Tuesday, September 8, 2015

Horus Heresy Review: Auxilia Artillery Tank Battery


Background
For when the Solar Auxilia need a bit more in the way of long range and sustained fire power with high yield shells, they rely on a battery of Artillery to rain down on their enemies. This tank battery encompasses three different tanks that are well-able to perform this role: the Basilisk, the Medusa, and the Bombard. The first two will be familiar to 40k players at the very minimum.

Strengths
These tanks rely on their firepower to get the job done. So we need to think about what jobs each might be good at.

For the Basilisk, the Earthshaker cannon is going to be employed for huge range, high strength barrage purposes. It'll be sat at the back raining down death on anything in power armour, or most tanks in the game.

The medusa is much shorter range (36"), but provides a critical S=10 option at AP2. It'll be needing to get in to a good position reliably.

Meanwhile the Bombard has much weaker strength (S=6) but critically ignores cover. Its prime job is therefore to target marines like support or sniper squads that are deep inside ruins and the like. The only question is whether to upgrade the shells fired of the Bombard with Seismic Shock shells which add the sunder and concussive rules. I think most players would toy with this concept at least!

Weaknesses
This is a squad that cannot be mixed and matched. You can only get up to 3 tanks of the same type. So choose wisely.

Builds
One build per tank, as follows:

Auxilia Basilisk, armoured ceramite (180 points)
A good price for an effective long range artillery tank.

Auxilia Medusa, armoured ceramite, hunter-killer missile, dozer blade (190 points)
The dozer blade is to help with movement, whilst the missile will help finish off any tanks left alive by its primary weapon. That said, it could be worth investing in some (or all!) of the other options here such as the auxiliary drive and extra armour. A pintle mounted heavy flamer may not be out of the question either.

Auxilia Bombard, armoured ceramite, seismic shock shells (225 points)
Able to take on most power armour in the game and give some other things pause for thought as well. Tempting to take a pintle mounted heavy flamer too in case of closer range threats. 

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