Best traitor terminator army

[Repentless]

Hello

I want to build a terminator army in the new version of Horus Heresy.

It has to be a traitor legion, any suggestions ?

I have no preference for shooting or melee.

Thanks.

[SlickSamos]

Ah but do you have a preference for Deep Strike, Land Raiders or walking?  Also so you have a preferred armour type?  And lastly, will your list have a strong core of Terminators or are you aiming for like 100% Terminators?

[Brother Sutek]

Death Guard have some amazing units. My personal army uses two Grave Warden units, large Deathshroud unit and Typhon with Seige Master in Cat armour as the starting point.

[Repentless]

Thanks for the replies:)

And sorry for lack of detailed information.

I only want terminators as models, but the army can include any kind of vehicles, dreadnaughts etc.

Deep Strike, Land Raiders or walking - no preference here:)

Also no preference when it comes to armor type.

 

[LameBeard]

Are you permitted the Exemplary Battles?

 

Night Lords could be an option with both Atrementar and Contekar. Iron Warriors also got an extra terminator option.

 

Otherwise I think Death Guard is the one with two unique units.

[Repentless]

Ohhhhh those Contekar terminators look really nice and evil.

For the Atrementar I must buy Cataphractii Pattern Terminator Armour ?

Sevatar look really eveil as well.

 

[SlickSamos]

They also can Deep Strike with Sev I think and the models are definitely really cool. 

 

Justaerians (Sons of Horus) are also a contender as they can Deep Strike, have a solid profile and are reasonably flexible in their load out. 

 

But yeah seeing the other replies, I suspect you're probably best choosing between Night Lords and Death Guard and it sounds like you've made up your mind.  Raptors and Deep Striking Terminators seem like a good combo to me! 

[Repentless]

I also like some of the descriptions of the Night Lords I have seen, like terror warfare:)

Also just saw that a shop close to where I live have the Noght Lord Omnibus, another plus.

Just tried to look for Night Lords decals, apprantly they are sold out everywhere.

Anyone know where I could get Night Lord decals or maybe just lightning decals ?

[SlickSamos]

The Night Lord omnibus by ADB is one of the best BL novel series, so enjoy!  It's also got references in the Horus Heresy series which are fun to spot.

[Repentless]

Fantastic, looking forward to that read.

Would someone be able to answer this please:

For the Atrementar I must buy Cataphractii Pattern Terminator Armour ?

Thanks.

Any suggestions on where to find lightning decals ?

[Brofist]

Thousand Sons have probably one of the best deepstrike oriented RoW and a bunch of synergies towards it

[Xenith]

Seems like Night Lords are a good call for you then! 

 

Seeing as you really love terminators, you can fit a lot of them into an army with night lords:

 

HQ - Praetor with 10 terminator retinue, pride of the legion

HQ - Sevatrar + 15 Contekar retinue

 

Comp troops - 2x 10 cata/tart terminators

Non-compulsory troops - 4x 15 contekar

Elites 3x 20 atramentar

 

Load of points, but that's 165 terminators. 

 

If you take Sevatar, all your dudes apart from Sevatar's unit gain deepstrike. 

 

Edited November 28, 2022 by Xenith

[LameBeard]

23 hours ago, Repentless said:

Ohhhhh those Contekar terminators look really nice and evil.

For the Atrementar I must buy Cataphractii Pattern Terminator Armour ?

Sevatar look really eveil as well.

 

Atramentar are now Tartaros, and get Deep Strike for free without Sevatar. Some modelling ideas in the original Exemplary Battles document, and on this site in places.

 

So you could have deep striking Atramentar and the slower cataphractii as legion terminators in tanks.

 

For decals, if all you want are shoulder pads, the 40k chaos sheet is probably good enough? If you want fancy banners and tank doors, not so sure … the older chaos sheet had some slightly bigger symbols.

 

[Repentless]

Thanks a lot.

I go to local GW shop in a few days to get a box of Tartaros terminators.

On the Night lords decal sheet from Forgeworld I saw some very nice lightning decals, unfortunately they are out of stock on GWs website at the moment.

 

[Mandragola]

You can have Horus deep strike with a retinue of Justaerin, who get a standard to make them Line. Not a lot can stand up to that. I think that’s the way I’d go myself. 3A and WS5 makes them the best terminators outside of the Custodes list. 
 

There’s definitely nothing wrong with death guard, Night Lord or Iron Warrior terminators either, except Horus doesn’t hang out with them. 

[Dont-Be-Haten]

17 hours ago, Mandragola said:

You can have Horus deep strike with a retinue of Justaerin, who get a standard to make them Line. Not a lot can stand up to that. I think that’s the way I’d go myself. 3A and WS5 makes them the best terminators outside of the Custodes list. 
 

There’s definitely nothing wrong with death guard, Night Lord or Iron Warrior terminators either, except Horus doesn’t hang out with them. 

