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So a while ago I posted a review of the Imperial Guard formation The Emperors Shield Company (which can be found here: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/678146.page )

In the review I included a few test games I played and overall the formation did pretty well. However, many dakkadakka members pointed out that I had not faced "tournement" lists. Well that has changed now as this weekend I took the ESIC to the 1750 points Warlords GT in the UK!



The list I used was:


For those of you who are unfamilier with the Warlords GT it is 6 games across 2 days which runs every 6 months. It draws players from all over Europe and the quality of play is extreamly high and the lists are generally powerful. The missions are always a combination of Eternal War and Maelstrom, with Kill Point difference as the tertiary. There were 40 players who attened the event this time.



Game 1: Flesh is strong, Metal is weak!
Mission: Big Guns and Tactical Escalation. Deployment was Hammer and Anvil

My first game was against a Ad Mech War Con. His list was roughly:
3x Crawlers with skyfire array
4x Dragoons with lance
10x stalkers/infiltraitors
6x grav tractors
Imperial Knight with Battlecannon.

So I was nervous going into this game. In my review of the ESIC dakkanoughts had been keen to point out that I would struggle vs an Imperial Knight, and here one was in my first game!

My opponent deployed his Knight on the right, infantry in the centre and all his walkers on the left. I counter deployed the las/melta blob against the Knight, Missile blob in the middle and Autocannon blob against the walkers. My conscripts formed a human chain across across my whole deployment zone with command squads and 2 sentinels across the back of my deployment zone (1 sentinel goes into outflanking).

Confident he is going first, the admech scout forward everything that can ... I then seize and my opponent groans!

My whole line moves forward, the concripts accept FRFSRF and remove a unit of infiltraitors thanks to nearly all of them being in range and many in rapid fire and I do 3 hull points to the knight with 5 rockets and 7 lascannons with bring it down (it dies turn 2). I also destroy nearly all the dragoons. Admech move forward and destroy all the conscripts by shooting and then charging what bits were left.
Over the next 4 turns I destroy everything but his crawlers and warlord which get locked in combat with autocannon blob and therefor I couldnt shoot them. I happily sit on 3 objectives and contest 1.

Summary:
Boy oh boy am I glad that Bring it Down Exists. Without it I would never have killed that Knight. Nearly everytime I did some damage I would roll a 1 to pen and then reroll and get a 4+.



Game 2: Wolfstar Rampage
Crusade and Cleanse and Control.
Deplyment was Vanguard.
Opponents list was a classic Wolfstar.

I have faced wolfstar before on many occasions and have about a 50% win rate against it with my IG infantry. I was confident that I could tarpit it and sit on the objectives.
Deployment was simple he put everything in his corner and I set out my conscript wall and 3 blobs of 40 behind it. I left 10 men out of each blob so I could use them and the PCSs to sit on objectives.

I won the roll to go first and the wolfs did not steal.
I move everthing forward as I know that I am only going to get 1 round of shooting off before he casts invis. I then use the order Fire and Advance to make all the Heavy Weapons not snap shoot and I fire everything I can into the wolfstar. I kill about half the dogs but do no wounds to the main characters.

His turn 1 he moves very fast towards me and gets up invis and reroll saves on his deathstar, but is just out of charge range so it back to my turn.
Knowing he is going to hit the frontline next turn I decided to stand firm and hold my ground. My whole army unloads into his wolfs and I put FRFSRF onto everyone thanks to punishing fusilade. 400+ lasgun shots, 10 Autoncannons shots, 5 Rockets , 7 Lascannons and about 8 Krak grenade launchers do zero wounds. Oh dear.

Crunch Time - wolfs smash into conscripts and kill them to a man. My turn comes round very quickly again.
Now is the time for boldness, a time for heroes to be made! The order rings out up and down the line "FIX BAYONETS! GLORY FOR THE FIRST MAN TO DIE , CHARGE!" 120 Guardsmen charge headlong into the howling dark.
I was planning to pin them wolf star in place for the rest of the game... things did not go to plan. In 3 rounds of combat all my men die without killing a single thing. In his turn 4 splits off nearly all the characters and goes unit hunting. In turns 4 and 5 he tables me.

Summary: Ouch!



Game 3: Big Guys Vs Little Guys.
Emperors Will and Contact Lost.
Deployment was Dawn of War.
Enemy list was: Riptide wing with 5 riptides, Wraithknight and 2 squads of scatterbikes (also some other bits that didn't matter).

Tau. eugh. Riptides. eugh. Well I have faced a list like this numerous time and it always ends badly for the poor bloody infantry and this battle was the same. It was a rather boring battle overall so I will not go into too much detail but needless to say I lost.

