Thursday, May 2, 2019

Horus Heresy Review: The Golden Keshig


Background.
Beginning our examination of specialist White Scars units in 30k, we turn to The Golden Keshig. These men are the "replacement" for terminators -- instead of massing large walls of slow moving armoured marines, the White Scars like fast moving, heavy jet bikers to ram in to their opponents. (Note: they're not actually replacements for terminators, its just stated as a fielding preference in their background). Their role is to literally ram in to the centre of the enemy. And at this task, they are good.

Strengths. 
The Kontos power lance means that this unit will be striking at an impressive S=7 and AP2 at the top initiative notch when charging in to an enemy. This should be enough to see off a smaller squad (assuming that they might break and flee). They do have hit and run as standard as well, should they get bogged down or tarpitted.

The scatterbolt launcher that they have is a template weapon that comes with a reasonable strength value, but only AP4. It does have shred and pinning though which is a nice touch to soften up an enemy before charging in.

Weaknesses.
This unit relies on getting the charge in. If they do not, then their attacks are pathetic -- only at the base strength of the user and at AP4. They can die to this if not played well. Beware! Hit and run does help out, of course, but the controlling player simply must get the charge in. No excuses here.

Watch out as well for any enemy that will reduce their initiative, otherwise they are similarly going to not make their points back.

Builds.
3 Golden Keshig (160 points).
Keeping it cheap, I rather like the base build. Add on some extra bodies to taste -- I'd suggest 4 or 5 might be around the golden number here; pun not intended. Keep it at 3 for a jetbike-cide squad.

6 Golden Keshig, all with melta bombs, 5 with power axes, champion with thunder hammer (375 points).
This is not recommended, but it is the maximum build possible here. It is a fully kitted out squad to take out big transports and then deal with the occupants. Don't use it - there are better ways for the White Scars to take out heavy transports. I include it here as a suggestion for some builds where other options might be in short supply.


No comments:

Post a Comment