Horus Heresy 2e Review: Blackshields Oath: The Legacy of Nikaea

Warpstone Flux Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

3.5/5 stars. Rounded down. Gain additional psychic powers thanks to not caring.  

Background.

Okay. So the Emperor said some stuff at the Council of Nikaea. Magnus, the Khan, and Sanguinius said other stuff. Mortarion chimed in. And then you're no longer allowed to channel warp powers. But you don't care any more because you went rogue and don't agree with either the loyalists or the traitors and you will use the warp powers as you see fit even if they're dangerous. Think that about covers it.  

Rules Evaluation. 

The Warp Torrent ability is gained by both characters and independent characters. This is a nice additional shooting attack to be very candid. Some S=5 bolts that also deflagrate are cool. The range is small, but it gels well with a close combat orientated force that have transports. By taking a Perils test, you can also get AP=3 which is especially tasty, but at a price I suppose. 

Finally those independent characters can pay a premium to gain access to a proper discipline. This is very handy! But you don't get lightning at all. Your HQ must be a psyker and two other characters. This is a reasonable balance that encourages you to go big. Overall then, this is a reasonable choice for your Thousand Sons wannabes, but don't choose Thousand Sons - their rules are already cool. Go for something unexpected like, erm, Imperial Fists or something? 

Combinatoric Analysis. 

The Eternal Vendetta: ⭐️⭐️. 2/5 stars. Too situational. But perhaps fluffy with Death Guard, White Scars, Blood Angels or Thousand Sons? 

Panoply of Old: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️. 4/5 stars. Useful depending on your choices. 

Only in Death Does Duty End: ⭐️⭐️⭐️. 3/5 stars. A little bit average to be honest. You're already risking wounds to get AP=3, you don't need more casualties. 

 

The Spoils of Victory: ⭐️⭐️⭐️. 3/5 stars. Pirate psychics could actually be really cool. Maybe they got trained by some eldar? Not sure what the narrative might be here, but there's tasty stuff to be had. 

An Eternity of War: ⭐️⭐️. 2/5 stars. This is okay. They're mad psykers that want to be in combat. There might be better choices for your psykers though. 

The Flesh Is Weak: 0/5 stars. You cannot have psykers. This combination is useless to you. 

The Broken Helix: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️. 4/5 stars. Psychic mutants and clones? Oh yes. This is a solid combination that I can see working really well!

In Disgrace All Are Equal:  0/5 stars. Psychic warbands not giving a hoot? Yeah, that can work! Unfortunately, you have to select a HQ, and those disgraced cannot select a HQ, so you can't have this combination sorry. 

Pride is our Armour: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️. 4/5 stars. Veteran psychics? Yes! This works splendidly well in my opinion. The only drawback is that the points cost is stacking up here fast with this combination. 

The Taint of the Xenos: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️. 4/5 stars. Psykers who have been trained by Xenos is one way of interpreting this very useful and interesting combination. I'd be tempted by this one. Especially in an Eldar direction. Some entertaining conversion opportunities are present here, along with another potential connection to the Dornian Heresy if you are tilting in that direction. 

The Weapons of Desperation: ⭐️⭐️⭐️. 3/5 stars. This combination works very well as well in a narrative sense. You could imagine marines escaping from their parent legion cells or something like that?

CSM in 6th Review: Abaddon

This is the first post of many that will systematically review the new 6th Edition Chaos Space Marine codex.  And to kick things off, what better character / unit to consider than Abaddon the Despoiler?!

The first thing to note is that his points cost is very high: more than a land raider.  But he does get eternal warrior and you don't have to roll for the warlord traits - he gets black crusader automagically.  In combat, he is going to be an absolute wrecking ball.  He can select between his daemon blade (granting a random number of extra attacks - and hopefully not wounding himself in the process) or the Talon of Horus (slightly lower AP, but better S).  Either way, its quite likely he will be taking down any character unfortunate enough to come in to contact with him -- and like other chaos lords, he will have to challenge them.  Yes, he's even going to best Calgar I'd say!

