Iron Warriors Rite of War: Hammer of Olympia

Macca here, and today I want to talk about the Iron Warriors and their Rite of War, The Hammer of Olympia. I will preface this by saying that this is one of the BEST Rites of War, as the negatives are almost all positives.

So, where do I begin?

Legion Special Rules

• The Bitter End: Your opponent (not you) may force full 6 game turns rather than rolling for random length. Just like the Imperial Fists.
• Wrack and Ruin: Iron Warriors do not suffer morale tests from shooting attacks and may re-roll failed Pinning tests. All grenades and melta bombs gain Wrecker.

These rules are HUGE. The ability to ignore morale from shooting casualties and re-roll pinning makes the Iron Warriors formidable at holding objectives. Nothing short of their annihilation will move them off an objective. At Inferno III, one tactical squad suffered the sustained firepower of half a mechanicum force and endured for 3 turns on top of an objective in cover, scoring me precious Victory Points.

Legion Unique HQ

Warsmith: A free Praetor upgrade that forces him to be the Warlord if Perturabo isn't around and gives an extra VP if slain. In exchange, it gains Stubborn and gives up a Warlord trait for Shatter Defenses (lower a chosen terrain piece's cover save by 1). Can't use a Jump pack, Bike or Jetbike, but can be upgraded with Battlesmith + Servo-arm combo for 35 points.

Rite of War: The Hammer of Olympia - Masters of siege warfare and attrition tactics, the Iron Warriors favour the use of murderous firepower as their principal agency of war, and are renowned for their use of heavy armour and fortifications, spurning vainglorious ideals of personal combat and valour for the brutal determiation to achieve victory by any means necessary. this culminated in tactical formations such as that which became known as the Hammer of Olympia; designed to carry out an unyielding close range attack and shatter the strongest enemy defence line under a weight of armoured warriors and hurricane of fire.

• Hail Of Fire: After firing a Rapid Fire weapon, a unit with the Legiones Astartes (Iron Warriors) rule may declare an assault as long as they haven't used Fury of the Legion, counting as a Disorganized Charge. I love this tactic, you can shoot a unit, hitting them on 3's and wounding (generally) on 4+ whilst if you charged, you would only get 4's to hit. Also, 2 bolter shots is better than 1 bonus charging attack, and if you can wear your enemy down before charging them, you'll do better in the long run (especially against Raptors or Reavers who gain bonuses for outnumbering in assault). Bonus points if you rapid fire plasma guns from a tactical support squad and then charge...
• Sheathed in Steel: All Tanks and Walkers gain Extra Armor for free. Not only does this save points, but since some walkers can't take extra armour, it's even better. The best thing here is that you're getting an upgrade which is normally seen as "a good choice but maybe a waste of points", but since it's free it's excellent.
• Siege Engineers: Can take an additional Heavy Support choice, which is freaking fantastic. Seriously, 4 heavy support options? In a big game, that's a Basilisk/Medusa Squadron, a Deredeo and a pair of Sicarians, just waiting to fire ALL THE DAKKA.
  
  Restrictions:
  
• A Warsmith or Siege Breaker must be used as compulsory HQ choice - A Warsmith is awesome if the enemy is taking fortifications, and the option of a cortex controller opens up Castellax, Thallax, Vorax etc. as an optional Heavy Support option. Yes, you want to have a unit of darkfire cannon armed Castellax manning your Aegis line. Also, a Warsmith shattering enemy defences is always desireable.
  The Siege Breaker is a great option as he allows your Medusa Squadron to take phosphex shells, and he grants Wrecker and Tank Hunter to the ranged attacks of any unit he joins. I suggest attaching him to Siege Tyrants.
• Must take more Heavy Support units than Fast Attack units. As they say on 1D4Chan: "If you think this is a penalty then you shouldn't be playing Iron Warriors. Also, doesn't matter since you get 4 heavy slots. If you wanted lots of flyers remember Caestii, Fire Raptors and Kharybdii are HS too. If you took a normal Praetor, mount him in a jetbike along his Command squad (who use 0 slots), take Shrapnel Bolts and go make up for the lost Fast Attack choice."
• Must take an additional compulsory Troops choice. If you have Erasmus Golg in your force, this could be a Terminator squad, freeing up precious elite slots for more Siege Tyrants, Rapiers and Contemptors.
• Cannot take an allied SPACE MARINE LEGION detachment. Meh. You don't need them, worst case, take some Mechanicum allies, and laugh because you have cortex controllers, a Praevian and your army is now more machine than man, twisted and evil.

