Special Characters: Lame

[Artemis360]

I'm sick of these dumb SM special characters. I never take special characters anyway because its lame and unrealistic (whats Marneus Calgar doing with your poorly painted mini-maxed 1500 point force? Shouldn't he be defending the gates of ultramar right now against 10 zillion nids?). But now we have to put up with characters like Lysander: 4 wounds, 2+ armour save, 3+ invulnerable, eternal warrior, strength 10... and he's not even a chapter master or anything. Does no one else find this a bit effed up?

[Primarch Naogedd]

While I'd agree with you on most of those counts, there are a few special characters that can really fit into even a small army.

 

Khârn doesn't care who, where or who with he's slaughtering, so he pretty much fits anywhere, except in another god's coven..

Fabius Bile works for whoever has got the cash/ancient artifacts/geneseed, so as long as you have a reasonably influential Chaos Lord, Sorceror or Daemon Prince he fits fine.

Typhus wanders the galaxy with his Plague marines, so he could fit with any all-Nurgle force regardless of size.

[Askari]

I don't care as long as the specials aren't too cheap or necessary for someone to make a certain type of army. marneus Calgar and Lysander are both more than 200 points and will have to be put in a unit that will run another 300+ points, sure they're eternal warriors but they're easier to kill than some Greater daemons and are so slow that they'd have a hard time eating through your forces.

 

Drop some ap2 pieplates on their unit then focus some lascannons or plasma on them. Sure you'll be focusing alot of your army on one unit but that one unit will probably be anywhere from 1/2 to 1/3 or more of your opponents' points. And loosing that many points worth of stuff from a marine army will make it pretty hard to get by for the rest of the game.

[Zerib]

Its my belief that Space Marines are the favored children of GW. For that they get many perks and shiny objects and are pushed to sell. While it may not be enjoyable to fight against them its in the game and you just have to deal with it. Posting on the forums and ranting about it does not do much to help you. Many people feel upset when they are unable to beat an opponent but asking for ways to counter them instead of whining is more constructive.

 

I believe that many others may have similar problems and tactical advise rather than complaining would do us all better. I have not fought him myself but I will be soon and was wondering if anyone has any ideas.

 

The only ones I have currently are to equip a terminator squad with an Icon of Tzeentch, the hope would be to tie them up while I deal with the rest of his army. Going with the previous idea use the same squad, thousand sons, plague marines or something that could take the charge and then counter with a full squad of berserks. I am not to fond of tactics revolving around the whole army shooting at one squad to destroy it but sometimes that is what you have to do so I supose that is an option. Lash armies should do their normal tactics against him. Using obliterators with plasma cannons, vindicator or defiler would hurt a great deal by hopefully putting a wound on him or another character but the main idea would be to strip his honor guard away. I'm not sure what you have in your army but there is generally a way to defeat someone, and if there inst then you should look at retooling your army. In a tournament setting I realize that you can not do this, and if you cant beat him just play the game and be polite. The best times I have played have been when I got stomped and stayed calm and tried to learn from the experience. I am lucky and on these occasions I ask my opponent what I should have done and take his advise into account....it is his army after all and he should know how it works..... I am stepping off of the soap box now please don't hurt me too bad.

[Night Stalker]

I'm sick of these dumb SM special characters. I never take special characters anyway because its lame and unrealistic (whats Marneus Calgar doing with your poorly painted mini-maxed 1500 point force? Shouldn't he be defending the gates of ultramar right now against 10 zillion nids?). But now we have to put up with characters like Lysander: 4 wounds, 2+ armour save, 3+ invulnerable, eternal warrior, strength 10... and he's not even a chapter master or anything. Does no one else find this a bit effed up?

 

Yeah, it's lame.

 

@Askari: problem lies in a fact, that they are UNDERPRICED and do not fit the fluff. 4 wounds for non-chapter master ?

[Deciple of Lorgar]

I think that they should introduce more spcial chaachters for every army, or at least make it so you need permission again to take them.

 

I don't see why Marneus Calgar and the like should be in games of 1500 pts unless oposing player relies on that one model/charachter.

[Drudge Dreadnought]

The real problem is that the new SM specials are, for the most part, really damn good while our Chaos guys are, for the most part, really useless. I feel that the chaos specials are how the specials should be. They are cool and have tricks but are highly situational and basically you have to build the army around them. They also just don't work in smaller forces for the most part. I think Khârn is probably the best designed/balanced special char in the game imo. He's cool, he's effective, and he matches his fluff perfectly. He perfectly compliments the type of lists he's supposed to be in (cc/khorne heavy) and doesn't work well in the ones he isn't. He also has a downside that makes it so he isn't a no brainer choice, but that doens't make him useless either.