I think the main negative side of things is actually the rewards of chaos chart.  With such a good likelihood of winning every combat against other characters, there's a none-negligible chance that he will get turned in to a chaos spawn or a daemon prince.  Either way, its not good news, I think!  Not only are those two options much worse than Abaddon, the perks he has do not carry through.  Therefore, I think it would be best to slot in a Dark Apostle HQ choice in Abaddon's unit so that he can at least re-roll undesirable results.

Next, we actually want him to get in to close combat.  That'll mean teleporting on to the battlefield (but then we can't do that with the Dark Apostle), or riding in a transport (i.e. land raider) to get where he wants to be.  Given he can turn chosen in to troops, that's one option for his accompanying band of chaos warriors.  But I think that a squad of chaos terminators would be a better unit for Abaddon to tag along with.  

And therein, we can immediately see a problem.  Two HQs, terminators plus/minus a land raider quickly adds up the points.  I not sure at what points level I would consider taking Abaddon to be honest.  At low points (e.g. Conflict-style at 750 points, or 1000 points), I suspect that taking more bodies may prove wiser so that enemies don't give Abaddon the run-around.  At 1500 to 1850, he could be a possibility - and a rude shock to opponents.  At 2000-ish, I don't have as much a problem as his points cost is then sinking below 20% of the total cost of the army (I like to aim for about 10 to 20% of points spent on an HQ in general, to give a little balance).  And in Apocalypse: you bet!

So to summarize: he is awesome.  He costs heaps.  He will win regularly.  He's tough to kill.  But he may well become a victim of his own success by turning in to a chaos spawn (or daemon prince).  Hence there's risk involved here!  But you're reading this because you're a chaos player, right?! :)

Apocalypse Homebrew: Vuldant the Reaper

The defiler of Cranthia VI, Imperial Shrine World and tomb of Saint Anthei of the knife, Vuldant the Reaper and his warbands have ploughed a swathe of destruction against Imperial Shrines in the Chorus Celestia subsector.  Local forces report his attacks come without warning, as if the winged horror had been invisibly reconnoitring the area for weeks ahead of time.  The truth is probably darker and sceptics point to his daemonic visage...

WS BS S T W I A Ld Sv
6  4  6 4 3 5 3 10 3+/5+

175 points.

Wargear: Power armour, wings, bolt pistol, master-crafted power maul
Special Rules: Daemon kin, infiltrate, scout, independent character, winged charge

Winged Charge: Vuldant may charge up to 12" in to combat.

Painted Possessed Raptor Lord

The New Year possessed raptor lord is fully painted in the Black Legion colours. I chose the Black Legion for its generic usage as an HQ.  Being an ensemble of forces, this legion's colour could readily fit in with my Khorne and Nurgle forces, in a command sense.

For the painting, I started with the reds (torso, head and wings).  They were base coated in mechrite red followed by a double wash of black.  The colours were then highlighted with progressively lighter tones (blood red through to near orange) to bring out the natural ridges present in the sculpt.  The head in particular was pleasing to see finished here as I'd spent extra effort to ensure that ridges along the brows (etc) were properly picked out.  The rest of the model was painted in slightly off-black.  This was followed by a gentle dusting of grey/black mixture before washing it back down with black to blend it all together.  The ridges of the armour and the knee-caps were picked out with shining gold (I didn't really want to bother with none-metallic metallics here). The weaponry was given a drybrushing of boltgun metal, before I started to pick out the power maul/mace.  I opted here to attempt an inverse painting (partly in response to the great feedback from ghost knight test painting I received).  Following a basecoat of white, I steadily picked out the darker bits with deepening blues; starting with electric blue and working my way through ultramarine blue to a dark blue on the outermost edges.  To create a feeling of glow, I highlighted selected portions of the arm that I thought might be highlighted by the glow from the maul -- in particular: parts of the handle of the weapon, parts of the arm itself and the glove especially. Perhaps part of the inner wing should have also got a little shine, but I didn't go that far. 

The only thing left to do is to base this guy up to finish him off.  I might try one of the back2basix temple bases I painted up a while back.

Drach'nyen: evolution between codex editions

Abaddon the despoiler's daemon blade is known as Drach'nyen, and was discovered below the crypts in the tower of silence on the world of Uralan duing the first black crusade.  It is variously noted as having the ability to "tear reality apart". 

