So, as all the foot players on here know, the biggest hurdle of playing a foot horde IG in 6th has been one key problem.
Taking the fight to the friggin enemy.
We can shoot the hell out of them, we can outlast them, we can provide so many scoring units its not even funny, but the problem remains. How do we cross the field and finish the fight?
And hence the thread. I figured we could discuss ways of making a more aggressive IG foot/hybrid army, and try and brainstorm a way out of this dilemma.
I have been fixing the problem by overwhelming numbers and firepower. Basically, I shoot my opponent so much my infantry don't have much to worry about when they move up. I also use stormtroopers and marbo to disrupt firebases and deathstars, which splits the enemy's fire even more and buys my guardsmen time to move into position. Every player I've fought against, has said the exact same thing "There's just to fething many of them to kill." Not everyone likes to play the human wave MSU infantry tactic though, so this isn't for the faint of heart. It also requires a ton of extra work to make it work, and I would like a slightly more simplified approach to breaking the enemy lines, if that makes sense.
I've seen other ideas mentioned, from the merely unusual (Ailaros's 30 stormtrooper lists for example) to some really oddball ones, like one guy who was thinking of making an uberblob with Yarrick and running it up behind a bunch of demolishers, possibly with some ogryn support.
So, how do you plan on getting across the table and grabbing those home objectives? No idea is too crazy or out there at this point. This is a thinktank so we can figure out some ideas on how to break out from our own half of the board. Try to be civil guys, our lists are all still very different at this point, so there's going to be clashes of opinion. Just keep in mind what works for one guy may not work for you.
MrMoustaffa wrote: like one guy who was thinking of making an uberblob with Yarrick and running it up behind a bunch of demolishers, possibly with some ogryn support.
Umm.... is that me? XD
Anyways, great thread. I was going to make something like this so we could discuss tactics and share strategies (FOR THE EMPRAH) but seems like you were a step ahead of me. I cannot get any games in (haven't been able to for the last month or so) but looking at my schedule, seems like I'll be able to grab some games soon enough. I'll post battle reports and share my blob-o-doom with Yarrick behind line of Demolishers tactic.
Crazy idea number one: Al'rahem with conscripts. Dump so many bodies on a flank that they will slaughter everything, or drown them in bodies. I doubt it would work but you did say brainstorm, and I have never heard of someone outflanking conscripts before.
I agree with the screening Idea. It's how I'd cross a battlefield with the IG... basically Blitzkrieg on a TT. Tanks first Infantry second, all supported by flanking, air support, artillery, or what have you.
Al rahem, 4 flamers in a chimera.
5x PIS with melta or plasma or krak.
2x Stormtroopers with 3x plasma/pistol in chimeras.
Supported by hellhounds, LR exterminators, and a small gunline platoon.
PCS, PIS, or smaller SWS advancing behind a russ or hellhound wedge squadron. With the changes to shooting, you can keep guys out of LoS and alive as they advance.
Simple flat-out chimeras. They can go 18 inches a turn now, so cramming a couple right down the throat could get a few squads in their face quickly. Bring enough higher threat targets to keep the heat off them.
Are you factoring in use of any vehicles. I think a vendetta or two are pretty includeable in any footlist and providing them with a fairly cheap effective scoring unit could be good (IS, Special weapons squad or PCS). I think combining any more than 1-of the mobility characters is a bad idea (Creed, Harker, Al-rahem) but using one may be a good idea.
I also think combining any of the above with Penal Legionnaires could be a good plan. Well, could be if you include anything but Al-rahem). But Penals are paper, so you'd need to treat them as such, use long range fire support to clear out backfield objectives.
I'm not a huge fan of using allies to augment Guard units, typically I prefer for them to fill a role that my army normally wouldn't have access to.
However, this would be a very funny (and annoying) unit:
1x Rune Priest with Terminator Armor (or Runic Armor, your choice)
50x Conscripts
For a total cost of 320 points, you have 51 guys. Put the Rune Priest in the front, so any shots will be resolved against his 2+ armor save. If for some reason he fails it, you LOS to a Conscript. Either way, the squad is LD 10 and has ATSKNF and Counter Attack just in case.
Then use the Rune Priest to get the Prescience Divination power, and just deal with the other one, unless of course you roll 2 better powers. Even with BS2, they'll be rerolling hits so that's effectively BS3. With Forewarning, you have the ability to give your entire squad a 4+ invulnerable save!
Making the Rune Priest Psychic Mastery 2 isn't a terrible idea.
Vladsimpaler wrote: For a total cost of 320 points, you have 51 guys. Put the Rune Priest in the front, so any shots will be resolved against his 2+ armor save. If for some reason he fails it, you LOS to a Conscript.
You do LOS! before saves in a mixed armour unit. Also, it would be pretty hard to hide 50 men behind the priest, units that are not shooting from directly in front would probably hit conscripts.
The issue with running your guys behind the tanks is that most other armies want the tanks to get close to them. If they are forced to shoot lascannons or missile launchers at av 14 from afar they are wasting shots. If you bring the tank into melta range they are quite happy.
The obvious answer is flyers. Blow people off the board and then send in the valkyries to drop guys off on objectives. I got my butt handed to me this way this weekend. The guy was running 2 vendettas and a valkyrie with vets inside and 2 20 man blobs as part of a doubles tournament. So that definitely works as "combined" strategy.
If you mean to not include flyers as part of a combined strategy (as I am attempting) it gets a lot harder.
As a newer foot IG player, I appreciate the work that's being put into cracking the foot puzzle.
I'm going to be trying out two squads of 10 Stormtroopers in my next game, along with a powerblob and commie.
I think Al'Rahem has lost a lot since 6th hit in the way of impacting a game. They can no longer pop up on a flank, shoot and assault. The best way to run Al'Rahem now seems to be with Chimeras.
Vladsimpaler wrote: For a total cost of 320 points, you have 51 guys. Put the Rune Priest in the front, so any shots will be resolved against his 2+ armor save. If for some reason he fails it, you LOS to a Conscript.
You do LOS! before saves in a mixed armour unit. Also, it would be pretty hard to hide 50 men behind the priest, units that are not shooting from directly in front would probably hit conscripts.
Not a big deal, regardless you'll still have the Rune Priest to absorb some shots. And yeah granted you'll have units hitting the conscripts, but then they're not focusing on other, much more important parts of your army. It's a bullet sink.
i personally like to tie up my enemy with Melta-vets dropping from Vendettas and marbo. while they spend a few turns doing trying to kill them i go a head and run as far as i can up the board with MMM! and the usual 6 inches
I've thought about running some SWS's with x2 melta and a demo charge in some vendettas, but until I stumble across $200 for some valks, that won't be happening. So in the meantime, I'm trying to think of other options.
I really am liking the idea of the "death blob" with Yarrick, maybe a priest or 2, with plasma/fist vets as support, and maybe some cheap infantry squads to run ahead of the Demolishers and keep back melta guns. It'd be a rediculous list, and would be hilarious to watch, and I'll deffinitely try it the moment I can get a hold of some demolishers.
Will it be effective? Probably not, but man will it look cool.
Honestly though, I do believe we're going to have to rely on breaking key targets with shooting and then moving in to mop up afterwards with the infantry. IG was never intended to be a blitzkrieg force that pops up and wrecks face. We're slow to get going, but designed to be impossible to stop once we're up to speed. We need to play to our strengths, and build up momentum. Cracking key firebases and damage dealers, like enemy tanks, artillery, deathstars, and monstrous creatures is key to this. How you go about this isn't important, stormtroopers, russes, artillery, HWS spam, it doesn't matter. What is important is that you crush the enemy. You find him, and you wipe him out. AKA he can run, but he can't hide. Cover the table in guardsmen and move up in a wall of pain, leaving his few survivors to cower behind buildings and hope they can make all their cover saves. They choke up movement lanes, slow down more mobile enemy units trying to get to your line, and pen him in, forcing him to bunch up and become fodder for your templates.
I know this sounds crazy, but I've been using it to great effect so far in 6th. Every game I won was due to this strategy of always moving up and forcing the enemy to react to my plans, not the other way around. Every time I tried to stay back and gunline, it ended in me losing. When we sit back, the enemy has time to pick targets, think out his plans, focus fire. If you move everything up, and throw tons of cheap throwaway units at him, he simply won't be able to kill everything he needs. He's either killing your tanks, your HWS, your deepstrikers, your command elements, or your fliers, but he can never kill everything at once. I've had opponents who were literally so overwhelmed they had to ignore Marbo sitting in the middle of their deployment in a desperate attempt to clear a 4 man infantry squad off an objective. It requires tons of infantry ( my Feasts of blades list had almost 120 infantry models in it) and always suffers heavy casualties, but it's shaken up every player I've gone up against, even the vets at my store, who fight the really scary cheese lists on a daily basis. Tourney armies especially just don't have enough seperate weapons to kill all that they need per turn, since they can only shoot a set number of units. I've watched players have to choose between shooting one of 3 infantry squads next to his squad, a leman russ 20" away, a squad of stormtroopers behind him, a CCS in the open that was begging to be shot, and 2 HWS's with lascannons lining up shots. Played right, it can be depressing to fight against. Played wrong though... well... let's just say it ain't pretty...
Right, so the problem I've found isn't necessarily mobility, the problem is survivability. 6th edition basically ensured that guardsmen will melt like snow to a blowtorch unless they're actually, physically in a ruins, or piece of area terrain. Mobility doesn't actually seem to be THAT tough. As mentioned, I've been running my 30 stormies, and that puts a hell of a lot of stuff somewhere else, and I guess I can see al'rahem for this role as well. If you're slightly desperate, you can always throw guys in a vendetta and parachute him on to stuff.
No, the problem, as I'm slowly starting to understand it, really is durability. You can try to pack some more durable units in, but there are problems. Russes are tough, but if you put them in the front, they're just going to be melta/CC fodder. Ogryn are tough, but it's actually possible for your opponent to sort of just ignore them, and they also have some hard counters that can lose you an entire batch in a single go (like, say, a certain necron vehicle that can throw down a line of S10 hits.
And in any case, this doesn't give your INFANTRY more durability, it's just a screen that you put in front and hope for the best. This, I think, is where the real problem lies.
So one way, as Moustaffa notes, is to reduce the damage by reducing your opponent's killing power. This is a classic guard way, but I kind of waver on it.
Firstly, guard has a tradition of being kings of firepower, but I don't think that idea is actually all that true anymore. In the last 2 years, we've gotten venom and warrior+raider spam which puts out a HUGE number of shots, mostly BS4, mostly Ap5, and often twin-linked (to say nothing of blaster and darklight spam). We've gotten new grey knights which are crazy at shooting now. Newcrons put out absurd firepower now. Guard doesn't even have quite the same monopoly on large blast templates that it had in the past. Since the advent of fliers, other armies have added a lot of shooting as well. Back in the day, guard only had to worry about a muzzle-to-muzzle gunfight against Tau. That's really not true now.
But then we need to talk about this durability problem. We can still throw out a lot of HWSs, but against smart opponents, they'll all be wiped off the board by the end of turn 2, and you can't shoot guns when you're dead (and you can only scarcely shoot guns when you've gone to ground). Furthermore, artillery, while being a bit more powerful, is also a bit easier to kill. You still have russes, but russes have always had a pretty lousy cost to killing power ratio, so when you're talking about putting down killing power, this causes problems.
Basically, it feels like guard shooting is either high enough in quantity, but too low in durability to really get enough out of it, or durable enough to put down the shots, but it doesn't actually put out more firepower than other armies anymore.
Another way of handling foot guard durability problems, of course, is trying to make the guardsmen themselves more durable. One way, of course, is to do things like take an aegis, but then you're stuck with an aegis.
Another way, perhaps, would be to start taking foot vets with carapace. 100 points vs. 50, but equally durable (per point) as taking twice as many regular guardsmen, at least as far as being out in the open is concerned.
Another option, though suffering from the ogryn problem is to take conscripts. If you're going to have the guys in front do nothing more than die, then you can do it at a lower up-front cost. Of course, this requires you to have a lot of extra models lying around.
Another option would be to just start your guardsmen in reserves. Literally don't make them a target until you've had a chance to soften things up a bit. Of course, this basically kills any initiative or field position you had, and basically sticks you in a reactive role.
You could also rely on the old bodies over bullets way by just frigging packing in the PISs, but this creates a killing power liability (among other problems), and it's rather a risk in a world where long-range anti-horde firepower is higher than its ever been.
In any case, this is a really tricky problem, after all. No small part of it has to do with the fact that you can really only ever employ like one strategy before you start running out of points to implement a second.
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Oh, and the other problem with the "kill them first" approach is time. Guardsmen are REALLY fragile now. You've REALLY got to cut down your opponent's killing power before you can make a reasonable advance on foot. This means it might be until turn 3 or 4 before you've finally rendered the board sufficiently safe for your remaining guardsmen.
What we need is a plausible way for guardsmen to start advancing turn 1 or 2.
Just an idea, but maybe take a Librarian, and droppod (or if you want BADoA) two squads in, nothing draws hate like droppods in the middle of your lines, I suppose another thing you could try is use Daemons as allies and drop some Bloodletters in.
I know this sounds crazy, but I've been using it to great effect so far in 6th. Every game I won was due to this strategy of always moving up and forcing the enemy to react to my plans, not the other way around. Every time I tried to stay back and gunline, it ended in me losing. When we sit back, the enemy has time to pick targets, think out his plans, focus fire. If you move everything up, and throw tons of cheap throwaway units at him, he simply won't be able to kill everything he needs.
I don't think it's crazy at all. As a long time guard player, I learned how to use my army much more effectively when i started playing Tyranids as a second army, because i learned the value of flooding the enemy with threats. My guard army used to be a pretty standard gunline. and always struggled to get out of the d-zone. Playing 'nids forced me to think long and hard about encircling the enemy, boxing them in, pushing them back off objectives so that my fragile gaunts could camp them happily. The losses were horrendous; nearly every game resulted in me nearly being tabled, but winning convincingly on objectives.
Now as a guard player i use a hellhound, a 20 blob of lasgunners, outflanking harker vets in a chimera and melta stormies in a valk to force my enemy's target priority. This also helps with the 'durability' problem Ailaros mentioned. By aggressively using 'pop' units to influence target priority, you can take the heat off your damaged units. My last game was won by the last two guardsmen surviving from my from my 'naked' blob - after firing at them for most of the game, my enemy felt compelled to start targeting the stuff that was actually killing him, and the surviving two guardsmen took the game winning objective.
For this approach to work you really need a combined arms force, and a lot of balls. You also can't neglect the fast attack options, as they are what let you win the game in the movement phase. There is a lot of value in simply being there first.
@Ailaros: the plausible way to advance is with a big-ass foot blob, no guns, a commissar and a vox for move move move! You are gonna lose a heap of guardsmen anyway; make it the ones that you really don't care about. It works surprisingly well. Just make sure to back them up with a variety of other threats so that the enemy cannot destroy them at leisure without seriously risking some of their key units in exchange.
I still stand by the Ogryn wall of meat, I have seen what it can do and the fact that they provide vehicles cover (big fellas) is just wonderful.
Although not pure IG, using Uriah Jacobus with them seems like it could put it closer to Death Star status, and make people really edgy with them around (pack in some of the sweet mass MSU and they will not know what to do).
Jimole wrote:the plausible way to advance is with a big-ass foot blob, no guns, a commissar and a vox for move move move! You are gonna lose a heap of guardsmen anyway; make it the ones that you really don't care about. It works surprisingly well. Just make sure to back them up with a variety of other threats so that the enemy cannot destroy them at leisure without seriously risking some of their key units in exchange.
The problem is still durability. If my opponent kills more inches of guardsmen than I can reliably move forward in a turn, then I'm not actually taking ground. I'm just loosing guardsmen to hold the same ground.
In 5th ed, units got a 4+ by-unit cover save with hidden weapon upgrades. In 6th ed, none of that is true.
I'm having a hard time seeing how a Napoleonic tactic of "hey, I've moved my guys all the way up here, you're screwed" is supposed to actually work in a game where killing power is more important than your ability to temporarily hold ground.
As for "how am I going to kill all these targets?" It's what target prioritization is for. It wont' take long against a skilled opponent to whittle down your first-rate units and eat into your second. It seems like a overwhelming strategy only works when all of the units you're attacking with are credible threats (like DoABA or some GK strategies). In the case of guard, they can take down your flimsy high-firepower units, and then simply munch down the thread ladder at ease.
I know this sounds crazy, but I've been using it to great effect so far in 6th. Every game I won was due to this strategy of always moving up and forcing the enemy to react to my plans, not the other way around. Every time I tried to stay back and gunline, it ended in me losing. When we sit back, the enemy has time to pick targets, think out his plans, focus fire. If you move everything up, and throw tons of cheap throwaway units at him, he simply won't be able to kill everything he needs.
I don't think it's crazy at all. As a long time guard player, I learned how to use my army much more effectively when i started playing Tyranids as a second army, because i learned the value of flooding the enemy with threats. My guard army used to be a pretty standard gunline. and always struggled to get out of the d-zone. Playing 'nids forced me to think long and hard about encircling the enemy, boxing them in, pushing them back off objectives so that my fragile gaunts could camp them happily. The losses were horrendous; nearly every game resulted in me nearly being tabled, but winning convincingly on objectives.
Now as a guard player i use a hellhound, a 20 blob of lasgunners, outflanking harker vets in a chimera and melta stormies in a valk to force my enemy's target priority. This also helps with the 'durability' problem Ailaros mentioned. By aggressively using 'pop' units to influence target priority, you can take the heat off your damaged units. My last game was won by the last two guardsmen surviving from my from my 'naked' blob - after firing at them for most of the game, my enemy felt compelled to start targeting the stuff that was actually killing him, and the surviving two guardsmen took the game winning objective.
