Re-Visiting Lernaeans

In the background for the Alpha Legion, the Lernaean Terminators are supposed to be the cutting edge of their assault. The tip of their proverbial spear. The recent announcement from Forge World that these marines would be getting miniatures has me rather excited as I'm sure I will be getting a squad of them. Or so. The image below shows the miniatures previewed by Forge World (Image copyright via Warhammer Community). 

I like a number of features about these miniatures. Clearly the Alpha Legion iconography is a major draw card for them. However, this is also a negative in the sense that they are all the same. Yes: they should be to some extent. Countering this is the plentiful arrangement of armour styles we have seen for the regular troopers though. Hence I am a little surprised by the uniformity of their armour. 

I really like the scaling applied to the shoulders, arms and legs though. Some really nice work there, even if painting them will seemingly take a while(!). The poses are varied enough to be interesting and some conversion opportunities do present themselves as well.

What I really wanted to return to were their rules. I have covered their rules extensively before in my large Horus Heresy review series, but given the miniatures are going to be available to us soon, I thought it was worth returning to them. There are several striking features here:

(1) stubborn (worth the price in 30k).

(2) mixed weapons (the beamer is oddly placed for what should otherwise be a close combat squad).

(3) extra pip in WS. 

The third and first points are what make the points value of this unit almost (perhaps totally) worthwhile. Given the charge, they are going to make better use of themselves than an analogous (and more regular) set of legion terminators. In a terminator on terminator fight, they will be making back more of their points. Indeed, the points efficiency of these models is higher than regular terminators due to the extra WS pip. I sat down and did some sums and thought that the points efficiency was something like a gain of 10-25 per cent on regular terminators depending on the scenario used (they get the charge; they face analogous terminators; etc). Sadly I deleted that calculation off my files, but think I'm right in recalling that percentage. Hence these guys really are the elite of the terminators.

However, there is the problem about what to arm them with. The beamer just doesn't sit right; even though it is very, very cool (and thematically fitting). Potentially the best way to go is to simply keep the cost down as low as possible and take them as it. That said, arming them with power fists or chain fists is a good option as well given that they are swinging at the lowest initiative regardless. Plasma blaster is valid. But I cannot justify the cost of the beamer in comparison to a weapons platform such as a predator that can pull the same kind of duty. 

An alternative that I thought of trying to pull off is simply to have the beamer in there as a kind of flexible utility, but then have Alpharius replace the model. Just because. Shoot the beamer in turn 1, then have Alpharius show up to wreck some other units in a different part of the board in turn 2. Not a good plan. It wastes a lot of points. But the look on an opponents face if this ever gets pulled off would be good! On reflection, I'm not going to do this ... but I cannot help but think the beamer does look good on these miniatures, and I am one for the rule of cool... its just how to play it that still is the problem without a solution. Otherwise, this is a really good, and elite, terminator squad that should see some play at certain points levels.