Best baneblade variant post CA

[Trickstick]

Don't forget the major advantage of the Hellhammer. It comes with a mighty lasgun!

[librisrouge]

I'm still going to rock the Shadowsword. It just does its job too well. The odds of anything surviving a round from it are fairly low.

[HallofStovokor]

The mighty lasgun was given to us plebians by the God Emperor himself. So obviously it's the best thing ever.

[duz_]

I've always like the Hellhammer as a personal favourite

I think in a general game it will probably do well and is a viable option

However in the tournament scene with IKs still super prevalent Shadowswords are still king. I know I had said prior to the IK codex dropping it could go up in points. However I took that back after the codex dropped so its disappointing for them to get a price hike. Ohwell ...

 

 

Meanwhile I still need to finish painting my SS and now I have more of a reason to finish the Hellhammer chassis sooner than later. :D

[HallofStovokor]

Truthfully, I don't think that any baneblade variants are good choices for competitive play. They hit hard, but you end up putting over 400 points in a single model that has no invulnerable save. The way I see it, they're more for apocalypse lists. The better choice is to bring a bunch of leman russes and basilisks. It'll one shot an IK, but it's also impossible to hide and is going to be your opponent's first target. As guard players, we must assume that we aren't going to win the roll off. This means that anything we can't hide during deployment, is a liability for in turn 1.

[Trickstick]

Truthfully, I don't think that any baneblade variants are good choices for competitive play. They hit hard, but you end up putting over 400 points in a single model that has no invulnerable save. The way I see it, they're more for apocalypse lists. The better choice is to bring a bunch of leman russes and basilisks. It'll one shot an IK, but it's also impossible to hide and is going to be your opponent's first target. As guard players, we must assume that we aren't going to win the roll off. This means that anything we can't hide during deployment, is a liability for in turn 1.

 

You could always ambush with it, although then you can't bring it on until turn 2.

[Gothical]

Given the small bump I think the Shadowsword is still worth it, it still has the same combos and weaknesses as before and in the context of the rest of the army dropping points in many places the increase is largely irrelevant. It was always daft that it was cheaper than worse variants.

 

I like the Hellhammer because it has all of the same weapons as a Baneblade but with a better (in normal games) gun - for games on massive tables I would want the true BB but that gun absolutely rocks on a regular board.

 

There is maybe a niche for the Banehammer as outlined earlier thanks to movement shenanigans, though I would still prefer the Shadowsword against a static target like a Castellan being able to slow a regular Knight/Gallant/deathstar unit is handy.

 

I think the Banesword is still outperformed by the Shadowsword against anything Titanic and is usually overkill against anything non-Titanic. The Doomhammer is weird given it seems to try to do too many things at once. The Stormlord might have a new niche in killing full-strength Primaris squads but is still more focused around transporting and we have little that is worth deathstar-ing any more. The Stormsword is just bad, I miss the old FW variant (where you could take a single Heavy Flamer and pair of Heavy Bolters on each sponson) so I always think this one sucks, but in objective terms it either lacks punch on the main gun or is seriously overcosted.