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Was always very interested in starting a skiitari army but the rules for 7th were too daunting, now that 8th has been leaked I haven't read anything about robo-men from mars. Can someone extrapolate their role in the new edition?

No Transport, got slower overall, very anti-Vehicle with the options. Not sure how you will get in melee range with an army that doesn't want to, and if they do, Toughness 3. You do get Ad Mech as well now, so some tough Robots and real HQ now.

Imperium keyword means you can take a detachment of Mech and then a detachemnt of IG to help deal with inf spam.

Canticles only work with pure Ad Mech detachment...

Overall, fairly good. Being able to mix skitarii and cult mechanicus has helped. Really tough IC that boost troops very well (cawl is still one of the best in the game imo), a bit of versatility with our canticles, Very shooty army.

Vanguard have benefited from the changes to assault weapons, making them a bit more mobile. Rangers can grab what is one of the best sniper weapons in the game, making them good for hanging back and picking off weaker IC, though the gun is also strong enough to wreck vehicles reliably. Destroyers have heavy grav, which wrecks infantry this edition. It's particularly good against primaris marines.

Two other units of note that benefited greatly are kastellans and dunecrawlers. Kastellans are great infantry killers as well, phosphor being able to ignore cover with a ton of high strength shots has benefited them and the army quite a bit. You can grab a datasmith who heals the unit every turn. The dunecrawler can also go phosphor, but also has good anti air weapons, or an excellent anti tank weapon in the neutron laser. It's also very tough, with an invulnerable save, tons of wounds, and your HQ can heal them every turn.

The melee game is overall where we got hit the hardest. Infiltrators and ruststalkers don't look great. The elctro staff priests are fairly solid now though, so if you want some melee to go with your shooting, that's your go to unit imo. That or the dragoons, which are... odd. I've never used them personally, so I'm not too sure how the edition treated them.

So generally a small army, lots of really powerful guns, lots of shooting, everything except our basic infantry units is tough as nails and very hard to kill. We are a bit slower than other armies, but honestly most of our units have 36" or more range weapons. THe exceptions being our melee units (again, not amazing, but hardy enough they can tank shots) and vanguard, who can do the advance+fire thanks to assault guns. So the lack of transports doesn't hurt that badly imo.

If you have anything more specific feel free to ask.

Unfortunately the admech models make me throw up in my mouth. How would an all skiitari force fare in the new edition... love the models; but would I be better off investing in necrons or tau if I'm going to be shooting heavy in 8th. I think it's worth mentioning that I find both flavours of electro priests very sexually attractive.

Lavy wrote:
Unfortunately the admech models make me throw up in my mouth. How would an all skiitari force fare in the new edition... love the models; but would I be better off investing in necrons or tau if I'm going to be shooting heavy in 8th. I think it's worth mentioning that I find both flavours of electro priests very sexually attractive.

Glad to know you find them sexually attractive

You'll need at least a tech priest dominus/cawl (or plain tech priest? Not sure, don't have list on hand) to fill the HQ slot. They are also generally good units, boosting firepower and keeping your big stuff (so dunecrawlers and maybe ironstriders/dragoons) alive.

Outside of that, you can run pure skiitari pretty well. Dunecrawler can provide phosphor or anti tank about as well as kastellans/destroyers, the ranger and vanguard are both versatile units that can be effective against most things. The only iffy bit of pure skitarii for me is the questionable melee options, and if you like the electro priests that's not an issue at all, they can fill that niche well (staff looks better to me personally but haven't tested). Infiltrators aren't bad admittedly, but a lot of that is their brutal close range shooting and ability to pop up wherever. The strider mechs might also be good, but honestly I didn't see anything that made me want to buy them, but they could help.

So all in all, pure skitarii (with mechanicus HQ) loses out on a bit of firepower from destroyers and kastellan, but vanguard and dunecrawler can fill those shoes fairly well, so the army is still perfectly functional, if a bit shorter ranged.

As for how they stack up compared to tau/necrons... I'm not sure. It's a bit early, and I'm still working my way through xenos codex 1 and 2. At a glance, it looks more or less fine, but that's hardly a guarantee.

