Adeptus Mechanicus Combat Patrol: Is It Any Good? Should You Buy It?

[@ironkidney9402]

I am a new player starting with admech, could've build like the advised combat patrol, but I just did my own thing and made the breachers with 2 arc and 1 tortoise, rangers with onmispecs and all the special guns, dune crawler with the eradication beamer because the blast + sustained hits with D3 and D6 attacks looks like it can be allot of fun. Thanks for the videos, helps me learn more about admech.

[@Techpriest]

Happy to be of help and good choices on the build out. I'd highly recommend magnetizing larger units though as it can be fun to play around with different options. All you really need to do it is a small hand drill, such as this: venturetradeco.com/product/hobby-hand-drill-set/ and some small magnets (coming soon^tm). With some units like the Skorpius and Kastelans you can even accomplish interchangeable loadouts without magnets which is nice.

[@ironkidney9402]

Thanks for the recommendation, I'll probably try it next time with magnets. 😅

[@Techpriest]

It's a bit of a pain the first time, but once you get a feel for it, it's pretty easy. A few tips is that before using the drill, make a small indent or score with the hobby knife you use where you want to drill as it will let the bit bite in a bit easier. Another thing is try to make all the magnets face the same direction in all the bits for a given unit type, that way all the bits work with all t he models they go on instead of having to match the right ones, and finally don't stress magnetizing and painting everything at once, do the load out you want and move on until you want to try the other options and then work on them.

[@stickylizardman9172]

0:15 “and I’ll leave a description in the link below” 😂

[@Techpriest]

Sometimes brain returns error code. Beep boop.

[@darkbotx]

the combat patrol rules and army setup are .....rough to say the least but as for the admech combat patrol as a whole for tenth is a good deal for some very useful models breachers with the skitarii cheerleaders for full hit rerolls and the enginseer being best friends with the dunecrawler i see that as a nice way to start the faction

[@Techpriest]

Completely agree, it's an awesome box set for value but poor combat patrol rules. If I was starting Admech today and couldn't find the Boarding Patrol, I'd buy 2x Combat Patrol. If I can get a Boarding Patrol, I'd buy one of each and still consider a second Combat Patrol down the line.

[@Roylevis]

kataphrons solid, onager is OK. Enginseer is probably okay if you run it with 6 breachers. Skitarii fine if you stay with just the 10.

[@Techpriest]

I might be biased but I'm hyped for the Onager in 10th, it seems very durable naturally and has enough output to be fun.

[@hitmonleespruce9868]

The box was a bit more viable in this edition but the overall loadout of each unit for the combat patrol rules are just.... wrong like we are already punching up to each of the other patrol boxes we did not need this awkward kneecapping.

[@Techpriest]

Completely agree and I think the forced loadout is setting up new players to fail both in this mode and going into larger games. I wish they gave you the option to either build shooty with one list like they did in this one, and then offered the alternative that's the same but uses Vanguard and Breachers for an aggressive build. That way players can choose between two easy options still based on how they like to play the game.

[@xiluo3306]

This patrol pack should be the best patrol pack currently available, as well as Grey Knight, players can consider buying three patrol packs at once and selling duplicate Tech-Priest Enginseer.

[@Techpriest]

Three might be a bit much but I think two is fine. Mostly what makes me avoid three is you can still find Boarding Patrols out in the wild as well as some other box sets where you can get the Kataphrons and Skitarii in a good number. Maybe if you run into being unable to get any of the other sets the third Combat Patrol becomes more appealing.

[@Highlaw]

I think this combat patrol box is amazing. It teaches new players how to magnetize and not trust GW, 2 very important things to learn in this hobby. But I can imagine some poor sod out there who glued 6 normal skitarii, leaving his 3rd special weapon in the sprue completely unaware of the implications for full 40K, and also glued the worst version of his Kataphrons, not even a half sized squad with the same weapon options, one of them just had to be different. Being snarky aside, I don't get why GW didn't offer double-kit boxes the option to chose units, at least one of them, just like they did for over-costed boxes. Even if Admech could bring Breachers the box would still only be 460pts (actually 415pts if we count Rangers as 8PPM like they should be, instead of 12,5PPM) while Custodes with the Bike option are over 500pts, so Breachers wouldn't break the game, and at least give Admech ONE good melee unit instead of zero.

[@Techpriest]

I'm with you on that, I wish they offered multiple builds for players to try, thus giving the format more depth and replayability overall. Unfortunately they chose to simply use the box art as the only build without any regard for how the rules had evolved. On the plus side, I'm currently working on videos for other Combat Patrols and they did remove most special abilities from the box rules, which makes things a little better.

[@biobreaker5009]

The combat patrol setup is so misleading for the actual game I find it funny. I would think it was malpractice to entice buying more models if I wasn't sure there's close to no communication among departments at gws. Anyway, thank you for the breakdown, I hope this helps many new techpriests.

[@Techpriest]

Happy to be of help and hope it helps others as well. It's a bit of a shame they used the logic that it should match the box art without giving alternative builds, but if they did have that in mind they might have wanted to format the units differently in the Index itself but I doubt they really thought that far ahead unfortunately.

[@TheBoboni]

I mean honestly you should just magnetize everything anyway. I just do it by default whenever I build anything.

[@Techpriest]

While a good idea, I just can't bring myself to do so with things like Skitarii and Sicarians.

[@davidsusko9785]

So many contradictions in the Combat Patrol rules. Enginseer's enhancement and strategem only benefit joined units, but he can only join Rangers, but if you join to the Ranger they lose Scout and Enginseer cant effectively use Omnissiahs Blessing. Also already on the low end of points value in the box, cant even let us take the full load out of heavy weapons? Smh

[@Techpriest]

It's a rough life being a Mechanicus player sometimes.