Legion Rite of War

This post will provide links to each page that will cover the rite of war available to the Sons of Horus, this will include the legion tactica, specialist detachment, unique prime benefit, gambit and the armoury of the legion

Ever on the offensive, The Sons of Horus never wasted an opportunity to attack the foe, To simply best the foe was not enough for they had to be utterly defeated before victory could be claimed in the name of Horus Lupercal.

Legion Tactica: Death Dealers

The legion tactica for the Sons of Horus is death dealers and its effect is simple, when you would go to volley fire you fire at full ballistic skill instead of snap shots. Its boring but somewhat useful? The issue is volley fire relies on having an assault weapon which most ranged weapons available to the astartes army list are not, and it doesn’t apply to vehicles. Most marine units will have the bolt pistol at least so if they get charged your enemy will cop a surprise volley from the unit, and it makes it somewhat worthwhile to upgrade your units to have better pistols, like maybe a segreant with a plasma or disintegrator pistol. Implacable advance can allow non heavy weapons to be volley fired, which is neat and common on terminators so you will get good milage out of terminators.

The easiest counter to this ability is to reach base to base contact using your set up move which skips the volley fire step all together so your opponent might just not even allow you to use this trait on a strong unit like a full 10 stack of termies with combi meltas. I’m not a huge fan of this trait but once in a while it just murders a random unit when 20 tactical marines whip out the self defense bolt pistol or an obscure unit has implacable advance + a powerful ranged weapon.

Legion Advanced Reaction: Warrior Pride

Warrior’s pride is the advanced reaction for the legion and its a bit of a stinker, despite the cool name this reaction does not give you any close combat buff or a heroic moment, instead allowing you for the cost of one reaction point to decline a challenge from a lower weapon skill opponent with no negatives to attacking or combat resolution… This is bad, for the most part. If my weapon skill is higher than yours I want to be in a challenge and most likely winning or forcing you to decline so you suffer from the disgraced status effect. The only real niche this has is declining master sergeants from soaking up all the attacks from your praetor but the issue is out of your 4 available characters, most likely only one or at most two will be higher than weapon skill 5, which is an issue because all other legion officers will be the same, solar auxilia characters are basically free food in a challenge, mechanicum tech priests are worth killing in a challenge to turn off their buffs to the unit and likely the only good mental stats in the unit and a custodian will more than likely be equal or higher weapon skill than you. This is just terrible and a waste of a reaction point. Unless you bring Horus Lupercal who sits at a disgusting weapon skill 8/9 depending if he has ascended or not, so declining an honourable duel from a random sergeant might be worth it if Horus can deal more damage to the rest of the unit, but Horus is not likely to be fielded by most players due to being a primarch level character who costs a cool 140 euros.

Legion Gambit: Merciless Strike

Compared to the advanced reaction the gambit is pretty solid and broadly applicable. Merciless strike gives your weapon phage: (toughness) for the duration of the challenge round. This is handy as reducing toughness can make weapons such as paragon blades or carosan axes more efficent in following rounds of combat, or sneakily using a master sargent to stab an unexpecting character in the back and reduce the toughness of them for when a real fighter turns up as phage lasts for the whole duration of the game. Its a mean tactic and fits the motif of a horde of barbarians winning through any means necessary.

Legion Specialist Detatchment: Supremacy cadre

This detachment I’m happy to say rocks!, Its simple but criminally effective, Its an auxiliary detachment so were going to be able to bring multiple, the detachment itself grants you two prime troops slots, a heavy assault slot and an elites slot. Its simple but basically pushes you to do what the army is pushing you to do, basic troops choices supported by more elite combat units. The two prime slots is handy for including a logistical benefit, aka the land raider your termies will probably want to ride in, or one of those elusive dreadnoughts. 10/10 all your friends will be jealous by how easy this makes army building as elite and heavy assault slots tend to be annoying to get a hold of as elites are only in an apex detachment and heavy assault are only two per shock assault detachment

Prime Benefit: Martial Supremacy

And after the success of supremacy cadre we couldn’t stay on the high, Martial Supremacy exists… technically. Its limited to units in the elites slot (prime elite slots are hard to find) and all it does is give a model in the unit the champion subtype and duellist edge (1) on their melee weapons which grants the user +1 initiative in challenges which will put you on par with normal officers and faster than mechanicum or auxilia officers. This is objectively worse than master sergeant but this has the neat quirk of not requiring a sergeant sub type model in the unit which justaerin do not, so its basically making a pseudo sergeant for your justaerin who generally don’t have any other prime benefits they need as they cant use combat veterans and true believers is a bit redundant. It okay I guess but id rather use the prime slot to give assault veterans a master sergeant or veteran breachers true believers

Legion Armoury

This section will cover the legion armory, these are weapons exclusive to the Sons of Horus that can be equipped to any unit that is eligible, we will start with the bread and butter, overall the sons of Horus armory is a bit mediocre and definitely got dialed in from last edition. All these options are available in two kits, the Sons of Horus armory kit from forge world and the decurion Lanius kit.

Banestrike Ammo

Banestrike bolters are bolters loaded with a special armor piercing round developed by the alpha legion, given to the Sons of Horus to enable them to quickly destroy power armor and even terminator armour. They were prone to overheating and damaging bolters more quickly when fired in volume and had a shorter range. In game this translates to them loosing 6 inches of range, going up from Ap6 to Ap4, staying at strength 4 and gaining breaching 6+, this is a neat little upgrade as it totally ignores armour saves worse than 4+ and can become Ap2 on a 6+ to threaten even terminators.

Banestrike bolters are two shots and may be purchased for veteran tactical squads at 5 points per model, replacing their normal bolters, power armored characters and sergeants may replace a normal bolter with a banestrike bolter for 5 points each. I wouldn’t bother doing it to characters but I am a big fan of large veteran squads of banestrike bolters. Chieftains come with these base.

Banestrike combi bolters are the exact same stats, except 4 shots and may only be purchased by terminator sergeants and characters equipped with a combi bolter for 5 points, its whatever, neat on characters who end up rolling with the justaerin who get them for free anyways.

Carosan Weapons

Carosan weapons are an upgrade for models with a power weapon, these weapons represent a cthonian pattern of power weapon, the lore for these is up in the air, I assume its just a fancier version of existing weapons.

Up first is the less offensive of the two the Carosan Power axe, its a power axe with shred 6+ for 5 points on top of a normal power axe, in my opinion they aren’t very good outside of aesthetically the model for them looks good and I guess if you have 5 extra points a consul can take one and pretend he has a good melee weapon.

And in another instance of previously good siege of cthonia supplement items getting nerfed we have the carosan tabar, a massive two handed axe that looks scarier than it actually is. for 10 points over a normal power weapon you get a initiative -2, S+2, Ap3, D1 shred 5+ and breaching 5+ weapon, this costs way too much for what it is, which is a worse thunder hammer. A thunder hammer costs the same, is S+3, Ap2, 2 damage flat, and is the same initiative -2, the only reason you ever run this thing is because you had one made from last edition or the niche ability to take them on sergeants for some units that can not normally take a thunder hammer

Decurion Lanius