Quick question about special characters.

[Polaris]

My friend plays Space Marines and just recently bought the "new" codex. He has told me that he can use ANY special character in any chapter without a minimum point cap. An example being Marneus Calgar used in a 500 point salamanders army.

 

Pardon my ignorance on the subject, but is this correct? It seems VERY unfair.

[greatcrusade08]

Its correct, but then you could do the same.

 

Personally id never run a 250 point character in a 500 point army, the troops will use up the rest to get the required HQ and 2 troops, so you could probably kill him quite easily with some dreads and preds... remember characters are not game winners by themselves, even Calgar isnt immune to massed bolters.

 

Gc08

[Polaris]

Thanks! I could do the same ( If I played space marines ) but I use a pure grey knight army.

[Custodian Athiair]

well if you play pure grey knights, just charge him with your grey knights, you will strike before him and the amount of Strength 6 attacks are going to kill him eventually :P

 

Athiair :huh:

[Banville]

Annoyingly Calgar has a power sword too so he'll still strike first if he chooses to use that.

[Tokunator]

Yes, he can do that, but you can always discuss it with him in friendly games. After all, if he insists on playing MC in 500 points every time, you might just stop playing him if it is a NPE (negative play experience) for you. I always discuss armies before and after games with my playgroup to avoid NPEs.

 

The recent rise of Special Characters that are just plain better than their equivalents (e.g. Lysander is 30 points more than a similarly equipped captain, has Eternal Warrior, an improved 'hammer (worth at least 30 points in my book), +1 wounds, Bolter Drill and grants Stubborn/ Pedro Cantor is ludicrously cheap for +1 attack in 12", let alone the other abilities) is something that I find very sad. In a way it is understandable as other games such as Warmachine also present all their characters as Ready-made characters. However, I find that the old system where Special Characters were expensive exemplars highlighting one of the army's strengths (i.e. old Eldrad who was an expensive Uber-Farseer, whereas new Eldrad is a bargain Uber-Farseer) or really Special characters that had funky or odd special rules (i.e. Farsight who modified the Tau list OR Asdrubael Vect who was a Special Vehicle character) was much more appropriate because it encouraged players to use their imagination, either by building their own characters or by building a creative and unusual list.

[Custodian Athiair]

personally i think GW should be encourgeing people to be making their own Special Characters

 

Athiair LD

[Tokunator]

They certainly would not allow you to use Special characters of your own devising in 'official' games such as tournaments, but they always insist on players' own initiative, so if you want to build your own characters and your playgroup is o.k. with them, more power to you.

 

Edited to actually make sense.

[tahrikmili]

I really dislike the move towards IC centric armies in 5th edition - it tends to make all armies of the same race stereotypical copies of each other, more or less.

 

For my BA army I just use 2 chaplains. I really feel ICs are cheesy and beardy..

[PirateRogue]

I agree the use of special characters is disheartening. I would prefer having more options for my captain so that I can Design my own character. It would have taken mabye a page in the codex to add in special rules for buying upgrades to HQ's.

[tahrikmili]

I really loved the traits/disadvantages codex divergence system of the 4th edition. To me, 5th edition SM rules are a huge backwards step, especiall wrt ICs.

 

To each their own, of course. This is the game as it is..

[chapter master 454]

Its correct, but then you could do the same.

 

Personally id never run a 250 point character in a 500 point army, the troops will use up the rest to get the required HQ and 2 troops, so you could probably kill him quite easily with some dreads and preds... remember characters are not game winners by themselves, even Calgar isnt immune to massed bolters.

 

Gc08

 

Or plasma cannon fire! especially since he's 250 WITHOUT terminator armour. Hmmm, GWs most favoured (I mean more favoured than any other chaos champion, more relied on than an entire army of assassins number the size of the persian army facing the spartans) man and they fail to give him artifcer armour, same for pedro. Don't mind about shrike, as a captain he already has some very precious relics with him so I'm not bothered there but some characters who are very high up aren't given artifcer armour. Then again this must be GWs marketting scam to get us to buy that what is it? 35 pounds or something? for calgar and 4 models. Oh well.

