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See title. I like the World Eaters. Their lore, their tragedy, their gameplan of "Rush the enemy and melee their faces off!".

But their rules just feel so lacking. Just... Mediocre at best, and it irks me.

They are very simple but can do some silly fun things like Chainaxe Landspeeders.

They've got some decent options, most notably Rampagers with Falax Blades, who are utterly lethal and one of the better assault units this edition. Not the strongest legion on the block but they're far from mediocre.

Biggest issue with WE at the moment is the lack of availability of melee options in plastic. If you're prepared to 3D print or source parts from elsewhere this isn't as a big a deal.

I mean, what do you want to do with your list? Spam termies, beserkers, champions and duelists, fast bikers?

The main rules you get are ravening madman, the extra attacks and the charge in the shooting phase.

I've faced them a few times when my mate took an infantry horde supported by some dreads. Brutally fast and hard (for me at least) to deal with.

What about the rules do you find lacking? Do you feel it doesn't fit the fluff? The rules themselves are pretty strong and I feel fit well with the world eaters background

World Eaters are pretty good among the traitor legion rules. They’re weaker than most of the loyalist legions several of whom can do their own thing better, but that’s true for every traitor legion due to the design teams clearly being silo’d.

As stated, Rampagers are excellent. Phalax blade squads are suicide blenders which can trade up into everything short of super heavies. With Meteor Hammers and support to get them to s8 they’re terrifying to everything in the game.

Other than that they’re really good as a fast moving horde. Big blobs of chain axe despoilers, made surprisingly tanky with apothecaries, can pull down even elite units. Chain axe speeders are hilarious backline bullies.

They benefit a lot from sinking some points into gun like units. The army will have enough fast must-kill stuff that you can afford to support it with fire support that won’t draw too much fire, and if it does it’s fine because your melee units aren’t being shot. The real danger is going to be not getting the charge (white scars and space wolves are especially dangerous for this) and highly elite melee armies.

Stay away from Red Butchers (they’re the worst, or second worst, legion elite terminator), inductii, and the berserker upgrade. They’re all heavily over costed. If you run Angron make sure to understand his body guard is going to get absolutely mulched due to his special rules.

Curious why the red butchers aren't viewed highly. A large number of ap-2 attacks, cataphracti armour, hatred so your acuracy is good and a -1 to wound natively. Seems like a decent unit on the face of it for 45ppm.

Admittedly there is the downside of being easy to hit and being unable to run. Aaaand very possibly mandatory charges to the closest unit depending on your ROW.

TLDR: Every change that effected butchers was bad for them.

In a slightly longer explanation, every terminator (and most elite) units going to 2 wounds doubled the number of power axe attacks required to kill them. In turn halving the efficiency of the axes while doubling the value of power fists into similar targets.

Madmen is an incredibly harmful ability. Any unit that wants to be in CC will have chainswords (rerolling wounds) at a minimum, and if they don't it's because they have something much better. Rerollable 5+ to wound is superior to flat 4+, so despite the 'toughness' buff Butchers actually became more vulnerable to the most common weapon profile. That's before factoring in their counts-as weapon skill gives a hit buff (to their enemy) which balances out any potential durability buff because hits are more valuable than wounds.

Lastly, they're just bloody expensive. 50PPM for 5 and then 45 PPM afterwards?

For 5 points less you get a standard Cataphractii who's better at killing TEQ and dreads but no easier to kill.
For 5 points more you get a Justaerin, who has an objectively better stat line.
For 10 points less you get a standard Tartaros who's better at killing TEQ and dreads, while slightly easier to kill by specific profiles.
For equal points you get a Cataphractii Command Squad, who're better into everything AND harder to kill to boot. Plus they have line.

All of this is without factoring in Madmen, which makes the butchers stack up even worse to every conceivable counter part.

Even as an escort for Angron, both Rampagers and standard Despoilers are strictly superior choices.

yeah, butchers got shafted, and afaik Power axes are probably the worst way to get to AP 2.

Which is incidentally also part of why lerna suck.

cody.d. wrote:
Curious why the red butchers aren't viewed highly. A large number of ap-2 attacks, cataphracti armour, hatred so your acuracy is good and a -1 to wound natively. Seems like a decent unit on the face of it for 45ppm.

