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I recently added a bunch of characters to my army to fill out my points to match my mate's tau list, namely Harker, Straken and Marbo.

Marbo and Straken have got to go, but Harker... he is more my speed. Unfortunately the command squad I strapped him to consists of 4 plasma guns, this is clearly a sub-optimal combination.

So, given the points deficit and the honourable discharges of Harker and Marbo I have some points to play with. I want to have a CC (ish) oriented CCS simply for the fact that I can, and what I have to work with are as follows (bear in mind that I am filling points out without buying more models until I have a better idea what direction my army will go in).

Converted guardsmen currently tasked with being Harker, Marbo and Straken proxies.
An infantry squad including a grenade launcer and autocannon.
4 plasma wielding guardsmen.
A converted priest (yet to find a place in my list)

From this I wish to create 2 CCS, 1 of which will simply consist of the 4 plasma guns and a company commander.
This leaves me with enough models to convert to whatever I want, so for my purposes and in keeping with not purchasing anythiing new for the time being, I have some wiggle room.


I have picked up a few ideas from looking around these, and other forums and have come up with the following basicl blueprint.


Straken. (Parts of his body are made of metal, he gets a pass...)
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2 Bodyguards. (From reading around, it turns out that wounds can be assigned to bodyguards -before- you use the special rule to assign wounds to them, I..... think, they also go someway to increasing the average WS to 4, more on this in a moment)
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Medic and carapace armour. (I would very much like this squad to survive long enough to get into facepawnching range)
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A priest. (Because I spent an hour trying to figure out how to strap a sentinal chainsaw onto a necromunda ganger, and remember wasting points is a good thing!)
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A heavy weapons team (Ok so, I have a spare autocannon team, I also have a proxy for Harker that I am quite pleased with which could be stuck to a HWT base, one of these could fill this slot.Now, this addition would reduce the total ws3 models to 4 <including the priest>. With Harker's ws 5 + 2 bodyguards the average ws is now 3.5somethingsomething, now I could replace a guardsman with keil, bringing the average to 4 wasting more points (yay) and making the unit even more puncy, or it could be the case that 3.5 rounds up to 4 and i needn't bother?)
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If I didn't take kiel, heavy flamer. (Because nothing says I'm about to hurt you like setting the enemy on fire, then hurting them, also visually it will fit very nicely with what I have in mind for the look+feel of the squad)
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Finally, Chimera. ( I have 2 chimeras waiting to be assembled and 2 of my squads will get one. The prime candidates are meltakazi vets, CCS with plasma, and this squad, I feel the plasma squad is hogging enough imperial resources already)


Ok so, there are problems with this, for example, what do I do with the converted models when I inevitably come to my senses (I currently have 4 guardsmen holding sniper rifles covered in green/brown painted gauze that is glued on so thoroughly that I have resigned myself to using them as ratlings), the squad will cost something like 400 points, I could have like 9 sentinels for this and they would probably do whatever the CCS can do but better, cheaper, and do it more often.

All that said, I do not see myself playing 40k competitively any time soon, I am happy enough just having models left on the board after 5 turns (last game was a close shave though), in that spirit, any discussion/suggestions/rule clarification, on this proposed squad would be much appreceated.

I would lose the HWT. You want to get to the face punching as quickly as possible. Lugging around an autocannon will drastically slow you down if you ever do get into a firefight or you lose 2 las/plasmas that could have given you support fire.

If you really want an AC to be following you squad around, throw it onto a sentinel squad and have that walk with you ccs. They can fire and keep moving and will give you opponents something to shoot at besides you footsloggers.

-cgmckenzie

The hwt is 10 points to raise the average WS to 4 when recieving CC hits, however, as it stands without kell the avrg WS is 3.5 and I am not sure how the rules work on this. If I can raise the WS to 4 without kell then it may be worth it for 10 pts, I would probably never fire the autocannon.

If the 3.5 does not round up to 4, then I would either drop the HWT or take the HWT+kell, there are of course some added benefits to taking kell but I would probably prefer not to have to take him.

It should be noted, that if I dropped the priest then straken, +2 bodyguards and the consolidation of 2ws 3 models into a HWT brings the average WS to 4 without the question of rounding or the need to take further models. At least this is how I have understood it.

You seem to be confusing the names 'harker' and 'straken' throughout your post, which makes it very confusing.

