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My attempt to make a Lore Accurate (to the game Boltgun) version of Malum Caedo, Sternguard Veteran.

He did solo 35,000+ and 6 Greater Daemons...

Malum Caedo – Scourge of Graia



DATASHEET

M 12"
T 11
SV 2+/4+
W 30
LD 3+
OC 8


Ranged Weapons

Relic Boltgun

Range: 36"
A: 20
BS: 2+
S: 6
AP: -2
D:2
Assault, Twin-linked, Sustained Hits 3

Melee Weapons

Astartes Chainsword – Strike
A: 6
WS: 2+
S: 16
AP: -4
D: 4

Anti-Monster 4+, Devastating Wounds, Lance, Strikes First

Astartes Chainsword – Sweep
A:12
WS: —
S:10
AP:-3
D: 2

Anti-Infantry 2+, Torrent

Abilities
Core Abilities
Deep Strike
Feel No Pain 4+
Lone Operative
Scouts 6"

Faction Ability: Oath of Moment

Other Abilities

My armor is contempt!
Malum Caedo has a 4+ invulnerable save. The save increases to 3+ if on an objective.

My shield is disgust!
Once per battle round, when an attack successfully wounds him, you may choose to ignore all damage from that attack.

I purge, again!
Every time he destroys an enemy unit, Malum Caedo regains D3+1 lost wounds.

In the Emperor's Name, DIE!
Melee attacks score Critical Hits on unmodified 5+.

You cannot escape the reach of my hatred!
At the start of your Command Phase, Place a Servo-skull token next to an enemy unit. That unit may not benefit from Cover, Lone Operative, or Stealth this turn.

Once the enemy unit is destroyed, you may select a new target during your next Command Phase.

My love for the Imperium is matched only by my hatred of the heretic!" 
Add +1 to Hit and +1 to Wound when targeting:
• Cultists
• Daemons
• Psykers
• Heretic Astartes

Hail to the Emperor, heretic!
All Attacks gain Devastating Wounds, Lethal Hits, Precision when targeting:
• Cultists
• Daemons
• Psykers
• Heretic Astartes

Beg your gods for mercy! I have none!
Enemy units cannot target Malum Caedo with Stratagems.

Keywords
IMPERIUM, ADEPTUS ASTARTES, ULTRAMARINES, STERNGUARD VETERANS, INFANTRY, EPIC HERO, MALUM CAEDO, GRENADES



MISSIONS ON GRAIA

Mission 1:

You cannot escape the reach of my hatred!


You put Malum Caedo on the objective.

Your opponent gets 1,500 points of Chaos (no vehicles)

How it works
• Turn 1: 500 points deploy on his board edge.
• Turn 2: another 500 enter from any table edge.
• Turn 3: 500 points enter via Deep Strike including a Greater Daemon (even if they wouldn't normally have that ability.)

There is one objective is the center of the table.



Mission 2: The Emperor sent me to redeem you! In holy fire!"

Setup
• The board has six objective points, each sealed with a warp glyph.

• At each glyph sits one Greater Daemon (your choice: Bloodthirster, Great Unclean One, Keeper of Secrets, Lord of Change, etc.).

• Malum Caedo must kill all six.

Special rule
Every time he kills one:
• He gains +1 Attack (both profiles)
• He regains D6+1 wounds
• His invuln improves to 2+ for the next turn


3. Survival Mode:
I will finish the work Captain Titus started!

Use Endless Hordes:
Every time a Chaos Cultist or Poxwalker unit dies, it comes back on a 3+ from its table edge.

Your opponent literally has unlimited chaff.

Your job is to survive six turns.

My comedy detector might be on the fritz. Sincere question that I hope doesn't come across as dickish: are you actually looking for feedback on this? The stats make me think we're just joking around, but missions make me think you're looking to actually use this guy on the table.

Short version of feedback: You've made this guy uninteractive enough that I don't think the missions as you've presented them would be much fun. The chaos player isn't allowed to shoot at this guy until they're already in charge range. And on the flip side, this guy is all but guaranteed to delete any chaos he shoots at or stabs. All while also healing up any damage he might take.

