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I field an infantry heavy gunline. I was thinking Sicarius, as I had some success with him in 5th before switching to Calgar. I don't think Calgar is worth it in 6th due to the buff to ATSKNF.

Pedro Kantor.

The problem with that is that sternguard are close range, and I prefer to shoot people from far away.

Then go with a MotF and a Conversion Beamer

Armadeus wrote:
The problem with that is that sternguard are close range, and I prefer to shoot people from far away.

No one really buffs long range shooting, but Pedro allows you to drop pod scoring sternguard in so that, while your firebase is an immobile wall of dakka, you have scoring harassment units that in your opponent's backfield.

This forces your opponent to choose what he focuses on, getting shot to bits by both in the meantime.

Either a Librarian (with some combination of Dome, Gate, and Null Zone) in either power or Terminator Armor, a MotF with a Conversion Beamer, or Pedro Kantor. Librarians provide psychic defense and also either give you an invulnerable save, mobility, or the ability to counter invulnerable saves. MotF are just shooty and let you take more dreads (Rifleman Dreads are quite good), and as mentioned, Kantor lets you make Sternguard scoring.

I like the plain libby. Cheap & nasty, has some powers that can buff you, and leaves mo' points for mo' guns

Null zone is so stupid good in some games. At actually gonna paint up smurfs to ally with my BA, and this is one of the reasons why.......

I run a Librarian. He's the best HQ if you don't give him any upgrades whatsoever. Null Zone destroys Demon's days, since all their saves are invulnerable saves. Deathwing armies cringe too, or anyone with lots of Invulnerable saves. The Avenger is good for clearing out Power Armored foes once they get close, Machine Curse isn't terrible (now) and is good for getting rid of that last hull point. If you put him in terminator armor, Vortex of Doom is something to consider too!

Master of the Forge with Conversion Beamer is good, if you stick him in a corner and then let loose. Put him on a bike so he can move and fire the beamer.

Cato Sicarius can give Tank Hunters to that Tactical Squad that runs a Melta + Lascannon, just to hurt tanks extra hard. Or Infiltrate to one of your squads in a rhino, and infiltrate forward. He also allows your entire army to roll on his Leadership.

Crazyterran wrote:
I run a Librarian. He's the best HQ if you don't give him any upgrades whatsoever.

Master of the Forge with Conversion Beamer is good, if you stick him in a corner and then let loose. Put him on a bike so he can move and fire the beamer.

Cato Sicarius can give Tank Hunters to that Tactical Squad that runs a Melta + Lascannon, just to hurt tanks extra hard. Or Infiltrate to one of your squads in a rhino, and infiltrate forward. He also allows your entire army to roll on his Leadership.

Cato is a good choice, we can also add to the Melta+lascannon. Quad Gun

I vote libby as well. As a gunline army we tend to lack mobility, so having a libby around gives us gate and as already mentioned null zone.

Librarian with null zone.

Another interesting one is Adeth (FW tho), as he gives you:

mastery 2, 3+/5++, re-rolls failed psychic tests, modifies enemy reserves by -1, re-rolls stealing the initiative, gives all infantry not embarked infiltrate

1 normal SM power (or a roll on divination), so far ive been thinking gate
His special power of giving he and his squad shroud and defensive grenades.


For me i lose null zone (which may prove to be too costly), but gain a really useful combo of gate and shroud/defensive grenades. at 1500 he's paired with a 10 man tac squad, but at 1750 he hooks up with sternguard, which is pretty potent.

Furthermore infiltrate gives us outflank (more mobility) for our tact and the ability to position our troops last, which is pretty nifty. I havent tried him yet but I think he would serve a gunline well, and let it be a lot more strategic/mobile and thus, harder to read for our opponent (which is typically the problem with gunlines, you always know what to expect with them).

If you have lots of tactical squads, Culln (Forgeworld, from Badab War Part 1). Can be good. He lets you swap all your tactical sergeants for apothecaries.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
If you have lots of tactical squads, Culln (Forgeworld, from Badab War Part 1). Can be good. He lets you swap all your tactical sergeants for apothecaries.

