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I recently purchased a Linebreaker Squadron and am painting it so that I can use it with both my Black Legion and what will soon be my Silver Skulls Loyalist marine force. I figured that the three Vindicators would be fun to use in Apocalypse, but also could be a deadly combination in a regular game.

Has anyone used the three vindicators to good effect in their games? If so what other units complement them. I know they will be fun to use in COD, but what about in regular play?

I haven't.

I've used just one, in my Legion of the Damned.

It's horribly effective.

So, for my Deathwing army I chose to go with three Vindicators.

Once it's built and I can test it, I'm pretty sure they'll do very well.

I only have one Vindicator.

I dont really need three, what you need is three sopmething. a lone Vindie will attract a lot of high S firepower. It needs other plate boxes alongside to be any good.

To quote General William Slim: 'One tank is no tank.' Gwet two more be they Vindies, Preds, Land Raiders whatever. Razorbacks can help too if you have enough.

My Vinicator with extra armour is enough of a brown trouser induced that all my other tanks get some peace and quiet for a while, occassionally it survives long enough to shoot - excepting the first high random double scatter shot while moving forward.

I believe 3 Vindies would be overdoing it. As a long time IG player, the pie plate is nice, but not the most reliable thing in the world, especially when its on tanks that need to get to close to have success.

I find a demolisher cannon to be a "major attention getter", which as others stated, pulls some fire off your other tanks.

In a loyalist list, the value of this is questionable, with your only other tanks being Predators. In a BA list, I find 2 Baals and a Vindie a wonderful combo, because some players will actually ignore the Baals in favor of a smoked Vindie...

In a traitor list, you can take heat off defilers and LRs with a Vindie racing forward.

2 Vindis and a triple lascannon Pred would be a great combo.

Placement is key with triple Vindicators. Give them all PMS and they'll fly forward, making your opponent scream in terror. Unless they're playing Necrons. Or gunline IG. Or SM SAFH.

But seriously, if you can keep them out of sight for the first turn or so until you can get really close, your opponent will have the unfortunate fate of greeting the business end of a lot of Strength 10 killing power.

The denser the terrain, the better. They complement my Black Templars very well, as they can move forward with the ground troops while acting as a frightening ward. Not too many enemy troops are going to want to engage in close-range fighting with more than one Vindicator nearby. Cities of Death are heavenly environments, as are Apocalypse games where a superheavy is involved. If you can make the Baneblade or Thunderhawk present itself as a more important target (not difficult to do), you can pretty much guarantee yourself a couple salvos from the trio.

CK

After playing a several Apoc games, I think that 3 vindies will do better in a regular game as opposed to an apoc game. Relative success of having 3 vindicators in a regular list will depend on the rest of the list, the role they will play, and tactics. If you put them in your opponents face, they will have to deal with them immediately, which will be difficult because you have three. If the rest of your list is assaulty in nature, that is how I would play it as a complement. Hopefully, their presence will allow the rhinos, jump packs, bikes, whatever to get to where they need to be. Having redundancy in a list magnifies the tactical effectiveness of the unit in question. If you like the results you have gotten with 1 vindy, you will love the results of three!

As an aside, ordnance can be unreliable, especially when it scatters 4+ inches (50% of the time). Make sure you back them up with some other units to do the job in case they fail.

Vindis are awesome and I am contemplating buying the line breaker set.

Capt k

With 3 Vindis the whole army has to be built around them.

BYOT: Bring your own terrain in the form of an HQ with dedicated Landraider.

- more tanks = better
- you will rarely struggle to hide the Vindis during deployment


Somehow Chaos comes to mind. Cheap Landraiders.

I used one with my space wolves, and it worked well. It hits hard, so the short range is less of an issue, and it thins enemy units nicely for assault by infantry. I've been considering taking 3 with a dread or two to provide some long range firepower. As others have said, keep them in cover until its time to strike. Try to time the barrage to coincide with the arrival of any assault troops, either to soften up a unit or to take out counter chargers.

