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Okay, so after ages of trying to find someone to play HH with, I ran into an old friend whose gotten really into it and he offered to show me the ropes. He was playing a more casual list since it was my first game and I just threw together something that seemed both fluffy for my faction and mechanically interesting. I had no idea if it was any good, but I won the game quite handily 9-3 and so I was wondering from some vets of 30K, is this list actually good? (For reference, he was playing Thousand Sons. I don't remember everything but he had 2 20 man tactical blobs one with a character, a dreadnaught, a Terminator blob with another character, some double Kopesh guys, and some ruinstorm deamons that he summoned early on). We were playing 2k points.

My List Was:

Primary Detachment (Alpha Legion)
Rite of War: Legion Recon Company
Warlord Trait: (Loyalist) The Mobius Configuration

Centurion Vigilator leading 5 Scout Marines with Nemesis Bolters
Exodus leading 5 Headhunters
Legion Recon Squad (5 Man) x2
Legion Scout Squad (10 Man) x2 (1 with Shotguns, 1 with Chainswords)
Ashen Circle (5 Man) (From Rewards of Treachery, and in Deep Strike because Recon Company)

Allied Detachment (Emperor's Children)
Saul Tarvitz leading 10 Palatine Blades with Power Swords riding in a Land Raider Protieus Carrier
Vindicator
Tactical Squad (20 Man) with Chain Bayonets

Saul and the Palatine Blades were a huge threat in the center of the table that managed to eliminate both Tactical blobs fairly early and keep his objective score low. My tactical blob held down a forward objective and got into a slap fight with the Dreadnaught for most of the game. The two Recons squads were amazing, just sitting scoring points while not being able to be shot because of the cumulative -8" to range against them from both Shroud Bombs and the Alpha Legion Special Rule. The Vindicator got popped on my turn 1 to reaction fire and did nothing, so not too sure how good that could have been. The scouts and Headhutners cleaned up the Kopesh guys pretty quickly but were eventually overwhelmed in the end by a combination of the Deamons and the Terminators. On the last turn I even managed to charge Saul into the Dread and get him killed for the extra 1 VP of having by entire allied detachment wiped out. (Though he did almost solo the Dreadnaught himself, which was really impressive, he performed real well the whole game.)

Coming in from 40k, there were certainly some misconceptions I had. I didn't realize that you couldn't charge turn 1 in HH which messed up part of my plan, everything else when pretty good. I also really underestimated how good Deep Strike is in this game, but fortunately I was spread out enough that I basically just lost the 2 units to it and stabilized pretty well after.

So yeah, as someone who still knows very little about HH in general and nothing about the meta, what do you all think of this list?

If you can guess what army I played in HH you win a prize!

My knowledge base is extremely limited, but I do know that you need some Anti-vehicle weaponry in your force.

If you expand to 3k, I heartily recommend some anti-tank to be added.

(There is a detachment of Dreadnoughts that ate my Knight army. And there are some big scary tanks in HH).

Does Exodus have Master of the Legion? If not then you can't take a Rite of War.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
If you can guess what army I played in HH you win a prize!

My knowledge base is extremely limited, but I do know that you need some Anti-vehicle weaponry in your force.

If you expand to 3k, I heartily recommend some anti-tank to be added.

(There is a detachment of Dreadnoughts that ate my Knight army. And there are some big scary tanks in HH).

I've got a Falchion that I've always wanted to run, but it was too many point for the LOW slot in a 2k game. I'd bring that in as my anti-tank for a 3k game.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Gert wrote:
Does Exodus have Master of the Legion? If not then you can't take a Rite of War.

Ah, I knew I was going to have messed something up. I thought that the Centurian Vigilator gave me that, but it seems like they don't. He and the Nemesis scouts were pretty underwhelming anyway, so that's just a quick swap out for a Praetor.

I would also stick to either XXth or IIIrd, not both.