Admittedly there is the downside of being easy to hit and being unable to run. Aaaand very possibly mandatory charges to the closest unit depending on your ROW.

Because there's a major asymmetry between the benefit of being harder to wound and the negative of being easier to hit.

Any weapons that you'd be seriously concerned about are already wounding you on 2+s or 3+s, and in the case of weapons wounding you on 2+s, you're still likely going to suffer instant death (b/c they don't have battle hardened). Suddenly WS4, non-legion specific Terminators are hitting you on 3s and still instant-killing you on 3s with their power fists.

Sure, you're suddenly making it that what, power swords are wounding you on 5+, but when did you seriously care about power swords (incidentally, power swords need to roll a 6+ in order to ignore your armour), but power fists will still instant-gib you.

Also as someone has pointed out Butchers have Power Axes, which mean they are significantly less capable at fighting other Terminators.

Not Online!!! wrote:
yeah, butchers got shafted, and afaik Power axes are probably the worst way to get to AP 2.

Which is incidentally also part of why lerna suck.

Lernaean are at least *tough* and line. Costly and going to struggle in a fight, but able to sit on an objective and semi-decent in Pride of the Legion.

 blood reaper wrote:


Lernaean are at least *tough* and line. Costly and going to struggle in a fight, but able to sit on an objective and semi-decent in Pride of the Legion.

Most of the traitor legion terminators aren't strictly bad, they're just priced in such a way that they're not auto-takes over generic termies. So they can be worth it if you have a plan for them / give them the proper support. The exception to this is NL and WE, who's terminators only specialize in killing MEQ but absolutely cannot tangle with terminators / dreads, and are more expensive to boot.

In the case of WE, I strongly suspect that simply playing Madmen's strength reduction as effecting ID, and maybe even allowing it to apply to ranged attacks, would take them from competing-for-last-place to upper-middle of the pack.

 blood reaper wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
yeah, butchers got shafted, and afaik Power axes are probably the worst way to get to AP 2.

Which is incidentally also part of why lerna suck.

Lernaean are at least *tough* and line. Costly and going to struggle in a fight, but able to sit on an objective and semi-decent in Pride of the Legion.

That is true, BUUUUT, WS 4, and PAxes, And shizophrenic loadouts.
But yeah WE madmans are somehow worse.

Atleast lerna look awesome though.

WE have a great colour scheme and dried blood looks good on the armour. Problem is that the lore (butcher nails turning them into murder hobos) doesn´t make sense for all of their units who are not busy mulching something in melee. Cool-headed snipers? Stealthy infiltrators? Disciplined tank crews? The list goes on.

I would want despoiler squads over tactical but tactical make sense when someone has to sit back and babysit a backfield objective. I'd like to see GW release despoilers and assault squads so we can play all of the marine armies. Right now, we can't play armies that rely on hth because the only troops we have are tactical marines. Armies like Night Lords, Blood Angels, World Eaters, and Space Wolves need marines with hth weapons. Armies like Iron Hands, Ultramarines, Imperial Fists, and anyone who needs boarding shields need models too. The tanks are great but the marines are the heart and flavor of the Legion. You need them to be able to play your Legion the way they are intended.

I'd like to see GW release upgrade kits for Heresy. For example the WE kit could come with 20 axe arms, helmets and shoulders, some rhino doors, a set of land raider doors, and some weapons to make a unit of gladiators. The Alpha Legion could be combi weapons for seekers, helmets, and shoulders, some rhino doors, some land raider doors, and sniper rifles. The Dark Angels could be sword arms, bike bits, helmets, shoulders, doors, and bits to make a couple of interemptors and/or terranic greatswords. Ultramarine/ Iron Hands could be 10 shields and bolters, shoulders, helmets, doors, and a couple of special weapons/ axes. SoH could be bits to make Reavers, shoulders, helmets, and axes/weapons. Night Lords Despoiler Squad bits, jump packs, some weapon options, terror squad bits, and doors. Just do what they did for Black Templar charge $60 and we would buy multiples. GW could still sell kits for terminators or keep them with FW. I'd like to see GW sell upgrade packs to make base characters too - Techmarines, Apothecaries, Command Squad members (standard arm), some weapons and backpacks, etc. I think some Legions will sell better if their rules were better but Legions like the Salamanders, Raven Guard.