Hellbrute Formations

[GodEmperorOfMankind]

The one I am super excited about is the Cult one. If there is not a large points increase, the unit becomes fearless because of the Helbrute, and the Helbrute ITSELF is scoring then this will be the goto Troop Choice for CSMs across the board.

200pts for x20 Cultists, Helrbute with a 10pt weapon upgrage.

 

Unfortunately if they follow the standard dataslate formation they don't take up a FOC slot, so you still need your normal troop choices.

[GodEmperorOfMankind]

Is the ibook version out sooner than the ebook edition or something? Ebook edition says it isn't out till next month.

 

I've preordered the ebook version, it's available to download 22/3

[Urauloth]

Weirdly it just says "April 2014" for me, but then again i haven't actually preordered it.

[Smurfalypse]

Is the ibook version out sooner than the ebook edition or something? Ebook edition says it isn't out till next month.

Dataslate: Helbrutes (eBook Edition) Available to download from 22/03/2014

So yeah, Saturday

The one I am super excited about is the Cult one. If there is not a large points increase, the unit becomes fearless because of the Helbrute, and the Helbrute ITSELF is scoring then this will be the goto Troop Choice for CSMs across the board.

200pts for x20 Cultists, Helrbute with a 10pt weapon upgrage.

Unfortunately if they follow the standard dataslate formation they don't take up a FOC slot, so you still need your normal troop choices.

That's fine, you can still take your obligatory x2 ten man Cultist squads.

[Aragantes]

Pre-Ordered as well. Almost bought the new brute, but I am a firm believer in never forking out cash for something I don't find good on the table top and something I can have fun with in terms of modeling and painting.

[Smurfalypse]

Pre-Ordered as well. Almost bought the new brute, but I am a firm believer in never forking out cash for something I don't find good on the table top and something I can have fun with in terms of modeling and painting.

 

Amen brother!

[Urauloth]

I really wish they'd make a multipart cultist kit. You'd think this would be an ideal time, really, then they could bundle it with the helbrute. Mostly I just want multipart cultists, but since that doesn't seem to be happening (and they're even pointing to dark vengeance as a selling point w/r/t the helcult) I'll go back to my plan of making my own. Seems like a missed opportunity, though.

 

On the other hand, most of the point of the dataslate seems to be encouraging multiple helbrutes onto the table, so that people who own the starter don't say "that's a great model but I already have one of those and it isn't very useful".

[Scribe]

Agreed on the cultists. I've got my 20, but now its like...ok 2 min troops, why bother with anything else. :/

[BitsHammer]

Is the ibook version out sooner than the ebook edition or something? Ebook edition says it isn't out till next month.

They should be out at the same time. I'd hit up GW Digital Editions about it on Facebook to let them know something is funky.

[minionboy]

Pre-Ordered as well. Almost bought the new brute, but I am a firm believer in never forking out cash for something I don't find good on the table top and something I can have fun with in terms of modeling and painting.

Then you're playing the wrong army, haha.

[Slayer le Boucher]

News!
 

 

 

Mayhem pack is as Nusguam says, 3 hellbrutes with IWND and Deep Strike.
They role each movement phase on the crazed table, even if not
suffered a pen/glance.



Helcult: 1 hellbrute, 2 units of cultists. The helbrute does not join
the unit, but if he is obscured by his cultist pack he gets a cover
save (3+), when passed a cultist dies. Also gains rage and a Khârn-like
betrayer rule. Makes the cultists fearless as long he is alive.



Last is a formation of 5 brutes, with 1 champion. They can make Look
out sirs to him. Aslong champ is alive owning player can choose what he
wants on the crazed table whenever 1 or more in the unit have a
marker. Affects whole unit.

 

 

apparantly some people allready got to download their dataslates and thats what we get.

 

Still missing some clarifications, like if the dreads forms a vehicle squadron, or if like with all the formations thus far are only needed to be taken at the same time, but can act indenpendantly from each others, in what radius must the Cultists stay from the dread to benefit the rules, does the Alpha dread from the 3rd formation count as a Character?

[Urauloth]

You have to have 5 for the murderpack? Yeesh.

[Dragonlover]

Not a fan of the cultist one, but I'm liking the other two.

 

Dragonlover

[Slayer le Boucher]

You have to have 5 for the murderpack? Yeesh.

Seems that way, now maybe its like with the Cypher+fallen formation, its 3 to 5 dreads or something, but for now i dunno more of it.

[Ammonius]

Wow, those sound completely awesome. I want to believe, but I need more evidence.

 

As soon as there are some corroberating reports, I will be getting the dataslate, and adding Helbrutes to my to-do list (and maybe more cultists...)

 

Does anyone know if you could choose a Helcult as one of your D3 infiltrating units if you were running Huron?

[Brother Ambroz]

Wow that last formation, you could take a bunch with auto/ml and just do a bunch of fire frenzies.

[Scribe]

IWND eh? So baddly wishing for a Daemon save...

[Dammeron]

Yep, just downloaded mine: these are all accurate. My favourite is the Mayhem pack, by far: IWND, deep striking Helbrutes that go insane automatically. Like 'em a lot; a great shock-attack unit that can seriously mess up your enemy's plans.

