Editing Warhammer 40,000/7th Edition Tactics/Cult Mechanicus (section)

===Heavy Support===
*'''Kastelan Robot Maniple''': Sweet Omnissiah! A squad of monstrous creatures that come with a Tech-Priest Datasmith. Massively expensive if you want to go for a full squad of six. Each robot has Toughness 7 and three wounds, as well as a pair of power fists and a torrent flamer. You can replace these for heavy phosphor blasters (twin linked if you swap the fists), which do the Luminagen thing of reducing cover and assisting with charge distances. You probably want to swap the fists, since they have S6 AP2 smash as monstrous creatures anyway, and will hit before anybody else's Power Fists. The Datasmith boosts the squad with battle protocols, which give the robots the Feel No Pain rule by default, but can be swapped to either let them fire twice with their shoulder guns if they don't move or double attacks if they don't shoot at all. Remember, though: if you lose the datasmith, you can't change the protocols, meaning they could be stuck in place or without guns for the rest of the game.
**Remember that this is a unit of Monstrous Creatures so no transports or Independent Characters for you (outside of the TPD joining in one formation, anyway)
**The datasmiths should not be forgotten, they've got artificer armour, refractor fields, FnP and a near-MEQ (T4, praise the Machine God) profile making them quite resilient on their own, as well packing an Armourbane S6 AP2 pistol, a dataspike and a power fist for popping tanks or high value troopers. You can buy two more of them if you were worried about the squad ever being left uncommanded and unable to change battle protocols. However, keep in mind that shooting attacks are resolved against the toughness of the '''majority''' of models in a unit, so if you have more Datasmiths then Kastelans then the entire squad has to use their wimpy T4 instead of the awesome T7.
**They also have a nasty trick where if they roll a 6 on ''any'' saving throw against a shooting attack, the attack hits the firer instead. It doesn't work against Blasts, Templates, or psychic shooting attacks. Still, that means that the guy trying to shoot you with a lascannon might end up blasting himself right in the face by mistake, thus keeping you safe and getting rid of a potential threat at the same time. I mean I have seen a deathmark headshot itself so it's pretty amusing for an army of unfeeling robots.
**Note that the activation for the protocols is extremely weird. You choose to switch them at the end of your turn, but the changes only take effect from the start of your next turn.
**Never actually rely on your protocols with these guys. To say they aren't worth it is an understatement. They are, however, excellent for playing mind games with your opponent. Say you activate the shooting protocol. Your opponent now has one turn to decide whether to try to destroy them (while they still have Feel No Pain) or to tie up a unit he otherwise wouldn't have bothered to tie up in melee, which would keep the unit save that he might otherwise have charged.
**With clever loadout and usage, this unit is pure bullshit. For 290 points you have a unit consisting of datasmith and six T7 wounds with 3+, (5++ against shooting) and FNP if you so desire (to say nothing of bullet-deflecting) that are pretty fucking tough to kill. Whole gunlines ill-equipped for massed high-toughness cannot give them more than 1 or 2 wounds. Tau in particular have literally no answer besides horde of Kroot who wound on 4+ and can snipe the little guy to prevent Protocol changes. As for broadsides, hammerheads and riptides? In a standoff (point for point) there is same chance that you deal a wound to these robots as you do to yourself WITH YOUR OWN WEAPON. The only answer I see is to just tarpit them with truly stupid amount of bodies -- even SS/TH Termies can struggle to kill them. Also anything with force, but you have to wound T7 first... Of course you cannot ignore them as for few pennies they can put out 12 S6 AP3 shots of which 6 are twin-linked. Also 2 attacks per robot at S6 AP2 that strike at I2, so before any heavy melee weapon. Have fun with that.
**Giving the Datasmith the Robe of the Technomartyr makes these robots pretty decent as an ad hoc anti-air unit, especially against flying monstrous creatures and lighter aircraft.
**Weaknesses to watch out for:
***'''Cost:''' These fuckers cost a small goddamn mountain of points, and despite their toughness have a very limited pool of wounds. Every attack that gets through hits these guys HARD, and you had best believe they'll be a bullet magnet right from the start. While you certainly can use that to your advantage, drawing fire from more fragile units, it's very difficult to justify using them as a [[Distraction Carnifex]] given their obscene price. The Datasmith, who is basically a MEQ with a 2+ and a meltagun, is 50 points all by himself. They cannot just charge in and start soaking hits, because they are by no means bullet-sponges.
***'''Cost Again:''' Only available two at a time with a Datasmith for $70!
***'''Poison:''' The bane of anything with a toughness value that is not gargantuan. Dark Eldar can have some pretty nasty tricks and with their transports they can ignore any shots bounced back by the robots' reflective shield. 
***'''Instant Death/Force:''' All it takes is one successful wound to drop a robot. The invulnerable save is only useful against shooting and feel no pain is negated by instant death. Combine psychic shenanigans, toughness 7 will not save robots long from death.
***'''Weight of Attacks:''' While they are relatively hard to kill in terms of fleshy things, they'll still go down if hit enough. Their weapon skill is an OK 3 and can be mitigated by changing doctrines and popping canticles but those are more circumstantial than standard. Granted, with or without cognis, the robots have a pretty mean overwatch, tarpitting is a very real and effective threat. Chances are that the robots will die before the tarpit does.