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After looking thru the codex I am debating whether or not to play Ultra's. All of thier characters look great and was just wondering how they play and if they are competetive. I don't see many in my local meta and at least at first look I was wondering why? Calgar, Tigerius?, and the character for vehicles look like they would be great and with Calgar you can take up to 3 units of honor gaurd. I know they are points intensive but thought maybe 2 units (one with Calgar and one with Tig) in LR Reedemers to rush hard units. Just wanted feedback on other players experiences with and against them?

Honor Guard are really expensive, and I've never seen a competitive list take them. They're good on paper, but a small squad of Assault Terminators can do the same thing while being more survivable. Tigurius is really not very good; over 200 points for a 2 wound model isn't cool. Calgar is pretty decent, even if he's very expensive.

Good advice. It's seems it's hard to beat terminators any which way you look at it with thier 3+ invul.(shields)

Honor Guard also have a WS4 and Ini of 4... and because they are espensives, there's usually few of them. This means that against a lot of of dedicated combat troop will destroy (or several cripple them) before they even get to attack.... Genestealers, Incubi, Banshees, Death Company (or even normal BA who get the charge really) all come to mind. And they don't have enough attack to really deal with huge group either (Boyz, Gaunts, etc)...

What you end up with is a unit that is very good at killing stuff that doesn't fight back... the kind of stuff your Tactical Marine could also kill. So they are kinda pointless...

A good Ultramarine character that is rarely used tho is Cassius, the Chaplain. He doesn't have a jumpack, but if you put him with Terminator in a LR, it gets really silly. Funny thing is that he's the same cost as a Chaplain in Terminator armor while being much better.

Sternguard are your friends... use them!!

As far as characters, I like to use Cato and any of the 100pt HQ units (chaplain, librarian, captain). As said before, Cassius is a must!

There is no reason to use any of the Ultra Marine special characters. They're all pretty much garbage. That being said the models are cool and I personally use the Tigerius model as a regular librarian. You don't have to use any special characters to play Ultra Marines (and you will most likely be a lot better off that way) all you need is the paint scheme. There are a large number of highly competitive builds in the space marine codex and the vast majority don't use a special character of any kind so if you like the paint scheme then paint away and field as much or as little of a competitive army that you like (if it wasn't meant to be used by the Ultra Marines it wouldn't have been included in the codex).

Honor Guard are over costed non-scoring close combat units that will die in vs any dedicated CC unit before they even get a chance to strike because of no invul saves and poor imitative. Calgar himself costs land raider points and only slightly modifies combat tactics. He is good at CC and shooting but not enough to justify his point cost and he basically just subtracts points from your list that could be better spent. Tigerius is a two would model with no invul save. Space marines have one of the best powers in the whole game (null zone) but the rest are pretty situation and its rare that you would actually want to use three powers in one turn. His reserve roll manipulation is interesting but he has to be on the board to use it meaning he is (expensive) easy prey.

I personally like to keep it cheep when I run my space marines and use a non-upgraded librarian or a master of the forge when im playing a mech army and one or two bike captains when im playing my bike army.