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I'm ging to start 30k and I'm leaning towards Iron Warriors.

I'm looking for help with starting the army and I'm looking for some input into which units to buy. I'll get the betrayal at Calth and use them all as IW and convert the terminators to Tyrant Siege Terminators.
Than I'm thinking to buy 2-3 Basilisk, get an Apothecary Primaris to go with the terminators and attach the War/Battlesmith to this unit.

So I'd end up with

Warsmith
Apotechary

5 Tyrant Siege Terminators.

3x 10 Marines.

Dreadnought

2x Basilisk.


After that I'd be looking to at the Typhon Siege tank (Or is the glaive better?) and maybe Peturabo.
Did I understand correctly that because of the warsmith I can add a unit of THallax to the army? Is a Thanatar also possible?
Did I understand it correctly that I can only use one artillery support unit? So I'd kind of have to choose between Medusa and Basilisk?
Anyway looking for input if this is a good start/playable army.

Thanks in advance,


EDIT: Also, what HH books do I need to buy to be able to play IW?

Not an expert on IW, but these are the books you need: http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/en-GB/The-Horus-Heresy-Legion-Astartes-Gamers-Collection

Since you are buying the way you said with the set then the PA guys are fine. I use IW as a gunline army with termies in transports. Typically
Tyr- the commander that is a loyalist in PA
5 Siege Termies
5 Siege Termies
Siege master in cata armor(with the Tyrants)
Spartan
Land Raider
5 cata termies
5 cata termies
5 Iron Havocs with missile launchers
Bastion
Caestus Assault Ram
Sicarion
Glaive

Benefit of 30k, you can build your army any way you like it and with skill not do too bad in non-competitive settings. The RoW for IW is horribad and I dont recommend it.

Why are you bothering with a dreadnought when the set comes with a Contemptor? Recommend either picking a set of Kheres Assault cannon from FW or making them yourself and run it as a Mortis.

As someone else said go for some iron haocs, the ability to mix and match heavy weapons in a 10x strong squad is awesome, and they come with tank hunter and reduce cover.

Col. Dash wrote:
Since you are buying the way you said with the set then the PA guys are fine. I use IW as a gunline army with termies in transports. Typically
Tyr- the commander that is a loyalist in PA
5 Siege Termies
5 Siege Termies
Siege master in cata armor(with the Tyrants)
Spartan
Land Raider
5 cata termies
5 cata termies
5 Iron Havocs with missile launchers
Bastion
Caestus Assault Ram
Sicarion
Glaive

Benefit of 30k, you can build your army any way you like it and with skill not do too bad in non-competitive settings. The RoW for IW is horribad and I dont recommend it.

Why are you bothering with a dreadnought when the set comes with a Contemptor? Recommend either picking a set of Kheres Assault cannon from FW or making them yourself and run it as a Mortis.

Yeah I meant the contempor, sorry! Besides Calth and now the 2 red books I have bought anything else yet, just trying to get my head around 30k so I don't buy things that are useless.

Looking at your army... thats about 3 or 4k points? I like your armour saturation.

Are the field artillery not good?
What is better, Basilisk or Medusa?
Any Ad Mech units I should look at?

Few comments for you, though I've not played against Iron Warriors (yet!).

There's nothing really useless in a 30k list. Somethings may be overcosted somewhat, but nothing useless in the traditional codex sense. Saying that, Contemptors are one of the units considered overcosted and you'd be better off spending your points on a Deredeo or the new Leviathan Dreadnought!

Rapier Batteries are excellent - Quad Mortar and Graviton Cannon ones being the most lethal (against Infantry and Vehicles respectively). Though the quad heavy bolter is frowned on, I love mine. The are dirt cheap and a battery of 3 chucks out 18 re-roll to hit Heavy Bolter shots. Command squads hate it (I've shredded 3 of them completely in games so far).

Basilisk is a solid choice and you can run them in squadrons of 1-3 in a single slot. Medusas are good as well, higher strength and shorter range. Make sure you get Nuncio Vox's for your Tactical Squads which will help you with barraging.

Consider Tactical Support Squads (with Volkites!) and Iron Havocs to beef up your infantry (Autocannons and Missile Launchers chew up predators nicely - something you'll see a lot of)

Typhon is a solid choice (and you can a have a squadron of two per 1 lord of war slot, points permitting). Generally, in 30k games, most problems can be solved with the Application of Graviton Weapons or Typhons!

Consider the Praevarin Iron Warrior character. He allows you to run a single HQ with a maximum of 5 Castellax armed with Darkfire cannons.

