Email in: shifting tracks

"Kirby,

Been reading your blog off and on for a while and still enjoying things. For a while I have been running a jump pack based army and I wanted to shift to something new. Since I dont want to run the blog-standard 10 razorback list I was looking at something a little different.
Thoughts:

Mephiston
2x sanguinary priests
10 thunderhammer/ss termies
5 dudes in a razorback, meltagun, inferno pistol, tl-lc
5 dudes in a razorback, meltagun, inferno pistol, tl-lc
5 dudes in a razorback, meltagun, inferno pistol, tl-lc
5 dudes in a razorback, meltagun, tl-lc (ran out of points for the pistols)
Predator, autocannon, 2 lc
Predator, autocannon, 2 lc
1850. add another pred for 2000

This gives me decent firepower but not all out shooting, i will still need to close with the enemy. Faster army with the slowest guys being the termies. Mephiston has 6 vehicles to hid behind and they can advance 12in while shooting to get him up there quicker. Turn 1 termies give the vehicles cover and then run up the center as fast as their stumpy legs will take them, everything else tries to flank the enemy. Two priests so that if i decide to combat squad the termies they both get fnp still.

Any suggestions, do you think it could work vs some of the more common armies out there?

Thanks, and Enjoy"

Solid core though the TH/SS are going to have a hard time engaging the enemy - such a unit is easier to run with Vanilla Marines due to Gate of Infinity. This squad would probably be better run as Shootynators with some CMLs - you lose a bit of punch in combat without the 3++ but still have 10 Powerfists + Mephiston and now have 20 stormbolter shots and four more missile shots. You'd need to drop a couple of pistols to get those CMLs in there though but having a dakka unit which is very hard to take down outside of high strength/AP2 weapons (i.e. the guns best at bringing down meph and your tanks) will give your opponent target priority fits.

Losing the pistols isnt such an issue with running the shootynators as the LasPlas RBacks (a change I'd recommend btw) are a unit which prefer to stay back and then push forward though having them is a nice safety net.

If you wanted to run the TH/SS though I'd make them a smaller squad and include Corb into the army. This gives you a re-roll where/if needed (i.e. on reserve roll/scatter roll) and the footprint of the unit is smaller so it's not going to be impossible to place when deep-striking. This gets them closer to the enemy and with FNP they are still pretty tough to crack if not as scary as a full unit.