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Your choices:

Guard + Cawlstar + BA/Knight/Custodes/Assassins

Basically, it's where we were before we got Drills, except maybe even without the Goondozer option (needs to be tested). Really lame.

It's a bit of a disappointment I haven't had the chance to use my 20 Fulgerites, 2 Drills and extra Dragoons yet and now won't get much mileage out of them. Got my first 4 Kastelans on the way though at least, those plus three Onagers are now less vulnerable to turn 1 melee from Fly and infiltrating units. Skitarii have got better at screening the Mars gunline as well and are less of a downgrade from Imperial Guard considering the CP regeneration limitation. It seems the Ad Mech melee lists have got a lot worse and we're pushed more towards a static-ish Mars artillery list. Compared to other armies going 2nd we can save 2CP via Shroudpsalm.

Considering I got into this army for the mobile shooting aspect we had last edition it's a bit disappointing for me but I love these models enough to still be fairly enthusiastic about the army. Trying to remain hopeful about further points tweaks.

Whoa there. Let's be clear: AdMech did not get worse. It simply got less diverse. Shooting as a whole got better, and we have gotten a huge boost from all the nerfs to flying (which hurts Eldar and Tau's ability to shove Shining Spears and Battlesuits down our throats) and Knights.

Anyhow, I am considering more Blood Angels now. Basically, I am thinking of a beta strike list where I try to deep strike on round two and use my shooting to remove their screen before the charge.

Suzuteo wrote:

Anyhow, I am considering more Blood Angels now. Basically, I am thinking of a beta strike list where I try to deep strike on round two and use my shooting to remove their screen before the charge.

Wanna share your thoughts / ideas? I started Blood Angels as my second to complement my AdMech and would really like to hear what you have in mind. The new FAQ seems to make BA pretty bad imo...

My intention was to express my disappointment at becoming a more linear faction, I understand that we gained power and mentioned some of the ways in which that happened. I just don't like that we've been pushed more towards a static army - I liked that we had those in-house melee and in-your-face options. Regardless, I expect we'll all be experiencing some greater success and will probably see more Ad Mech contingents in lists.

My thinking is that the pure BA Deathball was semi-competitive before and is garbage now. Their shooting is pretty much confined to expensive and vulnerable flying vehicles. They simply just can't compete now without mixing with a shooting Imperium army to remove the screens that they now cannot charge through.

On the other hand, we need a melee component. Dragoons have a lot less reach now that we have to move them through a screen. Gallants have always had a similar problem.

So it's Custodes or BA. I think BA is the better choice because they have Scouts. Denying area on turn one is now more important than ever because you need to create space for your Kastelans. I like choppy Scouts for this purpose because they're BA and get great bonuses, and I like having the option to counter-charge with Scouts.

We bring Smash Captain and Mephiston because they are clearly heads and shoulders above everything else. And we bring a ball of Death Company, maybe with Lemartes. A second Smash Captain can bring Vitae, but with a 1 CP cap per turn, I don't think this is efficient any more. And we don't have nearly as much CP to burn as we used to. Furthermore, DC can be buffed by the Mephiston for removing enemy infantry.

Spend round one setting up positions with your Kastelans and Crawlers. Gun down threats to your army or try to create an opening for your BA. Force your opponent to play more defensively or commit to an aggressive strategy; once your Kastelans are rooted, they know they have to get rid of them or they will lose. Round two, drop your BA where they are needed. Drop them to attack their backline or flank, to counter-charge or intercept enemies, etc. Have your shooting support this beta strike.

EDIT: Here is a list. Not sure if it's any good yet, but it's along the lines of what I am thinking:

Suzuteo, I completed my tournament.

Changed list at the last minute and went Mars dakabots for a turn 1 gut punch.

......it didn’t go well. Regretted swapping the list. The end

Looks interesting indeed. I'm not quite sure about the DC though. I think the lost ability to charge / pile in over models really hurts them (you know for wrapping around a unit and so on)
Mephiston is really nice because he is a beatstick with 2 denies. Maybe I would remove Lemartes + DC and add an another Captain + a small team of Devs so you can spam some more mortal wounds? (3 x D3 MW first turn is nothing to sneeze at).

