Power Up

One of my favorite parts of any codex is the SGT upgrade characters, these individual guys make units much more dynamic and colorful. The story behind most of these guys is pretty awesome and I have to fight myself to not take them in every list I take. Take this as a tie in with the last post about mini HQs.

In every codex the HQ section is bloated with people to lead your army but very few of those options are actually viable for each player. The best example I can think of is the Space Wolf codex which has a hefty 10 choices. Each of these characters looks cool with one particular unit but rarely can that unit carry the day by itself. Canis Wolfborn is an HQ choice and he rides a Thunder wolf, he also makes Fenrisian Wolves troop choices. The issue with this guy is that custom making your own Wolf Lord on a Thunder wolf is cheaper and more effective, sure you don’t get scoring Fenrisian Wolves but if you are counting on that for a serious game you are going something wrong. Canis belongs in the Thunder wolf entry as an upgrade character. It would bring his nearly unreasonable points cost down as well as his abilities but it would make that unit so much cooler. Yes that only brings down the total of HQ options to 9 with now 5 of them being named characters and 4 being custom heroes, with that I think the Wolf Guard battle leader should also be switched to a mini HQ. There are characters in every single codex that just bloat that section and many of them will only be taken in fluffy fun games. Making them sergeant upgrades would still keep them available to people who love the characters and want to take them in their units but would also free up an HQ spot for a character that can lead the army more efficiently.

 

I would love it if almost every unit in the game came with its own upgrade character, in a way GW has done that with Veteran Sgts but they don’t have the same impact as a named character. The Space Marine codex catches a lot of flak for how many characters it has in it; besides the fact that a majority of them are Ultramarines I think that it's awesome. Anything that adds more flavor to an army I am in favor of, and all these characters certainly does that. For those out there that despise Ultramarines just suck it up do some conversion work, rename the character, and use them in the army. I am making my own Telion model for my Minotaur scout units. I'm going to go back to the Space Wolf codex for a minute here and wish list that Sky claws, Wolf Scouts, Grey Hunters, and Long Fangs had their own upgrade character. To me Space Wolves are a very flavorful army which is why the codex allows a player to take more HQ choices than normal but I think that having more characters like Lukas the Trickster and Arjac Rockfist would make this army simply amazing to play with at any level of play.

 

Imperial Guard is an army that really needs more of these character upgrades, the best one I can think of is a Storm Trooper character or Kasrkin for those Cadian lovers. I am always reminded of the Kasrkin Master Sargent in Cadian Blood, the guy was a total bad ass and an awesome unit deserves a kick ass character to run around with them. Yeah IG has the Ogryn guy, a few crazy Sargent’s, and a tank guy. Why not give them a Valkyrie pilot, another tank guy that allows more shots instead of more accurate shots? You can see how a few of these guys can make any army a bit more fun to play.

 

From a modeling perspective this idea becomes better and better, very few sane people can deny that GW makes amazing looking models especially when it come to their single model range no matter what your views on Finecast are. I get pretty excited thinking about all the models that they could come out with for these type of characters. They could either do their standard Finecast blisters or they could add a sprue into the standard troop box to allow for further upgrades.

At the very least these guys make really cool looking standard sergeants. I see no down side to having more upgrade characters except that it means more for people to remember when it come to their own, or their opponents army. This is why I love Forgeworld so much; they have all sorts of awesome characters that breathe new life into old armies. I could go on this topic forever and I will probably go into further detail for a few armies about upgrade characters that I would like to see. Thanks again for reading and have a wonderful day!