Among Warhammer 40k fans, it's very often the Chaos Space Marine players who clamor loudest for quirky, flavorful, or even swingy rules attached to their weirder characters. It makes sense; of all the Warhammer 40k factions, those in thrall to the warp could always stand to inject a bit more, er, chaos into the game! Well, to you heretics I say: be careful what you wish for. Games Workshop has unveiled its new rules for chaos marine pirate lord Huron Blackheart, plus his curious coterie of support characters, and they're powerful - but, well, a bit of a faff.
Let's first address the Red Corsairs' apparently unkillable chapter master, Lufgt Huron - Huron Blackheart, to his friends (whoever those might be). Revealed via GW's Warhammer Community site on Friday, Huron's datasheet shows him to be, stat wise, a Chaos Lord upgraded with extra plot armor (adding an extra pip of Toughness and a 5+ Feel No Pain to the stock Lord's statline).
His true strengths, though, lie more in flexible frontline leadership and punching people very, very hard in the face. The funniest thing about his adapted power fist, the Tyrant's Claw, is its in-built Strength 6 heavy flamer with PISTOL, so he can fire it in combat each turn. The best thing about the claw is its six S8, AP -3, flat 3 damage attacks in melee, hitting on twos. Huron is a lot more dangerous in combat than the regular Chaos Lord he'd replace in most lists.
That's doubly true because of his two best abilities (The other one, Lord of Badab, gives him a six inch aura of +1 to OC, but that's comparatively small beans). First, unlike regular Lords, he has Deep Strike and can lead Terminator squads, making him a very attractive backfield wrecker. Second, his Hamadrya's Knowledge ability has been buffed from granting his unit a 6″ reactive move once per battle, to a D3+3″ reactive move once per battle round. Between those two abilities and his top-end melee output, Huron just became a pretty strong, flexible, killy HQ option for Chaos Space Marine players.
The other portion of this rules reveal is where things get more head-scratchy. It turns out the Masters of the Maelstrom, Huron's gang of fantastic looking support characters, functions as a potent (if janky) command squad, rather than five standalone units. Not the end of the world, but it does make them less versatile.
It makes the datasheet's weapon list a tad confusing to navigate, what with Bionic Gauntlets here and Londaxi Maimers there. Worse, each of their three abilities is narratively tied to a specific character, but only one (ex apothecary Garreon the Corpsemaster's Choice Samples) requires that character to still be alive. It's just confusing, and I don't know why they did it this way.
The Masters are, nevertheless, pretty good (even if poor old xenos operative "The Enforcer" is rather a damp squib compared to their in universe description). Standout features are most certainly the human Captain Sargotta's Fleet Command redeploy ability, and Katar Garrix's boringly named, but mega powerful Axe of Ending.
In fairness to it, that axe is going to reliably 'end' a lot of heroes of the Imperium, with a terrifying six attacks, 2+ to hit, Anti-Character 2+, Precision, AP-2 and damage 2. It alone makes the Masters a potent addition to a fully stocked Chosen squad, but add it to the Fleet Command redeploy ability and a touch of CP farming from Garreon, and you've got yourself a rather powerful support character with a varied toolkit (that just happens to be in five bodies instead of one). Oh, and they can join a Chosen unit Huron's already joined, creating one heck of a deadly blob - vulnerable and probably silly, but good craic to be sure.
GW's rules announcement says Huron Blackheart and "his crew" will be available to pre-order "in a few weeks". We're hoping that means the other Red Corsairs models, too: the Reave-Captain, Red Corsair Raiders, and the upgrades kit, though we'll have to wait for GW to announce if that be the case (arrr!) We do, at least, get confirmation now that all the Red Corsairs units' datasheets, plus three new CSM detachments themed around the renegade chapter, will be available free in an updated, downloadable Faction Pack, which it says is "coming soon".
What's your take on the new rules for old Lufgty boy and his merry band of horrible cut-throats? Will you be spinning up a Red Corsairs reave-fleet of your own? Come let us know (and trade theories about the upcoming Warhammer 40k 11th edition) in the free Wargamer Discord community. Piracy is not allowed, mind.