Cronos worth it?

Is the big squid soul soup sucking monstrosity worth the points? I typically use a 10 grot grotesquirie, and he makes them a tough lump of flesh to move, but with some list tinkering I'm tempted to leave him out of lists..

Thoughts are; at 1000pts+ ide say you'de need two, or one dark artisan (what I usally use) coz one guy on his own at that points will quickly get shot up as a priority.
But he's not very point efficient, the same points as a stock talos, with the fnp buff. Think of the difference, talos is nasty in combat, and a gun platform to boot. Cronos has a realy weak shooting attack and only room for one upgrade ( does anyone take the large blast?) and he's lack lustre in combat, low ws means half attacks will miss, and meh str stops him killing other monsters or limits him to trying to smash tanks ( always misses!! :p )
The fnp is good and has saved countless grotesque wounds in my experience, but everything has to stay within a 6" bubble which is obserdly small when you think of it.

Im interested in other people's experiences with cronos's'es!

I've only used it as part of a dark artisan and frankly have found the whole thin g lackluster. 6 In is way too restrictive for a fast army like ours, and the fnp, while useful isn't worth keeping my army bunched up. I'm back to grabbing a third ravager for less points

Me too, only tried as part of the DA formation, and talos and haemy were doing all the dirty work, the cronos was there only for the fnp buff but never did a single wound...
I think I could try and take it as HS only in case I'd try the 5 talos formation.

A Cronos is my standard iclude in the army atm and I play competitive. It and grots stay in the midfield and are very hard to move. In addition choros is a solid threath that many units need to avoid.

In Dark Artisan it was the cronos that did the work for me when bashing Vehicles. Being only S5 it had so much benefit in smashing that I always did it. And rerols to hit from Heamy T4 onwards, two dice/pic highest to pen/glans is great. Talos with its 5 S7 attacks on charge does not benefit from smash that much.

I've taken one separately to buff a pair of Talos holding my home objectives - it makes them ridiculously tough to take down, and if you're going for a full drop list, you need something really solid on the board to start with (at lower points levels, 1 talos would probably be enough).

Nice point Vasara, I forgot the Pfp from the haeme gives a reroll. It's not just me then who thinks the dark artisan isn't all that, I've tried the 5 talos formation and THAT is a monster
Even for my slow moving, footslogging coven units the 6" is too small and everything has to get bunched up, I need units to seperate more and get multi charges etc. I've never thought of sticking talos on home objectives burning eye, but yeah talos with Chronos are hard to shift but would you rather have another talos for the points?

depends on what you're trying to achieve - sure another talos gives you another decent offensive weapon, but if you're just trying to be difficult to get rid of, the talos is better - my original thought with that combination was to have the two talos and a cronos just to make sure i had enough on the board to get me to turn two when i could start bringing reserves in. Since then I've kind of gone a bit away from the heavy reserve style anyway, but it worked a treat and the two talos rinsed a unit of deathwing terminators before they could even strike back

I've looked at a non-Dark Artisan Cronos a bit; however, I haven't fielded one outside of it yet (that'll soon change though).

At face value, the Cronos doens't really benefit from either Power from Pain table until turn 4. Having Feel No Pain, Fearless, and Fear (from being a MC) standard, both charts are useless to it until midgame. Coming with a S3 AP3 template weapon isn't bad but it also means you're wounding most models on a 5+ (given T4 being the most common).

The spirit probe is a near auto-take for the unit since a 4+ FNP is worth the 25pts. The 6" buff bubble it also provides is nice; however, comes with the realization that other units need to be on the ground to take advantage of it - which ground troops don't tend to do well for us.

As for unit size, I like the idea of taking 3 of them with 1 probe and all 3 having the vortex upgrade. This makes for a very resilient unit of MCs with a 18" threat range of an AP3 large blast marker and 3 AP3 templates if something gets too close. It's expensive (400pts right there) but also an interesting option for controlling a table quarter or mid-field.

Right now, Dark Artisan is the easiest way of using it but I may try out some other options here soon. At the moment, I don't see any solid build (other than full units of Grots or Talos) that would justify taking it solely to support a near-by unit with +1 to their FNP. DE is just too fast to warrant the use of walking troops.

you can't take both the probe and the vortex, so a unit of three could only take 2 vortices

The_Burning_Eye wrote:

you can't take both the probe and the vortex, so a unit of three could only take 2 vortices

I misread and stand corrected. So another thing for me to try. 375pts for 2 large blasts but with a 4+ FNP or 3 Large Blasts with a 5+ FNP. In that situation, I'm leaning towards the 3 blasts but will need to try it out.

