Adeptus Mechanicus Thread

Post codex, Cawl is essentially mandatory for Mars. Before, he was just a really good model that was worth taking. Now he changes their 'maybe get a relevant pair of canticles' dogma into 'probably get a relevant pair of canticles'.

I think with their stratagem that lets them turn 6s to wound into mortal wounds, they want a lot of high-volume-of-fire models. Corpuscarii Electro-Priests, Skitarii Vanguard, Kataphron Destroyers with grav cannons, Kastelan Robots kitted for shooting, or even Sicarian Infiltrators with their 5-shot pistols.

Still a shame that they took an attack away from Sicarians. They were never a powerful unit to begin with in 8th, and further crippling their melee efficiency just seems petty.

They are the ones that get infiltrators. It seems the good Forge Worlds are divided into ones with Cawl (Mars) and the ones that go around the main weakness of AM - mobility (Stygies an Lucius)

Stygies VIII has the Alpha Legion / Raven Guard '-1 to hit this model over 12"' away' rule. Their Stratagem is 1CP: choose a unit during deployment, it gains infiltrate. Their warlord trait lets their warlord add 1 to wound rolls vs anything that's not imperium, chaos, or unaligned. Their relic is 'roll a dice for each enemy unit within 1" of the bearer at the end of the fight phase. On a 4+, that unit takes a mortal wound.'

Overall, amazing dogma and stratagem. Mediocre warlord trait and relic. But, the default warlord traits are pretty awesome, and the Autocaudecus of Arkhan Land is able to be taken by anyone, so it doesn't matter if you get a useless close combat bonus as a relic (for Stygies VIII or anyone else).

You could always say that you have a custom forge world with an alternate paint scheme.

I suppose it depends on how strict the people you play with are about paint jobs. The people I play with are pretty lax, but your results may vary.

Why you would want to play with Ryza rules is beyond me though. I feel that if their dogma and Stratagem had been switched, they'd be significantly better as a forge world- making rangers or vanguard with plasma guns top-tier choices.

Beast Status: Sighted.
My sniper Rangers are an untidy bunch. One is good, one forgot the handle on his rifle, one has noodle arms so can't keep the gun up and one is actually just a snake in a coat.

My guys are certainly going to be Stygies, since then I can go for the megacharge with 20 Fulgurites and a big pack of Dragoons while simultaneously keeping these boys and the heavy guns safer. Building a custom Magos too, but he's going to be on a 60mm base rather than a Dominus 50mm. Think people will be fine with that?

If not my GW still has like 3 boxes and no admech players except me so I should be good for now.

As far as I know, base size isn't as important in 40k as it is in age of Sigmar. Especially since AdMech aren't a melee army, having a larger base is likely a drawback. You're easier to engage and technically larger and easier to see. If people take issue with it, I'd bring those things up as counterpoints. If all you want is more space for your Dominus to look fantastic, it shouldn't be an issue.

One issue with your game plan is that, as far as I know, you can only infiltrate one unit in a Stygies VIII army. It's 1CP to infiltrate one unit, and since you can only spend CP once per phase, that's all you get.

Dragoons are pretty gross with the Stygies VIII dogma though- -2 to hit them over 12" means that space marines go down to Ork levels, and Guardsmen (or Guard equivalents) only hit on 6s.

>Lament that Kastelans are sold out.
What is GW planning with this? Other than pissing us off.

I thought Lucius was the one with teleporting stuff.

So how long till we get some damn transports?

Never. It's not fluff friendly.

Lucius has '1CP: teleport a unit to anywhere outside of 9" of an enemy unit' as a stratagem. The difference, IIRC, is that Stygies VIII spends their CP during the deployment phase, and Lucius spends theirs during the movement phase.

Lucius also has a relic that grants 'once per game you may teleport the bearer to anywhere within 30" that is more than 9" away from enemy models'

Because GW cares about keeping the fluff and the crunch consistent.