For this approach to work you really need a combined arms force, and a lot of balls. You also can't neglect the fast attack options, as they are what let you win the game in the movement phase. There is a lot of value in simply being there first.
@Ailaros: the plausible way to advance is with a big-ass foot blob, no guns, a commissar and a vox for move move move! You are gonna lose a heap of guardsmen anyway; make it the ones that you really don't care about. It works surprisingly well. Just make sure to back them up with a variety of other threats so that the enemy cannot destroy them at leisure without seriously risking some of their key units in exchange.
So, what you are saying is that we need to do what guard do best; flood the field with targets. Bring 3 tanks for each one your opponent has. If your opponent has 30 infantry, you should have close to 100.
The problem is that bodies, in and of themselves, are meaningless. Well, not to holding objectives, but to everything else.
What's the point of having 60 guardsmen somewhere if they're not going to kill something? Especially when they are much easier to wipe off the table than they were before.
The credibility of PISs seems greatly reduced. Spamming them, therefore, just seems like a bad idea.
Ailaros wrote: The problem is that bodies, in and of themselves, are meaningless. Well, not to holding objectives, but to everything else.
What's the point of having 60 guardsmen somewhere if they're not going to kill something? Especially when they are much easier to wipe off the table than they were before.
The credibility of PISs seems greatly reduced. Spamming them, therefore, just seems like a bad idea.
2 things Ailaros, and I'm not trying to be a jerk, so bear with me.
1. Your store seems to be on the verge of list tailoring for you almost every game. Which should be quite complement. You've literally played foot guard so much younve either scared people into tailoring or screwed the entire meta. This however brings me to my first point. You're facing armies designed to kill lots of guardsmen. How do we beat this? well, i solved it by, shockingly, taking more guardsmen. If your opponent thinks he hates 70 guardsmen, wait till he fights a 140 of em. Maybe you should try slimming your list down for a game and taking more infantry? For example, if i don't have at least 100 Guardsmen and 3 leman russes with tons of heavy weapons, I don't feel confident at all. And my guardsmen aren't just meatshields either. They're all packing a meltagun and depending on my mood an autocannon, and my opponents learned very quickly that ignoring them to shoot the "dangerous" stuff just meant they died to my infantry squads. You of all players should know that even the humble infantry squad can kill its fair share if you play it right.
2. One reason why we might see very different results is that we fight different types of opponents. My store is EXTREMELY competitive, and are constantly sending guys to go to tourneys. However, their tourney styled lists rely on small elite units. Many dont have more than 15 units in any given game, and I tend to easily double if not triple them on the unit count. My strategy literally overwhelms them. You don't seem to have this "problem" though. You've faced some...crazy lists... and so they're not countered as hard by this style as my store tends to be. This is a theory though, I know you dont do a report of every game, so maybe we missed that time you fought draigowing 3 times in a row.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Also, @ Jimole, while you run your list a bit differently it seems, we seem to share the same results. Usually the squad thats taking the objective is at or below half strength, and I consider myself to be doing great if I've lost less than 2/3rds of my guardsmen. However, I've been learning how to force my opponent to make tough decisions, and it' what's been winning me games. My favorite line so far has been been "Are you sure you want to shoot the HWS? what about that russ about to open up on the guys that had to abandon that rhino? Or those 4 guardsmen hiding on the objective way across the board? Or maybe you could kill the stormies right behind you?" etc. etc.
I need to try hellhounds or devil dogs now that i think about it, because I like your idea of "in your face" units to help draw fire. Hellhounds do a ton of damage at decent range anyways, so even if your opponent ignored it it wouldn't be a bad choice. Just slap a multimelta on that bad boy and it could scare just about anything. Yeah a vendetta is scarier, but a hellhound doesnt cost 80 bucks Which boils down to the same old adage I've been going by
"if your opponent is able to focus down your key units, you didn't bring enough of them" It goes for PiS, it goes for russes, it goes for HWS's. Heck, mech players have been living by this rule for years. Yeah a chimera sucks on its own, but when you have 15 they're almost unstoppable. It's a key strength of all IG units, especially foot armies. we just ned to figure out the best way of achieving the magical bmore bodies than they have bullets equation"
Aslo. excuse all the edits, my phone sucks and this was a LONG post, so i had to break it up into chunks.
Uhm... As I read through this topic I've discovered that nearly every post has at least one "While my footsloggers die en-masse, my Vendettas/Russes/'Hounds/Arty delivers the pain." sentence. But then... Are we even talking about footIG? Because in my book, you have foot IG when your armour is your Storm Troopers and you have 0 AV stuff in your army. Taking vehicles into the picture would only turn the army into a 'hybrid' and kill the essence of 'foot' (negating the enemy AT by simply not taking vehicles).
So if the answer to the current problems of the foot lists is "Mech up buddy!", then it is kinda' like everyone admits that 'foot' is dead and 'hybrid' is the new way to go... What is sad, but guess its true :(.
I'm finding this discussion very interesting, and I have been enjoying reading every post so far, keep it up guys!
I haven't played point levels above 1000 points yet (I'm playing in a campaign), but I should get to play a 1200 point game next week. So far I have won against Tau and SW, and lost to Necrons and IG.
I'm still trying to find a solid core for my army build in 6th edition. So far I have used a 30 man platoon, a flamer PCS in Chimera and a veteran squad in a Chimera as the core of my army. As support I have tried different Leman Russ variants or/and a Medusa. I can still get the blob tactic to work with a Psyker and commisar, just as long as my opponent doesn't field any barrage weapons.
The 3x 10 man PIS's have survived every game so far, both in a big blob and as separate squads - my only problem is that they pose such small threat to the enemy that often they won't bother shooting at them at all. So far I have been fielding them with the cheap GL+AC (and sometimes power swords as well), but I should probably start fielding them with plasma+AC or power sword + melta, I just don't have all those special weapons yet.
The flamer PCS hasn't been working very well as they never get in range of anything before their chimera is wrecked. The only time I get a proper use out of them is when someone is stupid enough to charge them or their transport, so I have considered giving the Chimera to another squad instead and field them differently.
The plasma vets have been doing great, although I have had some severe problems with necron vehicles so I have started considering fielding more melta again, both in chimeras or with stormtroopers.
The Medusa is as good as it was in 5th, if not better, but with the huge buff to barrage, I have been thinking about to convert some barrel extensions to field them as Basilisks instead - that way they should also survive longer.
The problem is that I don't want to play a static gunline, I want to be as mobile as possible. Unfortuately, I haven't get to try out my agresive Lord Commisar list yet because in the campaign we play with one random list out of three possible, so you almost never know what tyo get to play and what you have to play against.
Through all of 5th I played hybrid IG and I still do, but the more I think about it, the more it has changed. Tanks being hit on 3's now hurts a lot and the allowing of "sniping" sergeants and heavy/special weapons out of squads hurts even more. I should probably get more infantry, but I don't know exactly what the best way to field platoons with tanks is yet.
Whilst I have not had a chance to play an all-foot list in 6th, I have given it some thought (like many of you) and can’t see any easy way out (bar allies, but kind of defeats the point, no?).
My initial thoughts for an advancing combined squad is to go 3x10 PIS wCommissar & special weapons (melta/plasma), unsure about heavy weapons but either auto/bolter for increased chances to hit when moving, and 1x10 PIS with a flamer to advance in-front of the blob for a 5+ cover save against most things.
Drawbacks are easy enough to spot; kill the squad in-front first, which won’t be that hard (i.e. no cover) then start shooting/assaulting the blob. It’s also a fair lump of points in games of 1500pts or less, and I think you would need at least two of these platoons, preferably three, to stand any chance of making headway into the enemy DZ or have enough bodies left at the end to claim objectives.
Assuming two blobs with melta and one with plasma and all have autocannon comes to ~830 points (including 3x PCS w/4x flamer) but does give you 138 scoring troopers, 6 melta, 3 plasma, 9 autocannon and 15 flamers (!). Massive liability in KP games with 6x easy KPs for the PCS and lone PIS (although the PIS can be merged in with the blobs). Add in one or two cheap CCS for orders (+ ~ 150pts) then fill up the rest with HWS (2x LC, 4x AC) or (4x LC, 1x AC) and you’re at about 1500pts and have no supporting units, other than the HWS/CCS. I can’t see it doing that well TBH.
I’m also rather attached to a Bastion (with or without Quad gun) as a base for my CCS and a HWS (lascannons) which gives them the benefit of AV14 protection and a decent vantage point. (By-the-by, our group does not place fortifications before terrain (if only through the efforts of one player) as it’s too easy to be TFG and place a massive LoS blocking piece in-front of it. Sigh). Also helps hide/cover the artillery, if you’re taking any, which is probably a good idea.
I think re: HWS survivability; they’ve always been fragile and must be treated as expendable, to a certain extent. If you’re pinning all your hopes of anti-tank on your two squads of lascannon HWS and they get blown off the board in a turn (not unlikely), then what? IMO, foot guard needs some saturation here; the type of firepower that is bad for the HWS (S6+) could be diluted if you have multiple threatening targets that would require that type of fire to get rid off effectively. Sentinels is all I can really think of at the moment and including them doesn’t make it an all-foot list (well, all Infantry). If you’re not opposed to having some armour in with your guardsmen then artillery, sentinels and the hellhound variants should all be solid choices. Sentinels and Hellhounds have the added bonus of being scoring units in 1/6th of games, which is nice!
Other than that, others have already suggested lists with Al’rahem in, although in an all-infantry army I think his platoon will lack serious punch & range when they arrive; mounted in Chimeras with plasma/melta and autocannons would be the way to go; especially now the plasma guns have a larger threat area when entering the board. BS3 plasma still isn’t great, however.
Stormtroopers look more appealing now than 5th which is fantastic, as I’ve got a squad of Karskrin that need painting! Still pretty vulnerable after dropping in but nowhere near as much as regular Joe 5+. The ability to get them where you need them reliably is huge, too, as is the cover save change; making their AP3 more useful than ever before.
If you’re going to take armour in your foot list, Artillery is where I’d go first. They give your army the ability to hit targets that you otherwise can’t see/reach/get to. This is incredibly handy when most other armies can literally run rings around you in transports, etc, and forces them to come to you which is what you want – get the enemy within 12” and let loose FRFSRF/special weapon glory. Easy enough getting up the table if your opponent can’t stop you when most of his stuff is dead. I would happily take almost any of the artillery pieces we have access to, except the Medusa – it’s too fragile a vehicle with such a threatening gun to be in LoS of the enemy guns and for a meagre amount of points you can get an AV14 chassis that only has a bit less range (30” for Demolisher (6”+24”) or 42” for Medusa (6”+36”) which, when the enemy generally advances towards you, isn’t that big of a deal.
Other ideas would be a large blob of PIS (4-5xPIS) with attached Lord Commissar to act the same way as an individual PIS above, but covering as much of the rest of your army as possible. Follow up with smaller blobs of 2x10 PIS, or just individual PIS to take objectives, etc. Still not a great plan, as the LC can be picked out (gotta fail that 2+ LoS sometime) or the blob can be shot apart and holes punched through by a canny player. It’s also a lot of points for, essentially, a meat shield.
So, does foot guard only work at higher points levels, where you can take these large, expensive blobs and boat-loads of HWS and not worry about them dying so much? Or would they be better at the smaller points levels (1000-1500) where the opponent’s list might not have the tools to deal with you properly, without tailoring of course?
I’m hoping to get some games in soon with an infantry list but the only models I’ve painted recently have been tanks… and I like playing with tanks.
Something I've been thinking (tried to some extent on a kitchen table, against Orks- like game #1 and #2 ever played at a friend's house to show him the game...so yeah, little place or actual time to spread the blobs around but still-)
but, how about the 'creeping barrage' idea?
Either with mortars (got more of them) or similar arty (Grifon)
1- Barrage About
2- force pinning tests
3-???
4-Forward to profit!
Granted, you might need numerous of them to work, and many armies can manage to resist the pinning effect (either make the test, or simply immunte to them) but still- with 6-9 mortars, you can spread those blast all over, either ripping a squad apart or hitting 2-3 ones, and with 2-3 pinned squad (or even, 6-9 mortars raining death) your oponent better choose to shoot the infantry to try to get those mortars, behind the troops.
I do not really get it with all that "we have more bodies than our opponents have bullets" tactics. Also I do not see a problem in IGs mobility. Move move move provides it. Bigger problem I see is the survivability of platoons. To be more exact, non existence of it. I play a 40-man blob in a 1000 points game and it is crushed almost every game. Yes, I can win those battles, but only because of allies and vehicles I use. I played against Eldar, against various marines and against DE. The basic marine squad is cheaper than the blob of guardsmen in the terms of survivability, firepower and CC skill per point. In 6th edition, guardsmen have no save at all. How many guns in troop choices does not have AP 5? I know about orcs and guard. Tau have AP 5, DE have AP 5, Eldar have AP 5, Necrons have AP 5, Grey knights have AP 5, all the marine codices have AP 5 troops. With new wound allocation and cover rules, there is no save for IG Infantry squad any more...
You say "flood your enemy with bodies". The problem is that the guardsmen are not so cheap you can have so many of them to make this works. At least not in my meta. You know how many points a single squad of Space Wolves GH with 2 plasma guns cost? 160 points... You can have a 20-man blob with plasmas and some heavy weapons for the same cost. But it will die faster from shooting, it has lower firepower, it can not fight in CC and hope to win, it has not concentrated firepower, it can not hide so well or get cover save so well, it will probably kill itself with those plasmas. You know that, statisticaly speaking, lasgun needs 18 shots to kill one marine? Bolter needs 2,25 shots to kill a single guardsman. Thanks to the concentration of those bolters you can almost always count with the fact you will fire all of them. But lasguns? If you have a blob or two you have to spread out in order to survive blasts or templates. You will almost never get all your guns in a blob to fire (I never did). So you can not outshoot your enemy. What will you do with those guard bodies? You can have many of them but they will do less than a few marine squads or few chimeras with veterans. If you could concentrate all of those platoon bodies and make them all fire, it would work. That is alas not possible. I do not believe that foot guard is a good and competitive choice anymore. Not without allies, not without vehicles...and then we are not talking about foot guard anymore.
Lothar wrote: I do not really get it with all that "we have more bodies than our opponents have bullets" tactics. Also I do not see a problem in IGs mobility. Move move move provides it. Bigger problem I see is the survivability of platoons. To be more exact, non existence of it. I play a 40-man blob in a 1000 points game and it is crushed almost every game. Yes, I can win those battles, but only because of allies and vehicles I use. I played against Eldar, against various marines and against DE. The basic marine squad is cheaper than the blob of guardsmen in the terms of survivability, firepower and CC skill per point. In 6th edition, guardsmen have no save at all. How many guns in troop choices does not have AP 5? I know about orcs and guard. Tau have AP 5, DE have AP 5, Eldar have AP 5, Necrons have AP 5, Grey knights have AP 5, all the marine codices have AP 5 troops. With new wound allocation and cover rules, there is no save for IG Infantry squad any more...
You say "flood your enemy with bodies". The problem is that the guardsmen are not so cheap you can have so many of them to make this works. At least not in my meta. You know how many points a single squad of Space Wolves GH with 2 plasma guns cost? 160 points... You can have a 20-man blob with plasmas and some heavy weapons for the same cost. But it will die faster from shooting, it has lower firepower, it can not fight in CC and hope to win, it has not concentrated firepower, it can not hide so well or get cover save so well, it will probably kill itself with those plasmas. You know that, statisticaly speaking, lasgun needs 18 shots to kill one marine? Bolter needs 2,25 shots to kill a single guardsman. Thanks to the concentration of those bolters you can almost always count with the fact you will fire all of them. But lasguns? If you have a blob or two you have to spread out in order to survive blasts or templates. You will almost never get all your guns in a blob to fire (I never did). So you can not outshoot your enemy. What will you do with those guard bodies? You can have many of them but they will do less than a few marine squads or few chimeras with veterans. If you could concentrate all of those platoon bodies and make them all fire, it would work. That is alas not possible. I do not believe that foot guard is a good and competitive choice anymore. Not without allies, not without vehicles...and then we are not talking about foot guard anymore.
I agree with this. I think the only time I take armor saves is when my chimeras explode and the guys inside take a hit. This prevents me from ever wanting to actually walk over and take objectives with my guardsmen until almost the enemy models have been remove from the board.
For the most part, all the killing that I do is from the tanks that I bring and the few chimera plasma vets that I take as counter attack units. The PIS contribution seems to be a bonus. I give mine lascannons so perhaps once a game 1 out 5 hit something and cause damage.
The only reason that my PIS survive is because they are generally the smallest threat on the board. My opponents don't want to waste high strength long range firepower on plinking off guardsmen so they focus on the tanks and transports. In turn the PISs are ignored and can take their lascannon potshots. Whenever they are focused on, the PISs disappear in a hurry. Their only way of surviving is to be ignored.
That's why I think that a combined approach is important. If you bring an assortment of tanks, transports and infantry then the infantry can get lost in the shuffle and they can survive a long range fire fight.
This of course only works if you're content to sit back and shoot while sending Marbo or some stormtroopers to play in your opponents back field. If you need to go forward to capture objectives this becomes much more difficult. That's when you get into range of all the anti-personnel AP-5 weaponry that wipes whole squads away.
The easiest solutions to this problem of objective capture is to bring flyers, more tanks or allies. At this point you're not really playing foot guard anymore. The question that we're all faced with is how important is it for us to continue to play foot guard.
MrMoustaffa wrote: You're facing armies designed to kill lots of guardsmen. How do we beat this? well, i solved it by, shockingly, taking more guardsmen. If your opponent thinks he hates 70 guardsmen, wait till he fights a 140 of em.
