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Made in us
Fresh-Faced New User




I'm interested in starting 40k and have decided that I want to play Raven Guard. Would the Space Marines Combat Patrol be a good starting army or would I be better off getting the Start Collecting Vanguard Space Marines and replacing the Impulsor with something else?
   
Made in us
Ancient Venerable Dark Angels Dreadnought





Honestly, I'd get x2 Vanguard start collecting boxes, not the combat patrol.
2x suppressors and 2x eliminators are good buys for RG. Only downside is stuck with Infiltrators instead of Incursors, unless you do a little modification on them (for example, just getting the visor heads for incursors is easy.
   
Made in us
The Marine Standing Behind Marneus Calgar





Upstate, New York

First, Welcome to Dakka.

A lot depends on what you envision your army as. Generally there are savings to be had in the boxes, but that goes down the more units there are in them that you don’t want. When someone says “Raven Guard” to me, I think scouts and jump packs, but I’m old fashioned.

The Start Collecting: Vanguard is a nice chunk of models, and a good core to build a RG force around.

The Impulsor is situational. It’s a transport, but do you need/want it? Nothing in the rest of the box does. Generally phobos armored guys can get where they need to be with in other ways. Do you want to keep entirely footslogging? Do you want to add other vehicles? A lone tank is going to draw every bit of AV firepower on the table. But if you give them a choice of shooting the impulsor, or a pred, speeder, or something else, they can’t get them all.

What are you long term plans? What restrictions are you placing on yourself for theme? How competitive is your local meta?

It might be that your big picture never has space/need for one. In which case it would be a waste. But if you like the concept of the vanguard making contact with the enemy, and then a fast moving detactchment of grav armor smashes them, it might have a spot to carry some non-infiltrating infantry.

--

More generally for army building, make sure you have a well balanced army with the right tools to do the job. Something to deal with hordes, tanks, elite infantry. And a way to take and hold objectives. These days, also keep an eye on the secondary objectives and which ones you want to focus on.

The SC:V box comes with a lot of tricky units. Not tricky to use, but they all have special features (which they pay a little extra for). I could easily see a RG player doubling down with 2 boxes, as they fit thematically with your chapter. The supressors give you some heavy firepower, infiltrators are not bad troops for holding objectives, Eliminators can plink wounds off of things, and do actions/score. Not sure how hard the Lt would be to convert to an alternate load, but having two of him is not the end of the world.

If you wanted to keep things phobos centered, grabbing a full box of the eliminators might be worth it. Lasfusils will add some needed AV firepower to your army, and the box has enough spare bits that if you had some extra bodies you could convert them into more snipers.

But there are as many ways to built a marine army as their are marine players. Think about what drew you to them, what you thing is cool. Use that as the core and focus of your army. Figure out what you need to add to shore up its weaknesses to make it viable on the tabletop. Rules come and go, models endure. Build an army you love, tweak it as needed. Play with like-minded people.







   
Made in pl
Longtime Dakkanaut





PlantDad8 wrote:
I'm interested in starting 40k and have decided that I want to play Raven Guard. Would the Space Marines Combat Patrol be a good starting army or would I be better off getting the Start Collecting Vanguard Space Marines and replacing the Impulsor with something else?

I'd get Start Collecting Vanguard Space Marines (as it's being discontinued) then when you finish with it, grab Combat Patrol: Blood Angels. It's the best value of all SM CPs, and it has solid core of units RG use. The only downside is BA pad sprue you won't need, but you can sell them easily enough.
   
Made in us
Fresh-Faced New User




Hi bullyboy, thanks for the advice! I think buying the two SC:V boxes over time works better too.

 bullyboy wrote:
Only downside is stuck with Infiltrators instead of Incursors, unless you do a little modification on them (for example, just getting the visor heads for incursors is easy.


What's wrong with Infiltrators and what makes Incursors better?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Nevelon wrote:
First, Welcome to Dakka.

A lot depends on what you envision your army as. Generally there are savings to be had in the boxes, but that goes down the more units there are in them that you don’t want. When someone says “Raven Guard” to me, I think scouts and jump packs, but I’m old fashioned.

The Start Collecting: Vanguard is a nice chunk of models, and a good core to build a RG force around.

