panascope

I built 15 when the Caedere weapons were super cheap because they seemed neat and I wanted to build something weird, then they revised the edition and made the Caedere weapons 15 points a shot. Wayyyyy too much for a WS4 W1 model. Now I just run them as Rampagers.

Indomitus Terminators and Box Dreads are good though, what’s the problem here exactly?

Can’t you just give Angron the Berserker rule for +20 points? He falls under the guidelines for who can have it. I haven’t had a chance to play with him yet but I think he’s best paired up with the Red Butchers because they both help the other do exactly what they need. Has anybody given any thought to the new version of Surlak? I’m thinking about an army list that goes hard on the Inductii gaining S6 by tossing in a pair of Moritats (with Meteor Hammers, of course) so that both of my big Despoiler blobs are Instant Death against most marines (Sons of Horus notwithstanding). Because the Inductii now gain Bitter Duty you can keep the Moritats right in there with them, guaranteeing their rad grenades. You could sorta scale it with the Red Hand Destroyers, although they are so spendy I’m not sure they’re worth it. Sure you can’t score but who even cares? Scoring’s for wimps anyway.

I like the angle the World Eaters have now on a multi-front assault army. You can have a couple Spartans ready to dump out a Champion and 40 Despoilers. Deep Strike a squad of Red Hands (or Rampagers) with a Butcher’s Claws Jump Pack Praetor to keep your ID attacks, a Warmonger to bring in some Red Butchers, and some Outflanking Javelins to put pressure on the back. It seems pretty easy now to totally surround your opponent and drown them in attacks.

Very sad to see the sharp and unneeded nerf on our Destroyers. A max size squad with Meteor Hammers jumped in cost by nearly 200 points. Anyway the Warmonger is a prime delivery system for sure. With how strong Deep Strike is now this is probably going to be my preferred method to bust out my Red Butchers.

When the Red Hand Destroyers return to Heresy, the Meteor Hammers will have a wonderful niche with them, as they’ll provide Instant Death attacks at I5 against marines for your army. A full squad assaulting can expect around 60 attacks on the charge, and even against WS5 will pile on the ID wounds.

I like the axes as an all rounder type weapon, in the context of popping Rage to get A5 on the charge. I took a couple Dual Lightning Claw guys because getting A6/7 on the charge seemed good enough to bank on. The Power Fist remains the gold standard though, especially on Justaerin where you’re likely to weather your opponents’ attacks on the road to the initiative 1 step.

I played two 2k games last night with the following list, losing the first and winning the second: Delegatus with Carsoran Axe Master of Signals 2x 15 Tac Marines with Bayonets, Artificer Armor and Power Fist on the Sergeants 10x Vets with Carsoran Axes, PFist/Artificer on the Sergeant. They were in a Drop Pod with the Delegatus and an Apothecary 7x Justaerin Terminators with a mix of weapons, including 2x Dual Lightning Claws Contemptor with Kheres in a Drop Pod Leviathan with Drill/Grav Flux Bombard in a Drop Pod The first game was a disaster, my Deep Strike came in disordered and I called it after that because my position was untenable. The Vox Disruptor can really hose you, I don’t think I’ll start with him on the table in future games. The second game was much closer, we took it to 6 turns and I won on Attrition, my opponent falling off his objective after some good shooting from my Vets. I’m going to start controversially here: dreadnoughts are far better on paper than they are in the game. It’s easy to outclass them in melee and probably the best thing you can do against an opposing dread is to charge it if you have any sort of competent melee option. In my case, Sevatar ripped off something like 4 wounds from my Leviathan in the first round of combat, and the rest of the tac squad took off 2 more with their krak grenades. A Talent For Murder certainly helped my opponent but I still lost wounds far quicker than I anticipated, even going after Sevatar. A5 is obviously good but it’s not totally crazy to go from 5 Attacks to 3 Hits to 2 Wounds and suddenly your 270 point monster just killed two tac marines in a combat. The Drop Pod Vets weren’t great either, although I sort of anticipated that. They’re a huge threat and my opponent began wiping them off the board with a Missile Launcher Heavy Support Squad the second he was able to. I used the Traitor warlord trait to up my S and T to 5 on the Delegatus to try and stop the ID wounds but I rolled two 1s in a row and forgot the FNP rolls so bad dice got me there. The Justaerin were great, as always. Tons of attacks, extremely resilient, and no characters meant Sevatar’s challenge-based Instant Death rule didn’t get turned on. The Combi-Banestrikes even coughed up a couple kills. Surprisingly the Tac Squads were pretty good, especially for the points. At one point I Intercepted one of my opponent’s Terminator Squads, then hit them with Death Dealer, and then Overwatched them, all with Fury of the Legion. I didn’t wipe the squad or anything but even killing 2 Terminators felt pretty good, and kept them from totally wiping me out in combat. Overall I felt pretty good about the second game. My legion rule was great for the Justaerin, and let them take on even big blobs of infantry and characters that you might not want to at first glance. Black Reaving giving them Deep Strike is fantastic. I don’t think I’ll cut the Leviathan quite yet, but he’s definitely on the chopping block. My hope is that ATfM giving my opponent a bonus to his wound made him look more vulnerable than he really is, but the Leviathan is very expensive despite not having a ton of shots or attacks to show for it. I’d rather have had a second squad of Justaerin.

