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It looks cool, but the fluff for it bothers me a bit. The whole point of the Legio Cybernetica mothballing their Heresy-era Robots and using the less efficient "punchcard" versions was that they used actual grey matter with animalistic personalities, and it turned out that made them more vulnerable to corruption by Chaos.

But now the AdMech are building industrial bots used on major hive worlds that way? That seems a bit wonko.

Doubt the AdMech have anything to do with this. Most likely Van Saar dabbling with their STC!

I think it was posted earlier in this thread, but the AmBots use the brains of actual Ambull, so are more of a cyborg or servitor than proper robots.

There's plenty of instances in the fluff of servitors having full on robot bodies. It isn't surprising that they'd do the same with industrial servitors like the Ambot. It's a chunky looking model. Is he supposed to be a Forgeworld release, or will he be plastic?

Forge World release.

Oh, boo to that. So does that mean the Ambot is supposed to be the Van Saar pet, then?

It's an everybody pet. The initial artwork was painted as part of an Escher Gang.

GW3 has Ogryns and Ambullbots as the first 'Big Guy' members of the gang. They've said that eventually all the gangs will get unique Big Guys.

I'm expecting the Goliath brute to be that roided up abhuman that was mentioned in their back story!

Nice.

The Ambot looks like a solid miniature. It will do double duty for Necromunda and the new 40K RPG on my table.

How's the fluff in the Gang War books? Do they throw in character pieces or short stories?

Keep in mind I wrote 10,000+ words on civilian life in the Imperium...

No short stories that I recall - there's the odd quote in a sidebar, and every piece of artwork is of a named fighter.

 Barzam wrote:
Oh, boo to that. So does that mean the Ambot is supposed to be the Van Saar pet, then?

I thought the Van Saar pet would be the skull with mechanic spider legs? Their logo being a spider and all.

Baxx wrote:

 Barzam wrote:
Oh, boo to that. So does that mean the Ambot is supposed to be the Van Saar pet, then?

I thought the Van Saar pet would be the skull with mechanic spider legs? Their logo being a spider and all.

The artwork revealed on WHCommunity showed mech spiders, and someone said something about them being able to be assigned various weapon profiles.

I have to admit, very excited to see the new weapons, pets, and big guys options in GW3 - curse my online retaler for not sending the bits out so they arrive a day early!

I'm most excited about how they're going to solve the weapon profiles now that we get a new trading post. It's been complete chaos since the previous one.

For example Photo-googles, will it continue to be Rare(9)? If so, for which gangs would that rarity actually make a difference?

 BrookM wrote:
Forge World release.

Ah - anyone up with current FW rates for that kind of mini? Perhaps £40-50, or am I being overly pessimistic?

20+ quid if the Blood Bowl big guys are anything to go by, but nowhere near as high as that horrible suggestion.

Looks a little smaller than a Dreadnought which retail for £32 -£36 without arms so £40 wouldn’t be out of the question. It hopefully closer to £30. But Necromunda pricing is odd the 3 pack hired guns are £20 but bounty hunters are £18 each.

Thanks guys - I guess watch this space then!

Of course the price is compounded by the fact you can't get the 20% off or so you can get with general GW stuff (buying through a retailer)

 Pacific wrote:
Thanks guys - I guess watch this space then!

Of course the price is compounded by the fact you can't get the 20% off or so you can get with general GW stuff (buying through a retailer)

Plus stupid postage prices unless you make a big order.

Bloody hate Facebook, but managed to grab these:

My friend has book dropped me some info

Escher cat rarity 12, 120 points
mov 7" 3+ ws 2 attacks s3 2 damage -1 ap pulverise
-2 strength on fall damage

Ambot costs 215-305
grav gun- blast weapon
mov 4" ws3+ bs 5+ str 5 t 5 3 wounds 4+ save
base attacks 2 can go to 4 with combat weapons
has infiltrate
they can be captured by enemy and either sold or used by them.

