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BA Captains......Pretty much useless?


Debauchery101

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is it just me or are captains almost useless? the only reason i would take them is to have an I5 dude with twin LCs. captains have no special rules to confer to the army, allows no special options for the army if he chooses certain wargear ie if hes on a bike he gets bikes as troops.... imo libs and chaplains far outweigh him as options for hq. to me this sucks because hes the commander but all his cronies can kick more tail or help out his troops better. anyways rants over just wondeirng if anyone can come up with a good use for a captain if all i want is one HQ. im thinking if i want a captain i should just pony up and take tycho or Seth but thats a lot of points.
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Yep, pretty much useless. Its to the point where I wonder if GW didn't just forget to give them a lot of the options you'd think they have, such as artificer armour.

 

They could have made them moderatly useful if you needed a Captain with Jump Pack to get assault squads as Troops, much like Marines get bike squads as troops if you have a Captain on Bike. But then that would just have made the army as a whole worse to a certain extent due to need to spend 125+ points of otherwise fail.

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Maybe with twin lightning claws and a jump pack in a flying command squad, but taking a reclusiarch allows you to re-roll hits for the whole command squad, an ability which urinates on anything the captain can do from orbit. No. I can't see a reason to take a captain unless you have no other commander models.

 

Seth on the other hand.... Is cool. I use him. But usually it's a reclusiarch and command squad combo.

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In any case, a Reclusiarch (or Librarian) is just cooler. I don't even have a Captain for my regular SM army but a Librarian instead.

 

What's the point of them? a blip on WS, I and A and some extra equipment? Not enough to really do much as part of the whole. A Chaplain confers unit bonuses and a Librarian's Psychic powers/hood is much more useful.

 

In order to use Captains, they should be cheaper, not better. Much cheaper, at least 20-25 points less so as to tempt you into taking a cheap HQ (like in the old, old Codex...what was it? Force Commander...then? Anyway, two tiers of Captain)

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As far back as 3rd Ed. I only every used chaplains to lead my army. Back then chaplains controlled rage and gained you at least 4 DC. It was him and Mephy that always lead my force. For BA in my mind captains have always been over rated. I have a AOBR one and an old metal termi captain, both of which never see use. I really think GW messed up when they didnt give use artificer armour, but that is what everyone is saying anyway.
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BA Captains are indeed useless. I wonder why do they exist at all...

I can see the one reason you'd want to take a captain - if you create full company. I want to make 4th or 5th Co (haven't decided yet), but I'll use "counts as Tycho" in place of the Captain.

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All of you need to go see your Chaplain and confess. The self proclaimed "The Pleasure God's Chosen" comes in here dissing our Captains and you all jump on the bandwagon to heresy. :)

 

I use a Captain with a jump pack and Thunder hammer in my army. He may not be flashy or have cool rules, but he gets the job done.

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lol all jokes aside I have been using a twin claw/jump pack/melta bomb Captain recently who does indeed dish out some pain (especially with furious charge) but for the same points the Reclusiarch is nearly as good in combat but the squad he is with gets the re-rolls. Yes the Captain could have had more options but hey we can't have everything from the Vanilla codex and all of our own toys.
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The captain is probably one of the most inefficient choices in our codex. In fact, I can't think of many models that are as replaceable as he is.

 

Giving him (and only him) Heroic Intervention, so he could either come in on his own or join the vanguard, even for some more points, would have given him a very BA feel but kept him as a viable choice.

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i may have found a decent use for our captains, remember, that they are the only character in the book that can take a chainfist. And at 4 Attacks on the charge, that is some formidabble anti-tank power right there. He can also take a combi-melta with his TDA. There will be use out of captains yet! Well, at least from me there will be :HQ: Whether you put him in a squad, or deep strike him on his own, then there is no doubt that he will kill tanks. In my opinion, he has the best survivability of any anti tank infantry. No other anti armour infantry models have as many wounds, or as good a saves. realtively cheap aswell, at 160 pts. :wub:
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i think the only way id take a captain is if i choose to field a battle co for apoc. im glad Ba has a lot of cool new units but the wargear options for ICs are garbage. the only new thing is infernus pistols which really arent worth the points imo. wish captains could take adamantium cloaks still :wub: that woudl at least make them a half way decent choice.
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i may have found a decent use for our captains, remember, that they are the only character in the book that can take a chainfist. And at 4 Attacks on the charge, that is some formidabble anti-tank power right there. He can also take a combi-melta with his TDA. There will be use out of captains yet! Well, at least from me there will be :( Whether you put him in a squad, or deep strike him on his own, then there is no doubt that he will kill tanks. In my opinion, he has the best survivability of any anti tank infantry. No other anti armour infantry models have as many wounds, or as good a saves. realtively cheap aswell, at 160 pts. :P

 

This sounds as quite a decent tactic. But doesn't he get killed to soon when dropping in the enemy lines?

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They need to Errata the codex and put in Artificer Armour, Master Crafting on a weapon as an upgrade, Relic Blade as an upgrade, and Heroic Intervention

 

Then I would MAYBE consider taking one over a Chaplain. And even then I still probably wouldnt

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Generic Cpts use to serve a very nice roll as a cheaper HQ selection that still carried quite a bit of punch when you needed it. Then again, that was back in the day when BA were almost always forced to take a Chaplain as their primary HQ.

 

So to echo what’s already been said, they now don’t really have a role to fill. In the 5th edition 40K that’s dominated by mandatory named characters, generic HQ choices become more nominal. But that’s certainly not just for BA, almost all armies have the same issue.

 

Gone are the days where your HQ was as much a role-play element as functional unit. Terminator honors? Purity seals? Grenades optional? Codex armories???

 

Oh well. Yet ANOTHER Meph build will have to serve as a replacement.

 

-OMG

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Generic Cpts use to serve a very nice roll as a cheaper HQ selection that still carried quite a bit of punch when you needed it. Then again, that was back in the day when BA were almost always forced to take a Chaplain as their primary HQ.

 

So to echo what’s already been said, they now don’t really have a role to fill. In the 5th edition 40K that’s dominated by mandatory named characters, generic HQ choices become more nominal. But that’s certainly not just for BA, almost all armies have the same issue.

 

Gone are the days where your HQ was as much a role-play element as functional unit. Terminator honors? Purity seals? Grenades optional? Codex armories???

 

Oh well. Yet ANOTHER Meph build will have to serve as a replacement.

 

-OMG

I miss those days (though I wasn't a BA player then).

 

I tried for the first month or 2 of our new codex to use a captain (or captain/Librarian combo) as my HQs. While the Captain was potent as a fighter, he was still at best killing 5 models a turn. The benefits of a librarian or reclusiarch (not to mention one of the named guys) could easily be above that with the rerolls. So my captain got a demotion to Vanguard sergeant and I doubt I ever use a captain again until our codex changes.

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