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Sternguard in BA Army is my new favorite unit! I bring them with combi-meltas and a libby and a sanguinary priest. The libby has divination and will always take prescience and hope for misfortune. My libby is also a an Epistolary so he had a better chance on the power roll and can use two powers a turn. This unit is a lot of fun to bring and I highly recommend it! it is perfect for killing just about anything. I don't bring the full 10 men but bring around 6 veterans so the squad with the priest and libby number 8, you can try and combo you want, but I always bring DC in my list to for some awesome CC action and both units work well as a kinda sword/shield strat.

what powers did you roll up with the libby and how did they work?

If I was gonna take a level two libby, I would want to look towards getting a psychic shooting attack that will sync well with the sternguard unit it is attached to. However if I rolled misfortune on my roll for divination I would not turn my nose up.

Basically roll on divination see what I get, if I like it keep it and other is super guide. If not swap for super guide and then look around.

I hear you brother.
This is exactly what I'm doing too.
8 veterans with 4 combi melta guns, a librarian with prescience and a sanguinary priest in a Rhino or on foot.

They do hit hard and are pretty resilient.

@ g0atsticks, I always take the primaris power prescience and hope I when I roll I get misfortune which is a roll I commonly make. With prescience and misfortune the unit the sternguard can take out monstrous creatures, terminators and just about any other unit on the table. But I always run my libby as an epistolary which ups my chances because I roll for 3 powers and I can use two in a turn to increase the damage of the protection of the unit, but just because I don't always get the powers I want I will still always roll the three dice and always allocate the least favorable to prescience and take the other two powers, which is either the invunerable save, or misfortune.

Remember you roll one at a time. So can't wait and see which to swap. And might swap a power and get it again.

My go to unit for a all comers list is

7-8 sternguard - 3 Combie melta
Librarian - Terminator or plain, divination table for rerolls to hit, or Sheild/lance (awesome combo for droppod)
Brother Corbulo
Droppod

Corbulo stands in front take all the hits being 3+2++ and is a excellent assault buddy as long as you shy away from str8+ hits. I may have to run this unit again sometime soon.

I used the following a few times to good effect

(2) 8 Man Sternguard squad, 8x combi-plasma, Drop Pod

each of the above squads gets a sanguinary priest and a liby with prescience.

Very survivable (especially if you grab cover) and absolute murder to whatever they fire at.

Also, if you are going heavy with assault troops or vindi's in the rest of your army, this alpha strike will draw alot of fire off your troops as they move across the board

Erm.. Misfortune doesn't seem that great for sternguard, a squad that is great at cracking saves down to 3+... re-rolling to hit seems a heck of a lot better for a squad that inherently can crack 5+,4+,and 3+ saves.

just me though, and I know that re-rolling coversaves can be great, but that's what combi-flamers are for anyways, and sternguard can ignore coversaves so...

prescience seems like a better deal for you, especially cause it makes your AP 3 gets hot! bolters go from killing a sternguard 1/9 shots to 1/81 shots... so... never... basically

also, re-rolling to hit is HUGE. It takes you from a 66% hit chance to an 88% hit chance... and via the "forcing your luck" (or whatever the feth it's called) premise of game theory, it would be better to re-roll to hit rolls, so that you have more dice that you can potentially get lucky with later.

rerolling to hit is very good for sternguard, espically when you load them up with combi weapons and as Lord Popo says their ap3 ammo,

thats a lot of points to drop into 7 or so guys.

5 sternguard w/5c melta

1 libby

1 brother corb

thats almost 400 points. can they make up 400 points?

 Lord PoPo wrote:
Erm.. Misfortune doesn't seem that great for sternguard, a squad that is great at cracking saves down to 3+... re-rolling to hit seems a heck of a lot better for a squad that inherently can crack 5+,4+,and 3+ saves.

just me though, and I know that re-rolling coversaves can be great, but that's what combi-flamers are for anyways, and sternguard can ignore coversaves so...

prescience seems like a better deal for you, especially cause it makes your AP 3 gets hot! bolters go from killing a sternguard 1/9 shots to 1/81 shots... so... never... basically

also, re-rolling to hit is HUGE. It takes you from a 66% hit chance to an 88% hit chance... and via the "forcing your luck" (or whatever the feth it's called) premise of game theory, it would be better to re-roll to hit rolls, so that you have more dice that you can potentially get lucky with later.

This is why he's taking a lv2 Libby. Roll 1 if it's not misfortune take primaris. Roll 2 hope for misfortune. Use them both.

g0atsticks wrote:
thats a lot of points to drop into 7 or so guys.

5 sternguard w/5c melta

1 libby

1 brother corb

thats almost 400 points. can they make up 400 points?

The flexibility of the squad, combined with the resilience and the damage output is worth every single point for me.
Also my opponents tend to underestimate their abilities.

Also with misfortune you can switch over to the wound on 2+ ammo, avoid overheats and get more wounds than if you stayed with the ap 3 ammo

 BrotherGnaeus wrote:
With prescience and misfortune

Sorry to burst your bubble, but you can't possibly buff your unit and debuff the enemy without more than one librarian. I see this mistake a lot in my games and it's so irritating to have to point it out again and again.

You can only use one power per phase no matter how many warp charges you have. Being a level 2 psycher, you can cast two powers per turn. The blessings and maledictions both occur in the same phase - movement.

N.B. If you're drop podding the libby, then you can't use either a blessing or a malediction as they're in the movement phase.

 Griddlelol wrote:

 BrotherGnaeus wrote:
With prescience and misfortune

Sorry to burst your bubble, but you can't possibly buff your unit and debuff the enemy without more than one librarian. I see this mistake a lot in my games and it's so irritating to have to point it out again and again.

You can only use one power per phase no matter how many warp charges you have. Being a level 2 psycher, you can cast two powers per turn. The blessings and maledictions both occur in the same phase - movement. You've been cheating.

dun dun DUN!

If you can't use the both the same phase, then there is no reason to be a epistolary. Saved yourself 50 points, buy more S VETS.

g0atsticks wrote:

 Griddlelol wrote:

 BrotherGnaeus wrote:
With prescience and misfortune

Sorry to burst your bubble, but you can't possibly buff your unit and debuff the enemy without more than one librarian. I see this mistake a lot in my games and it's so irritating to have to point it out again and again.

You can only use one power per phase no matter how many warp charges you have. Being a level 2 psycher, you can cast two powers per turn. The blessings and maledictions both occur in the same phase - movement. You've been cheating.

dun dun DUN!

If you can't use the both the same phase, then there is no reason to be a epistolary. Saved yourself 50 points, buy more S VETS.

You know what, I can't find the page in the rule book. I could be totally wrong. In which case I apologise. Although, the point of epistolary would still remain as you need a warp charge to activate the force weapon.

Ah I found what I guess the people at my FLG must have thought was a compelling argument - p62 states that those with >1 charge can use >1 power per turn, but doesn't mention phase. Doesn't really stand up to my argument when I read it again, despite other people agreeing with me (although I have no idea why now). Nevertheless, if you're drop podding, you can't use maledictions or blessings.