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I’ve picked up my Keller today, and there’s several fluff justifications for why he’s so strong - firstly he has a bullet-time ability thanks to a bio-engineered “cocktail of supersensory stimilulants” which let him “pick out individual grains of sand drifting though the air” whilst dodging lightning from a techpriest. Secondly, acolyte hybrids (of which the Keller is one) are confirmed to have greatly enhanced lifespans compared to humans. Thirdly, his guns fire depleted tarantrium bullets which are made through the willing sacrifice of dozens of workers using “ionised residue gathered from the munitions factories and extractor pits”. So essential he has macguffin bullets that are really hard to make.

C4790M wrote:
I’ve picked up my Keller today, and there’s several fluff justifications for why he’s so strong - firstly he has a bullet-time ability thanks to a bio-engineered “cocktail of supersensory stimilulants” which let him “pick out individual grains of sand drifting though the air” whilst dodging lightning from a techpriest. Secondly, acolyte hybrids (of which the Keller is one) are confirmed to have greatly enhanced lifespans compared to humans. Thirdly, his guns fire depleted tarantrium bullets which are made through the willing sacrifice of dozens of workers using “ionised residue gathered from the munitions factories and extractor pits”. So essential he has macguffin bullets that are really hard to make.

So, nothing that justifies imo that his pistols are S4.
Great.

He has a long lifespan, like yarrick with rejuv? Yarrick also costs more then double of him and comes not close to the same damage output. Straken? ain't got gak on that dude.
He outperforms and instagibs nearly all SM and CSM charachters that are neither a DP or in terminator armor and even those begin to gak bricks when the relic pistol get's involved. Not to mention he has a double shooting stratagem handy on top of his double shooting, YAAAAAYYYYYY, which he allready can abuse for a free reroll 1's aura if chaff is involved, so scrrening itself is not even close to usefull against him, forcing all of these charachters to hide.

Yeah no, what a poster before me said, if it were an homebrew charachter it would be regarded as a marry sue.

His particular shooting skills and reflexes seem to be accounted for rather well in his special abilities, with him being able to single out Characters in a crowd, firing three weapons at the same time and generating additional hits doing so.

The weapons profile is still wildly out of place and inconsistent with established lore and other weapon profiles. It looks to me like GW wanted to give him rules that make him awesome on the table, but didnt't really know how to do it with GSC grade equipment, so they pulled a cheap one by giving him magic guns and putting him ad an absurdly low point cost.

Maybe it indicates that I have become a rules>>>>>fluff kind of guy now, but I don't get this issue with this guns.

Are you saying if GW had called his pistols "micro-mining laser blasters", and added plasma-style ribs to them that they could paint with glowing patterns, you'd have gone "well that's fine then."

Tyel wrote:
Maybe it indicates that I have become a rules>>>>>fluff kind of guy now, but I don't get this issue with this guns.

Are you saying if GW had called his pistols "micro-mining laser blasters", and added plasma-style ribs to them that they could paint with glowing patterns, you'd have gone "well that's fine then."

Probably not fine if they weren't priced accordingly, but better than what we've got now? Definitely. It's not even a deal breaker - it's just lazy and I'd expect more from people who make their living designing these things and fleshing out the setting.

Tyel wrote:
Maybe it indicates that I have become a rules>>>>>fluff kind of guy now, but I don't get this issue with this guns.

Are you saying if GW had called his pistols "micro-mining laser blasters", and added plasma-style ribs to them that they could paint with glowing patterns, you'd have gone "well that's fine then."

It wouldn't be wrong or bad, if other factions didn't get their rules delivered in nerfed form or over priced based on fluff. Kind of a can't have a balanced gaming system, when some classes are hand tailored with clearly design spending a lot of time and thought in their mechanics and how they should work, and others being a copy past of work in progress index books.

There is nothing wrong with units being good, save for some super rare times when a unit is really too good or warps the meta by its existance, in fact I am on the stance that book should be jam packed with good options to pick from. The more the better. But some stuff just makes no sense at all. Some of the GSC characters have more extra rules, then half the line up in marine books. The different cult actually feel different, the stratagams feel as if made for GSC. Why can't other armies get the same treatment or at least expect it?

