Horus Heresy Review: Legate Commander/Lord Marshal

Dear readers, wassup!?

As usual, my inclination to review units from the wide pool of horus heresy units is often dictated by my current painting interests. At the moment I am feverishly (somewhat literally due to illness) painting my Solar Auxilia, so Solar Auxilia reviews ye shall receive! Today is the turn of the Legate Commander and his upgrade the Lord Marshal, the generals of the army, along with his trusty household retinue whom I will explain below...

Legate Commander/Lord Marshall

The legate commander is your high ranking field officer that takes control of your human elite. They have a bunch of great rules and wargear to use and abuse... First, Stats!

Stats

                                  WS  BS  S  T  W  I  A  Ld  Sv

 Legate Commander  4      4    3  3   3   3  2   9    4+

 Lord Marshal            4      4    3  3   3   4  3   10    4+

So the Legate commander is your basic choice at 45 points. The Lord Marshal upgrade will nearly double that as a 35 points upgrade, which so far only give you a pip in I, A, and Ld. BUT the Lord Marshal grants you access to several rules and wargear that make it worth it if you want to go down that route. Clue, I do.

Equipment

The basic equipment of both the Legate and Lord are the same and are as follows:

Void Amour (4+ save re-roll against blast and void hardened)

CCW

Laspistol

Frag/Krak grenades

Refractor Field

So far so not inspiring. Lets have a gander at their special rules before we peruse the many many options you can give these two.

Special Rules

First I will detail the rules that both the Legate and Lord share:

Disciplined Fire - May overwatch at BS2 with pistol, assault and rapid fire weapons

Independent Character - Strong independent miniature

High Command - Grants their leadership for morale and pinning tests to the entire force as long as they are on the table (in ground vehicle and fortifications counts) and not falling back or engaged in assault.

Close Formation Fighting - So long as they are in base to base contact with another friendly model with this rules they gain +1 WS

Disciplined Command - Defines who has to be the warlord with ranks going from Lord, Legate, Strategos, Tank commander

Lord Marshall Only Rules

Forged in War - The Lord Marshall may select their warlord trait from ANY table they are eligible for. So all of the rulebook tables as well as the Auxilia traits.

Household Retinue - The Lord Marshall may take a Veletaris Storm Section as an Elite choice that gains WS4! They lose hold the line as a special rule BUT they gain preferred enemy (infantry) while the Lord is alive and on the table and not falling back. They may take a Dracosan or Arvus lighter as a transport. 

Upgrades and Options

So their is a veritable bucket of upgrades for these two esteemed leaders. I'm not going to run through every option but give you the low down on the best options and then in my summary I will proffer a couple of builds that represent high and low points investment in this category.

Defensive Upgrades

Artificer Armour - A 2+ armour save that is a must take for both HQ options.

Iron Halo/Cyber Familiar - The iron Halo grants a 4++ invulnerable and the cyber familiar can improve this to 3++ though this is still on a 3 wound toughness 3 squishable bugger.

Displacer field (Lord only) - This is a 3++ invulnerable that on the roll of a 1 immediately places your warlord in deep strike reserve. If they mishap when they re-enter play in your next turn they die immediately. Given that you can pin point precision deep strike with nuncio-voxs this is effectively a 2++ invulnerable statistically. It is only 15 points and a must take if you are going full Lord in my opinion.

Grav-Wave Generator (Lord Only) - Any charges made against the bearer suffer a D3" penalty (cumulative with the -2" for terrain) and cannot make hammer of wrath attacks. This is perfect for helping ensure you are the charger not the chargee!

Offensive Upgrades

Digital Lasers - A cheap method of giving you an extra attack

Master Crafted - For 10 points you can increase the likelihood of getting a hit with a re-roll

Needle Pistol - A 12" pistol with 4+ poison and rending (AP5 normally) - not a bad option at all and cheap.

Power Fist - The standard S6 weapon of humans to have at least a wee chance of hurting marines. But you will strike last and stand to get smushed first!

Charnabal Sabre - +1 initiative in challenges and rending. This puts your legate commander up to I4 meaning they have a decent chance of striking against squad sergeants at least.

Paragon Blade (Lord Marshal Only) - we know it we love it and that instant death on a 6 will help your puny Lord make a dent.

Archaeotech Pistols (Lord Marshal Only) - AP3 pistol to help plink of marines where you can.


Utilisation

As I insinuated before there are broadly two paths you can go down with this HQ choice. The first is as a cheap force multiplier with minimal survivability upgrades and the second is as quite an expensive points sink that has much more flexibility and staying power. Below are a cheap and not-so-cheap options with reasoning.

