Belial

[Dread]

One of my best friends and I both play DA and mainly Deathwing. We have both grown tired of waiting for GW to fix the emperors first. So we sat down and brought him into 5th eds way. These are our house ruled fixes for him.

 

Same stats but he has an Iron Halo and adamantine mantle. The sword of silence now has str 5 still with master crafted. His adjusted points value is now 220. He may also re-roll scatter for deep strike and acts like a homing beacon for other units deep striking with in 6" of him.

 

Anyhow this is what we believe he should be now. What do you think? Pro and cons please.

[krewl]

I agree on the sword upgrade, that is just a bit useless as it is right now.

The 4++ is also a given, that just makes him a bit more survivable and up to par with other captains. (And it has the benefit of making both lightning claws and bolter& Sword combo a bit more attractive aswell.

 

I'm not certain about the adamantine mantle, but thats just the fluffy side of me, I don;t see why he should be so tough. Then again, every codex has an etrnal warrior guy, but we have that already in sammael. But your points costs are fine for suchs stats, I can see it working quite well.

 

The teleport homer combined with eternal warrior and the 4++ makes him a pretty certain bet that he will be alive to act as a teleport beacon, so that bit might be affecting game balance quite a bit. (I play Deathwing at a reasonable high level, so if I could Deep strike support near Belial I know this would have effected my game quite a lot, as it would support Belail and is command squad when agressively deep striking up table.)

 

I know it would be good to have a Belial as you rule him in my list, might be a bit to good.

 

Also, cpould you clarify if the rest of Belials rules still apply? Like the banner and apothecary?

[Isiah]

Have fun with it ;). Though I too think AM is overkill. IH is a great improevement.

 

I'd add another rule: any DW squad he's attached to when they Deathwing Assualt don't need to test for scatter due to enhance teleport telemetry incorporated within [his] archaic termy armour. Fun.

 

Cheers

I

[Brother Immolator]

Instead of the teleport hommer i would increase his stats a bit.He is the master of the best terminator company ;).

[march10k]

Not bad, if a bit bland. I'd probably drop the AM and the telehomer, and instead give him, and by extension, his squad, the ability to re-teleport every turn a la veil of darkness. Of course, without the ability to charge on arrival, he'd have to take the sword of silence and accompany a tactical termy squad to get any real use out of the re-teleporting...but it would be really interesting, and potentially useful. It would be impossible, for example, for the enemy to hide that landspeeder that you've already disarmed out of LOS. His squad could drop behind a different tank every turn and blast its rear armor, and wait till turn five to jump onto and sieze an objective...the only thing is, they'd have to be a retinue. If any old terminator armor could teleport around the battlefield at will, why wouldn't that be a standard terminator ability?

 

Actually, that would be AWESOME...in the next DA dex...if they could all teleport at will (and still be deepstrikers in their new location, so no charge...that would balance things a bit while giving new life to shooty squads), say if they have LOS from the start point to the targeted arrival it's even without scatter or with reduced scatter...that would really set the deathwing apart from other chapters' termies! Hmmm...they could even be allowed to teleport out of melee (why would they want to, unless they're up against GK termies, frinstance?), but would have to take a dangerous terrain test and automatically count as not having LOS to their intended arrival point?

[Brother Immolator]

I dread a certain codex writer hearing that.I also dread at the cost of such a unit and the slander directed at its users.

[Dread]

I think we are going to drop the mantle and the deep striking homer, keeping the re-roll for scatter on him. Still think he should have to 4+invul but maybe that would be to much, were not space puppies after all. The sword should have something specail about it tho.

[ForTheLion]

Ok fluff wise, the sword of secrets is made of the same obsidian, as the sword of silence (azraels weapon) and that gives him str 6, so it stands ot reason belial would get it. I akways wondered how 2 swords were made from the same meteor but 1 gave 1 str less :lol: so the str shd be increased by 2, not 1.

 

Now assuming he is a sort of a captain, looking through ALL the power armor codexes, i see WS 6, not 5, so increae that too. Finally , give him the option to take a storm shield, and make that storm shield some sort of ancient relic (reroll invu save, but second roll is 4+, and if u fail the reroll, youre storm shield stays at 4+, if you succeed it stays 3+.) this should compensate for the eternal warrior. Finaly give him a homer and call it a day!

