HH 2.0 Serpents Lair: XXth Legion Tactica

[Mechanicus Tech-Support]

I thought the only reason you really take the power dagger is cheap access to that +1A and not its actually damage potential.

How are you finding the conversion beamer on the lerneans?

[9x19 Parabellum]

But why buy a power dagger when pretty much everybody that can take it can also take a bolt pistol or chainsword or some other free thing that counts as an additional weapon and gets  you +1 attack?

 

I only tried the C-beam once, to deal with my regular opponents' Gal Vorbak which continue to be a pain in my ass.  Unfortunately, they move so fast (and are melee oriented) so they want to get up in your face as fast as possible anyway. I only got one round of shooting at the instant-death profile.  A 265 point unit, to kill 2, maybe 3 Gal Vorbak is not a good deal.  Best case scenario, you get first turn and deploy on your line on Hammer and Anvil deployment and get 2 turns of shooting. Worst case, you go 2nd, or deploy pretty much any other deployment map and you get 0 rounds of shooting. (at the good, insta-death profile, I mean, ie, Str 12, ap1)

[Gorgoff]

I think Conversion bearers are really bad weapons, because they only work when you have a deployment style like hammerhead where you are able to start far away from the enemy. On a terminator unit which has 15" guns it makes no sense at all for me.

[2gud2bbad]

@9x19 Parabellum excellent comments on our legion, thank you for the contribution!

 

Regarding Lerneans, I don’t rate them too highly as well with the standard mission set and the point limits most people play at (2500-3000). If playing mission set  that place higher emphasis on scoring (I’ve always loved progressive scoring, but that’s my influence from RTS games) I can see a point for them, especially when playing RoWs that avoid the tactical tax. But then completely vanilla with a Volkite Culverin at Max to contest and hold objectives against soft targets. 
 

HH surely aren’t amazing for their points, but taking them as compulsory in HHL instead of Tacticals brings some added value. However, 2-3 5 man squads at max, everything else is wasted points. 
 

[HeinzD]

On 5/13/2023 at 2:39 AM, 9x19 Parabellum said:

So after about 30 games of Horus Heresy 2nd edition, playing Alpha Legion, here's my hot-take;

 

-our game is all about the Legion trait and the Legion reaction. 

-everything else is a distraction, and cute, gimmicky nonsense.  It is a trap to build into it, and even worse lean into it.  You will put your units into compromising situations trying to justify reasons to engage whatever gimmick you're dealing with.

 

WARGEAR:

-Power Daggers.  Your ideal target is the basic space marine, and even then, it's not particularly good.  The ~25 pt headhunter comes equipped standard, and a 150 point unit with 16 attacks hits 8 times and wounds just under 3.  On any other 'character' that can take this, there is virtually no reason to take it over any other power-type weapon.  Going up against T5 units, or any unit that has higher WS, any unit that has multiple wounds, or an apothecary (or other source of FnP) and your damage falls off considerably from there.  Because the str of the weapon is set as 3 (as opposed to say, User -1), no buffs on the carrying unit will apply (ie, biomancy or something similar).  This weapon is a trap. Avoid it.  C tier.

 

-Venom Spheres . 10 pts for a 1 shot, 8" weapon that allows full armor saves: not worth it.  D tier.

 

-Banestrike and Banestrike Combis.  the stats look nice until you get to the 18" rapid fire part.   So your 25 pt headhunters are getting 1 beefy bolter shot at 18" and 2 at 9".   About the only useful model I can see putting these on is an assault unit, and the only assault unit that can carry them is a Veteran Squad, perhaps deployed in a Drop Pod.   D tier.

 

SPECIAL UNITS:

-Lernean Terminators.  These guys are a mess.  WS 4 for an "elite" special terminator unit puts them on the back foot right out of the gate. We already have plenty of WS4 options to pick from.  Their stat line is the same as any other terminator, except an addtl point of leadership.  Volkite Chargers are fine and all, but you don't have enough shots to really make it all work and in general you don't take terminators for their shooting.  Power Axe's are the most 'meh' of all the unwieldly weapons, and I can put 5 power fists on regular Catas and still come in under the cost of Lerneans. IWND is cute, but on a 2 wound model, and at 5+, will have very little affect on gameplay (a 1/3 chance of healing a wound on a guy assuming he hasn't been insta-gibbed).  Having the "Line" keyword is nice but less than half of missions have objectives.  Hydran Exemplars is nice in that it helps you hit, but WS4 means elites are hitting you on 3's.  So in the end we have a very expensive unit with a hodgepode of special rules that appears to be a "sit on objective and be hard to shift", except they aren't truly tanky (no WS5, IWND is meh, and nothing else) and they aren't really killy (hit on 3's is great, but power axes kinda suck, shooting not great, still slow).  C tier.

