Horus Heresy 2e Review: Kytan Daemon Engine

Warpstone Flux Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

5/5 stars. An excellent Lords of War for those who want an alternative to Khorne dedicated knights.  

Background.

Somewhere between a Ceratus Knight chassis combined with a blood thirster, the Kytan is everything that the demented Taghmata of Sarum could have ever have dreamed of - or had nightmares about. A big choppy axe for chopping things and a quality dakka gun would make even the most jaded Ork weep. 

Strengths.

The gatling cannon is very reasonable here and is similar to the standard castigator armament for comparison. Heavy 18 at S=6 is nothing to be ashamed of even at BS=3. 

The stat line is very reasonable overall, but the stand out is that the weapon skill equals six. This reinforces the primary role of the Kytan: to lunge into combat as quickly as possible. Heedless slaughter will help with this, but the Brutal = 3 axe is where the real shine happens. Combine with special rules like hammer of wrath and rampage, and this is a chaos knight equivalent who is capable of tearing up other armies that don't have an answer to either running out of the way, or an equal counter threat. 

Weaknesses.

You could say BS=3, or the side and rear armour being 12 are a weakness. You may be correct. But you'd also expect the controlling player to get into melee as soon as possible to mitigate all of these facts on the ground! 

Overall.

Really excellent, and capable of near unmatched board control in melee. It is one to watch out for if you are playing against it since it will really (really) hurt. This is also the reason why I'm giving it a rare 5/5 star rating. 

Wargames Gallery: Termite Pest Control

The Alpha Legion emerge from a termite, but the Iron Warriors move in position to conduct some pest control. 

[Spoilers: those thunder hammers and chain fists make short work of the termite and their support squad inside it.]

Horus Heresy 2e Review: Aetheric Dominion

Warpstone Flux Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

3/5 stars. I wish that this rule was much more extensive. 

Aetheric Dominion.

The special rule "Aetheric Dominion" is given to dark mechanicum forces and represents the influence of one of the Warp's powers that be. 

Clearly within a single unit, there can only be one such dominion selected. And that unit cannot join another that has a different one. This is all well and good. 

What bothers me here is that in The Martian Civil War, there are only two - yes TWO - dominions to select between. This is more than disappointing. At least give us the core four chaos powers please? But no. 

Heedless Slaughter. 

Registering as the Khorne influence, the Heedless Slaughter dominion is to do as the title suggests. This rule forces you to charge within 8 inches of an enemy, but you can game play over ride this by shooting at a further away target and thus making the charge invalid. In addition, you get +1 charge distance, combat resolution, and sweeps which are all very appropriate. Its just the shooting that perhaps should be controlled a bit more arguably?

Malevolent Artifice. 

I see this as the Tzeentch one, but it seems to not quite be wholly appropriate either. The idea here is that the warp twists human invention to use it against them. If S<T from an incoming attack then you get to re-roll your armour save. I quite like this for engines with a good toughness value (at least better than a plasma shot?). Otherwise if you primarily have engines with a lower profile, then it might be a bit meh. Sure, sometimes you get lots of bolt gun fire incoming. But most of the time it'll be things like las cannons targeting your engines, so I suspect this dominion is a bit useless. 

Horus Heresy 2e Review: Scions of the Dark Forges

Warpstone Flux Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

3/5 stars. New warlord traits for your dark mechanicum traitor forces. Some are sound, others are very limited. 

Scion of Cyclothrathe.
This forge world has plentiful electromagnetic storms which the mechanicum regularly shielded against. This gives your corrupted engines an improved resistance against haywire attacks (there's a table with 50% of the results being no effect which is nice). Admittedly, this is very limited, but also very fluffy. 

Scion of Xana II. 

This provides an advanced reaction once per battle. This improves an invulnerable save by one pip before making any rolls for that corrupted engine. This is very good and much more powerful, as well as being fluffy for the esoteric modifications that were regularly made by this forge world. 

Scion of Retlaxi. 

I could not point to Retlaxi on a map of the Imperium, but it is a secondary world that resupplies Legio Mortis. Basically when you take the last wound or hull point, it gives out a blast of S=5+1d3 in a random radius which also causes pinning. To me this is a bit of a Pyrrhic maneuver, but its okay so long as you keep in mind it also hits friendly units. 

Scion of Sarum. 

Take blood slaughterers as troops (they handily get line) and also as fast attack. Welcome to the World Eaters resupply world basically. This is nice, but clearly needs you to assemble a dedicated army. 

Overall. 

The default choice is likely to be Xana II for most players unless you have a particular Khorne orientation in which case you're looking at Sarum. Retlaxi is dangerous to yourself, and Cyclothrathe is situational but could be good. 

Horus Heresy 2e Review: Automata Malefica Rules

Warpstone Flux Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

3/5 stars. Average overall, but good in parts! The automata malefica are the corrupted engines of traitor forge worlds and were created in great numbers during the Heresy. 

Praevians.
Arguably access to corrupted engines impacts the legiones astartes more than the mechanicum, but the chief way in which to gain access to them is via a traitor praevian. This is very simple: you take 1 or more praevian, and you get a maximum of 1 (and only 1) corrupted engine choice to include. This engine has to occupy its own force organisation slot (i.e., not the HQ like the praevian). This is very reasonable.

Corrupted. 

The corrupted rule as applied to engines does several things. Firstly there is Fear at a (1) level, but this can be incremented if it already has fear. Reflectively, they are also immune to fear themselves and instead of failing morale checks just takes d3 wounds instead.

Force weapons against them gain instant death, but its not really instant death, it is just 1d3 wounds instead. They could have just said that, so I'm not sure why there's this circular argument in the rules about it being called instant death to be honest. Oh well. 

Malefic Aegis. 

This one is much more straight forward: its just the invulnerable save. Again, not sure why they can't just call it that, but probably to do with the stacking of other invulnerable saves. Only cyber familiars and the like can modify these. 

Overall. Not too bad, just a bit clunky on the rule names to be honest!

Endryd Haar Painted in World Eaters Colours

Today, I finished up painting Endryd Haar of the Blackshields. But not quite as he became later on in the Horus Heresy. To be candid, I'm not a massive fan of the all black colour scheme of the Fangs of the Emperor Blackshields. So I wanted something different!

This is Endryd Haar in his original World Eaters colours - white armour and blue shoulder pads and back pack. Naturally, the most fun part of my method of painting the World Eaters is the chipping, weathering, damage, and splatter. I deliberately tried to not go over the top with the splatter since less is generally more when using this approach. And here it has worked rather nicely. I've done my usual two-step approach. This involved flicking red contrast paint at selected angles on to the otherwise finished miniatures, and then picking out come appropriate locations for the blood god technical paint to be applied. There's even a kill-count decal applied to the terawatt power fist here just to round things off. 

Of course, this kind of half obliterates the plan to have a distinct Blackshields force. That's fine. The new plan is to use my World Eaters detachment AS the Blackshields. The head canon here is that they're far too busy being angry at their former legion to re-paint their armour. Obviously. Hence, this is very early stage Blackshields, and probably with the Panoply of Old Oath. Somehow, I think I can make this work. Regardless, if I'm not using this miniature for Blackshields, he is obviously a character for the World Eaters either in a squad, or as a Praetor himself. He'll fit right in!