Plasma canon is 130 pts melta 180

Also, the Necromunda website gangs have been updated with the Van Saars

So...Van Saar gets RA2 desolators now. That is cool.
I'm tempted to get Van Saar just so I can paint one of them up like this guy.

Cannot unsee now or unhear that voice.

Also, some of those Van Saar names are quite.. Dutch! Or quite close to proper Dutch names.

 zedmeister wrote:
Doubt the AdMech have anything to do with this. Most likely Van Saar dabbling with their STC!

I very much hope not, the whole "oh yeah they totes have an STC that's super-sekrit shhhh" thing is already making a bit of a mockery of the AdMech(and basic common sense), throwing in local Robot manufacturing given the fluff surrounding the Legio Cybernetica would be...spectacular nonsense.

 BrookM wrote:
I think it was posted earlier in this thread, but the AmBots use the brains of actual Ambull, so are more of a cyborg or servitor than proper robots.

Yes, which as I said, is how the Heresy-era bots were though using synthetic brains, and they stopped doing that for a reason, which leads to...

 Barzam wrote:
There's plenty of instances in the fluff of servitors having full on robot bodies. It isn't surprising that they'd do the same with industrial servitors like the Ambot.

Yes, servitors, which use lobotomised human brains and control wafers to keep them limited to their specific task.


This is why I find stuff like the Ambot so...irritating; it would take so little effort to make stuff like this match the existing background material even when making the prime consideration in development selling new models, but they don't even seem bothered to try.

For example - it's a Van Saar-produced industrial servitor - in the proper sense, human brain and all - and "Ambot" is a nickname because it kinda looks like one a bit. Gangs repurpose them by swapping out their control wafers with contraband Combat Protocol upgrades the Mechanicus use to repurpose Servitors when their facilities are invaded, but because they're stolen and resold and tweaked by Underhive cybertechs the wafers can make the servitor unpredictable. Bingo, all the same qualities of appearance and behaviour, all within the existing background material. Now, I can headcanon it that way easily enough, but fans shouldn't have to do that - headcanon should be like house rules, something you do to change the official material to something you like more, not something you need to do to fix the official material.

And yes, before someone feels the need to come along and state the obvious - none of this is a big deal, there are children starving in Africa and climate change and blah blah. It's just a minor annoyance, but it's one in a long line of such and they've been cropping up a lot more recently it seems to me.

 Yodhrin wrote:


Yes, servitors, which use lobotomised human brains and control wafers to keep them limited to their specific task.


This is why I find stuff like the Ambot so...irritating; it would take so little effort to make stuff like this match the existing background material even when making the prime consideration in development selling new models, but they don't even seem bothered to try.

For example - it's a Van Saar-produced industrial servitor - in the proper sense, human brain and all - and "Ambot" is a nickname because it kinda looks like one a bit. Gangs repurpose them by swapping out their control wafers with contraband Combat Protocol upgrades the Mechanicus use to repurpose Servitors when their facilities are invaded, but because they're stolen and resold and tweaked by Underhive cybertechs the wafers can make the servitor unpredictable. Bingo, all the same qualities of appearance and behaviour, all within the existing background material. Now, I can headcanon it that way easily enough, but fans shouldn't have to do that - headcanon should be like house rules, something you do to change the official material to something you like more, not something you need to do to fix the official material.

Except that theres existing background that servitors arent always human based. Some servitors are based on cloned humans, some are based on human convicts, and some are based on non-human animals. Why use a complicated human brain for something that merely needs to dig? As long as it doesnt attack you and follows directions, you dont *need* a human brain. And something that basically just wants to dig is going to make things a lot easier for you. No need to perform drastic surgery to lobotomise the bits that could cause trouble, just inhibit aggression, make it happy all the time and add some controlling mechanism (which might be as simple as having it hear annoying noises from the side you dont want it to dig to.)
Being an animal with artificially decreased aggression also makes it a lot easier to remove those blocks. It could be as simple as disconnecting a wire, or even flipping a switch. Human-based servitors though? A whole other matter. To make a servitor safe, you seriously need to mess with their brain. And those changes are a lot more complicated than just decreasing aggression by keeping it drugged up on happy juice. A drugged human is way more unstable and unpredictable than a drugged animal. You need to actually remove bits to make everything work, which instantly makes removing blocks a lot more difficult... sure, combat servitors are a thing, but not for the public sector.

