Henchmen army

[Thornoo1]

1st off what's the legal number of henchmen units with Coteaz? Is it 6 or is it 8, if there is an extra inquisitor in the list? 6 troops and 2 non FoC for the 2 inquisitors?

[Mr.darkness]

It's 6 at a max. They are no longer counted as Ann extra choice, but troops, an take up a FOC so you can only get six. This is backed up by the most recent HQ.

 

Taking Inquisitor Coteaz in your force turns Henchman Warbands into troops choices. Does this mean that they take up a force organisation slot and can no longer be taken as an elites choice? (p45)

A. Yes to both questions.

[Thornoo1]

Thanks.

 

So in a henchmen army what do people feel works?

 

After a little thought I felt that:

A/ 3 deathcult assassins mixed in with 9 bare acolytes mounted in a crusader landraider would make a very nice assault unit. X2

B/ 12 acolytes with 2 flamers in a chimera are a good objective sitter X2

C/ 2 apes with 3 servitors with heavy plasma, a lightly equipped inquisitor with hellrifle filled out with bare acolytes makes a nice ranged unit X1

D/ 12 acolytes all armed with hotshot lasguns in a chimera are a good unit to threaten MEQ units. X1

 

This is the 6 troop choices that I'm thinking of fielding.

 

Any other combos that people find are working?

[Inquisitor Fox]

Melee units seem to have a consensus as to at least 4 to 6 DCA's, 3 to 4 Crusaders, then some Arco's or Banishers as per preference. For your ranged unit you can add Warriors with Stormbolters or Plasma Guns or Hellrifles as well instead of bare warriors.

[Mr.darkness]

I like to spam cheap vehicles. For 12 points then you can get three acolytes. They can then take a RB, which you can equip as you see fit.

 

Psykers are also pretty good for backfield scoring. If you put a single acolyte with them, the perils of the Warp won't screw them .

 

DCAs are prob the best close combat. They work even better if you can get them into a SR or LR because then they get frags.

[Reclusiarch Darius]

Henchmen armies are interesting because the squad itself is so mutable. It's one of the rarest things in 40k really; you can make completely different units out of the same selection.

 

For shooty, these are my preferred builds;

 

3 x plasma cannon servitors, 2 x Jokaero, Chimera w/multi-laser+heavy bolter

(185 points)

 

I only take one, and Coteaz hangs out with them for Deepstrike/Outflank defense and of course so they don't Mindlock. The advantage with this unit is it's so small but so annoyingly painful to suffer their firepower, the enemy has to come after them. Also, being 100% static, you can farm your Chimera out to Paladins or Purifers as a gunboat for them and just set up in a backfield position.

 

3 x Henchmen w/melta or plasma, 2 x Jokaero, 7 x Henchmen w/storm bolters, Chimera w/multi-laser+heavy bolter

(216 points)

 

Getting more pricy, but these squads are very spammable and are one of the most cost-effective shooty units in the game. There is literally no cheaper way to get this firepower, even melta-Vets cost more and do less in comparison. I find all-melta works ok, but depending on your meta-game plasma guns might be more handy (if people face a lot of MC's for example, it might be good as melta is functionally worse unless the target has an armour value). Again, you can ditch their Chimera for use by Purifiers or Paladins if need be, they are semi-mobile but the melta is largely for self-defense against walkers or heavy armour. Rather like the Strike squad they resemble (nearly the same price as the double psycannon unit we are used to as a staple), they camp at 24" and shoot infantry to death.

 

For hacking stuff to death;

 

5 x Death-Cult, 5 x Crusaders

(150 points)

 

Cheap, incredibly brutal to units without invulnerable saves, and even without fancy grenades or psychic powers boosting their Strength, this unit will still blenderise most Marine units quite handily. It also has the attack output and S4 to threaten blob infantry too, so don't be afraid to charge Ork/Tyranid/IG horde units if you need to tie them up. Delivery-wise, a Chimera is satisfactory but if you really want to make your opponent cry, a Stormraven is ideal. Fitting a Raven into a Henchmen army is much easier than with pure Knights, ironically, as your insanely cheap Troops give you a lot of points to play with

 

I would add one final build. It's not my favourite, but something I did try initally before moving onto the Chimera version with beefed-out bodycount;

 

3 x Henchmen w/melta or plasma, Razorback w/twin assault cannon, psybolts

(127 points)

 

This is stupidly cost-effective for the pain it causes. If you have the models to do it (you really just need a tonne of Razors, you can model the Henchmen with cheap surplus Guardsmen or left over Stormtroopers from the old DH days), it's pretty stupid. You have no durability, but when a wolf pack of this gets into range of the same unit, you just kill stuff. Again, all-melta doesn't give me issues with my meta-game, but you might find plasma more useful (it's the same price either way).

