresy stuff.