Overall, using animals is just way more efficient for what its supposed to be. So I really dont see the issue.

But yeah, what you described just now is what has been shared earlier as how the Ambot works: animal is great at digging, it just needs an inhibitor to curb some of its more aggressive tendencies.

Or, just disable the inhibitor when you are facing a rival gang and let it rampage, just be sure to have plenty of juves around to switch it off again post battle if it's not done via a simple remote.

Human servitors are heavily lobotomized most of the time, removing as much as needed so that it can just do simple tasks and nothing else. There are some more advanced models out there who have simply been mindwiped before conversion, like the servitor found in the Rogue Trader audio drama, which helps around with calculations and ship system maintenance.

 Tyr13 wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:


Yes, servitors, which use lobotomised human brains and control wafers to keep them limited to their specific task.


This is why I find stuff like the Ambot so...irritating; it would take so little effort to make stuff like this match the existing background material even when making the prime consideration in development selling new models, but they don't even seem bothered to try.

For example - it's a Van Saar-produced industrial servitor - in the proper sense, human brain and all - and "Ambot" is a nickname because it kinda looks like one a bit. Gangs repurpose them by swapping out their control wafers with contraband Combat Protocol upgrades the Mechanicus use to repurpose Servitors when their facilities are invaded, but because they're stolen and resold and tweaked by Underhive cybertechs the wafers can make the servitor unpredictable. Bingo, all the same qualities of appearance and behaviour, all within the existing background material. Now, I can headcanon it that way easily enough, but fans shouldn't have to do that - headcanon should be like house rules, something you do to change the official material to something you like more, not something you need to do to fix the official material.

Except that theres existing background that servitors arent always human based. Some servitors are based on cloned humans, some are based on human convicts, and some are based on non-human animals. Why use a complicated human brain for something that merely needs to dig? As long as it doesnt attack you and follows directions, you dont *need* a human brain. And something that basically just wants to dig is going to make things a lot easier for you. No need to perform drastic surgery to lobotomise the bits that could cause trouble, just inhibit aggression, make it happy all the time and add some controlling mechanism (which might be as simple as having it hear annoying noises from the side you dont want it to dig to.)
Being an animal with artificially decreased aggression also makes it a lot easier to remove those blocks. It could be as simple as disconnecting a wire, or even flipping a switch. Human-based servitors though? A whole other matter. To make a servitor safe, you seriously need to mess with their brain. And those changes are a lot more complicated than just decreasing aggression by keeping it drugged up on happy juice. A drugged human is way more unstable and unpredictable than a drugged animal. You need to actually remove bits to make everything work, which instantly makes removing blocks a lot more difficult... sure, combat servitors are a thing, but not for the public sector.

Overall, using animals is just way more efficient for what its supposed to be. So I really dont see the issue.

This is how I see it. It is just an animal servitor. The Silica Animus was an entirely artificial brain with modular capabilities. Those are what is disfavoured by the 40k Mechanicus (I have never seen a source stating they are explicitly banned though, just considered dangerous).

The Ambot is not doctrinally different from a cyber eagle, and we know they exist.

I’m strongly tempted to replace my Genestealer Cult with Van Saar for more official support, plus I get to say Rad more often.

Hmmm... I see the gang description mentions a rad gun (as well as the cannon), but such a weapon isn't mentioned in the ganger builds... here's hoping its one of the secondary options and not being held back for the inevitable weapon pack(s).