BREAKING NEWS: 8th Ed Salamanders Aggressors and Chapter Tactics Explained!

I love these guys! I first encountered them in the 3rd edition Armageddon campaign, where they were released alongside the Black Templars. They were essentially the same as normal marines, but with -1 initiaitve, cheap terminators, and two flamers in tactical squads.

Since then, they've kept up their pyromania but have become far more flexible as an army. Let's dive in to today's reveal at Warhammer Community!

Note that that is a Gravis-Armoured Flamer dude

I'm just going to copy/paste what I said about the Chapter tactic from yesterday's post, as there's no point in re-writing what's there already:

Salamanders, Master Artisans

• Re-roll a single failed To Hit, or To-Wound roll for a unit

Again, someone bland on the surface, but this makes them the best Special Weapon Space Marines out there! With decent Ballistic Skill and high strength meltaguns, it's rare that you miss or fail to wound. This Chapter tactic just makes sure of that.
Not only that, but they can more comfortably use plasma guns, being able to re-roll away that potential To-Hit of 1 on an overcharge which may kill you. Combining this with Command Point re-rolls means they can more safely pump out huge amounts of plasma fire each turn!
It also fits nicely with their fluff of more independence and taking responsibility for themselves. They can hot and wound targets a little better without their Lieutenants and Captains watching over them.
In fact this may well be the tactic I choose for the Space Marine Field Police!

Re-roll one To-Hit and one To-Wound roll per unit

 The only thing I need to add to the above is how this benefits small units. Multiple cheap single model units with one special weapon are going to benefit more from this rule than larger units with lots of guns. I'm not sure how this would be accomplished in a Space Marine army, but we'll have to wait until the codex drops.

The unique Stratagem for Salamanders is Flamecraft which "greatly boosts the power of flame weapons of all sizes". We'll need to see what this means, as before it's meant extra strength. In 8th edition that will be particularly nasty, as flamers can now do multiple hits to larger units as well as hordes... imagine a fully flamer equipped Blaster squad pumping out an average of 17.5 auto-hitting Strength 5 shots a turn.

You'll need to pay Command Points for it, but still worth it!

Finally we have the name for the Gravis-armoured guys in this picture, and in the artwork above:

Bottom left

These are Aggressors. Whilst we can see they have bolt storm gauntlets in that picture (3 shot Primaris Bolt pistols attached to power fists), the post tells us there are flamer versions of these.

Not only that, but if they stand still they can fire twice!

Really good stuff for the Salamanders, and I fully expect them to be more widely used in this edition.

Ok, three posts in one day. I'm exhausted. I'll see you all tomorrow for the Iron Hands reveal.

Until next time!

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