-Headhunters.  Oh dear god. Much like Lerneans. I really want to like these guys.  Very expensive elite power armor model at 25 ppm, have a lot of great things going for them but just can't capitalize on it.  Great BS and special rules, but no truly good gun to take advantage of it.  Banestrike bolters are terrible because of range.  I've heard about putting Saboteur consul in so they can leverage his shroud bombs, but you shouldn't need to put a 120 pt consul in to make a 150 pt "elite" shooty unit function properly.  Only useful play is to swap out all their guns for magna-combis, meaning you're putting even more points into them, or minor combis (grenades) which are cute, but ultimately haven't had too much affect on my gameplay as wounding on 5's, no AP, and hoping for a wound to get through to force that pinning check hasn't done squat for me.  Even the MM to snipe out sgrs/apothecaries is tricky because you need a "4" to proc the precision shot and becuase you're BS5 it actually hurts when you hit on a 2 or 3 and can't reroll the hit because of how twin-linked works.  So even that gimmick is only going to work at best, less than 50% of the time.  Their infiltrate and scout special rules dare you to put them close but they'll just end up getting killed quickly because they have no inherent defensive capability.  D tier with stock weapons or B tier with combi-weapon meta play. 

 

-Efrit Cadre. Haven't had a chance to play them yet.  Will post my thoughts later.

 

-Consul Saboteur.  Cute; I've tried to make him work several times but he does not work as either a screen, move blocker or 'infiltrator' to get in and take out enemy vehicles with meltabombs, because you're opponent can charge him.  There's gotta be a way to make him work, but I haven't figured it out.  C tier.

 

-Alpharius.  Never played a game with or against a primarch so I can't say for sure.  But I'll say I like the way Alpharius looks on paper and suits my playstyle.  I'll give Alpharius a completely theoretical A tier rating.

 

WARLORD TRAITS and RITES OF WAR.

-Hydran Excursors.  Good; this is my go-to trait.  It is nice on it's own, and it gives you the much-needed 2nd reaction in the shooting phase which is vital to have around so you have the most flexiblity to proc your special legion reaction.  A tier

 

-Master of Lies.   I really wanna like this but it will only be useful in half your games, at best.   To make max use of this, you need to have deployed first, so you can 'fake out' your opponent, and then redeploy 3 units afterwards.  However, if you're opponent deploys first, you'll be deploying reactively anyway, which means this trait will be nearly useless.   When it is useful, it's VERY useful, but I don't like taking a warlord trait that's so binary in it's utility.  It's reaction allotment is also in the move phase, which is nice in and of itself, but for our special legion reaction we want to that alottment to be in the shooting phase.  C tier  (average of A tier and D tier).

 

-Headhunter Leviathal.  Fantastic on it's own, except for the restriction of no vehicles deployed. OOf.  I'm not *huge* on having vehicles, but I do like my infiltrating seekers in a proteus LR and I can't do that with this RoW.  The all infantry getting evade on turn 1 is amazing.   This would be A tier if not for the vehicle restriction.   A/B tier depending on whether you like vehicles. 

 

-Coils of the Hydra.  This seems like a strong RoW if you really want to lean into it.  Unfortunately, I think it clashes with most people's aesthetic/composition desires.  You play AL cuz you wanna play AL....not some other legion getting USED by AL.   Evaluating purely mechanically I'd say this is A tier but taken in conjunction with people's aesthetic/comp desires, I gotta put this at C tier.  We have 3 AL players at my FLGS and I've never seen anyone do this RoW.

 

What a nice list, very helpful!

What are your thoughts on Dynat? Im a big fan of his warlord trait, but not sure if he is worth his points tbh

[Xenith]

Conversion beamers - take them for the blind rule as opposed to any actual damage - that's what, a 1/3 chance of dropping your targets WS - meaning your WS4 gets you hitting on a 2+. 

