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So I’m planning on starting an AdMech army, and wanted to get some opinions on the best way to go about a new army.

My initial thought was to purchase the new Battleforce, and maybe supplement with either a Dominus, Cawl, or even “go big” and get a Start Collecting to add even more models.

This will be my first ever 40k army, and I am a little worried about biting off too much at once for assembling and painting. Any thoughts?

I'd probably start with the Battleforce & then add more Kastelan Robots.
The BF looks like it contains models I'd buy anyways, & then more robots mostly just because I just love the models.
Anyways, that's how I'd start an Ad-Mec force....

Are you trying to do a pure AdMech army, or do you want to throw in some Knights for some heavy hitters? Seems like AdMech and Knights would go well together.

Just messing around in BattleScribe, if you bought the AdMech Battleforce and Get Started box, and an Armiger Helverin Imperial Knight, you could make a perfectly legal 1000 point army. No idea how good it would be, but it looks like it would be pretty decent to me, I know I'd likely make similar choices if I was building an AdMech army, its probably how I'd start.

If you haven't already got it, make sure to download BattleScribe and figure out how to use it. It's a free application you can install, and lets you build armies for wargames so you don't have to keep leafing through rulebooks to see what you can take, and how many points it costs.

I've had a great time with my AdMech and the army just got so much cheaper in terms of costs, allowing you have more variety in a list.

Start with the battleforce and grab some Kastelan Robots. It's worth deciding what kind of army you want to do in advance so that you know how to equip your units.

Hey, welcome to the website and to the Adeptus Mechanicus.

For starting out with the faction there's good news - we don't have as large a selection of units as some other factions but as of the soon-to-arrive 2018 Chapter Approved book (which contains updated points costs for our army, among other useful things) it's clear that Games Workshop is trying hard to make all of our units useful in some capacity. This means that you can't go too far wrong with whatever you buy.

I think that my recommendation would be to pick up a Battleforce box and a Start Collecting box, this will give you two HQs to command your first detachment (including the important Tech-Priest Dominus to augment your shooting) and two Troops to fill it up. You've got two Onager Dunecrawlers for long-range heavy weapon support, two Kastelan Robots to put out withering amounts of firepower and the Sicarian Ruststalkers for a little bit of relatively mobile close combat support. I will say however that the Ruststalkers are probably inferior to the Sicarian Infiltrators in this role, though they are somewhat cheaper in-game. All this leaves you with a very functional first army and quite a modular set of units to build on in whichever direction you choose to go in.

The Ad Mech army is one of the best internally balanced army’s. You can’t really go wrong with anything you buy. The weaker end of the units are Rust Stalkers and the Breacher servitors. The stronger end are Skitarii Vanguard and Kastelan Robots (at least pre-chapter approved 2018).

Personally i’d get the battleforce and a start collecting box to begin. Then decide whether you want to run knights or not and choose your direction from there.

All very good advice so far, thanks everyone!

I do want to include Knights at some point in the future (probably other Imperial allies as well) mainly from the coolness factor of having a big giant kill machine in my army. But for starting out I think I want to flesh out my AdMech pure army first before taking the plunge into Knights (the cost of one Knight is almost as much as the BF box I think).