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Dark Eldar don't have a Archon special character despite archons being the premiere Dark Eldar unit- our four or so SC's got removed in 6th.

Cry me a river.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
Dark Eldar don't have a Archon special character despite archons being the premiere Dark Eldar unit- our four or so SC's got removed in 6th.

Cry me a river.

I feel for Dark Eldars players, I really do. Honestly, this thread could be said of most armies. This is just from an IG perspective. I want to see more special characters for all of the armies. As much as we all love space marines the 40k setting is a massive universe & when you continuously ignore 95% of it for decades, it ceases to be a setting & more of clique. Don't play space marines? Not invited to the party.

 CrownAxe wrote:
They don't have in production models so they' don't get rules

How's that Assault Cannon Razorback doing?

Outside of FW it has NEVER had a production model. At least the Las/Plas Razorback had one in 2nd edition. But there has never been Assault Cannon Razorbacks outside of FW.

 Purifier wrote:

 Aenarian wrote:


It was meant as a typical random imperial regiment name.

Yes, I know that I could just call them <Cadians> if I wanted to, but it would go against the "make your own regiment/chapter/whatever" thing GW seems to have invented. I could call my Vostroyan models Cadian, I could call my Catachan models Cadian as well, hell I could just buy one troop of each regiment they sell and just call them Cadian. I know its fully legal for as I as said, it seems awkward and terrible when you want to have a bit more fluff. Besides, it makes some keywords better than others. If they release 10 characters for <Chapter A> and 2 for <Chapter B>, Chapter A will most likely have the better choice. Even if just 3 of them are better than the 2 B has, nobody will take the other 7.

And while I agree that its good that everyone doesn't get access to everything, that was never the complaint. Right now, only a few special characters get acces to anything unique at all and every other non-unique character of the same kind in the game will be the same, with no customisation available. To distinguish my warlord company commander from any other company commander other than a small warlord trait right now, as well as giving him or her another weapon. So why not just create a list for every race with I don't know, a dozen rules that could be bought for a cost? Limit it to one or two if necessary. But it would mean that my commander could use 3 orders like Creed, or give everyone next to him re-rolls like Harker.

Because if you give free reign to buy whatever to whoever then you're taking away from the special flavour of the regiments its locked to at the moment. Oh, so ANY regiment can have ANY rule? Why even have the keyword? Might as well drop it and just have "Imperial Guard."

And one regiment having 7 choices is fairly unlikely, and at this point not really worth arguing against. You might as well go "well, what if they make <Cadia> all of the book and all the troops, and then <Catachan> can't be fielded because it has no troop choices!" Why are you arguing points that are built on incredibly unlikely assumptions?

Yeah, the Cadian officer may just be the best of the lot. But it's a good balancing mechanism if he has an order that would be way too strong with Catachans, to lock it to only him, so that he can get a buff that is actually worth something to Guardsmen, without having to nerf it just because some special <Catachan> elite troops would have forced it to be nerfed because it synergised too much with them, and now it's so weak it's not worth anything to anyone.

Yes, I think it's good that you lock certain skills to certain regiments so that you can use it for game flavour. This is a very good way to ensure that there will be several different viable builds, instead of one perfect cookie cutter build.

Because I have Cawl, my entire army is "forced" into being <Mars> for their Forgeworld. But they sure as frickety-frack don't look Mars. They've got a blue camo pattern with Ryza colours on the inside of their coats. My Cawl does too! They're my own little homebrew Forgeworld, but ruleswise, they're Mars. The <keyword> isn't there to name your Regiment. It's there for rules purposes. It's a rule, treat it like it.

How is it an unlikely assumption? While it may be unreal for regiments, the Ultramarines has 7 special characters (8 if you count both versions of Calgar), as well as a unique Land Raider and unique Veterans. 7 unique characters you can use at the same time, 10 unique units in total. It's not an unlikely assumption that one faction may have more than 1 times the choices of another when it is happening. And let's not forget that the Cadians recieved an entire variant in 7th complete with unique formations and rules, which I could definitely see happen again.

I never said that any regiment could have any rules, you're just putting words in my mouth. I said that you could have a list of rules to customise, like I don't know, the old doctrine system. Or Chapter Tactics. Or just like purchasable warlord traits. So then Creed could have some of his unique rules, and my own Legate Commander Gary Smith could have his entirely distinct rules, which he has paid points for. Could some be OP? Definitely. This is why some factions would not have access to everything, but just a certain number of them.

