Castellax Battle Maniple

I assembled my Castellax battle maniple!

After the change to the Force Organization Chart, and the new Liber Mechanicum categorizing my current automata as Castellax Destructor Maniple in the Heavy Assault slots, I had to go procure a standard mauler cannon pattern Castellax battle automata maniple to fill in the support slot. Oh, well. But at least I have a Legio Cybernetica army ready to go.

Only automata I'm waiting for is for the Domitar battle automata to be released in plastic. Maybe Vorax, which I might get if they're released in plastic too.

I also assembled the multimelta and darkfire cannon as spares, along with the automata power blades. I mean, it's possible I might get more Castellax in future, so having a spare multimelta and a spare pair of power blades might help!

Legacies of the Age of Darkness

Good news, everybody! The PDF for the Legacies of the Age of Darkness is now available for download! WOOHOO! Go download it at the Warhammer Community Horus Heresy download page! NOW! That's an order!

My focus will be on Thousand Sons and maybe a bit of Dark Angels, then Solar Auxilia and Mechanicum, because these are the armies I own. Yes, even Dark Angels because I'm a plasma guy. That said, I'll only be talking about Destroyers and Dreadwing stuff because I'm a plasma guy and I like Dreadwing (though I also have Deathwing, but that's, like, whatever, man). Plasma repeaters are nerfed to the ground - for 5 more points than a normal plasma gun, they have 1 more shot but at lower Strength and lower range. Not sure if they're worth it. Oh, well.

Interemptors can now take a vexilla and the Sergeant can take melta bombs and phosphex bombs. Not my guys, though, they're sticking to plasma.

Destroyers are back, but what's funny is that both versions - Mortalis and Assault - are now Heavy Assault slots as opposed to Support like the Interemptors. Huh. Well, I'll take that. Now I need to start scrounging for volkite Serpentas...interestingly, another thing I might consider adding to my Dark Angels is a Veteran Heavy Support squad (since I already have the Retinue and Heavy Assault filled for that) - equipping them with 5 heavy disintegrators might be hilarious. They'll probably die from the sheer weight of overloads, though...but worth it? Who knows? But quite frankly, if they're going to die from firing their disintegrator rifles anyway, I might as well go big and go all in.

Thousand Sons have their aetherfire blasters back. At first glance, I wondered why you'd take them. Like the plasma repeaters, they're 5 more points than a normal plasma gun, but they don't get maximal fire (meaning no increased Strength and no Breaching 5+). So why would you pay 5 more points for them?

Then it hit me. They are all Damage 2 without any Overload. Repeat after me. Aetherfire weapons are all Damage 2 without any Overload. That includes our Aetherfire pistols. Holy Terra. Also, remember the whole Corvidae Rending 5+ shots I was talking about the other day? Let's do the math. 10 guys shooting 2 shots of plasma, roughly 14 hits, and 2-3 Breaching shots. With Corvidae's Fated Shots giving us Rending 5+, we increase that to 7 Breaching shots from the hits alone, plus maybe 1 more from the remaining 7. That's 8 Damage 2 Breaching (AP2) shots, all without the risk of overloading. Doubling the damage means they're much better at killing Terminators and Dreadnoughts now - formerly, even if you overload, you get like 9 Damage 1 AP2 shots, that's only about 4 dead Terminators. Now you have 8. Also, you can kill Dreadnoughts more easily (might be overkill, though?).

Ha ha. HA HA HA HA HA! HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!

Eat my plasma, Pardo-hater leaker dude! Who's the retard now, eh? EH?!

And we have asphyx pistols and bolters back, for those of you who want Rending 6+ without having to resort to Corvidae. I'll just take my chances with perils.

Numerologist Cabal is back. This time, he just gets 2 powers, which is Foresight's Blessing from Divination to give us 5+ Precision,  and Mind-burst from Telepathy to remove a tactical status from an enemy unit, force them to fall back and take a Leadership check, and if they fail, they're routed. Aside from that, he's identical to last edition, retaining his Life Wards and all the wargear. Hmm, I don't know what to do with him, as an Elites choice, he doesn't really fit my army now. We'll see, I guess.

