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Hello Dakka, I reading through the Space marine codex and I was disappointed that it doesn't have a HQ choice for lower point games,
or for just fluffy lists. I used the Wolf guard battle leader as a base idea.

Force Commander - 50 points

WS5 BS4 S4 T4 W2 I4 A2 Ld9 Sv3+


Wargear:
Power armor
Bolt pistol
Chainsword
Frag and Krak Grenades


Special rules:
And They Shall Know No Fear
Independent Character
Chapter Tactics
Heroic Aura

Options:
May echange his bolt pistle for boltgun.....free
May replace Power Armor for scout armor and camo cloak.............free
If the Force Commander takes Scout armor/camo cloaks, He gains the Move through cover Rule and make take a Shotgun or sniper for.....10pts
A Force Commander in power armor may take items from the Melee Weapons and/or Ranged Weapon and/or Special Weapon and/or Special issued Wargear list
A Force Commander in Scout armor may take items from the Melee Weapons and/or Ranged Weapon list
If a Force Commander has not taken anything from the Melee Weapons and/or Ranged Weapon and or Special issued Wargear list, he may pick a weapon from Heavy Weapon list


Heroic Aura - After Centuries of fighting This character has become a beacon of light and Heroism
Heroic Aura allows the unit The Battle Leader is in and any unit within 6" of him to re-roll leadership tests if they choose to.


Well dakka, here he is. what do you thing?

Name him Force Commander instead of Battle Leader.

Rename Centurion's Honours as it is unrelated to Centurions.

With the name Battle Leader, that's just what he is, I thought a Force commander was close to Captain.

My choice for Centurion's Honors was based off the Roman Centurions, who acted as a "Hero" in the battles

Not sure exactly what 'fluff' this guy is supposed to represent. Is he just a generic 'hero'?

I don't see why you would ever take one of these guys without a Heavy Weapon. Every other build seems like a fairly bad deal compared to a Librarian, who only costs 5 points more, but comes with a Force Weapon, a Psychic Power and +1 Ld at the expense of a fairly minor ability. I'd knock at least another 5 points off the base price.

Why doesn't he have grenades?

Any reason not to allow access to Special Weapons and Special Issue Wargear?

The option for Scout Armour seems pointless. Maybe change it to Scout Armour and a Camo Cloak? That might be a little better than power armour, so maybe charge a couple of points for it.

 Perfect Organism wrote:
Not sure exactly what 'fluff' this guy is supposed to represent. Is he just a generic 'hero'?

I don't see why you would ever take one of these guys without a Heavy Weapon. Every other build seems like a fairly bad deal compared to a Librarian, who only costs 5 points more, but comes with a Force Weapon, a Psychic Power and +1 Ld at the expense of a fairly minor ability. I'd knock at least another 5 points off the base price.

Why doesn't he have grenades?

Any reason not to allow access to Special Weapons and Special Issue Wargear?

The option for Scout Armour seems pointless. Maybe change it to Scout Armour and a Camo Cloak? That might be a little better than power armour, so maybe charge a couple of points for it.

I forgot the Grenades, and you're right, the librarian is still better ill drop him down some points. as for the SEW and the SWs lists, i didn't add those because I didn't think about it, ill add those as well .

Fluffwise a "Force Commander" is a sort of senior veteran detached from the Honour Guard to lead a small detachment of Space Marines where the task isn't important enough to devote a more senior officer to or where all the more important people are otherwise occupied (Dawn of War 2 stars a Force Commander).

One thing I would advise clarifying is that according to the rules as you've set them up you can run a Force Commander with a jump pack and a heavy weapon (not sure why you'd want to), but that combination is explicitly prohibited everywhere I've ever seen the possibility that isn't the Relic Space Marine shooter, and Captain Titus breaks a lot of common conventions with his arsenal.

I like this. A lot.

May replace Power Armor for scout armor and camo cloak.............free

This is pretty damn awesome, too!

He shouldn't be able to take Heavy Weapons, simply because no other Space Marine HQ can. Yes, it's weird (why wouldn't the Chapter Master be able to take a Heavy Bolter if he wanted?), but the point of this character is to be a cheap HQ, so he certainly shouldn't get something so unique. You should base him on the Chaos Lord, who starts off at around 60pts and is capable of accessing many items from the wargear list, including Terminator armour.

The "Centurions Honours" special rule is strangely named (not just because of the existence of Centurions and the similarity to "Terminator Honours", which makes it sound like he's got the right to Centurion armour if he wants it). Something like "Inspiring Presence" or "Heroic Presence" makes the meaning more apparent.

EDIT: I'm pretty sure Titus never has a heavy weapon and a jump pack at the same time, though!

He should be at least 65 points, but then, the Chaos Lord is hilariously undercosted at 60 points as well and he has three wounds.

I echo dropping the Heavy and Special weapon options. He should just have the standard Marine Character options. Should probably also have the Biker Captain's "bikes-as-troops" option as well.

The morale bonus within 12" thing should be an upgrade rather than inherent - it's a "standard bearer" type thing rather than a "hero" type thing, at least in the rest of 40k. Not that I object to the idea of being able to make the Force Commander a "Battle Standard Bearer" in a larger force, WHF style.

