Build Request: Alpha Legion

I have been asked to see what I can do for a themed alpha legion army using the new chaos space marines book and with as much raptor, cultist, apostle, warp talon, maulerfiend and chosen. I think alpha legion have been spoiled for theme choices with this new incarnation, you just have to be creative and use a little imagination. Im going to omit the warp talons, maulerfiends and chosen. They work in different types of lists. Warp talons simply dont fit the theme well and cant take advantage of the way this army plays without losing on the blind ability. Chosen are also the weaker choice with shorter range, not scoring ever and high cost. Maulerfiends are fun, but with so much combat already in the list, they will a. lack targets and b. occupy now valuable heavy support slots necessary to down threats and transports the maulers cant reach in time.

The first thing I think of when I think Alpha Legion is infiltrate. None of the units in this book have it specifically (poor chosen), however, there is a warlord trait that makes D3 units infiltrate. You can try chancing it with a generic character roll on the chart or you can stretch the imagination a bit and take on of the special characters that get it standard. We're going to pass over Ahriman and look at Huron.

Huron gives us the infiltrate rules as well as a little utility with the hamadrya. Convert up your own lord to match the weapons and his pet and voila.The little lizard (lizard, alpha legion, present from the Cabal, etc tell me how this doesnt work fluff wise) gives chaos its only acces to the divination discipline but no prescience. Still a great discipline and more utility is what we want.

Huron @160pts

With our HQ out of the way, I want to look next at what will best ultilize the infiltrate ability.  Because, jump units follow the rules for both the parent type (in this case infantry) and Jump Infantry , jump infantry qualify for the infiltrate ability. This opens up first turn charges if the chaos player is going second. On his request list, raptors fit the bill nicely.  With dedicated assault units, you need to go big or go home because they are going to take some firepower going in and after they blow up the first unit theyll likely take another round to the face. Marks allow us to have both speed and resilience with the mark of slaanesh and its icon, +1 Initiative and feel no pain are an awesome tandem on assault units.  Veteran is also important here to make sure they stay put. We'll take two units and play for the averages.

15 Raptors @ 380pts
-Slaanesh, Icon of Excess, Veterans, 1 Meltagun, Lightning Claw
15 Raptors @ 380pts
-Slaanesh, Icon of Excess, Veterans, 1 Meltagun, Lightning Claw

Now onto our troops. With Chaos Lords, Im normally an advocate for giving them a daemon weapon, throwing them in a unit of cultists for ablative wounds, but with Huron I wouldn't say he has the Killing Power to take units on his own so lets take a larger squad of marines.

10 Chaos Marines @ 233pts
-Khorne, Icon of Wrath, 2 hand weapons, 2 Meltaguns, Power Sword

For the remainder of scoring, were simply going to abuse the cheapness of cultists. 4 Times. These will go in reserve and make their way toward objectives and go to ground. If we have the points by the end of this we will take an Apostle, consolidate 2 units into one and use the blob more agressively.

10 Cultists @ 50pts
10 Cultists @ 50pts
10 Cultists @ 50pts
10 Cultists @ 50pts

Looking at this we have spent 1353 leaving us with 495ish to play with our heavy support choices.  We really need something to at least make flyers nervous and can open up transports at range. I like havocs, but flakk havocs are super expensive and will simply be the first target of any flier. So Im looking at the forgefiend. 8 Str. 8 shots will scare flyers and will reliable wreck tansports. They also have the head of a Komodo Dragon (lizard/theme). I want two.

Forgefiend @ 175pts
Forgefiend @ 175pts

127pts to spend. Lets drop the meltaguns down to flamers on the Khorne Marines  and consolidate two of the cultist squads into one. Lets purchase that Apostle. He gives the whole unit fearless and hatred and with the mark of khorne now gains counterattack. Lets give him the Axe of blind fury to make this unit actually scary.

Dark Apostle @ 150pts
-Mark of Khorne, Axe of Blind Fury

We've got 7 points left over so lets give the Marine Champ a meltabomb. Lets final draft this thang.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Huron Blackheart

Dark Apostle
-Khorne, Axe of Blind Fury

10 Chaos Marines
-Khorne, Icon of Wrath, 2 Hand weapons, 2 Flamers, Power Weapon, Meltabomb

20 Cultists

10 Cultists

10 Cultists

15 Raptors
-Slaanesh, Icon of Excess, Veteran, Meltagun, Lightning Claw


15 Raptors
-Slaanesh, Icon of Excess, Veteran, Meltagun, Lightning Claw

Forgefiend

Forgefiend

Total: 1848pts



Enjoy!

