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I'm not terribly interested in the statistical average of what he will do, but rather the table-flipping moments he will cause when you roll really well. That's not fun for your opponent.

Ah, so like Smash Captains.

I agree, Smash Captains should be refactored.

I agree completely with Elbows. There are 2 major problems for me. Firstly, the fact he has weapons that are simply far and away superior to pretty much any other similar weapons in the game, including every single Relic pistol that exists. It's too much for suspension of disbelief IMO.

Then you've just got the stack of special rules that lead to completely boneheaded non-interactive gameplay. There's no opportunity for interesting play and counterplay here and that leads to frustration.

 Eldarsif wrote:

I'm not terribly interested in the statistical average of what he will do, but rather the table-flipping moments he will cause when you roll really well. That's not fun for your opponent.

Ah, so like Smash Captains.

I agree, Smash Captains should be refactored.

More or less, yes? There are plenty of things in this game which are not fun, or cool, but just boring for your opponent...they pretty much all suck. Throw Harlequin's stupid-as-feth haywire jetbikes on that list as well.

Unless cult ambush works totally differently. Which it almost certainly will.

It's gonna be all based around counters and stuff!

 Elbows wrote:

 Eldarsif wrote:

I'm not terribly interested in the statistical average of what he will do, but rather the table-flipping moments he will cause when you roll really well. That's not fun for your opponent.

Ah, so like Smash Captains.

I agree, Smash Captains should be refactored.

More or less, yes? There are plenty of things in this game which are not fun, or cool, but just boring for your opponent...they pretty much all suck. Throw Harlequin's stupid-as-feth haywire jetbikes on that list as well.

Well, I would say that the Smash Captains are kinda cool even though they are really annoying to deal with. Technically I think the only problem with them is the Storm shield and relic storm shields that half their damage. I don't mind a Smash Captain getting me while my guard is down, because that is on me. What I do get tired of is trying to kill those bastards and it just takes wave after wave after wave of stuff to kill him because of that sweet 3++ invuln.

Call me an optimist but so far I think I'll dislike Smash Captains more than the Gunslinger as it feels like I can kill the Gunslinger in a single round rather quickly(assuming no extra FnP, halving damage rules). Only time will tell though.

Smash Captains have already been refactored, right?
They no longer Fly during the charge, so they can be always screened away from a juicy target.

 Cybtroll wrote:
Smash Captains have already been refactored, right?
They no longer Fly during the charge, so they can be always screened away from a juicy target.

My biggest problem with smash captains is one they are are as an individual unit are to strong for the cost. The other is that you can take multiple with no additional marines on the field. Two captains fighting on the same battle field is rare, hell even having more than one company of marines on a planet is rare. I wish the game had more limits on what you can take in a normal game to push it closer to the background and leave the nonsense for Apoc.

 Eldarsif wrote:

I'm not terribly interested in the statistical average of what he will do, but rather the table-flipping moments he will cause when you roll really well. That's not fun for your opponent.

Ah, so like Smash Captains.

I agree, Smash Captains should be refactored.

The difference is that smash captins are one of the few good things in BA codex. This dude comes to nids, which have more then 2 models. I understand that the opponents of people using BA wouldn't care, but the impact would be totaly different. Without a smash captin, BA are just weaker ultramarines.


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HoundsofDemos wrote:

 Cybtroll wrote:
Smash Captains have already been refactored, right?
They no longer Fly during the charge, so they can be always screened away from a juicy target.

My biggest problem with smash captains is one they are are as an individual unit are to strong for the cost. The other is that you can take multiple with no additional marines on the field. Two captains fighting on the same battle field is rare, hell even having more than one company of marines on a planet is rare. I wish the game had more limits on what you can take in a normal game to push it closer to the background and leave the nonsense for Apoc.

Ok, but why do people take two of those units? It is not like libararians and chaplains with packs are cool and valid options, and people are just a holes and pick 2 cpts. It is more like for the points, only mefiston maybe comes close to being a valid HQ option. You could say the same thing about GK, every army is GK in NDK with sometimes draigo added. Every other HQ option is just so bad costed and has so bad rules, that no one would ever want to take them.

