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 Insectum7 wrote:

 Drasius wrote:

Why not just play WE then?

1: Because WE pay for their MoK. The Hounds don't.

Yeah, but you have to pay for your reroll to charge and Furious Charge. They're also fearless in WE and get a free pre-game 2D6 free move per unit AFTER the seize roll. The Hounds basic CSM with MoK may be cheaper, but it isn't better unless it somehow gains fearless from something I don't know about. I concede the point about MoK Havocs, however you could always run them with melta guns alongside the charging madmen.

But if you want to make Black Legion then by all means, it's your army and rule of cool is absolute.

 andysonic1 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Drasius wrote:

Why not just play WE then?

1: Because WE pay for their MoK. The Hounds don't.

Yeah, but you have to pay for your reroll to charge and Furious Charge. They're also fearless in WE and get a free pre-game 2D6 free move per unit AFTER the seize roll. The Hounds basic CSM with MoK may be cheaper, but it isn't better unless it somehow gains fearless from something I don't know about. I concede the point about MoK Havocs, however you could always run them with melta guns alongside the charging madmen.

But if you want to make Black Legion then by all means, it's your army and rule of cool is absolute.

It's a good point about the Re-rollable Assault and Furious Charge, but do they have Hatred? Endless Hatred for me has been incredible as a 10 man Squad hits 30 times instead of 20 on the Charge, the re-rolls smooth out otherwise dangerous swings of the dice gods, and re-rolliing with a powered up Lord has been amazing.

There's a minor aside to be said about economy, as a 20 man Hounds Squad with an Icon costs 20 points less than a 20 man WE Squad, but at 10 it's a wash, and there's always the risk that the Icon gets killed off anyways for some reason. (I also had to learn Icon management after my first couple games, bad placement just got it killed). But those differences are minor to me when compared to overall army flexibility and Hatred.

Agree on rule of cool though. My loyalists are painted white, so having the traitors painted black pleases me.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Roknar wrote:
Did you get around to trying a blob or two?

Yeah I did! Took me a game to get over and solve the Chaos lack of ATSKNF though Now the Lord usually hangs with my big blob and my Sorcerers hang with the Spawn to not get run down if I lose a combat (I got hit hard by daemons in my second game). My third game saw the 20 man blob finish off a Dreadknight with sheer weight of attacks, then carry on to kill or chase off everything else on that flank. The Hatred coupled with Rage and either S 5 or 6 drowns a lot of units in wounds.

Right now I just have the one big blob, but I'm aiming for either two blobs or one of 20 and two of 10. I love the idea of 60, but I want to get a better handle on the army before I commit to it. The psyker reinforced blitz on foot is still something I'm figuring out.

I was playing around with a similar idea. Three of the BL objectives are about killing units, one of which requires units with VotLW. Two more trigger on morale checks (and fear), which triggers on shooting as well as melee and one on malefic. So you'd need lots of VotLW units and some psykers. The warband fits the bill for this, since they plan on killing anyway and get better at it when they do, plus they can take an optional sorcerer.

Chosen and/or termies are shooty as well as decent in assaults so work on both fronts. Ectomancy has shooty as well as choppy spells.
Should you roll ghost storm you could teleport chosen into rapid fire range or maybe rhinos for dirge casters.
Soulswitch to charge said chosen or anything really and this would work with summoned daemons too if there isn't a unit in range to switch or TAF termies for T1 assaults.
Three witchfires help you soften up units to activate preferred enemy in the shooting phase. Yuranthos also helps with that and you really only need a single roll on malefic.

Mix in a few bikes and you should have a fairly mobile army that plays to its objective and has good mix of melee and shooting despite being mostly footslogging. In theory anyway.
Would be nice to mix in a CAD for an exalted sorcerer too, divination is excellent for this. Problem, as so often, are points though. The more special weapons you bring and psykers, the less points you have for bodies and to make the warband work you really need a lot of units from one warband.





Automatically Appended Next Post:

 andysonic1 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Drasius wrote:

Why not just play WE then?

1: Because WE pay for their MoK. The Hounds don't.

