Saturday, July 29, 2023

Horus Heresy 2e Review: Castellax Battle-Automata Maniple

Warpstone Flux Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
4/5 stars. The rules are good. 

Background.
Thought of by some as a potential internal threat should Mars ever go against its agreement with the Emperor, the Castellax were a mainstay of both siege warfare and shock troops for the Mechanicum. This worry never arose thanks to the Heresy and they were never made in sufficient numbers ever again to pose an internal threat, but their potency was never much doubted thanks to the sheer aggression of the internal machine spirit.

Strengths.
In simple terms, these robots are like dreadnoughts for the Mechanicum. They are weaker than their space marine cousins, to be clear, but still rather nasty. The stat line has W=4 and T=6 which is nice, but the WS=3 is a concern for those robots that you want in combat. The ability to configure for both ranged and melee is a really nice boon here. 

Weaknesses.
We've mentioned WS=3, but the price tag is one of you get what you pay for regardless. Hence even though they probably won't win a fight with their space marine cousin dreadnoughts, they are cheaper and they are also in the troops selection of the army list making them a very tempting choice.

Builds. 
1 Castellax, Darkfire Cannon (115 points).
I really like the Darkfire cannon thanks to the critical AP=2 component among other strengths. This build is a long range monster killer. 

1 Castellax, Siege Wrecker (110 points).
Brutal (2) is amazing here and makes up for deficiencies elsewhere. Get them into combat quickly. Take a multi melta if you must, and perhaps take a Paragon of Metal if you've not got it elsewhere?

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