Listen here hombre, you best be keepin’ to your business. We got us a mean sort out there on the battlefield. I’m talkin’ the rough ‘n tumble type. The kind you cross but once before they’re crossing sticks six feet above your coffin. You don’t want no part of this fight. Especially when they’re fighting with Strength 12, AP-2, flat 3 damage, twin-linked Kastelan fists, partner.
Now that I’ve properly buried the lead, let’s dig it up and unearth this treasure of an army that won Best Theme at Games Workshop’s 2024 US Open Tacoma. I’m talking about the rootin’ tootin’, Robot shootin’ Adeptus Mechanicus from Elizadanger, who was gracious enough to put up with my nonsense and sit down to talk about the old west, the far future, and all things yee-haw.
Pendulin: I can think of no army better suited than the Adeptus Mechanicus to roll up to the battlefield with ancient weapons of a long-forgotten past. But what was your inspiration for this combination of theme and faction?
Elizadanger: It’s really hard to pin it down to a singular thing that inspired the entire army. I think the biggest thing was just where I live in Alberta, Canada and growing up with stampedes and rodeos being the big thing to go to. I also need to give a huge shout out to Kitto Paints. He didn’t know it but his adorable art and Skitarii heads made this entire thing possible. Then we’ll give a little bit of credit to Toy Story. I grew up watching that and Woody was my absolute favourite character so obviously I had to make a big silly army with robots where “Someone’s poisoned the water hole!!”.
I think lastly a big inspiration for me was fun. Ad Mech was the first army I started when returning to the hobby. I took a break in early 7th edition due to a mixture of rules and life situations, but I just loved the idea of robots and “War Crimes: The Faction” which gives me effective creative freedom to do whatever I want. I really didn’t love their rules in 9th edition which sadly made me shelf them for roughly 3 years. In 10th edition, even though the rules weren’t strong, let me play the army and have fun instead of them feeling like homework, which just made me so happy.
Having not painted or touched this army in 3 or so years I had naturally evolved and improved as a painter so I took the logical step. I decided to do the absolutely monumental task of stripping the army and repainting the entire thing in August of 2023. For the past year I have been painting like a madwoman between these models and my space marines.
Pendulin: I’m lucky to tackle a single box of minis in a month, let alone an entire army. That’s takes a incredibly level of dedication, especially for an army this thematic. But what’s the next step? Are you planning to expand this army, or are you instead looking at other factions in the 41st millennium for your next themed army?
Elizadanger: My goal will likely continue to expand my Ad Mech. I still have half an army to strip and repaint things. I’d really like to add my own custom inquisitor based off my cosplay at the Play on Tabletop Narrative this year: A Catachan woman complete with banner complete with banner. Then if time and money permits I want to make an absolutely amazing display board including a saloon and rodeo for my raiders! I am someone who commits to too many goals at a time, so I likely will also try to finish my Soul Drinkers Chapter Master Sarpedon who is a wonderful 8 legged conversion I’m slowly working on but am continually intimidated by.
Pendulin: I’d be intimidated too. This crew seems like the kind you’d whisper about in stories o’er the campfire. And speaking of, were there any story-worthy moments at the US Open Tacoma where the stars aligned with the mission, your opponent, that one fateful dice roll – everything lining up to tell a story that perfectly echoed your army’s theme?
Elizadanger: I think the best moment was really encapsulated just in the entirety of my last game of the weekend. Solomon was my opponent. He was just an absolutely amazing opponent, always smiling. He was new to the hobby, telling me he started in January. Making sure new players have awesome memories is one of my favourite things I can do. We had some great amazing back and forth. The overwatch and wrath of my Buffy bots absolutely burned some gants. If I remember correctly, the game came down to a great duel between my last 1-2 bots and Old One Eye dueling in the center where even my Onager charged with his giant laser ending that ole guy for good the next turn.
How happy he was seeing the little robot faces and that he got fun posters after just making my entire weekend and I honestly didn’t care about scores or prizes or anything. At that point I’d come to a different country and get to show everyone this dumb little army I made and it made people laugh and smile. That just made my entire year so thank you everyone who stopped by my table throughout the weekend and Solomon for an amazing last game you are the reason I’m in this hobby.
