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Since i just started to get my vanilla space marine army ready i was wonder who to take for a HQ choice. i like the salamanders color scheme and i like the crimson fists but i am torn between vulkan he'stan for his stat line and his chapter tactics and pedro cantor since he can make sternguard veterans scoring units. i know its a matter of opinion but at the moment im stuck any help is very much appreciated

There is a similar thread here.

Would you have more fun painting Blue Space Marines or Green Space Marines? That would be my question to you.

Unless you want to base your entire list around sternguard, go with Vulkan. With him, hammers, flamers, and meltas all get buffed. You cannot go wrong.

I play Crimson Fists alot and have used Pedro to good effect, but I've built my list around a Sternguard Alpha strike.

As noted in that other list, Pedro is weak in CC due to the PF so make sure to have the Sgt accept any challenges, then Pedro can deal out the pain to the opposing squad.

I also tend to put him in a 10man squad with 5x combi-flamers and 5x Combi-Meltas. The flamers can be used to bake the squad that comes out of a ruptured transport, or be held in reserve to provide wall of death coverage for the unit.

I also never leave home without at least 2 full 10 man squads of fully combi-weponed Sternguard in drop pods when I take Pedro.

Both of these choices require you to build your list around them to maximize their special abilities, but both are good, just matters on what flavor you're going for.

I don't see the point in taking a whole lot of sternguard. They should be used like a knife. They are just expensive marines with a couple more aggressive abilities after all. Not the best investment for scoring units, but if you're going to take them, you might as well have scoring ones.

I'm more into infiltrated fleet THSS myself.

When I initially got back into the hobby a few years ago, I was gating sternguard around. They are such an obvious target that they are more of a scalpel. Kill a necessary target, then expect them to be blown to bits. I suppose with the additions to 6th ed. such as longer range rapid firing bolters and ADLs, some of the weakness I found in the sternguard can be mitigated. In the end, I agree with the above post that they are extra expensive and die just like marines. Use sparingly and with purpose.

I agree, they must be used carefully, however I find they tend to be a bit more robust if given adequate support and firepower.

Two ten man squads, fully combi-weped, with dread backup dropping on turn one tend to be devastating. Just make sure the rest of your army has the long range firepower to support them and to spread the threats out.

See: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/489997.page

Why not use both?

Or neither and avoid bringing a list which you can guarantee will already be at your next tournament and which your opponents will all be experienced playing and not overly excited to play again

I also find using non named characters allows my army to represent my story ot one already written

Why not both? bring Vulcan as your warlord to get the twin-melta and flamers and Pedro to make sternguard scoring. Put in droppods and wreck faces! or is this madness? Mwuhaaahaaa!

 Madness! wrote:
Why not both? bring Vulcan as your warlord to get the twin-melta and flamers and Pedro to make sternguard scoring. Put in droppods and wreck faces! or is this madness? Mwuhaaahaaa!

He doesn't make them scoring. "Hold the line" makes them scoring which requires you to replace combat tactics (in addition to every one getting stubborn, sternguard get the rule).

So you can have one or the other but not both as both require you giving up combat tactics for it and you must choose which.

I'm not speaking from experience, but Kantor seems really amazing to me. One of the main issues vanilla SM players tell me about is that their troops are generally not very killy. Having sternnguard be scoring is a bit of a fix for that, and if you can add some support they can easily remove stuff from the board in a single turn.

It's expensive, sure, but not as much as, say, Thousand Sons or Warp Talons.

You could always proxy both in a couple of your next games and see which you like better.

 Sephyr wrote:

I'm not speaking from experience, but Kantor seems really amazing to me. One of the main issues vanilla SM players tell me about is that their troops are generally not very killy. Having sternnguard be scoring is a bit of a fix for that, and if you can add some support they can easily remove stuff from the board in a single turn.

It's expensive, sure, but not as much as, say, Thousand Sons or Warp Talons.

yeah but now they are more expensive and just as squishy. Just a consideration.

