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Im looking for some advice buying units for a Word Bearers list.

If demons are a must, Id prefer to keep it to a minimum.

There's alot of ways you can go with a Word Bearers army. Conditional access to Daemon Allies is a WB perk, but it is by no means necessary to use.

No matter which way you shake it, a WB army needs at least 2 HQs (1 basic Centurion or Chaplain + 1 non-support HQ of your choice) and 2 troops. BaC is a good starter for WB. 30 PA marines can be used to meet your 2 troop choices, or perhaps 2 troops and a support unit. The "Dark Apostle" HQ model can be used for a Centurion, a Chaplain, and happily the model is also equipped exactly with the wargear listed for High Chaplain Erebus. The UM terminator praetor could also be used as an HQ, perhaps a Praetor or another HQ that can take termie armor. The contemptor dred can be used as is, or with some conversion can be a Mhara Ghal dread. Terminators don't really play to WB strengths, so while those could be used in your army, I'd think of those models more as trade bait to some loyalist scumbag.

After that, you can start picking the units you like. All the standard marine units and RoWs from the Crusade Army List are available to Word Bearers. Among the WB legion-specific units, you'll want to take a look at Gal Vorbak...they are the bee's knees. And as stated before you have conditional access to Daemon allies, but no requirement to use it.

It's a good idea to study over the Crusade Army List and Word Bearers legion rules if you haven't already, see what you have access to, and try to find a direction you want to take your army that will be fun. There are lots of ways you can go.

Agreed. If disregarding daemons, then the Word Bearers' big strengths are incredibly tough morale, and good melee potential for their regular line troops. They're a legion who do well (in so far as anyone does) with massed "swarm 'em with bodies" tactics - lots of big legion tactical squads with bolter and combat blade, apothecaries, and dark channeling. Using their rite of war, diabolists, and dark channelling, you've got pretty good odds of each large unit having preferred enemy, zealot, or both, which makes them (a) very tasty in a melee fight and (b) hard to shift even if you lose.

The big weakness of the list is Typhon siege tanks and similar ignores cover area-devastation. Burning Lore telepaths are a good counter to this. at the risk of annoying people by mentioning it, invisibility is an amazing power, but it's not the be-all and end-all of the discipline. Shrouding is worth it, especially in a cover-heavy fight, whilst even Psychic Shriek has its place - battle-automata are very hard to stop with 'normal' attacks but have a garbage Ld stat. Normally irrelevant - they're fearless - but every burning lore character has psychic shriek up his colchisian sleeve.

It should be noted that Diabolist Preferred Enemy does not spread to their unit as far as I can tell.

It says PE is applied to the Diabolist's melee attacks, not that the model actually has the rule.

Start simple:

1 praetor
1 centurion (chaplain)
1 centurion (diabolist)

(OR you could replace the 2 centurions and praetor with Erebus)

2 larger tactical squads (15-20 men)


from a solid base, you can do many directions:

Infantry heavy - Lots of tacticals, terminators, and the like
Daemon/Possessed - Summoning, daemon allies, and all forms of the Gal Vorbak are all strong.
Jump-pack dudes - The other WB special unit can be pretty fun, and they look amazing
General expansion - Tanks, rapiers, more bodies, terminators, all the 'generic' options for legions can be pretty dang strong


really, just build what you like the look of, and it can be effective in 30k (unless you love the look of rotor cannons, 'cause then I have some bad news )

IMO, you probably don't want Terminators in a WB army (unless you really like terminators). They compete against the superior Gal Vorbak (and also useful units like Apothecaries, Tech Marines, DC Vet squads, and Dreds) for Elite slots.

Also, and this is slightly less of an issue but still worth noting, with the wrong dice roll of Dark Channeling, you can actually make your Terminators worse by rolling Daemon, gaining nothing but Fear, and losing the ability to score. So if you do use WB Terminators, you may want to think twice about whether you want to upgrade them with Dark Channeling.

 jasper76 wrote:
IMO, you probably don't want Terminators in a WB army (unless you really like terminators). They compete against the superior Gal Vorbak (and also useful units like Apothecaries, Tech Marines, DC Vet squads, and Dreds) for Elite slots.

Also, and this is slightly less of an issue but still worth noting, with the wrong dice roll of Dark Channeling, you can actually make your Terminators worse by rolling Daemon, gaining nothing but Fear, and losing the ability to score. So if you do use WB Terminators, you may want to think twice about whether you want to upgrade them with Dark Channeling.

you've got a point, but 2 things give value to WB terminators: 2+ armour save instead of 3+ and gal vorbak are massive bullet magnets, a squad of terminators parked on the other side of the board forces the enemy to either ignore 1 thread, or split their fire, meaning it's more likely for one of them to get into CC. HOWEVER if you have daemon allies, and grimoir the Gal Vorbak, then you have a stupidly mean, stupidly strong combo

My solution to opponents making Gal Vorbak a target priority is more Gal Vorbak

Actually it's not...I only have one unit of em . Just IMO and for my play style, there's several Elites I would take over Termites. FWIW

Thank you! There are some real pearls in there.

My plan is to make the list as versatile list as possible. I want an army that can plan Warzone Mortalis as well as normal 40k games.

I really like the Kal Vorbak - deep striking and their weapon options and stat line are sa-weet. 3 units of these please.

Ill also include Erebus, 3x 15-tacticals with Apothecaries and 3 Contemptor Dreads.

Just remember you only got 4 elite slots in the FOC.

He can take 3 Contemptors in a Talon so he should be fine.

3 Gal Vorbak, 1 Talon, and 1 unit of Apothecaries.

@Kaiser: also be aware that there's a Daemon HQ Zardu Layak that lets you take Ashen Circle as Troops. So that's another way you can go. I have a unit of Ashen Circle, they ate pretty costly points wise but it is cool running jump packs with hand flamers. I take them as Fast Attack if I take them all. I converted mine out of Raptors but IMO the FW models are top notch.

good point,

Ill field the Gal Vorbak as 2 units of 10

Yeah, I assumed he'd do that!

I only have 5 GV. I want to get more as I love everything about them but the single pose thing throws me off. I can swap heads and so on but how convincing is that really?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 jasper76 wrote:
I converted mine out of Raptors but IMO the FW models are top notch.

Yeah I have ten of those. Golden.