The old 3rd edition vindicator rush army isn't quite as powerful as it used to be, but it's still good. Take 3 vindicators and 2-4 rhinos. Blob them all up in one huge formation towards one flank. Put the vindicators in the middle and the rhinos on the outside. Zoom forward the first turn and whatever happens to the rhinos happens (but you should pop smoke with them if it looks like they will get shot). Turn 2, move the vindicators out from the rubble if you need to, or just shoot from where they are if you can. 3 templates into one side of the enemy army tends to be fairly devastating. If you get your rhinos from las plas squads, you can have the squads set up in you back field targeting whatever anti tank power your enemy has. From that point you can just keep steam rolling your way around. If you get the chance, any live rhinos can tank shock units out of cover to make your demolishers more effective. If they get killed in the process (by you or your opponent) you are not losing much.

One thing you have to make sure you do though is not to actually transport anything in the rhinos. They are just there to be a shield for the vindicators and I wouldn't expect them to live long.

Definitely some good advice,

I like the sound of the Rhino/Vindi rush supported by Las/Plas Squads. Would Razorbacks work in there also or do you think that is a waste of points? I can see complementing the list with Terminators and maybe a bike mounted character with a teleport homer. An armored assault with one or two deep striking terminator squads could really throw a lot of tough units up in his grill. How does this look

-Chappy w/Bike and Teleport homer

-Librarian w/Fear/Fury terminator armor= retinue w 2 Asscans
-Termy squad w 2 asscans
-3 6 Man - Las/Plas tacticals w/Rhinos, smoke + extra armor
Landspeeder Tornado

-3 Vindicators w/Smoke and Power of the machine spirit

Thats about 1850pts

Samwise158 wrote:
-Chappy w/Bike and Teleport homer

-Librarian w/Fear/Fury terminator armor= retinue w 2 Asscans
-Termy squad w 2 asscans
-3 6 Man - Las/Plas tacticals w/Rhinos, smoke + extra armor
Landspeeder Tornado

-3 Vindicators w/Smoke and Power of the machine spirit

Thats about 1850pts

A couple words of warning. First off, make darn sure your chaplin doesn't get killed before his buddies show up. Second, make sure those terminators are not anywhere near the shelling zone the vindicators are going to be laying down.

There are 2 ways to look at the rest of the army. One would be to do something like you have suggested and take units that are going to get in the enemy's face and make him really think about what he's going to focus his attention on killing. The other would be to focus on using long range fire power to supress any anti tank ability your opponent may have.

If you are going to try the second option, you might want to take things like additional las/plas squads, dreadnaughts, and land speeders. All have long range and/or mobility to allow you to go after the anti tank elements in the opposing army.

My Ultramarines have 2 Vindicators at their disposal, which have been used with devestating results. My last game with both I ran them somewhat up the flanks shooting along the way, and drawing enough firepower that my center force moved up into my opponent's center and ripped him to pieces.

One Vindie gave me a bad reputation in my local gaming club.
Two or three would be overkill. I endorse it!

I need to find myself another old one. I wub my little dense mostly-pewter one so, I can't bear to replace it.
Diddums. And so forth.

I think they are a bit too easy to take out. What a lot of people have been doing around here is taking 3 whirwinds and dousing the place in minefields.

3 vindies w/ POMS is soooooo good ... makes your vindies always moving and shooting until they are dead or wep destroyed .... im still working out the kinks in making them useful in non apoc. armys cuz of the pts. im sure something like this would work well...

chappy/jp/th/bp

3x v. dreads asscan/missile/tank hunters

3x vindie tank POMS

3x 6man las plas tac squads

2x 8man assault marines w/ PF

1850ish

Skorpion wrote:One Vindie gave me a bad reputation in my local gaming club.

Wow your gaming club must be a bunch of sissies.

Well, Samwise, you'd be surprised at how much damage a single Vindicator with PMS can really inflict.

I played a game with one where I rolled it up the field, braving Railgun and Fusion Blaster fire, only to have it unload a single round into the cockpit of the Hammerhead that was shooting it, causing the thing to explode in a 5" ball of soft infantry-killing goodness.

