New Player- List Help

[Gorefriend]

Hey, I just recently got started with 40k, and I decided to try and build a 2k point ad mech force as my first army. I am not confident with my ability to build a list, however, as I have not played an actual game yet. Would this be the sub-forum where I could ask for help? 

 

I have poor impulse control, and disposable income, so I have a pretty decent starting out point, model-wise. I have a knight, the Forgebane box, the Skitarii start collecting box, 2 boxes of ruststalkers or infiltrators, 1 box of kastelan robots, and Cawl. I also have a box of sisters of silence and a rhino, but I don't think they would work in an ad mech list. I am willing to get more models if they would be needed for a list. I would like to put the knight and 2 armigers as a super heavy detachment in the list, and I like the idea of 2 squads of rangers with 2 transuranic arquebus's each. Beyond that, though, I do not even know where to start. I have not put anything together yet, as I am afraid of giving my units crappy weapons and being stuck with them. Thanks for any advice!

[Bluflash]

General thoughts:

 

• Onager Dunecrawlers with neutron lasers are some of the most points effective AT on the table. The Icarus is solid for AA/Anti-infantry as well.
• Armiger Warglaives are a bit overcosted at present, and the Knight Codex should be coming out soon. Unless you need plastic on the table ASAP, I'd wait and see what happens there.
• That being said, if you're up for the challenge, magnetize the knight kit and you can swap things out as necessary.
• Shooty Kastelans + Cawl make for a very strong, shooty, parking lot.
• Me, I'm in love with Stygian Sydonian Dragoons. -2 to be hit outside of 12", 10" move, T6 6W 3+ makes them quite tough. Bring a squadron of 3 or 4 and use the Conqueror Doctrina Stratagem for lots of S8 AP-1 D2 hits that can pop transports and tanks.
• Generally, Infiltrators > Ruststalkers. Baked in deep strike and either taser goad for hordes or power swords for MEQ makes them super killy, but they are also super fragile.

I've theory-crafted a list of 1 knight, 2 armigers, 2 squadrons of 3 Stygian Sydonian dragoons, a squadron of 3 Ballistari with cognis twin auto-cannons, and some troop support. I haven't had a chance to build and paint 9 ironstriders yet ;) Might be worth a proxy though.

[Gaz1858]

Use google for ideas on how to magnetise weapons for some of the larger builds to allow weapon swaps, My Iknights arms come off so I can switch into whatever.

 

Also review the Army List part of the Amdech subforum to see what others are using.

 

Most important though (at least to me!) is try what you like! Who knows you may find a combo everyone says is rubbish works with the people you play against. For example Bluflash rates the Neutron whereas I would take the Icarus over that every day.

[Vel'Cona]

Most important though (at least to me!) is try what you like!

 

^This.  Also, welcome to the forums!

[Frostglaive]

This is what I would do if I had the same start point as you:

 

With the 20 Skitarii you have, I would probably say build two 5-man squads of Rangers w/ the Arquebus and an Omnispex. If you can find the bits online, definitely get two more Arquebus rifles to add to those two squads. The rest of the Skitarii I would probably build as Vanguard. Plasma calivers are awesome for them, arc rifles are cheap and somewhat decent for either Ranger or Vanguard.

The Infiltrator/Ruststalker boxes, definitely build as Infiltrators. Ruststalkers are just not that good for what they do, plus Infiltrators are our only natural Deep Strikers (outside of using the Lucius stratagem or the Stygies Infiltrate stratagem). Taser goads are great against GEQ units, power swords great against MEQ units. I'm partial towards tasers, but you do you.

Kastelans, definitely build with all phosphor. The Dunecrawler I'd recommend the Neutron Laser for your anti-tank. Throw them all next to Cawl, you got a nice dakka base right there.

The Knight, I'd either say a Warden or a Crusader. Crusader is full dakka, Warden is still good dakka but with some anti-tank close combat thrown in. Armigers are fun, but over-costed at the moment and not great at what they are meant to do. I'd wait until the Imperial Knight codex comes out before you field these guys consistently.

 

Al that being said, at the end of the day they are your models. Build them however you please. Try out different builds before you commit (use count-as rules if able), see what you like and what works for you. And let us know how everything goes. I like hearing from all our new brother Tech-Priests joining us in our fight for the Machine God.

[Gorefriend]

Thank you for the advice! Magnetizing the knight, dunecrawlers and possibly the kastelans looks like the way to go. The big thing that I was worried about was the troops and sicarian. They can't be magnetized as far as I can see, so once they are built, they are stuck with what they have. This gives me a  good place to start though. 

 

Hopefully I can get a list together. I pray that my efforts bring glory to the Omnissiah.

