How much is too much?

[InfestedKerrigan]

Is 210 for a Termie Lord with these abilities too much?  Counter Attack, It Will Not Die, Reroll to Hit/Wound, +1S/+d3 attacks in H2H

How does it compare to Special Characters to you?  When I played Templar, I kept my Marshal pretty basic, PW/BP and Iron Halo.  The same of my Night Lords, pretty basic Chaos Lord unless I'm running Huron instead.  

 

How do you determine your commander and the points you are spending on him?  Do you always go with a certain percentage of army?  Do you decide on a theme and choose an HQ that best facilitates that theme?  do you always avoid going over a certain cost?

[WestRider]

Depends on what I need him to do. If he's just there to fill the basic requirement, we're talking 65 Point Sorcerer/Librarian. Maybe shell out for the extra Mastery Level if I've got a few Points left.

 

For a combat beatstick character, you've got stuff ranging from the basic JuggerLord at about 145 up through a Chapter Master on Bike or ThunderLord coming in around 200-250 Points. I probably wouldn't go much above that, and if you're hitting that kind of Points level, I'd benchmark them against those guys.

 

Characters who provide broad-ranging buffs, it really depends on how well the Army can make use of them. Azrael is badly overpriced in most situations, but when you've got a big Guard Blob to stick him in, he's worth every one of those 215 Points. Dante is worth those 210 Points if you're getting use out of Descent of Angels, but maybe not otherwise.

 

If there's a specific role for the Character, it all comes down to does he have everything he needs to fill that role, and does he have anything extraneous. My go-to Rune Priest comes in at 115, with a Combi-Melta, second ML, and the Helm of Durfast, giving me quite a lot of highly accurate, Ignores Cover firepower. He's amazing at coming down in a pod and sniping out Venomthropes or DarkShrouds, or getting a first hard hit in on Wave Serpents or other Units relying on their Cover Save.

 

If that Termie Lord is passing some of those buffs on to his Unit, he might be worthwhile, but on his own, I'd say no more than 160 or so, probably.

[Prophecy]

I agree with West. SInce characters aren't really unlocking things as troops anymore you should only spend a bunch of points on someone who is a force multiplier.

[AbusePuppy]

WestRider basically hits it on the head- I don't think there is a cap per se on how much you can spend on HQs, but you need to look at what they're doing for you. Anything over a hundred points needs to be either buffing the army as a whole in some way (such as "unlock" characters or those with large auras) offering huge improvements to a single unit (like a Tau BuffCommander.) For combat characters, you need to match them up against the sorts of enemies they're likely to face as well as considering what the rest of your army is weak against; anything that goes over 200pts really needs to be bringing something powerful and unique to your army or it'll be dead weight.

 

Some armies can get away with more points spent on HQs than others, but it mostly depends on how good their HQ units are. A Necron army can reasonably spend 600pts from a 1.5K list on its HQs without going overboard; contrawise, a Dark Eldar army that is spending more than 150pts is probably wasting its time. In a lot of cases, though, your best bet is simply to minimize your HQ as much as possible without giving up all hope of functionality and just invest the extra points into more units.

 

Is 210 for a Termie Lord with these abilities too much?  Counter Attack, It Will Not Die, Reroll to Hit/Wound, +1S/+d3 attacks in H2H

How does it compare to Special Characters to you?  When I played Templar, I kept my Marshal pretty basic, PW/BP and Iron Halo.  The same of my Night Lords, pretty basic Chaos Lord unless I'm running Huron instead. 

 

Assuming the usual statline of a Chaos Lord/Marine Captain, I would call that guy fairly middling overall. (I'm also presuming his weapon is AP3 and he has a 4++ save in addition to the stuff you listed.) He's certainly no match for Chapter Smasher or a Juggerlord, nor a Wraithknight or even a Riptide- basically, he can kill standard infantry fairly well and little else.

[InfestedKerrigan]

It's a Wolf Lord with Relics from Champions of Fenris.  I'm considering using Company of the Great Wolf detachment for my Atramentar, and while looking over the relics, it got me thinking about HeroHammer.  I don't see kitting him like that.  IWND sounds tempting in theory, but I don't see it being useful on a Termie Lord.  

 

Thanks for the points of consideration, guys.  :)

[AbusePuppy]

CotGW can kit a guy to be pretty scary in melee, but you need to put him on a Thunderwolf and get him a Storm Shield. Those are both huge boons.

[WestRider]

Yep. Those two are the basic tools for SW Combat Character, regardless of whether it's base Codex or CoF. Once you've got those, you can play around in the Relics, but nothing will give you better value than a TW and SS. Without those, it's both going to take you longer to get into Assault and you'll likely get killed more quickly, so they're the bits that let you actually get the value out of your other upgrades.