Vanguard Tactica-thread.

[Minsc]

Shadowspear officially dropped today, the rumour-thread has been locked (as to be expected) and the intro-thread has seemingly turned into a thread about anything but vanguard-marines...

So I thought we needed a tactica thread for our new toys!

Do you plan on fielding the new Vanguard units? How and in what way?

I haven't given it that much thought myself yet but;

*I can't see myself using the Captain or Lieutenant in my Salamanders. I don't infiltrate enough to warrant the investment of a forwards RoB/TP-bubble, and the lack of proper weapons on the two HQ's is a massive turnoff for me. 

*I'm absolutely in love with the new Librarian and I love the discipline. This guy will most likely become a regular in my lists, along with Armour Indomitus for that sweet 0+ save in cover and the inv-save in a pinch. Step aside Bike-captain, there's a new HQ in town!

 

*Infiltrators are imo in a rough spot, and I expect them to drop at least 2 ppm in cost in the next update. I like the concept, I like the models, but I don't think they're worth 5 ppm more than Intercessors. With that said, I can see uses for them, and despite their pricetag I will probably play with a unit on occasion. 

*Suppressors are...weird, but not necessarily bad. Their cost seems about right for a jump-primaris with a pimped out autocannon. I'd probably either keep them in reserve to make sure they don't get shot of the table before doing something useful though, because they are very fragile for their cost.

Suppressing fire is a gimmick (how often do you want to shot AP2 Autocannons at the stuff you want to supress, i.e. infantry?), but I can see a use for it as well. 

 

*Eliminators seems great. I love the models and the concept. Great utility and a cheap Heavy Support-choice in general. The comparison to the new Vindicare is a fair one, but both have their pro's and con's. The Vindicare is better at killing though infantry-characters for sure, but at the same time, he dreams about having a 1+ save, being able to curve bullets and not being useless against GEQ-spamm. 

*The Obscuration discipline is interesting, and if nothing else, imo way more flavorful than our extremely dull Librarius(?)-discipline.
- Shrouding and Temporal Corridor seems very situational and I can't personally see myself ever picking these two powers unless I for some reason have 3 Phobos-librarians in my list (which will most likely never happen). 
- Scryer's Gaze isn't terrible on a large unit of Infiltrators, but I wish it affected melee-units as well so that I had a reason to field my 10 Reivers. 
- Hallucination, Tenebrous Curse and Mind Raid will probably become my new go-to psychic powers however. I can see myself using them in most lists and against most opponents. (Well, Tenebrous Curse is somewhat situational I suppose, depending on if your opponent has any melee-units that you want to lock down or not.)

*Our new Warlord Traits are a mixed bag, as expected I suppose. 
- Shoot and Fade would be interesting if the character wasn't forced to advance afterwards, and/or if our phobos-characters actually had any decent weapons, but alas, they don't. Skip.
- Princeps of Deceit allows us to use some Eldar trickery. Not bad, but not something I will use. 
- Master of the Vanguard is amazing! At least for me, since I like to field plenty of Dreadnoughts and melee-units in my lists. Finally something that gives me increased movement and charge-distance. Infiltrating/Deepstriking melee-units will absolutely love a Warlord with this trait.
- Stealth Adept isn't terrible and I can see Raven Guard-players using this, but I personally don't really want my opponents to be able to target my characters in the first place. 
- Target Priority is another amazing trait, and if I'm not using a Chapter Master on Bike as my Warlord (+1W / 6+++ trait), or using Master of the Vanguard on my Librarian, this will probably be my go-to trait. Giving a unit +1 to hit is good no matter how you look at it. This is probably the best way to field the new Phobos Captain: Stand next to a friendly unit and watch as it hits on 2+, rerolling 1's.
- Markman's Honours. Would be amazing if my Warlord was a Tau Commander. Sadly it's a Marine HQ with a S4 bolt-weapon. The comment about how the trait "applies to chapter relics" is weird to me because as I read it, the only relic the Phobos characters can swap to is the Imperial Fist-pistol. Massive skip on this one. 

That's my take on the Vanguard units. Feel free to post your own thoughts and opinions.
 