 

Also i think 220 points is exactly right, but that shd incorporate the things i mentioned above.

 

Using a vanila dex you can have a captain in master armor, with a ss and relic blade for under 200 points, so why the hell shd we pay more? (besides this dude making our termies troops!)

 

I think youre limiting urself, by thinking that belial can be made into an OP character, well think again, we have mephiston and draigo who are immortal beasts and cost around 250, and jst beat things in CC. It makes sense that we have 1 mean hitting machine too!

[WatchCaptainAzrael]

It makes sense that we have 1 mean hitting machine too!

Our superior tactics? ;)

[march10k]

TBH, I kinda like the real belial for two reasons...first, he's cheap. I'm not sure I'd want him to cost as much as an entire squad of terminators, even with a big stat/equipment bump. The other thing is, how many unique characters get more than one kit? Being able to choose between claws, hammer, and sword is pretty cool.

[shortysl]

Just give me WS6, an Iron Halo and Preferred Enemy:Orks and i'll be happy. He's a Company Captain, so let's bring him up to par with other Captains, and he owes Ghazghkull a good kicking as payback for almost killing him on Piscina! Keep it simple, we of the First don't need anything more than righteous wrath!

 

I will just take this opportunity to say as well that we need to be careful about making Belial too powerful or too expensive. We have a Chapter Master to think about too and if Belial becomes a S6, 220 point, special rule laden monster, what then are we supposed to do to make Azrael stand out as Master of the Chapter? We would risk making him prohibitively expensive. No Company Captain should ever be better than the Chapter Master.

[Interrogator Stobz]

+1WS(as per C:SM)=+5pts

+2S(Sword upgrade)=+10pts

+1Sv(Halo)=+5pts

Sternguard ammo=+5pts

total cost 155pts

 

I like that. Still cheap, a bit more survivable and his sword finally hits like it should.

[Brother Kovash]

WS6 and an Iron Halo are the two main points that I would vouch for. I like the +2 strength to the Sword of Silence, that would let myself and others field our originally built models. Of course, he would have to be allowed to use all 3 sets of wargear options, otherwise he wouldn't be Belial anymore. I'm just wondering if maybe each build should come at a different points cost? That might help justify a few of the new options.

[Kay]

He is not only a company captain, he is the first company captain... That should be reflected in his fluff...:

Taking base stats and cost of a sm cap, which is... Let me think some equivalence... 4/5 of a dreadnought!

You get ws6 and exchange combat tactics for DW assault and FOC alter, since historically a term armor costs 25 and a DA company master already equals the price of a sm captain (damn, I should have looked at the codex before!) we can assume that either belial's gear is dirty cheap, or his abilities are...

For the equipment, we use various codecii,relic blade from c:sm equals around 30p, storm shield is 25, eternal warrior is 35. I say 200 points for ws6, s6, 3++ and regular belial's rules for 200 should be fine... Which is the same as sicarius and vulkan...

[Isiah]

Darnath Lysander is a straight 200 points for a First Company Captain termy character with WS6 and interesting set of rules/wargear editions (I know that cross-codex comparisons isn't always wise), problem is with a 200 point Belial is that as a compulsory purchase for a Deathwing army he'd be hard to fit in with units already costing a base 240 with cyclone and a chainfist. Keep him around the 155-165 mark I'd say.

 

I've no issue with a 200 point kick-ass Belial though – provided a generic Master with termy armour option of lesser points and abilities was available to us too, but would still allow DW squads as Troop units.

 

Cheers

I

[Brother Kovash]

Darnath Lysander is a straight 200 points for a First Company Captain termy character with WS6 and interesting set of rules/wargear editions (I know that cross-codex comparisons isn't always wise), problem is with a 200 point Belial is that as a compulsory purchase for a Deathwing army he'd be hard to fit in with units already costing a base 240 with cyclone and a chainfist. Keep him around the 155-165 mark I'd say.

 

I've no issue with a 200 point kick-ass Belial though – provided a generic Master with termy armour option of lesser points and abilities was available to us too, but would still allow DW squads as Troop units.

 

Cheers

I

 

Having a generic First Company Master would be a very good idea, but if we were to get one as an option, then there would have to be one for a generic Grand Master and generic Second Company Master as well. I don't see that happening. Although the last few codices to come out have been loaded with new HQ choices, maybe there's a chance something like this could happen.