Solar Auxilia has their Companion Section back as a Retinue (I told you so, who were the dudes who downvoted me on Reddit?). So plasma spam is back on the table. Apex Detachment, 3 Retinues of 30 guys with plasma. Hah! Tarantulas can only take heavy bolter and lascannon options, so a hard pass. Carnodon is now Fast Attack, which boggles my mind.

BUT the important thing is the super-heavy tanks! They're all better now! They have a huge discount, so a Baneblade is 520 points (560 with sponsons), for example. My Stormblade is 500 points (540 with sponsons)! They're no longer the ridiculous 650 (previously 750, even) points from last edition. Woohoo! Also, I'm not sure if I'm reading this right because it's utterly ridiculous if true, but my plasma blastgun is Strength 8 AP2 Damage 5 without overloading?! And if I overload with maximal fire, it goes up to Strength 9 AP2 Damage 7? Wait, what?! How is this even a thing? Damage 7 plasma? Am I reading that right? I know it's a Titan weapon, but still...?!

Thank you, God-Emperor of Mankind. My Stormblade and Solar Auxilia are going to drown everything in plasma now.

Mechanicum retains the Arlatax, who...quite frankly, sucks? He's stuck with the same nerfed plasma cannon as the Astartes', meaning it's Strength 6 even if you maximal fire it. With only Damage 1, Strength 6 and Breaching 5+, but Overload 2, yeah...the poor plasma cannon just sucks now.

Funnily enough, Mechanicum Tarantulas have more options than their Solar Auxilia counterparts, even getting volkite culverins and melta array. Whoa. Pretty cool. I might want one...we also get all our Ordinatus back, so those who were worried can rest assure that their Titan-sized Ordinatus are back on the menu. So rejoice, servants of the Omnissiah!

Huh, that's it for now, I think? All the rest, you can read for yourself. Since they aren't armies I have, I'll give them a miss. Have fun!

List building with Liber Mechanicum, and Skitarii...Covenants? Plus millions of automata!

Today, it's the Mechanicum's turn! This one is a lot harder...

As usual, before I begin, I'll probably touch a bit on the lore. There's...no change, so far as I can tell. It's mostly copy-pasted from the 2nd edition Liber Mechanicum and the 1st edition's old black books. There are a few subtle differences, though, in terms of names...and numbers! Hah!

Do you remember in my Retrospective article about the Legio Cybernetica where I attempt to estimate the numbers based off various Apocrypha lore? So each maniple consists of 3-5 robots, and each cohort is composed of 100 or less maniples. On the upper end, you have like 500 robots per cohort, and with thousands of them, that means at least 1-2 million robots on the lower end.

As it turns out, I have grossly underestimated the number of automata.

In the new Liber Mechanicum, we have actual, hard numbers. The Legio Cybernetica is broken down into myriad self-contained and independent units known as Cohorts, and...guess what? Each cohort is formed of roughly 25,000 battle-automata and a cadre of a few hundred tech-priests and magi bound to the Cohort and commanded by a single Archmagos. Each Cohort also commands their own support networks, mobile workshops, transports, battlefield vehicles, orbital landers and even star vessels. Considering there were several thousand Cohorts active during the outbreak of the Horus Heresy, that means we have at least 50 million battle-automata running around the galaxy.

Holy Omnissiah...a minimum of 50 million battle-automata, and maybe over 100 million battle-automata. If there are like 10,000 Cohorts, wouldn't that mean like 250 million battle-automata? Nah, surely we don't have that many, right? Maybe 125 million would be a good estimate. Still an immense number of robots in the Imperium.

Wow. Omnissiah on Mars. My mind has been blown. The sheer scale of all this...

Anyway, another thing. We no longer have Legiones Skitarii or the Skitarii Legions. There's been a subtle change in their nomenclature, and now they're known as Skitarii Covenants, or the Skitarii Conclaves instead. Known as the Mechanicum Protectors, they are not members of the priesthood and instead follow their own unique martial traditions and sub-cult of the Omnissiah. The Skitarii Covenants follow their own secretive oaths rather than the authority of any Forge World and bowed only to the Fabricator General. Presumably of Mars, not just any random Forge World Fabricator General.