[Night Stalker]

The real problem is that the new SM specials are, for the most part, really damn good while our Chaos guys are, for the most part, really useless. I feel that the chaos specials are how the specials should be. They are cool and have tricks but are highly situational and basically you have to build the army around them. They also just don't work in smaller forces for the most part. I think Khârn is probably the best designed/balanced special char in the game imo. He's cool, he's effective, and he matches his fluff perfectly. He perfectly compliments the type of lists he's supposed to be in (cc/khorne heavy) and doesn't work well in the ones he isn't. He also has a downside that makes it so he isn't a no brainer choice, but that doens't make him useless either.

 

This guy won the thread! QFT.

 

I loathe spam of underpriced characters. Chaos ones do not prevent me from using my own characters.

[Baragash]

I think Khârn is probably the best designed/balanced special char in the game imo. He's cool, he's effective, and he matches his fluff perfectly.

 

Have to disagree with that. Both instances of Khârn doing his Betrayer gig in the fluff do not involve him slapping anyone on his side during actual combat. In the first instance he got peeved because the WE wanted to go to ground during the harsh night (or was it day?) conditions, so Khârn just started on every EC or WE he could find. In the second instance, the Zerks were taking cover in ruins from shelling and Khârn was having none of that sort of cowardice.

 

Much like the old High Elf Intrigue at Court, it should have been left as fluff only.

 

Furthermore, the original 2nd Ed version of Khârn had a rule to reflect the fact that he got battered at the walls of the Emperor's Palace, and simply refused to die, he should have the Eternal Warrior rule.

[Lord_Caerolion]

But now, Drudge, the SC are cloned by the dozen, so for some reason every Crimson Fists force has a Kantor-clone in the back of the ammo supplies, just in case the real one isn't there. Other Marines have their Vulkan-clone, or perhaps Sicarius-clone, but give him a new set of armour, and some plastic surgery, so they can't be as easily recognised.

 

This is the problem with the new "all *insert Chapter name here* are led by *insert Character name here*" policy with GW. I mean, of course the Crimson Fists would never be led by a Captain, or the Salamanders, Raven Guard or White Scars by a Chapter Master. That would just be stupid!

 

I'm almost vaguely expecting the next Chaos codex to be along the lines of "To take Icons of Khorne on units other than Troops, you must have Khârn in the army. Otherwise, Icons of Khorne may only be taken on Chaos Marine squads." And now that I've just tempted fate, I'll be waiting for the confirmations to appear tomorrow, stating that exact same thing.

[Brother Drakist]

The major problem with the SM dex is that the special characters were not just implemented for flavor, they were implemented to provide different ways of playing the army. "Counts as" has been encouraged so that players are not pigeon holed into playing a particular faction. The end result is that "special characters" have now been integrated into the standard army list and will most likely be in every army list without having to ask for permission.

 

In my opinion the special characters go down just as easily as any other character. Focus fire resolves all.

[Kadaeux]

Personally Characters aren't bad. SO long as its actually the army you're playing.

 

This "Counts-as" BS makes my skin crawl. You want to field a Marneus Calgar then field Ultramarines, you want to field Dante, play as Blood Angels etc

They are SPECIAL CHARACTERS not some rough approximation of your average Chapter Master etc.

 

They are unique, equipped with unique wargear and unique rules to reflect WHO THE DAMN CHARACTER IS.

 

In all honesty i've actually gone so far as to refuse anyone fielding a "counts as." And my local Tourney shares my opinion. Basically the rule is "If a named Character has a Chapter or Force labelled in his title then he can only be fielded with such."

[Hellios]

Personally Characters aren't bad. SO long as its actually the army you're playing.

 

This "Counts-as" BS makes my skin crawl. You want to field a Marneus Calgar then field Ultramarines, you want to field Dante, play as Blood Angels etc

They are SPECIAL CHARACTERS not some rough approximation of your average Chapter Master etc.

 

They are unique, equipped with unique wargear and unique rules to reflect WHO THE DAMN CHARACTER IS.

 

In all honesty i've actually gone so far as to refuse anyone fielding a "counts as." And my local Tourney shares my opinion. Basically the rule is "If a named Character has a Chapter or Force labelled in his title then he can only be fielded with such."

 

The problem is they have got rid of traits :S and that these special characters allow something that resembles traits. For example if their was a Chaos Iron Warriors special character called besieging Barry that changed the Chaos army list so it resembled the old Iron warriors traits I can imagine a lot of Iron Warriors players taking him and if it wasn't Iron Warriors only I could see other taking him as 'counts as'. Basically its a combination of GW simplifying the rules and taking away options, while removing the limitations on special characters and making them more general. These combined make 'count as' special characters more common.

