The Heretic Legion represents the slightly more normal side of the Fallen forces; the regular men and women who have turned towards supporting the hellish powers, lost their faith and devotion in the holy orders, or who have been corrupted at the gates to the dark beyond. They are the core military and the mainstay fighting force for the Fallen powers, and cover some slightly more generic options than the other Hell-aligned forces while still maintaining unique designs and a fun playstyle.
Overview
The best way to describe Heretic Legion (I’ll refer to as HL from here on out) on the tabletop is like you’re playing with chess pieces: you have a lot of individual key pieces that work together to make everything tick, but you have very few things that interact with one another. Your army will be exactly the sum of it’s parts, but those parts are very potent and perform specific roles extremely well. In general, HL is an army that scraps really well in the mid-board. You have a few particular ranges that you will beat targets at depending on what you bring in your roster, and they tend to be real long range (~30″) or close-support shooting.
Strengths and Weaknesses
Strengths
- Absolutely bonkers specialist options, with pretty much no “dud” units in the lineup. Everything is good and can pull it’s weight if you use things to their advantages.
- Access to a lot of very good weapon options, both for your regular chaff units as well as for more elite choices. You have a crazy amount of STRONG access, so heavy weapons are all on the table. Flamethrowers are also a staple AP weapon, and having them from the get-go is great.
- You can get protection from every damage keyword in some way, making you quite adaptable in a campaign setting.
- You have cheap units that are easy to replace as a campaign moves on that don’t require a lot of outside support, so it often can be a little easier to avoid hemorrhaging losses too much.
Weaknesses
- While your units offer great independent power, not having too many synergies means your gameplan is often pretty known and your units are going to do exactly what they set out to. Your units won’t be pulling any fancy tricks like some other factions can.
- Your scary units are well known for how scary they can be, and most of them aren’t the most challenging to get out of play with some focused fire or well placed infiltrators (with the exception of the War Wolf, who’s Big and Bad enough to struggle to hide). You’ll have to keep them protected and make sure you invest in defensive gear if you want them to stay alive.
- While there are great long and close range threats available, many of the good midrange options don’t really open up until you can start grabbing things like SMG’s for Glory – things that can keep you out of shotgun/flamethrower range but also remain out of sight of your long range stuff can be a bit of a pain to tackle.
- Your Mercenary access isn’t anything to write home about at the time of writing.
Unit Overview
Heretic Priest
Your required leader and one of your bread and butter ELITE models, you’ll never be upset that you have to take this one. +2 Dice to Melee and Ranged means you can make this guy work with pretty much whatever gear they’re given, and that alongside TOUGH means their looks can be a bit deceiving, as they’re actually a fantastic frontliner. The real kicker here is their Puppet Master ability: as a risky action, you pick a model you can see within 12″ of the priest and have them move D6″ in any direction. This works on both friendly and enemy models, and the possibilities are endless. You can move things into/out of combat (note: things don’t count as charging if they move into combat this way), move enemies off cliffs, get some extra distance out of your models that need a bit more movement. It’s a crazy ability and the only caveat is that failing the action will end it’s activation. This is such a powerful control piece on an already strong model that you’ll want to invest in making sure this guy can hold the fort in the core of your force without getting leveled by a stray shot, even if he has Tough to keep him upright.
Additionally, they can take the Sacrificial Blade as a melee weapon which adds +2 to injury rolls, but makes attacks with it Risky. Don’t fear the risky actions, this thing absolutely nukes enemies and is worth it especially on something that’s already naturally at +2 dice to their attacks with it. They can also grab the Blasphemous Staff later on for Glory, which lets you get a bonus Dice on non attack or dash Risky actions the model takes, although it’s a slightly less punchy weapon. It’s not a bad choice though, especially if you want to take a more supporting role with Puppet Master.
