Hellbrute Formations

[incinerator950]

Does gaining "It Will not Die" benefit the MP at all?

[Nusquam]

So if we go with this interpretation -- I agree with it; not arguing the point, just commenting -- then the turn they deep strike in, they're not going to suffer/benefit from the effects of the Crazed roll?

 

Correct, all rolls that occur at the beginning of the Movement Phase happen before deepstrikes.

[Nehekhare]

BRB p.125

Unless stated otherwise, a unit cannot charge, or use any abilities or special rules that must be used at the start of the turn, in the turn it arrives from reserve.

 

[Brother Ambroz]

So no crazed table the turn they arrive?

[incinerator950]

Tormented Terror's should only apply for the movement phases after. 

[Lord Ragnarok]

Does that change their usefulness or are they still too randumb?

[Iron_Within]

No it sounds like that is much better. If you drop them in the right place the next turn it doesn't matter if they rage charge or rage shoot, either should be useful for what it's meant to do - an indiscriminate weapon.

 

I still cannot understand why for the 5 Brute unit doesn't all experience the same crazed result as it's a squadron. Hopefully they will FAQ it.

[Sception]

IWND is nice, but it's not that big a deal on a vehicle that, ime, tends to skip directly to dead, bypassing alive but injured entirely.

 

They are better, no 1/3 chance of doing nothing the turn they arrive, but they are still ludicrously unreliable, with no telling when they'll appear, and no deep strike mitigation to stop them from mishapping or just scattering all over the place.  Add to that the fact that they generally don't have a ton of firepower, so you're not likely to get the needed bang for the buck to justify 300+ points and 3 victory points on the initial appearance alone, and that even with IWND they aren't very durable for their value in points (victory kind or regular kind) so they're not likely to stick around very long and justify their presence in your list via subsequent turns of damage or significant distraction to the enemy, and you end up with pretty much what I had initially thought, before getting carried away in the excitement of the release itself.  Deep strike on its own (or even with IWND) does not stop the helbrute from being rather baddish, and they're baddish in a way that taking more of them doesn't make them better.

 

I'm almost at the point of calling the fist a better formation, at least in kill point games.  Yeah, they aren't any more durable in terms of army points, but they're significantly more durable in terms of victory points (having to kill 5 brutes for 1 VP instead of 3 for 3), and slightly more reliable.  Not good, mind you, still pretty bad simply in terms of how much they deliver vs. how much of your army you have to pay for them, but my initial assessment of cult > meyhem >> murderfist has changed, and is now currently looking more like cult >> meyhem ~ murderfist.

 

Which is too bad, as I have 3 brutes at the moment, and was kind of hoping that the meyhem would be a good way to run them all together, but the more I thought about it and tried to work them into a list, the less sense they made.

 

I still might run them on occassion for funsies, but right now I'm feeling like they're not quite as good at their gimmick as termicide, and i dropped termicide from my list a while ago.  Unmitigated deep strike is just not a mechanic that I find fun to play with - rather it's frustrating and just way too random for any sort of justification.  At this point, without drop pod style mitigation or access to beacons, I'd consider regular deployment to be an upgrade compared to deep strike, rather than the other way around, at least for the sort of short or melee ranged, typically rather fragile for their points cost deep striking units that chaos marines have access to.

[daboarder]

Who cares

 

Look lets compare our 3 DS kill units shall we,.

Firstly they all come in at roughly the same price point, be it termicide, pair blits, or a hellbrute

 

Termicide: the only gun really worth running on these is the plasma, theres a page floating around where the numbers we're crunched and unless you drop within 6 the 6 plasma shots (within 12, easy to do) is more likely to kill a medium tank through hull points than the meltas are through explosions. furthermore the plasma is better for the other types of targets your likely to hit, like hiding HQ units (Eat plasma IG commander)

 

Oblits: You really shouldnt be wasting HQ slots and our best support options on deepstrike assualts unless you are trying to deal with a list on the fly so theses are out.

 

Hellbrutes: put 3 multi melta's around a tank and even a Knight titan is liable to die.

Force your opponent to re-direct fire (brutes only die if you dedicate fire to them, this is further required due to IWND letting them shrug off random HPs)

and for a modest price you can dual role and grab a heavy flamer.

They are also immune to the most common interceptor weapons (and the heavy ones will only be available in enough quantities to tag a single brute)

Finally they come in on a single roll and are therefore far more likely to allow you to apply overwhelming force where you need to than the equivalent multiple termicide units would.

