First wave of Stalker Constructs

 I have assembled the first wave of my Stalker Constructs!

This is only the first wave churned out from the daemon forges of the Dark Mechanicum. Technically, they are mine, but I bought and assembled them to serve as an enemy to my Loyalist Mechanicum and Knights. I'll be getting them Titan allies...eventually, but for now I'll focus on assembling the rest of the Stalker Constructs, plus the Serperos Overlord Heavy Stalkers. The Dark Mechanicum can't do much without those, after all. But it'll be fun! I hope...

Portable display cases

 It has been a while, hasn't it? Been busy with work and all that, so yeah. Anyway, some updates. I've bought portable display cases!

Don't get me wrong, I love the Citadel Crusade cases, and I would still recommend them to anyone looking to cart their miniatures around. But this Jucoci display cabinet offers a great alternative too! Especially if you want to stack them and stuff.

Looking good, eh? I'll probably pick up a few more cases to store more of my guys. I can't wait to see how they'll fare! Yay!

There's a Storm coming...

"There's a storm coming, Mister Wayne. You and your friends better batten down the hatches because when it hits, you're going to wonder how you ever thought you could betray the Imperium and get away with it..."

Okay, never mind. I know I'm doing the stormtroopers detachment, but I can't come up with storm puns. Never mind. Anyway, Warhammer Community has brought us a Bridgehead Strike Detachment, which focuses on Militarum Tempestus. Orbital assault, in other words, with Militarum Tempestus Scions swooping from Valkyries or other air transports and grav-chuting to deployment. Or Deep Strike, since we're back to using keywords and universal rules for 10th edition.

Only the Best soldiers are hand-picked for this detachment, which means that any infantry unit can reroll hit rolls of 1 whenever they shoot. Only for ranged attacks, so don't think your Bullgryns, Ogryns and Rough Riders (and Death Riders) are getting buffs. If you're a stormtrooper, you get an extra bonus - you get to add 1 to your wound rolls after you hop out of a transport, for example a Valkyrie or a Taurox Prime. Again, shooting attacks only.

Enhancements are a vox-array that allows your Militarum Tempestus officer to give up to three orders, but make sure his command squad has a command or master vox. There's a beacon that allows us to Deep Strike in the first turn, despite whatever mission rules say. We even have a shroud projector that protects us from overwatch.

For Stratagems, the standouts for me is firing hot, which means adding +1 Strength and AP -1 to Militarum Tempestus and Kasrkins' hot-shot weapons. That includes volley gunes! There's Aerial Extraction, which picks up an infantry unit and put them back into Strategic Reserves. Nice. There's also the classic "Fire on my position!" Uh, I think you're only dealing D6 mortal wounds to an enemy unit at the cost of taking 3D3 mortal wounds to your own, but hey, worth it.

So let's...uh, blow the enemies of the Imperium away with the might of stormtroopers!

Onager Dunecrawler

I assembled an Onager Dunecrawler today. The Icarus array configuration. He's for my Skitarii Hunter Cohort.

I had to sell two of them when shipping my armies back to Singapore, so now I'm slowly replacing the sold ones. Probably just a second Onager Dunecrawler will do. I plan to get Mechanicum stuff in the near future instead. We shall see.

For now, I at least have a pair of Onager Dunecrawlers! Yay!

Admech Knight

Yes, that's right. Today's Grotmas Detachment is literally...Admech Knight. In other words, me! Muahaha! I've been immortalized by Games Workshop as the theme for one of their Imperial Knights detachment! My infamy has spread to Nottingham somehow!

...as if.

Jokes aside, Warhammer Community has posted the Grotmas detachments for both Imperial Knights and Chaos Knights, and obviously I'm really pleased with the Imperial Knights one as it allows you to combine Skitarii and Knights for 10th edition, that I always wanted to do. Yay! I was always puzzling over how to combine my Skitarii with my Mechanicus Knights because 10th edition no longer allows allies, and it was just dumb if I had to do Imperial Agents with my Knights when I wanted to do Skitarii plus Knights. For most of my Pariah Nexus Crusade, I simply took a single Knight of the Cog with my Skitarii Hunter Cohort, but now I can actually combine them for a more thematic Admech Knight army! Minus my beloved Onager Dunecrawlers, though.

I even get to field my Tech-priest Dominus alongside them, which is a treat because I don't really get to field him in my Skitarii Hunter Cohort. Archmagos Theta-Rho finally takes to the battlefield! And I get to field all of my Mechanicus Knights - Sir Kanda in his Knight Lancer alongside the two Armigers Moirax! Yay! I might add a Knight Castellan and maybe an Atrapos alongside the Skitarii and Tech-priest - and I might field the Archmagos Prime as a proxy Tech-priest Dominus to kind of differentiate the wild and diverse augmetics and upgrades that the Tech-priests of the Mechanicus sport. He already has a "volkite blaster" (okay, I know it's a volkite serpenta) and I can treat the conversion beam cannon as a macrostubber or phosphor serpenta (I think?). He'll look more fun that way than being simply identical to my other Tech-priest Dominus. A third alternative is to use my Magos Macrotek, though I feel he resembles a Tech-priest Enginseer more.