But that's not enough. Even with triple-digit guardsmen, I've been tabled once and nearly tabled twice in the last 5 games I've played. Back in the day when those 120 guardsmen all got a free 4+ save against shooting, and had hidden upgrades that made them good enough to actually kill things in close combat, 120 was too many guardsmen for my opponents to handle. Now it is not.
I'd think in order to get that same old effect, we'd be talking about bringing more like 160 guardsmen at 1850 points, but I don't know if that would fix the problem. It would be a lot of dudes, but its killing power would be non-existent.
MrMoustaffa wrote:My store is EXTREMELY competitive, and are constantly sending guys to go to tourneys. However, their tourney styled lists...
Yeah, my store is also very competitive, but unfortunately doesn't send anyone to tournaments. I think my life would be easier if I saw more tournament lists on the other side of the table. A league, though, has none of the things that shoo away horde armies, so my opponents have to actually take stuff to handle foot lists.
infinityandbeyond wrote:I think re: HWS survivability; they’ve always been fragile and must be treated as expendable, to a certain extent. If you’re pinning all your hopes of anti-tank on your two squads of lascannon HWS and they get blown off the board in a turn (not unlikely), then what? IMO, foot guard needs some saturation here; the type of firepower that is bad for the HWS (S6+) could be diluted if you have multiple threatening targets that would require that type of fire to get rid off effectively.
The problem is that saturation doesn't work unless you have equally credible threats. If your opponent saw 3 lascannon HWSs and 3 lascannon sentinels, you know which your opponent is going to shoot his autocannons at first.
The other problem, too, is cost. Yes, an autocannon team only eats up 75 points, but if it only gets to shoot once, it's not that good of a deal. More importantly, it means you're actually not bringing as much killing power as you think.
Lothar wrote:You say "flood your enemy with bodies". The problem is that the guardsmen are not so cheap you can have so many of them to make this works. At least not in my meta. You know how many points a single squad of Space Wolves GH with 2 plasma guns cost? 160 points...
Right, and this is where spamming becomes more dubious. If guardsmen are having a problem being good for their cost, even their very low cost, then spamming them is exacerbating the problem as much as it is solving it.
Lothar wrote: You know that, statisticaly speaking, lasgun needs 18 shots to kill one marine? Bolter needs 2,25 shots to kill a single guardsman. Thanks to the concentration of those bolters you can almost always count with the fact you will fire all of them. But lasguns? If you have a blob or two you have to spread out in order to survive blasts or templates. You will almost never get all your guns in a blob to fire (I never did). So you can not outshoot your enemy.
And this, really, is where the problem lies. No hidden weapons means that you're going to have a very, very hard time concentrating your killing power (I've already been noticing this a fair bit). More often than not, whenever an opponent's unit is near my stuff, they're only having to worry about like a meltagun and a couple of autocannons from my PISs. That's not a lot of killing power in any one place at any one time. The same is true, of course, for close combat.
If you can't win any local engagement, then you have to rely on attrition. This has always been the guard way, but now guardsmen die way too quickly to actually WIN a war of attrition...
Great thread. I've been contemplating the same issues.
In 5th I ran 4 squads of Vets in Chimeras with 2 PISs in Vendettas, so much scoring AV12 it was really hard to deny them an objective.
Now I wonder what is really going to work?
I had a thought, since I have Chimeras anyways I was thinking of taking a 20 and 30 man blob with assault weapons and commissars, buying them 5 chimeras and marching them up behind the chimeras for cover.
This could be improved by adding LR Demolishers in behind them to create a big roving threat wall.
The Blobs+Chimeras+commisars+say plasma guns in this case works out to 675, not terribly expensive, and they'll be out of LOS in the best cases, or get 5+ cover in the worst, plus you're putting up seemingly juicier targets that are really just a smoke screen.
When will we ever find a solution to foot guards mobility.......
Anyways, what about maxing out special weapons squads in 2 platoons with a variety of weapons including flamers, meltas etc.
That tactic imo will make the footguard more moblie, while you may have to cut costs with your HWS teams, i think it would be worth it as indeed they will be more up in your face and are generally shielded by the PIS' who can take the casualties.
Together with hellhounds they can take the fight to the enemy, the SWS can bring a tough melta hedge to your army as well which will be very useful.
Basically what i am trying to put forth is the saturation of SW's unto units that dont really catch your opponents eye (let the LRs attract the attention)
I don't know, I really don't have all that much faith in AV12 vehicles. Every once in awhile I try and take one, only to remember why I don't. In an AV12 shield wall, you're doing just fine, but one or two AV12's alone around a throng of goobers just doesn't... quite... have the staying power I'd like.
Ailaros wrote: I don't know, I really don't have all that much faith in AV12 vehicles. Every once in awhile I try and take one, only to remember why I don't. In an AV12 shield wall, you're doing just fine, but one or two AV12's alone around a throng of goobers just doesn't... quite... have the staying power I'd like.
Ailaros wrote: I don't know, I really don't have all that much faith in AV12 vehicles. Every once in awhile I try and take one, only to remember why I don't. In an AV12 shield wall, you're doing just fine, but one or two AV12's alone around a throng of goobers just doesn't... quite... have the staying power I'd like.
Ah, but if there is some fire focused on the AV 12 then the squishy guardsmen are not being shot. It's a trade.
Odds are, those shots would be high strength/low AP weapons that most of the time only have one or two shots. Not ideal for shooting guardsmen anyway.
I have been thinking of adding in a carapace vet squad in my IG army for more thrusting power. However, I don't think that maxing out on Veterans is the right way to go. Your list doesn't seem to have the staying power of previous foot guard lists. Multiple 10 man squads, even with 4+ saves, scare me.
I've mentioned this before, but I think it's worth repeating: Pure Foot Guard (Defined as no vehicles) is going to present a lot of challenges, and looking at it from a codex perspective it's obvious why. There are not "Foot Guard" Heavy Support or Fast Attack choices. These are typically choices that, point for point, hit really hard at range and move quickly (respectively). This means you're relying on your Troops choices to do things that they are, point for point, inefficient at. To contrast, look at the Elites section, which Foot Guard has at least one really strong choice in (Stormtroopers). They do what Elites typically do well (force concentration), but in an all infantry list are also effectively tasked with Fast Attack duties (getting over there to disrupt enemy formations) and Heavy Support duties (killing stuff in general).
Most armies can't put together a good list using mostly the Troops section, it might be overly optimistic to think that Guard can do the same in this edition.
Sadly judging from what everyone's been posting and thinking, seems like the traditional Gree- I mean Flak Armour Tide is quite... useless in 6th Ed. So what answer do we have left for this?
Well just like several people suggested, meching up seems to be the only viable option to field a non-Chimera Guardsmen army. As Ailaros mentioned in other places, Leman Russ and other armour (MrMoustaffa, tell me how that Hellhound/Devildog does on the field) seems to be a must-include in any foot lists.
So my only question is.... is pure-footlist completely dead?
No, I'm not ready to give foot guard up as dead yet. There are still options to be hashed and combos to be tried.
As biophysical notes, it used to be possible to make a great guard army with nothing but troops and HQ. This has disappeared. I don't think it took the entire play style with it, though.
Ailaros wrote: No, I'm not ready to give foot guard up as dead yet. There are still options to be hashed and combos to be tried.
As biophysical notes, it used to be possible to make a great guard army with nothing but troops and HQ. This has disappeared. I don't think it took the entire play style with it, though.
I agree with Ailaros. Pure Footguard may be gone, but an army with a strong backbone of on foot infantry is still viable, I am sure of it.
Certainly the most "Heavy Support"-like option for Foot Guard is Heavy Weapon Teams. I think there's an interesting possibility of taking vast amounts of these guys as your damage dealers, base squads (with flamers, probably) as objective grabbers, and Stormtroopers/Marbo as hunter-killers.
A 1200 points core could get you:
2 Lascannon Teams (210)
3 Autocannon Teams (225)
3 Mortar Squads (180)
10 x PIS w/ Flamer (550)
2 PCS (60)
This gives you 24 heavy weapons to alpha strike with while your cheap as chips squads are running hellbent forward. The key (and I think this could be important to many foot guard formations) is to run your advancing squads in columns, rather than waves. As one squad gets shot (with the special weapon and sergeant in the back), most of the Guardsmen will get cover from enemies that aren't directly ahead of them, because they'll be shielded to their left and right by other files. The squad will be eaten back, with special and Ld 8 going last, but the leading edge of all the adjacent squads will still be at their starting position. The enemy can split fire, eating the leading edge of all the squads, but that leaves all the squads with some strength, which any 40k player knows will bite you in the ass in the end game.
Imagine the formation below, but taken out to 10 squads wide. Each letter is a different squad. The "F" is the squad's flamer, the "S" it's sergeant.
A B C
A B C
A B C
A B C
A B C
A B C
A B C
A B C
F F F
S S S
The major weakness of this squad is multi-charges, as the enemy can engage many squads at once, although there's lots that can be done to prevent it. It's just something you have to watch out for.
Either Lord Commissar or CCS would be good HQ choices, and Storms/Marbo are the obvious elites
Well, you don't have to deploy the same way every time. Just deploy in columns normally, and then switch it over to lines when you come across a blood angels player, or whatever.
Right, that's one of the ways to avoid multicharges. I think it may have merit for advancing, though. I can't try it myself, I don't have that many plain lasgunners to field so many squads.
A thought on force concentration: Even in 5th, when mortars were bad, they were good at force concentration. You could have mortars all over the board, and they would all be able to shoot at the same thing. Artillery (mortars included) is still good at this.
True. Too bad mortars are so terrible. I suppose they do have an easier time of it than other HWSs. You can always get a couple of HWSs in great lines of fire and in cover, but after like two or three, you're talking about HWSs that have crappy lines of fire, crappy cover, no access to orders, etc.
I've actually found that deployment is one of my more problematic parts with foot guard as of late. You've got to cram the guys in to have any degree of force concentration, but then you start to suffer from having a packed in deployment zone where everything is tripping over everything else.
You know, there might, possibly, be a HWS answer here, and that is in heavy bolters. Heavy bolters are awful enough that they might not actually attract that much fire from your opponent, at least, not nearly in the way autocannons or lascannons will. All you need, then, is something to break open the transports, and you'll have something that can sweep at least the infantry off the field. Plus, more importantly, it works against fliers. With BiD, you're looking at a hit or two, which means that you can start to dismantle them.
I havent actually played games with my IG yet because Iv been finishing off some other armies first and trying to figure out what I should take for a foot list.
I noticed that you have a list with 30 stormies Ailaros and Im curious as to how you use them. I also like the lidea of using a large amount of them as essentially the hammer of the army.
I started 6th ed with a unit of 10x stormies with flamers on a whim. I'd long wanted to use a squad like this, but I'd never really had an excuse. The numbers for how they work out against infantry look so good, but they were always somehow... dubious.
I started 6th with a 10x unit of stormies, and they have gone so fantastically so far, that it didn't take me long to find points to fill my elites slots with them.
They don't always work as planned (see my current game for example), but even when they have terrible luck, or things really don't go their way, they STILL feel like one of the most valuable assets in my army at the moment.
Which is great, because stormies are awesome. I'm glad I finally have an excuse to spam them.
Rolling meat wall.
2 or 3 platoons, each with 3 infantry squads, each with a single commissar.
Squads of 30, led by commissar push foward, backed up by command issuing orders.
Commissar hangs back to provide stubborn.
Heavy weapon teams, SWS and Company command fill the back field.
A trio of Valkyries drop smaller scoring units.
The idea is massed firepower, backed by stubborn blobs. Unlike the more expensive power blobs, these guys have a different job. Tie up the enemy, until you want the fight to end (which you do by appling wounds to the commissar). This should buy you time to close in with shooty support squads and gun down the enemy caught in the open. Sure, for 30 to 40 points more you could take power weapons; but you don't want power weapons. You want to keep the commissar out of the fight initially, and bring him into base to base as your numbers dwindle; ultimately losing combat and getting swept on your opponents turn. Rather than taking power weapons, I'd consider Krak. It counters light vehicles, and even scares monsters a little.
If you can halt you're opponents forward movement, you can then start to drop scoring units all over out of the flyers.
Or, just spam 10 man infantry squads. Spread the leading squads wide to block multiple charges and limit your opponent to killing 1 or 2 squads a turn. If he's only killing 60-120 points on his turn, you're rapid firing and heavy weapons will take their toll on him.
It is only natural that we all struggle with the problem of advancing guardsmen across the field. It is, after all, our armies weakness. The 'multiple threats' approach is the only tactic I have had work consistently. Yes, a skilled opponent will priorities targets wisely and make the job that much harder, but that is where the skill of the match lives.
At the end of the day, foot guard is always going to suffer from this problem, and I doubt there's any real way around it. The fact is that if you ignore most of your army's FOC to focus on one aspect almost exclusively, your force is going to be a one-trick pony. The guard is meant to be a combined arms force, and if you ignore heavy support and fast attack options then you are going to end up with a rock-paper-scissors army which will do well against certain armies but hardly have a chance against others. Same goes if you run a tank-heavy list with few infantry.
I think that the only 'pure foot' solutions to this problem is to take a healthy amount of units with deployment options - anything that can outflank or infiltrate, such as an Al'rahem platoon, harker vets, marbo, and storm troopers. A big unit of Ogryns would certainly help too. I would equip my front ranks of guardsmen with nothing at all, as they will certainly be dying fast so why waste points on weapons for them? Of course this will completely negate their ability to engage anything that isn't infantry, but when the problem is covering ground you really don't want them sitting back to fire heavy weapons anyway, and you would be surprised how many guardsman you can buy when you shave those points off.
On a side note, I've been playing around and had some success with an old-school 'armoured fist' platoon, being two or three basic infantry squads and a pcs in chimeras. While not pure foot, you can still field masses of these guys and they are actually able to cross the field. 295 points for 25 scoring bodies riding in chimeras with ML and HF is comparable in cost to a well-equipped space marine tactical squad, and will easily destroy the tacticals in a solo fight, even without any special or heavy weapons. Their mobility and threat potential will ensure they take a a lot of heat off your more vulnerable footsloggers, and the flaming chimera wrecks will give your groundpounders some cover to boot!
Id suggest a 20 man static platoon with HW withloads of HWT then we have an outflanking platoon Al Rahem with 30-50 men lots of SWS then 2 outflanking vendettas each with a squad of vets in have an astropath to pretty much gurantee a turn 2 entry
Yeah, I'd like to know before my game next monday. I still fear for it a little, as there are still heavy bolters and autocannons in the world, but it shows promise.
What I'm going back and forth on is the balance between troops and HS in this setup. It would be nice to know just how fast the troops sections fold so I can know if I need to peel some points from HS to cram in more vets.
So, if an army is no longer caring about killpoints, perhaps try MSU Rough Riders? They scream suicide unit (one use explosive lances), are fast (gain ground) are cheap for the core unit.
At worst they flop and buy some time for the rest of the men, at best... well I'm not sure what exactly 5 horsies can accomplish.
Rough riders seem better to me as fast melta teams. Now that they can move 12 inches, and have fleet, they get into range pretty quick as long as you can keep the heat off them.
I've been busy past couple of days, and have to leave in a sec, so bear with me if I cover things previously mentioned. I will be reading over the thread tonight.
I will admit that unless it's a thousand points or under, I won't be bringing pure infantry any more. Anything higher, just requires far too many models to make it worthwhile, many of which I don't own. Pure foot guard can absolutely crush other lists in small points though. Armies that I've struggled against at high points have been getting tabled by my foot lists at low points games, since they lack the points to buy their heavy hitters, while we have no such issue.
I guess now I'm technically a "hybrid" player, if we're being technical, due to my love of Leman Russes, but I still think, and more importantly, play, like a foot commander. They remain the focus of my army, everything else is secondary, and added to support the Foot horde.
Really I find that pure Foot is usable but not reliable. It makes it a gamble and if the enemy has the right weapons you SHOULD lose. I like to run Hybrid lists that can camp, assault or do a mixture of the two. Here is one of the lists I have been running with success in 6th Edition.
To be fair, though, being a foot guard player never required you to use ONLY INFANTRY EVER. I mean, I consider myself a foot guard player, and in like 3/4 of my games (including 100% of the games played above 1000 points) I ran at least a couple of russes or artillery pieces or something.
Aesthetically speaking, I consider the foot-hybrid-mech spectrum to relate to the inchimeradness of the troops and HQ sections, rather than if there are any vehicles at all.
I think foot guard is based on many soldiers and some support (Artillery/Leman). Mech guard is based on chimeras and some support (again some long range firepower).
In the end, I see every list which is rellying on chimeras like a mech/hybrid list.
btw.: I have a friend at our LGS. He is playing 6 chimeras in his list and he still calls it a foot guard.
^^ I always thought that foot guards is just that... Just foot. Because AFAIK, the whole purpose of foot guard is to troll the enemy AT firepower by simply denying the armour. Buf if you take mech into a foot list then you kinda' defeat the purpose, and your army becomes 'hybrid'.
Isn't limiting this to foot IG already assuming that you have disqualified most of your best options?
Maybe take some BA assault marines, if you want to play a foot army that a large portion of which will be wanting to sit around, and most of which is fragile, I think you already have your answer.
Moving forward and taking the fight to the enemy is what some tanks and air and allies impart upon IG, some people choose to forego those options for thematic reasons or for strategic reasons, but a general should know not to dwell so much on the limb he's cut off.
AtoMaki wrote: ^^ I always thought that foot guards is just that... Just foot. Because AFAIK, the whole purpose of foot guard is to troll the enemy AT firepower by simply denying the armour. Buf if you take mech into a foot list then you kinda' defeat the purpose, and your army becomes 'hybrid'.