Cheap

Legate Commander, Artificer armour, Iron Halo, Melta Bomb - 80 points

This commander presents a Leadership 9 buff to all of the army, but only on the table and out of assault. It is therefore important to keep them protected by putting them in a transport like a Dracosan with a 10 man squad of Veletaris. Hide them there and pop out only to judicially use melta bombs where applicable. Name of the game is to survive!


Not-so-cheap

Lord Marshal, Artificer Armour, Displacer Matrix Grav-Wave Generator, Paragon Blade  - 150 points

Nearly DOUBLE the cost of the Legate. BUT you get to pick your warlord trait which includes a solar auxilia trait to give you eternal warrior! This makes the Lord very survivable indeed. Additionally if you stick them with a Household Retinue in a Dracosan you now have 10 x WS5 buddies (due to close formation fighting) that have a shroud bomb (leadership test needed to charge) and will lose D3" to their charge roll.

This makes the Lord and his unit hard to charge until you are very close and if the Lord pulls of the charge then he has 5 x Paragon Blade attacks at WS5 + 23 Power axe attacks at WS5 that also have preferred enemy. The Lord with his 2+/2++ (effectively) and eternal warrior, if selected, can tank wounds for them and then they can wreck face.

Fun.

Peace out,

Rob

Solar Auxilia Veletaris - First mini finished

Greetings Friends!

Just an update on my Solar Auxilia as they seemed the most popular in my run down the other day! Feast your eyes and comment away! The base is supposed to be trodden gardens and the like in a city during siege.

Peace out,

Rob

Solar Auxilia and a blast from the past!

Hi all,

After posting up my to-do list yesterday, I cracked on with building some of my new Solar Auxilia. I managed to get the Dracosan put together as well the Legate Commander. The Dracosan is an astonishingly easy to put together forgeworld kit. The bulk of it is made up from 4 pieces before a few trimming details are added, like the weapon and exhausts.

I also prepped and cleaned half of the Veletaris volkite squad I purchased. These guys were a little tricky as each of the arms is specific to one of the models. I decided to separate these into their matching parts whilst on the sprue and paint them there before gluing them all together. It seemed much easier than trying to keep track otherwise. 

Finally, my parents visited at the end of this week just gone and they brought me a surprise gift from the attic!

A Leman Russ Vanquisher circa 1998! Cost me a grand sum of £18! I need to remove the sponsons to keep it in line with the Solar Auxilia Vanquisher load out, but I am hoping its slightly vintage design can be a boon with the Auxilia look. 

I'll be back tomorrow with more building progress likely :)

Peace out,

Rob

Hobby Update - 30k armies on the go

Hey all,

Hey everyone, today I just wanted to run through my 30k armies that I have on the go and list out what I have painted and what I have left to do. A few of these are very nearly done to completion for the long foreseeable future whereas others are barely off the ground! A self-indulgent wander through my collection, but I hope you enjoy seeing what is coming nonetheless :)

Mechanicum

So I have 3750 points of Mechanicum planned in total and the vast majority of this is already built and painted, but I have a few little odds and sods to complete that are currently on a backburner as I work on other armies to catch them up!

Completed:

2 x Magos

2 x Domitars

4 x Castellax

9 x Thallax

4 x Scyllax

1 x Vorax

2 x Krios Venators

2 x Thanatar

To-Complete:

1 x Calix Thanatar

1 x Converted Arlatax from Domitar

1 x Imperial Knight Paladin

To-Buy:

Nothing as of yet but in the new year I do plan on making several purchases that should hopefully encompass some of their upcoming releases such as drones and the Macroarid Explorator models.

Overall:

As you can see having only 3 models left to do, I'm pretty solid on the Mechanicum. The Calix is the easiest one to knock off this list as I won't be doing any serious conversion work to it at all. The knight is mostly built, but does need a hard 20% of it completing. The Arlatax will need the most work doing on it, but I want to keep this until I have a set idea of how I want mine to look in my head.

Alpha Legion

The Alpha legion have had a very productive stint of painting over the past few months resulting in quite a large chunk of painted miniatures. Unlike the Mechanicum however, none of these buggers have any bases done for them yet, so I really need to crack on and order those pronto. I am also waiting for alternative flying bases which have been very delayed so I need to chase them up as well!

