Dark Angels Review: Ezekiel

As a level 3 psyker, Ezekiel must be one of only a few who retain a specific power: mind worm.  Its a bit of a signature move for him: reducing any wounded enemy model's BS, WS, I and Ld by a whopping 3 for the remainder of the game.  It's there to take down opposing HQ selections and hurt armies that MUST use the Ld of their HQ (like Azrael!).  With one lucky shot of mind worm, an entire army can be devastated realistically.  But is it very short range and needs a little luck from the die as well.  But AP2 and ignore cover certainly help with that.  He gets access to Divination, Pyromancy, Telepathy and Telekinesis as well.  I suggest rolling on Divination.

His other equipment is reasonably standard (artificer armour, grenades, AP3 master crafted force weapon etc.), along with the book of salvation which increases WS by 1 for all DA units within 6".  His warlord trait is dictated: The Hunt.  This gives the possibility of an additional victory point for warlord slayage.  This clearly ties in with Ezekiel's battlefield role.

In an army, we really want Ezekiel to get within 12" of an enemy warlord to use mind worm.  Really: I see this as his primary purpose.  He's the mirror match breaker.  The whole strategy of an army built with Ezekiel must be to target opponent's HQs.  He therefore needs to have manoeuvrability to get where he needs to be, and preferably embedded in a command squad (or similar) that is built to take on opposing command squads.  Load up in a land raider or rhino and go seek and destroy with celerity.

Overall, I rate Ezekiel well: his price tag is cheap enough to make him tempting to players and to build a strategy (or sub-strategy if another HQ is there like Belial) around him.  He's not going to pull it off all the time, but his is a level 3 psyker afterall, and therefore can have many secondary roles beyond hunting the enemy HQ.