1650pt Pirates and Exiles

Duke sliscus
10 Trueborn with Splintercarbines, dual Splintercannons


Baron sathonyx
7 hellions
> Helliarch w/ Agonizer

7 hellions
> Helliarch w/ Agonizer

4 beastmasters. One with Agonizer, 2 clawed fiends, 5 razorwing flocks


5 trueborn
> 4x Blasters, 1x splintercannon
> Venom with second cannon

5 trueborn
> 4x Blasters, 1x splintercannon
> Venom with second cannon

3 ravagers, flickerfields



Now most reports I've read say the agonizer is not a good bet, but combined with the right drugs, I get a lot of use out of it. Especially when I run up against other elites like Tyranid warriors. I also chucked in as many mobile lances as I could to corner the transports into doing stupid things.. like running away from the ravagers, straight towards the venoms.

The duke is there to give both the hellions their choice of drugs, stay out of LOS, pick off anyone stupid enough to wander too close, and to lend a hand with suppressing fire if needed.

Beastmasters and hellions are there to work in concert to go straight for any meaty bits that don't go into transports... like obliterators that like to hold back and lascannon everything.


Unfortunately, I haven't been able to try this list out yet seeing as the group I play with has gone MIA. So I'm not sure when I can post a batrep yet.

I'm not what you would call the most experienced Archon around so you may want to take a grain of salt with everything I say however i can still provide some advice....hopefully....

The most obvious problem to me is that for 1650 points you have only two scoring units and they are fairly small hellion units. Not that i have anything against hellions but I wouldn't call them the toughest guys around and in squads of seven they will be shot off the board in 5 seconds flat, even with a 3+ cover save (flamers coming to mind here). With two thirds of your games being objective based this could be a real handicap, unless of course your plan us to wipe the table clean every game which is hard even at the best of times. If you want to run hellions they should at least be 10+ strong, I would lean towards 15 to 20, though mind you at that number of hellions it will cost you a truckload of cash.

So to construct those thoughts into advice, I would up the number of hellions to at least 10, preferably 12, per squad and add at least another squad. To gain these points I would remove the SC and one blaster off the trueborn squads and tone the dukes guard down majorly, those three units would have giant "kill me now" signs floating over them anyway.

Oh, and I'm not sure if you were putting the duke and his cronies in a raider, to not do so would be utter madness, but if so, you have one too many men in there anyway. Oh, and drop the Agoniser on the beast master, they don't have enough attacks for that to be beneficial.

So that's just my advice, apart from that, its a nice list, should do you well.

My opinion....

- Lord Clazaryn hit it on the head; wayyyyy too little troops for 1500, marine armies will have more scoring units than you BEFORE they split half of their army into combat squads

-I would say 2 HQ's in 1500 is too much; ESPECIALLY 2 special characters, do yourself a favor and pick one(I'd say Duke cause he's MUCH better)

-I don't like Hellions much; they get the str buff from their weapon but no invuln in CC; drop them and take wyches. That will help you out with your scoring unit problem, plus wyched can take HWG's to make them a good AT option.

- Three ravagers is unnecessary @ 1500 Imo; same w/ 2 units of blasterborn, drop em to 2 ravagers and one unit of blasterborn thats 300 points you will have to play w/ right there.


-Beastmasters are fun and can be effective, let me know how they work out for you cause i've never personally tried them.

- I hope to god you're running Duke in a raider lol


At the end of the day its all about what you enjoy fielding though; so if you like the way you have something set up don't change it just cause people say you should. Hope you maim many a space marine sir!

depending on how the next game goes, I might change the list up to include more troops and less AT, or end up spamming beastmasters/razorwings for killpoint games.

either way, the net game is gonna be funny for me, and painful for either the daemons, nids, or marines.


I tried the mass mob of hellions, something like 14 or so. With the kind of terrain I play on, I found that moving even ten of them around was laborious at best. So when I dropped them down to about where they are now, I could maneuver them and hide them much better, leading to a complete gank on the opponents' valuable unit with each and every one. Yeah, those nid warriors suddenly knew how frightening 28 poison shots followed by 42 str4 attacks on the charge really was.


thanks for the feedback, guys.

I really like Splinterborn, use them a lot in bigger games - but in 1500pts, they are really expensive. Perhaps try 9 Warriors (plus Sliscus) in an Raider w/ shadowcannon (SP?) and splinterracks+FF. The Warriors are faster in the raider and better protected against enemy fire (and are able to hold objectives). Saves 19 Points.

SC on the Blasterborn seem a waste because you are either shooting at vehicles or Infantery.

You need a 5th Beastmaster. 2 BM for 2 Clawed fiends, 1 BM for every 2 razorwing Flocks - so you are one short

17 DL - a lot of AT-firepower in 1500pts - do you really need that much? perhaps switch a Ravager from AT to AI with 3 shadowcannons (9 shots S5 AP2) - works wonders against SM or big MC from the nids (and you don't even need to buy additional miniatures)