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So my primary army is Blood Angels, meaning my only HQ option is Mephiston, meaning my oponents know to load up on 2+ armor save dudes (his one weakness)

SO

I need to add some serious anti-2+ save firepower to my army.

I have a small IG / astra militarum detachment (Baal PDF or Blood Angels serfs, however you wanna look at it) that I just got a leman russ excecutioner for that I'm going to stick a tank commander in and run in a squadron with a normal leman russ.

My question is, how do you guys load out your executioner?

Side sponson plasmas are tempting, because five plasma blast templates from one model? Holy moly! But I also sort of feel like that's overkill against most infantry squads. Also, five gets hot rolls a turn means I have a 41% change of losing a hull point. I'd have my normal leman russ up front to soak up shots, and I like using an enginseer w/ 5 servitors in my list, but still, I feel like I'd blow myself up in half the games I play.

Multi-meltas are cheaper, almost as good against 2+ sv dudes (bye bye mega-nobz and non-nurgle oblits), and give me some anti vehicle punch, so that's what I'm leaning towards.

Then, I'm debating lascannon on the hull vs heavy bolter. I'll be shooting at infantry as often as not, and they won't always be 2+ save infantry, so I'm not sure if it's worth the 10 pts. What do you guys think?

Then, I sort of feel like any other possible upgrade is a waste of points.

Thanks in advance for any advice! I've been playing Blood Angels since the 90s but I'm a super-novice at guard!

If you're worried about get's hot rolls you could pop Pask in there, he has preferred enemy. Though you would need to bring a second Leman russ to make it battle forged. But Pask is a brutal monster in Leman Russes and using him was the only time I felt threatening, he's really expensive to bring though. Plasmacutioner is really popular, but you're rolling get's hot and ordnance so if you roll awful like me it's not really feasible. Your best bet would be to gear your Leman and guard to be the guys to take out those ap 2 weapons, so what are you planning to face when it comes to ap 2 weapons, troops or vehicles?

Peesha, just roll pask in a steel host formation. dont have to waste points on troop tax.


If you are going Executioner you best be going full out with plasma las. 5 plasma per tank gets nuts.
You should just run Pask with punisher, melta sponsons and las cannon for the anti tank and fill out the rest of the formation with single plasmacutioners and call it a day.
Non template weapons are kind of a liability with IG since BS3.



Though i guess you do get stuck with a hydra :(

I find hull lascannons to be Meh on a regular BS 3 Russ. As for MM, they are great if you are not taking Pask, but taking pask is a must i think if you want to make his buddy a PC sponson executioner death machine, and he will rarely blow up with rerolling 1s. This allows you to do punisher pask for all around DESTRUCTION (he kills anything from hordes to land raiders in 24 inches) or a Vanquisher Pask with LC for long range tank killyness. Don't forget about the split fire order, its pretty reliable so you can safely split the Tank Commander and his buddy on their duties.

PS: Isnt Mephiston an MC? Dosent that give him AP2 for free?

Pask only gives preferred enemy if he's the warlord, no?

A divi nation psyker can solve this problem though.

Also Steel Host is not a small allied detachment.

Steel host hands out the PE (EVERYTHING!) rather than 1 codex from the codex.

Divination cast for twinlink is still 2 WC so not really a guarantee.

Steel Host still gets you a boat load of front armor av14 which is a nice compliment to assaulty BA.

Wow, I never stopped to consider how handy preferred enemy is on tanks, tbh. Was planning on going a regular commander to keep things cheap, but now I kind of want to go Pask...
Steel host is nice, since I'm the sort of chump who actually owns a hydra (scratchbuilt one back in the day), but I only have two leman russes, I'd need another three.
Also, I'm looking more for a force to compliment my blood angels, not the other way around, steel host is like 800 dang points, so I'd need to be playing an 1850 point game w/o knights or inquisitors to have my army be more than 50% blood angels.

Also, no, Meph isn't a monstrous creature :(. He gets smash if you go biomancy and roll iron arm, but that's not reliable. His stats put most monstrous creatures to shame, but he is just a man, and without iron arm his force sword is AP3, so if he gets surrounded by terminators/obliterators/meganobz he is at best tarpitted, but probably dead.

Also, I was planning on making my plasmacutioner the tank that my commander is in, so my cheapish normal leman russ can absorb shots.

