Horus Heresy Review: Legion Vindicator Siege Tank Squadron

Background.
In the original Betrayal publication, the Legion Vindicator was a singular selection for the Heavy Support slot in the army list. Here, in Retribution, it appears that this decision has been reversed to a more standard 1 to 3 tanks in a squadron. Nice! I'll therefore simply update my review for the original Vindicator entry here.

Strengths.

Genuinely, I'm quite fond of the vindicator as a tank. The Betrayal book explicitly notes that the vindicator finds a lot of use in both Iron Hands Legion and Sons of Horus Legion forces. But for my own part, I regularly use vindicators with my 40,000 Death Guard armies and have won some solid victories through the holes they've manage to punch in enemy lines.

My earlier reviews of Chaos Vindicators and Dark Angels Vindicators still applies in the Heresy era (modulo the daemonic possession stuff in the chaos variant, of course!). I think they make great tanks for many legion armies, but they are competing for a heavy support slot against other viable options here (assuming we're not playing with unbound armies). One interesting option available in the Heresy era is to replace the demolisher cannon with a laser destroyer array. I like this option as it provides a very nice tactical flexibility (especially coupled with the overload option).

Weaknesses.

As with rhino's, the rear armour is something to watch out for. Otherwise, its a very sound and robust tank with very little worries beyond positioning and range.

Builds.

A few sample builds to think about.

Legion Vindicator, dozer blade, armoured ceramite (145 points)

I think this is probably the baseline vindicator for the Heresy / Great Crusade era. The use of the armoured ceramite is almost a given to protect against lance and melta a little better and the dozer blade to help the tank get where it needs to be.  Add a machine spirit and/or auxiliary drive to taste. Of course, naked works well as well here.

Legion Vindicator, Laser Destroyer Array, armoured ceramite (150 points)

With a slightly larger range than the destroyer cannon, the need to move around is lessened and I've removed the dozer blade. This is probably the baseline build for the laser destroyer variant.

Legion Vindicator, dozer blade, armoured ceramite, havoc launcher, machine spirit (185 points)

For when you have to get somewhere and you want to pressure the enemy significantly. Half tempted to replace the havoc launcher with a heavy flamer for counter charge purposes. At this price tag, it starts to get expensive though.

Legion Vindicator, Laser Destroyer Array, Heavy Bolter (145 points)

At first glance, this seems kind of odd. But then factor in that the weapons both have the same range and realise that this combination could be a character killer.

Legion Vindicator, dozer blade, hunter-killer missile (135 points)

Cheaper and highly expendable. This one - particularly if taken a couple of times and filling out the heavy support slot - can be a painful experience for an opponent.