The last of the previews today, the Armageddon Steel Legion



The survivors of a series of unfortunate events, the First war of Armageddon, which we don't talk about and then the second and third wars of Armageddon, when the Orks tried there luck. The Steel Legion have long been know for their armoured warfare and love of chimeras'. While they are know for there hatred of Orks, meaning that they are well practised at close ranged fire fights and fast mobility,



This took me a little while to get my head around when I first read it and I'm still slightly confused. In the example, they say a squad will be putting out 36 shots at 18 inches with FRFSRF. Now, with a normal squad with no doctrines will put out 18 shots at 12 inches, but with FRFSRF that would got to 36 shots. So by my reckoning with Industrial Effiency a squad shout be putting out 36 shots at 18 inches normally and 72 shots with FRFSRF, as it double the number of shots. If I'm right in my calculations, then this makes the amount of firepower that you can put out from an army immense. If you can I combine squads together to for 20 man squads, then the amount of firepower you could put out would be in the region of 144 shots at 18 inches. That will pretty much devastate any squad you shoot at. The extra inches on the rapid fire range, also means that you can get your shots in before the enemy has a chance to get there own volleys in.

The trait for the vehicles will help reduce the effectiveness of quite a few weapons, although it does nothing to the true anti-armour weapons, a better trait I think would have been a straight +1 to a weapons AP up to an AP of 0. As it is, it will help out vehicles, as there are a lot of AP-1 weapons out there, and that -1 matters more than you might think.

Overall, I think that this is a decent doctrine but it does favor the infantry more.

The highlighted unit is not really a surprise:



The chimera is probably the most numerous fighting vehicle in the imperium and is used extensively by the steel legion and is here to highlight two items, the Armageddon Stratagem and their order.



The stratagem, Armored Fist, allows a unit disembarking from a transport to reroll 1's. Nice and simple, all you need to do is load up your plasma vets into your chimera and charge them up the field turn 1, unload turn 2 and overcharge those plasma guns for maximum effect, safe in the knowledge you can reroll those unlucky 1's.

You could also tie this in with the order; Mount Up!



This order enables the ordered squad to mount a transport after shooing. This means that a unit can move in to a position, next to a transport, out in the open somewhere and then shoot the enemy, before piling in to the transport and relative safety. While its not perfect, was the transport cannot move after, it does offer the squad quite a bit of safety from retribution. Imagine this order on a plasma command squad, they could move up tonrapid fire range to engage the enemy and then jump in the transport ready to escape the return fire that will no doubt come there way. This means there is a good chance of survival, compared to standing out in the open. This is a good order but will require some practice to get right.

We are also given the Armageddon warlord trait this time, Ex-gang Leader.



This trait means that your warlord will most likely be hitting with 4 attacks and without a power weapon, wounding on 4's. With a power weapon, you could be wounding on anything from a 2 to a 4, depending upon the weapon. This means that you have a better chance of wounding your enemy in most cases and paired with one of the relics below, namely the blade of conquest, you could do some real damage to an enemy, even taking out terminator's! Ok, that's unlikely but possible. Personally I don't know if this is the best trait to have. It seems like a one hit wonder, as if you don't kill off your enemy before they have a chance, its likely you'll be dead before you get to strike again. This seems like a poor use for your warlord. I think I wound stick with one of the other traits if I was going for an Armageddon detachment.



Next up is the Company Commander, highlighted purely to showcase the new Heirlooms of Conquest or Relics. There are quite a few of these but three have been highlighted here. The first is the Dagger of Tu'Sakh.



This relic effectively grand an infantry unit plus the bearer outflank. While it still follows the usually rules, it says infantry, a plasma or melta vets it is then. Being able to do this with any infantry unit is great but its one used only, so you need to make it count. I wouldeither look at a large conscript blob and commissar or a tooled up vet squad and platoon commander, both of which could cause a lot of problems for your enemy if they suddenly appeared in their deployment zone or next to a valuable unit or character. Definitely a useful relic.

Kurov's Aquila is also a very useful relic.



Being able to gain command points is very useful, in pretty much any situation. Ok, so you'll not get a point everytime your opponent uses a stratagem, but even if it gives you a couple more points during the game, its still better than nothing. It may not be my first choice for a relic, but if your not planning on taking a relic on a character, then you might as well stick this one on them and then any extra points you get is just a bonus.

