it's time to talk about the Skitarii

[mmimzie]

The best thing for melee for a vanguard is the pater radium. It's really nice and GREAT for multiple combats. Even more so if you ignore a challenge to hide them in the back.

 

Do a multiple charge, and support them with a real combat unit like kastelans, dragoons, or infiltrators (who could better hold thebpater honestly, but would do worse at withstanding a multi charge). Then you grin sheepishly and Smile as you get lots of free wounds in.

 

In addition vanguards work wonders in combat with kastelans letting you one shot more enemies than normal. For instances you can instant death most of the troops in the space marine book including HQs without having to using power fist. Your power fish smiths can one shot TWC which is ridiculously awesome. Same could probably be said for dragoons.

 

All this said with out transport you won't really make it into combat until turn 3. With kastelans however, the phos blaster lets you reroll charges and thus lets you get there on turn 2 with some luck. Dragoons can again also do this just worse and at a 10 point cost per model.

 

This makes vanguards such a good friend to kastelans and draggoons. Kastelans make your vanguards move much quicker across the field via charges, while dragoons make thier high initiative attacks even better.

[Terminus]

 

Just a preference thing but I prefer Dragoons over Infils for close combat.

The main reason I take Rusts is for their Haywire Grenades. I realize that Neutron Onagers and Arc Vanguards can cover the anti tank but for some reason I like a "third option" in a Knight heavy meta.

 

 

I know the focus is on skits, but for Anti-Tank amongst Ad Mech I really like the Holy Requisitioner Formation:

 

1D4Chan:

 

 

A Dominus joins 2-3 Kataphron Breacher squads and give them the Deep Strike rule, but the Tech-Priest never scatters so long as he arrives within 6" of an objective marker and the Breachers wont scatter if they arive within 6" of the Tech-Priest. Also, they gain the Zealot and Counter-Attack special rules while within 6" of an objective marker. Keep in mind that they can still Deep Strike where ever and seperate, they just scatter normal. Give them Torsion Cannons and if your opponents riptide doesn't have a toe in cover its as good as dead.

 

 

To which I add, give them the Heavy Arc rifles, strike in on an opponents objective and melt that tasty rear armour. Wonderful. Plus as they have the 3+, T5, 2W that the Dominus can repair and he can tank with 2+/4++ it get's very strong.

 

You can go even further with the Relic too:

 

• Give the Unit IWND from Arkhan Land's pimp cane.
• Give them all BS2 Snapshots - goodbye flyers!
• Super Scryer Skull to re-roll armour pens/ glances
• The Powerglove to just plain flacon punch some enemy armour - Or repair a friendly knight - Or Falcon punch an enemy knight!

Arc rifles don't care about rear armour or the Scryerskull. The Magos can only tank for one unit.

 

As for Arquebus, make that unit the Warlord for Preferred Enemy.

[Kilofix]

Since we brought up the Holy Req formation. Has anyone found using the Deep Strike to be advantageous? As opposed to just deploying them regularly and then firing Arc from 36" max range? I mean, for the latter, it really doesn't matter if it's a front or rear shot, and I'm unsure about Breachers' survivability when DS'ed behind enemy lines.

[mmimzie]

Since we brought up the Holy Req formation. Has anyone found using the Deep Strike to be advantageous? As opposed to just deploying them regularly and then firing Arc from 36" max range? I mean, for the latter, it really doesn't matter if it's a front or rear shot, and I'm unsure about Breachers' survivability when DS'ed behind enemy lines.

In short yes. Torsion cannons rock, and kataphron aren't really that safe from shooting, you'll lose 2 from a round of skit shooting.  That said your also not deep striking for rear armor. Your torsion cannons won't have a problem reguardless of the angle. It's more for the ability to get objectives easily. 

 

Long answer:

The first time i ran it was my first time ever playing 40k and it went quite poorly. The next time was after reading the post and wanting to give them another try. This time it went very well. I played them with cohort cybernetica, and if placed on the field normally the kataphrons become the primary target for some reason. Keeping them in deep strike lets me actually use the bouncy armor rule, and lets me save the tier 2 canticles for the 2nd turn and reroll 1's & 2's on thier first  turn they get to shoot to make sure you kill what you gottta kill. That or get some shroud if they have AP 3 weapons.  

 

Additionally, this lets you also abuse the electric attacks canticle along with the luminagen lets you do mean things turn 3. Multi-charge as many untis as you can get 2 free attacks  at str 4 per dude. which usually means 14 free str 4 auto hits.  But wait there's more, You can also throw kataphrons in there as you see fit, and they too are up the field and mostly intact (which they wouldn't be if deployed normally and forced to endure 3 turns of shooting; this way they only take 1).  These each also give you more str 4 hits against as many units as you decide to charge. Allowing you to do all sorts of cruel things.  All of these get to reroll charge distance with luminagen if you abuse this rule correctly. 

 

On top of all that. You keep on shocking them on turn 2, and order your kastelans to double punch to ground the entire enemy force to dust. on your turn if you make it out of combat use alpha dominus to go back to FNP (or more abusively if you get to strike first; you can do your attacks and then alpha dominus to get FNP before you get punched back or visa verse).

[Terminus]

Torsion cannons are crap. They only get one shot at BS3, it's not very impressive. Breachers in general are the weaker choice among the Kataphrons, the torsion cannons being literally the worst weapon choice they have. The double-shot arc rifles are quite nice (although for the cost of one you can buy three arc rifles for your vanguard), and either version of Destroyers really, erm, destroy things.

[Targetlock]

I don't think I would ever take breachers over destroyers, there weapon options just don't seem that great over the grav-cannons and plasma culverins, they also seem a bit sub-par to me in melee, the torsion cannon seems good to me but not enough shots to make it worthwhile over the destroyer firepower.

[Magos Takatus]

I can see there's not much love for the Torsion Cannon. On paper the special rule they have sounds great, but a single shot able to create multiple wounds is more likely to go wrong than having D3 shots in the first place. You're more likely to get your ranged damage halted by a cover save or two with Torsion cannons. A shame, because the description of the weapon sounds really cool. It sounds like a ranged version of the tear attack marine Dreadnoughts used to have back in 2nd edition.

[Charlo]

Back onto Skitaari;

 

Has anyone ran sniper Dragoons? They seem like they'd be cool on numbers.

[Kilofix]

I like the Radium Jezzail on the Dragoon as a tougher / more mobile platform over Galvanics on Rangers. Unless you're going up against like Firewarriors, etc., in which case the latter's AP4 would be better.

 

But I actually like 3 Arquebus'es in a 10-man Ranger over Jezzails. Though costly, they have a real chance of taking out a crucial model in a Marine heavy meta. I go so far as to put them 48" or more away and just use the Arqs without the Galvanics.