Vanguard is the new termie :)

[DarkGuard]

I would love to try heroic intervention with my BA vanguard veterans off a stormraven. Granted the stormraven must have an intact beacon turn 2 or turn 3 but think about it. The stormraven has already dumped its payload of CC nasties after a 24 inch charge first turn. It may have moved or not since then. The stormraven is a big craft imagine a 6 inch homing beacon extending from any point on the stormraven. If you run vanguard as sweep from reserve cleaning up after the death company and the dread it dropped its a perfect combo and makes good use of heroic intervention.

Okay this only works for Blood Angels but someone tell me that this is not a great idea to use BA vets with Heroic Intervention.

 

Personally I'd prefer to use Drop Pods with locator beacons. Take at least three, and give two locator beacons. First turn those two show up, and if you land right you've covered a huge area of the board. Better than a Storm Raven for this role because a Storm Raven has a massive "shoot me" sign on a banner trailing from its wings, so that locator beacon may not last so long. Drop Pods don't have this sign, and as long as you keep them away from objectives people won't really care too much about them. That and they're still going to be around from turn 1, probably in a good position.

[Br.Pat]

Yes, as the provocative title of the topic suggests, I have this crazy idea and I need to bounce it off you guys.

 

I play Raven Guard, which gives me lots of often suboptimal tactically but uber-optimal fluff&coolwise (IMO) army composition ideas. The main theme is 'mobility' and 'fast attack'. Also being a man who likes to go against the grain might be an issue here :lol:

 

So I was looking at the vanguards and somehow felt this is a type of a unit I just need to include in my army. It just seems right to have them, you know what I mean? But when you look at their stats, abilities and points cost it turns out that they are just an assault squad only ridiculously expensive.

 

Or are they?

 

After much consideration I decided upon two options to choose from.

 

1) 5-man squad with jump packs and power weapons, sgt with powerfist (for dealing with multiple wound enemies) with a JP equipped chaplain and perhaps Korvydae. 18" effective charge range, 20 attacks with "to wound" rerolls, no saves allowed for the enemy and a chance to break away next turn if the resistance met is too heavy to deal with.

 

2) 5-man squad with jump packs and double lightning claws, with chaplain. The same attack stats, but all missed "to hits" and "to wounds" rerolled and no save allowed. That sounds killer to me, if anything.

 

(I don't really count the Heroic Intervention rule as it seems to unreliable to me with the Deep Strike scattering and all.)

 

The problem is - it's really expensive pointswise. Option 1 is about 240pts, option 2 is over 300 pts. "That is stupid", one might say, "assault terminators cost 200pts with the same weapons and better armour AND inv save!". And that is correct - only that the termies NEED their 250pts LR to actually do anything other than slog across the battlefield trying to get anywhere near their enemy. So their effective points cost is more like 450pts. Granted, the LR is also here, but there's other things you can buy for the 150-200pts difference.

 

What do you think?

 

The part about the Land Raider is partly true... however circa 250 points gets you a beast of a vehicle with lots of firepower and that's a headache to take down. However, the main reason why ATs are so good is because of their Stormshields. 3+ save against elite infantry is a huge advantage.

 

Your 'elite' vanguard unit will die against anything with Init 5/Furious charge. Lightning Claws are only good if you strike before you opponent, so that his capabilities are vastly reduced. This is why BA and Templar Termies are effective with LCs. Furios charge means I5 S5 which is huge.

 

But if you want a good deepstriking unit here's an idea.

 

10 Assault Termies no LR, but they deepstrike. You play Raven Guard so I assume you have no objection to using Shrike. The ATs will weather the fire on the term they come down. Next turn your ATs can fleet and charge. Locator Beacons in Tac squads make striking more accurate.

 

Although I hate to say it, Vanguard vets are simply inneficient points wise to be any good in this edition. Which is a pity, because the models and fluff are cool.

[Vincent Black Shadow]

A 325+ point VV squad & a 125+ point jump chaplain is not a cost effective unit. You could get 2 tricked-out regular assault squads for that price, which gives you more bodies on the field and nearly identical results, statistically, on the charge (although split between two units). And in BA, they are scoring as well. Heroic intervention and fancy upgrades are the only things that VV have over regular assault marines. The upgrades are so expensive that you have to sacrifice other parts of your army in order to buy them. Heroic intervention is pretty pricey (jump packs) but can be twice as useful as you seem to believe if you include a couple beacons in your army.

 

Here's how I suggest VVs be used. Your army needs drop pods and/or scout bikers with beacons On first turn, you can have beacons in place to let you charge almost anywhere on the table when your VVs drop out of reserve. The VVs should be equipped with a mix of weapons, but most of them should have at least a power sword. When they come in, you put them on the table where they can take out MCs, low-initiative heavy infantry, or light infantry units on the edges of the enemy's army. Use them like a razor to cut off entire pieces of the enemy's kill potential in a single go. Against nids, multicharge some tiny bugs and a synapse unit, and pile up those fearless wounds. Against orcs thin out and tie up the meganobz or nob bikers so the shooty half of your army has a chance to shred the boyz. And so on.

 

The downside of vets is in their survivability. They aren't going to outkill anything with equal or higher initiative without severe attrition on their side. The trick is to use HI to get them into a combat that they will win, and then use their jump packs to get them out of combats they will lose.

[thade]

I've tried the whole Scout Bike/Drop Pods list to support Vanguard DSing. It's a tricky list because 1. Drop Pod lists are not easy to execute well, and 2. Scout Bikers - while awesome - are not cheap, and finally 3. Locator Beacons are not cheap.

 

I still maintain that Vanguard is best used by ignoring HI entirely and using them for counter charges. Any argument that dismisses them based on "how costly they can get" has not tried a more reasonably priced, foot-slogging Vanguard; anybody putting jump packs and tons of upgrades on a Vanguard unit is going to be very sad when that unit misses on HI and gets eaten by bolter fire.

 

Remember to allow for ablative wounds (models without upgrades) and only one upgrade per model. Keep the unit size at eight or less and don't take jump packs: stick them in a Land Raider Crusader (a better asset than jump packs in many cases) or a Rhino (if you're on a budget). Never charge them in first. They stay with/behind your gun line; they disembark only to intercept a charge or counter-charge so as to keep melee pressure from breaking your gun line. Vanilla Vanguard do a fantastic number of attacks on the charge (they'll hit like an Ork unit - you'll roll a dice cube). Lightning Claws are your friends (single claws only, no pairs).

 

I've had a lot of luck and a lot of fun with my Vanguard variants. I stand by them and recommend giving a few tries before dismissing them.

[Ash]

I see Vanguard Veterans using Heroic Intervention as an assualt technique to deep strike on some shooty firebase squad.

As a BA player I would consider dropping them on top of heavy armour, devastators, guard dakka, tau dakka, eldar dakka, ork lootaz or something similar. Being able to bring BA's DOA is essential to success , FC as well as FNP is a bonus. I want to try it.

[Something Wycked]

2. Scout Bikers - while awesome - are not cheap

Lets not forget that BA Scouts (not bikers) can also take beacons. This reduces the cost significantly, and while you may be giving up T5 and mobility, you are gaining number of models and/or survivability with cloaks.

 

I like the Drop Pod + beacon delivery system for VV's, but I'll be using the Scout method more often now.