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One thing that has always bothered me is the lack of viable special characters certain armies have available. Take Sister of Battle for example. I don't think I have ever seen a army not use Saint Celestine. Not that I have anything against her. Her lore is amazing & I think she is one of the more interesting characters in 40k. Her stats/abilities/point cost are also awesome. Why can't Sisters have some alternative options though? Even the Imperial Guard suffers from this. In the event that you wanted to take a special character 9/10 your going to take Creed. Yarrick adds little/no utility to a army unless allied/attached with Azreal/Ogryns & put into death star for the lols, but at a insane point cost that is not terribly effective. Captain Al'Rahem is nice in that he can outflank with a entire platoon & while he has a nice loadout & good BS the unit he is attached to has low to average BS & while his melee weapon is amazing his strength is low which decreases its effectiveness greatly in a low survivability unit. Marbo comes to mind. If played right he can be effective to some degree.

I guess I would just like to see more special characters added to each of the armies. Special characters that are not only competitive point wise with one another, but also completely change the dynamics/playstyle of the army they are in.


Sidenote: What happened to the Red Terror the Tyranids had? I was gone for several years, but I use to think that was one of the coolest units in 40k years ago.

Because giving Sisters of Battle options would require effort and acknowledgement that they exist. Two things GW won't do.

The "Red Terror" is now Deathleaper. They more or less just changed his name, it's still the Lictor SC.

I also really don't get why you're complaining about Guard SC choices. Creed is viable, Straken is viable, Marbo is viable, Harker is viable, Al'rahem is viable, Pask is viable, hell even Bastonne is sort of viable.

Sisters have Jacobus and Kyrinov who are both playable. I think you'll find that the problem with the SoB Codex isn't so much that their SCs are too bad as their generic characters are too bad. Celestine is way too good whereas normal Canonesses are way too bad. Jacobus is the best way to try to mitigate the mess that is faith.

Walrus pretty much has it nailed on the head. The current arrangement of the SoB codex puts the Canoness at a far, far, far last place compared to Celestine, Jacobus and Kyrinov, simply because the Canoness does not contribute anything to the army, and the named characters do a lot to support the army either as a standalone character (Celestine) or as an army-wide buffer (Jacobus).

If I were to have my way, what I would -LOVE- to see down the line is essentially a Living Saint generic HQ choice, with a load of options ala the Avatar or a C'tan shard. That would make me a very, very happy Sisters player.

Every Codex may seem to have duff special characters at first, since they're usually designed around building your army a specific way. The community then tends to concentrate on one or two builds for the army and so the characters that go with that army get preferential treatment. As an example - the ever-popular Vulkan would be next to useless alongside a Master of the Forge and half a dozen Dreadnoughts with Scouts as Troops.

Edition changes can change this up too - look at how popular Corbulo became with the changes to FNP and shooting wound allocation.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
The "Red Terror" is now Deathleaper. They more or less just changed his name, it's still the Lictor SC.

Not exactly true. The Red Terror is/was a Ravener not a Lictor, and the backstories for both (such as they are with Tyranid "characters") are different. They just fulfil similar battlefield roles.

I loathe St. Celestine personally. She is horrendously undercosted. The rest of the "codex" sucks though so I am alright with it. I would not be opposed to the addition of more characters, so long as they were actually balanced.

If played right he can be effective to some degree.

To some degree?! The guys costs 65 points, has an AP 2 sniper pistol, Envenomed blade, and can take out one target (almost one whole squad) in his alpha... maybe your criteria for a good character are a little unrealistic.

 Lobukia wrote:

If played right he can be effective to some degree.

To some degree?! The guys costs 65 points, has an AP 2 sniper pistol, Envenomed blade, and can take out one target (almost one whole squad) in his alpha... maybe your criteria for a good character are a little unrealistic.

Assuming he doesn't blow himself up since 40k didn't feel like implementing Necromunda's "max scatter = half the range" rule. I swear demo charges are more dangerous to their owners than the enemy.

Ultramarines don't need more characters, they need them to be less expensive!

So I agree with your general argument that it's hard to incorporate SC's into a list (unless you're doing a fluff build?).

I think the problem may have more to do with the benefits of including a SC in your list, versus the points cost.

I would like to see more SC's with Army-wide buffs, and more (Smurf) characters with shooting buffs. For the most part, their Specials are all for knife-fighting.

Or, well, chainsword fighting.

You get the idea.

 Super Ready wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
The "Red Terror" is now Deathleaper. They more or less just changed his name, it's still the Lictor SC.

Not exactly true. The Red Terror is/was a Ravener not a Lictor, and the backstories for both (such as they are with Tyranid "characters") are different. They just fulfil similar battlefield roles.

Glad you caught that. The Red Terror is somewhere between a Ravener and a Trygon/Mawloc. He's an MC that's Ravener sized and swallows models whole.

Deathleaper is scary...but aren't most bugs scary?

They shoot smaller bugs as bullets! I'd rather take a rocket propelled grenade bullet to the face.

I wouldn't be surprised if we saw more chapter-specific characters with the next Marine codex. Kind of surprised there wasn't a new Chaos special character this time around, and also that Eldar and Tau only got a dude each.

I personally believe Black Templar is going to be an Ultramarine supplement. If it isn't, expect a sweet character to be wrapped in there to sell the book.