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I'm gonna pick up a box of these guys but I'm not really sure which unit to build. I have Trazyn, so that kinda makes me lean toward Lychguard, and I have some Necron Lords to lead all my squads, which wouldn't do much good in a Praetorian squad since it would drop their movement speed. Regardless, what do you think of these two units? Pros and cons of each? Which is your personal favorite?

My opinion is com pletely uninformed, but I just happen to like Lychguard better aesthetically.

It seems to be the general truth that TP are unfortunately overpriced. More so than other jump pack elites, even Jump Pack Vanguard Vets can do more than them. Obviously someone was not thinking right when they gave an elite infantry unit 1 base attack. They are extremely outshined by Wraiths too

Lychguard can be a nasty little bodyguard for a Lord/OLord. The only issue they have is getting into CC can be a bit of a challenge

Neither. Unless you are using them as Cryptek conversions they both stink.

There are uses for lychguard that can be solid or cutesy and fun. There isn't much to do with praetorians.

I might try to make some cryptek conversions with them. I think that with some leftover warriors you can get 5 crypteks and 5 lychguard out of the boxes, but I would think you'd prefer to prioritize having crypteks over having lychguard.

JGrand wrote:Neither. Unless you are using them as Cryptek conversions they both stink.

So....incorrect.

Anyway, to the OP, pick up a box of warriors (or if you have a sprue lying around) and make both! If you pick up another box of lych/praet and one box of warriors you'd be able to make two 10 man squads of each with the box you already have. It's very simple to do and it doesn't look bad either.

That being said, lychguard are higher on the "bring in your army" list but praetorians have their use, limited as they are.

JGrand wrote:Neither. Unless you are using them as Cryptek conversions they both stink.

This is very true. I take 8 to 10 praetorians with void blades accompanied by a res destroyer lord. They do more damage than you would expect, being fearless but are a huge point sink!

If the lychguard could get the invulnerable save with warscythes or even if their armor save was 2+ they might have been worth taking. But seeing more swords and boards in 40k, priceless.

They both suffer from being cc oriented elite units that don't hit hard enough back to make up for having an initiative of 2. Even an extra wound would do it... so much wasted potential.

One idea is to use Lychguard as "Mobile Cover" for your Scarabs and Immortals; arm a squad of 10 all with shields for the 4++ and march them across the board with a Lord and res orb. With a 4++ save and then a further 4++ reanimation they are such a resilient unit and allows Scarabs to get into striking distance without taking too many casualties.

I haven't seen or even heard of anyone running Triarch Praetorians, I'll have to keep my eyes peeled.

Iranna.

I would have to agree with everyone here on the TPraetorians unfortunately as I would truly love to use them. But the fact is, they are simply 10 points too expensive. If you are going to make them, Make Lychguard. If you really are adventurous, a bit o conversion work, and you got yourself some Scythlords for a nasty lil deathstar for when trayzn goes nutz!!

But I would DEFINITELY recommend taking Kevin 949s advice to save a few bucks. So long story short... my vote is the Lychguard

I've used the Lychguard less but have had swimming success with the TPs. The people who think TPs are overpriced are simply not looking at the whole picture. I must admit that the Rod TPs I've found unwieldy largely because of the proliferation of cover severely reduces the Rods punch, but VB/PC TPs are a very good unit if fielded properly. Compared to Wraiths, their cousins in the FA slot, TPs are more resilient to a wider range of firepower and VP/PC TPs are more killy to tanks and Hordes. I think people lookkat Wraiths and think "2 wounds and an invulnerable it MUST be more resilient" but the fact is with cover mitigating the need for the invuln to some degree, the higher toughness, and RP, TPs are actually considerably more survivable coming up the field then the Wraiths are, against most weapons at least. Basically if you take alot of Wraiths, but your seeing them die a bit too much before they reach CC or you need more anti tank punch, swap some out for TPs.

To reiterate, Wraiths, the netlisters hero, actually are inferior in some aspects of the game to TPs. But more importantly, TPs compliment Wraiths better then more Wraiths compliment Wraiths.

