You know how it is: You wait ages for a new unit in Adeptus Titanicus, then four come scuttling along at once.
Games Workshop kindly provided us with a box each of Stalker Constructs (the little ones) and Serperos ‘Overlord’ Heavy Stalkers (the big ones). Inside those boxes are an Adeptus Titnanicus terminal each for the Errax, Tenebrax and Scintillax, plus two Serperos terminals in their box.
So let’s see how these things will match up against God-Engines.
Table of Contents
Dark Mechanicum Stalkers
If you just play Adeptus Titanicus it’s possible you won’t know what Stalkers are. All the background for them is in the recent Rise of the Dark Mechanicum book for Legions Imperialis. Basically they’re abominable intelligences that Horus unlocked for his allies in the Mechanicum to use, after which they started turning up on battlefields in the Heresy, unleashing scrapcode and causing havoc.
In Adeptus Titanicus, Stalkers are a type of Knight. They go around in banners of 2-6, because you get two of each kind (or four Serperos) in a box.
Construct Shields
Stalkers have different Ion shields to other Knights. They get a save of either 4+ for Errax and Scintillax, 3+ for Serperos and none for Tenebrax, regardless of the banner size or strength of incoming hit. If they fail the save they lose a shield and the hit goes through to roll to damage the Stalker.
Each Stalker has one shield but in a banner they are always merged, meaning they’ll get their save until all the shields are gone.
This means that Stalkers will take damage differently to other Knights. Normal Knights are very resilient to low-strength attacks, which bounce off their Ion Shields and struggle to hurt their armour, but can quickly die to high-strength attacks. Stalkers will have their shields stripped by lots of incoming low-strength shots and their weaker armour will take damage too – perhaps killing them as they don’t have much structure. However, a plasma hit or even something like a titan’s melee attack might bounce right off doing nothing.
Unless you get very lucky with your shield saves, most Titan weapons will be extremely bad news for Stalkers. Note that there’s no minimum Strength required to strip these shields, so a Questoris Knight’s gatling cannon might strip them and even cause a bit of damage.
Errax Stalker Banner
Errax are gribbly melee beasts. You get two for the very low price of 50 points and can add up to four more at 25 points each. They are the cheapest unit in the game at the moment and there are good reasons for this, as we’ll see.
The Errax, Tenebrax and Scintillax have weak armour. 8+ gets a direct hit, 13+ is devastating and 15+ is a crit.
Errax are the fastest Stalkers at 9” but have only two pips on their damage tracks, meaning a devastating hit kills one and a crit kills two. Each has a single construct shield, with a 4+ save. They won’t survive long against titan shooting. They have 3+ WS and 4+ BS, so are best within 2” of their targets.
You have two choices of armament. Lascutters are S5 Fusion with just one attack and 2” range but with the melee rule and +1 to hit, so up to four accurate attacks if you charge far enough. S5 fusion is a weird profile that can spike pretty high but mostly won’t. It’s pretty bad against knights as their ion shields will keep them largely safe.
The 5 point upgrade melta has a little bit more range at 6”, with +1 to hit within 3”, and is a S8 gun, also with fusion. So instead of charging it’s for sneaking inside a target’s shields and firing, which could do good damage.
The Errax only has a 7+ command value, which is a big problem. It’ll tend to want full stride or charge orders to make use of its lascutters, but it will usually fail the roll. As a result, the meltas might well be the best option.
Tenebrax Stalker Banner
The Tenebrax is a walking gun, or actually two guns. It has two S5 shots that get +1 to hit at its long range of 8-30” and two S6 shots with only 16” range but +1 up to 8”. One of its guns always get +1 to hit from its already decent BS of 3+. Its WS is only 4+ so it won’t be happy in melee.
The downside is it’s only got three damage pips and no construct shields, with all its power going to the guns. It’s slow for a knight at 7”, but that’s ok as it’s in no great hurry. Its command value of 6+ is rubbish but that matters less than for the Errax, as it can do its job without orders.
For 80 points for two you get two of these glass cannons on legs, which makes them some of the most expensive stalkers. Up to four more can be added at 40 points each. This is a unit that can do its job without orders, laying down consistent firepower to stop shields, so they could well be worth their cost. A Tenebrax may occasionally get an engine kill by accurately targeting a crippled location, though they’ll need something else to do the structural damage first.