Wow, that is good. A wall of 3+, FNP could get real hard to handle.

I would say a libby with null zone, however consider the badab war characters. As others said, they offer all flavor of army wide buffs, such as FNP, infiltrate, stealth, tank hunters, among others. These can patch some holes in your army or radically alter the way you play it.

Largo39 wrote:
Another interesting one is Adeth (FW tho), as he gives you:

mastery 2, 3+/5++, re-rolls failed psychic tests, modifies enemy reserves by -1, re-rolls stealing the initiative, gives all infantry not embarked infiltrate

1 normal SM power (or a roll on divination), so far ive been thinking gate
His special power of giving he and his squad shroud and defensive grenades.


For me i lose null zone (which may prove to be too costly), but gain a really useful combo of gate and shroud/defensive grenades. at 1500 he's paired with a 10 man tac squad, but at 1750 he hooks up with sternguard, which is pretty potent.

Furthermore infiltrate gives us outflank (more mobility) for our tact and the ability to position our troops last, which is pretty nifty. I havent tried him yet but I think he would serve a gunline well, and let it be a lot more strategic/mobile and thus, harder to read for our opponent (which is typically the problem with gunlines, you always know what to expect with them).

Take Null Zone instead of Gate, since Gate is mediocre. Gate is a decent 2nd Power, but i'd rather have Avenger, or Machine Curse if you fight a lot of Guard/Armor lists, or if you wear Terminator Armor, Vortex of Doom. But Null Zone #1.

I run a 100pt Librarian because Space Marine HQs overall are rather mediocre and I'd rather spend the extra 25 - 150+ points these Special Characters cost on another Vindicator, Typhoon speeders, Lascannons on tactical squads, Rhinos to move my troops around, etc.

I love Pedro (if using Sternguard) or Cato if just running a solid gun-line.

However, I agree that the Libby is a great option if you want to avoid named characters.

In a recent game I ran I used a Term Libby with GOI and Vortex, gave him a storm shield, and stuck him in a 5 man TH/SS termie squad.

I then proceded to port them all over the board to harass the enemy and keep them off my gun-line.

They drew a ton of enemy fire off my more vulnerable units, and killed alot of enemy models to boot. They managed to kill a Land Raider, the command squad inside it, and a number of other transports with Vortex before the game ended.

This put the enemy on the back foot, split his fire, and by targeting his transports / heavy tanks, it allowed my gun-line more time to chew his troops to pieces before they could cross the board.

The Libby survived with one wound, and I only lost 4 of the termies, leaving the unit alive. This 390 pt squad took out about 600 or so points worth of enemy models, and survived an absolute hail of gunfire. By the end of the game my opponent was ignoring everything else I had in a desperate attempt to down the Libby's squad.

Granted, this game was played against another MEQ player, but could be useful against other armies if played right.

It doesn't work all the time, and snake eyes might kill you on the Psy test, but man is it a fun unit to play with

Hope that helps

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
If you have lots of tactical squads, Culln (Forgeworld, from Badab War Part 1). Can be good. He lets you swap all your tactical sergeants for apothecaries.

Dang, that's cool. How much does it cost to swap the Sgt for an apothecary?

What about Lysander? Bolter Drill could be handy for a gunline army.

Largo39 wrote:
Another interesting one is Adeth (FW tho), as he gives you:

mastery 2, 3+/5++, re-rolls failed psychic tests, modifies enemy reserves by -1, re-rolls stealing the initiative, gives all infantry not embarked infiltrate

1 normal SM power (or a roll on divination), so far ive been thinking gate
His special power of giving he and his squad shroud and defensive grenades.


For me i lose null zone (which may prove to be too costly), but gain a really useful combo of gate and shroud/defensive grenades. at 1500 he's paired with a 10 man tac squad, but at 1750 he hooks up with sternguard, which is pretty potent.

Furthermore infiltrate gives us outflank (more mobility) for our tact and the ability to position our troops last, which is pretty nifty. I havent tried him yet but I think he would serve a gunline well, and let it be a lot more strategic/mobile and thus, harder to read for our opponent (which is typically the problem with gunlines, you always know what to expect with them).