Tyel wrote:
Maybe it indicates that I have become a rules>>>>>fluff kind of guy now, but I don't get this issue with this guns.

Are you saying if GW had called his pistols "micro-mining laser blasters", and added plasma-style ribs to them that they could paint with glowing patterns, you'd have gone "well that's fine then."

Yea I don't care about the fluff of them, either. They could fix the strength of the model by dropping them to D1 though.

Tyel wrote:
Maybe it indicates that I have become a rules>>>>>fluff kind of guy now, but I don't get this issue with this guns.

Are you saying if GW had called his pistols "micro-mining laser blasters", and added plasma-style ribs to them that they could paint with glowing patterns, you'd have gone "well that's fine then."

It's two separate issues for me.

Firstly the fluff, I play this game because I like the setting, that's what got me into the game. A snub pistol is basically a gun like we make today, sure he's got some fancy ammo but the setting tells us that snub pistols are utter garbage so seeing this one pop up as being the best pistol in the game is immersion breaking, if it was called a "plasma burst pistol or a Psy-charged hand cannon" I wouldn't have any issues with it fluff wise. They are the ones who set out the rules of the setting and should be expected to follow them unless they have good reason not to. These snub pistols being so good doesn't do any harm to the balance of the game it just annoys people (obviously I'm not the only one) who think the issue could have been pretty simply avoided by giving them a different name.

People saying that the rules don't have to represent the fluff is true to a degree but they should at least try, that's kind of the whole point of having a game system to run games set in a particular fictional universe.

Rules wise obviously pistols can have the stats his does, although they are likely the best non relic pistols we have see to date, but being on a character that is so cheap and gets them for free is the rules issue. Obvious its built into his cost but I feel like they have costed out all of his abilities individually and not given consideration to how they work together. This often happens with units comboing together to make an effect more powerful than expected for their cost but to have that on a single model that's abilities so obviously enhance each other is a little worrying.
(Multiple shots pistols are usually very weak and plasma is only dam2 with gets hot, melta has severe range issues)

Obviously very few games have been played with the model so far and he could turn out to be just pretty good for reasons that have not been forseen but most people who post on forums like this have been playing the game for some time and have likey logged hundreds of hours of game play. I know I have.
This experience gives me the ability to judge the merits of a model by looking at its datasheet and comparing what I expect it to be able to do in a game to its points cost. I can work out its effectiveness against different unit types, I can assess it in relation to other models with a similar role or price point.

Sure game play experience helps with this assessment but I don't think anyone is under the illusion that this model is going to be extremely powerful for his points. Game breaking? no I don't think so. Even if he is costed at half what he should be that's only giving you a couple of a % points boost on a 2000pt army which isn't really a big deal but is just annoying to see.

I suspect those £40 killteam sets featuring this guy are selling out fast, so we'll soon see what they are like on the tabletop I'm sure.

C4790M wrote:
I’ve picked up my Keller today, and there’s several fluff justifications for why he’s so strong - firstly he has a bullet-time ability thanks to a bio-engineered “cocktail of supersensory stimilulants” which let him “pick out individual grains of sand drifting though the air” whilst dodging lightning from a techpriest. Secondly, acolyte hybrids (of which the Keller is one) are confirmed to have greatly enhanced lifespans compared to humans. Thirdly, his guns fire depleted tarantrium bullets which are made through the willing sacrifice of dozens of workers using “ionised residue gathered from the munitions factories and extractor pits”. So essential he has macguffin bullets that are really hard to make.

I give you Cypher. 10000 years of expiriance,bio modified, armed with relics of golden age. So exeptionless that he was writen in fluff to be so fast with his plasma gun, that abadon the uber champion of chaos buffed to be on pair with greater demons and primarchs could not see when Cypher pulled his plasma pistol and shot one of his termintors, which was a again a powerful champion of chaos in his own right. Cypher rules are crap.

As special ammo goes. GK use ammo buffed with the residue from the emperors throne room. In fluff they are destructive like no other ammo same size, and get even more powerful against psykers, demons, sorceres. The bolts themself can be made even stronger if the shoter focuses his power in to the weapon. Rules do not equal fluff. But making some random worker rebel, better armed and more efficient then a trained human super soldider is not logical, and by logic I mean the rules that govern w40k. It is a strickt change to fluff just to put in a new model.

