Horus Heresy Review: Legion Land Raider Battle Squadron

The Land Raider comes with many variants in 30,000 warfare. For the Legion Land Raider Battle Squadron, there are three such variants to choose between: the Phobos, the Proteus, and the Achilles. Of these, its worth noting that Legion terminator squads can take the Phobos as a dedicated transport (or the Spartan - but we'll talk about that variant in a later review as it has its own entry in the army list!).

The major differences between these three variants are as follows:
(1) The Phobos is treated as an assault vehicle (i.e. squads can assault the turn they disembark) - hence this makes the tank ideal for assault style armies (World Eaters, etc.).
(2) The Achilles has a special rule called Ferromantic Invulnerability. Put short, it ignores the special effects of Lance and Melta attacks and reduces the results of penetrating hits by -1 on the damage chart.
(3) The Proteus has no special rules of which to speak. Which makes it kind of the "vanilla" flavour of the land raider.

Of course, the points values of these tanks are very different, as are their armaments. The Proteus has the traditional lascannons, the Phobos gets them and a heavy bolter, and the Achilles goes in for quad mortars and multi-meltas.

Of the various upgrades, one seems like no-brainers to me. Explicitly: armoured ceramite for the Phobos and Proteus (the Achilles already has it). This helps immensely with survivability.

Beyond that, here are a few build ideas to think through (noting that a full Legion Land Raider Battle Squadron may have up to three land raiders of any flavour in the squadron).

Legion Phobos, armoured ceramite, frag assault launchers, havoc launcher (295 points)
Add a hunter-killer missile to taste. This is the tank to deliver your troops to the front line. Replace the havoc launcher with extra armour if desired, or perhaps add in some heavy flamers if you're using Salamanders or Death Guard. The command tank upgrade may also be nice to have.

Legion Proteus, armoured ceramite, exploratory augury web, havoc launcher (285 points)
The exploratory augury web is a unique upgrade peculiar to the Proteus. In short, it can help your reserves come on the table, or hinder your opponents. This makes it a terrific "manipulator" and I can readily see it being used in sneaker legions like the Raven Guard or Alpha Legion. But even a World Eaters drop pod based army would benefit.

Legion Achilles (300 points)
Naked, its still awesome. Add in an extra multi-melta just for fun - or just to get the job done.