Recommended Battlekit: Reinforced armor, Combat Helmet/Gas Mask depending on your campaign environment, Sacrificial Blade, Gas Grenades. Pretty much any ranged option is good here, choose one based on how aggressively you want to place this model in your force, I’m personally a fan of the Automatic Rifle or Automatic Shotgun once you can get your hands on one to soften things up before you go in for the Big Stab, as I often like charging with this model as a counterpunch. Early off, a regular Shotgun will be fine if you don’t want to rely purely on tossing grenades.
Death Commando
The infiltrating assassin-type unit of the roster, their role is a unique one in that they’re pretty much stuck with Melee options and Gas Grenades (they have access to silenced pistols as well, but I’d leave them at home), but can be incredibly slippery as they’re harder to hit with ranged attacks and can use their unique Hide action to make them effectively invisible while near terrain features. They lack Tough for real staying power, but they’re unrestricted on taking good armor, and +2 Dice on the melee profile means they’re no slouch when it comes to brawling up close.
They have a few unique gear options, one of which being Tartaros Claws which are paired weapons that ignore the penalty for whacking with an offhand weapon, but also let you move 3″ if you knock a model Down or Out of Action with your attack. If that brings you into combat with another unit you can fight again, but you can’t do the bonus move shenanigans again. They also can pick up a Tormentor Chain, which is a short ranged weapon that lets you drag a model close to this one after a hit. It also passively makes it so you can’t retreat while next to a model with one of these, although it’s worth noting this isn’t an ASSAULT keyworded weapon.
There are two key roles for the Commando: A backline infantry blender or an ELITE assassin. With Gas Grenades and Tartaros Claws, you can use this guy to shred through any stray annoyances hiding at long range and absolutely punish anything that wants to risk staying clustered up with a gas grenade and a potential double-fighting charge. With a Sacrificial Blade (they are ELITE, so they can snag one) and Tormentor Chain, you can threaten characters tucked into their force with the old drag-and-tag special to deal with most non-Tough characters handily. Both of these are valid options, and while I don’t think the Commando is always an essential model to take, it’ll almost always have something to do. Watch out against forces that can spread wide to deny a good infiltration position though.
Recommended Battlekit:Â Reinforced Armor, Combat Helmet. For an assassin build, Tormentor Chains and Sacrificial dagger + second one-handed melee weapon for offhand smacking or a Trench Shield for defense. For an infantry shredder build, Gas Grenades and Tartaros Claws.
Chorister
The Beheaded Bugler is a powerful debuffing model and a deceptively good melee fighter, only offset by their total inability to hit the broadside of a barn with a ranged weapon. They’re unrestricted on gear though, so don’t let me stop you from making your headless sniper dream come true.
The Chorister’s key points are their innate FEAR as well as an 8″ aura that gives -1 Dice to success rolls for enemies. You want them to get stuck in the thick of it, hanging out with your frontlines to shut down melee threats and disrupt the enemy game plan. They aren’t slower than normal, but they don’t have any real speed to get to the backlines, so they realistically will be playing up alongside your forward operators and making use of their +2 Dice melee attacks to wax the floor with things that try to shut them down. The downsides here are that they really can’t defend themselves from far away targets, so try to keep them safe as you march up the board so they don’t get dropped by any long ranged firepower, as the lack of TOUGH will hurt.
Recommended Battlekit: Reinforced Armor, Combat Helmet if you have the ducats to spare, Sacrificial Dagger or Trench Club/Sword if you’re balling on a budget. Even though the model is holding their dome, they do actually have two hands to work with, so you can grab a Trench Shield if you want them to be more defensive and debuff for as long as possible, or opt for a Flamethrower if you want them to have a real ranged weapon they can use. They can technically take grenades as well if you’ve got spare ducats, but I don’t think it’s an efficient use of ducats and I wouldn’t rely on them.