Honestly it doesn't take a wiz to realize he breaks the game somewhat on a math level too.

Even if we put aside the reroll granted once you kill something as technically you shoot the pistols one at a time.
And you put aside any support elements, stratagems, the relic and whatnot that can make him EVEN WORSE.

The result are staggering.
He will have a 70.2% to deal 2*2 wounds to MeQ, and 41% to do 3*2 wounds to MeQ.
Now, MeQ are not exactly top tier, but the fact is that this 60 point dude will have a 70% to take out 2 intercessors on his drop (over half his price), and 40% to take down 3 (almost his price)
But if you got some helblasters, devs and whatnot, 2 kills already put you above your price. 3 kills puts you over 150% your price.
And if he gets a character? a 4 wounds dude like a libby or apoth is dead 70% of the time.

As I said, MeQ are hardly shining already-but this just hammers them down to oblivion on its own.

For perspective, he's got 80.7%/46.2% to kill 1 or 2 TeQ on the drop. same goes for bikers and other T5-7s with a 3+ doing 2/4 wounds at 80.7%/46.2%.
Against GeQ statlines, he's 63.6% likely to kill 5 dudes with 2 wounds each (so, 5 HWT if you got line the shots)
There is basically no target he's BAD against other than full-blown T8 monstrosities.


From the mere perspective of mulching stuff on the drop, he's doing enough damage that if you put a single "heavy weapon" type unit in the backline, he's more likely than not killing more than enough to earn his pay on the very moment he drops-and if not quickly cleared, he can easily rank 5 times his price over a game.
Then you pile up the fact he provides an aura, and can sometimes pull off assassinations of key models-and that besides padding every single valuable unit you've got with infinite chaff there is NOTHING you can do about it, but for the player running him he is no investment to take as he's just that cheap?

Yea, he's breaking stuff. not even by BEING there, but by the fact he COULD be there, he further and heavily enforces the "everything must be insanely durable, or useless chaff" meta.
Because as long something this cheap, and this lethal is around-you can't really play any infantry-based heavy support teams, 2W models suck even more then they already do, characters that do not stick directly to a chaff line are non-viable, etc.

He enforces every issue with the current meta even further, and killing any opportunity to break out of the stagnation of "chaff and knights" style armies.

An assassin type character who is also perfectly good at just gunning down goons, and provides an aura on top of it-is very much not healthy for the game.


He's not only obviously too strong, he's in poor taste but in flavor and in mechanics. this one unit, is a design flop.
He should have had D1 pistols, because even then he'd still be pretty darn impressive.

Yeah, at the end of the day I really do not think it's Keller that's going to be stopping anyone from breaking out of the 'chaff and knights' paradigm.

Take this for example:

Let's say there was a new named character released for the guard who was a special company commander identical in stats in every way, except that he let you take his bodyguard, which was a unit of imperial guardsmen who only cost 10 points.

You could look at those Guardsmen and go "holy crap, this is the highest value unit in the entire game! They're an auto-include! They make their points back effortlessly! They're an insult to game balance!"

You'd be right on all counts. But, that unit and its existence would make absolutely no impact on the competitive meta of the game, besides making guard armies the most microscopic fraction stronger. Nobody would change their list to plan for the one unit of guardsmen at 10 points. nobody would change their gameplan.

Keller is a 60 point suicide model who unlike other suicide models like marbo/lictors/assassin/whatever, actually reliably makes his points back on the drop. He's obviously undercosted for what he does, and so he is very reliable at getting that 100% points return trade for his inevitable instant death (and let's be realistic....he's pretty much always going to die unless his opponent's army is totally crippled in the GSC alpha strike. Him surviving to turn 2 is a "win more" situation). If his pistols were D1, he'd be just as bad as Marbo/Assassins/Lictors/Whatever, and so just like all of them he'd pretty much never be included, and the standard game of herohammer would continue with no real counters. A platoon commander would still be far more durable than a 12-wound giant tyranid monster because people get very sensitive about something that can actually remove their favorite heroes. Why do you think nearly every sniper unit in the game takes an average of 2-3 headshots to kill a 30 point guard commander?

