Headline: Chapter masters, are they black or white?

 Calvin here to talk about a unit that's were going to be seeing alot of in the meta very soon if you haven't already. The new space marine chapter master. This guys a beast! Coming in at WS6 and carrying 4 wounds it's the gear available to him that makes him deadly. My preferred build is taking a bike, shield eternal, artificer armor and a thunder hammer. This model can handle most any unit in the game in h2h.

I give mine a thunder hammer to tackle all the MCs we've been seeing so much of lately. To get an idea of this guys ability, a daemon prince on the charge with 6 attacks will do .88 wounds to the masters 1.1. This kind of defense is the reason I like the thunder hammer as his chosen weapon, even taking a charge from one of the most powerful h2h units he's likely to encounter he'll take only a single wound (which drops drastically to a .29 if he's got 5 buddies watchin the fight to give him a reroll) so it's a pretty safe bet going last wont hurt him much, an advantage his opponents lose to concussive after the first round of combat. Throw in a str 10 ap 1 barrage once per game and you better believe well be seeing marines led into battle by dual chapter masters for years to come.

All this brings us to the hardest part of choosing your master....will he be iron hands or white scars. Now both builds are great options, iron hands gives you a 6+ FNP and a 5+ It Will not die roll to keep him going longer, essentially giving him a 50% chance to either ignore or rejenerate every wound he takes, that's alot of survivability!

       But my personal preference is scar build master, because while the extra survivability is really nice, it leaves the chap masters one real weakness still intact, tarpitting. Every good list should have one, for power units like the screamer star to power models like the chap master. 

     Which is what makes having a model like that so scary, with hit and run, the fact that he ignores dangerous terrain, gets a str5 hammer of wrath and +1 to his jink is just bonus! 

      I run mine leading a 10 man bike squad and turbo boost them into my opponents face 1st turn with a 3+ cover save. They can take an entire armies shooting and survive. And we've already looked at their combat ability, so by removing the element of getting stuck in a guard blob, ork mob, gaunt unit, stubborn Kroot squad etc, for 2-3 turns I deffinitely prefer my chap master to wear white. Cause when your opponents turn is over, just hit and run through and say hello to that pesky broadside team everyone is so fond of. 

      And for everyone else looking for ways to deal with the chapter master menace....hope he's wearin black and get your stubborn/fearless squads front and center, cause the shooting and h2h required to kill one of these bad boys will take everything you've got, and if you find yourself having to use your whole army to mitigate one unit, your doin it wrong! 

      

If you have any thoughts or tactics for dealing with this unit feel free to write in.