Praetor Challenge: Word Bearers vs World Eaters

On a near airless moon, Lorgar leads his mutated followers against Angron and his crazed World Eaters! But what should they do?

It is the Word Bearers to play. The set up is as see at the start of the Word Bearers movement phase. 

Word Bearers:

1x Angron. [He has a summoning reading for a unit of 5x daemons - NB]. Unwounded. 
5x Gal Vorbak. 1 of them is down to 1 wound remaining. 

World Eaters:
1x Leviathan Dreadnought with grav flux bombard and storm cannon. 2 wounds remaining. 

1x Angron. 4 wounds remaining. 

6x Tartaros terminators. 5x Lightning Claws [1 has 1 wound remaining], and 1x Praetor with Paragon Blade (counts as) with 2 wounds remaining.  

The dreadnought LITERALLY is sat on top of an objective. Not that many of the participants seem to care!

What is the best play for the Word Bearers?

Internet kudos points await! (Only redeemable with your own friends when you boast to them about Warpstone Flux's Praetor Challenge ;).

Horus Heresy 3e Review: Vheren Ashurhaddon

Warpstone Flux Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

4/5 stars. The Either continues our leader heavy exploration of the Sons of Horus. 

Background.

Vheren really didn't like it when the Sons of Horus were falling to the ruinous powers. He just wanted his legion back to being simple humble reavers and traitors - and to hell with warp spawn. So he chose to invade Cthonia and take it back for the greater glory! Aside from that, he perfected the reaving warfare technique that many would later aspire to and generally held the terrans of his legion in disdain.

Strengths. 

A praetor level character with WS=7 here. 

He comes with a pair of bolt pistols that can be fired as the Bane Strike Fusillade. This gives you four shots at S=5 and with breaching. This is great, but the range is obviously short. The Axe Serpentis is reasonable and gives you critical hitting with AP=2 built in. The gain in initiative is also good to have.

He also has a vexilla to round out his character which is fitting given how he rounded up his men to his own (no chaos traitor) banner I suppose. 

Weaknesses. 

In truth, Ashurhaddon doesn't really have anything special about him beyond the stat line WS enhancement and the unique equipment. No special rules to be seen here sadly. A bit of a missed opportunity to make him more characterful in my opinion. 

Overall.

You are paying a good increase in points value for the extra pip in WS combined with that vexilla and special equipment. I suspect you probably would have the vexilla elsewhere in a retinue squad if you had the option. Other than that, Ashurhaddon is a very reasonable character and extremely fluffy for the attempt to re-take Cthonia for the Sons of Horus. 

Horus Heresy 3e Review: Tybalt Marr

Warpstone Flux Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

4/5 stars. The Either continues our leader heavy exploration of the Sons of Horus. 

Background.

Tasked with hunting down the rogue elements of the shattered legions, Marr got embroiled in a three year campaign against non other than Shadrak Meduson of the Iron Hands. He succeeded in the end, but it cost a lot of men and time to do so. 

Strengths. 

A praetor level stat line, but with a sword that helps him stand out. The Culling Blade grants an entertaining combination of breaching, critical hits, and poisoned to allow him to fell many of his erstwhile loyalist cousins with ease. The bane strike bolt gun is merely the icing on the cake here. 

Hatred against the Shattered Legions is an interesting special rule to have, and clearly situational yet also very appropriate. 

Weaknesses. 

A fairly solid character overall with no general weaknesses, but obviously might not be everyone's proverbial cup of tea, but I like him. 

Overall.

Fluffy to be very clear. His hunting down of the Shattered Legions is well depicted here and his Culling Blade entirely appropriate. The points value for Marr is also spot on for what he does. There's little not to like, except for the fact that the Sons of Horus are over-run with character choices. Hence I suspect Marr will be seen only in fluffier elements of the Sons of Horus who have been tasked with anti-shattered legion duties, which for me is a bit sad. 

