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As I am trying to move out of Blood Angels (see my thread in Swap Shop or Pm me, no business on discussion forums ) I have collected quite a bit of Ultramarines. Currently for UM I have a predator, vindicator, 3 dev
squads, and 2 tactical squads. Earlier, I was scrolling through Battle Scribe and was attracted to this formation. Here's how it (should) go if I get all the models:

Core:

Tech marine + 2x Predators and a Vindicator

Command:

Sergeant Chronus

Auxiliary:

Mechanized Infantry #1: Tactical squad 10 man
Mechanized Infantry #2: Same thing as above
Mechanized Infantry #3-5: Devastator squads

Are there any perks for this formation? As you can see what I have, what should I change around? Looking for helpful feed back to help start a new army!

Personally I would only take it as Iron Hands to for the IWND on the vehicles.

What does the formation bonus give you that you want? Could you get better bonuses elsewhere? Is there any synergy with the units you have?

The one extra shot is kinda nice. The ignoring stuns/shakes is also pretty good. In a straight up kill-fest, they get more dakka on the table and keep your tanks shooting, and rolling at peak efficiency until they get destroyed or bits blown off.

Is this worth loosing ObSec on the tacs? Right now you can only shift to a formation+CAD (and Chronos would have to drive a rhino unless you reworked things) Most 40k missions, particularly maelstrom, revolve around objectives.

Now with a little work (swapping two of your Devs for another tac and a assault-style squad, adding a HQ) you could have a basic Gladius. More ObSec, more doctrines. Ultramarines are not a power army. We are not winning games because we table out opponents. Keep an eye on the victory conditions, and work towards them. ObSec is a great tool for that.

Ultras are not the best at tanks. Not surprising, as we are not the best at anything. The whole jack-of-all-trades thing. That said, you can do an mech list, and it should do fine. You still have a chunk of infantry that will benefit from the CT. The Devs also feel very inefficient here. They don’t really want to be in vehicles, as they prefer to be tucked away safe in some ruins.

I do think the mechanized infantry section is one of the major perks of this formation. In the gladius, all the aux choices tend to be expensive bundles of multiple units. You want to add some scouts/vets to your list? You need 3+. But in the Anvil, you just just add a drop pod full of sternguard. They are not going to get much out of the formation bonuses, but you do have a lot of flexibility in army builds. I tend to have a transport for most of my units anyway.

I will often run mechanized Ultra lists. I use a CAD at the moment, as I don’t have the models for the armored spearhead. I do think the Anvil makes a nice option though, and will probably run it if/when I get another tank. You don’t get a lot of power/special rules for using it, but it you were building along this theme anyway, you don’t give up a lot of options. It should do fine for fun games at the FLGS.

Thanks Nevelon! My tactics were to deploy the devs in ruins, pop a Devastator doctrine when people are I'm talking range and then use the signum or auspex that my sergeant has.

I don't really care about objectives because my LGS likes to do total annihilation