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I've seen a lot of people talk up the War Convocation but as a stand alone force are the skitarii a viable army in a semi competitive setting?

Yes. Pure Skitarii is reasonably powerful. They got a boost when Secutarii were added, but I don't advise using them as a crutch, because they will be changed in Fires Of Cyraxus.

Check out the Tactica Mechanicus (All Hail Mars) thread in Tactics for more information.
-Shameless Self Promotion self-test complete-

I'd say forget playing big tournaments with them and expect to win, because pure Skitarii has a problem, and it's the size of the unit diversity. We lack transports, flyers, anything to defend us from psykers, and resilient units. If you would play say a 1850 pts game of pure Skitarii your side of the board would be filled with T3 guys, and a drop pod full of flamers or CC units will wipe you out. Yes, what we do have we have it nice, and it's loads of firepower. You could mitigate the speed problem by running lots of Dragoons and/or Ballistarii, they're cheap and someone here on the forum uses a list with a dozen or so of them and says it works nicely. In low points games it's perfectly viable with the right list building, it's at the higher points that it gets tricky.

Overall, I think it's an army that for now needs allies, even just with the Cult Mechanicus units, while we hope for a more complete codex in the future. If the problem is that you don't like the Kataphron models (I do) you could run a Cohort Cybernetica to ally with your Skitarii, that's what I'm going to do. I think it's nice addition to provide a bullet magnet so your guys can cross the board in relative safety (it's still war after all!)

Are the secutarii the FW guys? What's Fires of Cyraxus? HA I'll go over and have a look now

Yes. Fires of Cyraxus is a book that will never come out, but I'll save you a seat at the Restaurant At The End Of The Universe if you want to wait for it to come out.

Yeah
Fires of Cyraxus was Showcased last year and still not released
Gimme my Leviathan Dreadnought Carab Culln Already!

And it's going to change the skitarii rules? Or just the FW titan guard dudes?

Just the FW Secutarii.

Do you think they'll be nerfed or just removed from the codex? Are they both really good or just the shooty ones?

Nerfed. Just the shooty ones as far as I recall. The melee ones are meh, the shooty ones are BS OP right now.

Alright, I might have to look into picking some up so