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Hey y'all. I was doing some searching around for tactics on SM Vanguard Vets, and I found surprisingly little. It seems from my eyes that Vanguards tend to play second fiddle to Sternguards. What are your thoughts on this? Is it true or not, and if it is, is it for a reason? Are Vanguards just a weaker unit?

What I'm looking here is more than an observation of popularity. Why do you use them, if you do use them, and what do you give them? In what context do you see them used? Why do you think they're less popular, if the case is so? Are they a weaker unit, or is their purpose misunderstood?

They get expensive very quickly, specially if you give them jumppacks. That alone tends to keep people away from them. Heroic intervention can be good but very risky.
I have played them in high point games with Shrike, they were fully loaded and shredding stuff up but at great cost.

Blood Angel ones can be surprisingly effective: For 185pts you can get a squad of 5 with Jump Packs, Melta Bombs and a Glaive Encarmine. You can DS more accurately due to DoA, then assault a vehicle on the same turn with Melta Bombs.

I recently bought a squad, purely for the aesthetics, and I'm going to try and experiment with them to see what works. From what I gather, not overly popular, nor effective. The Heroic Intervention is relatively unreliable unless you've got a beacon on the table from some scouts. Which, granted, isn't hard to do, but it does limit your deep strike choices somewhat.

Only the BA ones are worth much. DoA+HI really helps them out. Make them 5 men support squads with a fist or something

To be honest, Vanguard need jump packs. I don't see the point in having them without, adding jump packs already makes them pretty expensive, they then need weapons to make them worthwhile, depends on what you want them to do, but i'd say minimum of two PWs, they should be aiming to kill slightly tougher units. So really you should be looking at taking as many PW, LC, TH/PFs maybe even SS as you can fit in. That makes them very pricy. If you are using drop pods, add in a teleport homer or two and they can be easily devastating (as long as your drop pod is near something worth killing), but scattering 2D6 is just a big risk, for such an expensive unit that is needing to assault. Ok sometimes you'll hit, or scatter just right, but there is also just as much chance you'll end up out of assault range, and that unit is pretty easy to kill to be honest.

As already said, in DoA lists for BA they work much better as D6 scatter your less likely to end up in the wrong place. Plus its either Vanguard or Sang Guard for your strong assault units, as Assault Marines aren't going to take down tough things all that well. Honour guard could I suppose, but I think they are better equipped to take down vehicles, would be every better if you attach Dante and not scatter with the vanguard, but then you lose Heroic intervention.


If your wanting to use them in your Space Marine list, what else will be in your list? Basically you need to work out if they are going to do the job they are best at in your list, without having loads of other things that also do that job.

rodgers37 wrote:As already said, in DoA lists for BA they work much better as D6 scatter your less likely to end up in the wrong place. Plus its either Vanguard or Sang Guard for your strong assault units, as Assault Marines aren't going to take down tough things all that well. Honour guard could I suppose, but I think they are better equipped to take down vehicles, would be every better if you attach Dante and not scatter with the vanguard, but then you lose Heroic intervention.

Unless the Vanguard all have PWs, I wouldn't rate them that much higher over regular Assault marines. You pay a big premium for Heroic Intervention. HG can be equipped in almost the same fashion as VV plus they come with a Blood Chalice.

IMO, Dante is best used with HG. Guaranteed melta or rapid fire plasma range is pretty awesome.

They work fairly well in a drop pod list with lots of locator beacons...but again are very expensive

Vanguard suffer by competing for space with good units like Land Speeders and not being a good unit. They are expensive if you gear them for assault and if you're not gearing them for assault why are you taking them?

Of course Codex Marines can't do assault well anyway.

That said, I like the concept of them and if I were taking them then for every five there would be five storm shields, four lightning claws, a power fist and jump packs. But then that's 320 points for 5 models (630 for 10) who are not as survivable as 200 points of assault terminators. I suppose they're still better than Honour Guard (Codex version) though.

rodgers37 wrote:To be honest, Vanguard need jump packs. I don't see the point in having them without, adding jump packs already makes them pretty expensive, they then need weapons to make them worthwhile, depends on what you want them to do, but i'd say minimum of two PWs, they should be aiming to kill slightly tougher units. So really you should be looking at taking as many PW, LC, TH/PFs maybe even SS as you can fit in. That makes them very pricy. If you are using drop pods, add in a teleport homer or two and they can be easily devastating (as long as your drop pod is near something worth killing), but scattering 2D6 is just a big risk, for such an expensive unit that is needing to assault. Ok sometimes you'll hit, or scatter just right, but there is also just as much chance you'll end up out of assault range, and that unit is pretty easy to kill to be honest.

