3/5 stars. The rules are average. Consider applying Dark Channeling to a maxed-out squad here and you will gain a lot potentially.
Background.
An echo of what the Word Bearers once were: iconoclasts who tore down not merely worlds, but also their culture and replaced them with the Imperial Truth. Later, that replacement would be something more sinister, but they remain arguably the most representative of what the legion once was. They traditionally work alongside destroyer squads and specifically hollow out enemies who hold cultural positions such as standard bearers and eminent leaders.
Strengths.
They come armed with Axe Rakes which provide a bonus pip in Strength and the shred rule which is good. Their hand flamers are torrent and cause pinning. Deployed tactically, they can be very effective, but they don't have too much in the protective department. Aside, I do like the melta bombs as standard here. The special Scorched Earth rule provides a bonus hit with Hammer of Wrath which is handy, all at S+1 as well.
Weaknesses.
The points cost is quite steep in comparison to regular assault squads. As a result, I almost gave them 2.5/5 stars here. I would suggest strongly to consider Dark Channeling if you're playing traitors to offset this, and for this reason, I gave 3/5 stars.
Difference to First Edition.
Say goodbye to those power axes. Boo.
Builds.
5 Ashen Circle, Iconoclast with Artificer Armour (135 points).
The baseline build.
10 Ashen Circle, Iconoclast with inferno pistol and artificer armour (250 points).
A bit of a max squad. This is a GREAT candidate for the Dark Channeling upgrade, and also for the Iconoclast to swap out the side arm for a warpfire pistol. See the Word Bearers Armour for more.
3 comments:
is it just me or is 2nd edition a really mixed bag? I loved the inclusion of reactions and the changes to how the game in general works, but there has been some serious nerfing, especially of the legion specific units.
I get that there were some real 'death star' units that needed to be reined in a little (thinking Justirian terminators, and some (Phalanx Warders) who needed to be beefed up a little, along with an almost complete re-write for the 4 initial legions. But it does seem that many legion specific units have been deprived of real hitting power.
I'm thinking a lack of reliable AP2 close combat weapons which actually incentivises the use of more vanilla units, esp when nearly every Tom, Dick and Harry Sergeant can take a powerfist along with Artificer Armour.
Being philosophical about it all, I think any new edition will bring changes that can be and are positive and negative.
I also think mistakes are made (I'd point to Alpharius' points cost for that especially). Some like this unit have certainly been nerfed for no good reason. And I would agree that many legions have been deprived of their hard hitters (again with the Alphas, the Lernaeans have dropped a pip in WS for instance). Without something special for each legion, there is certainly an incentive to go vanilla. Some stronger play testing and rules read throughs could cure this (and if GW or FW ever read this, then I'm personally more than willing to help cast an eye over such things!).
The only reason I can think of that they went down this road is that they wanted to give each unique unit something it was very good at, but didn't want to be a death star on its own.
I've just finished re-writing my IF, BA & DA Army lists and realized that I've mentally paired up my HQ choices with the unique units whereas before I'd have had them leading a vanilla unit.
The thing that gets me is the inconsistency e.g. the Invictarus Suzerains are still quite powerful, the Phalanx Warders have (rightly in my view) been upgraded whereas Units such as the Ashen Circle and your Lernaeans have suffered a downgrade. Given they've released the army lists all at once you'd have thought they could come up with a decently balanced list. This isn't 5th edition when some players could go years using 4th (or even 3rd) edition codexes and suffering as a result.
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