Not So Humble Scions: getting the most out of your Tempestus

[Master Antaeus]

Standard Not So Humble Disclaimer: This series is purely anecdotal and based on my experience playing this game.  If I seem opinionated, narrow-minded or just plain abrasive it's because I am all of these things at different times.

 

Also, this post assumes the bulk of your force is chosen from Codex: Militarum Tempestus.  If you are an AM player who wants a single squad of Scions to roll into their other army.  Get 2 minimum sized squads who each have 2 meltaguns, and deep strike them.  This is deeper than that.

 

So I haven't posted a not so humble review in a while because I had basically run out of things to say about allies.  There is no reason to ally Space Marines with militarum tempestus from a tactical standpoint--space marines is a deep codex that has a tool that does the job better than MT.  MT are already baked into Astra Militarum and writing all of their interactions would be a doctrinal thesis on the Astra Militarum, which I don't want to write.

 

So what is this post about?  I intend to do a series on the various enemies you might see on the battlefields of 40k, how they (usually) fight and what you can do to counter it, but that necessitates a primer in what the Scions do to begin with.  A lot of this stuff has been said elsewhere, but I'm going to condense it all here.  Over the next few months (I do have Fallout 4 to finish), I will write about the enemies of the Imperium, but to know the enemy, we must first know ourselves.

 

Consider the Scion

 

A Militarum Tempestus Scion is a guard veteran with a really nice lasgun, frag and krak grenades, carapace armor, different orders, move through cover and deep strike for a little more than the cost of 2 guardsmen.  On paper, there is nothing much to recommend the Scion by himself.  He's too expensive to be purchased in bulk and he can't be considered elite because you could get a space marine scout for one point less who has comparable skills and even better stats.

 

A Scion is, therefore, not a space marine and not a scout.  He's not a foot soldier, like the Skitarii and he's not built on crazy squad choices like an Inquisitorial henchmen.  He's not part of a horde and he's not durably expendable like chimera vets, nor does he have the range to camp an objective like forward observers.

 

So what does he do?

In general, the Scion is a close-range shooter who can be anywhere you need him.  His flexibility dwarfs that of any other light infantry in the game.  He has access to a ground transport that is fast, lethal and doesn't care about terrain along with native deep strike and move through cover, meaning that you can drop him and his buddies almost anywhere, drive them almost anywhere or walk them almost anywhere.  This means that you have the ability to get them where you need them, when you need them.  Properly supplied and supported, they excel at board control and can hit and fade as well as any dark eldar army, often with more durability (for what that's worth).

 

The flexibility of deep strike, the Taurox and move through cover means that your army alone can approach the formless, which pleases Sun Tzu.  What I mean by this is that other armies must approach things in a linear way; drop pods arrive first turn, rhinos must cross the field, etc.  When you deploy or counter-deploy your scions, you can truly mask your intentions by flexibly placing or reserving trucks, deep striking and trucking your scions.  In short--a Scion army should be unpredictable, its form and intent difficult, if not impossible to discern.  This is a strength of the army.

 

What does he need to do it?  (support)

You will need transports.  The Taurox Prime is an excellent one and fits their mission well.  Valkyries are good for transporting allies, but don't do a great job of carrying Scions because Scions can already deep strike.  Why should desired placement dictate what you do with your aircraft and telegraph your intentions?  You shouldn't.  For this reason, valks don't do much for a Scions army, except allow the terrible commissar to deep strike and look cool.  Exception:the flyer formation gives a pretty good payoff, making deep strikes more reliable.

 

Like any army, a Scions army has to answer a few questions before you put it on the table.  At low points, most of these questions can be answered by the Scions themselves, but eventually, the codex shows how thin it is and you will eventually have to add allies in order to be a credible threat past 1250 points.