 

Lerneans are crazy expensive, but they can put out decent shooting, and are line terms outside of pride lists. Most success I've had with them was 10 in a spartan with telepathy librarian in an apoc game - they smoke and mirrored onto an objective, stood on it and pinned and overwatched anything coming at them. Though this was insanely expensive. 

 

Alphas get a lot of benefit from generic legion choices. I've leaned into disruption - grav and phosphex are great weapons for us as they create areas of difficult terrain, meaning your opponent is suddenly at -4 to charges. 

 

Agree on the HH's - underpowered for what they should be, too squishy - should get line in Leviathal to give a reason to take them as troops other than theme. 

[9x19 Parabellum]

3 hours ago, Xenith said:

Conversion beamers - take them for the blind rule as opposed to any actual damage - that's what, a 1/3 chance of dropping your targets WS - meaning your WS4 gets you hitting on a 2+. 

 

Lerneans are crazy expensive, but they can put out decent shooting, and are line terms outside of pride lists. Most success I've had with them was 10 in a spartan with telepathy librarian in an apoc game - they smoke and mirrored onto an objective, stood on it and pinned and overwatched anything coming at them. Though this was insanely expensive. 

 

A 1/3 chance just isn't good enough (for my playstyle) to base any kind of planning around.  If I get a unit for a job (mix up with other elites), I need to know they can do it most of the time, not hope for a 1/3 chance that their gun procs. 

I can geta a 5 man Cata command retinue with WS5 automatically, and a banner which gives them line and a 6" ldr. 10 bubble.  They also get proper terminator weapons (power fists) and they come in at 245 pts.  Lerneans spend a whopping 325! pts for that loadout! :cuss:??

 

  

3 hours ago, Xenith said:

Alphas get a lot of benefit from generic legion choices. I've leaned into disruption - grav and phosphex are great weapons for us as they create areas of difficult terrain, meaning your opponent is suddenly at -4 to charges. 

 

Agree on the HH's - underpowered for what they should be, too squishy - should get line in Leviathal to give a reason to take them as troops other than theme. 

 

Totally agree.  Generic legion choices all over the place are great.  I've had great success with huge tac squads thanks to the legion tactic and reaction, and bouncing around my warlord with Hydran Excursors.  Also seekers are better than Headhunters.  

 

While I agree on the Leviathal additional rule for HH, they also just need something to make them generically better.  Actually I just think a couple points price reduction would have been fine. 

[Fallen11]

On 5/12/2023 at 12:14 PM, Imren said:

The range matches the multimelta and the bolter shots, S5 krak grenades or frag with pinning, its perfect for the headhutner squads.

 

I got these for my headhunters:

 

https://popgoesthemonkey.com/collections/custom-weapons/products/10x-grenadier-mk1-w-scope-right

 

I run 3 squads of 7 headhunters, 1 multimelta and two combimelta in each squad, combigrenades on the rest. The combimeltas are used more like a charge deterrance, they ought to stay around 20-25" and just pound emeny infantry and take out sergeants, libbies, signal masters, chaplains and apothecaries.

So you are paying quite a lot of points to have combi granade (tbh no one is rly afraid about 1 s5 ap4 shot per dude, unless you are guardsmen), combi meltas are out of range then, and  you have 1 multi melta that is only scary thing in that squad. At that price point, prety much anything is outshooting you, I mean, you should be very afraid of enemy tacticals point per point. While also, at that price point you are quite juicy target, where enemy has to fear very little in retaliation.


When it comes to Lerneans and trying to see any reedeming value in them, I just take Suzerain and I am happy about my special unit :D
Needles to say, we usually play 2v2, so Lerneans are even worse with their WS4, it's just another nail in their coffin. Let's give these guys special rule that makes them worse in every situation compared to just something like WS5. But fear not, you have IWND, which is also more or less useless most of the time,lol. If each of them was character, then we could talk about IWND. I mean , they aint even something like chosen warrior, making them also piss poor retinue.

Edited May 16, 2023 by Fallen11

[Brother Sutek]

The Lernean having ws4 is the main thing keeping me from using them. The other issues I could work around but my main opponent has a few units with ws5 and they would hit them far more times than my dice rolling could save. I love the model but can't afford a unit that I wouldn't use often due to real life budget. 

