What do Vindicators bring to the table?

Jamo wrote:
@ UltraTacSgt Are you running them as BA or vanilla? I'm writing an IH list at 2000pts and debating between preds or vindis.

Cheers

Jamo wrote:
@ I'm writing an IH list at 2000pts and debating between preds or vindis.

Cheers

 darthnatus wrote:
I have Blood Angels I'm over 1000 points now and heavy support is becoming a very important slot in my army, I was thinking take a Stormraven a Devastator Squad and a Predator for bigger point games but if the Vindicator could do one of these jobs better (and I would be taking a Land Raider(s) and rhino(s) and baal predator(s) so those would be doing their jobs already)

 Mr.Omega wrote:
The Vindicator puts a sum of wounds on heavy infantry squads and tackles hordes. And that's pretty much it for effective fire.

I don't use them for a number of reasons:

1) I'd take Tri-Las Preds, Devastators, Thunderfire Cannons and everything else in HS over them any day of the week - despite the fact none of them fulfil quite the same role (bar the TFC, which is a million times better at wiping a lot of scoring units off objectives and gives you bolster defences and a Techmarine to boot)

2) They suck against MC's, and cripple your ability to deal with them by restricting access to units that shave wounds off them effectively. (as in 1))

3) They require your opponent to present valuable targets to you. Sure, its great on that one occasion you're facing something like maybe Draigowing, but when your opponent is on the other side of the board and it takes 1-2 turns just to get into position, only to fire a single pie plate (that might miss) at a unit like Firewarriors or a squad of 5 MEQ possibly at best that doesn't exactly make for efficient points return.

4) Defence mechanisms are too common. Bikes get low jink saves, infantry cower in hard cover, you get Deathstars that aren't intimidated (such as the Farsight bomb or the Screamer Star) in the slightest, amongst a host of other things.

5) The famous time repeated point that they're a massive target priority and they're easy to neutralize.

 Senortaco wrote:
If I'm not wrong, there is a land raider variant called the land raider ares which sported a demolisher cannon, siege shield, hull mounted assault cannon and twin linked heavy flamers. I'm not aware of any experimental rules for it but I can imagine it would be a beast on the table albeit no transport

Belly wrote:

And the model looks pretty awesome when it's got the seige shield. Without it, it's like seeing someone without their glasses for the first time.

 UltraTacSgt wrote:

 Mr.Omega wrote:
The Vindicator puts a sum of wounds on heavy infantry squads and tackles hordes. And that's pretty much it for effective fire.

I don't use them for a number of reasons:

1) I'd take Tri-Las Preds, Devastators, Thunderfire Cannons and everything else in HS over them any day of the week - despite the fact none of them fulfil quite the same role (bar the TFC, which is a million times better at wiping a lot of scoring units off objectives and gives you bolster defences and a Techmarine to boot)

2) They suck against MC's, and cripple your ability to deal with them by restricting access to units that shave wounds off them effectively. (as in 1))

3) They require your opponent to present valuable targets to you. Sure, its great on that one occasion you're facing something like maybe Draigowing, but when your opponent is on the other side of the board and it takes 1-2 turns just to get into position, only to fire a single pie plate (that might miss) at a unit like Firewarriors or a squad of 5 MEQ possibly at best that doesn't exactly make for efficient points return.

4) Defence mechanisms are too common. Bikes get low jink saves, infantry cower in hard cover, you get Deathstars that aren't intimidated (such as the Farsight bomb or the Screamer Star) in the slightest, amongst a host of other things.

5) The famous time repeated point that they're a massive target priority and they're easy to neutralize.

I disagree.

1. All of those units fill different roles than the Vindicator. They can be specialized to do a better job of a single task, but none of them can cover all bases (anti-troop/elite/armor, armor saturation, threat saturation) the way a Vindicator can.

A) Indeed, because I would prefer to fill my heavy support choice with those efficient solutions rather than a crappy all-round unit. A Tri-Las Predator solves MC and AT problems far, far better than the Vindicator does, and so what if you lose having a pie plate, if you find someone dumb enough to present a squad of heavy infantry with minimal cover, well good luck with that. You still need to move into range which means a turn doing nothing, which means its going to be a target priority if it presents any threat and since you need to move to get into range on a 6x4 board its going to be difficult to conceal the side armour unless your opponent has a crappy deployment or the terrain is extremely favourable.

B)The Predator/Dev Squad is just so much better at AT/Anti-MC (and if you neglect the latter, you die in this edition) I can't ever see a reason for not taking them in a list where you might have chosen Vindicators instead.

2. I agree that the least efficient use of a Vindicator is shooting MC's. That said, if you are taking Vindi's then you should know to take other things in your list that are capable of hurting MC's (Sternguard, Typhoons, plasma, melta, weight of fire).

