TLDR: jail is super easy to implement, shooting not fun statistically but feels very lethal when it goes through, battle line are juicy for new objective format. Sicarians die like flies to Ap 1 weapons now no longer an optimal elite inf killing weapon target for our ops

Jail is fucking nuts 2” engagements allow to lock so much of the board up both in 2cp heroic + long charges even more easy

Shooting is pretty bad now that covet is -bs if you don’t have massive buffs/rerolls/ high ballistic skill however it does feel way more lethal if you do manage to score hits due to the removal of blanking an Ap pip, conqueror feels nasty just picking up things with the extra Ap even with the terrible ballistic skills

New terrain/objectives is very nice especially for our Vic’s, very hard to almost impossible to be alpha striked, very easy to immediately start scoring primary and beginning the scoring very easy to stage

Assuming sticky works the same way rangers and other sticky infantry are insanely good plenty of ways to toe on sticky and back to being obscured including T1 scouting due to objectives being very close to deployment

Vanguard work really nicely with new hidden mechanic they have to walk into range to shoot us very nice bait piece to smack with fast infantry in response

Chickens feel great (no shit they def gonna fuck us with this one)

Robots make nice blockers (pls GW drop their points I beg)

Fly is gonna be pretty important going into next edition just to beat the massive increase in board control but unless they get tougher our batty boys struggle to not get picked up by the wind due to their large size and the smallness of mid board LOS blocking terrain - they basically need to be in the op deployment zone or they are dead - torrent is nice now tho but horde clearing is not something we struggle with

Sicarians do feel a lil more crumpable but it’s pretty marginable just a realignment of efficient profiles

Predictions for next edition (comeback to laugh):
Hounds jail list becomes highly playable

Infiltrators > Rusty’s (battle shock changes feel pretty nice but def not oppressive can see skew battle shock lists being a problem tho - hopefully this means rad zone is one DP and even more usable)

Beamer onager is juicy af with extra Ap into jail lists [anti meta prediction]

More of the same really we just became more efficient at scoring (yaya)

Been into warhammer purely through tts for a little while now and want to start actually building an army, but have zero experience with painting or assembling minis. I'm aware we are the most expensive army and have a generally harder to paint range, but I have my heart set on admech at this point. My first thought was a set of skitarii rangers, would there be a better place to start for a newcomer to the hobby side?

Edit: It seems I was correct in having skitarii, kastelans, and a dunecrawler as my top three (very conveniant because they're the 3 I want the most anyway heh). I'll probably do skitarii first and pick up a dunecrawler and/or an adequate number of kastelans some time after that. Thank you all for the advice!

Here's some of mine:

PROCESSION OF THE MACHINE GOD

Friendly TECH-PRIEST models are treated as having the BATTLELINE keyword for the purposes of the abilities of friendly units.

It could have stratagems and enhancements focused around tech priests that make them the core of the army instead of skitarii.

RAPID AQUISITION CONCLAVE

Whenever a friendly KATAPHRON or SICARIAN unit destroys an enemy unit, it may make a surge move.

Focused around speed. Maybe an enhancement that lets marshalls lead sicarians.

ENHANCED AUGMENTATION CORPS

Not sure about the rule but i like the idea of units getting access to untested archaeotech that is crazy powerful but has hazardous.

Do they have satellites and are they like servo akulss or servitors trapped in low orbit?