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I bought baddon some while ago, and i havent fielded him yet. any good tactics?

Counts-as Kharn the Betrayer?

In a land raider with bezerkers, charge into anything and watch it die. There isn't really anything tactical about him, get him in combat asap with the biggest unit on the table and you're good to go.

I've converted a count as Abaddon and he literally is as simple as 'point, click, avoid the 1, win'

He is a pure melee beatstick in the purest sense, although I do find Khárn to be MUCH more effective per point cost.

Yeah. I’ve played with kharn look-alike pretty much since i started csm.
So a good (or at least OK) tactic is to put him with ‘zerkers in to a LR and get him to CC

Either with Berserkers or with a fairly tooled-up unit of Terminators.

Delivery:
The landraider is almost compulsory.

Footslogging can work in certain specialized builds. There's a neat anti-mech-IG build which uses BOTH Abby and Kharn attached to a giant (14-20) unit of Plague Marines, just running up the center of the field. The list has almost no KPs and is virtually an auto-win in KP games, but the PMs (you also take a couple more largish units of them) are also good for holding objectives.

Deep Striking is bad. If you're lucky, he may assault as early as turn 3. It's just as (or more, if your opponent's good) likely that he won't even have a chance to assault before turn 4, if the 50% chance of him not even showing up until turn 3 occurs. Given that games can and do often end on turn 5, this is way too large a percentage of the game for him to not be around for.

Accompaniment:

As noted, usually Berserkers or Terminators. Though Plagues or CSMs are also perfectly respectable, and let you accompany him with meltaguns to bust open transports so he can assault the chewy insides.

Terminators with Mark of Tzeentch are your best bet to have a chance of beating enemy TH/SS terminators, which are the cheapest and most ubiquitous powerful assault unit in the game right now. A squad of those will beat Abaddon by himself, and they rip through Berserkers (and even Plagues, despite the advantage of blight grenades) very quickly; but with a 4+ invul Tzeetnch-icon termies can live long enough to let Abaddon win the fight; while throwing a few wounds of their own in there too. If you take the terminators, be sure to include some combi-meltas, and probably a chainfist or two for popping LRs.

Berserkers (and even less-smashy units like CSMs or Plagues) with Abby CAN beat assault terminators when you get the charge; you can force him to take so many armor saves that he loses a couple of guys, and his attacks back aren't that scary once he's lost a few models and isn't charging.

But you don't want it to come down to who gets the charge, since the SM tend to win in that scenario. A) Because their LR can (and almost inevitably does) get a Multimelta which it can still shoot while moving 12", so they have the edge in popping you out of yours first, and B) Because their assault termie squad is only 200pts, whereas Abby is 275 by himself, before you even get to the 200-ish points spent on whatever's accompanying him. Even if neither of you can easily pop the other's LR, you have more points committed to sitting inside a transport not killing anything, so you're giving up a numerical advantage on the rest of the table the longer that stalemate goes on. As soon as you finally decide to get out, then he can charge you.

Using the accompaniment:

Remember that you can disembark either Abby or his accompanying squad separately if appropriate; if you want one of them to hop out and go kill something while having the other stay inside and continue to threaten a 21" drive & assault somewhere. You can also disembark them both at the same time but separate as long as he's outside 2". Again, this allows you to hit multiple enemy units at once, thus maximizing efficient use of your available turns against smaller units. You're investing ~500 just on Abby & the LR, and probably another 200-ish on the squad. You need to make good use of them once they get across the table.

Mannahnin wrote:As noted, usually Berserkers or Terminators. Though Plagues or CSMs are also perfectly respectable, and let you accompany him with meltaguns to bust open transports so he can assault the chewy insides.

I don't play CSM, so take this with a grain of salt. I know the codex, however, and I am thinking that either stick him in with Possesed or Berserkers, probably Berserkers. I would advise against Terminators because, even though MoT Termies have a 4++, they are not fearless and will cause Abbadon to lose his fearless status. Just my 2 cents.

