Mechanicus and the Meta

[Prot]

I wanted to start a topic like this for a while and cover a fairly wide subject matter with Mechanicus and some semi competitive talk. What I mean by that is the area between cutthroat and narrative.

 

My observation has been that the army gets lesser than average attention, and ( to my continued surprise) fairly low popularity. Why do you think this is?

 

Playstyle wise the army can do a few things fairly well now, but for the sake of this conversation, let’s keep the topic in the framework of the Mechanicus codex.

 

Is anyone playing them in tournaments? I know Nick Nanavati (?) was piloting them out in a tournament, but by the time he got to LVO, he went Orks. Take that fir what it’s worth.

 

In my own experiences, I have tested the newish Specialist Detachments in Vigilus, however most of that has been with the Servitor maniple.

 

My thoughts are that the Servitor Maniple has helped but it is costly (cp wise) and forces a strong commitment to the Destroyers and surrounding support structures. If you dabble in this, it most likely falls apart. ( unlike the Marines Indomintus Crusaders which is fairly self supported and can act independently as well).

 

In my more competitive gameplay I have serious issues with the design of these units, and some of our core units in competitive scenarios whether they be Maelstrom or simple objectives. As well it feels like the competitive gunline in my meta still favours tougher units with greater range.

 

Very recently I found character hunting and sniping to be a growing concern as the army heavily relies on these buffs for success.

 

I’m wondering what you guys are seeing these days and what’s working for you?

[brother_b]

Why play pure admech when soup is what wins "the meta". Cheap troops and tanks via IG; insanely powerful smashy captains; super knight Castellan.

 

That's the problem with the meta. I'm not a fan of tournament play but I can just say until things are evened out with soup then we're never going to have pure admech wins.

 

That being said, the 4th place player at the recent LVO 2019 40K tournament was a cult mechanicus player.

 

Take a look at this list, and you'll see something very familiar.

 

 

++ Battalion Detachment +5CP (Imperium Adeptus Mechanicus) [56PL, 886pts] ++

Forge World Choice: Stygies VIII

HQ: Tech-Priest Enginseer 

HQ: Tech-Priest Enginseer 

Troops: Skitarii Rangers : 4x Skitarii Ranger, Ranger Alpha: Arc Pistol

Troops: Skitarii Rangers ]: 4x Skitarii Ranger, Ranger Alpha: Galvanic Rifle

Troops: Skitarii Rangers ]: 4x Skitarii Ranger, Ranger Alpha: Galvanic Rifle

Elites: Fulgurite Electro-Priests : 11x Fulgurite Electro-Priest

Fast Attack: Sydonian Dragoons : 6x Sydonian Dragoon: Taser Lance

Dedicated Transport: Terrax-Pattern Termite Assault Drill : 2x Storm Bolter

++ Battalion Detachment +5CP (Imperium – Astra Militarum) [35PL, 510pts] ++

Regimental Doctrine: Regiment: Cadian

HQ: Company Commander : Chainsword, Display Astra Militarum Orders, Grand Strategist, Laspistol, Relic: Kurov’s Aquila, Warlord

HQ: Primaris Psyker: Force Stave, Nightshroud, Psychic Barrier

Troops: Infantry Squad: Sergeant: Laspistol, Heavy Weapon Team: Mortar, 7x Guardsman

Troops: Infantry Squad: Sergeant: Laspistol, 9x Guardsman

Troops: Infantry Squad: Sergeant: Laspistol, 9x Guardsman

Elites: Bullgryns: Bullgryn Bone’ead: Brute Shield, Bullgryn Maul, 3x Bullgryn: Bullgryn Maul, Slabshield, 1x Bullgryn: Bullgryn Maul, Brute Shield

Heavy Support: Heavy Weapons Team: 3x Heavy Weapons Team: Mortar

Heavy Support: Heavy Weapons Team: 3x Heavy Weapons Team: Mortar

Heavy Support: Heavy Weapons Team: 3x Heavy Weapons Team: Mortar

++ Super-Heavy Auxiliary Detachment (Imperium – Imperial Knights) [30PL, 604pts] ++

Exalted Court: 1 Extra Warlord Trait -1CP

Heirlooms of the Household: 1 Extra Heirloom -1CP

Household Choice: House Raven, Questor Mechanicus

LoW: Knight Castellan: Two Siegebreaker Cannons and Two Shieldbreaker Missiles

++ Total: 121PL, 2000pts ++

 

Yup. Knight, guard.