Basically what I have is, a Leman Russ with a normal battle cannon turret and a hull heavy bolter.
Then an unbuilt leman russ, and a forge world executioner plasma turret.
The tank commander model I built is a conversion, so I could use him like pask or a normal commander, and he's magnetized, so I can just stick him on whatever tank I want.

I think I'm going to go with the commander on the plasmacutioner with MM sponsons and a hull lascannon, along with the normal leman russ. If I can spare the points, I'll make him pask.

That's only 365-405 pts, add another 100-200pts for a veteran squad depending on whether or not they're in a chim, and bam, there's my guard detachment. Still PLENTY of points for my blood angels.

I'll build my spare turret into a vanquisher battle cannon, so if I ever REALLY need to go anti-armor, then I can swap turrets and now have my tank commander in a tank with a vanq, lascannon, and two MMs, along with a normal leman russ.

If I get a punisher in the future (I really want one...), then I can stick my 'pask' in that, and if I get two more tanks after that I can start running steel host.

Thanks for the input guys! I feel like I learned a lot.


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Also it'd be pretty easy for me to go pask, take two veteran squads, make pask my warlord, and then take a full CAD of blood angels. I like having an excuse to not make Meph my warlord, because I don't care how powerful he is, you have to play so aggressively with him, and he can't join squads, so I end up giving up that 'slay the warlord' point quite a bit :( .

You could probably convert up the battle cannon into a punisher easy.

Rolling 20 hot d6s is awesome with tank hunter and stuff btw .

But without PE its gona be a little difficult with the executioner gets hot. and it does happen some times.

Another cheap fix would be a ADL with Ammo dump. should mitigate it a bit or just lv1 pysker and hope for the best. (also nice making bunkers for your tanks)

Yeah, I realize running a normal tank commander in the executioner is a lil risky, but if just his turret gets hot then there's only a 17% chance of me taking a point of damage a turn. I can live with that considering I'll have another leman russ in the squadron to absorb hits and I'm partial to enginseers so I often as not take to the field with one of those dudes.

I do have an ADL and a couple of ammo dumps, which isn't a bad idea for situations where I won't be able to use pask as my warlord and I'll have enough blood angels on the field to not have to worry about advancing to take points with my russes

and yeah, now that I think about it, I do have a spare bit from a vengeance weapon battery that would really make the cannon look like a punisher cannon... actually might do that...

like, I realize, a punisher with pask, twin meltas and a lascannon is super effective, but part of me still wants to just buy a punisher, give it three heavy bolters and a stubber just to have a single tank that can put out 32 shots...


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Also, I feel like pointing out that my converted tank commander is smoking a cigar with a lighter that's producing a gigantic flame, so all in all, placing him in a tank with a giant souped up plasma cannon, twin meltas and a lascannon just feels right since he's got a serious robert duvall apocalypse now 'i love the smell of napalm in the morning' vibe going on

 Walnuts wrote:
Yeah, I realize running a normal tank commander in the executioner is a lil risky, but if just his turret gets hot then there's only a 17% chance of me taking a point of damage a turn. I can live with that considering I'll have another leman russ in the squadron to absorb hits and I'm partial to enginseers so I often as not take to the field with one of those dudes.

I do have an ADL and a couple of ammo dumps, which isn't a bad idea for situations where I won't be able to use pask as my warlord and I'll have enough blood angels on the field to not have to worry about advancing to take points with my russes

and yeah, now that I think about it, I do have a spare bit from a vengeance weapon battery that would really make the cannon look like a punisher cannon... actually might do that...

like, I realize, a punisher with pask, twin meltas and a lascannon is super effective, but part of me still wants to just buy a punisher, give it three heavy bolters and a stubber just to have a single tank that can put out 32 shots...


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, I feel like pointing out that my converted tank commander is smoking a cigar with a lighter that's producing a gigantic flame, so all in all, placing him in a tank with a giant souped up plasma cannon, twin meltas and a lascannon just feels right since he's got a serious robert duvall apocalypse now 'i love the smell of napalm in the morning' vibe going on

That man belongs on a hellhound, make it so!

 generalchaos34 wrote:


That man belongs on a hellhound, make it so!

God, if only they had rules for hellhound tank commanders.