You do lose Fearless, but you're still Ld10.

You take the MoT terminators if you want to be able to absorb and survive the charge of SM assault terminators. It's a metagame consideration, based on how darn common those guys have become. If you don't have to worry about seeing them in a substantial proportion of games in your local area, then obviously your mileage will vary.

Abaddon kills ~1.65 TH & SS terminators before they swing. So basically 1 or 2. If he's operating alone, the remaining 3 guys do ~1.89 wounds to him on the charge, or ~2.8 if Null Zone is up. If 4 guys survived, make that 2.52 or 3.78. So they beat him, possibly kill him in a round if they get lucky. Then he's striking at I1 on subsequent rounds and he's likely to be finished off the following round or the round after that. If he manages to win that fight, it'll usually be with only 1W, maybe 2 left if lucky, and he usually gets finished off with random lascannon or melta fire.

Getting back to the assault, if he's got non-terminator accompaniment, the enemy can continue to win the fight every round by killing those other guys, though only having 1-2 models on Abaddon means he's killing them faster than they're killing him. Still, if they're slowly killing a unit which costs around what they do, while tying down Abby at the same time, that's a net win to the SM player.

OTOH, with the MoT terminators, they add about .66 kills with 4 PW guys at I4, or a little better if you add in a Fist. And the assault terminators only wound & kill them at the same rate as they do Abby. So the MoT terms + Abby unit consistently wins or draws against the assault terminators, killing around 2 each round (assuming the enemy gets the charge), with baseline assault gear. After ~3 rounds (maybe 2 if Abby rolls well or the enemy saves badly), you should have finished off the assault terminators and sustained only ~half casualties or less. This is also one of the cheaper bodyguard units. 4 terms with icon of tzeentch and 4x combi-melta is just 175. As opposed to 208 for 8 berserkers with a fist, or 221 for 7 PMs with two meltas and a fist. Usually you'll want to throw in a chainfist, but that's still only 190.

Gorechild wrote:In a land raider with bezerkers, charge into anything and watch it die. There isn't really anything tactical about him, get him in combat asap with the biggest unit on the table and you're good to go.

I dont think he is worth the points. After he is on foot, unless he is in combat he is as good as dead. He is slow and does not have a ranged weapon. Just kite the guy and there goes a large amount of points.

Points don't win the game. KPs and objectives win the game. If he kills units/keeps them away from objectives, he can certainly be worth his cost. He is a bit expensive, though, and best used in larger-point games.

Abaddon can also make a very expensive ground-holder for larger point games. Stick him with a unit of plagues guarding an objective and anyone trying to take it will have to approach being shot at by plasma/melta and then face I6 S8 power attacks in CC.

He's a points hog and if you're unlucky alot like me will spend most of the game fighting his own sword

Mannahnin wrote:Either with Berserkers or with a fairly tooled-up unit of Terminators.

Delivery:
The landraider is almost compulsory.

Footslogging can work in certain specialized builds. There's a neat anti-mech-IG build which uses BOTH Abby and Kharn attached to a giant (14-20) unit of Plague Marines, just running up the center of the field. The list has almost no KPs and is virtually an auto-win in KP games, but the PMs (you also take a couple more largish units of them) are also good for holding objectives.

Deep Striking is bad. If you're lucky, he may assault as early as turn 3. It's just as (or more, if your opponent's good) likely that he won't even have a chance to assault before turn 4, if the 50% chance of him not even showing up until turn 3 occurs. Given that games can and do often end on turn 5, this is way too large a percentage of the game for him to not be around for.

Accompaniment:

As noted, usually Berserkers or Terminators. Though Plagues or CSMs are also perfectly respectable, and let you accompany him with meltaguns to bust open transports so he can assault the chewy insides.