I've been using Redth with my Mantis Warriors for a few games now. I always take Null Zone as my one standard power. So far... he's been kind hit-or-miss. The games he "hits" on his rather unique combinations of buffs has really been useful... his misses haven't been disastrous, I just haven't had a use for his buffs so he becomes an expensive libby. His innate psychic power really got nerfed in the 6th edition FAQ, which is a shame.

Armadeus wrote:
The problem with that is that sternguard are close range, and I prefer to shoot people from far away.

Find a cheaper scoring unit in the space marine codex that gets 2 missile launchers than a 5-man stern guard squad in a Pedro army list. Also, replace missile launchers with plasma cannons and then perform the same task.

reps0l wrote:

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
If you have lots of tactical squads, Culln (Forgeworld, from Badab War Part 1). Can be good. He lets you swap all your tactical sergeants for apothecaries.

Dang, that's cool. How much does it cost to swap the Sgt for an apothecary?

Free, but he can't have sarge wargear and culln costs more than 200 points.

 Praxiss wrote:
What about Lysander? Bolter Drill could be handy for a gunline army.

^ This and he also has bolster defences.

Gitsplitta wrote:
I've been using Redth with my Mantis Warriors for a few games now. I always take Null Zone as my one standard power. So far... he's been kind hit-or-miss. The games he "hits" on his rather unique combinations of buffs has really been useful... his misses haven't been disastrous, I just haven't had a use for his buffs so he becomes an expensive libby. His innate psychic power really got nerfed in the 6th edition FAQ, which is a shame.



How did his defensive buff get nerfed? Defenseive grenades in 5th count as a disordered charge in 6th (no extra attack), and shroud is +2 cover as it was in 5th as well. Not sure where it got worse.

Ah yeah so i guess the reason why i envision a use for him is I plan on trying out gate + mirage + 10 man tac (with like MM and MG) and, at 1750, with a 8 man sternguard instead.

The thing I have baout people like lysander/lias issodon (another good one, gives everyone stealth, just a regular captain otherwise though, though he does have a assault 4 special weapon, so he's like 2 sternguard in 1) is that while they make a gunline better, they dont necessarily change what constitutes a gunline. Thus our opponent, seeing our list, knows what to expect and can have already planned a bit accordingly. In otherwords they are a bit static. Mobilitiy will always be an issue for us, and neither of those 2 really help with that.

Bolster defenses is useful, but i already get it from my TFC, and how often are we going to have 2 ruins in our deployment zone?

Whereas people like pedro/adeth/gating libby is that they can change what it means to be a gunline, give us mobility, but also let us stick around as a gunline as well. Pedro changes sternguard to be scoring, so they become very powerful, i just dont really have enough sternguard/pods to really try him out. Adeth however, by giving us infiltrate gives us a critical advantage in setting up (so our gunline doesnt have to be, well, a line) last pretty much every time, AND he can port around a unit quitckly and make them very resilient to an enemy response. Sure he's not as good as like, brother corbulo or some such at keeping a pod of sternguard alive, but he's getting us to that level of resiliency for that squad. And we still get his strategic benefits.

Largo39 wrote:
How did his defensive buff get nerfed? Defenseive grenades in 5th count as a disordered charge in 6th (no extra attack), and shroud is +2 cover as it was in 5th as well. Not sure where it got worse.

I guess I see a disordered charge as pretty weak sauce when compared with giving his unit it's own private cover of darkness.

huh? he gets both, they get shroud AND disordered charge.

 Warp Angels wrote:

 Praxiss wrote:
What about Lysander? Bolter Drill could be handy for a gunline army.

^ This and he also has bolster defences.

Double this.
Nothing says "Hold the line!" Like 10 stubborn sternguard with two heavy bolters re-rolling all to-hits while sitting in 3+ cover.
Put Pedro in the squad too for extra attacks, more boltery death, more powerfisty death, and scoring.

Or just take a tech marine with a beamer to bolster defences and fix tanks.

I have seen a MotF -Gunline list here and it does pretty well.

Scouts, Tacticals, Rifle dreads, MotF, TF cannons, preds.... alot of dakka.