So mission 1 seems like it's pretty much just the chaos player being prevented from fielding anything that might survive this guy, then being forced to feed him units piecemeal to make the chances of hurting him even lower. The only way I could see chaos winning this scenario is if they just take msu, spend the first two turns hiding everything (not fighting), and then advance more units onto the objectives than he has activations to kill.

So it's "Let me punch you in the face while I laugh, the mission."

Mission 2: Not sure how the math works out on greater daemons surviving his shooting, but I'm pretty sure it's not great. I feel like the sheer amount of Twin-Linked S6 with DW is probably killing a greater daemon every time he shoots. Either way, this just feels like a stat check mission. Either there is a way to clump most of your daemons together to shoot/stab this guy to death or there isn't. And though I haven't run the math, I doubt it ends up being a close enough fight to be particularly tense/interesting.

Also note that this matchup sort of artificially prevents most greater daemons in the chaos player's army from bringing all their offense to bear in a single turn. Base sizes mean that (assuming this guy is on an infantry-sized base) only about 2 greater daemons will be able to fight him each turn.

So I guess your best best against this guy is to field 6 of the shootiest daemons, sacrifice whichever one he goes after, try to keep everything out of reach for a turn while his no-fun-allowed invuln wears off, and then jump him with ranged attacks?

Also, 6 is an awkward number of greater daemons. Rule of 3 means you either end up forcing a two-god teamup, or you try to go chaos undividied (1 of each) but still have two leftover slots to assign someone.

Mission 3 doesn't specify whether or not you opponent is allowed to bring vehicles, but I'm not sure it matters. You've got a guy with better durability than a knight that your opponent isn't allowed to shoot until they're within 12" of him. So you put this guy behind an L-shaped ruin way back in his own deployment zone, basically nothing gets to target him for the first few turns, and then he just auto-deletes whatever gets close and is actually a threat.

*Maybe* the chaos player could win this one with a tailored list that's just like, as many meltaguns or dev wounds as they can squeeze in, banking on him not having enough activations to kill them all while they attempt to rush in for a suicidal sucker punch. Certainly you wouldn't want to waste points on any cultists or pox walkers as they can't meaningfully hurt him even if they catch him.

So this effectively becomes "stand there and let me punch you while I laugh: hide and seek edition."

Running math, against a GUO because they're the tankiest...

20 shots at BS 2+ SH3
70/3 hits at S6 Twin-Linked and +1 to-wound, 10/3 Lethals
175/27 wounds plus 90/27 (10/3) from Lethals and 175/27 DevWounds
265/54 failed saves plus 350/54 DevWounds for 615/54 total instances of D2
22.78 damage on average, before the 6+ FNP
18.98 damage total, or the GUO survives with 1 wound

Against any other Greater Daemon, who are T10-T11 and no FNP...

20 shots
70/3 hits (even if targeting a Keeper Of Secrets, thanks to +1 to-hit) and 10/3 Lethals
35/3 wounds plus 10/3 Lethals and 35/6 DevWounds
15/2 failed saves plus 35/6 DevWounds for 80/3 total instances of D2
53.33 damage against non-GUO Greater Daemons on average

It's tough trying to wedge what is essentially an entire Ultramarines army into 1 model...

I'm sure my numbers are way off, but the idea was to create a fun Boltgun -Themed scenerio where each player gets a try at playing as Malum Caedo and then the Chaos forces on Graia.

Any suggestions would be helpful.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
It's tough trying to wedge what is essentially an entire Ultramarines army into 1 model...

I'm sure my numbers are way off, but the idea was to create a fun Boltgun -Themed scenerio where each player gets a try at playing as Malum Caedo and then the Chaos forces on Graia.

Any suggestions would be helpful.

I don't think you can transfer the Boltgun experience to 40k.

A themed board game, quite possibly. But actual 40k Wargame? No.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
It's tough trying to wedge what is essentially an entire Ultramarines army into 1 model...

I'm sure my numbers are way off, but the idea was to create a fun Boltgun -Themed scenerio where each player gets a try at playing as Malum Caedo and then the Chaos forces on Graia.

