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Considering tuning my traitor guard to be able to play 30k. Played around with a list and wondered if this escalation league plan is good. Except for the artillery and rapier units, this is mostly built on things I already have. Last 500 not really important now, but I guess it could lean more into russes, infantry or something more fun like ogryn brutes:

Imperialis Militia - 1000

HQ - 100
Force commander 100,
- Kinfolk helots (+1T infantry)
- Industrial stronghold (more heavy slots and russ squadrons)

Discipline Cadre - 60
- 3 discipline master 60

Troops - 300
Infantry Squad 80, plasma 10, bayonets 10
Infantry Squad 80, plasma 10, bayonets 10
Infantry Squad 80, plasma 10, bayonets 10

Heavy support - 530
Leman Russ Squadron 280
- Demolisher 140
- Demolisher 140

Leman Russ Squadron 250
- Vanquisher 125
- Vanquisher 125



Imperialis Militia +500 (1500)

HQ - 40
Discipline Cadre
- 2 discipline master 40

Troops - 200
Infantry Squad 80, plasma 10, bayonets 10
Infantry Squad 80, plasma 10, bayonets 10

Heavy support - 255
Rapier battery 165
- 3 rapier 90, laser destroyer 75

Rapier battery 90
- 3 rapier, gravis heavy bolter





Imperialis Militia + 500 (2000)

HQ - 20
Discipline master 20

Fast attack - 135
Thunderbolt fighter 120, heavy krak rockets 15

Troops - 100
Infantry Squad 80, plasma 10, bayonets 10

Heavy - 240
Leman Russ Squadron - 240
- Gravis Lascannon 120
- Gravis Lascannon 120



Imperialis Militia + 500 (2500)

Heavy - 500
Heavy Ordnance battery 230
- 3 gun carriages 205
- 15 militia gunners 30

Field Gun battery 125
- 3 Thunderblast cannons

Leman Russ executioner 145

Well, welcome.

The first question is, how hard should your list be?
The second how Big is this escalation league going to become and the final question is, do you have the corerules available?

That said. This is a very solid list for a multitude of reasons.

+1 T and Russ spam would be my chosen doctrines as well if I wanted to play a strong but not-weird list.

Not Online!!! wrote:
Well, welcome.

The first question is, how hard should your list be?
The second how Big is this escalation league going to become and the final question is, do you have the corerules available?

That said. This is a very solid list for a multitude of reasons.

Thanks. I would like to be reasonably competitive, have a chance of victory against pretty much everything.
I think the league will probably go to 3k. I do not have the core rules yet, but I've seen some battle reports, and have plenty of experience from the similar 40k rulesets.

Good to know it looks solid


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
+1 T and Russ spam would be my chosen doctrines as well if I wanted to play a strong but not-weird list.

Yeah, plenty of options for weird lists with militia. All cavalry, all ogres, 500+ infantry, close combat infantry +++ all look fun on paper, but I don't particularly feel like actually painting those lists

 Illumini wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Well, welcome.

The first question is, how hard should your list be?
The second how Big is this escalation league going to become and the final question is, do you have the corerules available?

That said. This is a very solid list for a multitude of reasons.

Thanks. I would like to be reasonably competitive, have a chance of victory against pretty much everything.
I think the league will probably go to 3k. I do not have the core rules yet, but I've seen some battle reports, and have plenty of experience from the similar 40k rulesets.

Good to know it looks solid

Fine good, 3000pts is standard size per definition of the HH rulebook. That has to do with Rites of war being mainly available after 1000 pts and the game being baseline marine centric.
That said, it'd be best if you asked specific questions about units etc to make it easier for the community to help you.

That said, Militia are a bit in a odd spot, mostly on the low end of strength in general, that has to do with a multitude of things and effects of the game state.
Otoh, tank milita, as you are intending to field, can very easily become oppressive for an area, because it turns into a game of, can you field enough S8+ on one side, to deal with the lemans, whilst on your side it will become a question of picking the correct turret. That is just something to be aware about the state of militia.

