"Storm Troopers are highly-trained shock troops forming the elite force that is a Storm Trooper regiment. They are trained to carry out special operations such as deep strike assaults, reconnaissance, and infiltration beyond enemy lines. Storm Troopers are the very best soldiers the Imperial Guard has to offer, being trained to the peak of human perfection, their combat skills are unmatched within the ranks of the Imperial Guard."
- Codex: Imperial Guard (5th Edition)
I just finished painting the 2nd squad of storm troopers, and since I now have two fully painted squads, I started wondering about how to play them to get full value for money (read: points). Looking at the special operations rule I see one thing that really makes them interesting from a tactical point of view and that is the flexibility the spec. ops rule gives them.
Until recently I’ve played the storm troopers as a 10 man unit with two meltas and a power weapon. They were to deep strike behind enemy amour or heavy infantry / power amour and take them out. It has however become evident to me that the drop-close-to-enemy-hammer-unit-strategy is suicide! Paying a lot of points for a fully tooled squad, that gets to fire for one round is not going to give return on investment.
So what I think I’ll do in the future is two 5 man squads with 2 special weapons (melta or plasma), who is to function as a rescue unit, sacrificing itself where the fighting gets too tough for the regular grunts in the army. While their ap3 guns are nice, storm troopers will, all in all, still be outgunned by regular infantry, so the gain I see is their tactical flexibility…
Here are my squads (I still have one unpainted, but 3 squads in one armylist might be overdoing it...):
Airborne 101:
Airborne 102:
/Nicolai aka Atoom
Good looking Storm Troopers. I really like the Parachute insignia's :)
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