 

I cannot wait to try a Mayhem pack, got a list that will use it ready to go as soon as I submit my thesis.

[Sception]

Try it and get back to us, but...

 

my experience is that 12" landing, while a lot better than 6" or 9", still is far from a given, particularly if you care about facing or have to worry about terrain.  And three multimelta shots isn't exactly overwhelming either, even if they do land on target.  Probably 2 hits, 2 pens, odds on 1 hull point after cover/inv on a knight?  for 300 points?  It easily wrecking 2 in its own turn?  And the amount of fire required two bring down a dread at close range just isn't enough to justify it to me.  It's never been impressive before, IWND does not strike me as a tipping point the way a 3++ cover save does, even with as much stuff ignoring cover as does so these days.

 

AND you HAVE to run three.  Even if they are as good as termicide squads (which isn't saying that much), who ran three termicide squads?  That's at least a 5th of your army in 1500 points?  We're talking nearly a pair of drakes, or almost two pair of oblits, or a pair of maulers plus points left over, or two largish squads of bikes or spawn, most of which strike me as more dangerous, more durable, more distracting, and especially more reliable than the meyhem pack.  And while the pack doesn't take slots, slots aren't our primary restriction, points are, and with 300+ points in a formation, you're probably going to have unused fast and heavy slots.

 

Again, still working on my brutes, it will be a bit before I try the pack out for myself (which I certainly will do), and I also admit to having some rather notoriously terrible luck with unaided deep striking, but all in all, my excitement for that particular formation is waning.

[daboarder]

the trick is to drop on different sides of the knight, so that he cant use the shield to cover all your shots. that brings the odds far more in your favour.

 

Throw in shots from your line units like oblits or unconventional weapons like vector strikes and you can surround him, force him to put the shield in a place where he can only minimize the incoming damage not prevent it. That means you will kill him.

 

Sure, thats spending a huge portion of your army to kill the knight, but you've achieved a major goal with very little expended resources on your part if you pull that off

 

as to termicide price?

 

well I was running a pair of plasma axe nurgle units, good tough and punchy for not that much. For a slight increase I get an increase in threat from 2 to 3, I grab a practical immunity to most interceptor weapons and they all come in on one roll preventing those games where I couldnt hammer a single target due to the squads landing in different turns.

 

The other option I'll be running is the cult, with an auto/missile dread.

 

Means I can drop typhus to a lord, net a warlord trait and run cultists instead of zombies but I need to get some more cultist models first.

[Kilofix]

There's one other thing about Mayhem:

They are intimidating. They are 3 separate targets, immune to regular infantry weapons, and that can draw fire from 3 separate opposing Heavy weapon units. Heck just Deep Strike them randomly. It will still cause your opponent some level of consternation. Expensive? Kinda yes. But hey, they may be just the thing to distract your opponent from your 'other master plan'

What 'other master plan' you say? If you're asking, what kind of Chaos Lord are you anyway??

[Sception]

300+ points is a lot to spend on 'distraction' units, and still expect to have much of a master plan to speak of. When I look at my lists and ask 'now what 300 points am I going to drop to make room for three deep striking helbrutes, there isn't much that jumps out at me.

[the jeske]

yep. 300 pts is too much for a distraction . 100pts for a tax to make cultists fearless , where you would take cultists anyway is already a lot , but worth it. 3 av 12 dreads that scater , not so much . What would you take out of a 1500 chaos army to take 3 dreads? I can fit a 100pts one in to a 1500 list[not without problems] , but for 300 the list has to be rebuild in to some sort of rush list and for those taking two helldrakes or mon spawn instead of the dreads is better.

[daboarder]

yeah if your running it solely as "distraction" its too many points. But I still think it has a role as assassination and gives us the armoured to potential to reach out and touch the opponent.

 

jeske, as I said, I'm swapping out my termicide units for it, think it should work well.

[the jeske]

You had points for 3 termicid units ? the list is 1999 or more?

[daboarder]

1850

Had the points for a pair of Nurgle marked termicide units with plasma.

 

drop them and some zombies. score 3 deepstriking dreads.

 

Honestly the idea that we of all codexes need to be "troops heavy" is flawed, our stack slots are usually FA and HS, so we typically have the scoring units required.

 

1 mission is KPs, so how gives a dams

1 mission oblits score

1 mission drakes and spawn score

1 mission is the relic in the centre of the table...how many scoring units do I need to nab that? Not that many

1 mission is 1 objective each (see above)

 That leaves 1 mission where only a few cultist squads leaves you hanging.

