Wednesday, December 16, 2015

Horus Heresy Review: Hol Beloth

Background.
A Captain in the ranks of the Word Bearers, Beloth was a rising star at the time of the Heresy and the Betrayal at Calth. Ambitious, capable, and ruthless, Beloth was already known for a string of bloody victories and encouraged his men to go up the middle and come through by sheer force of faith.

Strengths.
In terms of equipment, Beloth is armed and armoured as would befit a Master of the Legion. Naturally, this includes artificer armour, and as one might imagine for the Word Bearers, a tainted weapon to boot as well.

His stat line is that of a praetor, but having read the abilities, I might think (at a marginal level) that a custom build praetor might be better. That said, Beloth technically has more wounds than might ordinarily be the case. This is because he has had his flesh inscribed with Hexaglyphic Wards which mean he ignores the first wound he takes in a game. This is strong as it means he can even survive an instant death attack.

Weaknesses.
His main ability is an odd one. Once per game he grants WS=5 to the unit he is attached to.  I'm not sure its a weakness so much, but needs to be thought about crystal clearly. How will Beloth and his unit get in to combat? Which unit (of Word Bearers) should he be associated with (tactical squads with extra weapons, or something else?). There are a lot of possibilities here, but merits planning.

His warlord trait is nothing unique (like some other characters) -- fixed as bloody-handed. To be clear: fear causing is an amazing trait in 30k since there is no "And They Shall Know No Fear". This can be exploited, but it needs a good amount of thought about how a Word Bearer army might benefit from this.

Summary.
Beloth is a cheap praetor level character that is fluffy for Betray at Calth. How to best exploit his combination of effects is the clincher question. Which squad to marry him up with? How to get him in to combat with that squad? What support is necessary? Its a tough conundrum for me, but I'm sure there's exploitable facets in here that I'm not quite seeing. Perhaps with Night Lord allies? I'm not sure.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

His weapon skill five effects all word bearer units from my interpretation. Which makes him more useful but it is difficult to have it effect more than 2 units (timing and planning necessary). Also consider his powerfist will ID enemy Praetors and you can use his Ward to ignore any ID paragon blade attacks.

Overall I think of him as a warlord hunter. Can do well attached to power weapon vets in a assault vehicle.

Lol pretty much condensed my blog post right there.

jabberjabber said...

Ah yes -- a warlord hunter seems to be about the optimal role! Great point! (so long as its not a primarch…! I'm still of the opinion that only Sigismund stands anything like a chance out of the regular HQ choices).

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