 

This game should be competitive but I've got a problem with it being balanced towards tournament play. Tournament WAAC play is not the norm. I mean, 9 leman russ tanks can be taken but that 4th onager would be sooooo powerful. Just a random example of course, and yeah we could ignore the rule of 3. But that's the kicker, most people in our area play all the beta rules, all the tournament rules.

 

I think friendly competitive matched play is probably the number one way to game 40K. Not narrative, or whatever the other version is. I don't think people who play tournaments are bad, not at all. The armies from LVO were beautiful. Tournament rules should be enacted by the tournament organizers, I don't think they should impact the actual game. I know others disagree and feel that the tournament scene is the best way to see what's broken. I get it.

 

As far as what makes us competitive? I'm not sure. I love the vanguard and rangers, so think our basic infantry is very good. I love the Onager, but the neutron laser is so swingy and a single Icarus can't deal with high tough targets. Maybe I need 2 x neutron laser and 1 x Icarus. I haven't figured it out. I have a hard time delivering my priests, and don't want to pick up a drill. I've tended to use stygies and Lucius, but have missed some charges out of deep strike. I've found that fist bots are a great distraction, and deep striking them with Lucius with their 12" flamers has surprised my opponents. My grav cannon destroyers really hit hard, but they're fragile, have average BS, and tend to get dumped if I don't deepstrike them.

 

Anyway, I think the majority of players enjoy the fun, fluffy, competition that is normal match play. I went on a tangent. Here's a website to look over the recent LVO 2019 armies and winners.

 

https://www.battle-report.com/2019/02/11/2019-las-vegas-open-lvo-warhammer-40000-grand-tournament/

[Heliomanes]

brother_b pretty much nailed it, and by providing raw data to support the point as well. Kudos.

I found the recent buff to Imperium soup based armies through the new assassin release pretty tonedeaf too.

Maybe the recent arrival of the geneastealer cult and ork releases haven't given them enough time to make their presence felt yet? Hordes that can get up and personal really quickly could make Kastelan robots more worthwhile than the Castelan knight, but I'm not thrilled by that prospect either to be frank. I think our codex just badly needs more options. Fingers and mechadendrites crossed that the rumoured Mechanicum port to 40k will provide just that, and soon.

[hermanista]

It just feels like it's a half finished codex, the same as custodes.

 

I know AdMech have a lot more options than custodes, but they still lack the things we've complained about since inception - fliers, transports etc.

 

I think when we finally see the FW 30k rules hit, then things may change.

[Stray]

I found the recent buff to Imperium soup based armies through the new assassin release pretty tonedeaf too.

 

Oh gawd, amen Helio.

 

They're absurdly poorly thought through rules in the current climate of 'soup' which is supposed to be being defused.

You've caught the part where you can also now take any of the Assassins in much the same manner in Chaos armies, because of Cypher (whose keywords were seemingly forgotten) I presume?

 

On topic, I think it's fair to say Ad Mech have needed serious attention for some time as a competitive entity and, on a positive note, it  appears GW agree. As such, Ad Mech were arguably the recipients of the lions share of beneficial changes and buffs recently.

 

Did it go far enough?

 

I think it helped. LVO seemingly saw more Ad Mech presence than would have been expected, but certainly as soup. I suspect there is more to be done if vanilla Ad Mech is to be seen in the same light as say Dark Eldar or any of the other 'viable' non-souped factions.

 

I guess we wait and see what comes of the promised 30K crossover units. (So business as usual )

[MajorNese]

Problem with AdMech in general - we have nice units, but few of the hardcore combos necessary for competitive play. Not enough options in the codex, so we're even hindered by the rule of 3 as we only have a single "tank" unit entry. Competitive imperials these days is just cherrypicking from as many sources as possible, so one codex (especially one as limited as ours) alone can't compete. Solo IG? Good, but not unbeatable. Solo knights? Few models, every loss hurts. Solo BA? Use enough bubblewrap, and it turns into just another astartes flavor.

 

Maybe we'll get better when/if 30k units get ported. They have a lot of variety and could end up in a few nasty combos, but I don't expect them to drop all units at once, they didn't do that for custodes either.