Sternguard suck at killing MC's without combi-weapons. Typhoons are absurdly easy to kill and are absolutely worthless at killing Riptides or similar units. Plasma requires a short range delivery system, which is risky and unreliable unless you're using drop pods, in which case why the hell are you taking Vindicators. Not that I'm saying its even a bad idea to take plasma delivery systems - but the insurance of having backfield Anti-MC/AT is invaluable.

Melta is a joke. You can fire an entire company's worth of Tactical Squads at a Riptide and still at best shave half the wounds off it, depending on heavy/special weapons. Weight of fire is straight out the window, and requires everyone else to drop their tools and dedicate themselves to killing a single model.

3.Vindicators are pretty averagely costed for Heavy Support options. They destroy everything from the lowliest cultist to a decked out terminator to an armored vehicle with the same impunity. High value is not required for them to kill a target.

You know what else kills Cultists, and does it 2-3 times better? Thunderfire Cannons which ignore cover and kill those cultists on 2's, wiping them off that vital objective in cover where a Vindicator will almost certainly fail to kill every single one. And cost 25 points less. And give you bolster defences, the Techmarine, multiple barrage, and are harder to kill. And fire from the first turn. Sure, they're not AP2, but they can put wounds on, and you should have other units capable of dealing with TEQ anyway.

Terminators get 5+ invulnerable saves at worst outside of cover, and its rare that people take them, much less present them in this form because of the weak invulnerable bar a few exceptions. You will not be killing vehicles easily even with S10 AP2 Ordnance.

4. These defense mechanisms apply equally to everything that might be trying to kill a unit. They are no more or less affective against a Vindicator than anything else that is shooting at them. Barring special rules like Ignores Cover, of course.


Yes, except its one short ranged shot against the defence mechanism vs 3/4 which can fire at long range, from the safety of cover often. Its for this reason that the following statement after the first is matter of factually wrong.

5. Vindicators are not any easier to neutralize than any other Space Marine tank save the Land Raider.

45 degree gun arc which you only have one of (so at best 50:50 chance not to lose the entire appeal straight away) short range, weak side armour which is often exposed, and if gets immobilized its practically useless unless your opponent is a complete idiot.

The Predator can simply hide behind cover at range and is usually so much less threatening that it doesn't receive the attention that the Vindicator would.

Uh, yes? This is exactly why the Predator and Devastator Squad is better.


With intelligent play and tactics you can quite easily keep your Vindicators getting cover saves and not exposing their side armor.

'Easily' is an exaggeration and is purely circumstantial - you go to a tournament with unfavourable cover in the midfield, 6x4 boards and you will find it is not 'easy' to avoid being hit on your side armour. Since you have to go forward and within short range you also face the risk of being destroyed in a charge or by short ranged heavy AT like melta.

Many will agree with me that bringing Vindicators, with their high target priority, allows you to dictate the terms of a battle to a greater degree than anything except maybe drop podding, and there is value to be had in that.

You should not be using your heavy support section costing between 250-375 points as a distraction. As a preventive measure they're largely useless- If the swooping crane kick has no defence, why do you walk into your opponent? This isn't chess where you need to take the place of the piece you're knocking out. In the 41st millennium you're going to find a long range AT weapon is just going to blow it up, or a piece that you can't reliably deal with (like an MC, or a Hammernator squad, or a horde with sufficient distance and S4+ method of CC) is going to come forward and destroy it.


Another neglected benefit of Vindicators is anti-armor. It is hard to miss with the large blast plate and Str10 Ap2 Ordinance makes your odds quite high of penetrating

Using Vindicators as anti-armour is nothing but a side benefit. You have a 29~% chance of instantly destroying an AV12 vehicle that you won't see often. Bearing in mind the circumstantial requirements (range, incompetence of the opponent, cover, which with common 5+ reduces that to 16%) this is not 'being good at AT'. There's a 25% chance of doing the same on an AV13 vehicle out of cover, 12%~ in cover.

For a Predator, the odds of destroying AV12 are 33% out of cover (this isn't factoring in the twinlinked top facing gun) on AV12, and and 22% on AV13 out of cover. In addition you have the safety and comfort of cover, far easier AV13 facing, range and you can fire from the first turn - effectively those odds can be considered doubled for this reason in a variety of instances.


The Predator doubles as a valuable contribution to anti-MC, which has outweighed AT in terms of need in most lists now.

or otherwise damaging an armored target. A tri-las Predator or LC Devestators are only better than the Vindicator at ranged anti-armor and MC's and then will be far less useful than the Vindicator against anything else.

Which is only hordes (which you should already be able to deal with otherwise and can otherwise use a Thunderfire to deal with far better) and heavy infantry, which they're not exactly useless against and you should already have a strong counter to anyway elsewhere.

Vindicators simply give a Space Marine player supreme versatility.

You mean 'crippling under-specialization'