Horus Heresy Review: Cerastus Knight Acheron

Good afternoon,

Today's post is the second in my Cerastus Knight class reviews and focuses on what I think is the most competitive of the 4 available - the Acheron. Not only is this night extremely good, but like all the Cerastus frames it looks bloody brilliant!

Stats

The Acheron comes with the basic Cerastus stats line of :

WS      BS      S      F      S     R     I    A   HP

 4           4      10    13    12    12    4    4    6

Overview: A very tasty stats line as you get with all of the knights and cerastus frames, the cerastus frames have an extra attack in general I think which with this knight in particular may not make too much of a difference as we will see!

Special Rules

As a super heavy walker the Castigator comes with a chunk of special rules that include:

- Move through Cover

- Fear

- Strikedown

- Relentless

- Invincible Behemoth

- Smash (eh!?)

- Hammer of Wrath

The Cerastus frames also have the special rule Flank Speed, that means they can run 3D6 inches in the shooting phase. 

Incidentally the specific wording is the knight may opt to run instead of shooting A weapon in the shooting phase. This seems open to interpretation that a knight with multiple weapons could sacrifice one weapon to run and still shoot the others. Personally I think it would be a dick move to play it that way as it seems super gamey to me, but just to point it out.

Equipment

The Acheron has two fantastic pieces of equipment:

Acheron Pattern Flame Cannon - Hellstorm S7 AP3, Ordnance 1

This is a 16.5" template, effectively giving you a 28.5" range with the weapon when you consider the 12" movement of a super heavy walker. This will TOAST any marines or 3+ save bikes with aplomb. 

Reaper Chainfist - D AP2, Melee, Machine Destroyer

Ho Boy! Here is the D! Not only is this the D but when you are rolling on the Destroyer Table against any target with an armour value then you can re-roll any rolls of a 1! Vastly increasing your chances of just obliterating vehicles through hull points.

IMPORTANTLY the Reaper Chainfist also has a built in twin-linked Heavy Bolter. This means you can toast one target with your hellstorm and then charge another that you shot the Heavy bolter at. This gives you a level of target saturation lacking on the Cerastus Castigator.

Ion Shield - 4++ against shooting attacks with the facing declared at the start of the shooting phase as usual. You know it you love it.

Options

Only two options here:

Blessed Autosimulcra - IWND weak edition, you can regain a hull point on the roll of a 6 at the end of your turn for 10 points. Worth it for the price!

Occular Augmetics - May re-roll vehicle damage results of 1 when shooting from 12" or less and also gain night vision for 10 points, not worth it on this knight at all. 

Utilisation

The Cerastus frames in general have relatively low ranges so they really do work well with an aggressive playstyle to get the best out of their weapons. The hellstorm template will mulch through any 3+ astartes easily, but you will need to be within 10-12" to get the best out of the template with the fat end covering the unit.

The acheron is more prone to getting tar pitted with large squads like 20 many fearless techthralls. Even with stomp he will only kill 7-10 a turn on average with attacks and stomps (as they should be able to wrap all aroun him with a pile in after charge and after additional 3" after combat over). Thats a 2-3 turn tarpit!

So keep this monster away from fearless blob squads and storm shields (D in 30k allows invulns but forces a re-roll if succesful), and don't expect him to be able to take on Primarchs at all!! Vulkan would mess this guy up no problem as would Anacharis Scoria.

You are designed to take out 3+ saves and pretty much any vehicle their is that is 6HP or lower and even a baneblade in one turn if you are a lucky son of a gun.

Peace out,

Rob