So does that mean the Kelermorph is fine at, say, 40 points if every single other option in the Codex just doubled in points with no bonuses?

I would think not-while I'm perfectly willing to agree most BA needs a buff, that doesn't mean Captain Smash does NOT need a nerf.

I have very little expiriance with w40k, but from what I see GW can nerf stuff so hard no one uses the units anymore, but buffing is not something they are good at.

I don't play BA, so I shouldn't care, but what I think would happen is that the cpt would end up being a non entity, while the buffs to other BA stuff would be no where near as powerful to make the army good.

Karol wrote:
I have very little expiriance with w40k, but from what I see GW can nerf stuff so hard no one uses the units anymore, but buffing is not something they are good at.

I don't play BA, so I shouldn't care, but what I think would happen is that the cpt would end up being a non entity, while the buffs to other BA stuff would be no where near as powerful to make the army good.

Well, GW's just kinda incompetent at rules. (And they do NOT have an excuse for that.)

But I'm talking theoreticals here, not what's gonna happen. And using hyperbole to make a point.

I think they know very well what they want. There is no way to randomly get eldar synergies as good well as they work now. Or give IG and knights such points cost that they fit perfectly in to a list, with an option to switch out a knight for something else, like the cpt for example.

They also seem to be great at nerfing, if they want to nerf something the unit is dead. It is never fixed, it is always unusable. If they don't want to nerf something, then we get something like the dark reapers. Changed four or five times, but still taken by eldar.

On the other hand GW trying to make stuff good or better, ends with a lot of hype and not much substance.

Karol wrote:

They also seem to be great at nerfing, if they want to nerf something the unit is dead. It is never fixed, it is always unusable. If they don't want to nerf something, then we get something like the dark reapers. Changed four or five times, but still taken by eldar.

That's a bogus statement. Dark Reapers are decently costed at this point. What people have issues with is Ynnari and Doom.

 Elbows wrote:

If, God forbid, this is not limited to a single model, it'll become a really boring auto-take option for GSC even in a tournament setting. "Oh, okay, your first turn (or whatever the new GSC ambush is) you're going to absolutely pop those X dudes up and kill off any sub-character or special squad I need in the game and there's nothing I can do about it". That's not cool, it's...lame. It's not Ork-boyz-360 dumb, but it's definitely a poor design choice.

Yep that's absolutely correct - there's simply not a thing at all that can be done! Some people will say "screen your characters with your army you silly git, they have only 12" range", others will say "put on your thinking cap and put the tiniest amount of thought into list building and strategy in deployment", and I'm sure someone will suggest "conceal them within terrain, or reserves, or block line of sight to them like you aren't a complete numpty", but what do they know eh?

You are entirely right, if your opponent dedicates up to 1/4 of his entire list on 3 Kelermorphs, who have to deploy using a cult ambush ruleset that we haven't even seen yet, then there is just no counter-play to that - you simply lose immediately.





Excellent competitive commentary as per usual from Elbows.

 SHUPPET wrote:

 Elbows wrote:

If, God forbid, this is not limited to a single model, it'll become a really boring auto-take option for GSC even in a tournament setting. "Oh, okay, your first turn (or whatever the new GSC ambush is) you're going to absolutely pop those X dudes up and kill off any sub-character or special squad I need in the game and there's nothing I can do about it". That's not cool, it's...lame. It's not Ork-boyz-360 dumb, but it's definitely a poor design choice.

Yep that's absolutely correct - there's simply not a thing at all that can be done! Some people will say "screen your characters with your army you silly git, they have only 12" range", others will say "put on your thinking cap and put the tiniest amount of thought into list building and strategy in deployment", and I'm sure some smartass will suggest "conceal them within terrain, or reserves, or block line of sight to them like you aren't a complete numpty", but what do those scrubs know?

You are entirely right, if your opponent dedicates up to 1/4 of his entire list on 3 Kelermorphs, who have to deploy using a cult ambush ruleset that we haven't even seen yet, then there is just no counter-play to that - you simply lose immediately.