[Slips]

9 hours ago, Fallen11 said:

So you are paying quite a lot of points to have combi granade (tbh no one is rly afraid about 1 s5 ap4 shot per dude, unless you are guardsmen), combi meltas are out of range then, and  you have 1 multi melta that is only scary thing in that squad. At that price point, prety much anything is outshooting you, I mean, you should be very afraid of enemy tacticals point per point. While also, at that price point you are quite juicy target, where enemy has to fear very little in retaliation.


When it comes to Lerneans and trying to see any reedeming value in them, I just take Suzerain and I am happy about my special unit :D
Needles to say, we usually play 2v2, so Lerneans are even worse with their WS4, it's just another nail in their coffin. Let's give these guys special rule that makes them worse in every situation compared to just something like WS5. But fear not, you have IWND, which is also more or less useless most of the time,lol. If each of them was character, then we could talk about IWND. I mean , they aint even something like chosen warrior, making them also piss poor retinue.

Combi-Grenades being Minor Combi weapons are a free swap on Headhunters; youre trading out 18" Banestrike for a regular bolter profile + grenade launcher stats.

[Gorgoff]

22 minutes ago, Slips said:

Combi-Grenades being Minor Combi weapons are a free swap on Headhunters; youre trading out 18" Banestrike for a regular bolter profile + grenade launcher stats.

So a straight level up.

[9x19 Parabellum]

True/agreed, but at 25 ppm, they are still very expensive for the very low chance that a.) You'll actually get unsaved wounds through and b.) your opponent will fail their pinning test.  (which is really what you're looking for).  I've probably engaged ~20 shooting attacks with C-gl over all my games and I've had one actual pinning test be successful.

[Slips]

Imho, if your not at least giving the unit youre trying to pin -1LD, I dont really know why youd try since its unlikely to fail.

Thats where some unit synergy can kick in as well as taking advantage of night fight. (although its expensive and only worth doing on expensive non-fearless units)

 

Between Night Fight, an Effrit Squad hitting a unit with their Hydra's wail attack and either some nemesis bolters (can be from the effrit or another unit) or a combi-grenade shot (either from Terminators or HH's) you can force Pinning LD checks at -2 because the Effrit squad turns off vox's and augurs and are now under the effects of Night Fightings -1LD.

 

Unfortunately, the effrit need to be within 12" to do this (they, at least, count as being 8" further away thanks to shroud bombs and LA:AL for your enemy) but hey, its something.

 

If you just have points to burn, bonus points for getting a command squad nearby to affect them with Fear, too.

Its why Night Lords Curze bombs are so strong because you can force a table-wide -3LD Pinning Check.

Edited May 16, 2023 by Slips

[SkimaskMohawk]

On 5/12/2023 at 8:39 PM, 9x19 Parabellum said:

Lernean Terminators.  These guys are a mess.  WS 4 for an "elite" special terminator unit puts them on the back foot right out of the gate. We already have plenty of WS4 options to pick from.  Their stat line is the same as any other terminator, except an addtl point of leadership.  Volkite Chargers are fine and all, but you don't have enough shots to really make it all work and in general you don't take terminators for their shooting.  Power Axe's are the most 'meh' of all the unwieldly weapons, and I can put 5 power fists on regular Catas and still come in under the cost of Lerneans. IWND is cute, but on a 2 wound model, and at 5+, will have very little affect on gameplay (a 1/3 chance of healing a wound on a guy assuming he hasn't been insta-gibbed).  Having the "Line" keyword is nice but less than half of missions have objectives.  Hydran Exemplars is nice in that it helps you hit, but WS4 means elites are hitting you on 3's.  So in the end we have a very expensive unit with a hodge-podge of special rules that appears to be a "sit on objective and be hard to shift", except they aren't truly tanky (no WS5, IWND is meh, and nothing else) and they aren't really killy (hit on 3's is great, but power axes kinda suck, shooting not great, still slow).  C tier.