 

Macca's evil ideas:

So, you know you want to take an army big on firepower. Naturally, since you lack in melee, (except against buildings, seriously, melta bombs with wrecker is PLUS THREE to damage against fortifications!) you want to exploit your superior firepower to Tau like levels. I suggest using a unit of Siege Tyrants with a Siege Breaker attached, for maximum effectiveness, and two units of rapiers; one with graviton cannons and one with heavy bolters running shrapnel bolts. the idea here is simple, Grav Rapiers will screw any vehicle, and the leftover difficult/dangerous patch will bog down heavy infantry (especially Cataphractii type units who cannot run), the Tyrants will mince anything weaker than a Knight Titan, and the Heavy Bolters will fire 24 twin-linked S5 AP5 shots per turn with PINNING. You're a fool if you don't use that in an era with little pinning defence. (not good against Mechanicum or Death Guard, but, meh, chose your battles my young grasshopper, that's why you have Tyrants and 4 heavy choices...)

Which brings me to my next point... Heavy Support. I have suggestions, and they are:

-Predator Squadron with plasma exterminators, for killing heavy infantry,
-Sicarian Battle Tanks, for modest anti-air and excellent anti-skimmer and light armour destruction,
-Sicarian Venators, for when you really REALLY want to kill enemy armour (do note, don't use lascannon sponsons, since the main gun is ordnance, you're better off taking heavy bolters, which instead of two snap-fire lascannons will give you 3 separate heavy bolters if enemy infantry are too close. Bonus points for selecting Shrapnel Bolts for pinning),
-Deredeo, because there is NOTHING better for Anti-Air. (In a pinch, take one with an Atomantic Pavise and stick him with your Siege Tyrants giving them a 2+3++ invul save. Sure, you lose the missiles, which do wreck Rhinos and Fliers, but 2+3++ Tyrants is just pure evil);
-Legion Basilisk/Medusa Squadron. You only get one, so choose wisely.

I hear the voices in my head, "kill them all.."
Uh, no, not those voices, these ones: "Why no spartans for rushing Golg and Terminators up the table?"

Well, because our terminators aren't as strong as enemy terminators in many cases, and due to all the points you have spent on Heavy slots already, you won't be sending much up the battlefield. Instead, I suggest focusing on using your excellent firepower to get the job done. As for actually sending units up the table, Tactical Squads in Rhinos (with their free extra armour) are a great choice, and if the Primarch Perturabo is in the army, you can deep strike terminators anyway, and if your game is big enough, you can take the Tormentor, and you can add all that firepower plus the transport ability to the force.

Fortifications:

If you are taking Kyr Vhalen, you will WANT to take fortifications (he is also a Warsmith, so automatically fulfills two criteria for the Rite of War, as a Master of the Legion and a Warsmith). Kyr will give +1 ballistic skill to a unit of your choice and/or give you +1 to your cover save for one fortification. I suggest a Bastion, Bunker, Aegis Defence Line, or if you're a true bastard, a Plasma Obliterator or Void Shield array.

Really, fortifications are quite optional, but an Aegis line with +1 cover save in front of all your armour is going to make people weep, especially when they realise that they need to kill whole units off for them to no longer threaten objectives. Gotta love that 'no morale against shooting'.

In summary, this is how to use the Rite of War: BUCKETS OF BULLETS!!!

If you want more information on the Iron Warriors in general, check out the episode I guest appeared on of the Eye of Horus Podcast here.

~Macca

IVth Legion Terminators WIP

So, a quick update today,

Here is where the Terminators are at for the IVth Legion. Obviously, Perturabo and the Tyrants aren't pictured, but they do exist, trust me!

Obviously, there are the 3 HQ's I made a few weeks back, Erasmus Golg, Forge Lord and Primus Medicae

There is gold squad, who are painted in the same scheme as the existing terminators in the army. Gold squad is mostly armed with combi-plasma.