And I don't understand why you think that locking away rules to regiments will be a good thing, as it could just create cookie cutter builds. Just because they have different rules does not mean that they are all viable. If GW made a Vostroyan character which gave every <Vostroyan> with 6" re-rolls of 1 to hit in close combat, it would just mean nobody would ever play with him when they could use units that actually buff good parts of the army. You will always have cookie cutter builds, because surprisingly, Games Workshop cannot perfectly balance and I don't see this changing with <Regiment/Chapter/etc> keywords. Ultramarines will have +1 LD for all their units, as well as the ability to shoot after falling back (albeit at -1 BS). What's not to say that Crimson Fist's or Black Templar's rule will be worse, just like it seemed to be for some chapters in 7th? You using Mars shows that perfectly, as <Ryza> would be a strict downgrade, which means that instead of 2 viable builds, we have 1. The chance that they release additional rules for all flavours of regiments seems miniscule as they have not done this for a long time, same goes for (apart from some of these having a few formations) Sororitas orders, Forge Worlds, Craft Worlds, Covens, Clans...
The only faction which have had good unique rules these last few years have been Space Marines and Chaos Space Marines towards the end of 7th from what I recall. Will this change? Maybe, and if it does, I admit that I would be wrong.

 Mr Morden wrote:
Quick Answer - Guard are not Marines so they get less.

Other factions have similar issues:

Dark Eldar
Sisters
Ad Mech
Knights

Custodes and Sisters of Silence

Am still waiting for them to re-release Cain with stats!

This 100%, you aren't marines, almost every other army has the same for fewer than IG/AM as far as special characters are concerned (not including any FW stuff, which would skew marines even more)

Orks - 5
Tau - 6
Nids- 4
GSC - 0
CSM- 10 (many faction restricted buffs)
Daemons - 9 (all faction specific buffs)
CE- 10
DE - 3
Harlies - 0
Ynnari - 3
Necrons - 9
IG - 7 (unless I'm missing one in the index)
AMech- 1
Sisters - 2
Inq - 3
Space marines - 48 if you count all chapters

SO IG is in the upper tier for number of special characters, it is just that Space marines are their own tier 1 (if you count all sub factions together, even if you split them out they have the top SM - 17, SW-12, DA - 6, BA - 9, GK 4), they have the top 2 and are tied for 5th.

IG have more special characters than 9 factions (more if you include things like Custodes and sisters of silence) They are 6th out of 16 if you count marines as one faction, If you count all factions separately they are 8th out of 24. So they are in the top 1/3rd.

Breng77 wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:
Quick Answer - Guard are not Marines so they get less.

Other factions have similar issues:

Dark Eldar
Sisters
Ad Mech
Knights

Custodes and Sisters of Silence

Am still waiting for them to re-release Cain with stats!

This 100%, you aren't marines, almost every other army has the same for fewer than IG/AM as far as special characters are concerned (not including any FW stuff, which would skew marines even more)

Orks - 5
Tau - 6
Nids- 4
GSC - 0
CSM- 10 (many faction restricted buffs)
Daemons - 9 (all faction specific buffs)
CE- 10
DE - 3
Harlies - 0
Ynnari - 3
Necrons - 9
IG - 7 (unless I'm missing one in the index)
AMech- 1
Sisters - 2
Inq - 3
Space marines - 48 if you count all chapters

SO IG is in the upper tier for number of special characters, it is just that Space marines are their own tier 1 (if you count all sub factions together, even if you split them out they have the top SM - 17, SW-12, DA - 6, BA - 9, GK 4), they have the top 2 and are tied for 5th.

IG have more special characters than 9 factions (more if you include things like Custodes and sisters of silence) They are 6th out of 16 if you count marines as one faction, If you count all factions separately they are 8th out of 24. So they are in the top 1/3rd.

This is funny because its so damn sad.

 Aenarian wrote:
If GW made a Vostroyan character which gave every <Vostroyan> with 6" re-rolls of 1 to hit in close combat, it would just mean nobody would ever play with him when they could use units that actually buff good parts of the army.

What do you mean, "good parts of the army." Call your good parts <Vostroyan>, then? this is what the variable regiment keyword is for.

It is not for you to be able to make your own custom chapter have all of the good rules, it's so that if you run a Vostroyan officer, then he can have Vostroyan heavy weapons teams next to him, and if you run a Cadian officer, then he has Cadian weapons teams, but those teams can't be both Vostroyan and Cadian, so running both of the officers won't be able to buff the same unit.

