I think the commisar way is the best! Wouldn't mind a FF MW attack also...

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I'm leaning away from the commissar route for these reasons:

1. Cataprhactii will likely have lower formation counts of core or heavy units.

2. Formation eligibility. We don't want this extending to aircraft, allies, or even robots. I estimate you will have 6 or so formations that you can place this on in a typical army. At one per 500 points, that basically cover everything. One per 1,000 points doesn't make it useful.

3. It's a simpler solution to just drop the placement aspect entirely.

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-Vaaish

I personally like the character route but not like commissar which is going to make this too much like existing guard lists IMO.
Perhaps we should have two characters that can be purchased that perform different bonuses and the list builder lust decide if they want to purchase them and put them in what formation.

engineseers: gift of the omnisiah (I like the BM removal route )
elctro-priests: are inspiring and got the assault route

only one can be added to a formation.

I think if you're going to the commissar by another name route then really this list is just Tank Legion but slightly more rare territory

edit: sorry. On pain killers atm so hopefully the above made sense and not just the ramblings of a medicated jerk

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Well at this rate maybe we should rename the thread "shooting down every idea for a Cataphrachii list" instead... *sigh*

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"You have a right to be offended" - Steve Hughes
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The only two ideas that have been definitively shot down are a drop castle which is more than a bit OP and duplicating IG commissars for the blessing rule.

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-Vaaish

I understand the thinking Vaaish, though like most other contributors I much prefer using characters than presenting a blanket ability.

1. A character can be targeted, whilst a blanket 'special rule' cannot (which was one of the main issue with the original Eldar 'Spirit stone' rule). In this respect a character is much more aligned with the basic principles behind the E:A rules
2. Characters are much more representative of Tech-priests and other individuals than a blanket ability.
3. Using characters presents the possibility of having several different types as suggested by Jimmy which seems a colourfull and 'fluffy' idea.

As to the number, we can present these characters as a costed upgrade (and reduce the cost of the associated formations if necessary). Alternatively like the commissar mechanic, we can provide a number of such characters expressed as a ratio of the associated formations. So one 'special' character per Cataphractii formation, or a 'special character' per pair of formations, or even 3 characters for every 4 formations rounded up etc. Following this thought a second, what characters should be considered?

Basically IMO it is certainly feasible to adopt such an approach, the details just need to be worked through.

Putting this to one side, what else can be done to make this different from the IG. Is it simply a case of different pattern AVs, different formation compositions etc, or is there some other dimension to explore in the 'fluff'?

I like the commissar route too. Make em +10pt or something so cost isn't a huge factor.

There were some really odd Admech vehicles from the card game, weren't there?

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SG

Ghost's Paint Blog, where everything goes that isn't something else.

Well as far as AdMech, sky's the limit on what random things they might have access to but at the same time I don't want to create units that don't exist officially and the official fluff on what the AdMech uses is fairly thin.

The card game definitely has some funky vehicles from the Horus Heresy art book but I don't recall how they actually integrated the cards or what they had on them.



Ok, lets say we go this route. First, I'm completely opposed to any form of this character being a costed upgrade to the formation. Doing this effectively limits it to two formations since we couldn't allow other formations access without allowing formations outside of core access to upgrades. It also practically guarantees it will never be used and we might as well drop the idea entirely.

That leaves us with a character distribution option similar to the Commissar. So we basically have an AdMech commissar that grants leader and perhaps a chance to remove all BM but nothing more. Is that really worth creating a character to distribute rather than just assigned to a formation?

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-Vaaish

Yeah, because he can be killed. What else is Sniper for?

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SG

Ghost's Paint Blog, where everything goes that isn't something else.

why is it so important that he can be killed? I don't read many battle reports about snipers taking down IG shadowswords or russes.

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-Vaaish

It is not just about being able to kill the character (though that is in line with the E:A principles, much fairer and less 'gamey'), it also allows us to give the player a number of potential choices:-

Following on from Jimmy's excellent idea, we could allow the player to choose different leader types depending on his intended strategy, so either being a Leader to remove BMs or an inspired commander to marshall assaults, or some other abilities and attributes.

Equally this character could be mounted in a different type of vehicle and possibly be able to use a wide variety of other weapons - I love this image

I'd strongly prefer a character rather than a blanket rule, so that the character can be killed.

Not a fan of an Electroo Priest character. Electroo Priests were a unit type, not really relevant in the tank list but the main AM deserves to have a CC infantry option like we know they use (electroo priests, combat servitors, chrono gladiators, ect) and CC infantry would make them more different from imperial guard.

I don't know about the others, but I'd like a character becuase the image of a multi-limbed robot monster quickly repairing a tank while under fire, chanting weird consecration rituals and assisted by mindwiped servitors while humans are gunned down all around them is so ingrained in the DNA of 40k it's important to get that model on the table.

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Is this list currently under performing to the extent that it warrants a bunch of free characters?

Adding a tech priests to an admech mechanised list makes perfect sense; but I'd imagine they'd be costed similar to most other armies rather than thrown in free.

Since we're still taking through aspects of the list, I haven't played it yet. However, I estimate it will underperform compared to an IG mech list due to poor CC and FF combined with smaller formation sizes. I have a feeling that formations will be easily suppressed. Since IG commissars are "free" units and provide much better effect that just BM removal I don't see why we would make people pay for them especially when we WANT people to take them.

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-Vaaish