WMD's in the 40K universe

[Duke]

Ok here goes (thanks for all the input)

points: 250+ Models
Name: Marshal of the ordinance
Unit: Command Squad (must include one master of the fleet and one master of the ordinance and an officer.)
Unit options:
The marshal of the Ordinance and his unit may be mounted in a Chimera (see codex Imperial Guard) or they may be mounted on horseback for +5 points per model.
Fluff: The Marshal of the Ordinance has the ability to call down any and all firepower that the Imperial guard, Navy and Titan Legions can bring to bear.

assets: Scheduled bombardment.

Ability:
roll a d6
1-3 - Basilisk battery support: place d6 st9 ap3 large blast templates.
4 - Death strike support: place one St D 7" blast template
5 - Lance stirke place 1 st 10 AP1 Apoc barrage (3) template
6 - voice of the God-Emperor (The Marshall calls it all in) place one St D ap1 apoc blast template

Orders:
- Paint the target: The Marshal may order a single veteran/ storm trooper/ or command squad within 12" to do nothing this turn if he does this then he may reroll scatter this turn only for stirkes called in from the Ordinance High Command (I put the specific units because I wanted to make it a sacrifice, and it isn't something he would leave to a lowly conscripts squad...these guys need to be good under fire as the paint it.)

- Broken arrow: You may not roll on the ability chart if this order is used. The OHC calls down a high risk strike on a friendly posistion. Place a st8 ap3 spoc barrage(4) template within 6" of a friendly unit, scatter as usual. "Sometimes one must lose a goldfish to kill a shark"


Changes:
-Name "Marshal of the Ordinance"
-unit requirements (HQ + Master of the Ord. and Master of the Fleet
- took out vox caster for paint the target
- lowered points cost to 250 to reflect the fact that he is "squishy,"

Duke

[Nabterayl]

That's "Marshal of the Ordnance" unless this guy is flinging law codes around

I wonder if 5 points per horse is a bit much. That's 35 points, right? Effectively all it does is give the unit Fleet, which for a decidedly non-assault unit isn't much of an advantage. In fact, you know, maybe that option isn't worth including at all. I still think it'd look cool model-wise but I'm not sure I'd pay even +1 point per model for it in an actual game.

I'd specify that Broken Arrow is Ordnance and Pinning. The Apocalypse orbital bombardment profile is S8 AP3 Apocalyptic Barrage(4) Ordnance Pinning, and it seems to me that Broken Arrow ought to be the same.

EDIT: It just occurred to me that the rules for template placement prohibit you from placing any kind of template so that it will touch a friendly model, before scatter. Perhaps Broken Arrow should explicitly allow you to place the template in such a way that friendly models are under the template. It's in the spirit of the ability, and otherwise, the placement restrictions will be very severe.

EDIT 2: Do we want to include the Master of the Ordnance? Does that mean that he gets to fire his single Basilisk shot in addition to the Marshal's abilities?

As an alternative, we could have the command squad's company commander count as the Marshal of the Ordnance, who is himself an Imperial Guard officer and in charge of the army's artillery assets. Joining him would be a Navy liaison who helps him coordinate the invasion force's total artillery assets. Or we could flip it around - say the Marshal of the Ordnance is a Navy officer, and he has a Master of the Ordnance as his liaison.

[Aldramelech]

That makes sense, In the UK forces FAC's are RAF Officers attached to ground forces, and they handle calls for Arty fire's too. Still think a Salamander would be better then a Chimera. Just a question: With broken arrow, who is he issuing the order to? Himself? or the squad thats nearest to the template?

[Nabterayl]

Double post

[Nabterayl]

Perhaps allow two versions, then - one with an Officer of the Fleet (Marshal is a Guardsman), which gives the OotF's Reserves-interfering ability as normal, and one with a Master of the Ordnance (Marshal is a Naval officer), which gives the MotO's extra Basilisk strike as normal.

Is Broken Arrow an order? I thought it was an alternative to rolling on the ability table.

Agree about the Salamander Command, just because Chimeras don't seem to be used as transports above company level all that often. Mechanically, that gives the squad a weaker vehicle, but interferes with infiltrators setting up near the squad. That actually seems like a good fluff tradeoff to me. One question, though - if the Salamander was used, would it just replace the whole squad, or be a weird sort of transport (with, like, a six-man capacity, or perhaps an abbreviated command squad)? Would the squad be allowed to disembark, and if so, would it be allowed to carry other units (preliminarily, I vote small transport - fluff-wise, when an officer uses a Salamander as his personal transport, it's him and three other members of his staff, so we could let the command squad consist of only two veterans, plus the mandatory advisor - no, and no)?