I think it killed about 250 points of models in one shot. Not bad.

Vindicators really are vicious, though. Like bulldogs. They'll tear you up if you're not careful.

My brother (Tau) always demands to know if I'm fielding it in each battle we play, even though I haven't used it in over a year (read below).

I tossed mine after screwing up on a conversion job (it started its life as an old edition Whirlwind, then became a Destructor, then a Vindi, then back to a Destructor, and was in the process of becoming a modular hull so that I could field it as either a Vindi or either Pred variant when it was damaged in such a way that I could not bring myself to putting it on the field.

CK

For a shooty army, a vindi can often prove to be more effective by never firing a shot.

In my old balanced SM army, putting the vindi in the open got it shot right away, reducing it to scrap. As I went more shooty, I only had to make sure I prevented assaults - putting the vindi behind terrain facing a direction I didn't want people to go allowed me to basically ignore that side - nobody wanted to walk in front of a vindicator! It helped to funnel the enemy into where I wanted them to go - into my criss-crossing fire lanes.

-Spellbound

You definatley would want to go shooty and not assault because with three scattering templates every round the odds of your own troops recieving friendly fire goes up big time. I could see it being a good bait and switch army were you bring a assault squad behind them to counter charge anything that tries to go after them.

I have thought a long time about this as well, Sam.

From what I gather, three is a bit over the top, but if the opponent is just as competitive then it shouldnt be an issue. In early 3rd edition, I ran three proxied and they were really nasty. Not so sure how they will do now, but am aching to find out.

I just bought the linebreaker squadron from Tower Games today and am in love with them.

I've had a regular opponent in the past who used two POTMS vindicators and a whirlwind as his heavies in COD. He took Devastators as elites. It was a strong army, but lacked mobility. I definitely made taking out the Vindicators priority number one, but found that the shooty elements could often be tied up in combat too easily or ignored.

I like the terminator idea, because they wouldn't need to be engaged in hand to hand right away, but could teleport in and put down some serious firepower in a place that the other guy wasn't expecting(i.e. counterassault units, anti-tank infantry) My hope would be to keep the enemy on his back foot long enough to complete the mission.

Sorry to resurrect this thread, but I figured what I have to say was relevant.

Over Christmas Break, I bought a Linebreaker Squadron. On impulse.

I've built two of them, and am already awaiting a chance to field all three with breathless anticipation.

I'm going to have a particularly nasty Apocalypse army when I plop these down beside by brand spanking new Baneblade. That's a lot of Dakka.

Okay, I'm done.

CK

Vindicators are why the Machine God invented Lascannons.

/reach out and touch faith...

Do I consider 3 vins too much? No. It's codex legal, so I'm loathe to cry about it on the far side of the board. I played BA in 3rd ed, still do, but decided then that, after all the crys of beardy broken and cheddar that I wasn't in much of a mind to cry the same at others. Bring it, and win iwth it.

There may be more effective combos to use that 3, but you really will only see that once you see how they fit into your play style, I think.

It's perfectly legal, and if someone complains you can point out that they only have 24" range. Their armour is good, but not great, and anti-tank weapons will chew them up if they come out of cover to fire. It's better to complement them with a Predator Tank or a Land Raider to escort them and make enemy Heavy Weapon squads keep their heads down. Even better the Land Raider can carry a counter-assault unit just in case someone tries to get in close and sort the armoured squadron out the old fashioned way.

Rhino and Razorback shields for the Vindi works, but i am definitily toying with the idea of shielding a Vindi with LR/LRC in my DW. One trick pony maybe but no one is going t want see that coming their way.

3 vindis may be OTT, but so what? If your club flips, maybe it'll encourage some of them to grow a back bone and find a cure for your "cheese". Oh, dag, you brought something New and Improved? Drat, now thought will have to ensue! What's wrong with shaking them up a bit? Heck, do it just so they never really know what you are packing until the game is set.