Horus Heresy: The Care and Feeding of Your Legion Consul Champion
This week The Legion Consul: Champion is hacking and slashing its way to your gaming table with a Forge World official model. Here’s how to put him to best use!
Once again I’m asking you to paint Space Marines in the age of Darkness. If you have dreams of honorable single combat like Sigusmund…or warp stained blood drenched carnage in your wake like Lucius you’ll want to buckle up and settle in as we discuss some of the most revered warriors on the tabletop and how to best utilize them.
The Consul Champion, Assembly:
The Legion Champion, is a joy to build. Unclog your superglue, its assembly time. The Champion is only handful of pieces and should come together in under an hour. You can tell the Forge World mold is brand new so everything is crisp and fits together beautifully. The model that I assembled was pretty clean, had no flash and all of the joins were near seamless. The only small issue I had with my model was that the paragon blade was wildly askew and required a quick dunk in some hot water to straighten out (truth be told that is expected). Utilizing my BSI EXTRA THICC super glue, the join lines faded away and the model was table ready rather quickly. Now that we’re all assembled, we’re ready to defend the Legion’s honor!
Why Take a Consul Champion?
Truth be told, I don’t often run Champions. The are an okay unit at a fair price but there is much better in the Consul HQ category. That being said I think they fill a niche role within an army but often compete with a Praetor if you are playing over 1000 pts. If you’re not deterred yet they get a Weapon Skill of 6, a free Paragon Blade and when engaged in a challenge make their unit fearless. They aren’t awful. But they just aren’t going to be better than some of the other Consul and HQ options floating around out there.
**A Legion Champion must accept and issue challenges if possible. A sly opponent can utilize this rule to side line a Champion by feeding it a Seargent or Apothecary while mitigating a good deal of damage to their overall squad. Be leery of things like Custodes or any other elite unit that has a higher initiative. They can be lights out for your would be champion if they get attacks off before that Paragon Blade can do some work.
Wargear:
The truly desirable part about most of the Legion HQ choices is the absolute slew of wargear options you get. You can build your champion to your hearts content however I recommend keeping him reasonably cheap. You definitely want him tooled for combat as he will inevitably be issuing/accepting challenges and fighting in the thick of it. He is not a support HQ, he will be up front, taking hits.
Champions in Two Flavors
- Legion Consul Champion – Paragon Blade, Meltabomb, Bolt Pistol, (Jump Pack/Outrider if attached to high mobility unit). This is your base option, its cheap, its effective its probably tagging along with Tactical Squads, Despoilers or Assault Squads in large blobs 15-20 man blobs. You want to be floating toward objectives and engaging other similar squads and triggering challenges so that you can remain fearless. The Champion retains his 5++ refractor field which comes in handy when you run into another heavily armed HQ or Sgt.
- Legion Cataphractti Consul Champion – Paragon Blade, Meltabomb, Cataphractii armor, Combi Bolter. You’re going to be slow so a transport for you and your unit is highly recommended. The tried and true Spartan comes to mind.**Avoid weapons that drop you down to Initiative 1, you want to be attacking early and often with your Champion to ensure that you can get a kill on whoever you’re challenging.
The Champion comes with a free Paragon Blade, use it! Pile up those Murderous Strikes and watch your opponent cringe on missed saves. I generally like to put a meltabomb on my Champions as they sometimes encounter an AV 14 vehicle or something tough that their unit might not be able to crack.
I also like giving a Champion a fighting chance in duels, so I do think that Cataphractii terminator armor isn’t outside of consideration. The downside of course is that the Cataphractii armor can’t run and you can’t sweep combats. Armor choices for your Champion really come down to what you plan to run alongside them. Keep in mind that running a unit with mixed armor can have detrimental effects. A Cataphractii Terminator attached to a unit of tactical marines while awesome for soaking damage on the 4++ invulnerability save can be useful, that unit can no longer run or sweep because of the Heavy keyword on the terminator armor and you wouldn’t get re-rolled armor saves against blast templates. I recommend running like for like armor.
The Consul Champion’s Entourage
Every Champion needs an entourage and Horus Heresy is no different. If you’re going to run Champions lean into Legions that are melee focused so you can enhance your close combat monster with Legion Traits, Warlord Traits and Rites of War that will benefit him. World Eaters, Son’s of Horus, Blood Angels, White Scars, Emperor’s Children and Space Wolves are obvious choices as their Legion Traits are melee focused, movement focuses or activate special abilities on the charge. All Legion Traits that help a Champion and his Entourage get into combat and win in combat.
Final Thoughts
The Legion Consul Champion is part of a long line of Legion consuls that can dramatically change the way armies play. While I find the Champion’s close combat abilities a bit lacking, I think there is definitely a time and a place to deploy one. I would have liked to have seen +1 to Initiative and +1 to Attacks to go along with the WS6. Ultimately, I find the Champion fragile for his intended mission. He’s low toughness, low wounds and some bad luck can easily remove him from play.
Champions seem to be best suited protecting large Tactical, Despoiler or Assault squads by helping those marines disregard morale checks. They could really be crucial if you fight armies like Night Lords or in some cases Thousand Sons that can manipulate leadership and encourage your tactical marine bricks to break. Consul Champions can also help you win a game by their attached squads on objectives as they fight to claim them.
I expect in the next year or so we’ll see many more of the Legion onsuls hitting shelves. Which ones are you looking forward to?