Terminators with Mark of Tzeentch are your best bet to have a chance of beating enemy TH/SS terminators, which are the cheapest and most ubiquitous powerful assault unit in the game right now. A squad of those will beat Abaddon by himself, and they rip through Berserkers (and even Plagues, despite the advantage of blight grenades) very quickly; but with a 4+ invul Tzeetnch-icon termies can live long enough to let Abaddon win the fight; while throwing a few wounds of their own in there too. If you take the terminators, be sure to include some combi-meltas, and probably a chainfist or two for popping LRs.

Berserkers (and even less-smashy units like CSMs or Plagues) with Abby CAN beat assault terminators when you get the charge; you can force him to take so many armor saves that he loses a couple of guys, and his attacks back aren't that scary once he's lost a few models and isn't charging.

But you don't want it to come down to who gets the charge, since the SM tend to win in that scenario. A) Because their LR can (and almost inevitably does) get a Multimelta which it can still shoot while moving 12", so they have the edge in popping you out of yours first, and B) Because their assault termie squad is only 200pts, whereas Abby is 275 by himself, before you even get to the 200-ish points spent on whatever's accompanying him. Even if neither of you can easily pop the other's LR, you have more points committed to sitting inside a transport not killing anything, so you're giving up a numerical advantage on the rest of the table the longer that stalemate goes on. As soon as you finally decide to get out, then he can charge you.

Using the accompaniment:

Remember that you can disembark either Abby or his accompanying squad separately if appropriate; if you want one of them to hop out and go kill something while having the other stay inside and continue to threaten a 21" drive & assault somewhere. You can also disembark them both at the same time but separate as long as he's outside 2". Again, this allows you to hit multiple enemy units at once, thus maximizing efficient use of your available turns against smaller units. You're investing ~500 just on Abby & the LR, and probably another 200-ish on the squad. You need to make good use of them once they get across the table.

Can you post a list like the anti-IG one you mentioned above? With Abby and Kharn in the Plague Marine squads? What else does it take? How is that anti-IG?

From what I know he needs a Land Raider to be effective, which is a major investment.

You could always deepstrike him next to an icon risk-free. The problem, of course, is that it's dependent on your reserves rolls.

One of the things that's neat about most chaos units, abbadon included, is that he doesn't need to get the charge in to be effective. He'll do roughly as well if you just place him in front of something and let him get charged as you will if you deepstrike farther away and try to get the charge in yourself.

Of course, this doesn't work all that well against wraithguard, but still...

You could try a Khorne foot army with 6 obliterators 49 berserkers and abbadon. Very hard to use but very fun. Just roll lots of 6s for DT and running for 1850.

winnertakesall wrote:From what I know he needs a Land Raider to be effective, which is a major investment.

When i see him most of the time he is in a LR, those together are over 500points. It cost a lot to hide a HQ like him. It works but at the same time i would put everything on the LR and destory it and then he has to walk for the whole game. Thats 500 points that will not do anything ! IMO

UberhAxTHC wrote:

Mannahnin wrote:Footslogging can work in certain specialized builds. There's a neat anti-mech-IG build which uses BOTH Abby and Kharn attached to a giant (14-20) unit of Plague Marines, just running up the center of the field. The list has almost no KPs and is virtually an auto-win in KP games, but the PMs (you also take a couple more largish units of them) are also good for holding objectives.

Can you post a list like the anti-IG one you mentioned above? With Abby and Kharn in the Plague Marine squads? What else does it take? How is that anti-IG?

40kEnthusiast first described it here:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/283279.page

It's anti-IG because it can absorb an absurd amount of firepower, still kill multiple units once it finishes running across the table, and any surviving plagues mean it's still scoring. Abby and Kharn mean you can take on just about anything in HtH, regardless of them charging you. The Blight Grenades on the PMs make charging you not work so well either. Kharn also makes the unit basically immune to psychic powers.

The version in the link above also includes cheap naked CSM squads in LRs for objective holding, but you can do it with Oblit/Havoc fire support instead, and squads of plagues with meltas to sit on objectives.

Terminator retinue and land raider? That's what i usually take, and he kicks lots of loyalist butt.