Damnation of Toreus: Initial List

I'm starting this escalating narrative campaign at the beginning of November and I'm going to use it to get my Chaos marines finished for the new year. The campaign is turn based and takes place on a planetary empires map. you have your home base of course, but there are some special tiles that can grant you either an extra Fast Attack, or Heavy Support, or whatever. I'm likely not going to stray outside of the standard force org too much, but the initial org chart your given is VERY limiting.

1 HQ

2 TROOPS

1 ELITE

1 FAST ATTACK

1 HEAVY

The campaign starts out a 1000pts so I am trying to get my initial list finalized and painted for the first turn.

Daemon Prince

-nurgle, wings, armour, black mace

15 Chaos Marines

-nurgle, veteran, 2 hand weapon, 2 meltagun, lightning claw, meltabomb

21 Cultists

5 Spawn

-nurgle

Forgefiend

My shooting in this list is a little lackluster, but on 4x4 boards there isn't a place one could really run to get away from Uncle Gespacho, the daemon prince, and his band of merry spawn. I just need something to open up any transports to expose the gooey nougat inside, hence the forgefiend. Cultists are there for moral support.

Chaos Review: Part I

New blog and a new book, it's a match made in heaven.

The review will be in 3 parts. The first part will look at the structure, background and army wide special rules. The second will analyze the different force org slots and wargear options. The third will bring it all together to see what

I'll lead with this; all praise the Kelly!

Structure

This is the first codex release for 6th edition and with it comes a couple of welcome changes. First is hardcover. This is done to match the fantasy counterparts and inexpensively add value to the book. With the hardcover also comes full colour, which is excellent as all the artwork is outstanding; nothing wasted on Blanche's ''style." I know a lot of people were ranting about the price of this book, the paper and hardcover and colour make it worthwhile. I love picking up this book to read. Its reassuring in the way only hardcovers can be.

Its layout is pretty similiar: table of content, background stories which I wont spoil, Chaos Special Rules, Unit Bestiary, Wargear/equipment/psychic disciplines, colour photos of the models, Wargear table (eeeeeeee!!), army list, and reference section.

Ok, the wargear table is back. Anyone who's been around for more than 6 years will remember the wargear table of old. What it represents is the myriad of options that have come back to chaos characters. They design team was obviously not happy with the work gav and alessio did on the last chaos codex where they removed so much choice for the sake of balance. They have made up for it in spades.

I want to elaborate what they did for the reference section, the put all the necessary rules and tables onto this 3 page foldout at the back so you're not flipping through looking for a rule; and believe me, there are a lot of special rules. This is super handy because you only need this section for 99% of the questions you'll encounter in a game.

Background

The background has been not so much advanced as fleshed out near the end.  The timeline has been brought in line with the Blood Angels Codex where the end is about to occur. Abaddon is about to launch his final crusade on Terra and he has a diabolical plan to do it.

Extra attention was given to a whole founding of chapters and there attempts to purge the doubts and accusations on them that ends in tragedy and rebellion. Lots of cool, potential, narrative campaign concepts are there.

Army Rules

Champion of Chaos - Models with this rule have to issue a challenge or accept if one has been issued against. This is one of those rules that is meant to increase the narrative/cinematic side of the game. However, it falls short because of a lack of cooperation with the main ruleset. While chaos characters are pretty lethal in combat, its very simple for the opponent to decline to deny the boon roll in exchange for losing a couple of attacks. The boon table is pretty neat, nothing game breaking, but no real downside until your lord turns into a spawn or daemon prince. Even then, hes still alive and your enemy is down a character. Most of the time you'll end up with a benefit for combat you really didn't need, but on the rare occasions that you roll up instant death attacks or d3+1 more rolls on the chart, you can actually make a mountain out of a molehill.

Warlord Traits - Chaos now present us with the first race specific warlord table and the first word that comes to mind here is consistent. Just like the main rule set there are a couple of gems and a couple of duds. I like how they didn't restrict chaos players to this one unless they are using a special character (more later).  Fear and Flames being next to worthless while black crusader and master of deception can be right mean. Roughly half the armies you come across are going to have that marine special rule so preferred enemy in a 24" bubble is wicked mean. Master of deception opens up some first turn charges if you're going second or some very early board control if going first.

Daemon Weapons - The super smash bro hammers are back again with some major tweaks. Functionally, the daemon weapons work the same with the extra d6 attacks; however, if you roll a one now you still get to attack but your weapon skill is reduced to one for the phase.  There are no longer generic daemon weapons but rather 2 artifacts an HQ can buy. We'll get into those later.

