Horus Heresy Review: The Kakophoni

In short, the Kakophoni are the early iteration of noise marines with psycho-sonic weaponry. But instead of the 40k Salvo style sonic blasters, they have the Cacophony -- effectively a heavy 1 weapon instead.

But the bonus in 30k is that these guys have a special rule called bio-psychic shock. In short, if you cause wounds on your target, the target must take an Ld test modified by the number of wounds caused. Failure indicates more wounds that have AP2 and instant death. Hence the optimal tactica with Kakophoni is to have a large squad of them to ensure the maximum possible hits, the maximum possible Ld modifier, and hence the maximum amount of damage. A large squad of these marines can readily take down squads of enemies with some good die rolls.

The only real upgrades available are for the Orchestrator (squad sergeant). Given their sonic shriekers, I think a power weapon is probably the optimal choice, but can also see that a power fist hidden in a larger squad might be beneficial.

I'd suggest a build along the lines of this:

10 Kakophoni, Orchestrator with power weapon and artificer armour (265 points)
A back field unit with sufficient range to take out enemy infantry squads. Place in cover, or take a rhino and drive closer to your target before unleashing that bio-psychic shock!

Alternatively, a slightly smaller squad drop-podded in to the enemy would also be a nice way to deploy them. So perhaps:

6 Kakophoni, Orchestrator with power fist, artificer armour, melta bombs (195 points)
A squad to drop pod in with Orbital Assault rite of war and take down some light tanks and their contents.

CSM in 6th Review: Noise Marines

Lots of plusses about Noise Marines in the new Chaos Space Marine codex.  They got cheaper, they can produce a prodigious amount of firepower and are dangerous in close combat due to their higher initiative. Their sonic weapons are also cheaper and the Icon of Excess looks on paper to be pretty awesome.

In comparison to the old codex, the Noise Marines now are strictly better. They have more options, and more builds.  Squad upgrades include the sonic weapon (excellent price), close combat weapons (in exchange for the bolter, or instead of taking sonic blasters), Veterans of the Long War (great in a space marine heavy meta-game), Icon of Excess (making them feel no pain -- very cheap as well if there we're taking a large blob of Noise Marines), and one in ten marines can get a blastmaster.

The Noise Champion can get the doom siren, in addition to melta bombs, an odd gift of mutation as well as access to melee and ranged weapons from the armoury.

Let's have a look at the the sonic weapons to start with.  The blasters have been changed to Salvo 2/3.  But, we've got to remember one thing about "salvo" weapons: we cannot charge any model who has fired a salvo weapon.  So if you're planning a charge, you need to switch to bolt pistols. That said, their ability to ignore cover and a range of 24" means they're always going to be pretty useful on the move, or stationary.  The blastmaster on the other hand, is tremendous.  Seriously!  With a choice of modes (both of which ignore cover and cause pinning), this weapon singularly can cause tremendous headaches and has great range to boot.  Alone, this weapon is the reason to go for 10 strong squads.  For the Noise Champion, the doom siren is an interesting selection for an assault-orientated squad.  The AP3 on the template weapon is clearly going to down space marines and discourage assaults.

Since there's so much here, let's turn now to consider a pair of comparably priced builds and a crazy 20 man shooty squad.

10 Noise Marines, 9 Sonic Blasters, 1 Blastmaster (237 points)

A ranged, blasting unit.  Set them up in a building or ruin to start with.  Only move them out to gain better range.  Use as a bait by spreading them out and then falling back (not routing!), firing as they go, luring the enemy close to other guns and units.  Take a bastion for fun?

6 Noise Marines, 2 sonic blasters, 4 close combat weapons, Veterans of the Long War, Icon of Excess, Noise Champion with doom siren, melta bombs and power sword, rhino with dirge caster and havoc launcher (245 points)

This is an assault orientated squad with a fluffy number of members.  Get on board the rhino and fire the salvo weapons from the roof-top hatch, along with the havoc launcher to lay down a strong ground fire.  Get out, rapid fire.  Assault the enemy (don't forget the doom siren) or let them charge you (don't forget the doom siren).  Use the champion to take out opposing champions and sergeants to secure rolls on the chaos rewards table (did he make daemon prince?).  Use the Icon of Excess to buff the saving throws of your (smallish) squad and keep them alive.  Once done, hop back on board the rhino and get away!

