We'll start the unit reviews with the named characters first and the highest of the high is the Lord Solar.
The Lord Solar is a very good character (even if the model still sucks) with several very go abilities. Claiming an extra CP in your command phase is a great ability in an edition with limited CP, plus with the ability to redeploy units at the start of the game, means that this is almost a must take unit. You can easily put him in a big unit of infantry or rough riders to hide him, although the going with rough riders means that you’re taking a powerful unit and relegating them to back field duties. The ability to issue 3 orders in also very useful, however, without the ability to use a master vox, the range is very limited and you may find in hard to actually issue three orders most of the time. All in all i think this is a very good unit and i can see it being taken in a lot of lists.
Creed is a mother big name in the guard, even if it’s now Ursula and not Ursarkar. While not quite as powerful as the Lord Solar, i think she actually has more utility. Yes the extra CP is very useful but with Creeds Tactical Genius meaning you can use a stratagem for 0CP per battle round, which could be worth 2CP, gaining you a CP per turn over the Lord Solar. In addition, having a unit be under two orders a turn can also be very useful. The only issue is the restrictions on the units that she can join. I would pick Creed over the Lord Solar pretty much every time.
Colonel Straken, hero of Catachan, is one of two Catachan leaders. While he has lots of character, as an actual leader choice, he is quite poor. He is based around getting in to melee but seeing as he can only join Catachan squads, who have very little melee ability, he really isn’t very good. The Lethal hits ability can be useful but the ability to re-roll hits and wounds would have been better if it effected the whole unit not just him. 2 orders are useful however but don’t make up for the weaknesses in other areas. I think he is really a character to use for fun and fluff reasons rather than any tactical reasons.
Sergeant Harker on the other hand is actually a more useful character to attach to a unit of Catachan. While payback is useful and gives a bonus to shooting, especially as the squads can’t take any heavy weapons of their own, and the payback time can be a very useful in critical moment, the most useful ability is the Hellraisers ability. Either pushing the unit forward or sitting them back on the home objective can cause issues for you opponent. I think the most useful way of running Harker would be with a unit of 20 Catachan sitting on the home objective, with the -1 to hit and cover keeping them safe. I would look at taking Harker over Straken in almost every circumstance.
The last of the Epic hero’s is Sly Marbo. Marbo is a very useful distraction character and has some good abilities. One-man army is very useful for counter strikes and fighting a shadow is useful for keeping him alive but overall i think he’s not as useful as he was. He is really just a fun and fluff character, alongside Straken. I can’t see him getting very much play at all.
Lastly i have included the Castellan on the list. He’s not a named character but he is the only single model character unit left. The Castellan is a very useful model and for certain units he will be very useful, such as the Kasrkins. The unit can take a number of different weapon options for some versatility but overall i think that he will be outclassed but the Cadian command squad.
Overall there are a couple of units that are going to appear in most lists, such as Lord Solar or Creed and some units that you’ll very rarely see outside of fluffy lists, such as Straken and Marbo.
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