Highlights were:
Lasgunning to death a riptide to death using 300+ shots.
Bonking a riptide on the head with a Commissars power axe and it deciding to have a permenant nap.
A junior officer getting a farseer down to 1 wound in a challange and surviving to the end.

Summary: Well at least I wasn't tabled. This was the only game where not having obsec really hurt me. The Riptides just boasted over shot the crap out of my guys and then contested my objective the whole game.



HALF WAY REFLECTION:

Well after day 1 I was feeling a little down.
I had got off to a good start but it had quickly gone downhill. I was getting the felling that dakka had been right all along and this Formation was not competative.
However, I had seen a few things that impressed me, such as the massive amounts of orders I could through around and the crazy amountof lasgun shots I could sling out a turn. Also my standard deployment tactic of having 3 lines seemed to be working well.



Game 4: The time of the Eldar is over. Now is the age of Man.
Relic and Spoils of War.
Deployment was Dawn of War.
My Opponents list was:
Seer Council-star with 3 squads of Harlequins in skimmers and 1 shooty skimmer.

Another Invisible deathstar another day. However, this was one I had not faced before. Going in I had the same plan as vs the wolfs from game 2, but this time it would be slightly easier for 3 reasons:
1) only T4 on eldar jetbikes, lasguns wound on 5s
2) only a 2+ jink, So i can use orders to ignore that save and drop him down to either a 3+ or 4+ rerollable save.
3) 7 chaff units that I can kill for kill points.

The Eldar deployed first and setup his seerstar on the left and his skimmers in the centre. I deployed the conscripts and las/melta blob againt the deathstar, Autocannon blob in the centre and Missiles on the right (where he had no models). Only had the conscripts in front of the lascannon blob and Autocannon blob. 2 Sentinels and command squads at the back. 1 sentinel at the very front on the right flank.

Once again I roll to Seize and once again I get it! Once again my opponent groans.

My Turn 1 everything advances forwards (the sent on the far right moves forward and runs the whole game to get linebreaker). I get excited start shooting the deathstar with conscripts, lascannons and autocannons. I manage to kill 4 of the bikes and am about to launch my rockets and other remaining firepower into the star but stop myself. I want to get first blood and also dismount his infantry in the skimmers. I use 2 sents to kill 1 skimmer, the rockets and grenade launchers to pop another and a single lascannon round from my Warlord CCS to explode the last transport (I had the Cadia extra BS warlord trait so I hit on 2s with the lascannon!) I used ignore cover on everthing this turn to ignore his 2+ jink save.
The Eldar jump up and get zooming, trying to make up for being caught with their trousers down. Seerstar moves forward and ends up 6"away from the conscripts. The 3x 5 man harlequin squads all move forward and are about 8-9" away. in the Magic phase the star goes invis and reroll saves and prescience. Shooting is nothing so straight onto charging. Even with fleet my opponent is unable to get any of his infantry into the conscripts and loses a couple of models to overwatch. the bikes roll and get ....

Ok so I have 1 more turn to shoot the deathstar! I start picking up dice but stop and take a step back. It is unlikely that I will be able to kill more than 1 model from the deathstar now it has its buffs up, and those harlequins could get annoying tieing up my shooting blobs. I decided instead focus on removing the chaff first and dealing with the deathstar after. Lascannon blob kills that last skimmer with Fire on my Target. Conscripts, Autocannon blob and Missile blob all accept FRFSRF individually so I can put 1 unit into each infantry squad and I wipe them all out.
Crunch time - eldar smash into the conscripts and murder all of them (there was only about 25 left thanks to all his shooting and powers). They consolidate towards the relic.

I advance everything (get the relic with autocannon blob and shoot everything at the deathstar and kill 2 more bikes, still has about 10 left. Eldar charge the relic holding blob and kill me off the relic and themselves out of combat, I only have about 10 guys left in autocannon blob.
The last 3 turns consist of him picking up the relic and moving 6", turboboosting 6" away with the relic and me chasing after him with about 100 guardsmen shooting him but only killing 1 bike a turn.
However, the end result is a win for me as the only points my opponet had was for the relic (worth 6 points in this game) and I had 16+ points in maelstrom, line breaker, first blood and a 4 kill point advantage.

Summary: Phew, that game actually went to plan! My opponent may have had bad luck at the start of the game but he more than made up for it with his combat rolls and save rolls. I knew if he got the relic i would not be able to get it back so I concentrating on the bigger picture and it paid off.



Game 5: Waaagh!
Scouring and Deadlock
Deployment was Vanguard
My opponents army was:
2x 10 ork shoota boys, 4x kans, truck with mega nobs, nob bikers with warboss on bike and a STOMPA with 3 meks inside.