I don't think AdMech are going to get transports for a VERY long time. The soonest will be when Fires of Cyraxus comes out, but the book has been in development hell for quite some time now with no signs of a release any time soon.

I disagree though about transports not being fluff friendly. 'Mechanized Infantry' sounds like it should have been an AdMech thing from day 1, and I'm honestly still surprised they didn't just let AdMech take Astra Militarum / Tempestus Scions transports.

We built the damn things in the first place, it seems very strange that we wouldn't use them.

Fluff wise don't we have access to all vehicles that are not a land raider, including dreadnoughts but why would we need them?

Pretty much. The footsloging part may be cool fluff wise, but why the hell you wont bring transports, if you are the AdMech.

This new codex better fucking bring back war convocation.
It matched my tactical playstyle perfectly but now i struggle against pretty much any opponent with admech

For the same reasons anyone else would need them- safely delivering infantry to key points on the battlefield, and, depending on the armament of the transport, providing fire support for units.

I have some bad news for you, user.

War Convocation had some elements that were egregiously overpowered. Free wargear often meant that you were playing with anywhere between 500-1000 points more than your opponent. Seeing how formations in general have been treated, it seems highly unlikely that War Convocation will return in any form.

What did you like in the War Convocation formation? What tactical elements did you feel it brought that you struggle to implement now?

I was specifically referring to the dreadnoughts why would we need them when we have better robots.

Ah, no, my bad- I misunderstood. With Kastelans, Dreadnoughts would be pretty superfluous. Onagers fill the role of heavy fire support platform, really transports and fliers are the only things AdMech lack.

Thing is, it's explicitly used during deployment, which isn't a phase and thus has no limits on how many times you can use stratagems in it. Does mean that if I want a decent melee spearhead I need to blow around 3CP on getting it all over there and ready to fight, though I might not want to TP the dragoons. They're hard as nails now and if they are drawing all the fire it means all the squishy things aren't.

Thinking that Stygies will probably be one of the best Forge Worlds, we suit the tactic much better than the comparatively puny shooting of Space Marines (without Guilliman, anyway) and T1 charges with huge melee smashy units might just distract our opponents from the deploying Kastelans and Neutronager lines a teensy bit.

My gut is telling me to go with the more limited possibility- infiltrating only one unit. Even though deployment is not a phase, it stands to reason that using command points during deployment would work the same as using command points during any other time.

Admittedly, I'm paging through the rulebook and trying to find any evidence that supports one way or the other. Nothing yet so far.

The stratagem does seem to say 1CP per unit though, so if you can use it multiple times in a phase, it'd be at a rate of 1CP per thing you want to infiltrate.

Under the Matched Play rules on pg. 216 of the MEGA Pdf it has this bit:

>STRATEGIC DISCIPLINE
>The same Stratagem cannot be used by the same player more than once during any single phase. This does not affect Stratagems that are not used during a phase, such as those used "before the battle begins" or "at the end of a battle round".

I thought the same way when we first got that, but I found that bit when checking the Psychic Focus rules.
It's probably balanced by the fact that you have to do that before the roll for first turn, so all those squishy priests not yet jacked up on 3++ goodness could just be gunned down if you're unlucky.
Thinking we'll need to lever large units of everything like Kastelans, Electros and screening Skittles in 10s so as to keep unit count down some, since any melee alpha strike units will REALLY want that +1 to the roll.

Update: I found the rules for using stratagems in Matched Play games and learned something new. It seems you are correct- stratagems used before a game begins, at the end of a battle round, or anything else outside of a phase can be used as many times as you damn well want/have command points for.

That certainly makes any arguments for playing Stygies VIII significantly stronger.

My strategy was based on outpreforming my opponent in quality rather than quantity and i ran every plasma weapon with every option equipment.