 

1.  How does my army kill AV14 all around vehicles?

2.  How does my army strike the back field?

3.  How does my army deal with TEqs (Terminator Equivalents?

4.  How does my army deal with hordes?

5.  How does my army deal with hull point spam?

6.  How does my army deal with large numbers of high Toughness troops or monstrous creatures?

7.  How does my army deal with Castle armies?

8.  How does my army deal with Flyers/FMCs?

9.  How does my army deal with Stealth armies?

 

Now, as stated before, armies are less likely to spam overwhelming numbers of these leading up to 1250 points, but after that, armies that consist mostly of any one or two of these threats are very much a thing and the chances of you encountering one become a mathematical certainty outside of closed gaming groups.
 

So what do you do?

 

 

Well, you can deal with hordes, stealth and, to a certain extent, TEqs with conventional shooting,  The AP3 is nice, but you will just have to accept that the points that went into it (baked into your per model cost) will be wasted on hordes, which typically rely on cover and on TEqs, which typically rely on armor saves and cover.  Everything else is laser bait.  Your lasguns are effective up to S6, so you can kill troops from every army in the game.  The good news is that there aren't many T5 and T6 units that have a 2+ armor save, so, generally, if you wound, chances are good it will be unsaved.  For this reason, I recommend that your standard line squad (squads not earmarked for another, specific use) carry plasmaguns.  The humble plasmagun has enough shots to make it viable against hordes, hot vs TEqs and outstanding against high toughness enemies.  It is dangerous to you, as well, but there are a few ways to mitigate this, which I will discuss later.

 

Flyers/FMCs: Your Scions frankly have more important things to do than shoot at flyers and even more important things to do than shoot FMCs.  You (should) have other units that do that better (Valks, Vultures, even Taurox Primes).  Always keep at the front of your mind with FMCs that if you shoot one and it falls, it can assault you the very next turn.  If it stays flying, it has to spend a turn on the ground before it assaults,meaning you have that opportunity to shoot it.  One caveat to this rule: some FMCs (Daemon Prince with burning brand) and one flyer (heldrake) have template weapons that will easily flambe your fragile troops.  You might want to consider devoting large amounts of resources to neutralizing these foes early.

 

Hull Point Spam: A rhino is 35 points and has 3 hull points.  A razorback is a credible threat and is around 50.  Armies that spam light vehicles are particularly menacing to Scions armies as our expensive vehicles often have trouble outmaneuvering these, as well as scratching off hull points and if you deep strike, your basic weapons can't scratch them.  Allies and aircraft can greatly alleviate this, as can the order that gives rending when firing at a vehicle, though that is hardly ideal.  Best to be locally strong and land or drive to a place where not all of his vehicles can target you and force him to move in range of your guns with a few vehicles at a time, while you harry his flanks with the rest of your forces.  The other thing to consider when you go up against this kind of army is what is in those vehicles?  A 5 man tactical squad can easily take out a full (and much more expensive) Scion squad in assault.

 

The back field: A standard tactic is to have a layered defense with a hard salient, backing support troops and long range, squishy things in back.  Scions excel at disrupting this sort of setup and dropping two squads in your opponent's DZ to force him to turn back or (if he's smart) to keep forces back in case you do this.  The beauty of deep strike is that you don't need to decide until your troops become available.

 

AV14 vehicles (and buildings): Unfortunately, the only way you can deal with AV14 all around vehicles is with meltaguns and meltabombs.  You might scratch off the odd hull point with Taurox Krak missiles, but this is unreliable and a 100 point armor 11 transport (or three) vs a land raider or monolith.is not a good matchup--to say nothing of what it might be carrying.  Deep strike can help you here, but it will really depend on the terrain whether it is better to sacrifice a truck getting your squad close with those meltaguns.

 

Castle armies: Armies that rely on buildings or ruins to make a long range gunline can be a pain since you always feel like you have to come get them.  Typically, you have to weather buckets full of shooting dice while your opponent moves little or nothing in the movement phase.  To get around this, carefully study what buildings you can land near in order to force him to move to engage you.  Castle players hate to move and even if you're never in danger of winning by tabling your opponent, you can usually force him to anger, or at least reprisal by taking one of his precious fortifications that he paid points for and demolishing it with meltaguns or taking it over.

