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I'm considering adding a Helbrute to my army for cheap increased armor saturation. The easiest and most likely option is to keep it stock but I'm open to suggestions.
specifically I'm tempted by the Plasma Cannon and Power Scourge but both add considerable cost.

What does the rest of your army look like?

Autocannons are a good all round choice.

Make sure your units aren't in the field of fire of your Helbrutes. Crazed can end quite horribly for your army.

 Chaos Legionnaire wrote:
What does the rest of your army look like?

Rhino CSMs, Fiends, Prince, Oblits or Vindicator, Drake, Spawn.

I'll occasionally throw a stock one in lists for a 100pt bullet sponge. The multimelta hasn't helped too much but it still absorbs a good amount of shots.

I'm personally a fan of TL lascannon/ML or quad autocannons

A PC Hellbrute killed 8 of my DWTs the other day. They can do some damage with their special rules.

Keep it stock if you want it cheap. It can threaten high armored targets if it gets in range. And it won't be useless if you roll the assault option on the frenzy table.

Power Scourges are an interesting option and are very good in the assault, but the problem is still about getting them there.

Plasma cannons are trash. I've always thought they were. Unless you can get an obscene number of blasts (as the leman russ variant) I never see them make their points back.

Well, it looks like you have plenty of other high value targets for your enemy to shoot at.

Sometimes, just having something else in your army which provides armor saturation can be helpful.

Leave it as is or take an auto cannon.

If your opponent ignores it, the Brute can be annoying early and threatening mid-to-late game.

I would say to make your Brute as annoying/threatening as possible early on by picking on easy targets. Encourage your opponent to target him.

Any shots directed at your Hellbrute obviously are not going at your more important targets.

Anyway, that is one use for them.

Hope this helps.

 gpfunk wrote:


Plasma cannons are trash. I've always thought they were. Unless you can get an obscene number of blasts (as the leman russ variant) I never see them make their points back.

Why do you say that?
I'll admit the tiny nature of small blasts makes me reconsider using them but I hear others get value from PCs or similar weapons.

The PC never seems to kill much unless it's frying my own troops.

 Chaos Legionnaire wrote:


Sometimes, just having something else in your army which provides armor saturation can be helpful.

.

That's kind of the plan. To be honest, there isn't much in the Elite section and after I've filled out my Heavy and Fast slots, it would be nice to add an extra piece of cheap armor to the table.

MM & PF is a threaten to most any high value target, though the shortish range is limiting for a 6" movement unit.

 Kain wrote:
The PC never seems to kill much unless it's frying my own troops.

Not around my codex right now, but what does a plasma cannon cost 25 points? So if I only get to shoot the stock multi-melta once it kills one model/vehicle (with a smaller chance on the vehicle depending on positioning, rolls, etc), if I pay for the plasma cannon upgrade and it kills 2 models the only time I shoot it, well unless you shot at guardsmen, it paid for itself. And the extra 12" range is very nice, and its "full" strength at max range too. Yes scattering into nothing can suck, but plasma cannons are fairly powerful weapons.

 Kain wrote:
The PC never seems to kill much unless it's frying my own troops.

I run Bjorn with a PC in my SW army, but that's because he's BS6! Personally, I enjoy my PC, but I don't think they'd be a good additions to a CSM army unless you're running ectoplasm cannon spam.

I like the TL Las/ML brute. Just when you gotta reach out and touch someone.

 Aleph-Sama wrote:

 Kain wrote:
The PC never seems to kill much unless it's frying my own troops.

I run Bjorn with a PC in my SW army, but that's because he's BS6! Personally, I enjoy my PC, but I don't think they'd be a good additions to a CSM army unless you're running ectoplasm cannon spam.

I remember in 5e when my dreadnoughts rolled fire frenzy, all three of them. Unfortunately my Abaddon star was the closest target.

Quite the ignoble end dontcha think?

 Kain wrote:

 Aleph-Sama wrote:

 Kain wrote:
The PC never seems to kill much unless it's frying my own troops.

I run Bjorn with a PC in my SW army, but that's because he's BS6! Personally, I enjoy my PC, but I don't think they'd be a good additions to a CSM army unless you're running ectoplasm cannon spam.

I remember in 5e when my dreadnoughts rolled fire frenzy, all three of them. Unfortunately my Abaddon star was the closest target.

Quite the ignoble end dontcha think?

For Abby? Yeah. Plasma Cannons are powerful, but collateral damage can be a bitch. You need to make sure you're firing away from your own squads lest you kill your own guys. That's one of the reasons why I let Bjorn have one. That BS 6 makes the plasma cannon fairly accurate, even allows me to reroll the get's hot! roll as well, but it still needs to be fired where it will do the most damage, not the most kills. It's not an antitank weapon, it's an antiheavyinfantry weapon, and a darn good one too, so taking out some crisis suits, pathfinders, long fangs, and other support infantry is the perfect job for plasma cannons.