So what do we get if we use this detachment? Up to 25% of your army can be Mechanicus - that's 250 points for Incursion, 500 for Strike Force and 750 for Onslaught, but you can only bring a Tech-priest Dominus, a Tech-priest Manipulus, Skitarii Marshal, Skitarii Rangers and Skitarii Vanguard. You'll notice the Skitarii Marshal is kind of redundant or makes your Detachment Rule redundant - your Skitarii (or Tech-priests) natively get rerolls of hit rolls of 1s, and even get to reroll wound rolls of 1s if they're within 6" of a Knight. Secondly, your Knights recover 1 wound per Command Phase, or D3 if they're within 3" of a Tech-priest. And if we even have an enhancement for a Tech-priest to heal 2 extra wounds per Command Phase! The Magos Questoris! Whoa!

And if you rerolls for your Knights and not just Skitarii, then enhance your Knight into a Knight of the Opus Machina and he can reroll hit rolls of 1s if he's within 6" of your Adeptus Mechanicus units (which you'll already get because of Magos Questoris).

Speaking of which, I find it odd that you can't take a Tech-priest Enginseer. Wouldn't they be more appropriate for repairing Knights? Well, whatever.

Stratagems are affordable, with all of them costing just 1 Command Point. One gives you a 5+++ Feel No Pain, like the Honored stuff for the Noble Lance detachment that I've been running. We also get to ignore modifiers (so no more mini-transhuman, hah!) or give Skitarii a Bondsman buff instead of an Armiger. Or a Titanic Knight can overwatch with one  weapon (I bet most people are thinking a Knight Valiant and his triple flamer/conflagration cannon for this).

Now, I know Goonhammer is talking about Castling and how the Knights are much faster than the Skitarii units. But wait! Don't forget that Skitarii Rangers have 6" Scout natively, which gives them up to 12" movement in the first turn, allowing them to keep up with Knights. Combine that with their sticky objectives ability (so park them or scout them onto an objective to capture it, then move them another 6" forward during the Movement Phase), that should allow you more freedom of movement than Goonhammer said. Unless they are referring to keeping your Knights next to the Tech-priests to get the heal D3 wounds per Command Phase, then that makes sense.

Anyway, I can't wait to field this Detachment in January, once the Grotmas indexes become available in the Warhammer app. YAY!

Halo Reach...I mean Haloscreed Battle Clade

And we finally come to my beloved Adeptus Mechanicus! What has Grotmas brought for us? A bunch of Tech-priests dressed in red Santa robes, plus a new detachment!

Halo: Combat Evolved! Ahem...I mean Haloscreed Battle Clade. This plays differently from other Adeptus Mechanicus detachments by allowing you to select 1/2/3 units for your Incursion/Strike Force/Onslaught games, and give them one of several buffs. Your pick. You can give them +2" to their Movement characteristic, or +1 to Toughness, or allow them to advance and charge, or give them Stealth if you want to play Skitarii Hunter Cohort, except non-Skitarii units can get Stealth now too!

However, it's the Enhancements that look really, really tasty. Transoracular Dyad Wafers, at a whooping 30 points, give your Kastelan Robots Doctrina Imperatives and make them a bonus Halo Override unit (to get the buffs I was talking about above). You can't give them 2 Halo Override abilities, obviously, and you'll need a Cybernetica Datasmith to take the advancement before placing him in the same unit as the robots. Still pretty cool.

Cognitive Reinforcement is amazing as it gives the bearer's unit both Protector and Conqueror Imperatives, while Sanctified Ordnance increases the range of your weapons by 6" and makes you immune to plasma. Heh. Good on both Skitarii Vanguard that has plasma calivers and Kataphron Destroyers with plasma culverins (my men!).

Stratagems, I shall not comment because I don't know what to say. Go to Goonhammer, I guess. I'm just here because Adeptus Mechanicus and there's a new, fun way to play them. So yay. I can only say you can combine Targeting Override with the Tech-priest Manipulus's ability to give his unit Lethal Hits to now obtain them on a 5+. Something to think about, heh.

Hexwarp Thrallband

Today we get a Thousand Sons detachment called Hexwarp Thrallband. You can read the article on Warhammer Community or go straight to the detachment here. Anyway, it seems like the Thousand Sons are sharing the magic of Grotmas!

So basically, the Hexwarp Thrallband centers on a concept titled the Flow of Magic. Your deployment zone is always within your Flow of Magic, and you can capture No Man's Land or your opponent's deployment zone by controlling at least half of the objective markers within each region to put them within your Flow of Magic.

Why would you want to do that? Well, if your Thousand Sons units are within a region that has your Flow of Magic, you get to +1 to wound rolls for psychic attacks. That doesn't mean you're completely reliant on your Flow of Magic, though - if there's no Flow of Magic, then you default to rerolling wound rolls of 1s for your psychic attacks.

You get enhancements that add 2 to the Strength of psychic weapons in the bearer's unit, or increase the range of your psychic abilities while allowing you to reroll Hazardous tests. There's another that switches on Flow of Magic permanently, at the expense of rituals.

We also have a bunch of Stratagems, but the standout one is giving your Rubric Marines Deep Strike, or if you use it on Scarab Occult Terminators instead, they get to Deep Strike more than 6" away from an enemy unit instead of 9". The other Stratagems are fun and cool, giving your pysker units Stealth and if they're within your Flow of Magic, they get Cover too!

But what interests me is the Adeptus Mechanicus detachment slated for tomorrow! I wonder what they'll have in store for my little cyborg soldiers...