3.5/5 stars, rounded up. Superb body guards for Perturabo after he found his sons wanting.
Background.
Perturabo found that his Iron Warriors bodyguard was, shall we say, lacking after the Battle of Phall. Released from his oath to the Emperor, he designed and released his own automata to replace those body guards. A product of his genuine genius applied to war, these machines became known as the Iron Circle and would see use as body guards and front line troops accompanying the Primarch and other Praetors of the legion into battle.
Strengths.
The stat line is interesting with a base of T=7 and W=4. Although their save is 2+/5++, they will suffer at the hands of lots of high strength ranged attacks coming their way eventually. So make the most of them whilst they last.
They are armed with twin shrapnel cannons which are great (don't forget the pinning aspect here - it works so well), graviton crushers (very strong and shock and armour bane are just icing on the cake), and the Karceri battle shield which halves the damage of incoming unsaved wounds. Then there is the Shield of the Iron Tyrant special rule which prevents their charge from suffering precision hits at range. This is very nice indeed.
Weaknesses.
Only Paragons or Command sub types can be accompanied by these robots, but you didn't expect anything less. They are really strong in conjunction with Perturabo and you need to simply choose your targets and move up to tackle them. The only problem really is with challenges since they won't be taking part. Unless you make Perturabo a coward which given his strong close combat finesse is not something you really want to do. They can handle themselves in a fair fight though.
Builds.
The only real build option here is how many Iron Circle automata you want to include in a unit. You can have up to 6 of them in a single maniple. One is probably going to be very nice on its own, if only for ablative wounds and also ideal for small points value games to provide a decent challenge to an opponent. Two or sometimes three is about right for most other situations and you do get a points cost discount for additional ones over the first which makes my argument for 2 or 3 being the correct value stronger - at least in my opinion.
More than that is overkill, or you are playing a large points value game (and if you are in a large points value game, just take 6 to accompany Perturabo and be done with it - if money is no object to your hobby!).
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