I think equipping a straken command squad is quite simple. Go the barebones route: do you need a vox, do you need a company standard, do you want to take weapons on the remaining men or treat them as spare wounds?
Or, go the big close combat route: medic, carapace, bodyguards and other advisors? You could even add Kell or a commissar lord. And/or a priest.
In either case, avoid any heavy weapons at all, the squad will be on the move.

I would recommend the barebones approach. If you do go big, try and keep it down. The problem with going all-out is that you pay a lot for a unit that is still T3, so it can be shot up by plenty of weapons, is less tough than either a big blob or a terminator unit for example. It will still lose in assault to many units from 'proper' assault armies. And even for all your spending, straken is still the only really fighty model there.

Just did a rescan of my post, and while I am quite certain I did not confuse Harker and Straken I concede that my origional post is a wall of text, and who doesn't get crit by a wall of text once in a while amirite.

But yes, put simply. I have to fill some points until I decide what to go out and spend money on, a good way to do this seems like character proxies. The character proxies I have don't seem like efficient use of those points and I could remove Gunnery Sgt Harker and Guardsman Marbo, and in turn fill out Ironfist Straken's Squad with the leftover points (The previous mention of Harker with respect to this was simply that I could use him as a proxy for a HWT to make the squad look more badass, and to save me tearing the model apart). This would be a consolidation of overspending into a single squad, which I could switch in and out of my army at will.

I suppose the main thing holding me back at the moment is the question of whether or not 3.5 WS rounds up to 4WS when recieving CC attacks. If it does I can replace 2 WS 3 guardsmen with a single WS3 HWT (which combined with 2 bodyguards and a priest brings the average to 3.5 and therefore 4 WS), if not then I can either drop the priest, keep the priest and add kell, or just scrap the idea alltogether thus dropping the HWT and possibly dropping down to a single bodyguard.

edit> Ok I double checked and it is now evident that I was mistaken regarding the weapon skill of a unit, and that it is indeed the majority weaponskill rather than the average that is taken. In which case taking 2x bodyguards and consolidating 2 guardsmen into a HWT would result in the higher WS being taken, however it also seems the same situation, but with straken in place of the CC, would result in the unit having a WS of 3 despite straken's higher ws :S

If you want to take straken, there are two ways to take him. As mentioned, the first way is utter bare bones (Straken and 4 dudes with laspistol and close combat weapon), or slightly off bare bones (Straken and a couple meltaguns, for example).

Anything else is just going to bloat. I also wouldn't take a priest with him, because, while being a nice boost, priests are hard to keep out of close combat in a very small squad like a CCS, getting them needlessly killed. The only real boost I'd consider taking is a fully kitted lord commissar, but even then, the LC could probably be doing more somewhere else in the army.

From the models you have, I would take a normal commander, the 4 plasma wielding guardsmen and model the priest to look a bit like an astropath (if required).

Taking the barebones approach (I have resigned myself to leaving the priest on a shelf until I have a use for him :()....

With CCS+Straken I would note that it costs 90 points to do the following:

Add 2 wounds (via bodyguards thus also allowing me to allocate further wounds away from Straken)
Raise the armour save to 4+ from 5+
Add Feel no Pain via a medic
Raise majority weapon skill to 4 from 3 (via consolidating 2 guardsmen into a heavy weapon team, though am still not sure if this is legal)

So for 90 points I effectively raise the wounds of the squad, then increase their 'effective health' by raising AS, adding FnP and increasing majority weapon skill.

Still, it's starting to feel expensive. I still have the issue of a massive points deficit (to allow my mate to use his full list) but I am feeling more reluctant to waste the points.

Leaving it as is, is not an option, because right now I have worse point sinks than the options I have considered in this thread, not to mention straken twiddling his thumbs in a squad full of plasma guns. That said taking a balanced approach to consolidating points wastage into a single squad (for reasons of simplicity and future ease of adjustment) just leaves me with points left over to waste elsewhere.

I suppose the best thing to do would be to go out and drop some cash on more infantry or a russ or two before my next game, but as mentioned previously I have not decided the direction I want my army to go in.

So, in the end I suppose the question is this. What is the least innefectual choice between my current solution to fill the points (Straken, Harker, Marbo and Demolitions option on my vets) or something like described above, and indeed how to make the most of it.