The last relic mentioned is the Blade of Conquest.



This replaces a models power sword, so you need a character with a power sword and the option for taking a relic but what you end up with is a super power sword. It will push most models to strength 5, as good as a power axe, but with better AP and a chance of doing significant damage. Stick this on a company commander or a lord commissar and you have the chance of creating a bit of a combat monster, jsmuat make sure your striking first, otherwise you might not get the chance to strike at all.



Last, but by no means least, is a new unit, the Ogryn Bodyguard. Now, I quite like Ogryns but have never really had a use for them. I have thought about adding a squad of Bullgryns since they were released, with power mauls, as a back field support and counter charge unit, but have never got around to it. If I had of done, they wound have hung around with the warlord and shielded him, now I can place a dedicated bodyguard to do the same job. I know that Nork Deddog does the job already, but if I'm going to buy a box of three models, I want to be able to use the other two but with a minimum unit of 3, that meant buying a second box. Now, I may very well pick up a box and make three bodyguards, hopefully one shooting and one combat and maybe Nork as well. We will have to see what the rules say first though.



The new units come with the bodyguard rule. Now, I don't really like this rule. I understand wwhyit jumps to a mortal wound but I still think its over the top.I can't really see me using it much, at least not until my warlord is down to its last wound or so, in an effort to keep it alive longer but I certainly won't be using it right off the bat.

So, that's the previews over and done with. I know this one is a little late, later than planned as well, but real life and the weekend got in the way somewhat. I've got a battle report up next and will be playing another tournament warm up game, with the same army, this afternoon. Ill let you know how I get on.

There are times when if blogger was a person, I could kill them. I'd pick them up by the scruff of the neck and throw them out a very high window. Basically, blogger just threw a wobbly and deleted all the text on my post when I tried to move a picture. It probably wound have been fine, except for bloggers insistence on auto saving. Does anyone know if you can turn this feature off?

So, to start again.

This week we are looking at the Valhallan Ice Warriors, a grim and determined lot, where life is cheap (if not worthless) and only success matters.



The Valhallans doctrine, Grim Demeanour, is a pretty good representation of the Valhallan attitude to warfare.




I was expecting the Valhallan doctrine to help out with moral, and the doctrine does not disappoint. As usual, it is formed of two parts, one for infantry and one for vehicles. So how does it work? Well for infantry it means that you are going to loose a lot less men from failed moral tests and to some extent removes the need for commissars. With a standard infantry squad, normally if you loose half of the squad, you are in real danger of being wiped out in the moral tests, with this doctrine, you need to loose over 7 of 10 men in order for the squad to be wiped out and that's assuming that you roll a 6 for moral. In other words, your men are going to be hanging around on the table top a lot more, meaning that your enemy cant rely on the moral phase to finish off the job of destroying you. This means that they will have to dedicate more firepower to destroying your units and as such, this means that there will be less firepower to dedicate to the rest of your army, resulting in your troops lasting longer.

For vehicles, the same idea is represented by doubling your remaining wounds when consulting the damage table.  For most Imperial vehicles, they drop down a tier after loosing half their wounds, but with this doctrine, they will have to loose over three quarters of their wounds instead. This means that they will be on there top tier until they are down to about 2 or 3 wounds, before dropping down a tier with almost every wound. In reality this means that your vehicle are going to be working at full efficiency until they are destroyed. This is because most weapons that are going to destroy a vehicle are multi-damage weapons, and will usually remove 2 to 4 wounds at a time. Again, this means that your enemy cannot just cripple you vehicles by taking them down a tier or two and then ignore them, instead they will have to continue firing at them until they are completely destroyed. This means, that similar to infantry, your enemy will have to keep shooting at a vehicle until its destroyed, mean that they wont be able to fire at any of your other vehicles, saving them from damage and keeping them on the table longer.


The unit highlighted this time around is no surprise, as its pretty synonymous with the Valhallans.

