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Hey Dakka.

A lot of people have conflicting ideas as to what the best loadout for Sternguard is.

I am leaning towards a 10 man squad with 2x Heavy Flamers and 4x Combi-Melta and give the Sargent a Power Fist.

What are your favoured loadouts? Ones that have worked for you?

I prefer 9 bolters and a libby in a drop pod or rhino.

That is, zero special/combi weapons. The special ammo is too good to waste points on some other gun.

10x Man w/ 2x Heavy Flamer and 3x Combi Meltas.

8 combi-meltas, 2 heavy flamers. Drop Pod.

I run a 5 man squad all with combi-meltas with the Iron Hands "Invincible" Chapter Master in a drop pod. Enough firepower to take down MC's and Armour and then the CM to deal with the assaults and to tank wounds.

I have found that while spamming combi meltas on them is very tempting it is incredibly ineffecient. While you do get 5 Melta shots into two different vehicles you are spending 300+ points to do it, and because you have to drop right on top of someone you inevitably lose the unit the turn after. That means unless you are killing two expensive vehicles i.e two Serpents (which you will be lucky to kill) the unit isn't paying for itself - many armies don't even have good targets for them and not many vehicles are above 150pts.

The best idea I have seen for Sternguard is to run them as part of a Marine horde type list, you run 3 units of 10 Sternguard (still in Pods) + Pedro to make them scoring, 3 units of 10 Devs with Lascannons and 2+ units of Tacticals. Your IF Lascannon Devs can open up vehicles from across the board, the Sternguard drop into the middle of the board (accept 24" range shots turn 1 and focus on board control) and deal with infantry and you combat squad your entire army and have millions of 5 man Marine units all over the board (most of them being scoring). This maximises the usefulness of the Special Ammo without making them far more expensive by making them into a suicide melta delivery system.

Robbo97 wrote:
Hey Dakka.

A lot of people have conflicting ideas as to what the best loadout for Sternguard is.

I am leaning towards a 10 man squad with 2x Heavy Flamers and 4x Combi-Melta and give the Sargent a Power Fist.

What are your favoured loadouts? Ones that have worked for you?

That, but no Pfist.