Warhammer 40,000/7th Edition Tactics/Renegades and Heretics

Originally printed across Imperial Armour 5-7 to represent the forces of Chaos. Forgeworld gave these guys a bit of a nod by updating their rules for the 5th Edition, while a far cry from being competitive in 6th edition, the way that Forgeworld are going and revising old rules means it might get a revamp sometime soon... but for the moment here you go.

Why Play Renegades & Heretics

• You've got leftover units from the old Eye of Terror campaign that introduced Lost and the Damned.
• You want to play chaos without superhumans or daemons
• The 5th Edition army list is freely available from Forgeworld

Special Rules

• Renegades - Renegades & Heretics got one of the most stupid rules in 40k ever: Randomly generated leadership values... That means the first time a heretic unit takes a morale test, you have to pre-roll to figure out what the unit's leadership value actually was... somewhere between 5 and 10, potentially crippling a unit for the rest of the game.

• Wargear
  • Voxcasters - While Renegades get vox casters like in the Imperial Guard, the definitely do not work the same way, but are no less important as they grant you a re-roll to generate your random leadership. For 5 points you probably want one in every discrete unit that doesn't have a decent character/advisor attached whose leadership you can rely on.
  • Banners - only available to the HQ command squad, but is also probably an essential 15 point purchase. While it does the normal banner thing of adding +1 to combat resolution to all friendly combats within 6". The fact it also lets models in 12" re-roll morale checks.

Unit Analysis

HQ

• Company Command Platoon - Old-school Imperial Guard command squad and 0-6 three team heavy weapon squads. You don't get orders like Imperial Guard do, but you do get a 12" leadership bubble allowing other squads to use the commanders leadership BUT you suffer from the same leadership issues as the rest of the army, so you could potentially have a commander who's more cowardly than the everyday troops!
  • The Heavy Weapon support squads get an amazing weapon in Servants of Decay only: They have mortars that launch poisoned (2+) shells with AP3, FUCKING AWESOME! If you're playing against space marine armies, take all of these and watch your opponent weep as you fling poisoned / pinning templates of death over hills and buildings.

• Champion of Nurgle (Servants of Decay):
• Champion of Khorne (Servants of Slaughter):

Advisors

Another throw-back to the way things used to be done all the time with IG. You get to buy dudes that HAVE to be permanently attached to your renegade squads.

• Enforcers - Think evil commissars and you wont be far off, slightly better too since they have 2 wounds as standard but unfortunately cost 40 points a pop for the same gear as a guardsman. They are kind of essential in your important units though since they are your consistent source of Ld 10.
• Apostate Preachers - Very similar to ministorum priests with 2-wounds, but disgustingly overcosted and if you want a rosarius you have to pay through the nose for it. Probably not worth it as the army isn't particularly melee focused and cannot be attached to the space marine or ogryn units which might have benefited from getting melee re-rolls.
• Renegade Psykers (Defenders of Vraks) : For once a good unit! They were actually given a 6th edition update separately from the army list too. For starters they are dirt cheap; you can get five Lv1 psykers at 15pts each. While they do not draw from the disciplines in the rulebook, Forgeworld changed it up a bit so you can always get a power where before there was a possibility that your psyker did absolutely nothing, and you can buy a second roll, guaranteeing two powers. Just remember that instead of suffering perils of the warp, they turn into daemonhosts and become WS4 S4 A3 Rending, 5++ melee units for the rest of the game. Which while unfortunate, is better than most other armies get!
  • Random Powers Roll D6 :
  • 1: Lose 1 Ld but pick a power between 2-5.
  • 2: a unit in 12" gets 6++.
  • 3: The psyker gets a powerfist.
  • 4: the psyker gets D3 extra melee attacks at AP3.
  • 5: A unit within 12" gets +1 WS.
  • 6: Witchfire 24" S3 AP6 Heavy D6.
• Renegade Psykers of Nurgle (Servants of Decay): Behaves almost exactly like the unaligned renegade psyker, with the same standard profile and weapon options, even turns into a daemonhost instead of perils. The only difference is the choice of powers.
  • 1: Lose 1 Ld but pick a power between 2-5.
  • 2: a unit in 12" gets 6++.
  • 3: An enemy unit in 24" is in difficult terrain next turn (not Jump or Jet units though).
  • 4: auto-hit one selected model in 24" with AP2 Fleshbane!! (fuck yeah).
  • 5: A unit within 12" gets +1 WS.
  • 6: Nova 12" Assault D6 Poisoned (6+).

Special Characters

• Arkos The Faithless (Defenders of Vraks) - Finally an Alpha Legion Character. This guy wield the 3-th ed Black Blade (+2S power sword), and bestow counter-attack to his squad, both of which is not near impressive as Zhufor also gets it from having the mark of Khorne- you need AP2 for challenges, - he's from the times when Alpha's was little more then space Taliban with lots of trained cultists, rather then modern closet loyalist anonymouses with mind-blowingly over-complicated schemes and tons of just as planned.

• Zhufor The Impaler (Servants of Slaughter) - 2+ armor save, Eternal Warrior, and two different close combat weapons, the Skulltaker Chainaxe (like regular chainaxe, but two handed and with a +2A bonus) and the Claw of Deimos (power fist with another stolen Dorn's Arrow). And, because the extra attack of the old MoK is included in his profile and the MoK is in his profile he gets 6 S10 AP2 attacks or 8 S5 AP4 Attacks on the charge!
  • One often overlooked point in Zhufor's favour is that he also lets you take a bodyguard unit of Khorne-marked Terminators without taking up a slot and granting the Renegades list one of its only sources of 2+ saves!

