Grots vs Talos

I am not a fan of single Talos units, because I feel they really want stratagems to sing (fire and fade, level 3 pfp on turn 2, reroll wounds, etc), which is a bit of a waste on single engines. I think it’s way easier to get your big unit of Grots (also for stratagem efficiency), and take two small units of Mandrakes who don’t need any kind of support.

It depends on the size of the game, but anything that is 1850-2000 points would mean you should have more than 1 Talos.

You can have 3 Talos with Talos Gauntet, Macro Scalpel, and Haywire blasters comes to 330 points. If you give them Prophets of the Flesh, you have 330 points of a unit of 21 wounds with FnP, 4++ invulnerable save that can dish out mortal wounds in the firing phase and can pretty much deal with anything in Close Combat. Yes they do benefit from Urien, Cronus and Archons buffing them, but get those three stuck into a Knight and they will destroy it.

Gauntlet is really expensive and I’m not sure matches scalpel performance. I assume you’re specifically looking at fighting T8 knight armies?

Did some quick calcs for the Gauntlet option, and the best case for it is against a T8 target (say a Knight) with Urien's buff and the +1 to hit from Power from Pain. In that setup they will do 11% more damage than a dual Scalpels option, for 11% extra cost. That is OK if you know you are facing Knights, but less efficient against other targets.

Elfric - you mentioned Archons buffing Talos - the Archon buff only applies to Kabal units, so that wont affect a unit of Talos.