[Duke]

points: 250+ Models
Name: Marshal of the ordnance
Unit: Command Squad (may include one master of the fleet or one master of the ordnance but not both, though both MotF and MotO should be represented in the models. )
Unit options:
The marshal of the Ordnance and his unit may be mounted in a Chimera (see codex Imperial Guard) or they may be mounted on horseback for no additional cost.
Fluff: The Marshal of the Ordnance has the ability to call down any and all firepower that the Imperial guard, Navy and Titan Legions can bring to bear.

assets: Scheduled bombardment.

Ability:
roll a d6
1-3 - Basilisk battery support: place d6 st9 ap3 large blast templates.
4 - Death strike support: place one St D 7" blast template
5 - Lance stirke place 1 st 10 AP1 Apoc barrage (3) template
6 - voice of the God-Emperor (The Marshall calls it all in) place one St D ap1 apoc blast template

- Broken arrow: You may not roll on the ability chart if this order is used. The OHC calls down a high risk strike on a friendly posistion. Place a st8 ap3 spoc barrage(4) ordnance, pinning template within 6" of a friendly unit the tmeplate may be placed on friendly models or models in close combat. scatter as usual. "Sometimes one must lose a goldfish to kill a shark"

- Make it rubble: you may not roll on the ability chart, the Marshal calls down enough firepower to take out a single piece of terrain. Place a large blast tmeplate, roll for scatter if the center hole is on the terrain piece then replace the terrain with rubble. Any models under the tmeplate take a st 8 AP 3 ordnance pinning hit.

Orders:
- Paint the target: The Marshal may order a single veteran/ storm trooper/ or command squad within 12" to do nothing this turn if he does this then he may reroll scatter this turn only for stirkes called in from the Ordinance High Command (I put the specific units because I wanted to make it a sacrifice, and it isn't something he would leave to a lowly conscripts squad...these guys need to be good under fire as the paint it.)



Changes-
- Broken arrow may be placed on a friendly unit or models in close combat.
- Horseback option lowered to "free"
- either one master of the fleet or one master of Ordnance
- Changed spelling to reflect the fact that he is working with Munitions, not the Municipality... lol
- put ordnance and pinning in "broken arrow profile,"
- Added a new ability "Make it rubble,"

Questions:
- I don't know much about a salamander, and I don't have the IG codex... so Ill add it if you want it, just tell me what you would like to see e.g. points, options, etc.

- Broken arrow is not an order, I changed its posistion to reflect that. though it might make sense that it could be an order that he makes on his own squad...

Input always welcome.

Duke

[Nabterayl]

The complete Salamander Command rules can be found at Forgeworld's website [url=http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/pdf/IA1update28AUG.pdf]here[/url].

Fluff-wise, the Salamander is yet another Chimera variant, which is used as a tracked scout vehicle to complement Sentinels (Sentinels handle rough terrain better; Salamanders are faster and more heavily armored). According to the various TOs we have in the Imperial Armour books, the command variant is used as a transport for commanders above company level (company commanders, if they use a transport, seem more prone to use Chimeras) - at least, I'm not aware of any TO in which a Chimera is used to transport an officer above company level. It's for this reason that Aldramech and I were suggesting that a Salamander Command would be a fluffier option than a Chimera.

As you can see from the above PDF, the Salamander Command is not a transport. This raises a question for us: does the Salamander Command replace the command squad (but with a special rule allowing it to use all of the command squad's various abilities, such as Broken Arrow, the Master of the Ordnance/Officer of the Fleet abilities, the Marshal of the Ordnance ability table, etc.)? Or do we allow the Salamander Command to transport a special four-man command squad?

After thinking about it some more, I'm inclined to just replace the command squad with the Salamander Command vehicle, if we want to drop the Chimera option.

[Duke]

I like that option... now it all makes so much more sense.

here is the update with the Salamander

points: 250+ Models
Name: Marshal of the ordnance
Unit: Command Squad (may include one master of the fleet or one master of the ordnance but not both, though both MotF and MotO should be represented in the models. )
Unit options:
The marshal of the Ordnance and his unit may be mounted in a Salamander (+55pts)* or they may be mounted on horseback for no additional cost.
Fluff: The Marshal of the Ordnance has the ability to call down any and all firepower that the Imperial guard, Navy and Titan Legions can bring to bear.

* If a salamander is taken then it replaces the command squad, the models may not disembark and are destroyed with the vehicle. Rules for the Salamander can be found at the Forgeworld website IA1 update 28 AUG.


assets: Scheduled bombardment.

Ability:
roll a d6
1-3 - Basilisk battery support: place d6 st9 ap3 large blast templates.
4 - Death strike support: place one St D 7" blast template
5 - Lance stirke place 1 st 10 AP1 Apoc barrage (3) template
6 - voice of the God-Emperor (The Marshall calls it all in) place one St D ap1 apoc blast template

- Broken arrow: You may not roll on the ability chart if this order is used. The OHC calls down a high risk strike on a friendly posistion. Place a st8 ap3 spoc barrage(4) ordnance, pinning template within 6" of a friendly unit the tmeplate may be placed on friendly models or models in close combat. scatter as usual. "Sometimes one must lose a goldfish to kill a shark"

- Make it rubble: you may not roll on the ability chart, the Marshal calls down enough firepower to take out a single piece of terrain. Place a large blast tmeplate, roll for scatter if the center hole is on the terrain piece then replace the terrain with rubble (difficult terrain). Any models under the tmeplate take a st 8 AP 3 ordnance pinning hit.