War Wolf Assault Beast
The “Big Dawg” himself, and the boogeyman a lot of other players hear about. It doesn’t have any Battlekit options – it naturally has -3 Armor and comes with two pretty nightmarish melee weapons which we’ll cover shortly. It has a special ability that gives +1 Dice to dash actions and ignores difficult terrain, so paired with 8″ of movement this makes it a fast lad. The Assault Beast ability is what really defines how it functions: whenever it makes an attack, it can either attack once with it’s Chainsaw Mouth (+1 Dice, +1 Injury, Ignore Armor, Risky), once with it’s Shredder Claws (+1 Injury, Cumbersome, Risky), or make an attack with it’s Mouth and then Immediately with it’s Claws (with the offhand penalty applying to the Claws). The reason for this wording is because both are risky, so if you want to try and do some other things after you attack and not worry about whiffing the attacks and ending your turn, although if you’re going for the single attack you pretty much always want to go for the Mouth attack.
Chainsaw Fido is what you get on the tin – this is a ballistic missile that needs a target and nothing more. TOUGH keeps this from going down like a sack of bricks, but people will focus the hell out of this, and that’s a key advantage it has. We have enough other threats that threat saturation is a really valid strategy for the faction, so sometimes just using this to push things out of position and open up juicy opportunities to strike with the rest of your force can be the optimal way to play, and if they don’t respect his threat range they’ll get mauled for their hubris. Just make sure not to sacrifice him for nothing – if you think he’s going to make a play where he’ll go down after, capitalize on it. This is also not an ELITE model so be weary of being too reckless in a campaign.
Recommended Battlekit: Milk Bones and a winning attitude.
Artillery Witch
The other boogyman of the faction, hosting one of if not the single best shooting attack in the game. It’s got a slew of abilities that end up resulting in a blast weapon with a potential 3d6 injury roll for anything caught in the apex of the blast as well as Shrapnel, Ignore Armor, and Ignore cover. The caveats are that intervening terrain between the blast and the targets will soften the blow a bit, and the RELOAD keyword means you’ll be done your activation right as you shoot. You always have this weapon (known as the Infernal Bomb) and can’t take other ranged weapons or grenades, however you can take whatever else you want for gear.
The Witch is horrifying for many armies to play against, and for good reason. Not every faction has a way to protect themselves from getting slammed by a 36″ range bomb every turn, but due to this people will expend resources to make sure your Witch eats the dirt as soon as possible, especially since she often will be exposed after a shot. Innate gas resistance will help a bit, but you’ll want to invest in keeping her alive and kicking. -1 Dice in melee also means she can’t really protect herself, so in some matchups you may have to keep some bodyguards around to protect from speedy flanks or infiltrators. It’s worth giving a shout to the Heretic Priest here as well, who can use Puppet Master to try and maneuver her into a safer spot after firing. Given the current variety of terrain we see for games at the time of writing, it’s tricky to suggest placement with her, but I like to lean on the side of caution – she’s arguably the most important piece of your ranged game, and sometimes taking a sub-optimal shot will be more worth it than risking trading her off to an enemy with a sniper.
Recommended Battlekit: Standard Armor at the least, Reinforced if your campaign has a lot of threats against her. The Bomb only takes one hand to use, so she can hold a Trench Shield no problem. I don’t like leaving home without a melee weapon even if she should never be in melee, so if you’ve got a few ducats to spare you can throw a Trench Club her way. Infernal Brand is also an OK shout if Fire is an issue, as well as a Shovel if your boards are more open.
Heretic Troopers
This is it, your bread and butter core infantry. 6″ movement, +0 across the board, unrestricted equipment access, all for the cost of 30 ducats. These guys will be featured in every list and you will learn to use and love them. Half of the Troopers in your warband (rounding down) can be upgraded to Legionaries, adding 10 ducats to their cost, but changing their ranged or melee characteristic to +1. You should virtually always do this as long as you aren’t seriously strapped for cash, although which you pick depends on the role of the specific trooper.
These will be your workhorse models. If you haven’t caught on yet, our specialist models above are all really good, but that means they can’t waste time with objectives, screening, prepping models with blood markers, and clearing out chaff. That’s where these guys come in. Quantity over quality will often be the name of the game here, but never leave home without a handful of these.
Recommended Battlekit: I’m going to go into a bit more detail here based on what role you want them to fill. We’ll break it up based on what (if any) upgrade you choose.
