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I find the brand allows The Lord to really reach out and do damage from afar. A potential 20" range is nothing to sneeze at. It wrecks marines, is a good way to kill characters (giving a boon roll), makes players think twice before charging, and can wipe entire units off objectives. Also soul blaze, which while not dependable, I've had it finish off units for me before.

 Ailaros wrote:
lol. Cute.

I hadn't thought of a bike mounted chaos artifact before. I suppose there's no reason you couldn't do it for a melee weapon, either. Have a burning brand/murder sword/black mace bike lord.

Would be insanely expensive of course. It would provide some... interesting modelling opportunities as well. I'm imagining a murder sword welded to the front armor piece as a ramming prow...

I've run a Slaanesh lord on a bike under Crimson Slaughter rules to have the Daemonheart, blade of the relentless, the sigil, and the Icon of Ecstasy. While he's neck and neck with a nurgle lord for resilience against small arms fire, against higher strength shots, poison, and grav guns he wins out.

Sure he starts as a power sword lord with a few extra attacks but give him a while (or some cannon fodder to eat up to power up) and he can take on Abaddon in a fight and win.

Just keep him away from S10 Ap1-2 shooting.

Sorry but even with a fully charged blade of the relentless he still would lose bad to abaddon. The blade of the relentless is just plain bad.

 herpguy wrote:
Sorry but even with a fully charged blade of the relentless he still would lose bad to abaddon. The blade of the relentless is just plain bad.

Slaughterer's Horns, fully charged blade, FnP, Daemonheart, SoC, Combat familiar, a roll on the Crimson slaughter's flat out better warlord table, and probably a two rolls on the boon table (one from boon of mutation, one from killing some sergeant), should be enough to make Abby know he was in a fight since Abby doesn't have the Doomrider wannabe's primary weakness of instant death at Ap2 or better. He and his unit are always going to charge any units Abaddon can join after engaging in some shoot 'em up.

Also with IWND, if he chooses to try shooting Abaddon to death he'll win the very, very, very long and drawn out shootout if only by sheer attrition.

Abaddon usually comes in a landraider, outshooting Abaddon is not hard, 4 tactical marines can outshoot abaddon. but this is a bit off topic.

I find brand on bike/steed does fulfil some important roles that a melee setup doesn't: people on level 2 ruins or bubble wrapped shooty units or killing scoring units the turn you arrive from outflank. I do agree that its better for a budget option though... But still a sigil and a powerfist isn't that much when you have already bought a lord, bike, brand and shooty biker retinue.

i agree though about spawn, wouldn't put a brand in if you are running with spawn.

 Kain wrote:

fully charged blade

Good luck charging your blade when you either need 2 turns getting there and not get shot to death in the process or when you face something like a fmc or waveserpent spam. Blade of relentless is fine for fun non-competitive games but don't hope to charge it if you meet something more or less competitive nowadays. PF+LC, sigil is a trustly combo tested with time.