Litanies of the Faithful

Hello fellow Magos,

Last week we talked a bit about beginner 1k lists for Ad Mech, as well as my ethos surrounding list building. This week, we are going to look at a couple of 2k lists.

From what was discussed last week, my own interpretation of a beginner Warhammer list follows these principles:

Straight forward gameplan

We are not aiming to flood the board with bodies in SHC, we are not jailing our enemies with max Pteraxii, we are composing lists of high value units with solid, repeatable and reliable synergies.

Redundancies

The caveat to a beginner list being the army rule – Conqueror/Protector Imperative – and being able to use your battle-line accordingly to maximise the value of those effects. In this instance, the redundancy comes from including 1-2 extra battle-line units than you would typically need to get the value from this rule.

Limited gameplay decisions

These lists will be designed with Conqueror or Protector Imperative in mind and you should be able to remain in that Imperative for the entire game and still have your army be effective and efficient. Other than the army rule, the only other decision to make is your Invocation of Machine Vengeance (full re-rolls to hit) target if you’re running Cawl.

Detachment

I would highly encourage running these lists in the Eradication Cohort detachment. Due to our decision of remaining in a single Imperative for the game you’ll have a very simple detachment rule to memorize – Skitarii models re-rolling 1’s to hit in Protector, or wound in Conqueror.

The Stratagems and play patterns of this detachment are straight forward and simple. Once you’ve had a few games under your belt you can try the same lists in the Haloscreed Battle Clade detachment which gives you a lot more agency in your decisions.

Building on what I wrote last week, I’ll be taking those 1k list bases and expanding them closer to 2k points, including enough units to play the game, but leaving enough room for you to flex the rest of the list out depending on unit preference, local meta, and style.

2k lists

Conqueror (+1 ap within 6″ of battleline, assault, +1 WS):

Base

• Cawl/Thulia
• Tech-Priest Manipulus (2 if 2×3 Breachers, 1 if 1×6)
• 3x Battleline – Rangers or Vanguard
• Dunerider
• Infiltrators (2×5)
• Ruststalkers
• Pteraxii Skystalkers (1×5)
• Skorpius Disintegrator/Onager Dunecrawler
• Kataphron Breachers – Heavy arc rifle (2×3 or 1×6)

This list comes in at around 1500ish points depending on your unit choices and a good start to a 2k Conqueror list. Cawl or Thulia can be a great boon to your army with their abilities. Infiltrators allow you to infiltrate beyond your deployment zone and score secondaries early on. Battleline Skitarii sticky your deployment zone objective and push forward to contest enemy objectives and spread your army buff which in turns gives the Kataphrons full re-rolls to hit. Kataphrons are your punch unit, and on average will kill an armiger, rhino or light tank (think Gladiator Lancer) in shooting, a good break-point to have. The Dunerider synergises well with your Skitarii, extending their threat range and adding anti-chaff shooting to the list. Skystalkers give you a rapid ingress target in a fast-moving deepstriking flying unit, and a Disintegrator/Dunecrawler gives a long-range shooting threat.

1500ish points, and we can play the game. 500ish points left over. This is where your own decision making really comes into play. Whether you have a preference due to local meta, narrative vibes or raw unadulterated style, ultimately you need to make decisions about what to include in your list.

In general, this list is more aggressive, asking you to make plays and attack your opponent to progress the game. It doesn’t have to do that, but if you’re going to sit back and wait for your opponent to come to you a Protector based list would be better.

I don’t really want to write a Protector 2k list, it’s not my vibe

Refer back to my previous article, start with the 1k Protector list and go from there. Protector isn’t really my vibe.

Low motivation this week, soz x