The big caveat with TPS though is you do need larger games to fully utilize them, say 1850 to 2K, largely because they need to be brought big. I would say 7 to 10 is the key range of models. And obviously, they play quite well with DLords.

I tried Praetorians in a game. They managed to wreck a vehicle in CC, but they couldn't hit anything. The finally got charged and died in one turn. I haven't used them again yet, mainly because my enemy has been DE for the last two games and they tend to die when hit with 20 attacks, even at S3.

Lychguard.

TPs are made to use their mobility to assault into enemy units, their 6" rod shots are basically a third attack on the charge and the void blades really need the numbers from charging to rend well. Unfortunately it's difficult to get a res orb on them and I2 means the units they can safely charge into without taking severe loses first are few.

Lychguard are just burly as all get out. They can use 2 scythe mss lords like 2 hidden powerklaw nobz and a res orb is an easy pick up from there. They are pretty much made to shield other units from shooting and take assaults on the chin, the despersion shield reflects make assault units with powerful short range shooting like meltas or plasma pistols or rods of the covenant or rokkits dangerous to unusable the turn they assault and the 4++/RP4+ and easy access to 2 mind shackles means only the biggest and best assault units in the game could hope to kill enough models that the s5/7 power weapon hits coming back won't still win combat. But they are super super expensive, it's often difficult to justify spending ~510 on a unit made to stop assaults from reaching your gun line instead of something like say 3 annihilation barges and 6 destroyers to just blast assault units apart before they get to your gun line, and if they do lose assault and then fail morale and fall back and lose those rp tokens and get wiped it's a serious beating. To give perspective on that kind of loss, it would be cheaper to lose 2 monoliths to deepstrike mishaps.

Actinium wrote:

TPs are made to use their mobility to assault into enemy units, their 6" rod shots are basically a third attack on the charge and the void blades really need the numbers from charging to rend well. Unfortunately it's difficult to get a res orb on them and I2 means the units they can safely charge into without taking severe loses first are few.

I'm not calling you out Actinium because I see people say this alot, but what unit out there can cause a sever amount of losses on T5 3+ models when being charged? I mean, I know some particularly Elite ones, but most bog standard CC units aren't going to overwhelm you in the first round, primarily because the well designed ones are designed to charge and then finish the enemy off on their turn, and they are regularly designed to do this against MEQ. I would just like some body to list me some regularly fielded units that can kill more then one or two TPs when they are assaulted (not including PFist wounds and the like because, obviously, they will strike last). Also, either through the rods or the Particle caster, you are likely to removed a couple of bases before they even have a chance to strike.

Iranna wrote:One idea is to use Lychguard as "Mobile Cover" for your Scarabs and Immortals; arm a squad of 10 all with shields for the 4++ and march them across the board with a Lord and res orb. With a 4++ save and then a further 4++ reanimation they are such a resilient unit and allows Scarabs to get into striking distance without taking too many casualties.

I haven't seen or even heard of anyone running Triarch Praetorians, I'll have to keep my eyes peeled.

Iranna.

^This^

I take a unit of 10 lychguard with shields and a res orb lord, and spread them out in a line to provide cover for my immortals and scarabs marching up behind them.

Like, all the units? Cause even a regular tactical marine squad kills a preatorian reliably and takes 3 assault phases to get cleaned up so anything with 1 more base attack would kill 2, things with power weapons kill 4ish, mobs with twice those numbers kill 3ish, and so on. If you're running an affordable 6 or so Tps that's 1/3+ of your attacks gone before you hit with maybe half the squad gone by the time you get out of combat, which is horrendously inefficient.
It's easier to list the things they excel against which is heavy weapon infantry or small units they can single out and mow down in one shoot and charge. They're tough, but they're still highly susceptible to shooting so you really need to hug terrain and abuse the mobility to find ideal things to assault. I don't think preatorians have no place in any list but between the 2 I can find a place for lychguard much easier.