Ok so this may not be the most competative list but that STOMPA is gonna cause me some serious problems, it has 12 hull points and could possible grow back 3 a turn.
I win the roll off and deploy first and do the standard deployment, conscripts out front and then rocket blob, las/melta blob and Autocannon blob behind from left to right.
STOMPA and kans deploys against my rocket blobs, truck and boys in the middle and warboss bike mob on the right.

My turn 1 I advance and spread out (that STOMPA has lots of blasts and a really big blast), take 6 hull points of the stompa and kill the truck and strip down the bikes to just the warboss. His first turn he guns everything forward. His stompa fires everything into the lascannon blob and kills about 25 guys including a lascannon, it also grows back a hull point. 1 shoota boy mob charges the Conscripts and the stompa does as well. Warboss charges autocannon blob and take a wound to overwatch. STOMPA kills itself out of combat, conscripts and boys pile into each other and the grind begins (that combat goes on to the last turn with the conscripts winning with 5 men left). Warboss kills 5 guys and takes no damage in return.

Turn 2 I only chip 2 hull points off the STOMPA and only manage to kill half off the 2nd shoota mobs. I take a wound off the warboss and lose 4 more guys.

Turn 3 the STOMPA spreads it fire and kills 10 more from the lascannon blob (just melta guns and the commissar left) and 10 from the missile blob. It then charges the missile blob and the 2nd grind of the game begins (the STOMPA spends the rest of the game killing 2 guys a turn with its attacks and only getting 1 stomp a turn killing another 3 a turn on average). The Warboss finally falls to a mass of bayonet attacks.

The rest of the game devoles into the kans sitting on one objective and the mega nobs sitting on another (both only worth 1 point) and I sit on the other 4, with the 2 combats grinding on to the end of the game. In the end its another convincing win for the Guard.

Summary: I thought that STOMPA was going to cause me a lot of trouble and it did! Once again Bring it Down was working over time, and if that had been an imperial Knight I would have killed it.



Game 6 (Final Game): The Revenge of the Tin Men!
Crusade and Contact Lost
Deployment is Hammer and Anvil.
Enemy Army is another Ad Mech War Con:
1 dragoon, 1 crawler, 1 Knight with Battlecannon and Gatling Gun, 10 Infiltrators/ Stalkers, 20 Rangers/Vanguard, 6x Grav Tractors, bunker with a Culexus in it..

The final game! If you have made it this far then I salute you. At this points I was on my last legs and my brain was very tired but I carried on not wanting to incur the wrath of my Commissars!

I won the roll off to deploy first and put lascannon blob on the right in a big tall ruin so I could see over the whole board with the lascannons, Missiles in the centre and Autocannons on the left, conscripts out front and everything else at the back. a.k.a. my now standard deployment.
The Knight went against the lascannon blob, tractors and infiltrators in the centre and infantry and walkers on the left.

Turn 1, as always I begin the general advance across the line and then I thrown down bring it down onto lascannon blob, missile blob and both command squads against the Knight. The Knight makes it 4+ saves like a fiend and I only sneak a single glance past its sheild from 3 pens and a glance. I Also use bring it down on the crawler with the autocannon and glance it to death and I Multi laser down the dragoon.
Turn 1 for the Tin Men sees everything rush forward. His shooting from the Knight badly mauls the lascannon blob and everything else shoots the conscripts killing about half. Nothing in range to charge so back to Guard.

I keep up the advance across the board, putting pressure on him on all fronts. I use bring it down on the same units again vs the Knight but again his saves are amazing and I only get 1 more glance through the shield!
I use FRFSRF on my other units and do scattered damage to all his units killing 1 tractor from each squad and 1 stalker/infiltraitor from each squad, as well as a few vanguard and rangers (I did this as I needed to score Overwhelming firepower next turn).
The Tin Men respond. Knight mauls the Las/melta blob down to just the cannons and the melta guns and then charges the conscrtips, infiltraitors/stalkers both charge the conscripts. in short all my conscripts die (no surprise). He also did a few casaulties here and there to my other 2 blobs.

My turn 3 comes around and I win the game. I get the meltas round onto the side armour of the knight but conga line out so the Lascannons are still on the front. I use bring it down on the them and everthing hits, the shield stops the lascannons dead (again) but the melta all pen or glance and Knight goes down. I shoot Autocannon blob into 1 tractor mob and kill it, Missile blob into the other and Kill them two. The sentinels are gang up on the infiltrators and thanks to instant death they all die. All my command squads (junior and senior) gang up on the stalkers and wipe them outwith 36 lasgun shots, 2 snipers and 2 lascannons.
At this point my opponent only has his infantry left, we play on but its a forgone conclusion and I carry the day.

Summary: It was basically a repeat of game 1, but still lots of fun.