 Ideasweasel wrote:
Suzuteo, I completed my tournament.

Changed list at the last minute and went Mars dakabots for a turn 1 gut punch.

......it didn’t go well. Regretted swapping the list. The end

LOL. What went wrong? Ran out of CP? Didn't have enough dudes to screen?

 lash92 wrote:
Looks interesting indeed. I'm not quite sure about the DC though. I think the lost ability to charge / pile in over models really hurts them (you know for wrapping around a unit and so on)
Mephiston is really nice because he is a beatstick with 2 denies. Maybe I would remove Lemartes + DC and add an another Captain + a small team of Devs so you can spam some more mortal wounds? (3 x D3 MW first turn is nothing to sneeze at).

DC are still really devastating if they connect; they also have a role as anti-infantry fighting. The problem is that they're glass cannons.

Lemartes is sort of key to the beta strike though. He lets you reroll the 3D3 to guarantee the charge. Remember: Fly does not move over units when you Forlorn Fury now, so the old way of just bypassing the screen no longer works. You have to drop them in front of a target and charge.

I don't think this list needs Devastators in the shooting phase. I mean, if I really need more shooting, it will be Icarus Crawlers or something to deal with -2 to hit.

@Suzuteo

Bit of both haha

 Ideasweasel wrote:
Suzuteo, I completed my tournament.

Changed list at the last minute and went Mars dakabots for a turn 1 gut punch.

......it didn’t go well. Regretted swapping the list. The end

Usually it's better to go with what you are familiar and have experience with rather than using netlists the internet wants you to play. Especially if it's full of soup units everyone will be expecting.

Especially all-in Cawlstars that are pretty easy to dismantle.

Hoping that this thread won't end up with yet another multi-page discussion of non-Admech/Knights units/relics/warlord traits to slot into some Cookie-Cutter Cawlstar list, what do you guys think of a Skitarii infantry heavy lists?

Vanguard with Calivers are good and Rangers are super point efficient. For someone playing Fire Warrior heavy Tau lists on the side, especially rangers have less maximum potential, but with the Stygies -1 to hit (or alternatively FnP or AP -1 immunity), BS3+, shroudpsalm and the AP -1 on 6s on 15" S4 rapid-fire they are very self-sufficient and strong without needing mandatory buff characters. In small 5-7 dude Ranger squads or especially in 8 men squads for Vanguard with data-teether (IMO the best compromise between LD precaution and protecting the two Caliver guys who are as expensive as 5 1/2 regular Vanguards), 40 or 50 of them should not only be able to efficiently push the midfield and move their butts on objectives, but also add a ton anti-infantry firepower that outranges most other infantry small-arms. Even better if you throw in two or three vanguard moving Dragoons as extra distraction Carnifex.

IMO it also solves the issue of most Admech lists (especially Mars), which is basically an almost immobile firebase that not only falls apart as soon as someone manages to get past the lousy 15 rangers most pure Admech lists run and manages to get something fast or cheap into close-combat with the dakkabots (which in most Cawl lists is like 50% of a 2000 pts. list in one easily tied down unit), or gets completely outmanoeuvred thanks to awful board control. Having a bunch of dangerous and very tanky point efficient Skitarii should do quite nicely to give the Kastelan and Onagers more breathing room.

Probably nothing that will win Nova, but should still be pretty good considering most of us are probably not utterly focused on nothing but hyper-competitive US tourneys, and is something different for a change.
Throw in to be expected point increases to guardsmen (and the other currently on vogue guard, BA, Castellanos and other meta soup crap) and it being as good as guaranteed that Rangers and Vanguards stay exactly where they are now, taking a look at them for infantry spamming rather than discussing tiny variations to Suzuteo's run of the mill Cawlstar soup or being depressed about the FAQ for another 10 months.

Sure that you need Lemartes if you include DC. But what is the purpose of them? They are chaff killing with bolter and chainsword, but do you really need that with 6 Dakkabots?

 Ragnar Blackmane wrote:

Spoiler:

 Ideasweasel wrote:
Suzuteo, I completed my tournament.

Changed list at the last minute and went Mars dakabots for a turn 1 gut punch.