Keller's design was obviously Game Design First, Fluff Second. Design his offensive output so he could reliably kill a character on the drop so that he works as a game piece. If he was a gunslinger guy with three regular S3 AP- D1 stub pistols, the amount of special rules they'd have to stack on him to make him ever capable of even wounding a character would need to be so ludicrous it wouldn't even be funny.

I don't think the character archetype of the "closerange pistol-wielding character assassin" works with proper rules for 60pts. I think the best way forward is to make him functional rules-wise (able to reasonably down a character maybe with CP expenditure on the drop) but reasonable price wise, somewhere around 90-100pts.

the_scotsman wrote:


You'd be right on all counts. But, that unit and its existence would make absolutely no impact on the competitive meta of the game,

That may be true, but breaking/shifting the meta is not the only relevant criterion when considering how well a unit is designed. If something is powerful enough to shift the meta, than that's just a subcategory of "too strong".

Kelermorph might not be that, but it's still in the category of "too strong" and possibly in the subcategory "much too strong"


Making his Pistols D1 could have made him useless, but it's not like GW can freely invent special rules to make him worth his points in the niche they've chosen for him. It's just that they are not very good at this thing.

If he was a gunslinger guy with three regular S3 AP- D1 stub pistols, the amount of special rules they'd have to stack on him to make him ever capable of even wounding a character would need to be so ludicrous it wouldn't even be funny.

If he had S3 AP- D1 he'd be around 25 points at best if he had the existing rules(shoot more and inspire).

There is currently a problem with characters in the game. Either they have to be able to do a lot of burst damage(Kelermorph, Smash Captain) or they must be good at boosting considerably(Roboute, Azrael). If those units can't do that then most people will eschew them for something worthwhile as a slot wasted is one slot closer to losing.

I don't know that he's going to be so easy to use.

Can't readily deploy within 9" of the enemy. Only has short ranged pistols. Without forethought, he may struggle to get to any 'worth it' targets - especially against an opponent that knows to keep an eye out for him.

He's soft, squishy and fragile, so is going to take finesse to be effective against characters.

Me? I think he's an excellent objective sweeper. Let him open up, do some damage. Boost up other incoming firepower, and let something else claim the objective after an assault. And that is where I think he'll be the real threat. Characters? I'll use the Assassin and the Biker Chick. Nobble them from further away.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I don't know that he's going to be so easy to use.

Can't readily deploy within 9" of the enemy. Only has short ranged pistols. Without forethought, he may struggle to get to any 'worth it' targets - especially against an opponent that knows to keep an eye out for him.

He's soft, squishy and fragile, so is going to take finesse to be effective against characters.

Me? I think he's an excellent objective sweeper. Let him open up, do some damage. Boost up other incoming firepower, and let something else claim the objective after an assault. And that is where I think he'll be the real threat. Characters? I'll use the Assassin and the Biker Chick. Nobble them from further away.

If he, and he can, casually wipes off a Infantry squad of guardsmen he has 2/3rds of his points back and now generates an aura for his fellows.

I can't see any situation where he can't make his points back except you throw him into a bunch of grots and even THEN he still dent's the chaff and makes protected units now attackable via forcing open the screens.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Eldarsif wrote:

If he was a gunslinger guy with three regular S3 AP- D1 stub pistols, the amount of special rules they'd have to stack on him to make him ever capable of even wounding a character would need to be so ludicrous it wouldn't even be funny.

If he had S3 AP- D1 he'd be around 25 points at best if he had the existing rules(shoot more and inspire).

There is currently a problem with characters in the game. Either they have to be able to do a lot of burst damage(Kelermorph, Smash Captain) or they must be good at boosting considerably(Roboute, Azrael). If those units can't do that then most people will eschew them for something worthwhile as a slot wasted is one slot closer to losing.

You forgot good at killing elite targets, e.g. Smashcaptain.

You forgot good at killing elite targets, e.g. Smashcaptain.

I thought that was heavily implied with "good at burst damage"?