 

[Lemondish]

- Shoot and Fade could be interesting with the Librarian. He can already deploy pretty far forward, but I imagine that plus his normal baseline move would allow one to get in range of anything they might want to cast offensively against, then shoot and run 7"-12" back behind your own lines to protect him.

 

Pity he can't cast Null Zone lol

[Panzer]

Shoot and Fade is nice for the Captain. It's the classic JSJ T'au strategy. Go out of cover/get LoS, shoot, hide again. Deploy him with a bunch of Eliminators which can actually shoot without requirering LoS and you'd have some very tough to dig out threat to characters with decent damage output.

[mel_danes]

Target Priority - Does not work that way. Its +1 to hit rolls, not BS. So a 1 becomes a 2, thus never triggering the Cpt. re-roll. However it means never killing Plasma due to overheat. So put it on the Lt. go ape on Hellblasters, and re-roll 1's to wound.

[Marshal van Trapp]

Target Priority - Does not work that way. Its +1 to hit rolls, not BS. So a 1 becomes a 2, thus never triggering the Cpt. re-roll. However it means never killing Plasma due to overheat. So put it on the Lt. go ape on Hellblasters, and re-roll 1's to wound.

You calculate rerolls before modifiers, that's why a -1 to hit still only rerolls 1s, not 1s and 2s

[Lemondish]

Target Priority - Does not work that way. Its +1 to hit rolls, not BS. So a 1 becomes a 2, thus never triggering the Cpt. re-roll. However it means never killing Plasma due to overheat. So put it on the Lt. go ape on Hellblasters, and re-roll 1's to wound.

Re-rolls happen before modifiers, so you'll still get to re-roll those 1s

[Jorin Helm-splitter]

I think that's a great Summary Minsc. I tend to agree with your assessments I do think infiltrators need a bigger drop but I don't think they're designed to be the only troop choice they just add another deployment option which Primaris need.

[mel_danes]

Am I right in thinking if this ability were used near Hellblasters they could not overheat?

[CCE1981]

Crimson Fists love the Reiver Lt. with their Vigilus detachment the LT can get the re-roll 1s to hit aura at 9”. This also means he doesn’t have to make the charge. I will have to figure out how good that is.

[Panzer]

Am I right in thinking if this ability were used near Hellblasters they could not overheat?

 

That's right. Unless there's some negative to-hit modificator in place like from various chapter tactic equivalents, Stealth Suits, Eldar units and/or psychic powers etc.

[Lemondish]

Am I right in thinking if this ability were used near Hellblasters they could not overheat?

Yep! Giving plus 1 to hit for plasma renders death to overcharge impossible. The 1s still miss specifically because an unmodified roll of 1 is always a miss. But it wouldn't overheat on account of it being a 2 for purposes of resolving the overheat rule.

 

So the natural next step is that this is a way to protect your Hellblasters from blowing themselves up, which in turn means slightly less value from an ancient and apothecary nearby, which could have you some points there.

[Lemondish]

Follow on from the Shoot and Fade discussion. Check this :cuss out:

 

Librarian in Phobos Armour with shoot and fade. Tome of Malcador relic gives him one extra power from Librarius. Grab Null Zone.

 

Can now realistically reposition really easy for null zone, shoot, and run back without guaranteed imminent death.

 

Worth a shot I think.

[The Wolfguard]

I played roughly 1000 points against a slaanesh demon army today, using almost two boxes of shadowspear, 2 squads of 10 Infiltrators, with sergeants and apothecary in both. Librarian, Lieutenant (warlord with the trait that lets him give a unit +1 to hit), 3 suppressors, 3 eliminators and a laspred. Now, I'm hoping I got the rules right with the Lieutenant being able to use the +1 to hit on the predator but I saw no reason why it shouldn't work, please correct me if I'm wrong. Using that on the predator allowed it to bring down 3 of the chariots in the game, the librarian buffed a squad with scryers gaze each turn, as well as used the ability to slow a unit down to give me time to shoot. The deep strike range reduction is a MASSIVE boon in such a game as you can imagine. In general the infiltrators are perfect vs such an enemy, giving them the +1 to hit from that Lieutenant buff, or scryers gaze, meant that the 6s to auto wound was melting infantry quickly, which is just what I imagined from them. When units finally got into combat, the daemonettes were generally too weak to do anything and the minor damage that slowly piled on was fixed by apothecaries...

