Honour Guard? How useful are they?

[Arkkinite]

Really, are they useful at all? BA rarely fields captains, Chaplains go to DC squads and Librarians... well they don't usually pair up with honour guards anyway.

I know the SP is nice, but you could have placed it on some other squad than a command squad, so what circumstances (if any) would any of you use honour guards?

[JamesI]

In my opinion, the best use for an honor guard is 4 meltaguns or 4 plasmaguns, deepstrike near something and toast it.

 

I almost never attach an IC to the honor guard, though sometimes will with Dante to get the no scatter.

[Atlantic]

Honour Guard are fantastic for getting a very point cheap Sanguinary Priest on to the table.

 

I used to run the following with Seth. It is a bit crazy, but it will wreck just about anything (damn you halberds) it charges.

 

Seth

Librarian (I would use Unleash Rage to give Seth an extra d 3 attacks)

Chaplain

Honour Guard (Chapter Banner, Champion, 3 Power Weapons, 1 Power Fist)

and a Land Raider Redeemer to top it off.

 

If you are lucky, Seth will end up with 9 str 8 rending attacks at I 6.

a total of 30 power weapon attacks at str 5 and I 5 and 4 power fist attacks at str 9.

 

The whole squad re rolls hits as well....

 

I have never been displeased with how it performed and it holds up surprisingly well against enemy shooting (Shield + Feel No Pain).

 

I stopped using it though as the squad ends up being 700 - 800 points depending on war gear. That isn't especially prohibitive, but I've moved to a different paradigm when building lists. I used to just try and throw as many rocks as I could at my opponent, but nowadays I try to not spend more than 250 points on any single unit and flood the table with numbers. You get much more flexibility that way and if you lose a particular unit or character it isn't game changing.

[Leksington]

In my opinion, the best use for an honor guard is 4 meltaguns or 4 plasmaguns, deepstrike near something and toast it.

Yummy plasma when you have a built in priest to take care of Gets Hot. I'm with James.

[dadieau]

The Honor Guard gives you the cheapest Priest and WS5 Power Weapon in the codex. It also alows the most Meltaguns in a unit. Every time I make a list I try to get one in. I haven't done it yet but I'll figure it out eventually.

[Arkkinite]

So tank hunting Honour Guard o.0

Sounds rad :)

[Tamwulf]

The Honor Guard represent a very cheap, flexible unit with all kinds of fantastic load outs and options.

 

Great way to get an extra Blood Chalice in the army, and back up your HQ.

 

Just be sure you define what you want these guys to do. If you want a hard hitting assault unit with Jump Packs, you might want to consider Sanguinary Guard instead. By the time you tool up the Honor Guard, they will cost at least, if not more then Sanguinary Guard.

 

Honor Guard as a strong shooty unit? Think about Sternguard instead. Ablative wounds and an extra Razorback in the army? Think about a troops squad.

 

The best thing about the Honor Guard? They don't take up a force organization slot, which might be the answer for some players if they exhaust the Elites section of the BA list.

[Gv0zD]

In my opinion, the best use for an honor guard is 4 meltaguns or 4 plasmaguns, deepstrike near something and toast it.

Yummy plasma when you have a built in priest to take care of Gets Hot. I'm with James.

+1

I run 4 plasmaguns HG in my DoA list. While as not deadly as 4 meltas, they are verry effective against termies and power armour squads you want to thin down. I found them especially valuable when I needed to get rid of nasty chosen/veteran/gk squads and I had no units to enter HtH nor wanted to do it. Oh, and 4 plasmas can take out most side and rear armour. If you feel you lack anti-armour capabilities, then go for 4 meltas. If you can, join them with Dante for maximum efficiency, however they work just fine on their own.

[JamesI]

Honour Guard are fantastic for getting a very point cheap Sanguinary Priest on to the table.

 

I used to run the following with Seth. It is a bit crazy, but it will wreck just about anything (damn you halberds) it charges.

 

Seth

Librarian (I would use Unleash Rage to give Seth an extra d 3 attacks)

Chaplain

Honour Guard (Chapter Banner, Champion, 3 Power Weapons, 1 Power Fist)

and a Land Raider Redeemer to top it off.

 

If you are lucky, Seth will end up with 9 str 8 rending attacks at I 6.

a total of 30 power weapon attacks at str 5 and I 5 and 4 power fist attacks at str 9.

