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I was wondering if using counts as models for HQ’s is frowned upon. I am starting with a betrayal at calth and burning of Prospero set for the pride of the legion gimmick, but find praetors in terminator armor to generally be a waste of points, since chances are you are tossing the power weapon for something better and artificer armor plus the iron halo already makes him superior in every way to the terminator option... the only terminator option that looks like it is worth it is the praetor tribune. Which is a Tartaros terminator anyways...

Should I bite the bullet for the time being and run the cataphractii terminator praetor as is, counts as him as a named character, or do some weird shuffling where I swap him as the consul and the chaplain as a praetor? I would love to eventually buy the named characters, just not until I have painted all of my marines I already have... I understand those two boxes combined won’t be winning many games but it’s cheap and easy and I would like to minimize the gimping being confined to those two boxes will be setting me up for.

Oh yeah I intend to play them as word bearers so the consul is either a consul or a chaplain. I really want to figure out how to kit bash me a diabolist for some warp charged infantry assault one day as well. But if I can counts as the chaplain or praetor for a named character, I’ll have some options for bypassing that as well.

I find the difference between Iron Halo/Artificer Armour and Cataphractii armour mostly academic; you might be paying 5pts more or less for a given loadout, losing the ability to run/sweep makes some difference but much less if you're attaching him to a Terminator squad anyway, and it does give you the chainfist if you want to put a vehicle can opener somewhere without taking an entire Terminator squad.

I'd suggest keeping the Cataphractii profile for now; I don't know your play environment but I haven't found 30k to be anything like as points-pinching tooth-and-nail competitive as 40k tries to be, and there are upsides to using the Terminator profile beyond worrying about saving 5pts here or there.

As far as Diabolists go, I used the model below as my version of Zardu Layak (I bought the FW set, love the Blade Slaves, but do not really like the Zardu Layak model).

Anyways, you could use this model as a Diabolist. Just replace the open hand with whatever weapon you want, and glue a power pack on his back.

As far as Praetors go, the only real reason I would take Terminator Armor would be access to a Chainfist.

However, by choosing Terminator Armor, I believe you lose access to the Paragon Blade and the Archeotech Pistol, which are almost must haves.

My most effective Praetor has Artificer Armor + Iron Halo, a Jumppack, a Paragon Blade, and an Archeotech Pistol. The terminator with the chainfist I got out of the HH boxset is fine, just more situational, focused on anti-armor more so than Close Combat. (By the way the Word Bearers Chaplain makes the perfect Erebus, I just swapped out the head...not that Erebus is worth much of anything on the board for his points cost).

Also, if you're playing Word Bearers, dont even bother with Terminators of any kind...you have access to Gal Vorbak Dark Brethren...way, way better than terminators and I believe around the same points. Just my opinion, but I dont see the been point in bringing termites when you can bring Gal Vorbak.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
I find the difference between Iron Halo/Artificer Armour and Cataphractii armour mostly academic; you might be paying 5pts more or less for a given loadout, losing the ability to run/sweep makes some difference but much less if you're attaching him to a Terminator squad anyway, and it does give you the chainfist if you want to put a vehicle can opener somewhere without taking an entire Terminator squad.

I'd suggest keeping the Cataphractii profile for now; I don't know your play environment but I haven't found 30k to be anything like as points-pinching tooth-and-nail competitive as 40k tries to be, and there are upsides to using the Terminator profile beyond worrying about saving 5pts here or there.

It's also worth noting that if you're running orbital assault as your RoW you'll need your praetor to be wearing some kind of terminator armour if you want him to accompany a squad of deepstriking terminators, otherwise he won't be able to join them.

Definitely not cool imo. 30k is about settings, aesthetics and feel. Calling a counts-as for such a minor in-game min-max style difference would just tick me off.