You know, in terms of the Meta....what if GSC's various ways to knobble characters is a deliberate decision by GW, rather than some design oversight?

If they can reliably pick off enemy characters, that changes the meta to some degree. Smashcaptaincy etc is still potent, but now faces a pretty solid counter, making it less of a sure thing, and in theory, less prevalent.

Perhaps SoB/Black Legion (whichever comes next) continues that trend into their book, increasing the chance of coming up against that risk.

Then, use the next Codecies out of the stable to tackle a different 'abuse' of the game.

It's certainly an interesting way of doing things, if I'm right.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Back to the Kelermorph.

I'm definitely taking one, because he's useful and the model is gorgeous. And for 60 poins, why the devil not?

But I don't intend to build my list around him. Instead, he'll just be a roving threat, possibly a very deliberate sacrificial prawn (because there's no prawn better than one your opponent has to deal with then and there) to distract my opponent.

Dunno if peeps have seen the imgur pics, but for a measly 1CP, we can keep our Tactical Objectives secret from our opponents. That appeals to my sense of cunning. Is my Kelermorph moving in to bag a VP, or simply there to make you paranoid, and try to tackle him? Maybe it's both and I'm hedging my bets. Who knows? Not you....

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
You know, in terms of the Meta....what if GSC's various ways to knobble characters is a deliberate decision by GW, rather than some design oversight?

If they can reliably pick off enemy characters, that changes the meta to some degree. Smashcaptaincy etc is still potent, but now faces a pretty solid counter, making it less of a sure thing, and in theory, less prevalent.

Perhaps SoB/Black Legion (whichever comes next) continues that trend into their book, increasing the chance of coming up against that risk.

Then, use the next Codecies out of the stable to tackle a different 'abuse' of the game.

It's certainly an interesting way of doing things, if I'm right.

That's an interesting point you bring up about GW using Keller to shift the meta...

On a side note, even though I probably will never play Kill Teams, I picked up a box of Starn's Disciples yesterday too. Just to good a deal for US$65. =)

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I don't know that he's going to be so easy to use.

Can't readily deploy within 9" of the enemy. Only has short ranged pistols. Without forethought, he may struggle to get to any 'worth it' targets - especially against an opponent that knows to keep an eye out for him.

He's soft, squishy and fragile, so is going to take finesse to be effective against characters.

Me? I think he's an excellent objective sweeper. Let him open up, do some damage. Boost up other incoming firepower, and let something else claim the objective after an assault. And that is where I think he'll be the real threat. Characters? I'll use the Assassin and the Biker Chick. Nobble them from further away.

No, it really isn't the case.

Its very VERY easy to catch a "worth it" target, because almost everything in the game is worth it considering his low cost and high damage output.
he's soft, squishy and fragile-in an army that can shove a ton of it's own chaff at you to cover him-so even the fact he "instantly dies" is very much not a guarantee. a keler living to fight another round or two isn't even going to be rare if you are not going balls-deep with him on a solo mission.


The problem with the keler is not that he's too good at assassinating stuff (though he might also be that, remains to be seen), its that he's too good against ANYTHING you throw him at.
Any backline unit is a viable target, any character not covered in heavy amounts of wrapping is a viable target, heck even vehicles are viable targets given that he's better than 2 BS3 lascannons against them.

The only thing he wont turn Swiss is chaff so cheap it really doesn't care about casualties-but if you used your keler against THAT, then you got nobody else to blame, as given the wide array of good targets not finding a single one is practically a challenge.
And then he's still boosting his own chaff to better take out the enemy chaff.


If the goal was to make an assassin-they failed. because he's not an assassin-he murders anything and everything, and piles up being a support character on top of it.


Sure, its good that you got stuff you can master and then they are really good to set the good players apart from the bad.
But a keler is amazing even in the hands of a totally incompetent player by sheer numbers, and then he piles up all the opportunity for pros to milk far far more on top of that with skilled use.

 Eldarsif wrote:

You forgot good at killing elite targets, e.g. Smashcaptain.

I thought that was heavily implied with "good at burst damage"?

Not really, the damage smashcaptain does is more specifically good against multi wound models. Not so much against chaff.