All drop pod list with Pedro, Sternguard, AV 13 Dreads, and Terminators would be fun....

Deuce11

Only problem you run into there is the limit of 3 elite slots :(

 Instinctual wrote:
Deuce11

Only problem you run into there is the limit of 3 elite slots :(

6 if you run to 2000pts... Had a list with Master of forge, and Pedro ... 4x5man scout squads, 5x5man sterngard (2x heavy weapons) and 6 rifle dreads. Sure it not mobile or big at 2k (53 models) but I've had fun with it at my local. Sit the bate... i mean scouts on the objectives and shoot like mad, dreads should be used as mobile cover.

Sounds like fun Tri Might have to give that a whirl some time

With Kantor, you really have to go all in on Sternguard. As mentioned elsewhere, Sternguard are like a scalpel, they precisely cut a specific target out of the game, and then are discarded. If you want them to stick around long enough for scoring to really matter, you have to bring enough of them to take out the deadly targets that are most likely to give you trouble in one big alpha strike, leaving your opponent fighting an uphill battle. Although I haven't had the time or resources to test it out, I like the idea of Pedro in a all drop list with 3 squads of sternguard as your elite choices. You can then take 2 Tac or Scout Squads for your mandatory troops and then fill your list with other things that work well with the sternguard. Although expensive, I would consider picking up a Master of the Forge to go alongside Pedro so that you can take Ironclad Dreads in your HS slots to compliment your sternguard (or just take 2 Sternguard 1 Ironclad with no MotF). The idea would be to drop as much of your army on T1 as aggressively as possible to cripple the foes armour and elite killer units, and then hope that you killed enough of his army that he can't fight back.

 Tri wrote:

 Instinctual wrote:
Deuce11

Only problem you run into there is the limit of 3 elite slots :(

6 if you run to 2000pts... Had a list with Master of forge, and Pedro ... 4x5man scout squads, 5x5man sterngard (2x heavy weapons) and 6 rifle dreads. Sure it not mobile or big at 2k (53 models) but I've had fun with it at my local. Sit the bate... i mean scouts on the objectives and shoot like mad, dreads should be used as mobile cover.

I've also had luck with using sternguard to park on midrange objectives. 3+ in cover isn't super squishy. Obviously, they need support, and no, they can't take an entire army of decent shooting, but really, what can?

but I digress. Here is what vulkan is, to me, really good at:

He has a chapter tactic that does three very good things for you:
1) he gives you a strong upgrade. (melta and flamers are extremely common in SM armies, and with good reason, why not make them better?)
2) as I started hinting at, this upgrade is one that the vast majority of your army has, at least, the potential to use (DEV squads, Dreads, TAC, LRs, Bike squads, Land speeders.. TAC SQUADS AND TERMINATORS )
3) mid range is usually a pretty good distance for SM armies anyways (I'm a bit crusty, don't know the current range metas, so GK/sisters and maybe other armies beat you out here) and these upgrades help you figure out where you should place your strengths, i.e. midrange so Vindis, mid/close range TAC squads, then LR TH/SS terms as a finisher.

He's also not a bad IC iirc. 3++ aint nothing to sniff at, though no EW makes us sad. But a heavy flamer (twin linked, der) is niiiiiice, and gives him the kind of versatility that I like(the cheap kind that actually matters.. sometimes )


Meanwhile Kantor does the following for you:

first of all, he kind of feels like more of a rich man's captain. He doesn't do much for the rest of your army, in fact, taking away atsknf for stubborn is a bad tradeoff, can help, but can also screw you.

his +1 attack bubble CAN be very nice, and I've run armies that took advantage of that decently. The matches though were against sub-par players/army lists so I'm not sure that this ability really helps you that much, by which I mean that it is hard to make full use of this, AND his scoring sternguard ability *see non CC focused units

so now the thing that actually matters? Scoring sternguard. I think the biggest boon that you're going to see from this is the ability to take a smaller number of our kinda lackluster troopchoices. I mean sure, they can do stuff but... ehhhhhhhhhhhh
Yes, they are more expensive, yes they are more killy but oh god are they just as easy to kill as your TAC marines. Also, because they are more killy, you are likely to throw them to the fire more, which partially mitigates the point of having them be scoring units in the first place, cause you need to keep em alive till end of game.

