What's a Calgar and why is he so smexy? Many reasons. Well, let's take a look:
WS6 BS5 S4 T4 W4 I5 A4 Ld10 Sv3+
On top of these incredible stats, the guy has Eternal Warrior, gets rerolls to all failed wounds in shooting and close combat. Also, while he is on the board anyone with the Combat Tactics rule in your army can choose whether to pass or fail any Morale check. That's all super-neato, but let's take a peak at his gear. Armour of Antilochus is his only upgrade, and should always be taken in my opinion. This gives him a teleport homer for Terminators and also boosts his armor save up to a 2+. The best part of Calgar is his Gauntlets of Ultramar. These are a pair of power fists equipped with 2 bolters with a profile of 24" S4 AP2 Assault 2. That's right, an AP2 assault weapon that gets rerolls on failed wounds. Lastly, the guy gets an Orbital Bombardment that also receives rerolls to wound. Yes, that's correct, S10 AP1 Large Blast with Pinning and rerolls to wounds.
Now, all of this is pretty fantasterastic, but very costly as Calgar comes in at a whopping base cost of 250 points. So, what has gotten me up in a hooplah about this guy if he's so friggin' expensive? Calgar has the option of bringing 3 Honour Guard units as a retinue rather than the usual 1 that the Chapter Master gets. What's an Honour Guard you say?
An Honour Guard, fully equipped is a melee powerhouse of epic proportions. Each Honour Guard comes with 1 Chapter Champion and 2+ Honour Guardsmen (1 of which can be upgraded with a Chapter Banner per retinue.) The Chapter Champion and Honour Guards have the following profiles:
Chapter Champion - WS5 BS4 S4 T4 W1 I4 A3 Ld10 Sv2+
Honour Guards ----- WS4 BS4 S4 T4 W1 I4 A2 Ld10 Sv2+
Chapter Champions get a slew of upgrades, but already start out with a Power Weapon. They can bring a combat blade for an extra attack or a Thunder Hammer(though I see this as overkill) to stop their foes and can always grab Digital Lasers for some rerolls to wound. Chapter Champions also allocate all attacks to enemy independent characters if they're in base-to-base with them, regardless of if they have a retinue or not.
Honour Guards also start out with a Power Weapon. But may upgrade 1 Honour Guardsman to a Chapter Banner bearer. Any SM unit within 12" of the Banner Bearer always re-rolls failed Morale and Pinning tests. In addition, all models in the same unit as the Banner Bearer have +1 attack and also count as scoring one extra wound in close combat for the purposes of calculating the assault result, so long as this model is alive. Needless to say, a must.
Both Champions and Guardsmen can take a relic blade and/or an auxiliary grenade launcher.
Back to the reality of things, everyone I've mentioned is expensive. I don't mean expensive, I mean; exxxxxxxxpeeeeeennnnnsssssiiiiiive-uuuhhhhh. If you want to bring 3 Chapter Champions and have an army list that's legal and worth a damn, you won't be playing a 1000 point limit game. 1250 is even cutting it. The customizations give you some point flexibility, but in any case, you'll be spending lots and lots of points - make no mistake.
The Calgar Power Hour isn't something I'd bring to a tourny, he's more of a friendly-game type of setup. I've fielded him a couple of times in team games where I could completely focus on melee while my partner could have at the shooty-stuff and both times were a lot of fun. Anytime a Squad of Orks and a Chaos HQ assault you, and you kill them all losing only 1 Guardsman in 1 turn of melee - it's a good day.
Now, I've gotten WAY off track, here. Back to my original point; I'm hitting the reset button with my painting and going back to good ol' UM Blue. With over 3800 points in SMs, I was determined to find some faster ways of taking care of my new smurf-tastic look on life, and I found it: The Army Painter Navy Blue Colour Primer. Not only is it the only blue primer I could find in 2 days of searching, but it's very close to the UM blue from GW. Slap on some Quickshade Dark Tone on there when you're finished and they look fantastic.
The primer has saved me weeks of painting, and probably some cash if I cared enough to break it down that much. And here is what my desk looks like, right now:
2 Terminators down, 3780ish points to go. Wish me luck! Pics to come!
I'm just about to use some Army Painter to paint some Skaven.
ReplyDeleteHow did you find it? Any close up pics of how the finished mini's look?
Awesome! Let me know how it turns out for you.
ReplyDelete