I guess i will just sell my army then. It is a shame that gw would fuck over a loyal customer for over two years but i guess privateer press will be glad to take my money

I think that SURPRISE NUMINOUS CONCLAVE might be a hilarious way to start a battle. 40 Fulgurites and 20-40 Corpuscarii dropping in, Sith Lightning clearing out any conscript blobs before the Fulgurites smash their lines. Costs pretty much ALL the CP, and you'll only have around a 1k gunline to deal with the enemy afterwards, but it would be hilarious.

Why not both?
At least you're not agripinaa.

Can someone with the book check the prices on special weapons? I've heard conflicting things.

Have you tried playing with power levels rather than points? That seems right up your alley?

AdMech are still one of the shootiest armies in 40k, capable of dropping an absurd amount of high-quality firepower. Plasma weapons on Skitarii got their cost cut in half to make up for the loss of War Convocation.

You could run a Mars army with Cawl at the head- he is an incredible force multiplier. He takes the Kataphron servitors and Kastelan Robots who both have issues with their ability to reliably hit (hitting only on a 4+) and bumps them to being more accurate than a space marine. If having scary accurate troops with heavy weapons or insanely accurate plasma fire for less than most seems too weak, I don't know what you'd consider strong.

Otherwise, seems to have the right of it. Power Level play lets you build what you want with whatever gear you want without worrying about fiddly points. Maybe try that?

Otherwise

The cawl thing actually sounds pretty cool..... Kind of a neat combo with the mars bonus as well.
I think i will try this. Thanks user

Glad that I could be of some help!

Another crazy thing Cawl sets up is with the Corpuscarii Electro Priests. Mars has a stratagem that says, '2CP: choose a MARS unit. When it rolls a 6+ to wound in the shooting phase, it inflicts a mortal wound on the target unit.'

Corpuscarii Priests inflict 3 hits instead of 1 when they roll a 6 to hit. With Cawl, they turn any misses into potential crits. They also have 3 shots each that hit on a 3+, so they are good even without him. With him, they become a nightmare pain-train.

Combined with the stratagem, a unit of Electro Priests within Cawl's aura of 're-roll all misses in the shooting phase' lets you inflict a staggering number of mortal wounds on a chosen unit.

I think a unit of 20 can either down a Knight or cripple it to near uselessness.

A really quick session on a calculator tells me that one should expect a full-strength unit of electro priests within Cawl's bubble to deal roughly 10 mortal wounds under that stratagem. That's not even counting the wounds from the normal S5 hits.

While it doesn't remove a Knight from mortal wounds alone, it does remove a bullshit-powerlevel model like Roboute Gulliman from the table with no saves (or at least forces his owner to pass that crazy 4+ return with d6 wounds rule).

Jesus christ what a whiney entitled manchild

That seems rather non-productive, user. I can understand seeing someone pining for the loss of an incredibly strong formation and thinking of them as entitled, but I think it's better to be more productive and try to suggest alternatives.

What are your thoughts on War Convocation? Do you think the AdMech codex fixes a lot of the problems AdMech got when they transitioned to 8th edition?

You're a good person and are wasted here

Ryza kataphron destroyers can kill roughly 100% of their points cost every single turn while in a Dominus aura.

The dogma is hot garbage, the warlord trait is fun but mediocre, but if you remember that Destroyers exist and stop trying to squeeze firepower out of vanguard with the strategem it gives Ryza probably the most powerful ranged artillery in 8e. Fuckers out-damage neutron laser crabtanks against heavy vehicles and just delete TEQs and views from the game (and, hilariously, other kataphrons)

I plan on running a Ryza patrol detachment to back up my Stygies-flavored dudes.

Does anyone want to exchange some well-formatted data packets? I'm lonely.

01101100 01101111 01101110 01100101 01101100 01111001

They have a good stratagem, but I don't think it can carry them. Ryza as a separate detachment helps a lot. It just feels a shame that their best use is in a supporting role.

I didn't catch their warlord trait, what is it?

