So here he is - the toughest dude in the whole Space Marine Codex - Captain Darnath Lysander. I picked this model up back when I first started working on my Imperial Fists but only got around to painting him up recently. I had been fielding Vulkan in my lists and decided to give this monster a try.
Lysander is a monster. I have heard tale of him being nigh impossible to kill. Both Monkey and Jester have told me about when they faced him in a tournament and he either refused to die or took an entire army to bring down. With this kind of stoutness I decided it was time to put him in the roster.
For those of you not familiar with the awesomeness let me run it down for you. Lysander has four wounds, a 2+ save, and a 3++ invlunerable from his storm shield. He also has Eternal Warrior. On top of that Lysander has a Master Crafted Thunder Hammer that swings at strength ten and gets +1 on the vehicle damage chart.
On to of the fact that he is a solid close combat monster Lysander also gives your entire army the Stubborn USR. The other special rule that he has is Bolter Drill. This allows the unit Lysander is attached to the ability to re-roll all misses with Bolters. This seems a bit out of place since he himself doesn't have any ranged weapons.
To me it feels like Lysander had a different set of special rules until right up before the codex was finalized. Looking at Pedro Kantor we can see that he also grants the army the Stubborn USR - kind off odd to have two models doe the same thing. His Bolter Drill also really seems out of place. The write-up on Games Workshops website used to talk about how he allowed you to group your Terminators together as one group for rolling for reserves and re-roll the result. This was explained away as being his Apocalypse formation rules and has subsequently been removed from the site. I am betting that is what his rules were in some of the earlier versions of the Codex.
So how do you use this guy? For me I am still figuring it out. I haven't ran him in very many games but I am getting the feel of it. My standard 1850 Space Marine list has a Librarian, Lysander, 10 Sternguard Veterans, a Dreadnought in Drop Pod, 5 Thunder Hammer / Storm Shield Terminators, 2x10 Tac Sqauds, a 5 man sniper Scout unit and a Land Raider Redeemer. For 2000 Points I add in a pair of Land Speeders and I am good to go.
In my last game I put Lysander in the Land Raider with the Terminators. It drove up the middle of the field, was wrecked, and really didn't do much the whole game. I usually field the Librarian in with the Sternguard to be able to Gate of Infinity them around the board. I think I am going to switch up my tactics in my next game. I think that Lysander will ride in the Land Raider with the Sternguard to give them that sweet re-roll and I will let the Librarian gate the Terminators to where they need to go. Hopefully they will be stout enough to survive with a 2+/3++ save.