Vanguard Veterans

[LordofDeath11]

Awsome!

Killed 65 orks with em yesterday. Kinda useful considering it was obj. and that was all his troops!

Oh and did I mention I didnt lose a man?

 

8 men

4 Storm sheilds

6 PW

1 Infernus pistol

=

Hell!

 

Brutal.

[Chairman_woo]

Heres my plan...

 

Run them alongside a decent sized unit of bikes (say 5-8) with a bike preist. The bikes hang about untill the vanguard appear on turn 2 or 3, then turboboost into a supporting position near the squad you intend to use HI on. The bikes get a 3+ invun against shooting for moving flat out and with a 18" move (or is that 24 for bikes I forget) they can usually get just about anywhere on the board provided they have a staight run (which you set up on turn 1 or 2). This gets you FNP and furious charge for your HI and really helps split target priority if you have some RAS etc. jumping into supporting positions with them. If its done right you should be able to get the enemy in a position where they have to choose between countering the things that are hurting them that turn (mainly the vanguard) or going after the things that will hurt them next turn taking the heat off your other units.

 

Also the perfect number for vanguard IMHO is 7, it means that you have a bit of extra controll over your deepstrike positioning (due to bunching up base to base the 7th man can go anywhere on the outside of the circle, meaning you can extend or shorten the distance to target units as necessary (basically buys you an extra inch for HI purposes). Plus it means you can kit 4-5 of them with special weapons and still have 2 or 3 ablative wounds to play with. How much equipment is going to vary depending how much or little you want them to do, but I think stormshields are a must if you want to use them as the focus of your assault. They need to make that first charge stick so the rest of your army can get stuck in where you want them.

 

Failing that cheap 5 man unit with a single power weapon or so will do a nice job of hunting annoying but daingerous units like longfangs, or at the very least affect the way the enemy deploys his troops and just generally making them more paranoid about what you are going to do.

[Joasht]

Also the perfect number for vanguard IMHO is 7, it means that you have a bit of extra controll over your deepstrike positioning (due to bunching up base to base the 7th man can go anywhere on the outside of the circle, meaning you can extend or shorten the distance to target units as necessary (basically buys you an extra inch for HI purposes).

 

I thought it was eight guys, one guy in the middle, six bunched around him, and one guy to go anywhere else.

 

But anyway, with regards to Power Weapons, aren't Lightning Claws typically better? I haven't got a calculator with me, but they seem to do better against WS3 T3, WS4 T4 and WS4 T6 off the top of my head.

[Chimaera2000]

I agree that eight is a (not the, but a) magic number with Vanguard Veterans. Unless you're on a very tightly-packed board, I like the eighth man for giving you that extra base's worth of charge range. If you scatter too close to your target, you can rotate the eighth man to the opposite side of your formation too.

 

I find a combined-unit arms approach can work well with Vanguard Veterans. Like others mentioned, putting a priest in a bike squad or Deep Striking them nearby works very nicely. A strategy I'm toying with is with a first-wave drop pod with locator beacon. If they don't remove the pod, you have a win-win stiuation; if they don't react to the pod, you arrive with a scatter-less Deep Strike for Heroic Intervention. If they react to the pod, you have the potential to create a feint, putting the pod close to one target while sending your Vets to hit your real target.