Scion drop troops

A little late to the party but never mind. The new Tempestus Aquilons are here and they look stunning. 

All ten of the models have lots of character and poses are really nice and dynamic.

They have all the classic kill team operatives, from special weapons gunners and sniper (marksman) above, to fighters, gun slingers and demolitions at the bottom.

 And in kill team these guys have some very cool.rules and abilities, not least being able to drop in around the board over various turns rather than having to.start in your deployment zone. This gives you options to get in to positions you wouldn't have been able to and to pressure your opponent in all sorts of new ways. However, as much as I love kill team, and I'm genuinely excited to see what the new edition brings (hopefully less complicated cover and obscurity rules!), I'm a 40k player at heart and that's were things start to go a bit wrong for me.

There were three things that jumped out at me about the data sheet when I first read it, those being; movement, assault and special weapons. There were a few other bits that I noticed or were pointed out while watching various YouTube videos but we'll start with those three. Firstly the good point, assault. This means that they can be faster moving and still shoot, with the advance roll being an average of three and a max of six, that can be quite a boost to their movement, plus these are, as far as I know the only assault weapons in the whole of the guard codex. And that's the end of the good news. 

Movement is an issue for me, I was hoping that these would be fast moving troops, with a proper fast profile, ie 12 inch movement. Yes, I know they are drop pack \ grab chutes, but I was still hoping for something, as we don't really have many fast infantry options outside of the rough riders. Combine this with the shorter range of the weapons, 18 inch for the lascarbines, and the actual threat range is 24 to 30 inches (average 27 inches), where as the standard scions have a threat range of 30 inches.

Granted you'll have less shots at that range, a max of 20 for the Aquilons compared to just 10 for the scions, however, you could have better firepower as well, in the form of plasma, grenade launchers and volley guns. This is as big an issue as the movement, the lack of special weapons. Being able to take four special weapons in a 10 man squad of scions against just one in the Aquilons is a huge advantage. If you could take more in the Aquilons it would make a huge difference, dropping in three inches away (more on that later) and dropping two melta guns and two krak grenades in to a vehicle would be very useful. 

There are some other positive and negatives to.mention as well, firstly the positives.

The servo-sentry is a very useful model and goes some way to making up the lost firepower, with some good weapon profiles and the ability to shoot on the drop. It could make a huge difference on that initial drop, even at BS 4+. Secondly, the three inch drop. This could be huge for snatching objectives or victory points, getting around screening units and such. This could very easily become a major game play tactic. The long-las is another good point, even if it's only one shot at S4. If it does punch through, it's going to do damage. Lastly points, at only 90 points, less than the equivalent Scion unit, they are cheap for what they can do. 

However, there are some minor issues still to mention. The biggest here being that they are locked to a 10 man squad. 10 bases is a lot to squeeze in to the enemy deployment zone or to try and crowd out an objective. The second minor issue is the weapon options. Now I've mentioned the lack of special weapons but there is the other options, like taking twin pistols or swapping two lascarbines for pistols and a knife. I get that these are really set with kill team in mind and they have only done 40k rules to (try and) keep people happy but still, why would you drop carbines for pistols? The last negative is no unsurprising, the last of leader options. This is understandable as there are no drop troop characters or command squads but it does dent there utility and versatility so what.

 The last bit to mention is that these are still T3, 1W, 4+Sv, 7+LD, as they should be amd so you are going to have to be very careful where you drop them, as even a 10 man unit can disappear very quickly.

Over all I was really excited by these guys, now however I'm not in a hurry to pick up any and will see what happens with the next codex.