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Hi all,

I've been playing White Scars for many moons now but I am yet to try their formations and have only tried a couple of their relics - mantle of the stormseer and the glaive of vengeance.

I've started looking into the formations and I was wondering if anyone had used them and what you thought about them. Are they worth using? Has anyone used the other relics?

Ed

I have just started building White Scars as allies for my Sisters of Battle with a plan to eventually grow them to a full army. I ran 1000 points for the first time last weekend, with 1000 points of allied Space Wolves (another player; we had an odd number at our club) against a 2000 point AdMech War Convocation. I took 2 formations just to try them out: Suppression Force from the Space Marine Codex and Stormbringer Squadron from the White Scars supplement (originally Kauyon).

The Stormbringer formation did everything I had hoped. I ran a Scout Squad with Meltabombs, a Storm with Assault Cannon, and a Speeder with Typhoon launchers for (I think) 165 points. It went up against the side of the table with a bunch of Skitarii troops, some Kastelan robots, and some Kataphrons with insane grav cannons. The Storm crossed the table with the help of their formation Jink bonus from the nearby Speeder-- otherwise they'd have been glanced to death by grav fire. They scored got a Rending hit with the Assault Cannon-- not sure if those are points well spent but extra dice helped out when they Jinked-- then got blown out of the sky by the Kastelans. The Scouts survived their crash landing and advanced to an objective marker in the opponent's deployment zone, where their formation ObSec bonus got them 2 juicy VPs (I lucked out on objective cards) despite being totally surrounded; they even shot up some Skitarii before being wiped out in the opponent's shooting phase. Their accompanying Speeder withdrew to my DZ to help grab a VP for Hold the Line while taking out a Kastelan with it's Typhoon launchers-- S8 vs. T7 gave me the edge against an otherwise tough unit of MCs. So for my points I got 3 VPs and did some damage to an expensive and durable enemy unit-- had my opponent not conceded (he had Wulfen tearing up his other flank and we were up 12 points to 5), they probably would have made their points back and they certainly helped me win the game on VPs.

The Suppression Force was a little harder to use. The blast templates were inexpertly placed by me, being a Barrage noob, but the re-rolls to hit from the Speeder were nice. I was playing on a pretty light table in terms of terrain, and the Kataphrons with Arc Rifles took out 2 of my 3 Whirlwinds by Turn 2. Had I had more cover to choose from they might have had more impact. After the Whirlwind formation was neutralized, the Speeder still made good use of its Typhoon Launcher, helping out with the Kastelans from across the table. Having the unit of tanks made them susceptible to long range Haywire from across the table; I might have rather run them as individual heavy choices for greater staying power or maybe even swapped them for Scouting Tac squads in Rhinos, but the re-rolls from Shred were nice and my opponent did fail a Pinning test for his Skitarii at one point.

The rest of the army was a grav biker command squad with Khan and two small grav biker squads. They took 4 Hull Points of a Knight (which the Wilfen and TWC finished off), smoked the Kataphrons that were heckling me with long-range grav fire, and delivered Khan into melee with the opponent's Warlord. All in all it was a good build for 1000 points: great mobility, lots of grav, lots of T5, a fair bit of S8, good blast weapons, and just enough ObSec, but too little AP3 or better, poor AV, and relatively few models.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Should've mentioned the Hunter's Eye too, an amazing relic for giving your bike command squad Ignores Cover.

I'm definitely going to use the hunter's eye at some point. I was thinking about using a hunting force, spear tip strike, and a librarius conclave to make a scarblade strike force. The only problem is, I don't like using attack bikes unless they're part of a bike squad. I guess I'll have to suck it up and go for it.

I wasn't too keen on the mantle of the stormseer. I guess it would be useful if my opponent had a psyker but I didn't find the extra psychic power that useful. The glaive of vengeance was fun though with their ability to hit and run - striking at I5 S7 AP2 is handy.

I do want to give the Hunting Force a try. On the one hand it seems like it imposes artificial constraints and keeps you from adapting to a shifting battlefield, but those bonuses are hard to pass up.

The Glaive may have to make an appearance as soon as I can model one up.