N18 newbie Van Saars out the box

Freekill58

Juve
Sep 20, 2020
12
4
3
Hey again!

Second Gang Idea for Van Saars,

This is just a list from what i built from the box but any ideas and input would help!

I do have a model with multi melta but i have no idea if its worth the 180 credits
other then that have a look and see where i've messed up

cheeers


 
More plasma, less las. Drop leader's and champion's las weapons and the monosight. This should afford you to have a plasmagun to your boss or champion. Then drop Hystar shield, hotshot pack and power knife from your gangers to afford a combi plasmagun/laspistol to your champ or leader. You could also swap the lascarbine, for two lasguns to give the former hystar ganger a better ranged weapon.

Van Saar is the best shooting gang in the game, so might take most of it, as they are not that good in close combat. Better just shoot the enemies down, before they make it into base to base contact.

Multi-melta is a great weapon, high streangth, high damage, high armour penetration and a 3" blast as a cherry on the top. Great way also to alienate your buddies in the local gaming group. Give it to an Archeotek with Weaponsmith -skill and you don't have to worry about Scarce. Later on you can buy him either suspensors, or Omega lvl torso cybernetics.
 
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More plasma, less las. Drop leader's and champion's las weapons and the monosight. This should afford you to have a plasmagun to your boss or champion. Then drop Hystar shield, hotshot pack and power knife from your gangers to afford a combi plasmagun/laspistol to your champ or leader. You could also swap the lascarbine, for two lasguns to give the former hystar ganger a better ranged weapon.

Van Saar is the best shooting gang in the game, so might take most of it, as they are not that good in close combat. Better just shoot the enemies down, before they make it into base to base contact.

Multi-melta is a great weapon, high streangth, high damage, high armour penetration and a 3" blast as a cherry on the top. Great way also to alienate your buddies in the local gaming group. Give it to an Archeotek with Weaponsmith -skill and you don't have to worry about Scarce. Later on you can buy him either suspensors, or Omega lvl torso cybernetics.
I think the idea I was going for was bodies first then use creds later to then get the goodies from trading post etc? didn't want to alienate my group straight off the bat so that we can at lest enjoy some gaming fun before i start annihalting the board with plasma and melta shennaigans!

that and I built my models for the "Cool" look idea not the min/max I'm gonna dakka dakka you into the middle of next millenium!
 
didn't want to alienate my group straight off the bat so that we can at lest enjoy some gaming fun before i start annihalting the board with plasma and melta shennaigans!
Don't change anything then. With the current list you'll make a lot of friends and everyone wants to play against you. Win-win.
 
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The Multi-Melta is good, but it's probably too expensive for a starting gang and maybe a bit overkill. I'd save it for later.

If you're not looking for an optimized Plasma gang, there are still some other options, albeit less effective options.

You should still probably dump the shield, the Power Knife and probably most of the Hot Shots... those are easy upgrades for later, except for the Power Knife, which is just kinda bad for VS.

Put the one Plasma Gun on one of your Augmeks and give him either Trick Shot or Fast Shot. Put Lasguns on your Subteks; that makes them useful. You can consider doing a Pistoleer build on one of your Augmeks or you Leader, giving them a Plasma Pistol and a Las Pistol and the skill that lets them shoot two Pistols with less penalty. A Rad Gun or Grav Gun are also ok choices, particularly when paired with my favorite shooting skill, Hip Shooting, which will give you a bit of improved mobility.
 
The Multi-Melta is good, but it's probably too expensive for a starting gang and maybe a bit overkill. I'd save it for later.

If you're not looking for an optimized Plasma gang, there are still some other options, albeit less effective options.

You should still probably dump the shield, the Power Knife and probably most of the Hot Shots... those are easy upgrades for later, except for the Power Knife, which is just kinda bad for VS.

Put the one Plasma Gun on one of your Augmeks and give him either Trick Shot or Fast Shot. Put Lasguns on your Subteks; that makes them useful. You can consider doing a Pistoleer build on one of your Augmeks or you Leader, giving them a Plasma Pistol and a Las Pistol and the skill that lets them shoot two Pistols with less penalty. A Rad Gun or Grav Gun are also ok choices, particularly when paired with my favorite shooting skill, Hip Shooting, which will give you a bit of improved mobility.

hmmm so looking at both your and sump things advice. grab another box of bodies and tool them to more specific loadouts for later ish like plasguns meltas etc??
 
Drop the mono sight, power knife and flack armour and pick up mesh instead. The sight may be ok but you can do without it to start.
For a extra 5credit mesh armour gives you a 4+ save with the body gloves while the flack only gives you that save when being shot by Blasts or templates. Many such weapons have some Ap as well so any bonus to armour is moot anyway.

While the power knife is alright Van Saar should be nowhere near any melee to start with. Way too fragile and low WS.
An acceptable back up for later.

You got a lot of bodies in there. I usually go for 8 with 1000 credit Van Saar but it could work well for you. I would have a second champion but mass hotshot fire early can even some things untill you get another champion.
For any other gang I would put the plasma gun on a champion over a specialist for the BS but Van Saar teks have the good BS to make it work well.

Just a note to remember. Adding Hot shots to the last weapons actually changes the profile of the weapon to S4 Ap-1 Ammo 4- and loses plentiful. You don't get to keep the original las profile with the Plentiful rule. I know Yaktribes adds both to the fighter but its not how the rule works.
Hot shots are good however and well worth the expenditure.
 
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Drop the mono sight, power knife and flack armour and pick up mesh instead. The sight may be ok but you can do without it to start.
For a extra 5credit mesh armour gives you a 4+ save with the body gloves while the flack only gives you that save when being shot by Blasts or templates. Many such weapons have some Ap as well so any bonus to armour is moot anyway.

