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Is a Termy Chaplain w/ Lightning Claw Termies something YOUR army would stay away from? I have tried this combination in the past to different levels of success. I'm just curious whether or not anyone has faced this combo and whether anyone can give me suggestions as to what makes good backup for a squad like this, especially when they are rolling out of a LRC?

No, cause I play with throw away fast moving melta squads that can wreck their ride and have them huff it and/or kill the throw away squad with ease for me to take them out at my leisure.

They're a very rock paper sciisors unit (ie they'de be almost worthless vs my mech tau). What I REALLY fear is someone who mixes both types and uses chaplain for re-rolling to hit against my fast moving vehicles.

EVERYONE will fear a 7 man terminator unit with 4 hammers and 3 claws.

EVERYONE will fear a 7 man terminator unit with 7 hammers.

SOME people will fear a 7 man terminator unit with 7 claws.

sooo... take one of the top two.

They are very strong but I've had problems with overkill with them, especially with a chaplain.

I like the mix of thunder hammers and LC though.

I will try the 4 TH/SH 3 LC mix in my next game. Thanks for the input everyone!

A Chaplain with a unit of seven Assault Termies, all th/ss, in an LRC is a decent threat to any opponent.
Fearlessness and rerolling to hit are big bonuses.

The mixed TH/SS/LC squads in my BT army are pretty scary when combined with a chaplain w/ power fist. Even with the old crap shields, I find they roll through just about anybody. Oh and Furious Charge is awesome.

But just a squad with LC? nah, not that impressive since they can only overkill a big mob of normal infantry, and a 5++ is not all that great.

Well, I'd let the Chaplain strike with his normal initiative,
eventually soften up the enemy unit.
LC's are not as impressive as th/ss.

Between Trygons and Genestealers, not a scary unit.

For about the same price, I take a 10 man Death Company with a couple power weapons, with a chaplain. This lets them reroll both to-hit and to-wound, while maintaining furious charge and striking first. Without Storm shields to save them, it isn't likely that enough terminators will survive to mount an effective attack back.

Crazy_Carnifex wrote:Between Trygons and Genestealers, not a scary unit.

Well, the Genestealers will not survive long enough to threaten the Chaplain/Termie combo.
Not sure what ****** are you playing.

wuestenfux wrote:

Crazy_Carnifex wrote:Between Trygons and Genestealers, not a scary unit.

Well, the Genestealers will not survive long enough to threaten the Chaplain/Termie combo.
Not sure what ****** are you playing.

Ninja'd by Wuesten.

Thunder Hammer Terminators are scary because they are so durable, and a Chaplain is icing on the cake. Lightning Claws fall short because you lose that 3++ durability, and you die just like regular Terminators. Like other posters have said, what's scarier is a Terminator squad that can mix TH/SS with shooting (Wolves, BT... DA if they had the right shield). Lightning Claws just kinda aren't.

As has already been covered LC termies are only scary to certain armies and certain units. TH/SS termies are a menace to everyone. On days when the dice are on my side i've gutted out entire armies with just 5 of them and a chaplain.

Another good setup is take vulkan, spam melta and flamers which makes your entire army devastating and then to add insult to injury, vulkan rides with your 5 TH/SS termies and gives them each a reroll because of master crafted thunder hammers rule (he doesn't have to be with the unit since its an army wide rule. but he has 5 initiative and a relic blade so I usually stick him with the termies). Its a devastating hydra of a list that never stops spewing death. Anyone who says otherwise isn't being honest. 5 TH/SS termies can ruin anyones day, and they always pay for themselves and then some.

What about a 5 man squad 2 TH/SS and 3 LC, Terminator Librarian with SS and Sanguinary Priest with Terminator armour and power sword? This is for my BA list so I thought furious charge would make the lightning claws a bit scarier?

Nah. I play Tau and Orks.

My Tau would be equally slaughtered by a Tac Squad - so it's your points waste. I'll still shoot at them once you've gone through that unit.

My Orks aren't scared of anything.

As long as there's more than 10 of them...

the reason why LC aren't that hot is because the purpose of the assault terminator squad is to attack the largest, clearest threat to your army. In my army that is their purpose, along with being a huge flashing target for your enemy. If you are spending the points which comes to about 590 in a stock list for termies, hq and LRC you are talking about probably a 3rd of your army riding in one unit.

To throw that squad, equipped with LC's at a boyz mob, where they will probably take at least 1 casualty if not more, it begins to undermine their purpose and cost. Against any army that goes at initiative four or higher, you are going to lose a lot of terminators before you can sway the battle in your favor. And you don't get the instant gib of the hammers, which makes them so good against multiple wound units. and or non-eternal warriors.

On the other hand you can probably kill an hq and send his retinue running in a turn or two with said squad, assuming you get the charge and still have enough TH/SS left to do some damage to another squad, and probably wipe them out, and so on, emperor willing. (another reason I like vulkan in the Close Combat termie squad is that his heavy flamer gets rerolls to wound, usually claiming 1 or 2 guys from the unit you intend to charge.)