 

The power of Deep Strike and move through cover:

 

Deep Strike is so powerful, it's almost comical.  Mastering it is critical to successfully playing Scions and you must always consider your options as this army will not play itself.  You don't always need to deep strike and many times, loading up in trucks is more effective and reliable.  The interaction of these two rules and the Taurox Prime special rules mean that there is literally no reason for you to not be in cover unless there is an objective in the open that you absolutely must have.  Before you rush a truck out there, consider that dedicated trucks in a CAD have objective secured.

 

Consider this: Move through cover means that you can deep strike into terrain with impunity, though if landing in ruins, you must always place your models on the bottom floor.  This often means that you can hide your models for a turn, using ruins to spread out during the shooting phase, although you usually need fire support right then, so consider whether you can afford to waste a shooting phase spreading out to avoid fire that will most likely kill your scions regardless of their formation.

 

This means that you can deep strike under an aquila landing pad and lower the shields during your turn, which ALP players always find hilarious.  It means you can deep strike on the back side of an ADL and hose down the troops manning it and can even take it for yourself if you have enough Scions in the area.

 

Summation: The scalpel army is a false comparison

A lot of people compare the actions of the special forces-like Militarum Tempestus to a scalpel, but scalpels aren't used violently, they are tools used to cut slowly and deliberately.  The Militarum Tempestus are more like a rapier: lightning fast, precise, unpredictable and deceptively deadly, but dull and flimsy when hit from the sides.  If you do not dictate the flow of battle, control will be taken from you.

 

This is a not so humble review, but I'd like to leave it open to the community to annotate.  If I like your annotation, I will edit it into the document and then, if possible I'd like to ask the mods if we can make this a sticky article because there needs to be more Militarum Tempestus love on the B&C.

 

Also, feel free to let me know if there are issues with my sentence structure, grammar, syntax, fragments, etc.

[mertbl]

Nice write up. Im getting back into the game and find your insights helpful. I wont be playing full scions however and on paper find the tuarox lacking.

[Ulrik_Ironfist]

I've been trying to build a good Stormie list, and the best I can get is an Elysian vet list that's heavy on the Stormtroopers. As that gets me the Valks and Vendettas to hit armor hard. 

 

I'm thinking that a cover camping vet detachment with some sentinels could work well to cover down on Scions. Tallarn Desert raiders rules might work well for helping vets keep up with scions.

[march10k]

My stormies are three 5 man squads with dual melta, one command squad with 4 plasma, and 4 valkyries, 2 with rocket pods...I have more models, but the min/maxed air cav formation seems to be the apex of stormtrooper goodness.

[Emicus]

Love it! Perhaps more of a shotgun than a rapier though.

 

Close range and horribly violent, vs the rapier which is more finesse and not to mention actual CC where you'll get butchered with scions.

[march10k]

Well...the ability to precisely place a stormtrooper squad where a pair of BS4 meltaguns are needed (for example), without facing enemy fire while slogging across the battlefield...it's scalpel-like.  The only thing is, when it hits a broadsword, the scalpel breaks.  

 

Stormtroopers aren't really a viable army on their own, they're good for special missions, like "deepstrike here to eliminate the optimized stealth cadre's drones, then the missile teams will bring down the ghostkeels, finally, the russes will pieplate the stealth teams...but the destruction of the optimized stealth cadre is critically dependent on your elimination of the stealth drones!"

[Kilofix]

My Scions as often die horribly.

 

But when those Melta Squads do land and wipe out that Necron AV13 wall in 1 turn, or when those FAMT Volleys or Plasma wipe out whole Bike Squads, then lol.

[Ubique]

I've been playing a 40k a year and I use the MT as my main Army, usually backed up by Inquisition Detachment. I usually play 1000-1500 pts using a CAD of MT as my main force with some Inq to buff some major weaknesses of MT. Here I'll write specifically about MT.