Completed (aside from bases):

Autilon Skorr

2 x 5 Veterans with sergeant and melta gun

2 x 5 veterans with sergeant and heavy bolter

1 x Leviathan Dreadnought

1 x Dreadnought Drop Pod

To-Complete:

1 x Armillus Dynat

2 x Fire raptors

1 x Xiphon Interceptor

5 x Sons of Horus Reavers

To-Buy:

5 x Sons of Horus Reavers

1 x Rhino

2 x 10 Assault Marines 

1 x Alpharius - though in realty I am going to convert this bastard

Overall:

For the mean time, the big boring bulk of infantry has been done with only the assault marines looming really. If the rumours concerning the next "Betrayal at Calth" like boxset are true and it will contain assault troops then hopefully they should be a steal for me. That makes the capital required to complete this army pretty low. I don't have plans to buy anything else after that so this army shouldn't take too long to complete I hope!

Solar Auxilia

The Solar Auxilia are a recent buy but I have painted 2/3 of my original purchase with just the 10 man squad of Veletaris with Power Axes to go. However my recent selling spree has yielded enough money to make some additional purchases.... which I maaay have made when I was at warhammer world as you will see in the too complete section...

Complete:

1 x Malcador Infernus

1 x Dracosan Armoured Transport

To-Complete:

1 x Dracosan Armoured Transport

1 x 10 man Squad of Veletaris with power axes

1 x 10 man Squad of Veletaris with volkite

1 x Auxilia Command Squad

1 x Legate Commander

To-Buy:

1 x Malcador Infernus

2 x Dracosan

1 x 10 man Squad of Veletaris with Volkite

Overall:

This army will sit at 2250 points once the additional purchases are made. I haven't yet decided on what will be bought to expand this army further, any suggestions on that front will be well received :). I have recently ordered the bases for these guys so I am hoping to have them playable as a small army or large allied detachment before the end of the year !

Imperial Militia

These guys really caught my imagination when I sat down and read the rules. I decided this was a great opportunity to take advantage of some of the other amazing miniature companies out there and decided I would really like to field an all female army and so a big spend was made at raging heroes...

I have virtually everything needed to make this army with quite a small amount of capital required to fund it. I am planning to make the final purchases for this army with the sale of my dark angels army, should I ever find a buyer! I thought £130-150 would be a good price but no biters yet :(

To-complete:

3 x Commander models

20 x Infantry models

15 x sniper infantry models

2 x Proteus Landraider counts as models

4 x medusa heavy artillery cannons + 16 crew

To-buy:

1 x Baneblade counts as model

Overall:

This army will be a siege force that has a distinct neo-reich steampunk aesthetic. The counts as Baneblade will be the Huntsman Spider Walker from Ramshackle games. That plus some conversion materials and bases will be enough to complete a 2500 point army. Obviously I haven't built let alone painted any of this, so much work is required, Having this built with the odd united painted before 2017 would be an achievement I feel so do look out for this in my posts!

Overall

As you can see I have a lot on my plate even with jettisoning the vast majority of my 40k armies. But I feel like with a solid period of time to do some painting I and my focus being properly placed I could get a good amount of completion done on these lists! Let me know what excites you and if you want to see some things sooner than others, I my just bump stuff up the queue :)

Peace out,

Rob

Dracosan Armoured Transport - Finished!

Hey gang,

I'm at Warhammer world today! But in my absence here are some pictures of my armoured Dracosan!

Peace out,

Rob

Horus Heresy Review: Dracosan Armoured Transport - Solar Auxilia

Good day to you!!

I've been piling in the hours to get my solar auxilia painted up recently. I was incredibly happy with how the Malcador Infernus turned out, so I dove right in with the regular transport for the Solar Auxilia - The Dracosan Armoured Transport. This is the only available transport for the Solar Auxilia outside of the Arvus Light Transporter and certain Lord of War choices like the Storm Lord. 

Its a doozy.

Unit Stats

The Dracosan rocks an immense profile for your troop transport and costs only 135 points base:

BS  Front   Side   Rear   HP

 3      13        12      11     5

That is a 5 hull point vehicle with damn fine armour for the price. Oh, it also carries 20 models!! 20! Important to note it cannot transport bulky or bigger models (poor ogryns) and it is NOT an assault vehicle, with NO fire points. Access points are on both sides.

Overview - A human standard BS of 3 is more than made up for by more HPs than a land raider and decent armour.

Special Rules

Just the one!

Explorator adaptation - Re-roll failed dangerous terrain tests and gain a 6++ invuln against blasts and templates. Can't go wrong as standard!!

Equipment

The Dracosan is a transport at base and so does not come with firepower in mind. That said it has great utility with its armaments all the same.

Twin-linked Lascannon - 48" - S9 - AP2 - Heavy 1 

The lascannon we know and love, though being twin-linked it seriously mitigates your sub-par BS3 which is very handy indeed.