Not entirely, though. Russes provide a target for anti-tank, but only serious anti-tank. All of those missile launchers and splinter cannons and autocannons and rokkits are still useless if you're bringing only infantry and russes. Likewise, if you're good about keeping artillery out of LOS, it likewise invalidates a bunch of stuff.
Plus, it doesn't make sense for an all-foot list that includes a single vehicle to be called a hybrid list unless a list that's full of vehicles that includes a single infantry model isn't also no longer a mech list.
Almost all guard lists contain at least one infantry model and at least one vehicle. If this means that all guard lists are hybrid, that's fine, but I like to use a more narrow definition of hybrid than that.
AtoMaki wrote: ^^ I always thought that foot guards is just that... Just foot. Because AFAIK, the whole purpose of foot guard is to troll the enemy AT firepower by simply denying the armour. Buf if you take mech into a foot list then you kinda' defeat the purpose, and your army becomes 'hybrid'.
Not entirely, though. Russes provide a target for anti-tank, but only serious anti-tank. All of those missile launchers and splinter cannons and autocannons and rokkits are still useless if you're bringing only infantry and russes. Likewise, if you're good about keeping artillery out of LOS, it likewise invalidates a bunch of stuff.
Plus, it doesn't make sense for an all-foot list that includes a single vehicle to be called a hybrid list unless a list that's full of vehicles that includes a single infantry model isn't also no longer a mech list.
Almost all guard lists contain at least one infantry model and at least one vehicle. If this means that all guard lists are hybrid, that's fine, but I like to use a more narrow definition of hybrid than that.
Exactly. I use russes all the time, and I still troll enemy anti tank weapons constantly. Most weapons, like autocannons and rockets, are almost completely useless against russes, and REALLY useless against guardsmen. I've also noticed that Russes will draw every ML in an enemy army, even though the enemy knows he can only glance it, even when there are plenty of bunched up infantry he could kill instead.
As for the whole foot/hybrid/mech, I really see it as how many chimeras do you bring. Do you bring none? You're a foot guard player. Doesn't matter how many other tanks and other things you cram in, your infantry are all on foot. Hybrid tends to have 2 or 3 chimeras, but there is still a platoon that has some sort of job that is filled by being on foot. It's a hybrid of a foot and a mech list, hence the name. A mech list would be a list that literally has all, or almost all, infantry inside chimeras. That's how it delivers its troops, and that's how it's played.
Hence why you'll get foot IG players with 6 leman russes or a mech player that literally runs nothing but chimeras. The mindset of how you take your troops, to me at least, seems to define what kind of mindset your army follows above all else.
Not entirely, though. Russes provide a target for anti-tank, but only serious anti-tank. All of those missile launchers and splinter cannons and autocannons and rokkits are still useless if you're bringing only infantry and russes. Likewise, if you're good about keeping artillery out of LOS, it likewise invalidates a bunch of stuff.
Well, missile launchers can now hurt Russes pretty badly with some good rolls and autocannons (and most of the other mid/high strength stuff, like missile pods or psycannons) are good against infantry as well (And splinter-cannons? What about splitner cannons? The are totally anti-infantry... Maybe it is supposed to be Dark Lances?). And you can't keep your arty ouf of LoS every time you want.
So if you mix up xyour foot list with mech then you will end up with an average army, what has armour and flesh, but the 'flesh' part is just happens to be on foot. So your enemy can still utilize his full firepower in its intented role (target the armour with AT and the flesh with AP). And he can utilize it even better, since the flesh is out on the plate, ready to receive his daily AP firepower dose from the start.
Ailaros wrote: Plus, it doesn't make sense for an all-foot list that includes a single vehicle to be called a hybrid list unless a list that's full of vehicles that includes a single infantry model isn't also no longer a mech list.
Hah, it doesn't make sense to include only one vehicle in an all-foot list . And the posters here talk about multiple vehicles ("bunch of arty", "russes" and so on).
And I don't see as much overlap between AV14 and T3 Sv5+ as I think you do.
What I was referring to was more that there are anti-AV14 weapons, very few of which will make a serious dent in a foot horde. Meanwhile, there are a lot of weapons that can handle both hordes and AV11, and some armies (cf. eldar S6 spam), that rely exclusively on these weapons to handle both. As such, they're going to bring them and use them against your troops choices regardless of how many chimeras they are riding in.
And I don't see as much overlap between AV14 and T3 Sv5+ as I think you do.
What I was referring to was more that there are anti-AV14 weapons, very few of which will make a serious dent in a foot horde. Meanwhile, there are a lot of weapons that can handle both hordes and AV11, and some armies (cf. eldar S6 spam), that rely exclusively on these weapons to handle both. As such, they're going to bring them and use them against your troops choices regardless of how many chimeras they are riding in.
Lascannons and meltaguns vs an all foot list are deadweight, a waste of points.
Lascannons and meltaguns vs a foot list with a couple of tanks just got a lot more important.
For all the strengths of hybrid, being all infantry or all mech (not sure why you think all mech needs to have at least some infantry. My mech guard never did, and for damn good reasons) brings advantages of its own.
Your mech guard brought infantry. They're called vets. You probably also took at least one infantry model for your HQ choice.
But seriously, my point is this: If a list is otherwise all infantry, but contains one vehicle, that doesn't necessarily make it a hybrid list. Likewise, having at least one infantry model in a list that is otherwise comprised of vehicles does not make it a hybrid list. Were that true, there would BE no mech lists, as they all contain at least 21 infantry models, and are thus all hybrid.
The point I'm trying to make is a syntactical one, not one of semantics.
If a foot guard commander takes a russ, saying "tee, hee, hee. You're totally a hybrid commander. GOTCHYA!" is meaningless.
Right, the problems of advancing Troop units on foot are more similar than advancing in Chimeras whether one has fire support in the form of HWSs or Russes. They are still T3/5+ save guys that have to survive advancing toward objectives.
How about 'advancing' in a Vendetta. Granted the squad is near-dead if the Vendetta gets shot down but it seems quite mobile to me and can drop (grav drop??) its troops off at an objective.
Infantry platoons count as a single entity for the purpose of rolling for reserves. Vendettas must start the game in reserves. This means that in order to fly a squad that comes from a platoon in on a vendetta, both the platoon and the flier must start in reserves.
But then things become highly questionable. What happens if the vendetta and the platoon don't both come in on the same turn? The platoon cannot deploy without deploying everything at once. That kind of implies that if the vendetta shows up first, then it shows up without anyone inside, and if the platoon shows up first, then everybody has to go on the table, and, once again, the vendetta shows up without any passengers later.
Were a vendetta a dedicated transport, or the platoon not have indivisibility in reserves, this wouldn't be a problem, but as it is... it is.
Ailaros wrote: Your mech guard brought infantry. They're called vets. You probably also took at least one infantry model for your HQ choice.
But seriously, my point is this: If a list is otherwise all infantry, but contains one vehicle, that doesn't necessarily make it a hybrid list. Likewise, having at least one infantry model in a list that is otherwise comprised of vehicles does not make it a hybrid list. Were that true, there would BE no mech lists, as they all contain at least 21 infantry models, and are thus all hybrid.
The point I'm trying to make is a syntactical one, not one of semantics.
If a foot guard commander takes a russ, saying "tee, hee, hee. You're totally a hybrid commander. GOTCHYA!" is meaningless.
If everything that my enemy can shoot at turn 1 has an AV value, then I'm running a mech list. If everything has a Toughness value, it's a footlist. If it's a mix of both, it's hybrid.
The distinction is very important. If my army is full of tanks, then a lot of my enemy's firepower is useless. However if I have a unit of HWTs or a CCS, they're going to be taking heavy bolters to the face like it's no one's business.
Similarly in a foot list with a couple of tanks, your enemy could have 3 las-preds that are wasted points. But if you have a couple of armoured units on the board, they're dead meat.
And when your opponents break open transports, what, gas comes out? No, infantry models do. Infantry models that anti-infantry weapons are good against.
You have to apply the same standard when labeling two different ends of the same spectrum, or else different terms refer to different things.
But all of this is an insanely pointless digression to how a foot guard army should assault. Feel free to continue to press a meaningless syntactic argument all you want. It will be ignored from now on...
I mean, as your signature itself notes...
jcress wrote:Seem super off topic to complain about epistemology on a thread about tactics.
Ailaros, just out of curiosity what kind of units or lists are you facing that can shred 6 to 12 inches of a guardsman advance and have all your HWS's dead by turn two? Are they bringing lots of flamers and the like because it sounds horrific
Ailaros wrote: And when your opponents break open transports, what, gas comes out? No, infantry models do. Infantry models that anti-infantry weapons are good against.
A popped transport is empty. The guys inside are already dead as far as I, and a lot of mech commanders, are concerned.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Axemanadam wrote: Ailaros, just out of curiosity what kind of units or lists are you facing that can shred 6 to 12 inches of a guardsman advance and have all your HWS's dead by turn two? Are they bringing lots of flamers and the like because it sounds horrific
Many "modern" codexes have more than enough dakka to rip guard to shreds.
Grey Knights, Blood Angels, Necrons will all annialate foot guard.
Axemanadam wrote: Ailaros, just out of curiosity what kind of units or lists are you facing that can shred 6 to 12 inches of a guardsman advance and have all your HWS's dead by turn two? Are they bringing lots of flamers and the like because it sounds horrific
For the guardsmen, part of it is spacing. If I were to deploy everything in close order, then this wouldn't be that big of an issue, but as I have to spread my troops out to stop myself from losing too much to blasts, it is. If I have a model with a 1" base, and then there's a 1" gap to the second rank of the squad, and those guys are on 1" bases, and the other squad is 1.5" behind the first one, that's 4.5". If, in return, the second rank charges up 6", I'm only really moving 1.5" up the field. Basically, the next wave does little more than make it to the pile of corpses from the first wave. Even if you shorten these distances, you're still just talking about a couple of inches of advancement.
This also creates another problem, that being that you can only fit so many ranks of guardsmen in your deployment zone. Eventually you're going to have troops that spread out left and right, and then they have problems with hypotenusical movement as well (they have to move to the left or right, as well as forward).
As for what's killing so many guardsmen, it's actually relatively mundane stuff. Assault cannon razorbacks, chimeras, fliers with and without missiles, splinter spam, bolters and the like. One of my recent games involved the losing end of a chainsaw massacre vs. BA.
Ailaros wrote: And when your opponents break open transports, what, gas comes out? No, infantry models do. Infantry models that anti-infantry weapons are good against.
A popped transport is empty. The guys inside are already dead as far as I, and a lot of mech commanders, are concerned.
I don't hold this view. The guys inside are still a threat or at least a objective grabber. You still have to kill the guys inside.
Ailaros wrote: And when your opponents break open transports, what, gas comes out? No, infantry models do. Infantry models that anti-infantry weapons are good against.
A popped transport is empty. The guys inside are already dead as far as I, and a lot of mech commanders, are concerned.
I don't hold this view. The guys inside are still a threat or at least a objective grabber. You still have to kill the guys inside.
Yeah but the enemy has Heavy Bolters, Bolters, Assault Cannons and Frag Missiles that before had nothing to shoot at, and now have one or two squads to concentrate on. And they're an assault target, obviously. Oh and they have to take a pinning test, then a morale test.
Sure if they get popped turn 4 or 5 then MAYBE they might do something. But I played mech guard for about 6 months and once a chimera's popped I just write off the guys inside.
I've been thinking of running an IG foot army once I polish my old Boyz up. At 750 points, I've basically got two two-squad platoons each with a vanilla Russ for them to follow, so their front's covered by AV14 and the single plasma in each and every infantry squad is all that'll keep flankers away. I've got a choice between Ratlings or Marbo in addition. I'm leaning more towards Marbo for the off-chance he can pop a heavy enemy vehicle and attract some fire for a phase. A medieval tactic, yes, but at such a smaller-end game I'm not too worried about my AV14 getting battered.
Then again, I've yet to play a 6th ed game (Let alone as Guard!), so I'm probably talking out of my arse here.
Anybody good at Math-hammering different sized RR squads with the hunting lances vs common targets?
If used as small suicide units meant to cripple (not kill) they could become this sort of safe-zone generating units.
Take down enough marines/enemy guard so your small Infantry unit can charge Marines, stay in combat safe from shooting, end assault on enemy turn and keep marching forward.
Axemanadam wrote: Ailaros, just out of curiosity what kind of units or lists are you facing that can shred 6 to 12 inches of a guardsman advance and have all your HWS's dead by turn two? Are they bringing lots of flamers and the like because it sounds horrific
Seeing as an Autocannon can kill a base in one shot, it is not hard to kill HWS.
As for the whole foot/hybrid/mech, I really see it as how many chimeras do you bring. Do you bring none? You're a foot guard player. Doesn't matter how many other tanks and other things you cram in, your infantry are all on foot. Hybrid tends to have 2 or 3 chimeras, but there is still a platoon that has some sort of job that is filled by being on foot. It's a hybrid of a foot and a mech list, hence the name. A mech list would be a list that literally has all, or almost all, infantry inside chimeras. That's how it delivers its troops, and that's how it's played.
Hence why you'll get foot IG players with 6 leman russes or a mech player that literally runs nothing but chimeras. The mindset of how you take your troops, to me at least, seems to define what kind of mindset your army follows above all else.
This.
There is also Air Cavalry list, which uses Planes to deliver its troops. Its really all about how you get your infantry to the field. I hate chimeras look and I do not like valkyrie spam so I am stuck with foot lists.
to Axemanadam: What can shred infantry so bad? Necron warrior spam, grey knights with storm bolter spam, eldar S6 spam, dark eldar venom spam, IG chimera veteran spam, shooty boyz spam, Chaos with lash of submission and ANY template weapons, tau firewarrior + crisis suit spam,... There are many options and those lists are actually most common...at least in my meta. Which is the reason my foot guard hardly win any battles in 5th edition. In 6th edition power blobs become meaningless so I adapted and changed to shooty foot guard mixed with a few vendettas and allies. Infantry is still getting anihilated every game, but the army as a whole can win.
to Testify: If your enemy pops a transport with a squad of melta/plazma vets inside, how can you consider them dead? They are very dangerous until killed.
If you have game plan that requires T3 5+ models moving up the field on foot I think your army qualifies as "foot guard" regardless of the chimera count.
While a "pure" list (only T3 5+ men) seems viable at lower points (as most enemy will be limited to mostly troop choices) my mind is struggling to see something that would work in 1000 pts + games.
I'm a wh40k noob, so I will not claim to present any solutions. Instead I'll have a go at structuring the problem a bit by breaking it up in three parts that can be discussed separately:
Expect your casualties to be horrific and that every "victory" will feel hollow. To all except the cigar smoking generals who put the objective markers on the map in the first place that is...
Games on the other hand are not won by killing the enemy, but by victory points.
A large part of those comes from objectives. Having a horde of scoring units may be the main strength of a "pure" foot list!
Another strength is the fact that such a list has no Fast Attack or Heavy Support entries.
The kill points weakness is huge.
List design
=======================
Keeping scoring units alive (target saturation)
- Many bodies (someone said 200ish for 2000pts)
- Many units (force enemy to spread fire)
- Many scoring units (to claim objectives)
Killing enemy units that contest objectives (target priority)
- Kill enemy scoring units.
- Kill enemy denial units.
- Ignore other units that can't easily kill a lot of guardsmen.
Deployment
- Need space to manouver. Can't cram all 200 men in the deployment zone. Reserves, outflank or deep strike required!
Troubleshooters
- Rapid response troops to take out 1 or 2 select targets per game.
Playing the game
=======================
Foot is slow
You need to plan ahead. I think the overall game plan must be more or less ready already at deployment.
Foot is weak
The game plan can not rely on your army holding any point of the table. Instead you must move around your enemy avoiding his strength. Use the 6" move before firing and don't be afraid to make sacrifices if it means allowing other units to perform.
Keep you men on the field
Target saturation. There must always be more (visible and equally important) targets than the enemy can destroy.
Stay in cover when possible.
Regimental standards and CCS to rally troops?
Protect your damage dealers
Make sure the heavy and special weapons are properly placed. Make the enemy kill lasgunners. Advance with the lasguns as a shield.
Beat the mathhammer
Take care of the remnants. As someone pointed out a unit of 1-3 guardsmen can still score and if it is still carrying a heavy or special weapon it still poses a threat. To kill this remnant the enemy is likely to waste firepower.
okay, so hackneyed stereotypes aside, I'm going to post a list recently put up by red corsair on my recent battle report, and my response.
Red Corsair 471464 4684783 wrote:50- Aegis DL
65- CCS with standard
105- (5) Stormies with 2 melta
105- (5) Stormies with 2 melta
105- (5) Stormies with 2 melta
40- PCS with Auto C
65- PIS Plasma G
65- PIS Plasma G
65- PIS Plasma G
65- PIS Plasma G
40- PCS with Auto C
65- PIS Plasma G
65- PIS Plasma G
65- PIS Plasma G
65- PIS Plasma G
75- HWS (3) Auto C
75- HWS (3) Auto C
75- HWS (3) Auto C
75- HWS (3) Auto C
75- HWS (3) Auto C
125- Basilisk
160- Manticore
160- Manticore
1850
Ailaros 471464 4685229 wrote:I keep acid testing this, and it keeps out coming clean, so to speak. I also like the style. I especially love the S7 spam EVERYWHERE. That said, I'll have to apologize for not exactly being bowled over.
Basically it suffers from a problem that hordes have always suffered from, except worse, that of force concentration. If you took all of the units in that list (except the stormies), and packed them in at a near-suicidally close 5 square inches per model (and the appropriate margin for heavy weapons bases and vehicles), the army you've presented takes up 715 square inches. On a deployment zone that's 6 feet by 12", there are only 864 possible square inches. That's 5/6ths of the deployment zone. That's practically the entire deployment zone packed to bursting with guys. Guys just BEGGING for some blast templates to be thrown their way.