Regular Troopers: Don’t bother with armor unless they get some upgrades down the line. Bolt Action Rifles, Shotguns, and any variation of grenades are solid options. I suggest giving them all a trench knife at the minimum, although anything up to a Trench Club is fair game if you have the spare coin.
Having one guy on standby with grenades/a pistol and a Musical Instrument is also key to making sure your other higher investment models can get where they need to be, I sometimes give this guy a mountaineer kit and standard armor to make sure he doesn’t get whacked if I have the money to spare.
+1 Melee Legionaries: Either no armor or standard is fine here, although since they’ll be up close I like to get standard if I can. Flamethrowers and a Club can be a really solid close ranged threat, even if that’s a bit expensive for a regular troop. Trench Shield + Club and Gas Grenades is a unit i really like to use as a bodyguard for your backline models like a Witch or a ranged build on a Priest. If you want to keep things cheap, a Semi-Automatic Rifle and a bayonet can actually be a surprisingly good tool to clear out other armies chaff.
+1 Ranged Legionaries: You can stick with the Bolt Actions/Shotguns on these guys if you don’t want to invest in them much, they’ll do the same job as regular troops slightly better. If you do want to invest a bit more into skirmishing with them, a bit of standard armor/gas mask action can help keep them alive as well as SMG’s or any flavor of grenade to give them a bit more punch. If you end up wanting to dump some extra points into them, Incendiary ammo on an SMG or rifle can be an alright way to give them a bit more Blood priming power, but that ends up being a bit pricey.
Anointed Heavy Infantry
While Legionaries represent your better trained regular goobers, these guys are your real meat for fighting. -2 Armor and NEGATE FIRE built in, +1 Melee, +1 Ranged, and STRONG. No other abilities, no frills. These exist to carry the heat and go toe to toe with some of the tougher models in other rosters and still have a chance to walk away alive, as well as pave the floor with most chaff units in other lists. A good way to think of things is using Troopers for dirty work and setting up blood markers, while these guys can cash in on everything they’re doing to go for clean kills. Because they have access to the whole roster of weapons and don’t need to worry about HEAVY, you can kit them for literally any role. 95 ducats base isn’t bad when you consider everything they come with, but they aren’t exactly cheap and you’re still limited to 5 at max.
I generally think that these guys are pretty much the reason you don’t want to get too crazy upgrading Legionaries too much, as they’ll outclass them pretty hastily once the gear costs start racking up.
Recommended Battlekit: The philosophy here is pretty much the opposite of the Troopers – since you’re already investing an a pretty expensive body, you should take advantage of that. Every HEAVY weapon on the roster is good here; the Anti-Materiel Rifle, Machine Gun, Grenade Launcher, and Heavy Flamethrower are all great picks; I’m partial to the AMR and Grenade Launcher myself. Automatic Shotguns also get a special shout since they can easily run some good melee weapons to make for a pretty deadly activation up close. Speaking of which, either great weapon or a Hellblade are good 2-handed weapon options for melee. Shields are also a good way to make them extremely durable, with Polearms, Automatic Shotgun + Bayonet or even an SMG + Bayonet being a good combo. Even just double trench clubs aren’t a terrible shout if you’re tight on ducats and don’t have a shield. Any defensive equipment or an Unholy Relic on a melee build are some nice extras to add later on.
Point here being, you can give them pretty much anything and make it work. They’re just solid all-rounders to fill what role you need in your list.
Wretched
Wretched exist for two reasons; to be stupidly cheap bodies to bulk out your roster (which are able to be sold away later on), and to hand out blessing markers to something nearby when they inevitably die. They can only take the cheapest of gear, but they can’t go in entirely unarmed and need some type of weapon. At 25 ducats base and 26 with a Knife, they’ll be the best cheap fodder you can get your hands on, although -1 to both combat stats means they’ll always be fighting worse than a regular Trooper. Having one or two to run around and help play objectives and screen out charges and infiltrators can be good roster filler compared to the slightly more expensive other options in the roster. I tend to learn more towards the usefulness of Troopers being worth the slight points hike, but if you need to bulk out with some bodies these can be a good choice, especially since you can sell them off later without worry; gear only fetches half price, but you can get basically a full 25 ducat refund on the body.