To be honest, if the existence of the Kelermorph forces players to have to choose between maximizing the effects of auras versus protecting characters, I consider that a win. Right now characters are just a little too untouchable for the effects they provide to nearby units, and as far as I'm concerned, the more difficult decisions a player has to make, the better the game is for it.

Don't most armys have bodyguard units of some kinds? If the Kelermorph does become strong, it's not as if there isn't counters besides screening.

As for the pistols *Shrug* If they were called "Liberator Handcannon with Manstopper rounds", would that be better? It's one exception to an army that lacks these kinds of weapons so having one guy with decent weapons is not some affont to the lore.

Agreed with both the above posts. Also, a few weeks ago, a leaker who got other things right already like the Biophagus, said Cult Ambush was being turned into blips. This is the first anyone had ever heard of the idea. Today, the pre-order for GSC confirms that the book comes with Blip tokens for cult ambush, meaning that this leaker, who has already been confirmed accurate on other points, was almost certainly telling the truth here.


Cult Ambush leaked rules:


This is a barebones overview (he talked about a lot of things) giving you a ton more counterplay options than last edition, and as we know from the Kelermorph's rules, there is also a success roll or table of some manner involved.

So basically, there is a ton of options to deal with him cult ambushing in on your characters. Ambushing him may not yet even be the best way to play a character who requires such precision - we'll have to wait and see. Let's at least do that before making these extreme declarations, yes?




If people could please stop begging for the game to be dumbed down just because they are really, really bad at it, thaaat'd be great. Level up your own play and I'm certain you will discover that there is a grey area somewhere in between "deploying on the very back corner of your board in a ball" and "auto-losing all of your critical characters to deepstrikers".

 SHUPPET wrote:
Agreed with both the above posts. Also, a few weeks ago, a leaker who got other things right already like the Biophagus, said Cult Ambush was being turned into blips. This is the first anyone had ever heard of the idea. Today, the pre-order for GSC confirms that the book comes with Blip tokens for cult ambush, meaning that this leaker, who has already been confirmed accurate on other points, was almost certainly telling the truth here.


Cult Ambush leaked rules:

Spoiler:

(cult ambush): It's been completely overhauled. Essentially, you get a number of "blip tokens" (which are included with the codex) equal to the number of units you have in Cult Ambush reserves, plus one spare token for every two units in reserves (to use as "decoy tokens". After both sides have finished deploying, you get to place your tokens down anywhere on the board that is more than 9" from enemy units. At the end of any of your movement phases (including first turn) you may flip over a blip token to reveal a unit in cult ambush reserves (you choose which one, if any, appears there - if nothing appears there it's one of your "decoy" tokens). They must also be flipped if an enemy unit goes within 9" of a blip token. There are a number of mechanics that allow you to place more blip tokens down and move them.

If an enemy unit moves within 9" of them, you place down the GSC unit as close as possible to the blip token.

So if a guard squad advances onto the token and surrounds it, you then place the GSC unit as close as possible (but outside of 1" of enemy units. If they move to 3" away from it, you just place it down on the token (but outside of 1" of enemy units). One model from the unit must be centered on the token if possible.

This is a barebones overview (he talked about a lot of things) giving you a ton more counterplay options than last edition, and as we know from the Kelermorph's rules, there is also a success roll or table of some manner involved.

So basically, there is a ton of options to deal with him cult ambushing in on your characters. Ambushing him may not yet even be the best way to play a character who requires such precision - we'll have to wait and see. Let's at least do that before making these extreme declarations, yes?




If people could please stop begging for the game to be dumbed down just because they are really, really bad at it, thaaat'd be great. Level up your own play and I'm certain you will discover that there is a grey area somewhere in between "deploying on the very back corner of your board in a ball" and "auto-losing all of your critical characters to deepstrikers".

This. One hundred per cent. The amount of Chicken Little hysteria here is nuts. Even for dakka. We have no idea how Cult Ambush will work. Added to that we have people complaining in one thread that the game lacks depth and then people here complaining that a hypothetical single model is going to destroy their armies single (triple?) handed. For goodness sake, there are umpteen ways to protect characters. Terrain, for instance. This dude definitely won't ignore line if sight. If people are forced to screen there fireblade more effectively, then that's a good thing. Right?

