New Mephiston/Psychic awakening p3

[Indefragable]

More thoughts than I'll be quiet for a while:

 

-Death Company Intercessors are a "line" item unit in the Codex and not a Strategem:

--Death Company Troops could be interesting

--On the flip side, if it's a Strategem like Death Visions of Sanguinius, than perhaps it has wider implications like Death Company Incursors et al.... (not holding my breath).

 

-Libby Dread's halberd and Sanguinor's Encarmine Broadsword are now in Assault Doctrine AP-5. Lol. Diminishing returns, but neat I guess?

 

-I think the Doctrines are more "nice to haves" for us, where we get some better potshots with the shooting we bring, but are still aiming to get stuck-in as soon as possible. Assault Doctrine + Savage Echoes mean that our depleted assault forces get some extra punch to make up for the casualties they've inevitably suffered before going for charge 2 or 3.

 

-updated my post above for more 4chan info dumps on C:SM Strategems and Litanies to better inform us of what we might expect

[Chronos1985]

I would assume Death Company won't be tied to JUST intercessors. Perhaps Death Company Reivers too? Do they now become viable with Black Rage and likely point drop via Chapter approved?

[Zephaniah Adriyen]

I have a friend who's got his whole Primaris army painted up DC, he's gonna love this.

[Pathstrider]

I would assume Death Company won't be tied to JUST intercessors. Perhaps Death Company Reivers too? Do they now become viable with Black Rage and likely point drop via Chapter approved?

I'm not so hopeful - from the article "When they succumb, they are arranged into Intercessors squads and unleashed on their enemies."

[Charlo]

I think DC will only be intercessors.

 

The lore from the article says that all primaris that fall are arranged into Death Company Intercessor squads.

 

Plus adding a DC option for everything would be a bit much.

[Remtek]

So sad looking at the info that dropped today, i was hoping for more utility stuff. Hopefully they are saving the good stuff for last :)

[Arkangilos]

I feel like reivers would have been the better option.

[happyslugger]

I purposely kept 10 intercessors and 10 reivers unbuilt for this announcement...so I guess I can build the 10 intercessors as DC versions now. Will wait and see what the full picture is so I can model them accordingly. At least they will look cool :-)

[Chronos1985]

What I anticipated was likely the doctrines would be the same, given GW has made it VERY clear they do not want games ending in turn 1 and 2 because of how powerful assault armies were in the past. I am fine with that. My hope was we get more survive-ability, and a way to push assault doctrine quicker. So far I haven't gotten either based on the previews. Hell, not even Mephiston could be saved from his Plasma pistol lmao.

[Charlo]

I feel like reivers would have been the better option.

But Reavers are a specific type of troop with a specialized role. They're in the Vanguard.

 

Those fallen to the rage are wanton killers with no leash or idea of tactics.

 

It's annoying they don't even give them a combat weapon but hey that's how it be.

[happyslugger]

 

I feel like reivers would have been the better option.

But Reavers are a specific type of troop with a specialized role. They're in the Vanguard.

 

Those fallen to the rage are wanton killers with no leash or idea of tactics.

 

It's annoying they don't even give them a combat weapon but hey that's how it be.

Could we give them chainswords/power swords/or power fists?

[Pathstrider]

I agree Reavers would have been better - who better for terror troops?

[Panzer]

So all my Primaris now have at least 4 AP-1 attacks with +1 to wound turn 3+. I can live with that. Who needs proper melee units anyway. Aggressors with 5 powerfist attacks and +1 to wound for the win. :D

 

Also I'm kinda glad I painted only 10 of my 20 Intercessors so far. One big DC Intercessor unit to go, pretty please!

 

Though on the flipside my Combat Blade Reivers once more feel redundant compared to Intercessors lol

 

 

Also also I guess the DC Intercessors will be our variant of the Veteran upgrade, so we are still without Veteran Primaris unlike vanilla Chapters. :D 

[Spagunk]

I'm probably going to end up modeling mixed DC intercessors squads with a bit of everything (EtB probably best for that) but I don't lament the fact that DC intercessors are just more punchy bolter marines.
 

6 attack normal DC seems scary but I am with everyone else in that they still suffer from attrition due to the many ways they can be shot close to turn 1 or 2. I think this helps sharpen our blade for assaulting but doesn't really work to mitigate our biggest issue: survival.

 

FNP for DC really needs to go back to 5++ to help us out.