Pendulin: Everyone has their own reason to be in this hobby. And in this humble interviewer’s opinion, yours is objectively correct. To me, the game is an incidental thing in the background while I’m hanging out with cool folks for a couple hours. If I wanted hours of pushing faceless numbers around on a spreadsheet to minmax my results, I’d do my taxes.
But in the interest of those who are concerned with things like “the actual game”, I can’t help but notice that your army at the US Open Tacoma had a lot of Kastelan Robots. Some may even say an entirely appropriate and normal amount of Kastelan Robots. As a Kastelan Robot-haver myself, I definitely approve. But those uneducated in the ways of Beep Boop may be wondering how well the army fared, mechanically speaking. You’ve got a lot of points tied up in vehicles with only a 6″ move characteristic. How did that work out?
Elizadanger: The robot stat lines are incredibly deceiving. They look incredibly lackluster at a glance with 6” moves and WS/BS 4+ but in combination with the Cohort Cybernetica detachment they become absolute nightmares. All strats in the detachment are only 1CP with notable ones increasing their move by 3” while giving them +1 to advance and charge, the ability to get into both of the army doctrinas (allowing my shooting bots to have both 24 S12 AP-3 D3 melee punches and put out 40 S6 AP-2 D1/2 ignores cover shots all hitting on 3s). Then of course you have the scariest strat that everyone wishes they had access to: a strat that gives you fall back and shoot along with the ability to just ignore all modifiers… Needless to say when you can ignore any damage reduction or armour of contempt the robots become god killers.
Overall the army I brought wasn’t optimal. It was designed for another event and pivoting out of the absolute wrench Games Workshop threw into my plans by completely redesigning the army 1 month prior to Tacoma, and pivoting out of that with limited time was a challenge. My list ended up a hard stat check that often could wipe an opponent, but overall really suffered on scoring.
I’m still a huge fan of Cohort Cybernetica being a detachment. I find it incredibly rewarding and it favours players that can both predict their opponents and control the flow of the game, as all of its strats and abilities are done in the command phase. The current list I’m testing has a more balanced approach where I’m bouncing between 6-8 robots instead of an entire dozen of them allowing me to focus more on scoring and adapt to the new missions instead of just hammering all my solutions with 12 robotic fists.
Pendulin: I don’t want to meet a problem that survives being hammered by 12 robotic fists. But if you only had to pick one, which of those robots is your favorite?
Elizadanger: My favourite is my OG girl who is the one that sparked the entire scheme and theme of the army… Bethany ಠ_ಠ. She has the expression of being all to done with shit and she just makes me smile.
She was the last surviving robot where I like to assign funny names to my models to make both my opponent and I laugh. Then I started naming each robot with their own little personality. Having Bethany, Stephanie, Tiffany, and Roxanne the OG’s. Buffy, Anya, Cordelia, and Willow as I just love that show with amazing girl power and having an absolute blast (of course they have their own datasmith named Data-Spike). And Finally the ones to represent my boyfriends favourites: Hayden, Jayden, Aiden and Andrew. Named after a fun meme he enjoyed and Andrew tagging along from the love for Buffy.
Andrew “Pendulin” Haywood: I’m partial to Andrew myself, for entirely un-nakesake’d reasons. And I’ve got one final question for you: what was your process for creating these perfectly sized hats for every model in your army? Scaling a 3D model in Blender? Steady hand and sculpting them with green stuff? Trapping the world’s smallest hatter in the world’s smallest hattery?
Elizadanger: Again, I have to give an amazing callout to Kitto Paints who has all of my little cowboy Skitarii heads on his Cults 3D page. Then an enormous shoutout to my amazing local 3D printer guys who took the time out of his day to work with me and scale a random cowboy hat STL to fit my Kastelans and print last minute hats for Cawl and my Onager when I was trying to make a list after the June dataslate.
Pendulin: Fantastic. It goes without saying that I love this army. It really brings together all the things I love about Warhammer 40,000: creative expression, an amazing narrative presence, and of course tiny cowboy hats on tiny robots.
I’d like to thank Elizadanger for putting together an amazing army, and also putting up with my questions. Hats off, pun intended.
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