Follow-up on Secutarii and Terrax

[Frostglaive]

It's been over a week(?) now since Forgeworld shocked us all with the gift of Secutarii and the Terrax Termite rules for 8th edition. Safe to say none of us were expecting it and was a pleasant surprise to us all. Granted, the Secutarii's rules are rather... underwhelming, namely the Peltasts. But still, we got rules for them.

 

Since it's been a while now, I figured I'd ask how they are holding up in the game. I'm sure a lot of us here have used any number of these units in their games by now. How did they perform for you? Good, bad, meh? Are they viable in-game or just good for Rule of Cool?

 

Asking because I have 20 Hoplites that I haven't tried out yet (will do Saturday). And I'm debating whether to buy a Knight Castellan or bite the bullet and buy a couple Termites instead.

[Stray]

They're... alright.

 

Peltasts are arguably a very, very slight upgrade to Vanguard, but only really by virtue of being a little more flexible. And not in all situations.

 

Hoplights are decent, for their costs especially, but nothing earth shattering.

 

The problem with both is that they are Elite choices, and neither are special enough to be going out of your way for imo.

 

 

 

How would I fix this?

 

Secutarii are Titan guard in the fluff. They hang out with the big machines to finish stuff off, and help repel boarders. Now, you never really see a Titan fielded in a game of 40k outside of Apoc, but what else in fluff hangs out with Titans as part of their support group?

 

Knights.

 

Knights and Secutarii must be deployed together often, because Knights and Titans are. Personally, I'd make Peltasts and Hoplights a Troop choice, IF you are fielding a Knight Lance in your army.

That, and give Peltasts back their ability to deploy smoke on superheavy units - which is the entire point of them as a unit.

[Vel'Cona]

I feel like the Peltasts having 3 profiles for their guns and none of them doing anything AdMech needed (ie. filling gaps) means they're just a huge missed opportunity, all-around.  They're cool models and it's neat to be able to swap them up, but when Rangers can do pretty much the same thing cheaper and filling Battalion requirements, it begs the point.

 

Hoplites are a bit more interesting especially alongside the Termite release, but again I don't know why AdMech needs a melee focused Skitarii equivalent when we have access to Sicarians, Electro-Priests and Kastelan Robots.  The big problem I have with Hoplites is that S6 means their ability to deal d3 damage to Vehicles is severely hampered since their preferred targets tend to run T7+, making their bonus somewhat laughable.  Even worse, T3/4++ isn't going to see them through any type of protracted combat with a remotely focused melee unit (Wyches will chew them to pieces for less points, for example).

 

The fact that neither of these units can benefit from Dogmas remains the ultimate issue for me.  Canticles are cool and all but the Dogmas are where the real unit focus comes in, and being deprived all of them means Secutarii in general miss out on some key elements of the AdMech codex.