 

Well, in the 1k point game I lost two infiltrators by the end. Now, it's not a super competitive game and the Infiltrators are vs the perfect opponents, but to me it really showed what they could do well. The Librarian was a massive advantage and I love Scryers Gaze for sure. The suppressors didn't do much, the eliminators wiped out the demon with the harp thing and killed a fiend off so not sure if they were that great, but was definitely interesting!

[Ishagu]

Here's a hot take :

 

The new Marine codex will be out by the end of April. Might be worth waiting on any deep tactica until then.

[ambit]

- Shoot and Fade could be interesting with the Librarian. He can already deploy pretty far forward, but I imagine that plus his normal baseline move would allow one to get in range of anything they might want to cast offensively against, then shoot and run 7"-12" back behind your own lines to protect him.

 

Pity he can't cast Null Zone lol

 

Actually he can. The Phobos Librarian can be given the Tome of Malcador, which allows him to choose a power from the Librarius discipline (Null Zone).

 

One potential combo could be to start him 9" away from the enemy deployment, advance him in your movement phase, then case Temporal Corridor on himself to advance again, then cast Null Zone to cancel Invul saves in turn 1.

 

Obviously good players will probably screen and you need to actually have the powers work and not be denied. 3 psykers and empyric channeling for Null Zone might be the answer, then cast everything else with your other psykers to try and draw out any denies, then cast temporal corridor last.

 

If he is the warlord, then shoot and fade would allow him to run away afterwards, at the end of the shooting phase... risky though as that's some easy points when they kill your warlord.

 

Alternatively, Master of the Vanguard WT to give him an extra 4" on the 2 advances he will be doing turn 1. Range is then 18-28 inches, after starting 9" from their deployment. Null Zone then has a 6" range.

[Tamiel]

Can someone post the new psychic powers?

[Panzer]

I played roughly 1000 points against a slaanesh demon army today, using almost two boxes of shadowspear, 2 squads of 10 Infiltrators, with sergeants and apothecary in both. Librarian, Lieutenant (warlord with the trait that lets him give a unit +1 to hit), 3 suppressors, 3 eliminators and a laspred. Now, I'm hoping I got the rules right with the Lieutenant being able to use the +1 to hit on the predator but I saw no reason why it shouldn't work, please correct me if I'm wrong. Using that on the predator allowed it to bring down 3 of the chariots in the game, the librarian buffed a squad with scryers gaze each turn, as well as used the ability to slow a unit down to give me time to shoot. The deep strike range reduction is a MASSIVE boon in such a game as you can imagine. In general the infiltrators are perfect vs such an enemy, giving them the +1 to hit from that Lieutenant buff, or scryers gaze, meant that the 6s to auto wound was melting infantry quickly, which is just what I imagined from them. When units finally got into combat, the daemonettes were generally too weak to do anything and the minor damage that slowly piled on was fixed by apothecaries...

 

Well, in the 1k point game I lost two infiltrators by the end. Now, it's not a super competitive game and the Infiltrators are vs the perfect opponents, but to me it really showed what they could do well. The Librarian was a massive advantage and I love Scryers Gaze for sure. The suppressors didn't do much, the eliminators wiped out the demon with the harp thing and killed a fiend off so not sure if they were that great, but was definitely interesting!

 

Sounds like a great game for the Marines!

+1 to hit on a Lascannon Predator definitely sounds strong and the Psyker did a lot of the heavy lifting to tilt the game in your favour with his powers.

Not sure why the Daemon player would try to deep strike against Infiltrators in the first place as he'd be much faster running up the board anyways though. And I guess units without armour saves are one of the few cases where the auto-wound special rule is actually better than the AP-1.