20 Noise Marines, 14 sonic blasters, 2 blastmasters, Icon of Excess, Noise Champion with Power Sword, Aegis Defence Line with Quad Gun (622 points)

Team up with a Slaaneshi sorcerer to (hopefully) get Symphony of Pain.  Shoot.  Then shoot some more.  Then don't bother shooting some of the blasters, but shoot the blastmasters instead and maybe the quad gun.  Then shoot a bit more.  If in trouble, charge the enemy: the icon and high initiative should be enough.  These guys are going to be a tough nut to crack. Probably strictly better to run as two 10 man squads (but then 2 Icons would be getting expensive), but what the heck: we can dream.

There's something for everyone here.  And more significantly, Noise Marines just made the top tier!

How Slaanesh is infiltrating the Olympics?

Did you hear the one about the 2012 Olympics and Slaanesh? It would seem that Slaanesh has loaned some sonic weapons to the organizers.  Or perhaps in the pursuit of perfection, the Emperor's Children have decided that they're going to show Terra how good they are at, ...well, everything.

Pet theories not withstanding, it was this BBC online article that caught my eye.  It concerns how "sonic weaponry" is being deployed in London for security and announcements during the 2012 Olympics.

Noise Marine Painted

What better colours to paint a noise marine in than the Emperor's Children colours? This miniature was one that has been sat on my shelf for some time since being assembled, largely because I wasn't happy with how tough it was to get it together -- largely a result of trying to fit the metal arms flush with the shoulder of the torso.

The main colour for the armour is purple, washed down with a darker purple hue and highlighted around the edges. The trim of the armour is metallic gold with some sunburst yellow highlighting. For the sonic weapon itself, I wanted something in bright colours that stood out from the main torso of the marine itself. Hence I chose a sickly green colour with some blue bits (because we all know blue and green should never be seen together -- I figure the noise marine would like that). The one problem is that the blue and green on the sonic weapon makes it look quite plastic-like. Perhaps this is not too much of a problem as I contend that the deviant noise marine would paint it any colour he so enjoyed. Finally, the piping on the marine was simply dry brushed in bolt gun metal. Overall, I like the feeling of the miniature, but I might have painted it in different colours if I had it over again. I'll look forward to assembling and painting up more of these guys at a later date.

Noise Marine Assembley

As well as a number of other concurrent projects, I'm also building up a small number (six!) of noise marines. This one is the first that I've assembled.

The major issue I've found with assembling these guys are the sonic weaponry. Simply put, they don't fit snugly enough to the chaos space marine's abdomen. On this miniature, I've had to file away the belt buckle to near-oblivion. Even with that done, there are some micro-issues with the pose. The miniatures right arm (on the left hand side of the picture!) doesn't connect smoothly with the torso -- it is at an angle to the torso despite my efforts to file away the belt buckle and everything else that might be pushing it away from the body and causing this. Secondly, although the opposite arm sits flush with the torso, it is located a bit further back than I would have expected for a standard noise marine.

As a result, I'm going to be doing a little bit of green stuff work around the shoulders of this noise marine to correct for the sonic blaster not fitting more flush with the body. I'm going to try to choose front torso's a bit more carefully now that I know the problems with assembling noise marines!

Can Noise Marines Hurt in Vacuo?

Go with me here ...

Noise marine weaponry fires, well, noisy shots that literally tear apart their targets by vibration.

Noise requires a medium to travel through.

Therefore, if one is fighting in power armour in hard vacuum, can Noise Marines actually do any ranged damage? :-)

Or do their weaponry have a psychic component to them as well that would still deal damage in vacuo?

Advantages of Noise Marines

This article is a follow-on from my (much earlier) article on advantages of plague marines / Death Guard. There may be little here that most of you didn't already know, but I hope that at the very minimum it will be informative for new comers to the hobby.

Basics.
The first question is what do Noise Marines (or Emperor's Children) have that other troops do not. There's two distinct answers to that. Firstly there is the statistic line: +1 Initiative compared to ordinary marines coupled with fearlessness. Secondly, there's the unique sonic weaponry that they have access to. Let's have a look at each in turn.

Higher Initiative.
How does a higher initiative help out? I have already covered some of the detail behind the mathematics of my argument when I considered what icon to give my chaos raptors some time ago. But I'm going to repeat the logic here so that you can see how a higher initiative would be of benefit.

We're going to have a unit of 10 noise marines go into melee with a squad of 10 "standard" imperial space marines.