You just want to be able to create some kind of fluffy mix-and-match, but you seem entirely blind to the fact that it would be used mainly by people min-maxing lords. So now you have three different lords with all the best skills, and you run them all in your deathstar of heavy weapons teams and they can get all the buffs because they're all <Rico's Roughnecks> just like all the three different lords they've created using your character creation are.

 Purifier wrote:

 Aenarian wrote:
If GW made a Vostroyan character which gave every <Vostroyan> with 6" re-rolls of 1 to hit in close combat, it would just mean nobody would ever play with him when they could use units that actually buff good parts of the army.

What do you mean, "good parts of the army." Call your good parts <Vostroyan>, then? this is what the variable regiment keyword is for.

It is not for you to be able to make your own custom chapter have all of the good rules, it's so that if you run a Vostroyan officer, then he can have Vostroyan heavy weapons teams next to him, and if you run a Cadian officer, then he has Cadian weapons teams, but those teams can't be both Vostroyan and Cadian, so running both of the officers won't be able to buff the same unit.

You just want to be able to create some kind of fluffy mix-and-match, but you seem entirely blind to the fact that it would be used mainly by people min-maxing lords. So now you have three different lords with all the best skills, and you run them all in your deathstar of heavy weapons teams and they can get all the buffs because they're all <Rico's Roughnecks> just like all the three different lords they've created using your character creation are.

Alright, I'll give an example. Imperial Guard are much better in shooting, so they benefit more from shooting rules. I have character A which gives re-rolls shooting hits, and character B giving re-rolls to close combat hits. I hope both of us could agree that A is much better than B in general. In fact, depending on his cost, B might be a terrible choice compared to generic characters, as he doesn't buff the good units (i.e. good parts of my army), which are all ranged (apart from Conscripts, but I will concede that it could be overpowered in a few cases). This is dependent on costs and much more, but it could mean that we have a character that is never taken because he doesn't do enough, while we have one that may be taken every time. If they are different regiments, one regiment will have the superior rules. I would not have a <Vostroyan>/<Cadian> army then, I would have whichever one A is from and just not use B's regiment.

I will admit that that particular problem of just picking and choosing the best rules has crossed my mind, but I just hope (and believe) it could be balanced away. So, say I could make my own character, and I have this list of rules 1-12 I could choose from. Just state that one or two characters in the army (i.e. not detachment) could pick from this list, and that you could not do it for already named regiments? That would negate the problem of granting 3+ buffs to the same unit. It would not be different from just running Harker with his decent buff together with some Catachan HWS and the rest of my army as <Byzantine Dragoons> or whatever I fancied. But it would give some (in my opinion, which as you have stated, is more fluffy than competitive) much needed flavour to different regiments instead of having 2 special ones in the Codex, 2 additional ones from Forge World (one of which I play), and you could have some cool special characters.

Like, say if we got Kanak Skull-Takers as a possible doctrine (akin to chapter tactics from C:SM). They could have a list of "Commander Rules", 3,6 or even more, to make your commander a bit unique. Like 6" Furious Charge, re-rolls in close combat, +1 attack within 6" etc. I hope you understand what I'm getting at. It could be rolled into a doctrine system just like the old one we had, but (i.e. Rule: all Kanak Skull-Takers have +1 attack on their profile), but like this we could have some flavour for regimental type (like Cadian, Catachan, Valhallan) and some flavour for that particular character or his personal regiment (Cadian 8th, Vostroyan 597th, 492th Byzantine Dragoons or Legate Commander Smith, Chieftan Conan and Captain Chenkov). Edit: Well, I guess I described a possible warlord traits system anyway. But this would just mean that named characters did not have access to it, and Creed as a warlord should not be able to choose a generic trait and just have his special rules. This would be the same for all named characters. If you want to take Sicarius, you are free to do so if but if he is to be Warlord, he does not get a trait.

But yes, this is dependent on it actually being balanced. I despise cookie-cutter builds as much as anyone, but I think DIY regiments could be made about equal to the ones we already have, and if nothing else, a little worse but still balanced. It is my firm belief that choices are never inherently bad, but that they can complicate balancing, like the Trojan vehicle being only "okay" with Leman Russes, terrible for lighter tanks, and amazing for superheavies.

Anyway, I think we're too far from eachother to come to a consensus and I will concede that your point of view makes sense from a different standpoint.