The difference is that smash captins are one of the few good things in BA codex. This dude comes to nids, which have more then 2 models. I understand that the opponents of people using BA wouldn't care, but the impact would be totaly different. Without a smash captin, BA are just weaker ultramarines.

Not sure if this was intentional or a mistake but you said "nids". If we are counting allied armies as well then BA have Castellans, Imperial Guard, Celestine, and ton of great stuff.


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So basically, there is a ton of options to deal with him cult ambushing in on your characters. Ambushing him may not yet even be the best way to play a character who requires such precision - we'll have to wait and see. Let's at least do that before making these extreme declarations, yes?

I agree 100%.


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Right now characters are just a little too untouchable for the effects they provide to nearby units, and as far as I'm concerned, the more difficult decisions a player has to make, the better the game is for it.

That is a good point.


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They also seem to be great at nerfing, if they want to nerf something the unit is dead. It is never fixed, it is always unusable. If they don't want to nerf something, then we get something like the dark reapers. Changed four or five times, but still taken by eldar.

Depends on what type of Eldar you run. If you are running Ynnari then they are probably still taken as you can effectively double their worth with Word of the Phoenix. For more standard Eldar they are good, but huge point sink so you may or may not get your points back.

Which is why I think they need to change Ynnari drastically. They are just too effective of a force multiplier to be used as something to balance against.


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The amount of Chicken Little hysteria here is nuts. Even for dakka. We have no idea how Cult Ambush will work. Added to that we have people complaining in one thread that the game lacks depth and then people here complaining that a hypothetical single model is going to destroy their armies single (triple?) handed. For goodness sake, there are umpteen ways to protect characters.

I know in fiction gunslingers tend to become legends in their own right. Apparently the gunslinger for GSC became a legend without ever touching the table.


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Don't most armys have bodyguard units of some kinds? If the Kelermorph does become strong, it's not as if there isn't counters besides screening.

As someone who has tried to run specialized character hunters I can attest to the fact that bodyguards are a thing and usually ruin whatever machinations I had in mind. So at this point I usually just don't do character hunting unless the enemy maneuvered badly and left his characters exposed. Even then you'll just get heroic intervention and all that crap and you've managed to kill a bodyguard or two and then lose your precious character hunter.

Woah a lot of crying over a 'strong' looking option for GSC, which fits their theme very well in my eyes.

Strong output, short range, about as tough as wet paper once you land the hit on him.. Yep it seems pretty par for course for them. Nothing breaking the army theme. Oh his guns are better than a lot of other options in the 'fluff'? Eh maybe it's outlined in the book, maybe it shoots charged bullets from the hivemind, or he's just that damn skilled with his reflexes, like the rest of you I don't know, but I will wait until I get my greedy little talons/claws on the codex before I decry the fluff implications.

He can ambush yes. He has good shooting vs characters, yes. He also gives GSC a good option in a unique way with clear downsides of his short range and all or nothing nature. If he fails to kill his target, or even if he DOES he is well within range to be charged/blown into oblivion because last I checked virtually nothing in the GSC codex can stand up to anywhere near the amount of firepower loaded into this edition.

And for everyone crying his pistols strength break the fluff/ immersion. 40k is inconsistent as hell. That is a large part of the attraction, anything is possible. ANYTHING! (except sanguinis coming back, sorry BA!)

except sanguinis coming back, sorry BA!

Never say never.

 Eldarsif wrote:

except sanguinis coming back, sorry BA!

Never say never.

Haha, the Mac daddy OG slamguinius returning to the fray!

Not sure if this was intentional or a mistake but you said "nids". If we are counting allied armies as well then BA have Castellans, Imperial Guard, Celestine, and ton of great stuff.

I know my english isn't good. What I ment is that if BA cpts get nerfed, then soup players won't use them and non soup BA players are going to have nothing to play with. While the existance of the gunslinger GSC character has a much limited impact on tyranid soup or non soup players. If he is great people will take him, if he is 250pts people won't, but they will take other good stuff.