Staff priests look like they've become more than viable, but they lack a delivery system. They want to get into combat, and they're gonna have to slog it.

Skitarii Vanguard with supercharged plasma calivers are terrific. Put them in a ball with a Dominus and "gets hot" becomes 1/36 chance from rerolling your 1s. Meanwhile you get 2 shots of strength 8, AP -3 which deal 2 damage each. All for 24 points a pop.

This kills the primaris marine absurdly efficiently.

Specifically 0.926 of a primarus marine for each turn of firing (with no modifiers). And those cost 20 points a pop.

Do they have any good snipers? Thought I saw somewhere they might be good for picking off enemy characters so I may try to include some as an allied detachment.

 Aetare wrote:
Do they have any good snipers? Thought I saw somewhere they might be good for picking off enemy characters so I may try to include some as an allied detachment.

Rangers with Aquerbuses look okay in a utility sniping role. The overall dakka/point is mediocre though. You get an infinite range, zero mobility sniper shot with BS3+, S7, AP-2, D3 damage for 35 points.

Lavy wrote:
Unfortunately the admech models make me throw up in my mouth. How would an all skiitari force fare in the new edition... love the models; but would I be better off investing in necrons or tau if I'm going to be shooting heavy in 8th. I think it's worth mentioning that I find both flavours of electro priests very sexually attractive.

Welcome to my signature.

steerpike92 wrote:

 Aetare wrote:
Do they have any good snipers? Thought I saw somewhere they might be good for picking off enemy characters so I may try to include some as an allied detachment.

Rangers with Aquerbuses look okay in a utility sniping role. The overall dakka/point is mediocre though. You get an infinite range, zero mobility sniper shot with BS3+, S7, AP-2, D3 damage for 35 points.

Much obliged!

 Aetare wrote:

steerpike92 wrote:

 Aetare wrote:
Do they have any good snipers? Thought I saw somewhere they might be good for picking off enemy characters so I may try to include some as an allied detachment.

Rangers with Aquerbuses look okay in a utility sniping role. The overall dakka/point is mediocre though. You get an infinite range, zero mobility sniper shot with BS3+, S7, AP-2, D3 damage for 35 points.

Much obliged!

Not an entirely accurate number as you have to pay the tax of a 5 man unit. You can get two arquebus in that unit, which means a 30p tax. You can shoot at something else with those 3 in 8th, but there's a good chance they won't reach anything unless you want to move and give your snipers a -1 to hit. You can however do nifty stuff like add an omnispex to the unit at a little cost to make your snipers ignore cover.

I will reserve my opinions until they are released, but with the changes to reserves and a more reliable deep stike I think it will be more difficult to keep their big guns safe in the back. I agree that they will probably need additional support to make up for their low toughness, but I still like their playstyle as a shooty IoM choice.

I'm glad they are a single faction though as I have a decent assortment of Skitarii/Ad Mech. I was originally building towards a Warcon but ended up swapping them out for another army. 8th gives me a reason to revisit them though.

Edit: I'm pretty sure that I read Rangers cannot shoot their Snipers on a turn where they moved.

You are correct, the snipers went from one of the most mobile heavy weapons to the least mobile. One of the weirder changes (though it makes sense, the model did make it seem silly).

Can our Onager Dunecrawlers with "Neutron Laser and cognis heavy stubber" take another cognis heavy stubber?

The "This model may take a cognis heavy stubber" is on a different line.

I'm pretty sure they can take both. The one linked to the neutron laser is co-axial (it's mounted under the neutron laser's barrel) while the optional one is on the command hatch, so they are in two separate slots.

 Purifier wrote:

 Aetare wrote:

steerpike92 wrote:

 Aetare wrote:
Do they have any good snipers? Thought I saw somewhere they might be good for picking off enemy characters so I may try to include some as an allied detachment.

Rangers with Aquerbuses look okay in a utility sniping role. The overall dakka/point is mediocre though. You get an infinite range, zero mobility sniper shot with BS3+, S7, AP-2, D3 damage for 35 points.