Now, secondly, let us take a look at the actual list and we have to discuss infantry. Kinfolk makes your infantry from dead bolter fodder walking into mostly dead but not yet. However, you are still talking about 20 man units that can’t regroup as soon as they hit 50%, that is something you need to be aware off. Secondly, the Plasmagun is entirely wasted on militia, it borderline has a higher chance of killing your own militiamen then it does at killing an marine. It’s also 10 pts for “dubious value” on a model that half the time won’t hit and has a 1/6 chance to commit sudoku with a gun 2.5 times its cost. The bayonets are an investment worth it insofar as they put you in that all important S4 range in melee, however the average militia unit will run and then consequently get wiped against legions with morale shenanigans and even without morale shenanigans, so basically since you don’t rely on infantry skip both the PG’s and Bayonets and then use these points on the following:

Your Force commander is severely lacking in protection. The issue is here, from a game perspective, slay the warlord often is a VP mission worth a lot of points, another fact is, that warlords provide reactions, depending upon warlord trait. Losing reactions is bad. The reaction system in general is something that you should look up asap. Considering this, I recommend at least buying him an iron halo and cyber familiar, that pushes his ++ to 3+. Further that allows your commander to not die from stray nemesis bolters (sniper rifles), guaranteeing a better morale for the squad you attach him too and having at least a chance at getting an reaction more out of him or a repair.

Discipline masters are a good choice, if you go with an infantry-based army, like mine due to lowering the chances of getting bs-folded (double charged, failed morale test, wiped). However, you run tank militia, tanks can’t get folded that way. IoW, these here make no sense, because let’s be very blunt here, militia infantry that aren’t grenadiers with morale padding and the loss of support squad is only on the field for either A, coming back 50% of the time, or B putting down 28mm base size movable terrain on the field. Everything else a squad of militia achieves should be hailed as getting their investment back, which happened in the first place because you have to take non-support squad troops for non-compulsory troopslots and because tanks have a very sensitive backside.

On to the lemans, there’s 2 lemans worth it and the rest isn’t (at least the leman has variants that are worth it, most tanks in HH 2.0 suffer a quick death). Vanquishers (with coaxial AC, very important as hitting with a AC grants your vanquisher rerolls) and to a far lesser degree AC turret lemans. The problem on the demolisher is, that a 3” template isn’t realistically doing something more than 1.5 hits if it hits, because cohesion is on normal units 2”, certain unit types (skirmishers) have 3” cohesion. Which then through rules of averages gets severely beat out by vanquishers having 2 shots of their cannon with rerolls due to the coaxial AC’s statistically hitting at least once. Brutal is a great rule as it on a successful to wound roll generates 2 wounds that need to be saved, whilst AP 2 always on top of sunder makes it able to take out enemy tanks and elite infantry with ease.

Artillery, is basically there to save you from enemy shooting and reactions, going with the thunderblast is therefore not advisable, you want shellshock, to lower the enemy’s morale during the pinning test by x and make him more likely to get pinned. Another thing, if you rely on this, it is advisable that you have units with nuncio voxes to reroll template scatter dices in vision of a vox carrier. The thunderblast is more of an indirect anti rhino weapon, and something you don’t require seeing as you will have more than enough antitank in form of leman russes and rapiers with laser destroyers around.

As for the militia thunderbolt, it’s nearly the only competitive plane in the HH 2.0 meta due to its dirt-cheap price so it’s a good choice but don’t expect wonders from it.
Heavy ordnance is just bad, sadly. AP 4 precisely hurts other militia and the already by template easily removable 1”-cohesion-rule suffering Solar auxilia. Against marines though… nope and neither is the medusa effective. You are probably better off replacing these with calliope rocket artillery (or whatever you will count as these) and more leman russes.

So that’s it for my commentary.

Thanks for that writeup, I'll have to come back to it once my Wargames Atlantic army gets delivered.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Thanks for that writeup, I'll have to come back to it once my Wargames Atlantic army gets delivered.

What flavour of not guardsmen have you ordered?

That is some great advice and a super cool army, thanks Not Online. What about extra weapons on the tanks? The pintle mount seems decent for +10 pts

Are no special weapons worth it on the infantry, 5 point flamers? IMO (with no experience in 30k) bayonets seem very cheap for +1S. Can make the infantry able to finish off small units of marines. What about krak grenades, worth it for 10 points to be able to threaten vehicles?

Discipline masters seem quite cheap for what they add IMO. I'm guessing they confer their Ld 8 to the squad? And then you can re-roll fails. It looks like they make the "militia" rule much less of a downside, making the infantry into somewhat of a tarpit (compared to their low cost)

The heavy ordnance battery not being that great is good information, being the major part I don't actually own any of. I guess for max competitiveness, more rapiers is the answer, but will likely go for a more fun option.

What are your thoughts on the rogue psyker, sentinels and ogryns? Any other units that are worth looking more into for a tank heavy list, a Baneblade?

It is, imo, worth it to give the commander an iron halo + cyber familiar. Giving him a 3++ allows him to provide his leadership for most of the game and deny Slay the Warlord.