......it didn’t go well. Regretted swapping the list. The end

Usually it's better to go with what you are familiar and have experience with rather than using netlists the internet want you to play. Especially if it's full of soup units everyone will be expecting.

Especially all-in Cawlstars that are pretty easy to dismantle.

Hoping that this thread won't end up with yet another multi-page discussion of non-Admech/Knights units/relics/warlord traits to slot into some Cookie-Cutter Cawlstar list, what do you guys think of a Skitarii infantry heavy lists?

Vanguard with Calivers are good and Rangers are super point efficient. For someone playing Fire Warrior heavy Tau lists on the side, especially rangers have less maximum potential, but with the Stygies -1 to hit (or alternatively FnP or AP -1 immunity), BS3+, shroudpsalm and the AP -1 on 6s on 15" rapid-fire they are very self-sufficient and strong without needing mandatory buff characters. In small 5-6 dude Ranger squads or especially in 8 men squads for Vanguard with data-teether (IMO the best compromise between LD precaution and protecting the two Caliber guys who are as expensive as 5 1/2 regular Vanguards), 40 or 50 of them should not only be able to efficiently push the midfield and move their butts on objectives, but also add a ton anti-infantry firepower that outranges most other infantry small-arms. Even better if you throw in two or three vanguard moving Dragoons as extra distraction Carnifex.

IMO it also solves the issue of most Admech lists (especially Mars), which is basically an almost immobile firebase that not only falls apart as soon as someone manages to get past the lousy 15 rangers most pure Admech lists run and manages to get something fast or cheap into close-combat with the dakkabots (which in most Cawl lists is like 50% of a 2000 pts. list in one easily tied down unit), or gets completely outmanoeuvred thanks to awful board control. Having a bunch of dangerous and very tanky point efficient Skitarii should do quite nicely to give the Kastelan and Onagers more breathing room.

Probably nothing that will win Nova, but should still be pretty good considering most of us are probably not utterly focused on nothing but hyper-competitive US tourneys, and something different for a change
Throw in to be expected point increases to guardsmen (and the other currently on vogue guard, BA, Castellanos and other meta soup crap) and it being as good as guaranteed that Rangers and Vanguards stay exactly where they are now, taking a look at them for infantry spamming rather than discussing tiny variations to Suzuteo's run of the mill Cawlstar soup or being depressed about the FAQ for another 10 months.

I love admech infantry lists and while Stygies sure is a great choice I love to play Ryza with them.

Here is a small list I made for fun battles that uses Ryza and packs a decent enough punch.


The plasma in the Vanguard can be used as an alternative to use the strat on incase my Destroyers are dead or locked in combat. Furthermore the Robots provide a +1 to hit bonus on the Destroyers with the elimination volley strat. Making overcharged plasma safe on everything without a modifier. S8 plasma with Damage 3 and +1 to wound is quite tasty.
Also 2 squads of infiltrators are quite nasty, they got enough shots to clear away chaff and hit hard enough to kill of anything that is not dedicated to surviving CC.
Dragoons with their S8 and rerolls ones for to-wound in CC is also grand.

 Ragnar Blackmane wrote:
Hoping that this thread won't end up with yet another multi-page discussion of non-Admech/Knights units/relics/warlord traits to slot into some Cookie-Cutter Cawlstar list, what do you guys think of a Skitarii infantry heavy lists?

Vanguard with Calivers are good and Rangers are super point efficient. For someone playing Fire Warrior heavy Tau lists on the side, especially rangers have less maximum potential, but with the Stygies -1 to hit (or alternatively FnP or AP -1 immunity), BS3+, shroudpsalm and the AP -1 on 6s on 15" rapid-fire they are very self-sufficient and strong without needing mandatory buff characters. In small 5-6 dude Ranger squads or especially in 8 men squads for Vanguard with data-teether (IMO the best compromise between LD precaution and protecting the two Caliber guys who are as expensive as 5 1/2 regular Vanguards), 40 or 50 of them should not only be able to efficiently push the midfield and move their butts on objectives, but also add a ton anti-infantry firepower that outranges most other infantry small-arms. Even better if you throw in two or three vanguard moving Dragoons as extra distraction Carnifex.