Once the couple of pieces of AV12 are shut down (or, well, enough of them), and a few of the HWSs picked off (which is really easy), the killing power is about as concentrated as a gallon of blood in a swimming pool. A gallon of blood sounds icky, but you'd scarcely notice it over that much space. An opponent that spent his time focusing in any one place would easily be able to gain fire superiority. The multiple squad thing would help, but still...
There's also the movement problem. That packed of a DZ doesn't exactly giving you maneuvering space on the one hand. On the other, it would take so long for something on one side to get over to support the other (causing even more problems against blast weapons in the process), that the enemy really does have time to take it apart piecemeal. Furthermore, it has some very nice staying power in the DZ, but I hesitate to think how well it would do on the offense. 80 guardsmen is a lot, I'll grant you, but I've seen that many guardsmen taken down in just a couple of turns before.
Put another way, this seems very unwieldy.
Had I the models to do this (I don't have all the extra autocannons or plasma guns just lying about), I might actually want to give this a try, and at lower points I might, as this does seem to be a way of doing a more classical version of foot horde guard. If I've learned anything over these last few games, though, it's that I'm not entirely certain that the classical foot guard actually works anymore.
I'd love to see a few, proper battle reports, but it seems like the main problem with foot guard at the moment - the crippling lack of durability, especially on a by-unit basis - is still a problem here.
to Testify: If your enemy pops a transport with a squad of melta/plazma vets inside, how can you consider them dead? They are very dangerous until killed.
Nah... They are dead. If not from the explosion (where you will lose ~5 guys and have to take Pinning/Morale) then from the aftermath (assault, leftover random enemy units shooting at them). Even if their Chimera is only wrecked they are a fire-magnet for all the bored enemy AP firepower that was useless so far.
If by some miracle they survive then it could mean two things:
- You have some random guys with short-ranged special weapons but without mobility and durability. Do whatever you want with them. they are essentially a 'bonus' unit.
- The end of the game is night, and your enemy is already destroyed, so nobody cares about those footsloggers .
Ailaros wrote: To be fair, though, being a foot guard player never required you to use ONLY INFANTRY EVER. I mean, I consider myself a foot guard player, and in like 3/4 of my games (including 100% of the games played above 1000 points) I ran at least a couple of russes or artillery pieces or something.
Aesthetically speaking, I consider the foot-hybrid-mech spectrum to relate to the inchimeradness of the troops and HQ sections, rather than if there are any vehicles at all.
Nice word there, "inchimeradness".
It seems to me that the way I have found foot guard to survive best is to spread out as much as possible. Granted I have only played 2 games of 6th ed with them and both of those were 1000 point games but I was starting to come to that conclusion at the end of 5th as well. If you take 3 platoons with 3 PIS each, a HWT or two for each and 1-2 special weapon squads of flamers as a speed bump unit you can then deploy a squad each on each side of your deployment zone and one in the middle. Granted you loose the concetrated firepower of clumping them all togather however with that much spacing between them all you don't have to worry about fighting your opponants entire army at once. If you put your CCS in a Chimera in the back field (or take 2 CCS if your hell bent on no Chimeras) They can zip back and forth to provide support where it's needed most. throw a couple of LRBT or even Hellhounds or Sentinals in between the flanking and center units and you can help to soften up the incomming threats reasonably well.
Like I said I haven't gotten many games in yet but it seems to me when I bunched up and deployed in one section for support I got my kicked in the teeth by Dark Eldar but when I spread out I was able to shoot down the Raiders and make his witches walk further to get to me all the while taking fire. I need to test this some more but it seems sound to me.
P.S. This may only work well if you deploy second.
Why are people ignoring Rough Riders? IIRC Hunting Lances are AP3 and don't they get Hammer of Wrath as well? 100~ points for 21 S5 I5 attacks on the charge doesn't seem bad to me.
Amaya wrote: Why are people ignoring Rough Riders? IIRC Hunting Lances are AP3 and don't they get Hammer of Wrath as well? 100~ points for 21 S5 I5 attacks on the charge doesn't seem bad to me.
Because they die like regular guardsmen, and with that damage output they'll be a fire magnet.
to Testify: If your enemy pops a transport with a squad of melta/plazma vets inside, how can you consider them dead? They are very dangerous until killed.
Nah... They are dead. If not from the explosion (where you will lose ~5 guys and have to take Pinning/Morale) then from the aftermath (assault, leftover random enemy units shooting at them). Even if their Chimera is only wrecked they are a fire-magnet for all the bored enemy AP firepower that was useless so far.
If by some miracle they survive then it could mean two things:
- You have some random guys with short-ranged special weapons but without mobility and durability. Do whatever you want with them. they are essentially a 'bonus' unit.
- The end of the game is night, and your enemy is already destroyed, so nobody cares about those footsloggers .
Gotta agree with the mech players here. There's a reason they treat their guys as dead the moment the transport pops, because for all intents and purposes, they are. It's like for foot guard players who have an infantry squad lose its heavy and special weapon. Yeah, it's still alive, but it cant do anything useful, besides pray it gets ignored. Some of the mech players in my store will just remove the guys as casualties in friendly games, just because they really don't care. Speaking of which, you thought us Foot IG players don't care about their troops? Watch a veteran treadhead play sometime. We have an IG player at my store who said this once.
"If I could tie guardsmen to the front of my tanks to give them coversaves I would."
Those dismounted guardsmen squads have lost their range, their mobility, their ability to provide a good counterattack, and pretty much everything else that a Mech commander buys them for in the first place. They are quite literally, dead the moment their tin can is gone.
Also, I noticed that this thread has sort of spiraled off of just being a foot IG discussion and just become "aggression for IG" in general. Not that I mind, I love seeing all the different ways of play discussing tactics about this, just thought it was funny. I'll be changing the title to reflect that.
Infantry platoons count as a single entity for the purpose of rolling for reserves. Vendettas must start the game in reserves. This means that in order to fly a squad that comes from a platoon in on a vendetta, both the platoon and the flier must start in reserves.
Now now, this isn't entirely true.
RAW is just that an entire platoon is rolled for collectively when rolling for reserves. Say I have two infantry squads and a PCS in the same platoon. Both the infantry squads are reserved, the PCS starts on the board. Turn 2 comes around, I roll reserves, and a 5 comes up on my reserve die. Yay! My platoon comes in! Both infantry squads come on, and the PCS is already on the board so it's reserve roll didn't affect it.
RAW says nothing about having to reserve it all, just that a reserve roll affects the whole platoon in reserves.
To target the OP; I've taken to plopping two plasvet squads in Valkyries, and a SWS with two flamers and a demo charge in a Vendetta. Come turn 5 they hover, drop their cargo right next to some poor sods, and everything dies. Everything. Linebreaker, Slay the Warlord, and maybe an objective or two are mine.
TheCaptain wrote:RAW says nothing about having to reserve it all, just that a reserve roll affects the whole platoon in reserves.
Guard were FAQed to make it so, though. I don't know if it carried into 6th ed or not, but in 5th ed FAQs they explicitly said you couldn't start with some of a platoon on the table and some of it in reserve.
It actually says something much to the opposite tune, something I too wasn't aware of, that is relevant to your previous post.
"Page 96- Infantry Platoon, second sentence
Change to: (...) In addition when making a reserve or outflanking roll, roll once for the whole infantry platoon. Any units in reserve that are embarked upon a non-dedicated transport are instead rolled for separately."
So in addition to sectioning off parts of a platoon being fair game, as "roll once for the whole infantry platoon" does not mean parts of it can't go unaffected if they're already on the board, if you toss a SWS in a Vendetta/Valk, they act completely separate in terms of reserves.
Perhaps moving a few chimeras flat out with SWS with plasma inside will provide a cost effective threat to the enemy. I think in this regard they might be better than vets seeing how when their APC pops their "already dead"
Combine this with stormies in their back field and marbo breathing down their throat. You got yourself one hell of a vanguard, not exactly rock hard but they should give the enemy 2 turns of trouble before their mopped up.
In the meantime move your blobs up and fire your HS platforms.
To keep things cheap i throw some SWS with meltaguns/Demo charges in some Vendettas for objective grabbing and (oh lord im saying again) cinematic suicide drops.
any ideas on that?
Automatically Appended Next Post: The key here is to keep your mech units and your units mounted in your mech as cheap as possible so you can have more points for your foot elements as previously mentioned.
Great ideas so far though!
You'll have to find a way of getting them into Chimera's. They don't have transport options, so you'll have to buy them on other things, but those other things have to deploy inside them due to dedicated transport rules.
Blaggard wrote: You'll have to find a way of getting them into Chimera's. They don't have transport options, so you'll have to buy them on other things, but those other things have to deploy inside them due to dedicated transport rules.
I always overlook the dedicated transport option..... darn it all sounded so good..
I think if your not adverse to taking allies you can use Coteaz and 2 squads of henchman with crusaders/assassins.
They make for some scary units that people will prioritise shooting over your foot sloggers, having the crusaders gives them hopefully enough survivability to get into combat.
Blaggard wrote: You'll have to find a way of getting them into Chimera's. They don't have transport options, so you'll have to buy them on other things, but those other things have to deploy inside them due to dedicated transport rules.
I always overlook the dedicated transport option..... darn it all sounded so good..
I know that feeling. I thought about shoving loads of Plasma SPS in chugs, more target saturation than Vets in chugs and for the same price a higher chance of hurting stuff (loser BS offset by more guns).
Other than using my BA to augment my Guard I will be running the following list or approximately:
CCS: LC, PG, standard
CCS: LC, PG, standard
PCS: 4 x flamer
IS: PG, LC IS: PG, LC IS: PG, LC IS: PG, LC IS: PG, LC
HWT: AC x 2
HWT: Mortar
Vets: Harker, Chimera 3 x MG Vets: Chimera 3 x MG
Demolisher: LC LRBT: H-bolter sponsons, H Stubber
LRBT, LC
Then I will either round the list out with scout sentinals, special weapon flamer squads, Ogryns, Marbo or Stormtroopers depending on need.
I too have been wondering and reading all your posts and trying to soak up all the info I can. I think the key (like many people have already said) is target saturation. I can provide 10 + scoring units for you to deal with, 3 battle tanks, and sentinels and veterans showing up in your rear. I think the formula we need to figure out, is: How many bodies do we need to throw at each objective to weather damage and hold the point, while still being able to whittle away the opponents force. In my list above every infantry unit has a LC and a PG and the CCS do also, so thats 7 sqauds with the ability to cause some good damage. Then I have AC heavy weapons teams... you want to shoot them over the LC/PG squads, be my guest. The mortor team will ALWAYS be out of LOS throwing rounds on things that scare me... scarabs, pathfinders, orks. They are more of an annoyance unit that you will have to put up with all game but probably be unable to effect. Then I have 3 LRBT hulls... lots of dakka to take them out. They will have infantry units close by or wrapped around. The Vets in the chimera's are really what I am banking on to take objectives end game. I will plan on moving the foot squads up, but only when I think they have a shot at crossing open ground without getting tore up. Again though, with so many scoring units I am betting on being able to move aggressivly turns 3+ with them, after I have had 2 turns of decent shooting.
I know I will loose units, I am just planning on haveing enough units left over to still win.
What do you guys think ?
Edit - A side thought about allies.
I have had evil thoughts about a BA Terminator SS librarian with Shield of Sangiunius(5+ cover save to all units within 6 inches) leading a blob squad. I also believe that Guard mixed with BADOA jump list would be a great combination.
Blaggard wrote: You'll have to find a way of getting them into Chimera's. They don't have transport options, so you'll have to buy them on other things, but those other things have to deploy inside them due to dedicated transport rules.
Things dont have to start embarked on dedicated transports. Just deploy the empty chimeras in front of your SWS, then embark and drive in turn 1.
So, some food for thought here, since I've not noticed anyone bring this up.
But if the dual FoC for 2,000pts ever becomes accepted, it could be the shot in the arm that IG needs to really apply concentrated killing power and push up the field. 6 heavy slots could get you 4 independent leman russ hulls, and 2 manticores for example. It allows you to pretty much drop heavy weapons teams entirely, and if you ran, say 2 or 3 demolishers with artillery and infantry support, you could seriously threaten a gunline with it. It'd also allow you to take more CCS (orders and guns), HQ's we dont see as much like lord commissars and primaris pyskers, and allow you to take more stormtroopers to really screw with the enemy. 1 10 man flamer squad and 3 5 man melta teams would be devestating to almost any list for example.
Is this something we're missing that might make a difference? Almost everyone takes two CCS's anyways, and troop slots are easy to fill with cheap units, so it's not like the extra foc requirements hurt us in any way. I've already been trying foot vets as a better SWS to decent results, so it wouldnt bother me in the slightest.
This does require people to accept dual force org at 2k though, whic sadly doesnt seem likely anytime soon.
MrMoustaffa wrote:But if the dual FoC for 2,000pts ever becomes accepted, it could be the shot in the arm that IG needs to really apply concentrated killing power and push up the field. 6 heavy slots could get you 4 independent leman russ hulls, and 2 manticores for example.
In a way, it kind of doesn't matter what the rest of your list is. Anti-infantry of all kinds is managed by the 42 BS4 hellgun shots (plus all the fancy specials) on the drop, and vehicles are handles by plasma, melta, and thrown kraks. In return, the survivors have to deal with carapace armor, and if they charge, they have to deal with Ap3 (or better, plus flamers) overwatch. Of course, all of this is in their deployment zone, so while they're desperately trying to fend off 60 angry, angry hornets, the rest of your army can do... well... whatever it wants. You basically have the board mid-game.
The only thing I could possibly think of more ridiculous than this is a 2750 point list with 60 ogryn...
Actually, wait, maybe you're right. 1200 points DOES get you 6 bolter boat punishers. Why yes, I WOULD like 174 S5 attacks per turn, thank you.
MrMoustaffa wrote:But if the dual FoC for 2,000pts ever becomes accepted, it could be the shot in the arm that IG needs to really apply concentrated killing power and push up the field. 6 heavy slots could get you 4 independent leman russ hulls, and 2 manticores for example.
In a way, it kind of doesn't matter what the rest of your list is. Anti-infantry of all kinds is managed by the 42 BS4 hellgun shots (plus all the fancy specials) on the drop, and vehicles are handles by plasma, melta, and thrown kraks. In return, the survivors have to deal with carapace armor, and if they charge, they have to deal with Ap3 (or better, plus flamers) overwatch. Of course, all of this is in their deployment zone, so while they're desperately trying to fend off 60 angry, angry hornets, the rest of your army can do... well... whatever it wants. You basically have the board mid-game.
The only thing I could possibly think of more ridiculous than this is a 2750 point list with 60 ogryn...
Actually, wait, maybe you're right. 1200 points DOES get you 6 bolter boat punishers. Why yes, I WOULD like 174 S5 attacks per turn, thank you.
Testify wrote: Dual FOC is part of the core rules. Dissallowing it is an intentional nerf to many armies, essentially halving their number of options.
You may as well disallow heavy support, or psykers.
Yeah, but given how most metas are determined by what the tournaments allow, and almost every tourney player I know had an aneurism at the mere thought of Dual FOC, I'm kind of worried it'll end up like forgeworld, aka "sure, it's legal, it's just that nobody will play you"
Ailaros brings up a good point with all those stormtroopers. You pretty much have half your army deepstriking in to cause pain and misery, and very few things will survive all those shots when they pop up. If you're clever and get a few near each other for support, they might be able to form up into fireteams and sweep areas of the table. The question would be then, how does one support 60 stormtroopers deepstriking into the enemy. Obviously, you're either going russes (for durability) artillery (for range) or fliers/hellhound variants for mobility. Then, what does one do about the infantry you'll need? While it's not a ton of points available right there, if you toned the stormies back a BIT (no offense) you could have plenty of bodies and firepower to survive any turn 1 alpha strike and maybe even dish out some hurt of your own. You're probably either going to be going carapace vets or mass PIS if you're wanting a foot list, if you're going hybrid or mech you'll probably do the same old same old with keeping your chimeras on the defensive.
Yeah, but given how most metas are determined by what the tournaments allow, and almost every tourney player I know had an aneurism at the mere thought of Dual FOC, I'm kind of worried it'll end up like forgeworld, aka "sure, it's legal, it's just that nobody will play you"
You know you're a tournament player when you refuse to play by one of the basic tenets of the rules, yet still make your army as OP and cheesy as possible
MrMoustaffa wrote:But if the dual FoC for 2,000pts ever becomes accepted, it could be the shot in the arm that IG needs to really apply concentrated killing power and push up the field. 6 heavy slots could get you 4 independent leman russ hulls, and 2 manticores for example.
In a way, it kind of doesn't matter what the rest of your list is. Anti-infantry of all kinds is managed by the 42 BS4 hellgun shots (plus all the fancy specials) on the drop, and vehicles are handles by plasma, melta, and thrown kraks. In return, the survivors have to deal with carapace armor, and if they charge, they have to deal with Ap3 (or better, plus flamers) overwatch. Of course, all of this is in their deployment zone, so while they're desperately trying to fend off 60 angry, angry hornets, the rest of your army can do... well... whatever it wants. You basically have the board mid-game.
The only thing I could possibly think of more ridiculous than this is a 2750 point list with 60 ogryn...
Actually, wait, maybe you're right. 1200 points DOES get you 6 bolter boat punishers. Why yes, I WOULD like 174 S5 attacks per turn, thank you.
All hail Ailaros! King of cheese!
We all saw the day Ailaros discovered the Dark side of gaming.
MrMoustaffa wrote:But if the dual FoC for 2,000pts ever becomes accepted, it could be the shot in the arm that IG needs to really apply concentrated killing power and push up the field. 6 heavy slots could get you 4 independent leman russ hulls, and 2 manticores for example.
