Site icon

iNcontroL’s Adeptus Mechanicus Tourney Report

Reecius


Hey everyone Geoff “iNcontroL” Robinson here to talk about a fun RTT I attended this past weekend in San Jose California put on by John Feuerhelm called the “Konflict at Firebase Charlie 4” which is a tourney series he puts on with standard stuff like ITC missions, 2k points etc etc.. was in preparation for the awesome SoCal open coming up in just a few days!


Competitive 40k in California is really strong and I think that is very true in north California in particular. Reece asked me to talk a bit about Adeptus Mechanicus and how they did here!

The List:
MARS BATTALLION:

1,242

STYGIES BATTALLION:

753


This list may look familiar.. it’s one a lot of players have been playing SOMETHING like throughout the index phase but this list also features some of the obvious grabs for fellow servants of the Omnissiah. Kastellans are insane work horses. I am still craving practice games trying to get a feel for their kill power. Cawl (a must) makes them fairly accurate but the sweet spot that is their strength 6 shooting at -2 is insane. Beyond them the Sydonian Dragoons were incredible. AM suffers with mobility and reach but this unit gives you that that ability to have presence on the board. Run them as Stygies for the natural defensive synergy of -2 to hit at 12 or more as well as their access to infiltrate for only 1 CP. I will get into the line by line with the game reports but those two units were the big lifters.. however they couldn’t do it alone!


Game 1: vs Imperial Guard paired with Celestine and some Salamander stuff.
My first game was vs a nice young fellow running two storm ravens, celestine, 60 conscripts, 5 or so mortar teams some scouts and then the space marine standards like 2 dev units with las cannons/plasma backed by that dumb banner that makes dead people shoot and the bash brothers a captain and LT.

With standard guard units having something like 20+ drops you almost always go first vs them.. this game was no different. My opponent made some deployment mistakes which gave me this game at least on paper right out of the gate. We deployed Dawn of War playing ITC mission 1 (before the changes!) so with all his bodies sitting on objectives and shooting me sounded like a good call right? Wrong! If you are inside of 36 of a Kastellan unit and in line of sight you are going to have a bad time (mmmmkayy). With first turn I used 1 CP to anchor and switch to shoot everything real gud mode on my Kastellans and after 90 shots went out he was down 2 devastator units, half a storm raven and 30 or so conscripts. I also infiltrated my Dragoons and was collapsing his left flank which was mostly a couple scout units screening some mortar teams. He also deployed his storm ravens away from his auras trying to avoid them being shot (which he succeeded in doing on turn 1) but still gave me rich targets like the devs. The game kind of went down hill from there for him with Celestine heroically trying to charge into the Kastellans but being gunned down on the charge.. resurrecting and dying on the next volley. Ad Mech ended up winning handily and we had a lovely discussion on what went wrong.. I think he will put up a much better fight next time!

Line of sight blocking is key in 8th edition. As my other army is Tyranids I know this all too well.. if you line up straight across from a line of Kastellans you are probably going to die.
19-0 in favor of Ad Mech.


Game 2: Death Guard army of farts
The second game was vs my friend and fellow competitive WH40k player Adrian and his beautifully painted Death Guard. His army had Mortarian, nearly 60 plague zombies, some nurglings, 2 heralds of nurgle, Typhus, Necro dude, two of those mortar tanks that are neat and Mortarian had 3 body guards.. he also had the other Death Guard characters like the bell guy and grenade guy.

Adrian was saying of all the armies their he did not want to face me the most. I have two Icarus Onagers which are a nuisance to a character like Mortarian but also that Kastellan gun line that can really drop a bucket of pain. Adrian deployed aggressively playing ITC mission 4 with the full intent of jumping on top of me. Mortarian had no access to warp time which we agreed was probably something he will want to include in the future so it meant at best he needed 2 turns before he could start cutting through the meat of forces. Adrian won the roll to go first and was all happy until I.. seized. Probably more brutal than even 7th edition the seize remains strong. Mortarian was well within 36 of my Kastellans and I again.. did what I said I wouldn’t and switched into shootie mode and activated the Wrath of Mars strategem which dishes out mortal wounds on rolls of 6. Now, I learned a valuable lesson. NOTHING lives through that volley but Mortarian did this time! His Death Shroud is super super effective. Absorbing the shots and shrugging off most of it while sharing some of the load with Mortarian I ended up killing the 3 body guards and doing only 6 wounds to the big man himself after both the onagers AND the Kastellans off loaded their arsenal, woah! That said.. without warptime Mortarian had to feast on the Dragoon unit which he did but I popped a vehicle with a strategem for a few mortal wounds and then gunned down Mortarian on the ensuing turn. With such a big threat gone the game was mostly a squaring off of objectives of which there are 6 but I was too far ahead on secondary and with Mortarian giving me BGH and WL I was essentially locked to win the game. This game however did highlight an issue that Ad Mech have and that is getting around the table. With the Dragoons gone my fast moving units are next to nothing.. the Kastellans can do it but I planted them so they aren’t moving ever again. When you build you Ad Mech list try and remember this! You need to be deep striking something or have fast units like infiltrators or Dragoons.. if not you will struggle to score. I had killed most of Adrian’s army but the score was really close with me winning 14-6 – a nice win to be sure but missing out on a few things simply due to LoS terrain protecting a few objectives and me not being able to get there can cost you in a tourney!

