As I get more games under my belt; one of the things that I’ve learnt is to consider the types of complementary buffs that you’d like your units to receive from your HQs alongside other abilities that are unique to your chosen faction/sub-faction.
In Warhammer 40,000; every army list that you put together requires a HQ unit to be part of your list. So depending on what you’d like to do pick a HQ unit alongside any Warlord traits and other equipment loadouts that complements the style of play you intend for a game. This layer of strategy is what makes Warhammer 40K interesting.
In my recent army lists I picked my Skorpekh Lord as the HQ and also selected other abilities, etc that would help my troops do better in melee. Here are some of considerations and the thinking behind some of my choices for my Novokh.
Making use of the Skorpekh Lord’s United in Destruction Aura which gives Destroyer Cult units within 6″ of it re-rolls if they roll 1’s when wounding (this negates bad rolls hopefully) but what this means is that I need to keep the units like the Skorpekh Destroyers close to the Skorpekh Lord.
I gave the Skorpekh Lord the Blood-Fuelled Fury trait unique to Novokh as it gives him the ability to inflict Mortal Wounds upon an unmodified wound roll of 6 (which makes him potentially more deadly once he’s closed in an enemy) – but I could also utilise other traits such as the Thrall of the Silent King to extend the range of the Skorpekh Lord’s aura or Implacable Conqueror to re-roll charge rolls.
I was also particularly keen on being able to take advantage of the Protocol of the Hungry Void + Awakened by Murder Combo which would give the following benefits in the turn where Protocol of the Hungry Void is active:
- +1 to charge rolls
- If a unit charged, was charged at or if it performed a Heroic Intervention gain a +1 to AP and a +1 to its Strength characteristic
- +1 AP improvement on an unmodified wound roll of 6
Command Protocols: Necrons are able to get additional bonuses from different protocols that take effect in each round of battle. What this essentially means is that Necron players benefit from different buffs which change every turn.
The idea behind all the above is to be more deadly in melee especially since quite a number of the models in my army are melee-centric; namely my Skorpekh Destroyers and Canoptek Wraiths.
If you’re new to the game, do spend time to read your army’s codex prior to a game and pick out Strategems, etc that you intend to use that really complements your play style. Tactically it always helps if you are able to re-roll bad rolls or improve the number of dice that goes into a particular roll.
Till next time. Happy hobbying & happy gaming!
Storm Gate Games 