Scintillax Stalker Banner
The Scintillax might be the best of the small Stalkers. You get two for just 60 points and they have 3 pips of damage plus a shield with a 4+ save, making them a fair bit tougher than the Errax or Tenebrax. Unlike the other Stalkers it has a decent command value of 4+, which it shares with other Stalkers within 6” thanks to the Networked Anima rule. Adding extra Scintillax only costs 25 points each, so they’re the only Stalkers where extra models come at a discount.
Scintillax have 3+ BS and 4+ WS. They come with a Lascutter like the Errax’s, for S5 Fusion melee attacks. For 10 points this can be upgraded to either a Storm Laser, with three S4 Rapid shots up to 24” or an Exo-planar Cannon with 2 S6 shots at 16”, with +1 to hit within 8”.
I think it makes sense to take these with Storm Lasers. You’re basically buying a 24” range vulcan mega bolter for 80 points split between your two stalkers, which isn’t bad at all. They don’t need to be given orders but with a 4+ Command they can potentially get First Fire if you like, or perhaps there will be times to do a late-game full stride to achieve an objective of some kind. It’s nothing dramatic but could be useful.
Serperos Stalker Banner
You get two Serperos for 80 points and up to four more for 40 points each. They are armed with Lascutters and either Storm-laser Arrays or Exo-Planar Bombards, which are the same as the Scintillax’s guns except that the Exo-planar Bombard has Bypass, meaning it ignores Void and Ion shields.
That strength of only 6 isn’t amazing so don’t expect to bring down Warlords with it, but it’s a bit of a threat to Knights and lighter Titans, especially if you can flank them or if they’re already damaged. There will be times when you’d prefer to have the Storm-laser, to strip a few shields rather than just plink off a Titan’s armour. I’ve built two of my Serperos with each gun, to see which I prefer in practice.
Serperos are quite a bit tougher than the smaller Stalkers. They still only have three pips of structure but each brings a 3+ Construct shield. It takes 9+ to get a direct hit on them, 13+ for devastating or 16+ for a crit, which is more like existing Knights. Unfortunately they have a rubbish command value of 7+.
They are the only Stalker to have both a gun and a melee weapon, making them more of an all-round threat than the others. It’s a shame about the command value but at least they don’t need orders to function.
Missing Stuff
We aren’t really told how to use these units. They’re Knights, so by the normal rules in the Loyalist and Traitor Legio books you can field two banners of them for every Maniple you take. It’s therefore slightly awkward to get a box with three banners in.
More awkward is the question of Household armies. We haven’t been able to find anything to stop you taking Stalker Banners in Lances along with the other Knight types and we don’t know if you should be able to. It seems like you could have a Lance led by a banner of Cerastus including the High Scion, with a couple of Errax banners attached. They’d then be able to operate off the Scion’s far better command value, if they were all doing the same thing. Or maybe you could have an Acastus lead a couple of banners of Tenebrax to reliably pass first fire orders. That doesn’t seem right at all. Stalkers can’t have High Scions of their own at least, as they don’t have Scions to begin with.
There also doesn’t seem to be anything making these Traitor-only units, which is obviously a mistake. They’re definitely not on the side of the Emperor. They aren’t actually corrupted though, so whatever the long-awaited corrupted Knights are, they are not this.
Hopefully we’ll get a bit more guidance on how this all works. It only needs a small clarification I think. You probably ought to be able to bring more than two banners per Maniple but not use them in a household, and they clearly need to be Traitor-only.
Conclusion
It’s nice to have some new options for Titanicus, and something that feels genuinely different. These are not just another type of Knight to always put on charge orders. They’re probably more useful for shooting.
Simply having a unit that costs as little as 50 points can be very useful. They can screen against charges, delay activating your big toys and score objectives, for a fraction of the cost of the cheapest titan.
Stalkers have a pretty big footprint on the board, with 50mm or 64mm round bases. This helps with screening but don’t let them get in the way of your own titans.
If you also play Legions Imperialis you might want your Stalkers to be usable in both. It’s therefore a little awkward that they have fewer weapon options in AT than they do in LI, potentially ruling out some options. Personally I’ve gone ahead and built a couple of my Serperos with Irradiation Engines underneath, despite them not being allowed in AT. Nobody will care.
I’d recommend starting out with a box of Serperos at first. These seem like the easiest option to use and will be the most useful in Titanicus, most of the time I think. You then have the option of two banners of two or trying out a banner of four. With the smaller Stalkers you’d need multiple boxes to have big banners, and they might be a bit weaker than Serperos anyway. It might be fun to try a big banner of Serperos with a couple of Scintillax nearby, giving them a better Command value.
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