>>96157619
If your not building at least 1 shooty vanguard unit to push VPs for captured objectives you are going to fall behind and DS a shooty squad is a fantastic way to do this or pushing a LR full of vangaurd melee into an objective turn 2 or 3 as you mentioned.

I really need to sit down with the list builder once it launches and scope out the best DS vanguard ranged units for this tatic but I fear not all forces will be the same.

>>96141578
I'm Theory crafting an ultima pattern SA list right now, planning on five full lasrifle sections all in prime slots with combat veterans for extra mental stats.

Sticking 2 sections In dracosans and having the other 3 footslog. My line commands are hiding in Arvus Lighters and I'll be dumping the rest of my points into Tanks and sentinels.

Glad line sections are allowed to be useful honestly, Ive always liked them.

>>96009431
In terms of gameplay The Aux are a horde army that focus on points efficiency over performance. Compare performance between a rifle section and a tac squad in 2.0.

On a model to model basis an auxiliary is inferior to a tactical marine in all regards save for the fact that the auxiliary is far better at dying. A mortal statline of 3's vs the standard astartes 4's along with a 4+ voidsuit instead of glorious 3+ power armour

However on a unit to unit level the calculus changes. In 2.0 a tac squad starts at 100 points for 10 marines with more bodies costing 10 ppm. An Auxilia rifle section starts at 60 for 10 with more bodies sitting at 5ppm.

A naked 10 man tac squad is superior to a naked 10 man rifle section but because the aux are so cheap they could buy an Aurox dedicated transport with a multilaser for 40 points and stick their 60 point naked rifle section in it before the tacticals have even bought any upgrades. Having a metal box means they can deploy and redeploy faster than the marines to get on objectives first.

Or just bring 20 guys in a squad for 110 points and trust that weight of numbers will carry the day. After all, "Any legionary who scoffs at the humble lasgun has never run across a field against 100 of them."

The Aux struggled a lot in 2.0 because they got nerfed too hard for their S10 AP2 Large Blast related warcrimes in 1.0.

They did honestly need to be nerfed to help making footslogging marines possible in HH but GW did their classic trick of nerfing the armies strongest units on multiple levels while not improving their weaker models at all. The battle cannon went from S8 AP3 large blast to S8 AP4 small blast and which was just emblematic of the whole list.

That said that was a balance issue and not a conceptual design issue. The Aux can absolutely work in a game that focuses on marine vs marine and remain effective.