Much obliged!

Not an entirely accurate number as you have to pay the tax of a 5 man unit. You can get two arquebus in that unit, which means a 30p tax. You can shoot at something else with those 3 in 8th, but there's a good chance they won't reach anything unless you want to move and give your snipers a -1 to hit. You can however do nifty stuff like add an omnispex to the unit at a little cost to make your snipers ignore cover.

Actually the arquebus is unique in that its the only heavy weapon that acts like pre-6th ed heavy weapons. You can't move and fire with it.
Ad Mech actually have 2 sniper options -
Radium Jezzails (on the Dragoons)
Transuranic Arquebus (on the Rangers)

I think the arquebus might be the strongest sniper option in the game outside of assassins. Most sniper rifles are S4 AP0 1 damage.
The Arquebus is S7 AP-3 D3 damage. And it still has the ability to inflict an additional mortal wound, so against a target with 4+ save you're looking at 4 wounds at ignore armor at most. It is quite possible to delete a character in a single turn, and you can have up to 3 in a squad. Probably the best weapon for taking out crypteks, coming from a necron player.
They're expensive though, and I don't think there's 3 arquebus in a box.

I do like 8th ed Admech, and they might be my first Imperial Army.
I'd wait until the proper codex gets released though. Maybe they'll finally get a transport option. Like a Command and Conquer style drill or something. Or something that looks like an ornithopter from dune.
One can do all sorts of weird stuff with admech.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 Purifier wrote:

 Aetare wrote:

steerpike92 wrote:

 Aetare wrote:
Do they have any good snipers? Thought I saw somewhere they might be good for picking off enemy characters so I may try to include some as an allied detachment.

Rangers with Aquerbuses look okay in a utility sniping role. The overall dakka/point is mediocre though. You get an infinite range, zero mobility sniper shot with BS3+, S7, AP-2, D3 damage for 35 points.

Much obliged!

Not an entirely accurate number as you have to pay the tax of a 5 man unit. You can get two arquebus in that unit, which means a 30p tax. You can shoot at something else with those 3 in 8th, but there's a good chance they won't reach anything unless you want to move and give your snipers a -1 to hit. You can however do nifty stuff like add an omnispex to the unit at a little cost to make your snipers ignore cover.

Actually the arquebus is unique in that its the only heavy weapon that acts like pre-6th ed heavy weapons. You can't move and fire with it.
Ad Mech actually have 2 sniper options -
Radium Jezzails (on the Dragoons)
Transuranic Arquebus (on the Rangers)

I think the arquebus might be the strongest sniper option in the game outside of assassins. Most sniper rifles are S4 AP0 1 damage.
The Arquebus is S7 AP-3 D3 damage. And it still has the ability to inflict an additional mortal wound, so against a target with 4+ save you're looking at 4 wounds at ignore armor at most. It is quite possible to delete a character in a single turn, and you can have up to 3 in a squad. Probably the best weapon for taking out crypteks, coming from a necron player.
They're expensive though, and I don't think there's 3 arquebus in a box.

I do like 8th ed Admech, and they might be my first Imperial Army.
I'd wait until the proper codex gets released though. Maybe they'll finally get a transport option. Like a Command and Conquer style drill or something. Or something that looks like an ornithopter from dune.
One can do all sorts of weird stuff with admech.

You're right, they're an oldschool heavy weapon now. Which is odd, as they didn't get any disability for moving in 7th and now they get the biggest in the game. Oh well.
You get one Arquebus in a box, but odds are you'll want 2 Vanguard units for every Ranger unit anyway, so it's not a big issue.

I did some mathhammer on Ad-mech:


https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fGhXLPCfRTNsB_qbRh7noPGRr-iYDUxoRlIIrzK8D2c/edit?usp=sharing


It's a roster of most of what Ad-Mech has available and how models with these weapons perform shooting against different targets.

