The terror squad is one of the most iconic units for the Night Lords and with my army plan is the unit I have tested the most and since it is all of my troop selections it is a unit I need to really get to grips with.
The terror squad is at its base pretty expensive but for those points you get some amazing men, base two attacks, preferred enemy (infantry), infiltrate, fear - thats an amazing package but it is signifcantly more expensive than the tactical squads other legion forces will be fielding. The lack of any alternative for transport than the drop pod is somewhat problematic.
Since the squad as a whole lacks long range fire power and have little to no way to redploy once they are on the battefield you have to be extremely careful with how you use them, they will shatter alot of enemy units when they arrive or should the charge be needed but after that they are going to have limited impact on the battlefield unless against the most compact enemy force (which is not something I tend to face in my local metagame).
The first choice for the unit is if you stick with the base 5 men or boost up to 10, personally I go for 10 men. These are your troops so you need them to be able to absorb some firepower without becoming redundant. As with most legion forces expanding the squad is a lot cheaper than buying another small squad which has to be borne in mind. On top of that Night Lords excel when they outnumber enemy infantry units so 10 men in my opinion is almost essential.
Once you have planned out the unit size then there is the choice of weapon fits, the basic guys only come with bolt pistol and close combat weapon but they can all be upgraded with a longer ranged weapon. My personal preference is for the volkite charger, this is a reasonably expensive upgrade but the shear quantity of fire from this assault 2 weapon is scary, the base strength 5 makes it amazing at butchering lighter infantry such as eldar guardians (especially with preferred enemy) and they can do a number on light transports since with their deployment options they should be able to get in to flank or rear armor. The main issue is that with a range of 15" once they have demolished the enemy nearby they may have nothing else to do for the battle but hide and try and hold objectives.
The headsman (sargeant) has plenty of nice upgrade options, personally I feel artificer armor is a great choice since it gives an option of trying to use him to soak some AP3 attacks. I also generally prefer to give him a nostraman chainglaive and meltabombs. I like the AP3 weapon in the squad to give him the option of carving up marines and the fact that the chainglaive also has rending gives him some nice options against light tanks while meltabombs give a solution to very heavy tanks.
This makes the terror squads extremely expensive but from experience they have the potential to dish out hideous amounts of damage, you just need to be able to support them and have long ranged firepower in the units to negate some of their weaknesses.
My army plan has 3 units of 10 all with volkite chargers, two of the squads are assigned drop pods while the other outflanks. These three units equate to almost half my 2000 points army and with so many points gone on these 30 men it means I will not have many models and I will not have redundant troops. This is a massive change to what i am used to with imperial guard which is probably why so far I have had been brutalised in the test games I have fought.
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