 

There is also an ulterior motive for showing this unit off and that's the changes to the rules. Now, we all know that Conscripts have been ruling the roost somewhat at tournaments, even with there poor leadership and BS, once massed in to a 50 man squad with a commissar and an officer, they form a very hard hitting and hard to shift unit, soaking up shooting and combat with ease. The days of the massed Conscripts maybe number though. The two key rules updates have come in the form of reduced numbers and the removal of automatic orders.

The reduction in numbers has almost reduced the unit in half, dropping the maximum from 50 to 30. This is still a big unit but it does still drop the shooting output quite significantly. For a lot of people, this probably wouldn't change the situation much, as they would just split up the conscripts in to two 25 man blobs and carry on as normal, just upgrading the platoon commander to a company commander to get the extra orders. What really damaged the shooting output of these units though, is the fact that orders will now only work on a 4+. This means that it will only be a 50/50 change of getting that FRFSRF order off, and if you fail, that's it, no second chances. In some respect, this actually encourages the two 25 man squads, as at least your likely to get one of the orders off. If we think about this in terms of averages, over 2 turns, this will drop the shooting output potential from 400 shots (at rapid fire range with FRFSRF) to 150 shots (with one successful order and one fail). That's quite a difference is firepower, and makes quite a difference to what you will kill. I haven't run it through MathHammer, but I imagine there will be a significant difference in how many marines you could kill.


The next thing mentioned is the Valhallan order, Fire on my Command, is very similar to yesterdays, just the other side of the coin, firing IN to combat.



We all know that you can't fire in to combat right? Well now you can, there's just one drawback, roll a 1 and its your own men your hitting. As it stands, I cant think of any aura abilities that enable you to reroll 1's, otherwise this would be prefect. Being able to shoot IN to combat is great, as it means that you can shoot in with whatever weapons you like and your men don't have to fall back from combat. You could issue Fix Bayonets to the engaged unit, let them take a swing at the enemy and then fire in with some other models to kill a few off before you went in to combat and had another try. If you were running a Vostroyan detachment and a Valhallan one, just imaging the look on your enemies face as he watched his squad getting shot to bits, while locked in combat. Very situational, but also very fun. Valhallans we looking to be a good army already and this just adds to it, while still keeping in with there play style and fluff.

After the order we get the Stratagem and also this is where the "classic and much loved rule" returns.




This stratagem is very reminiscent of the old rule, which use to apply only to conscripts but now applies to all infantry units. At its basic level it enables you to regenerate a single unit that has been wiped out. There's seems to be a couple of clear winners here, firstly, those expensive specialist units, such as plasma or melta command squads. With this stratagem, you can do those suicidal charges to take out a character or vehicle, without worrying about the repercussions. Kill that captain but loose the plasma squad in return? Ok, ill just bring them back next turn. If you have a chimera spare you can just taxi the units around all game. The other winners with this are conscripts, as now you can throw them at something, like a squad of dark elder wytches and watch them get destroyed, knowing that they'll be back next turn. Its a great stratagem and opens up lots of options for just pushing forward and dam the consequences.

But the part I really find interesting is the bit that says "the combined squad stratagem". Now, I've had a look around and it seems that this will not be a before game stratagem to combine X number of squads at deployment, but an in game stratagem to merge squads together, to form a reinforced composite squad. I guess the idea is to take two squads that maybe down to half strength and combine them to form a single full strength squad, however, if there are no limitations on it, then I can see it being used a lot for first turn amalgamations of squads to form good old blob squads and i'm assuming that it will limit things to just the basic infantry squads and not allow things like conscripts or veterans to benefit. Its not quite what I had hoped for as I would have liked to be able to form proper blob squads at the start of the game, but as long as its not an expensive stratagem, then I think it will work out just fine. We will have to see the proper wording to really see how good it is and how it will work best, but its good that the option is there.








The next highlighted unit is one of my favourite super heavies in the game, the Stormlord, with its Vulcan Mega Bolter. If I had the money, I'd have one of these in my armoury for sure. But why is it here? Well, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, they Steel Behemoth rule has been updated to include the fact that heavy weapons no longer suffer a penalty to shoot after the vehicle has moved, which is good, it should really have been that way from the start, its a mobile fortress after all. The second reason for it being here is to introduce the next stratagem, Crush Them.



