Yeah, meshing the fire support role with the mole mortars (thereby giving mole mortars ff3+) does seem to have created a wacky awesome unit. The formation looks better than basic skitarii formations in most regards, yet also cheaper.

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60cm means they can garrison and sustain fire into an enemy's deployment zone, and ff3+ means you can garrison confidently. Definitely worth taking, but likely not with plasma.

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I am a bit curious about them myself. Stat wise you have 2x more shots and one less stand from the original Mole Mortar formation. You get FF 3+ but you are paying almost 100 points more and the mortars are suppressed faster than with them being separate stands. I'm wondering if people just didn't think about the mortars previously? The capability to garrison and sustain like that should have made them a more common choice, I'd think, when you consider they were 150 points for 6. Both the rapiers and the mortars SHOULD have been decently cheap and useful options but until we started messing with the layout and put them with sagitarii I can't recall much discussion.

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-Vaaish

Mortars weren't tried much before but were likely great, If with the weakness of worse ff. Still disagree with rolling them into secutors. Rapiers too.

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I rather liked them as upgrades to Skitarii (4 Mole Mortars @100 pts). They provided some much needed long range shooting, and additional numbers for combat res. Of course, that was back in 3.18, when I was just starting building the AdMech list, so I don't have actual playtest experience with that option.

Would it be fruitful to consider something that would motivate a garrison force to sit and marshal, encouraging a more static playstyle? Eg,





A formation of Skitarii with Field Artillery (and possibly a Secutor or two to help shed blastmarkers) would be a useful defensive formation - the quality of its shooting is good enough to let the formation Marshal and still do something useful, and the range is good enough that they don't need to move much, once in a good position.

200pt upgrades will never get taken unless they add something amazing - can't think of anything that price that sees regular tournament use.

100pt upgrades won't get taken unless a list has a good amount of activations or they offer something amazing (like skyrays) - the current round of changes has driven most of the smaller activations out of the list.

Note that Griffons don't get taken in steel legion army lists, not because they're a crap unit per se but because their role (indirect fire) meshes terribly with the role of any formations they can be attached to - this is relevant for mole mortar upgrades. You end up with an expensive formation that wants to do two different things, and does neither particularly well.

Upgrades are always going to be comparatively rarely selected choices unless they're AA or a character, in general. Not less common, but rare, in competitive lists at least - and I'm sorry to be specific but it seems from S2M's last "tournament" list that he's not got a good idea of what makes a powerful competitive list just yet. He will do in time, I'm sure.

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If you want to base your Rapiers on the FW stats so call it Rapier Laser Destroyer (Graia pattern).There you will have your 30cm AT3+

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Following further discussions we will be leaving the stats on the rapier as they are in this version as a test to work out a solid rapier stat line.



We'll see what happens with this, but if the combined option still doesn't make them something useful then we've tried about every option for them and I'd have no issue with moving them to their own formation again. I still like the idea of rapiers in with the sagitarii, especially with the adjusted stat line. It feels like a good fit to boost the formation size and make a more resilient garrison and fits with the idea of the sagitarii having heavy weapons.

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-Vaaish

Yes but you end up with a very expensive and slow formation - not gonna get taken by people who like to win games. This is very easy to spot right now.
Rapiers rarely get taken in the lists they already appear in for the same reason.

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I think you mean people who WAAC probably won't take them. I'm not saying sagitarii are ready to go yet, but not every unit in a list has to be for every tournament army. Some people play the game to have fun too you know. I understand you are big on the one forced playstyle per list concept, but please remember that people didn't take rapiers when they were a 150 point support detachment and you can't really get much cheaper than 25 points a unit. Because of that I fail to see how it affects their desirability to include them as an option to sagitarii; it's not like you pay for them in the base cost or are forced to include them. They are an option for people who want to make the formation more resilient or wish to have them operate more defensively.

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-Vaaish

Just saying, again, I would happily take Mole Mortars and Rapiers at 150 for a separate formation, but will absolutely never take them as an upgrade to the Sagitarii

Signal, history shows you would be one of the only people to do so.

I am curious as to why you would take rapiers as a 150 point 6 unit strong formation with a 10cm movement speed, 30cm weapons, no armor save, and no way to transport them rather than boost the size of a Sagitarii formation and make a formidable garrison unit. Simply to boost activations cheaply and if so, why not crusaders instead?

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-Vaaish

No I don't mean people who WAAC. I mean competent players who want to win their games.

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With your new 30cm range on Rapiers they're probably not worth taking as an independent formation unless you dropped the price. The ones with the original GW stats were likely pretty good at 150pts though; The difference between 30cm and 45cm range on a slow infantry unit that lacks armour is pretty dramatic.

The mole mortars with the stats you inherited were likely great as independent formations.

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Thanks. Seeing you probably statted those and have a better understanding of what the formations were capable of doing, and yet very few, if any, people actually took them, I'm a bit interested in the sigils reasons since he's coming in from outside on this.

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-Vaaish