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G'day everyone,

I am currently making my first Horus Heresy army.
I feel like I should take a form of AA in my army, currently missing 181 pts any suggestions?
This is my current list:

Age of Darkness FOC:

HQ
Lord Marshall (180 pts)


Auxilia Tactical Command Section (272 pts)


Troops
Auxilia Infantry Tercio (507 pts):


Auxilia Infantry Tercio (935 pts)


Fast Attack
Auxilia Leman Russ Strike Squadron (550 pts)


Heavy Support
Auxilia Malcador Heavy Tank (310pts)


LOW:
Auxilia Stormhammer Assault Tank (564 pts)

Other than small nitpicks (the HQ squad needs double melta, not a pointless grenade launcher) the main issue is that your second troops unit isn't legal. The flamer squads can only be taken after a lasrifle section has been taken. The storm sections don't count towards this requirement.

I'd probably recommend swapping them for another veletaris - if you're taking a mech-ed up force, veletaris are good for close-quarter objective taking; being able to out-shoot astartes at close range comes as a nasty shock to the power armour brigade.

AA isn't critical. You have a lot of pintle multilasers, so can throw a lot of snapshots into the air if you have to. More importantly, your army is tough, has a lot of warm bodies and a lot of good armour. Flyers aren't that lethal (they're scary but not devastating).

If you're concerned, spending 100 points on a pair of quad-guns assigned to those aegis lines should put enough flak in the air to persuade ordnance-carrying lightnings to jnk, which takes their missile and bomb loads out of the equation even if you don't kill them.

I'd agree that if you're going to take assault weapons on your command squad, take two* - but grenade launchers are fine. Solar Auxilia get tempest grenades with Haywire, if I remember right, so they're actually probably better antitank than melta weapons given that most things you really, really need to kill will have armoured-bloody-ceramite and sodding flare shields.

I'd also consider using your third HQ choice for a tank commander. He fits perfectly in either your stormhammer (because a BS4 overwatch-capable superheavy is funny) or - arguably even more effectively - the malcador.

Because you've set it up as basically a huge predator annihilator (albeit with better frontal armour and a faster move), then it pairs well with the tank commander's ability - going from BS3 to BS4 with tank hunter will double the amount of damage you put down on AV13-14 with those lascannons. Since that's the main unit you've got able to put holes in a mortis/deredeo dreadnought, or scorpius whirlwind, or whatever, without getting close, improving it is a good idea.



* I understand that the modelled set only comes with one, so it's not necessarily achievable!

locarno24 wrote:
Solar Auxilia get tempest grenades with Haywire, if I remember right, so they're actually probably better antitank than melta weapons given that most things you really, really need to kill will have armoured-bloody-ceramite and sodding flare shields.

Oh yeah, I forgot about the tempest grenades (other armies don't get them). Definitely double grenade launcher over double melta then.

G'day again,

Thanks for your quick replies. I have taken both your recommendations by giving another grenade launcher to the Command Squad and taking the Tank commander.
I didn't realise that Flamer sections have minimum requirements to be taken, so I have moved both Veletaris squads to Elites choices and split my Lasrifle Sections for the 2 Tercios.
The AA question is actually because I like to play my 30k list in standard games of 40k with my mates, so usually fliers are a small problem. So I took 2 Quad guns.

Thanks again for your help.

redbeast001 wrote:
I have moved both Veletaris squads to Elites choices

This is a very bad idea, unless you're only playing in 40k games against 40k armies. Under the 30k rules/missions only troops can score objectives, so moving a unit out of troops is almost always a bad idea.

 Peregrine wrote:

redbeast001 wrote:
I have moved both Veletaris squads to Elites choices

This is a very bad idea, unless you're only playing in 40k games against 40k armies. Under the 30k rules/missions only troops can score objectives, so moving a unit out of troops is almost always a bad idea.

Brain fart. I could just make another Tercio for them.

Well, there is the option to take them as elites with some nice bonuses if you take the higher-tier HQ, which is great if you're playing by 40k rules/missions where all units can score. It's just in 30k that the upgrade option is a really bad one, since it costs you a scoring unit.