 Gert wrote:
I would also stick to either XXth or IIIrd, not both.

The idea behind the list was to capitalize on what both factions (at least from my limited understanding) excel at. Alpha Legion at objective control, ranged defense and elimination of specific targets, and Emperor's Children at close combat. Having them be the force that charges up to fight/contest, then scores me an extra point if they all get killed seemed like a win-win situation. Also it was a way to get the advantages of the Recon Detachment and still have heavy support on the table as they are with the auxiliary force and not subject to the same rules.

I have a small Alpha Legion Force and remember, you can use any unit you want from anybody Loyalist or Traitor with the Rewards of Treachery.

I'm adding some Templars and their transport to my army (once I get more funds).

Dunno what to tell you, chief.
It's pretty clear the army wins you games, but IMO it's a bland experience, and you've sacrificed building a more narratively styled army.
You don't have any real weaknesses apart from anti-tank.
IMO, HH isn't about building the "perfect" list that covers all the angles. It's about picking a narrative hook and hammering that home.

 Gert wrote:
Dunno what to tell you, chief.
It's pretty clear the army wins you games, but IMO it's a bland experience, and you've sacrificed building a more narratively styled army.
You don't have any real weaknesses apart from anti-tank.
IMO, HH isn't about building the "perfect" list that covers all the angles. It's about picking a narrative hook and hammering that home.

I was just curious to hear what people thought of it.

My force is based off a unit of Blackshields that are a joint force of Loyalist forces of the Traitor Legions which is why I went with Alpha Legion, so that I could field other Legion units with it. The whole idea was narrative based and I was mostly curious what the level of strength was so I could tell people ahead of time if it was a more casual list or not since I don't know what the power level is like in 30k and was very surprised with how much I won by.

From your reaction though, it seems reasonably strong so I won't worry about asking people to bring more casual lists if I end up getting more games in. So, I guess you did pretty much tell me what I wanted to know.

Functionality wise:

This list isn't great, but it isn't awful. Snipers are admittedly solid so spamming them is not weak, and EC melee are also strong; so again not weak.

However I'd hesitate to call it 'good'. The lack of anti armor is a glaring weakness. While it's not always required, I play in several groups and most people run a decent chunk of armored fire power in their lists. Which would be unmanageable for this force.

Like wise, this force is going to struggle against PA hordes (which I love running), mass transport assaults (which I also love running), and will be heavily frustrated by terminators or armies which just want to sit back and shoot; because while snipers are good at killing characters they are not good at killing units, and against an effective gunline you'll either force enough tests on one dangerous unit to pin it, or potentially pin nothing by spreading fire around.

But yeah. Against someone bringing a confusing mix of stuff without trying to also make it decent, or leaning into a theme, the list could be kinda mean.

In terms of narrative: I agree with Gert here. This is not it.

I mean, Alpha legion having allies of any type is fine. But Saul pretty explicitly died in the opening battle of the Heresy; he's not going to be tooling around with a blackshield force. Which is another thing; you say it's a blackshield force but you're not running black shields, you're running alpha legion. This is further exacerbated by the inclusion of several named characters (which I touched on). And that's not even touching on the 'joint forces of loyalist and traitors' which sounds like.. guys from both sides? Or do you mean loyal elements of traitor legions.

I'd say if you're running blackshields then run blackshields. They're not over-all a power list (they have some nasty combos) but that's also not the point of heresy. Alpha-legion counts as blackshields just feels like kind of a pissy cop out to me; own running the XXth or own running the sketchy psychos no one wants to associate with. Don't run one but claim its the other.

Don't have much in the way of input for the actual list, as anything I'd comment on has already been noted.

But, just on this....

 Tawnis wrote:
He and the Nemesis scouts were pretty underwhelming anyway, so that's just a quick swap out for a Praetor.

