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Hello Dakka!

First, I play mostly against IG and Tau, both very shooty, and I had this idea with them as enemies in mind; it probably is a bad idea against Orks, Chaos, etc., so please keep that in mind when reading this.

The IG CCS gives the officer a broad selection of wargear, but what I only noticed on second glance is the fact that every veteran can exchange is lasgun for a laspistol. This is not an obvious choice for IG, being a very shooty army. However, howzabout the following...

CCS:
Straken or kitted-out senior officer with PW/PF
laspistols on all veterans
maybe medi-pack for FnP or carapace armour for everyone

I had this idea at first more for fluff reasons: I'm planning to do a little catachan guard army. The normal catachan is no different from a cadian stats-wise, while in fluff catachans are nasty killers with arm-long envenomed knives. To give this fluff some credit, I thought: Where can I make catachans a bist more fierce in CC? The idea is: This CCS sits in a chimera, where it is protected from most incoming fire and, more importantly, where it gets mobility. The chimera can drive around fast, either to get hold of an objective or to close in with the enemy. Now, if someone tries to contest the objective by moving troops in or tries to get a melta-weapon in 6" range...Straken and his four gung-ho veterans jump out and swiftly punch and slice the feth out of this near squad. Strakens uber-powerfist, 12 CC attacks at S4, I4, they strike before normal IG and Tau, they have frag grenades and ignore cover...sounds like a good deal to me. If they win - and, keep in mind, enemies will be IG and Tau, so their chances are good - the enemy will most probably flee, giving a chance for sweeping advance and consolidation back onto the objective. The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of a med-pack in there - it minimizes losses in CC and provides additional "protection" against possible retaliation fire in the enemies turn.

So: What do you think? Viable tactical element? Keep in mind that it is not supposed to be absolutely uber-competitive, but is supposed to be at least as good as a conservative CCS outfit.

Some additional mathhammer:
This CCS, firing its way into assault and hacking left and right, will kill approx. 6,22 guardsmen or 5,22 firewarriors before anything can hit back. The surviving ~4 enemies will only kill 0,33 vets, so the chances are good that the CCS wins combat by 5 to 6 models, making the enemy run for sure. In this case, the enemy squad will be under 50% of minimum force strength, which means they're as good as dead anyway, either sweeped by advance or by running back to their table edge for the rest of the game.

With FnP and Carapace armour, you could have a decent speed bump. Otherwise flamers will be more desructive and meltas more useful.

I agree about the usefulness of flamers. Maybe I should put at least one of those in there, cheap as they are. I think buying carapace and medi-pack might be almost too much - a firewarrior or guardsmen attack has only a chance of 8,3% of killing a command squad member with flak armour and FnP anyway.

By the way: Flamers fit the catachan style well, too.

Postscriptum to elaborate further: A melta is nice, too, I agree on that. However, I'm not sure it is superior to this tactical idea with either Straken or an officer with a PF in it - four S6 attacks that disallow armor AND cover saves seem better than one S8 attack that leaves the enemy with a cover save. (Might be superior against T4 targets, though, not sure.)

Further postscriptum: Yup, the meltagun is better than a S6 powerfist against T4 multiple wound targets. Meltagun has a chance of 27,7% of instakillling the guy (even with possible 4+ invuln), while the chance of three power fist attacks hitting and wounding is only around 17,15% and that does not take invulnerables into account. However, morale effect within close combat might be interesting - one or two fist wounds on that Shas'O, he fails his LD test and gets sweeped...however, meltagun might still be better.

The only issue I want to mention is that, as straken is the same init as the guardsmen, giving the guardsmen extra attacks with pistols MAY allow your opponent to stack all of straken's wounds on a few models, while the s4 guard get armor saved.

Versus a big squad, like a 10 man tac squad, this wont be an issue, BUT as you stated that you want this squad to hunt smaller squads, the wound stacking issue will become a bigger factor.

Example--5 man combat squad with fist, flamer, 3 regular tac marines. You shoot and strakens pistol kills one regular marine. Charge in, straken gets 3 wounds, your 12 attacks get 3 wounds. He can put 3 of strakens wounds on the regular marines, plus 1 armor save, and then only have to make 1 armor save on the flamer and the fist. Meaning he will probably only lose 2-3 marines, and has a 66% chance to keep the fist. The 3 marine attacks will maybe kill one guy, and the fist can kill up to 2. Next turn, straken wounds maybe 2 times, and the 4 pistols maybe once, and then the 2 straken wounds go on the flamer and one regular armor save on the fist, which again has a pretty good chance of saving. Thus the fist gets to swing again.

So, in the end, versus a bad squad like regular guard or tau, you dont need anything beyond straken to kill them. And for marines, the close combat weapons can actually be a HINDERANCE. So like others said, take melta or flamers!

Thanks for your post!

One thing: I'm not sure we're talking about the same Straken here? As far as I know he wields a shotgun, not a pistol able of one-shot killing a marine? (In this case, senior officer with plasma pistol might be better.)

I think I may roll with a hybrid, to adapt to the changes you guys proposed!

CCS
Straken / Senior officer with PW/PF
1st vet with flamer
2nd vet with meltagun
3nd vet with medi-pack, laspistol and blade
4th vet with laspistol and blade

Dishes out some template and AP1 damage while keeping a bit with the theme. I might test out that against my usual opponents soon.

Straken has a shotty and a plasma pistol.

Glad you droped hte carapace armor as its not very fluffy for Catachans (too bulky to be romping about the woods in not to mention hot and heavy)