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Hey Dakka, sorry for posting like twice daily, I just have a lot of questions stemming from jumping back into 40K after a year long hiatus and starting a new army.

Anyways, my question is simply how the hell do I make a vindicator look scary?

I don't really know if this belongs in P&M or tactics but I'm facing lots of newbies with my Space Puppers and I was wondering how can I scare them with a vindicator? I feel like that's the main strength of the tank and I really like its aesthetic so I am looking for the best way to mesh this love and strange usefulness of the tank.

Thank you!

-Mikey

Put it next to two more vindicators.

 JamesY wrote:
Put it next to two more vindicators.

That. The squadron ability - three firing together provides a massive, ignores cover blast - escalates it from "a threat" to "dear god kill it now!!!!".

Don't expect it to get to fire in this mode much (if at all), because one vehicle in the squadron being stunned or killed, and you lose the ability, but as a fire magnet it's superb - and an AV13 glacis plate isn't that fragile, especially if you pop smoke in the first turn whilst closing.

Vindicators are functionally av 11 because if their massive side arcs.

Tak a squadron of 3 Vindicators, plus two more separate tanks (preferably Tri-Las Predators), and a Techmarine on bike (remember to hide him behind the tanks), and a few Dreadnoughts (Ironclad would be better) in Droppods, use Ironhand CT, call it a Medusa Strike Force.

Now as long as your Techmarine lives, your tri-Vindicator units will ignore 2/3 of the vehicle damage chart, and can move 12 inch and fire, a 36 inch threat range with Apoc blast, Ignore Cover, S10 AP2 ; It will be quite hard for your opponent to hide.

Deployment-
Pick one side of your deployment or the other and use the board edge to guard one side arc of your Vindicator. You can usually keep most things in the front arc this way if the midfield units in your battle line prevent the enemy from getting easy flank shots. Stick to cover (with the auto-include dozer blade), and worst case you tactically force the opponent to completely sacrifice any unit they try to flank your Vindi with.

General-
Use your Vindicator(s) in direct support of other mid to long range shooters to project a 24" kill zone out into the board. Your battle line should have enough threat saturation to force tough target choices for your foe (you are going to need other armor). You build the rest of your army to either steadily move your battle line up the board and control ground, or deliver enough long range firepower to force to enemy to walk into your 24" guns.

Neophyte2012 wrote:
Tak a squadron of 3 Vindicators, plus two more separate tanks (preferably Tri-Las Predators), and a Techmarine on bike (remember to hide him behind the tanks), and a few Dreadnoughts (Ironclad would be better) in Droppods, use Ironhand CT, call it a Medusa Strike Force.

Now as long as your Techmarine lives, your tri-Vindicator units will ignore 2/3 of the vehicle damage chart, and can move 12 inch and fire, a 36 inch threat range with Apoc blast, Ignore Cover, S10 AP2 ; It will be quite hard for your opponent to hide.

Actually, if he is playing vanilla marines, he could also take the Anvil Strike Force out of Angels of Death book and take an Armoured Task Force formation as one of his core choices (basically what you mentioned above) and get the three vindis and two preds. The detachment bonus for the Anvil SF allows all vehicles in the detachment to ignore the effects of crew shaken/stunned. Iron Hands CT combined with this detachment would do,some work for sure.

The Space Wolves also have a formation that lets them do a similar thing, only with an Iron Priest (so Thunderwolf), as well as the ability to grant one of the vehicles in the formation a special rule for the turn.

So you could conceivably also give that Vindicator formation Preferred Enemy as well as POTMS, so you can reroll all your 1s to-wound as well.

I still wouldn't recommend it of course.

On a more amusing note, Chaos now have Vindicator Squadrons too, and they have the option for Possession in case you really need to make a pointsink. Alternately, Forgeworld "Legacy of Ruin" upgrade grants one non-possessed vehicle the Outflank rule, and a squad can outflank if at least one model in the unit is allowed to.

you buy it a laser destroyer upgrade pack and point it at enemy tanks so you can destroy every vehicle in the enemy deployment zone dat 5' s9 ap1, ord 3, tl gun tho

3 vindicators, fastest way to make a dark angels ravenwing player cry.

