BaconCatBug wrote:Totally useless. Morale barely matters, you can't legally shoot assault weapons after advancing anyway
RaW and a trait that only works against half the enemy armies is crap too.
Well, you're wrong on all three points.
First, it's not useless. Not by any measure.
Morale matters unless your opponent specifically builds to ignore it, not every army can do that, and the ones that do have to give things up in order to do it. For example, if you combat squad your
tac marines you get to largely ignore morale. However, to do that you have to halve the effectiveness of buffer wound protection for your special and heavy weapon, and you make
ATSKNF completely redundant. Since you're
paying for
ATSKNF, it means you're wasting points up front instead of risking them during play.
You
can shoot Assault weapons when you advance. Might want to re-read that part of the book.
Finally, their warlord trait is balanced against the rest of their kit. Just like in the
SM codex, and just like all the other previews we've seen. A codex sub-faction is a faction trait, a warlord trait, a relic, a stratagem, and sometimes a psychic power. They're balanced
all together (at least the two traits and the stratagem are). When one part sucks, it's usually because one of the others is borderline
OP.
Just look at the salamanders! Two die rerolls per unit per shooting AND fight phase? Are you KIDDING ME?
Then you read their warlord trait, and their stratagem...and you yawn. But it suddenly makes sense. The last two suck because the first is so good.
The
BL stratagem is pretty good, all things considered. The black legion trait supports and is supported by it (large squads of
CSM advancing up the board. Moving, advancing, and shooting with bolters that count as assault, that get to reroll all misses after taking their -1 to hit.) The only piece of cruff is their warlod trait, which is only a waste until you're fighting anything imperium (which is half the armies in the game).
In that little
BL comfort zone, you take a sorcerer along with your chaos lord, and throw prescience into the mix. Now you're advancing up the board and firing assault weapons until you're ready to assault. Properly supported by daemons, raptors, whatever mobile unit you need to prevent a counter-charge or escape your 20-strong
CSM squad is charging into combat, hitting on 2+, rerolling 1's, and getting extra attacks on a 4+ because prescience stacks with your warlord trait!