I disliked the concept of Special Characters in the main dexes ever since they removed the restrictions in late 4th edition. These are suppose to be heroes from certain points in the past and yet suddenly almost every single Salamander force was led by He'stan, every tank company was commanded by Pask, and every zombie horde had Typhus at the head (or in the rare case of someone affording FW, Necrosis). Fortunately the most used special character at the time, Fateweaver, actually does have a reason to appear in multiple armies at multiple times, but he's the only one that gets an exception due to being thrown into the well of Eternity.

It's far better to just make your own character and make your army your own.

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
I disliked the concept of Special Characters in the main dexes ever since they removed the restrictions in late 4th edition. These are suppose to be heroes from certain points in the past and yet suddenly almost every single Salamander force was led by He'stan, every tank company was commanded by Pask, and every zombie horde had Typhus at the head (or in the rare case of someone affording FW, Necrosis). Fortunately the most used special character at the time, Fateweaver, actually does have a reason to appear in multiple armies at multiple times, but he's the only one that gets an exception due to being thrown into the well of Eternity.

It's far better to just make your own character and make your army your own.

Well, a whole lot of them are alive in the present day of 40k. I can only think of a two which are dead (Kell, Tycho from BA I think?), but I agree with the rest.

Oh, look. Another "wait for the damn Codex" thread.

PS: Just to address the actual topic...you're hosed by plastics and GW's policy on no un-modeled unit entries. Finecast is garbage and they're supposedly moving away from it. Metal is dead to GW. And no one is going to pay $30-40 dollars for a plastic Imperial Guard character who still sucks relative ass on the battlefield.

In the days of metals you had loads of IG characters because it was as simple as a $7 figure in a blister cast in metal. GW doesn't appear to know how it's going to manage characters if they move from Finecast - without going to metal. They can't price a crappier IG figure $15-20 for a single sprue because then everyone will complain about the already stupidly priced $30-40 figure sprues.

The only real option you'll have is if GW decides to release a plastic triumvirate (or honestly, better with five fellas) as a "heroes of the IG" plastic box set. You're basically hosed by GW's silly logistics decisions.

Bring back Bastonne for Cadia!

And Kasrkin! And remove our access to Scions for them!

 Elbows wrote:
Oh, look. Another "wait for the damn Codex" thread.

I don't know, previously they have just removed a lot of characters for the Guard. If history is to tell us something, it's that some of our characters will be removed.

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
I disliked the concept of Special Characters in the main dexes ever since they removed the restrictions in late 4th edition. These are suppose to be heroes from certain points in the past and yet suddenly almost every single Salamander force was led by He'stan, every tank company was commanded by Pask, and every zombie horde had Typhus at the head (or in the rare case of someone affording FW, Necrosis). Fortunately the most used special character at the time, Fateweaver, actually does have a reason to appear in multiple armies at multiple times, but he's the only one that gets an exception due to being thrown into the well of Eternity.

It's far better to just make your own character and make your army your own.

Well, I mean you can just do counts-as to fix that. If they instead of naming him Pask, named him "Genius Tank Commander (limited to one per army.)" with the exact same rules, there wouldn't be a fluff reason to dislike that every time a battle plays out as a game, the army has managed to find one of those geniuses.

Or if you think geniuses are too rare, call him Senior Tank Commander. Everyone can have one of those.

Anyway, listening to the Warhammer Live stream, Space Marines have a stratagem called "Chapter Master". It basically gives a Captain the Chapter Master rule, but for your own <Chapter> (i.e. a Captain from <Flaming Roses> would have the Chapter Master rule for units with <Flaming Roses> keyword), so it gives me some hope we can customise characters a bit more. Let's just pray it's not only marines that gets this kind of treatment.

Honestly, I don't see why plastic would force characters to be super-expensive.

Sure, making a new plastic mold is expensive, but plastic is cheap and so the net cost of a model is inversely proportional to how many models you can squeeze out of one mold. But you don't have to sell models exactly the way they came out of the mold. You could make a single mold for half a dozen different characters, then cut the resulting sprue up and sell them separately. Seems like a fairly obvious way to cut costs on a group of low-count models.

 ross-128 wrote:
Honestly, I don't see why plastic would force characters to be super-expensive.

Sure, making a new plastic mold is expensive, but plastic is cheap and so the net cost of a model is inversely proportional to how many models you can squeeze out of one mold. But you don't have to sell models exactly the way they came out of the mold. You could make a single mold for half a dozen different characters, then cut the resulting sprue up and sell them separately. Seems like a fairly obvious way to cut costs on a group of low-count models.

Sculptors, shelf space, storehouses all add to the equation. But more importantly, I think its just a business decision

 Commissar Benny wrote:

 BlaxicanX wrote:
Dark Eldar don't have a Archon special character despite archons being the premiere Dark Eldar unit- our four or so SC's got removed in 6th.