While the power knife is alright Van Saar should be nowhere near any melee to start with. Way too fragile and low WS.
An acceptable back up for later.

You got a lot of bodies in there. I usually go for 8 with 1000 credit Van Saar but it could work well for you. I would have a second champion but mass hotshot fire early can even some things untill you get another champion.
For any other gang I would put the plasma gun on a champion over a specialist for the BS but Van Saar teks have the good BS to make it work well.

Just a note to remember. Adding Hot shots to the last weapons actually changes the profile of the weapon to S4 Ap-1 Ammo 4- and loses plentiful. You don't get to keep the original las profile with the Plentiful rule. I know Yaktribes adds both to the fighter but its not how the rule works.
Hot shots are good however and well worth the expenditure.
thanks for the help there. is it worth grabbing another gang box or would the grav boards and archeoteks be a better buy?
 
thanks for the help there. is it worth grabbing another gang box or would the grav boards and archeoteks be a better buy?
In general you don't want more than 15 in most gangs. A couple will be in recovery on average and any more will spread your XP and cool toys to thin.
For you Van Saar that really depends on where you want to go. The standard box gives you a ton of good shooting ang whilst a little slow they do the work. The neo teks give you a lot more speed and manoeuvrability in exchange for survivability while the archeotek is interesting and fun.

How are your magnet and drilling skills? All the clan gangs (Cawdor are a real pain), Enforcers, Nomads and Squats can have 2mm diameter 1mm thick disc magnets inserted into the shoulders and arms so you can swap weapon loads. The GW love of shoulder pads helps.

Cuts down on having multiple models and uses much more of the kit.
Van Saar are particularly good at this. All thier arms are cross compatible across both kits and thier Basic weapons have both two handed and single handed versions.

If you can get the magnets to work you can get a lot of milage and customisation if you add the neo teks box and the standard Van Saar upgrade box.
 
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Never worked with magnets, I know you drill em in and super glue em that's all lol. Any ideas on where to get them?

So the gang creater won't let me swap weapons around (says no credits left)

Prime: Skill
Meltagun laspistol mesh

Augmek; Skill: hip fire
Plasmgun laspistol mesh

Tek specialist:
Laspistol plasma pistol flak

Teks x3
Lasguns x3

Subteks x3
Lasguns x2 laspistol x1

1000 credits on nose.

Just need a skill for Prime boy
 
Personally, I like including a pair of Neoteks with Lasguns in my starting rosters. They start off basically functioning like extra fast Subteks and give me some much needed manueverability in scenarios where speed is helpful. As the gang develops, they get things like Hand Flamers, Incendiary/Blasting Charges and better protection and become a big pain in the butt for opponents.
I also love having an Archeotek, but I usually don't start with one because all of the "good" gun options for them come from the Trading Post. Two Augmeks do a great job as starting Champions; an Archeotek is an "extra" for me.

An extra gang box is always useful, but it doesn't give you anything you don't already have. If you get one, I suggest getting a weapons upgrade sprue, too. That'll expand your options.
 
For your present gang, I'd sacrifice the Laspistol Subtek and a Laspistols from Leader and Augmek to make your Specialist an Augmek with the Gunfighter skill and Mesh Armor instead of Flak. Then promote one of your Teks to Tek Specialist. I'd also give the Prime the Plasma Gun and either Fast Shot, Trick Shot or Fixer (for the extra credits!). Give the Melta Gun to the Augmek with Hip Shooting... that skill works best with shorter ranged weapons like the Melta Gun or a Rad Gun.
 
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A good rule for starting gangs is to not start any of your fighters with cheap backup weapons; it's an inefficient use of credits that are better spent on bodies, primary weapons or armor.
 
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Seriously. Do not chose Flack armour. It's a waste of credits. Especially when mesh is only 5 more.

On Yaktribes gang manager, you have the option on your individual fighters equipment to sell the items, return them to the Gang stash or delete them. On your gangs main page you can Edit your gangs credits. I usually ignore the gang wealth and go off the gang rating and at the end of a campaign, which is the only point when you actually need it, then manually calculate Wealth.
 
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They really need to recost armor. If they put Flak Armor at 5cr and Mesh Armor at 20cr there'd be a pretty good case for taking Flak Armor on a lot of fighters.
 
Never worked with magnets, I know you drill em in and super glue em that's all lol. Any ideas on where to get them?
I get mine from First4Magnets but there are lots of sites out there.
If you do go down the magnet route pick one model, drill the hole, add a tiny amount of super glue then the magnet.
Let it dry, only takes a few seconds, and then stick a column of fresh ones to the magnet in the model. Then using the flat end of a spare drill bit, opposite the drill part, to pick up a new magnet off the attached column.
When you insert that magnet in a new hole it is now the same polarity. To add it to the arm grab the column from the model and take off the magnet closest to the model from the opposite side and it should be a the opposite polarity when you insert it into the arm.
Check the two parts, arm and torso, join together with the magnets properly and once you are ok that they have the right polarity just repeat.

I have magnetised virtually all of my necromunda models all on the same polarity just to keep the process standard. Also it means I can add Delaque arms to Esher bodies for example for a unique hive scum or bounty hunter when needed.
 
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so how would you recommend magnetising the weapons on van saars?? the rifles are split down the middle or do i just magnetise the arms and glue the weapons?
 
Just the arms and glue the weapons.
From what I remember the Van Saar arms even have small holes in the joint that can guide your drill. (They may not anymore I got mine early on).
Just make sure you make enough arms with the weapons you want so not all las pistols for example.
There is enough give in the model torso and pairs of two handed gun grips that they work too.
Thank you GW and your love of shoulder pads.
 
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