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Skitarii and Mechanicum HARD DATA review


Seathal

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More data! More Data! Data Squirt incoming!

Played a very one sided game against the forces of chaos and it... wasn't too good. I completely tabled him to the point of it being just a little sad, as his rolls were poop and mine were amazing.

I brought:

Warlord: Techpriest Dominus with conversion field

troop 1: Vanguard with 10 models, x3 arc rifles, omnispex

HS 1: Oneager Icarius

Skitarii Maniple:

troop 2: Vanguard with 10 models, x3 arc rifles, omnispex

troop 3: Vanguard with 10 models, x3 arc rifles, omnispex

Ranger Squad with 5 models

Neutron 1: Neutron Onager

Neutron 2: Neutron Onager

and he had...

Khârn the Betrayer with a squad of 10 beserkers in a Land Raider with Havoc launchers

Mark of Khorne with 2 melta guns and CCW in a rhino with a havoc and dirge caster

An obliterator

annnnnd that it! I was expecting more things like noise marines, personally, and even while setting up I warned him about all my anti-tank and offered a chance for him to change his list, but he said no. He was to go first and I was to go second, so he deployed accordingly as did I.

I stole the initiative.

Annnd it went how you expected it to go.

Turn 1 Admec: my arc rifles from troop 2 and 3 and neutron 1 were in range and lambasted the Land Raider with anti-tank. his berserkers got out and got shot by the dominus and the icarus onager, killing at least three. Neutron 2 blasted his oblitherator.

Turn 1 Chaos: His rhino got into range of troop 3 and his beserkers charged them, making it so they couldn't fire overwatch. Needless to say that squad got destroyed by completely. He consolidated into some ruins nearby.

Turn 2 Admec: popped the +1 BS skill and had my dominus and troop one walk up so they were in range, TL'd the shooting and wiped out the remaining beserkers pretty much by themselves with my icarius killing off Khârn. Troop 2 finished off the chaos rhino readily. My rangers finally got onto the relic.

Turn 2 Chaos: His chaos marines charged my rangers as they sat on top of the bridge and wiped them out easily, sitting on the objective.

Turn 3 Admec: Troop 1 got in range again and Killed half of the remaining beserkers along side neutron 2, with only four remaining. Everything else walked around to try and get in range.

Turn 3 Chaos: The remaining four marines moved around a corner of the ruin they were hiding in, blocking off line of sight from most of my army.

Turn 4 Admec: a very pitiful round of shooting saw only two of the chaos marines die. Both of my onagers missed the neutron laser shot and killed the marines with stubbers. The last two were left alive.

Turn 4 chaos: His two marines got out of the ruin and tried to hide behind their wrecked rhino with the relic, and all of my army but neutron 1 couldn't see.

Turn 5 admec: neutron 1 blasted the one marine he could see and the rest moved up.

Turn 5 chaos: his final marine, the chaos champion, moved 6 and dropped the relic to hide behind a wall.

( At this time we thought it was only turn four and he played accordingly to the next turn without rolling wacko.png )

Turn 6 admec. Neutron onager 1 again could only see him, and he shot everything at the last model on the table. He saved the neutron wound but the heavy stubber got through and finally ended the game.

Final score: Chaos Wiped out, Admec victory.

Some notes:

-Strategic warlord table is bar none the best table you can roll on in my opinion

-Arc rifles are still amazing even against infantry, as Str 6 hurts and they can put down a lot of wounds!

-Neutrons only scored 1 unit kill but helped to kill the Land Raider. The heavy stubbers did more killing than the lasers!

-Steal the initiative is the worst and best rule in the game at the same time.

Next time I hope to use cult mech stuff!

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One question before the rest of my post: What (power)-tier is Adeptus Mechanicus even considered? I know that Eldar, Necrons, Tau and Astra Militarum are considered top tier (or they win tournaments at least pretty frequently). But where does Ad Mech stand? Because so far I have won all of my games with them (about 6 or 7 games so not that much) and there were only two very close games. The rest were in-between with one game where I just curbstomped the Dark Eldar.

 

However, looking at the tournament scene I either hear that the War Convocation beats ass or we get wrecked (image from Torrent Of Fire):

 

http://www.bilder-upload.eu/upload/988ecf-1456081114.jpg

 

____________

 

 

 

Played a very one sided game against the forces of chaos and it... wasn't too good. I completely tabled him to the point of it being just a little sad, as his rolls were poop and mine were amazing.

 

Aw, shame. It is never much fun for both players when one side just dominates the other one. 

 

 

 

 

Khârn the Betrayer with a squad of 10 beserkers in a Land Raider with Havoc launchers

Mark of Khorne with 2 melta guns and CCW in a rhino with a havoc and dirge caster

An obliterator

 

annnnnd that it!

