The new HQ's thanks to the FAQ?

Sitting looking through my guard codex the other night and I still got lost in how many good unit options there is in that book. I think I noticed at least 2 unique unit types I wanted to begin reviewing in all the sections. Then I remembered the FAQ changes which lets the techpriest and priests become your mandatory HQ’s and tried to figure out when they would be useful for an army more than a CCs or a Lord commissar... So far I’ve not found a situation.

While it is nice of GW to give us even more freedom of HQ’s I’m stuck to see when they would be better use than a company command squad. The orders alone look to add more to most guard army types than a single pries tor techpriest and if you keep them both barebones their only 5 points more than both... hard to look past 5 guys, with better BS more attacks, shots and better leadership and one of the five has 3 wounds, a 5++ (Still better than the priest’s 4++ due to mutlti wounds imo as long as you can allocate high Str shots to others) and comes with a nice 4 attacks right off the bat!

Although they can both offer a unique piece to the army in some sense. For the priest he could be put into a large blob unit as standard and used for helping them reroll hits, but how often will the blobs be getting the assault? Most enemy armies will either hold back just out of range knowing you have to advance on them or shoot them with lasguns, or they can drop in close by and if using jump packs, hop up and assault your lines. Although as mentioned in my priest article, giving him an Eviscerator opens up some good HTH anti dreadnought as long as it doesn’t gut him first, but is it enough to take him as your main HQ?

Possibly if the orders aren’t needed, but then that means you aren’t aiming to bring Straken, and even then in both cases, when are you not wanting to BID or make them reroll cover saves? And with that 12inch range it is hard not to want to include that... all for 5 points more than the priest base.

Regarding the techpriest, you could bring him purely if you needed to save 5 points and shove him in with an infantry unit to let him repair their transport, but then that feels like a waste when you could again take the CCs and have them in their own transport.

Looking at it I think it’s due to their lack of wargear options and single wound... if both had 2 wounds and WS4 (For the priest) and BS 4 (For the techpriest) it could open up more options. Maybe the techpriest could come with plasmagun options, and a FNP which only affects him, this could make him into a cheap shooting HQ who can hide in squads.

Though his servo arm is ok I suppose for that single S8 attack, but with only a 3+ armour save and no inv will he last in HTH to use it? Prob not and especially so if it’s a KP mission...

Even his serv squad doesn’t make him any better looking, 5 models max, BS 3 and allows 2 heavy weapons for 135points roughly (Or 115 if you take heavy bolters)... but this doesn’t have much of a sue in an army which can already spam higher Str shots or special weapons throughout its FOC slots... so what could his use be?

Looked similiar to priests, but prob more useful in an army.

 The company command squad on the other hand can fill both roles (The HTH less so than the shooting) by taking Straken, a medic if you have the points spare (And if you do please let me know how as I never can find 30 points in my 1850 point lists for this!) some bodyguards, changing the men’s lasguns to las pistols to give the squad a mass of attacks and a banner for rerolls. It comes out more expensive of course, but it does a better job overall. Heck even if you used the bog standard setups for both units the CCs would win out, add the priests Evis and give the CCS even points worth of upgrades and it will still come out better.

In shooting the CCS comes into its own, plasma, melta, heavy weapons, you are really spoilt for choice... so why would you ever take the techpriest and serv squad? Even in HTH the techpriest only has 2 attacks normal and 1 sevo arm attack at ini 1 S8. And while the servs also have one I don’t really see an ini 3, 1 wound 4+ save unit surviving to use them.

Again I go back to wargear options, if they had more or maybe unique ones they could posibly be more useful.

Don't get me wrong, the priest with his toys can easily be put into a Blob army alongside Straken, giving rerolls to 20 odd  power weapon attacks which are benefitting from Furious charge...  

Anyone else got good ideas for these now possible as mandatory HQ choices?