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 Nevelon wrote:
I'm a big fan of bare-bones sternguard, so this is a little devil's advocate here…

Plasma does everything at once. It's wounding on a 2+ (for most things) like the hellfire, and ignoring armor like the vengeance. Better, at AP2. If you want to kill hard, 2+ targets without massed fire, plasma gets the job done. Personally, I just use a full squad and make them roll ones on their armor saves, but if you just have a 5 man squad, you are not going to have the weight of fire to drop terminators.

I think this tactic would work especially well in a red scorpion army, as you can swap the Sgt for an apothecary with a combi-wep to give the whole squad FNP on top of their armor save, no fearing the plasma there UM tactics also works great so that they can re-roll their 1's when burning up the plasma shots. I have tried all combi-plas / plasma on a stern squad once for gits and shiggles and it was surprisingly effective.

 Nevelon wrote:

Grav should not be taken on non-relentless troops on the move. That's sternguard most of the time. Take plasma instead. There are a few corner cases where moving grav is equal to or better then plasma, but not many. Although I'll admit when I was crunching the numbers on grav/plas, It was as a pure gun, not as a combi w/ special ammo. That may affect the edge cases.

I agree, only on relentless troops. This is where your bikes come in.

 Nevelon wrote:

Melta kills tanks. It's the one thing special ammo can't even pretend to do, so a solid choice.

Agreed again.

 Nevelon wrote:

While the special ammo is nice, it's still just rapid fire. 2 shots a marine at close range. Flamers will let you get more hits in vs. hordes. Not a particularly strong choice, IMHO. Alternitively, don't fire the flamers during your turn, but keep them for overwatch for when you get charged. d3 hits per combi adds up.

While combi flamers are the worst option, I think heavy flamers are the only thing worth trading in your special ammo for. S5 will reliably wound most things, it's AP4, and ignores cover. There are a LOT of weedy little gits with a 4+ save that like to hide in ruins. HFs remain the leading cause of death for my sniper scouts, for example. Tau cowering behind an ADL also spring to mind.

I love the flamers for overwatch, can be a great deterrent, especially for the little gribblies, but since the point increase I only take HF, not the combis.

 Nevelon wrote:

If you are even considering a stormbolter, please report to the nearest techmarine for conversion into a servitor. It's a trap choice.

Agreed!

Don't get me wrong, I love Sternguard. I am just extremely dubious of dropping into harm's way with them. I guess I can thump my BA chest a bit here and say that perhaps BA are a dangerous list do drop into if you're not named SW.

Martel732 wrote:
Don't get me wrong, I love Sternguard. I am just extremely dubious of dropping into harm's way with them. I guess I can thump my BA chest a bit here and say that perhaps BA are a dangerous list do drop into if you're not named SW.

I prefer a flank drop, just picking off a exposed unit for first blood and then contributing to the rest of the battle. But sometimes you need to do the suicide drop into the teeth of the enemy. When I drop them straight into the meat grinder to die, I recognize they get one round of fire. But even without combi-loaded alpha strikes, you can get your points back if needed. They are that front loaded for damage. Particularly with a good use of chapter tactics or some other multiplier.

Actually, I don't think that sternguards have ever gotten their points back against my BA. Even with plasma, shooting through FNP and SoS blunts the damage too much.

I've done them with 3 Combi-Melta and 2 Combi-Flamers more often than any other load out. If points were low, I would do 3 Combi-Melta only and other combat squad relying on special ammo.

That being said, if I was Salamanders it would be 3 Combi-Melta, Heavy Flamer and 2 Combi Flamers....all day...every day...and twice on The Day of Reckoning

What special rounds do you use the most? Vs what target? I seem to only use the poisoned rounds as I have horrible luck with anything that "gets hot".

Poisoned rounds against monstrous creatures.

No-cover rounds against Tau, IG and Eldar units that depend on cover.

Get's hot rounds on Power Armored units not in cover.

 kronk wrote:
Poisoned rounds against monstrous creatures.

No-cover rounds against Tau, IG and Eldar units that depend on cover.

Get's hot rounds on Power Armored units not in cover.

This

I run 6, naked, with a Razorback. I like TL LC on it to crack open stuff and to back up my Predator.

I run them in two 5 man squads with missile launchers to sit near back, or heavy flamers to move up, I play raven guard.

If you want an escort then Vulkan is your way to go, 2+/3++ tanks many shots. Plus if you have two heavy flamers, then you get three tl heavy flamers to overwatch with.

 phantommaster wrote:
I run them in two 5 man squads with missile launchers to sit near back, or heavy flamers to move up, I play raven guard.