Oh you have 2+ rerollable jinks? it would be a shame if some one....ignored your cover :}

 Backspacehacker wrote:
3 vindicators, fastest way to make a dark angels ravenwing player cry.

Oh you have 2+ rerollable jinks? it would be a shame if some one....ignored your cover :}

But it's such a weak unit vs MCs, that it's a 100% list tailoring choice.

Eh, 85% of the time there should be more than enough other targets for a vindicator squadron. Besides, that blast is so large you're not unlikely to catch an MC in the blast anyway and it's still a 2+ to wound and AP2. Still enough to kill a daemon prince on a failed save lol.

 Roknar wrote:
Eh, 85% of the time there should be more than enough other targets for a vindicator squadron. Besides, that blast is so large you're not unlikely to catch an MC in the blast anyway and it's still a 2+ to wound and AP2. Still enough to kill a daemon prince on a failed save lol.

Maybe. I've had pretty terrible experiences with vindicators over all, though.

Martel732 wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
3 vindicators, fastest way to make a dark angels ravenwing player cry.

Oh you have 2+ rerollable jinks? it would be a shame if some one....ignored your cover :}

But it's such a weak unit vs MCs, that it's a 100% list tailoring choice.

I dunno, that seems a bit of a stretch. I get that mentioning its use versus Bike armies definitely implies the intent would be for list-tailoring, but it's not the end of the world to use them versus MCs or other heavies. It's not like you can't fire the Demolisher Cannons individually for one (or split-fire with them if you're POTMS-ing them), plus your army most likely has ready access to Grav, Psychic Shriek, and other monster-killers anyway. And how many "MC-heavy" armies are there anyway besides the Riptide Wing or Flyrants?

If anything, their main weakness would still be Deep Strike units, just because their short range forces them to take the center of the board. Flyers are still dangerous (If nothing else, EGrubs remain deadly), and the squadron is one D-shot or Weapon Destroyed away from losing its squadron capabilities.

Me too, but only because they always got disabled before they got to do much XD. When they did get to fire they worked well for me. In that sense they're pretty good. They attract fire to a relatively cheap and durable platform and if they still get to shoot? Well it's a S10 Ap2 large blast...what's not to like lol. Doubly so these days with a psychic power to give ignore cover to whole squadron and the chance of an apocalyptic blast with built in ignore cover.

 MagicJuggler wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
3 vindicators, fastest way to make a dark angels ravenwing player cry.

Oh you have 2+ rerollable jinks? it would be a shame if some one....ignored your cover :}

But it's such a weak unit vs MCs, that it's a 100% list tailoring choice.

I dunno, that seems a bit of a stretch. I get that mentioning its use versus Bike armies definitely implies the intent would be for list-tailoring, but it's not the end of the world to use them versus MCs or other heavies. It's not like you can't fire the Demolisher Cannons individually for one (or split-fire with them if you're POTMS-ing them), plus your army most likely has ready access to Grav, Psychic Shriek, and other monster-killers anyway. And how many "MC-heavy" armies are there anyway besides the Riptide Wing or Flyrants?

If anything, their main weakness would still be Deep Strike units, just because their short range forces them to take the center of the board. Flyers are still dangerous (If nothing else, EGrubs remain deadly), and the squadron is one D-shot or Weapon Destroyed away from losing its squadron capabilities.

I'm not excessively concerned about the weapon destroyed bit. It's the fact that ANY penetrating hit will disable the main gun (and the Squadrons ability to fire the Apoc templates).

Now, Chaos have a solution for that in Demon is possession. Add on a combi bolter and you have almost completely solved the two problems of running a vindicator squadron. IIRC if you run 3 chaos vindicators w demonic possession and combis, it'll be a 435 point squadron. However, it will be firing the big templates unless one gets stunned or loses a 50/50 roll for weapon destroyed. Expensive, yes, but a seriously scary unit that will save the rest of your army from the worst of your opponent's shooting for at least 2 turns. Best case, scenario you're reliably firing a 7"10/2 ignores cover template every turn.

Personally outside Iron hands I would not bother. Dat power of the machine spirit makes it so they can move 12 and still fire.