skoll

Well every crusade does need an emperor's champion

Honestly could maybe bulk out primaris aggressors and call em centurions? I find the aggressor sculpt much more palatable

In all honesty storm shields only improve the survival of vets by a smidge in most cases Besides if he is shooting plasma, meltas and lascannons at my vets i figure one of the two of us has failed as a commander. Either he failed at target priority or i failed at making him choose other targets

Storm cast greatswords should be the correct scale for primaris marines. If you dont want to shell out for the storm cast boxes, kromlech rippers has a giant greatsword which should still look suitably large in primaris hands

I dont think they particularly care for the stepping on toes argument. After all look at all the primaris versions of characters , they are just straight upgrades of their vanilla versions. Just with the inavility to ride transports. They have limited wargear options but that is just as a way to sell more kits. In the future we will likely see primaris captains with axes, mauls ,etc. So a 3 attack close combat primaris unit with power weapons is not altogether unlikely, just pretty sure they will be locked to a single load out like power swords or something to that tune.

Im also hoping for a power weapon primaris squad, but dont get your hopes up about supplements, DG amd TS are getting their own book, because they arent in the current release. So for a templar only book we'd need to have been left out of the main book

A 10 man squad near grimmaldus or grimmaldus and Hellbretch could certainly put put work. 40 attacks rerolling misses and making more on 6s. Hellbrecht making em s5 as well.

It would prevent the squad from going in vehicles, which is kind of a drawback, unless you are doing a super 25 man squad of foot slogging but , morale would certainly hurt you

Dunno, lack of keyword buff interaction seemed detriment enough to me. I mean you already cant ride in rhinos painted the wrong color regardless of how often it happens in the fluff

Oh, wow that is actually pretty lame. I thought all you missed out on was the super objective secured thing.

Primaris are certainly replacing normal marines, much in the way storm casts replaced any releases from the old empire. As for honorguard not being the tip of the spear, I dont know, whenever we read about chapter masters goint to war personally they always seem to be were fighting is fiercests , inspiring his battle brothers to further feats of heroism , the honor guard around him, paragons of the chapter , heroes in their own right. While surely they are more than willing to lay their lives low for the chapter master the easiest and most effective way to neutralize a threat is to kill it, not intercept it with their bodies (otherwise I'd see them walking around with double storm shields) Funny thing, is iron hands honor guard actually get their 6+ fnp after absorving the wound from a character, even cheesier because they get to do it after the character already failed his own.

What ? Where does it say you can only use chapter tactics if the detachment is wholy composed of SM units ? Also hammenators rerolling 4s still has less likelyhood to hit than custodes which naturally hit on 2s , custodes also have on average 2 extra attacks (gotta take that banner) and additional shooting. Albeit the hammenators wound better. Dual lightning claws is certainly a closer contest for the same purpose with hellbrecht around as they reroll 3s and reroll to wound on s5.

I'm unsure they would do that, as currently the land raider is actually a reason people are not taking custodes as it makes up the majority of the investment. Shield + blade custodes with a vexila come to 286 points while the land raider totals 364 by itself. The custodes regardless of loadout are actually closer to 50 points than 60 (except vexilia one), so they actually are cheaper than hammer terminators and if my math is correct sword custodes will beat them quiet often. As far as a custodes book, i believe they and sisters are due for a long wait unless gw decides to incorporate the rest of the custodes 30k line, at which point we are prob looking at 70 point 4 wound custodes terminators (basically unit of full characters) Edit:removed the double post portion

