Warhammer 40K: Imperial Fist Codex Supplement Overview
The Imperial Fists have a new Codex Supplement and we’re taking a tour! Check out the new book for the Sentinels of Terra.
Rogal Dorn’s Imperial Fists are the most stalwart defenders of humanity among the Adeptus Astartes. They are legendary Siege Masters thanks in no small part to their iconic stoicism in battle. With their new book, we get to explore their history and we get a ton of new rules to represent them on the tabletop:
Sentinels Of Terra
This book covers the 10 companies of the Imperial Fists. It goes over each of their histories and it covers the background of their major characters. It also has a section on their successor chapter the Crimson Fists. Iconic Heroes like Captain Lysander, Chapter Master Kantor, and new faces like Tor Garadon are all included in this book as well.
The Imperial Fists Supplement follows a similar format that we’ve seen in previous books with tons of lore and artwork included. It also has an entire section devoted to the painted miniatures for both the Imperial Fists and Crimson Fists. But, you probably knew all that was included. This being part of the last set of Space Marine Codex Supplements, the formula for these books is pretty well established.
While this supplement doesn’t deviate from that, it is the only one to include a section on the Crimson Fist and includes rules for them as well. On one hand, I’m glad to see them (the Crimson Fists) get their rules printed in a book – I just wished there was a bit more on them in this codex supplement.
Speaking of rules, this book contains all the good stuff – Stratagems, Warlord Traits, Tactical Objectives, Relics (as well as Master-Crafted Wargear) and the new Geokinesis discipline. Their Combat Doctrine boost is Legacy of Dorn and it boosts the damage of Heavy Weapons by 1 while the Devastator Doctrine is active. This is an interesting ability as it will boost the damage output of those weapons that have multiple shots more so than the single-shot heavy hitters. At the same time, a possible 7 damage from a lone Lascannon shot is also kind of cool.
The Imperial Fists also have quite a lot of synergy with bolt weapons in general. Heavy Bolters that will be spitting out AP -2 (thanks to Devastator Doctrine), 2 Damage shots (against vehicles) that ignore cover and generate additional hits on unmodified 6s seems pretty good. And we haven’t even started messing around with their stratagems, either.
I don’t think that the Imperial Fists are going to dethrone the Iron Hands (even post-nerf) but they do appear to have a pretty balanced Codex. But maybe that will be the problem for some folks – it’s NOT broken by any means. We’ll have to wait to see how the competitive meta shakes out for the Imperial Fists. And if you’re actually playing with Buildings the Imperial Fists do actually get better.
The Imperial Fist Codex and their Datacards are hitting pre-order this weekend. The Sentinels of Terra are as trusty as the Bolters they bring and are a solid codex – but is “solid” good enough to compete? Time will tell.
At least no one will complain if you bring them!
