Ad Mech in 8th Edition

[Sicarian]

 

In preparation for the new edition, I've picked up a pair of Sydonian Dragoons. I was gonna equip them with Taser Goads (mainly cos they look the best, IMO) - but what are people's thoughts on the best weapon loadout? Twin-linked weapons are a lot more appealing now, so....

IMO the lascannon is good. If you're going to get the autocannon, why not bring an icarus array- ten shots hitting at BS-1 for non fly! Fantastic.

 

For Dragoons, I think radium jezzails are better this ed, being mortal wounding sniper rifles that can murder characters.

 

Taser goads are now pants vs vehicles with their 1D and only 3 attacks. Phosphor serpenta are good with their IC but expensive.

 

63 points for a heavy 2 sniper with mortal wounds on a 6 to wound it totes worth it. I'll be running a sniper army with that and lots of transuranic arquebuses which murder everything too, being snipers at S7 and ap-2, omnispex and D3 damage and mortal wounds on a 6. Brilliant.

 

Thanks for the replies. Maybe I need to magnetize to give myself some options. The Taser seems a little underwhelming to me... though I do like the look of it best, so maybe that's enough. :)

[Tiger9gamer]

soo.... played a random game of 8th with a guy's black templars he bought to paint (10 honor guards, 10 crusaders, the champion and a knight) at power level 50 and i gotta say, it was pretty fun!

 

so wanting to try things out I brought two neutron onagers, two robots, two units of vanguard with various weapons a domninus and a datasmith.

 

first off can I just mention that the protocols still change the next battle round like before, so we at least have one turn of 2+/4++ (and hilariously, reflecting shots back on a 5+) before the fun begins. And can I just say holy crap the shooting is awesome. even with just two robots they pumped out so many shots across the game, ripping apart the crusader squad by half turn one and killing another squad / wounding the knight turn 2 when the protocol activated. by turn 3 they killed another honor guard squad and finished off the knight without too much problems, so they really are worth the 12 power level points. the 4+ to hit is  somewhat negated by a dominus hanging around behind them to boost the accuracy. and with overwatch's changes they are even more ridiculous. they killed at least two units of honor guard in overwatch and then slaughtered the emperor's champion before he got into combat, so I would say they are better than ever.

 

 

The onagers are still really good. in one turn they managed to strip 12 wounds off a knight (half of it) in one turn, and the next turn managed to get him down to one wound before the knights finished him off, in all dealing 21 wounds to it in a short amount of time, even shorter if I managed to wound it with anything turn 1 (so the damage really was spread over 2 turns), I gotta say i like these jerks a lot still, and plan on taking at least three every game in the future.

[Odds.043]

Something I noticed. The kastelan rules specifically say they only deflect shots saved with the Invuln save, not the normal armour save. So if you want to deflect shots, you need to risk a worse save (unless, of course AP has made your Invuln better than your armour save)

[MagicHat]

We are going to have 40 power points 8th introduction games next Sunday. 

I am thinking:

 

10 man Vanguard, 3 Arc Rifles, Omnispex.

 

10 man Vanguard, 3 Plasma Calivers, phospor blast pistol/arc maul, omnispex.

 

10 man Rangers, 3 Transuranic Arquebus, Ominspex.

 

Dominus, Eradication Ray, phospor serpenta.

 

Onager Dunecrawler, Neutron Laser.

 

Which leaves 3 power points. My first thought was an Enginseer, as a backup to repair my onager if the dominus gets to far away. 

However, I could take a Datasmith, and gain superior combat abilities at the cost of no repairing.

 

Thoughts?

[MajorNese]

If you can (=have built the models accordingly), always add a CC weapon on the skitarii alphas. Doesn't replace the standard gun, so it's essentially a free upgrade when using power level.

 

And yes, a datasmith is simply superior to an enginseer. Even in matched play, they cost exactly the same, but the datasmith has far superior stats/wargear. Can only repair Kastelans, but with just one vehicle and a dominus, there is less need for more repairs.

[gilt_imp]

With the release setback of ‘Fires of Cyraxis’ I have a decision to make…

In anticipation of that book and 30k/40k I purchased 2 x Castellax with power blades and multi-meltas for some cc punch.

Would they be acceptable to use as Kastelans? With the ‘fire-fist’ loadout? Is the size comparable?

Or should I just wait for the Cyraxis book and then use them as intended? Hmm it’s probably best really, I guess then there’s no confusion about what they are.

[MagicHat]

gilt_imp, should be fine to proxy them, although you should be superclear about what they are to the opponent and that it is only until they get the proper book.

 

 

If you can (=have built the models accordingly), always add a CC weapon on the skitarii alphas. Doesn't replace the standard gun, so it's essentially a free upgrade when using power level.