[the jeske]

well dont be hating . As the codex sm goes . The main designer is hardcore ultra fan . could they have name tellion and chronus scout master and sm tank commander ? they could , but its like H-man and his iron warriors .He went a bit over the top . The difference is that H-man/chambers team gave just extra fluff [iW didnt become the main focus of the dex ] , sm in the new dex had their fluff changed .

as the specials go . we dont use ours because they plain suck , thats why . Sure it would be cool to have a Raptor-fear lord or Dark Adeptus/Chaos Forge Master etc but our codex was build to be balanced at the [sorry chill] "BL" lvl . If your happy with playing a zerker/pms/oblits /2 dp list , then the codex is a balanced and good army . If not ..well then tough luck for you . people from GW would probablly say now that if you dont find chaos fun anymore you can always start space marines.

[Brother Drakist]

Personally Characters aren't bad. SO long as its actually the army you're playing.

 

This "Counts-as" BS makes my skin crawl. You want to field a Marneus Calgar then field Ultramarines, you want to field Dante, play as Blood Angels etc

They are SPECIAL CHARACTERS not some rough approximation of your average Chapter Master etc.

 

They are unique, equipped with unique wargear and unique rules to reflect WHO THE DAMN CHARACTER IS.

 

In all honesty i've actually gone so far as to refuse anyone fielding a "counts as." And my local Tourney shares my opinion. Basically the rule is "If a named Character has a Chapter or Force labelled in his title then he can only be fielded with such."

 

Wow that's a lot of hate towards counts as. So does that mean that Abaddon can only be fielded with Black Legion, or Typhus with the Death Guard? I do not think the issue is with counts as, it wouldn't be fare to pigeon hole somebody into a chapter of legend to get a benefit from a single character. If that was the case then we would rarely get to see alternate/homebrew chapters.

 

"Counts as" is GWs policy. It's there for a good reason. Are some of the special characters in the Marine dex overcosted? Yes, but it's nothing that can't be handled.

[Jarulek]

Personally Characters aren't bad. SO long as its actually the army you're playing.

 

This "Counts-as" BS makes my skin crawl. You want to field a Marneus Calgar then field Ultramarines, you want to field Dante, play as Blood Angels etc

They are SPECIAL CHARACTERS not some rough approximation of your average Chapter Master etc.

 

They are unique, equipped with unique wargear and unique rules to reflect WHO THE DAMN CHARACTER IS.

 

In all honesty i've actually gone so far as to refuse anyone fielding a "counts as." And my local Tourney shares my opinion. Basically the rule is "If a named Character has a Chapter or Force labelled in his title then he can only be fielded with such."

 

Wow that's a lot of hate towards counts as. So does that mean that Abaddon can only be fielded with Black Legion, or Typhus with the Death Guard?

 

Erm, yeah

[Warp Angel]

Its my belief that Space Marines are the favored children of GW. For that they get many perks and shiny objects and are pushed to sell. While it may not be enjoyable to fight against them its in the game and you just have to deal with it. Posting on the forums and ranting about it does not do much to help you. Many people feel upset when they are unable to beat an opponent but asking for ways to counter them instead of whining is more constructive.

 

Aaaahhhhh. Yes, the days of 3.5 when Chaos could literally do anything with an army list that it wanted to do. GW gave us an average dex and Marines a better one a year plus later. The Chaos dex is still better than the one for DA. Waaaaaay better. It's just not as good as the uberdex of 3.5 and that seems to be a major complaint (and probably a valid one)

 

Anywho, I digress -

 

You beat an army with Calgar by ignoring him.

 

1) He's not a troops choice, so he isn't scoring

2) There are easier and faster ways to degrade his army's overall killyness than by going after him

3) The objectives of all 5th ed battles have him as a relatively low priorty target.

 

As others have pointed out, he's slow, unless he's with an expensive option (Land Raider, Terminator Squad, Drop Pod with Squad). So you're looking at 200-400 points to effectively deploy a 200+ point monster.

 

I can think of lots of things to do with 400-600 points in a 1500 point list that give me a) more scoring units and ;) enough killpower to flatten the rest of his army.

[Lord Captain Sam]

I think the dislike for "counts-as" characters comes from the belief that it should be very difficult to start up an army. The flexibility of the new SM codex is unequalled by any codex, and until such time as another codex is realsed with something new to be mad at, there will be those who argue that this is somehow "unfair."

 

As long as the "counts-as" character is clearly identified and explained, there is no just cause to not allow people to use them.

[Brother Drakist]

Personally Characters aren't bad. SO long as its actually the army you're playing.

 

This "Counts-as" BS makes my skin crawl. You want to field a Marneus Calgar then field Ultramarines, you want to field Dante, play as Blood Angels etc

They are SPECIAL CHARACTERS not some rough approximation of your average Chapter Master etc.

