1/2 is the New Black

I am back a day later than I expected and now have to get back in the swing of things. I hope you all had a nice and restful Easter. Today I am going to talk about Games Workshop's fascination with HQ choices that only take up half a slot, so you get two for the price of one. At least as far as the force org chart is concerned.

I like this new trend as I believe that it allows armies to get more bang for their buck and spread those special rules out farther. Daemonic heralds now can give their buffs to more units and those units can now be spread out along the table and not bunched up being left vulnerable to blast templates if they want the buff of the HQ. This type of HQ really adds a new layer of flexibility to an army. My favorite aspect of these mini HQs is that they are very customizable so really you can upgrade one and spend enough on the guy to make him match up to a more powerful HQ, or you could just leave them basic and just swarm the field with them. The downside to the swarm aspect is you will probably give up 1 victory point from slay the warlord.

I would really like to see GW do this with every codex that they have. Grot mini Hqs for Orks, I am hoping the Fireblade Cadre is a mini for Tau, Chaplains for Space Marines, and a level 1 Warlock for Eldar or something along those lines. HQ choices for the most part are very easy to pick for every army. Only so many of them are actually worth taking and even fewer fit each player’s style of play. Anything to bring in more options to what is a very stale section of most books would be a breath of fresh air and make every list potentially more potent. It makes sense from a fluff perspective as well, rarely will you see two great heroes from the same army fighting side by side, and it is much more likely that there will be one hero and his sub commanders. I also have to admit that the mini HQ models have all looked fantastic and I want to see more.

I am going to leave it at that for now since it is late and my brain is not functioning at 100% right now. I plan to elaborate on this a bit more when I talk about character upgrades tomorrow.