[Indefragable]

I lied, a couple more thoughts about Codex: Space Marines 2.0 Strategems and LItanies of note for us (no officiall indication we get any of this, but stuff to start stewing over) :

 

Strategems:

Hidden Content

Adaptive Strategy: 1CP, can immediately change the combat doctrine

 

Big Guns Never Tire: 1CP a Vehicle does not suffer the penalty for moving and shooting Heavy weapons

 

Duty Eternal: 1CP a Dreadnought halves damage taken, rounded up. Some use for us given we have a lot of Dread options

 

Skilled Riders: 1CP Bikers and Land Speeders get 4++ if they moved or 3++ if they Advanced. Marginal use case since we tend not to go too heavy on those units, but it's something not be overlooked, especially with Scout Bikers. Also, we have (had?) a Tactical Objective that was +1VP if a unit Advanced. Again, edge case but interesting to consider.

 

Veteran Intercessors (1/2CP): as we've already discussed, probably removed in favor of Death Company Intercessors, but in case we do get it, it's 1 CP for a 5 man and 2Cp for a 10man, giving the unit +1A and +1Ld.

 

Chapter Champion: 1CP Company Champion gets +1A +1Ld and enemies in melee with him are -1 To Hit. If we get the updated Company Champion datasheet that C:SM gets, this fella is going to be AMAZEBALLS for us...basically a heatseaking missile sent to gut enemy characters, freeing up Slamguinius to do his Empra-given mission unfettered.

 

Chapter Master: 2CP probably not gonna get b/c of Dante and Seth, but it would be cool if we could so long as neither of those dudes are on the bable

 

Chief Apothecary/Chief Librarian/Master of Sanctity: hopefully Flesh Tearers can use these or apply my same comment above to this, though I wouldn't hold my breath.

 

Master of the Forge: 1CP: non-named Techmarine can be upgraded to restore flat 3HP to vehicles. Never a bad thing, but probably overshadowed (wher this gets very interesting is the WLT he can unlock which is +1 To Hit for friendly Vehicle in 6" (Master of the Machine)

 

Hero of the Chapter: 1CP another big one for us, lets you give a <Character> who's not your Warlord a Warlord Trait. Very useful for giving +1D to someone while keeping Slamguinius with Gift of Foresight for the 5+++ re-rolling 1's ability (assuming our WLT have not changed).

 

Relics of the Chapter: 1CP  "upgraded" Relics Strategem which means you can take as many as you want so long as they are to different characters. WIth the advent of special issue wargear, this gets interesting

 

Bolt Storm: 2CP Intercessors with Auto Rifles automatically hit if they target and enemy unit in half range

 

Steady Advance: 1CP an Infantry unit that moved counts as stationary for the purpose of Bolter Discipline

 

Target Sighted: 3CP Intercessors with Stalker bolt rifles can target characters and cause MW on 6+ To Wound

 

Transhuman Physiology: 2CP ah yes, the big one. non-Vehicle or Servitor Astartes unit that is targeted has the attack against it always fail on a roll of 1-2-3 . Aka even S10+ attacks need a 4+ To Wound. This is where it gets interesting for us, since hopefully it applies to Death Company and the like. Could be VERY useful when combined with SoS for us.

 

Vengeance of the Machine Spirit: 2CP Land Raiders, Stormravens or Repulsors can automatically explode when destroyed, shoot or attack one last time

 

Hunter-slayer Missile: 1CP Repulsor targeting a Vehicle or Monster in 48" rolls a dice, if equal to or greater than its BS (so ignoring all modifier, good and bad) the enemy unit takes D3 Mortal Wounds.

 

Fury of the First: 1CP Terminators (all kinds) are +1 To Hit until the end of the phase, so either Shooting or Assault. Interesting when paired with Terminator Ancient, but still not enough to make Terminators competitive.

 

Gene Wrought Might: 1CP Primaris Infantry auto-wound on To Hit rolls of 6 in melee. Extra hilarity combined with the Triple 6 explosion combo mention in the Itanies section

 

Gravitic Amplification: 1CP unit with Grav cannon and grav-amps shoots, re-roll the Wound and Damage rolls. Pity party for all the Gravcannon devs and centurions laying around.

 

Hammer of Wrath: 1CP (Big deal for us) Jump Pack models that successfully end a charge move within 1" of an enemy unit cause MW on a 5+. A whole other Tactica will need to be written about refreshing yourself on how the Assault phase works and why the specific distance of rolled charges matter and how to maximize model placement in the Assault phase. Theoretically speaking, a DC bomb of 15 dudes could get you 4.95 MW on an enemy before anyone even strikes

 

Rapid Fire: 2CP <Intercessors> (does not specify Veteran or any other kind)  Bolt Rifles become Rapid Fire 2. I point this one out since it could hint at wehther or not we get Veteran INtercessors in addition to DC Intercessors. That being said, most likely not considering the Warcom preview specifically says <Blood Angels Intercessors> and <Death Company Intercessors>.