 

As for dealing with him, if he's out of his terminator armour just spam kraks at him to weaken his save 4++, might not one hit him but a sustained attacked will surely leave him weak or if he's travelling with terminators just spam plasma cannons. Lets just say in one game I nailed a vindicator, stunned a predator on it's side armour holding it still for next turn and mauled 3 terminators and wounded calgar (first two results were my own predators doing that) with my 2 plasma cannon servitors and conversion beamer all on a stolen first turn. Yea, thats how you steal first turn and show up that over glorified smurf master. He isn't great, the whole 'I chose whether to pass or fail' is annoying but to be honest considering most marines pass their leadership I wasn't really bothered so the benefit isn't that great.

 

I personally feel lysander is by far a better choice and so far everyone I've seen calls him the juggernaut of 40k, proof and this I swear that if I lie I shall eat the very model: it took about 150 daemonette attacks over 3 turns to finally kill him ALONE, 3rd turn he died but he had done his job of holding back something that I thought was going to maul him by the 2nd combat phase. Calgar can't compete with lysander who may I point out can instant death a ork warboss and most likely compete with thraka with little problem (duel of the titans!)

[The Black Watch]

I use my own custom chapter and as a result I want to make my own characters and avoid just 'cloning' existing ones. But without any guidelines from GW and with the woefully limited options for characters in the codex it makes it really hard. Its not even easy to modify the existing characters and have a reasonable points cost to give them.

 

For these reasons I tend to avoid using HQ and pour more money into other places. :whistling:

[sword brethren]

i understand the idea of special made characters, spose its so you can go with the fluff.

 

i have a custom chapter so i can have my own chapter master, in times of need though he is armed in the same way as lysander, i can just use him like that. same with my shrike lookalike.

[Frosty the Pyro]

If your playing Greay Knights just kill him with a force weapon, eternal warior doesnt help against Grey Knights old style force weapons.

[Grey Mage]

I really loved the traits/disadvantages codex divergence system of the 4th edition. To me, 5th edition SM rules are a huge backwards step, especiall wrt ICs.

 

To each their own, of course. This is the game as it is..

What they SHOULD have done was made it like the BT Vows- IE you take a captain or a chapter master you get access to vows. You only ever get one vow. For 40 points your army is *for sake of argument* stubborn. For 50pts your army gains fleet....

 

And then let SCs do things like say... infiltrate one of your units with the SC.

 

The problem with the divergence system is it led to alot of min-maxing. Who cared about taking "I cant have any allies" if you didnt want one in the first place? OR no attack bikes/speeders if you didnt own the models to begin with?

[tahrikmili]

I really loved the traits/disadvantages codex divergence system of the 4th edition. To me, 5th edition SM rules are a huge backwards step, especiall wrt ICs.

 

To each their own, of course. This is the game as it is..

What they SHOULD have done was made it like the BT Vows- IE you take a captain or a chapter master you get access to vows. You only ever get one vow. For 40 points your army is *for sake of argument* stubborn. For 50pts your army gains fleet....

 

And then let SCs do things like say... infiltrate one of your units with the SC.

 

The problem with the divergence system is it led to alot of min-maxing. Who cared about taking "I cant have any allies" if you didnt want one in the first place? OR no attack bikes/speeders if you didnt own the models to begin with?

 

The problem with the divergence system is that it was poorly thought out. Allowing each army to take one advantage and disadvantage to customize their army, with well thought out advantages and disadvantages would have been fine.

 

And please don't get me started about min-max'ing things - the ICs certainly DID NOT help with that problem AT ALL.

[Tokunator]

I think the two main issues with the Traits system were min-maxing and the fact that you could mix them freely. Although the new system doesn't redress the min-maxing issue, as the trade off of Combat Tactics (a sound rule but rarely used and one that requires strategic thinking, as opposed to the easy-to-use Chapter tactics) for Chapter Tactics is not that painful for most people (trading a rule you might use every third game for a free Flamer tuning or Outflanking your army).

 

However, the new rules no longer allow you to mix these boni freely. I had to face so many Tactical Squads with 2 Plasma Guns, a Plasma Pistol and an Apothecary that I no longer find that funny.

 

 

As an aside, my gaming group banned people from using Marine Special Characters if they are designed for another chapter. If you play your own chapter, you can make it a successor of one chapter to get their heroes, but no others. Anyone else doing that?