Chaplain Trickery

[Brother Nbolo]

Hi!

 

So, looking over faith and fury and it got me thinking about Chaplains, is it just me or do they seem like a pretty awesome delivery method for centurions/aggressors now? i.e.

 

First take the hungry for battle chapter tactic.

 

Primaris Chaplain w/t

Master of Sanctity (knows 3 litany's (including litany of hate), can recite 2 per turn)

Warlord: Wise Orator (re-roll the dice when seeing if litany's go off)

Master of the trifold path to get Swift and Deadly

Benediction of Fury relic crozius

Litany's: Canticle of hate 

              Mantra of strength 

              Litany of hate

 

This guy eats your free relic and takes 2cp to get everything.

 

Put him down with a unit of assault centurions and suddenly you're looking at 4" move, D6+1" advance then a +2" charge PLUS a 6" pile in.

 

As for the chaplain himself, at base on the charge he gets 5 S6 AP-2 D3 attacks.

As for litany's, you're probably always using canticle of hate for the mobility, but that still lets you use 1 more.

Use litany of hate and he and all the centurions get a re-roll to hit (probably the sensible idea).

Use mantra of strength however and this guy hits with 6 S7 AP-2 D4 attacks (not quite smash captain territory but 'like a truck' still seems appropriate.)

 

To top it off all his buffs are simple area of effect so you could put him between 2 assault centurion units and race both across the board.

 

If you've got CP to burn you can even bump them to midfield pre turn 1 with the infiltrators strat to all but guarantee you're in your opponents deployment zone turn 1.

 

Obviously i realize this guy could be pretty swingy in his effectiveness based on advance rolls etc but i can't help thinking that the sheer potential to charge home with a dozen assault centurions turn 1 might be worth a little risk?  Even if you charge into chaff (which you murder horribly) 6" pile in and consolidate moves should make it tricky to keep other valuable units from being immediately tied up in combat?

 

Personally i'm seriously tempted to use a chaplain + 2 squads of assault centurions and just get right in my opponent grill turn 1, probably backed up by some invictors, and maybe another unit + character (smash captain being the obvious choice) with master of ambush.

 

Maybe i'm reading to much into it but there looks to be some serious potential to this guy?

Edited November 25, 2019 by Brother Nbolo

[Cruor Vault]

Canticle of Hate does not stack with any other bonuses to charge distance or Consolidation (specified in the Litany itself).  So you're maxing out at +2" on charges.

[Brother Nbolo]

Canticle of Hate does not stack with any other bonuses to charge distance or Consolidation (specified in the Litany itself).  So you're maxing out at +2" on charges.

 

Noticed that as soon as i posted, already corrected :-) thanks for the heads up.

[SanguinaryGuardsman]

What if you go second?

[Brother Nbolo]

What if you go second?

 

In that case you're still in your deployment zone so not to exposed and you have a pretty mobile counter charge unit?

[ShinyRhino]

The problem is that Assault Centurions can carry a lot of shooting output with hurricane bolters. If you're constantly advancing them around the table, you're wasting 36 shots a turn, 72 if it's a unit of 6.

If you're dead set on this tactic, use Aggressors instead. They can fire after advancing.

[Dracos]

What if you go second?

Setting a Seize to the side. With current rules you should know if you’re going first or second. If you know you’re going first it’s MoA and get aggressive with infiltrating units. If going second then forego MoA and use SftS and bring them in with other reserves.

 

Mmv depending on army list and over all game plan but I think it’s imperative when designing a list to realize what odds you generally have against what other factions of going first or second and plan accordingly. M

 

As Raven Guard a lot of the stratagems and warlord traits might seem to get wasted but if you plan on going second you’re usually better off imo. Try and for the opposition to commit to a particular path and use shenanigans to flip the tables (metaphor ;)) on them

[superwill]

In that case you're still in your deployment zone so not to exposed and you have a pretty mobile counter charge unit?

That’s fine for the chaplain (although, a lot of games you won’t need a counter charge unit) but I think it was mainly in reference to the assault centurions mentioned in the original combo. They are certainly not mobile, and if you deploy them on the board planning to MoA them and then realise you’re going second, you’re stuck with an incredibly immobile and short ranged unit that you can only pray has somewhere up-field it can hide out of LoS and charge range of the enemy.

 

 

What if you go second?

Setting a Seize to the side. With current rules you should know if you’re going first or second. If you know you’re going first it’s MoA and get aggressive with infiltrating units. If going second then forego MoA and use SftS and bring them in with other reserves.

 

Mmv depending on army list and over all game plan but I think it’s imperative when designing a list to realize what odds you generally have against what other factions of going first or second and plan accordingly. M

 

As Raven Guard a lot of the stratagems and warlord traits might seem to get wasted but if you plan on going second you’re usually better off imo. Try and for the opposition to commit to a particular path and use shenanigans to flip the tables (metaphor ;)) on them

I think a lot of competitive players play ITC, where you only know who’s going first in half the rounds or less (in my area they’re almost always 5 rounds, so 2/5 times you know before deployment, not accounting for seize). If you know beforehand it’s easy as you say - if you’re going first then MoA, if you’re going second then SftS (and just pray that you don’t get seized on if going first). But it all gets a bit dicey when most rounds you don’t know until armies are fully deployed. Edited November 27, 2019 by superwill