LC are good at killing hordes but if I were the opposing general I would be more than pleased to see my opponent throwing his deadliest unit at a squad I hand picked to be cannon fodder. And the terminators with LC's are amazing at killing hordes, I've been on the receiving end of them. I've lost 16 guys in a turn to them. The problem for the LC termies is that then I use my nob bikers to countercharge, and then its curtains for the LC termies. Every unit has a counter, personally I use the Assault termies to counter the enemies killiest unit.

wuestenfux wrote:

Crazy_Carnifex wrote:Between Trygons and Genestealers, not a scary unit.

Well, the Genestealers will not survive long enough to threaten the Chaplain/Termie combo.
Not sure what ****** are you playing.

Funny, last time somebody said that, my genestealers ended up ripping straight through half his army. What kind of ****** are you playing?

Crazy_Carnifex wrote:

wuestenfux wrote:

Crazy_Carnifex wrote:Between Trygons and Genestealers, not a scary unit.

Well, the Genestealers will not survive long enough to threaten the Chaplain/Termie combo.
Not sure what ****** are you playing.

Funny, last time somebody said that, my genestealers ended up ripping straight through half his army. What kind of ****** are you playing?

Well, the last time I played my vanilla mech Space Marines in an RTT.
The enemy had two Genestealer broods that outflanked while the rest approached normally.
I left enough space between the board edge and my units so that upon arrival they were targeted by a Tactical and two Dreads with heavy flamers.
Bye bye Genestealers.

LCs used to be a good option when they had the option to take Furious Charge, but now that isn't an option (for most of us). 5++ is less than reliable, and initiative four leaves something to be desired with the way they are handing out stats nowadays.

Due to the limits of my collection, not that it particularly makes too much of a difference, I almost always (well, pts providing nowadays it is always in 1000pts upwards) run my good ol' regular LR with 5 Assault termies and a bare chaplain. The Chappy, now that I have discovered he can, may quite often take digital weapons so he does slightly better, and for my assault termies I run 2 LC and 3 TH/SS. I got the termies second hand, but they've proved their worth enough times. In a multiplayer bash down at a GW 200 miles away from where I live, me and some SM newb fought chaos and nids. My termies disembarked from their LR, although the GW dude there came up with some crap about me not being allowed to assault out my LR... he started talking about something from the rulebook, and I was having too much fun to care, although it had something to do with my LR moving 8" and not 6". Malan'tai did his wound eating thing, and did nothing. I then got charged by a Trygon prime (who shot and failed against my termies) and I wounded the 'gon once or twice. The Doom suffered some wounds. I lost between 0 and 1 termie, I can't remember. Anyway, an alpha warrior had eventually joined the combat, and a turn or two later my termies were all dead. But so was the Doom, the Alpha and the Trygon was half dead (down to 3 wounds). Now, if I'd got the charge off on that trygon... goddamn GW..

Also, on a side note, Abaddon and termies had come down elsewhere during the game, and my ally with 8 normal termies, after having shoot the chaos termies, thought he shouldn't assault the termies. It took 5 minutes of saying, do you want to charge or be charged for him to actually assault abaddyboo and co.

But that's something for the battle reports section, so I shall shut up now :p

EDIT: Anyways, only take LC termie squads in a BT army. Either go all TH/SS or mix, and chappy is definitely necessary unless you have an all TH/SS vulcan squad.

FoxPhoenix135 wrote:For about the same price, I take a 10 man Death Company with a couple power weapons, with a chaplain. This lets them reroll both to-hit and to-wound, while maintaining furious charge and striking first. Without Storm shields to save them, it isn't likely that enough terminators will survive to mount an effective attack back.

I was about to say that . Death Company does the work! Even better with the chappy

I find 7 Termies w/ 5 TH/SS & 2 LCs with a Termie Sanguinary Priest on a LRC more effective.
My default HQ is Astorath, so I've a 50/50 chance of Red Thirst. Str 7 LCs & Str 9 THs are fun... especially when whacking an opposing Land Raider or Dread.

Wildcard101, how do you get str 7 Lightning claws exactly? The max you can get is 5.

Yeah, Furious Charge results don't stack.

Darkvoidof40k wrote:Wildcard101, how do you get str 7 Lightning claws exactly? The max you can get is 5.

Ooopsie! My bad... It is Str 5... Was thinking of the Dreadnought Blood Talons...

My Grey Knights don't fear TH/SS termies, because they can usually reduce them to nearly nothing before they even get a chance to strike back. But they're scared shitless of LC termies, because they can force my GKT to go down with them.

Fafnir wrote:My Grey Knights don't fear TH/SS termies, because they can usually reduce them to nearly nothing before they even get a chance to strike back. But they're scared shitless of LC termies, because they can force my GKT to go down with them.

:massed: :bolter: :fire:

Pop your raider and fire everything into you, or when you DS either shoot you with everything or pistol into CC.

Wait, you already know that.

I'm just saying, if I had to get close in with one of the two, I'd gladly fight the TH/SS over the lightning claws. GKT make short work of the former, but the latter is no pocketful of joy.

Good thing very few people play Grey Knights huh?