Lamenters

[kharn_the_betrayer]

I am finally working on my Blood Angels Army and starting to take shape in concept and everything. I am making a Blood Angels army but was flitting through the codex and know that Lamenters were a BA successor. I was wondering which codex they would be best used by Blood Angels or Vanilla? I am only asking as they were listed as an option in the 4th ED Vanilla Book. My thoughts:

 

BA:

Pros:

They are a Successor Chapter

Still Use BA imagery (though different colors)

Cons:

The allegedly solved the flaw (so no fluff toward Death Company and Red Thirst)

Much more diminished then other chapters

Nothing that leads to them having anything special available to them

 

Vanilla:

Pros:

Solid and Dependable List can be used to represent anything

Has a lot of options that flow well in a Marine army

Cons:

No BA feel or flavor

 

Any thoughts on which to use or not use? I am just doing this as I've seen them put in BOTH books and they according to the fluff have solved the flaw. Any thoughts?

[Nemisor]

i would use the BA dex and just not use DC. then you still get the fast tanks, lots of dreads, scoring RAS and Baals.

[Erasmus of Baal]

i would use the BA dex and just not use DC. then you still get the fast tanks, lots of dreads, scoring RAS and Baals.

 

This.

[Carnus Caedes]

Lamenters use death company... a fact reinforced by both the codex and FW Badab War Pt1 which incidentally reveals the Lamenters Chapter master Malakim Phoros.

 

A star fleet based Chapter with a notional strength of 100 marines consisting of 10 companies

 

1 x veteran, 1 x scout, 4 x line of battle, 2 x Tactical reserve, 1 x Assault reserve and 1 x Devestator reserve.

 

In terms of operational equipment and and insignia, Lamenters cleave more to standard space marines than their progenitors.

 

Tanks (baals and LRs) are rare. Sanguinary guard artefacts (they have them too) and terminator suits are few.

 

The reclusiam of Chaplains is a part of the overall command structure not subordinate. The chapters Sanguinary Priesthood hold a predominant role and is known to them as them 'Calix'

 

The apothecarion of the Lamenters tend not only to the physical well being as heck its battle brother but their spiritual stigmata that presents as 'great black runnels' that pour from the eyes... 'blood, the blood of sanguinius wept for the dead'

 

Lamenters like the 'Cure', Shag hair cuts, riding the back seats of a stormraven looking windswept and interesting. They also enjoy wearing their black jeans a little too tight during downtime which isn't a concern because marines are functionally sterile but if they weren't they'd obviously 'HIT THAT' like a tactical squad, deploy grenades and leave before resistance can be waged... they galaxy is safer without that <--- Lies are higlighted in red... disregard!!! :D

[igotsmeakabob!!]

Where do you read the Lamenters have Death Co.? They don't as their Flaw has been cured.

And yeah, they're fine with the 5th ed. codex.

[Leonaides]

its in IA9... Apparently the curse is creeping back in, and there were a few other outward signs of it occurring. Also, interestingly enough, it suggests that the ba's must have, on some level at least, known about what was done to the lamenters to attempt to cure the flaw. You could use either codex tbh, but at the moment c:ba is probably the easiest to use.

[Carnus Caedes]

pg54 of the 5th ed. codex

 

... the chapter has gone through marked degeneration since their discovery, raising severe doubts as to the effectiveness of the 'cure'

 

and

 

pg107 of the badab war - part one shows illustration of an 'unknown battle brother Lamenters death company' from the battle of Optera.

 

The Forge world strangeness commences with the blood angels having knowledge and allowing some random biologian to affect a 'cure' upon their geneseed. As we know FW is full of crazy talk and what we thought we knew is all lies ennit.

[Brother-Captain Devlonir]

FW has a nice idea, but often their fluff is as much as their rules a 'test' to see how it sticks and if it's any good with all the other fluff around.

 

But, the fact that their 'Cure' might not be perfect is right indeed. That can mean that some might be falling to the Black Rage again. But the Lamenters would probably not openly show this like their other battle brothers. Their DC might be more hidden from view, marked with small marks and not big showy Black Armor of Doooooooom!

 

I'd go for BA codex and use the special BA units sparingly. The Priests still have a major role, as do Chaplains. So use them as your HQ and Elite choices in numbers, but don't field more than 1 Baal, Sang Guard, Land Raider, Terminator Squad, Stormraven or other BA specific or expensive units on the board.

[JamesI]

If the Lamenters haven't cured the flaw, I would use the BA dex. If they have, then I'd use regular marines.

[SamaNagol]

All the background now seems to indicate they would be based around the BA dex

[Israfel]

If the Lamenters haven't cured the flaw, I would use the BA dex. If they have, then I'd use regular marines.

 

This!

[Whitefireinferno]

Oh yeah did you hear FW are going to make special Cursed founding dice? they come in a range of colours and are out with the Badab war book they come with fine 1's and a 6 because thats how the 21st founding roll

[Brother Nathan]

agreed on the if they have cured quote. but the fluff in the codex says theya re cured of the flaw but might havesomething worse as they seem to be cursed and have really bad luck. ie, siding on huron black hearts side, lost, sent on pentinant crusade and not allowed to recruit for x amount of years. then promptly ran into a nid splinterfleet if i rember correctly. i would persoanlly pay less attention to the forgeworld fluff than to the fluff in our dex, and thats considering the necron event. although i could have seen that owrking if it had been say, ba attack crons, nids show up, both sides retreat and set up new defences of their own. kill nids. dante says... were low on guys now, lets see how the necrons fared. dante joins the scout team and arrrives in time to see the last of the crons go through some portal of their own leaving a pile of nid dust, the lord leaving last sees dante, lets off a roar, then shovethe last of the gunts through before going through himself. along with dant noting the crons took it harder than they did but killed less. just because were awsome...

