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Hey Dakka,
I was just thinking about Marine lists, and I though about a primarily Veteran list. I absolutely love Sternguard with weapons for every occasion, and the only problem I can see with the army is lack of model count and the fact that losing models hurts.

What do you think?

Remember to run Pedro and make them all scoring.
And put them all in some kind of transport or drop pods so they can make good use of their close range weapons.
Take Combi-weapons on all of them. Nothing else is worth taking since you are losing your special ammo.
All together that actually makes a pretty scary list.

Or go super vets and take 3 Honor guard squads lol

I have been toying with the Idea of Sternguards...
Pedro, I'll have to look at.
I will be proxying them in some CP games with the wifey..

SM listbuilding isn't nearly as straight forward as some other codex build I fear... but it's what I have and ...

Good Luck, AND THEY SHALL KNOW NO FEAR!
Isaiah

PS. ...a loaded bolter never hurt...

Heavy Weapons on some Sternguard squads can be handy, depending on their role. Double Lascannons in a 5 Man Squad acting as fire support to kill Chimeras/Rhinos isn't all that bad a choice (they're not quite Long Fangs, but still pretty okay at what they do).

I think that shrike and a bunch of jetpacking vanguard, or in LRCs with pedro and/or a chaplain will make a lovely mess. Absolute, top tier competitive? No. But hilarious.

If you want some squad set ups I can suggest the following.

6 men with 2 lascannons in a rhino.
6 men with 4 combimeltas and 2 heavy flamers in a rhino.
6 men with 2 meltas and 4 combiplasma in a rhino.
10 men with 10 combimeltas in a drop pod.
10 men 5 with combimeltas 2 heavy flamers in a drop pod.

They have a cheap supply of combi, special and heavy weapons. 6 men last longer than 5 whilst cheaper than 7 , seriously though 6 works very well.
Drop pod with 10 combat squad and you can take out two targets. Something like 335 pts if it lands and takes out two tanks is not such a bad price to pay.

The problem with vets is they are just marines. Their offensive potential doesn't justify the ridiculous price per model I see some people running them at. When Grey knights were 25 pts for a basic guy, people were complaining they (correctly) cost too much to be good. Sternguard are not nearly as good as old book grey knights (special ammo is nice, but assault weapons and S6 attacks is better). Yet they cost 25 pts before what many consider are mandatory upgrades.

I take sternguard because they can be a cheap extra ML unit. 5 guys with 2 ML is 135, not too bad with special ammo supporting the range or AP of the ML. Suicide combi melta pods is too many points for a one hit wonder, yet I see them taken all the time...

Vanguard vets in vanilla marines are far to expensive to even consider. They are slightly better assault marines (already a terrible choice outside of BA, where they are good mostly because at least they score) for a considerably higher cost. To arm them and give them jump packs makes a already expensive unit into a horribly expensive unit that underneath it all, is only a marine in durability. Their gimmick deepstrike ability is really only worth considering in BA.