Spartan instead of Rhinos?

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**chimeara**

I was thinking about running a single Spartan in my WE army rather than Rhinos and/or Land Raider. I can fit all my sqads plus an Exalted Champion in a single Spartan. Opinions?

**mrhappyface**

I think two rhinos is better than one Spartan for a few reasons:
- Multiple targets mean that high damage weapons are more likely to overkill and therefore reduce their efficiency: a shadowsword will whipe the floor with a single spartan but can only pop one rhino a turn with it's main gun.
- Having a transport that also puts out damage focuses the enemies firepower on your Zerkers when before they may have prioritized other units (best to keep as much attention away from them as possible).
- Two transports allows for more flexible deployement of the Zerkers, perhaps to pin a target in.
- Two transports allows for you to negate overwatch from two different targets and/or allow for a second attempt at sponging overwatch if the first rhinos dies to some lucky 6s.

**Desubot**

chimeara wrote:
I was thinking about running a single Spartan in my WE army rather than Rhinos and/or Land Raider. I can fit all my sqads plus an Exalted Champion in a single Spartan. Opinions?

Its the same problem with the storm raven. its all your eggs in a very armored basket. its going to take a lot of shots but its still a single basket and its going to hurt to lose it.

**JohnnyHell**

From experience, if it’s good it’s very, very good. If it’s bad it’s horrid.

You can reliably delete a Leman Russ a turn with the two quad lascannons, or a heavy armoured/multiwound squad. I once made my Eldar-playing friend super sad by taking out an entire Dark Reaper squad in one salvo, with heavy bolters to spare for shooting Guardians. Other than that it’s damage output is limited, and it’s a huge fire magnet for every Lascannon out there. I had great success when Index Azrael gave it a 4++. Without that it dies much faster and I’m down 500pts in one go. It also suffers the synergy issue Phobos Land Raiders do... its guns have the range to stay further away, its cargo says “drive me closer so I can hit them with my sword”, and it’s pricey to boot.

I do love mine dearly but a savvy player will delete it Turn 1 and then you have lost 1/4 of your list, some of the occupants will die and the survivors have to walk. If you manage to get it to do stuff it hits hard, but fingers crossed you do. Pair with some kind of re-roll aura and a Lieutenant for re-roll 1s To Wound and its Shooting is disgustingly good.

**Inquisitor Lord Katherine**

No, split up into small transports.

The basics of it is that if the big transport goes down, which it will, then you'll be out both your squads instead of just one.

Overall, though, there are just massive advantages to being in small transports and having a lot of different units.

Here's a good rule of thumb: start by considering a "unit" to be a transport and everything within it. Ask yourself, "if this unit dies on turn 1, can I still win the game?" As a rule of thumb, if a given unit [transport+cargo] is over 300 points, it's probably worth avoiding.

**mrhappyface**

Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
Here's a good rule of thumb: start by considering a "unit" to be a transport and everything within it. Ask yourself, "if this unit dies on turn 1, can I still win the game?" As a rule of thumb, if a given unit [transport+cargo] is over 300 points, it's probably worth avoiding.

Unless of course you have some kind of way of hiding your 400pt model off the board for your opponents first turn only to slide it onto the board in your turn.

**Slayer-Fan123**

The issue with Spartans is that they're almost 500 points for basically no increase in durability over even a Land Raider.

**techsoldaten**

I have a Spartan and almost never play it.

Sure, the transport capacity is nice, and so are the special rules. I like firing off 8 lascannon shots from a single model, keeps me from having to bring Predators. It's got excellent BS and shooting while moving is not really an issue.

But the thing is a lascannon magnet. Massed AP -3 firepower is directed towards it every turn. It's also a Titanic model. Feels like every army has a Stratagem that lets them do extra damage against Titanic.

If you do decide to use it, bring plenty of distraction units. Find a way to get your opponent to split their fire.

**chimeara**

I don't have a lot of las spam in my FLGS. If anything it's plasma spam. But only one DG player does that so far. I think I'll try a Land Raider as a proxy next game since it's about the same size. I'll run some other stuff that classifies as "good " targets as well.