Actinium wrote:Like, all the units? Cause even a regular tactical marine squad kills a preatorian reliably and takes 3 assault phases to get cleaned up so anything with 1 more base attack would kill 2, things with power weapons kill 4ish, mobs with twice those numbers kill 3ish, and so on. If you're running an affordable 6 or so Tps that's 1/3+ of your attacks gone before you hit with maybe half the squad gone by the time you get out of combat, which is horrendously inefficient.
It's easier to list the things they excel against which is heavy weapon infantry or small units they can single out and mow down in one shoot and charge. They're tough, but they're still highly susceptible to shooting so you really need to hug terrain and abuse the mobility to find ideal things to assault. I don't think preatorians have no place in any list but between the 2 I can find a place for lychguard much easier.

I'm not sure how your getting your numbers...it take 18 S4 WS4(or 3) attacks to reliably remove a TP base [18(1÷2)(1÷3)(1÷3) = 1]. I'm not sure if I've ever seen a codex that allows you to take 18 tac marines in a squad? Also to be clear, I'm assuming the TPs get the charge, as jump infantry if your not getting the charge your doing something tragically wrong.

Also, you just cannot ignore the fact that the unit's offensive capability is going to be diminished by the pistols. 5 pistol shots almost exactly remove a base. So lets say they are assaulting 10 assault marines with a PF. Pistols kill a base, 16 attacks from the marines kill almost one base (we'll call it a full base), then the TPs kill 2, then the PFist kills almost one, and then about one comes back from RP (roughly, basically the net of the normal assault marine attacks+PFist-RP=about one base). You now have 4TPs versus 7AMs and the TPs will eventually win, against a very similarly costed unit (you can't deduct the cost transport from the AMs because they are worthless unit without one).

The numbers break down similarly against wyches, orcs, really any but the fiercest CC units, which are generally much slower then the TPs and are therefore avoidable. Their designed to hunt troops and tanks, but, if the situation presents itself, can work in tandem with WC Wraiths to punch a hard core CC unit squarely in the taint.

Personally prefer Lychguard. I currently run a small unit with warscythes as a bodyguard for my overlord, acting mainly as a counter-assault unit. Excluding one game against GK ( paladin deathstar) i've had good results from them.

Not to derail this topic but what's the best number of Lychguard to take? The minimum of 5 or more? Also I'm talking about the Sword & Board type.

bmoleski wrote:I'm gonna pick up a box of these guys but I'm not really sure which unit to build. I have Trazyn, so that kinda makes me lean toward Lychguard, and I have some Necron Lords to lead all my squads, which wouldn't do much good in a Praetorian squad since it would drop their movement speed. Regardless, what do you think of these two units? Pros and cons of each? Which is your personal favorite?

Take neither; buy some Deathmarks instead.

azazel the cat wrote:

bmoleski wrote:I'm gonna pick up a box of these guys but I'm not really sure which unit to build. I have Trazyn, so that kinda makes me lean toward Lychguard, and I have some Necron Lords to lead all my squads, which wouldn't do much good in a Praetorian squad since it would drop their movement speed. Regardless, what do you think of these two units? Pros and cons of each? Which is your personal favorite?

Take neither; buy some Deathmarks instead.

Nah. Save your money, and wait until the 2nd wave hits.

ShadarLogoth wrote:Things

10 tac marines vs 6 TP kill .49 from 10 bolter shots and .54 Tps over 3 rounds of combat assuming the tps shot rods first. 1 dead TP reliably in the case of the marines not double tapping you or getting the charge or having special or heavy weapons or a power weapon sergeant or anything but bolters and bodies. Obviously 180pts for 40 is a good deal but as basically devastators with different weapon options tac marines are an ideal assault target, things get worse the better at assault you go from tac marines and it takes 3 assault phases to even do that so you can only realistically do it twice a game.

Also if you do extend that void blade tps vs assault marines example out past the turn you charge in and assume no one breaks with very minor rounding;

round 2 - 4v7
.66 tps ded at I4, 1.5 m ded (1 rend) at I2, .83 tps ded at I1, .5 tps make rp rolls

r3 - 3v5.5
.5 tps ded, 1.33 m ded (1 generous rend here, gonna assume no more lucky rends after this), .83 tps ded, .44 tps rp

r4 - 2.1v4.2
.35 tps ded, .4 m ded, .83 tps ded, .4 tps rp

r5 - 1.3v3.8
.3 tps ded, .2 m ded, .83 tps ded, 1.13 is probably close enuf to wiped out so no rps

The assault marines win with about 2 dudes and the pfist sgt still alive.

