Crimson Fists

My original concept for the Fists was that they were in a point after the Chapters decimation on Rynn's world, when the Chapter was rich with Veterans and new recruits, but light on vehicles and troops after the heavy casualties and loss of their fortress monastery. Initially, this was to be an all drop army, with thunderfires/devastators in heavy support, land speeders and storms in fast attack, scouts/tacticals in troops (duh), a dreadnought, sternguard and terminators in elites and pedro with his honour guard in the HQ slot. After a couple of games, it became apparant to me that while great fluffwise and divergent from other armies I had, the drop army wasn't really a very practical way of playing. My army mostly ended up being picked off piecemeal and I couldn't adapt to the lack of mobility the troops had.

So, I dropped a few of the pods from the army and started with some units already deployed. A bit more success here, but having still not used the honour guard due to fear of their lack of decent transport, and not digging the idea of the DP assault still, I decided on a more radical overhaul; the thunderfires were donated to the Raven Guard and the devastators to the Blood Ravens, while the tactical squads gained a couple of rhinos. As the icing on the cake, I dropped a stormraven into this list (as with the raven guard and iron hands). Again, I must stress that the main reason for this is not to gain some sort of tactical advantage by shoehorning in a unit from a different codex, more that the SR fills a void in the SM list which the fluff clearly plays upon a lot. (i.e. thunderhawk deployments) I tried this with the DP list and things weren't working (there's a difference between a fun, competitive game, and a gam where you're on the backfoot from the start) and so it was either add in a land raider for pedro and the HG (but I have land raiders in a lot of armies) or add in the stormraven - I went for the latter:

Pedro Kantor
Chaplain
Librarian
10 honour guard
10 sternguard
dreadnought
5 terminators with cyclone / CF
10 tactical + rhino
10 tactical + rhino
5 scouts
5 scouts
Land speeder
Land speeder storm
Land speeder storm
Stormraven

This I believe has brought balance to the list while still keeping it unique. (it's the only army I have to feature Storms and HG for example) In practice, I hope to use it in a 3-pronged attack manner, with the scouts/speeders being one element of the strike force, the two rhinos being another and the stormraven/dreadnought/HQ being the third. The other elements will vary depending on the list/points but will either drop pod/teleport/stormraven in where needed. This 3-way attack angle is another unique element of this army which I don't have in other armies, one which I look forward to using next time out with the Fists.


Kantor and retinue

Honour Guard

Sternguard