Any suggestions would be helpful.

I don't think you can transfer the Boltgun experience to 40k.

A themed board game, quite possibly. But actual 40k Wargame? No.

A long time ago we had The Last Chancers which were 12 Guardsmen balanced to play against 2000 point armies and later the fun Movie Marine rules.

I think it's doable as a not serious event style game.

Originally we were using the stats of a Knight Castigator as the base for Malum Caedo, but even as that, he would be annihilated by 2k of Chaos.

Thus the stupid was added on, in order to make him not only survivable but make him feel like he did in the game.

How many Lascannon hits could you tank in Boltgun?

Because he can take 13 failed saves from Lascannons and usually survive it.

Edit: Think about what interactions are available. Because right now… not much.

 JNAProductions wrote:
How many Lascannon hits could you tank in Boltgun?

Because he can take 13 failed saves from Lascannons and usually survive it.

Edit: Think about what interactions are available. Because right now… not much.

Good point.

Maybe if I tied the health regen to objectives.

Or better attacks/damage on objectives to mimic the health/ammo spots in the game.

And have him not-as-awesome in other terrain.

Thanks for the help so far.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
It's tough trying to wedge what is essentially an entire Ultramarines army into 1 model...

I'm sure my numbers are way off, but the idea was to create a fun Boltgun -Themed scenerio where each player gets a try at playing as Malum Caedo and then the Chaos forces on Graia.

Any suggestions would be helpful.

Gotcha. Then with this goal in mind, the biggest problem I'm seeing with your current proposal is that it doesn't seem like it would be much fun to play these scenarios as the chaos forces. If you want to stick with this idea, I think you may want to try starting with chaos in mind. Imagine that you're playing the chaos forces, imagine how a given scenario is going to go, and ask yourself where the fun is. As-is, these scenarios seem to largely be about Malum getting to flex on waves of chaos models with minimal chance of being slain in return. What's in it for the chaos side of things?

As JNA said, this concept seems like it may not lend itself particularly well to 40k proper. By virtue of limiting one side to a single unit with a single unit's worth of actions and options, you're going to end up shrinking the tactical depth of the game by a ton. Like, to the point that if you have a knack for mentally calculating averages, you can probably figure out how each mission is likely to go as soon as you deploy. And on the flip-side, you're running into issues like greater daemons having to take turns fighting because their only target is too small for their bases to cluster around, hordes of enemies that functionally aren't allowed to damage Malum, etc. But that said, some games you might want to look at include:

* Deathwatch: Overkill. This is a GW boardgame where a small number marines take on an infinite horde of genestealers. Like your game, there's a lot of asymmetry between the two sides. But crucially, there's a lot of appeal to playing both sides. The marines get a suite of special abilities and unique weapons to use with each team member and are generally going to cut their way through a lot of enemies and feel like badasses. But on the flip side, the genestealer cultists get to plan sneaky ambushes, feel clever, and have the comfort of knowing they always have more reinforcements on the way. A thing to note here is that, despite being a 40k game, this game uses barely any of the 40k rules. Instead, it uses bespoke rules that better suit the scenario and capture the feeling the designers were going for.

* Ogre: A game where a bunch of "little" tanks, hovercraft, artillery, etc. are trying to take on a super tank. Sort of an army vs kaiju type scenario. In the version of this I've played, one side has a single unit that is super tough and super deadly while their opponent is basically a horde. And again, the key thing here is that it finds a way to make the game interesting for both sides.

* Kill Team: The version from the 4th edition 40k rulebook. In this, you have a single unit (made up of models potentially from different datasheets) that is sneaking and/or fighting its way past "brute squads" of enemies that start the game operating by largely AI logic, but then come fully under the opponent's control once the alarm has been sounded. I'm not sure how well the stealth aspect fits Malum Caedo's whole thing, but this is an example of a 40k game that used a lot of the basic 40k wargame rules but facilitated a game of 1 unit vs many (albeit with multiple models in that one unit) where the single unit was generally significantly more powerful than the brute squads.