Depends on what type of Eldar you run. If you are running Ynnari then they are probably still taken as you can effectively double their worth with Word of the Phoenix. For more standard Eldar they are good, but huge point sink so you may or may not get your points back.

Which is why I think they need to change Ynnari drastically. They are just too effective of a force multiplier to be used as something to balance against.

When was the last time GW made eldar bad or at least bottom tier, then? Because from the stories I hear, which maybe false, eldar are always at least very good. It is like non of the rules w40k works on apply to them. People say that if an army is bad, GW then makes it OP and the good armies are mad bad. But it seems to not be the true. And I can't find an explanation to it at all.

but they will take other good stuff.

Not if the rest of the GSC codex is gak. Ie. if the GW gods are capricious the GSC codex could just as well end up as BA: Xenos with one good unit(or not).


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When was the last time GW made eldar bad or at least bottom tier, then? Because from the stories I hear, which maybe false, eldar are always at least very good. It is like non of the rules w40k works on apply to them. People say that if an army is bad, GW then makes it OP and the good armies are mad bad. But it seems to not be the true. And I can't find an explanation to it at all.

There was a time in 5th that Eldar were far from top tier. Basically the only builds were ton of War Walkers or a Seer Council on jetbikes(which all had to be kitbashed as the model did not exist for them) and at the end of 5th you saw some people make do with Footdar. Ton of other codexes were top tier then with Matt Ward's Grey Knight codex probably being quite high ranking at the time along with Necrons.

The truth is that the balancing for GW is pretty random with things going up and down willy nilly. In short there is no method to the madness. Craftworlds have just been lucky in escaping a doomed fate, but my guess is that the varied range that allows for various degrees of combat tends to protect it from any wild swings in balance. However, it is good to keep in mind that all top tier Eldar units have received heavy nerfs over time, whether it be Starcannons, Scatterbikes, or wraithknights. You don't see these things on the table often, but they used to dominate the game at the time. As someone who has collected Eldar for a long time I can say that their line is very fickle and requires you to own quite a few of each and every unit if you want to be competitive or stand a chance.

To some extent I think Eldar benefit from being sufficiently varied that they have a good pick whatever the current meta (either base rules of 40k, or what people are playing).

Really though this is a function of points. The special rules made Scatbikes and Wraithknights good in 7th - but if they had cost considerably more that wouldn't have mattered. Same for Starcannon spam, then the Falcon being broken, then after the 5th ed blip Wave Serpent spam.

You occasionally see people say otherwise - but there is nothing inherently wrong with the GK codex - it might be bit dull, but if everything was suddenly half the points it is now GK would walk every game. The issue is that everything is too expensive.

Anyway not totally the right thread, but kind of sad the female Magus is just a Magus. Its nice to avoid duplicate models if you want to run 2 (someone reading this with 3 copies of the old HQ set looks sad) I guess but meh.

 Eldarsif wrote:
Ah, so like Smash Captains.

I agree, Smash Captains should be refactored.

You mean, guys who cost a lot of points, have standard wargear of their faction, instead of completely broken gak, who eat warlord traits, relic slots, and tons of CP for breakfast in order to be any effective, and then can still fail on poor dice roll, instead of being plug and play cheap unit deleter that just needs to show up within 12 inches to be good to go?

Yeah, these two things are totally comparable!

Though, I suppose you do have a point - if Kelly Sue is costed like BA captain and requires as many CP to work, he would be pretty OK, don't you think?

 Eldarsif wrote:
I know in fiction gunslingers tend to become legends in their own right. Apparently the gunslinger for GSC became a legend without ever touching the table.

Well, gee, I have no idea why someone who can outshoot and outdamage say Roboute Guilliman and his relic heavy bolter with trivial ease using some homemade junk for tiny fraction of the price might be something people don't like, all while making supposed tactical genius look like chump who can't even identify enemy officers and has to take potshots at random. Maybe it's the model's paint job?