 

Litanies:

Hidden Content

Canticle of Hate:+2 to Charge rolls and +3" to pile in and consolidate is the clear winner for us. I think it will be a question of why you would want to take anything else over this for us

 

That being said...

 

Recitation of Focus: +1 To Hit when shooting, even in Overwatch is never something to sneeze at. Obviously great for gunlines and for pairing with Devastator or Eliminator squads' native boosts as well for overcoming opponent shenanigans.

 

Exhortation of Rage: exploding 6's To Hit in melee. Hilarious when paired with Corbulo and the Vengeance for Sanguinius Strategem (assuming both of those are unchanged), for each 6 To Hit generating an additional 3 extra attacks.

 

Catechism of Fire: +1 to Wound in shooting against the closest enemy unit. This has some interesting utility for us when using things like hand flamers and inferno pistols (being stuck in combat = closest enemy unit, right?) but it's so situational, given you have to choose this for your Chaplain before the battle begins and then position your Chappy near the unit you want to shoot so that he can pop it at the start of the next Battle Round.... It's useful overall, but not as utility for us I think compared toCanticle ofHate.

 

Mantra of Strength: +1A +1S +1D to Chaplain. Great for Lemartes and Astorath, but again, the other possible buffs seem far more useful.

 

Litany of Faith: 5+++ vs Mortal Wounds, not cumulative with other sources. What's interesting about this is if it can be applied to Death Company which the SoS cannot...but I would put this near the bottom of the pile since we have that priceless relic already.

 

...and Mephiston really does sound like Emperor Palpatine in that latest video.

[Spagunk]

...Aggressors with 5 powerfist attacks and +1 to wound for the win.

May help with anything T8-9  so that's good. But it won't be relevant for anything below t7 and lower since we should already be at a 2+ to wound at that point.

[The Unseen]

Fairly meh.

The super doctrine being +1 attack isn't bad, but it doesn't open up anything new like, well, everyone elses super doctrine, and it of course doesn't kick in till turn 3, when the vast majority of our melee units are putting in their work turn 2.

So I guess it'll be useful if you have some weakened assault units will hit slightly harder come turn 3.

But comparing it to codex super doctrines it isn't even a contest, unless you have a unit with multidamage weapons already, even the Scars +1 damage is miles ahead, and it's by far the weakest.

Comparing it to Ultras, Fists, or IH is a joke.

On the other hand, it means taking allies for BA is way less punishing.

 

DC Intercessors is a very emphatic sigh.

Worse than veterans, and unless they can take melee weapons on dudes beyond the sergeant, pretty pointless, because giving intercessors a 6+++ for CP isn't a good trade at all when the SoS exists.

It would've made more sense for Reivers for sure, but I doubt it would've been any better. They still struggle to actually make it into combat because GW won't let them step on scouts infiltrating toes.

 

Edit: well, we know for sure we won't be getting the 5+++ back for DC, which kinda sucks. They get to remain brittle glass cannons who struggle to survive long enough to do stuff.

 

Getting doctrines isn't unexpected nor unwelcome, we are nominally a codex adherent chapter with some variation, not a non-compliant chapter.

Tactical doctrine especially gives us some new choices for turn 2 deep striking shooty units. I think bolter inceptors look much better now with -2 AP for example.

 

The unique litany is actually pretty damn good.

Lemartes didn't lose his reroll aura for specifically DC, so he can chant the new one, and still give rerolls.

Chainsword DC are almost triggering 1 AP-4 wound EACH.

It won't kill tanks, but it will mulch low wound high save targets like marines or characters without invulns.

I've seen units just bounce off other marine units if you don't pack power weapons and the other guy has a hot streak of 3+s, especially if you have taken some casualties.

It isn't amazing, but I can easily see situations where it'll be handy to have.

 

But I'm really hoping they updated Red Thirst to buff vehicles, and gave us some new good strategems, hopefully replacing/updating our mediocre ones.

If Flesh Tearers chapter tactic is just straight better than Red Thirst I won't be throwing a fit, they don't get our characters after all, but it'd still be weird.

And since they didn't show it I feel like they did something to it.

 

The new relic is very sad.

Our offensive powers are real bad, like, worst in game tier, and our best powers have a range of "this psyker", especially for a libby dread who can only know 2 powers.

The reroll is nice, but probably not worth paying the CP since you'd have to fail/peril on a critical power twice to make it better than just spending the CP then.