-Headhunters.  Oh dear god. Much like Lerneans. I really want to like these guys.  Very expensive elite power armor model at 25 ppm, have a lot of great things going for them but just can't capitalize on it.  Great BS and special rules, but no truly good gun to take advantage of it.  Banestrike bolters are terrible because of range.  I've heard about putting Saboteur consul in so they can leverage his shroud bombs, but you shouldn't need to put a 120 pt consul in to make a 150 pt "elite" shooty unit function properly.  Only useful play is to swap out all their guns for magna-combis, meaning you're putting even more points into them, or minor combis (grenades) which are cute, but ultimately haven't had too much affect on my gameplay as wounding on 5's, no AP, and hoping for a wound to get through to force that pinning check hasn't done squat for me.  Even the MM to snipe out sgrs/apothecaries is tricky because you need a "4" to proc the precision shot and becuase you're BS5 it actually hurts when you hit on a 2 or 3 and can't reroll the hit because of how twin-linked works.  So even that gimmick is only going to work at best, less than 50% of the time.  Their infiltrate and scout special rules dare you to put them close but they'll just end up getting killed quickly because they have no inherent defensive capability.  D tier with stock weapons or B tier with combi-weapon meta play. 

 

Maybe it depends on match ups and the skew to a build, but lernaeans really don't come off that bad.

 

Stubborn 9 is a huge upgrade over inexorable 8. It lets characters join without breaking it and stops fear, which is the component used for leadership bombing in most armies. Exemplars increases your damage, which is fine. IWND can help the seargent stay alive for wound juggling. Line lets you score. Scoring primary isnt the end all be all due to kill point secondaries, but its kinda still useful (only one mission makes scoring fully irrelevant), and the glue to the units weird rules; bullying enemy objectives. You deepstrike these guys with a warmonger (or alpharius) on a weak objective and kill the power armour unit taking it; you now hold it, and force some sort of counter play from your opponent, while being more frustrating to shift off. Those power fist cataphractii can kill the unit harder, but can't do anything but fight guys after that. The lernaeans just have a very weird use compared to most other terminators.

 

Headhunters are a unit that needs investment. Some units are like that, in fact, a lot are. 5 barebone recons aren't very good; you need to spend 60 points on gear, and then they transform into one of the best units in the game. Same with HSS. So let's say the base Headhunters doesn't seem good; take a unit of 5, toss them in a rhino and give them combi meltas. Then you can infiltrate and scout and blast an elite unit with the IC attached. Any non precisions can go onto the multiwound 2+ save models and still get value, and youre as close to guaranteed as possible with 2s and 2s and rerollings 1s. And then they can react back into the rhino to frustrate targetting, or alpha legion teleport. You can also do some flex into outflank bullying with the knives, or the grenade and MM general build.

 

Niche and weird units are hard to grade. If their thing doesn't appeal to you, they're essentially worthless, and a lot of people want to use their special units as the core of their army instead of as a specific tool to use when appropriate. 

[Fallen11]

14 hours ago, Slips said:

Combi-Grenades being Minor Combi weapons are a free swap on Headhunters; youre trading out 18" Banestrike for a regular bolter profile + grenade launcher stats.

As I said, 7 HH with MM, 2 combi melta and 4 minor combis is 195pts, that's a lot of point for 7 3+ save models and what they bring to the table. Sorry, but I would be happy to face them just because it's easy for me to remove them while they will have very hard time earning their points back. You might argue but you can blow some tank up with MM, yea, you can, you can also blow it up with MM for twice the less pts. You can assasinate someone, yes, you can, but you also cost around the cost of 2 consuls. If you are going first, you might take someone out, then again, consider yourself lucky if you are playing against people who deploy themself like that.
People who I play against, usually don't care about stuff like that, like DG that just brings 30 lascannons in troop slots(and they still have 3 HS left :D ), they love to return fire on ya,lol
Or maybe BA with like everything in DS with their ROW so then when they come down, you have 40 dawnbreakers, angel, characters, flying dreadnoughts and assault marines first pining your army then charging and killing you in cc. Or maybe custodes that don't rly care about S8 weapons (even have SoB medics in big squads for only 35pts), or DA that also don't care about sniping in general because they ignore it with their veterans, or maybe they just bring Warhound because for 750pts it's a beast and obliterates stuff.
But yeah, my group tends to bring good stuff so bringing subpar stuff is usually sending meat to the grinder...and I do have bias when I look at mediocre stuff when it comes to the performance.

 

[Gorgoff]

"We only play maxed out armies" is an argument, but a problem by itself because you reduce the options you have while playing. A lot of units fall out of the picture if you Max out, lists become similar, games boring "who wins the first turn" roll offs etc.

