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Why is it some special characters can have awesome back stories, but in the game they suck hardcore? Example in the Ork codex is Captain Badrukk. His fluff just paints him as a total badass, his mini is even pretty cool looking. The guy has "killed" a void whale for goodness sakes! But why is it if you pay for him in the game, your basically committing suicide doing it. He is WAY over costed, doesnt really bring anything to the table and his gun can kill him.

Why? WHY?!?! would GW make something as awesome as Badrukk, and then total hoe him out game wise? It almost feels like he was a last edition to just take up some space in the codex, and rather then think it threw, they tossed on a huge points cost, and then called it done. Hes not the only terribad special character Im sure, but he is epic in his sucktitude

And vice versa some special characers have terrible fluff but kick a ridiculous amount of arse.

Maybe the fluff writers and stat makers are different people, who don't know how to talk to one another.

But the fluff will never match the play completely...should a soul grinder or defiler or monolith ever be taken out by a lone model with a power fist? All kinds of mismatches are bound to exist.

And besides, orks have enough good stuff for minimal points as it is...it's sort of silly to hear an ork player complaining about too many points.

I'm still waiting for fluff for my favorite character, Sgt. Centurious...


And yeah, Characters are the epitome of rules /= fluff.

It could be that GW have a character in stories that is really intersting, so they want to put him in the game, forgetting why he isn't in the game in the first place. Or, you can have a character in the games who is so good, that they write some more fluff on the person, forgetting why it didn't have a deep background in the first place.

My chapter master Gabriel Seth. Awsome model and character, wierd streetfighter style moves (WHIRLWIND OF GORE?!) and next usless compared to the other blood angel SC's. No jump pack?!

Seth also does not have artificer armour, whereas his bodyguards DO!

Speaking of BA charecters, Dante, the oldest marine fully alive (although he may be a vampire) does not have eternal warrior, because aparantly, while Yarrick can take a volcano cannon to the face and keep on killing, Dante has yet to get hit with anything stronger than an autocannon and live. He is a fragile peach, and his men jump in front of missiles for him.

Yeah. I think Date should be at least on par with Meph.

Tau special characters. All others cannot even hold a candle to their sucky gameplay and fluff.

Shadowsun
-Fluff: Marysue who can't loose a single ship in space fights
-Gameplay: low toughness crisis suit with "suicide-tactic" upgrades

Farsight
-Fluff: We get he owns a section of the empire, but has very little written about him besides being trained about how to command and him getting the Dawn Blade
-Gameplay: CC Tau and list gimping Farsight bodyguard of "Doom" (Another suicide tactic)

Aun'Va
-Fluff: He's 300 years old and rule the empire with no "mysterious cause" plot device written. (Aside from which, his quote is actually likeable)
-Gameplay: sit with a +4 coversave with low Initiative bodyguard and troops either running away/not getting bonuses from being in a transport.

ChiliPowderKeg wrote:
Aun'Va
-Fluff: He's 300 years old and rule the empire with no "mysterious cause" plot device written. (Aside from which, his quote is actually likeable)
-Gameplay: sit with a +4 coversave with low Initiative bodyguard and troops either running away/not getting bonuses from being in a transport.

While that's not a full reasoning why he sucks, he takes the cake as the absolute worst special character in 40k. Nothing else comes close. Until some kinda change occurs with him (and the tau codex in the process) no one else has any room whatsoever to even attempt to complain about bad special characters.

Though, I find it appalling that none of the special characters in the CSM book have eternal warrior. I mean the CHOSEN of a single GOD don't have eternal warrior, but a flipping random leader in the space wolves can? WTF. Seriously.

Oh god, I agree.

Huron Blackheart, lucius the eternal and Typhus are horrible...And that's just my codex....

I always loved the background on Typhus though.
Huron Blackheart was ok.
I really dislike Lucuis the Eternal.

purplefood wrote:I always loved the background on Typhus though.
Huron Blackheart was ok.
I really dislike Lucuis the Eternal.

Agree with your opinions The fluff for typhus is spectacular.