[SnorriSnorrison]

Hm, not much that was unexpected. Didn’t see DC primaris as a necessity and don’t see their use when footslogging anyways, and the doctrines are a bit of a surprise. That said, GW does have a habit of making inconsistent design choices. Let’s see if DA and SW will follow that lead.

 

Having to wait until turn 3 for assault gives our enemies plenty of time to shoot our assault units, while we’re more likely to spend points on shooty options that can operate more effectively in turn 1 and 2 or be severely outnumbered when deploying in deepstrike. Not convinced, I’d rather just seen something else slapped on the army, like Lucifer-Pattern engines granting ignore heavy weapon restrictions when shooting.

The “special” doctrine is not that special actually, but the damage output from our key assault units will be a lot higher so I’ll take that. Probably too late in the game still to make an impact. Just face a Tau or Guard list and you don’t really want to waste just one turn.

 

The rest is...Me(p)h. Let’s see what stratagems we’ll receive, it seems like they’re just going to copy lots of SM ones. Seeing as we’re very Codex compliant all of a sudden.

[Blindhamster]

We have always been a codex compliant chapter. We make some minor exceptions to manage the flaws but otherwise see adhere. It's not news!

[Indefragable]

Reivers are definitely in a weird place. Like, what can they do that other units can't do way better? Not that stabby for a melee unit, not that shooty for a shooty unit, not that sneaky for an infiltrating/deep striking unit (esp compared to Incursors or Infiltrators). They get -1Ld? Just plain weird and out of place, IMO, especially since they're yet another Elites choice. If they were Fast Attack (ya know, they have yellow helmets after all...) then there would maybe possibly kinda sorta have a role, but then again I would almost always be taking Inceptors over them.

 

Not impressed over all so far. Feels like they went the safe route of not wanting to upset the apple cart, giving us essentially more of the same at a time when everyone (not just us) could use something different to get ahead. As I've stated multiple times before, they took the best parts of BA (what makes the classic Smash Captain great) and doled that out to everyone else without giving us something in return beyond an additional source of +1A on the Charge. What continually worries me about BA is having so much locked up in successfull charges yet not having reliable ways of re-rolling charges* means we will be burning even more CP on Command Re-Roll dice for those crucially necessary charges.

 

As always, will withhold full judgement until I've seen it all, but seems they erred too far on the "safe" side of the spectrum.

 

*other than Lemartes and the new Chaplain Litanies, but the former only applies to a single type of unit and the latter requires some finesse to get to work, especially with out Deep Strike-happy style

[Panzer]

 

...Aggressors with 5 powerfist attacks and +1 to wound for the win.

May help with anything T8-9  so that's good. But it won't be relevant for anything below t7 and lower since we should already be at a 2+ to wound at that point.

 

 

The +1 to wound was not the focus of my post lmao. We already had that before. The 5 attacks is what's important here. ;)

[Hintzy]

One thing I noticed that I haven't seen mentioned yet is the announcement of an updated Sanguinary Priest data sheet. I'm not aware of any reason they would need to update it other than to make a jump pack codex official.

[Neuralshock]

What continually worries me about BA is having so much locked up in successfull charges yet not having reliable ways of re-rolling charges* means we will be burning even more CP on Command Re-Roll dice for those crucially necessary charges.

 

As always, will withhold full judgement until I've seen it all, but seems they erred too far on the "safe" side of the spectrum.

 

*other than Lemartes and the new Chaplain Litanies, but the former only applies to a single type of unit and the latter requires some finesse to get to work, especially with out Deep Strike-happy style

We have a ton of reroll options or ways of pushing the odds on charges, 3d6 charge, Angels wing, Wings of sang and quickening, magna-grapples. Now canticle of hate.

 

Undoubtedly it's going to take a lot more brainpower and movement planning to keep cp usage down, but I think with a bit of stategery you can break the back of your opponent with a single charge phase

[Majkhel]

New litany is kinda weird. First it needs a roll to go off, then it needs another roll to work :/

 

It's good we got the doctrines, but our focus on the Assualt doctrine decreases our chances of survival.

DC Intercessors... I'm torn. It will dwpend on their cost I believe.

 

And here is the main grain of salt - much of this talk is still in the vacuum until we get new points from the CA.

 

(Mephy sounded anything but reborn...)

[Wassa]

Now let me get this straight...

 

Flesh Tearers with Chainswords....

 

The BA litany makes them -4AP on a 6.

Flesh Tearers doctrine improves the AP by -1AP on a 6.

Assault Doctrine improves the AP by -1AP on turn 3.

 

is this -6AP chainswords (on a 6 in assault doctrine)?