The Titan Legions or Legio Titanicus have also been changed to Titan Orders. Not Legions. Orders. I think they're trying to distinguish between the Legiones Astartes or Space Marine Legions from the other forces, and using Legions for everything like Legiones Skitarii and Legio Titanicus will make everything confusing (really? I don't think so). They want to individualize each force, so now the Skitarii Legions are Skitarii Covenants and Titan Legions are Titan Orders.

Right. Okay...bro. Whatever you say. Honestly, it's not a major retcon. It doesn't really change anything. However, I'm looking forward to whatever they're cooking for the Skitarii. We had their reveal a couple of months ago about plastic Skitarii models for Mechanicum, and the renaming of Skitarii Legions to Skitarii Covenants might be significant there. Who knows? I certainly don't. We'll have to ask the Foil. Someone hop onto Valrak's stream and poke him about this. I wonder if his whispers in the warp mentioned anything about Skitarii in the Horus Heresy.

Anyway, back to list-building. Like the Knight army I have yesterday, I think I actually have more than enough to put together a 3,000-points list without allies. No Solar Auxilia teaming up with my automata because there's no room for them, not if I want to bring my Mechanicum Knights along. Oh, the horror!

I start with my Archmagos Prime, which is the new plastic model from last year, with his Thanatar buddies. He's equipped with a cortex controller, cyber-familiar, machinator array, corposant stave, volkite serpenta, Overcharged Reaction and conversion beamer for 220 points. He's backed up by a Magos who also has a cortex controller, cyber-familiar and Overcharged Reaction, but this Cybernetica Magos has a power sword, Archaeotech pistol and servo-arm instead, for 175 points. They're supported further by 2 Tech-priests with cortex controller, cyber-familiar, power axes, servo-arms and Overcharged Reaction, for 90 points each.

My Castellax Destructor Maniples are 190 points for the multimelta and power blades ones, and 180 points for the duo with Darkfire cannons. That's the Heavy Assault slot. The Archmagos with the Cybernetica Techno-arcana will unlock the Apex Command maniple for me, which will let me field a 150-point Castellax Battle Maniple, a single Domitar battle-automata for 100 points, and the 245-point Thanatar-Calix siege-automata. The Logistical Benefit will unlock the Thanatar-Cavas siege-automata, which is 225 points. The automata are backed up by an Armor detachment of 2 Krios Venators that cost 350 points in total. Our Lord of War is a Cerastus Knight Atrapos at 600 points. I'll give him Medicant Affiliation, so that I can unlock 4 Armiger slots, which I'll fill with an Armiger Moirax with dual conversion beam cannons for 205 points and a second Armiger Moirax with 2 lightning locks for 175 points. That brings me up to 2,995 points.

I have like 4 Characters for the 3 Castellax maniples and 1 Thanatar, while the Domitar and remaining Thanatar will have Paragon of Metal. No idea what to do with the logistical benefit, only thing I can do now is improve the intelligence of the Tech-priests or something.

Well, that's that. The only thing I can do now is wait for plastic Domitar automata.

List building with the new Liber Questoris and cool Strategic Disposition stuff

I've bought the new Liber Questoris and Liber Mechanicum, so I can start assembling my guys into armies now! I'll first start with Knights. Before that, let's have a deep dive into the lore in these books! I see some new stuff for Knights, especially. Yay!

We now have a Strategic Disposition of a Knight Household, which is really cool. In addition to Household assets, which include planetary and tribulatory domains, void flotillas, household armory and Household support chambers that consist of Sacristans, provenders, aedificators, scribes, etc., they are usually composed of banners of Knights. Most Knight banners are comprised of multiple armors of the same broad class (e.g. Questoris or Cerastus, while lances are configured to be tactically flexible, with specialist lances among the ranks of larger knight households. Needless to say, at the top of the Household Aristocracy is the High Monarch, or whatever title you want for the guy ruling your Knight Household. For House Yato, it's the Shogun.