Recommended Battlekit: A knife. Really, that’s it. Anything more and you approach territory where these guys should be replaced with a Trooper. If you really want to get spicy you could give one some kind of grenades or a pistol, and frankly the two extra ducats for a Club over a Knife means it goes from “won’t kill things” to “maybe once in a blue moon will smack something,” but I think none of these are generally worth it and cheapest will be best.
Armory Notes
We’ve covered a lot of use cases for things in the suggested battlekit, but I want to give a few shouts on things we haven’t mentioned as much, or just some extra notes on a few things:
Ranged Weapons
Anti-Materiel Rifle – This weapon is extremely good and what cements our faction as dominating the 30+ inch range alongside the Artillery Witch. Anything with STRONG (which is only Anointed without skills) can reliably use this, and it’s at least worth a look. I don’t personally think it’s 100% worth taking if you want to play a force that wants to send it into close range, but this + a Witch or two can make the core of a really strong shooting focused force.
Pistol/Silenced Pistol – You might notice these are the only two things I’ve mentioned sparingly from the ranged roster, and I don’t think they’re bad necessarily. The issue is that they compete in a similar range bracket to Grenades, which are cheap, plentiful, and very good. Pistols do let you shoot them up close which can be handy, but more often than not the value of a grenade will be better. I do like them when you have something always locked to one hand though, like an Instrument or Flag.
Semi-Automatic Rifles – In general I think these aren’t going to be as common in lists, but they can replace Automatic Rifles until you have the glory to afford them.
The rest of the roster I’ve covered above, and it’s really great that pretty much everything has some sort of use case. To Recap though; Shotguns and Bolt-Action Rifles are your core, Flamethrowers are a good choice for armored targets, and ASSAULT weapons like the Automatic Rifle and Shotgun are great on your melee beat sticks. The heavy stuff can all stick around with your Anointed.
Melee Weapons
Trench Knife – I do not like the trench knife. For a measly two additional ducats you can get a weapon with no penalty. The only reason to take these in this roster is if you think the unit should basically never be in combat, but you don’t want them making unarmed slaps in the emergency scenarios when they are stuck fighting. Wretched are the exception here.
Bayonet/Trench Club – Different profiles, but I’m grouping them together as the “basic functional weapons.” I think most models that aren’t dedicated chaff should have these at a bare minimum, and even chaff should throw a few points to make sure they aren’t totally screwed when they get stuck in.
Sword/Axe – These are fine weapons but are very marginal over the Club, so really only take these if you have spare ducats. They will never hurt you to take, but the CRITICAL bonus will only help you occasionally.
Great Hammer/Maul & Great Sword/Axe – These are going to be your melee choices for STRONG units, and the same rule applies as above. If you have the spare points, go for the Sword to sometimes just nuke something with a crit, but it’s not going to make or break the model to go for the Hammer and save a few ducats.
Hellblade – I really like these, and they are cheap glory-wise costing only one point. The downside is that we have a lot of great glory items, so sometimes it just doesn’t make the cut. The main use case here is if you want to use what is effective a fire Great Weapon but don’t have STRONG. I think an upgraded +1 Melee Legionary actually can handle one of these really well.
Polearm – This is a defensive tool more than anything, but Shield Combo means they pair well with shield models and BLOCK really helps keep you alive when you eat a random charge. If you have a shooting-focused model with a shield, these can be a good extra ducat sink.
Grenades
Grenades are pretty interchangeable, but Gas Grenades will get the most milage here. A lot of your selection will be based on your metagame/campaign environment and how much you want to invest in that model. All of them have ASSAULT which makes them work really well on models that want to be up close anyway.
Frag Grenades – These are your cheapest option, and while Shrapnel is one of the more common things armies will have counters to, they also the smallest blast radius. While this is typically a downside, it does mean you can worry a bit less about going Danger Close with these.
