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Pretty new to 40k and I am liking Skitarii, they look awesome and have cool story.

How are they in battle ? Looking at 7ed they seemed really good but now they seem somewhat lacking.

What would be some good lists and advice on how to field and play them ?

Skitarii aren't really their own army anymore, they've been officially merged with Cult Mechanicus (which is fine, since that's basically how things were anyways).

AdMech seems to be in a good spot if you're willing to run with exactly one build; onager dunecrawlers and kastellan robots are very strong, but the rest of the army is only good enough to offer support to those core units. Vanguard exist to screen for them, Ruststalkers exist to counter-charge for them... Rangers are pretty good compared to other snipers but snipers are pretty bad all around.

So the basic units are not that great ? I really love the look of Skitarii infantry but would also like them to be competitive.

Yeah you can't really make an army out of Vanguards and Rangers; they're in a weird middle between guard and marines where they're too pricey to be a horde and not tough enough to be an elite army. Maybe the codex will put out some stratagems that make the infantry more viable, I definitely share your love for the designs.

Ad Mech player here.

From my games with them, and most of the core thoughts from the Forums and Facebook groups, everyone's running pretty much identical armies (when staying Pure Ad Mech).

Cawlstar ft. either Kastelan's, Onagers, or a Mix.

Once you have those 3 units spammed, you add Vanguard to bubblewrap and screen and you're done listbuilding.

You can occasionally get cute (if you're someone who wants to get cute in a competitive list, as you said you wanted to be competitive) and add a single 5 man unit of Rangers with 2 sniper rifles, and maybe a unit or two of infiltrators for deepstrike fluffiness.

If you're not staying pure Ad Mech, you still Cawlstar with Onagers or Kastelan's, but you replace the Vanguard with Conscripts, and add Psykers to deny.

But right now, the army is basically just Cawl + Heavy Support, and all other options are just flavor.

Just because the unimaginative try hards all run the same thing doesn't mean much, that happens with every army in every edition. So take what people say with a grain of salt.

The vanguard are actually a really great troop, on top of having beautiful models. Their special weapons got a hell of a lot cheaper and they can take 3 per unit. Infiltrators while fragile can solve problems. And onager's are one of the most point cost effective units in the game, especially the neutron laser or icarus. Skitarii do gunline real damn well.

Cawl is the elephant in the room. He's not filling a need in the army, he gets taken because hes unfortunatly one of those wildly undercosted power units, like Rowboat. But he's not making up for any shortcoming or a crutch the army needs, and that's why I'm saying it's the try hards who insist you have to take him.

Skitarii and ad Mech are finally combined as they should have always been, which is cool and gives easier list building. What they could use though is mobility. Infiltrators can do a that to an extent, dragoons work well for it, but Skitarii are especially good paired up with militarum tempestus, or deathwatch. They can stand on their own, they just synergies well with mobile imperial armies.

Good luck!

Yeah. This "Take Cawl+Katapron or go home" is from a ultra competitive standpoint.

The rest of the units are mid tier. What that means? That they are balanced and fair. You can use them without feeling cheated or at disanvatdage unless you go agains't other ultra competitive lists.

Love the previous responses so I will just echo them. You don't have to take cawl, you can play and enjoy our models while still having fun. Unless you are playing against competitive tryhards most of our units do just fine.

I mean sure, you could make a list of nothing but Sydonian Dragoons if you wanted. That doesn't mean it's going to be any good, and the OP asked about what's good.

 Carl wrote:
Love the previous responses so I will just echo them. You don't have to take cawl, you can play and enjoy our models while still having fun. Unless you are playing against competitive tryhards most of our units do just fine.

To be fair, the reason why Cawl is such a big deal is because his rules are phenomenal, the model is superb, and many people got him during The Gathering Storm because--again, he was a big deal.

Add to it that he is literally the only named AdMech character right now and it makes for a very static environment.

 Kanluwen wrote:

Add to it that he is literally the only named AdMech character right now and it makes for a very static environment.

To further elaborate, he is also the only other HQ than our one singular choice. He is far and away from his absolutely ridiculous OP levels in the Gathering Storm, but his buff to the shooting phase is very nice and so is the canticle bonus he provides. Just remember if you're playing against him, some people will understandably not have picked up on the exact wording and will use his aura for overwatch like some other character auras can. This is not possible as he only buffs in the shooting phase.

Arachnofiend wrote:
I mean sure, you could make a list of nothing but Sydonian Dragoons if you wanted. That doesn't mean it's going to be any good, and the OP asked about what's good.

You're creating a false dichotomy, pretending the options are either cawl or derp. This is a common thing around here, anything that isn't the copy paste try hard net list is "the worst thing ever." Cawl being too good doesn't make everything else bad. If Cawl didn't exist you'd be talking about how good vanguard are. He did ask about good, which skitarii is with or without cawl.