Chaos vs. 30K Iron Hands

So, I had Dan a 2000 point game this week playing against his 30K Iron Hands army. I don't know how many people have had a chance to flip through the Horus Heresy game books, but they are pretty fantastic and give a wealth of unique options for a 30K army.

Some of the rules are I think.. slightly elevated from 40K as an average.. but the great thing about it is there isn't anything I would say is broken, overpowered or completely out of balance. I mean, if playing straight by the book, you both have access to exactly the same things.

Against a standard 40K list, something things do seem to be ramped up a bit. Dan's been trying hard to hopefully get it accepted more widely, so he's been taking a tamer list. As Iron Hands, he gets some cool rules. Things like 6+ invul save, shooting attacks against infantry units are at -1 str., I think he gets a super Tech marine for a commander, and a couple other things but I can't remember exactly.

Dan's 30K list was more or less the following :

Super Tech marine w/ Paragon Blade
The Paragon Blade is a power weapon that instant kills on a 6 to wound. He's impressive himself, with str 5, tgh 5 and 3 wounds. I think he only had a 3+ save though?

4 x 10 man tactical squads
2 of which were in rhinos and outflanked. This is pretty good..  for 10 marines with a 6+ invul and -1 str to shooting. However, his guys are only Stubborn, not fearless, which ended up being a big problem. I "think" each squad had two Volkite chargers, but no other heavy or special weapons. They are Assault 2, str 5 and if it causes an unsaved wound, has a change to inflict another wound

3 Turrets
2 T-L autocannon, 1 T-L Lascannon. They are stationery, with a 45 degree front firing arc. They also have firing priorities, so the Heavy Bolters had to shoot at the closest infantry unit and the Lascannon at the closest Vehicle unit.

2 Scorpious Whirlwinds  
These had me the most worried out of anything in the list. They are Str 8, ap 3 small blast Barrage weapons. If they haven't moved, they get an additional d3 barrage blasts. Ouch! I was mainly worried for the Berserkers..  barraging out the Icon or Champ would have been a setback, but as it turned they were more or less nullified most of the game. One neat piece of wargear his Commander was a Nuncio-vox. If I remember right, it allowed the Whirlwinds to fire barrage as if they had line of sight, if the Commander could see the target and the whirlwind. I might have that a bit off. But, these little guys can be scary. It was a small blast, so wasn't too devastating, but imagine getting your vehicle popped, and having to climb to face 4 Str 8 ap3  small blast template.. eek. I think at 115 points, they are impressive. But again, small blast. So if you can catch some marines out in the open, maybe. They won't cause massive casualties with spacing, and trimming guys out after each blast..  but you can make sure that single model you want picked out is hammered on pretty good.

Sicarious Battle Tank
This is the new awesome looking super predator. The Turret gun in an Accelerator Autocannon, which is Str 7, Heavy 6, Twin linked and rending.  It also has three heavy bolters. He's expensive at about 300 points.. but good at popping tanks and potentially downing Flyers.

Contemptor Dreadnought
He had 2 Super Assault cannons, so each one Str 6, heavy 6 rending. He was gonna be a big threat..  12 str 6 rending shots, eek.

Aegis Defense Line w/ Quad Cannon


My 40K List:

Nurgle Lord on Bike with Black Mace, Sigil
Khorne Lord on Juggernaut with Axe of Fury, Sigil

8 Berserkers w/ Icon, Power Claw, Vets
7 Plague Marines w/ 2 Plasma Guns

10 Cultists
10 Cultists

3 Nurgle Spawn
Heldrake

2 Landraiders w/ dozers and dirge caster

Sorceror, lev 3, Terminator armour, Last memory, familiar, Vets
5 Chosen w/Lascannon, Vets
5 Chosen w/Autocannon, Vets

This is more or less the list I've been playing with. I threw this one together last minute and realized when I went to set-up I didn’t have anything for the Khorne Lord to run around with. An alternate list I created had a few bikes for him, but when glancing over everything I really liked the idea of the 5 man scoring unit with a heavy weapon.

We rolled Emperor's Will with Hammer and Anvil set-up. Dan won deployment zone and I won first player, electing to let Dan set-up first. I really needed to know where his Dread and Sicarious were setting up so I could put my landraiders in a position for a bit of cover. With Hammer and Anvil, it was gonna take a few turns to get across the table. I rolled on telepathy for the sorceror this game, really hoping I could grab Invis or Puppet Master. I got Dominate, Puppet Master, and Hallucination.

