Thursday, March 17, 2011

What is a Jokaero Weaponsmith?

OK, what are these things. There appearance has caused a small outcry about space monkeys or  space orangutans. This is not rumor, as they are already up for pre-order.

Games Workshop pre-order info:
Jokaero are heavyset, orange-furred apes with retractable fingers and toes, similar in appearance to the orang-utans of ancient Terra. Yet this primitive appearance is completely misleading. Jokaero are technosavants without peer and have an instinctive understanding of machinery and technological systems. So great is their skill that they can customise almost any weapon or equipment, giving a group of Henchmen more powerful weapons, better protection or even both at the same time. While outwardly they appear to be unarmed, Jokaero digital weapons can prove to be deadly, whether they choose to use a powerful laser, a flame thrower or a devastating melta weapon

 
The Jokaero are here, and are part of the Grey Knight codex as Inquistorial Henchmen. They are expensive point wise, a big 35pts but can morph out there weapon on the fly. Morphed weapons include, lascannon, multi-melta, and heavy flamer. That really means its possible that each one of them can take a lascannon and that can be a lot of lascannons.

With Inquisitor Coteaz, you can take henchmen as troops are not limited to 1 unit. Meaning you can take 6 units of these as your troop choices. I saw someone make a list that had 54 Jakaero/lascannon/multi-melta/heavy flamer in it for under 2000 points. Yes you heard that right, a space monkey army that shoots 54 lascannons round one. You can take 3-12 of them per unit. A Ballistic skill of 3 really does not hamper that many space monkeys.

They also get some fancy chart in which they alter their units weapons or armour by a die roll of a d6. From increasing non template ranges by 12", to increasing everyones armour save by one, to making weapons rending, the options are all good, unless you roll a 1. (take two jokearo and you get a +1 to your die roll, so it doesnt matter).

Now they are vulnerable to dying with but a single wound. The only thing they have is a 5+ invul save to try and keep them alive.

I really expect to see the Jokaero Weaponsmiths on the battlefield. Especially mixed in with warrior acolytes in Chimeras as troop choices.