White Scars blog wars army

I thought I would go through my choices for my blog wars white scars army and why I chose them.

Blog wars requires you to take a special character, with White Scars there is only one choice; Khan. Being forced to take Khan is not really a disadvantage. He provides the ability to take bike squads as troops units when mounted on a bike, and provides an awesome ability that gives all bike units and units with dedicated transports Scout, a very powerful ability that I have had a lot of fun with.

KHAAAAAAAN! (Cause you've never heard that before)

As a second HQ unit, I took the obligatory Chapter Master on bike. You know the one; power fist, Shield Eternal, auspex. This seems to be the go to choice for Chapter masters. I didn’t want to just go with the crowd, but it is a solid commander who should be able to win a fight against most opponents.

I thought about taking a librarian on bike, but I have not had a great deal of success running space marine Librarians in 7th edition. Dark Angels librarians on the other hand are fantastic. As they have access to Divination, they can bolster your squads very well. The damage output of a tactical squad with Prescience in range of the Standard of Devastation is just, well…….devastating. Unfortunately, space marine librarians do not have access to Divination.

There are other psychic disciplines to choose from, but I have never had much success with them. Telepathy is useful, but in all my games, I have only ever rolled Invisibility once. On an Imperial guard astropath, who never even got to cast it. I like the idea of psychic shriek, but I never seem to roll high enough to cause any wounds with it. The rest of the powers are ok, but never seem to be much use against my regular opponents.

I love Chaplains (not surprising coming from a Dark Angels player) and think Zealot is very powerful, just ask the priests in my guard army. If only the Crozius was AP3, I would definitely consider a Chaplain in place of the chapter master.

Next up comes the bulk of my army, the troops choices. What would a White Scars army be without bikes. They have some very powerful special rules that make them the best marine bikers around. Three squads of five, two armed with Grav guns, one armed with meltaguns.

Get your motor running....

Oh Gravs guns, what did I do without you. Before you came along, the Wraithlord was a fearful sight, stomping across the battlefield killing marines left and right while they hopelessly beat against your toughness 8 exterior. Two grav guns in each squad should allow me to deal with any tough, well armoured opponents.

Next up is two squads of tactical marines mounted in Rhinos. This should provide a fast response force that is objective secured and numerous enough to hopefully hold objectives. One squad has a grav gun, the other has a flamer to clear any enemies out of cover.

Grav gun squad with transport.

Pay no attention to the man in grey.

My next choice is a scout squad with landspeeder storm transport. I like the idea of the landspeeder storm, its jammer hopefully mitigating any drop pod alpha strike armies that I may face. I've not had much chance to use this feature yet (stupid swooping hawks and their stupid no scatter deep strike!). The large blast with blind is also neat, I hope this will cause some fun times (being on the receiving end of blind, stupid swooping hawks again, makes me realise it can be quite powerful if you get it).

Scouts, ready to seize objectives.

Next up comes a unit of Sternguard veterans in a drop pod. These are supposed to be my alpha strike unit, able to deal with all the threats the regular marines can’t thanks to their special ammunition

Strike force.

These are supposed to be my unit for dealing with the trickier stuff I may face such as Riptides and Wraithknights that could mush my other marines. At least, they were supposed to deal with Wraithknights until the new codex dropped and my poisoned 2+ to wound has now been reduced to a 6+. Maybe the grav guns will have better luck now. They should hopefully be able to help with grabbing objectives, especially if the drop pod lands near one.

In the fast attack slot, I have a couple of attack bikes. I am running these with multimeltas, hopefully to deal with any tanks or heavier items that I may face. I will probably run them both solo, so that anyone wanting to shoot at them will have to use two different units to do so. Even though they will be separate units, I will probably try and keep them together as odds are if it split them to hunt different tanks, at least one will miss with the multimelta.

Ready to tank hunt.

 

My final choice is the unit that got me started in the first place, the Stormtalon. I really like this model and it can put out some decent firepower.

Flying fury

 

So that’s my army. I need to finish the painting a couple of units and get a few more practice games in before the tournament in June. I still have time to modify the army if I want. I was thinking of adding some grav centurions to the list, but would need to either lose the Chapter Master or one of the tactical squads and an attack bike to fit them in.

 Any comments or suggestions would be appreciated, it’s probably too late to change the army now, but it would definitely be helpful for the future.