Thursday, May 13, 2021

Horus Heresy Review: Deredeo Pattern Dreadnought

Background.
The Deredeo has already featured in Book 5, Tempest, and in Book 9, Crusade, we find the rules have been updated a little bit compared to the earlier book. 

The Deredeo remains a heavy weapons platform that has its history in the Contemptor class and the earlier styles of Terran and Martian designs. It remained in high demand by both sides of the conflict in the Heresy, although there were few forges that could produce them.

Strengths.
With helical targeting, the Deredeo is fantastic at taking out aircraft with its weapons. Given the weapons, its also fantastic at shooting nearly everything in the game to be honest. Monstrous creatures? Yep. Terminator equivalents? Yep. Its got it all.

The entry level Anvilus auto cannon battery is S=8 with plenty of shots and sunder. The reasonable range means it can reach across the board to ensure they reach the desired target.

The Hellfire Plasma Cannonade is AP=2 at just one pip less in strength and has two modes of firing: sustained, which provides a good number of shots, or maximal, which gives a big pie plate. And terminators are fans of pie, so I hear.

Meanwhile the Aiolos missile launcher gives a huge ranged weapon that can do significant damage to space marine equivalents. Hitting side armour is just icing on the cake.

New in Book 9 is the addition of the Volkite falconet battery. I kind of like this for pinning and the combination of the high rate of fire and quality strength. It will shine against Guard equivalent armies. But I might still err on the side of the autocannons instead.

The Arachnus heavy lascannon battery is also very impressive thanks to the exoshock rule: there's a 50 per cent chance of a second penetrating hit if a first one is scored. This is very dangerous stuff.

Boreas air missiles are a nice idea but I suspect many will be put off playing this due to its one use rule. Other than that, a first turn volley at just one less strength than a lascannon with independent tracking is really nice, and probably spells doom against transport tanks and White Scar jetbikes thanks to invalidating Jink saves. 

Weaknesses.
This is fundamentally not a close combat dreadnought. That said, it is still a dreadnought with an invulnerable save and good frontal armour.

My suggestion is to run a Deredeo with ranged terminators -- upgraded with Atomantic Pavaise, it can grant a bonus to the invulnerable save of regular terminators nearby which is very nice, but also costly.

Builds.
Several builds to mull over here, including the ones from Book 5 that I have already noted previously.

Deredeo, Anvilus autocannons, Aiolos missile launcher, armoured ceramite (240 points).
Drop the armoured ceramite if you must, but this is something of a baseline build.

Deredeo, hellfire plasma cannonade, atomantic pavaise (270 points).
I like this one - lots of plasma goodness, teamed up with protective invulnerable saves.

Deredeo, Arachnus heavy lascannon battery, 4 boreas air defence missiles (259 points).
Add extra shielding where required (armoured ceramite). Fire those missiles in turn 1, and blast everything else with the lascannons.

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