[Fallen11]

Yep, we had games 2v2, that are literally decided in single turn, last game we had Alpharius that deepstrikes leviathans, dreadnoughts, himself and suzerain along with BA deep strike bomb, that's game over in T2(unless you have bad luck with DS roll), in 5k game, we killed around 4k in a single turn.
In a lot of cases it's game or rock/paper/scissors...

[Gorgoff]

38 minutes ago, Fallen11 said:

Yep, we had games 2v2, that are literally decided in single turn, last game we had Alpharius that deepstrikes leviathans, dreadnoughts, himself and suzerain along with BA deep strike bomb, that's game over in T2(unless you have bad luck with DS roll), in 5k game, we killed around 4k in a single turn.
In a lot of cases it's game or rock/paper/scissors...

So basically you meet up to put your miniatures on the table for half an hour, play ten minutes and have to store them away again. Sounds fun. 

 

[Fallen11]

24 minutes ago, Gorgoff said:

So basically you meet up to put your miniatures on the table for half an hour, play ten minutes and have to store them away again. Sounds fun. 

 

Actually, games usually last around 5-6-7 hours, sometimes even more,lol
That one that 'ended' in a single turn was kinda great because we finished in like 3-4h,lol

[2gud2bbad]

1 hour ago, Fallen11 said:

Yep, we had games 2v2, that are literally decided in single turn, last game we had Alpharius that deepstrikes leviathans, dreadnoughts, himself and suzerain along with BA deep strike bomb, that's game over in T2(unless you have bad luck with DS roll), in 5k game, we killed around 4k in a single turn.
In a lot of cases it's game or rock/paper/scissors...

Ah yes, a fellow Alpharius/Suzerains/Leviathan/Contemptor DS Connoisseur. You can comfortably fit all this in 3K and I think it’s one of the most broken things in the game. Obviously, I’ll play it one day

[Fallen11]

Well, it's strong, but still, depending on your luck with reserves and the fact that you will be missing almost your whole army, you might be eliminated before your guys arrive...game over. So yeah, it's strong if you play it vs someone who doesn't expect it and depends what kind of mission you play also. If you are 2nd and don't have luck for your reserve to arrive t2, enemy has 2 turns to eliminate few guys you have on table, this ain't rly that hard.

[Gorgoff]

2 hours ago, Fallen11 said:

Actually, games usually last around 5-6-7 hours, sometimes even more,lol
That one that 'ended' in a single turn was kinda great because we finished in like 3-4h,lol

That's enough time I agree. Games with 2vs2 tend to take ages to play. 

[2gud2bbad]

Changed up my 2500 list to go with Dynat instead a delegatus and cut a HH team, so there’s just 2 for the compulsory slots left. This uses stuff I have either already built or the parts to build.

 

Dynat

2x5 HH w combi-melta and MM

2x5 Recon Marines w Nemesis Bolters

2x1 Contemptor w 1x LC and 1x MM

2x10 Seekers

10 Fulmentarus w PFs

1 Tech-Marine with Cognis-Signum

10 HHS w LCs

=2500

 

Dynat infiltrates himself and fulmentarus somewhere out if LoS to use the guided fire and night vision the fulmentarus get. The HSS+Techmarine are infiltrated as well. All other units have infiltrate stock bar the dreadnoughts. 
 

what do you guys think? 

[Xenith]

Just bear in mind that the cataphractii fulmentarus lose the benefits of the heavy rule if you attach Dynat, so they no longer reroll armour saves against blast. I do think 10 fulmentarus are a lot at 2500, hell, 5 is a lot at 3k (10% of your points) so you could easily drop 5 and fit more fun things in. 

[2gud2bbad]

Thoughts on our inductii? 

On 5/22/2023 at 10:44 AM, Xenith said:

Just bear in mind that the cataphractii fulmentarus lose the benefits of the heavy rule if you attach Dynat, so they no longer reroll armour saves against blast. I do think 10 fulmentarus are a lot at 2500, hell, 5 is a lot at 3k (10% of your points) so you could easily drop 5 and fit more fun things in. 

 
Good catch, forgot about the heavy thing. Yes, 10 Fulmentarus are a lot for 2500, but that’s the only way that let’s me field my guys without buying new models :P