Holocaust

[Stargazer]

Hey guys I was just wondering firstly how many of you take holocaust in your army secondly what applications do you use it in such as what unit takes it in your army and what situations you have found it useful in?

 

Thanks in advance

 

Stargazer

[Secondwind]

I personally think holocaust has none of the oomph it needs to be useful mainly for the reasons below:

 

-Incinerators: Cheaper in points, higher AP, no partial hits from the template, wont hit your own models and no perils of the warp, ignores invulnerable saves...Probably the best reason why holocaust is not used, the situations where you'll normally use holocaust could normally be avoided by flamer usage. Only downside is you'll be sacrificing a stormbolter or that extra melee attack with your inquisitor.

 

 

-In the situation you take holocaust, its initiative 1 so it'll probably be your last attack (great if your last man standing, bad if your survived the combat with your retinue / terminators intact). The last thing you want to do is kill off one of your own units especially if its an expensive terminator while still giving your opponent's orks the chance to roll that 6+ armoursave!

 

The worst experience I had with it was a large unit of ork slugga boys on my terminators where I saved all my 4+ armour saves from their choppas and killed 3 of my terminators from holocaust...

 

 

-Perils of the warp: One wound on an inquisitor no problem...wiping out a GK terminator squad with perils - pricel....about 300-400 points worth. One wound on every model in the terminator unit + rerolling those 5+ invulnerable saves simply hurts.

 

-Partial hits: The old blast template rule in which you need to roll a 4+ to count partial hits hurts its effectiveness as big terminator bases mean less enemy models in close proximity to the user and more of a chance in hitting your terminators. Odds are those enemy bases you do manage to get in range are effectively getting a 4+ save before its even being used which is not too good for us.

[Grand Master Iapetus]

For an all comers or tourney list, I don't know that "HolyCost" has a place. If I have the flexibility to cater an army list for one off games or for a campaign with variable army lists then I do find it has a place against hordes - a extra ordinance barage template attack of S5 usually helps there.

 

If you do take it, best to take on ICs to mitigate POTW (as noted). And placement of the model that is using the power in relation to other friendly models is also critical. Sounds stupid, but the day you lose a terminator due to a "1" on an armor save because 1 millimeter of the template is touching him is a sad experience :P

[Grand Master Tyrak]

There was some fairly extensive discussion in this recent thread.