Golden Keshig

Gas, gas, gas. I'm gonna step on the gas. Tonight, I'll fly (and be your lover). Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll be so quick as a flash. And I'll be your hero!

The Golden Keshig is another type of Keshig Honour Guards used to protect Jaghatai Khan, with the other being the Ebon Keshigs. An oddity in the fact that the Golden Keshig ride in Jetbikes, these were the fastest Honour Guards out of any legion during the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy.

Overview

Unlike the standard Keshig, the Golden Keshig were clad in Artificer Armour instead of Terminator Armour. The Golden Keshig were the most prestigious of the White Scars heavy assault Jetbike squadrons and each of its Legionaries were superlative skilled riders. In battle they would encircle their foes at apparently random speeds and directions aboard the Shamshir Pattern Jetbikes before gathering into a single Power Lance piercing attack, known as a Zao, that struck through the center of an enemy formation. Such an attack would cause numerous casualties in the Golden Keshig's wake. This led them to be refereed to as "Storm Ghouls" or "Sky-Beast Tamers".

Besides their power lances, Golden Keshig wielded Chainswords as a secondary weapon and Scatterbolt Launchers on their Jetbikes.

Crunch

On the Horus Heresy tabletop, they are a pack of Shamshir Jetbikes with Chainswords and Kontos Power Lances, monstrous Two-handed S10 AP1 weapons with Brutal (3), Lance and Sudden Strike (4) that can only be used on the charge. While you don't get the extra attack from Charging or using two melee weapons, you do get an extremely dangerous Charge at Initiative 8 thanks to Sudden Strike (4). After that Charge is when the Chainswords come into play. Unfortunately, as the Apothecary/Techmarine rules specify their ability to join units of Scimitar Jetbikes, they cannot join Golden Keshig.

Speed, power, maneuverability; the only thing these guys lack is durability. Fortunately, they will typically kill anything they encounter in one go, and are fast enough to stay out of dodge for the most part. Plus with Hit and Run, if you either miscalculated or angered the dice gods, they can retreat and charge again, which gives them back all the bonuses on their Lances. However, with only T4, there's a good chance many of them will be dead if you did in fact blaspheme the dice gods.