IMO it also solves the issue of most Admech lists (especially Mars), which is basically an almost immobile firebase that not only falls apart as soon as someone manages to get past the lousy 15 rangers most pure Admech lists run and manages to get something fast or cheap into close-combat with the dakkabots (which in most Cawl lists is like 50% of a 2000 pts. list in one easily tied down unit), or gets completely outmanoeuvred thanks to awful board control. Having a bunch of dangerous and very tanky point efficient Skitarii should do quite nicely to give the Kastelan and Onagers more breathing room.

Probably nothing that will win Nova, but should still be pretty good considering most of us are probably not utterly focused on nothing but hyper-competitive US tourneys, and something different for a change
Throw in to be expected point increases to guardsmen (and the other currently on vogue guard, BA, Castellanos and other meta soup crap) and it being as good as guaranteed that Rangers and Vanguards stay exactly where they are now, taking a look at them for infantry spamming rather than discussing tiny variations to Suzuteo's run of the mill Cawlstar soup or being depressed about the FAQ for another 10 months.

I think a horde of Skitarii would make for an excellent list as far as my games go and I'm slowly building up to being able to one, the main issues I see are relatively short range and having to buy so many of the same unit for those that prefer some variety. Skitarii can make decent use of a lot of the Forgeworld traits we have and have some nice firepower with our decent special weapons. Graia or Metallica Vanguard up front for some Deny The Witch or Fall Back and shoot, Lucius plasma Vanguard for turn 2 objective grabbing, Stygies VIII for Arquebus Rangers etc. Skitarii are quite aggressively pointed and it seems to go mostly unnoticed because of IG Infantry and our expensive HQs. It's something I've been keen to try but I already play one predominantly horde army and wanted to build a fairly complete collection of Ad Mech before really increasing the amount individual units I have.

If you try it, I'm sure there would be a lot of interest in how it works out.

The danger you have with a skittarii hoard is that now you have lost mobility an am hoard does it better and if your truelly competative you use the best tool available

Still a blend of the two might work and im trying it in a tourney Nov.

I really would like to have a Red Tide, but I'm not quite sure it will work. But maybe someone got an idea, he wants to share

U02dah4 wrote:
The danger you have with a skittarii hoard is that now you have lost mobility an am hoard does it better and if your truelly competative you use the best tool available

Still a blend of the two might work and im trying it in a tourney Nov.

Yeah, I definitely wouldn't run more than 50ish, max 60 rangers or vanguard, unless I could actually fill two battailon detachements with HQs that I actually need (there is no reason to pick more than two Dominuses (I mean a second one is already situational) and 3 Enginseers would leave one or even two of them being dead weight on the table as they can literally do nothing but repair), though a Battalion + Spearhead with 9 troop slots leaves more than enough room to run the units at sizes of 5-8 dudes.

You are right that running nothing but Skitarii (along the lines of spamming Boyz) wouldn't work, Admech armies do need Kastelans and Onagers, they just make up the largest chunk of our firepower. But complementing that with several dozen infantry plugs several holes in most current Admech lists, most importantly no longer being forced to castle up with almost your entire list and all of the weaknesses inherent to that (something gets inside the castle and you are done and you effectively give up board control).

Mobility for Skitarii isn't that much of an issue as what you want to do with semi-hordes is move them up the midfield, put up pressure and move them right on objectives, forcing the other player to get rid of them. If you put the units pushing forward on the edge of the deployment zone then the long range of rangers (they can move and fire until they get into rapid-fire range) as well as the ability of Vanguard to move, advance and still shoot (with full accuracy and no risk of overheating to boot if you pop Protector doctrina on them and if you gave them a very worthwhile data-teether) really helps with that. The former is what I do with Fire Warriors and it works really well, aggressively deploying them and making sure that objectives are not all sitting in corners as far away as possible (if playing against another shooting army you want them close together near the middle with this sort of list) really helps, as most lists struggle to effectively get rid of massed cheap 4+ save infantry quickly, especially if you throw in additional defensive bonuses like cover via Shroudpsalm (hordes of 7PPM 3+ save infantry are nasty), the Stygies -1 to hit or even just the Graia FnP.