 

I've had success with MT solo running a CAD and overwhelming the other side with the asymmetric nature of my force. I think it is the asymmetric nature that makes them difficult to deal with. Further, they are efficient in the sense that the amount of time fighting at optimal range/capability is high vs the amount of time getting shot at in the backfield or manoeuvering into position. The caveat being that efficiency goes from 100% to 0% pretty damn quick.

 

My standard load out is 5 model squads organized as:

2xCmd Squad with 4 HSVG: Deployed in cover either as far forward in the deployment zone as possible (or as far back depending on who has 1st turn and what kind of long range heat is coming my way)

3xsquad with 2xPG and 1x plasma pistol: 1 in Taurox, 2 in DS

2x squad with 2xmeltagun: 1 in Taurox, 1 in DS

1x squad with 2xflamer: in DS

2x Taurox Prime always with autocannons, ML or Battle cannon (can be either or depending on situation) with cam nets, always deployed in cover.

 

This type of loadout has a number of advantages:

-The mix of weapon types mean there is a weapon for each type of target

- The number of squads which DS mean that they can be fed into battle where required

- The limited range of some of the weapons is mitigated by DS or using the taurox

- The vehicles have good mid-range AT firepower and can hang back in cover to mitigate low AV with cover saves

- It has some robustness to counter-alpha strikes because the 2 command squads can chew up whatever drop pods into the rear such as a tac squad in a drop pod

- The command squads, without any upgrades, buff leadership to 9 within a 18" bubble

 

Negatives

- low model count due to prohibitive cost

- incredible vulnerability to heavy flamer so outlanking Ork Burna Buggy or Dreadnought w HF in drop bod can be instantly lethal

- Awful warlord traits, no relics, no advisers, no psykers,  (greatly mitigated with Inquisition)

- Reliance on luck for reserves, accuracy of deepstrike, orders

 

I've debated picking up another box of 5 and using all my spare voxs to put voxs in all command and plasma squads or possibly 1 command and all the DS squads as passing orders is sometimes critical. I'm not sure 17 pts for the scion w vox is worth the points but maybe their points will drop with the rumoured codex.

 

Overall, they are a lot of fun to play. When used in tandem with Inquisition they get some great synergy. Three examples:

 

- Servo skulls - 1d6 scatter vs 2d6 within 12" when deepstriking, 1d6 scatter vs 2d6 within 12" when firing blast templates such as TP Battlecannon/frag missle.

- OM Inquistor w TDA/Psycannon dropping in with a buffed up 10 scion squad in a vulnerable part of the enemy line, ideally a flank. Puts some serious heat down range, Inquisitor takes shots for scions from AP3+ and uses them as ablative wounds for AP2-.

- Taurox Primes backed up by a Land-raider can create a targeting dilemma. Often the ideal weapons to kill the TPs are what are absolutely necessary to kill the LR. Often the ideal weapons to kill the infantry are what are then absolutely necessary to kill the TPs.

 

 

[Terminus]

How to get the best out of your Scions:

 

Use them to proxy Skitarii.

[Stofficus]

I've been sitting on 25 metal kasrkin for what feels like a lifetime, and haven't used them since 5th - the loss of their special doctrines for a points discount didn't feel like much of an improvement to me. 

That being said, I have been puttering around with an idea ever since I found a decent source of more Kasrkin (not a big fan of the plastic models either): Unpredictable armoured escort. 

Using, originally, the Steel Host formation, though the new Russ one would work more or less the same (though the Hydra could be handy for reasons laid out here), throw a variety of Russes of your preferred flavour at the enemy with a fair number of Auspex scanners on them (say half, preferably the low-priority ones, i.e. not pask, demolishers, etc). Upgraded, the russ formation should sit around 1000 points, or a touch less depending on chosen varients, with the remainder of one's points spent on stormtrooper squads to deepstrike in as needed. Need close-in support against an army trying to assault the tanks, such as bikers? Drop in some stormies to gun them down. Trying to breach a castle? drop in aggressively, take out high-threat targets and let the Russes do their thing. 

