Saturday, April 10, 2010

I am Death Incarnate!

Well, not me, but this BAMF right here. . .


Not familiar? That's Lemartes, Guardian of the Lost. He's a new Bangels special character that isn't really a special character. He's a unique unit upgrade for Death Company. For 150 points, you get a Chaplain that can't be singled out in combat (he's not an IC), has regular chappie stats (2 wounds, 2 attacks), makes the Death Company go crazy (they re-roll failed rolls to Hit and to Wound on the charge), and gets all of the Death Company goodness (Feel No Pain, Furious Charge). Oh, and if he suffers an unsaved wound? Yeah, he goes nuts! His Strength and Attacks both get bumped to 5! And did I mention he's Initiative 6? With Furious Charge?

I hummed and hawed over whether Lemartes would be worth his points. This was, of course, until I played two 'Ardboyz practice games with him tonight. Even before he takes a wound and goes crazy, he rolls in with four attacks at WS5, re-rolling failed To Hit and To Wound when he charges, all at a lovely S5 I7. Bottom line -- he's going to kill at least three one wound models before anything else happens. Then his buddies attack. A unit of ten Death Company have forty attacks on the charge. Forty! With WS5, they're hitting lots of things (save for Waaagh! Banner nobs) on 3's with a re-roll, and at S5 with a re-roll, they're doing lots of wounds. Against, say, a unit of Orks, we're talking about 32 wounds, which, with their paltry 6+ Armor Save, would result in at least 25 orky deaths. And that's before you start handing out power weapons.

So if anyone else was considering whether Lemartes is worth his points at a hefty 150 for a sarge, consider this. A Chaplain with a Jump Pack is 125 points. For 25 points, you get:

-- Master-crafted Power Weapon (doesn't matter on the charge, but it's still nice if you somehow don't annihilate your enemy the first round of combat)
-- Feel No Pain
-- Furious Charge
-- He's not an Independent Character, so he can't be singled out in combat
-- When he suffers a wound, he goes CRAZY!!!

The only drawback is the fact that, if you take Lemartes, you either have to pay to equip the entire unit with Jump Packs (at a hefty 15 points per model, on 20 point models), have them foot slog it, or buy them a Stormraven. I'll probably be doing that last one.

4 comments:

  1. WOW... That is sick! I have to admit I have purposly stayed away from the BA talk, as I dont need another distraction...but OMG! that is just too sexy.

    I have heard a lot of chatting about BA's around my gaming store, and I have to say I am feeling the pull....

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  2. Resist the pull! Don't be another bandwagon jumper. I will say this -- it's a difficult army to take a fluffy list with lots of nasty in it. Everything is extremely expensive, so it's hard to cheese things out effectively. Then again, the 'Ardboyz min/max list I'm working on has four land raiders, three vindicators and two Baal preds.

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  3. I had a Blood Angels list WAY back in the day, and honestly it never fit my play style well. I like to shoot and blow stuff up. The more i hear about the army the less I think I would enjoy playing it.

    Wish you the best with the army building...that is a heck of a lot of thread to build :)

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  4. The nice thing about the new BA 'dex is that you CAN shoot and blow stuff up. . .but why would you want to when you have one of the best assault units in the game?

    I like the way they more or less decided to include everything (after all, the Bangels do follow the Codex Astartes), they just removed a few specialist units (thunderfires and LS storms), and added in a whole bunch.

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