 

They are unique, equipped with unique wargear and unique rules to reflect WHO THE DAMN CHARACTER IS.

 

In all honesty i've actually gone so far as to refuse anyone fielding a "counts as." And my local Tourney shares my opinion. Basically the rule is "If a named Character has a Chapter or Force labelled in his title then he can only be fielded with such."

 

Wow that's a lot of hate towards counts as. So does that mean that Abaddon can only be fielded with Black Legion, or Typhus with the Death Guard?

 

Erm, yeah

 

Perhaps I should have fleshed out my point more. I have seen Abaddon and Typhus "counts as" with "renegade" armies before. Didn't have a problem with it.

[Warp Angel]

In my opinion the special characters go down just as easily as any other character. Focus fire resolves all.

 

Can I get an Amen?

 

Calgar isn't substantially harder to kill than a Wraithlord or kitted out Carnifex, and costs a whole bunch too. I'd be more afraid of a Winged Hive Tyrant than of him.

 

Yet nobody calls that cheese. Maybe if we called the Winged Hive Tyrant "Old Four Eyes", and made his synapse range 6" greater for another 25 points, people would start moaning.

[Legatus]

Sure, you can ignore Calgar, or even kill him, but in the meantime the whole Space Marine army is fearless, while still having the option to fall back instead. The scoring units are fearless too, which I am sure will help. You can kill Khan, no problem. but you might be flank charged by a squad of assault terminators in a crusader that game. But maybe it's just assault squads. Hestan ist not that much harder to kill, but the whole space marine army can re-roll missed melta and multimelta shots and re-roll all failed wounds with flame weapons.

I think the captain with an extra wound or one additional attack is not the problem.

[Warp Angel]

Sure, you can ignore Calgar, or even kill him, but in the meantime the whole Space Marine army is fearless, while still having the option to fall back instead. The scoring units are fearless too, which I am sure will help. You can kill Khan, no problem. but you might be flank charged by a squad of assault terminators in a crusader that game. But maybe it's just assault squads. Hestan ist not that much harder to kill, but the whole space marine army can re-roll missed melta and multimelta shots and re-roll all failed wounds with flame weapons.

I think the captain with an extra wound or one additional attack is not the problem.

 

And how are loyalist space marines being fearless any different than having grey knights, berzerkers, plague marines, etc. fearless? The only real difference is that the points are focused in a character instead of spread around the entire army on a squad by squad basis. Less efficient in small games, more efficient in larger.

 

Fearless is not always a benefit either. General consensus in many parts of this board are that it's a wash from a pro/con standpoint. When you lose combat by a couple of wounds and have to make those extra armor saves... well... statistics don't always average out during a game.

 

I can do better for 200 points than the benefit Calgar provides my army.

[Zeller]

To be fair Marneus could be part of a 1500 point section of the bigger line thus making his appearance in this more reasonable. Yeah, special characters are pretty much the anchor point of every marine army I've seen since the new 'dex but they are also a shatterpoint. I don't care to use them often if at all, however, I do think there are a few special characters that look pretty cool and have an interesting set of rules.

 

Many good points have been made so far. They're just statlines and die all the same. Get over it. :rolleyes:

[minigun762]

I just wanted to say one thing that I thought was kinda crappy.

I would like some Special Characters that could alter the FOC in the same way that the Ork and Loyalist Marines can.

 

The "Take Special Character A" and unit B becomes scoring, or a Troop Choice or you can field an extra one yadda yadda"

 

I mentioned this along time ago, in the great rantings about the Chaos Codex, how easy it would have been to maintain some of the Legion flavor using just this method.

 

Night Lord Special Character = Raptors are Scoring or gain Hit or Run

Word Bearers Special Character = aura of Fearlessness or something or reroll attacks on the charge

Iron Warriors Special Character = can take 0-3 Obliterators as Elites or gain Tank Hunter on a unit

Alpha Legion Special Character = unit you join gains Infiltrate and Move Through Cover, reroll reserves

 

These are ideas just off the top of my head and they would have helped maintain the unique feel of each Legion while allowing for the whole "Count As" craze that went through the other codex.

As it is now, the closest thing we have to this is Fabius Bile.

[Legatus]

Fearless is not always a benefit either.

I was paraphrasing, but Calgar does not actually make his units fearless. Instead of letting the Marine player chose to fail a morale test, as the "Combat Tactics" rule enables them to, with Calgar the player can chose to fail or pass all morale tests he has to make. Their units can still decide to run away in the shooting phase, or try to escape form a disadvantageous combat to shoot the enemy instead. But if they don't want to lose the onjective they are currently defending, they can decide to just pass the morale test.