 

As a side-note, you can ignore all the other Henchmen options. They don't work as intended, or are stupidly overpriced, or underpowered (Daemonhosts spring to mind here, as do Psykers). They are only there, just like with the old DH codex, for the people who still don't understand 40k isn't an RPG. Most of the writers of our current codex freely admit the biggest mistake was trying to make our old codex work like the Inquisitor RPG they were pushing at the time. With the benefit of hindsight, they realised all the playerbase wanted was elite IG and uber-Marines, and thus righted their wrongs.

[Thornoo1]

Henchmen armies are interesting because the squad itself is so mutable. It's one of the rarest things in 40k really; you can make completely different units out of the same selection.

 

And really this was what attracted me to a henchmen army. When looked at from this perspective do you start to realise what a straight jacket GW puts on its players with the current FoC and Codex structure.

 

Thanks for all of the advice. I was looking at the difference between razors and chimeras. I guess the chimera are a little more more fluffy but the razors answer the question about the lack of heavy weapons. The Las/plas with pysbolt is a good mix with added survivability. I've got heaps from my BA army.

 

In regards to deathcult assassins what are people using as alternative models? They are a bit pricy on various 2nd hand sites currently?

[krewl]

<<SNIP>>

 

As a side-note, you can ignore all the other Henchmen options. They don't work as intended, or are stupidly overpriced, or underpowered (Daemonhosts spring to mind here, as do Psykers). They are only there, just like with the old DH codex, for the people who still don't understand 40k isn't an RPG. Most of the writers of our current codex freely admit the biggest mistake was trying to make our old codex work like the Inquisitor RPG they were pushing at the time. With the benefit of hindsight, they realised all the playerbase wanted was elite IG and uber-Marines, and thus righted their wrongs.

I agree that deamonhosts are horrible, but psychers... come on. :P

For 10 points you can add a large blast to each squad, who cares if you lose the psycher to a perrils once every while?

One more psycher makes it S4 ap5, suddenly it works wonders versus the hoardy squishy types.

Increadible cheap anti infantry as an add on to almost any of the units you just named, for a measily 20 points.

[The Holy Heretic]

Trouble with psykers is that people think, they're good for a S10 AP1 blast, and they are - except thats 80 extremely squishy points with a lousy precision. Not the anti-tank monster you're looking for.

 

Cheap anti-horde on the other hand :P

[adamv6]

I was planning on running 6 psykers in a squad, making a nice ST8, AP2 blast.

 

Do servo skulls make it more accurate?

[nurglez]

Aye, servo skulls make everything* more accurate, apart from orbital strike relays as "they always scatter the full amount".

 

*blast weapons and deepstrike

[RolandTHTG]

Thornoo1, I currently use a mix of Dark Eldar Wyches and Dark Elf Corsairs. The Corsairs give enough extra blades to equip all the wyches with 2 ccw, and then adding a shield in place of the corsair crossbow give you a nice crusader model

[Thornoo1]

Thornoo1, I currently use a mix of Dark Eldar Wyches and Dark Elf Corsairs. The Corsairs give enough extra blades to equip all the wyches with 2 ccw, and then adding a shield in place of the corsair crossbow give you a nice crusader model

 

 

It's funny that you say this. I was looking around and came to the same conclusion as far as the wyches are concerned. I was going to use all of the left over falchions to equip them with double power swords. Did you put IG heads on the DE Corsairs? I have a bunch of Tomb King shields left over so along with the falchions, I have 3 boxes of GK termies, I was going to do up a box of Cadians I have laying around. There's also heaps of left over iconography from the termy boxes to add.

[RolandTHTG]

Its a mix of Warlordgames Imperial Roman Veteran heads and some Corsair helmeted heads. The wyches also got several corsair heads.

I don't play Fantasy, so I picked up a box of the Warlordgames Imperial roman veterans. The heads and shields fit well with the GW 28mm Heroic scale, but the bodies are basically 25mm true, so they look like toddlers next to GW models. I wish I could reccomend the conversion, but you just end up with too many extra parts.

 

The corsair and wych bodies have to be built with their respective leg/torso combinations, as they don't interchange with out a lot of modeling. The heads and arms require no trimming to fit together, to that can be mixed and matched wonderfully.

[Thornoo1]

For plasma servitors I have gone some dirty old plastic catachans with the plasma cannons off my 2 stormravens plus the marine heads that have respirators. Much better than $15 a model. ;)