Well you just finished the part about why you should consider playing Honour Guard it is now time to move over and take a look at some army lists that are both fun and semi-competitive. Also some compressed tips when playing Honour Guard. Here is part one for reference LINK for some reference as well.
Calgar & Khan Honour Guard Army List
Honour Guard with Calgar and Khan is a very deadly combination (I5 and str7 relic blades). With foot Khan in mind utilize the outflanking ability to force your opponent into the middle of the board. The Assault Bikers and Terminators provide outflanking units that can threaten most of the board. The Multi-Meltas on the Tact squads on the other hand are a bit of a bluff. Sometimes giving your opponent an easily discernible threat range can keep them at bay. Why draw attention to yourself with a missile launcher or lascannon?
Having Honour Guard as your only “hammer unit”, so depending on the mission either protect the scoring units or destroy out-of-place opposing units. You have a lot of points rolled into one unit don’t worry if you have to play defensive: this army is designed not to table your opponent, but out maneuver them, either by holding a strong point or forcing your opponent to spread out and negate their firing lanes.
1500 Point Version: Remove Terminators and Scouts and replace with Typhoons and/or Dakka Preds
2000 Point Version: Remove Terminators and add Assault Terminators with Land Raider or add another Attack Bike Squad with another Scout Squad
Calgar & Cassius Honour Guard Army List
This is a simple bait and switch army. You can run this list very straight forward. Throw the Land Raider Terminators strait at your opponent lines drawing as much fire as possible while at the same time the Honor Guard either drive behind in cover to counter charge or sit back and protect your scoring units. The Razorbacks and Typhoons sit back taking pot shots to keeping your opponent honest. You can also keep your Land Raider in reserve especially in Spearhead missions and head off any threats that might appear. Don’t forget you can also Deep Strike the Terminators if you feel that can throw your opponent off.
Having an Eternal Warrior and T6 ICs minimizes dangers of losing Honour Guard from shooting, unless your opponent wants to shoot everything at them– giving your LR and Terminators free rein. Another tactic I like to use with Calgar and Cassius is stringing out charges: forcing opponents to put more bodies in base-to-base reducing the attacks on the Honour Guard.
1500 Point Version: Remove the Land Raider and a Typhoon or drop Terminators and the Land Raider and add another Typhoon
2000 Point Version: Add another Typhoon and more Terminators or add two Scouts for more scoring units.
Calgar & Pedro Honour Guard Army List
Typically I am not a fan of MSU lists so instead this list takes that concept and makes a fun way to surprise your opponents. It also utilizes Calgar’s “bonus” of taking three Honour Guard squads and throw another in because of Pedro just for kicks. So now that gives you 3 Lascannons and 8 missile launchers (mostly hiding in Rhinos) plus 4 more from Speeders. This is quite the blanket of suppression. You can also use the Honour Guard to gang up on multiple units as long as they can stay within Pedro attack bonus bubble.
This creates tons of wound allocations nightmares for your opponent when you charge with multiple squads. You also don’t have to worry about losing combats (Calgar) holding your opponent in place as you throw another Honour Guard to the fire. Horde armies will give this list lots of problems, you have to weaken the mobs and really make sure to gang up with the Honour Guard. I would love to see how this list would fare against Grey Knights.
1500 Point Version: Just remove any combination of Sternguard or Honor Guard to get to 1500
2000 Point Version: Convert a Scout squad to a Tact squad give them a Razorback and add a Rhino to the Sternguard squad without one.
Pedro & Cassius Honour Guard List
This is a double threat list that takes some special finesse to get the most out of it. Typically you want to run the Terminators in a long wall moving towards your opponent. The key is having Pedro and Honour Guard just behind to give the 12” bubble to the Terminators. As well consider putting Cassius with the Terminators if you think you need re-rolls against a heavy Mech force. Leaving the Sternguard and Combat Squads back provides a great cover for your units as they advance, in addition to being scoring units. The Honour Guard are the counter charge unit for your Terminators if they die or get into trouble. With that many Relic Blades, Thunder Hammers, and 2+ saves not many units can stand up to such beating. This is one of those lists that attempts to give your opponent a whole bunch of bad choices to deal with. Remember also don’t be afraid to combat squad your Terminators: if giving your opponent more targets is a good idea.
1500 Point Version: Drop Terminators number down and remove a Sternguard Squad.
2000 Point Version: Remove Lascanons from Tact Squads add another Sternguard missile squad.
Pedro & Khan Honour Guard List
This list is predicated on crippling your opponent’s mobility so your outflanking elements come on board to contest and break any units that are endangering your scoring backfield. The list also has enough flexibility where you don’t need to outflank your forces if you don’t want to. Horde armies will give this list problems because even with 8 missiles you will have a hard time clearing a mob in cover. Khan isn’t as good as Cassius for killing large units because the Furious Charge bonus doesn’t add much to your killing potential in those situations, but he does give bogged down Honour Guard a way out with Hit and Run. Try to keep your backfield units and objectives close to the edges even if you lose some firing lanes. Better to have your enemy advance towards your potential outflankers instead of being in the middle without any real support. This list tries to make the most out of expensive units, by getting Sternguard at their cheapest and effective best and Honour Guard loaded up more on Power Weapons instead of Relic blades. Without a second hammer unit finesse once again is the name of the game with this list.
1500 Point Version: Remove a Sternguard squad, Assault Bike squad, and drop another to one bike only.
2000 Point Version: Add a Dev Squad with whatever combination of weapons you think you need.
***Warning Experimental Army List***
This list is what I came up while thinking about how to handle Grey Hunters Spam at the same time bringing Footdar/Loganwing to Space Marines. So it is by no means been tested, but I thought it would be a cool way to end this article. The general idea here is to spam 2+ saves in different annoying ways to throw your opponent off– especially if they invested in AP3 or worse weapons. Just walk across the board with Assault Terminators leading the way with the basic Terminators and Honour Guard behind, all the while making sure Pedro is in bubble range. Use your missiles to destroy any AP2 or better weapons and just hope you can make two up saves. The obvious weakness is the scoring units are just asking to die, so best keep some in reserve. Once again if you are facing a heavy mech force use Cassius with the Assault Terminators because you just might need that re-rolling Thunder Hammers to break some vehicles.
1500 Point Version: Don’t even try
2000 Point Version: Fill up your Assault Terminators Squad and add more Honour Guard
Final thoughts…
What I hope these articles provide Space Marine players another way of looking at their army. Using Honour Guard is not for beginners, but if played right they are very rewarding. Here are some basic tips when you start playing Honour Guard.
- Stay in cover even if it means risking not getting off a charge better to get saves then none.
- Don’t be afraid to protect your scoring units. Honour Guard are not a blunt unit that you can just throw away often their best use is dealing with any threat that arrives to destroy your other important units.
- Target other scoring units. Especially other Marine Scoring units. Honour Guard can cut through multiple units of them in single combats many times not even getting a hidden powerfist a chance to swing back.
- Against MSU or scoring unit spam make sure to string out your Honour Guard to draw them close to your side of the table remember Honour Guard are great at clearing almost all basic troops with ease.
- Don’t forget to use those special characters.
So what are you waiting for go play some Honour Guard!