 

And yes, a datasmith is simply superior to an enginseer. Even in matched play, they cost exactly the same, but the datasmith has far superior stats/wargear. Can only repair Kastelans, but with just one vehicle and a dominus, there is less need for more repairs.

 

Yeah, don't have any more melee equipped Alpha right now. The Ranger Alpha is magnetized, but I never made a melee arm and will be to busy painting other stuff in preparation I feel.

 

Plan is to advance with the Vanguards in front, Dominus in middle, and Dunecrawler in the rear so everyone benefits from the auras. Rangers stays back and camps in cover, hopefully killing characters. 

Will bring the Datasmith along I guess... Thought they would make solid IC in 7th, and now we got them.

[Suzuteo]

 

 

In preparation for the new edition, I've picked up a pair of Sydonian Dragoons. I was gonna equip them with Taser Goads (mainly cos they look the best, IMO) - but what are people's thoughts on the best weapon loadout? Twin-linked weapons are a lot more appealing now, so....

IMO the lascannon is good. If you're going to get the autocannon, why not bring an icarus array- ten shots hitting at BS-1 for non fly! Fantastic.

 

For Dragoons, I think radium jezzails are better this ed, being mortal wounding sniper rifles that can murder characters.

 

Taser goads are now pants vs vehicles with their 1D and only 3 attacks. Phosphor serpenta are good with their IC but expensive.

 

63 points for a heavy 2 sniper with mortal wounds on a 6 to wound it totes worth it. I'll be running a sniper army with that and lots of transuranic arquebuses which murder everything too, being snipers at S7 and ap-2, omnispex and D3 damage and mortal wounds on a 6. Brilliant.

 

Thanks for the replies. Maybe I need to magnetize to give myself some options. The Taser seems a little underwhelming to me... though I do like the look of it best, so maybe that's enough.

 

Sydonian Dragoons use Taser Lance, not Taser Goad. It's a +3 Strength, 0 AP, 2 Damage weapon that triple hits on 6.

[lancerusso]

Taser lances are 2D? I never saw that, my Dragoons died to overwatch. Flamestorm cannons on a land raider slaughtered me

[Subtle Discord]

++ Hard Data Input... Compiled. Indexing Data... ++

[Steerpike_]

I did some mathhammer on Ad-mech:


https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fGhXLPCfRTNsB_qbRh7noPGRr-iYDUxoRlIIrzK8D2c/edit?usp=sharing


It's a roster of most of what Ad-Mech has available and how models with these weapons perform shooting against different targets.

By scrolling to the right you can see how the unit performs with the different to-hit buffs. (i.e. re-roll 1s from dominus/canticles; re-roll misses from cawl)

It produces: 

expected wounds per turn
expected wounds/turn/point

Then I decided to try and weight weapons based on their range profiles. First I assumed the enemy is at ranges: 36", 27", 18", 9". This lets rapid fire weapons eventually get some benefit. For some weapons I just took the range and divided it by 9 to get about the right scale factor. Mostly because I thought this underrated weapons with 24" and 30" range. This cancels out the "turn" unit in wounds/turn/pt and produces one efficiency rating of just Wounds/pt

Then I took the approximate wounds and points of the target to cancel out the units of wounds (inflicted) and points (cost of your model).

i.e. (Expected Inflicted Wounds per turn * Expected Turns Firing / Friendly Points) * (Target Points / Target Wounds)

which is a unit-less measure of determining if you are in a good target match-up.

 

The major takeaways are:

A: Arm your dunecrawlers with Neutron Lasers and Icarus Arrays. I decided not to include the cognis heavy stubbers in points or damage (as they would be firing at different targets than the big guns) but you definitely want to bring them.

B: Buffed up Edward Phosphor hands are super good. This is really our only effective counter to GEQ spam. (Note that I tried to count the cost of the datasimth into this robot profile by adding 25 pts/ so about 1 for every 2 robots)

C: Cawl's re-roll buff is a 1.5x buff for 4+ to-hit, 1.33x buff for 3+ to hit. So make sure to put him in a ball with your Icarus Arrays, Phosphor Hands, and destroyers.

D: Ironstriders with Lascannons are really good, despite being a strange mix of fast attack and artillery.

E: Rad-carbines and Galvanic Rifles are pretty bad. Arc rifles are WAY worse than plasma calivers. 

The main problem with our infantry is they just cost too much for how fragile they are. I made a little durability metric of W*T*(Sv multiplier)/pts. The save multiplier is the number of 0AP shots it takes to get 1 shot through. This definitely overrates the durability of vehicles relative to infantry, (as vehicles will draw the ire of high damage, high AP shots), but it does ok at comparing similar units.

I.e. Rad Carbine Vanguard have a durability of 0.6 while guard: 1.13
Conscripts: 1.5
Marine: 0.92

This makes rad carbines a bad meatshield for the plasma calivers. 