01011001 01101111 01110101 00100111 01110110 01100101 00100000 01100010 01100101 01100101 01101110 00100000 01110011 01100011 01110010 01100001 01110000 01100011 01101111 01100100 01100101 01100100 00100000 01100010 01101001 01110100 01100011 01101000

You select a non-relic weapon carried by your warlord and increase its Strength and Damage by 1

Not fantastic, but can make an alarmingly killy Dominus if you take it and then make a second weapon a Relic (there's an excellent assault 3 AP -3 phosphor serpenta, for instance)

And in a small point game it can be hilarious to watch an Engiseer land a hit with their 3-damage axe

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Oh, and you make the selection of what weapon to use the trait on during deployment, so you can tailor it to your enemy

I now want to see.a specialist Annihilation Clade of two Kastelans, a Datasmith, a Dominus and 12 Plasmaphrons. Each one when Overcharged and with the stratagem active has a weapon (almost, has more use against multiple models thanks to it being 3.5 shots/3D instead of the other way around, but will overheat very slightly more) mathematically equivalent to three lascannons. Pay a silly number of command points, fire some BS3+ phosphor for lols then fire up the doombots and land 28 lascannon hits on a target of your choice at the cost of one overheated Kataphron. Fuck you, Mortarion, you're dead.

Use the trick with the Warlord too and chip in with some Phosphex and Volkite and other Heresy nostalgia.
Fuck, that's a gunline detachment on it's own. I now rather want to get some Ogryn boxes and make bipedal KatDs out of them with all my spare plasna culverins and such.
No idea how much that would all cost, though. 420ish for the Dominus and Kasty maniple plus 12 times whatever a plasma Kataphron goes for these days.

Just got back into 40k after more then 5 years away and went straight for the start collecting mechanicus box. What would you guys suggest to be the best expansion. I really like Cawls as a model and was thinking of doing Mars lorewise anyway so whst's good with them?

A plasma kataphron is 70 points.

But user, you silly bitch. The strategem doesn't give +1 strength.

It gives +1 to wound.

Overcharged Plasma Culverins functionally become Strength 14.

Mortarion has what, 16 wounds? Toughness 7? Yeah just did the math. With his 4++/5+++ you only need 5 destroyers to open fire on him to get the kill, on average.

You're going to need more line troops. You'll probably want the Tech-Priests as well, they work very well with mars. Vanguard are going to be your immediate need, though; the most basic way to play the game is with a battalion, and you'll want Cawl, a Dominus, and 3 squads of basic skitarii for it.

Oh, didn't factor the accuracy boost from popping the beep boop strategem.

3.5 destroyers.

Ok, that's officially amazing. My mathhammer says that six Plasmaphrons with Strat and R1, but no accuracy buff do 12 hits/10 wounds/saves negate D3 to Mortarion's W18, though, so might take either a fuckheug 920pt Dominus/11 Kata block to kill him instantly or generally combined firepower from the rest of an army.

Personally I'm not a huge fan of subfaction mixing since it feels untidy, so I'll probably stick with my Stygies, but I suspect that any Plasmaphrons I make in the future will have one shoulderpad orange in case I want to test that out. Shouldn't be a problem to do some orange trim on one of my Domini, either, since I already do orange weapon glow.

as long as I'm shitposting about AdMech codex optimism and mathhammer, have you heard the good word of Stygies VIII Sydonian Dragoons being some of the scariest assault units to grace the tabletop?

I have, yes. Three with Conqueror active will one turn kill a Rhino chassis or demolish a squad of Primaris, all while being hard as nails and making Hellblasters feel very puny indeed . I may need to get a couple more than my current two.

Admech actually has some really reliable and scary melee this time around. Stygies can teleport in two score Fulgurites and a wedge of Dragoons to go with that Ryzan firebase and smash everything to bits quite handily, and if you try both of those tricks you probably still have room for a few screening Skittle squads to make up troop slots in a 2.5k list. Pretty shiny even by our dakka standards.

