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Just purchased a fair old amount of stuff. Thing is, no idea what to do with it.

I have two Command Squads (honour guards, what ever).

Three sanguinary guards

A storm Raven

A terminator librarian

Two baal predators

I am 100% lost on how to build these things. I have enough jump packs to give all the honour guards Jump packs as well, and I've built up one Sanguinar Priest with a power ace and a jump pack so far.

Main questions: What do I do in terms of Banners?
What guns do I give the Sanguinary guard? Do I give them death masks?
What do I do for the sponsons for the Baal preds

One banner is fine in a command squad. IIRC it gives everyone within 6 or 12 +1 attack. That's always good for an assaulting army. You don't need more than that though. That's called a chapter banner. There's no reason to ever use the company banner.

Don't give sanguinary guard death masks. Frankly don't use them, or at least don't use them as sanguinary guard. The models are extremely cool but they're horrible as assaulters. Use melta pistols. Don't use plasma pistols. Plasma pistols are almost never worth it.

Run the baal with flamestorm cannon and no sponsons. The reason is that if you shoot the heavy flamer or heavy bolter with the flamestorm cannon your opponent can play wound-allocation games and actually end up taking fewer wounds than if you just used the cannon. Weird but true. I wouldn't run a baal with the assault cannon. It's just not strong enough offensively.

Hope that helps.

GreatGunz wrote:Really bad advice.

Please tell me you're not serious?

Edit: To add something constructive.

Baal predators are amazing with assault cannons. FAR less so with the flamestorm pattern (with OR without the sponson flamers), as that brings them to exactly where they DON'T want to be: 2d6 melta range. Essentially, taking the flamestorm cannon turns your Baal into a very expensive one-shot weapon. And as far as wound allocation hijinks go, template weapons do not prevent them: BRB p. 29 under "Template" states: "Wounds inflicted by template weapons do not have to be allocated on the models actually covered by the template, but can be put onto any model in the unit." (emphasis mine)

Plus, assault cannons are better in just about every way than flamers. Better range, better strength, better AP (with rending) and even serves double duty as troop-killers and armor poppers. Statistically, an assault cannon is better than a lascannon at popping high (13+) armor values. Sponsons are entirely optional, but I generally take them on my Baals.

Honour Guard almost requires a chapter banner. +1A in a 12" bubble around the standard is absolutely amazing. Company Standards aren't actually completely horrible, as that (counts as) extra wound in CC can easily make the difference between winning and losing a close combat, and an additional -1 to the LD test for your enemy after they lose the combat. The morale test benefit is only moderately useful, as ATSKNF covers most of the morale failures, but the pinning test reroll can prevent your units from being stuck in place for an entire game when going against anything with pinning weapons in multiples (I'm looking at you, pathfinder spamming Eldar!). That's the infantry equivalent to a vehicle being "glanced to death".

Death Masks are either invaluable or a horrible waste of points. There's not really any "in-between" with them. Dropping that GK squad to WS1 before their I6 force weapon spam hits you? That's invaluable. If they pass their LD test? The masks are a horrible waste of points. I say model them, since they look awesome, but it's your choice whether you actually use them or not - I'm pretty sure nobody would ever give you flak about modeling an upgrade on a unit that you aren't using, even in WYSIWYG games. As always, Rule of Cool surpasses all other rules when it comes to conversions, modeling, and "counts as".

I'm a fan of the assault cannon/multimelta stormraven. That gives you character-killing ability, anti-vehicle, and even a fair amount of anti-troop shots.

You could always look up tutorials online as far as how to magnetize models, and magnetize your stuff so you can swap load-outs on the fly (and it makes for an easier "weapon destroyed" look on vehicles. It's hard to "forget" that your multimelta or assault cannon got blown up if it's not actually on the model itself anymore).

Re: plasma pistols. They're great, especially in units with FNP. It's possibly the only 1hand pistol that's actually worth taking, especially in small units since every model you can take down before charging is a model that's not going to be really pissed off at your unit after you pull off a charge on them. Consider that Sanguinary Guard is capped at 5 models, so just about every unit you can charge is going to outnumber you, usually horribly.

Re: "melta pistols" (infernus pistols): these are absolutely HORRIBLE wastes of points. There is absolutely no redeeming feature to infernus pistols. They have half the range of standard pistols, and if you're in range to get a 1d6 hit with the infernus pistol, you're in range to get a 2d6 hit from a meltagun. And with a 3" melta range, you might as well save yourself 10 points and just take meltabombs instead.

Sorry for the reflex response earlier. I realized after posting it that it was horribly unconstructive and added absolutely nothing to the discussion, nor did it help the OP in any way. Hopefully the edit fixed that!

Edit, the sequel: Formatting. Bleh.