Silver squad is painted similar to the Cataphractii Terminator pictured in Book III (also, I put a copy of him below. Note the dark silver armour with bright silver trim. Fun times making that look right...

There is also grey squad... who shouldn't be grey, but I can only paint so fast. There is also a wip banner bearer for a command squad option, his banner is the 40k Grey Knight one where I have filed all the detail off and smoothed it over with putty. Took forever for the record.

I'm digging the colour palette for the plasma blast gun, with burnished barrel and glowing coils.

I heavily weathered the chevrons on the silver squad, which is all hand painted (as you'll see in the close ups). For me, it helps the look.

Yes, that's ALL hand painted, and it is kind of a pain in the ass painting symetrical stripes of black and yellow.

So there you have it, the work in progress shots of the Iron Warrior Cataphractii Terminators, an army I am hoping to debut at Inferno IV with their Primarch at their side.

~Macca

Perturabo... now on YouTube

A new YouTube video from A Galaxy in Flames.

Direct link: https://youtu.be/iG2ArYM6fA8

Also, check out our other pages;

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/agalaxyinflames

Instagram: https://instagram.com/agalaxyinflames/

Or you can watch the video right here.

~Macca

Home Made Damocles Command Tank

Another day, and a fun conversion. today we have my home-made version of a MK I Damocles Command Tank.

The Damocles is an existing kit from Forge World, based on the MK II Rhino chassis. I am thinking of using one in a tournament coming up in October (Inferno IV, in Brisbane. If you're in Australia, do check it out, it's a lot of fun and a great opportunity to meet a bunch of passionate HH hobbyists) and I decided I needed one. Since the kit is around $115 Australian, I thought instead I could convert one rather than pay all that money for a tank I may not need.

Thus, the MK I Damocles was born.

The old red rhino I repainted had textured paint on it, which meant that I had no option, bar completely stripping the textured paint (which is much harder than regular paint, without plastic dissolving solvents) than to paint some dust and mud onto the tracks. So, I painted some mud and dust onto the tracks. It's not ideal, but it's good enough.

I cast myself a mid-size Iron Warrior emblem for the front visor, as well as making a small scroll for the IVth legion on the opposite side. The hazards had to be worked into the vehicle somewhere, so I put them above the slits. I think it's the perfect spot and it actually complements the vehicle, as opposed to painting them into all the inlays on the side.

The tank has a nice Olympian sounding name and this Greek pattern motif throughout. These are off the Minotaurs Transfer Sheet from Forge World, because I felt my freehand wasn't up to the task of such tiny tiny symbols.

The dish itself is a pair of grates off a Nephallim Fighter from 40k, attached to a chaos searchlight, with a small aquilla from an old Leman Russ kit attached to make it more imperial-y. The assembly is mounted atop a chaos rhino cupola slightly modified to look more like a scanner.

A few spare cables, a filter off a German King Tiger tank and a bit of a hunter killer were combined together for the small generator unit behind the dish.

IRON WITHIN, IRON WITHOUT

Here is the starting Rhino, it was a mess!

  

So, all in all, this is the kind of project that I have come to LOVE about the hobby. A simple idea, for a budget command tank, realised with just parts I had lying around. I think it looks good enough that nobody will complain, well, at least I hope.

~Macca

Iron Warriors: Erasmas Golg and more Consuls!

Erasmus Golg.

Not many photos here, as he is the most simple conversion, simply a Grave Warden with a head swap and a vexillia.

Primus Medicae.

This guy was a little more effort. Apothecary lights and sensors were glued onto his torso, and his weapon is a conversion of the grenade launcher, combining a melta and bolter together for a combi-melta combination.

Multi-HQ.

The most fun of the three, this guy is a combination of a little Forge Lord, Siege Breaker, Warsmith, Praetor, Champion, Consul etc. This is my Jack-of-all-trades character, something I can use in multiple lists.

Befitting his stature and techno-prowess, I elected to modify the grenade launcher arm in a different way, combining a melta into it, and adding a small augery scanner (just above the hand). He has a large servo arm on his back, as well as a single frag assault launcher.

Three HQ's.