 

Assassin deployment strat just seems like a money grab. "You like soup already, so why not spend 1CP (from your battery) for an assassin of your choice? The more different assassins you buy, the more hard counters can you spontaneously field."

[Prot]

Okay,

 

For the record I know that list. I know most of the stats for LVO. This isn't an LVO conversation though.

 

Secondly the reason this is supposed to be a 'pure' conversation is because any army, diluted with Knights, and CP batteries is extremely easy to use. I fully realize how strong soup is. That's the whole reason for keeping soup out of the conversation.

 

I assume at this point everyone knows that if you aren't sure what to do, take a battalion, perhaps combine with the loyal 32, and Knights, perhaps the Castellan. roll dice, consume strats as needed.... etc. etc.

 

That's boring, way over done, super predictable and easy to mimic.

 

For a challenge I prefer to change things up. The goal here is to initiate conversation where people are exploring the codex to full potential and seeing what they can do. 

 

Don't forget for ITC some players are trying to play JUST enough Admech to count their primary detachment as Admech, then use the rest of the soup to win the games, thus grabbing as many admech faction points as possible. It's just not something I would ever do, and ITC is not the only game in town. 

 

The codex is certainly challenging, but if you are playing cover rules as intended (Re: not ITC) then you have a few more options. The codex is limited, I agree, but we can all agree CA18 helped a lot. Also minor allies may go a long way: Celuxes, etc.

 

Recently I've been playing pure AdMech in pretty strong metas with modified Maelstom or just objective based missions and I'm doing better than I ever have before.  And there's other things out there I'd like to explore, but for money or time I haven't yet. Stuff like the Drills with disco sticks for example. 

[MajorNese]

That's boring, way over done, super predictable and easy to mimic.

 

For a challenge I prefer to change things up. The goal here is to initiate conversation where people are exploring the codex to full potential and seeing what they can do.

We've had exactly that discussion recently in the RG forum - use tacticals and other "worthless" troops units to win on objectives. Keeping them alive with managing targeting priority, threat saturation, distraction units, deployment shenanigans and so on. Probably not tournament grade stuff, but considering C:SM has been overtaken as a single codex by many codices since, it's a nice challenge.

 

This fit nicely with my pre-FAQ list for a local tournament - 2000p of just power/scout armoured dudes and a few tarantulas. Anti tank was wasted on them, anti infantry had to concentrate on the heavy hitting infantry, and the scouts/intercessors were just forgotten and scored until the end of the games - got me 3rd out of 18 on the tournament I went to.

 

Problem is - space marines have a lot of unit variety to pull this off, and there are lots of options no one considered so far or even faces on the table. Playing AdMech as pure infantry for example would be even more limited than usual, for marines it's no problem to still fill every role. And we've already discussed most promising combos and approaches, but pure AdMech on tournaments was mostly just dakkabots/Cawl and Stygies dragoons, mandatory troops, and filled up with a bit of whatever the player fancied. There is not much deviation, for there are few other combos as effective as these.

[synthaside]

Alright , i'm going to wade into this .... I took a pure stygies;  single Ad Mech brigade to heat 4 ...  which I have just gotten back from last night , so while it may not be ITC or ETC  it is its own hard  meta where people bring filthy stuff , I was going to get around to doing a write up of my games but my machine spirit pretty exhausted i'm gonna to pass unless people really want to hear my mindless drivel

Game 1  Kraken /  Kronos ,  Hive T and swarmlord plus genestealers  , biovores and hive guard  ,  Mission : Four Pillars
Game 2  Deathwatch  with assassin support  ,  Mission Beachead

Game 3  Drukkari Skyfleet of doom , will boats full of sex pests with blasters  Mission : Narrow the search
Game 4  Imperial soup , Guard  loyal 32 2 tank commanders 2 wvyerns , 3 helverins , 3 shield captain s on bikes    Mission Supplies from above

Game 5  A better Drukkari Skyfleet of doom ; plus 30 deepstrike wyches   Mission Vital Intelligence

People were surprised  when I handed them my list , especially in games 4 and 5  .... I know in one case the guy laughed and after the game told me i was getting his  soft score point for bringing a plastic spoon to a knife fight and beating him with it  , my record was  3 wins 2 draws  i am qualified for the finals.