Kain wrote:Make sure your units aren't in the field of fire of your Helbrutes. Crazed can end quite horribly for your army.

Thankfully they changed that rule to only include enemy units as targetable.

As for how to use them, that's kind of hard to say. I like the multimelta+DCCW loadout for regular marines, but that's because they can ride in drop pods, which hellbrutes can't. Meanwhile, taking them in the 2x power fist loadout is completely pointless, because for only 20 points more you can take a mauerfiend which is twice as fast, ignores terrain, has a 5++ and it will not die, and demonforged and metaguns that hit in close combat. I also don't like it as a 2x heavy weapon platform as it doesn't compare well with the predator which is only a teeny bit more expensive, fully loaded, but comes with AV13, and more dakka.

So, the question is, what can it do that's relatively unique to that unit? One thing, as mentioned, is the plasma cannon. I agree that they're pretty bad, though, as they can't target fliers, and aren't that likely to get more than one hit per shot against savvy opponents. You might as well just fork over the points for the lascannon, which means you might as well get a predator.

The second thing is that you can take powerfists which make it worse than a maulerfiend, but you can also give it a pair of heavy flamers, which a maulerfiend can't take. I don't really know what you'd do with this, as they don't have the mobility to use this weapon offensively, but I guess it's possible to be used as a defensive weapon. A bit hard to see why you would take this over a 5-man squad of terminators with a heavy flamer and combi-flamers, though.

The third thing is the power scourges, and this is where I think the magic is. With one, or especially a pair of them you can easily reduce your opponent to hitting you on 5's. For something with AV12, that's likely going to cause some serious problems for trying to take it out in close combat. The best part is that a unit can only choose to break and run if they can't hurt it. So long as they have krak grenades, they're stuck in that close combat for good, slowly getting chiseled away by the flails, but not really able to hurt the dread.

Put another way, I can see this as a close combat fly paper unit. Something comes up to assault you, and then it gets stuck duking it out with an unkillable dreadnought. Not only can you tie up that THSS termie squad or big blob of CSM, but you can also use it to hold units in place for a couple of turns so that you can arrive later and shove an axe of blind fury into the squad once you're done killing other stuff.

Once again, this is a defensive weapon, but I can see it being kind of useful to run interference. Give it the lascannon, and it can go fishing for first blood and be annoying to fliers. It won't do as much damage as a maulerfiend or a predator, but it will also be a lower threat profile and act as a defensive spoiler.

I don't know if that kind of a unit is needed in a hard-charging offensive codex like CSM, but I think that's probably the best use you're going to get out of one.

Id either go for a PC or TL Lascannon

Well, mines comes in at 110 points. Was considering the scourge too... but that ups the points considerably for something so slow and not too tough.... But for 110 pts he has a cannon, and I don't regret it! Gives you that extra AP2 when you need it. And when it comes to people saying collateral damage, I don't shoot at things with my expensive troops so close by...

I like the PC upgrade, and it works well so far


Von Chogg

Reaper AC isn't half bad and let's him threaten flyers. Also adds some range to his shooting attacks.

I just have such a hard time throwing 100+ points at something that dies when the enemy wants it to die. Specially in a list where your stuff is pretty expensive and your rarely rocking max troops. That could be a blob of Cultists or a 5 man CSM squad with a Plasma gun sitting on a Objective, not First Blood bait for your opponent.

If I would run them, I would run them stock and look at having 2-3 of them. I feel you need to spam them to make them effective and get your points back, and you probably want to be running a mech list.

 minigun762 wrote:

 gpfunk wrote:


Plasma cannons are trash. I've always thought they were. Unless you can get an obscene number of blasts (as the leman russ variant) I never see them make their points back.

Why do you say that?
I'll admit the tiny nature of small blasts makes me reconsider using them but I hear others get value from PCs or similar weapons.

Because Plasma Cannons are only extremely effective against deepstriking terminators. Unless you're facing a bunch of 2+ saves, the PC is going to be a worse option than pretty much anything else. In my meta I fight a ton of vehicle heavy armies and things like Imperial Guard, Orks etc. I don't fight a lot of Deathwing or GK Paladin armies, so I almost never find the PC worth more than a direct firing weapon with lower AP. If you're having trouble dealing with Terminators I always think it's better to slap plasma Plague Marines in rather than pay more for a Dreadnought that should be kept cheap and cheerful.