Pre-orders for Codex: Space Marines are less than a week away, but there’s still plenty of time to have a look inside at the new rules. Today, we’re showing off some awesome new datasheets – including the Avenging Son himself.
As the author of the Codex Astartes, it should come as no surprise that Roboute Guilliman can use all of its tenets as easily as breathing, manifesting as him having all parts of the new Combat Doctrines army rule active at all times. Not only does this mean that he can Advance, Fall Back, Shoot, and Charge at will, whenever he likes, but it also interacts with a few stratagems from the new detachments to boost their effects.
He can also bestow a Combat Doctrine of his choice on a nearby ally, and unlike other sources of alternative doctrines, this one is active alongside any others you picked for the turn. Between this and his new Primarch of the XIII aura, which more directly enhances the hitting power of everyone around him, he’s a superb support character who just happens to also be great at punching heretics’ heads clean off.
As you may have seen from the rules in Codex: Orks, Psykers now have a psyker level that determines how many powers they can use in a turn. This wouldn’t be much use if everyone just had the one, so now Librarians of all stripes have different powers they can activate – like the regular Librarian’s Veil of Time and Force Dome options.
You don’t always need that (undoubtedly handy) 4+ Invulnerable Save, especially in the later stages of the game when dashing to objectives is vital, so now a quick Veil of Time will maximise your Advances instead. Librarians in Phobos armour can shroud their unit with a -1 To Hit ward or strip the cover from their unit’s target, while those in Terminator armour can boost the strength of their melee attacks or the range of their guns.
Speaking of guns, the undisputed marksmanship masters of the First Company, the Sternguard Veterans, now have a vastly expanded selection of shooting profiles they can use.*
Their new artificer firearms encompass all kinds of special boltguns, combi-weapons, and ammunition their models are equipped with, and give them a choice of weapon types to emulate every time they open fire. When attacking an enemy Vehicle, they can pick Damnatus to get the high Strength, AP, and Damage of a meltagun, while Infernus loads up the newly improved stats of a bolt rifle and adds Rapid Fire 2 for extra carnage.
We could hardly finish things up without showing off Terminators, especially after we talked about their snazzy new detachment last week, and they don’t disappoint with better Toughness, better bolters, and a new Hunter profile** on their chainfists to put the fear of the Emperor into Vehicles and Monsters.
Their new take on Fury of the First makes cracking armour a breeze when you’re face-to-face with the foe, and it works all the time – even in close combat. If you add in the improved assault cannon stat line, you’re getting an AP -3, Sustained Hits 1 death machine that can chop up almost anything man-sized with little effort.
That’s just a little taste of how some of the datasheets have changed in the new Codex. Come back tomorrow as we start looking at rules updates for less Codex-compliant Chapters, starting with the Blood Angels and Dark Angels.
* Superficially similar to Flash Gitz and Killa Kans, but don’t tell them that.
** We took a first look at Hunter when we first showed off the new datasheet for the Tankbusters.
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