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So I'm in the process of planning out a dark mechanicum army, which I originally considered making using Admech and Imperial Soup, but I realised the options with Chaos were not only better, but also far more 'fluffy'.

As a HQ, the Hellwright with Dark Abeyant seems an obvious choice. Helbrutes, Decimators, Maulerfiends/Blood Slaughterers, etc, for an army of walking monstrous death. Lovely.

However, something I've been mulling over (for far, far too many hours) is the choice of legions and gods.

While the choice pretty much comes down to the legion trait and the god psychic buff, I am trying to find a balance between usefullness and 'fitting' for a Dark Mechanicus force.

For example, Alpha Legion seemed like a great choice, giving -1 to hit on all my walking monstrosities as they cross the no-mans-land towards the enemy. Lovely. But... I dunno, I couldn't see how I could justify it being hard to hit a giant robot

Night Lords seemed a good choice. -1 to leadership isn't particularly overpowered, especially as my list would be relatively small on model count, but giant robots instilling fear in the enemy sounds appropriate. Could back my force up with Raptors for some small leadership negating bubbles and instil some fear.


But yeh, Legions and Gods. What combination would you use for a dark army of soulless monstrosities, and why?

Answers on a postcard Actually just here would be fine

If your looking at getting in close with your army, then Night Lords can be really good, a -1 ld may not seem like much, but you can stack that up 3 times, so a -3 Ld can really hurt, especially if you keep one contemptor or decimator in the back running twin butcher cannons. Combine those effects and now you're looking at a -5 Ld.

i play a Demon Engine theme army. I use Warpsmiths, Apostles, and alot of cultists.
I field Defilers, Forgefiends, Helldrakes, Kytans, etc...
The Demon Engine Strategem is awesome with these Demon Engine models!

My main chaos army is World Eaters and Khorne. So i play the above demon Engine army as Legion World Eaters and Align to Khorne.

Remember LEGION traits only apply to bikers, infantry, helbrutes. So alot of the "robots" wont get benefits.
Helbrutes do get Legion traits.

I would suggest Alpha Legion or Dark Renegades (Renedgade Adeptus Mech) . Their trait is very nice "may charge after advancing". That would make HtH Helbrutes quick!

Spellfax wrote:
i play a Demon Engine theme army. I use Warpsmiths, Apostles, and alot of cultists.
I field Defilers, Forgefiends, Helldrakes, Kytans, etc...
The Demon Engine Strategem is awesome with these Demon Engine models!

My main chaos army is World Eaters and Khorne. So i play the above demon Engine army as Legion World Eaters and Align to Khorne.

Remember LEGION traits only apply to bikers, infantry, helbrutes. So alot of the "robots" wont get benefits.
Helbrutes do get Legion traits.

I would suggest Alpha Legion or Dark Renegades (Renedgade Adeptus Mech) . Their trait is very nice "may charge after advancing". That would make HtH Helbrutes quick!

Hmm, unfortunately Helbrutes are only 8" movement, so not very quick. Decimators are 10" (not a huge difference but every little helps). Decimators have some nice gunline weapon options, but at their speed it'd be nice to have them running at the enemy firing assault weapons. Shame the Soulburner Petard got upped to 60 points.

Contemptors, Deredeos and Leviathans are Helbrutes, and so would get the Legion Trait. But I only just checked and found out that decimators, maulerfiends and blood slaughterers *dont* get legion traits (not Helbrutes). They do count as daemons though, so they can benefit from daemon buffs... not sure how I can make use of those though. The psychic buffs are only once per turn for one unit. I may have to look and see if there are any aura buffs that are relevant.


After posting this thread originally, I did notice the Renegades Trait that could have been good. Though it does only make melee units faster on the turns they charge, so it's not *that* much difference. Would depend on how many melee units I field. I did consider adding in some Raptors or Talons, but they can't advance anyway so the trait would be wasted. Renegades would be the fluffiest choice though.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

Ravingbantha wrote:
If your looking at getting in close with your army, then Night Lords can be really good, a -1 ld may not seem like much, but you can stack that up 3 times, so a -3 Ld can really hurt, especially if you keep one contemptor or decimator in the back running twin butcher cannons. Combine those effects and now you're looking at a -5 Ld.

Sorry I only just noticed I'd missed a reply! Yeh I was really tempted by Night Lords, until I remember that my Orks basically completely ignore leadership/morale due to mob rule. A mob of Boyz has a leadership of about 30, and you'd have to kill the mob down to about 8 models (and have no other mobs of orks anywhere near them) for night lords to have any effect.

I then looked into it, and found that Tyranids also ignore morale (synapse), and so do Imperial Guard (commissars). Tau also ignore it if they roll any 6's, though that's a little less likely. But Tau/Space Marines/ ect all use small unit sizes so they would be dead before the morale check bothered them much. May lead to one or two extra kills.

All in all, a lot less effective that it first appeared. Except against Necrons I guess, who get shafted. Pretty much only works against certain armies though, which is a pity.

Unless I'm missing something?

Still tempting just for fluff reasons. Same with the Renegades trait, but again not sure how useful Advance&Charge is unless you build an army around it (footslogging berserkers).