Cry me a river.

I feel for Dark Eldars players, I really do. Honestly, this thread could be said of most armies. This is just from an IG perspective. I want to see more special characters for all of the armies. As much as we all love space marines the 40k setting is a massive universe & when you continuously ignore 95% of it for decades, it ceases to be a setting & more of clique. Don't play space marines? Not invited to the party.

You could also say that IG have plenty of special characters, compared to other armies. The IG is the largest non-marine range and other non-marine armies have even less special characters.
I wouldn't mind seeing more special characters, because they are fun, but I feel other armies are more in need of them than the IG are.

Also, Space Marines getting a lot of special attention makes sense. Space Marines have always been the protagonists of 40k, they are the main characters and they are collected and played by the vast majority of players (and therefore also vastly more profitable than most other factions thrown together). I can't really blame GW for this, it is what any company would do and should do in their place.

Still, I really agree with you that IG needs some love. Just this week I was thinking about how I can't even really remember the last time the IG saw a new release. What I really feel that the IG needs is new basic infantry kits. The current ones just look really old and kinda ugly because of their strange proportions (which is the reason why I play a tank company ). I have my own homebrew regiment, so I do not really need special characters. I much prefer making up my own.

 Aenarian wrote:

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
I disliked the concept of Special Characters in the main dexes ever since they removed the restrictions in late 4th edition. These are suppose to be heroes from certain points in the past and yet suddenly almost every single Salamander force was led by He'stan, every tank company was commanded by Pask, and every zombie horde had Typhus at the head (or in the rare case of someone affording FW, Necrosis). Fortunately the most used special character at the time, Fateweaver, actually does have a reason to appear in multiple armies at multiple times, but he's the only one that gets an exception due to being thrown into the well of Eternity.

It's far better to just make your own character and make your army your own.

Well, a whole lot of them are alive in the present day of 40k. I can only think of a two which are dead (Kell, Tycho from BA I think?), but I agree with the rest.

GW put in a 400-year timeskip just so they could introduce the biglymarines.

All Guard and Tau characters are dead, unless there's some sort of massive warp storm or I guess in the case of creed if they're in a poke-ball.

Come to think of it, that's probably why the tau sphere expansion got lost in the warp. Its so coincidentally all the tau named characters can pop out of the warp in the new "we wanted to make more marines" time period.

 Aenarian wrote:

 ross-128 wrote:
Honestly, I don't see why plastic would force characters to be super-expensive.

Sure, making a new plastic mold is expensive, but plastic is cheap and so the net cost of a model is inversely proportional to how many models you can squeeze out of one mold. But you don't have to sell models exactly the way they came out of the mold. You could make a single mold for half a dozen different characters, then cut the resulting sprue up and sell them separately. Seems like a fairly obvious way to cut costs on a group of low-count models.

Sculptors, shelf space, storehouses all add to the equation. But more importantly, I think its just a business decision

True, but those things are more or less constant regardless of which material you use so we can't really blame plastic for them.

Honestly I think the reason we don't have many characters is just the same reason most of the other factions don't have many characters: "You're not Space Marines, so GW doesn't care".

the_scotsman wrote:

 Aenarian wrote:

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
I disliked the concept of Special Characters in the main dexes ever since they removed the restrictions in late 4th edition. These are suppose to be heroes from certain points in the past and yet suddenly almost every single Salamander force was led by He'stan, every tank company was commanded by Pask, and every zombie horde had Typhus at the head (or in the rare case of someone affording FW, Necrosis). Fortunately the most used special character at the time, Fateweaver, actually does have a reason to appear in multiple armies at multiple times, but he's the only one that gets an exception due to being thrown into the well of Eternity.

It's far better to just make your own character and make your army your own.

Well, a whole lot of them are alive in the present day of 40k. I can only think of a two which are dead (Kell, Tycho from BA I think?), but I agree with the rest.

GW put in a 400-year timeskip just so they could introduce the biglymarines.

All Guard and Tau characters are dead, unless there's some sort of massive warp storm or I guess in the case of creed if they're in a poke-ball.

Come to think of it, that's probably why the tau sphere expansion got lost in the warp. Its so coincidentally all the tau named characters can pop out of the warp in the new "we wanted to make more marines" time period.

Dark Imperium only skipped 100 years or so, and rejuvenation techniques can extend an individuals lifespan pretty considerably. But yes, some additional ones could probably be considered dead.