Today, I wanted to quickly compare its abilities between the 2002 and 2007 codex editions.

In 2002, Drach'nyen was able to automatically penetrate any vehicle on hitting, gave Abaddon an extra attack, ignored armour and caused instant death.

In 2007, the new codex saw Drach'nyen give Abaddon an extra 1d6 attacks, and when combined with the Talon of Horus, allows re-rolls to wound and doubles his strength to 8.  The downside is that Drach'nyen shares the bad bits of its counter-parts: a roll of a 1 on the 1d6 for the extra attacks means that the daemon blade is playing up and decides to inflict pain on Abaddon.

The change from a leadership test for mastery of the blade to a 1d6 test is severe: the chance of failure went from 3 in 36 (=0.083) to 1 in 6 (=0.167).  I would very much like to see Abaddon not have to take this test: surely if anyone has mastery over chaos, it is Abaddon himself.  I also think that the automatic penetration of vehicles was a good thing for a reality tearing blade to possess -- its loss is missed by old timers like myself!

Assembling Abaddon the Despoiler - II: Final Conversion.

In converting Abaddon using a plastic chaos lord body, the head is a problem: not only does it feel like it is incorrectly proportioned, but it also extends very high with the top knot.  To alleviate this, I've leaned the body of the terminator slightly and had the head protrude over the edge of the upper torso -- giving the impression that the big guy is leaning forward in his armour.  With a little bit of milliput to fill in and raise the head in the head alcove of the armour, the effect is completed.

The other metal parts have been pinned to the upper arms and elbows of other terminator bits.  The body is a standard plastic chaos lord body, with a chain mail tabard hanging from the groin, much like the original metal body of Abaddon.

The base is standard for the chaos terminator lord, and I've added a couple of smaller protrusions scattered around the base for added detail.  I'll eventually add a bit of static grass and grit as well.  Am looking forward to painting this one up in a little while.

Assembling Abaddon the Despoiler - I: The Arms.

Many folks tend to use a proxy for Abaddon, typically building him from the chaos terminator lord and associated parts / bits, perhaps using some of the metal components from the blister pack.  My intent is to do the same, motivated by the desire to have a suitibly intimidating looking commander for my Sons of Malice marines.

To create the conversion, we need to use the metal bits from Abaddon and attach them to suitible upper arm substitutes.  The simplest way of getting these is to carve up either a plastic chaos lord, or a terminator.  I chose to use the upper arms of the bits I don't tend to use: e.g. the mutated tentacle arm.  I intend to pin the upper and lower sections of the arms together and then glue the plastic upper arms on to a plastic choas lord body.

The head of Abaddon is a problem though.  As pictured (lower left), the hair piece / top knot extends for a long way up and the head is not fantastically proportioned in relation to the standard terminator.  I'll look at how I worked around this problem in the next post.

Captain Rull Mothantis, part 3: Rules

For all intents and purposes, Rull is considered an HQ choice. He is best utilized in low (less than 1000 points) games, where a usual Chaos Space Marine choice might cost significantly more. Rull has the following profile and rules.

Captain Rull Mothantis (HQ slot)
Cost: 105 points

WS BS S T W I A Ld Sv
4 4 4 5 2 3 2 10 3+/6+

Unit Type: Jump Infantry
Number per army: 1 (unique).

Wargear:
Power Armour
Bolter
Bolt pistol
Power Fist
Frag grenades
Krak grenades
Blight grenades
Wings

Special Rules:
Mark of Nurgle (included in profile / Toughness is 4 for instant death rules)
Feel no Pain
Fearless
Independent Character
6+ Invulnerable save

Psychic Power:
Nurgle's Rot.
Special Condition: Rull MUST attempt to use Nurgle's Rot every turn, even if there are no enemies in range.