Veteran of the Long War - This special rule was added so that legion players would stop their bitching a bit! I kid, kind of. The rule grants +1 ld and hatred (space marines) reroll hits in the first round.  The ld bonus is what most people will be after as the fearless icon is rather expensive and on a combat unit, ld 10 is often enough. Since half the armies you fight will likely be space marines, having that little buff is nice and can help generate some rolls on the boon table.

Marks of Chaos

These really haven't changed too much, but they have brought back the god animosity. If you're marked you may not join a unit with a different mark. This would appear limiting, but everyone and their mom can get marks in this book so its not bad at all. Nurgle, tzeentch, and slaanesh havent changed outside of psykers with the mark must take at least one power from that discipline. They offer +1 toughness, +1 Invuln, and +1 Initiative respectively. Khorne is where you see the big change with the granting of the two USRs counterattack and rage. Counterattack is the important one where even if he is the only one in the unit with that rule, everyone else in the squad gets to use it.

Independently, these marks make for nice and often expensive bonuses. Where they really come into their own is that they open up the use of icons and can combo very well. That we will leave till the next part of the review.

Dice Roll: Dramatis Personae

Welcome to the Art of Warhammer!

My name's Jordan and Ive been miniwargaming for 15 years. Ive done two year long stints with Games Workshop and am actively involved with different groups around the city (and have even started a small one of my own).  I am a 3rd year accounting major at MacEwan University and am otherwise interested in politics, physics and business of all types.

Rationale behind starting a blog:

Ive been told Im outspoken, blunt and harsh when it comes to criticizing the work of others. Im working on my tact, but I genuinely feel I have a lot to share. I take my knowledge for granted, which is such a waste. I like playing sharing in the hobby with like-minded individuals and while I realise mine isn't the only view point I feel I have enough to offer with respects to all facets of the hobby to warrant a blog.

Armies I own(ed):

-Necrons

-Chaos Space Marines

-Dark Eldar

-Dark Angels

-Sisters (sold)

-Orks (sold)

-Tyranids (sold)

-Daemons (sold)

-Space Marines (sold)

-Loganwing (sold)

-Death Company (sold)

-Grey Knights (sold)

I've owned a myriad of fantasy armies, nearly all of them. I do miss bits by the gram and being able to take your bonus in the form of 90% off your next purchase. I dont enjoy the fantasy ruleset anymore, that rant will be for another post. As you may have noticed, I have no love for the imperial guard, it could be my lack of military experience, but I simply cannot sit down and create a list that I like.

That brings me to list building, I write lists like people smoke cigarettes. Doing it is calming. Dont know why. However, it has given me some deep insight into the composition, tricks and pitfalls of proper list building. 

I plan on presenting lots of lists and list tricks, codex reviews, model reviews, battle/tournament reports, painting logs and general 40k hobby thoughts.

List O' the Day

Daemon Prince

-Nurgle, Wings, Armour, Black Mace

14 Chaos Space Marines

-Nurgle, 2 hand weapon, 2 meltaguns, Lightning Claw, Meltabomb

14 Chaos Space Marines

-Nurgle, 2 hand weapon, 2 meltaguns, Lightning Claw, Meltabomb

10 Cultists

10 Cultists

5 Spawn

-Nurgle

5 Spawn

-Nurgle

Forgefiend

Forgefiend

Vindicator

-Siege Shield

1850

General tasks, the daemon prince is THE beatstick. Outside of Lysander and Draigo, this guy will mince anything and everything. He can either go all attack and mash units with his always wound on 2's AP2 mace at WS 9 or smashing for a respectable amount of str 10 hits. Reading the local facebook group, people are really not taken with this guy. I love him. I just wish the Kelly had just given them proper marks but fortunately for my them nurgle is the most viable upgrade giving himself shrouding so when hes swooping he has a 3+ cover save. He'll likely be knocked out of the sky but I plan on moving him to benefit from terrain so he keeps that save.

Him and the spawn form the flanking units. I really dont want the enemy to have easy access to my cultists and fiends so the deployment plan is to refuse flank with the two Marine blobs anchored by the vindicator in between with the two forgefiends as fire support.  The flanking units will be about a foot off to the side. Given the choice if I have to deploy first, I doubt my opponent will deploy anything valuable by the prince and spawns to be either mashed or tarpitted. This puts them across from the vindicator and marine blobs, likely he deployed deep in his own zone as to not be in range of the vindi.

Plan is always solid till dice hit the table!