OVERALL SUMMARY

Wow! What a blast. 4 wins at a tournement is the best I have ever done and it was using a formation that I was told would be bad in a tournement setting. Now I am sure there will still be some nay sayers but overall I hope that I have proven that this Formation is very viable in a competative environment.

The formation takes footguard from being an uncoordinated mess with a trickle of firepower, to a well drilled machine that can put out a hail of small arms fire that even Orks would be impressed with! With so many orders mobility issues are reduced as an officer can simple order a unit to Move! Move!Move! and almost guarantee a good run move. Lasguns go from being a joke to a genuine threat and I can honestly say that were the work horse weapon in all the games, consistently chipping off the last wound from a tough squad or just hosing down an enemy. The star of the show is Bring It Down. I was told that I would struggle with Knights, and honestly they were not a problem at all!

I was worried about no Obsec but it actually turned out to not be an issue at all. Due to it being a tournment nearly everyone had a formation and this meant that I could still contest objectives with no issue, and because of my foot print on the board in nearly every game I was able to push through any gaps in my opponents lines and sit on objectives. In all the games I won I was sat on 4+ objectives at the end, even against the Tau I still had 2.

Between these games and the ones I carried out in the initial review, I can definetly recommend this formation as a viable army for both fun and competative play.

Thank you everyone who reads this and I look forward to seeing some comments!

This was a treat read up and down. Grats on your wins and a tip of the cap for trying a non-net list!

Fantastic write up, sounds like it was a lot of fun.

Did you find having so many models an issue time wise?

buddha wrote:This was a treat read up and down. Grats on your wins and a tip of the cap for trying a non-net list!

Thank you for reading, I am glad you enjoyed it .

flukezor wrote:Fantastic write up, sounds like it was a lot of fun.

Did you find having so many models an issue time wise?

Thank you, it was really fun. After every game my opponnets always said they had a good time as well, everyone is happy when Guard are dying in droves!

Time wise I had no issues and no one complained. I got to turn 5 every game (which is the minimum for this event). I was able to keep my deployment down to about 5-6 minutes, I have had a lot of practice using pure infantry guard so I am pretty quick at setting up!

Love me some foot-guard. Great job in the tournament!

I think one of the differences in the US tournament scene is that unlike the ETC format, kill points are not part of every game. This makes battle company a more viable so you end up seeing it more often. Against battle company this list is not nearly as viable. The limited amount of AP-2 shooting will make it hard to bring down the rhinos efficiently, while the MSU nature of the marine squads will also make it hard to wipe them all out with lasguns. Plus the whole objective secured thing.

What do you think of taking the list as part of a CAD instead? With 4 orders from the company command squads and 3 orders from the platoon squads you can still efficiently buff the blobs and conscripts. You also can take some quad mortars instead of the sentinels. Do you think that losing the formation benefits would be worse than gaining objective secured?

bogalubov wrote:
Love me some foot-guard. Great job in the tournament!

I think one of the differences in the US tournament scene is that unlike the ETC format, kill points are not part of every game. This makes battle company a more viable so you end up seeing it more often. Against battle company this list is not nearly as viable. The limited amount of AP-2 shooting will make it hard to bring down the rhinos efficiently, while the MSU nature of the marine squads will also make it hard to wipe them all out with lasguns. Plus the whole objective secured thing.

What do you think of taking the list as part of a CAD instead? With 4 orders from the company command squads and 3 orders from the platoon squads you can still efficiently buff the blobs and conscripts. You also can take some quad mortars instead of the sentinels. Do you think that losing the formation benefits would be worse than gaining objective secured?

Thanks for reading

I would say the benefits of the formation far out weigh the Obsec of the CAD. For example,the fact that you can guarantee 3 blobs and both CCS have Bring it Down every turn (thanks to the fact that you issue orders on 3d6 pick the lowest) is amazing. I did not fail to issue a single order all tournament thanks to the formation and I did not have a single vox. I just cant express over the keyboard how much of a force multiplyer it is. The sentinels are actually the unsung hero of this formation and I do not consider them a tax unit anymore. By giving everyone move through cover I avoided the traffic jam that usually happens with horder armies.

Against mech armies like the Battle Company (with Kill ponts not being ann issue) I can still see this army doing ok. I would deply the in 3 blobs of 30 and have 6 small 10 man squads. I would then use bring it down on the blobs and the 2x CCS and destroy 3-4 transports. I would than use FRFSRF, both indivdually and as part of Punishing Fusilade to give extra shots to the 6 small 10 man squads, the conscripts and the 3x PCS to maul the dismounted space marines. Repeat this cycle for turns 2 and 3 (maybe 4) and I cant see there being much left.

I would love to give this formation a try but unfortunately I only own about 45 guardsmen so far. Maybe one for the future (if I ever get my current infantry painted that is )

Awesome batrep excited to see more