Against CHARACTERS its Damage increases to 3. Some White Scars players at the LGT were already seeing success with Assault Centurions or Aggressors, either catching an opponent off guard with a surprisingly long advance and charge on turn 1 Use in fight phase when a friendly RAVEN GUARD unit is chosen to fight Until end of phase, when resolving a melee attack against a model with the WORD BEARERS, IRON WARRIORS, NIGHT LORDS, or ALPHA LEGION keywords, you can re-roll hit rolls. As seems to be common, the unique bolt ammo is underwhelming; however some of the others are competitive with the genuine Relics of the Fists as options to take in a list.The Imperial Fists and the Crimson Fists each have their own unique set of warlord traits, with the Imperial Fists having six and the Crimson Fists having three. Opening up the range for positioning infantry units near an Ancient is helpful, allowing them to better stay in cover or in range of objectives, and making it harder for those units to get multicharged.The Chapter Champion upgrades the little-used Company Champion unit, making it a bit stronger of an anti-character melee threat.The upgraded champion gains +1 leadership and attack, and a new special ability The Chapter Champion really shows off how much the army building rules of 8th disincentivise units outside the HQ and Troops slots and how gridlocked Marines now are in wanting to buy traits and relics. That said, none of them are complete duds, either.The Banner is probably the biggest winner here (something of a trend, see also White Scars) – +1A is the kind of buff that turns your normal line infantry into capable combatants, opening up new avenues of play at a low cost.The Ultramarines share four Special-Issue relics with the White Scars, and we expect to see those four show up again multiple times in other supplements. Credit: Jack HunterThe Master of Sanctity is an upgraded Chaplain, improving how many Litanies they can use and the potency of them.Many armies will stop here, but the Chaplain Warlord traits are also worth a look, and synergize effectively with having multiple Litanies.Imperial Fists Primaris Techmarine. As we saw in our White Scars review, what lightning claws really need to be relevant is D2, and wouldn’t you know it, Shrike has a pair that have just that (with a bonus point of AP tacked on). You can even use its “Assault Transport” ability to pop him out after moving to provide a re-roll bubble up front.The only real strike against him is that for fluff reasons he Ultimately that shouldn’t sour you on him though – he’s both an unusually powerful murder machine in his own right, and an absolutely incredible force multiplier. They also changed their order around on the page for some reason that is strange and alien to us.The Librarius discipline gets some minor tweaks, but on the whole remains kind of middling in terms of what it brings to the table for your psykers. They’re BS2+ and move 9″ which doesn’t degrade, they have 12 wounds and a 2+ armour save, 5+ invulnerable, and a 6+ FNP. As Imperial Fists they have access (through the Imperial Fists Primaris Eliminator Squad. Until the end of the battle round, roll D6 each time your opponent spends CP to use a stratagem. At time of writing, Psychic Awakening: The Greater Good (book 5 of the PA release cycle) has just arrived. They get a boost to their WS and Ld within 6” of Grimaldus and friendly Black Templars automatically pass get to ignore mortal wounds taken while they’re within 6” of the unit on a 4+. For fast, aggressive melee-focused builds, they make powerful forward troops – White Scars lists focused on wrapping up their opponent’s lines for a couple of turns before a turn 3 strike will see great benefit from them.Like the other Marine characters, Apothecaries come in both big and little flavours. All three profiles are 36″ range and Heavy, and can target CHARACTERS indiscriminately, with the rest being:This is a basically perfect set of profiles – there should never be a situation where your Eliminators have Hellblasters do in fact blast hell. Naaaaaaaaaaaah. That’s OK because you get the Emperor’s Champion (see below) instead.The Black Templars get access to a specialist detachment that gives some extra melee-focused options to the following units:While the affected units list is pretty narrow, with the focus largely on the characters, the buffs are actually extremely good and it’s well worth an include if you have any of these characters you’re expecting to get into fights (which if you’re Black Templars, you almost certainly do).The Black Templars have five units specific to their chapter. They can deep strike naturally, they have smoke launchers like Infiltrators/Incursors (but aren’t Phobos units so Phobos powers/traits don’t affect them), and also have Suppressing Fire (not the stratagem!) Finally, there’s the Phobos Captain, with no changes in statline but toting a master-crafted instigator bolt carbine (i.e. Checking our notes, arbitrarily being able to Deep Strike infantry units is apparently “quite good”. They can deep strike natively and they also get the Crushing Charge rule which allows them to do mortal wounds on a 6 to an enemy unit they charged. The other set, Special-Issue Wargear, are available to successors freely and some can be given to squad Sergeants via the Scion of the Forge Stratagem.A Deathwatch Veteran hailing from the Iron Hands. The special ammo for Raven Guard successors.
Toughness 8, 14 wounds, 2+ armor save, 4+ invulnerable save. With such flexibility it’s hard to pick out any one thing – instead you should look at the plan for your list (or check out one of the ones in the relevant Chapter section) and work around that.Techmarines are cheap and cheerful, at 45pts for the basic version (for some reason the default one per the datasheet is 50pts, since it comes with a power axe, but you can swap the axe for a chainsword to keep it cheap).
His Chaplains got a big boost with the new Codex, gaining Litanies as a set of powerful effects that turn Chaplains into real force multipliers. The “Reiver” Phobos Lieutenant build and the Phobos Captain both struggle with access to good weapons normally, so having something like this available is extremely helpful, and it combines with the Doctrine to give something that will put a proper dent in characters of all shapes and sizes. They are the baseline Phobos-armoured Troops, and like other Phobos units they’re able to infiltrate onto the board, similarly to Scouts.