So here's your average TAC squad:
10x squad 170
maybe some upgrades er somethin (so an average of +5 points per squad sound reasonable?) 5
transport 35
Total of 210

And here's what you could do as a sort of equivalent to your TAC squads with scoring sternguard
6x squad 150
Special weapons! (probably about 20 points worth)
drop pod 35

so obviously, with 4 less wounds per squad, going to die quicker from equivalent amounts of fire than the TAC squad. However, Sternguard stand a good chance of thinning the fire directed at them by killing the out of whatever might be firing at them. Also, I think that you possibly could run sternguard in this fashion, but they are a unit that is very different than your TAC squad, so feel free to run them that way.
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My conclusion is this:
Kantor is a lot of fun for an army list builder. Vulcan is very specialized, and therefore might be better, but I think Kantor allows for a lot more variety than vulkan does. Yes, you are going to need to take advantage of your scoring sternguard in any kantor list, but what you do after that is your choice and I think you can make a bunch of cool stuff with him in a list, and that you'll be able to go through a lot of different lists, find a few that you really like, and play those over and over again.

RegalPhantom wrote:With Kantor, you really have to go all in on Sternguard. As mentioned elsewhere, Sternguard are like a scalpel, they precisely cut a specific target out of the game, and then are discarded. If you want them to stick around long enough for scoring to really matter, you have to bring enough of them to take out the deadly targets that are most likely to give you trouble in one big alpha strike, leaving your opponent fighting an uphill battle. Although I haven't had the time or resources to test it out, I like the idea of Pedro in a all drop list with 3 squads of sternguard as your elite choices. You can then take 2 Tac or Scout Squads for your mandatory troops and then fill your list with other things that work well with the sternguard. Although expensive, I would consider picking up a Master of the Forge to go alongside Pedro so that you can take Ironclad Dreads in your HS slots to compliment your sternguard (or just take 2 Sternguard 1 Ironclad with no MotF). The idea would be to drop as much of your army on T1 as aggressively as possible to cripple the foes armour and elite killer units, and then hope that you killed enough of his army that he can't fight back.

Tri wrote:

 Instinctual wrote:
Deuce11

Only problem you run into there is the limit of 3 elite slots :(

6 if you run to 2000pts... Had a list with Master of forge, and Pedro ... 4x5man scout squads, 5x5man sterngard (2x heavy weapons) and 6 rifle dreads. Sure it not mobile or big at 2k (53 models) but I've had fun with it at my local. Sit the bate... i mean scouts on the objectives and shoot like mad, dreads should be used as mobile cover.

Instinctual wrote:Deuce11

Only problem you run into there is the limit of 3 elite slots :(

Deuce11 wrote:

 Sephyr wrote:

I'm not speaking from experience, but Kantor seems really amazing to me. One of the main issues vanilla SM players tell me about is that their troops are generally not very killy. Having sternnguard be scoring is a bit of a fix for that, and if you can add some support they can easily remove stuff from the board in a single turn.

It's expensive, sure, but not as much as, say, Thousand Sons or Warp Talons.

yeah but now they are more expensive and just as squishy. Just a consideration.

All drop pod list with Pedro, Sternguard, AV 13 Dreads, and Terminators would be fun....

This is what I meant.. just explained better!

 Loricatus Aurora wrote:
Or neither and avoid bringing a list which you can guarantee will already be at your next tournament and which your opponents will all be experienced playing and not overly excited to play again

That's not a tactical decision though.