Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I was looking at the Flames of War rules when I hit upon an idea for (partially) solving the Kill Points problem that Imperial Guard have and also brings a little flexibility and firepower to the Imperial Guard.

Combat Attachments - Skills & Drills Doctrine

Heavy Weapon teams, Platoon command squads and Special weapon squads may be attached to Imperial guard infantry squads (max one attachment per squad).
The combined squads become a single unit for the duration of the game and submit a single Kill point when destroyed.
Any Independant characters that are part of a command squad become full independant characters - able to leave the squad or join other squads.
If one Heavy weapon team is attached to an Infantry Squad all teams from that squad must be allocated to an infantry squad.

e.g.

Infantry squad (inc Sgt, Lascannon team & Plasma trooper) + Lascannon team = 12 men (2 lascannon teams, Plasma trooper & Sgt)

Infantry squad (inc Sgt, Lascannon team & Plasma trooper) + Special weapons (flamer) squad = 16 men (1 lascannon team, Plasmagun trooper, 3 Flamer troopers & Sgt)

Infantry squad (inc Sgt, Lascannon team & Plasma trooper) + Platoon command squad (Medic, Plasmagun trooper, Meltagun Trooper) = 14 men (1 lascannon team, 2 Plasmagun troopers, Medic, Meltagun trooper & Sgt)

Any thoughts?

I've had a few days to think about this and I still can't find any obvious holes in this. I like the way it makes Dawn of War style big Imperial Guard squads with multiple special weapons.

Wha-wha-what?! I don't even know where this starts to fit into the Imperial Guard. Big, wierd, squads built up with no real rhyme or reason, just cobbled together to make "uber" squads? And the kill point issue still isn't solved, at all. Put back a quarter step, maybe, but still blatantly there.

This only seems to pump more heavy weapons and special weapons into squads in an awkward manner. Granted, I think more of these "Special Weapons" squads should be more easily accessible without eating up valuable Heavy Weapons Squads, but this is just wierd....

The obvious holes;
Making a squad a couple soldiers bigger does not solve the fundamental flaw in kill points - weak guardsmen.

All these special weapons, three per squad, really tilts things towards "strangely broken" status.

Generally awkward to deal with. Imagine building things like this for an entire army of 1550 or 1850 points? The shear level of confusion would be urksome, explaining it to your opponent would be awkward, and generally, you would only be limiting yourself by tying down your weapons to another squad.

Make the squads bigger? Aren't they already diffulct enough to handle?! Getting ten men into proper layout to take advantage of cover and such is hard enough, now you will have to squeeze a minimum of 8 troops fully behind cover to even begin arguing for those covetted 4+ saves...

Skinnattittar wrote:Wha-wha-what?! I don't even know where this starts to fit into the Imperial Guard. Big, wierd, squads built up with no real rhyme or reason, just cobbled together to make "uber" squads? And the kill point issue still isn't solved, at all. Put back a quarter step, maybe, but still blatantly there.

So removing the small Imperial Guard squads (command, heavy & special weapon) from the kill point equation while at the same time increasing the survivability and firepower of Infantry squads doesn't help the kill point issue? Ok. The fluff would remain the same, these ad hoc squad formations would only operate as a single entity in the rules.

Skinnattittar wrote:The obvious holes;
Making a squad a couple soldiers bigger does not solve the fundamental flaw in kill points - weak guardsmen.
All these special weapons, three per squad, really tilts things towards "strangely broken" status...
...Make the squads bigger? Aren't they already diffulct enough to handle?! Getting ten men into proper layout to take advantage of cover and such is hard enough, now you will have to squeeze a minimum of 8 troops fully behind cover to even begin arguing for those covetted 4+ saves...

A 16 man (Infantry + Special weapon) squad would have four special weapons at it's disposal, one more than Hardened Veterans but with a lower BS and with more expensive weapons, but if they're as broken as you suggest you can always shoot them as it will be difficult to squeeze a minimum of 8 troops fully behind cover to even begin arguing for those coveted 4+ saves.

Weak guardsmen will never go away and no kill point fix will fully address that although I have increaed the firepower available to Infantry squads.