The simplest unit of a Knight Household is the banner, led by a Lord Scion and composed of 1-5 Knight armors, depending on class. Banner assets might include Armiger Talons, which vary from 2-8 Knight Armigers, Automata Maniples, Yeomanry Detachments or even individual Freeblade Knights. A High Scion commands about 3 banners, which make up a single lance, much like how 3 platoons make up a company. Lance assets include Auxiliary Knight banners (1-4 Acastus or Achaeus class Knight armors), Freeblade banners that might consist of 2-6 Knight banners, Automata Talons of about 2-4 Maniples, Yeomanry Mesnies of varying numbers and sometimes accompanied by hundreds of levied serfs, Sacristan Conclaves, Provender support retinues, Drop-keeps and Knight Carriers.

Multiple lances - up to dozens of lances, if necessary - are commanded by a Seneschal, who leads a muster. You can think of a muster as the equivalent of a battalion or regiment, which is comprised of many companies. For example, the Tanith First and Only regiment is composed of over twenty companies. So that's your version of a Muster. Muster assets are comprised of Yeomanry Hosts, seconded Auxiliary forces such as Solar Auxilia Sub-cohorts, Mechanicum Macrotek Covenants, Imperialis Armada Air Wings, etc., Titan Overseer Maniples, Macro-landers and air-defense assets, and warships and void-capable transport vessels. Essentially, a Muster is a self-sufficient army in itself.

Apparently, three Musters fall under the command of Household Representatives, which can be an Archmagos-Prelate when present, Sacristans Prime, Yeomanry Marshals - the commanders of Yeomanry Mesnie, or basically our Household Militias - and Flotilla Captains. These Household Representatives answer to the Baronial Court, which consists of Household Family Dynasts (whatever that means, probably the heads of individual , noble households), Specialist Knightly Order Representatives, Veteran Companions and Household Standard Bearers. All of whom will hold fancy Knight titles like you'd see in the older codices, like, uh, Gatekeepers or whatever.

There are endless variations of Knightly or noble titles for the myriad Households of the Questoris Familia, so for the counterpart for another House's High Monarch would be the Shogun of House Yato, for example. Or Suzerain-Designate, a High Scion Viceroy and a Lord Scion Marquise if you dislike High Monarch/King/Queen. Similarly, musters, lances and banners are not necessarily termed as such or numbered, and might instead frequently have distinctive titles of either allegorical natures or directly derived from the name of their commanding scion. For example, a banner of House Yato might be the Honoo no Ryu (Flame Dragon), led by the Lord Scion or Taicho Tanaka, piloting the Knight Errant, Kazan (Volcano). Something like that.

The Questoris Familia do possess "lesser" military forces to serve them upon the battlefield to accomplish more mundane strategic objectives, which we term Household Retainers. These are our Armiger, Yeomanry and Automata divisions, which are the Knight Household's most common retainer forces. Interestingly, though Armiger Knights are less costly and complicated to fabricate than full-scale Knight armors, and are found within almost all Households, a high Armiger-to-scion ratio often indicates a Household in decline. Better start getting rid of my Armigers then, eh?

The Questoris Yeomanry are as varied as the armies of the Imperialis Auxilia - meaning they are basically Imperial Army that happen to serve Knight Households - and range from impoverished peasants pressed into mass levies to veteran soldiers patterned after the elite of the Solar Auxilia, though in Questoris Mechanicum Households, they are often substituted for forces drawn from their patron Forge World's Taghmata. It'll be interesting to see how the new Imperial Militia rules will change for 3rd edition. Hopefully, we get to keep Grenadiers as Troops and not move them to Elites, and retain Armory of Old Night so that I can continue running my Ryuusei Katanas volkite grenadiers as Yeomanry Mesnie (Household Militia) for my Knights of House Yato. No tanks, though, which is a pity. Oh, and I think this is a sign of the Forge World provenances for pseudo-Skitarii to be kitbashed for Imperial Militia, which is really cool! Lots of possibilities!

Household Automata, in contrast to Skitarii Yeomanry Mesnie, are conversely rarer outside of Mechanicum Vassal Households, gained through pacts of mutual support by the larger Questoris Imperialis Households where their Mechanicum counterparts are usually furnished with hosts of deadly battle-automata as a matter of course. Cool!

