Of Belials

Its amazing that thoughout my entire gaming life i have been priviliged to see different people with different ideologies. Everyone is different and everyone has their own unique opinion on any and all matters. Today i would like to talk to you about Belial , Master of the Deathwing.



I have played since the release of 5th edition and have read more Black Library books than i care to admit. Safe to say the aspect of the hobby that interests me is competitive play and pure fluff. I have no skill in painting or converting, all my armies have decent painting that allows them to participate in tournaments. So having said that i would like to share a little "Secret" that i have known since time imemorial as a Dark Angel player.

To begin explaining this secret i must set things straight. In 5th edition if you wanted to play competitively with a Dark Angel codex there was only one option for you: Deathwing. Now this could have been deathwing or deathwing with elements of ravenwing, either way a 2+ save was our only chance of winning tourneys. Having said that i must urge you to remember that we did not get a 3++ storm shield until very late in 5th edition. Our storm shields only gave us 4++ in close combat. So you can understand what a boost we got with updated FAQ that made our shields 3++.

So back to this secret, Belial as a character is pathetic...he has a Weaponskill of a fish (WS5). He costs 130 points which is fairly decent, and he makes our Deathwing terminators into troops which is freaking amazing.
Now when i say he is pathetic i mean it in a purely "Character like view". What do i mean? Well take Cato sicarius for example (the equivalent of Belial) and compare their stats and rules, you see a huge degree of play complexity and utility.

Fluffwise belial is a beast and has taken on Ghazgul in a 1 on 1 and survived to tell the tale, and yet his game rules show him as a simple terminator with 1 additional WS and 2 extra wounds, makes sense? Not to me!

So when i play games against opponents they always seem to want to single out belial and kill him (i run him with a TH/SS and in a command squad). Now this is perfectly fine in my opinion since to me hes there to only take wounds and die, its an almost trap like situation, i WANT my enemies to focus on belial and his command squad, because i  have NO empathy towards his unit, i couldnt care if he dies or not. To me this is unacceptable, i love my chapters fluff, i love the story behind my chapter and i love every single special character, but due to Games Workshop demoting Belial to a mere improved terminator, i find myself unable to feel any sort of attachment to it.

Will this stop me from playing? Never, but as a player that wishes to improve his expirience , i would like my Codex and army to reflect what i read in books....

What do you guys think?