Something I really, really want to try

6 Stygies Kastelans with fists and 12" heavy flamers infiltrating as close as possible to the enemy. Don't bother with a datasmith, they're going to stay in Aegis mode.

A virtually indestructible wall that your opponent can't ignore because then it will lumber around roasting his infantry and punching tanks to death

Hello sir do you have a moment to talk about the Omnissiah

So I am guessing 2 more start collecting boxes would be ok for the tanks?
>You'll probably want the Tech-Priests as well
By that you mean the Enginseers or the Dominus?

I mean the fulgirites and the corpuscarii.

And yes, if you can find them, 2 more start collecting boxes is actually ideal.

My current 8e experience of two Phosphor Kastelans tearing everything smaller than a Leviathan in the enemy deployment to shreds within a couple turns is cursing that as a waste of half a dozen good robots, but all the rest of me is shouting that bit down and saying that sounds hilarious. Run a Stygies Battalion and we can drop a massive pile of death at optimum brawling range when we want it, although Lucius is probably better for anything that's not strictly a melee unit and can actually do something worthwhile from 9" out.

How do I make a good-looking AdMech banner or symbol?

Do we have the rest of the strategems anywhere?

Well the trouble is Stygies can only do it before turn 1

Lucius can do it during turn 1-3

My trouble with dakkabots is being forbidden from moving to dakka it up, and I play with a lot of sight blocking urban terrain. Destroyers at least can drive around And ignore the penalty for doing it. And 15 foot tall punchbots inexplicably sneaking around is inherently funny to me.

Can I ally these guys with the Imperial Guard? (I refuse to call them Astra Militarum)

Big thing about Stygies is they're able to guarantee that charge, or close as makes no difference anyway. Admech sometimes has pretty front-loaded damage with Canticles and such and our units are physically bulky, which makes it sometimes hard to find DS slots for them all.
Sneaky Boop Phalanx I think has managed to outclass the Stealthy Leviathan I fought a while ago in terms of silliness.

Standard Impeial rules, so yes, you can. Admech Enginseers can fix Guard vehicles, as can a couple of our other characters IIRC. Personally I'm planning to take one of the Guard Marauders as my Lord of War, since Knights aren't really worth using precious CP on at the moment and I find the planes cooler.

Boy oh boy. That Codex threw some damn shit around and trolled us good. I wonder how robochicken wil turn out as you can literally tun like a madman through the field rushing down people in melee and stabbing them to desth with tasers.

Cawl + Mars looks really powerful, good god. Shame I don't really like playing Mars or Cawl because one would force you into the other. Oh well.

I'm okay with how the codex turned out. There is nothing really obviously broken or WAAC (besides maybe cawl+mars being really good at the first look). I think there is potential in each of the forge world somehow even though some are outweighted by the others.

Hope to test out stuff whenever I get some more models. So much shit to try out.

Post art.

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Are there any rules for dark mechanicum anywhere?

Honestly, from what I can tell, I expect quite a few things;

1. Dominus are going to become a lot rarer; unless they got a point drop, they are simply too squishy and too costly to see high level play. I've said it before, but Domni are simply way too expensive, and while D3 wounds back is great, his T4 and 2+/5++ means he is rarely going to get to use that. Cawl is still fantastic, but I imagine that 1 Domnii and 2 Engiseers will be the common way to play.

2. Expect see more rangers; 8 pnts for a bolter on legs is pretty good; add in the possibility for AP, and 80 points for a whole squad is amazing. Thats enough to add in 3 Arc rifles, which when coupled with the canticles gets even better.

3. Mars will be gun line and forefront; Cawl getting you 2 bonuses of pretty much your choice is awesome, and that Mortal wound Stratagem works incredibly well with the Add BS+Re-Roll misses ability. That turns Vanguard into tank hunters.

4. Destroyers and Kataphron are butt buddies now. You will always roll them together for that sick ass +1 to hit stratagem.