You know against 90% of dakka they will die as quickly as PIS right?
Just because stormies are useful in small numbers doesn't mean you can scale that up. A single heavy flamer could wipe out any of those on the turn they deepstriked, and would do it pretty reliably too.
No to mention the lack of any mobility whatsoever.
MrMoustaffa wrote:But if the dual FoC for 2,000pts ever becomes accepted, it could be the shot in the arm that IG needs to really apply concentrated killing power and push up the field. 6 heavy slots could get you 4 independent leman russ hulls, and 2 manticores for example.
You know against 90% of dakka they will die as quickly as PIS right?
Just because stormies are useful in small numbers doesn't mean you can scale that up. A single heavy flamer could wipe out any of those on the turn they deepstriked, and would do it pretty reliably too.
No to mention the lack of any mobility whatsoever.
Well with some solid vehicle support he can just plan on tabling the opponent turn 2!
Oh yeah don't get me wrong, I'm not slagging off six Russes at all. Though I wouldn't go with Punishers. 6 Demolishers with HB/Sponsons would be fething sweeeeet. 1110 points, so plenty of room for troops.
Testify wrote: Oh yeah don't get me wrong, I'm not slagging off six Russes at all. Though I wouldn't go with Punishers. 6 Demolishers with HB/Sponsons would be fething sweeeeet. 1110 points, so plenty of room for troops.
But...but then you won't have enough points for 12 Valkyries and 6 Vendettas. How will you win games without 18 flyers?
Testify wrote: Oh yeah don't get me wrong, I'm not slagging off six Russes at all. Though I wouldn't go with Punishers. 6 Demolishers with HB/Sponsons would be fething sweeeeet. 1110 points, so plenty of room for troops.
Yeah at that point, you just walk your infantry up behind the tanks to help scrape the goo of the enemy off the tank treads.
I'd love doing that with some rediculous 50 man blob led by Yarrick and maybe a couple smaller ones led with lord commissars. Would it win very often? Hell no. Would it be hilarious to watch in action? You better believe it.
Plus that look on your opponent's face when he realizes he's facing an assault IG army is always priceless
Testify wrote: Oh yeah don't get me wrong, I'm not slagging off six Russes at all. Though I wouldn't go with Punishers. 6 Demolishers with HB/Sponsons would be fething sweeeeet. 1110 points, so plenty of room for troops.
But...but then you won't have enough points for 12 Valkyries and 6 Vendettas. How will you win games without 18 flyers?
Testify wrote: Oh yeah don't get me wrong, I'm not slagging off six Russes at all. Though I wouldn't go with Punishers. 6 Demolishers with HB/Sponsons would be fething sweeeeet. 1110 points, so plenty of room for troops.
But...but then you won't have enough points for 12 Valkyries and 6 Vendettas. How will you win games without 18 flyers?
2 veteran squads, 140 points. CCS 50 points.
So you can still get 5 Vendettas at 2000 points.
And now we know why nobody wants to play against IG with dual Force Org
Testify wrote: Oh yeah don't get me wrong, I'm not slagging off six Russes at all. Though I wouldn't go with Punishers. 6 Demolishers with HB/Sponsons would be fething sweeeeet. 1110 points, so plenty of room for troops.
Yeah at that point, you just walk your infantry up behind the tanks to help scrape the goo of the enemy off the tank treads.
I'd love doing that with some rediculous 50 man blob led by Yarrick and maybe a couple smaller ones led with lord commissars. Would it win very often? Hell no. Would it be hilarious to watch in action? You better believe it.
Plus that look on your opponent's face when he realizes he's facing an assault IG army is always priceless
Strategy - coat the Demolishers in the blobs and roll forward baby. Would probably be pretty effective actually, though the veteran squads are dead weight. Could possibly make some of the Demolishers normal Leman Russes and give the vets plasmas.
Testify wrote: Oh yeah don't get me wrong, I'm not slagging off six Russes at all. Though I wouldn't go with Punishers. 6 Demolishers with HB/Sponsons would be fething sweeeeet. 1110 points, so plenty of room for troops.
Yeah at that point, you just walk your infantry up behind the tanks to help scrape the goo of the enemy off the tank treads.
I'd love doing that with some rediculous 50 man blob led by Yarrick and maybe a couple smaller ones led with lord commissars. Would it win very often? Hell no. Would it be hilarious to watch in action? You better believe it.
Plus that look on your opponent's face when he realizes he's facing an assault IG army is always priceless
Strategy - coat the Demolishers in the blobs and roll forward baby. Would probably be pretty effective actually, though the veteran squads are dead weight. Could possibly make some of the Demolishers normal Leman Russes and give the vets plasmas.
Hey Ailaros, we fixed your blobs bro.
To add to that, I'd find some points to drop somewhere, and arm all the infantry squads with power mauls or axes. Then you've got an obscene amount of attacks with some good strength on them. I'd also add some sort of long range threat, like manticores. You only really need 1 or 2, and that'd be more than enough to soften the enemy up by the time your main force arrives. Plus, it's gonna be kind of hard to see a manticore behind 4 demolishers and about a hundred guardsmen
The problem with Manticores is that it means fewer Russes. If you wanted to be cheesy you could just take 6 manticores and hundreds of infantrymen to guard them.
Having 6 AV14s on the table is very scary for most players, and with all those infantrymen meltaguns are impossible. And I know from experience what happens when you try to kill Russes with lascannons, i.e. not much.
Unless your enemy had a lot of lances (and really, who plays eldar? ), I'd guess that 5 out of those 6 Russes would be alive by the turn 4. Might get a bit different turn 5/6 once all those infantrymen are dead but who cares
Testify wrote: The problem with Manticores is that it means fewer Russes. If you wanted to be cheesy you could just take 6 manticores and hundreds of infantrymen to guard them.
Having 6 AV14s on the table is very scary for most players, and with all those infantrymen meltaguns are impossible. And I know from experience what happens when you try to kill Russes with lascannons, i.e. not much.
Unless your enemy had a lot of lances (and really, who plays eldar? ), I'd guess that 5 out of those 6 Russes would be alive by the turn 4. Might get a bit different turn 5/6 once all those infantrymen are dead but who cares
Yeah I have to admit I'm really liking this idea too. Just one last question though.
How do you plan on dealing with fliers? Because while most won't scare this list, a couple of vendettas behind your tank line could really ruin your day...
How do you plan on dealing with fliers? Because while most won't scare this list, a couple of vendettas behind your tank line could really ruin your day...
How do you plan on dealing with fliers? Because while most won't scare this list, a couple of vendettas behind your tank line could really ruin your day...
That.
One valkyrie could beat your whole army.
To be fair, it wouldn't be hard to find some points to drop for hydras, vendettas of your own, or even a quad gun defence line if you were desperate.
How do you plan on dealing with fliers? Because while most won't scare this list, a couple of vendettas behind your tank line could really ruin your day...
That.
One valkyrie could beat your whole army.
To be fair, it wouldn't be hard to find some points to drop for hydras, vendettas of your own, or even a quad gun defence line if you were desperate.
But, just in theory, I want you to picture one Valkyrie winning a 2000 point game solo. With a naked PCS inside it to grab an objective turn5.
If a person manages to defeat my entire army with a valkyrie, I'm pretty sure I wasn't fit to win in the first place.
That said, watching that IG list fight a Draigowing list would be hilarious to watch.
Draigowing guy:"Aww you brought IG, how cute, lets see you kill 35 paladins".
IG Player:*sets down 6 Demolishers*"If you live to turn 5, this will be an interesting game."
That said, watching that IG list fight a Draigowing list would be hilarious to watch.
Draigowing guy:"Aww you brought IG, how cute, lets see you kill 35 paladins".
IG Player:*sets down 6 Demolishers*"If you live to turn two and half, this will be an interesting game."
Homing Beacon: Any friendly unit that deep strike within 12in can reroll the scatter die
Lasgun w/ Auxiliary Grenade Launcher: Replaces the Sgt's laspistol with a lasgun with a 1 shot krak grenade.
Homing Beacon: Any friendly unit that deep strike within 12in can reroll the scatter die
Lasgun w/ Auxiliary Grenade Launcher: Replaces the Sgt's laspistol with a lasgun with a 1 shot krak grenade.
I don't think you can ally two armies with the same codex.
Well there are 10 meltaguns in that list. If I were actually to run that list, I'd find the points somewhere and give the veterans AND the PCSs meltaguns, and have them on the flanks of the armour. That'd give me 18 BS4 melta, 6 BS4. Even at 6-12", that's plenty.
Homing Beacon: Any friendly unit that deep strike within 12in can reroll the scatter die
Lasgun w/ Auxiliary Grenade Launcher: Replaces the Sgt's laspistol with a lasgun with a 1 shot krak grenade.
I don't think you can ally two armies with the same codex.
He's using the Elysian Drop troopers list. It's been specifically FAQ'd by forgeworld that it ally's just like IG does in response to the typical 6th ed codexes, except that it can also ally with the normal IG codex as battle brothers. His list is 100% legal and awesome.
Testify wrote:Well there are 10 meltaguns in that list. If I were actually to run that list, I'd find the points somewhere and give the veterans AND the PCSs meltaguns, and have them on the flanks of the armour. That'd give me 18 BS4 melta, 6 BS4. Even at 6-12", that's plenty.
You do realize that regardless of BS, they'll be hitting those flyers at BS 1 right? You've probably got weight of fire downpat, but there's no way you'll be able to get all 18 meltas on the same target at once. Although to be fair, you really only need one or 2 solid hits to knock one out of the sky with a meltagun...
I'd still probably just throw in a vendetta or some hydras for AA if I was worried about it. It's not like you're pressed for slots after all
You do realize that regardless of BS, they'll be hitting those flyers at BS 1 right? You've probably got weight of fire downpat, but there's no way you'll be able to get all 18 meltas on the same target at once. Although to be fair, you really only need one or 2 solid hits to knock one out of the sky with a meltagun...
I'd still probably just throw in a vendetta or some hydras for AA if I was worried about it. It's not like you're pressed for slots after all
Right. 6 snap-shotting meltaguns would average a hit. That's a 33% chance to penetrate at AP1, and 50% chance to take a hull point.
Bring it down! would help greatly, but in order to afford a CCS you'd have to get rid of a squad or two. And it'll draw a lot of fire.
Honestly I'd just take an Aegis. I made a mistake earlier, forgetting I was in 6th and therefore an Aegis is compulsary
MrMoustaffa wrote: He's using the Elysian Drop troopers list. It's been specifically FAQ'd by forgeworld that it ally's just like IG does in response to the typical 6th ed codexes, except that it can also ally with the normal IG codex as battle brothers. His list is 100% legal and awesome.
You could also use Armoured Battle Group allies, to get a lot of russes into an sub-2k list. Take a Commissar tank to give a 6" ld bubble and a couple of russes as troop choices. You could even give them ace gun skills, or a fourth stormtrooper squad.
Of course, some people probably wouldn't play against a Forge World list. I feel like I'm always going on about ABG when I post here.
Still, it can be a bit of a points squeeze trying to get all of those tanks in.
MrMoustaffa wrote: Don't tempt me. I'm THIS close to buying the book that battlegroup is in so I have proper leman russ formations to go with my infantry.
Why bother with HWS's when I can just bring 8 russes of various flavours
Testify wrote: Man that conquerer is insane. A 130 point Leman Russ that can re-roll the scatter dice. There's no way my opponent would let me field that.
Especially not 15 of them.
Oh and those manticore rockets? Yikes.
Conquerors only use the 3" template though, and don't have lumbering behemoth.
MrMoustaffa wrote: Don't tempt me. I'm THIS close to buying the book that battlegroup is in so I have proper leman russ formations to go with my infantry.
Why bother with HWS's when I can just bring 8 russes of various flavours
If I'm going to grind my opponents souls into oblivion under the thundering amazingness of 20 Leman Russes, I would like to at least have the decency of having the book with me.
Aka, if I'm going to kill everything in sight, I'm going to do it right
I've already got the PDF anyways, thanks for posting it though!
No problem. However, the list in the book is completely useless and would do you no good. It is in Imperial Armour Volume 1. All of the points costs are wrong, many of the stats have changed, things have changed organisation slot and many other things. There is even an armoury section, and those things have been gone for a while.
In reality, the book would be a waste of money. You can't even buy it without going for a second hand copy. Don't let wanting to own the book stop you trying it out.
Trickstick wrote: No problem. However, the list in the book is completely useless and would do you no good. It is in Imperial Armour Volume 1. All of the points costs are wrong, many of the stats have changed, things have changed organisation slot and many other things. There is even an armoury section, and those things have been gone for a while.
In reality, the book would be a waste of money. You can't even buy it without going for a second hand copy. Don't let wanting to own the book stop you trying it out.
So you actually have to use the PDF if you want to use them... Which means I can use it right now...
Now, to get enough tanks without completely destroying my troop section.
I'm tempted to take a Commissar exterminator with LC/HBs and the ace gunner skill. 205pts is more than I would usually pay for a russ, but it is only 20 points more than the same tank load out from the IG list. It would also give things like HWTs a ld boost.
A couple of basic russes for troops and manticores/hydras for the standard IG slots could work nicely.
Now, to get enough tanks without completely destroying my troop section.
I'm tempted to take a Commissar exterminator with LC/HBs and the ace gunner skill. 205pts is more than I would usually pay for a russ, but it is only 20 points more than the same tank load out from the IG list. It would also give things like HWTs a ld boost.
A couple of basic russes for troops and manticores/hydras for the standard IG slots could work nicely.
It's a BS 4, twin linked psyfleman dread with AV 14/13/10, that gives LD 10 to all units within 6" of it, and it's got a FREAKING COMMISSAR COMMANDING IT, AND IT CAN TAKE AN EXTRA LASCANNON (That's S10 against vehicles) AND OTHER WEAPONS.
Trickstick wrote: It's like taking Pask, but Better in almost every way. It doesn't get the bonus against MCs though.
fix'd that for you
In all seriousness though, an armored battlegroup would be an excellent choice for a guard army wanting to be more agressive and push the field. Since platoons can take all the infantry you'll ever need in 2 slots, I'd almost rather take the vanilla IG as the ally, so I could take full advantage of the slots the armoured batlegroup offers, and i'd still be able to spam a ton of infantry and stormtroopers.
I'll ask my store if they're ok with me trying it. I don't think they'll mind, but it doesn't hurt to ask. At the very least. it's not another leafblower they have to face. I'm going to write up a potential 1,850 here in a sec and see if I can find a good way to run it.
EDIT: My god their chimeras can take autocannon turrets... It's so beautiful...
Alright so now that I'm done drooling over the Armored Battlegroup faq, I think I've got a rough idea of what I would want to run. As far as I can tell, it covers pretty much everything. Critique and criticism is welcome though!
Spoiler:
1,850 Armored Battlegroup with Vanilla IG allies (ITS ALL IG SO IT"S COOL OK?!?!?)
Trickstick wrote: No problem. However, the list in the book is completely useless and would do you no good. It is in Imperial Armour Volume 1. All of the points costs are wrong, many of the stats have changed, things have changed organisation slot and many other things. There is even an armoury section, and those things have been gone for a while.
In reality, the book would be a waste of money. You can't even buy it without going for a second hand copy. Don't let wanting to own the book stop you trying it out.
So you actually have to use the PDF if you want to use them... Which means I can use it right now...
Trickstick just murdered Moustaffa's wallet.
I see several Leman Russ purchases in his future.
Maybe a few Baneblades proxied as Vanquishers, just because you can.
Trickstick wrote: No problem. However, the list in the book is completely useless and would do you no good. It is in Imperial Armour Volume 1. All of the points costs are wrong, many of the stats have changed, things have changed organisation slot and many other things. There is even an armoury section, and those things have been gone for a while.
In reality, the book would be a waste of money. You can't even buy it without going for a second hand copy. Don't let wanting to own the book stop you trying it out.
So you actually have to use the PDF if you want to use them... Which means I can use it right now...
Trickstick just murdered Moustaffa's wallet.
I see several Leman Russ purchases in his future.
Maybe a few Baneblades proxied as Vanquishers, just because you can.
May as well just driven a stake through it's heart and spit on it's body. I'm already sweating college loans. Then somebody comes along and says "hey, you can make an army of almost nothing but tanks!" How does any IG player resist that? That's like taking a crack addict and waving a 5 pound bag of the stuff in his face.
Luckily, this main idea I'm trying only needs 5 tanks, and I don't see myself using more than 8 even in high points games for now, so I think I'll be ok. I just got 4 unassembled ones on ebay for dirt cheap the other day, so in the mean time I'll be ok. I think I've got six total at the moment, which should be plenty. Still need to buy a couple demolisher kits though...
Yes, my plan worked! I'm actually a secret GW marketing executive. Sales must be increased, even on my day off. My next task will be to screw up the entire game's balance by making ratlings do precision shots on both a 5 and 6, so everyone must buy them!
I'll have to write up a list, as I'm supposed to be starting regular games again next week. I'm thinking about using ABG just to fit the "mini-Pask" and an extra russ into my list. A small problem with using ABG as your primary would be the question of what would be your warlord, as there are no HQs with ld values. I assume the updated army list will sort this out, but who knows when that will be released.
Trickstick wrote: No problem. However, the list in the book is completely useless and would do you no good. It is in Imperial Armour Volume 1. All of the points costs are wrong, many of the stats have changed, things have changed organisation slot and many other things. There is even an armoury section, and those things have been gone for a while.
In reality, the book would be a waste of money. You can't even buy it without going for a second hand copy. Don't let wanting to own the book stop you trying it out.
So you actually have to use the PDF if you want to use them... Which means I can use it right now...
Trickstick just murdered Moustaffa's wallet.
I see several Leman Russ purchases in his future.
Maybe a few Baneblades proxied as Vanquishers, just because you can.
