regardless of the amount they need to cost for balancing, Vaish's wish (and I agree) is they should be free, and the additional cost built into the formation instead.

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My shifting projects

Ok, so we can go with the character route. Should we do 1 per 500 or 1 per 750?

Should we stop calling it blessing of the omnissiah and go with a more BFG style Gifts table that a player selects from to give to his formations?

What characters/gifts should we have?

I definitely plan on Blessings of the Omnissiah being the tech priest. This one is rally with no modifiers in the end phase and a roll of a 6 removes all BM.

I'd shy away from FF or CC bonus since vehicles aren't the best when it comes to assaults. How about making cataphractii easier to sustain with? Maybe some kind of hard wired servitors that allow a reroll when shooting?

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-Vaaish

Start at 1/500 pt, and we can go from there.

A choice would be interesting, but hard to balance properly without points costs.

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SG

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

I wouldn't oppose having a base option for free with other options available for additional cost.

I also updated the first couple posts with some ideas to swap out the Devourer with the Tetrarch Heavy Lander. The old OOP dropship model is so littered with weapons it's hard to figure out what to actually give the thing. I opted for most of the weapons being autocannons and the total number based on approximately how many could fire on average in each arc. The rest is a best guess. I pointed it at 450 for one lander.

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-Vaaish

At 1 per 500 points that will be somewhere between 1 character per formation of AV and 3 characters per 4 formations so perhaps we could start with one of these?

also, what characters and equipment should we introduce?

The base character would be rally in the end phase without modifiers and remove all bm on a roll of a 6 to rally.

Past that I don't know. FF and CC boosting characters I think would be poor choices for an armored list though.

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-Vaaish

Throw in some big ol' MWs or other specialist weapons to represent Techpriests pet projects?

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SG

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

some ideas. I'm not espcially attached to any of them.

Blessings of the Omnissiah - rally in the end phase without modifiers and remove all bm on a roll of a 6 to rally.

Flesh is weak – all units in formation gain ’automaton’ special rule
Sanctioned Explorator – Character ‘leader’ + all units in formation gain ‘walker’
Reductio ad níhilum – Character weapon – range 30cm 3BP, TK(1), ignore cover

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My shifting projects

These look good. We could add a second weapon:

Reductio ad absurdium: 2xAP5+ Any units killed are replaced with units of Grots.

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SG

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

Another alternative might be "omnis duritia" - where the character confers Thick Rear armour and Invulnerable save to make it harder to lay BMs in the first place.

Though "Reductio ad absurdium" also gets my vote

Wait, why do Skitarii, a primarily defensive force who would therefor have a lot less experience than your average Imperial Guard regiment, suddenly get such a massive bonus to rallying? For free as well I suppose?

Rerolls to shooting, even "only" on sustain, is also a massive boost. I'm not even going to touch a barrage IC TK attack.

Why don't you try the list as is first, without all these crazy additions, then decide if they need suck massive additions.

I believe the intention is only to provide this 'boost' to the Cataphractii, which seem to be crack armoured formations with Tech Priests in attendance providing religious and mechanical support. As a list it is expected to have fewer, more expensive formations, the choice of character / vehicle is seen as a way of providing some compensation for these particular formations - but specifically *not* for allies (like the Skitarii).

They're still Skitarii, and hence still just the personal defensive forces of a specific Magos. They'd obviously have access to all the best Admech toys, but there's no rational for them being battle hardened or elite.

Giving them the best rallying rules in the game indicates they're both battle hardened and elite.

the ones i put up i roughly estimated as worth +50pts on EVERY AV formation, not just the ones that get the 'free' character.

even comapred to other tank lists, this would be small, rare and charater driven. The skittari list represents a defence milita - by it's very nature a cataphracti list would be the Ad-mech scalpel, to match the Titan hammer.

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My shifting projects

Skitarii are better trained and equipped than guard including genetic modifications to remove fear. Skitarii also get deployed to most major warzones. There's no reason to assume they are a strictly defensive force. Skitarii are part of the military arm of the AdMech and as such likely see just as much combat as military arms in the imperium. Probably moreso seeing the AdMech likes to poke around for archaeotech.

EDIT:

For instance, here's a couple of the skitarii deployments:

13th black crusade: 87 regiments
3rd war for Armageddon: 14 regiments

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-Vaaish