The new Mont'ka formations offer a further option in the supreme command command squad - getting the ignores cover order from the base Guard book makes Stormtroopers an excellent counter to some of the deadliest units out there; FMCs, Bikes, stealth+shrouded units and so on. 

Using Kasrkin as well maintains a more thematic tie - they aren't actual conventional stormtroopers after all, but specialist heavy infantry from Cadia, for Cadia, by Cadia - working in tandem with a Russ squadron both caters to each other's strengths, keeps everything inside the Guard, and pacifies my own internal fluff demands. 

Once I sell off my Death Korps whom I have not been enjoying in the slightest since 7th dropped, some of that money will go towards following through on this idea. 

[Terminus]

Not enjoying Death Korps? The sweet call of Chaos beckons you, my friend.

 

Siege Regiment sucks? Ordnance Tyrant. Hello Field Artillery troops and Heavy Artillery Elites and Heavies (bonus points with Nurgle for like 10 Elite/heavy slots).

Assault Regiment blows? Master of the Horde. Practically fearless hordes of recycling troops with tons of special weapons.

 

Hell, you could even do a decent Stormtrooper/Grenadier list if you don't mind not being 100% optimized.

 

Cast off the oppressive yoke of the Imperium. Join us!

 

Of course, you may not want to flaunt your new-found enlightenment. Fret not, the Legion understands. The Legion provides. Spawn are a key power-unit in renegade lists, but if you don't want squirming monstrosities shambling around, the Death Riders share a 40mm base size.

[march10k]

 

 Valkyries are good for transporting allies, but don't do a great job of carrying Scions because Scions can already deep strike.  Why should desired placement dictate what you do with your aircraft and telegraph your intentions?  You shouldn't.  For this reason, valks don't do much for a Scions army, except allow the terrible commissar to deep strike and look cool.

Something else that valkyries do is deal with numbers via rocket pods.  One of the critical vulnerablities that you mentioned is low model count.  That really hurts in two ways.  First, your opponent can afford to lose more men than you, and second, every man you don't have is a rifle you don't have, killing your ability to kill his men....AP3 lasguns are nice, but one AP3 lasgun facing two AP6 lasguns loses every time!  Those rocket pods really go a long way towards righting this imbalance, and any enemy infantry that doesn't fear the rockets is almost certainly as expensive on a per-model basis as you are, so you're not outnumbered after all, and your plasma an melta guns are the right tool for the job, a tool you have in spades!  Valkyries don't do much for a scions army in terms of providing transportation, but a ten point upgrade makes them a critical source of anti-infantry firepower.

 

This means that you can deep strike under an aquila landing pad and lower the shields during your turn, which ALP players always find hilarious.

 

Erm...only if it's unoccupied.  In order to raise or lower the sides, you have to be in sole possession of the skyshield.  IF both you and your opponent are touching it (and you do have to be touching it, not just lurking underneath), then neither of you can change its configuration.

 

 

Something you left out of your review was a discussion of fortifications and superheavies.  Whether or not a scions CAD can have a baneblade is open to debate, but it absolutely can have a knight...that's worth discussion as a means of covering deficiencies without taking allies.  Fortifications can also be a valuable tool, adding survivability to stormtroopers deployed on foot (to guard an objective or prevent auto-lose while awaiting the arrival of the air cav formation)  and can also provide long range shooting (battle cannons) and/or air defense.

[Ulrik_Ironfist]

There is so much that is great from the regular AM that could really help out MT, like sentinels, and vendettas, not to mention the forge world goodies that could really help, like the Vulture gunship and tauros vehicles. 

 

I'm a big fan of walkers, you see. That said i think that a primary core of MT with a knight and an ADL go a long way toward covering the inadequacies of the MT. Those two things can help out a lot at sub 2000 point games, like 1750-1850 points. Yes Inquisition and assassins can also really help out a MT list, and given enemies with low amounts of armor (like Tau, Tyranids, and Daemons) I'd be more inclined to take the Inquisitors and assassins. 