 

Geez, that's hardly anything! >_> ...And it is a pretty mediocre list, even for a Bear & Pretzels game. :/

 

 

 

-Strategic warlord table is bar none the best table you can roll on in my opinion

 

Haven't used it so far. Have you rolled some troll-tastic WT or why is it "the best table"?

 

 

 

Arc rifles are still amazing even against infantry, as Str 6 hurts and they can put down a lot of wounds!

 

Agreed! They will ID light infantery and take away ther armour with the AP5.

 

 

 

-Neutrons only scored 1 unit kill but helped to kill the Land Raider. The heavy stubbers did more killing than the lasers!

 

I can somehow report the same. Only fielded one so far but that one Neutron hardly killed anything, which is why I am thinking about fielding a Squad of 2 Neutron Onagers.

 

 

 

-Steal the initiative is the worst and best rule in the game at the same time.

 

Yeah, agreed again. I can think of a few more: 7+ killing a vehicle outright (there goes your 200+ points Land Raider), Anti-Air-Weapons being able to shoot at Skimmers with full BS (they should either hit everything on full BS, since it is not that hard to just aim that gun towards that huge and slow Land Raider and not the fast stuff in the sky or they should only hit Flyers at full BS but not Skimmers/Anti-Grav-Vehicles) and Invisibility. That power is outright broken and should either be nerfed/much harder to access/removed. It stands in no correlation to the power-level of the other Psychic Powers which also have potent spells in them but none of those will turn a unit into an unkillable tank/deathstar. 

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@ MoGuy

 

Well, the times I rolled on the strategic trait I almost always had something useful (except the times I got the +1 reserve roll and steal the initiative while going 1st and having everything on the table) The one that provides Move through cover and stealth in ruins is particularly handy, and saved my bacon quite a few times! Also I have fond memories from Using Lias Issodon and his master of ambush trait to make my Ravenguard Troll-tastic. Again, try it! it's so good. 

 

And yes, that army I played against was very pitiful, and actually the 2nd time I played against it with similar results. I was expecting him to bring his noise marines or maybe a helldrake or something! But yea, still pretty bad. 

 

Also I totally agree about the invisibility thing. Very broken. 

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So I played a game last night against CSM. It went pretty well and I had him tabled by end of turn 3 (he likes to charge and BS2 overwatch is a good friend to have).

 

I didn't really learn anything new using the units but I did try something a little different in terms of Warlord Traits. Instead of using Skitarii or Cult I used the Strategic Traits table in the Rulebook. 

 

It looks as if a lot of the traits there are more useful than the Skitarri one. Last night I used a Skitarii Alpha as my Warlord (to get Preferred Enemy), I rolled on the Strategic table and got +1 to seize and re-roll reserves. This turned out to not really help as I failed my seize and only had one thing in reserve that came on anyway second turn.

 

However IMO other traits such as all units have move through cover and stealth in ruins, auto nightfighting and night vision first turn and 3 units of your choice infiltrating work very well with how Skitarii would run (up close and in range). 

 

While Skitarii traits such as Eternal Warrior, Master Crafted weapon and FNP re-roll don't work so good with a 1 wound T3 Warlord with a Rad Carbine.

 

I understand that this is situational and using a Infiltrator Alpha or a Dominus as your Warlord would benefit more from the Codex Traits by have other people tried with Warlord Traits other than in the Codex? Were they successful? 

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However IMO other traits such as all units have move through cover and stealth in ruins, auto nightfighting and night vision first turn and 3 units of your choice infiltrating work very well with how Skitarii would run (up close and in range). 

 

While Skitarii traits such as Eternal Warrior, Master Crafted weapon and FNP re-roll don't work so good with a 1 wound T3 Warlord with a Rad Carbine.

That was my observation too, the strategic table is by far the most useful for skitarii. City Fighting is great, why use a 4+ armour (that most support weapons ignore), when you can have a 3+ cover? Move through Cover is a great way to get into range too. Infiltrate WT is a fun possibility too, as Infiltrate gives Outflank. Arc vanguard starting in rapid fire range, radium rifle in range without being fired upon first, does have its advantages. Few are really useless, but yeah, the skitarii ones rise and fall with a decent warlord, which skitarii don't have. Cult might be something else, as the magos is a badass, but with a random alpha it's not overwhelming.

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While Skitarii traits such as Eternal Warrior, Master Crafted weapon and FNP re-roll don't work so good with a 1 wound T3 Warlord with a Rad Carbine.

Alphas have 2 wounds, took myself a long time to realise that myself msn-wink.gif

Mind = Blown. Just checked my Codex, how did I not see this before now!