He outflanked two units of marines, everything else set-up up behind the aegis or deep in his deployment zone. I kept the cultists, Sorceror and Heldrake in reserve. I elected to deep strike the Sorceror even though his Sunburst wasn't going to be much use. He only had two units on the board I could affect with it, and from what I could tell, it was going to be at -1 str anyway from his trait rule. However, I needed to make sure I was able to get Puppet Master off at least a few times on his Sicarius or Dread. The rest of my stuff set-up as far as I go forward. Both raiders lined up on the left, with the Nurgle Lord and Spawn on the right. The two units of chosen set-up in buildings on opposite sides. Everything had cover from his stuff, the Khorne lord was just gonna hide behind a landraider on the way up. Oh..  look, he seized the initiative..  uh oh.

I got past the first turn fairly unscathed. The unit of chosen with the lascannon disappeared. I took only a hull point of damage from a glancing hit on the Berserker raider…  and that was from a whirlwind. The Dread moved up but was still slightly out of range. 12 str 6 rending shots is nice.. but that 24" is a bit rough on a Hammer and Anvil table. On my turn, everything rushed forward. I was able to kill the Contemptor with a snap shot lascannon from the berserker raider, even with him standing behind the Aegis line..

Turn two was kind of the same. His two units of reserves came on, one of each side. This time though, the majority of his army opened up on the Nurgle Lord with his 3 spawn who could probably charge next turn. I was in cover, so he was only able to clear out two spawn. The berserker raider took another HP of damage. On my turn, things finally happened. All my reserves came on. The sorceror made a risky deep strike into his back lines. It was the only way I could guarantee a puppet master.. Berserker raider moved up right to his Aegis line.. but they didn't get out this turn. Nurgle Lord and Spawn also did the same. The Plague raider just spun around and blew up the rhino that outflanked on his side, and the Khorne Lord dropped back to deal with those pesky marines that had to get out. The cultists hid. The Heldrake came on in a fury, excited to burninate some of those marines sitting behind that aegis line. I vector striked a rhino coming on doing a HP and then for the first time ever, he was blown out of the sky from an intercepting Quad gun. The chosen on the left plopped another HP on the other rhino. Oh, and lookey here at Mr. Sorceror. I cast Hallucinate on the other big 10 man squad sitting in his backfield. I got Bugs! So they wouldn’t be able to move, shoot, assault, etc. That was great..  and then I puppet mastered the Battle Tank but managed to only kill 4 marines. Not to effective. The Nurgle Lord and Spawn rushed in, and thankfully, no 20+ overwatch thanks to the dirge caster.. haha! I challenged and his commander accepted. I did no wounds with my 12 Black Mace attacks. He did one wound back.. and oh look..  a 6. I made save so wasn't instant killed..  eek. The Spawn and Marines waved at each other politely. The Khorne Lord rushed in and..  challenged the marine sgt. He did 8 wounds to that poor fella and was rewarded with a Crystaline Body. The marines weren't fearless and ran away with an 11. The Khorne Lord chased them down easily.

Turn 3 had a few more goofy twists. The battle tank opened up on the Berserker raider and finally wrecked it with a couple glancings. With the berserkers out, the Whirlwinds blasted in. I only lost 3 guys thanks to a couple wonky initial shots, and being in around area terrain and an Aegis line. The other outflanked rhino plopped a couple wounds on my Khorne Lord. The big combat continued..  the two Warlord locked in combat. I got 10 attacks and failed to cause a wound again. He attacked back and oh..  this time he got 2 6's to wound. I failed both and was smote. The marines finished off the Spawn. On my turn, I rushed the Khorne lord across the table in my deployment zone to go after the other unit of marines. The Plague raider moved up a bit. Shooting was ineffective. I shot at the Lascannon turret hoping to take it out but didn't cause a wound. I puppet mastered the Whirlwind this time and dropped it on the marines that just freed up from the Nurgle Lord combat and killed 4'ish. I tried Hallucinate again on the ten man unit I did it to last round, and got Traitors this time. I was able to cause 1 wound. I cast Dominate on them as well. Finally, the Sorceror assaulted the Whirlwind I puppet Mastered and blew off the big gun with his Power mace. The berserkers rushed through the Aegis line and assaulted that same ten man unit. I killed 8, and with 6 wound back, I failed 5 saves and was down to two guys just like that. My Champion got a reward of nothing. The cultists continued to hide on the 1 objective in my deployment. The whirlwinds only have a range of 48", so luckily for me and the cultists and Khorne Lord were always just a couple inches out of range.