Now list-building. Let's start off with a single Knight Questoris - the base cost is 400 points for a Knight with 2 Reaper chainswords and a heavy stubber. Uh, nope. My Knight Errant with a meltagun and Stormspear rocket pod will cost me 440 points. Oh, well. A Knight Preceptor with a las-impulsor, Avenger gatling cannon, multi-laser and twin Icarus autocannon will be 450 points. My Knight Castigator is 480 points and my Knight Lancer is 480 points. In total, that will be 1,850 points. That leaves me with 150 points for 2,000-point games. That's exactly the price of a Castellax battle-automata maniple of 2 I can bring along with my Knight Preceptor. Whoa! Awesome! That's the Honoo no Ryuu banner I mentioned earlier, led by Sir Tanaka piloting his Knight Errant, Kazan.

For 3,000-point games, I'll bring a Knight Atrapos, and I have 400 points left over. Now I'll need to wait for the Imperial Militia list to see how I can fill out the rest of the list, but I will want a Domitar battle maniple for 100 points, so I have 300 points left for my Imperial Militia. I don't have a Domitar automata yet, but I'll buy one the moment he's released in plastic. I'm not touching the resin version.

There you go! My Knight list! Knight Preceptor will be Preceptor, Castigator will be Scion Implacable. Lancer will be Scion Uhlan. Depending on whether it's 2,000 points or 3,000 points, my Knight Errant will be the Lord Scion or Scion Martial to unlock my Lord Scion Atrapos.

In the meantime, I might just fill out the remaining 300 points with Imperial Militia or Solar Auxilia, depending on when the Imperial Militia PDF will be released. Anyway, that's all for today. I might do the Mechanicum one tomorrow, or I might assemble my newly acquired third box of Castellax battle maniple for my Legio Cybernetica. Till then!

Math for plasma

If you remember the leaker dude, he posted on imgur the leaks of weapon profiles for Horus Heresy 3.0, and he was pretty, uh, vocal and angry about it. I mean, just look at his furious words at the bottom of the image. So if I think plasma is decent, I'm apparently a "retard."

It's not that I don't understand. Aside from the guy needing therapy, anger management and probably a ban for harassing poor Pardo, I do think plasma is...actually kind of bad this edition. Breaching 4+ went down to 5+, though 6+ and lower Strength if you want to play it safe (you'll still be wounding Astartes on 2+, though). But that's like 33% (67% on safe mode) less effective in terms of taking down both power armor and terminator armor dudes. Gone are the days of plasma as anti-Terminator equivalent weapons. With them being bumped to 2 wounds, and now Toughness 5 means you'll have to overload your plasma gun if you want to continue wounding them on 2+ instead of 3+, they...are just not as effective anymore. Meltaguns are better anti-Terminator weapons, particularly against the new Saturnine Terminators, while plasma is...what exactly is plasma's role now?

They are high Strength weapons, so they can be light anti-tank, though I don't fancy my chances of glancing AV12 vehicles on 5+. Might give them tactical statuses, I guess. They wound infantry, most of them anyway, on 2+, which makes them more effective than boltguns, but are they really worth paying 10 points each and taking up a support slot? At least the plasma cannons (and the heavier plasma weapons) are damage 2, but they're mostly blast. The one upside, aside from the nerfed Breaching, is that rapid fire as a trait is gone now, and plasma guns can fire 2 shots from their full 24" instead of needing you to be within 12" for 2 shots. So I guess you're safer from charges, and you can make more shots at longer range now? But that's still not worth the extra 10 points and Support slot, is it?

Let me offer a hypothetical (now I'm sounding like Ultramarines, but Thousand Sons do this too because we're scholars) scenario. I have 10 Thousand Sons plasma gunners. That's 20 shots. In Heresy 2.0, with a BS4, we average about 14 hits (rounded up), and 7 of those are Breaching wounds resolved at AP2. Not bad.

In Heresy 3.0, with the nerfed Breaching, we'll only have roughly 4 Breaching shots (5 if I round up), and that's only if we overload our guns (which basically puts us back in square one). Ouch. If you want to play it safe, you can fire without overloading, and that's...2 Breaching shots. 3 if you want to round up. And you're wounding Terminators on 3+ instead, which is...well, we're ignoring those because we want to focus on Breaching shots for now, as those are what kill Terminators, and it's unlikely they'll fail their 2+ saves anyway.