The Impulsor is situational. It’s a transport, but do you need/want it? Nothing in the rest of the box does. Generally phobos armored guys can get where they need to be with in other ways. Do you want to keep entirely footslogging? Do you want to add other vehicles? A lone tank is going to draw every bit of AV firepower on the table. But if you give them a choice of shooting the impulsor, or a pred, speeder, or something else, they can’t get them all.

What are you long term plans? What restrictions are you placing on yourself for theme? How competitive is your local meta?

It might be that your big picture never has space/need for one. In which case it would be a waste. But if you like the concept of the vanguard making contact with the enemy, and then a fast moving detactchment of grav armor smashes them, it might have a spot to carry some non-infiltrating infantry.

--

More generally for army building, make sure you have a well balanced army with the right tools to do the job. Something to deal with hordes, tanks, elite infantry. And a way to take and hold objectives. These days, also keep an eye on the secondary objectives and which ones you want to focus on.

The SC:V box comes with a lot of tricky units. Not tricky to use, but they all have special features (which they pay a little extra for). I could easily see a RG player doubling down with 2 boxes, as they fit thematically with your chapter. The supressors give you some heavy firepower, infiltrators are not bad troops for holding objectives, Eliminators can plink wounds off of things, and do actions/score. Not sure how hard the Lt would be to convert to an alternate load, but having two of him is not the end of the world.

If you wanted to keep things phobos centered, grabbing a full box of the eliminators might be worth it. Lasfusils will add some needed AV firepower to your army, and the box has enough spare bits that if you had some extra bodies you could convert them into more snipers.

But there are as many ways to built a marine army as their are marine players. Think about what drew you to them, what you thing is cool. Use that as the core and focus of your army. Figure out what you need to add to shore up its weaknesses to make it viable on the tabletop. Rules come and go, models endure. Build an army you love, tweak it as needed. Play with like-minded people.








Hi Nevelon, I really appreciate the detailed response. I'll admit, there's still a lot I do not know about 40k, but slowly learning!

I was on the fence about the Impulsor, thinking that RG has the ability to deploy almost anywhere on the map , plus vehicles kind of get in the way of the stealth appeal. Basically I like the black color scheme of the RG and their ability to parachute behind enemy lines. Fast moving units/stealth approach is something I also considered, and I think the Eliminators are cool too as I've always like playing snipers in FPS games. Not sure if there is a viable list that can combine these all or at least two of these strategies.

Haven't really thought about the long term or have mingled with the local 40k community because of covid but having an army that is versatile/easily modifiable is something I strongly consider after learning that the rules and codices get updated every now and then.

In the end I did end up getting one box of SC:V to start. Whether I buy another box or go a la carte with specific squad will be up to the local meta and what else I learn about this game.

Thanks again!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Irbis wrote:

I'd get Start Collecting Vanguard Space Marines (as it's being discontinued) then when you finish with it, grab Combat Patrol: Blood Angels. It's the best value of all SM CPs, and it has solid core of units RG use. The only downside is BA pad sprue you won't need, but you can sell them easily enough.


Hey Irbis, thanks for the advice as well. Do you mean that SC:V is being replaced by another SC box or is GW going with the heftier Combat Patrol box?

And regarding the CP for Blood Angels, which units in particular are useful for RG and for what purpose?

This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2021/06/09 02:55:50


 
   
Made in au
Owns Whole Set of Skullz Techpriests






Versteckt in den Schatten deines Geistes.

All Start Collecting! boxes for 40k are going away, slowly over time, to be replaced by the far more expensive and generally less useful Combat Patrol boxes.

If there's something you want in an existing SC!, get it now before it vanishes.


This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2021/06/09 03:08:06


Industrial Insanity - My Terrain Blog
"GW really needs to understand 'Less is more' when it comes to AoS." - Wha-Mu-077

 
   
Made in us
Ancient Venerable Dark Angels Dreadnought





PlantDad8 wrote:
Hi bullyboy, thanks for the advice! I think buying the two SC:V boxes over time works better too.

 bullyboy wrote:
Only downside is stuck with Infiltrators instead of Incursors, unless you do a little modification on them (for example, just getting the visor heads for incursors is easy.


What's wrong with Infiltrators and what makes Incursors better?




The points savings are nice, as you don't generally need that many infiltrators. That being said, I have 10 of each (one from the vanguard set and a box of incursors).
I also love the way incursors look.
   
 
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