• Necrosius (Servants of Decay) - A fearless Nurgle Sorcerer with Feel No Pain, a poisoned bolt pistol and arguably one of the most powerful shooting powers: Wasting Disease. It hits automatically, wounds on a 2+ with Fleshbane at AP2, and if you roll 5 or less on psychic test you can snipe with it. He also has +1I compared to a normal sorcerer. Also, run him in a Zombie Horde List to give your zombies furious charge (with S4 they get reroll on 4+ poison when fighting T4 opponents).

TROOPS

• Renegade Militia Platoon - similar in form to an Imperial Guard platoon: 1 command squad and 2-5 militia squads. The basic soldier has the same stats & equipment as a standard guardsman but with the stupid leadership rule. Nothing particularly impressive here weapons or rules wise.
  • Perhaps the best thing to do would be to use the combined squad rule and bunch your separate units into one big super-unit. That gives all your heavy and special weapons an excellent measure of protection via wound-allocation by model positioning and also has added effect of delaying the effect of the random leadership after taking shooting casualties. If you go this route, there's also less need for having as many voxcasters in the unit, where if you had the platoon as separate units you'd need voxcasters everywhere!

• Worker Rabble

• Renegade Armoured Fist Squad

• Plague Zombies (Servants of Decay)

DEDICATED TRANSPORTS

• Rhinos - Very cheap and good transport since space marines are KNOWN TO HIDE IN MEHTAL BAWKSES, DA KOWARDZ! TEH FEWLZ! There's not much to say about it beyond "use it!" Seriously, don't footslog your Marines. A walking Marine is a dead Marine, and dead men hold no objectives. The only upgrades recommended are the Dozer Blade and maybe Hunter-Killer Missiles (if you have a lot of HK's in your army already). Once the guys are out of it, you can basically throw it away in petty dick moves like preventing charges, blocking line of sight, and tank shocking people into tight formation to be hit with flamers, more useful for shielding your own guys as it's side armour is 11, as opposed to the 10 most transports have (*cough* Chimera *cough*) so str 4 weapons (standard infantry power) can't glance it. You can also use its speed to dick around with Necrons if you feel like trolling them and don't really care about winning.
  • NOTE: look on the entry for the rhino in your codex and you will notice a rule that no-one ever uses, which is a shame because it totally rocks: opt out of shooting for a 1/6 chance of repairing an immobilized result.
  • In this list, it doesnt have all the cool toys of the latest 6th edition chaos codex.
• Chimera: This is the gem of the MEHTAL BAWKS world. Heavy Bolter Snap firing with Multi Laser? This has become the hate machine it was supposed to be. But nothing stops you from Snap Firing Multi Laser with Flamethrower. Or use Hunter-Killers to demolish enemy vehicles. Other points of this fine vehicle:
  • Cheap (point-wise). You can spam them, get lots and lots of multilasers (it will please you), and a solid wall of AV12 metal in front.
  • Unlike Imperial Guard Chimeras, this baby can have an Autocannon turret, which actually makes it vicious, and a threat to other vehicles.
  • You can fire all your important shit (special weapons, which is, Melta and Plasma) out the top hatch. Letting you fry while staying safe from retaliation.
  • They also count as tanks, meaning that once your troops are in position, you can tank shock the enemies off the point and even crush some Ork vehicles and scare off the mobs.

ELITES

• Alpha Legion Squad (Defenders of Vraks) - Chaos space marine squads that are more like Tactical squads than Chaos squads, though they do get the additional close combat weapon as standard. They can also infiltrate. However, they have no heavy weapon option nor do they get access to any marks of chaos.

• Khorne Berserkers (Servants of Slaughter):

• Plague Marines (Servants of Decay):

• Renegade Ogryn Berserkers (Defenders of Vraks & Servants of Slaughter): Ogryns that have gone bat shit mental and work for chaos. Toughness 5, 3-wounds & fearless gives them some staying power. With D6, Strength 6 attacks they've also got a bit of punch. Unfortunately suffer from a BAD rule meaning that you might even take Alpha Legionnaires over these guys. Shame cus the models are awesome and you're not playing competitively anyway!
  • One dude (non-character) can take a power weapon, such as an axe or a maul, meaning you might get lucky and throw out seven of strength 7, AP2 or strength 8, AP4 Concussive attacks on a charge.
  • They've got some stupid & convoluted rule (evidenced by the fact it's an entire fucking paragraph) where you've got to roll again after combat, roll higher than the number of attacks they made or take the difference in wounds... meaning they are penalised for doing well in combat and start granting your opponent kill points.

• Plague Ogryns (Servants of Decay): Renegade Ogryns infected with plague. Pretty fun overall, A lot better than standard renegade ogryns since they don't randomly drop down dead any more, Feel No Pain makes them comparable to Plague Marines for immovability, though they don't have power armour. They also have D6 poisoned (2+) so they can harm practically anything more reliably than standard renegade ogryns too.
  • the 6th Edition changes to universal special rules guaranteed their FnP rolls against nearly everything except S10 or Force Weapons despite nerfing the roll means they do better in melee combat against things with power weapons/fists than they did before. Slow & Purposeful also made them a bit quicker, since they don't always count as being in difficult terrain all the time.

FAST ATTACK

• Blight Drone (Servants of Decay): Possessed hovering flyer with a BS2, 5+ invulnerable save, reaper autocannon and a mawcannon (without tongue). At 120 pts., it's a vehicle so long as your army has a squad of Plague Marines. Pretty decent armour for a cheap flyer, but it will also explode when wrecked so be sure you get this thing as close to the enemy as possible! They can be taken in squads of 1-3 too.