Comparing units to the old edition versions is an exercise in futility, but I like discussing the edition change so please allow me to explain my thinking on Honor Guard. Honor guard used to start at 3 men a unit. 1 Chapter Champion, 2 Honor Guard. The Honor Guard were 25 points each. That left the Champion at 35 points. Now, Honor Guard have +1 wound and are 27 points (with a power axe). They are more like a unit of 4. They were WS4, and so they should be hitting on 3s (which is an improvement) as most WS4 units now hit on 3s. Yes they "lost" an attack on the charge, but this was an edition change, not a change to them. EVERYTHING lost an attack on the charge. But you know what else is an edition change? They can now rapid fire their bolters before charging you. That means they actually had a net gain on attacks, albeit 2 of them are with bolter stats. You see, the +1 attack for charging was always supposed to represent shooting, lobbing grenades, and crashing into the enemy. Now you *actually* shoot on the way in, which means your gun matters, and crashing into the enemy is represented by going first. You used to be able to add a bunch more guys to the Honor Guard squad and make a "poor man's Death star". Now they are split up into pairs, with the Chapter Champion gaining 3 wounds and the character tag and all the bonuses (and weaknesses) that entails, and the Banner Bearer became the Chapter Ancient, also gaining 3 wounds and some point cost for what he is and does. Being split up has advantages and disadvantages I won't get into for the sake of brevity (that could totally be its own thread). It's not good or bad, it's just different. It changes their role from mini-deathstar to bodyguards. Honor Guard are essentially extra wounds for your characters in an edition where that's not really possible unless you have a bodyguard type rule. It's like Tyrant guards for a Hive Tyrant, only not a big dirty alien. Company Vets do it too, but they aren't as well equipped default. They also have a Banner Bearer and Champion that became characters. This change happened to many body guard type units in the edition change. I honestly like it, I think it fits. They can still be your Sword Brethren! Mine represent Sword Brethren too, and Company Vets, Chapter and Company Champions, and Vanguards are also Sword Brethren. They are still elite heroes. My Marshal's household is honored by the weight of their deeds. As for who would win, a Berserker or a Vanguard, that depends on a ton of factors. Equal points? Who got the charge? Any reroll auras? What weapons? Strategems? Etc. Try some Honor Guard out. You'll be thankful for them when snipers are gunning for your Marshal or a Solitaire does a blitz hoping to snag a ninja Warlord kill. Or give your TH/SS Marshal some backup fighting a Bloodthirster who would otherwise single him out and try to obliterate him. See, I stayed on topic! The vanguard vet vs khorne berserker was pure fluff comparison(as somebody said our crusaders could never compare to them in the fluff, which isn't the point as they werent equivalent units), as they are similar levels of elite shock troops, not table top one. As for the bodyguard rule, unless my interpretation is incorrect we picked up a rather substandard one. Does the honor guard suffer the mortal wound before the damage is rolled or after ? The tau shield drones suffer a single wound regardless of damage rolled which is fantastic, I've been led to believe hour honor guard absorb wounds after dmg, so say a single powerklaw swipe would kill 1.5 honorguard. If it is before , they are more useful than i gave them credit for, not by loads more, but certainly at least a better meat shield. The separation of the banner certainly feels a bit insulting when it comes to honor guard considering custodes kept the vexilia in squad. I understand the champion was separated due to precedent of other codexes having singular champions, hell chapter champions used to be a hero choice in various books back in the day. Mind you I didnt use my honor guard as poorman s death star, two units with mauls accompanying grimmaldus was an absolute terror to anything they hit. Were they deathstars ? Certainly they dont fit that definition to me, but they were certainly solid hammer assault units. But I don't think honor guard can fulfill a hammer roll anymore, they are much better off leaving that to things like lightningclaw catphracti termies (somehow 5 points cheaper than reg claw termies). Funny enough to fight a blood thirster I'd prob send the emperor's champion over a Marshall, although a Marshall with a thunder hammer and the warlord trait that adds +1 to hit is certainly a combat monster given that he is back to hitting on 2s rerolling 1s

It is a 650 point investment. Which i would certainly not claim is unreasonable, specially since the land raider is a very solid fire platform many would consider taking anyway. The custodes land raider also happens to be venerable for free so it can ignore wounds on a 6+ which i suppose is an alright trade off from not benefiting from character auras