So any decent Blood Angels list should be putting down some VV's right? lets take a look at the possible options available to them...Blood Angels VV's in my opinion are one of their best units, but what's the point of them? what do they do? first of all its safe to say, VV's should always be taken with jump packs since you're paying points for divine intervention, the ability first seen on vanilla marines but for them much more dangerous. With Blood Angels however and their D6 scatter + re-roll on reserve roll from Decent of Angels it stops becoming so much of a risk and turns into a really good idea to take them in your list.
So onto what do they do, well they can be a tar pit, a hammer of serious death, or simply a shield for other units. Let's take a look at a few sample builds..
Team 1
5 man Vanguard Vetran Squad - 245
Power Fist Sargeant
Jump Packs
2 Storm Shields + Lightning Claw Marines
Team 2
10 man Vanguard Vetran Squad - 325
Power Fist Sargeant
Jump Packs
Team 3
5 man Vanguard Vetran Squad - 175
Power Fist Sargeant
Jump Packs
Team 4
7 Man Vanguard Vetran Squad - 225
Power Fist Sargeant
Jump Packs
2 Power weapons
Starting with Team 1, this is how I'm currently considering running with my VV's. It gives some protection to your power weapons from things that generally gank your marines sideways (power weapons, plasma once you get out of combat, rending etc) while also packing enough of a punch to hurt nasty things. Another way i was considering running this team is to put the storm shields on the regular marines and just use them to take nasty wounds.
On the charge, this team would get 8 Normal attacks, 6 power weapon attacks with wound re-rolling and 3 power fist strikes. The job of this squad is simply to attack and kill units with armour then get out of the other side in one piece while also not really getting enough attacks to slaughter its target in one go for the most part (after all you want combat to end in your opponents turn not your own)
Team 2 is the heavy duty expensive team. Personally i would only take this if i wanted 2 squads of VV but didn't want to take up 2 FA slots, hence why this would probably be in a combat squad formation.
Alone as 5's your looking at 20 normal attacks from one half and 16 normal / 3 PF attacks. In one big cumbersome squad its 36Normal/3PF.
Team 3 is simply a basic version of team 2 for when you just want a cheap VV squad to come down and put a bit of hurt on something though with a lack of bodies it would fall under the same problem as the combat squad version of team 2, only standard marine survivability and no real punch.
Finally Team 4, what i think is another solid choice all though pricey gives you low survivability but that extra kick in the nuts of 3 power weapons / 2 weapons and a fist.
Team 1 and 4 are clearly designed to kill nasty units, armour mainly, things that you really need dead and your assault squads might struggle with, where as 2 and 3 are more for killing swarms, bubble wrap etc.
So that's my opinion on Vanguard Veteran's, what's yours? I'm sure many will disagree but I would like you see some counter arguments that might even change my mind how I roll with my VV's.
Oh and as an extra note, here's the work in progress pic of my lately project, meaty!