I’m also fairly certain that the demolisher russes are awful, as the combination of small blast template and low BS means they won’t do much. Iirc the vanquisher and heavy lascannon are flatly better against every target except a direct hit over marines packed base to base.

 Illumini wrote:
That is some great advice and a super cool army, thanks Not Online. What about extra weapons on the tanks? The pintle mount seems decent for +10 pts

Pintlemounts always count as defensive and can shoot at the closest target. so Pintlemounts are great, especially MM's.

Are no special weapons worth it on the infantry, 5 point flamers? IMO (with no experience in 30k) bayonets seem very cheap for +1S. Can make the infantry able to finish off small units of marines. What about krak grenades, worth it for 10 points to be able to threaten vehicles?

Again, you are taking militia squads not to do something other than standing around and or shooting solar aux or other militia, and no they won't finish a small squad of marines in melee, because the WS table is far more unforgiving in HH than it was in 40k, +1 Ws means hitting on 5s whilest getting hit on 3s. Further rapid fire weaponry doesn't allow a charge after shooting. Krak nades could be worth it, when you fight marines or other solar aux and such, if only because 1 S6 AP 3/ modell in basecontact attack against the rear of a tank or against automatons and dreads but realistically... yeah you are not really scratching the paint of contemptors and many tanks have rear armor 12.
However, there's another unit you may consider, the grenadiers, they come with more special weapon slots, so saturation is better, they come with sv 4+ which whilest still meaning about 60-70 % of the arsenal in any given army ignores their armor, but they also come with full melee and lasgun / autogun loadouts aswell as both nade types standard. Can also carry a nuncio granting you basically a 50 % hit chance on LoS ignoring firepower IF the nuncio sees the point as it allows a reroll of the scatter dices.

That said, if you got points left over a flamer, nade launcher or stubber may be worth it.

Discipline masters seem quite cheap for what they add IMO. I'm guessing they confer their Ld 8 to the squad? And then you can re-roll fails. It looks like they make the "militia" rule much less of a downside, making the infantry into somewhat of a tarpit (compared to their low cost)

That is the idea, my counterpoint to that is, that you are tank militia, the way you currently have to play militia is lean into a gimmick as hard as you can. Sure you can spend 60 or 120 pts in discipline masters. Or you can field another leman russ. The issue beeing that realistically basically all weapons you are facing are atleast S4 and AP 5. So sure their LD 8 may keep a squad in line for a turn longer, but again you don't rely on infantry in your list, you rely upon av (brittle) 14 Walls of steel that don't give your opponent killpoints. And those don't care about morale.The infantry realistically is only there to deny deep strike or flanks and occaisionally sit on an objective. Even with the discipline master they won't survive an actual shooting atack even from a squad of tacs if they get to close. F.e. a normal scenario is, you pushing forward into the range of a normal 10 man tac squad, identical points to your supposed squad, and it stood still. Yeah you shoot with 20 dudes 19 Lasguns, 1 plas. generating a generous 9 lasguns and 1 plas gun hit. wounding 3 lasguns and the plas, even ignoring the armor, because the dice gods favour you. yeah, the tacs sitting on the objective have a FNP against the plas, and against the failed lasgun wound of 3. Then they answer in kind, because they stood still, they double their rof, 20 S4 hits, hitting 15 times, wounding 8 times. Half the squad is dead, if they are nightlords, then you already statistically fail the morale check due to fear, if they are corrupted hence gaining fear, you already failed the morale check, etc, etc, even with a discipline master, and worst of it all, you may roll the thing, losing another 2 squad mates. That squad now basically fails one morale check and it's permanently gone.
It's better in this regard to cut corners on the infantry, even if you just field more infantry in a second part of the platoon.

The heavy ordnance battery not being that great is good information, being the major part I don't actually own any of. I guess for max competitiveness, more rapiers is the answer, but will likely go for a more fun option.

Rapiers with laser destroyers, calliopes and more importantly, more leman russes with vanquisher turrets.

What are your thoughts on the rogue psyker, sentinels and ogryns? Any other units that are worth looking more into for a tank heavy list, a Baneblade?