Orders:
- Paint the target: The Marshal may order a single veteran/ storm trooper/ or command squad within 12" to do nothing this turn if he does this then he may reroll scatter this turn only for stirkes called in from the Marshall(I put the specific units because I wanted to make it a sacrifice, and it isn't something he would leave to a lowly conscripts squad...these guys need to be good under fire as they 'paint it'.)


Changes:
-Replaced Chimera with Salamander.

Questions:
- What does everyone think of "make it Rubble,"?

Duke

[Nabterayl]

You might want to lose the OHC abbreviation in Broken Arrow, as it no longer makes much sense.

Make it Rubble works for me in concept. A couple of suggestions:

I would specify that we're talking about natural terrain here. Technically a bastion, bunker, fortress, or other defensive building is also "terrain." I'd feel pretty peeved if my AV14/14/14 bastion, which could theoretically withstand several Destroyer hits, was just wiped off the map by the Marshal's hand-waving! I don't think that's the intention, anyway.

Another thing that seems weird to me about Make it Rubble is that only models under the template are hit. Since we're potentially talking about leveling a much larger piece of terrain, that seems a little weird to me. My instinct is that all models in or on the terrain should take the hit.

This raises the question of using Make it Rubble to snipe at models in cover - since the terrain is a much larger target than the models, you might just target the terrain instead. That doesn't really seem like the spirit of the ability to me - it's about re-shaping the battlefield, not making orbital bombardment magically more accurate

Anybody have ideas about how to mitigate this effect? Just leave it as is (since this way comparatively few models will be hit)? Decrease the strength of the hit? Give the models hit a 3+ cover save?

[Duke]

@ nab: one thing I love about you is that you will often provide a point/ suggestion and then counter the suggestion within the same post which usually means no change. It makes reading your posts great fun.

I tried to replace all the OHC with "marshall," thanks for the catch.


points: 250+ Models
Name: Marshal of the ordnance
Unit: Command Squad (may include one master of the fleet or one master of the ordnance but not both, though both MotF and MotO should be represented in the models. )
Unit options:
The marshal of the Ordnance and his unit may be mounted in a Salamander (+55pts)* or they may be mounted on horseback for no additional cost.
Fluff: The Marshal of the Ordnance has the ability to call down any and all firepower that the Imperial guard, Navy and Titan Legions can bring to bear.

* If a salamander is taken then it replaces the command squad, the models may not disembark and are destroyed with the vehicle. Rules for the Salamander can be found at the Forgeworld website IA1 update 28 AUG.


assets: Scheduled bombardment.

Ability:
roll a d6
1-3 - Basilisk battery support: place d6 st9 ap3 large blast templates.
4 - Death strike support: place one St D 7" blast template
5 - Lance stirke place 1 st 10 AP1 Apoc barrage (3) template
6 - voice of the God-Emperor (The Marshall calls it all in) place one St D ap1 apoc blast template

- Broken arrow: You may not roll on the ability chart if this order is used. The Marshall calls down a high risk strike on a friendly posistion. Place a st8 ap3 spoc barrage(4) ordnance, pinning template within 6" of a friendly unit the tmeplate may be placed on friendly models or models in close combat. scatter as usual. "Sometimes one must lose a goldfish to kill a shark"

- Make it rubble: you may not roll on the ability chart, the Marshal calls down enough firepower to take out a single piece of terrain*. Place a large blast tmeplate, roll for scatter if the center hole is on the terrain piece then replace the terrain with rubble (difficult terrain). Any models under the tmeplate take a st 8 AP 3ordnance pinning hit, models receive a 3+ cover save from this attack. (its meant to kill terrain, not models.)

* Does not apply to terrain pieces with armour values (i.e. Bastion, skyshield landing pad, etc.)

Orders:
- Paint the target: The Marshal may order a single veteran/ storm trooper/ or command squad within 12" to do nothing this turn if he does this then he may reroll scatter this turn only for stirkes called in from the Marshall(I put the specific units because I wanted to make it a sacrifice, and it isn't something he would leave to a lowly conscripts squad...these guys need to be good under fire as they 'paint it'.)

changes:
- Made "make it rubble," grant a 3+ cover save, this is to represent that the intent is to destroy the building, not the people. I know it doesn't make much sense in real world application, but in game it does.

- Specified that "make it rubble," cannot be used to target terrain with an AV.