 

If you give me more points, I'll of course take everything I have to support my guard, including elements from an astartes chapter (Dark angels have some great options to help guard). 

[Emicus]

Been thinking about Scions lately and dug this gem out of the search engine.

 

What do people think of "I wish they could take Vendettas, wait, 3 of them in a guard formation that's plug-and-play, where do I sign up?"

 

 

With the Sentinel formation perhaps?

[Tallarn Commander]

Yes, stormies might do nicely with some of the new IG doctrines introduced in the Montka book.

 

I'm thinking of  trying the sentinel formation.  I'd run a regular IG CAD with about 100-ish troopers and 5 tanks at 1050-ish points, a 20-stormtrooper CAD of 400-ish points, and 9 (outflanking!) armored sentinel squadrons using the sentinel hunter squadron formation of 400-ish points.  It might not be competitive, but it would be fun and mobile. 

 

By the way, I took a 2nd CAD of 30 stormtroopers to a tournament last weekend alongside my main CAD of IG.  The stormtroopers usually died horribly a turn or 2 after dropping but they tended to deal a respectable amount of damage before dying (often they dealt more damage than my other units combined). They tended to do better when I opened up a 2nd front somewhere on the battlefield and dropped all 4 squads close to each other. When I spread them out across the board (to grab maelstrom objectives) their performance was lackluster at best.

[Emicus]

Yeah the way I envision the scions is dropping down and blasting something off theboard but struggle a bit with vehicles.

 

That's where the valk/vendetta formation comes I to play, but now I've got an army in reserves and nothing on the board, queue the Sentinels. Also sentinels would be a nice enough distraction to pull the enemy out for the scions yo go to town, right?

 

 

 

Then fliers fly, shoot, scoot down and reposition units as they are won't to do.

 

Looks beautiful in my head anyway, just a shame all I have is 3 sentinels and 5 scions.

 

What load-out? Plasma for maximum threat, budget autocannons or freebie multilasers?

[march10k]

Does anyone know if you can get the flier formation and the motorized formation into the same list at 1850?  I'll figure it out for myself when I get home if I need to...but it sounds intriguing.  I'm totally in love with the air cav formation, but I struggle to conceptualize a pure kasrkin list based on that formation. 

 

I'm certain that it involves a firestorm redoubt with dual battle cannons, and it'd have to have an HQ and two troops.  Problem is, I don't see much room for more than the minimum there, and it feels like it's just a beleaguered garrison waiting for relief....a lot of points that don't contribute dramatically to the battle plan.  Don't get me wrong, a pair of battle cannons is a game-changer for the stormtroopers, and stashing four volley guns in the bunker and two more on the roof makes for a great firebase, but it's way too static for stormtroopers, and what do you do with the other line squad, hide them behind the bunker?  That's a waste...or do you dangle them as bait to draw fire and possibly maneuver away from the bunker?  That's almost a waste.  I'll relook the points and see if I can squeeze in a truck for them, it can get "obscured by hiding behind the bunker, draw antitank fire that otherwise might target the bunker itself, and then break out and get about the business of the day once the air cav arrives...

[Ulrik_Ironfist]

March, If I'm understanding you correctly, you want to know if you can get the "Airborne Assault" Formation and the "Ground Assault" formations from C:MT in the same list at 1850? The Answer is yes you can, bare bones both formations together come in at 1460pts. That's less upgrades and with Min squads.

 

Unless you were talking about taking the Ground Assault formation from C:MT and taking the Emperor's spear from Mont'Ka, in which case that also seems doable, as you'd be less a squad of Scions and less a flyer.

 

Honestly March, the way I end up using my Kasrkin is as Krieg Grenadiers. Take the Assault brigade List and you have an awesome mech force, with Chimeras that allow 5 guys to shoot out of, has an autocannon, and armored track guards. Plus you get WS4 to boot, and Hotshots. You lose Deep Strike and MTC, but if you're going mech are you really using that?