Samus_aran115 wrote:

purplefood wrote:I always loved the background on Typhus though.
Huron Blackheart was ok.
I really dislike Lucuis the Eternal.

Agree with your opinions The fluff for typhus is spectacular.

His model is also very good IMO.

Typhus is a pimp if you forget about his rules. His mini is just awesome. Infact when I played Chaos forever ago, I used parts (yea from bits order, like I said forever ago) of his mini on 3 separate minis.

I wish his scythe was at a more epic position though. Or at least one handed so it'd be easier to convert

But yeah, great model for sure. I like the huron model too, but the face doesn't have enough paintable detail for me. There's too much stuff an average painter can't pick up.

Is it just me or the 'nid special characters really really powerful. They all seem to have crazy stats (swarmlord WS 9, Old one eye Str 10, the crazy zoanthrope thing with x T and x W). They all just seem way over powered IMO

Worst special Character IMHO is my favorite and he used to be one of the best.

Commisar Yarrick, back in the old Codex he used to have this awesome rule called Energy Field which said anytime something shoots at him you roll a D6 and lower the Str of the attack by the roll. Bolters used to make Yarrick laugh. One time I even reduced a lascannon down to Str 4. Now he sucks. Yes he is Eternal Warrior and he comes with a power fist, thats it. He has nothing else that is remotely useful and his energy field now sucks terribly. Re-roll succesful wounds, really? So if I need a 2+ to wound him in CC with a power fist the chances of me re-rolling the dice and getting a 1 are very very bad and now it equals 1 dead Yarrick in CC.

Its ashame I like Yarricks fluff and I think he is so awesome, yet if he were to ever go toe to toe with Ghazgul (his mortal enemy) he would get destroyed without ever causing Ghazgul a wound. I think thats just sad.

If you take Aun'va, you are basically asking to lose. I believe that he won a competition a while ago of who was the worst unit to take in game. He barely beat out chaos spawn, for chaos spawn actually have a use if you make them with the spell, "Gift of Chaos".

Once again, seeing Aun'va on the tabletop means that the Tau player decided he wanted to lose, or he's so good that he really, really, REALLY wants to try his luck.

PraetorDave wrote:Is it just me or the 'nid special characters really really powerful. They all seem to have crazy stats (swarmlord WS 9, Old one eye Str 10, the crazy zoanthrope thing with x T and x W). They all just seem way over powered IMO

Swarmlord and Doom of Malantai are the only great ones.
Deathleaper and Parasite of Mortrex are both fun, good enough in fluff lists, but hardly overpowered.
Old One Eye is awful, only slightly better than pyrovores.

Aun'va is a melee buff character in an army that sucks at melee. To exacerbate things even more, you can't take him with Farsight, the only Tau who is at least competent in close quarters. I tend to see Ethereals in general like this however, since they're trying to do something that the army they're in was never designed for.

On another subject, it feels like my Daemon Princes have been lacking ever since the update. He use to have 4 wounds, T6 and had an Armor save of 2+ and an Invul save of 4+. Now everything got bumped down a point (except for wounds, thank the chaos gods) and he lost his access to Daemon Weapons. While not a special character in the traditional sense, I do feel like he's been nerfed.

Kharn on the other hand got a major boost. he lost his daemon armor and feel no pain, but being an infantry-sized Daemon prince is nothing to laugh at, especailly since he kept his "hit on a 2+" ability.

In general, there are three classes of special characters

- ones that suck. This is almost all of them. Use only for a dash of fluff

- ones that synergize. Vulcan makes your whole army twin-linked while Al'Rahem can outflank a lot of dudes if you're playing infantry-heavy. These special characters are good for unlocking play styles that you wouldn't otherwise have access to.

