Daemonhunters: The Units; HQs  

Posted by Michael Hogan in , ,

The holy Inquisition sends the most elite soldiers and generals into the Daemonhunter army. Due to this, however, their "HQ" and "Elite" options are fairly expensive and limited to many of the other armies, but all perform well in the field of battle. For the in-depth statline, you can refer to the online codex. Here is the link.

The HQs

  • Ordo Malleus Inquisitor Lord
  • Grey Knight Hero

The Ordo Malleus Inquisitor Lord is one of the weaker overall choices for an army focusing on Grey Knights. He does allow you to take Daemonhosts, Death-Cult Assassins, and Officio Assassinorum Operatives. This prerequisite, however, for an Inquisitor can be met with an Elites choice. In addition, the Inquisitor Lord must take a retinue of Henchmen, a minimum of 3 and maximum of 12. These forced henchmen don't allow you to attach the Inquisitor Lord to a Grey Knight squad so that they may benefit from his wargear and special rules. His low price comes with a very weak statline, Strength and Toughness both at the human standard of 3. However, the Inquisitor Lord does bring several benefits to your army. Having access to everything in the Grey Knights armory can allow him to take wargear like the Null Rod and Psychic Hood. Not to mention he is a potent psyker and may take any number of psychic powers. Also, the Inquisitor Lord has the special rule called Iron Will. This allows his squad and himself to pass or fail any morale or pinning check they are called to make. Note that if you choose to pass a morale the morale test after losing an assault, you would have to take wounds via the No Retreat! special rule. Either way, the psychic powers available aren't game changing and I'd probably shelf this guy in most situations for a Grey Knight HQ. However, you can pull off some Deep Striking units and a strong gunline of henchmen, which I'll try to cover soon. Most of his tricks can be performed just as equally by an Inquisitor Elite, so that is why I would nix this guy in a Grey Knights focus force. But if this guy is something you really like, you can still make him work. With the right henchmen and wargear you will be a powerful Devastator like squad with some other tricks and if you have some ideas, post them on this comment. I'd love to see something to try out myself.

The Grey Knight Heroes are your other HQ options. They are both Terminator "Sergeants" essentially, wearing Tactical Dreadnought Armor and having the ability to bring around a retinue of terminators. There are two options however; the Grand Master or Brother-Captain are available. The Grand Master is much more expensive, but carries a +1 Ballistic Skill, +2 Wounds, and +1 Attack. In addition, he has a Force Weapon, which can be read more about in a previous post on wargear. Both characters may buy many things out of the armory, including the noble Psycannon, righteous Incinerator, and potent Psychic Hood, which I highly recommend. The Grey Knight Heroes can take one psychic power, but none of them really suite their style. If any, consider Hammerhand or Holocaust. Hammerhand will give you a +2 Strength in close combat with vehicles, but that isn't too impressive seeing that you can get the same Strength 8 by having a Terminator with a Thunder Hammer and Storm Shield, which costs nothing from a Storm Bolter and Nemesis Force Weapon. Either way, I recommend you have either Hammerhand or a Thunder Hammer, but both are not necessary. Which brings up my next point, the Grey Knight Terminator retinue. Grey Knight Heroes may take 3-9 terminators to accompany them, equal in cost as if you had created an elite squad. These terminators may equip wargear they usually have access to, the Psycannon and Incinerator. Try to match your HQs weapon pick here, to give more consistency. I personally almost always take the Psycannon, but the Incinerator really helps take on hordes of opponents before charging in in addition to canceling out cover saves. The Psycannon would keep your Knights from being worthless if they get stuck away from any opponents while the Incinerator increases your already potent close-combat strength. The choice is more of an opinion than one better than the other, so, again, just pick what you prefer.

No matter an HQ option, don't forget about the Psychic Hood. Not all armies will want this, as it is completely wasted against certain lists. However, infinite range Hoods are simply amazing, and their benefit is definitely worth the points if you go up against a list with any psyker.
Other pieces of wargear you want to remember are the Master-crafted Weapon and Emperor's Tarot. If you really want to win that "who picks to go first roll", the Emperor's Tarot is really worth it, though I usually don't bother as I don't care in most situations. The Master-crafted weapon, however, really works well on any weapon. With a Brother-Captain, I will usually Master-craft either his Psycannon or Nemesis Force Weapon, leaning towards the Psycannon more. With the Grand Master, however, I often feel I've put enough points on one model and I leave his weapons as is, but his heightened Ballistic skill makes up for the lack of Master-crafted weaponry.
Also, when you take a retinue, keep in mind that the HQ loses the Independent Character rule. This does mean you cannot leave this retinue but also has the hidden benefit of making your HQ untargetable in close-combat. This means your opponent must attack the entire squad and you choose how to allocate the wounds, possibly protecting your HQ from instant death weapons.

That's all for this post. Soon I'll do an post about the Elites, probably split up with the Assassins with their own article. I'll keep in touch and hopefully get my next post up soon.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 18, 2010 at Sunday, July 18, 2010 and is filed under , , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the comments feed .

3 comments

One thing you didn't mention which is worth noting is due to our old codex any IC with a retinue no longer counts as one until the retinue is dead. That means your GM and BC can't be singled out in combat, can be a nasty surprise for your opponents :D
I like to keep retinues small and simple, 4 termies with 1 psycannon Usually does the trick for me. Any more and it's too many points for a non-scoring unit.

August 22, 2010 at 11:24 AM

Ah, I can't believe I forgot to mention that. I will definitely update the post to include that. What a boon it is to have the "hidden" HQ in close-combat.

August 22, 2010 at 2:37 PM

I totally agree with your assessments.

The retinue rule is definitely really useful, and I used to swear by it.

I still love it, but i've taken to using both a regular GK Hero and our Special Character Hero (Stern) as seperate IC's attached to a regular GK squad. The wound allocation possibilities give my opponents fits, and the extra I5 power weapon attacks turn regular gk from good to great in combat! try it, just realise this makes them very weak against other IC's.

October 28, 2010 at 12:39 AM

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