Berserker Assault is totally great, maybe one of the best Rites around. It does everything you want. Your guys run and charge farther. You’re more resistant to pinning. Rampagers become Troops choices so you can take more Dreadnoughts or Terminators. Predators shift to Fast Attack so you can load up on Spartans while still having a good long-range platform.

Keep in mind Crimson Path only makes them Line, not Troops, and Berserker Assault does the opposite, making them Troops but not giving them Line. Either way you’re going to need a couple squads just for scoring.

Given the premium you pay for the base load out I’d keep them as cheap as possible, and just bank on getting there with 15 Chainaxe guys getting 5 attacks each. WS5 and S5 Shred actually produces pretty good throughput.

They don’t really have a melee boost compared to Vets. Power Weapons being only 5 points means a full squad of Power Weapon Vets only costs 10 points more than a 10-man Reaver Squad with no upgrades. If you’re simply looking for mechanical efficiency I’d call the Chainaxe wielding Reaver Squad a Vet Squad with the Carsoran Power Axes. Reavers’ additional special rules: Counter-Attack and Precision Shots/Strikes really aren’t good enough to build around, although I do sort of like the angle of hitting them with Death Dealers, then getting them with Overwatch, getting lucky and sniping out an Apothecary or similar, and then getting a bonus attack when they charge you. It’s not horrible but I’d prefer to be turning on Rage in support of a squad of Justaerin. Reavers’ utility comes in two parts: their ability to become Line under the Black Reaving Rite of War (which is fantastic and does everything you want unlike Pride of the Legion), and to take 15 models rather than the normal limit of 10. If you’re not building your Reaver squads with these ideas in mind I don’t think they’re going to do very much that a Vet squad wouldn’t do better. It’s a bit of a shame really, we’re fresh into another edition and Reavers are already being outshined by Veterans. I can’t help but think losing the Jump Pack option was an omission because the math doesn’t really work for Reavers without them.

This seems fine, Dreadnoughts are so good this edition they should be able to handle your AT at this points value with this Rite of Wat. I’d suggest considering a squad of Rampagers as a line of expansion for this list. They’re very good in this edition as the Falax Blades give them A5 on the charge and Rending 4+ make them a threat against everything.

The new edition hasn’t dropped and already people call fluff, markings and such a massive waste of space.Oh, how much times have changed. A 500 page book is impractical both from a logistics perspective and a cost perspective. If someone want's the lore of their Legion, they can buy the book it's contained in. You don't see everyone lugging around 5 black books to get use of the one unit contained in each as well as the generic legion units from betrayal. Unit markings contribute zero to how the game is played on the table. I'm all for giving Legions the full treatment. Paying £50 for a book when people will already have that information in all likelihood is an utter waste These are so clearly along the lines of a re-issuing of the red books I don’t get his complaint at all. The black books are cool but super impractical to actually whip out and reference if I want to make an army list.