Without any special upgrades (i.e. a power fist or power weapon) for a champion, all 10 noise marines will strike before the imperials. They'll cause 2.583 unsaved wounds on the imperials. Assuming that the imperial sergeant is still around (worst luck!) after the noise marines strike, there are the sergeant and 6.417 ordinary marines left over. The total number of attacks from the imperials is therefore reduced to (2x6.417)+3 = 15.834. These will be expected to cause 1.320 unsaved wounds. Hence the difference in wounds caused dW is 1.218 (an increase of some 46% compared to "normal" chaos marines).

What happens if the noise champion has a power fist?
This case reduces to 9 ordinary noise marines hitting first on the charge, the imperials striking back, and then the power fist. The 9 noise marines will inflict an average of 2.250 unsaved wounds on the imperials. Striking back (again, with the sergeant still alive), the imperials then inflict (2x6.75)+3 = 16.5 attacks that cause 1.375 wounds. The champion (whom we'll assume is still alive) causes an additional 1.250 unsaved wounds. The difference in wounds is 2.125 in this case.

What about the noise champion having a power weapon?
The 9 ordinary noise marines are still striking first and causing 2.250 unsaved wounds. The noise champion also gets in on the act early here, causing an additional 1.000 unsaved wounds for a total of 3.25. The opposition marines then take their turn, with (2x5.75)+3 attacks that only cause 1.208 unsaved wounds. Hence a difference in wounds of 2.04.

Although the wound difference is slight, the higher initiative means that the champion will always get to strike before any return strikes (hence avoiding any surprise wounds). Hence, if you're a chaos space marine playing that is using noise marines, I'd recommend taking a power weapon over a power fist for your noise marine champion.

Sonic Weapons.
Whether they function in deep space aside (presumably there is a psychic component to the sonic damage?!), sonic weapons have some great potential.

First up is the sonic blaster. Its basically the same as a bolter, but can be fired as assault 2, or heavy 3. That is very impressive - being on the move and able to shoot twice at strength 4 up to 24 inches means that noise marines have a troublesome range of 30 inches. Some serious maneuvering in to cover will be required to avoid a torrent of fire from them. With the alternative of heavy 3, the noise marines can lay down a withering amount of rounds. But to see exactly how good this is, let's compare it to a ten man strong chaos marine squad with bolters that are targeting 10 loyalist marines at 24 inches away.

The humble bolter will shoot once at this range, assuming that the shooters stay stationary. With BS=3, the chaos marines score 6.67 hits, cause 3.33 wounds, of which 1.11 will be likely to stick (i.e. fail the 3+ saving throw).

The sonic blaster can pump out double the amount of shots, hence it'll cause 2.22 unsaved wounds. However, the noise marines can also back off, effectively taking them out of range of return bolter fire from the loyalists! By extension, if they stay stationary, that mean 3.33 unsaved wounds using heavy 3. Quite a torrent of fire - equivalent to 3 squads of ordinary marines all with bolters.

Secondly, there's the doom siren (only available to the noise champion). It's the same as a heavy flamer, but with AP3. That means that it would be very handy in a unit of noise marines expecting to meet an opposition head on in melee -- especially when coupled with sonic blasters using the assault 2 mode.

Lastly, there is the blast master. Its great at range when staying stationary (S8, AP3, heavy 1, pinning), but can also help with moving troops (S5, AP4, assault 2, pinning). But to be honest, if you're a chaos playing utilizing noise marines, then I would expect you'd want them on the move. As such, the blast master is probably not worth the points cost since a sonic blaster can perform almost as well on the move.

Final Thoughts.
I'll leave you with this thought. Consider a unit of 10 noise marines with a noise champion. The noise champion has a power weapon and a doom siren; the other 9 all have sonic blasters. Total points cost = 295. Pricey?, most certainly.

They're approaching a unit of 10 loyalists and are ready to charge. They firstly shoot their sonic weapons (assault 2) and cause 2.00 (rounded up) wounds from the sonic blasters. The doom siren might add on to this another 2 or more wounds.
In the assault, they attack first and inflict a further 3.75 wounds. We're already up to about 7.75 (ish) wounds, and the imperials haven't even hit back yet; let alone thought about falling back and not knowing any fear. They can certainly cause superlative alpha strikes on other (marine equivalent) units!

Hope you've enjoyed this and got something from it :)