New guard rumours

So we finally have some more guard rumours floating around. Most of these have come from a single source, that of chapter master valrak,  who has been fairly accurate as far as I know but I have also found some other sources around and about, all of completely unknown quality or reliability but I shall muse on them anyway.

First up is that tank rumour again, the Rogal Dorn. I've spoken about this before and It's still a stupid idea and a stupid name as well. We have arguably the best tank in the game, yes it's not the most powerful or fastest or most resilient bit it is the most versatile and cost effective. Why we need another tank is beyond me, what we really need is for the Leman Russ to have its damage output match the rest of it. 

Talking of vehicles, we have been told that the sentinel kit is being updated. I'm not sure what really needs updating here. The sprues could be made more compact and we could gain access to multi-meltas but apart from that I don't think it need updating and to be honest I can't say I've heard anyone else saying that it does either. I just hope that they don't turn it in to some 10 gun monstrosity like that have with most of the space marine stuff.

The rest of the rumours are about infantry kits and we'll start with the new HQ's. From what I've seen, both on the video and other places, it seem that these are most likely going to generic commanders, probably in clam pack form. There is likely to be some sort of new named characters revealed, as Creed has gone AWOL (on holiday with the Necrons), so a new Cadian character is needed. It makes sense that these would be clam packs as well, as currently we only have commander models included within the command squad boxes. I suspect we will see a new commissar as well but it would be nice to see a new psyker, priest and advisor models.

There was also talk of a new veteran or command squad box. This doesn't makes sense to me. A command squad is 4 strong and to be honest is pretty useless unless it's armed with 4 special weapons, usually plasma or melta. I'm not sure how a new box set could for fill both a vet squad and command squad options, without having to buy multiple boxes to get a full squad of vets or having lots of bodies left over. While a new veteran box would be nice, I think that just refreshing the current line and having options for veterans within the box makes more sense but we shall see where this goes. The other option for this is that they are going to redo the whole range and turn them in to a very veteran looking force, which again I think is the wrong way. The guard are not formed of veterans, they are few and far between because guardsmen and women don't last long enough to become vets! The vast majority of guard are raw recruits or basically train soldiers. 

However, there is one rumour that has got my interest and combined with the rumour engine picture, has opened up a lot of possibilities.

When I first saw the image I thought either of new strom troopers, which would be a little silly given how recently we got the Scion boxes, new marine primaris scouts, but again with the black Templar releases I'd expect new scout to look a lot like neophytes, or possibly new Kasrkins. To be honest though, Kasrkins were bottom of the possibility list at the time but have shot to the top with these rumours. The latest rumours seem to suggest that we will see a full release, more so than with scions, with Hq units, Troops and also heavy weapons. Now, a couple of places have not mentioned the heavy weapons, just hq and troops, which sounds more accurate to me, as this is what they use to have and they have traditionally relied on normal cadians for heavy support, something that the scions\storm troopers of old used to do themselves but now can't (not that I'm salty about it or anything!) Anyway, new Kasrkins would be great, as they are such an iconic unit and having the option to take heavy weapons would be great too. If they do give Kasrkins heavy weapons as well as other options, such as command squads, I will probably start running my scions as Kasrkins and take advantage of the extra units, as I would love to be able to run heavy weapons in my scions force. 

All in all, from Valrak's video and the other bits and pieces I've found around then place, (some of which may have come along due to the video) it seems like there is going to be a refresh of the cadian line, maybe not a full range refresh but certainly a sizable one. Although there seems to be no mention of any other regiments in this latest batch of rumours, which is disappointing. The best news out of all this however is that very fact that we are getting rumours and tesasers, as this means that the codex is closer than we thought, at least a couple of months but it will be this year at least.