This card has several uses, as it enables you to advance and charge but also means that your hitting on a 2+ instead of your usual 5 or 6+. I can see this card being used one of two ways. The first way is purely to get a unit up the field, to contest an objective or to try and grab line breaker, yes you are going to need to charge, but with careful planning, you can pick a unit that has a very slim chance of actually doing any damage to the vehicle, that way you could get up to an extra 12 inches from your movement, giving you a potential total movement of anything up to 30 inches, depending upon which vehicle you use. The other use for this is to finish off a unit of enemy models, either in your own deployment zone or on an objective, this general means that you need to use a vehicle with a lot of attacks, which is another reason the Stromlord is being highlighted, as it has 9 attacks. Most times when your charging in a vehicle its as a last resort, as your not expecting to hit, but when you do hit you have a fairly good chance of wounding, with this stratagem, you can pretty much guarantee to hit. Getting hit with 3 attacks from a Leman Russ will do some damage, especially against some of the softer squishier units. This could clear out the last of a unit from you deployment zone or to remove that last model from the objective. As a stratagem I like it. Its not one that will be used very often but its one to keep in your back pocket for those last minute moves.

Overall, I think that the Valhallan doctrine is a good doctrine. While it doesn't directly help with shooting output or combat potential, but it does help indirectly by keeping your men on the table longer or keeping your vehicles firing at full power. I don't know if I will use this for any of my armies but its defiantly a strong doctrine.

Today see us looking at the Armageddon Steel Legion and is the last of these previews. That means that we will have to wait and see what the Cadians, Tallarns and Militarium Tempestus doctrines hold.

In part two of the Astra Militarum preview we get to see the Mordian Iron Guard in all there glory, well, maybe not all there glory, but the juicy bits anyway.



In the lore, these guys are the unbreakable anvil of guard units, holding the line until the last man and following order to the letter, no matter what the cost and i'm glad to say that it appears that they will be as similar on the table top as they can be. Now, its worth noting here, that GW could have gone one of two way for this doctrine, in terms of what regiment to name. The Mordian Iron guard were an obvious choice, but so too were the Praetorians, another regiment known for there iron will and fortitude. Granted, the Praetorians were not a widely available as the Mordians, but they looked better in my opinion. One positive of using the Mordians though, is its a dam sight easier to spell!

But what is the doctrine you say? Well, its this, Parade Drill



Again, we'll split it up in to its various parts, starting with the last part, the Vehicles. This is a simple one really, vehicles get to fire overwatch and now hit on a 5 or 6, instead of just a 6. Now, this is a very useful bonus for most vehicles, who usually have low number of shots, the exception being the punisher armed Russ. In a situation where every shot counts and can really make a difference, especially to the likes of turn 1 charges and charges out of deep strike. This is mostly because, many vehicle weapons then to be high strength or high Ap modifiers, and a successful wound is usually converted in to a kill. and in a situation where even one kill can cause a charge to fail, getting those hits in in critical, with this your looking at doubling the number of hits and therefore increasing the chances of wounding. the only downside to this, is that you need to keep your vehicle close to each other, but that's not always a problem. Running a couple of Leman Russ' together is not a bad idea anyway, nor is running several chimeras together, the downside come when your running things like Hell Hounds or Valkyries. The flyers is fairly obvious, not many people want to keep there flyers next to each other, with the Hell Hound, there are not many people I know who run multiples of them and not normally together, as they tend to go off hunting a specific threat. You could support it with a chimera or maybe a Taurox, but it will outpace most other vehicles. The is one question I have, but I will get to that later in the post, as it will either make this doctrine a but useless or great.

The other part of the doctrine affects infantry and in the day and age of no blast markers, doesn't make any difference to the how close you can position your models. In 6/7th this would have been unthinkable, bunching up was a sure fire way of loosing large parts of your army quickly but in this edition it makes no difference and in this case, its actually a positive. If every model is in base to base, they get a +1 leadership buff and a +1 to overwatch, echoing the vehicle abilities. Now this is an all or nothing doctrine, you cant get one without the other. Its going to mean forgetting everything that you've learnt in the last 7 editions, but I think it is well worth it. A free +1 to leadership, means that you are not going to need to spam Commissars or have to use up valuable CP's on moral tests. Granted it doesn't make your troops invincible to moral, but it does help, meaning that you'll need at least 3 casualties before you even need to think about moral. The +1 to hit for overwatch is also great, as it will massively increase you hits. I cant tell you the amount of times I've fired overwatch, only to look at a bucket load of 5's and not one 6. As I said with the vehicles, increasing your hits from overwatch, increases your chances to wound and therefore kill the enemy before they get in to combat. For guard this is what you need to be doing, as were useless in combat against everyone but the Tau. All that you need to do is remember to keep everything in base to base with each other!