Skinnattittar wrote:Generally awkward to deal with. Imagine building things like this for an entire army of 1550 or 1850 points? The shear level of confusion would be urksome, explaining it to your opponent would be awkward, and generally, you would only be limiting yourself by tying down your weapons to another squad.

There would be no changes to army building; squads and heavy weapon teams would be attached during deployment. Sorry I didn't make that clear in my first post. I'm sure it would be easy to explain to an opponent. By allocating heavy weapon squads at the team level I believe I have mitigated the issue of tying up heavy weapons.

Over on the New IG units thread I threw out the idea of a Platoon as a KP idea. You have to wipe the entire platoon to get the KPs.

To solve Kill Points.

The sides have D6+4 Killpoints to assign amongst their armies (single roll, so both sides have the same to reap).

First three have to be on your compulsories, then you can choose where else they go.

Essentially, you are swapping terrain objectives for critical squads. Voila, all is done.

George Spiggott wrote:
There would be no changes to army building; squads and heavy weapon teams would be attached during deployment. Sorry I didn't make that clear in my first post. I'm sure it would be easy to explain to an opponent.

You are? Well, I for one disagree empathically. Especially when two of these squad-blobs were to brush against each other, making sure each one remains the same as it was before would be a fiddly process.

Agamemnon2 wrote:You are? Well, I for one disagree empathically. Especially when two of these squad-blobs were to brush against each other, making sure each one remains the same as it was before would be a fiddly process.

What? Having an additional heavy weapon team or a few extra squad members in each squad would really confuse you that much?

Sure, when they're right next to the squad that has no such attachment, or a bunch or regular weapons teams, or another squad with some gak bolted to it. At least with the real rules, I can always do a headcount and subtract casualties.

I don't see why. No more than ordinary Imperial Guard squads. If you painted simple markings on their bases you could easily tell the difference. In actual games swapping attachments between different squad configurations would be uncommon once mutually beneficial pairings had been discovered.

So, kind of the opposite of Combat Squads?

I'm happier if all Platoon squads are worth a half KP each. Easier to track and easier to resolve.

The only 2 solutions I can think of that would not be overly complicated or overpowered:

1. 1/2 KP per Guard Infantry Squad.

2. All the KP of the Platoon are all put into the Officer of that Platoon (read: A JO of an infantry platoon with 5 squads would be worth 7 KP). Still the unfortunate number of KP, but now you can loose infantry squads w/out loosing KP, just protect your Officers...

JohnHwangDD wrote:So, kind of the opposite of Combat Squads?

Yes, pretty much. Keeps the number of models and specialist weapons the same but reduces the number of available kill points in exchange for a reduction in flexibiity.

George Spiggott wrote:I've had a few days to think about this and I still can't find any obvious holes in this. I like the way it makes Dawn of War style big Imperial Guard squads with multiple special weapons.

Problem with what you propose is:

It is overly complicated and breaks down the command stucture.(No kp for the command squad????)

It increases controversy and rules exploitation. (The chance for someone to abuse this rule is to great and the rules lawyers would make it seem like we were back in 4th edition.)

It overcompensates,thus, is unbalanced.(Some of the pairings would be a lot more than just "beneficial")


With these flaws it is easy to see GW doing something exactly like this.

focusedfire wrote:It is overly complicated and breaks down the command stucture.(No kp for the command squad????)

It increases controversy and rules exploitation. (The chance for someone to abuse this rule is to great and the rules lawyers would make it seem like we were back in 4th edition.)

It overcompensates,thus, is unbalanced.(Some of the pairings would be a lot more than just "beneficial")

Platoon command squads high KP is one of the current failings of KP's. Complicated is somewhat subjective so there's not much I can say here.

This is an optional house rule, I don't see how rules explotation comes into it although you do mention that you think some combinations are too powerful Which ones did you have in mind? Which weapon combinations would be too cheap for their cost?

Double lascannons to start(making a troop into a broadside team for less points) then double mortars& missles(Way to many blast temps).

