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Would a pair of Armiger Helverins make a good super-heavy auxiliary detachment for an Ultramarines army?

My 800 point battalion detachment currently includes a Venerable Dreadnought (twin lascannon and close combat weapon). Are the Helverins worth their extra points in comparison to the dreadnought?

I could potentially replace the dreadnought with the Helverins at 1000 points...

No doubt the Helverin is better than SM Dreads, for Its mobility and 5++.

But it may also depends on the enemy you are facing. If your enemy has lots of T6/T7 light to mid armor targets with decent inv saves, the Helverin is definitely your choice.

Personally, I think the better way is to go whole-hog and take a super heavy detachment with a questoris knight and at least 2 helverins. Then you get all the household benefits plus a giant firepower soak. But while helverins are good, another option to consider is a supreme command detachment of AM Tank Commanders, they put out similar firepower and have more flexibility with weapons options for a similar cost

 greyknight12 wrote:
Personally, I think the better way is to go whole-hog and take a super heavy detachment with a questoris knight and at least 2 helverins. Then you get all the household benefits plus a giant firepower soak. But while helverins are good, another option to consider is a supreme command detachment of AM Tank Commanders, they put out similar firepower and have more flexibility with weapons options for a similar cost

What are the household benefits? I don't have the IK codex (I'm just going off the Renegade Knights Index and assuming they're similar)...

Bonuses like marines have for being ultramarines etc.

To get the household benefits you need at least a super-heavy detachment, not an auxiliary one. You then get benefits similar to those that marine chapters get, but only so long as you have a proper big knight in the detachment.

You'll need the codex to see all the benefits. There are a ton of stratagems, warlord traits, relics and so on for knights. You get different benefits depending on how many knights you get, as follows:

- A single knight taken as an auxiliary gets stratagems but no household benefits.
- If you take at least three knights then you get household traits and one of them gets to be a character (so you can make it your warlord if you like, and it'll then get a trait). If none of the three are titanic then (armigers aren't) then you don't get any CPs. If one is titanic you get 3CPs and if 3+ are titanic you get 6CPs.

So you get a lot more cool stuff if you've got a super-heavy detachment instead of just an auxiliary.

I've recently added a a super-heavy detachment of a crusader and two armiger warglaives to my marine army and it's a big help. I'd tried out killshot predators for my fire support and while they are pretty good they are very vulnerable to even one of them getting killed. Knights just have good firepower from the start, and are tougher. They don't cost much more and they bring you CPs.

Personally I prefer warglaives to helverins. Helverins are shooty but they don't control the board at all and are scared of close combat. In an objective game I find it far more valuable to have something with a 14" move that people don't want to have running into them. Then I can have the crusader stay back and shoot stuff up.

I still prefer Quad-Autocannon VenDreads. More reliable # of shots, hits on 2+ and no damage charts and they benefit from Chapter Tactics.
Granted they have less wounds and no ++ save, but they're a bit cheaper for it.

Having said that, I am encouraging my son to add 2 Warglaives to his Salamanders army in addition to his Qauto-cannon VenDread. Them being up in the opponents face should take a lot of pressure off the Dread so it can comfortably do it's job of removing 2W Infantry/Bikes and Light vehicles.

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 greyknight12 wrote:
Personally, I think the better way is to go whole-hog and take a super heavy detachment with a questoris knight and at least 2 helverins.

Mandragola wrote:
To get the household benefits you need at least a super-heavy detachment, not an auxiliary one.

...

So you get a lot more cool stuff if you've got a super-heavy detachment instead of just an auxiliary.

I think at that point I'd end up with more IK than SM which isn't really the idea. If I was to go down that route then starting a Renegade Knight list could be an option. For now I was just thinking of Helverins in a support role...

Most of the special traits don't really benefit Helverins anyway, though Taranis is pretty good. Having a 6+++ FNP save is always handy, it effectively gives you 16% more wounds on every model.

Biggest problem with taking Helverins is that you can only take 1 or 3, and that they do not grant CP. You need a Questoris Knight in there for CP.

It would cost you 700 points, but a Knight Gallant + 2 Helverins would be a decent choice for a SM Gunline, as long as you don't have Guilliman. Guilliman is too expensive to take 700 points of non-ultramarines units.

My list is majority marines - just! At 1750 I have about 790 points worth of knights and the rest is marines.

The bottom line is that helverins are a decent addition to a marine army. Each one essentially has two of the guns you find on a Predator, but they are significantly tougher than a predator, can move and shoot with no penalty, and only cost a little more.

I haven't seen a comparison with venerable dreads. Those have guns that only do 2 damage instead of 3, but they do have 2+ BS for more accuracy and they're cheaper. They sound an ok alternative.

Personally I'm looking forward to seeing what suppressors cost. They might actually fill this particular niche quite nicely.

Brother Castor wrote:I could potentially replace the dreadnought with the Helverins at 1000 points...

Horst wrote:It would cost you 700 points, but a Knight Gallant + 2 Helverins would be a decent choice for a SM Gunline, as long as you don't have Guilliman.

So a couple of options there at 1000 and 1500 points, one being a stepping stone to the other



Automatically Appended Next Post:

Mandragola wrote:
The bottom line is that helverins are a decent addition to a marine army.

You can also consider taking Mortis Contemptor Dreadnoughts w/ 2 Twin Lascannons.

Mortis Dread vs Helverin:

The Helverin has on average twice the shots, and on average they both do the same damage, though the Lascannon is more variable. Lascannons of course are much stronger and better at penetrating armor.

The Mortis has BS2 and can re-roll 1's if a Captain is nearby.. it's far more accurate. The Helverin can use Skyreaper Protocols though, to re-roll misses vs Flyers, which is kind of nice.

The Mortis has 2 wounds fewer, but also degrades better. The Helverin is next to useless hitting at BS5, but the Mortis doesn't degrade to BS4 until it's on 2 wounds left. Both have a 5+ invuln and the same toughness / armor save.

The Helverin is significantly more mobile though... 14" move is huge.

Both are similarly costed, 168 pts vs 172 pts. I think they both have merits.

 Horst wrote:

Biggest problem with taking Helverins is that you can only take 1 or 3, and that they do not grant CP. You need a Questoris Knight in there for CP.

You can take 1-2 Helverins for a single LOW slot so you can field 2 in a detachment.

I really like Helverins. They ignore the -1 to-Hit for moving which makes it easier to take advantage of that 14" move without compromising your firepower. Their guns also do 3 damage rather than 2 like a regular autocannon. You can also boost one of them to 4++ for a turn for 1CP with the Rotate Ion Shield stratagem.

Of course Marine fire support units can benefit from their own character auras but that requires castling up to some extent. Helverins can operate quite happily independently.

You can take 1-3 Armigers per slot, not 1-2.

SJ