He seems too cheap for sure.

I wonder if they could've fixed his chaff clearing abilities by giving him the extra shots only if he fires at a character. Call it legendary duelist or whatever. Personally I don't care about the fact that his guns are way too good to be called stub-guns, but seeing how many people that irks it probably would've been better to call them master crafted hand cannons or something.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Eldarsif wrote:

You forgot good at killing elite targets, e.g. Smashcaptain.

I thought that was heavily implied with "good at burst damage"?

Not really, the damage smashcaptain does is more specifically good against multi wound models. Not so much against chaff.

Then you are putting more explicit meaning into the wording "burst damage" that I never stated.


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I wonder if they could've fixed his chaff clearing abilities by giving him the extra shots only if he fires at a character.

Good point. What is needed is a bit of designer's commentary on what they were thinking when they designed him. The problem with new units that are exceptional is that one never knows what the intended use was for these units.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I don't know that he's going to be so easy to use.

Can't readily deploy within 9" of the enemy. Only has short ranged pistols. Without forethought, he may struggle to get to any 'worth it' targets - especially against an opponent that knows to keep an eye out for him.

He's soft, squishy and fragile, so is going to take finesse to be effective against characters.

Me? I think he's an excellent objective sweeper. Let him open up, do some damage. Boost up other incoming firepower, and let something else claim the objective after an assault. And that is where I think he'll be the real threat. Characters? I'll use the Assassin and the Biker Chick. Nobble them from further away.

If he, and he can, casually wipes off a Infantry squad of guardsmen he has 2/3rds of his points back and now generates an aura for his fellows.

I can't see any situation where he can't make his points back except you throw him into a bunch of grots and even THEN he still dent's the chaff and makes protected units now attackable via forcing open the screens.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Eldarsif wrote:

If he was a gunslinger guy with three regular S3 AP- D1 stub pistols, the amount of special rules they'd have to stack on him to make him ever capable of even wounding a character would need to be so ludicrous it wouldn't even be funny.

If he had S3 AP- D1 he'd be around 25 points at best if he had the existing rules(shoot more and inspire).

There is currently a problem with characters in the game. Either they have to be able to do a lot of burst damage(Kelermorph, Smash Captain) or they must be good at boosting considerably(Roboute, Azrael). If those units can't do that then most people will eschew them for something worthwhile as a slot wasted is one slot closer to losing.

You forgot good at killing elite targets, e.g. Smashcaptain.

I'm playing admech, eldar, grey knights, deathwatch, blood angels, dark angels, space wolves, or space marines, and I use my 2cp "shoot you when you deep strike" strat to explode him when he arrives. Or I'm playing orks and I use grot shields.

If he has to pay 3+ Cp to make his points back, I'd call that pretty solidly not worth for a 60pt unit. (3cp to vect that stratagem or not die).

Also, another scenario I can think of is "I'm playing a competitively-built drukhari list, nurgle daemon focused chaos list or imperium soup list, pretty much everything present in today's competitive meta, and he has no good target to hunt"

the_scotsman wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I don't know that he's going to be so easy to use.

Can't readily deploy within 9" of the enemy. Only has short ranged pistols. Without forethought, he may struggle to get to any 'worth it' targets - especially against an opponent that knows to keep an eye out for him.

He's soft, squishy and fragile, so is going to take finesse to be effective against characters.

Me? I think he's an excellent objective sweeper. Let him open up, do some damage. Boost up other incoming firepower, and let something else claim the objective after an assault. And that is where I think he'll be the real threat. Characters? I'll use the Assassin and the Biker Chick. Nobble them from further away.

If he, and he can, casually wipes off a Infantry squad of guardsmen he has 2/3rds of his points back and now generates an aura for his fellows.

I can't see any situation where he can't make his points back except you throw him into a bunch of grots and even THEN he still dent's the chaff and makes protected units now attackable via forcing open the screens.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Eldarsif wrote:

If he was a gunslinger guy with three regular S3 AP- D1 stub pistols, the amount of special rules they'd have to stack on him to make him ever capable of even wounding a character would need to be so ludicrous it wouldn't even be funny.

