With Carcass Front and the new plastics we have some rules updates for Heretic Naval Raiders, expanding them into their own fully fledged faction with some new unique options. I'll go through them all in this post, including the sub-factions, and what I'm most excited about and why
Battlekit
Hull Drill- Ignore Armour on a Death Commando is super gnarly, although you lose out on the extra attacks from Tartarus Claws you get a really good melee weapon. CRITICAL and HELD together very much offset RISKY and add together with the native defenses of the Death Commando
Boarding Axe- An Axe with Armour Piercing and Risky is quite good for a little bit extra cost, and add on the cost of what is basically a Mountaineer's Kit for the extra Dice to Climb. My Legionaries already were modeled with them, so I'm definitely running these going forward
Wrecker's Torch- Effectively an Armour Piercing Polearm with Fire for 15 Ducats and only on ELITE, it's quite a good weapon and I already love Polearms. Definitely something I'm considering for my own lists on a Captain
Shark Tooth Talisman- Limit 2 for NEGATE FEAR, and a once per game +1 in melee provided they are near models with Blood on them. Pretty solid for 10 Ducats, but Naval Raiders do stack up really quick in terms of gear so it probably is something to leave out before others
Abyssal Armour- A Death Commando upgrade to Reinforced Armour, for 5 Ducats extra they can Fade in water and treat any water as open terrain. Super thematic and cool, and I'll probably be using it on my own Death Commando
Drowned Choir
The first of the 2 variant warbands for Naval Raiders, this one is focused around a core of Choristers with Wretched as shock troops being flung into melee.
A Song Within the Deep- You get to take up to 3 Choristers and have to take at least 1, with that one being 20 Ducats more to gain LEADER and TOUGH, getting bumped to a 40mm base and getting Dread Harmony instead of their usual Unholy Hymns. This makes every roll for enemies within 8" of the Leviathal Chorus a Risky roll which on top of the -1 dice from your other Choristers can be crippling for an opponent. Adding extra ways to make things negative dice (Polearms in particular) can make things even more oppressive and will work to make the faction really interesting mechanically
A Wretched Chorus- Wretched are 30 Ducats but with no melee penalty, which increases to +1 as long as they're near a Chorister. Taking a ton of cheap Wretched with nothing but 2 melee weapons and flinging them forward I feel is where the fun of this faction will come from, as you have the ultimate disposable troops and can fill out a ton of numbers really easily to swarm the table. They still get the +1 to Dash from being Naval Raiders too, so can potentially missile up the board really quickly. I'd take a single Trooper with Musical Instrument as well to really amp up the speed for everyone else.
Mounting Madness- Your Unholy Hymns increase range by 4" if Choristers are near each other, giving you a huge amount of board presence with your debuffs and making things a lot harder for your opponents. The 8" range is quite significant too as it's fairly easy to have Choristers close enough to trigger on the average TC board.
To No Purpose Save Their Own- No Captain, Commando, Hag or Anointed. You're playing Choristers, Troopers and Wretched and that's it, although that's a feature not a downside
Leviathan Shoal
The other variant is far more blunt than the Drowned Choir, being built around a bunch of beefy Anointed with melee weapons to hit as hard as possible and kill things quickly.
Only the Strong Survive- Captain gets STRONG and you can take up to 4 Anointed, but you don't get Choristers, Wretched or Hags so it really leans towards taking a bunch of big guys with Reinforced Armour and big weapons.
Feeding Frenzy- Every model gets extra dice in melee as long as they're within 1" of models that have blood on them, stacking to a total of +3. This makes grenades really good value as they'll put blood out pretty easily, and provided things are somewhat close to each other you can ping a couple of models and charge in the middle to get +2 or even 3 quite easily.
Charge and Rend- You must have more melee weapons than ranged weapons, and can't take HEAVY ranged weapons (this part is massive because it stops you taking Heavy Flamethrowers and AMRs). You get 4 Sacrificial Blades and can give them to Anointed, which is quite nice but I'm leaning towards you wanting Sacrificial Blades as a sidearm rather than the main weapon, as you want HEAVY melee weapons more to make the most out of STRONG
