Vulkan Hestan is essential for a Salamanders army. Vulkan Hestan is not only a great character in his own right, but makes all your thunder hammers master crafted while all flamers, heavy flamers, melta guns and multimeltas become twin linked. Salamanders forgefather Vulkan Hestan is just one of the excellent special character choices from the new Space Marine codex, but if you thought that this weeks How to Win at Warhammer 40K article is entirely about him, then you’ll be in for a surprise.
Instead, I’m looking at concepts behind army building and how it’s natural to overlook the obvious options while attempting to dig a new super combo from the latest codex books.
Keeping it Simple
It’s common for competitive players to contemplate the most powerful game winning combinations of units, weapons and wargear while maximizing numbers of models, scoring units and uber units. But sometimes, keeping it simple can be the greatest army builder of all.
Vulkan Hestan then, is a perfect example of how theming can make a great game winning army. Simply put, if you take Vulkan Hestan, then all your thunder hammers, flamers and meltas greatly improve.
Naturally, to optimise thee effectively free upgrades, you want to maximise on units that can be equipped with thunder hammers, flamers and meltas.
Suddenly your army selection is less of a mind boggling matter as you quickly tick off all the essentials: thunder hammer terminators, multimelta attack bikes, multimelta and heavy flamer land speeders, and some tactical squads with multimeltas and flamers for good measure. Then again, a Land Raider Redeemer with a multimelta slapped on top would be fun too.
Choose your Character
With so many special characters in the codex books, 5th edition Warhammer 40K seems to be borrowing a number of elements from the Privateer Press game Warmachine. Simply pick your special character and build an army around them, reaping the benefits from their abilities as best you can.
Vulkan Hestan, Sammael and Belial and probably the most obvious examples of this.
If you take Belial to lead your Dark Angels army, Deathwing Terminators become troops, so take nothing but terminators and use Belial’s Deathwing Assault rules.
If you take Sammael to lead your Dark Angels army, Ravenwing Squads become troops, so go crazy and take nothing but Ravenwing and make the most of the Outflank rules.
Conclusion
Before Christmas a friend asked how he should build a Ravenwing army list.
Quite casually, I said “Just buy 3 battle force boxed sets and Sammael in his land speeder. Then Give all your bikes melta guns and all your attack bikes multimeltas.”
It was such an obvious list that I never imagined how infuriating it would be to play against when everything uses the Outflank rule (more on this another time).
So don’t shy away from building an obvious and effective army list while searching for a new competitive concoction from your chosen codex. Often, it’s the simplest ideas that work the best. Now to go fine tune my Tau army some more.
5 comments:
The new special characters are over the top in the most recent codexes(Ork and Spacemarine). I think one of my first blog post was titled "Every Chapter Master is Pedro" since Pedro seemed like such a value that I could see very little reason to ever take a generic chapter master instead.
Likewise, I'm not a fan of special characters. I wish Games Workshop would just give every army a trait system like the last Space Marine codex. That allowed for plenty of customisation.
The problem with the trait system was that you could in general get benefits without any off setting losses. You could not use some units or allies etc. Not a big deal makes list building easier.
The special characters really leave me conflicted as a space marine player. I do not think I should have a chapter master or unique captain at every little battle but you loose so much by not taking them. Essential the only time I would not take one of the named characters would be a 1K game where the ~200 points average is too high. Ofcourse Cassius is a bargain down around 120 if I wanted a walking chaplain.
I know what you mean. But when I used to play Warmachine by Privateer Press, ALL the characters were special characters. So you just got on with it.
Cool article. My next marine army will be Salamanders. Twin-linked multi-meltas are some of the best anti-tank in the game at this point and flamers are really important for controlling hordes in competitive play.
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