[Trixie]

Not much I can add here on top of the good advice already given but here it goes 

 

1) Definitely magnetise any of the large kits, the Onager and the Knight for sure.

 

2) Dragoons seem to be a marmite unit, people either love them or hate them. They have access to a lot of stratagems which perhaps people are not utilising enough.

 

3)Kataphron Destroyers generally > Kataphron Breachers

 

4) Our glorius Mech forces lack truly beastly melee infantry, or more accurately we lack transports to quickly deliver any of our melee units that have good melee potential. If considering allies, perhaps some Imperium keyword heavy infantry and a transport for some mobile punch power (Ogryns spring to mind here and have excellent mechanicum conversion potential)

 

5) Sort of a follow up to point 4) is that the Stygies and Lucius forgeworlds have some very interesting deployment tricks that could potentially make up for our lack of mobility and transports. Definitely look to them if you would prefer a pure admech force that still has the ability to put something nasty like 4 punchy Castellans or a squad of raving electro priests right into someones gunline. 

[Black Knight]

Everything above sounds spot on but I wanted to summarise what I have picked up on to in case something isn't right

 

First off I am not sure if you are new to the faction or 8th Edition in general so please excuse the brackets of explaining if you know 8th Edition well. Everything above is spot on but I wanted to write this as a general summary.

 

From what you already have I would wait with building the Knights or at least leave the arms off/magnetise them, for the next... fortnight? They are very expensive for what they do right now but the knight rumors are starting to spill over the net so the codex is on its way within the next two weeks i'd say. Knights are structured in the codex as Mechanicus but they also have their own codex which will update ours as well, so we kind of get an update in the next few weeks.

 

Most Mechanicus  armies that I see or hear about right now usually follow two strategies, either Gun line(Slow wall of firepower) or a fast intercepting army.  

 

If you wanted to build a Gun line its usual to build around Cawl in a Mars detachment.  So that is Cawl in the centre with a number of Phosphor robots(3-4) and 2-3 Dune crawlers(Neutron for anti vehicle/monsters or Icarus for anti fliers/Horde) around him. Then a buffer line around them so no one can deep strike into that mass to stop them shooting(When you get enemies within 1 inch of a unit you cannot shoot unless its pistols). So that is usually a few groups of rangers/vanguard spread around in lines to protect them from the enemy getting through(at least for a turn or two so you can shoot them with Cawls blob). If you count the units that is 4 heavy units so you can't use a normal battalion detachment(The collections we use for grouping units together on a list, they can split up while gaming) so this would sit inside a Spearhead detachment.

 

The rest of the army usually goes inside a battalion so you need 2 HQ and 3 Troops so your Rangers/Vanguard bubble. You can usually save some points here by using Tech-Priest Enginseers instead of tech-priest Domini but you will loose the re-roll ones to hit. If you take four robots and three Dunecrawlers that will leave you with around 500 points to add whatever you like to fill out to 2000 points. A lot of people like to take Ironstriders(More firepower)/Dragoons(Fast melee power) and use another Forge world like Stygies VIII so you get -1 to be hit on this detachment, but you can do whatever feels more to your play style.

 

There is also another section of players that don't want to get bogged down in the status quo and run different units entirely so that they don't have to play the Gun line. A popular thing is to change the Phosphor bots to their close combat version and laugh at the panic if you can run them into the enemies lines with a large group of Dragoons. This way you can effectively not take Cawl who is very good but a huge points sink and will likely never move from his spot most of a game. You can also have huge groups of Electro-Priests dropping in with Stygies and Lucius deployment stratagems as running them up the field is just... nope.

 

From what you currently have you could go either way but you do have Cawl who right now really only has a place in the Gunline play style. I wouldn't bother building any Ruststalkers as they are deadly but getting them to their target is almost impossible and honestly if you want to run an elite front line brawler take the Disco sticks Electro-Priests, they hit harder and when they kill a unit its party time with siphoned vigor. Infiltrators though are still not great running up the field but they get deep strike. Putting them in a Mars detachment and dropping them near a character and using Wrath of Mars Stratagem(Mortal Wounds on 6s to hit) on their Blasters will probably cause some panic but be prepared with them dying the next turn as the enemy shoots everything into them.

 

People tried to run a fast attack force with the mini Forgebane knights but after about a week the consensus is they are too expensive and even though they are designed to get in close to big models, the enemy intercepting with a large amount of models neutralises them as they don't have the attacks to chew through the bodies. But a lot hope that both of these problems will be addressed in the new knights codex and the flying wedge of Armigers, Dragoons, and fist bots running into the enemy destroying all will become a thing.

 

SO... after that essay you need to decide what kind of army you want as it pretty much affects what way to build every one of your units. Do that and it really isn't that difficult then. Most of our boxes are built in two flavors depending on the style you want to use them as.