Havoc Brothers....as Cursed Foundings?
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| The incredibly cool and underrated Black Dragons. |
The 21st (or Cursed) Founding is (in)famous for producing disturbingly mutated Space Marines as a result of the Priesthood of Mars attempting to create some new and improved experimental Space Marines which would lack the Gene-Seed flaws of their predecessors. While a sizable portion is said to have turned renegade or died off, those that remain can be pretty badass if unusual Space Marines. Famously, White Dwarf released a special list for Cursed Founding Space Marines. Given their unusual, monstrously mutated brothers and their lack of the 'And They Shall Know No Fear' these Space Marines played strangely similar to the Chaos Space Marines. Considering these heavily distrusted and mutated marines would be under-staffed and under-equipped it make sense to base them off the Havoc Brothers list which is Grimdark Future's counterpart to the Chaos Space Marines. The one exception would be Lamenters, who should clearly just be played like vanilla Blood Angels albeit with the worst set of dice one has for maximum effect.
Of course, no one expect these 'Cursed Brothers' to be fully embraced Chaos Marines and, as such, here are a few of the units which would work well within this army:
- Havoc Lords, Dark Champion, Dark Psychics, Havoc Brothers, Havoc Supports, Havoc Bikers and Havoc Destroyers are all fairly fine to use, as they play and function nearly identical to their loyalist counterparts. They should be modeled/fluffed as their loyalist equivalent.
- Possessed Brothers and Mutated Possessed represent those Marines whose bodies have grotesquely mutated and twisted. One could give them Wings if they feel like it, either representing mutants with jump packs being hurled into enemy lines or some horribly twisted attempt at recreating Sanguinus' wings or something.
- Daemon Spawns would be the most horribly mutated Brothers, so twisted they cannot even use ranged weapons. Rather than some twisted tentacle monster, these would be modeled as grotesquely bulked out, ape-like monstrosity too large for armor.
- At opponent discretion, it could be well-suited to allow these armies to take vehicles from the regular Battle Brother list.
As for the specific Chapters themselves, some specific examples could use sub-armies:
- Black Dragons and (original?) Minotaurs use the Disciples of War sub-army to represent their prowess and ruthlessness in close quarters.
- Sons of Antaeus use the Disciples of Plague to gain the Regeneration special rule to represent their toughness. It is not recommended to take any demonic or plague-themed units and to simply use the sub-army to max the crap out of durability.
Support Brothers....As Troops?
Do you like the boringly reliable Bolter? Do you like to play as either Imperial Fists or Iron Hands, who have specialized doctrines or special rules (depending if one is looking at 30k or 40k) which make basic bolters better? There is a simple way to replicate this: by taking 5 or 10-man Support Brothers squads armed with the default Assault Rifles. The Support Brothers are meant to be equivalent to the Devastator Squads but by default they come armed with the same equipment as basic Battle Brothers, only worth a tiny bit more points for having the Relentless ability, which allows to generate an extra attack on a 6. The downside is that Support Brothers cannot take a medic (thus cannot gain Regeneration) and lack good melee options for a Sergeant. Note that this trade-off can also be repeated with Havoc Brothers, as their own Support troop also has Relentless and has similar trade-offs.
Playing Iconic Chapters
The most iconic of each Space Marine Chapters are generally accepted to be all the loyalist First Founding Chapters and the Second Founding Black Templars. The first category being the archetypal and historical progenitors of all Space Marine Chapters. The latters are just really, really weird and have a boner for crusader imagery and styling. Out of these, currently on the Blood Angels, Dark Angels and Space Wolves have dedicated rules in Grimdark Future. There's a few work around, however:
- Imperial Fists and Iron Hands use the Support Brother 'trick' described above. They are well known for being stable and very 'shooty' armies and so any thematic list would greatly benefit from a 5 or 10-man marine squad with relentless. Alternatively...
- Iron Hands use Custodian Brothers! Ignore the Custodes and Sisters of Silence and purchase Regeneration to really have that feeling of being invincible and not giving a crap about your meaty bits when you replaced them with glorious metal. Remember ++THE FLESH IS WEAK++!
- White Scars and Black Templars use Blood Brothers rules. No, really! They gain the Furious special rule (both Chapters are good at melee) and in the case of the White Scars their vehicles can be made faster. Just don't take these units which are Blood Angels-specific.
- Customize your list with Watch Brothers. Want to focus on specific weapon types. Perhaps you want to use Stalker Bolters for your Raven Guards? The trick is to take Watch Brothers, which are heavily customization and even have some unique gear that the basic Battle Brothers lack. Watch Brothers could also represent Tyranic War Veterans for Ultramarines.
- Salamanders just need to pick everything that's a flame weapon, obviously.
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