On turn 4, Dan got his marines out that outflanked and opened up on the tgh 6 Khorne Lord doing a couple wounds. So far, the Khorne Lord had failed 2 out of the 3 saves he had to make all game.  The battle tank opened on the Sorceror. 3 rending shots and 6 heavy bolter wounds got through. I passed all my invul saves..  haha! But failed two of my heavy Bolter saves.. Booo! The Whirlwind shot at the Plague raider and did a HP. The remaining 3 marines with the commander moved over  to Dan's objective and shot the two remaining Berserkers off the table. They failed8 out of the 9 armour saves they had to make. On my turn, I assaulted the outflanking marines and took a wound I didn't save. He got 10 attack on the sgt. and .. umm, something lame as a reward, I can't remember now. The marines broke again and I ran down the remaining 9. Ouch. The plague raider moved up shot uselessly again.

Turn 5 just saw some shuffling. Dan shot the Battle tank at the Raider doing nothing. The heavy bolter turret hit the Khorne Lord and he died..   the Khorne elements of my army were on offense this game.. but man, I failed 12 out of 14 3+ saves had to make. The whirlwind shot at the raider to I believe, but his initial shot scattered so far his extra blast couldn’t do anything. The plague raider moved up and disgorged it's marine content into some cover. I opened up on the remaining 3 marines and Commander with the raider and plague marines and was able to wipe out the troops, so we called it there.

In fairness the game should have ended a tie on objectives. Dan could have moved his whirlwind up to block line of sight, or.. is he would have moved his marines back slightly or commander up a bit.. he could have tanked the wounds and kept the scoring units alive. We were moving quickly at the end since there were so few units and he just didn’t think about it until I went to shoot the marines with all my plagues.

Post game

I didn't an issue at all with the 30K list Dan had. The Dreadnought was probably the scariest thing..  but I got lucky and took it out before it could shoot. The game was a ton of fun, with a few back and forths. I killed the Dread, he killed the Heldrake. He killed my Warlord, I wiped out the marine squads. It looked scary when he seized that first turn, but raiders tend to be so darn resilient in this edition.

Everything about his list was neat, probably because it was fairly different, but still the same. His marines had some good defense, but without Know no Fear, they were really susceptible to assaults.

The Scorpious Whirlwinds are great, but if you miss your initial shot by a lot, your remaining shots are pooched. Even then, since you wound after each template, and the str and ap are so good, you might clear out your hits pretty quick and not get to many wounds on subsequent rounds. But, for sniping, they are killer.

Everyone did well on my side. I've been playing pretty standard with two cultists, then a berserker and plague marine unit. By putting the Chosen in, I think I really just gave him a target for that str 4-7 weaponry I can usually deny on the first few turns. I the chosen weren't there, he wouldn't have had much to shoot at except the Nurgle Lord and Spawn..  who can take it fairly well with their tgh 6.

The Sicarious tank is pretty cool, but I think I'm glad I didn’t pick on up in the last FW order. He looks super cool, but at 300+ points, its expensive. I think I may look at a Fire Raptor for the next order.. although what I really want is to see Dreadclaws back on the menu.

Thank for the game Dan, I'll play your 30K list anytime. Maybe I'll build one myself next time, although all my Worldeaters would be red and not the gross blue/white pre heresy.

Whoops.. looks like i made a big mistake Dan. I didnt know the Sorceror couldnt generate Warp charges on the turn he arrives from reserve. I would have had him with the.plague marknes or berserkers otherwise.

We'll have to try a rematch!

System Commander wrote:Whoops.. looks like i made a big mistake Dan. I didnt know the Sorceror couldnt generate Warp charges on the turn he arrives from reserve. I would have had him with the.plague marknes or berserkers otherwise.

We'll have to try a rematch!  

Aroo? He can't cast blessings / maladictions the turn he arrives from reserve, as he "moved". But he can witchfire his face off (at least, that's how I've been playing it....)

I just got a note i had did it wrong.. but havent looked it up. Thats the first time i had a sorceror DS in.. usually hes a nurgle lord with amace. I had him with plague marines against you.. but with hammer and anvil i thought id try to cover some distance.

My main hq has 2+ 4++ and I would gladly face you again, as for your army buy the tims of the hh hafe the army was already painted red lol

System Commander wrote:I just got a note i had did it wrong.. but havent looked it up. Thats the first time i had a sorceror DS in.. usually hes a nurgle lord with amace. I had him with plague marines against you.. but with hammer and anvil i thought id try to cover some distance.

reserves and generating powers happen at the same time. so if its your turn you get to pick the order they happen (same with mindshackle scarabs in assault!)

Interesting line of thought.


Rolling for reserves... and moving them onto the table are two different things and happen at two different times

The two events, Rolling for reserves, and generating warp charge happen at the same time...