Destroyers and Breachers are also glass cannons. And they are exposed to being eviscerated by multidamage attacks.

 

I think the best strategy will probably be to bring a 300ish point screening battalion of guard. Like:

4 units of guard/conscripts
1 commander
1 commisar
1 greyfax (provide leadership, anti psykic)
(+a cheap 3 command points!)



I'm making a similar sort of sheet for melee combat but it's not there yet. 

There are certainly loads of mistakes, but it gets the idea across I think.

Also the supercharged plasma culverin on a destroyer looks like it has terrific stats, but you probably don't want to risk it. Especially not re-rolling NON-1s. 


Edit: Actually I think I'm probably selling vanguard a little short. You can always get turn 1 shrowdpsalm for a universal cover save, and get it 75% of the time after that with Cawl/command re-roll. (I think people are really underrating canticles compared to the old doctrina). Then if you manage to get just the Alpha and some stragglers into melee you can get a lot out of rad poisoning combined with strength of the machine spirit for -1 enemy toughness and +1 allied strength. Throw some power sword infiltrators in there and you can get a turn of infiltrators cutting through toughness and armor.

 

Edit Edit: The first edit was fraudulent, as I mostly ctrl-c'd this from a post I had made on Dakka Dakka. But I lacked the editing skill to incorporate it into the main body of the post.

Edited June 12, 2017 by Steerpike_

[Charlo]

Some nice data there chap! Especially for your first post on the forum - welcome aboard!

 

Have long considered some Guardsmen as low-level tech guard, just a matter of making them look right.

[Steerpike_]

Trans Aquerbus 					
Target	        w inf	C Pts	C W	W in eq Efficiency
Cawl	        3.33	250	8.00	10.68	1.34
Dominus	        3.33	141	5.00	6.03	1.21
Datasmith	3.33	52	4.00	2.22	0.56
Greyfax	        6.22	85	5.00	6.78	1.36
Inquisitor	6.22	55	5.00	4.39	0.88
Karamazov	3.33	150	8.00	6.41	0.80
Cpny Cmmdr	5.11	30	4.00	1.97	0.49
Comissar	7.33	30	3.00	2.82	0.94
GirlyMan	2.44	360	10.75	11.28	1.05
Captain	        3.33	76	5.00	3.25	0.65
Captain Cata	2.44	152	6.00	4.76	0.79
Captain Term	3.33	128	6.00	5.47	0.91
Captain Gravit	3.33	122	6.00	5.21	0.87
Calgar	        2.44	250	7.00	7.83	1.12
Calgar Artifi	3.33	235	6.00	10.04	1.67 

Oh I also made a little sheet about how efficient (points wise) it is to shoot your snipers at different targets:

 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pvqUdN2oh_g7fFBZAVQ8Wq5su7xWDklFHckPtwvhDKo/edit?usp=sharing

 

 

Assuming you bring aquerbuses at max efficiency, you're looking at a 5 man squad of rangers ( with 2 of em and an omnispex. This should cost 107 points, but to be fair to the snipers, the "tax" of 3 galvanic rifles isn't really a tax as your unit can chill out on an objective and 30" rifles will probably be able to fire at something.

 

So lets just pretend the sniper unit is 77 points. Lets assume you get 3 turns to shoot up the character you really need to kill. If you can't kill them in 3 turns they've already buffed their army for the grand bulk of the game. 

 

We calculate the expected wounds after 3 turns of shooting, divide that by the number of wounds the character has, multiply that by how much the character costs, and divide that by how much our snipers cost. Phew. I.e. If you took the same points in snipers that your opponent took in character, how dead would that character be after 3 turns of the snipers firing on him.

 

Girlyman has 10.75 wounds because he doesn't know how to die like a man's man. 

 

It's a lot easier to read on the actual google sheet. 

 

The Tech Priest and Cawl look super easy to snipe, but snipers are almost always going to have to take a few turns to kill their target, so they will get heals I didn't account for. 

Edited June 12, 2017 by Steerpike_

[Steerpike_]

Also, yeah, I think guard look pretty terrible. I'm tempted to try and find some ~28mm WWI or WWII models instead. I definitely don't want to paint 40 ugly models.

 

Except for those Vostroyan Firstborns. Goddamn. 

Edited June 12, 2017 by Steerpike_

[lancerusso]

If I wasn't working full time this us exactly the kind of project I'd like to work on. I'm not sure your efficiency metrics are completely accurate but they're pretty great. I feel like bionics is being missed out on, but who the hell needs footsoldiers weak to small arms but somewhat tough vs antivehicle weapons?

 

I'm convinced that TAs and rad jezzails are the best thing ever, snipe skitarii army 2k17

[MajorNese]

Also, yeah, I think guard look pretty terrible. I'm tempted to try and find some ~28mm WWI or WWII models instead. I definitely don't want to paint 40 ugly models.

