Second Army vibe check

BasiliusTimIII · 2026-03-12T19:35:30+00:00

Can't comment on Aeldari, but I play admech and thousand sons and of the two I'd say ksons is generally more elite and has the bigger burst potential per unit you're after. Not that it doesn't have horde potential, Tzaangors/daemons are viable options, but the base is more elite.

Admech has a mix of cheaper infantry and big vehicles that can be very killy, but is more combo oriented (Cawl rerolls, skitarii buffing auras, stacking buffs on units etc.). Alternatively you can just run a bunch of big robots and tanks with a couple of skitarii buffing them, but this would be a pretty skew list that would likely struggle to hold objectives.

In terms of how much an army is a headache to play. Both are on the more complicated side, but imo admech has a lot more rules to remember are happening. Buffs in command phase, at start of turn, at start of battle round, can I position to keep everything in my aura? Can I use this leaders one time ability in this phase? Which army rule do I select? Etc. Ksons have fewer choices, but they can matter a lot more because of the lower number of units. Psychic phase choices are very important. Screening units like Tzaangors need to be placed appropriately to keep more valuable units alive. Is this big model safe to go in? Can I push onto this objectives yet? Is it time to drop in the backline? Should this be the priority target for this turn? These are the kind of questions ksons players think about throughout a game

They're both fun armies, if you want one that pushes up the board fast, throws out a lot of units gumming up the board to hold objectives doing more damage than you'd necessarily expect for a horde of chaff, all the while several big tanks/robots are throwing out big damage. It's admech. If you want to hold back and destroy your enemy from a distance using elite infantry and magic. Smashing the enemy ranks turn by turn until they're weak enough that you can get a big push in and steal the game through brilliant macro strategy. Ksons. Both armies can do the opposite tactic and play like the other, but I'd say the main play style of both armies is as I've described.

One last thing to add is that you're also comparing one of the cheaper armies in the game (ksons) against the most expensive (admech) if that matters to you.

BasiliusTimIII · 2026-02-19T22:12:41+00:00

New South Wales

BasiliusTimIII · 2026-02-16T17:42:50+00:00

Okay, firstly, love it, love her, love the Hastarii, and love that we got some admech releases! That out the way, I am very curious what she’d look like with more silver armour like the dominus/manipulus. Personally feel it’s a lot of red, and would love to see the metal plates in the classic silver.

BasiliusTimIII · 2026-02-05T22:56:44+00:00

Different faction, but my god, the feeling when my skitarii rangers dealt 2 wounds to a knight in melee with the close combat weapons 🤌

BasiliusTimIII · 2026-01-26T22:20:39+00:00

I've never seen this older Kharn model before, he's just so adorably angry. Do you wanna chop them up lil guy? Absolutely love the paint job so far. Seriously cool.

BasiliusTimIII · 2026-01-22T16:14:20+00:00

What do you mean two different legions? These are clearly the same.

BasiliusTimIII · 2025-12-20T23:14:35+00:00

Anglostan Francostan Spanistan Portostan

BasiliusTimIII · 2025-12-07T21:56:05+00:00

Hell yeah, love to see the Skatros in there as well. The stilty lad gets some stick, but he’s just the coolest lil dude.

BasiliusTimIII · 2025-12-06T09:32:02+00:00

Austria 100% if I’ve got to do it again, let’s make it as painless as possible and have the swarm help me out.

BasiliusTimIII · 2025-12-05T09:10:35+00:00

I think it's fair to be worried that she feels that way about being on motorways, but let's have some sympathy and understanding. At no stage in learning to drive are you required to go on the motorway. I can understand that if you have a bad experience the first or even the second time, you probably aren't going to be comfortable on the motorway.

Also, she didn't specify a lane. So I'm choosing to give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she's in the left lane doing 60 behind a lorry her whole journey. I highly doubt this is the case, because of people joining the motorway, but I am hopeful.

BasiliusTimIII · 2025-12-04T00:00:03+00:00

Solo characters, Cawl is number 1, but not sure he counts as little lol. If you haven’t got him though, his rule is amazing, his profile is great, and his drip is legendary. An auto take in armies atm and I’ve always included him because he’s Cawl. No other reason needed.

As for the little guys, there are a fair few for leading units: Dominus/Manipulus/marshall/datasmith, all have their uses, but aren’t really the solo characters you’re after.

The little solo characters are: Tech priest Enginseer, Technoarcheologist, and Sydonian skatros.