If he had S3 AP- D1 he'd be around 25 points at best if he had the existing rules(shoot more and inspire).

There is currently a problem with characters in the game. Either they have to be able to do a lot of burst damage(Kelermorph, Smash Captain) or they must be good at boosting considerably(Roboute, Azrael). If those units can't do that then most people will eschew them for something worthwhile as a slot wasted is one slot closer to losing.

You forgot good at killing elite targets, e.g. Smashcaptain.

I'm playing admech, eldar, grey knights, deathwatch, blood angels, dark angels, space wolves, or space marines, and I use my 2cp "shoot you when you deep strike" strat to explode him when he arrives. Or I'm playing orks and I use grot shields.

If he has to pay 3+ Cp to make his points back, I'd call that pretty solidly not worth for a 60pt unit. (3cp to vect that stratagem or not die).

Also, another scenario I can think of is "I'm playing a competitively-built drukhari list, nurgle daemon focused chaos list or imperium soup list, pretty much everything present in today's competitive meta, and he has no good target to hunt"

Yeah, because Genestealer Cults are going to have soooooo many issues when it comes to generating CP as everything in the army is expensive and they can't cheaply fill in any of their FOC slots.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I don't know that he's going to be so easy to use.

Can't readily deploy within 9" of the enemy. Only has short ranged pistols. Without forethought, he may struggle to get to any 'worth it' targets - especially against an opponent that knows to keep an eye out for him.

He's soft, squishy and fragile, so is going to take finesse to be effective against characters.

Me? I think he's an excellent objective sweeper. Let him open up, do some damage. Boost up other incoming firepower, and let something else claim the objective after an assault. And that is where I think he'll be the real threat. Characters? I'll use the Assassin and the Biker Chick. Nobble them from further away.

If he, and he can, casually wipes off a Infantry squad of guardsmen he has 2/3rds of his points back and now generates an aura for his fellows.

I can't see any situation where he can't make his points back except you throw him into a bunch of grots and even THEN he still dent's the chaff and makes protected units now attackable via forcing open the screens.


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 Eldarsif wrote:

If he was a gunslinger guy with three regular S3 AP- D1 stub pistols, the amount of special rules they'd have to stack on him to make him ever capable of even wounding a character would need to be so ludicrous it wouldn't even be funny.

If he had S3 AP- D1 he'd be around 25 points at best if he had the existing rules(shoot more and inspire).

There is currently a problem with characters in the game. Either they have to be able to do a lot of burst damage(Kelermorph, Smash Captain) or they must be good at boosting considerably(Roboute, Azrael). If those units can't do that then most people will eschew them for something worthwhile as a slot wasted is one slot closer to losing.

You forgot good at killing elite targets, e.g. Smashcaptain.

I'm playing admech, eldar, grey knights, deathwatch, blood angels, dark angels, space wolves, or space marines, and I use my 2cp "shoot you when you deep strike" strat to explode him when he arrives. Or I'm playing orks and I use grot shields.

If he has to pay 3+ Cp to make his points back, I'd call that pretty solidly not worth for a 60pt unit. (3cp to vect that stratagem or not die).

Also, another scenario I can think of is "I'm playing a competitively-built drukhari list, nurgle daemon focused chaos list or imperium soup list, pretty much everything present in today's competitive meta, and he has no good target to hunt"

Yeah, because Genestealer Cults are going to have soooooo many issues when it comes to generating CP as everything in the army is expensive and they can't cheaply fill in any of their FOC slots.

If First Rank Fire, Second Rank Fire was a 2cp stratagem I don't think it'd get used even if you could use it to make 40 points back on your guard squad instantly. 2cp to get close enough to hit a character behind a screen, 3cp to shoot twice, and 3cp to vect a stratagem is a really inefficient use of Cp even if you have 20 and it makes you back 120 points. In a different list I can use those 8cp to make a smashcaptain return 500% of his points value vs a knight.

Not Online!!! wrote:So, nothing that justifies imo that his pistols are S4.
Great.

BertBert wrote:The weapons profile is still wildly out of place and inconsistent with established lore and other weapon profiles.