Vasara wrote:

In Dark Artisan it was the talos that did the work for me when bashing Vehicles. Being only S5 it had so much benefit in smashing that I always did it. And rerols to hit from Heamy T4 onwards, two dice/pic highest to pen/glans is great. Talos with its 5 S7 attacks on charge does not benefit from smash that much.

How are you getting the re-roll to hit??

Also, it's not 2 dice, pick the highest. It's re-roll armour pen with a Smash attack.

There seems to be a bit of misconception around pfp and the pain engines. Neither have pfp, simply have fear fearless and fnp 5+ as standard. With the DA, the haemy will have hatred from zealot at turn 4 I believe, but neither cronos nor talos have it. As far as the cronos being a threat...my meta is very space marine, knight, and flyer heavy (at least in the competitive portion, so a flamer wounding on 5s and 4-5 cc attacks with mediocre ws (if in the DA; poor ws outside of DA) on the cronos scares no one. The best way to min/max with it in my opinion is abuse coherency and conga line units I want the buff on so that one model is in 6 inchs (only one model out of a unit needs to be in range to get the buff for whole unit) and the rest line out to an objective somewhere on table half. Keep the DA on some mid point objective and run my grots up to keep the opponent presses to their side. The cronos for me is mostly a distraction carnifex that draws fire and is REDICULOUSLY hard to kill. Still too immobile though. My vote is make a corpse thief claw and auto win

Kahnartiste wrote:

There seems to be a bit of misconception around pfp and the pain engines. Neither have pfp, simply have fear fearless and fnp 5+ as standard. With the DA, the haemy will have hatred from zealot at turn 4 I believe, but neither cronos nor talos have it.

Ugh. I keep forgetting this fact.

I like them. The +1 FNP bubble is great, and more Smash attacks are always tasty.

If I run Cronos and Talos outside a Dark Artisan Formation, I consider them a Tax for beeing able to Null Deploy without resorting to Scalpel Squadron.
Also they act like a fire magnet as I tend to run into AM quite ofen... would not use them vs SM to easy to kill for them.

Hellstrom wrote:

Vasara wrote:

In Dark Artisan it was the talos that did the work for me when bashing Vehicles. Being only S5 it had so much benefit in smashing that I always did it. And rerols to hit from Heamy T4 onwards, two dice/pic highest to pen/glans is great. Talos with its 5 S7 attacks on charge does not benefit from smash that much.

How are you getting the re-roll to hit??

Also, it's not 2 dice, pick the highest.  It's re-roll armour pen with a Smash attack.

Zealot from Haemy.

Thanks for clearing that Smash pen roll thingie

How does cronos velp you null deploy without scalpelsquad?

There is real null deployment and pseudo null It helps on the latter.

Vasara wrote:

Hellstrom wrote:

Vasara wrote:

In Dark Artisan it was the talos that did the work for me when bashing Vehicles. Being only S5 it had so much benefit in smashing that I always did it. And rerols to hit from Heamy T4 onwards, two dice/pic highest to pen/glans is great. Talos with its 5 S7 attacks on charge does not benefit from smash that much.

How are you getting the re-roll to hit??

Also, it's not 2 dice, pick the highest.  It's re-roll armour pen with a Smash attack.

Zealot from Haemy.

Does it transfer to the Talos and Cronos even though they don't have pfp?

No but when you brake it down to fearless and hatred you'll notice why it does benefit both engines too.

Vasara wrote:

No but when you brake it down to fearless and hatred you'll notice why it does benefit both engines too.

Explain more please

The benefits of Zealot apply if at least one model in the unit has the special rule, so they benefit the Talos and Cronos too.

I use a single Cronos to follow 2 Talos (squaded up) around and it works great. They all become tough nuts to crack which is great...they take midfield, sometimes my grots from the grotesquerie will be around and they love that benefit even more!

Anyone use a Cronos with the Spirit Vortex instead of the Probe?

The Shredder wrote:

Anyone use a Cronos with the Spirit Vortex instead of the Probe?

i highly doubt anyone will say yes to this