[Nemisor]

. although i could have seen that owrking if it had been say, ba attack crons, nids show up, both sides retreat and set up new defences of their own. kill nids. dante says... were low on guys now, lets see how the necrons fared. dante joins the scout team and arrrives in time to see the last of the crons go through some portal of their own leaving a pile of nid dust, the lord leaving last sees dante, lets off a roar, then shovethe last of the gunts through before going through himself. along with dant noting the crons took it harder than they did but killed less. just because were awsome...

 

 

i have just torn out that page in the dex and replaced it with this :lol:

[BOBMAKENZIE]

I would use the Tyranid Codex because most of the lamenters were chewed up and are now long processed and being pooped out as Tervigon spawn. :lol:

[NExOBLIVISCARIS]

Oh yeah did you hear FW are going to make special Cursed founding dice? they come in a range of colours and are out with the Badab war book they come with fine 1's and a 6 because thats how the 21st founding roll

funniest...idea...ever

 

what if when they cured the flaw it only did it temporarly and when it wore off it became worse?

[Wildfire]

How about whichever you feel like at the time you're making a list?

[Octavulg]

Yeah...if the BA Codex says they're cured and Forge World says they're not, ignore Forge World.

 

I'd lean toward vanilla, honestly. It makes more sense.

[Carnus Caedes]

True choose whatever suits you really... but in regards to the codex it says the Lamenters' geneseed has relapsed as per my previous post... what ever you choose it will be awesome and best of luck with the yellow and checkers (the thought of the thought of such things keeps me up nights) ...

You're a far braver and better man than me! ;)

[Eerie]

As a Lamenters player I follow the Lamenters fluff pretty closely since years.

 

My interpretation is simply that GW recently (2010) decided to retcon the Lamenters fluff.

 

Older stories explicitly state that they are cured and act exactly like generic vanilla marines. This for example is a direct quotation from the Index Astartes II article about the cursed founding:

[...] the Lamenters adhere to a strictly `Codex` formation and the chapter does not field any Death Company.

 

This seemed true until very recently. As recently as the 2008 novel "Red Thirst", which had a really tiny subplot revolving around the Blood Angels trying to contact the Lamenters to find out more about the cure.

 

This is also the reason why, despite being a successor of the Blood Angels, the Lamenters never appeared in any of their codices, but instead in the Ultramarines/Vanilla codex.

 

All of this changed with the new Codex BA, which suddenly includes the Lamenters as ordinary BA successor chapter. It explicitly states that (quotation, again) "all successor chapters invariably maintain a Sanguinary Guard and a Death Company [...]", this statement being at the same page as a picture of (among others) a Lamenter. The upcoming IA9 book seems to further elaborate in that direction. The BA Codex also states that the Lamenters simply claim to have found a cure (and might lie), unlike previous articles which took the successful cure as a given fact.

 

So, as these two versions are totally incompatible with each other, the only logic conclusion I can come to is the loathed word "retcon"...

[shatter]

It kinda hints that the cure may be a therapy in progress with side effects unforeseen which limit err, foresight to the point of bad luck.... or something. The chapter itself of course still has untreated geneseed to switch back to or they can simply shut off therapy activity... ie, use whatever codex you want. It's up to you to decide what 'cure' means.

[xa0s]

Yeah, I've covered this before about the "Emo" squad. <_< Do a search, if you're curious. Index Astares I's failed aspirant is what I recall at the moment. Suicidal men.

[Imperialis_Dominatus]

I preferred it in their old fluff when it seemed to me that they were a Cursed Founding Chapter who, due to geneseed tampering, never dealt with the Flaw but suffered from terrible bad luck. It fit with the theme of the Cursed Founding (which was "don't fix it if it ain't broke, you'll make it worse on a cosmic level you idiots").

[Eerie]

I think both their old and new fluff have their pros and cons. Yes, the old fluff definitely had it's charm, them being a doomed chapter fighting against destiny itself, which is why I started them back then. You're on direct route to extinction, you know that sooner or later you'll surely screw things up completely, and you can do nothing about it, but you keep on fighting anyway, cause you may do some good on your way as well. These were the Lamenters as I pictured them. But, and that's a con, GW often depicted them as some sort of crybabies. They even got that special rule in the Index Astartes, called Aura of Doom, which basically said that enemy soldiers have so much empathy with these guys that sometimes they don't want to attack them, so as not to hurt them even more. Honestly, that's pretty wimpy. "Oh come on, Khârn, not this day. Look at them, they already have tough times, no need to rip them to pieces on top of all that..." Their name, Lamenters, was interpreted a tad too literally.

 

It seems that now GW has got rid of all this, and the "lamenting"-part of their fluff seems less about them whining all the time, but part of their Sanguinius-cult.

[Ethnic Minority]

Don't forget Lamenters have access to furioso dreadnoughts (as in IA9)!