This time around it is veteran squads that are highlighted, mainly to highlight the Mordian special order.



Now, this order is useful but highly situational. At first I though it was great, but much like my assumptions about the Catachan doctrines, once I sat back and properly read it, it has a catch and that catch is RAPID FIRE WEAPONS, so no issuing it to a Lascannon heavy weapons team and watching the carnage, because that would be awesome! No, its rapid fire weapons only, which in reality is sensible and not overpowering. It is situational though, as when we look at the rapid fire weapons the guard have, the list is small, Lasguns, Plasma Guns and errr...... Bolter? Yeah, not a great selection, which is why they have highlighted the vets, as you can pack these guys with 3 plasma guns for maximum punch. I can see this order being used a fair bit, but mostly by said vets with plasma guns and a platoon commander, loaded up in to a chimera for some rapid movement. The plan would be simple, nail it to where you need to be turn 1, de-bus from the chimera, issue order and toast character turn 2, die. I would also be unloading from the chimera in base to base at all costs as your going to need the +1's for the return fire and probable charge that will come back at you. I'm not saying that's the only use for it, but its definitely the best use, it will able be useful for taking out the buffing characters before an enemy charge, but at 24" range, its not going to take a smart opponent to keep any characters out of that range until the last possible minute, meaning you'll probably only have one shooting attempt and you'll have to decide which is more important, the character or the unit that is going to do the damage! I would have like to have seen this order be available to any weapon in veteran or infantry squads, not special or heavy weapon squad, as I think that this would have been better and still not overpowered, plus it would have made more sense, as if your going to shoot at a character, your going to shoot everything at it, not just the flashlights and shoot the big gun at something else.





Again, they have highlighted a particular unit from the codex in general, in this case its the Leman Russ and particularly the Punisher. They seem to be doing this for similar reason as they did with the Deathstrike, purely to highlight a rule that is not linked to a particular doctrine. In this case there are three items of note. The first is the comment about points costs adjustment, a small one downwards, which is good. how small this adjustment is I don't know, but any points reduction is welcomed.

The second item of note is the new rules for the Leman Russ; Grinding Advance.



This is encouraging you to go slow and steady with your tanks, rolling up the field, demolishing everything in its path. Now, this is really good, although it affects some tanks more than others. the likes of the Demolishers, Nova and Battle cannon tanks will benefit from this, as will the executioner, even more so if they are using the Catachan doctrine and rerolling the number of shots. Autocannons should be putting out double the number of shots anyway, so this just makes them what they should be but only at half speed. The Vanquisher is a real winner in my opinion, its got good range, ap and damage but was always hampered by the single shot, with this, you can have some backup and be confident that you should hit at least one of the shots. However the real winner here is the Punisher, being a high volume, low strength weapon, hits are vital, and doubling the number of shots on such a weapon is a massive boost. I cant think of a weapon that can kick out that kind of volume of shots, apart from ones on super heavy vehicles. yes, you have a short treat range, just under 30", but once your in range, your a massive threat, even to the likes of marines. Toss in a tank order as well and things get even better. The Leman Russ is a great vehicle, solid and resilient and now it has the fire power to match.

Talking of fire power, the Defensive Gunners Stratagem is also really good.




As I've mentioned a few times, when firing with guard, volume is key, and with overwatch, killing a model can be the difference between a successful charge and not. With this stratagem you are doubling the number of potential hits and with that the number of wounds and kills. Its simple and for only 1 CP I would definitely be considering this every time a vehicle gets charged. There really isn't a lot to say, its good, use it.

