A great local 40k player posted an interesting article on his blog regarding the Stubborn Universal Special Rule (USR) last week. After reading it, I felt challenged to find something - anything! - useful about Stubborn for units in the Space Marine codex. After all, I can't let my fancy blue Lysander go to waste, right? First off, how do Space Marines get access to the Stubborn USR? Both Lysander and Pedro Kantor replace Chapter Tactics with Stubborn. The fluff behind these two characters is that their primarch, Rogal Dorn, was a defensive genius. The Stubborn USR pretty much goes hand in hand with defensive oriented tactics. It allows a unit that loses a close combat to use their base leadership value for their morale test. So for example if I lost combat by 4 wounds, I will take my morale test at 9 instead of 5 (I'm assuming my sergeant is still alive). The problem with defensive tactics is that more often than not the best defense is (of course) a good offense.
Here's a little background on the characters who make Space Marines Stubborn: Captain Darnath Lysander leads the 1st Company of the Imperial Fists chapter, and is the only other Space Marine character aside from Marneus Calgar who has the Eternal Warrior USR. A model with Eternal Warrior is not affected by Instant Death, so that's good. He has 4 wounds, same as Mr. Calgar; wears terminator armor and is equipped with a STR 10 thunder hammer and a storm shield. Lysander has some other spiffy abilities as well. Pedro Kantor is the master of the unfortunate Crimson Fists chapter. In addition to granting an army Stubborn, he makes Sterngard Veterans scoring units and is armed with a Power Fist and suped-up Storm Bolter.
The main disadvantage of Stubborn is that units can stay in combat for a very long time when you may not want them to. The plus side is that any unit engaged in close combat with a Stubborn unit could also be in combat for a very long time. If the humble Astartes wish to take advantage of Stubborn, we must identify both the keys to maximizing its potential and the units that can do so to best effect. What are the keys to taking advantage of Stubborn? First is redundancy. Horde-type armies can take advantage of Stubborn through sheer weight of numbers. They can tar pit a unit and eventually kill it even after losing a lot of their own. I think the second key is sheer killing power. Horde armies also achieve this through weight of numbers. Quantity has a quality all its own. Target selection is the third key. If I can identify the optimal enemy unit to tar pit, that helps me win in the end because I've maximized the potential of one of my units while decreasing that of my opponent's unit. The last key is wound allocation. Keeping a squad leader with a good Leadership value around for as long as possible is important - not only for purposes of not failing a morale test, but because more often than not this is the guy we can pimp out with special weapons that can help us eventually win the combat.
In my next post I'll talk about what units I think can best take advantage of the Stubborn USR using the keys I listed. Are these keys set in stone? No. Are they even the right keys? I don't know for sure. I make no claim of being the world's best Space Marine player, not by far! Got ideas, post 'em up. Help me use Blue Lysander as something other than a paperweight!
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