The Dracosan also comes with extra armour as standard along with smoke launchers and a searchlight. 

Overall the Dracosan is a power house transport and so getting a twin-linked lascannon on such a durable frame is a really sweet bonus. Until you see what else you can take....

Options

Offensive Upgrades (they swear too much):

Demolisher cannon - 24" S10, AP2, Large Blast

Thats right! For the princely sum of 30 points you can upgrade your twin-linked lascannon for a demolisher cannon!!! That also cuts the transport capacity down to 10 mind though. But it still makes your transports into vindicators...

You can also take a pintle mounted heavy flamer or multi-laser as well as up to 2 x Hunter killer missiles. I quite like the hunter killer missiles in this regard as they give you a nice option if your demolisher is out of range or destroyed.

Defensive Upgrades (they always say it wasn't them):

Armoured Ceramite. Yep for the price of 20 points you can now melta proof your 5 HP transport! Whats more you can also give it a Flare Shield for 25 points making it effectively AV14 against all shots, or AV15 against blasts and templates on the front arc.

Bizarrely you have the option of paying for extra armour and dozer blade upgrades which you have already (dozer blade being a lesser version of explorator adaptation). You can also pay for an auxiliary drive for never ever getting stuck.

Utilisation

With a demolisher cannon, coupled with a flare shield and armoured ceramite you punch 210 points for your Dracosan Transport. BUT you aren't just getting a transport but a better armoured vindicator that can also carry 10 man squads into the enemy. With your short ranged weapon you will be naturally inclined to take them up the field which is where your short ranged weapons want to be.

I prefer this set up for veletaris squads that keep their volkite, allowing you to deploy and lay down a lot of fire on both an armoured target or 2_ save squad with the cannon as well as target squishy things with the volkite.

One of the issues with taking the demolisher however, is that you will be unable to add an independent character to your 10 man squads. So if you want to have a retinue squad to accompany your Legate commander you will have to settle for the twin-linked lascannon option. I use the word "settle" very loosely as it is still an excellent option.

Keeping the 20 man capacity and carrying las-section squads around might sound like a good idea, but given how bunched up your deployment will have to be, I don't recommend it. It is asking for you to be rinsed with templates the turn after and poof you are gone. The smaller squads have a greater degree of flexibility, indeed you can fill Dracosans with 10 man flamer squads yourself and burn baby burn!

Overall the Dracosn, like any none super heavy, can go boom with one lucky dice, however apart from a vulnerable rear armour you are looking at an incredibly resilient transport that can pack a hell of a punch. Plus, my god they look bitchingly good.

Peace out,

Rob

Hero For a Day and Warhammer World Trip!

Hey gang,

Quiet blogging from me recently, just been busy with reality, but mostly doing fun things though! Today I wanted to just stick up a reminder of an event being run by Nick from The Burning Eye. This is an event called Hero For A Day and its a 24 hour 40k event which Nick has put a huge amount of effort into with lots of fluff and multiple campaign outcomes designed. He's even got some voice acting on board for real fluff!

The event has two sides (attackers and defenders) and each round of gaming progresses the story. Its not a tournament but a wonderful narrative event. The aim of this event is to raise money for the Children's Cancer and Leukaemia group, if you follow the link above you'll find the home page on Nick's blog for Hero for a day and it will give you all the motivation for the event. 

But REALLY how often do you get the chance to play 40k for 24 hours!!? There are still spaces left so if you fancy attending please whizz on over to The Burning Eye and have a look and then contact Nick. This is going to be a fantastic (if slightly sweaty!) event plus I'll be there :P what more do you need!

More you say!? Well, Nick has also organised a raffle with people being incredibly generous with their donations, you can find a list of the donations through this link, ranging from single figures all the way up to deathwatch overkill and even my painted Cerastus Knight Castigator! You can buy raffle tickets even if you can't attend!

Or if you feel like being even bigger awesome peoples then you can donate to the charity the event is supporting through this link here. It is a fantastic charity that supports parents in what must be a nightmare scenario when your child is diagnosed with cancer. The charity has done many magnificent things and will continue to do so. So even if you can only spare £1 or £100 please donate as it all counts :)

Warhammer World

I will be spending wednesday in warhammer world with some club buddies playing a 5000 points a side double match of 30k! Hopefully I'll be able to grab some pictures as I know that Sam Perkins who is coming is an amazing painter with beautiful armies! Plus I should hopefully have some more solar auxilia painted to dazzle you with :P

If you fancy coming to say hi then do :)

Peace out,

Rob