Game 3: Ynnari eldar tom-foolery
The third and final game was against my friend Grant formerly of Team Zero Comp and now of the fluffier and softer pastures of Rage Quit Table flip. Grant’s list had 2 hemlocks, a lynx on a skyshield, a 4×3 sky weavers(?) with haywire guns, cat lady, warlock, sniper eldar hero guy, 4×3 spectre units and a couple other characters I think?

Playing ITC mission 6 it was a bit more of a battle with the objectives being fairly few at 4 and in the open. I had obsec though and this would prove to be a problem. Grant got first turn and the blessed Omnissiah (may his greasy gears forever be cleansed of xenos filth and unburdened with the grabby hands of the unkempt followers of chaos) saw fit for me to NOT seize this time, doh! The Eldar were able to drop a Onager with the two fliers and Lynx was well as a smattering of some shots from the haywire fellas. Outside of that he did 6 wounds to the other Onager and after a few shots at the Kastellans quicky found out shooting them is no good.. What this DID do was bring the Eldar out from behind their cover… hmm surely I wouldn’t drop anchor a third time and give him Kastellan hell, would I? Oh, oh I would.. and did. The return volley dropped 1 Hemlock, did 8 or so wounds to the Lynx and dropped a unit of sky weavers. My snipers finally killed his sniper who helped kill one of my Enginseers. Notice how I haven’t mentioned the snipers much? A quick note on them.. they under performed this tourney. If we judge them strictly off of what they actually did it wasn’t much.. too many times I neede to wound on a 3+ and rolled a 1 or 2 OR they still made their 5+ or 4+ save depending on how tough the target. Don’t get me wrong they did some wounds here and there but they were NOT all stars. What they did do however was make my opponent deploy restrictively and that was really nice. It stopped them from moving some aura bubbles around and gave them pause to come out from behind walls. The remainder of the game was close for a bit before the wheels fell off the wagon for my eldar opponent. Hemlocks hit hard but I was able to constantly repair my Onager up to full strength almost each turn. I even used the strategem where I can repair it twice and generated 6 wounds in 1 turn.. wow! With the Kastellans planted Grant was smart about avoiding them for the majority of the game but whenever something HAD to step out for an aggressive play or objective they were there to destroy that target. I highly highly suggest you almost never drop anchor but if you do make sure they are in a central location.. shooting twice is devastating but a 550 point unit not doing much if improperly placed can be just as deadly but to your detriment. The Dragoons really shined this game… they were up front and Grant put in some shots on turns 1 and 2 only to discover that 6 wounds on a tough 6 model that is hard to hit CAN withstand a fair amount of punishment. They were able to track down his Warlord cat lady and almost kill her but they did score me some melee wins and tie ups that bought me precious time to pull away on maelstrom. In 2 of my 3 games the unit died on the first 2 turns but in both games they dragged down more with them in objectives or straight points. I think in other matchups they probably don’t die and pose an even more serious threat but in these games with a list that has a ton of auto hit weapons and before that Mortarian they STILL did a lot of work despite those obstacles. At the end of the game with maelstrom handily in my favor and us both having first strike I was able to win this game as well and with it the tourney!


Konflict at Firebase Charlie 4 had some nice prize support with a custom trophy and I took home $80 in gift cards which isn’t bad for a guy who wants to buy some melee electro priests and scratch that itch where you want to field and army of blind electro men who want to give you the bad touch… really fun tourney with some top notch players.

Adeptus Mechanicus are strong. They hit hard, can take a punch and have flexibility. They have no defense against psychic stuff unless you put in a culexus or mix in some imperial stuff and they can run into issues with getting around line of sight blocking terrain or grabbing line breaker. Build a list with these things in mind.. my list had really only the dragoons as an answer for board presence but that unit has a HUGE footprint and moves quickly especially with the infiltrate deployment through the stygies strategem. I don’t think I will make any changes just yet to my list but I really really like the idea of infiltrating stygies electro priests and getting them to a 3++ 5+++ on turn 1.. oooooh that sounds nice. Any unit they hit will die. Also 20 of them are a bit cheaper than the Sydonian Dragoons BUT they do not withstand an alpha strike half as good.. so I feel like they have a bit more risk in that way AND they aren’t as mobile.

Anyways I hope you enjoyed this bat rep. It’s obviously very loose and I am leaving out a lot of details but maybe you can grab some meaningful stuff from it!

GIMME TYRANIDS CODEX

 

And remember, Frontline Gaming sells gaming products at a discount, every day in their webcart!

Exit mobile version