You don't need to be fast if you got table control and are able to dictate the flow of the battle (forcing the other player to play reactionary. and especially if he plays a gunline. to deal with a shooting list grabbing board control and pushing aggressively instead of playing the expected and predictable gunline vs gunline game), especially against other shooty lists that don't have units capable of directly engaging a horde like that in close comat or are unable to pull away their troops because they need them for screening. And if you are playing Graia then you even move your pretty solid 4+ insta-psy-deny right in their face.

Finalizing a list with ~43 rangers/vanguard right now myself, would you be willing to share the list you are bringing to that tournament ?

do you think its still viable to run 3x drills with 5x6 units of vanguard (2plasma calivers each) toting 12 plasma with supporting Dominus re-roll?

I've put it on the army list page under ES/AM/AdM.

The admech portion is
2 enginseers for cost effectiveness 1 with omniscient mask
5 vanguard units cheap anti-infantry
2 corpuscarii units - little stronger than the vanguard and can flank through terrain.
3 hoplite units + data teather cheap survivable good anti medium vehicle
1 unit 3 dragoons disraction carnifex

The list is focussed on objective control and survivability

 Ragnar Blackmane wrote:

U02dah4 wrote:
The danger you have with a skittarii hoard is that now you have lost mobility an am hoard does it better and if your truelly competative you use the best tool available

Still a blend of the two might work and im trying it in a tourney Nov.

Yeah, I definitely wouldn't run more than 50ish, max 60 rangers or vanguard, unless I could actually fill two battailon detachements with HQs that I actually need (there is no reason to pick more than two Dominuses (I mean a second one is already situational) and 3 Enginseers would leave one or even two of them being dead weight on the table as they can literally do nothing but repair), though a Battalion + Spearhead with 9 troop slots leaves more than enough room to run the units at sizes of 5-8 dudes.

You are right that running nothing but Skitarii (along the lines of spamming Boyz) wouldn't work, Admech armies do need Kastelans and Onagers, they just make up the largest chunk of our firepower. But complementing that with several dozen infantry plugs several holes in most current Admech lists, most importantly no longer being forced to castle up with almost your entire list and all of the weaknesses inherent to that (something gets inside the castle and you are done and you effectively give up board control).

Mobility for Skitarii isn't that much of an issue as what you want to do with semi-hordes is move them up the midfield, put up pressure and move them right on objectives, forcing the other player to get rid of them, if you put the units pushing forward on the edge of the deployment zone then the long range of rangers (they can move and fire until they get into rapid-fire range) as well as the ability of Vanguard to move, advance and still shoot (with full accuracy and no risk of overheating to boot if you pop Protector doctrina on them and if you gave them a very worthwhile data-teether) really helps with that. The former is what I do with Fire Warriors and it works really well, aggressively deploying them and making sure that objectives are not all sitting in corners as far away as possible (if playing against another shooting army you want them close together near the middle with this sort of list) really helps, as most lists struggle to effectively get rid of massed cheap 4+ infantry quickly especially if you throw in additional defensive bonuses like cover via Shroudpsalm (hordes of 7PPM 3+ save infantry are nasty), the Stygies -1 to hit or even just the Graia FnP.

You don't need to be fast if you got table control and are able to dictate the flow of the battle (forcing the other player to play reactionary. and especially if he plays a gunline. to deal with a shooting list grabbing board control and pushing aggressively instead of playing the expected and predictable gunline vs gunline game), especially against other shooty lists that don't have units capable of directly engaging a horde like that in close comat or are unable to pull away their troops because they need them for screening. And if you are playing Graia then you even move your pretty solid 4+ insta-psy-deny right in their face.

Finalizing a list with ~43 rangers/vanguard right now myself, would you be willing to share the list you are bringing to that tournament ?

I use 60 Skitarii myself ever since the Drills were released.

For those planning to run hordes of Skitarii...

I regularly play using 30+ Vanguard and 30 Rangers, and I've lately begun bringing 20 Peltasts. I lose regularly. Toughness 3 simply does not last long on a board, and against anything other than Eldar and Guard, Strength 3 guns do jack squat (tanks are an exception, due to the 2 damage rule). Also, turn 1 sucks big time for Vanguard, since they have to advance on the first turn just to have a chance to shoot. That means plasma guns can't target anything big turn one. Sure, we essentially have FRFSRF baked into our units without orders on the Vanguard, and a decent 4+ save, but it simply isn't enough for a T3 model.