World Eaters are looking real good in the new edition, here are some initial thoughts. Tac Squads look a lot better than Despoilers. Fury of the Legion isn't as much of a liability now since you don't lose a turn of shooting in the new rules and getting the extra shot at long range is sorta nice too. Spite of the Legion is pretty lame and requires you to buy a bunch of power weapons to be relevant, which I generally don't think is good to do on cheap units. Sniper looking quite strong in the new edition makes your special weapons dudes pretty vulnerable. Going Tactical and buying the chainaxe upgrade is probably the better move mechanically. If you were like me and loaded up on Inductii, the playstyle has changed almost entirely. Before you could totally skip thinking about objectives since none of your stuff scored but now you're incredibly interested in fighting over objectives, because getting a FNP you can stack with an Apothecary is really potent. Your berserkers are surprisingly durable under the right circumstances. Assuming the Rites of War don't change much, Berserker Assault looks far stronger than Crimson Path. A 6+ FNP isn't that good in the first place and the fact that they went out of their way to make sure it doesn't stack with any other FNP rolls you might be getting makes it really uninteresting. Berserker Assault on the other hand buffs everything you want to do with the only drawback being that you have to declare a charge. Interesting units obviously include Contemptors, which have been buffed tremendously, Red Butchers, which have gained a similar immunity to power fist instant death that the Sons of Horus are gaining in 2.0, and Javelins, which have quietly become an excellent World Eaters unit. The Javelin Attack Speeder boasts impressive weaponry, with a multi-melta and the lascannons making you effective against a lot of different units. It also has access to both Deep Strike and Outflank, which are very handy since alternative deployment shenanigans are becoming much more limited. On the charge they'll get 5 attacks with their chainaxes, and with T6 they're tough to move. As Cavalry you can't use melta bombs or krak grenades against them, and dropping an Evade reaction against enemy fire lets them reroll their Shrouded save which makes them pretty durable. A bad combat can be dropped out of using Hit and Run. I plan on painting a few of these for both my World Eaters and Sons of Horus armies.

How many meltabombs are you taking in ZM that this is coming up a lot? A regular meltabomb has like an 80% chance of blowing up a door, lol is that really the huge buff you’re making it out to be? I’m sure you’ll tell me how you’ve been blowing up 8 doors a turn with melta bombs in every ZM game you play now but I’m not buying it.And again, what is a “subtle” rule? What makes Fear subtle? Why is subtle good? These are rules people have been complaining about being irrelevant and boring for years and years now, what makes you right and the hundreds of others wrong?

Of course your approach is very subjective as well, but has essentially boiled down to old rules being “subtle” and “thematic” (the definition of these words still hasn’t been explained) while the new rules are boring and unthematic or whatever. Even as several people are pointing out that a lot of existing rules are pointless or essentially do nothing. Immunity to Fear barely even matters against night lords because Fear is such a bad, low impact rule in the first place. This is why they’ve had to change it completely, because nobody cares about Fear. A rule that does nothing essentially 99% of the time is a bad way mechanically to represent fluff, and should be replaced with something that actually matters. Like how is wrecker coming up in ZM? The doors are AV13, so the krak grenades that are standard on tac marines don’t do anything.

Like what rules are subtle in the current edition? What makes a subtle rule good? A lot of them are just bad or irrelevant, especially the earlier legions. Wrecker on your grenades is meaningless. Immunity to Fear isn’t exciting anybody. Not being able to benefit from an allied warlord trait has never come up.

Are Chaplains and Standards not common? Neither of those is more than 100 points to get on to the table, and the Chaplain was even included in the Calth box, making it one of the most common models around.

3 tests over what, the course of a game? You don’t take repeated morale checks in a phase and in the current rules units tend to just get blown off the board, not chipped away. But this is also right to my point: it’s a boring, unimpactful rule that needed a big change. Saving yourself one morale check a game under ideal circumstances is like the definition of pointless. Fearless is pretty common. You can get it on Chaplains, Command Squads, with Primarchs, with Ironfire specifically as Iron Warriors.

You’re just not liable to fail that many leadership tests over the course of a game from shooting. It seems useful but the reality is that Ld9, 10, and some variety of Fearless are very common, and especially as Iron Warriors. I think I can personally count on two hands the number of shooting-based morale checks I’ve failed or seen failed in a decade of Heresy. I consider the +1BS that Imperial Fists get on bolters to be along this same line. It looks good on paper, but bolt weapons are bad even if you’ve got a lot of them. And to add insult to injury: Sons of Horus got a better version in Death Dealers a couple years later and immediately became one of the best legions in the game. I mention these three legions because they sort of represent the ways in which various rulesets are changing in the new edition. The major update, the light touch, and the simplification. Iron Warriors needed a big change, so they’ve become the ultimate anti-vehicle and fortification legion. Their new rule is strong, interesting, and sure to be relevant in every game. Imperial Fists needed a lighter touch. +1BS with auto weapons is a nice change (especially coupled with the new Autocannon rules) that doesn’t also upend their playstyle. Sons of Horus had a very clunky rule, Merciless Fighters, that had an odd negative synergy with their Justaerin and, even though it was easy to turn on, didn’t usually cause a major change to the outcome of combat (despite all the work you had to do for it). This has been streamlined and strengthened substantially but the new version also doesn’t totally change what you want to do.