As already said, in DoA lists for BA they work much better as D6 scatter your less likely to end up in the wrong place. Plus its either Vanguard or Sang Guard for your strong assault units, as Assault Marines aren't going to take down tough things all that well. Honour guard could I suppose, but I think they are better equipped to take down vehicles, would be every better if you attach Dante and not scatter with the vanguard, but then you lose Heroic intervention.


If your wanting to use them in your Space Marine list, what else will be in your list? Basically you need to work out if they are going to do the job they are best at in your list, without having loads of other things that also do that job.

Well, for the main body of my army I'm running the Pedro Kantor/Sternguard Vet combo, in a Rhino. I've got a dread with TL-LC, ML, and extra armor to run heavy support, and I've got two 10 man tactical squads for bodies on the field.

Some thing I keep hearing in all these space marine theads "vanilla marines can't do assault", not true vanilla marines can do counter-assault and actually do it really well. People who try and go toe to toe with armies in assault think vanilla marines are bad at it, which they are. But the des has units that preform great when you pick your match up and use your good shooting to soften the enemy up a bit.

Pony_law wrote:Some thing I keep hearing in all these space marine theads "vanilla marines can't do assault", not true vanilla marines can do counter-assault and actually do it really well. People who try and go toe to toe with armies in assault think vanilla marines are bad at it, which they are. But the des has units that preform great when you pick your match up and use your good shooting to soften the enemy up a bit.

That is something I've always thought of, but never voiced. I've always thought that Space Marines in assault get played by people who think they're gonna preform like orks, or Blood Angels.

Vanilla SM ones are just so expensive, and not very reliable compared to their BA brothers. As well, you have other (better) options

BA VVs are better purely because of DoA, and potential FnP. This makes them much more survivable AND they can actually use HI reliably.

Pony_law wrote:Some thing I keep hearing in all these space marine theads "vanilla marines can't do assault", not true vanilla marines can do counter-assault and actually do it really well. People who try and go toe to toe with armies in assault think vanilla marines are bad at it, which they are. But the des has units that preform great when you pick your match up and use your good shooting to soften the enemy up a bit.

Vanilla Marines can't do assault well, as you acknowledge. The issue with "counter-attack" is, what are the points you invested in counter-attack doing to the enemy for the first three turns of the game? The most efficient source of assault power in the Marine Codex are assault terminators. That's a minimum of 200 points and without mobility all they can do is wait for the enemy to come to them. They can shield their fellows by bubblewrapping tanks and the like to keep away units that want to kill them, but of course you could just buy more tanks with the points used. A tooled up Vanguard squad can go to the enemy, but costs an even bigger chunk of your army.

My favourite unit in my army are my biker command squads, just because they're tough, mobile, have some shooting ability and can do a good punch up when they have to. Of course I can only get two squads of them, fingers crossed it's enough, and they do cost a lot too, although worth every point.

One of my first games i played as Spess Mahreens i kitted out a squad of Vanguard and put them in a Rhino. They would have done alright if i wasn't entirely new to the game and managed to get assaulted by a Wraith Lord, mostly because i forgot it is not a Walker (such bs), but even so they weren't worth the points i put into them. Give me a Command Squad on Bikes anyday

Peace Out!
Jonny!

Valkyrie wrote:Blood Angel ones can be surprisingly effective: For 185pts you can get a squad of 5 with Jump Packs, Melta Bombs and a Glaive Encarmine. You can DS more accurately due to DoA, then assault a vehicle on the same turn with Melta Bombs.

Well, my usual pick is 5 Vanguard Vets with a power fist, 175 pts. Cheap and effective unit in a BA army, thanks to the special rules. Such a unit can eventually charge upon arrival. I use them to silence guns that can threaten my Assault Marines.