 

The whole squad re rolls hits as well....

 

I have never been displeased with how it performed and it holds up surprisingly well against enemy shooting (Shield + Feel No Pain).

 

I stopped using it though as the squad ends up being 700 - 800 points depending on war gear. That isn't especially prohibitive, but I've moved to a different paradigm when building lists. I used to just try and throw as many rocks as I could at my opponent, but nowadays I try to not spend more than 250 points on any single unit and flood the table with numbers. You get much more flexibility that way and if you lose a particular unit or character it isn't game changing.

 

You can't give the SAnguinary Novitiate a power weapon or power fist, so the above unit is at least slightly illegal.

[Res Ipsa Loquitur]

I think they're just including the Champion's PW with the rest of them.

[Atlantic]

I forgot about the initiate's limitation on wargear. Good call.

 

I used to put the power fist on the guy holding the banner. I have an old oop banner bearer model with one.

 

 

I've also used an Honour Guard with 4 plasma guns before. It is pretty destructive, especially when given a Razorback.

[AGPO]

It depends on the meta in your group. I face a lot of MEQ armies so lots of plasma is invaluable. Generally the combat focused honour guard aren't great compared to the other options BA have, but then the fact they don't take up a force organisation slot is great. You get a Priest on the board too, so you're freeing up two elite slots if you plump for them over Sang Guard. Against an army without many AP3 weapons it could be a good shout.

 

I'm in the process of modelling up an HG squad with four plasma guns. They're magnetised so they can either drop in with jump packs or hop a ride in a las-plas razorback. The Priest gives them a lot of survivability against gets hot and counter attacks, and they can really hurt deathstar units.

 

The meltaspam on the other hand I'm not a fan of. There are simply cheaper, more flexible ways of delivering your meltaspam. One option I do like the idea of though is going for Dante with an HG with the chapter banner, and either meltaguns and lightning claws or inferno pistols and power weapons. That's a very survivable unit with precision deepstriking, with five melta shots and a bucketload of power weapon CC attacks. Only for big games obviously but it could be fun.

[Brother Chris]

Never leave home without one. Especially with Dante. I have Chapter Banner and Champion on it, for fun and variety. Mainly useful for reasons shown above. Cheap priest and pressure on the elite slots. I play 2000 points plus and find this part of FOC most difficult.

[AGPO]

Anyone ever tried running four flamers against a horde army? I imagine it could look quite nasty.

[BloodTzar]

For a while there was a common consensus , that HG's used 4melta / 4 flamers very flexible unit, with nice price tag ... 225

[Res Ipsa Loquitur]

I've never liked flamers. Now granted that's probably partly situational because the only person at my club that ever uses a horde army is me but it's also partly because Blood Angels, IMO of course, don't need any help from wargear to take down lightly-armoured hordes.

 

Now that's not to say that I think taking flamers in a Honour Guard is necessarily a bad choice but, again IMO, there are better choices to be made ie. Plasma/Melta or making them a quasi-Deathstar assault unit.

[Morticon]

it's also partly because Blood Angels, IMO of course, don't need any help from wargear to take down lightly-armoured hordes.

 

 

^ This ! The only time ill have a flamer is when I absolutely cant spare 5 points.

[hoya4life3381]

Does anyone have any experience running HG with 4 Meltaguns in a Razorback with TL-Heavy Flamer?

 

I totally agree with the sentiments that traditional flamers aren't as necessary with the abundance in bp/ccw that we have in our assault troops. However, heavy flamers roasting those 4+ armor save armies out there is a whole lot more efficient than trying to slog your way through them because of their often greater numbers.

 

The HG with 3-4 meltaguns and a TL-HF Razorback is a very IG/Veterans like setup that I think would work pretty nicely. You don't need multiples of this squad particularly because the Razorback isn't discounted and you could use more bodies. However one unit of HG in the role of Line-Plugging Veterans would be perfect. Compare it with a regular ASM squad of 5 would only be able to pack 1 meltagun and even a combi-melta priest or an infernus pistol sergeant isn't able to replicate the firepower. This seems like a nice niche for HG where they are superior to ASM in Razors and better than even Sternguard who usually have only combi-weapons.