- ones that are power units that are special characters because you should only be allowed to take one of them. Seriously, have you noticed how codecies are moving away from restricting the number of a certain type of squad? I'd think that mephiston would have been a single powerful elites choice back in the day, but GW has been moving away from the "0-1" nomenclature. In any case, this category is pretty small, and once you learn how to counter them... well...

perfect example: abaddon. total badass in fluff. reality: kills himself more often than anything i've ever seen

Abaddon is awesome on the tabletop imo, however fluff wise he kinda falls short on his actual plans (13 crusades and in counting). Characters are becoming less "flavour" choices and more actual army-changing units. Perfect example: Beilal. If you play a game without characters at all, Dark Angels would not be able to field any terminator captains, as Beilal is the only HQ choice allowed Terminator Armor and allows Terminators to be Troop Choices. He is otherwise no different than a normal Captain in Termie armor in the standard SM codex. Some characters, however, completely outclass what they're suppose to be replacing. Kharn is so much better than a Khorne Lord with a Daemon Weapon or a Khorne Prince. Fateweaver, likewise, is much more superior to standard Lords of Change, especially since he's very cost effective compared to what he actually has (not to mention rerolling saves). They supercede the vanilla choices and become staples (which kinda kills the "special character" aspect when you're in an multiple-player megabattle and everyone has their own version of "kharn" or something similar).

micahaphone wrote:If you take Aun'va, you are basically asking to lose. I believe that he won a competition a while ago of who was the worst unit to take in game. He barely beat out chaos spawn, for chaos spawn actually have a use if you make them with the spell, "Gift of Chaos".

Once again, seeing Aun'va on the tabletop means that the Tau player decided he wanted to lose, or he's so good that he really, really, REALLY wants to try his luck.

I don't think tau need any help losing.. They can lose just fine without him.

Ailaros wrote:In general, there are three classes of special characters

- ones that suck. This is almost all of them. Use only for a dash of fluff

- ones that synergize. Vulcan makes your whole army twin-linked while Al'Rahem can outflank a lot of dudes if you're playing infantry-heavy. These special characters are good for unlocking play styles that you wouldn't otherwise have access to.

- ones that are power units that are special characters because you should only be allowed to take one of them. Seriously, have you noticed how codecies are moving away from restricting the number of a certain type of squad? I'd think that mephiston would have been a single powerful elites choice back in the day, but GW has been moving away from the "0-1" nomenclature. In any case, this category is pretty small, and once you learn how to counter them... well...

This, but I think that the last point should be changed to "Powerhouses that are a big enough threat to either distract a large proportion of the enemy, or tear it to shreds".

There's also a fair bit of mix-and-match between these three categories; for example, Ghazzy fits into both the "synergise" and "powerhouse" categories, along with characters like the Deceiver (combat 'Crons) or Iron-hand Straken (power blobs of doom with a mechano-nippled spearhead)

Just my £0.02

S_P

Also, Shadowsun for the Tau is an interesting paradox-y thing. She has a jet pack 3+ suit, and is fairly small, AND has a stealth field generator, so if you try to shoot her, you roll as is shooting at night. However, she is armed with 2 melta guns that can fire at different targets, and a drone that benefits friendlies neaby, making her good for the front of the army, or deepstriking between two tanks, or other such close range fighting. Guess how hard it is to roll 9" vision on 2D6 X3?

Eldar Phoenix Lords...

micahaphone wrote:Also, Shadowsun for the Tau is an interesting paradox-y thing. She has a jet pack 3+ suit, and is fairly small, AND has a stealth field generator, so if you try to shoot her, you roll as is shooting at night. However, she is armed with 2 melta guns that can fire at different targets, and a drone that benefits friendlies neaby, making her good for the front of the army, or deepstriking between two tanks, or other such close range fighting. Guess how hard it is to roll 9" vision on 2D6 X3?

I assume she's supposed to take out heavy hitters that are trying to assault the Tau gunline, without making herself vulnerable to their gunline. Getting shot by two tanks (if they survive) is a lot better than getting shot by two tanks and the rest of their army.

phyrephly wrote:Eldar Phoenix Lords...

Totally disagree, if you can't play them well then it is the generals fault not the model/rules with Eldar. If you know HOW to use each individual phoenix lord, then they do ok-super, if you expect them to be a terminator and just stand there in the middle of the field killing anything and absorbing heaps of fire then you aren't playing eldar