Rogue psykers are fun,loads of firepower and the possibility to summon daemons which may pad melee capabilites, can be very usefull , also Fear, however, requires a morale babysitter, because LD 7 means half his psy tests when you focus fail. Otoh 50 pts for a slot you anyways won't really have much to compete with is worth a consideration.
Sentinels are basically the militia answer to contemptors, ergo 3 of them = one contemptor in points and firepower / durability. (yes kinfolk affects them aswell) further, they have scout, ergo can be put in reserves for a flanking attack, can be a handy tool with MM's or lascannons, or AC's or Missile launchers. In essence,they are always a good idea to get some tank hunter, or support as in my case two smaller cav squads with a melta that also can flank.
Ogryns are nasty, the boss can have a thunder hammer striking at his initiative. They don't have as many morale issues, and can be made really tanky and mean. Otoh, don't bother with ranged on them at all, these things are for beating your opponent over the head with the lamppost they just ripped out of the pavement. And they are good at it. 4 attacks at least, 5 on the boss with a power weapon, or thunder hammer, not including charges and other shenanigans, you can build around them with covenants and then you can make even marines wet their pants. Otoh, concentrated firepower, especially volkite based one, will threathen these squads fast, armor of 4+ at best is iffy due to 50-70% of any given arsenal being basically ap 4 and still being militia nvm pts cost for them... yeah, either build around them or field them in small meassures if you have an elite slot open. Granted, you'd still want field ordnance over them in your list, because pinning a lascannon squad is the difference between a whole leman russ tank squad of yours not existing anymore and a whole squad of lascannon marines not existing anymore. Also what is pinned can't react, ergo can't shoot back as a reaction, nor hurt you particulary hard due to snapfiring, which incidentally is the biggest single improvement for your units survivability.
Works especially well if you use a recon squad or two with sniper rifles to eliminate enemy sergants with precision shots. Sniper rifles are mean.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 morganfreeman wrote:
It is, imo, worth it to give the commander an iron halo + cyber familiar. Giving him a 3++ allows him to provide his leadership for most of the game and deny Slay the Warlord.

I’m also fairly certain that the demolisher rushes are awful, as the combination of small blast template and low BS means they won’t do much. Iirc the vanquisher and heavy lascannon are flatly better against every target except a direct hit over marines packed base to base.

the demolisher is probably the single most sad thing that happened to template weaponry. Ordnance, slowing you down, S 12 ap 3 with rending 6+ and brutal 3 on a 3 " template just feels bad. 2 marines dead after a 140 pts heavy support slot unit had to get in range and shot once...NVM that you now are in range of retribution via krak nade more often than not with a 50 % chance of getting a full on hit due to third line... yikes, those remaining 8 tac marines just got their cost back basically guaranteed at 4 HP of the leman sadly.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Thanks for that writeup, I'll have to come back to it once my Wargames Atlantic army gets delivered.

What flavour of not guardsmen have you ordered?

The Dooooooomed!

 lord_blackfang wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Thanks for that writeup, I'll have to come back to it once my Wargames Atlantic army gets delivered.

What flavour of not guardsmen have you ordered?

The Dooooooomed!

Damned, personally i want the brutes, but a good choice imo.

Wow, those WGA damned look amazing, good prices too, 3 medium artillery or 9 ogryn for 35$! The look is close enough to fit in with FW renegades too. My paint queue says NO, but my heart says "just a few boxes"

My handsome lads:

Very nice, sadly i missed the FW resin renegades mostly. Hobby budget said always no in relation to opportunity cost.

That said, good News on the nade launcher and missile launchers, pinning frag profiles are actually worth a consideration.

Frag is pinning, that is good to know. Weird that pinning is a thing in 30k, it was always so useless in 40k.

To nobody's surprise, I ended up with a pledge for the damned, so now medium artillery pieces, grenadiers, ogryns and more reinforcements are on their way. 14 free sprues is pretty insane value for a 99$ late pledge.

 Illumini wrote:
Frag is pinning, that is good to know. Weird that pinning is a thing in 30k, it was always so useless in 40k.

To nobody's surprise, I ended up with a pledge for the damned, so now medium artillery pieces, grenadiers, ogryns and more reinforcements are on their way. 14 free sprues is pretty insane value for a 99$ late pledge.

Pinning is a thing for multiple reasons, for one a marine has M 7, a sargent 8.

That means a pinning test allready has a high chance to succeed just baseline.
Further fearless is basically gone, shellshock x is a thing, sniperrifles are strong, do pinning and allow for targeting of sargents.
Morale shenanigans and other things help further.

And militia is Master of los ignoring pinning.

Frankly that is why my infantry list above halfway works and i have an inclination, that one could build a full on pinning list that would perform very well.

Wow, some great comments and advice here - most of which confirms that my Militia will suck big hairy goat balls. They will just have to look good as they die horribly.

 Snord wrote:
Wow, some great comments and advice here - most of which confirms that my Militia will suck big hairy goat balls. They will just have to look good as they die horribly.

why , what have you planned?

