Odd Man Out: Blood Angels Captain
5 Minute Read
Feb 13 2011
Advertisement
Who’s our special guy, hmm? Who’s our special little guy??
Mr. Black here, and today I have a very special guest for you here in the Bell of Lost Souls Lounge. We gave him a call last week and told him we represented Matt Ward
That was mostly a lie.
He does not know our true intent, he does not know this will be written.
We wait patiently, “we” being me, your host, Mr. Black, and Bigred, whom we have dressed as
I’d believe this man writes codices for a living.
Initially he did not want to go along with it, but let’s just say someone needs to have a better password than “password12345” on their photo drive. Ten minutes past our agreed upon time there is a knock on the door. I step to be other room and Bigred opens the door, allowing our guest, the ever prestigious Blood Angels Captain, entry into the room.
“You’re Mr. Ward?” The Captain asks sheepishly, the dark grooves under his eyes made all the worse in contrast to his golden “Sanguinius” locks.
“I am” replied Bigred, his noise nasally and high pitched, exactly like we presumed Mr. Ward sounded like. “And I wanted to talk to you about some… Erratas… We’d like to make to you. You know, to…” He is cut off by Captain. “To make me usable? Or at least on par with that Librarian? I’ll do anything, man, anything.” The desperation in his voice is deep-seated. Bigred merely responds with a comforting “Y-yeah.” before excusing himself from the room, exiting to “get some papers”.
After a moment I make my presence known.
“Hey, how’s it going? Why don’t don’t you go a head and have a seat on that stool over there.” The Captain looks visibly stunned, but after a moment and a whimper of defeat he takes his place on the stool. “Do you know why you’re here?” I ask, my demeanor and voice calm, as not to rile him up. “They called me and said they wanted to fix a few things, make me less over-powered!”
“Mhmm, mhmm… That’s not what I heard”, I countered, “I heard you came here today because you wanted to be errated, to be made better.” He shifted in his seat, his expression growing angry. “Listen, I’m fine how I am! I have a bunch of attacks, a Jump Pack, Artificer Armor, a Relic Blade!” He held up a Thunder Hammer, the head broken off and what appeared to be the remains of a Lightning Claw welded on. It was in this moment I felt sorry for the sight in front of me. Even as I initially entered the room I had noticed the gold primer on his armor, now chipping and fracturing to betray the plain red suit of Power Armor he had tried so hard to cover up. Clearly this poor soul was in denial to the point he actually believed he had all these things, wishing he was like the standard-template Space Marine Captains before him.
“Mhmm, mhmm… Look at yourself. Look at what you’ve become. You were once on par with the likes of Dante and Corbulo, now look at you. I don’t mean to be, well, mean, but really look at yourself. Having no point is one thing, but trying to steal the wargear from other Codex Chapters? I mean really?” I stated, still calm but assertive. He was visibly growing disgruntled. “I’m not useless! What does that , little Reclusiarch have over me?!
“Well, give him a Jump Pack and he’s the same number of points as you are with Duel-Lightning Claws. And what is he giving up in exchange for that? One Weapon Skill for the ability for his entire squad to Re-roll wounds on the charge.” I countered.
“That Weapon Skill Six comes into play all the time!” He yelled.
“Sure it does, sure. Oh yeah, he also makes his unit Fearless.” His anger was nearing it’s boiling point, this much was obvious, and I was not here to enrage him, only confront him. We needed to bring it back down a bit. “Well, you are more combat savvy than the Librarian. You have that going for you.”
It was here our meeting took an unexpected surprise. The Captain, so full of anger that I was worried the Black Rage would overtake him, began to break down, tossing his make-shift Relic Blade and Trashcan-lid Storm Shield to the side and cupping his face in his hands, sobbing. “He costs less though! And can Unleash Rage or give out a cover save! How am I supposed to compete with that, huh? How am I supposed to compete with that??! And don’t even get me started on the specials! Dante? The Sanguinor? Do you honestly know how it feels to know you won’t ever see battle with those guys? No, instead your banished to the bottom of the army transport… If you’re lucky you may be a proxied Honour Guard or Vanguard… If you’re lucky…”
It was obvious from here on we couldn’t continue our interview. We had Jawaballs and The Duke come out and take him away. He may have seemed just like a harmless victim of Codex-Neglect, but we couldn’t ignore what he had been trying to go to those Noviate Scouts, as well as the threatening videos and emails he had been sending the chapter’s Reclusiarchs… There aren’t enough Hail Emperor’s in the world to atone for some of the things he said…
And that brings us to our topic of the week. How do you feel about the Blood Angels Captain and, in general, the other victims of changing codices and editions? Today we saw what was once the shining star of the .pdf codex (well, behind Dante and Corbulo) and how far he has truly fallen. Would you still field him? Is he has bad as he appears on paper (the answer is yes), or are there tactics that can make him worth fielding?
Also join us next week when we have a very special guest joining us to speak about how he feels that his stat-line has been stolen!
“I- I just feel that that arrogant Space Marine Mephiston is trying to steal my turf. You know? I… I’m worried he’s a better me than, you know, me.”
~Hope you enjoyed this break from our usual, dear readers! Until next time, Mr. Black- out!
Author: Guest Columnist
Advertisement