Titus indeed never has a heavy weapon and a jump pack at the same time.

A Force Commander can just be a Veteran Sergeant taking charge of a Marine contingent. They do not need to be an honour guard.

 kinratha wrote:
Well dakka, here he is. what do you thing?

I like it, the C:SM needs something like this for smaller games. I do think it that this would be better priced at 50-55 points (a veteran sgt. is 24 points normally, and this guy has WS5 and an extra wound. Wargear would be the expensive part anyhow.). Also, it would be cool to be able to give him a bike.

"Centurions Honors" doesn't make a lot of sense on a 3rd-tier leader, IMO. Better just to drop that entirely.

I changed the name of Centurions honors to Heroic Aurora and dropped it down to 6".

I renamed him to Force Commander and made it to where he cant take a heavy weapon and jetpack.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Furyou Miko wrote:
He should be at least 65 points, but then, the Chaos Lord is hilariously undercosted at 60 points as well and he has three wounds.

I echo dropping the Heavy and Special weapon options. He should just have the standard Marine Character options. Should probably also have the Biker Captain's "bikes-as-troops" option as well.

The morale bonus within 12" thing should be an upgrade rather than inherent - it's a "standard bearer" type thing rather than a "hero" type thing, at least in the rest of 40k. Not that I object to the idea of being able to make the Force Commander a "Battle Standard Bearer" in a larger force, WHF style.

The reason I want to keep the Heavy weapon option is because I think it would be cool to have a leader in a dev squad and be useful.

He should be able to take heavy weapons or jump packs IMO.

Just not both at the same time.

Rename Heroic Aurora to Heroic Aura.

That should be it.

 Frozen Ocean wrote:
why wouldn't the Chapter Master be able to take a Heavy Bolter if he wanted?

He has a different job. He is meant, sort of, to actually not fight. He commands one thousand marines, but is not one of those marines. Captains command ten squads of marines, but are in any of those squads - you wouldn't order a captain to take a building. He "fights" because he's on the field of battle, but giving him a heavy bolter makes him a tactical unit that has to pay attention to what he is shooting at, and more importantly that makes enemies try to stop the fire coming from his position. In your archetypal napoleonic style volley fire infantry units, many countries issued the line officers pikes, because the whole point of the job is making the unit work more efficiently, not fiddling with priming powder. However, the most important thing is still that an officer with personal weapons does not, in a tactical sense, exist, but if he shoots a heavy bolter, then he suppresses the enemy's advance and they have to start shooting at him. He can't deal with that because his gun only points in one direction at a time, unlike the bolters of the multiple marines in a tactical squad.

Wow.

Anyway.

If any of that seems compelling, it might support another point, which is that a marine deployment that is only three or for squads does not need a separate officer, and so the "battle leader" is just one of the squads' sergeants. The best squad in a company definitely has a sergeant that is well in advance of the "veteran sergeant" profile.


I do think that a space marine captain/master might be able to get a psycannon, especially in chapters that do not use Librarians. However, that just reinforces the idea that an officer isn't there to hold a choke point or take out tank columns, and all the combat he does is in a personal sense against a specific enemy, like a greater daemon that has crawled out of a imperial commander's head in the middle of a secession.

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Davian_Thule#Wargear

I see this as justification enough to allow heavy weapons.

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Davian_Thule#Wargear

I see this as justification enough to allow heavy weapons.

I would agree... if Captains and Chapter Masters got to do it as well. If the senior officers don't, then a jumped-up sergeant shouldn't be allowed to either.

That is just a wipe on GW's part.

Why does he get a leadership aura when more senior commanders don’t? Don’t get me wrong, I long wistfully for the days of 4th edition where the entire army could use the captain’s leadership. But working within the framework of the 6th edition codex, I don’t see this guy gaining that sort of ability unless we are doing a total re-write of the SM HQ section.

While some characters in the computer games can use special/heavy weapons, none currently in the codex do. Adding it to this one character seems out of scope for the project. If you want to work up CT: Blood Ravens which allows characters to take bigger guns, that’d be a great idea. But for adding a low cost character to fill a gap in the HQ selection, I think we should stick closer to what we have as examples.

I like the concept of allowing a HQ in scout armor. I would still allow them the option to take special wargear, but restict them from the jump pack/bike. They should still be allowed to take metla bombs, auspex, teleport homers etc. I would also give them the options that normal scout sargents do, notably the shotgun and sniper rifle. I’d have to doublecheck the wording on scout, infiltrate, and move through cover, but you will want to make sure this guy won’t slow down a scout squad he’s attached to. This might require giving him some of those special rules with the armor swap.

For the sake of completeness he should have the option to swap his bolt pistol for a bolter for free.

60 points is too high.

For 65 you get a librarian with a point more of leadership, force weapon, and level 1 powers.
For 90 you get +1 W,I,A, and LD, plus a 4++ save.

I think 45 might be a better cost.

I dropped the cost to 50pts and add a Mtc to the scout armor