Iron Hands Tartaros Siege Squad Completed

Adding to the Iron Hands forces, a freshly completed squad of Tartaros terminators in a siege squad configuration!

Each terminator is armed with a reaper auto cannon and a chain fist (with the squad sergeant having the reaper from the chaos range with the others holding standard Tartaros reapers). This makes the squad pretty expensive in terms of sheer points value (I probably should have just used power axes to be honest), but it looks very good overall regardless. And it means that the squad can potentially have multiple roles whilst also looking like a real siege squad in my head cannon (why take power axes when you can have chain fists for a siege?). 

As with the first test model, I have replicated the red colouring on the left hand chain fist to make the models "pop" a little more on the battlefield. All legions have peculiar markings, so why should the Iron Hands be any different? Decals / transfers have been applied on to the chain fists, shoulder pads, and lower leg armour to give them a uniformity of appearance. Although the basing is simple, it does offset the matt black colour of the Iron Hands enough to make them readable at a distance without too much effort. 

Squad complete!

Horus Heresy 3e Review: Garviel Loken

Warpstone Flux Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

4/5 stars. Solid and fluffy for the Loyalist Sons of Horus or Luna Wolves amongst you.  

Background.

The loyalist's loyalist and survivor without peer. Loken was betrayed at the events in the Isstvan system by Horus but subsequently rose to exact revenge. And rose again. Almost the star of the early books in the black library series, Loken was a Captain in the Sons, but renounced them to reclaim the ideals of the Luna Wolves of old.

Strengths. 

A praetor level stat line and a loyalist to boot. 

Loken comes with a Paragon Blade which will certainly assist with close combat. His special rule is of some note though. Born Survivor means that when he dies for the first time in a game, he has a 50/50 chance of immediately coming back on with 1 wound remaining. You just can't keep the guy down until he's through with all the traitors! 

Weaknesses. 

Loyalist only of course. Not necessarily a weakness of course. He is also a sort of mirror image of Little Horus Aximand in the game. Certainly a fluffy choice. Hatred against Traitors is worth noting here as well for the bonus to wound. 

Overall.

From a points value point of view, Loken costs only fractionally more than Aximand for which you get the Born survivor rule. But his paragon blade is strictly worse than Mourn-It-All, and therefore Aximand has the edge statistically, but that's before you factor in Hatred - its a delicate balance but I think that the damage = 2 on Aximand still takes the day overall? (Let me know if you've ran the stats? I'm going on gut instinct here!). Loken isn't looking too crash hot against Abaddon either due to the WS difference. But so what. If you are playing Luna Wolves or loyalist Sons of Horus, he is as ideal as they come!

Horus Heresy 3e Review: "Little" Horus Aximand

Warpstone Flux Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

4/5 stars. A fluffy choice for a high command entry in the Sons of Horus. 

Background.

Little Horus looked exactly like his gene sire in appearance. He chose to follow the same into Heresy and became a traitor, but was never too sure about his choices. He became wracked with guilt about it, and sought to justify his choice to himself repeatedly, ultimately fighting on Beta-Garmon.

Strengths. 

The stat line here looks and feels like a Praetor level character - which is exactly what Aximand is at a fundamental level. He comes with Mourn-It-All as his close combat weapon which is a power blade with S+1 and critical hitting which is very nice to have. The bane strike on his bolt gun is also similarly nice. He carries a shield, but I'm not too sure you would make use of it unless you are running him with a Breacher squad. 

His special rule is exceptionally circumstantial: Haunted. You gain extra victory points for taking out Loken. 

Impact on (I) is very nice overall though - and makes him worth it. 

Weaknesses. 

Activation of the special rule will be a very unusual event in any given game or tournament. This is a character that is basically wanting to be used and chosen in a fluffy style game. And I for one don't mind that!

Overall.

From a points value point of view, Aximand is worth the points cost. As noted above, the special rules are a little circumstantial to say the least and the shield trait is probably not going to get used that much.