Raven Guard and how to use a Vigilator to maximize your force.
A guest blog by Pete from Pete Happens.I've always approached Raven Guard as the Black Ops Space Marine Legion. So what consul could be better than the Vigilator, a Captain-sized-super-scout-spy-bad-ass?
With Independent Characters with infiltrate only being able to infiltrate with units with Infiltrate, Raven Guard have lot of opportunities to add a Vigilator to just about any squad.
So what do Vigiliators add to a Raven Guard?
Scout: First and foremost your unit picks up scout. In an army, with tons of infiltrate, this can be HUGE. Infiltrate lets your units deploy within 18" in view or 12" out of view. Thus, in most cases, this means your units are 18" away. Scout let's you move of 6" or 12" depending on your unit type. But must stay 12" away from your enemy. From a shooting perspective this means you will easily be in range for melta, graviton guns, double tapping rapid fire weapons like bolters or plasma.
Infiltrate and Move Through Cover: If you drop the Vigilators power armor down to scout armor, the Vigilator will confer Infiltrate and Move Through Cover on the squad. In a Raven Guard list, the Vigilator already has infiltrate in Power Armor, so the real question is if move through cover is worth dropping your save to a 4+. A good example of when this might make sense is if you give your Vigilator a jump pack and run him with a Dark Fury Squad. Now your jump packers auto pass dangerous terrain checks ;)
Special Ammo and Sniper: With Tempest rounds, you have a rapid fire, small blast tempest that always wound on a 4+ and on a 6+ to wound become AP2. The scorpius rounds are also good with precision shot. On a 6+ to hit you can pick out that hvy weapon or serg and add on shred and rending. Another thing to remember is that you get sniper on all your shooting attacks, so feel free to toss your sniper frag grenade on your way into hth ;)
Sabotage: On a 2+ you get to inflict D6 S5 AP6 hits (to the weakest front of a vehicle). Not great, but you never know. Note, that you can't pick up first blood before turn one if you are playing that secondary because it must happen in the game turn, although you would pick up a VP for killing a unit.
Stealth: Vigilitators come with cameleoline, which conveys stealth to him and his entire squad. This adds to shrouding picked up in the Recon ROW, but it can also be interesting if you have him attached to a squad of bikes and they jink.
War Gear: So you can't take a combi-weapon, boarding shield, power fist, thunder hammer, lightning claws, bike, jet-bike or termi armor. It's actually, kinda of an odd exclusion list, but the important thing to note is that you can take a JUMP PACK. Plus, remember that you can take an infravisor. Finally, for the ultimate cheese, you could always take a void shield relic.
So on his own, a Viglator doesn't really add a huge amount of offensive fire power. You can tool him up for hth, but really his strength is that he is a force multiplier.
Below are a couple ways to use a Vigilator:
- Legion Recon Company ROW: In this ROW, all units that infiltrate or scout start with shrouding on the first turn. Most infantry in the Raven Guard force have infiltrate, but there are few exceptions. A Vigilator adds scout to a unit, which would give a unit shrouding, plus remember you can take cameleoline, so now youa re +3 to cover. So consider taking a Vigilator with a jump pack, scout armor and cameleoline in a dark fury squad. Now your Dark Fury squad starts 12" forward, is +3 to cover and auto passes dangerous terrain tests. You can do similar tactics with attack bikes or jet bikes. For more tips on this ROW, check out this article: http://www.petehappens.com/2016/02/raven-guard-30k-rite-of-war-legion.html
- Breachers: Breachers are often overlooked as expensive and not very useful in a Raven Guard force, but with a Vigilator, they now scout into 12" range which makes 4 X 18" graviton guns very viable. And you will see if you compare this what you would pay for a tac squad and grav rapiers, you will see that it's not actually that expensive of an option. You can find more tips on Breachers here: http://www.petehappens.com/2016/03/the-legion-breacher-squad-is-not-squad.html
- Seekers: Combi-Plasma Seekers in particular are especially dangerous with a Vigilator. With BS 5 and preferred enemy, a 10 man Seeker squad shoots 20 shoots that hit and wound of a 2+ and re-roll ones. In addition, seekers now have precision shot, which is good for plucking characters out of the squad. So if you are running Nex and the Liberation Force ROW you could score score 6VPs killing a warlord turn one! For more about the Liberation Force ROW check out this article. http://www.petehappens.com/2016/02/raven-guard-30k-row-liberation-force.html
- Support Squads: When I say support squads, I mean units with assault weapons like support squads, seekers, demolishers, and even units like castellax. Vigiliators let you get with in 12" turn one, which when combined with the Recon Company ROW or the Decapitating Strike ROW combined with Alvarex Maun or a Democlese Rhino, you can set up a VERY powerful alpha strike.
- Transports: Scout also confers to a units transport, so you could totally scout landraiders forward with termies bristling with combi weapons or put support squads in scouting rhinos. Or even a unit in a Dark Wing, Thunder Hawk or Storm Eagle on a landing pad and scout it on the platform first turn ;)
Do you guys have any other clever ways to use Vigilators?
Thanks to Pete for this awesome article! Check out his blog at http://www.petehappens.com/