Sentinels of Terra iBook review

by Chris Vinton

I just downloaded the ibook and have been looking it over.  As a new Chapter Supplement I'm very excited to see what was in this.  I looked around for a 'under the hood' type review because as someone that doesn't normally play imperial fists, I wanted to have a read before I buy look at it.  Unfortunately there is little out there so after sleeping on it I decided to drop the 40$ and let all of you enjoy this buy as well.  Hopefully this will help our readers make an educated buy.




So whats different?  Honestly not much.  If you're not in love with the Imperial fists, this book might not do much for you.  The fluff is a huge section on this and will definitely be an interesting read, but to me, not worth 40$.  That's nearly 4 black library books that you could get for the price of this fluff.

So, onto the rules.

Warlord traits:

First my disappointment in reading that even in the supplement army, Lysander must take his current trait; Champion of Humanity.  Now this trait is cool and Lysander certainly can stand toe to toe with most warlords and crush their face, but I'm willing to bet that if you know you're going to lose your warlord then just don't take that challenge to loose d3 victory points when Lysander shows their face the Fist of Dorn.  Unless of course you're chaos, in which case under the current meta at best poor Typhus might be an extra liability for those of you that have to have him as your warlord.  But my disappointment comes in that the centerpiece of most people's Imperial Fist Army does not get to take the new trait.  Sad.


So with that the new traits

Siege Lord- +1 result vs buildings for the lord and his unit
Tenacious Opponent- Lord has It Will Not Die (how awesome would Lysander be with this?!)
Wise Commander- +/-1 to reserve rolls
Indomitable- If the unit doesn't move they get Fearless and Counter-Attack
Architect of War- If Lord in a building damage rolls get -1 vs it.
Fleet Commander- 10/1 orbital bombardment once per game.

So there are some winners and some not so winners.  Would have been nice if Calgar taught Lysander how to roll traits on his own personal table but alas, Lysander once again passed on some Ultramarine help to his demise.

Centurions:

The force org got shaken up a bit.  Devo suits can be elites or heavy. Assault can be fast or elites.  Nice for the devo since the heavy support section of the Marines is so contested for.  For me, this lets me take my 3 thunderfires and a centurion squad.  This is about the only thing I like about the book.

As far as making a centurion army, I believe their too expensive to have more than 3 squads of in any normal game. (both points and cash!).  So really not getting much as far as flooding out suits, more of freeing up other slots for the much less competitive elite slots.









Chapter Tactic:

They traded in rerolls of 1's on bolters for all rerolls on bolters if at half range. (still not sternguard though...sadface)  This seems like it's an idea that sounded good when people were used to the old rapid fire rules, but now that Marines can move and still fire bolters at full range, you loose the benefit being able to beat people up at range with the added bonus.  However, this does add to over watch so rerolling 1-5's then, is way better than just rerolling 1's.  Otherwise when shooting you are only going from rerolling 1's to rerolling 1's & 2's (seeing that most of them are BS 4)

Its worth noting that they still keep the tank hunter part of the C:SM Imp fist chapter tactic.


Sergeant Garadon:

You can upgrade one tac sergeant to Garadon.  He becomes a captain with a power fist and a dumb relic pistol.  All for one point less than a naked captain (if you consider the 14 point marine you upgraded).  If you were to build Garadon as a Captain he would cost 120 points.  However, and a kind of big however, you don't get the Halo that comes on a naked captain.

Relics:

Eye of Hypnoth (cost of a grav pistol
like an auspex, 18" range not cummulative with an auspex and can reduce the AV of a building by 1 instead

Angel of Sacrifice (cost of a combi weapon)
replaces a chaplains crosius +2s/ap4 melee concussive and allows him to still attack even if slain in an earlier int step.

Bones of Osrak (cost of a powerfist)
gives a libby an extra warp charge and rerolls failed psychic tests

The Banner of Staganda (cost of a powerfist)
company standard that gives bearer counter-attack and crusader.  as well as functions the same as a company standard for morale and pinning

The Spartean (cost of a storm bolter)
MC/ignore cover bolt pistol

Also included are as always some apoc formations, city fight stuff, planet strike stuff and new missions.  A side note, the apoc formation gets tau like overwatch for units within 12".  Pretty boss.


So, that's it.  40$ not well spent.  After two misses for me between this and the sisters codex (at least sisters I might use for an ally) I'm going to be much more cautious when considering the supplements.  These most recent ones are no Farsight powerhouses as far as rules go.

They did a very good job of making you want to be a static 'sentinel' army, stand and shoot and do overwatch better, versus a crafty mobile army but I just don't see marines holding up well by doing this.  But who knows, I'm sure someone will figure out a very crafty way to use this but I just don't see it.


If you're an imperial fist fanboy, more than likely you have bought this, but if not don't expect anything special rules wise.  Buy it for the fluff if you want or just simply hold out until a book is released and pirate it, honestly.  (We spend enough on plastic to not feel bad about that).