May as well just driven a stake through it's heart and spit on it's body. I'm already sweating college loans. Then somebody comes along and says "hey, you can make an army of almost nothing but tanks!" How does any IG player resist that? That's like taking a crack addict and waving a 5 pound bag of the stuff in his face.
Luckily, this main idea I'm trying only needs 5 tanks, and I don't see myself using more than 8 even in high points games for now, so I think I'll be ok. I just got 4 unassembled ones on ebay for dirt cheap the other day, so in the mean time I'll be ok. I think I've got six total at the moment, which should be plenty. Still need to buy a couple demolisher kits though...
You know you want a full, fluffy armoured company. Or regiment. Yeah. Regiment. Like 200 tanks. (And if that's fluff-innaccurate, withhold your riposte, I'm a horrible, mean TFG and I don't read a wink of fluff.)
OK time to get this thread back on topic. I know some people were interested in trying Hellhounds, and I tried some today and decided to see how they worked in a foot IG list. I probably could've written a better list, but I was running late and just threw them into another list I had laying around. I ended up gutting my HWS's and my stormtroopers, which are two of my mainstay units, so the hellhound had some big shoes to fill.
I ran 3 with multimeltas in an 1850 list, and all I can say is holy crap is that overkill against necrons. Delicious, delicious overkill. They also did exactly what I wanted them to do, move up, tie up the enemy, kill key targets, and provide an agressive counterattack to eat up the enemy's shooting. And that was with me playing them wrong for the first half of the game (I thought they could only move 6" and fire template and snap fire the multi melta. Turns out you can move 12" and fire both at normal BS. They got MUCH better after that) As a heads up, I do not know much about necrons, but I eeked out a pretty solid win on Big guns never tire, holding 2 objectives to his one. Had the game gone on another turn, I could've cleared off his surviving warriors and claimed a 3rd objective for a more solid win, but that's dice for you. Here's what the Hellhounds accomplished:
Hellhound Number 1: Moved up, harrassed some immortals with a lord (it was his warlord, T5. That's all I remember. he had some scary scythe too) It didn't kill much, but managed to slow down that unit severely, making it reach my lines turn 4, instead of turn 2. While it didn't kill much, it showed how disruptive one could be if placed well. I have to admit, it probably helped me win the game, as delaying that unit saved my support units and allowed me more time to whittle them down.
Hellhound Number 2: The underachiever, he didn't do much. Managed to run up, eat a lot of shooting, get a couple of flimsy shots on the immortal unit, and killed a guy. It proceeded to be glanced to death by warriors turn 3. Not sure if it was the tank's fault, bad rolling, or just me, it was just kinda meh.
Hellhound Number 3: One of the MVP's of the game, this one showed just how nasty these bad boys can be. Turn 1 it rushed up the right side of the board. Turn 2, it lined up a good shot on this walker thing the necron guy had (all i know is it shot a twinlinked lascannon that, if it hit, would allow other units to twin link as well) Hellhound pulls up, easily in melta range, fires, and explodes it in one shot. Turn 3, it races across the board and proceeds to unload on a unit of warriors holding an objective in the back. It killed all but 3 over a couple of turns before they managed to glance it to death, and that wasn't till turn 5. Had I rolled a little better, it could've easily cleared that objective and continued it's rampage.
Thing I learned though was that 3 hellhounds is just way too much. If I continue running these, I would probably run at most 2, and a devil dog or two as well. That way, you can be more flexible, and be able to handle more threats. I'm torn between putting a multimelta on the devil dog (to turn it into a real tank hunter) or throw a heavy flamer on as a backup plan incase I fight another horde army or need to clear an objective. I guess if I already have 2 hellhounds though, it wouldn't be a big deal putting the multimelta on. The multimelta worked great on the hellhound, and made it a lot more flexible. Plus, the way the inferno cannon works, you'll almost never use a normal flamer anyways, so may as well take a weapon you can use on a regular basis. It also did a great job of killing IC wound soakers so the inferno cannon could kill off the weaker scrubs behind him.
These tanks definitely have potential, but they're very reliant on your meta. Each one is designed with a different role, so choose the one that matters most to you. I'll be trying the devil dog next time I get to play, and will probably keep running 2 hellhounds for a while as well. They're a lot of fun, people don't expect them, and they're a cool and unique unit. Plus, they're not $80, so if you need some good fast attack that won't break the bank, they might be the right choice for you. They can also score on The scouring, if that matters.
MrMoustaffa wrote: OK time to get this thread back on topic. I know some people were interested in trying Hellhounds, and I tried some today and decided to see how they worked in a foot IG list. I probably could've written a better list, but I was running late and just threw them into another list I had laying around. I ended up gutting my HWS's and my stormtroopers, which are two of my mainstay units, so the hellhound had some big shoes to fill.
I ran 3 with multimeltas in an 1850 list, and all I can say is holy crap is that overkill against necrons. Delicious, delicious overkill. They also did exactly what I wanted them to do, move up, tie up the enemy, kill key targets, and provide an agressive counterattack to eat up the enemy's shooting. And that was with me playing them wrong for the first half of the game (I thought they could only move 6" and fire template and snap fire the multi melta. Turns out you can move 12" and fire both at normal BS. They got MUCH better after that) As a heads up, I do not know much about necrons, but I eeked out a pretty solid win on Big guns never tire, holding 2 objectives to his one. Had the game gone on another turn, I could've cleared off his surviving warriors and claimed a 3rd objective for a more solid win, but that's dice for you. Here's what the Hellhounds accomplished:
Hellhound Number 1: Moved up, harrassed some immortals with a lord (it was his warlord, T5. That's all I remember. he had some scary scythe too) It didn't kill much, but managed to slow down that unit severely, making it reach my lines turn 4, instead of turn 2. While it didn't kill much, it showed how disruptive one could be if placed well. I have to admit, it probably helped me win the game, as delaying that unit saved my support units and allowed me more time to whittle them down.
Hellhound Number 2: The underachiever, he didn't do much. Managed to run up, eat a lot of shooting, get a couple of flimsy shots on the immortal unit, and killed a guy. It proceeded to be glanced to death by warriors turn 3. Not sure if it was the tank's fault, bad rolling, or just me, it was just kinda meh.
Hellhound Number 3: One of the MVP's of the game, this one showed just how nasty these bad boys can be. Turn 1 it rushed up the right side of the board. Turn 2, it lined up a good shot on this walker thing the necron guy had (all i know is it shot a twinlinked lascannon that, if it hit, would allow other units to twin link as well) Hellhound pulls up, easily in melta range, fires, and explodes it in one shot. Turn 3, it races across the board and proceeds to unload on a unit of warriors holding an objective in the back. It killed all but 3 over a couple of turns before they managed to glance it to death, and that wasn't till turn 5. Had I rolled a little better, it could've easily cleared that objective and continued it's rampage.
Thing I learned though was that 3 hellhounds is just way too much. If I continue running these, I would probably run at most 2, and a devil dog or two as well. That way, you can be more flexible, and be able to handle more threats. I'm torn between putting a multimelta on the devil dog (to turn it into a real tank hunter) or throw a heavy flamer on as a backup plan incase I fight another horde army or need to clear an objective. I guess if I already have 2 hellhounds though, it wouldn't be a big deal putting the multimelta on. The multimelta worked great on the hellhound, and made it a lot more flexible. Plus, the way the inferno cannon works, you'll almost never use a normal flamer anyways, so may as well take a weapon you can use on a regular basis. It also did a great job of killing IC wound soakers so the inferno cannon could kill off the weaker scrubs behind him.
These tanks definitely have potential, but they're very reliant on your meta. Each one is designed with a different role, so choose the one that matters most to you. I'll be trying the devil dog next time I get to play, and will probably keep running 2 hellhounds for a while as well. They're a lot of fun, people don't expect them, and they're a cool and unique unit. Plus, they're not $80, so if you need some good fast attack that won't break the bank, they might be the right choice for you. They can also score on The scouring, if that matters.
Son, you just won us the war.
Necrons are THE hot army in 6th, and if you are saying that hellhounds smashed through necrons (as a tank no less), we may have a very interesting pick for those FA slots.
Now, how did the Leman Russes treat you in this game?
Well, smashed through aint the best way to put it, but I definitely think they made a difference. They eat through warriors like no tomorrow, and their mobility took a lot of heat off my russes surprisingly. My russes were only shot at by warriors for example once, and that was because he airdropped in an entire squad next to it. The rest of the time, they were too busy trying to kill Hellhound Number 3. His other anti armor tried to shoot the russes, but usually died before it could do much. The hellhound killed the walker thing easily, and my lascannon HWS sniped his annihilation barge turn1 (that's the one that has the S9 AP 2 template if it doesn't move right) Had my army not killed the skimmer right away though, the hellhound would have been in the perfect spot to take it down.
As for the Russes, they did what they always do, kill everything in sight, and generally eat shots and provide that rock hard core that a foot horde needs. The leman russes did great, although the exterminator I'm on the fence. There are moments where it really, REALLY messes up whatever it shoots at. It ate half a warrior squad in a single salvo for example, and really messed up a close combat squad as it came across the board at me (some sort of jump infantry with +3 invulns). Other times though, it's pretty lackluster, and only puts down a few wounds. To be fair though, I haven't fought a true transport spam army with it yet, and that's what it's really made to fight. The fact that it's holding it's own against army types it was never really designed to fight gives me hope though. Plus, it fills an important role in my army as a MC killer, and whenever it gets pitted against one, I find myself very glad I keep it around. I'd rather take it as a commissar tank with the "Crack Shot" skill in an allied battlegroup though. For a measly 20 more points, that tank gives all infantry within 6" LD 10, and all weapons get +1 on the pen roll against vehicles. It makes that tank death incarnate.
Incidentally, I played in a small local tournament today (only 10 people total), and my list also had a couple Hellhounds, because I hadn't tried them in 6th. The list follows:
Spoiler:
Lord Commissar w/ PF CCS, PF, Standard
Marbo
5 Ogryn in Chimera (LC goes here)
PCS empty
4x Plasma/Missile Launcher PIS
Meltavets in Chimera
2 Hellhounds
2 Exterminators
1 Demolisher
The idea behind this list is that I wanted to see if I could make an army that had a big hammer to just smash part of the opposing army to pieces. I also wanted to try a "reliable" army, with units that dealt large numbers of attacks/shots or automatically hit or got re-rolls. Anyway, I'm not going to go into a full out battle report here, but I usually had the Demolisher, Hellhounds, and Vets or Ogryns grouped together (depending on enemy army), and punched forward with melta/flamer/demolisher death. Because my scoring units were low, they tended to hang out in cover near objectives. I tended to find that with the rushing contingent, there wasn't a lot of heat coming toward my troops. This may have been a mistake by my opponents, but often they just couldn't see the squads thanks to the wall of armor. Below is a list of a few things I learned:
-Multimeltas on Hellhounds are great, both because multimeltas on a fast, tough platform is great, and having two weapons that scare opponents is great. The 12" move and the 12" flatout really let them break through into the backfield it a neat way. Against a Deathwing player, I had one with a busted Multimelta run 24" through to his backfield to start taking Inferno Cannon shots against the rear armor of a Contemptor Dreadnaught. This maneuverability can also be used pretty well to get the right enemy models closest to your tank. Also, laying the IC template across muliple squads and vehicles, while firing a Multimelta at a vehicle is freakin' great. They are just loaded with teeth, it starts adding up, but I would almost consider putting a hunter-killer to make use of their speed for anti-vehicle work (more on this later).
-Bolter Boat Exterminators vs. Terminators are great. Two armies I faced had 15+ terminators, and the Exterminators were like sandblasters. They team up with Hellhounds and Demolishers in a great way, because the templates put a bunch of wounds on a squad, and the Exterminators clean it up. They don't care about invulnerable saves, or cover, or Eternal Warrior, they just pour on the wounds.
-Ogryn are absurdly durable when a character can lead them. I used them in a Chimera, but I'm convinced they would bring a lot on foot leading a Foot Guard advance. In two games they soaked a lot of fire and then tied up terminators for several turns (eventually losing to one, winning against the other). In one game, they took multiple direct hits from an Executioner and then claimed two kill points the next turn by destroying a vehicle with shooting and assaulting it's passengers. They weren't lucky, it's just so many wounds packed into a small space.
-Missile/Plasma PISs are solid fire support. A few missiles with a steady stream of Bring it Down! supporting the Exterminators really starts to grind down the opponents medium armor. Because of the lists I faced, ACs would have been better, since it was largely anti-vehicle work, but I felt good having the S8 in my back pocket that was mostly lacking from my vehicles.
-Mech Vets are great on the attack. When the enemy is getting rushed by Hellhounds and a Demolisher, the meltavets following up had a pretty free hand to pick targets and destroy them. The 18" total move of the Chimera really lets them get into a dangerous position, and also makes Linebreaker so much easier to claim.
-For all the Terminators I faced, the Demolisher really got the most usage as a vehicle buster. There's so many invulnerables out there these days, but vehicles lost a point of cove save, and it's super hard to miss Land Raiders with that cannon.
-All in all I was a little afraid to hit the table without either artillery or Stormtroopers. I like having units that can reach out and put firepower on target when I need it to. I was relying on durability and localized brute force to punch through to deny objectives. It worked, and it was pretty enjoyable, but I'm not sure it would work against a broader range of armies. I played against Guard and lots of Terminators, and felt like I had good matchups against all my opponents. I've been playing a lot of infantry lately, and this was my first vehicle heavy list of 6th. I really enjoyed the vehicle rules. Hull points let my Exterminators grind down enemy armor, but having the Meltaguns and Multimemeltas still gave me a puncher's chance at one-shotting Land Raiders. On the receiving end, the Russes just kept putting out the punishment every turn until succumbing to damage. Having so much rushing firepower really protected my Troops and left them relatively safe to do their job.
Moustaffa, I think your experience with a hellhound is like mine with the colossus. When they work well, they work very well, but when they don't they're horrid. For example, in my last game, it showed up, did virtually nothing, was killed right away, and gave my opponent a VP (scouring). Like the colossus, it has a certain niche that it does really well, but for everything else... well, it's just an AV12 vehicle.
Put another way, your game sounds like this one except with hellhounds instead.
In the end, I almost question if this isn't the time for the otherwise wretched eradicator. I'm finding myself prizing AV14 more and more over time. The AV12, especially in a list with little else of it is just too flimsy.
As for the exterminator, it seems like the same kind of thing as the hellhound or the colossus. It's good at a lot, but it's REALLY good against transports. If you're not playing a lot of mech, then it might make you second guess if its the right vehicle for you.
Well what's wierd is normally I AM fighting a ton of mech. A lot of the armies field nothing BUT metal boxes. And of course, what happens the one day i want to try hellhounds out? Infantry army with one flyer, a skimmer, and a walker. That said though, I think one thing about them is you really can't run just one. They're like russes, one will just get focused down, but 3 can provide a serious threat, and either spread out to force the enemy to split his fire, or group up to break a hard point. Next time I'll be using a devil dog and two Hellhounds, all with multimeltas, and i think this will do much better.
What I found funny about them was that i fully expected them to die. Their job is get in the enemy lines and kill as much as possible. They did their job admirably. Even the one that "failed" drew a lot fire and slowed down the enemy. And that was with me playing them at literally half potential for the first half of the game. I can't wait to see their potential at full effectiveness.
Granted, there's still a lot of testing to do with them before I hammer out if they're "worth it" or not. I've literaly only played one game with them so far, so it's not like I've got a ton of experience with them. But man, having a multimelta and a 20" flamethrower is awesome They really work like they do in the fluff now, they're fast attack in the most literal way possible.
Happygrunt wrote: Do you believe that two would suffice, or is three really required?
Not sure yet. My army has little AV12, so i take 3 for saturation. If you're runnings lots of AV12 though this wont be as big a deal.
And Ailaros, I don't think an eradicator really fits the same role a hellhound/devil dog/banewolf fills. An eradicator isn't fast, an eradicator can't take a hull mounted multimelta, an eradicator cant get in the enemy's deployment turn 1, etc. A russ and a hellhound (I'm just going to use this name as a broad term for all 3 for now) are made for different roles. A russ, even an eradicator, is designed to stick with your infantry and provide fire support. They anchor your army and take the hits. A hellhound that isn't moving is a dead one (as number 3 found out today in my game) They can't afford to sit in your deployment and wait patiently, as they're just an expensive chimera at that point. Their only defence is a good offense. They need to press the attack, get in between the enemy, sneak into the deployment area, and harass support units and objective sitters. Think of them as a tank equivalent to stormtroopers. Yes they're pretty much dead no matter what, but they can reliably get damage where you need it and do it quickly. Or at least, that's what they seem capable of (like I said, needs testing)
Honestly, what else do we have that fills it's role? Vendettas may hunt tanks better at range, but they'll have trouble cracking landraiders and other AV 14 like monoliths. A hell hound with a multimelta or a devil dog can get in close and really hammer it with a melta hit. We have other stuff that can shift units off cover like colossi, but they dont autohit. It's really a tough call at this point. The potential is definitely there to be a great unit, but until I play it more, I really don't know. It's all about if you've got an army that can use them, and if you can find a way to get them in close where they need to be.
MrMoustaffa wrote:An eradicator isn't fast, an eradicator can't take a hull mounted multimelta, an eradicator cant get in the enemy's deployment turn 1, etc. A russ and a hellhound (I'm just going to use this name as a broad term for all 3 for now) are made for different roles.
An eradicator can move 6" and fire 36". That engages the enemy even faster than the hellhound.
An eradicator can take a pair of multimeltas, which doubles the amount of multimelta.
An eradicator can't get into the enemy deployment zone, aka suicide gulch, but it can get 18" of the requisite 24". I don't know why you'd do that, though.