Iron Warriors’ rules right now are super boring though. Wrecker on their grenades has never, ever come up and getting Fearless against shooting attacks barely matters at all in a land of high leadership values. Like half the legions right now have extremely boring, bad rules. I’m glad that’s changing. I’d way rather see everyone getting strong, relevant special rules and units that encourage unique play styles. Which is exactly what 2.0 is giving us.

This list has a lot of things I don't like about it, so I'm just going to go line by line here. Crimson Path - I think this Rite of War in general is far worse than Berserker Assault, and you've weirdly doubled up on it by including 2 Apothecaries even though it explicitly doesn't stack with the Apothecaries' FNP, and 2 Tac Squads that will get a 6+ FNP when they touch an objective, this means 4 of your 5 squads don't get anything from this RoW. The real get here is that Rampagers become Line units (presumably the Assault Squad bit is changing), but you've only taken one squad of Rampagers. 2x 10 Tacticals in Rhinos - These are pretty wimpy scoring units, at 3k points I would expect them to die without achieving anything. My recommendation is to make this one big unit so that an Apothecary is more impactful. I'd consider the chainaxe upgrade mandatory on these, and I'd also consider turning them into Rampagers with the Berserker Assault RoW. 10 Red Butchers in a Spartan - This unit will demolish any infantry squad you might expect to face, but the presence of Primarchs, Knights, or other Lords of War at 3k points could make them a liability. If the Spartan goes they're going to have a difficult time staying relevant. I think their utility will mostly come down to how your local meta is structured. Lots of Knights or Superheavy tanks will weaken them quite a bit. Losing Fleet makes Berserker Assault a more tantalizing prospect again. Leviathan with Drill and Grav - No Drop Pod and the Heavy sub-type makes this a tough sell to me. M6 is slow and the Grav Bombard is only an 18" range. I'd definitely emphasize playing keep away from this. The obvious move is to commit this to the dead center of the board every game to maximize its threat radius. Contemptor Dreadnought with CCW/Melta - This is basically fine. A Drop Pod would be a big upgrade for it. It's obviously a lot less dangerous than a Leviathan in combat but it can move a lot further which gives it a good advantage. 7 Rampagers in a Land Raider - I'm guessing 7 came from points limitations but I'd commit more to the idea of Rampagers in this list. They're really good now and with the Falax Blades are a relevant threat against any unit. Berserker Assault making them Troops choices makes this a lot easier. 2 apothecaries - 2 of your 5 infantry squads will have 5+ FNPs, watering down the impact of the Crimson Path RoW. I think these are best with the larger tac squad mentioned earlier and with the despoiler squad. 20 despoilers in a Storm Eagle - With Khârn I think there's good utility here, as a secondary monster assault unit that can also coordinate pretty easily with the Red Butchers with huge maneuverability thanks to the Storm Eagle. Putting this many eggs in one basket moves the Master of Signals into a must-take in my opinion, as without that you'll be really hurting since one bad roll means Khârn might not be in combat until halfway through the game. You absolutely need this in on turn 2. I'd consider making this another Rampager squad. Khârn - he needs Gorechild if you haven't taken it.

I think you're really, really overselling how much flavor the drawback rules added to most legions. I play Sons of Horus and World Eaters, Sons of Horus' drawback is that I can't benefit from allied warlord traits - a drawback that I have literally never seen come up in a game played by me or anybody else in nearly 10 years of playing Heresy - and World Eaters' drawbacks are that I have to Sweep - something I've never wanted to not do - and that I have to consolidate towards something I can hurt - which, again, has never been a drawback in the entire time I've owned the army. You mention the morale check drawback if the Night Lords HQs died, but every marine squad in the current edition is Ld9 or 10, meaning you barely fail morale checks anyway.

Before they nerfed cults I ran Sac Offering with Sons of Horus regularly for a year and a half or so and literally never lost a game. 100 Zealot, Rending, FNP cultists is almost impossible to stop. Not to mention you could Outflank a Warhound Titan, what’s not to like?