Shock Troops

Imagine...

The battle is raging on in full swing. Every single warrior doing his part, and the Imperial Guard are just barely holding against a terrible assault. When over head, two vendettas drop their payload of napalm, and stormtroopers float down on grav chutes shooting all the way down, turning the tide of battle, by diverting the enemy forces.

that is just one way to use the units I'm talkin bout. Two vendettas, with two stormtrooper squads of ten in each. I know I know, stormtroopers are supposed to suck, and valkyrie's much > vendettas...wait a minute, kenny are those door gunners on your vendettas? >.> uh... yeah... DAMMIT learn whats useful and whats useless wouldya!

Joking aside, yes, these are not the best possible units for the job, so one would say... but check this out. My storm troopers pin, on their first round of shooting. That's a possibility of 40 ap3 pinning shots. Just sayin, that's good enough to pin space marines, and or anything else. Fire the vendettas first, so their is a better shot they will be fewer in number prior to pinning, and yeah, there is but one strength I have, and I like it. Why the door gunners? If for whatever reason, I have to hole up my stormtroopers, so they can secure a table quarter, or just divert enemy firepower, I have that extra push of 12 more str 5 shots.

Stormtrooper loadout:
plasma pistol and power weapon for sarge
two plasmaguns in one unit, two meltaguns in the other
and ALWAYS behind enemy lines spec ops rule

Now, on the first turn these units throw down, that's the easy part. They can kill anything, from terminators, to landraiders, to tau gunlines, to super HQ's. they got it goin on. The hard part, is keeping them alive post first punch. As the unit is too expensive to just throw away. There are quite a few ways to do this, each has its flaws, so I have to gauge it as the battle goes on.

Simplest way: divert the firepower of my big guns, so that any unit that can effectively counter attack, is just blown away. Problems: one: the rest of my army then goes without that support :( two: now the stormtroopers have nothing themselves to kill.

Forethought: every now and then, the perfect set up is made, where I can just kill the defenders, and take their spot, and use it against them. Problems: one: it won't always be there. two: it can still be assaulted, and stormtroopers have a short range on their guns.

Conestoga Wagons: in the west, what pioneers would do when they were attacked by indians, is get out of their wagons, and flip them over, creating instant barriers. These Conestoga Wagons, have armor value 12, and a shit ton of firepower. So I can create my own defense if necessary with the vendettas to hold off the enemy. Problems: one: the obvious thing here, is that the vandettas could blow up. two: the stormtroopers would have their LOS blocked. Three: THE VENDETTAS COULD BLOW UP

get the heck outta dodge: just hop right back in the vendettas, and boot scoot across the board, back behind friendly lines. Problems: one: we might be dead by then. two: that's a turn of no killing for a 500+ point group of units.

Sacrifice the Stormtroopers: if I feel the need to, I could move fast, and still drop off the stormtroopers, and have the vendettas out of the way before anyone was able to shoot, and even if they do, get a 3+ coversave, plus armor 12. Problem: it totally fucks over the stormtroopers.

Ok, so there are all the ways to keep them alive... wait a minute, that last one had them dying! <.< nobody's perfect dude.

so yeah, over all, you could cram some vets with demolitions and shotguns in there, for fewer points, and still have a scoring unit. OR you could go balls out, spend way more money on stormtroopers, just so you can pay extra points for first turn pinning, on a unit that might just shoot at a vehicle anyway, and yeah. But you know what, it's really bad ass.