[LordCommanderSamirus]

I use a slightly more tooled up HG for my DoA list with Dante. 4 meltas, 2 storm shields, power fist, meltabombs. Gives you fire power, durability, and a little CC punch. 275pts.

 

-Samirus

[knife&fork]

it's also partly because Blood Angels, IMO of course, don't need any help from wargear to take down lightly-armoured hordes.

 

 

^ This ! The only time ill have a flamer is when I absolutely cant spare 5 points.

 

Don't underestimate flamer spam. Quantity is a quality of it's own.

 

Shoot a squad with 4 meltas and the maximum amount of guys you can kill is 4. Shoot him with 4 flamers and you'll most likely triple or quadruple that figure even if the average number of wounds is the same.

 

More importantly there's also the possibility to mess with wound allocation and force saves on key models.

 

Let's take IG melta vets as an example; I used to think these guys were scary until I realized that I could just allocate those FNP denying and instakilling shots to regular BP+CCW dudes in an assault squad and pretty much get no negative impact on the squads performance whatsoever. Just tank a round of fire and slaughter them in the next round. My fist will still be there and so will my meltas.

 

Do the same thing with flamer vets (or worse a command with a heavy flamer as well) and I have to take a ton of saves. With 3+ and FNP I won't fail many of those on average, but on the other hand I have far less control over who will potentially fail his save.

 

With everyone in a squad rolling at least one save there's no hiding the key models behind ablative wounds. :D

[Devilmixer]

I give the Jumppack chapter banner, champion and as many power weapon as i can and add a Reclusiarch, any think they charge just die

[Midnightmare]

I'm currently building 4x Plasmagun Guard. Anybody use stormshields with these? I'm thinking of magnetizing some and running with Dante. 530 points, dropping them in and killing whatever needs killing (couldn't take down a Tervigan last game and suffered big time for it so hopefully these will be the answer to things like that). They may well get charged next turn but would have a good chance of surviving with the shields then can jump out with Dante at the end of combat to do it all over again.

 

What do you guys think? A lot of points for 6 models, but planning on running them in tandem with some Vanguard.

[appiah4]

I have two, one is:

 

Novitiate, Champion, Company Banner, Fist, Meltagun, in a Razorback with TL Heavy Flamers, This unit is often joined by a Librarian. It's my counter-assault unit.

 

Novitiate, 4x Plasmaguns, Drop Pod. This unit deploys alone. I reserve it, and then drop it wherever I need to put the hurt.

 

Another good build I would do if I didn't already have more than enough models is Novitiate, Company Champion, 3x Lightning Claws and 3x Meltaguns, with a Chaplain, in a Land Raider Crusader. That's just badass. 6 marines with FNP, 3 Meltaguns and 5 power attacks with FC, rerolls to hit and wound.

[Morollan]

Don't underestimate flamer spam. Quantity is a quality of it's own.

 

Shoot a squad with 4 meltas and the maximum amount of guys you can kill is 4. Shoot him with 4 flamers and you'll most likely triple or quadruple that figure even if the average number of wounds is the same.

 

With T4, 3+ and FNP you have to squeeze a shedload of models under a flamer template to come close to the damage you're likely to take from a similar number of meltas. You're only going to kill 1 in 6 models that you get with a flamer. Yes there are more saves to roll and you can't do as much with wound allocation but I'm not sure that really makes up for the ability to take an armour save and get FNP on any fails.

[knife&fork]

Don't underestimate flamer spam. Quantity is a quality of it's own.

 

Shoot a squad with 4 meltas and the maximum amount of guys you can kill is 4. Shoot him with 4 flamers and you'll most likely triple or quadruple that figure even if the average number of wounds is the same.

 

With T4, 3+ and FNP you have to squeeze a shedload of models under a flamer template to come close to the damage you're likely to take from a similar number of meltas. You're only going to kill 1 in 6 models that you get with a flamer. Yes there are more saves to roll and you can't do as much with wound allocation but I'm not sure that really makes up for the ability to take an armour save and get FNP on any fails.

 

Not quite sure what you are arguing against here? We seem to be in an agreement that both weapons have different situations where they excel. What I think people does is overestimate the usefulness of melta for taking on infantry. In addition to what I've posted earlier any sort of inv save or cover will severely limit the effectiveness of the melta shots while having zero effect on the flamer which relies on weight of numbers.