Against Guard soup, I have pulled off some amazingly ridiculous wins. Against Necrons, I died horribly (Neutron Onagers are useless against Quantum Shielding, T4 troops don't die to vanguard, and their Doom Ark cannon things have Rapid Fire 10 (!) guns that eat light infantry that have to close in). Against unbuffed Space Marines and Chaos, I can hold my own. Against any netlists or Girlyman, I get completely stomped. Harlequins are the bane of my existence with across the board 4+ invuls, and they have insane movement and charges that AdMech simply doesn't have a way of recovering from (although the charges MAY be nerfed now, we still have no way of falling back from combat and still shooting).

Without any indirect fire weapons, we really don't have a way to compete by staying in the backfield. Guard have Basilisks and Manticores and mortars. We have direct fire Onagers and Bots and Ironstriders. I don't know about every other army and their ability to reach our lines, but the longer Vanguard try to camp in the deployment zone to goad the enemy into advancing, the more firepower they lose. The more Vanguard advance, the more vulnerable they become to every basic gun in the game. They want to first strike, without a real ability to do it.

Honestly I wouldn't be worried about Quantum Shielding because none of the vehicles using it are any good outside the D Ark, and that's only okay at best.

I think the Red Tide idea is very optimistic. But if you are going to do it, I think Graia and loading a full half of your army's PL into Drills (MSUs of 6x Vanguard) would be best.

 lash92 wrote:
Sure that you need Lemartes if you include DC. But what is the purpose of them? They are chaff killing with bolter and chainsword, but do you really need that with 6 Dakkabots?

There are many -2 to hit threats. Fighting bypasses that and has inherent defensive value as well. Furthermore, all BA fighting is a threat. Chainswords wound everything up to T7 on 4+ or better on the charge; 5+ to ANYTHING. And 10 DC pack 40 attacks; 50 with Unleash Rage; up to 100 if you Honour the Chapter.

I would be backing stygies still for footslogging the -1 to hit is strong defensivily

To with the new cover rules every model in a tide list is likely in cover for the first 2 turns.

Mars shooty lists are fine with onager but the truth is if your spliceing into an imperium list as has been pointed out AM does artillary better

Sure individual squads are squishy but collectively they can still output a lot of fire 9 vanguard models will still W/2W a knight and with enough squads they are very hard to remove.

What they wont do is table a knights list but they don't need to in order to win just kill the stuff assisting the knights then take the objectives

Sure it's better than a 6+++ defensively. But you lose out the Graia WLT which let's you shoot into melee, which so nice to have against other cqc armies.

True but if your aim is to board control then survival is key. Shooting into combat is nice but very situational.

U02dah4 wrote:
True but if your aim is to board control then survival is key. Shooting into combat is nice but very situational.

I disagree because people will charge into Vanguard to stop them from shooting. It's a really good defensive tool at the cost of having your Warlord a bit close to the enemy.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also their Stratagem is super clutch. I'm thinking Graia Vanguard and Stygies Rangers.

In a world where we could run 2 Batallions without gimping ourselves... A TPE is so useless and a TPD (let alone multiple) are so freaking expensive, especially in a Skitarii list...

Don't put up your hope on Graia's dogma too much. While it might be a good tool to withstand, it is also very moody. 1/6 chance is something that can't be really relied on as a srvivability tool when opponent can easily focus down any Skitarii squad. As someone previously noticed, T3 without a solid inv (like Harlequins 4++) is punishing no matter what kind of an after rule you will bring.

dadamowsky wrote:
Don't put up your hope on Graia's dogma too much. While it might be a good tool to withstand, it is also very moody. 1/6 chance is something that can't be really relied on as a srvivability tool when opponent can easily focus down any Skitarii squad. As someone previously noticed, T3 without a solid inv (like Harlequins 4++) is punishing no matter what kind of an after rule you will bring.

It's still better than Stygies for a unit that wants to be close though.