To +1 this, I frequently play against good SoH lists with Abbadon and deep striking Justerians. Horus is too many points but nothing can kill him.

 

Though it all depends on how you want to build your army.

[Repentless]

I got a Tartaros Terminator box, what would be the best loadout for the Atramentars ?

 

[SkimaskMohawk]

59 minutes ago, Repentless said:

I got a Tartaros Terminator box, what would be the best loadout for the Atramentars ?

 

 

Not to run them at all. Just use them as legion tartaros terminators instead. If you want deepstriking terminators just take contekar or sevatar w/ normal ones. 

[SlickSamos]

How would you run them as Tartaros though?  What equipment works well for them?

 

 

[SkimaskMohawk]

1 hour ago, SlickSamos said:

How would you run them as Tartaros though?  What equipment works well for them?

 

 

 

That's rather a broad question. 

 

They're not as durable as cataphractii, so probably don't want to pay for ranged weapons and risk return fire. Melee is a bit of a toss up; either have them shred power armour with maces or lightning claws, or just give them thunder hammers and ram them into elite units that need to fish for rends/breaches to get through the armour. If you're doing the later you might need to invest in a larger unit size to take full advantage of inexorable and push through attacks against Ws5 opponents.

 

Honestly, the biggest strength of the unit is its price. When you take lots in large numbers they become more annoying to deal with, especially as they don't hit any speed bumps like cataphractii. But one small unit of 5 isn't that impressive, and I'd recommend using them as a command squad before anything else. 

[MichaelCarmine]

12 hours ago, SlickSamos said:

How would you run them as Tartaros though?  What equipment works well for them?

 

 

Depends on their Legion.

In general, since they don't want to proof their 5++ at initiative 1, i'd say anything that hits at initiative, prefferably Lightning claws for obvious reasons.

With Night Lords, i think they get no special advantages over Cataphractii other than not being heavy and being able to Sweep. Might work wonders against big infantry blobs, combined with nightfighting and Fear.

 

Other than that, i don't see them in a good spot, unless picking them for Style reasons. I'm doing the same with a Tartaros Command Squad for my RG. No real benefit against Cataphractii, just fits better to the Legion "flair".

 

They work veeeery well with wolves though, 'cause there they are able to Move, Run and Charge. So Redblade with a Tartaros CommandSquad is fast as hell and did catch more than a few Opponents offguard. =]

 

Edit: Come to think of it - they'd work pretty good with Emperors Children, thanks to their Initiativ bonus on the charge, for Ini2 Powerfists/Thunderhammers/Chainsfists.

 

Edited December 27, 2022 by MichaelCarmine

[Brother Sutek]

The only thing that lets me down with Deathshroud is that they are no longer your choice of armour type. I ran mine as Cataphracti last edition and they were a very tough nut to crack. Now they have a lesser invul save and still can't sweep as they are with Typhon and he is in Cataphracti!

[MichaelCarmine]

20 minutes ago, Brother Sutek said:

The only thing that lets me down with Deathshroud is that they are no longer your choice of armour type. I ran mine as Cataphracti last edition and they were a very tough nut to crack. Now they have a lesser invul save and still can't sweep as they are with Typhon and he is in Cataphracti!

Yeeeeeah, but they now have 3 Wounds and Battlehardened (1), which means, they can benefit from FnPs even against Str. 9 weapons. And 5++/5+++ beats a 4++. And even if they fail both tests, they only loose one LP, whereas all Cataphractiis (other than Deliverers) get InstaSmashed.

Meaning to say - they still are a tough nut to crack. Even tougher, thanks to the absence of Str10 AP2 Templates in this edition.

[LameBeard]

17 hours ago, Repentless said:

I got a Tartaros Terminator box, what would be the best loadout for the Atramentars ?

 

Just have some fun and lean into their special options. That means headsman’s axe on the Sergeant and a few chainglaives for the others. But of course, they don’t come in the kit. So if it were just what’s in the box, the usual options are all legal. Lightning claws look great on Night Lords.https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/SjrRPYUuOeTbZ2Mu.pdf 

Page 3.

[SkimaskMohawk]

2 hours ago, LameBeard said:

Just have some fun and lean into their special options. That means headsman’s axe on the Sergeant and a few chainglaives for the others. But of course, they don’t come in the kit. So if it were just what’s in the box, the usual options are all legal. Lightning claws look great on Night Lords.https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/SjrRPYUuOeTbZ2Mu.pdf 

Page 3.

 

Just take legion tartaros with double claws instead. You can get 5 claw atrementar for 295, or you get can 5 claw tartaros for 200. They have the same stats. You can get fear for free in terror assault or pay 10 points. Deepstrike is good, but if youre taking sevatar to fully unlock sworn loyalty, he just gives it to the tartaros too. Which, again,  have the same stats and are cheaper. 

 

The only thing that makes the unit unique from a rules perspective is that they can all take chainglaives. And that's not even that interesting any more with the strength increase and shred of chainblades, and the rending of lightning claws.