I did not bring Cawl , i didnt bring plasma vangaurd , I did not have Robots or electro priests  , i brought  2 Tpd , 1 seer  ,  2 Kataphron breachers 1 Destroyers  , 3 ranger teams ,  3 X Onager's 2 laser 1 erad ,  2  X5 goad infiltrators , 1X 4 servoarm servitors   2 X3 man dragoon teams  1 X 2 man las balastari team.

A pure ad mech list can indeed bring the pain we can be impossible to shift off objectives ; but we are incredibly CP hungry  hence the brigade ; we have some significant weaknesses such as psy phase , fliers and our HQ's arent great for that dumb mission where we have to cap the middle , but i feel Ad mech are a finesse army  pretending to be a gun-line , all to often its easy to fall into the trap of camping and shooting but that doesn't win most of the time .
 
My game plan and build of my army was actually around maximizing as many objective points as possible as fast as possible . This meant doing things like spending 3+ CP to pre move breachers onto objectives moving large squads of troops onto objectives which matter turn 1 works wonders as both a distraction and  for capturing it and trust me many armies struggle to kill a t5 3 wound unit  in cover especially when you can give them  a 1 up save  and a 4+ invulnerable save <3 Acquisition at all cost .  Which you can repair  and or respawn with servitors  , never forget we have the ability to be in cover for 3 whole turns  for 4 CP .

Onagers are filthy cheap too and great utility , buffing morale bringing the firepower and denying deepstrike  plus they moving out of cover to get shots into the back field we have the power to negate minus's to hit with or +2  and very little can stand against dragoon team charges , I typically use them as counter charge  or distraction units moving my army on masse when needed to try to flood objectives ,  In reserve I took had two blobs of  infiltrators which used together can swarm objectives  take out motor teams  , support a push or reinforce a position ...





 

[Prot]

Great post Synth. That’s a great result for a hardcore tournament. And good for you for trying a pure codex like AdMech.

 

Now what would you change if you did the whole thing tomorrow?

[brother_b]

That was great information. I am lacking two of the units you took to your game; the ballistari and dragoon. The reason I'm lacking is that they're so darn expesnive.

 

How did you deploy the dragoons? 9" move via Stygies?

 

How is the eradication onager? I'm guessing you need to screen the onagers very well with your infantry to avoid getting locked in combat.

[Redtoof]

Nice post, some good thoughts in here.

 

Really like the take on ‘basic’ AdMech going to Heat 4. I guess it shows how strong having a varied list and knowing your army can be in an environment where most people are bringing hyper focused lists, but might have some gaps at 1750 points? I’d probably suggest the Warhammer World tournaments are also a better reflection of ‘the’ meta than ITC events because, from what I hear, there are pretty much no additional rules beyond the rulebook.

 

For my part, I haven’t had the AdMech out for a while, but I suspect Ryza plasma Destroyers will still surprise people. If you can start them behind a wall or in a bunker or something, then pop out and splurge all the command points to get +1 or +2 to hit, +1 to wound and +1 damage, you’ll only need to fire them once to make a huge dent in something.

 

Also, it’s worth considering that Knights are still in the AdMech Codex - though with different keywords it’s still soupy to take them, I strongly suspect GW wrote the book with the intention that AdMech would be bringing Knight buddies a lot more regularly than other factions, and it’s probably a small factor in while they seem unwilling to address soup.

[synthaside]

Thanks guys , reading back over my post ... there's so  many grammatical mistakes ... I was very very sleepy .

The main concept of my list was to expect people to be able to shut down core units were playing at level where you can easily erase a coupld of key units a turn  so I had to take redundancy in everything. While it's very tempting to take a nice big unit to benefit from our abilities and stratagems,  I needed to spread my threats out .

Yes i was using Stygies stratagem  for the 9 inch pregame move ...  it reads move up to 9 sometimes you want this somtimes you dont its also 9 regardless of the units actual move , a really good player actually Vect'd one of my Pregame moves while it left him hurting for cp he realised how much a huge move me being able to grab the active objective uncontested turn 1 would be .

In principle i'm expecting my opponent to know exactly how to shut down our " trick units " and relying more on our meat and potatoes  wall of cheap and relatively tough stuff to hold  to know not to shoot dragoons , to shoot crap AP guns at electro priests and  that robots can't move for any reason in double shoot mode and what to prioritise killing. 