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Indeed, between them and the Dominus you can field a quite tanky unit of Vanguards, or at least so I have observed when fighting the Mechanicus in a tournament. The adversary was able to tank quite a lot of wounds due to this and the good cover. It makes the Mechanicus infantry even more sturdy. 

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Indeed, even got excited that SM sergeants might follow.

I have always rolled on the Skitarii table for my Vanguard alpha, hoping to get Shrouded, which is huge. Have had Turn one nightfight, warlord scouting into cover and the other vanguard squad getting a Dominus to tank. Strategic is sometimes very good and sometimes does nothing. I dunno, psychologically, the Skitarii trait that I can re-roll is more attractive, even if I usually only want shrouded.

 

I have run the Warlord with arc maul/blast pistol/conversion field. I am frankly undecided on if it is useful or not, as he have accomplished good things (spent 2 turns beating two nobs from two squads to death in challenges, took down a Hammer Head and so on) and then there are times when he died before even getting close enough. 

 

My Ranger have been in situations were having some backfield haywire attacks would help a lot, but mostly melee does not happen and pistols would be laughably outranged.

Further testing required.

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...You guys didn't know the alpha's got 2 Wounds? that is like the first thing I noticed about him!

 

Also am I the only one who keeps them good and cheep?

Same here. "The statline looks like IG vets, but the base squad is more expensive. Anything unusual going on with that sarge? Normal...normal...2W, that explains it."

 

And yeah, I don't waste points on sergeants too. They have neither strength, resilience, initiative nor AP to really shine in CC, so the only maybe useful upgrades are pistols with special effect (reduce cover, haywire).

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Likewise. I learned my lesson the hard way with my Dark Angels. Tactical sergeant with power axe and plasma pistol? Even in 3rd ed. when I made him that wasn't a good choice. I only run my skitarii alphas with their stock rifle/carbine and they perform just fine, although I have recently made a vanguard alpha with carbine and power sword to lead a forlorn hope of unupgraded vanguard. He follows the rule of cool however and has no place in this discussion of hard data.

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I'm leaning more towards loading on special weaponry than anything else - just because for the overall unit cost, Vanguard with Radium Carbines and Arc Rifles can be a very scary proposition!

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I only run my skitarii alphas with their stock rifle/carbine and they perform just fine, although I have recently made a vanguard alpha with carbine and power sword to lead a forlorn hope of unupgraded vanguard. He follows the rule of cool however and has no place in this discussion of hard data.

The power sword doesn't seem that bad - it's quite expensive, but reduced toughness means even marines can be killed on 4+. As 4+/6++ is quite resilient against non-power weapons, CC can drag on for a few rounds, and in that situation I wish I'd had invested in a power sword. The taser is great at wounding, but no AP is mostly the catch, and a power sword is just as expensive as the pistol/taser combo.

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I run the phosphor blast pistol/taser goad. It's the cheapest option and not too shabby for getting more lumigen onto the battlefield. -1 to cover saves and re rolling charges can be a god send.
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Fielded the combo a number of times, never did anything besides kill maybe a few ork boys, if there were no painboy around. Power armour never cared about S6 or AP4, so that was a 100% wasted points. Now I built 2 Magneto sergeants (all options), will try out a few more ways.

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I just played a 1000 point rematch against my SM friend.  He learned from his previous mistakes, which made this game way more fun.  This game was definitely closer than before but still an AdMech victory.  

 

So, since my table is a bit narrow (3'6") we taped out a 5' by 6' rectangle on my floor and played there.  That helped a lot.  We also still don't have good terrain, so we just put paper on the ground in spots and said it was rock outcroppings or trees.  Shooting over the paper gave cover saves that we determined ahead of time.  That way we didn't have LoS blocking terrain everywhere like last time.  We still had a couple boxes units could climb on, but they were more around the edges.

 

I brought some Cult Mech for the first time.  I was really eager to bust out my Gravaphrons, which I ended up being really happy with.  I also brought only Rangers since I had been favoring Vanguard and wanted to see how they'd compare.  On top of that, I tried out the Heavy Phosphor Blaster on my Onager to see if my assumption that it would suck was wrong.  I also dropped the Ruststalkers, and tried Infiltrators with Power Swords.  Finally, I proxied in an Ironstrider instead of a Dragoon.

 

He finally stopped using the Armor Indomitus on his warlord, seeing the last couple times we played that it simply isn't worth the points.  He brought only 2 5-man scout squads as troops to put more points into more interesting units, put his assault terminators in a Land Raider instead of deep striking them, and then used a stormtalon.  I wasn't expecting that, and brought no anti-air, but it turned out okay.

