Games Workshop put out a new Space Marines codex last week.  Today I started putting together some army lists and will be posting thoughts as I go.  First up: Everyone’s favorite flaming hero, Vulkan He’stan.

Vulkan

Like nearly everyone, last edition I eventually caved and started running Vulkan.  He was just too good to resist—army wide Flamer and Melta buffs, with a standard Captain stat line but a 2+/3++ save, Digital Weapons, a Relic Blade, and a Heavy Flamer and Bolt Pistol to boot.  His points in the new book remain the same, a large but not crazy 190, and all of his stats and gear are also identical.  So he’s of slightly less value given that a Salamanders army gets the Flamer buff for free, and neither buffs Thunderhammers anymore.  However, I think he still stacks up pretty solidly.  I’ve generally found Vulkan to be fairly survivable and able to go toe-to-toe with tough units, so 190 points is not unreasonable for this HQ.  The one negative I’ll say about him is that his Warlord Trait (Iron Resolve: +1 to combat resolution w/ Vulkan in the fight) is terribly underwhelming.  The whole Space Marine trait list is weak across the board, and that is not one of the stronger ones.

In any event, by way of comparison, a very similar generic captain would run like so:

• Captain: 90 points
• Artificier Armour: 20
• Storm Shield: 15
• Power Weapon: 15
• Relic Blade: 25
• Digital Weapons: 10

There’s no option to pick up a heavy flamer on the Captain, unfortunately.  That totals 175 points, so for 15 more Vulkan’s picking up a Heavy Flamer and buffs all Melta weapons to Master-Crafted.  So, Vulkan is probably worth it if you want to run this basic setup.  I’ve found the Heavy Flamer actually fairly useful, and the Melta buff alone could easily be worth 15 points in many armies.

My other response is that’s pretty awesome and a huge improvement in the Space Marine codex.  Generic HQs in the previous book were just slightly boring in their options, and very inefficient compared to the named heroes.  They just cost too many points for how (un-)survivable a Space Marine leader is and to miss out on the army wide buffs, previously only granted by the named HQs.  So, that’s super awesome that you can now pretty much construct the named guys out of the generic options and get the bulk of the buffs from the Chapter Tactics.  That gives a ton of options.  In this case, you could basically run Vulkan but shaving a couple points with a generic guy if you don’t need the Melta buff, or you could upgrade to the Burning Blade and/or some other Chapter Relics if you wanted to beef him out to a heavier close combat fighter.  I’m super stoked about that.

Kingbreakers

So, for now at least, I’m probably going to run Vulkan and then see how I want to tailor things tighter to my playing style.  Next up: Librarians!