Ok, washes are on the metals and the waiting game starts so time to dig into this
Duncan,
I'm excited to see what's in store from FW myself and I'll definitely be reviewing the new new models and fluff when I get a chance to see where they might fit in the skitarii lists. Not all of the new stuff will make it simply because we want the list to contain useful formations of iconic units rather than just chucking the whole cannon in the mix. It will help keep the list focused and recognizable.
We do have some difficulty in doing this because we need the list to be more than just red IG so we've experimented with some stuff. Lack of aircraft is one one them and I'd still like the list to function with little aircraft support. We also dropped aircraft to keep the list to adMech, not admech and IN because we know they do operate independently. Now, we could easily just add the Thunderbolt as an "adMech" version but that's a less than cosmetic change. It has no affect of how the list employs aircraft and almost leaves you wondering why no just keep them as IN allies. That's kind of thing I want to avoid.
That said, aircraft have been a fairly popular request and one of the things that seems to pop up in a lot of battle reports. I think the list is possible to use effectively without them, but it does take a bit of getting used to. Now that the Avenger has official support as a unit widely used by the admech, I'm game for adding it in because it gives an aircraft option for players who want them and it does so in a way that is more interesting than just adding a red thunderbolt. Perhaps down the road something even more exotic will appear and we can go with that over the avenger.
As far as the Thallax go, they are a cool unit and they would fill a gap with the slower army. I was very tempted to add them in, but the more I thought about it I feel that the combination of being closely associated with Ordo Reductor and the only real place for them being as support, started to conflict with the Crusader robots. The net gain was a second fast scouting formation that could drop a 45cm AT shot which adMech isn't lacking in access to.
That brings me to the idea of a dedicated non-minorus based transport. This simply won't happen. I really will not make things up for the list. It's been done in the past with Tau and I believe it got shot down and since the minorus presents a pretty good alternative that fits with the cannon that is also an iconic AdMech unit, the focus is to test and balance the minorus and majoris as a modular platform not create new fan made units.
Last, there are no plans to extend the automaton rule. It's specifically to make robots feel more robotic and extending that the the rest of the list, no matter how much augmentation they have, the skitarii just aren't robots. We do that and then suddenly we have to make the robots different again and add more special rules. The automaton rule works well for robots where it was designed to go; lets leave it there.