5. Stygies Dragoon Spam will be a annoying little nut to crack; The 8 Str Ap -1 and a -2 to hit will make them really favorable to be ran in big charges. Also, that Double Advance stratagen makes them impossible to catch.

Finally, with so much of our buffs coming from CP, you will find a lot of people trying to get as many as they can possibly get.

Dumping

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So, I haven't seen updated points yet, but this is what I'm thinking of bringing to my next local tourney. Made out of stuff from my 7e War Convocation.

+ Mars Spearhead +
Cawl
2 Kastellans w/ full phosphor
Neutron Onager
Icarus Onager
Kataphron Destroyers w/ Plasma
Datasmith

+ Some Other Forgeworld (Undecided! Taking suggestions) Battalion +
2x Dominus
10 Rangers w/ 3 Arc Rifles
5 Rangers w/ Transauranic Arquebus
10 Vanguard w/ Plasma Calivers

+ Superheavy Auxiliary +

Hexxenhammer, Knight-Errant

Can someone with the book tell me what that'd all come out to?

My A-plan here is Cawl sitting in the back with his entire detachment, giving them full rerolls. One Dominus, my Warlord with the Autocadeuceus, hangs out with Hexxenhammer and provides him with heals, while the other Dominus escorts the Vanguard up the field to provide them with a reroll. The 5-man ranger squad stays in the back playing sniper, while the 10-man either hangs back or pushes forward as needed.

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>Ha ha! My side project as a ventriloquist is off to a wonderful start!

>DAMMIT MAGOS STEVE, THAT'S WHY WE DON'T "JUST INVENT" NEW STUFF

On another note, I'm getting a Knight Castigator soon, and I kinda want to try to run him with my other two knights, and some AdMech as support. The SC! box and another Crabtank would fit perfectly, pointswise. Question is though, is this even remotely useful, or should I just go and fill up on cheap guardsmen?

No PDF out yet?

Here's my AdMech stuff.

1 TPDominus
2x onagers, magnetized.
6x 5 man squad of vanguard, all have one plasma gun each
2x 5 man rangers with arquebui
1x Kastelan squad, full phosphor
2x dragoons
2x infiltrators one with t-goad and one with sword

Any tips?

You can do basically what I'm planning up here:
But with dragoons and infiltrators in place of the knight for melee punch, and with two vanguard squads (What I'd rather have anyway) instead of a vanguard and a ranger.

>two squads of 7
Why not one squad of 10 and one squad of 5?
>eradication beamer on your spider tanks
Go for the Neutron Lasers or the Icarus pods.

7 helps mitigate a lot of morale problems. MSU is great and all but loosing your two special weapons or alpha to morale blows. On the other hand, if I get blown out in morale, then I've sunk less points than if the squad was max sized.

For me, I run seven because it's fluffy with my army. My "forge world" is actually a confederation of seven forge moons orbiting a dead forge that was annihilated in civil war; each member of the skitarii squad is from a different moon and has a binaric tag marking them as such

Combine the rangers into two 10 man squads with three plasma guns each.

Actually, I fucked up in battlescribe, but I guess could be right. I'll just act like it was intentional and well thought-out.
The Neutronlasers I could fit in though, if I reduce the Skitarii to 5-man squads.

That's some really cool fluff my fellow adept.

GW removed one attack from their stats with the first Errata, so nothing new there.

I know, I guess I was hoping they'd take it back. I feel 2 attacks is nowhere near enough to make a unit good at close combat.

My thoughts are: 1 attack = bad at CC, 2 attacks = Bare minimum required to be decent, often only good in a unit with a lot of models, 3 attacks = solidly good.

Infiltrators are too expensive to only have 2 attacks each, even if they have pistols.

I was assembling my unit of infiltrators when the errata hit- I lost all motivation to finish them. They are sitting on my desk half built. I don't see a lot of reason to run them anymore, especially with Stygies VIII giving anything and everything infiltrate.