But the sorcerer isn't on the table to trigger generating warp charge until After the "start of the movement phase"

Must dig deeper!

BRB wrote:At the start of your Turn Two, you must roll a D6 for each
unit being held in reserve these are known as Reserve Rolls.
If the roll is a 3 or more, that unit arrives this turn. If
the roll is less than 3 it remains in reserve and is rolled for
again next turn.

When Reserves arrive, the player picks any one of the units
arriving and deploys it, moving it onto the table as described
below. Then he picks another unit and deploys it, and so on
until all arriving units are on the table. The player can then
proceed to move his other units as normal.

does this then denote two different time references, or is it all happening " at the start of the turn"... lets look at generating warp charge...

**Note that it says "If the roll is a 3 or more, that unit arrives this turn."  not   "Deploy them right now!"

BRB wrote:GENERATING WARP CHARGE
A Psyker automatically generates his full allocation of
'Warp Charge points at the start of each turn. There's no need to do
anything - it happens automatically. It's important to keep
track of Warp Charge across the turn, either by making notes
on your army roster, or by marking the Psyker with counters.
Once a Warp Charge point has been used, it's gone. Any unused
Warp Charge points are lost at the end of the turn.

So yes, it happens at the start of the turn, just like reserves, so you can choose to do one before the other, and hence if a psyker is on the table he generates Warp Charge.


This Raises two questions for me,(three actually) since the psyker wasn't on the table at the start of the turn(as he wouldn't be there until you actually rolled for reserves and moved him onto the the table ) to trigger the effect, does it happen? and two, does deploying reserves happen directly after rolling for them,"at the start of the turn" or "after the start of the turn"  

AND.....is the start of the turn the start of the movement phase? or some nebulous time before that? and does the movement phase start AFTER "start of turn"events.

The wording of reserves leads me to believe that the psyker wasn't around to generate warp charge at the start of the turn and that he wouldn't have any for that turn. its probably not rules as intended... but its rules as written?


(....PS: There is an argument that could be made that it doesn't say you have to be Deployed to Generate Warp Charge)

sorry... insomnia.

Super insomnia!

Robyn: the sicaran battle tank is 300+ pts?

I'm looking at the fw hh book 2, and it's base 135, the highest you could get it to is 215 with double lascannons sponsons, and maaaybe 300 if you bought all the upgraded armor etc etc.

Paz he failed to mention that I had an iron hands special character piloting said tank lol and he was worth 70 points

I would argue that you don't need to be on the table to generate your warp charge points. Might be worth asking around and see what other interpretations we can find.

I remember something about this a long time ago.. like just when 6th came out. Ill have to look through the faqs or something.. but i do remember a similar discussion happening

Going through Psychic powers in the main rulebook, I found this on page 67:

On a turn that a psyker arrives from reserve (see page 124) he
cannot attempt to manifest any psychic powers that must be
manifested at the start of the Movement phase.

I'm just going to go through the faq to see if it was corrected, but I dont think so. So like Mark said, no blessings or maledictions, but shooting is ok. That being said, just the Hallucination he cast in the last game was incorrect. Sorry Dan!

Adepticon ruled on it before April, but I can't find it now (since they're working on a new FAQ for their next event.)

System Commander wrote:Going through Psychic powers in the main rulebook, I found this on page 67:

On a turn that a psyker arrives from reserve (see page 124) he
cannot attempt to manifest any psychic powers that must be
manifested at the start of the Movement phase.

Actually this Rule is quite telling. IF a psyker had to be on the battlefield in order to generate warp charge... no such rule would even be necessary. The rule disallowing blessings at the start of the phase assumes that the Psyker would have enough warp charge to DO something, but is being restricted by the rule, Hence that warp charge should be available later in the turn to be applied to other spells.

It appears to me that you played it correctly Robyn.

Rhaevyn wrote:

System Commander wrote:Going through Psychic powers in the main rulebook, I found this on page 67:

On a turn that a psyker arrives from reserve (see page 124) he
cannot attempt to manifest any psychic powers that must be
manifested at the start of the Movement phase.

Actually this Rule is quite telling. IF a psyker had to be on the battlefield in order to generate warp charge... no such rule would even be necessary. The rule disallowing blessings at the start of the phase assumes that the Psyker would have enough warp charge to DO something, but is being restricted by the rule, Hence that warp charge should be available later in the turn to be applied to other spells.

It appears to me that you played it correctly Robyn.

Assuming that GW has a logical progression when writing their rules   

Of course they do. Spend several years developing a new edition of rules, then progressive write codexes that ignore or invalidate said rules.