Gas Grenades – These will be less lethal than the other options due to the -1 Injury Roll, but Ignoring armor makes them great for setting up Blood counters on things. They’re extremely cost efficient for what they do and absolutely punish anyone trying to castle up and bubble wrap key models.
Incendiary Grenades – The most expensive of the bunch, but has a keyword that’s slightly less common to counter and still can ignore armor on Crits. They’ll be slightly more lethal but slightly less reliable than Gas Grenades, which is why you’ll see folks advocate for them less often. They can, however, be a great pickup later on when people start to buy more gas masks or if things like Black Grail are becoming a struggle for you.
Other Equipment
Combat Helmet/Gas Mask/Infernal Brand – Uniquely, HL have access to protection from every keyword. This is really great for later on in campaigns when some of these start to really stack up in rosters and you need to keep your key units alive, so don’t be afraid to start investing in them when the big guns come out.
Hellbound Soul Contract – These are a fun way to Martyrdom your Troopers that will be on close range screening duty. If they die, every enemy without NEGATE FIRE within 1″ takes a Blood Marker as they explode into fire, nice. It can be good on Shotgun models to try and deter people from actually charging in and trading with them.
Troop Flag – I don’t think these are super necessary but they can be good if you do find yourself losing to Morale in a list that goes pretty wide on bodies. It’s only 1 glory point, but you need a model you’re willing to hide out in a corner to wave it around.
Incendiary Ammunition: A good way to buff up the weapon on something that can’t afford something heavier, not really something I rush to grab but can be good later on.
Unholy Relic – A bit expensive, but FEAR can help some of your melee brawlers stay a bit more durable in the fight.
Unholy Trinket – These are a good luxury grab for your Priest, a Sacrificial Dagger holding Commando, or anything that will be dashing like a maniac. Letting you re-roll a Risky action can be really essential for making sure you don’t flub a shank attempt or Puppet Master roll.
Building Your List
Rather than give a sample list, I think HL benefits more from understanding the philosophy of how you want your army to function. Since pretty much everything on the roster is good, it’s hard to go wrong as long as you don’t skew too elite or too horde from the start (you can still build pretty horde focused, but you don’t want just a Priest and warm bodies). I’m going to go through some list building ideas so you can confidently build out your own roster to taste.
Realistically, you’ll want to decide on a gameplan – the three “core” ideas here will be close range/melee focused, long ranged, or a balanced force. What your focuses are will depend on which one of these you want to lean to, but really the key thing to note is that you’ll want to tailor your specialist selection based on which of these you want to use. An example: an all-in aggressive force can be really potent and still wants some shooting support, but if you bring an Artillery Witch and leave her out to dry with no protection, savvy opponents will be able to punish her.
Specialist (ELITE and Limited) Models:
- Your Priest is required anyway, so you’ll want to upgrade them. You’ll need to decide if you want them to be in the backlines and use Rifles and longer-range options to be more supportive with Puppet Master to shift Machine Gunners and Witches around, or if you want to have them up in the thick of it with a close quarters build. Either can be good, but even in shooting lists I think they make a great front lining threat.
- You won’t be able to take everything from your choices here, especially in a campaign start setting at 700 Ducats, but even in 900 Ducat skirmishes. You’ll have to decide between what you value from the other choices.
- Choristers can be really great to backup a bunch of melee screens and have value in any force, but really shine if you have a Witch/Death Commando to deal with ranged threats that might pick it off. If you’re running a melee focused force, they’ll be a bit more vulnerable to ranged threats but will get more value protecting your frontline as long as they stay alive to get into combat.
- The Death Commando and War Wolf are really good lone operators and are pretty much always useful, however they can be expensive to include both in a list. The Death Commando will be less explosive than the Dog and requires much more surgical use, but is a bit better at getting in and killing something. The Wolf is a Big Scary Thing that will eat gunfire, but can be really useful even in shooting lists to screen out a flank to protect your backline. To be transparent, I think the Wolf is pretty much always a safe bet for most lists and can just be a menace to deal with.