...Which is terrible, since the 6x Praetorians cost about twice as much as a 10-man Tac squad.

azazel the cat wrote:...Which is terrible, since the 6x Praetorians cost about twice as much as a 10-man Tac squad.

Wait, re-read Actinum's post. He showed that against a Tac squad the most likely scenario woud be trading 180 points of tac for 40 points of TP. Obviously any shooty based infantry or tanks will be the prime tragets against TPs, and the great thing about TPs, and the reason they cost what they do, is with JPs they should be able to chose their prime target, or at least be able to choose the engagement moment against sub prime targets.

The example he showed where the battle turned out much closer was Assault marines with a PFist, which is at least 175 points right? But generally much more. Plus Assault Marines are worthless with out some mobility so they either are paying for JPs, a drop pod, or a Rhino, not too mention a couple of melta guns that will slightly lower their CC potential, and increase their overall cost. Once you factor in all of those things the point cost between the two units is nearly identical.

i dont currently have either but if (when) i get a set i will most likely field Lychguard with Sword n Board. then use the spare bits for Cryptek conversions.

Actually, after a few games, I figured out that if you think of the Triarch Praetorians weapon as another attack, they work well. Technically, they have 3 attacks on the charge, all S5 PW attacks. Honestly, if you aren't charging after shooting the Assault 1 weapon, you're doing it wrong.

The problem? I2. For either Lychguard or Praetorians, that's their biggest weakness. It's a good thing, then, that the Rod of Covenant is basically an I10 attack, as it is almost a guaranteed wound. Throwing in a Destroyer Lord is ok, and in this situation it would actually almost make sense taking a Gauntlet of Fire on the DLord, as it would vastly increase the wounds the enemy takes before getting into CC, and since the flamer template is 8" long, you would get in plenty of hits, all before the enemy can touch you in CC. Giving a Dlord a SoL would mean 3 save-negating shots against MEQ (not terminators, though) plus 3 CCW attacks. A Warscythe would be just 3 S7 PW attacks.

That would actually make them better than Lychguard in CC. I played against DE using a unit of 8 Preatorians, and they wrecked a unit of Wyches and a Hemonculi (sp?). Against MEQs, a DLords loadout would be a tossup between a Staff of Light (3 S5 AP3 shots, plus RoC S5 AP2 shots before combat) or a Warscythe is there's a MC or Vehicle you need to kill.

The other problem is that using them in small units (anything less than 8, really) is damn-near a death sentence to that unit, esp. if charging into CC with DE. As I found out.

Summation:
-RoC Praetorians +DLord w/ Gauntlet of Fire= decent, despite how... adequate the GoF is. Best against Horde armies with low T and 5+/6+ saves. Try not to shoot through cover. Giving a DLord a Staff of Light would be somewhat useful, as it would again be more shots before charging, and less units to kill you in CC. The problem is the non-PW status of the SoL. Keep the Scythe on the DLord if you're attacking Terminators, but I would switch it out if you're attacking Tactical marines or anything with a 3+ or worse save.

-VB&PC Praetorians, on the other hand, are much more of a crapshoot, since their attacks are not PW attacks. Rending is only so useful, and VB's are ok against vehicles if you have no other option. However, if you have no other option, you're doing it wrong, and by "it" I mean playing Necrons. Glancing a vehicle to death is a better option, if only because it's cheaper.

-Lychguard-Sword and Boarders makes for a very survivable unit. Hiding a Scythelord in there is not a bad idea. Also, they make for great Crypteks/Lord conversions. Honestly, they fit the look very, very well. Deathmark bodies+Lychguard legs=ballin' Crypteks. Throw in RoCs to make a Lancetek.

-Scytheguard are capable of killing things, but at I2, they have the capacity to die in small units. Unlike the RoC Praetorians, they do not have shooting attacks, and so cannot inflict casualties before getting into CC. Still, if they live, they tend to own face.