New to the Heresy, HQ Choice Help

[Rawenwing]

Hi everyone! i'm a relatively new player who wants to finally start an army for Horus Heresy. My choice is the Word Bearers, last of the serrated sun rite of war. Building my list, i had troubles finding the right hq to guide my forces. i know that word bearers must have a chaplain, and my third choice was either a moritat to go with the ascen circle or a sanctic esoterist to cast hammerhand on the gal vorbaks. Regarding the warlord, i was leaning towards a legion herald, it's a good option but gal vorbaks aren't affected by him, or Zardu Layak to back them up more. 

 

 

Which hq should i choose and why? Thanks!

[Imren]

Regardless of what legion you play, a stronger option as warlord reduces the risk of giving up easier VPs for warlord. Apart from VP also there are some missions and tactics that give incentive to slay opponents warlord. So you're encouraged to have a stronger option such as a praetor.

Praetor and Consul are the few legion-independent characters in the game that get AP2 at initiative through the paragon blade, and since they often are quite competent at close combat, you ought to give them a paragon blade.

At lower point games at 1000-1500p (ZM and Centurion-mode) a consul with art.armour, refractor field and paragon blade is probably a a good foundation for a warlord you can add perhaps jump pack, digital weapons for additional capacity.

At higher points I'd go for a praetor, how to kit it depends on how you want it to play. If you want it to join a terminator squad them obviously terminator armour is the way to go.

The advice above is of course for a generic legion. There are legion specific warlord characters that are preferable in some cases. If you play IH you might want an iron father.

For Word Bearers I'd suggest to add a chaplain for the legion specific perks of having one in addition to a strong warlord that can pack a punch in challenges such as a praetor or a chaplain.

Models-wise I'd suggest you to get a dark apostle model as a WB chaplain, it fits the 30k WB theme quite well in a mid-late heresy era when WB already got the Gal Vorbak. Unfortunately this model is out of production so you have to get it from either 3rd party re-casters or from Ebay and strip it for your own paint job.

For praetor models I suggest to kitbash something with WB bits and perhaps some chaos space marine bits as well. I find the FW praetors quite good looking, especially the cataphractii terminator  holding the volkite charge and the sword in a quite dynamic way.

As a new Horus heresy player I suggest you look into this post I made as a suggestion to getting into 30k/Horus heresy:

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/355480-considering-hh-because-i-loathe-8th-edition/?p=5300750