 

The cultist one is interesting, and will require some subtle and considered use, but is still a very handy means of simultaneously buffing your cultists and protecting your Helbrute as it move up the battlefield. 

 

The last does indeed require five Helbrutes, but is still rather interesting, in that they are much more controllable and whatever psychosis they happen to be suffering can be tailored to what you want them to do.

 

The background in the data slate is excellent; there's some truly gruesome, morbid detail concerning how the sentient sarcophagus of the Helbrute effectively eats its way into the host and torments them.

 

Very, very interesting stuff indeed. It seems that our Helbrutes just became highly viable in a variety of battelfield roles and have had their potential application blown wide.

[Smurfalypse]

Yeah just downloaded mine as well.

 

 

 

News!
 

 

 

Mayhem pack is as Nusguam says, 3 hellbrutes with IWND and Deep Strike.
They role each movement phase on the crazed table, even if not
suffered a pen/glance.



Helcult: 1 hellbrute, 2 units of cultists. The helbrute does not join
the unit, but if he is obscured by his cultist pack he gets a cover
save (3+), when passed a cultist dies. Also gains rage and a Khârn-like
betrayer rule. Makes the cultists fearless as long he is alive.



Last is a formation of 5 brutes, with 1 champion. They can make Look
out sirs to him. Aslong champ is alive owning player can choose what he
wants on the crazed table whenever 1 or more in the unit have a
marker. Affects whole unit.

 

 

apparantly some people allready got to download their dataslates and thats what we get.

 

Still missing some clarifications, like if the dreads forms a vehicle squadron, or if like with all the formations thus far are only needed to be taken at the same time, but can act indenpendantly from each others, in what radius must the Cultists stay from the dread to benefit the rules, does the Alpha dread from the 3rd formation count as a Character?

 

The Murderpack is a squadron, the rest are not, no minimum distance for anything.

The fearless has no range, it is just while he is alive. If he dies the Cultists gain Zealot instead (so fearless and hatred).

He is a character but does NOT have the champion of chaos special rule, so he can decline challenges if he wishes.

[zyl-]

One of the formations is multiple helbrutes teleporting into play.  The actual mechanics of that aren't known, but deep strike is expected.  That might open up some interesting options, but let's not get carried away.  After all, deep strike, without access to homing beacons, is still worse than drop podding, so even deep striking helbrutes would still be less useful than the least useful loyalist dreadnought.

 

I'm not saying the formation or any of the others will be bad, I'm just saying maybe we should try to keep our expectations in check is all.

May or may not have been mentioned, but that's not really true. To deepstrike 3 loyalist dreads, you would need to buy 3 drop pods. If we can deep strike 3 brutes without the drop pod tax, it would at last give us superior delivery in a sense that it would be cheaper. Less accurate yes, but on the other hand, most weapons they carry have a decent range.

[minionboy]

Just some quick thoughts on these formations...

 

Deepstriking and having to roll on the chart is awesome, you can potentially come in with 3 stock brutes and dish out 6 multi-melta shots, with a double-tap range of 12" you don't even need to be super risky with the deepstrike.

 

The one with the cultists is interesting, possibly on a pure gun brute, though I never really like pure gun brutes.

 

The last one is just too expensive, at minimum 500 points, 550-600 realistically.

[Hellrender]

Was about to write the same as Smurf. He beat me to it.

 

As said, the deepstrike formation is great for disrupting a lot. They come at the same time from reserve, but deep strike seperatly. Allowing quite a bit of flexibility while offering saturation by coming together.

 

The cultist one is atleast a cheap buffer to cultist, without taking cultists. Granting 2 squads of cultists fearless, without having to keep the babysitter there? Doesnt sound bad at all, means i can use my HQ for killy stuff. 

As said in other parts, i love the 5 hellbrute formation. if just for the fun of forcing your opponnent to either ignore them, so they dont go overboard with their dakka, or to spend a lot of shooting per turn, so he actually removes 1 or 2, instead of taking 1-2 HP's on 1 or 2, after which you can shuffle them so new ones are in front. Put a warpsmith next to it, and he can regen them aswell a bit. Just keep the champion alive, as he allows you to choose which sort of crazy they go.

 

Love the formation, even if it turns out to not be very competive, just the idea of 2 forgefiends, 5 hellbrutes, a divination sorcerer, a divination herald, and go loose on dakka :)

[Brother Ambroz]

Anyone have any thoughts on the squadron of 5 kitted out for anti-knight duty? The amount of firepower they could put out would be pretty scary.

[zyl-]

If only the 5 man formation actually were able to outflank or something useful for getting close fast. 5 multimeltas that can target independantly and shoot twice would be awesome.

 

EDIT: Also, being able to choose fire frenzy actually makes our brutes more potent than loyalists. We may not have as good of weapons, but hey, they shoot twice.

[Kilofix]

All in all, I have to say I like this Dataslate. It means that I am positively going to use Helbrutes again. I can see uses for all 3 Formations.

 

Good thing too that I'd acquired for cheap and horded 60 Cultists and 6 Helbrute models from DV sets. Time to do some work to magnetize parts for the latter.