This remind me of something I suggested a while back after reading one of the grey knights books, in the book the grey knights are infiltrating a forgeworld which was lost to the warp and had suddenly rematerialised. A big part of the dark mechanicus forces in that book were made up of conscripted menials, dragged away from their workstations to protect the precious secrets of the forge and sent out to fight with whatever tools they could find.

I beleive I suggested a pretty crappy but low cost infantry unit with only CC abilities which could be used in some form of meat shield capacity, after all the flesh is weak and the machine sacred, so why not sacrifice flesh to preserve the holy works of the mechanicus.

Edit :- This may be a bit too conceptual but could prove to be interesting. From any rational point of view an APC is ultimately designed to protect the lives of the infantry men within and a gun is a tool to enable a human to harm things from distance. Would the mechanicus consider these things the same way or would they see the human as the tool to transport the gun and the tank to utilise its cargo as a weapon?

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You see a mouse trap? I see free cheese and a f*cking challenge! - Scroobius Pip

Hey guys I hAve a question for the transports problem we keep griping about. So even tho they are out of production, has any body thought of the old style tech guard chimeras(chimero, chimerax, chimerdon)? Only the tech guard were supposed to have them. You could get some of otter ware and either fudge the turret with a. Chaos Bfg quad turret or many that watery artist could make turrets? It is a possibility.

remind what they are: chimera's with different turrets? or more major modifications?

Different turrets. Chimerax had two twin linked auto cannons. The chimerdon had a battle cannon turret and the chimerro I believe had a rack of hunter killer missiles. But the original vehicles were to be for the tech guard only. I could see some form of plasma gun variant turret or melta.

I like the idea, if suitable proxies can be made available. The originals are in short supply.

The major problem would be how to limit/cost them. Switching out for all Chimerax, for example, would form a veritable wall of AA fire, since they were originally Hydra alternatives. You'd have to restrict each variant to one (maybe two in the case of the Chimerro) per upgrade, and price them fairly heavily, I'd think.

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SG

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

Actually, looking in my epic and net epic sources, the Chimerrax is not an AA version of the chimera. its just purely infantry support of the tech guard with a fire rate of two.. which would translate into EA as 2x ap4+/at 5+ i would guess.(the autocanon from the fluff i believe were twin linked). I checked out the Chimmero and its just a hunter killer missile one shot with the standard multi laser. In our case if it was to be used better i would give it something like what the Vulture has and give it two "one" shot weapons with a similar stat base. As with availability, it is true that they are in short order though the best versions are chimedon and chimmerax due to their weapon load. About 6 months ago i bought a huge supply of random tanks leman russ's and chimera forge world miniatures off of somebody here. The forge world chimera's did not have turrets, but with turret swaps and other measures i made "ad-hoc" chimedons out of some spare leman russ forge world turrets. They looked pretty good since the forge world turret is flatter than the standard metal turret. Also i just won some of the chimmerax off of eBay and plan to try to use those too.

If we are trying to be sticklers to use official fluff, then why not try to use what the tech guard had in the original case and carefully add to it or delete things as play balance see's fit? Like i said before,, i can see a heavy plasma gun varient turret or a multi melta turret possibility but i may be just being imaginative and not thinking about balance. I'll post a pic of what i've done here in a few hours with the chimera/chimerdon.

I'd be extremely hesitant of using Chimerax, Chimerro, Chimedon in the Skitarii list as the models are incredibly hard to get hold of.

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Though at the moment their painted for my guard army.. i will probably paint them tech guard blue, or Red depending on if this idea passes. These were made from the hulls of the forge world Chimera and FW LR turrets

That one is at least an easy conversion.

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Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

Harder than the ordinatus minorus? I'd say the amount of work to convert a chimera to the variants would be much less than building a minorus.

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Let us playtest like the Greeks of old... You know the ones I mean

Ordinatii are an iconic and important part of the skitarii image. Chimeraxes are not.

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Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

actually, when i think of skitarii, i think of slightly freaky looking chimera. probably because i grew up learning about them via tech-guard. You may have a great big boner for ordinatii, but that doesnt mean everyone does. i personally think they should be rather limited. 1 majoris or up to three minorus in an army in anything short of a full on Engine-War list.

perhaps a quick chat with a certain water-mammal would cause chimeric variants to become very easy to proxy soon.
i think that chimera squads, with variants handled in the same way as the minervan upgrades, would go some way to making the skitarii not just IG+

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~Every Tool Is A Weapon, If You Hold It Right~

I'd say that proxies are easy to find...
Search Tactical Command for useful information.
LINK to photo of proxy model.

We may need to find a few more turrets but really, custom Chimeras are far easier to find of than some other models and there seems to be a general desire through Skitarii players to head back to Chimeras (and their variants). I'd certainly prefer it.

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If a suitable proxy can be obtained, I think these are far better than Rhinos and Hunters for adding that AdMech flavor.

Chimeraxes did have some AA capability, by memory and according to the various sources I've been able to dredge up (the 40k Wiki foremost among them). They didn't have the same tracking gear as a Hydra, making them less effective at that role, however. Between that and the lack of long barreled AC. I'd suggest something like:

Chimerax Autocannon: 2x 30cm AP4+/AT5+/AA6+

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SG

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

I can agree with those stats. And it still is fluffy and useful.