The exploitation comes in that in this time of declining moral fiber we have an increasing number of players trying to fudge the rules(What,.. no, that squad was attached to the other squad. Not the one you just hit with the ordinance).
It's stuff like this already happening that was part of what lead me to propose a mandatory 6" platoon squad separation in another thread.

Twin lascannons will cost 150 points for a vanilla squad with two lascannons and has no more firepower than the constituent squads from which it was formed (an Infantry squad and a platoon command squad) but is less flexible as it can no longer ‘split fire’ or contest objectives seperately. It does have an extra four men in it though so it'll need to test for morale a little less and only surrenders 2KP instead of 3KP when it and the Junior Officer are killed.

Two Mortars in a squad actually makes Mortars worth fielding in Infantry squads although you have to make quite a large investment in mortars (three Infantry squads with Mortars and a Mortar squad) to make the most of this.

focusedfire wrote:The exploitation comes in that in this time of declining moral fiber we have an increasing number of players trying to fudge the rules...

I can't be expected to legislate for A$$holes.

150 points for 2 S9 AP2 shots 14 wounds as a troop. You consider this equal to 150 point for 2 twin link rail guns that have 4 wounds and count as a heavy? And the potential of how many of those squads? 6 squads, 12 sqauds?

As to mortars. Know an IG player that wipes my squads out as soon as they disembark with those things that arent worth fielding.

focusedfire wrote:150 points for 2 S9 AP2 shots 14 wounds as a troop. You consider this equal to 150 point for 2 twin link rail guns that have 4 wounds and count as a heavy? And the potential of how many of those squads? 6 squads, 12 sqauds?

As to mortars. Know an IG player that wipes my squads out as soon as they disembark with those things that arent worth fielding.

150 points is what Imperial guard already pay for the same weapons. You could have six of these squads for the bargain cost of 1260 points with no additional upgrades, you do end up with twelve infantry squads and six independant characters though.

Any chance you could get that Mortar player to post a list I'd love to field a tournament winning Imperial Guard army filled with mortars.

how bout this: 10-man infantry squads aren't worth KP. There's a little room for abuse here, but it makes complete sense to the IG mentality. This leads you to throwing your guardsmen under the bus to protect your heavy weapon emplacements, captains, tanks, and so on. 'Screw the foot soldiers, we need to hold that line!'

I agree with BoxAnt, and believe that the proposed combi-squad thing would be a mess from a rules and Fluff POV. Guard doesn't mob up. And the rule is overly complicated.

Either:
- Command, HWS, SWS, Veterans = 1 KP;
- line squads = 0KP

Or:
- all Platoon squads = 1/2 KP.

Simple and easy to evaluate.

1/2 KP's and 0KP units are a slippery slope though, why aren't Grots 1/2KP's?

I thought that only the command squads should count for KP from infantry platoons.

yeh 1/2 KPs and no KPs are a slippery slope, but with the rumoured guard codex in a few months time we may aswell wait until then and see what Workshop do and then decide if they still need fixing, tbh i'm not bothered if it gets fixed soon and i just have to grit my teeth for a while a fielding an army with 20KPs and 1500pts

George Spiggott wrote:1/2 KP's and 0KP units are a slippery slope though

1/2 KP / NO KP is a way to encourage proper Guard Platoons.

, why aren't Grots 1/2KP's?

Grots are a full KP to discourage Orks from fielding them in lieu of proper Boyz.

JohnHwangDD wrote:1/2 KP / NO KP is a way to encourage proper Guard Platoons.

What's a 'proper' Guard Platoon? It sounds like you're indulging in fluff fascism to me. Remember it's the high KP small squads that are the problem.

Grots are a full KP to discourage Orks from fielding them in lieu of proper Boyz.

It's no worse of an idea than having some armies take units that split FOC choices or not consume FOC slots.

99MDeery wrote:…but with the rumoured guard codex in a few months time we may aswell wait until then and see what Workshop do and then decide if they still need fixing…

That's true and GW may well fix the Imperial Guard's KP issues. This doesn't mean that we should stop thinking about game mechanics in the mean time. I’m happy to experiment with ideas until April.

@JohnHwang: That's a tangent I'm not particularly interested in pursuing here.