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Snord wrote:
Wow, some great comments and advice here - most of which confirms that my Militia will suck big hairy goat balls. They will just have to look good as they die horribly.

why , what have you planned?

Check out my militia thread below…

 Snord wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Snord wrote:
Wow, some great comments and advice here - most of which confirms that my Militia will suck big hairy goat balls. They will just have to look good as they die horribly.

why , what have you planned?

Check out my militia thread below…

Ah i now remember. I mean the rhino and land raider force you into survivors i guess, which i mean, yeah kinda forces you into warrior elite if you want to avoid fielding more men, however i think there could be something said about feral warriors instead, ws 4 grenadiers with chainaxes in Landraiders and shotguns?

Alternative, weaponry of the dark age and go full on pinning but that would make land raiders obsolete..

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Snord wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Snord wrote:
Wow, some great comments and advice here - most of which confirms that my Militia will suck big hairy goat balls. They will just have to look good as they die horribly.

why , what have you planned?

Check out my militia thread below…

Ah i now remember. I mean the rhino and land raider force you into survivors i guess, which i mean, yeah kinda forces you into warrior elite if you want to avoid fielding more men, however i think there could be something said about feral warriors instead, ws 4 grenadiers with chainaxes in Landraiders and shotguns?

Alternative, weaponry of the dark age and go full on pinning but that would make land raiders obsolete..

Chain axe wielding ogryns in land raiders maybe? Sounds like a ton of fun if nothing else

 Illumini wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Snord wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Snord wrote:
Wow, some great comments and advice here - most of which confirms that my Militia will suck big hairy goat balls. They will just have to look good as they die horribly.

why , what have you planned?

Check out my militia thread below…

Ah i now remember. I mean the rhino and land raider force you into survivors i guess, which i mean, yeah kinda forces you into warrior elite if you want to avoid fielding more men, however i think there could be something said about feral warriors instead, ws 4 grenadiers with chainaxes in Landraiders and shotguns?

Alternative, weaponry of the dark age and go full on pinning but that would make land raiders obsolete..

Chain axe wielding ogryns in land raiders maybe? Sounds like a ton of fun if nothing else

Land raiders are only, by muster available to grenadiers and command squads sadly...
So, sadly no ogryn party bus. Further running ogryns for a melee List honestly basically forces you to go for atleast 5 imo, if only for the boss+ hammer.

My Ogryns have a Ridgehauler to ride in, although it is unlikely to survive past turn 1. My Grenadiers just have lasguns and a pair of meltaguns, so when they leave their Rhinos they’re not going to last long either. And the Land Raider carries the Command Squad.

 Snord wrote:
My Ogryns have a Ridgehauler to ride in, although it is unlikely to survive past turn 1. My Grenadiers just have lasguns and a pair of meltaguns, so when they leave their Rhinos they’re not going to last long either. And the Land Raider carries the Command Squad.

Well, in between the trade of an 11 AV box or another 10 grens, i am unsure but i'd say the box sadly wins, not on its own merits, but rather because someone forgot to make the aditional weaponry squad size dependent. With the box you can atleast get another multi melter on point, that is not something another 10 grens can realistically compete with.

Agreed. The Command Squad should have been given the option of taking additional special weapons - especially given that they're BS 4. At least the Command Squad will have a nice flag...

 Snord wrote:
Agreed. The Command Squad should have been given the option of taking additional special weapons - especially given that they're BS 4. At least the Command Squad will have a nice flag...

Funny that the sister list SA, has all it's special weapons basically only available in the command tercio, which makes the command tercio the sole provider of actual firepower in an infantry focussed SA army... which is worse than a infantry militia army, if only for the 1" cohesion and AP4 pieplates. And arguably the SA list lacks a heavy support / special weapons tercio probably even more than militia considering how the army has gaping holes.

Honestly, i can understand that militia should have lower access to special weaponry, but the static equipment slots makes a lot of squads a nonstarter, f.e. grenadiers not boosted to BS4 compared to militia? Recoon squads are another such, 5 with full sniper rifles / long lases, vs. 10 with just 5? why ever go up in squad size? Also a 5 man squad for a whole slot which also has the only massable anti-tank without the muster is a steep ask imo.

Militia itself as a squad, atleast 1 in 10 should have a special weapon option. Grenadiers are really tragic because why ever go above 10 if you don't intend to run grens as mainline unit, which is also why melee grens are probably better and more easily specialisable and that is probably the wierdest fact that on a PPM basis melee grens with the right muster are one of the most points efficent Melee units ever because you can also hand them a shotgun..