- The Artillery Witch is going to be most useful in a Balanced or Shooting roster where you can buy them enough time and space to rattle off as many shots as they can down range.
All of these require a reasonable investment to get on the board, so play around with each and determine what works best for you. Remember that in Campaign settings your roster will grow so you can eventually be a bit less picky. In a 700 Ducat environment, I’d opt usually for 2-3 (besides your priest) at most, but in a 900/8 setting I think you could invest in all of them if your list can leverage them to good use.
Core Units:Â
Your selection here will depend both on what your gameplan is, but also on how elite you want to run. If you opt for more of the above choices than not, you’ll definitely want more chaff here to make sure you aren’t too strapped for bodies, but if you have the room to spare you can pickup more Anointed and heavy-hitting choices like Flamethrower Troops.
- Trooper with Instrument. Pretty much always. You will notice the benefit of +1 Dash dice.
- A few bodies to play objectives and do some dirty work. Legionaries, Troops, or Wretched will do the trick. I tend to like a bare minimum of three things here if you’re skewing more elite, but I prefer 4-5. Legionaries will do a lot more heavy lifting than you expect early in a campaign, make sure you take them when you can.
- If you think you’re lacking in armor piercing threats, you’ll really want them here. Whether it’s Anointed or Troopers with Flame weapons or just a bunch of goobers with Gas weapons, Armor will be a point of difficulty.
- Anointed will change in priority depending on how many specialists you took. They’re great to fill the gaps that the other things can’t. Machine Guns and AMR’s I find to be best with shooting focused lists, as they work really well with a priest who can Puppet them around a bit. Don’t sleep on having some kitted just to be durable and frontline, but they also can be key damage dealers up close if you didn’t bring the Wolf/Commando/Chorister.
- When you come to the ends of your list, weigh the options of upgrades vs bodies. While I think ELITE models are absolutely more worth investing in early campaign, you still want to have enough bodies to be functional. Never forget that you can take action dorks for 26 ducats that you can sell later – decide if extra gear is going to give you more value than an extra Trooper or Wretched. I think shooting for 7-8 models for a more elite list and 9-10 for a more balanced list to start is a good choice. I don’t really advocate for spamming troops early in a campaign as they can die really easily to slow your progress a bit, and morale can be a bit of a pain.
Variant Warbands
HL have a few solid options to mix up the playstyle from their default gameplan, allowing for some interesting and flavorful options if some more eclectic selections are up your alley. Watch this space for future links to more detailed guides – this is just to give a quick idea on how they will handle differently to their core brethren.
Knights of Avarice
The KoA are the followers of Mammon, the Archdemon of Greed. They appreciate money and riches over all, and they love nothing more than flexing their extreme wealth over their enemies as they beat them down and steal their riches.
On the tabletop, they have a unique ability to take 1 piece of Battlekit from both the New Antioch and Iron Sultanate armories to use as they see fit, although any Keyword specific restrictions still apply. They also can recruit Goetic Warlocks – normally restricted to being a mercenary exclusively for Glory, but here they can just be bought for 110 ducats. They provide a pretty terrifying mobile crowd control piece that can help assist your backline and help dive in deep to disrupt the enemy. Lastly, your Priest must replace their Puppet Master ability with Price of Greed – a Risky action that lets you pick a target within 12 inches and roll an injury roll for them adding dice to the roll for each point of armor they have. This can be devastating into the right heavily armored target, but losing Puppet Master can be a bit of a kick in the pants.
They have a few drawbacks as well, although some are more neutral than anything. Artillary Witch Infernal Bombs are replaced with Gas Bombs, which are exactly what you think they are – slightly less lethal but better against armor. You can’t take Fire or Shrapnel weapons (you don’t want to damage any of that sick loot), but grenade launchers get replaced with gas grenade launchers instead. These things together make your warband really great at shelling out blood markers, more so than normal into armored targets.