The Vigilator can be a tough character to effectively utilise. On paper he reads like he should be good at eliminating HQ's. But that is very much a trap, because in practice, the ability only deal 1 wound per turn makes him absolutely gak at dealing with multi-wound models. He's infinitely more useful when used to remove apothecaries, sergeants, vexillas, special wepaons, etc. from squads.

I've used one quite extensively in different ways and what I've found is that he's best used when given a melee weapon and attached to a despoiler squad or other dedicated melee unit. Knock off the sergeant, hope for the pinning check to go off and then charge the squad into them.
He synergises especially well with the despoilers because they have spite of the Legion which gives them an extra attack for charging units that are pinned and/or have no [character] models.

I would say OP, if you are interested in playing Blackshields then take a look around at other examples to see if you enjoy the playstyle and rules of that specific faction.

They get a lot of interesting rules and the modelling opportunities are huge as well.

Beta-Garmon is the book with the rules but you'll be able to find rundowns across the Internet (I recommend ArbitorIan's video myself).

 morganfreeman wrote:
Functionality wise:

This list isn't great, but it isn't awful. Snipers are admittedly solid so spamming them is not weak, and EC melee are also strong; so again not weak.

However I'd hesitate to call it 'good'. The lack of anti armor is a glaring weakness. While it's not always required, I play in several groups and most people run a decent chunk of armored fire power in their lists. Which would be unmanageable for this force.

Like wise, this force is going to struggle against PA hordes (which I love running), mass transport assaults (which I also love running), and will be heavily frustrated by terminators or armies which just want to sit back and shoot; because while snipers are good at killing characters they are not good at killing units, and against an effective gunline you'll either force enough tests on one dangerous unit to pin it, or potentially pin nothing by spreading fire around.

But yeah. Against someone bringing a confusing mix of stuff without trying to also make it decent, or leaning into a theme, the list could be kinda mean.

In terms of narrative: I agree with Gert here. This is not it.

I mean, Alpha legion having allies of any type is fine. But Saul pretty explicitly died in the opening battle of the Heresy; he's not going to be tooling around with a blackshield force. Which is another thing; you say it's a blackshield force but you're not running black shields, you're running alpha legion. This is further exacerbated by the inclusion of several named characters (which I touched on). And that's not even touching on the 'joint forces of loyalist and traitors' which sounds like.. guys from both sides? Or do you mean loyal elements of traitor legions.

I'd say if you're running blackshields then run blackshields. They're not over-all a power list (they have some nasty combos) but that's also not the point of heresy. Alpha-legion counts as blackshields just feels like kind of a pissy cop out to me; own running the XXth or own running the sketchy psychos no one wants to associate with. Don't run one but claim its the other.

Thanks for the breakdown. I'm thinking of taking out the Vindicator as well as the Vigilator and Nemesis Scouts for a Preator and a Daradeo. That should fix the Row issue and give me a little more anti-tank punch.

As for lore-wise, a few things:

First, in regards to Saul Tarvitz, and by extension Nero Vipus (not that he has a model) GW did the thing where they heavily imply that they die, but never actually confirm it. Loken and Rylanor both lived and it is specifically stated that Saul knew of some kind of hidden ship underground. While they never actually utilized this setup, it was clearly put there in case they ever did want to bring them back into the setting.

Lore wise for my army though, they're basically a backdated version of my second founding Space Marine chapter that was made from loyalists of the traitor legions at the end of the HH. In their lore, they recovered Saul's armour from Istvaan and the Captain of the 3rd company wears it as a chapter relic. So, at this point in the story, weather it's actually Saul, or if it's someone wearing his armour and impersonating him to boost morale of allies and intimidate foes, that's a secret of the Void Rangers.

I will look into the blackshields rules though. If I can field a hodgepodge of units from various legions in them, that could work just as well as what I'm doing now. I only have the Liber Hereticus in addition to the main rulebook at the moment, so that's what I've been using.

You won't be able to take any unique Legion units with Blackshields.
There is an option for wargear but not units.