Now, skipping back a few points, back to the Mordian doctrine. This allows vehicle to +1 to there hit rolls for overwatch, therefore turning 5's in to 6's, but it also turns 4's in to 5's. Can you see where I'm going with this? Yeah, charging a Mordian vehicle just got serious. Charging a Mordian Leman Russ Battle Tank? Well, there they're hitting at normal ballistic skill, for overwatch. Yep, scary stuff. Can you imaging a punisher doing this? hey, if you moved in your movement phase, you might actually be hitting on a lower dice than you did in your own shooting phase!

Mordians are going to be a very hard army to fight against. They are going to struggle in Mealstrom games, where they want to stay close and move slowly, but they are going to be a hard army to fight against, especially if your a combat based army. Once your in combat, well, you'll cut through them no bother, but you've got to get there first and with these boys that's going to be no easy task.

As things stand, these guys maybe useful for the Hildasay PDF, in support of the Dagr Ormr Militarium Tempestus. They aren't going to be moving much, and the leadership and overwatch bonus' would be useful, especially as most of the units don't have Sergeants. I'm not going  to set that in stone yet though, as we still have 5 more guard doctrines to come, the next of which I'm very interested to read about, that of the Vostroyans.

(Again, all the images are from the warhammer community page)

These boys are the very essence of brawn over brains in many cases, bred on one of the most inhospitable planets in the universe, yet they survive, even thrive, especially on the battlefield. But what is there role in this edition? Lets have a look;

The main Regimental Doctrine is this:




As you can see, there are two parts to this, a +1 strength bonus and also a +1 leadership bonus but also a bonus to vehicles', in this case the ability to reroll one dice when determining the number of attacks a weapon has.

We'll look at them individually, starting with the second one, the one for the vehicles. Now, it mentions that the doctrines will apply to both vehicles and infantry, so expect most of the doctrines to have two parts, one for infantry and one for vehicles. it would be nice if both applied to both types but that might be a bit strong, after all it would put Leman Russ's to T9 and 12 Wounds. as for the doctrine itself, it enable you to reroll a single dice when determining how many shots a ranged weapon has when it has to roll for the number of shots it can fire. Now the main ones that spring to mind are the Leman Russ Battle Cannon along side its Demolisher brother and also the Wyverns but the likes of the Valkyries MRP's and Hell Hounds flamers will also benefit. For some of these weapons, this could be a huge bonus, in one game when I took a Hell Hound, I was really disappointed with the amount of shots that the flamers gave me. With this doctrine I would have been able to reroll those dice to get a better number of shots without using up precious command points. For the likes of a twin flamer armed Hell Hound this could be a huge bonus, enabling both weapons to be rerolled, where as the likes of the Wyvern, this is less of a bonus, as its a 4d6 roll. now if it was 4x d6 rolls, it would be huge but as a single 4d6 roll, it means that 3 dice are fixed, although I suppose a CP could be used to reroll one of the other dice. For me personally, running the Hjaltland LI as a Catachan regiment just got better, as it will mean that all my vehicles will be getting a free reroll, with the Vyverns both having MRP's and the Wyverns having their mortars, it also makes the heavy flamer armed one a bit better, as those heavy flamer points start to look a bit better value for money. My only issue with this is that it only effects vehicles and not d3/d6 infantry weapons, which is a bit odd as the two weapons that the Catachan fighter love most is the flamer and mortar, both of which are d6 weapons.

The second part (or first, depending upon how you look at it) applies to the infantry and is itself a two parter. The bonus to leadership is always useful ad it wasn't until the last game that I played, which i'm still trying to type up the battle report, that I had serious issues with moral. Granted this only applies if your close to a friendly officer, but if your running guard you should be running plenty of officers, even running a platoon commander with a vet squad is a really good idea. This means that pretty much all your army should be benefiting from the +1, making most squads Ld8 or more. Some units will benefit more than other, mostly things like Ratlings and Conscripts, but even vets and command squads will find this useful. I'm assuming that you wont be able to apply this to commissars as that would mean that you'd be almost immune to moral. Now, the second half of this part is a +1 to strength and when I first read this I almost jump out of my chair in excitement, then I realised its +1 to strength and NOT toughness! So I got comfy on my chair again and continued reading. The +1 to strength is good, don't get me wrong, but its nothing compared to a +1 to toughness. As it is we have a +1 to strength and with the fact that you can only take power weapons on sgts it really does help out in combat. Against marines and the like it will help as its hitting on 4's now and against the likes of Tau we'll be hitting on 3's, which does actually make a difference when were talking about the small numbers of attacks that guardsmen get, any extra wounds you can do, really do make a difference. For those armed with power weapons, this is even better, as swords are user strength, it increases the change of wounding from 33 to 50% and with the likes of mauls, it can drop a wound roll from 3 to 2 when going against the likes of Tau warriors and tyranid guants. Its situational though, as guard are not a combat army and there won't be many times when you'll be charging across the battlefield to take the enemy in hand to hand combat, but this does mean that, if its a charge or be charged situation, you've got to charge and make the most of that extra strength before your wiped out.