 

Except for those Vostroyan Firstborns. Goddamn. 

...use FWs tech thralls instead, they entirely fit the profile and concept of recruits. Convert a techpriest overseer (commissar) and call it a fluffy day.

[Steerpike_]

 

Also, yeah, I think guard look pretty terrible. I'm tempted to try and find some ~28mm WWI or WWII models instead. I definitely don't want to paint 40 ugly models.

 

Except for those Vostroyan Firstborns. Goddamn. 

...use FWs tech thralls instead, they entirely fit the profile and concept of recruits. Convert a techpriest overseer (commissar) and call it a fluffy day.

 

Do they have a profile somewhere? How are FW models usually incorporated into the rules?

[Ammonius]

 

 

Also, yeah, I think guard look pretty terrible. I'm tempted to try and find some ~28mm WWI or WWII models instead. I definitely don't want to paint 40 ugly models.

 

Except for those Vostroyan Firstborns. Goddamn. 

...use FWs tech thralls instead, they entirely fit the profile and concept of recruits. Convert a techpriest overseer (commissar) and call it a fluffy day.

 

Do they have a profile somewhere? How are FW models usually incorporated into the rules?

 

I believe that MajorNese was suggesting you use the Tech Thrall models in place of Astra Militarum rank & file to fix the visual problem.

 

Tech Thralls have a profile for 30k. Forge World releases rules for their models that indicate whether they are for 40k, 30k or AoS. It's all on their website.

[Grand Master Laertes]

But tech-thralls are the most boring models to paint ever (and that's from someone who really loves their aesthetic) Edited June 12, 2017 by Grand Master Laertes

[MajorNese]

Yeah, I meant fielding the models as recruits. The 30k profile of them is almost exactly like the 7th edition recruits profile, which is why it isn't too far stretched to use those models instead. Cheap cannon fodder, unable to hit the broadside of a barn (from the inside), low morale, cardboard armour and weaponry made in China. With the old platoon system gone (for now), all it takes for a battleforged detachment is either a count-as Lord Commissar or a count-as Company Commander.

 

But tech-thralls are the most boring models to paint ever (and that's from someone who really loves their aesthetic)

...have you ever played IG? After a few hundred cadians, thralls look like the most interesting models in existence.

[Suzuteo]

Taser lances are 2D? I never saw that, my Dragoons died to overwatch. Flamestorm cannons on a land raider slaughtered me

Well, charging Dragoons into Land Raiders doesn't seem to be their best use case so... no data?

 

Maybe try your Dragoons against what used to be considered MCs, light transports, artillery, and possibly MEQs and Primaris?

[MajorNese]

The previously preferred target of dragoons, light vehicles, got pretty resilient against them now. S8 might wound the light T6 transports on a 3+, but 10W and 3+ or 4+ save will negate most of the impact. Previously, rear AV10 was almost always a pen, a single 6 to hit would eradicate a light vehicle in one go. I guess, my next ironstriders will be the shooty ones...

[Steerpike_]

Strength 8, Ap0, 2 damage is a pretty bizarre profile. 

 

Maybe good against chaos demons and only chaos demons?

[lancerusso]

 

 

Taser lances are 2D? I never saw that, my Dragoons died to overwatch. Flamestorm cannons on a land raider slaughtered me

Well, charging Dragoons into Land Raiders doesn't seem to be their best use case so... no data?

 

Maybe try your Dragoons against what used to be considered MCs, light transports, artillery, and possibly MEQs and Primaris?

Yep, but when you've already nuked every other model on the table to death with neutron lasers and Icarus arrays it's the only thing you can do

[lancerusso]

Just had a 1000point game:

1 neutron laser onager

1 Icarus onager

1 tech priest dominus w/ erad Ray and phosphor serpenta

10 ranged epriests

5 man skitarii ranger 2TA s and an omnispex

Another of the above

1 Lascannon ironstrider

1 Sydonian dragoon with radium jezzail.

 

Not fantastic. Neutron laser only shot once for three turns, Icarus array helped slaughter some chimeras.

 

Lascannon helped take various vehicles down.

 

Epriests murdered five ratlings turn one, died to return fire via lasgun volleys.

 

Sniper squads were meh, mildly helping glance down vehicles, no mortal wounds rolled. Galvanic Rifles took a couple of guardsmen out.

 

Tech priest did very little than provide rerolls and healed two wounds. He was terrible vs vehicles in CC, he couldn't kill a hellhound after three combat turns.

 

Rad snipers ended up not having characters to snipe so sucked vs transports.

 

 

To be honest, I can see heavy stubbers on onagers doing more hurt than skitarii infantry squads ever do, for their points. Spam onagers with cheap guns and heavy stubbers methinks. Heavy phosphor blaster would have been fantastic that game to root out infantry and help hurt vehicles.