Yeah, but you have to pay for your reroll to charge and Furious Charge. They're also fearless in WE and get a free pre-game 2D6 free move per unit AFTER the seize roll. The Hounds basic CSM with MoK may be cheaper, but it isn't better unless it somehow gains fearless from something I don't know about. I concede the point about MoK Havocs, however you could always run them with melta guns alongside the charging madmen.

But if you want to make Black Legion then by all means, it's your army and rule of cool is absolute.

Depends on how you look at it. (from the black legion tactica)
Hounds of Abandon
rage, counter-attack, furious charge (sorta)
1 turn of run+charge
fearless (mandatory lord)
hatred everybody + extra hatred imperium
crusader
fear ( nobody cares)

World Eaters warband
rage, counter-attack. furious charge.
1 turn of free 2d6 move
fearless
re-roll charge
OB-sec
adamantium will (nobody cares)

Fearless can be gained by sticking a lord into the unit. You save more by bringing more marines so a fearless ,fairly fast, blob isn't THAT bad of an escort.
Though spawn are cheaper yet and actually a little bit faster than other legions, since they too get crusader.
The free moves aren't that different really. Over two turns you will move 6 inch twice in both cases. WE also move 2d6 in the first turn, while BL move 2d6 by running in the first two turns.The only difference is a potential additional 1d6 run in the first turn for WE, but without crusader, so it kind of evens out. Although obviously hounds can't use it re-deploy and it's only the basic csm that can keep up, rather than being an armywide thing, but yea.

So that one unit you let the lord join is pretty much identical to WE, except it has hatred with potential S6, crusader helps it sweep better and you do get a combat result bonus from the banner.I'll have to admit that it's a flawed comparison due to the lord still being better off with spawn.
Without the lord though you could still opt for the fearless banner for a worse version of furious charge. On the plus side, that allows for fnp via the auloth legacy I guess.
I suppose you could also treat the lord as a 30 point champion and just skimp on the icon altogether with a pretty naked lord, but meh.

Ultimately though, they're both very similar. If you don't care about objectives, BL will be just that little bit more killy and fearless or not, a blob isn't that likely to break especially with ld10. Although the difference isn't always going to matter. WE on the other hand have Objective secured, which is obviously good. Still, they're going to take objectives in combat, and a blob of hounds has a pretty good shot at killing or sweeping a unit off of an objective too. I'd give ObSec the edge , but it's not like hounds can't take objectives.

I'd say BL has the advantage of taking a cabal to buff them further, but as a stand alone formation that's really not saying much unless you insist on sticking to one legion or don't want any filthy psykers lol.

WE can charge turn 1, hounds can't. WE also have hatred: Marines from VotLW, so that's something (sometimes, depending on how often you play against marines). WE move 2d6+6 and then charge or run (plus 3" for move,run & charge for the unit with the talisman lord, but that's going to be something killy, not regular marines), BL moves 6+d6.

The hounds also need to take at least 1 unit of 'zerks and 1 unit of MoK marines (even though the mark is free), while a WE warband is only required to take 2 units of MoK marines, saving you 10 points (though the free mark on the lord and mandatory FA choice will mean the warband costs more eventually even only considering the equivalent units).

Overall, I think I'd rather have the WE, but if the Hounds are getting the job done for you, awesome!

I've played world eaters decurion 4 or 5 times and regular marines (i took 2 min squads with bp+ccw) have done close to nothing. The job's done by ic, spawns and termies.
What's the point of arguing weather WE or HoA marines are better if marines rarely even matter anywayz?

They'd be amazing if they had trukks. But as is, there's just not much you can do with a bunch of relatively slow mellee dudes without much durability or killing power vs real mellee units. All they did for me was sit on a point around the midfield, score and prevent opponent from getting the point with chaff units. But most meq units can do that.

 koooaei wrote:
I've played world eaters decurion 4 or 5 times and regular marines (i took 2 min squads with bp+ccw) have done close to nothing. The job's done by ic, spawns and termies.
What's the point of arguing weather WE or HoA marines are better if marines rarely even matter anywayz?

They'd be amazing if they had trukks. But as is, there's just not much you can do with a bunch of relatively slow mellee dudes without much durability or killing power vs real mellee units. All they did for me was sit on a point around the midfield, score and prevent opponent from getting the point with chaff units. But most meq units can do that.

