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How are other players dealing with arae shrikes? Are they deep striking out of range or chancing hte mishaps

Pallas grav attacks, 1 unit of 3 or 3 units of 1 for more flexibility?

Never, ever under any circumstances, place vehicles in a squadron unless you have some kind of nifty special rule that makes them better in a squadron. This is because a squadron of Vehicles must maintain coherency, must all shoot at the same target, and they all die together. What do I mean by that? When shooting at a squadron of vehicles, you shoot at the first vehicle, resolve the attack. If it's not destroyed/wrecked, resolve the next hit, etc. You resolve the hits sequentially against the closest vehicle first, and when it's wrecked/destroyed, you move to the next closest vehicle until it's a wreck/destroyed, and the next. That means a unit with a lot of high strength shots could wreck the entire squad with one volley.

With all your vehicles shooting at the same target, you could end up wasting a lot of shots. Let's say you had 6 S8 shots from a squad of three vehicles and you shoot at a Land Raider Proteus. You blow it up with the first shot, now you have 5 more shots with nothing to shoot at.

Finally, vehicle coherency. Sure, it's 4", but it's not enough to avoid multiple models being hit by Pie Plates of Doooom! The final issue- as a squadron of vehicles, they could all be charged by one unit, and you could lose the entire squad of vehicles to melta bombs.

Don't squad up your vehicles! There is no advantage to it.

I would argue that with the Pallas, since they only get a TL Arachnus Blaze Cannon, that having a squadron of them might be a good idea if you are hunting other vehicles with them. That way you are getting 2-3 TL S8 AP1 shots with Exoshock rather than just one.

@ Tamwulf, that is what I was thinking as well.

 VictorVonTzeentch wrote:
I would argue that with the Pallas, since they only get a TL Arachnus Blaze Cannon, that having a squadron of them might be a good idea if you are hunting other vehicles with them. That way you are getting 2-3 TL S8 AP1 shots with Exoshock rather than just one.

Is this a special rule they get while in a squadron? Because if each model has these rules, then whats the difference between a squad of three vehicles all shooting at the same target or three individual vehicles shooting at the same target? The squadron could waste shots if the target vehicle is destroyed by the first vehicle. The individual non-squad vehicles could shoot at something else.

If this is a special rule they get while in a squadron, then I'd consider what other models/units I have in the list that are anti-tank, and if I really needed this vulnerability applied to these tanks.

No its just they only get 1 shot per vehicle and in my experience a single S8 AP1 shot doesnt do much. Exoshock will help though.

Taking 3 individual Pallas will just fill your FA slot up which would mean no Jetbikes.

I don't have any jetbikes, so I have plenty of FA slots.

Ok then having the Pallas divided up should work fine if you just have them focus up to take big things down. Plus if you get one Pen, you do get that free second, so it makes only shooting something once not as bad.

I'm sort of skeptical about using the Pallas at all (on paper), given that for an extra fifty points you could get twice the hull points, +1 front/side armour, a transport bay for six Custodians, a Lastrum bolt cannon that can fire at a separate target from the blaze cannon via the Machine Spirit if necessary, and the power to be a Dedicated Transport for any of the Custodes infantry units instead of eating any kind of FOC slot, all by taking a Coronus instead. The only upside to using the Pallas I've been able to find is that's 50 GBP cheaper as well as 50pts cheaper.

(But if you aren't using your FA slots and you like the Pallas there is no upside to taking them in a squadron rather than taking them individually.)

The heavy support tanks, and the transports are really all the non walker vehicles you should bring.

Surely the upside to squadroning your Pallas is that they're relatively easy to bring down and lots of games involve kill points?

The Pallas has a Machine Spirit, so you can fire at separate targets irrespective of whether you field them as single models or as a squadron.

Fielding them as a squadron means you only give up a single kill point. However hits overflow within a squadron, so if your opponent scores three penetrating hits and the first one destroys a Pallas, the other two overflow into the other squadron members. Also you have to keep them within 4" coherency, even if one of the squadron members is stunned, which can be a pain.

On the whole, I think it's better to field them as single models if you can. But Pallas Grav-attacks are fairly cheap, so it's not long before you run out of fast attack slots and then you're forced to squadron them anyway.

The Jetbikes are definitely better, but there's no models for them yet and you aren't going to win any friends if you field three units of them. Custodes are powerful enough anyway, so a more balanced approach would be to field one unit of Jetbikes and two squadrons of Grav-attacks.

On paper the Coronus is more points efficient. However it serves a different purpose. It's primarily a transport vehicle. You want to shove it down the throat of the enemy, unloading it's contents exactly where they are needed. The Grav-attack is designed to flank around the enemy, sniping side and rear armour. If a Coronus was to get destroyed or immobilised stuck out on a flank, then the troops it carried would be wasted, stuck on the the edge of the battle and probably unable to do anything useful.