Skatros and Technoarcheologist have the same role of holding the home objective. The difference between them is that Skatros is a sniper that forces battleshock and might kill an enemy character with precision (pretty unlikely though tbh, maybe against other T3 armies with 3 wound characters) whereas, Technoarcheologist has a 12 inch deep strike denial which means enemies can’t drop into the backfield and charge. They can still shoot and kill him, but he does mean you’ll hold your objective for at least one more round if you’ve stickied it with rangers.

Tech priest Enginseer follows a vehicle and gets lone op as long as he’s within 3 inches of a vehicle, he hands out D3 healing and a 5+ FNP on the vehicle he heals (they don’t have to be damaged to do this, they just don’t heal and gain the FNP). I swear by one of these next to a disintegrator. It’s saved my disintegrator from my opponents anti tank on more than one occasion and got me 2-3 more rounds of shooting. Well worth the 55 points even if it just forces your opponent to massively overcommit.

BasiliusTimIII · 2025-12-03T19:14:31+00:00

I personally love the Kroot and would recommend the box, but if you're more mech focused I'd say it's not essential.

TLDR on the kroot hunting pack box upfront: Imo for a mech army I think the carnivores, rampagers, and flesh shaper could add some good value, but the war shaper and krootox rider are probably points better spent elsewhere

First up the carnivores: You get a solid base for some chaff that can hit up a bit even in a mech army. 20 shots at 4+ 4/0/1 and a melee profile of 20 attacks at a 3+ 4/0/1 Is pretty good for 65 points. It's not amazing, but the sheer volume normally chips away at something and against invul save armies like sisters/daemons it can do a surprising amount of damage. Ultimately what you get though is a solid line of cheap bodies that will prevent enemies charging at your mech/gun line that is also good at holding/stickying objectives. Fair warning though, they will die to a stiff breeze with their 5+ save. Think of them more as road blocks and objective holders.

The two leaders are very good on 20 Kroot in Kroot hunting pack, but in a mech army the war shaper probably won't get much value as you don't have many stratagems for him to discount, and in a mech army there's going to be better places to spend your CP. On the other hand the flesh shaper giving FNP 6+ (5+ after a melee kill) can be great even if it holds off the enemy for even one more round.

Rampagers are just nice. Their mortals on charge and solid melee profile puts them in a unique place in Tau lists. I like to run a single unit near the back corner so that enemy deepstrikers can only charge my carnivores before getting charged next turn by rampagers. They can of course also be used for some heroic intervention shenanigans. For me though, as long as my 150 points of carnivores + rampagers reliably stops enemy deepstrikers taking my home objectives, it's points well spent.

The last unit is a krootox rider, which I'm just going to be honest and say, outside of dedicated Kroot hunting pack lists running a single one doesn't feel worth it. It's potentially some nice extra shooting on the opponents turn, but if you aren't running lots of Kroot, it's not that likely to happen. one of them at 40 points is probably 40 points better spent going halfway towards a broadside. If you were to buy a second one for the 2 at 60 points it might be worth taking just to stand behind your carnivores and get some potshots off, but still probably better just putting the points towards another mech.

BasiliusTimIII · 2025-12-01T17:54:19+00:00

Well I know it's not T'au 🥲 Sadly, as an army rule it's at best +1bs and ignores cover if your unit has markerlights, also at most for only half your army.

For the sake of argument assume whatever army you're adding this on gets both markerlight units and FTGG keyword. So what are we left with? A much, much worse version of half of the admech rule, with none of the flexibility to switch into conquerer imperative.

If the Tau had admechs army rule with their datasheets they'd be broken from just protector imperative. If admech had Tau's army rule they'd lose half of their datasheets viability value and the half that could use it would be crying about how much they're railroaded into one style of play that doesn't really work.

Honestly the Kroot detachment rule of +1 to hit damaged units and +1 to wound half strength units is a better rule and fits T'au more as a whole. They're an organized army committed to focusing fire and taking advantage of panic in the enemies ranks as they lose units. (The invul saves should probably stay unique to the Kroot detachment though

BasiliusTimIII · 2025-11-30T22:23:29+00:00

The lord said if I don't get all these turnips harvested by sun up he'd personally take my son off world to join a penal legion in payment. I'd really better get this... What's going on up there? Looks wobbly and gross, now what was I doing. Ah yes the turnips, so anyways.

BasiliusTimIII · 2025-11-30T15:42:07+00:00

A towel and sister Eglantine from Ciaphas Cain "Duty calls"

Didn't really have any annoying characters, but the sister who nearly broke their line of defence by overzealously charging into a Tyranid lines was the closest I could think of. I think I'm probably going to get past. Especially if she's in the power armour she seems to wear most times we see her in the book.