 

I agree that battlecannons can really help out scions, but I prefer my forces mobile rather than sitting in a fortification. Besides a couple of vengeance weapon batteries would do just as much damage while being cheaper. Unless the Firestorm Redoubt fires at higher BS.

[march10k]

Ulrik, I agree with everything you're saying.  In a theoretical construct where I insist on no allies and no "counts as," I think a "both formations" list could kick some serious tail.  I just pointed it out, and I'd get everything I wanted except the ability to upgrade at least one commie to commie lord under the 1850 cap.

 

4 primes with missiles and autocannons: pimp!

 

3 squads with dual plasma to fire from the ports: pimp!

 

command squad with 2x plasma and 2x grenades to fire from the ports, as the situation warrants: pimp!

 

4 valkyries, 2 with rocket pods (hey, I modeled two with missiles, sorry!): 2 pimps and 2 gimps!

 

3 squads with dual melta: pimp!

 

Command squad with 4x plasma: megapimp!

 

The commie in the command bird gets to be warlord, but his feet'll never touch terra firma...he might go down in a ball of flame, though, LOL...command bird will have to have the missiles, I intend to fly it off the table and try to keep him out of harm's way once the squad dismounts.  The other commie...meh.  He's not getting out either, he's a free VP as a "unit."  Actually, I'll be happy if the mech kasrkin never get their boots dirty...five man squads with T3, carapace, and 2 or 4 special weapons won't last long on the ground...not that they'll have much choice because AV11...but missiles and autocannons means they can try to stay at range, I guess.  I sense synergy...covering fire from the gun trucks supporting the air cav as they get out and hose stuff down with twinlinked shooting...if anything gets too close, the ground pounders can get out for twinlinked doubletaps with plasma guns...sweet!  The only thing that would improve this is if the command squad could give itself an order while mounted.

[Emicus]

How do you even transport 4 Valkyries/Vendettas? I've heard the wings come off pretty easily, but the buggers are enormous o.O

[march10k]

Battlefoam Pack Air...available trays include one that holds two valkyries with the wings attached, in addition to some tanks and sentinels.  Two such trays fit in the case...perfect for four valks!  Actually, come to think of it, the tank slots in those trays would probably hold taurox primes...actually I just looked online, They do have the trays I described, but I got custom trays instead, in order to fit four sentinels and two tanks (with room for the vanquisher's long gun tube) alongside the valks instead of just two tanks (no vanqs) and two sents.  But they do have a "wings on" 2-valk tray for Pack air, and two of them fit in the case, like I said.  I have another custom tray for that case that holds my demolisher and my avenger strike fighter.  It's a great case for big models!

[Emicus]

I'll have a look, I must admit I'm a battlefoam fan :) trick is just to fit the entire force in 1 bag after the valks have eaten all the space first.

[Akrim]

Lol yeah the Air Cav is a lot of big models. I use a bankers box with bubble wrap. Might not be as fancy, but it's the perfect size for Valks/Vendettas.

[march10k]

I'll have a look, I must admit I'm a battlefoam fan trick is just to fit the entire force in 1 bag after the valks have eaten all the space first.

Well...you won't get troops in there with two trays's worth of valks, but getting four valks into one case is a coup in itself. Plus, it's stormtroopers...you're not gonna have a lot of infantry...separately hand-carrying a couple trays of troops isn't fatal.

[Emicus]

Maybe not much compared to guard but my dreams are already filled with 50-60 scions :o

 

My biggest problem is I use public transport a lot, and I'm about to move soon'ish (including several trips by plane) so I just want the lovely minis to stay safe.

 

Reckon I'm getting a bit off topic though. But suffice to say if I can save up for another month there's a high probability I'm going to splurge on 'some' scions :)

 

Just such an underdog army (niche army?) that you hardly ever see. Never thinking they'll hit top tables but it will be fun to see what they can do. Especially with proper air support (vendettas, thanks emperors spear) and maybe some sentinels... And a knight.