That being said Slaanesh daemons aren't exactly strong currently either so while it seems to have been a great game for the Vanguard Marines I wouldn't expect things to go as smooth against most other armies unfortunately.

[Hellebras]

I think looking at the killing power of Eliminators may be a bit of a red herring. Sure, you might pick off some support characters with them. But where I think they're going to shine is in sitting on a backfield objective. Stalker rifle Intercessors now seem all but redundant to me thanks to them. Three Eliminators are cheaper than five Intercessors. They have a 1+ save in cover, a marginally better gun (though fewer of them) than the Stalker bolt rifle, that extra six inches of range over a regular bolt rifle, and if needed they have Concealed Positions. All they really lose out on is Objective Secured, and I generally find that in games I win that doesn't matter on backfield squads. Without having run them yet, I think they have a lot of potential.

[Captain Idaho]

Here's a hot take :

The new Marine codex will be out by the end of April. Might be worth waiting on any deep tactica until then.

=][= There is no need to take this thread off topic like this. I've removed subsequent posts replying to this post but left this post in because I wanted to use it as a moment we can learn from.

 

Whilst there likely will be a new Codex, that has no bearing on the purpose of this topic. Please contribute to the topic in front of you and not dismiss it just because there might be a new Codex release.

[Minsc]

I think looking at the killing power of Eliminators may be a bit of a red herring. Sure, you might pick off some support characters with them. But where I think they're going to shine is in sitting on a backfield objective. Stalker rifle Intercessors now seem all but redundant to me thanks to them. Three Eliminators are cheaper than five Intercessors. They have a 1+ save in cover, a marginally better gun (though fewer of them) than the Stalker bolt rifle, that extra six inches of range over a regular bolt rifle, and if needed they have Concealed Positions. All they really lose out on is Objective Secured, and I generally find that in games I win that doesn't matter on backfield squads. Without having run them yet, I think they have a lot of potential.

I feel like comparing Intercessors to Eliminators is a bit like comparing apples to oranges. Neither unit makes the other redundant.

 

While Eliminators have a list of advantages over Intercessors (as you rightly pointed out), there is no way to move away from the fact that Intercessors are Troops (with all that entails) and the Eliminators aren't. Intercessors also have a higher rate of fire / cost-ratio due to Beta-bolters, which vs. certain armies will make a huge difference.

 

13 Intercessors (221 pts) shoots 26 S4 AP1 shots.

9 Eliminators (216 pts) shoots on average 18 S4 AP- shots.

 

I suppose if you're looking for backfield campers and already have your Troop-selection filled out (or forego troops altogether), then Eliminators are a better pick overall, especially in Take All Comers-lists due to their flexibility. 

 

 

 

[Panzer]

The best thing about Eliminators is to be able to shoot without require LoS. That allows them to be super save and also pick off units your opponent tries to hide like T'au Drones and such. Not sure how they compare with other space marine artillery though.

[thewarriorhunter]

Rules question regarding the OP with the librarian having a 0+ save on cover.

 

I understand how we get to 0, but if the model is wounded by a 0AP weapon it's still a 2+ save, correct? That relic essentially negates the benefit of using 0AP through -2AP on the model in this situation, correct?

[Panzer]

Rules question regarding the OP with the librarian having a 0+ save on cover.

 

I understand how we get to 0, but if the model is wounded by a 0AP weapon it's still a 2+ save, correct? That relic essentially negates the benefit of using 0AP through -2AP on the model in this situation, correct?

 

A 1 always fails, so yeah you basically roll a 2+ save but ignore the first 2 AP the opponent would throw at it.

[thewarriorhunter]

Thanks, trying to get a better understanding of rules and how to make them work for me. I'm excited for this box and enjoying the thread. I'm really interested in seeing what people suggest for the psyker because I've never had one in my army. That's going to be one of the first models I paint up so I can start participating in that phase.

[Marshal van Trapp]

I'm in the same boat as you thewarriorhunter, I mainly played Black Templar through 3rd edition till now, I've recently picked up both Space Wolves and now more vanilla marines with the new Vanguard (thinking a raven guard all primaris successor) so I am learning all about this new thing called "psychic powers"