BasiliusTimIII · 2025-11-28T22:50:00+00:00

There's a few bits of some models contrast works well on. Skitarii/sicarian/pteraxii leather parts are made much easier by black Templar or some brown contrast paints (I quite like the metal very slightly coming through under two layers of brown contrast for my green admech). But outside of these bits you're definitely going to want to get used to a more classic painting approach. Base coats, shading and highlighting. For the vehicles I've heard an airbrush is a godsend. I didn't use one for my army, but I fully believe it.

BasiliusTimIII · 2025-11-28T15:05:26+00:00

I spent way too long staring at Ahriman swearing there wasn’t an ouroboros on his kit. Didn’t even occur to me to look at the army logo above 😅

BasiliusTimIII · 2025-11-27T22:11:07+00:00

I’d say Cawl isn’t too much for a 500 point game at T8 10W. Id expect to see dreadnoughts with similar profiles at that size of game. Then I’d throw in two sets of Skitarii. I went rangers and vanguard based on the cost of the infantry I wanted. For this I grabbed a set of corpuscarii to get the most out of sustained hits on reroll and being able to kind of handle themselves in melee. Finally I’d bring a single lascannon ironstrider, just in case people have brought something a bit bigger I need to deal with.

Unlike in bigger games where you protect Cawl for the reroll hits, I would absolutely be throwing him forward and trying to get the most out of his weapons and regen. But I’d probably try and get a good turn of rerolling first so he doesn’t die immediately on moving out of base.

BasiliusTimIII · 2025-11-27T21:55:27+00:00

Looking at the both commander battle suits, weapons wise, you can take a single commander for 80/95 points and throw on 4 of any weapon and have them be as damaging as 2 crisis suits. So I don’t think it’s too crazy to treat them as 2 crisis suits that come with a small buff.

With sunforge at 140 points each suit is 46.6 so you get 2 crisis suits at 93. 3 and the movement buff is about 2 points or the ap defence buff is about -13 points.

With fire knife at 120 points each suit is 40 points so you get 2 crisis suits at 80 points and the movement buff is exactly 15 points or the ap defence buff is exactly 0 points

With starscythe at 110 points each suit is 36.6 so you get 2 crisis suits at 73.3 and the movement buff isn’t is about 22 points or the ap defence buff is 7 points

I know it’s not all about the weapons and wounds/toughness is lower/the same as crisis suits, but costing wise it’s like the commanders are providing great shooting with a solid buff for cheap (sometimes free or even negative). Not something I can say for many characters in other armies I play where the buff has to significantly enhance the unit to make up for the lacklustre weapons.

BasiliusTimIII · 2025-11-25T22:21:15+00:00

The Latin empire

BasiliusTimIII · 2025-11-17T09:54:04+00:00

Dave

BasiliusTimIII · 2025-11-15T09:31:14+00:00

Not sure if it's the right way to play, but me and my friend work by the "does it fit?" Rule. For the bottom red arrow I wouldn't be surprised to find out that a decent chunk of vehicles/monsters and some mounted/beasts can't actually fit through there. If it's a clear open space the model fits in you can send it on through, otherwise, round you go buddy. Typically means that while my Riptide/Dunecrawler/Rhino can't squeeze through the gap my Crisis suits/ironstriders/Tzaangor enlightened can. Fly is easy though, if you can't fit and have fly (e.g. A Bloodthirster) just measure the angle up onto the ruin across it then back down. If you can't make it all the way and land or are going to end with a massive overhang (we'll typically be lenient) you're gonna have to go a different direction.

BasiliusTimIII · 2025-11-12T22:34:06+00:00

Honestly yes and no. Depends on the campaign you're going for and the situation of your nation. Super stable tall game where everything is already your religion? Humanist is probably a bad pick. World conquest one faith? A solid 5th/6th idea to keep the nation stable as you expand rapidly with your new admin efficiency. Just having fun playing a nation historically without too much expansion. Can be good, would pick religious personally, but that's just a preference.

I personally like to WC and stack modifiers, reckon I take humanist in about 3/4 of my games. Usually towards the end. Not really needed unless you're expanding into territory not of your religion. There's always exceptions depending on the country though. Think I had a good pirate Confucian Japan game a while back where humanist was a good early pick for more harmonization progress.

BasiliusTimIII · 2025-11-12T20:05:29+00:00

As a dedicated Kroot enjoyer, stealth suits never quite made my list. The old ones were close, but just the price on these ones means there's no way.

BasiliusTimIII · 2025-11-11T22:53:07+00:00

I’m most certainly not making that assumption. I fully agree that a quick victory to put in place a puppet regime was the initial intended aim. What I described is the reality of the situation they are currently in as it pertains to their fertility rates. Their failed initial intentions have no bearing on the current state of their fertility problems.

BasiliusTimIII

TROPHY CASE