In terms of coming up with these rules, I simply price a plague champion and added on the power fist and the other accessories as standard. This was followed by adding on 15 points for the extra wound and rounding up. I used half-price wings as an incentive to select this character whereas the 6+ invulnerable save is about the only full give-away here. This is somewhat balanced by being forced to try to activate Nurgle's Rot every turn. He has no choice in this matter! If playing a narrative campaign, then I'd suggest that Rull cannot be "killed" by a perils of the Warp attack from being forced to use the Rot -- rather, the narrative should be that the Rot has incapacitated him for a time, until Nurgle re-animates him. It encourages the player to play him aggressively less he dies from the rot before the end of the game -- hence the very dynamic pose for the miniature (see part 2 of this mini-series).

The feel of these rules is about right for the points value. This is a low level character that represents someone who was once a possessed chaos space marine but is left with various "mutations" from the experience (power fist for an arm, wings, a 6+ save from once being daemon-kin and Nurgle's Rot that occasionally overcomes him).

Captain Rull Mothantis, part 2: Model

This is the miniature that I'm going to use to depict Rull on the battlefield with. I'll show how the painting went in the final part of this series of four.

The bits used in this conversion were as follows:

Base = Back2base-ix resin forest base.
Legs = Chaos Space Marine standard. Left leg has been chopped off and reposition with some milliput.
Torso = Death Guard resin from Forge World.
Shoulder Pads = Death Guard resin from Forge World.
Left Arm = Possessed Chaos Space Marine. (Representing a mutated power fist).
Right Arm = Chaos Space Marine standard.
Wings = Possessed Chaos Space Marine.
Bolter = Chaos Space Marine standard.
Blight Grenade (held in the power fist) = Warhammer Fantasy Zombie boxed set.

Altogether, this is a more dynamic plague marines than I usually encounter or set out to build. I think that the positioning of the bits looks like he has just come in for a landing on top of a tree stump and is about to charge forward, bolter blazing and blight grenade / death head at the ready.

Captain Rull Mothantis, part 1: Background

(Today: some fluff to start a series of four postings about a unique character...) After the Heresy, the Sons of Horus became the Black Legion. But they were suffering many woes. The Emperor's Children stole the clones of Horus from them. Their numbers were shattered. The other traitor legions held them in contempt. Abaddon, unifying the core of what was left of them, lead lightning raids to destroy the clones. As the years became decades, the chaos powers that the Black Legion paid service to shifted also ebbed and flowed. Caught up in the ebb and flow was one Captain Rull Mothantis.

In the midst of the wars to unify the other legions behind the Black Legion's banner, he gave himself up for daemonic possession. A Great Unclean One of Nurgle answered the call and mutated his body. He increased in bulk, grew mutated wings and his fingers lengthened to monstrous proportions: pushing through the gauntlet of his power fist.

Yet, in the fullness of time, one war lead to another war. Nurgle fell out of favour as Tzeentch ascended into prominence in the Black Legion. It was shortly thereafter that the Black Legion figured out how to remove safely recover the host as the unwanted daemons retreated (voluntarily or not) back to the Warp. This discovery is reported to have singularly saved the Black Legion from extinction.

Captain Rull Mothantis was one of the first group of Black Legion marines to be safely recovered from daemonic possession. Regaining full control of his body, he realized that the body was scarred for eternity. the Black Legion had not yet discovered how to turn a mutated body back to its original form. Even the Thousand Sons were reported to be suffering from excessive and rampant mutations without finding a cure. Although Rull knew the Iron Warriors simply chopped off the offending mutation and replaced it with bionic and cybernetic implants, this would never be enough.

Moreover, the Great Unclean One who had controlled the flesh had left residues behind, such was its power. His very flesh had been contaminated with various unpleasant Nurgle pestilences and his body was decaying. His fear fermented. Then he went in to action.

In desperation, he left the Black Legion on a stolen fighter and sought out a Death Guard warband. They accepted him as one of their own and he dedicated himself once again to Nurgle, but this time in control of his own body and no longer suffering from the ailments that the Great Unclean One had left for him (although still a carrier).

Rull is now one of Nurgle's finest Chaos Lord's and willingly serves both the Black Legion and Death Guard. Additionally, he has been sighted on the battlefield on numerous occasions with an ominous looking Great Unclean One. Scholars believe it is the self same daemon who had control of him all those decades earlier: but now they are strongly allied in different bodies.

(This background is unofficial; Please read the disclaimer).