The next thing that I wanted to talk about is the highlighted command squad. Ill have to go back and check if its been updated but is mentions that the squad can be armed with a heavy Flamer and FOUR flames. Now, unless the Catachan command squad has been changed from the index command squad, its a model over, as the command squad is only 4 strong, meaning a heavy Flamer and THREE flames. If it has been changed, that's cool, but i suspect the price will reflect this change. The Catachan order is also mentioned, Burn Them Out. This is obviously a Flamer related order only and I can only hazard a guess at its meaning but I suspect that it will either guarantee maximum hits or give you the option to reroll them, of course it may also add strength or increase the ap value as well. Personally, I'd take the hits over an ap modifier, unless it was a -3 or something.

The stratagem "vicious Trap" is also highlighted. It costs 1 CP and is played after an enemy unit successfully charges a unit of Catachans in cover.



Now, its only a 1CP card, so it might be worth a punt on the odd occasion, but I wouldn't be looking at this every time. Its only going to go off half the time and I guess if you wanted you could use your CP reroll to help and even if it does go off, on average you'll do 2 mortal wounds. Against squads of multi-wound models, such as terminators, this wont do a lot, you might be lucky and get it off and roll up a 3, killing a termie and a half, or you might just take 1 wound of a single model, either way its not overly useful. Against squads of single wound models its better, potentially killing off up to three models, but in my opinion its best use is against low wound single model units, or characters. If your getting charged by something like a Space Marine Captain, a 5 wound model, that could potentially do some real damage to a squad of guardsmen, then this could help immensely. With the potential to half the number of wounds before combat begins could be the difference between killing the model or being killed. Personally I will probably only use this if I feel I have points to spend, such as with my 14CP 1000 point list, where I struggle to actually spend all the points in matched play. Pushing this to 2000 points gives the potential for more CP's, anything up to 26! if you have then many, then spending one on this is worth it, if you only have 4 or 5, then I wouldn't bother, I'd save them for something more important and less likely to fail.



This section is going to be brief, mostly as I don't have a death strike and don't plan on getting one. The Deathstrike is a one hit wonder, and was fun in 6/7th and hasn't really changed much in 8th. Why they have decided to try and include it in to the Catachan page is unknown, but I guess they have to put something fun and random in somewhere, which basically sums up the Deathstrike. Yes it would benefit from the rerolls for the random number of shots, but the trouble is that when you read the actual rules, it doesn't benefit as much as they make out. The only roll that is affected is the 3d6 roll, and so you can old reroll a third of the dice, all the other rolls are either what is effectively a to hit roll or a to wound roll, neither of which are effected by the Brutal Strength doctrine. The Vortex Missile Stratagem card is also a fun addition to the Deathstrike and does pair well with the Brutal Strength doctrine, meaning that you can reroll the number of hits and also the to hit rolls, meaning that you should get a significant number of hits. The addition of extra mortal wounds, albeit on a roll of a 6, is also good, but only against multi-would models, against single wound units it wouldn't have any effect. What is also good, is that this appears to apply to not just the initial target by also any units that are within the blast radius, which thanks to the middle part, the +1 to the dice roll, your more likely to hit. So if your going to take a Deathstrike, then you should definitely be looking at this stratagem and doing what you can to get this thing off as early as possible, when the enemy are still bunched up in the deployment zone. In reality though, your probably not going to get the Deathstrike off until turn 3 or 4, by which point the enemy will be scattered and the rocket will not be as useful and the stratagem will be a bit of a waste of 3 CP's. If you manage to get it off turn 2 though, you'll be laughing, as most of the enemy will disappear in a cloud of smoke and fire.