MrMoustaffa wrote:A russ, even an eradicator, is designed to stick with your infantry and provide fire support. They anchor your army and take the hits. A hellhound that isn't moving is a dead one (as number 3 found out today in my game) They can't afford to sit in your deployment and wait patiently, as they're just an expensive chimera at that point. Their only defence is a good offense. They need to press the attack, get in between the enemy, sneak into the deployment area, and harass support units and objective sitters.
Yes, but you can use an eradicator in this exact same way. You don't HAVE to (which is a strength, not a weakness), but you can if you want.
Yeah, it's 190 compared to 145, but you get an extra multimelta (so, really 160 vs. 190), and get AV14. Plus, you can also take a lascannon in addition, or instead.
MrMoustaffa wrote:Honestly, what else do we have that fills it's role? Vendettas may hunt tanks better at range, but they'll have trouble cracking landraiders and other AV 14 like monoliths. A hell hound with a multimelta or a devil dog can get in close and really hammer it with a melta hit.
Let's not get rosy-eyed here. It's a BS3 shot.
And it's got to get really close.
MrMoustaffa wrote: It's all about if you've got an army that can use them, and if you can find a way to get them in close where they need to be.
Yeah, it seems pretty niche. I've tried a hellhound in every edition, and it scarcely lasts long in my list for good reason...
In my long experience with Hellhounds (I've been a fan since 3rd), I just about always take two. I don't think they can't work solo, but I try to build a list with one and I usually take it out for something else, it just feels unsettling to me. That comment has very little tactical value other than to explain that all my experience has been with two. With two, you can at least feel pretty confident that one will be able to get to your preferred target to deal some damage. With one, you've got to protect it, and that kind of foils the whole point for me.
In my list, they were bodyguards for my Ogrn and Meltavet chimeras. They provided cover, front-end damage, and threat while the Chimeras advanced. Those two units were usually more important strategically (they could deny and/or score objectives and get linebreaker, and the Ogryns could do more telling damage over time. The Multimelta helped continue to draw the enemy AV12 fire, because while your odds aren't good (BS3 and all), it's enough of a threat that they can't just let it go, and it's damage over time is not trivial.
I will agree that it's best to design an army with them in mind, but I'm not sure that's so much different than most units. A bonus not yet mentioned: It's one of the tougher Fast Attack choices in the game, which makes it nice for the Scouring missions.
Amusing Anecdote: In my second game, I had both of my bolter boat Exterminators unload on a Rhino. Between misses and lousy armor pen rolls, they forced zero cover saves.
Today, I had two games with my new brainchild: The Blood Surge (Allies Warning!).
The Blood Surge is a maxed-out infantry blob (50 guys with plasma guns and autocannons) with a Blood Angel Librarian w/ terminator armour, storm shield and Divination Primaris Power. Form up a spearhead formation, place the Librarian in the tip, and enjoy the 2+/3++ on the 50 guardsmen. Your enem can't even outmanauver it, because this abomination can pour out an insane ammount of firepower (don't forget to use the Divination power!). And of course The Blood Surge is highly resistant to melee too, as they can re-roll melee to-hit rolls too and they have ATSKNF.
Again, this unit is beastly, I won a slugfest versus two 20 strong Necron Warrior blobs with losing like... 5 guys or so (and wiping out both Warrior squads) and did a perfect Linebreaker against an Eldar S6 spam without taking any casualties (!!!).
Biophysical wrote:I will agree that it's best to design an army with them in mind, but I'm not sure that's so much different than most units.
It doesn't require the list to be built around them as badly as some units, but I think it does than most units.
Hellhounds are very exposed pieces of AV12 that generally have to drive into suicide range to use their guns. I rather think they'd need more help from the rest of the list than russes or stormies, or infantry platoons.
Frankly I think the hellhound is a excellent tank. In most cases armies will be looking to close with you. Nobody wants to hang back against IG and outshoot them.
You will be having people trying to close on you and the Hellhound gives you a 32" threat radius with its turrent weapon. 12" Crusing Speed, 12 inch torrent, 8 inch flamer template.
STR 6 AP 4 murders Jet Bikes, can put heavy wounds on Nob Bikes, foot hordes, inflitrators sitting in cover and many other things.
If your bringing AV 12 Artillery, AV 14 russes, Plasma Vets in Chimeras, its unlikely that anyone is going to bother shooting at your Hellhound on turn 1. You can always place in in reserve and it can shoot out to 12" and flame anything that approaches your gunline.
Its solid and the only major knock is it competes with Vendettas for FOC slots and they cost the same.
I'm getting a little skeptical about the Hellhound though... Valkyries/Vendettas are "better" in many cases and I feel that Hellhound is a little overpriced for what it does on a regular basis....
AtoMaki wrote: Today, I had two games with my new brainchild: The Blood Surge (Allies Warning!).
The Blood Surge is a maxed-out infantry blob (50 guys with plasma guns and autocannons) with a Blood Angel Librarian w/ terminator armour, storm shield and Divination Primaris Power. Form up a spearhead formation, place the Librarian in the tip, and enjoy the 2+/3++ on the 50 guardsmen. Your enem can't even outmanauver it, because this abomination can pour out an insane ammount of firepower (don't forget to use the Divination power!). And of course The Blood Surge is highly resistant to melee too, as they can re-roll melee to-hit rolls too and they have ATSKNF.
Again, this unit is beastly, I won a slugfest versus two 20 strong Necron Warrior blobs with losing like... 5 guys or so (and wiping out both Warrior squads) and did a perfect Linebreaker against an Eldar S6 spam without taking any casualties (!!!).
I like it. I've been experimenting with a similar infantry blob and come to the conclusion I need the same kind of Libby to provide cover for the squad.
Glocknall wrote: Frankly I think the hellhound is a excellent tank. In most cases armies will be looking to close with you. Nobody wants to hang back against IG and outshoot them.
You will be having people trying to close on you and the Hellhound gives you a 32" threat radius with its turrent weapon. 12" Crusing Speed, 12 inch torrent, 8 inch flamer template.
STR 6 AP 4 murders Jet Bikes, can put heavy wounds on Nob Bikes, foot hordes, inflitrators sitting in cover and many other things.
If your bringing AV 12 Artillery, AV 14 russes, Plasma Vets in Chimeras, its unlikely that anyone is going to bother shooting at your Hellhound on turn 1. You can always place in in reserve and it can shoot out to 12" and flame anything that approaches your gunline.
Its solid and the only major knock is it competes with Vendettas for FOC slots and they cost the same.
Stop me if I am wrong, but don't Hellhounds have scout? So couldn't they outflank to hit your opponents fragile backfield units?
Glocknall wrote: Frankly I think the hellhound is a excellent tank. In most cases armies will be looking to close with you. Nobody wants to hang back against IG and outshoot them.
You will be having people trying to close on you and the Hellhound gives you a 32" threat radius with its turrent weapon. 12" Crusing Speed, 12 inch torrent, 8 inch flamer template.
STR 6 AP 4 murders Jet Bikes, can put heavy wounds on Nob Bikes, foot hordes, inflitrators sitting in cover and many other things.
If your bringing AV 12 Artillery, AV 14 russes, Plasma Vets in Chimeras, its unlikely that anyone is going to bother shooting at your Hellhound on turn 1. You can always place in in reserve and it can shoot out to 12" and flame anything that approaches your gunline.
Its solid and the only major knock is it competes with Vendettas for FOC slots and they cost the same.
Stop me if I am wrong, but don't Hellhounds have scout? So couldn't they outflank to hit your opponents fragile backfield units?
If only. That would let them really compete with a vendetta. The problem isn't so much that the Hellhound is overpriced, as the Vendetta is underpriced. How can you look at anything in our fast attack slot and not view it as useless when you have a flying tank that can carry guardsmen and has 3 twinlinked lascannons for only a 130 points? If the hellhounds and their variants were 10 to 20pts cheaper though, I'd imagine they'd be as much of a must take as the vendetta.
When I was talking about price earlier, I meant dollarwise You can make a really easy hellhound/devildog conversion by just buying a couple of bits for the top of the hull online. Then you can swap between regular chimeras and hellhounds at will. For people who just don't have the money or the space for 3 of those massive fliers, the hellhound really is the only serious contender otherwise (and as always, I'm talking about all 3 variants, using the hellhound name as a blanket term)
Think of them like how the Punisher changed from 5th to 6th. In 5th, they were terrible, and people thought you were insane for bringing them. In 6th however, they're actually pretty good, the problem is that they're slightly higher priced than you'd like and there are other things in that slot that just compete with it too much. But now at least, you can actually take them and make them a worthwhile addition to an army, you just have to have a list that can take advantage of them and good units to support it. It's not an autoinclude, but it's not terrible. Tourney players will never take them, but for the average joe, they'll probably become a cool, fun, and dependable unit.
Glocknall wrote: Frankly I think the hellhound is a excellent tank. In most cases armies will be looking to close with you. Nobody wants to hang back against IG and outshoot them.
You will be having people trying to close on you and the Hellhound gives you a 32" threat radius with its turrent weapon. 12" Crusing Speed, 12 inch torrent, 8 inch flamer template.
STR 6 AP 4 murders Jet Bikes, can put heavy wounds on Nob Bikes, foot hordes, inflitrators sitting in cover and many other things.
If your bringing AV 12 Artillery, AV 14 russes, Plasma Vets in Chimeras, its unlikely that anyone is going to bother shooting at your Hellhound on turn 1. You can always place in in reserve and it can shoot out to 12" and flame anything that approaches your gunline.
Its solid and the only major knock is it competes with Vendettas for FOC slots and they cost the same.
Stop me if I am wrong, but don't Hellhounds have scout? So couldn't they outflank to hit your opponents fragile backfield units?
If only. That would let them really compete with a vendetta. The problem isn't so much that the Hellhound is overpriced, as the Vendetta is underpriced. How can you look at anything in our fast attack slot and not view it as useless when you have a flying tank that can carry guardsmen and has 3 twinlinked lascannons for only a 130 points? If the hellhounds and their variants were 10 to 20pts cheaper though, I'd imagine they'd be as much of a must take as the vendetta.
When I was talking about price earlier, I meant dollarwise You can make a really easy hellhound/devildog conversion by just buying a couple of bits for the top of the hull online. Then you can swap between regular chimeras and hellhounds at will. For people who just don't have the money or the space for 3 of those massive fliers, the hellhound really is the only serious contender otherwise (and as always, I'm talking about all 3 variants, using the hellhound name as a blanket term)
Think of them like how the Punisher changed from 5th to 6th. In 5th, they were terrible, and people thought you were insane for bringing them. In 6th however, they're actually pretty good, the problem is that they're slightly higher priced than you'd like and there are other things in that slot that just compete with it too much. But now at least, you can actually take them and make them a worthwhile addition to an army, you just have to have a list that can take advantage of them and good units to support it. It's not an autoinclude, but it's not terrible. Tourney players will never take them, but for the average joe, they'll probably become a cool, fun, and dependable unit.
I think Sentinels, while not the most competitive option for the FA slot, are still good buys. I wouldn't say Vendettas and Hellhounds are the only two options.
AtoMaki wrote: place the Librarian in the tip, and enjoy the 2+/3++ on the 50 guardsmen.
Except that you're playing Look out sir wrong. You can't take saves on the librarian and then move them to other models. You can only transfer "unsaved wounds" in units where everyone has the same save. Where you have units with different saves you have different rules.
If the unit has the same save, you:
- Roll to Hit
- Roll to Wound
- Roll Saves
- Allocate to closest model
- If closest model is a character, you may attempt Look out Sir
- Resolve unsaved wound against the model the wound is (re)allocated to.
If the unit has mixed armour saves, you:
- Roll to Hit
- Roll to Wound
- Allocate to closest model
- If closest model is a character, you may attempt Look out Sir
- Roll save of the model the wound was (re)allocated to.
- Resolve unsaved wound
I think Sentinels, while not the most competitive option for the FA slot, are still good buys. I wouldn't say Vendettas and Hellhounds are the only two options.
Nah.
Well, not nah. If you have 35-60 pts spare, sure, get a Sentinel. But if you have 130pts to spare, there's no reason you should be weighing your options between a Vendetta and a couple Sentinels.
With all of this talk about hellhounds, I should add my experiences with the hellhound's sister.
For me, the devildog with hull heavy flamer has been exceptionally good.
It is 10 points cheaper.
The turreted melta cannon just got measurably more accurate as a vehicle killer.
An ap2 small blast is seeing a lot more prime infantry targets.
Fast vehicles can move 12" and fire TWO weapons now. There is no need to snap fire either weapon, unless you get crew shaken.
I have found that the devildog is a major threat to literally any army I've faced. FAQed harlequins are terrified of a heavy flamer that can circumvent their 2+ save IC. Paladins hate me throwing an instant death ap2 blast at them from a direction that doesn't allow drago to take the wound. Tyranids just hate the devildog for all kinds of reasons. And it should be fairly obvious that marines hate facing it.
I'm not always going to take the devildog over the vendetta. But I'd argue that the only way a vendetta can be as flexible as the devildog would be if it bought heavy bolters. An that makes the devildog cheaper by 20 points. And as I've been playing the game more and more with flyers I'm coming to understand their troubles. Getting fired on before you even get a shooting phase in a game where you had first turn is annoying. This will only increase as more interceptor units emerge. Missing out on first blood has also been a decider in more than a few close games. People forget that it is a two-point swing. It is the most valued secondary objective by far. And having all of your anti tank tied up in flyers will cost you first blood a lot unless you built around that.
Back to the overall point of the thread. Yes, it isn't easy to adjust our old ways, but getting out of chimeras, shooting and then using the chimeras flat out move to "fish of fury" can be a better way to keep units of veterans alive and unpinned. Incidentally, it powers up all of those CCS orders that we hardly used. You can field a platoon designed to hang on to a home objective or two, and then power command squads and veteran squads forward starting on turn 1. Devildogs love being at the vanguard of wedges like that.
I hadn't thought about the devil dog, seems like a nice buy now. Slightly cheaper than the other choices.
Would you think smoke launchers are worth taking? I'm wondering if they would get decent targets first turn, or if it is better to "lay up" for a second turn melta strike by hiding and popping smoke.
AtoMaki wrote: place the Librarian in the tip, and enjoy the 2+/3++ on the 50 guardsmen.
Except that you're playing Look out sir wrong. You can't take saves on the librarian and then move them to other models. You can only transfer "unsaved wounds" in units where everyone has the same save. Where you have units with different saves you have different rules.
If the unit has the same save, you:
- Roll to Hit
- Roll to Wound.
- Roll Saves
- Allocate to closest model
- If closest model is a character, you may attempt Look out Sir
- Resolve unsaved wound against the model the wound is (re)allocated to.
If the unit has mixed armour saves, you:
- Roll to Hit
- Roll to Wound
- Allocate to closest model
- If closest model is a character, you may attempt Look out Sir
- Roll save of the model the wound was (re)allocated to.
- Resolve unsaved wound
Just got my libby terminator to try something like this out. Access to Divination is nice for foot sloggers
Trickstick wrote: I hadn't thought about the devil dog, seems like a nice buy now. Slightly cheaper than the other choices.
Would you think smoke launchers are worth taking? I'm wondering if they would get decent targets first turn, or if it is better to "lay up" for a second turn melta strike by hiding and popping smoke.
I'm looking forward to trying it too. I didn't even think of how much more accurate it is now that any part of the blast is a full hit. That would make it's accuracy a bit higher than a hull mounted multimelta at BS 3.
Trickstick wrote: I hadn't thought about the devil dog, seems like a nice buy now. Slightly cheaper than the other choices.
Would you think smoke launchers are worth taking? I'm wondering if they would get decent targets first turn, or if it is better to "lay up" for a second turn melta strike by hiding and popping smoke.
I'm looking forward to trying it too. I didn't even think of how much more accurate it is now that any part of the blast is a full hit. That would make it's accuracy a bit higher than a hull mounted multimelta at BS 3.
Yeah, the single BS 3 melta just isn't reliable enough in my eyes. I prefer going with weight of fire, and at over 100 points for a single shot the melta hellhound doesn't seem a great choice.
MrMoustaffa wrote:Think of them like how the Punisher changed from 5th to 6th. In 5th, they were terrible, and people thought you were insane for bringing them. But now at least, you can actually take them and make them a worthwhile addition to an army.
A fair comparison. They went from insane lunacy to not needing to feel like an idiot showing up with one.
I think the Vendetta just shines for one very simple reasons - it can transport infantry.
I'm now fielding no chimeras and my guard have just gotten easier to kill. But for a mere 50pts I can grab a SWS or naked PIS. For 55-70, I could grab an armed PIS or melta SWS. The vendetta can grab a pair of heavy bolters (not quite there yet with the cost of the things) and be more Versatile.
But the transport is the key thing. Very helpful! .
The Punisher was great in 5th. You're forcing 20*0.5*0.6 marines to make armour saves, plus the heavy bolter's 1, that's 7.6, for 2.5 dead.
Given that 4++ was king in 5th, you'd need to wound 5 MEQon average. Did you really average 5 MEQ under the template? Every time? And did it never scatter? And always wound?
It will also wreck monstrous creatures, and small elite units like Zooanthropes.
The only real downside is/was its weakness against light/medium armour. That is definitely something to be considered when building a list, so you wouldn't want 3 of them.
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Razerous wrote: I think the Vendetta just shines for one very simple reasons - it can transport infantry.
Hm...that and the AV 12/12/10, 3 twin-linked lascannons, hard to hit and 130 points. Vendettas is probably the most over-powered unit in the game.
I cannot get any games in (haven't been able to for the last month or so) but looking at my schedule, seems like I'll be able to grab some games soon enough. I'll post battle reports and share my blob-o-doom with Yarrick behind line of Demolishers tactic.
Which boils down to the same old adage I've been going by
