Kicking off with part 2 of Salamanders HQ choices, we have a second chaplain
This guy is an Artificer armoured, pointy stick wielding chaplain with +1LD and a storm shield and Burning (iron) halo. This means he has a 2+/3++, which for 30k is pretty rare. While he may not be doing much damage because of his Ap4 Maul he will be more than able to tank a few rounds of assault with a dedicated combat character.
His burning halo is another nasty reflector type weapon like the salamander relic. Anytime Xiaphas saves a S5 hit he inflicts a S4 hit back. I’m not sure whether this allocates to the inflicting model or is allocated randomly so if anyone has the new book or knows if you could drop it the comments that would be awesome.
To make this guy even better, not only does he confer Zealot to his unit, he is a Masterly Lvl 1 psyker with Prescience and Precognition from the Divination tree. With Precognition Xiaphas is downright hard to kill, a re-rollable 2+/3++ save is hard to crack.
As you might have guessed these powers immediately look assault based, but as Xiaphas already confers zealot to his unit you could throw out Prescience to a large Tactical Squad to soften up any nearby units with shooting before charging them with whatever combat unit you have Xiaphas joined to. Equally you could cast it onto another assault unit and have both squads reroll to hit. This power could also be cast onto a vehicle around you before you charge in the assault phase for better scatter (Medusas) or Anti-Tank fire. It might take some thought but you can defiantly get some nasty tricks out of this.
However with great power comes… great limitations. Xiaphas Jurr only counts as a measly LD7 when rolling for Perils of the Warp test. This defiantly hurts.
Also oddly enough, in contrast to Cassian Dracos’ rule, Xiaphas Jurr cannot be warlord if Cassian is in the army.
Finally, he has a pretty meh warlord trait where you can re-roll your first failed morale or pinning test of the game.
Overall Xiaphas is an excellent HQ choice for salamanders that buffs your army in multiple ways. He's not without drawbacks and risks but overall Xiaphas is an outstanding choice for all sized battles. (Also he might be worth looking at in an allied Salamanders force)