However, what if I tell you there's a way to make them decent? Thanks to my scholarly tendencies and my legion being Thousand Sons, I might perhaps have a way to make plasma guns for us work a little more efficiently than they did in Heresy 2.0. That doesn't mean they're worth it, mind you. If you think plasma was decent in 2.0, then hell yeah, this works out. If you don't because you think Breaching 4+ is still bad, then...well, nothing has changed, except that plasma is slightly better for my Thousand Sons.

Huh? What are you talking about? You may ask. Well, with the newly updated Prosperine Arcana, I present to you the Corvidae's Fated Shots Blessing. Sure, you run the risk of Perils of the Warp, but thankfully I'll just shunt them off to my Castellax-Achea, which retains his ability to take the hits for us when we peril, but let's run the math for now. Fated Shots gives us Rending 5+, which means we automatically wound on hit rolls of 5s and 6s, and these wounds count as being resolved as 6s. Which means they count as Breaching wounds. Hell, yeah.

So what does that mean, mathematically? It means that out of 20 hits rolls, about 7 of them automatically breach. Just the Rending hits alone make us equal the average tally of Breaching wounds in 2.0! The remaining 7 hits will produce another 2 wounds, which means you average about 9 breaching wounds at AP2. That's 2 better than Heresy 2.0's 7! If you play it safe, it goes down to about 8 wounds, which means no-overload does 1 more than the number of Breaching Wounds in Heresy 2.0, without the risk of blowing yourself up (but with the risk of perils, which is mitigated by Castellax-Achea, but you're paying an extra 80 or so points on top of that).

So...are plasma weapons worth it with Corvidae's Fated shots? It depends on whether you thought they were worth it in 2.0. If you didn't, nothing has changed and you can continue to avoid plasma. If you didn't mind the Breaching 4+, then you can play your plasma tactical support squads as Corvidae to get a slightly better number of Breaching wounds than in 2.0!

Tartaros Terminators have their power fists back!

 What did I tell you? If you recall, I wrote about this a couple of weeks ago in the Thousand Sons leaks.

So an errata has dropped for Horus Heresy, including a PDF for Talons of the Emperor, and Tartaros Terminators can now take power fists and chainfists and stuff from the Legion Terminators melee list.

I TOLD YOU SO.

Legacies of the Age of Darkness

Fortunately, as I thought, most of the supposedly "cut" units are in the Legacies of the Age of Darkness. Warhammer Community has announced this yesterday, but I worked until midnight yesterday, so I didn't have time to write about it. It also seems like some wargear options might be put back there, so you have stuff like "Veteran" Breachers who are those with volkite chargers and meltaguns and Inner Circle Knights Cenobium from the Order of the Broken Claws (probably your Thunder Hammer Knights Cenobium). And additional wargear options. Or exotic wargear, so your characters still have bikes, jump packs and Terminator armor no matter what Consul they are. Cool!

Destroyers are in the Legacies PDF, as I told everyone on Facebook and Reddit. Despite this, people didn't believe me, with one guy insinuating something by asking if I was bullied in school, and The Outer Circle posting a photo of a printer to push his 3D printing and anti-Horus Heresy 3.0 agendas. Sigh.

I was wrong about Tartaros Terminators, though. Seems like the power fists being missing is not an error - they're on the Legacies Tartaros Siege Terminators now, which confirms a new plastic kit for them coming. Yay. I might actually rebuild an Imperial Fists force with the Tartaros Praetor, a bunch of Tartaros Terminators with storm shields, and the new Breachers because they're coming out in plastic. Cool! I can't wait!

I also told people the Aurox transport and Tarantulas for Solar Auxilia will be in the Legacies PDF and I was downvoted to oblivion in Reddit and called a shill and some nonsense. Look, I already anticipated that because my Carnodon was relegated to Legacies in Horus Heresy 2.0. Instead of panicking, I looked at my Carnodon and was confident the Aurox and Tarantulas will be getting the same Legacies treatment.

One thing I disliked, though. The Ordinatus is missing for Mechanicum. That's an expensive Lord of War model, and to pretty much write it out of the game completely is...painful, especially for the owners. C'mon.

Anyway, I look forward to the Imperial Militia rules next month. I can't wait! Till then!