Cohort Cybernetica + Lords of the Forge: A 3-DP AdMech Combo

At a 2,000-point Strike Force game you have 3 DP. Cohort Cybernetica costs 2 DP and Lords of the Forge costs 1 DP, using exactly 3 DP.

The legality check is the Unique Tag rule: no two detachments may share a tag. Adeptus Mechanicus have exactly one tag, DATA-PSALM, and it is carried only by Data-Psalm Conclave and Luminen Auto-choir. Neither detachment in this pairing carries a tag at all, so the combination is legal.

This is a 2,000-point combo. At 1,000 points you only have 2 DP, which Cohort Cybernetica uses on its own.

Cohort Cybernetica has an unusual structural quirk. All six of its stratagems trigger in your Command phase. Motive Imperative, Auto-divinatory Targeting, Machine Spirit Resurgent, Machine Superiority, Transcendent Cogitation and Benevolence of the Omnissiah are all Command-phase spends.

That has two consequences. You must commit your command points before you have rolled a single dice, choosing buffs on prediction rather than information. And once the Command phase ends, a mono-Cybernetica list has no reactive spends at all for the rest of the turn: nothing to answer a devastating volley, nothing to change a fight.

Lords of the Forge is the fix, for one point. Its three stratagems live in your Movement phase (Overloaded Safeguards), your Shooting phase (Holy Avarice) and your opponent's Shooting or Fight phase (Scriptural Prognosis). Between them they cover almost every window Cybernetica leaves empty, and Scriptural Prognosis in particular gives you the reactive defensive spend the core cannot provide.

Under 11th edition's army-building rules, each detachment grants an army-wide rule, and your army can use both detachments' stratagems plus a shared enhancement pool. So the same models benefit twice:

• Cyber-Psalm Programming gives your Kastelan Robots and Cybernetica Datasmith +2\" Move and +1 Objective Control, turning the Robot brick into something that reaches the midfield and then refuses to be shifted off it.
• War-Form Mantles gives every Tech-Priest in the army a 4+ invulnerable save and Feel No Pain 5+ — which includes the Cybernetica Datasmith leading those Robots, and the Tech-Priest carrying Necromechanic that keeps them alive.

The enhancement pool matters here too. Vingh's Wafers of Dynamism, from Lords of the Forge, is a Cybernetica Datasmith enhancement that gives its attached unit Mobile for the whole battle. It is written for exactly the unit Cohort Cybernetica is built around, which is not a coincidence: the two detachments were designed to be able to meet.

Cohort Cybernetica's weakness is timing and character durability. Its buffs are strong but front-loaded into one phase, and nothing in it protects the Tech-Priests whose enhancements hold the list together. Necromechanic, Lord of Machines, Emotionless Clarity and Arch-negator are all Tech-Priest only, and a Tech-Priest with no invulnerable save is an easy answer for any opponent with a sniper or a stray melta shot.

Lords of the Forge fixes exactly that for 1 DP: the same Tech-Priests become 4+ invulnerable, Feel No Pain 5+ models, and Scriptural Prognosis adds -1 Armour Penetration on top when they are holding an objective.

Conversely, Lords of the Forge on its own is not an army. It has one rule, three stratagems and two enhancements, and it needs a core to attach to. Cohort Cybernetica gives it a durable, objective-holding body of Robots and vehicles to sit behind, and gives Vingh's Wafers of Dynamism a Kastelan unit worth putting it on.

Run Cohort Cybernetica + Lords of the Forge when your collection has a Kastelan Robot brick and a couple of vehicles, and you want a durable, midfield-controlling list that grinds objectives rather than alpha-striking.

Alternatives for the 1-DP slot on a Cybernetica core:

• Cohort Cybernetica + Cohort Acquisitus — trades character durability for recon and detection, if your local meta is full of hidden secondary-scoring units.

Or keep Lords and change the core:

• Rad-Zone Corps + Lords of the Forge — a grinding attrition list instead of a robot brick.
• Explorator Maniple + Lords of the Forge — objective-anchored, and every Explorator enhancement is Tech-Priest only, so Lords protects all of them.

And remember the alternative shape entirely: a 3-DP detachment (Haloscreed Battle Clade or Eradication Cohort) uses the whole budget and takes no support at all. That is the trade this combo is competing against.