@ redtoof , while my destroyers are still stygies ... I was tempted to go this route ... but it felt like it was corrupting the pure nature of the army  ... and giving up the -1 to hit army wide was a bad idea.  I very much used this trick hide them away and then move them up / through the terrain allowing them to shoot ,  I also very often chose to go second to try my best to grab objectives ... this allowed my pregame advancing breachers or dragoons  to catapult  onto objectives ... by moving again / shooting and charging ... then finishing on an objective for Acquisition.

While knights are indeed in our codex ... and  mine are painted to match my forge  , I considered it breifly then abandoned the idea to take mine in a pure list  they don't get a household and they are kind of pointed to have one .  I dont see what they are adding that i couldn't bring with more chickens  more  Ballistarii or my 3 onagers .

The  E-rad beamer was an all star unit in my army, but his function is weird he's captain disposable , essentially at 1750 I couldn't afford a 3rd laser  i was a couple of points shy because of wysiwyg on my dominus's . In the end i was glad of him  he's the onager who moves out in front to get targeted or eat a charge.  Its ideal for this role , the base is also HUGE ... stick him on an objective and even a unit of troops cant get within 3 of the centre.   The gun itself many players had not seem them and when I tell them its' a battle cannon that goes up to -4  d6 damage the closer it gets ....  many people seem to be quite happy to fire at it  over my sneaky hidden laser chickens and leaving my N-lasers to do the heavy lifting from the rear ...

Plus its an excellent medium infantry clearer something we struggle with ... killing primaris ... deathwatch terminators ..  invulnerable saves or  tricking out the minus to hit stratagem from your opponent letting you switch to his other ravager  i'd often do this a the third or fourth shooter .. letting them stew a bit  eager to pop their stratagem on my first  " good weapon".

What would I change .... ? NOTHING the machine is  PERFECT ...  ;-)
Considering  I have to do it again for the finals in a month ... and i don't expect to do as well here.

I wish i could take some fliers i really really do movement  , I hate to say it but if i could live with myself i would buy , convert and  take 1 shield captain on bike in a patrol, paid for by dropping the plasma kataphrons for more rangers and my second dominus to a seer .   Unfortunately as a super strong HQ with Fly  he basically wins 2 of the missions that are played outright  supplies from the sky and the data uplink HQ mission  are 2 we fundamentally struggle with .

This would let me drop the servitors which babysit them as well for some more good ranged horde clearance  5 Corpiscarii , I think i may have to drop the lascannons to autocannons on the chickens too to fit this.

Right out of time back to work  ta ta for now

[DanPesci]

Really interesting to see your list  as its quite similar to mine.  (and congrats with it doing well)

 

I also run stygies, no big bots units, lots of breachers, 3 onagers, many rangers with snipers, and 3 squads of infiltrators for objectives. With both breachers and onagers being able to move and fire without penalty, they can shift about farily well in the backline as needed.

 

I dont play in comps though so cant speak too much of the meta. But i feel more confident post-vigilus

[Mushkilla]

Yes i was using Stygies stratagem  for the 9 inch pregame move ...  it reads move up to 9 sometimes you want this somtimes you dont its also 9 regardless of the units actual move , a really good player actually Vect'd one of my Pregame moves while it left him hurting for cp he realised how much a huge move me being able to grab the active objective uncontested turn 1 would be .

 

For the record Agents of Vect can't be used on stratagems that are used during the deployment phase. So your opponent wouldn't have been able to use Agents of Vect to stop Clandestine Infiltration. 

[Ulfast]

@ synthaside: when it comes to your breacher units, how many breacher in each? Same with rangers, do you do 5 or 10 of them? 

[synthaside]

I use 3 man breacher units and  5 man ranger teams  , I have experimented with larger unit but the idea of losing a 3 wound model to moral scares me  and since the changes to the who goes first no longer caring about drops  i'd much rather Go MSU ...  this is as much due to me only owning 6 breachers with arc mind you .

 I will sometimes take 6 rangers over 5 , to surprise grab objectives off an opponent who has a 5 man unit 'ive never seen value in 10.

[DanPesci]

@ synthaside: when it comes to your breacher units, how many breacher in each? Same with rangers, do you do 5 or 10 of them? 

 

EDIT - Ninjad by synth...but adding my tuppence anyway

 

 

Realise that the question is aimed at synthaside...but ive been running a similar 'all admech' stygies list so thought id throw in my thoughts on breachers as im loving them at the moment.

