Many questions

[syxx]

I haven't been playing very long and here are done questions I have. Marneus looks to be a beast but I dont ever see him run...is he not as beastly as he seems to be on paper and is just too many points? Same with the honour guard, are they just not good enough for what they cost?

Sternguard are super good, is it within reason to run 2 10 man squads in an 1850 point army, with our without kantor.

Um, think thats all for now. Thanks for your responses in advance

[daddy4count]

Calgar is as much of a beast as he seems on paper... so are Honor Guard. But for the points, you don't really get much in return.

If you want to be competitive, you can get more for your points.

Sternguard are awesome... I prefer smaller squads... 5 marines with a PF or PW, one or two combi-meltas and a Razorback. But you can certainly fit them into a list. Without Kantor they will take up a big chunk of your list that you could use for scoring units...

It all depends on what else you're running and what you want the list to accomplish.

[Baragash]

The issue with Marneus is that his abilities don't offer as wide a benefit to the army* as many of the other, often cheaper, SM characters do.

*Or if they do, they are certainly harder to exploit.

Honour Guard... well IMO GW, certainly at the start of 5th Ed, were too conservative with the incremental pricing of additional benefits to 1W models/squads, and as a result Honour Guard are over-priced. I also think they over-price combat units generally. Grey Knights show that the incremental benefits of layering very useful abilities on models (such as everyone having power weapons) are only really worth small points increases (before anyone says GKs are broken, the issue with GKs is with their additional equipment, not the basic costs and abilities). Vanguard are another good example of this.

IMO if you run Kantor you can use two squads of 10. If you don't run Kantor you're better off using 1-2 squads of 5 as melta-suicide squads.

[edmundblack]

Sternguard also work well in 6-man teams in a Razorback to hunt the big game (Monstrous Creatures) and take out units camped in cover.