 

Heres what I plan on running next week,

 

HQ

Typhus

Sorc ML3 with Div

 

6 terminators, MoN, Combi-Plas, axe, heavy flamer

 

2x 15 zombies

2x10 cultists 

2 drakes

2x2 Oblits MoN

 

then a mayhem pack with 3x multi melta brutes.

 

1850

[the jeske]

Never had a game against tau or eldar where oblits or drakes would be alive at the end of the game to score. But what point systems people use depends on the tournaments or community .

 

I play with4  troops and you have 4 too. So the lists [troop wise] are the same . Your list feels like a 1500 one with a 300pts dread tax added. What are the dreads suppose to do in this list and how worse it would be to let say runing belkor [ally]+taking one cultists unit as his troops and some spawn . Or making the oblit units bigger to get better returns from the divination sorc.

If an army can't breaks up , because three walkers randomly drop on the table , then how do the same armies deal with stuff like serpent spam. Where there is no random[well other then the number of shots from the shields] and they are/can be on the table from turn 1 onwards.

[daboarder]

see those knights, serpents, manticores, stalkers, scouts, cultists, Thinderfire cannons annihilation barges and the like? well the dreads either kill those. or the opponent has to turn their army around to deal with them

[Hellrender]

I tried out the Mayhem pack.

 

I found it rather lacking compared to some DS'ing oblits. With obliterators you always have the tool for the job, more importantly, the option to go twinlinked if you are within range.

To get the Deep Strike formation you pay atleast 300 points, and then they dont do that much. 

 

1 Brute didnt do anything with its MM(we played it so that crazed affected them right after deep strike), but killed a sternguard squad (power scourge), 1 shot a razorback and tied up (and killed) a combat squad of tacts (no power scourge, but opponent kept rolling 1's with his powerfist). The last 1 destroyed a rhino, then got meltad. In total i made 4 IWND rolls (over the 3), to regen a total of 1 HP. 

 

If you want deep striking multi meltas, i rather get Obliterators, as they do the job better. But if you also run a maulerfiend or 2, and maybe some other fast assault units, i can understand the usefulness of having 3 distraction brutes dropping in opening some vehicles, and hopefully tarpitting some shooty stuff with a power scourge. 

[Iron_Within]

I guess where it benefits over the Oblits is you've got 3 units to deal with instead of 1 (or 2), but that would go against you in KP games.

[King Jackal]

Why the comparisons between Oblits and the mayhem formation? Seems to me they would do well in each others company

3 x 2 or 3 Oblits and a Mayhem pack is expensive but brings a lot of firepower (granted, if everything goes well)

Add in some horrors, some divination, maybe a soul grinder.......

[Nehekhare]

guess we need dataslate: icons of chaos for them to act as T-homers again ;)

 

and codex: daemon engines for AV13 and defilers to act as open-topped transports for berzerkers?

[Slayer le Boucher]

I tried out the Mayhem pack.

 

I found it rather lacking compared to some DS'ing oblits. With obliterators you always have the tool for the job, more importantly, the option to go twinlinked if you are within range.

To get the Deep Strike formation you pay atleast 300 points, and then they dont do that much. 

 

1 Brute didnt do anything with its MM(we played it so that crazed affected them right after deep strike), but killed a sternguard squad (power scourge), 1 shot a razorback and tied up (and killed) a combat squad of tacts (no power scourge, but opponent kept rolling 1's with his powerfist). The last 1 destroyed a rhino, then got meltad. In total i made 4 IWND rolls (over the 3), to regen a total of 1 HP. 

 

If you want deep striking multi meltas, i rather get Obliterators, as they do the job better. But if you also run a maulerfiend or 2, and maybe some other fast assault units, i can understand the usefulness of having 3 distraction brutes dropping in opening some vehicles, and hopefully tarpitting some shooty stuff with a power scourge. 

 

 

SO with one of the Brute you get back the 300pts investement, and they din't do good?...

 

Sternguards, lets say 5 man squad with at least 2-3 combi weapons and 2 special weapons, ine the 170-180-ish points, razor, usually the TL AC, 85pts and a combat squad TAC so in the 80-ish points, wich make (roughly) in the 340-360pts annihiled by a 100pts model.

 

In my opinion, its not bad at all.

[Iron Father Ferrum]

But at the same time, victory is rarely measured by the paradigm of "Did it make its points back?"