 

The gravaphrons were not as overwhelmingly destructive as I had expected - that BS3 is a bigger penalty than I had expected.  They still killed a lot, though.  When his stormtalon came on, they managed to bring it down by sheer numbers.  They also really tore his Terminators to pieces.  I think in one round, the two units killed all of them plus his chaplain with them, and had five or six more wounds left over.  One of my units had flamers, but they never came into play.  Their slow speed and inability to run definitely hurt more than I thought it would, but I'm happy with the unit.  I'll be bringing them again.  I might try Plasmaphrons out next time, though.

 

Infiltrators with Power Swords were a lot better than I expected.  On paper it seemed like the number of wounds from the tasers would make up for the lack of AP, and maybe that'd be true against other armies, but against SM the power swords were nice.  They did get themselves killed, though, by not being locked in combat for any of the enemy shooting phases.  I'll have to think about them more.  This was also the first time I played them without screwing up their Infiltration.  I had them just close enough to shoot stuff turn one, but far enough away not to get successfully charged on his turn.

 

The Rangers I didn't like so much.  The added range was not worth the lack of shots for me.  They accomplished very little the whole game, except the Arc squad, which benefited from having move through cover.  I'll probably field Rangers for small special weapons squads and then naked Vanguard for everything else.  

 

The Ironstrider was great.  It scouted up and then moved, made it just in range to shoot the Terminators' Land Raider, scored a lucky immobilized hit on it (which probably dramatically changed the way the game went, since his Terminators, which accounted for about 1/3 of his points, were footslogging from almost the board edge, and the Raider itself never came into play).  It then spent the whole game glancing or missing the dreadnought, I think doing just enough to counteract the IWND from Iron Hands tactics.  It got blown up instantly by the Stormtalon, though.

 

The Onager with HPB was absolutely atrocious.  The only thing it ever contributed was causing one wound on scouts in cover that helped some other unit kill them.  Between the wound it caused and the wounds that only got through because of the reduced cover, it caused four wounds in total.  This gun really sucks.  If it had longer range, it could have done something.  If it fired more shots, it could have been worthwhile.  But it really sucked.  I will probably never take this gun again.  Even the little it did seems like a Neutron Laser would have done better.  I just can't think of a situation this gun would do well enough in to justify taking it over literally any other option.  I really wish I hadn't brought it.

 

I didn't really miss the Ruststalkers.  I think I might just start fielding two units of Infiltrators from now on - one to really get in their faces and tie up units and let that aura mess up their back line, and one to hang back and countercharge (maybe with power swords).  

 

I liked having the gravaphrons, and I want to try out some arc breachers, but not much else in the Cult Mech book looks like a must have.  I might try to proxy in Kastelans or something.  Hopefully I'll have more time in the coming weeks to actually paint and play, so I can try to meet more players.  I only know two people in my area who play, this guy (who is just starting and not very good) and a guy who never has time to play (and isn't very good at playing friendly games).  I think soon I should be able to field a decent army without proxies, which is probably when I will start trying to play at shops.  I think this game has also convinced my friend to not spend all his points on one unit like that - the lucky lascannon shot in turn one really killed him.  

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All other options are very simple to magnetize, only the Icarus requires a few more magnetized parts.

 

I have, until now, only used the eradication beamer as pie plate thrower and neutron kill-em-all laser, never tried Icarus or phosphor blaster. Icarus seems extremely useful when facing flyers, but otherwise are extremely situational.

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I don't get the question... why should sticking to 1 option (Icarus) be better than magnetising and being able to switch between all options ?

Totally true, I just didn't know how difficult it may be to magnetise!

 

But, if it's as easy as MajorNese suggests, I will go to the effort :)

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I have not built mine yet, but looking at the instruction manual it should be easy to magnetise.

 

The Autocannons and Phosphor Blasters uses the same mount (16) before going on the round bit (4A), so will be harder to magnetise unless you just skip the PB. Either way I would magnetise each weapon mount (17 for EB, 16 for AC, 73 for NL) the missiles (4C) and the end plate (10) for the round bit (4A). Won’t have Phosphor Blasters but I have Kastelans for those.

 

Bits in brackets are piece or steps from the manual for reference.

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For me it's pretty hard to magnetize the icarius as I have no clue how it would work for putting the missile launcher on.

 

Just magnetize the Skull/Ad Mech Symbol so that you can take it off and magnetize the missle launcher as well. 

 

Also, use youtube buddy! This is literally the first video that pops up when you enter "Magnetize Dunecrawler": 

Seriously, it is alright to ask people but hacking the problem into Google and Youtube should always be the first step. Otherwise, people will think you are too lazy to look this up yourself. :P

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