Saturday, September 2, 2017

Horus Heresy Review: Secutarii Titan Guard Rules


Background material evaluation.
Developed in parallel to the Skitarii legions, the Secutarii share many of the ancient and near unknowable ways of old Mars. Their purpose is, simply put, to defend the titan legions. This might seem absurd at some level. But there are many threats to titans. The Secutarii are there to take care of would be ambushers and human sized targets that would simply not regularly be targeted by the building-shaking and tank-busting weaponry of the titans. Further, they are there to mop up the human sized remnants of anything the titans blow up. Like the people who are being transported in tanks or the ones taking cover in a bunker that the titan targets. They are also regularly deployed to defend a titan landing zone or just generally help with the titan legions, as required.

 In all of this, the background of the Secutarii comes across as very in line with the Martian way of doing things. They are highly dedicated to the machine god and go about cybernetically enhancing themselves and replacing critical organs with ones that do not possess the weaknesses of the flesh.

Rules Review.
Firstly, it is important to note that the Secutarii deploy as Taghmata. However, unless one possesses a titan in the army list, they cannot be used as compulsory selections. This makes a lot of sense really.

As Titan Guard, they are literally inspired to insane levels of bravery and therefore re-roll morale and feel no pain rolls within a wide bubble of any titan. This rule encourages the Secutarii to stay close to a nearby titan. This is fluffy and ultimately a good thing for the flavour of this army.

With Secutarii Hazard Protocols, they can act as one and boost their BS and snap shot BS for one turn. This comes at the expense of being able to make run moves (you probably were not going to do that anyway I'd think) and a penalty to WS and I.

The Kyroptis Field is a small field generator contained in each Secutarii that gets stronger (overlaps or constructively reinforces each other) with larger numbers close together. With 5 models, you get a re-roll of "1" for saving throws. With 10 or more, they get an Iron Hands inspired reduction in incoming fire by one. This is amazing and encourages large blobs of Secutarii to be deployed. Of course, this being Horus Heresy, you were probably erring on the side of large blobs of troops anyway I would suspect.

The Omnispex is a cute addition to some units causing a penalty in cover saving throw. Obviously this is situational, but can be very powerful.

Beyond these rules, some of their weapons provide for interesting options including rules like Haywire. Other special rules include Rad Poisoning that deals 2 wounds instead of 1 wound when the to-wound roll is a natural 6. Parabolic shot meanwhile means that one need not have a direct line of sight to the target which can be useful in some situations (e.g., hiding behind Titan's legs!).

Overall.
The Secutarii are an army list that wants to go big and try to stay close to Titans. In some ways it reminds me of a human cyborg version of 40k Tyranids, but with different options and the big beasts costing heaps more!


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