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 Nevelon wrote:
Tyranic war vets were proto-sternguard, but once sternguard were out were worse (unless you were specifically list tailoring against nids, but why?)

You could briefly field the sword and board victrix guard that came with Calgar separately.

Basic honor guard have drifted around between UM only, anyone can have them, and legends over the years.

Now we have the new Victrix with blade and bolter.

And a zillion characters…

All of those were squatted before the OOM change. And I'm not sure they have "a zillion" characters compared to the other Big Four.

In my Crimson Fists army, I play Tor Garadon as Captain of the 9th Company, The Fists of Dorn, while my main Battleline Company is the 2nd Co, The Shield Wall!

Breton wrote:

 Nevelon wrote:
Tyranic war vets were proto-sternguard, but once sternguard were out were worse (unless you were specifically list tailoring against nids, but why?)

You could briefly field the sword and board victrix guard that came with Calgar separately.

Basic honor guard have drifted around between UM only, anyone can have them, and legends over the years.

Now we have the new Victrix with blade and bolter.

And a zillion characters…

All of those were squatted before the OOM change. And I'm not sure they have "a zillion" characters compared to the other Big Four.

I posted the list of units to point out that there were never a lot of them, and most were gone/legends at best. Just looking through the faction pack, surprised to see the TWVs still there, with a unit size of 5! At one point you could field a 4 man squad, because that’s the number of models they had.

Captain Sicarius
Chief Librarian Tigurius
Marneus Calgar
Roboute Guilliman
Uriel Ventris
Marneus Calgar in Armour of Antilochus
Cato Sicarius
Lieutenant Titus

Legends:
Chaplain Cassius
Sgt. Chronus
Sgt. Talion
There is a new BL captain with a TH, who will probably get straight to legends rules. Or of we are lucky, they may just add hammers to the basic captain’s options

8+3(4)L

OK, I was honestly expecting more. And the list is shorter when you consider both Sicarius and Calgar have 2 versions.

Quick look counting Epic Heroes in New Recruit for the Big Four show:
UL - 8+3L
SW - 8+6L
BA - 5+4L
DA - 7+0L

So Ultramarines do not have the most characters. That honor goes to the Wolves. You can play with the stats by counting unique heroes, or legends. That will change the rankings around a bit. They all have more then the other named chapters, who generally have 1-3 heroes each.

Ultras have one non-legends faction unit, and an average amount of epic heroes. Sure, we are the poster boys, but don’t actually get much for it on the table.

And that’s my morning coffee project this Saturday. Have a good weekend all.

Edit: For completeness, we also have the preview of Captain Titus, so another duplicate named hero on the way, and a new command squad with mixed SM/humans. Who knows how that will be tagged. Also, for pedantic counting, the champion and ancient in the victrix HG squad have the epic hero tag.

Breton wrote:

 Nevelon wrote:
Tyranic war vets were proto-sternguard, but once sternguard were out were worse (unless you were specifically list tailoring against nids, but why?)

You could briefly field the sword and board victrix guard that came with Calgar separately.

Basic honor guard have drifted around between UM only, anyone can have them, and legends over the years.

Now we have the new Victrix with blade and bolter.

And a zillion characters…

All of those were squatted before the OOM change. And I'm not sure they have "a zillion" characters compared to the other Big Four.

Ultramarines have EIGHT named character datasheets, one of which is a freaking Primarch. For that alone, they should be split off as a snowflake chapter.

The primarch does skew things. No argument there.

But while we have more options, how many are you going to see in a particular list? Do people put more then one Epic Hero on the table very often? While we have more choices, from a practical point of what hits the table, you will probably see as many named characters in blue then you will from any other chapter.


I’d argue that the inclusion of the Victrix HG is a more solid argument against keeping us with the vanilla rules. The ability to leverage chapter locked characters with chapter specific units is where a lot of the difference comes from. Without that you have a named character doing slightly odd things to one squad of otherwise generic marines. Which may or may not be better then what you could get from a non-named hero anyone could field.

 Nevelon wrote:
Do people put more then one Epic Hero on the table very often?

::Looks at tournament players regularly fielding Guilliman and Calgar together, even after Calgar's nerf::

 BorderCountess wrote:

 Nevelon wrote:
Do people put more then one Epic Hero on the table very often?

::Looks at tournament players regularly fielding Guilliman and Calgar together, even after Calgar's nerf::

I think she's got you there.

It was an honest question; I don’t closely follow what the latest tournament hotness is.

Thank you for the answer.