 

The breachers i find work really well in units of 6, i run two of them like this (rifles and hydraulic claws), using the servitor maniple thing from vigiulus.

 

18 wounds at T5, 3+ (2+ with shroudsalm), 5++ with the strat....is a headache to get through in one round of shooting, and if you dont, they'll just regen turn after turn. Ld7 can be an issue, but you still need to lose half the squad before you are losing guys on average morale rolls (and it may well be the one you lost was only on 1 wound)

 

12 S6 -2AP shots a turn is nothing to sneeze at either (24 if you have 2 units), with dominus rerolls (and possibility to up their BS to 3+ with a strat),

 

they can do some serious damage to elites and vehicles (yes you wound on 5s against most vehicles, but with massed fire a few will go through on average, and then its d6 damage a time).

 

The hydraulic claws, although hitting on 5s, provide surprising counter attack punch too if they get charged. 3 attacks each means 1 hit per model average, at S10 d3 damage. If you've popped the aquisition at all costs strategem...the're even hardier.

 

They also take up quite a hilarious amount of backfield space if you want them too, and effctively are 42" range

 

Id say my breachers have been MVP the last 2 games ive played them. 

 

 

A note on list composition though...runnign breachers this way is pretty CP heavy when you are paying for their 5++ and then dropping the BS3+ strat once a turn (on top of the other shooty strats we have). I shifted my list into a double battallion to combat this, and just spend spend spend on my first 3 turns to max out as much damage as possible.

 

I also run 3 onagers as my dedicated anti-tank....as you cant rely on breachers to take down heavy vehicles turn after turn themselves...though they will reliably knock a few wounds off

 

Ive also got 2 dominus, one runnining the servitor shtick with field commander, and the other running as a primer hermeticon warlord. Having 2 reroll 1 bubbles in shooting is great. Having the 2nd dominus making all my breachers reroll those 5+ in combat makes them lethal.

[synthaside]

Don't forget that sweet  +1 save from acquisition oh how i laughed when rolling 2 up Saves against helverin autocannons but at the end of the day   6 is eggs in one basket breaks a lot more easily that  2 lots of 3 . plus it makes it easier to get to the brigade at 1750.

Speaking of ... is anyone still playing 2k ??  it appears to be the de facto standard since GW reduced  and while i'm happpy about it 
i keep seeing people still posting 2k ... i believe even the ITC are looking to revise game size post LVO.

[Prot]

All my games are 2K.  Maelstrom, etc. whatever.

[Frostglaive]

My average games are 2k. My buddies know I like to push for bigger games though (I enjoy larger games more). 

[Heliomanes]

Most casual games here follow the format of the upcoming big tournaments, which are all 2k points atm.

[Stray]

Things seem to be a bit split right now. In the UK - at least at the big GW events - it seems like things have moved to an 1850/1750 standard (I forget which, but Hermanista could confirm I think). In the US, the major tournament scene still seems to be using a 2000 point limit, though whether that will change this year we shall see...

 

The community as a whole is likely to track along these lines depending where they are and what becomes adopted long term.

[hermanista]

GW events are 1750, ITC and my own tournaments I know are at 2k (although I give 3 hour rounds to make up for time issues).

 

I can see why they have dropped to 1750, I could see the GW events going to 1500, but boy I'd hate that.

[DanPesci]

Don't forget that sweet  +1 save from acquisition oh how i laughed when rolling 2 up Saves against helverin autocannons but at the end of the day   6 is eggs in one basket breaks a lot more easily that  2 lots of 3 . plus it makes it easier to get to the brigade at 1750.

 

Speaking of ... is anyone still playing 2k ??  it appears to be the de facto standard since GW reduced  and while i'm happpy about it 

i keep seeing people still posting 2k ... i believe even the ITC are looking to revise game size post LVO.

 

 

Oh aye the +1 from aquisition is excellent, especially if they're already in cover/shoudpsalmed. 

 

I get what your saying about squads of three...makes you way less susceptible to morale (as you say, eggs..basket etc).....but then if you are using the +1 BS strat with them from the vigilus detachment..its only affecting 3 models worth of shooting each turn rather than 6....so you are getting less bang for your buck per CP spent (or should that be zzap for your credits?? :) ) 

 

Obviously if you aren't using the actual breacher detachment though there's less to worry about there as you wont be rinsing that strategem every turn!