Maybe characters are a problem, and need a solution. But, that solution could be something even remotely realistic, not immersion breaking nonsense better than whole squads of most elite SM like Sternguard or DW vets for small % of the price. For one, it makes you wonder why the hell Tyranids even bother with worthless gants or even warriors when they could breed this gant-sized guy instead and have a platoon of those kill whole SM chapters with no effort whatsoever.

As someone who has tried to run specialized character hunters I can attest to the fact that bodyguards are a thing and usually ruin whatever machinations I had in mind. So at this point I usually just don't do character hunting unless the enemy maneuvered badly and left his characters exposed. Even then you'll just get heroic intervention and all that crap and you've managed to kill a bodyguard or two and then lose your precious character hunter.

Do kindly look at the cost of Primaris bodyguards and consider this guy makes their 2+/3++ completely worthless as they need to eat MW to intercept anything. If he manages to kill just two of them he already took points cost of typical GSC character back, if four, which is not hard, he would need to cost more than BA captain to not make his points back and then some. You know not every army has access to broken xeno stuff like Tau cheap as peanuts drone wound erasers? If this guy manages to always take at least his points back, then he is complete no-brainer even if he doesn't kill characters, and that's without even considering GSC can simply take second one (or that bike sniper) to kill character once bodyguard are gone...

The only problem I see with this guy is that if his guns where a bunch of S3 Ap0 1D weapons what kind of rules he could need to be able to kill characters and not become a machinegun for killing hordes.

There aren't to many bodyguard units:

Chaos has the terminators and they are only DG.

Tyranids have hiveguard i belive.

Imperium has the most of these i belive.

Chaos however needs a big ammount of charachters generally and has a low ammount of bodyguards, so to say this won't cause any issues is also a wrong statement.

I've read the rules for this guy and as many have said find them a bit much, so I decided to try and write down why I think that and others clearly don't.

I'm a long time 40K player and and have enjoyed the fluff and rules of the game for nearly 30 years.

I have a huge Imperial army with alot of blood angels and parts of most Imperial forces.

I also have lots of chaos with a heavy focus on Daemons.

I like the genestealer cults, great looking model range and interesting way of playing that is distinctly different to other armies. Tyranids were one of my first armies and lent very heavily on genestealers back then.


Obviously the points cost of this model will define whether he is "OP" or not but regardless of that I still find that his rules annoys me.

In part it is the stats of his pistols, again if they are costed appropriately they are perfectly fair in game terms but they do break my immersion in the game. When a small pistol armed model has the ability to deal such a huge ammount of damage it just doesn't sit right. Most people play this game because they enjoy the fluff, we could use coloured counters or scraps of paper but instead we spend alot of time and money on painting great looking models (the kelermorph looks great btw). The other part is that he has loads additional rules tacked on, does he really need to double the shots of his three rapid firing pistols?
I may well be my long ingrained bias towards spacemarines that has been build up over the years but I don't think pistols picked up on an mining planet should be far more powerful than specifically designed weapons of war. I feel similar when playing against my friends acolyte hybrids and their mining equipment seems far more effective and better suited to combat than most standard melee weapons.

I think this feeling of being hard done by comes down to rules creep and jealousy on my part.

Not that the rules are unfair, if costed correctly everything can be fair but I think it comes from the fact that I play (and have for many years) two of the original factions in 40K and these are now seen as standard. Marines are the baseline of 40K and imperial equipment is seen as the starting point of basic weapon stats.
When new factions and models are released GW obviously has to give them things that make them stand out from the older stuff and this is often done with fancy equipment and most often lots of additional rules.

I think it is these rules which likely fuels my feelings of jealousy and saying that they are a bit much, its mainly down to the fact that most of my armies (sm in particular) are a little more bland by comparison, our weapons are often just flat stat lines and characters have less abilities to play with and I've spent a great deal of time reading about how these are the mightiest of heroes.. They are not worse in game play as other things balance them but certainly are often less striking and interesting - thus jealousy.

Just my point of view :-)

 Galas wrote:
The only problem I see with this guy is that if his guns where a bunch of S3 Ap0 1D weapons what kind of rules he could need to be able to kill characters and not become a machinegun for killing hordes.

Something that lets him deal MW to characters specifically, for example.