Col. Dash wrote:
Since you are buying the way you said with the set then the PA guys are fine. I use IW as a gunline army with termies in transports. Typically
Tyr- the commander that is a loyalist in PA
5 Siege Termies
5 Siege Termies
Siege master in cata armor(with the Tyrants)
Spartan
Land Raider
5 cata termies
5 cata termies
5 Iron Havocs with missile launchers
Bastion
Caestus Assault Ram
Sicarion
Glaive

Benefit of 30k, you can build your army any way you like it and with skill not do too bad in non-competitive settings. The RoW for IW is horribad and I dont recommend it.

Why are you bothering with a dreadnought when the set comes with a Contemptor? Recommend either picking a set of Kheres Assault cannon from FW or making them yourself and run it as a Mortis.

What ROW did you use to make this list?

Pride of the Legion. I think its 2.5k which is fairly normal points for my area. I play it when I want to play something totally different from my drop pod/terror assault Night Lords.

Iron warriors are a solid Legion, not the best but solid.

They take no morale tests against shooting, this is quite powerful as fearless units are very rare in 30k, they also get wrecker on all grenade types, so melta bombs and krak grenades are a must (krak grenades being free anyway)

Tyrant siege terminators are a very good unit, combi bolters, power fists and a cyclone missile launcher on a 2+/4++ platform is worth 50pts before you even add the special rules.

Iron havoc are a fairly decent unit but are quite squishy in 30k, cover is a must for them of course and they work best with high Str low ap weapons firing at units in cover, slightly better than normal heavy support squads but not by much.

Iron warriors work best as an infantry heavy army with a couple of heavy vehicles to back them up, advancing to the mid table and pouring out the firepower causing morale tests and ignoring them in return.

I'd suggest 2 units of siege terminators, 2 units of havocs 45 tactical marines with 3 apothecaries to buff them, 1 doredo and 2 Mortis contemptor or 2 standard ones, the doredo can hand out a 4++ to the Mortis contemptors with the automatic pavise.

All in all treat iron warriors as an attrition high fire rate army and you can't go wrong.

 Formosa wrote:
Iron warriors are a solid Legion, not the best but solid.

Tyrant siege terminators are a very good unit, combi bolters, power fists and a cyclone missile launcher on a 2+/4++ platform is worth 50pts before you even add the special rules.

Iron havoc are a fairly decent unit but are quite squishy in 30k, cover is a must for them of course and they work best with high Str low ap weapons firing at units in cover, slightly better than normal heavy support squads but not by much.

Iron warriors work best as an infantry heavy army with a couple of heavy vehicles to back them up, advancing to the mid table and pouring out the firepower causing morale tests and ignoring them in return.

Yeah I originally choose them to because the colors look cool and I want to use some of the big tanks in 30k! (Glaive and the Typhon would be my first choices). I love their terminators but like what you said about the havocs, I'm scared they're to squishy.

I also really love the artillery so I'll definitely be adding some of those, the Vox calling it in makes it all the more exciting, I love this little synergy + realism. The extra bonus is that everything in Betrayal at Calth seems usefull! (It's pretty easy to find 5x cyclone launcher for me).

I'm thinking in the future I'll add some ad mech. Specifically looking at the Cestellax with Dark Fire cannons, seem good counter vs. Spartans. At first I thought I could join a character to them to give them tank hunter but now realized they are MC's so they can't join Makes me a little less excited because they will have to stay close to the warlord because of the Ad Mech special rule. This means I'd have to keep 2 expensive units together at all time (castallax + warlord + Terminators).

 zedmeister wrote:


Rapier Batteries are excellent - Quad Mortar and Graviton Cannon ones being the most lethal (against Infantry and Vehicles respectively). Though the quad heavy bolter is frowned on, I love mine. The are dirt cheap and a battery of 3 chucks out 18 re-roll to hit Heavy Bolter shots. Command squads hate it (I've shredded 3 of them completely in games so far).

Typhon is a solid choice (and you can a have a squadron of two per 1 lord of war slot, points permitting).

Consider the Praevarin Iron Warrior character. He allows you to run a single HQ with a maximum of 5 Castellax armed with Darkfire cannons.

These are interesting! How do the Gravitons do vs. the Spartans? (I'm horrible scared of Flareshield+ceramite+spartan rushing my army). Actually, what (fluffy) solution could I use to stop a spartan like that?
Should I look at some of the Tank Hunters? (The vindicator & Sicarin have tank hunter versions right?)
This Narik guy looks really cool, I'll be sure to include him + Castellax in 2k games, seems to solve most of my problems and keeps to my theme!
Happy what you wrote about the Typhon because that is one bad ass tank that I'll be looking to play in bigger games (2k/25k)

Thanks for all the help so far guys!