If you play or are thinking about playing Mechanicum (or even allying with them) in Horus Heresy 30k, you don’t want to miss this!
The Castellax Battle Automata is a terrifying meld of machine and the barest essence of life. A wet-worked neural system grown from human progenitor cells fused into a body of metallic might and controlled by phased impulses in its cybernetica cortex. These beings are the transcended form of the Men of Iron, subservient to their cortex controllers, with no self awareness or desire; killing machines that will not rise up. Or so at least the High Priests of Mars believe…
Unit Stats
The Castellax is a monstrous creature that can be taken in units of 1-5 and with a stat line to match as you an see below!
WS BS S T W I A LD Sv
3 4 6 7 4 3 2 7 3+
With a BS of 4 relative to a WS of 3 this already indicates that this is not a front line monster designed for melee. The 3+ is something of a downer, but remember that S4 will be hurting this on a 6 and it will be impervious to S3 firepower! A meltagun will be hurting this monster on a 3+ which should indicate its resilience, coupled with 4 wounds AND any cover you can provide, this will be a tough nut to crack. Additionally it also comes with Atomantic Shielding granting a 5++ versus ranged attacks and a 6++ against attacks in close combat!
Poisoned fire and fleshbane will be ignoring its high toughness, BUT it has the Cybernetica Resilience special rule which forces successful poisoned or fleshbane wounds to be re-rolled. This is nice against fleshbane but HUGE against poisoned weapons with 4+ being the most common form of poison, so reducing those wound by half again on average! Though not designed for melee, the Castellax does have the Rage special rule to give it a little edge when going it alone, but unless your hand has been forced, keep this guy back for shooting purposed!
Additionally the Castellax has two other special rules Reactor Blast and Support Unit. The former rule causes the Castellax to explode on a D6 roll of a 6 after it loses its final wound, which can be handy if in combat all alone! The latter rule means that though these beasts occupy the troop slot you cannot use them to fill compulsory slots or claim objectives (unless part of a Legio Cybernetica Cohort as discussed here).
The most important rule regarding the Castellax as well as ANY other Battle-Automata is its Cybernetica Cortex. The cybernetica cortex has lots of benefits, which includes making them Fearless and allowing an cortex controller toting HQ to buff the Automata using Cybertheurgy. Cybertheurgy is akin to Orders in the Astra Militarum of 40k, but will be covered in a HQ post in the near future. The cybernetica Cortex also allows all Automata to fire up to 3 weapons in the shooting phase.
However not all is happiness in the brain shell of the Automata, if you are out of Cortex controller range (i.e. a HQ for most intents and purposes) which is a 12″ bubble then they revert to programmed behaviour which prevents running and sweeping advances. Additionally if the Automata is within 12″ of the enemy, it must move, shoot and attempt to charge the closest enemy unit. And finally, models with a cybernetica cortex can NEVER score an objective, BUT they can act as a denial unit to prevent the enemy from scoring it.
Overall – the Castellax has a beefy resilient stat line, but you still want to use her carefully as AP3 high strength weapons will still ruin your day despite an invulnerable. Keep them in cover and and out of close combat!
Equipment
Boy do you get a lot for your money! The Castellax comes stock with 5 weapons!! Yes 5!! This includes 3 x ranged weapons and 2 x close combat weapons. What these are and what they do are discussed below along with any upgrade weapons you can take.
Shoulder mounted weapons
Mauler Pattern Bolt Cannon – S6 AP3 Heavy 3 pinning 24 inch range bastard
This will ruin your regular tactical marines day quite handily… Remember monstrous creature so no need to worry about the heavy aspect! This is a marine killer in the same way that its upgrade can be a tank killer…
Darkfire Cannon – S7 AP2 Heavy 2 Lance Blind Gets hot 60 inch range
OK so this is the upgrade you take for busting light tanks with ease and medium to heavy tanks on a 5-6. Strength 8 would make this an absolute steal, the strength 7 limits its tank busting capabilities but it will still munch through 2+ save troops at range.
Arm mounted weapons
The arms mounted weapons can either be bolters or be swapped out for regular flamers at 5 points a pop. You can swap one of these out for a flamer and leave one as a bolter. I actually think this is a good option with the mauler bolt cannon as you can maintain some ranged fire power with the bolter but have a wall of flame defence against charging units.
With the Darkfire cannon I would be tempted to go with two flamers to further dissuade close enemies. You aren’t going to be damaging anything with the bolter anyway if you are firing at tanks so you might as well have some ignores cover duality against deep striking units clustered up.
You can also take a multi melta as an upgrade, though I would prefer to keep these as close up marine killers or long distance tank /2+ save busters.
Close Combat Weapons
Stock weapon – Shock Chargers – these add concussive to the close combat attacks of the castellax with no further profile. As you are a monstrous creature you still have smash attacks so go with them! These don’t count as two weapons for the purpose of attack number.
Power Blades – S-User, AP2 – rending and paired weapons (grants +1 attacks like dual specialist weapons)
Siege Wreckers – S10 AP2, Concussive, wrecker and specialist weapon
These both have utility, but with castellax I would stick purely with shooting. You have a concussive smash attack anyway and you are only fighting at WS3… If you want close combat units their are much better options than Castellax to choose from.
Other Upgrades
Searchlight and Frag grenades are as per usual, but you also have the option for an Infravisor that grant night vision but you test for blind on initiative 1. Finally you can have an Enhanced Targeting System. THIS IS AWESOME! You add +1 to your BS and -1 to the cover save of the unit you are shooting at! For the price (15) it is an absolute must take. Must take I repeat.
Utilisation
These are your tough survivable fire power bases. The Mauler Bolt Cannon has a short range so you have to keep your Castellax further up the line towards the enemy and focus them on 3+ save blobs, I think you have to have these in at least squads of 2 and you have to take enhanced targeting array to make sure that you hit those buggers and deny as much of their cover save as you can. You are going to be removing their armour save so cutting that cover save will really help take them down.
Similarly with Dark Fire Cannons I would keep them in at least squads of 2 and focus fire them on 2+ save squads or light to medium tanks again with your enhanced targeting arrays.
In terms of other upgrades I would take flamers as you feel like and skimp on all other upgrades, these are not close combat units and I wouldn’t ever bother trying to take them as such.
