[RUMORS] More Codex:SM musings from the BoLS

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Hi all, here are some morsels that have washed up on the shore on our good friend, the Master of Bling - Marneus Calgar himself.

Marneus Calgar
First off, Marneus Calgar is described as awesome; the Abaddon of loyalists. Not simply because he's an outstanding fighter but because of the support he provides for his army. He gives all Ultramarines the ability to pass or fail any Leadership test (other reports say morale checks). This is a superior ability to Combat Tactics as that only works in CC and the marines can normally only choose to fail.

Marneus also has a rule called "God of War" which allows him to re-roll virtually anything (shooting to hit rolls, attacks rolls in assualt, to wound rolls). It is basically the psychic power Warp Time, but is always on and works with Marneus' shooting. His storm bolter built into the Gauntlets of Ultramar is AP2. Marneus had 4 base attacks on his statline and is armed with two powerfists. ~you do the math

Calgar possesses Eternal Warrior without any mention of a mantle. Power armour is apparently no longer an option for him, but his "Honour Guard" are still in power armor. Finally, he's wearing his Terminator armour with an additional 4+ invulnerable save.

Honor Guard Vs Command Squads
There is a bit of confusion regarding these units so here are some other morsels we've heard. Honour Guard and Command Squads are two different things. Only "Chapter Masters" can get Honour Guard and they cannot take apothecaries (so no Honor Guard-Feel No Pain combos). Command Squads are available for company captains. The leader of the Command Squad is the company champion who gets to re-roll all hits against enemy ICs.

~Wow, thats a big ball of crazy for Marneus. Now the Gauntlets of Ultramar seem downright scary. No word on points costing, but if these rumors pan out (standard caveats apply) then I'm thinking somewhere in the order 200pts wouldn't seem too far out there. Your thoughts?

WOW WOW WOW that is awesome! I like MArneus being God like!

All I can say is: "he's a real bad-ass!" Should give Abaddon (or anyone else for that matter) a run for the money.

As an Ultramarines player, I'm not sure how I feel about this ... while I'm glad that Marneus can finally take his place amongst the Grand Badasses of the 41st Millennium, I'm not sure I like the sudden jump from "solid" to "godlike." The current Marneus is pretty hard, but some of the new changes seem a bit ridiculous. AP2 on his storm bolter? How do they justify that? God of War? I could see that being an ability for Roboute Gulliman, but not Calgar. The Eternal Warrior, 4+ Invulnerable save, and something akin to his old Giant Among Men rule would have been just fine for me.

As terrible as he is now (and he is terrible) this is quite a nice change. I do agree with Chethrok that this guy is maybe a little too primarch like... but maybe it's just a new trend for special characters.

Oh and he'll probably cost as much as a landraider!

He is going to Rock w/ Run! Should be pretty cool coming out of a LandRaider as well.

I think there is a balance when it comes to guys like this... too expensive (like abaddon) it doesnt really matter how badass you are, you just can't get around to everyone in order to deliver all of your smackdown potential.

It's even hard now that you dont get to roll into other units after winning an assault.

So I think he won't see much use except in larger games, like Abaddon.

Matt wrote:

I think there is a balance when it comes to guys like this... too expensive (like abaddon) it doesnt really matter how badass you are, you just can't get around to everyone in order to deliver all of your smackdown potential.

It's even hard now that you dont get to roll into other units after winning an assault.

So I think he won't see much use except in larger games, like Abaddon.

True, unless the opposing player takes a character that's just as badass and the two duke it out in a title fight. That seems to be what the trend it going towards - each of the latest Codexes have one character that is clearly a cut above the others - Ghazgkull, Abbadon and now Calgar (all with high Str, great armor, and the ability to ignore Instant Death). It's definitely becoming a trend.

i still dont think you will see a ton in competitive play (maybe with the "traits" they offer in the new SM dex.)

Reason being, they are a huge amount of points in a unit that can only contest and not score. If a bumper squad can hold them up for even 1 or 2 turns then their usefulness in the game will be severely diminished.