By scrolling to the right you can see how the unit performs with the different to-hit buffs. (i.e. re-roll 1s from dominus/canticles; re-roll misses from cawl)

It produces:

expected wounds per turn
expected wounds/turn/point

Then I decided to try and weight weapons based on their range profiles. First I assumed the enemy is at ranges: 36", 27", 18", 9".

This lets rapid fire weapons eventually get some benefit.

For other weapons I just took the range and divided it by 9 to get about the right scale factor. Mostly because I thought this underrated weapons with 24" and 30" range.

This cancels out the "turn" unit in wounds/turn/pt and produces one efficiency rating of just Wounds/pt

Then I took the approximate wounds and points of the target to cancel out the units of wounds and points.

e.g. if my 10 pt model inflicts 1 wound on an enemy model which costs 20 pts and has 1 wound it would have a target efficiency rating of 2.

It's:

(Expected Inflicted Wounds per turn * Expected Turns Firing / Friendly Points) * (Target Points / Target Wounds)

which is a unit-less measure of determining if you are in a good target match-up.


The major takeaways are:

A: Arm your dunecrawlers with Neutron Lasers and Icarus Arrays. I decided not to include the cognis heavy stubbers in points or damage (as they would be firing at different targets than the big guns) but you definitely want to bring them.

B: Bring probably at least 4 Edward Phosphor hands Kastelan Robots and buff them up to shoot double. This is really our only effective counter to GEQ spam. (Note that I tried to count the cost of the datasimth into this robot profile by adding 25 pts/ so about 1 for every 2 robots)

C: Cawl's re-roll buff is a 1.5x buff for 4+ to-hit, 1.33x buff for 3+ to hit. So make sure to put him in a ball with your Icarus Arrays, Phosphor Hands, and destroyers.

D: Ironstriders with Lascannons are really good, despite being a strange mix of hyper-mobile artillery.

E: Rad-carbines and Galvanic Rifles are pretty bad. Arc rifles are WAY worse than plasma calivers.

The main problem with our infantry is they just cost too much for how fragile they are. I made a little durability metric of W*T*(Sv multiplier)/pts. The save multiplier is the number of 0AP shots it takes to get 1 shot through. This definitely overrates the durability of vehicles relative to infantry, (as vehicles will draw the ire of high damage, high AP shots), but it does ok at comparing similar units.

I.e. Rad Carbine Vanguard have a durability of 0.6 while guard: 1.13
Conscripts: 1.5
Marine: 0.92

This makes rad carbines a terribad meatshield for the plasma calivers.

Destroyers and Breachers are also glass cannons. And they are exposed to being eviscerated by multidamage attacks.

I think the best strategy will probably be to bring a 300ish point screening battalion of guard. Like:

3 units of guard/conscripts
1 commander
1 commisar
1 greyfax (provide leadership, anti psykic)
(+a cheap 3 command points!)



I'm making a similar sort of sheet for melee combat but it's not there yet.

There are certainly loads of mistakes, but it gets the idea across I think.

Also the supercharged plasma culverin on a destroyer looks like it has terrific stats, but you probably don't want to risk it. Especially not re-rolling NON-1s.


Edit: Actually I think I'm probably selling vanguard a little short. You can always get turn 1 shrowdpsalm for a universal cover save, and get it 50% of the time on turn 2 with Cawl. (I think people are really underrating canticles compared to the old doctrina). Then if you manage to get just the Alpha and some stragglers into melee you can get a lot out of rad poisoning combined with strength of the machine spirit for -1 enemy toughness and +1 allied strength. Throw some power sword infiltrators in there and you can get a turn of infiltrators cutting through toughness and armor.

Thanks for this, really helpful. Nothing too surprising, besides infiltrators shooting being better than I though for geq clearing.

Note you forgot about the flamer/blaster on the destroyer, can't tell if it is included in the points total or not, so having to take that might change things.

Oh right.

I really didn't know how to handle split fire in general, as the stats are more organized weapon-model pairs than models with long weapon lists.

Also, does anyone know if the icarus array (or combi weapons in general) can split firing profiles between different targets?

Also, probably bring the phosphor gun one. In my breif experience, you virtually never get those flamer shots off.