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So Forge World has published an update to the older Imperial Armour books, found at http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/Downloads/Product/PDF/s/Smupdate.pdf. I'd like to start a discussion about the merits of the two squad upgrade characters listed; Sergeant Culln for Vanguard squads and Sergeant Haas for Tactical squads.

Beginning with Culln, while it has long been an article of faith that Vanguard squads are overpriced and under-performing, I feel that Culln may in fact be able to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. While spending yet more points on an already over-costed unit seems counter-intuitive, consider you're getting a relic blade and a jump pack (not explicitly listed in his wargear, but implied by his unit type of Jump Infantry) as nearly half of the cost. For the other 35 points, you get an extra wound and (fairly common) conditional re-rolls to hit in close combat. Best of all, you don't need to sacrifice Heroic Intervention as you would to attach a Chaplain, and you can save the HQ slot too. While this probably doesn't elevate the unit from garbage status to must-have, there's something to be said for having a more-reliable assault unit that doesn't automatically fold up against larger squads.

Moving on to Sergeant Haas; this character seems almost broken-good. Tactical squads are often maligned as poor Troops choices, even as a tax to get to the real meat of the codex. Haas however changes this up by removing some of the identity crisis a Tactical squad suffers from. Firstly, Haas himself is a CC beat-stick with wargear out the wazoo, which alone account for nearly his entire point cost; a power weapon, two wounds, and a 2+/4++ save thanks to artificer armor and an Iron Halo. This also allows you to play some wound-allocation games to bounce AP 3 weaponry or eat a plasma bolt instead of another model. Haas is also not an independent character, so using him once this way is actually pretty safe, since he can't be singled out. But the real advantage is making the whole squad Relentless while he lives, which in addition to allowing your heavy weapon to fire on the move also removes the age-old conundrum of whether to charge or stand and double tap. Now you get to do both! While tooling up a full squad with Haas, a plasma gun, a multi-melta and a Rhino is a little points-intensive, especially as you probably wouldn't want to combat squad them, it's so effective that I can't imagine any list not doing so if the option is available.

All that said, would you include either of these two characters in your lists? Does anyone else have thoughts on this?

Vanguard Vets are proving more and more useless for their point cost to me. Part of this is just luck of the dice I know, but I've been doing a lot of games against one of my regular opponents in preparation for a tournament this weekend. His Blood Angels DoA list has two squads of 5 Vanguard with 3 Power Weapons in each.

Generally, he's lucky enough to charge in with Heroic Intervention. The downside has been their performance. For example: both units charged an 8 man pack of Grey Hunters I had. I expect my Grey Hunters to effectively get wiped out. Instead I kill all but 3 and he downs two Grey Hunters. Next turn I have 4 Grey Hunters left when I consolidate.

This is just one example, and bad luck has a lot to do with it since he had 24 Power Weapon attacks. He should have killed 6 Grey Hunters with that, statistically, and I should have failed some armor saves. But the thing is, for the point cost these units are consistently under performing unless they have Furious Charge. The only reason to take them is for Heroic Intervention, and you can't put an IC in with them when they do that so it involves some luck as to if you can put them in a FNP bubble.

Even better, Vanilla marines have no way to do this as far as I'm aware!

Sergeant Cullin seems to be the perfect upgrade unit for the squad, but he still doesn't make them particularly useful. For Vanilla SM they scatter 2D6" and have to be lucky enough to be in charge range or they'll probably get shot to death (unless you can put a lot of pressure on the enemy). Stubborn and re-rolls to hit will see them doing a lot of damage but even still. Seems a bit spendy. Will have to play with it and see if I can figure out a better load out if you are including him, but unless someone points one out why wouldn't you just use an ASM squad and take more bodies?


Sergeant Haas seems potentially handy. But its basically 6 points a model for Relentless and no Combi-Weapon is allowed. Plasma Gun and Multi-Melta with all those Boltguns would be pretty nice to throw at the enemy, but Tactical marines aren't stellar in close combat. Generally you only want to move and charge in order to deny charge bonuses to the enemy.

Vanguard are a really good way to get lots of power weapons into a squad with Jump Packs, he makes Heroic intervention seem more worth but what are their points?

Haas seems very good but it will probably only be worth it in an offensive army.

Regarding Haas, the loss of the combi-weapon option does hurt a little, but being able to use your multi-melta on the move makes up for it, I think. Another neat trick you can pull is to move backwards 6" (outside of 12" range) to gain an extra turn or two of shooting, using Relentless to take single shots at up to 24" instead of double-tapping and taking or eating the charge.