Step 1: Chamber a pistol in the same caliber fired by a heavy stubber. GSC have tons of those. That makes a S4 gun.

Step 2: Hand-load consecrated grimdark magic bullets. That makes D2.

Step 3: There is no step 3. That is the entire sequence of logic needed to justify the statline. It's a high-caliber pistol with special bullets. It's the same strength as the bolt pistol carried by every podunk officer in the Imperium, but with D2 because it's a master-crafted weapon with supernatural ammunition wielded by an inhumanly good marksman. What about that is inconsistent with the rest of the game?

Is this one of those 'xenos shouldn't ever have better stuff than my marines' things? Like I get how the fact that he has three of them and special rules to allow him to delete a character can be a balance concern, but complaining about pistols being S4? Really?

Except Imperial Guard would be able to use it if they wanted every phase as they can comfortably fill up a Brigade with no trash units and a Battalion on top of it. Also don't forget they have allies that want to use their CP whereas Cults don't have that many ally options.

So who cares if they spend 2CP to make sure the character is dead? They already have at minimum 15CP.

catbarf wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:So, nothing that justifies imo that his pistols are S4.
Great.

BertBert wrote:The weapons profile is still wildly out of place and inconsistent with established lore and other weapon profiles.

Step 1: Chamber a pistol in the same caliber fired by a heavy stubber. GSC have tons of those. That makes a S4 gun.

Step 2: Hand-load consecrated grimdark magic bullets. That makes D2.

Step 3: There is no step 3. That is the entire sequence of logic needed to justify the statline. It's a high-caliber pistol with special bullets. It's the same strength as the bolt pistol carried by every podunk officer in the Imperium, but with D2 because it's a master-crafted weapon with supernatural ammunition wielded by an inhumanly good marksman. What about that is inconsistent with the rest of the game?

Is this one of those 'xenos shouldn't ever have better stuff than my marines' things? Like I get how the fact that he has three of them and special rules to allow him to delete a character can be a balance concern, but complaining about pistols being S4? Really?

No, its not 'xenos shouldn't ever have better stuff than my marines' thing. ffs I play tau, our base gun puts the bolter to shame.

But a STANDARD ISSUE piece of gear belonging to a nobody shouldn't be IDENTICAL to a chapter-spesific relic, who is based of a superior weapon to begin with.

catbarf wrote:

...

Step 4: Add some more magic to make what is basically a revolver Pistol 2

Step 5: Sprinkle a bit of fairy dust on the Heavy Stubber caliber rounds to make them -1 AP

You can explain away anything if you really want, but that's not a good excuse. It's also not the main issue about the Kelermorph, just a minor nitpick, really.

 BoomWolf wrote:

catbarf wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:So, nothing that justifies imo that his pistols are S4.
Great.

BertBert wrote:The weapons profile is still wildly out of place and inconsistent with established lore and other weapon profiles.

Step 1: Chamber a pistol in the same caliber fired by a heavy stubber. GSC have tons of those. That makes a S4 gun.

Step 2: Hand-load consecrated grimdark magic bullets. That makes D2.

Step 3: There is no step 3. That is the entire sequence of logic needed to justify the statline. It's a high-caliber pistol with special bullets. It's the same strength as the bolt pistol carried by every podunk officer in the Imperium, but with D2 because it's a master-crafted weapon with supernatural ammunition wielded by an inhumanly good marksman. What about that is inconsistent with the rest of the game?

Is this one of those 'xenos shouldn't ever have better stuff than my marines' things? Like I get how the fact that he has three of them and special rules to allow him to delete a character can be a balance concern, but complaining about pistols being S4? Really?

No, its not 'xenos shouldn't ever have better stuff than my marines' thing. ffs I play tau, our base gun puts the bolter to shame.

But a STANDARD ISSUE piece of gear belonging to a nobody shouldn't be IDENTICAL to a chapter-spesific relic, who is based of a superior weapon to begin with.

So if his name was Jeans Dealer, Named Gunslinging Gene Stealing Hero of the Wild West and his fluff was that he was cloned by the hive-mind so he could appear in each hive generation, and his guns were called mega-bolt space six-shooters (tm games workshop PLC 2019) then you'd be fine with him?