So there they are, three HQ's. The choice to go with more Cataphractii is in response to a few things:

-My previous force, the defensive siege force was too dominant in the ranged game, reducing the entire tournament I played in to a shooting game, I felt like dirty Tau.

-I have little to no effective Zone Mortalis forces. Can't defend the Contrador with MK IV armour!

-I lacked mobility. The one situation where my shooting failed was when Michael from the Eye of Horus backed away with the Relic hidden inside his Spartan. I had to cross the battlefield to grab it, I couldn't just shoot both the Spartan AND the Stone Gaunlet Breachers with Feel No Pain to death. I needed strong assault options to do it.

So, here I am. I hope you enjoy these quick snaps.

~Macca

Getting To Know Your Graviton

Macca here, and today we are talking tactics. I recently took a battery of 3 graviton rapiers to the 2500 point Inferno III tournament. I was rolling a solid 6/10 list, as follows:

HQ
Siegebreaker
Praevian Narik Dreygur with 5 Vorax

Elite
10 Siege Tyrants
2 Contemptors with chainfist and graviton guns
3 Graviton Rapier Batteries

Troop
2x 10 man tactical squads

Heavy
Deredeo
5 Iron Havocs with Autocannons and an Augery Scanner

The list is on foot. It's slow. It has no real close combat muscle. It has no meltaguns, no plasmaguns, not a single fast attack unit. Yet for game after game the list held its own. Why?

Gravitons. (ok, and siege tyrants, but the tyrants rarely got their points back, the rapiers however killed 2 Sicarians, a Cerberus with Castraman Orth and a Spartan in one game alone.)

The trick with Graviton Rapiers is to place them in a position where they can dominate the enemy in the first 2-3 turns. The units you want to take out are their armoured assets, and damn are these good at that. I also had Gravitons on the dreadnoughts, but they are more situational, so I will be focussing on the rapiers.

The Graviton Rapier mounts a Graviton Cannon, a 36" ranged, S- AP4 Large Blast. It is haywire, always wounds a target if they fail their toughness test. Sound a bit boring? Well, it leaves an area of difficult AND dangerous terrain in play in the turn after it has fired, and this is the gold dust.

When fired at a group of tanks, it tends to scatter. Poor Nate had a carpark with 2 Sicarians and a Predator in our game in a single confined area, and the rapiers, with scatter, managed to kill both Sicarians and to punish the Predator. This is the average performance of these fearsome weapons. The best part is, if a vehicle does survive, it has to make a dangerous terrain move next turn, potentially damaging it, and this is fantastic for killing transports.

I can hear you all now, "what about flare shielded Spartans rolling a squad of Red Butchers and Angron?"

What about them? Flare shields don't affect haywire, the Spartan still has to go through the terrain patch left after firing and generally they never survive more than 2 salvos from the Gravitons, if they are lucky. What do you do however once the squad disembarks? You have no armour left to kill, and AP4 toughness test graviton won't kill terminators?

Why, little Billy, you shoot them anyway. Make their slow Cataphractii 'cannot run' asses wade through difficult terrain for 3 turns to get to you. Angron leaves the unit and runs at you solo? Even better, you can focus on just him now.

That's how you use graviton. You use it strategically.

Got trouble with the Mechanicum? Well, if they are rolling constructs, the haywire attacks cause a subsequent wound on any cortex units on a roll of a 6. It's not much, but it's a potential extra wound. You fighting Imperial Militia? Who cares, Large blast, AP 4, going to wound on 4's and leave them in dangerous terrain, what's not to love?

Against Superheavies like knights, these guns also rock. The poor player I faced in round 1 copped 3 of these and had to divert his shield to that arc. As soon as he did that, he had now opened up the other 3 arcs on the knight to my remaining firepower (which was quite considerable). When Nate took a run at these guys with his Castraman Orth pimped Cerberus Super Heavy, he found that even the Neutron laser and Lascannons combined were having trouble killing these Toughness 7 platforms in cover. Two turns was all it took for these guns to turn the pride of his army into a massive explosion. 

In summary: WHY AREN'T YOU USING GRAVITON RAPIERS? YOU ARE HERE TO TALK HOBBY AND WIN GAMES, AND RIGHT NOW YOU ARE DONE TALKING HOBBY!

