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After a while, I've gotten a bit bored with my standard guard, and have been looking to the elite section for something to spice things up. Add something new to my casual games. Particularly, I've been looking at the Ogryn/Bull, and the Tempestus Storm Troopers. I was hoping for some insight/advice/good old stories on their uses to help me better make a choice.

I play my guardsmen in all manner of styles, so I'm not looking for any specific use. Mainly, how much mileage Dakka has gotten out of them, how much I could get out of them, and how to get so much out of them.

I dont play Guard, but I have always liked the look of the Temptus/Storm Troopers. With space marine Bs and ap 3 guns, they look like they could be pretty powerful with their deep striking and access to melta weapons.

vets are better then tempestus. better weapon load out and much cheaper. Orgyrn are suppose to be fron units, but they cost a lot and have no resilience to do it. I have seen people try to run them in front of infantry blobs with azrael attached, but conscripts do the same thing for cheaper. Ogryns also have the problem of being an upfront unit with weak melee abilities.

Ratlings are great for maelstorm. Scions are good for riding vendettas or deepstriking with a bunch of plasma/melta.

 Vulkan Fran'cis wrote:
Temptus/Storm Troopers. With space marine Bs and ap 3 guns,

And space marine price tag. They're incredibly overcosted.

 Vulkan Fran'cis wrote:
I dont play Guard, but I have always liked the look of the Temptus/Storm Troopers. With space marine Bs and ap 3 guns, they look like they could be pretty powerful with their deep striking and access to melta weapons.

On paper, they initially look very cool. The problem is they pay Space Marine points a unit with only slightly better resiliency than 5pt guardsmen, and while that AP3 looks neat, the guns are unfortunately only S3 and can only double-tap within 9". Under their best circumstances, engaging a MEQ foe in the open at double tap range, they'll trade even casualties with basic bolters, and are drastically worse if cover is involved or ranges are longer or any other situation (e.g. CC, heavy weapons fire, etc).

Storm Troopers are sadly a one-shot trick and can really be useful to pop up heavy armor with their meltas. DS can be good to grab objectives but once they are footslogged, almost anything would kill them... and their Ld is 7

Really disappointed with their power level, since they are supposed to be killing machines trained since childhood.

In the elite section, unfortunately, there's no much to be enthusiast of. Ogryns are costly, and IG has no assault vehicule in its regular codex (Idk about IA 1) so expect to pay an allied Land Raider to have a not-so-effective "deathstar". Ratlings can be cool to man firestorm batteries on fortifications and their sniper rifles can cause some damages on a lucky shot. Wyrvdane psykers are not bad and not too pricey, you can use them effectively as a support unit but nothing to be mad about.

If you want some exotism, maybe have a look at the Armoured Battlegroup List of IA 1 2nd. Some surpising stuff not very well known by majority of players. It's still not the big solution to our weak elite choice, but it can be fun.

Based on what you guys have said, I'm leaning a bit towards Bullgryns even if none of the choices are really worth much. Something to tie up enemy assault units for a bit, and provide mobile cover for troops/tanks sounds like it might be worth it. Also, I doubt the vets could out do the Bullgryns at this. Suck on that Scions!


On a side note... I still occasionally play rough riders, even though they're horrible, just for the reason that I modeled them on bikes. I mean, come on...guardsman bikers riding at the enemy! If anything they're usually just an expensive decoy, but if they ever do anything...it's epic.

Thanks for the suggestions, and advice. Always have my ears open for more.

I used to use ratlings, ogryn and storm troopers alot of in 3rd edition guard army

Ratlings were fun to infiltrate and with +1 cover and bs4 were fun, but only if target independent characters or devastators (i.e infantry carrying long range firepower)

Ogryns were fun when (90 points for 3 ogryns) put them behind a conscript platoon, let conscripts absorb the charge then counter attack with ogryns...adding extrawounds to your ogryns essentially

storm troopers were the only ones that were effective in game.... back then you could have 3 storm trooper squads max, but only 1 vet squad max per IG army. I like that rule, hope they bring it back. Storm troopers were great to deep strike with plasma or melta

Other than that elites for guard were not effective, whatever they do was done better by infantry.

Ogryns were the funnest, especially against ultramarines - nostalgia