Of course min squad MoK marines are going to do nothing they are most likely getting shot off the table before they get halfway up the board. We aren't talking about min squads because everyone has realized min squad marines are useless. We're talking about 10 man and 20 man squads, which actually do work since they are more difficult to remove and can lay down some serious pain. Their survivability is only in numbers and their damage output is again only in numbers. They aren't like other units where you can rely on multi wounds, 2+ save, and awesome artifacts.

BrianDavion wrote:

Tycho wrote:

The unique legion formations are too expensive. In most cases, taking full advantage means spending more than 70% of your points on troops. It does not leave enough room for other units.

The unique Legion formations are very nearly unplayable. Too many weird taxes and too many units that don't support one another. It's the typical CSM problem of being too expensive while also having almost no synergy. With the exception of Death Guard, all of our CSM folks are running CADs. A few of untried to make the Black Legion alpha strike thing work, but there's just too many things in the way so that seems to be abandoned for the time being.

belive it or not this is something they share with space Marines, once you remove the "free rhinos gimmic" the basic gladius has very similer problems of large expensive aux formations I don't nesscarily mind that but woulda prefered some other options that way. I'm debating how to build a new UM force for gulliman, and as useal the auxillery is kind of a pain. I don't have the option to take 1 or two predators, I have to take 3. unsquadroned, with a tech marine

3 scout squads is not expensive.

 koooaei wrote:
I've played world eaters decurion 4 or 5 times and regular marines (i took 2 min squads with bp+ccw) have done close to nothing. The job's done by ic, spawns and termies.
What's the point of arguing weather WE or HoA marines are better if marines rarely even matter anywayz?

They'd be amazing if they had trukks. But as is, there's just not much you can do with a bunch of relatively slow mellee dudes without much durability or killing power vs real mellee units. All they did for me was sit on a point around the midfield, score and prevent opponent from getting the point with chaff units. But most meq units can do that.

Andysonic1 already mentioned it, but you're not killing by virtue of quality attacks. Consider a blob of hounds, if even only half of those make it, that's still 40 S6 (more often than not) attacks with hatred.
That's enough to kill 4 TEQ without considering any attached IC's, special weapons or shooting first. And then there's still 20 bolt pistol shots in this case to consider.
It gets the job done. You don't really want to take min sized squads because, as you say, they tend to do nothing unless they can sit on an objective which hounds in particular have no reason to do at all. At least no longer than it takes to bully a unit off of an objective.

@ Drasius: Yea WE can potentially charge turn 1 without psychic support. That's definitely an advantage they have over hounds, but it's also not going to happen every time. Just like hounds won't be S6 every time.
Both have a very good chance of assaulting turn 2 though and in that case move at almost the same speed. Assuming hounds can get enough models into base contact, ObSec vs S6/hatred/icon/crusader should also about even out on taking objectives
I'd be interesting to see some statistics on the tabletop performance for the two. I'd say on average they'd performance roughly the same. Even against other marines because while WE gain hatred too, BL gain even better hatred in that case.
Although I think say hounds want to take more marines per unit compared to WE to get the most out of their attacks. Which means more units for WE to take more objectives at the same time. That might skew stats in favour of WE.

That isn't saying anything on the rest of the army mind you. Hounds are cheaper as a formation than a warband is without even considering marks, so that leaves you with more options and as a legion they have more options yet by virtue of having access to all marks and more formations. Personally, I prefer not to mix legions so that's an advantage to me. And BL isn't quite as shoehorned into assaults as WE are even when taking hounds. But yea, I think a hound based assault army and you're average WE army are going to be similar enough to point it becomes personal preference as to which is better. And meta of course.

The barrier was set so low to 'improving' Chaos Space Marines that anything was an improvement, even Traitor's Hate.

You are in a desert, have been for weeks. You ran out of water 2 days ago and all the other travelers are on camels with casks of water to drink from, except for maybe that weird green guy with the odd british accent you saw a ways back. Suddenly, you find a canteen filled with cold, sweet iced water. It isn't much, but after a few days in the desert getting spit on by other travelers and dying of thirst it is a god send.