Seriously, if you're Iron Hands, you're immune to bolter fire. If you're Alpha Legion... who the hell knows what you can do, something shadey that's for sure. If you're rocking these things, you can do a LOT of damage. Even if you don't take them with Grav, take them with Heavy Bolters for insane Imperial Fists accuracy, or Iron Warriors with a crapton of pinning. (Seriously tho, take grav)

~Macca

A Galaxy In Flames Battle Report: Inferno III Round 3 Iron Hands vs Iron Warriors

So, as promised, here is the second battle report from Inferno III, this time between the Iron Warriors, and Age of Darkness' Nate. This was the 3rd and final game, and despite having known each other for years, it was the first game we ever played against one another.

The setup was simple, Dawn of War deployment, kill points, 2VP per infantry unit, 1VP per vehicle, with the standard secondaries, as well as bonus VP's for the player with the most units left alive at the end of the game. Nate won the deployment, however, his Force Org chart forced him to take second turn, so no seize roll was required.

Due to a lack of enclosed tables, we played on a relatively open table. With the Iron Warriors on the offensive, poor Nate proceeded to be violated, repeatedly, and without lube. The Graviton Cannon Rapier battery proved throughout the tournament to be an ungodly powerful AT platform. Once combined with the Tyrants and the Deredeo, well, turn one saw the loss of 2 Sicarians and 2 hull points from a Predator before Nate even could retaliate.

Nate's turn one consisted of moving his remaining armour into positions where he could draw a good LOS to my RAPEier batteries (no political correctness here, these guns were committing a crime), as well as crying into a small cup as half of his firepower was already dead.

He fired his Cerberus Super Heavy (crewed by Castramen Orth!) into the Contemptors, and where possible, any spare shots were channeled into the Rapiers.

Turn 2 for the Iron Warriors saw a full 5-model Vorax unit led by a praevian, all with tank hunter, move on from the right flank. The Gravitons finished off almost all of the armour on the left flank before proceeding to swivel towards the right flank as the Tyrants advanced (spewing an ungodly amount of frag missiles all the while).

Turn 2 for Nate saw him trying to kill the Graviton cannon rapiers, as well as targeting the Vorax with whatever shooting he had, backed by a Gorgon Terminator charge.

Sadly, as turn 2 was ending, the Gorgons charged the Vorax, and despite having to make only 5 invuls, Nate managed to fail all 5 in an excellent display of dice rolling (Danny and I have begged him to burn those dice numerous times), meaning that the Gorgons died without causing any damage.

Turn 3 saw the Vorax take out the Spartan, and the Gravitons destroyed Orth's superheavy, which ironically blew up and killed 7 out of 10 members of one of the Iron Warriors tac squads and netting Nate more kills in that explosion than in the whole match thus far... For Nate's turn 3, he tried to shoot down the Vorax and repositioned his Sicarian Venator to shoot the Tyrants, as well as castling up with his surviving armour.

By turn 4, the Iron Warrior Siege Tyrants had reached the back lines, and it was all but over. The rest of turn 4 and 5 was spent mopping up the remaining Iron Hands and taking the last hull points off the Sicarian Venator.

Nate, I'm so sorry. So very, very sorry.

We joked at the time that I would have to censor every photo of the game as the images were 'too graphic' to be shown. This was the unfortunate result of matching up a defensive anti-tank force (Iron Warriors) against a mechanised armoured company. I for one blame the Loyalist General for the match up, Tim from the Eye of Horus!

All of this aside, Nate and I had a good laugh, and it was a really relaxed game, we basically knew after turn one that it was over so we weren't playing for sheep stations. It was one of those games where we just let the other player tally up the wounds on their own units from blast templates, and overall we mostly just sat around all game talking smack. It's a shame that we couldn't play on a table which had a far more dense terrain setup, however being assigned our game late in the round meant all the tables were taken which we wanted. On the bright side, this has lead to four days of the traitors making jokes about loyalist tears, with Danny managing to make loyalist after loyalist cry for 3 tournaments (ask him about his "Toughness zero list", go on, I dare you). Also, I got a lift to the event with Nate, so needless to say, I wasn't offered a lift home :P

Thanks for the game Nate, next time out, we'll make it a balanced one.

~Macca