"Best" Way to run the Calgar Boxset at 2000 points?

[Gornall]

I'd like to run Calgar and his Honor Guard (1 box worth) in some 2k games and was curious as to what the best setup would be? I'm thinking Relic Blade on the Champion along with the Chapter Banner. Also, what is the point of the combat blade option of the Champion since they all have bolt pistols?

 

I'm thinking about trying to run 2 LR©s, one with the Honorguard and Calgar, the other with the Assault Termies and then trying to fit in some support. Any suggestion on how to make it work?

[asur03]

A few points to keep in mind:

 

- At 2000 points you are tying up a lot of your army in basically two units (considering the LRs as transports essentially). And when I say a lot it's over half of the army. I know because I did this two weeks ago.

 

- Marneus with his 7 RRW attacks on the charge at S8 is more than enough to put the hurt on enemy characters, MCs or armor. In my opinion you don't need the S6 hits from the RBs and would do better with the two extra attacks.

 

- HG also are not that survivable especially with the small amount of targets in your army after spending around 1200 points on the two units in question. They'll be hit with all manner of heavy and special weapons that go right through AA. You will need those extra 30 points in your army elsewhere. (30 points for the RBs)

 

- Marneus himself isn't as survivable as you would think when forced to take loads of saves. (no one is for that matter)

 

- At 2000 points you'll also want at least 2-3 Troops choices. I would say 2 Tacs or 1 Tac and 2 Scouts. They will need to be mobile with transports as well.

 

- With the few points leftover I'd consider a dreadnought, landspeeder or sterng.

[Gornall]

Yeah... I'm not sure if I can shoe-horn them into 2000 points, but I wanted to see if people had any good ideas on the best way to set up the squad. I am only planning on buying two upgrades for the HG: the Chapter Banner, and a RB for the Champion. You're probably right on the RB though. What are units that provide good synergy with Calgar/HG? I was thinking that the Assault Termies would take some heat off of them, especially if I lead with the more durable Termies to take out the meaner threats, while Calgar and Co could follow up to perform cleanup duty on anything without PWs. That might be a little points prohibitive though. So yeah, my two main questions are:

 

1. What's the best equipment setup for 4 HG and Calgar (and what's the combat blade for?)

2. What other units provide good synergy for a Calgar/HG unit?

[ShinyRhino]

An attached librarian with Force Dome will give the Honour Guard an invulnerable save to make them live a tad longer. Even a cheap 100 point version would do.

[Captain Idaho]

Combat blade is purely for a Thunder hammer chamption really, aside from modeling purposes of course.

 

A relic blade is always good, even when with Calgar, simply because you are hitting at Initiative 4 with 5 S6 attacks on the charge! Trust me, I use a Relic bladed Champion all the time!

 

Brother Tual uses the box set from time to time in smaller games and has sucess, so don't worry too much about costs. 4 men, with Chapter Banner and a Relic blade Champion is actually only 190pts, while you were going to end up with a Landraider in your list anyway (surely at 2000pts :P ), so the costs aren't as extravagant as you would think.

 

In fact, Calgar himself is only around 65pts more expensive than the usual favourites many players are going on about, Lysander and Vulkan, and he is much better than either of them.

 

Now, an Honour Guard unit in a Landraider, along with a powerful character, will be a great spearhead assault unit. Natural complements would be other mechanised units, included a couple Tactical units in Rhinos to bulk out the numbers on the assault.

 

Check my list here for ideas on taking Honour Guard.

 

Incidently if I get to the GT finals I might take Calgar in my army to prove a point!