Homemade Special

One of my biggest draws about Fantasy/40K/Pathfinder/every game ever is the possibility of an on the field avatar.  Not THE Avatar, but, rather, an idea of a character given tiny form.

With this thread of thought in mind, I and a couple of friends decided to give the homemade design process a run during our weekly gaming session.  Each of us plays the same army fairly regularly at this point.  In making a set of special characters, we though we could put an interesting twist on our standard games.  Not only would it mix up the way units interact and provide some uniqueness, but it would help us structure a narrative around the games.

Antisthenes leading his merry band

So this is what I came up with:

Antisthenes, Master of the Host   200 Points
WS  BS   S   T   W    I    A   Ld    Sv
5      5      4    4    3   5    3   10     3+

Wargear:  Bolt Pistol, Frag and Krak Grenades,
Sigil of Corruption, Gift of Mutation

Warlord Trait:  Black Crusader

Word Bearers vs. Death Wing

Special Rules:  Beseech the Dark Gods, Zealot, Demagogue,
Champion of Chaos, Magister of Rituals

Magister of Rituals:  An army that includes Antisthenes
can count one squad of Possessed Marines as Scoring.

Chaos Artefact:  The Accursed Crozius
S: +2   AP:  4  Special Rules:  Melee, Daemon Weapon, Legion

Legion:  On a turn in which the Daemon Weapon adds attacks,
roll a D3:  1: Re-roll Hits and Wounds.  2: AP2.  3: +2 A and I.

My Word Bearers have been wishing for a Dark Apostle worth being "the guy."  Someone who you look at and think, "Yeah, he'd lead a legion of psychotic zealots."  The standard Dark Apostle is a decent buy in terms of being a force multiplier, but in reality, he is only his special rules and wargear.  You take him for the Zealot rule and hope the Sigil of Corruption keeps your investment safe.  I understand him being a second to the Chaos Lord, but not really as the face of the franchise.  For the Word Bearers, something a little different makes sense. 

I'll pass on trying to take this objective.

I kicked off with most of the basic Chaos Lord statistics.  I reduced the weapon skill by one, reasoning that even if he were going to be "teh awesome", he still wouldn't necessarily be the master of blades.  I added the Dark Apostle special rules, a Warlord Trait, and went for a very minor force org adjustment.  Finally, I thought, "Time to come up with a daemon weapon."  While raking my mother-in-law's leaves, it occurred to me to make an artefact that reflected the Daemonkin table of the Possessed.  Obviously, this can be very random, but so it goes.  In his first three games of service, he's had positive results.  In the first game, he mostly did mop up duty.  A Daemon Prince on his last wound, plus a wounded enemy special character formed an auspicious pair of pelts to start with.  The second game saw him hit a timely roll against some Assault Terminators and roll a squad by himself.  The third game, against the same Deathwing army, he rolled the dreaded one.  In the end, he accounted for a total of two terminators.  He has yet to die, which, frankly, is quite surprising to me.  There have been a lot of Thunder Hammers floating around lately.  We'll see what the future brings for him.