In the last edition I experimented with 5 man Sternguard squad with 2 LCs as a mini-dev squad due to the lower points cost of their heavy weapons.

6th has nixed the need for this due to normalization of Heavy Weapon costs from the armory.

Also, depending on Chapter tactics (I'm thinking IF here), Dev's are better in this role now due to Tank Hunter. With other Chapter Tactics YMMV

 Instinctual wrote:

 phantommaster wrote:
I run them in two 5 man squads with missile launchers to sit near back, or heavy flamers to move up, I play raven guard.

In the last edition I experimented with 5 man Sternguard squad with 2 LCs as a mini-dev squad due to the lower points cost of their heavy weapons.

6th has nixed the need for this due to normalization of Heavy Weapon costs from the armory.

Also, depending on Chapter tactics (I'm thinking IF here), Dev's are better in this role now due to Tank Hunter. With other Chapter Tactics YMMV

Fair enough. I find Scout and 1st turn Stealth very handy though. As well as the versatility of the bolters.

I find they cost to much and always die the next turn

zilka86 wrote:
I find they cost to much and always die the next turn

Yes, they can be expensive, but used properly they almost always get the points in return, plus they tend to shield the rest of your army by drawing firepower.

 Instinctual wrote:

zilka86 wrote:
I find they cost to much and always die the next turn

Yes, they can be expensive, but used properly they almost always get the points in return, plus they tend to shield the rest of your army by drawing firepower.

You don't want them to take fire. This is why marines are only average at best. Tactical squads need to be drawing fire off Sternguards, not vice versa. It's not like Sternguards have any extra defenses.

300+ points for a Suicide unit just seems like a waste

Martel732 wrote:

 Instinctual wrote:

zilka86 wrote:
I find they cost to much and always die the next turn

Yes, they can be expensive, but used properly they almost always get the points in return, plus they tend to shield the rest of your army by drawing firepower.

You don't want them to take fire. This is why marines are only average at best. Tactical squads need to be drawing fire off Sternguards, not vice versa. It's not like Sternguards have any extra defenses.

It just matters what you're using them for.

a 5 man melta squad used for suicide is expensive, but will almost always get their points back, and are expected to die in the following turn due to volume of return fire.

However, given the squad costs only 200 w/ 4 combi meltas, its a good trade for a land raider, and will strand you're opponents death star on foot.

zilka86 wrote:
300+ points for a Suicide unit just seems like a waste

If you are going with full squads and combat squading them to hit two targets, you can do even better by maximizing your alpha strike

In this scenario though You'd want to use more than one drop pod unit to saturate the area and screen the sterns so they can fire for more than one round. A Drop pod Ironclad and or multiple stern squads and a sacraficial assaults squad or two (2x flamer in free pod) can do wonders to keep them alive.

You can then support the alpha strike with any backfield units like Dev's, TFCs, Centurions, Vindis or such.

It's all about how you use them, how you support them, how much you shield them, and the focus of your army's tactical thrust.

The Sterns must synergize with the rest of your army and spread the threat out so all elements of your army are a priority to your enemy.

What if your opponent doesn't have a Land Raider? Or what if I don't care about Land Raiders? Which I don't. I think throwing these guys away is ALWAYS a mistake. I have some empirical evidence on my side here, because I win most of my games that involve drop pod Sternguard.

I don't take Sternguard for suicide-melta squads. I take them for their special ammo. Combi's are just a point-sink trap if you load them up with it. Why pay for special bolter ammo if you are just going to kill them off before firing off a single round?

If you want a suicide squad take a command squad in a drop pod. Give them 5 regular Meltaguns and kill something else if they survive a turn. Less points than 5 sternguard in a pod.

As a huge fan of the Sternguard, I think most of the plans discussed here are still playing 5th edition. You just can't do some of this suicide Drop Podding anymore against a lot of armies, they'll wipe the Sternguard off the board with Interceptor shots before your vets even get one round of shooting off. Tau in particular make this basically impossible. Plus there often isn't that big vehicle kill like a Land Raider anymore with the general trend of demechanization. You're probably better off now standing back and shooting at range at big guys or podding onto a flanking standoff position, something like that, more likely to not just throw your points away.

But, to support some of these kinds of tactics, Salamanders players should check out Harath Shen. He's an Independent Character Apothecary, part of Forge World's Badab War stuff but exists only in the free PDFs (I don't believe he's actually in any books) and doesn't have a specific model. He provides for the Salamanders a lot of what you would use Corbulo for, as somebody noted above.

Sternguard got wiped in 5th. Nothing has changed. It's always been a horrible idea.