The real drawbacks are as follows: you can’t include a unit below 80 Ducats that isn’t a Wretched, and you can’t take Death Commandos. This cements KoA as the more elite force focused on strongarming enemies with juiced up Anointed, with powerful extra equipment like the Coin Hammer and Golden Calf Altar helping boost their threat potential. The loss of Commandos isn’t as bad with the inclusion of Goetic Warlocks, and you can still use wretched to lug around on objectives and bolster your activations. Really, their main drawback is losing Puppet Master, although your Priest can really be a combat monster here.
Trench Ghosts
The Ghosts are a methodical, grindy variation of base HL that trades some of their powerful specialists and speed for durability, unrestricted mobility, and a powerful buff piece in the form of a Barbed Wire Banshee to replace the Chorister.
Trench Ghosts are taking -1 Injury Dice to ranged attack rolls against them, right off the bat. You’ll gain the ability to trade blows incredibly well with other factions that want to fight in your range bracket and become obnoxious to shift off objectives and choke points. All of your models have Fear and Negate Gas as well, helping squeeze even more durability out of them and, funny enough, making them really strong into Gas-heavy factions like Knights of Avarice. Your models ignore difficult terrain as well, due to being literal ghosts. Lastly, you gain access to the Barbed Wire Banshee, who is identical to the Chorister but adds +1 Dice to Injury rolls for enemy models nearby rather than making enemy actions less successful, making them a much more aggressive tool than in base HL.
Also, their priests can ride on a tank. Yes, your ghost priest gets a tank. Yes, it’s awesome and makes them extremely durable and gives them STRONG, opening up some crazy loadout options.
There are some big drawbacks here though. First and foremost, any movement on Dash actions is halved and it becomes harder to hit enemies retreating from you in melee. Your army is locked into being a durable, slow, grindy wall of…sheet. You can’t include any mercenaries, and you lose access to ARTIFICIAL models (War Wolf, Artillery Witch). You can’t include Hellfire Contracts or Infernal Brands either – you can still bring Anointed, but they cost the same and lose the Brand.
These are some big hits, taking some powerful units out of the roster, but you trade these things for the ability to have a nightmarishly strong core of Troopers/Legionaries and still get to keep some powerhouse ELITES to help back them up. If you like the idea of playing attrition armies and want to swarm the board with Legionaries that can take more of a hit than they have any right to, Ghosts might be the pick for you.
Heretic Naval Raiders
Smooth seas didn’t make good sailors, but they made great great heretics apparently. The Heretic Navy is a pretty simple and straightforward variant on the base HL. Identity wise, they focus on aggressive assaults, close range shooting, and frighteningly quick charges to overwhelm your opponent.
Navy models can get Submachine Guns for 25 ducats – a great grab that will allow you to take them much more readily than base HL, who can only get them for Glory. You gain +1 Dice to all dash actions as well, which is HUGE. Dashing is a really important way to keep your units moving to where you need them, and basically having an instrument on hand at all times is a crazy bonus to have. Lastly, up to three non-elites in your warband can gain INFILTRATOR for +10 ducats each, which lets you do some real dirty plays like infiltrating flamethrowers and grenadiers. These can also make nasty pairings working with a Death Commando to really make the flanks become a nightmare for anyone to deal with.
For drawbacks, you can’t include a War Wolf at all – the Big Dog simply cannot swim. Additionally, you’re capped out at two anointed and one Artillery Witch – notably this supersedes their normal restriction, so you can only ever have one regardless of how big your warband gets later in a campaign.
The Naval Raiders provide a pretty basic trade-off that opens up interesting strategies – lose some specialists and have more restricted heavy firepower to gain the edge in close range shooting and a hell of a lot more mobility. This provides a really fun playstyle that shakes things up a bit from the normal “dominate two ranges” idea of base HL and pushes more towards just mauling people in the close range game, and getting there a hell of a lot faster.
Final Thoughts
Heretic Legion are a really fun faction to play and have tools at their disposal to handle most of what the game can throw at them. They have a surprising amount of skill expression wrapped in a pretty simple to learn package, and I believe are one of the more forgiving armies to play while still being a faction with enough depth to be enjoyable to learn and grow with.
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