After completing the lost and the damned reviews one of my good 40K gaming mates who is a lot better than me, like ETC level better, told me I was a bit too lenient with the Warband Formation. I will admit that there is a small soft spot for it as it is finally a formation that has semi competent and decent marines in it with rules that can help it win games, however from now on I will try to be a bit more 'nitty gritty' with these reviews as some of the formations can be laughable. So Lost and the Damned, GO!
The Lost and the Damned formation comes in bare bones at: 305 points for 1 apostle and 4 units of 10 cultists (this can be increased to up to 9 units). These all get the bonus's from the Detachment if taken within a Black Crusade, Hatred (Imperial Stuff) and the free boon rolls. Out of the two I would see the Hatred benefiting the cultists most as many others within the Detachment would prefer that free boon unless you intend on DP farm with cultists champions (this isn't advisable).
So this formation gets 2 extra special rules bolted onto it. First up is 'A Tide of Traitors', a special rule where when a Cultist unit is completely destroyed for any reason, they re-appear in ongoing reserve with the outflank special rule on a 4+. Nothing but positives on this front at the moment. Cultists, being cultists die a heck of a lot whilst doing very little to even justify spending 50 points on them, usually they are seen as the cheapest form of tax. Cultists that die and return with outflank on a 4+ however is a vast improvement for claiming objectives.
In conjunction with this, the apostles Zealot rule is increased to a 6" radius, matching his LD10 bubble with Hatred, which the formation already has within a Black Crusade Detachment, and giving them fearless. So the Apostle keeps the Cultists fearless, and when they die they come back with outflank. Unfortunately, the apostle doesn't have a chance to come back, so keeping him safe would be a priority for this formation to receive 100% benefits throughout the game, wouldn't it?
Possibly, possibly not. There are a few ways to look at this.
Seen as though the outflank and re-spawns work without the Apostle he really would just be around for the first few turns to make sure the first cultist units don't run off straight away giving away and easy first blood. His job is first blood deny and to keep some objectives locked down as long as possible.
Alternatively, Apostles are not seen by chaos, or opposing players as anything of a big deal. Neither are cultists for that manner. For the opening turns, they would most likely be overlooked for something bigger like a death star or a Vindicator Linebreaker unit or some Renegade Knights. Turn 4/5 when it comes to dealing with X many bodies of cultists, (You can get 315 bodies for around 1,000 points, this works out at about 600+ wounds on the table from the re-spawns. Extremely over kill but its the worlds greatest tarpit!) that are fearless, hidden in ruins, on obejectives with re-rolls to hit in combat, they won't be moving anytime soon and once you do get rid of them, 50/50 chance that they will come back.
We can also take a very humorous route here, this could be considered a competitive play or a funny one. Adding Typhus to the Detachment via Command options would allow all cultists in this formation to become Zombies making them fearless with FnP, coupled along with the respawn waves then you have the best Zombie nightmare to deal with. I'm not sure how successful this would be, adding typhus is an extra 230 points and you would probably want to buff out the formation for extra efficiency driving that cost up pretty high. But it's funny, and who doesn't love zombies!
The two ways I see this formation being used is either the bare bones minimum 305 points for 40 cultists and the apostle. Alternatively buffing out this formation for more units and bodies (but not max), possibly making the apostles unit larger than the others to keep him around longer. Either way, out of the 3 Core choices I see this one as the cheapest and most competitive choice for CSM. It's scoring units that give you a good chance of coming back later on in the game where objective capturing matters a lot more and its cheap and cheerful in comparison to the Warband which clocks in at 450 points minimum (lord, chosen, x2 marines, bikes, havocs) which needs upgrades and more units to work.
Hope you have enjoyed this review, I have used this one in my last game at Derby's Dice and Daggers and I never rolled a 4+ to come back, they were zombies too for fun but they managed to kill some Thunder Wolves thanks to the Hatred. I will be doing GoreStorm Formation next
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