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Hi all, was wondering if someone could school me how character upgrades work. I'm assembling my first squad and it's not going so well. For example, in my space wolves codex it states that for a price a blood claw can be upgraded to Lucas the trickster. I have seen the model and I am unsure if this means I would have to procure a Lucas or if it means one of my blood claws 'becomes Lucas' so would look different whilst retaining the same wargear/characteristics,

Any clarification would be awesome

Also minor questions - On the sprue there is an axe (using two hands) option. Can I still use this guy as a BC even though the wargear column says he should have a bolt pistol as well

Similarly, what happens if I assemble a model with 2 ballistic weapons. Can he still fight in CQ?

 andywalker07 wrote:
Hi all, was wondering if someone could school me how character upgrades work. I'm assembling my first squad and it's not going so well. For example, in my space wolves codex it states that for a price a blood claw can be upgraded to Lucas the trickster. I have seen the model and I am unsure if this means I would have to procure a Lucas or if it means one of my blood claws 'becomes Lucas' so would look different whilst retaining the same wargear/characteristics,

Officially you're suppose to get the Lucas model in order to play him, but if you play with friendly opponents then usually it won't matter if you have the actual model or not so long as you point out who's who and you paid the points for it.

 andywalker07 wrote:
Also minor questions - On the sprue there is an axe (using two hands) option. Can I still use this guy as a BC even though the wargear column says he should have a bolt pistol as well

Yeah. Not every weapon will be on the model in most cases.

 andywalker07 wrote:
Similarly, what happens if I assemble a model with 2 ballistic weapons. Can he still fight in CQ?

Almost everything can fight in CC and a SW with 2 guns is no exception. If the 2 guns are both pistols then you can fire both of them in the same shooting phase and count as 2 CCW for CC purposes.

Special character upgrades, like Lucas the Trickster, have their own models and generally replace a model in the squad. So for example, if you spent the points to purchase 5 Blood Claws and upgraded one of them to Lucas, you would have a total of 5 models: 4 Blood Claws and 1 Lucas the Trickster. He would have different wargear and different characteristics from the rest of his unit. Model-wise, most people aren't super strict about special characters (what if you don't like the model?). You could convert your own character (use a Blood Claw model, but add on some extra bits and spend more time on the paint job)...or you could just use the actual model.

I hope that answers your question.

You certainly don't have to give every model the wargear they come with as standard (most people don't model Grey Hunters with bolters, bolt pistols, close combat weapons, frag grenades, and krak grenades). So no, you don't need to give every Blood Claw a bolt pistol. I would suggest modeling at least a few Blood Claws with pistols, to avoid confusion.
The axe, however, is a special piece of wargear (I believe it's a frost axe/power axe). Taking a model with that weapon would probably lead to confusion, or at least a comment before the game - "This guy doesn't actually have any special close combat weapons. He's just modeled that way." With that said, most people probably wouldn't have a problem with that.

On a completely unrelated note, I would suggest taking Grey Hunters over Blood Claws. They are a significantly better unit.

Thanks gnoise and siphen. Just to clarify my codex says he can add the power weapon for 25 points. I was only asking because I've assembled one of my BC with twin Lightning claws only to realise that the only guys allowed them are wolf guard.

In friendly matches that wont matter too much just remeber not to rr to wound and they are just fancy looking for weapons