So, for starters, I am quite familiar with 8th ed rules, and have played a couple times, as orks with boyz blobs. I'm having fun, and still think it's a good game, but I keep hearing people on here saying hordes are OP, and I'm frankly a bit confused.

I mean, boyz are the same price, 6ppm, same stats mostly, but got an extra strength. pretty nice.

And the KFF got a 3" radius buff, and painboyz have a 3" 'partially-within' 6+ FNP bubble. Latter isn't exactly game-breaking, but both together is a nice combo.

And, to be honest, when I read about being able to advance and charge with the warboss, the KFF/painboy combo, then about wierdboys giving +1 A, then ghaz giving +1A, THEN 20+ strong groups of boyz getting +1A, at str 4 and the same price, I too thought that boyz were going to be strong.

And the news about flamers and blasts and whatnot not being nearly as effective (no more 2 flamer guys out of a drop pod getting 17 hits with no saves) only bolstered that opinion.

Then I played a couple games.

First and foremost, if you play with hordes, you may as well not even play with cover. It doesn't slow you down, and it doesn't help your army. The ENTIRE infantry squad has to be in cover to gain a benefit (which isn't ever going to happen), and even then it's a measly +1. Enemies simply shooting through cover, RAW, provides no save. Same for intervening models.

Then, factor in that a TON of weapons got increased shots, or just straight up double shots. Twin assault cannons - 12 shots. Twin hurricane bolters (at rapid fire range) - 24 shots. Kastellan robots - 18 shots APIECE, plus reroll shooting with cawl nearby. Storm bolters - 4 shots (for no particular reason, they weren't even twin linked). The list goes on and on. And instead of getting a usual 5 to 4 up save, now I get a 6 up, if that, if not for the KFF.

So, lots of units got a lot more shooty, and hordes primary saving grace, cover saves, basically got thrown out the window. And then there's the whole fall back mechanic, which opens up your boyz to a whole sea of dakka once you make it into combat.

Lastly, boyz honestly seem worse than ever before at anti-vehicle, which, in fairness, is reasonable. It's not their job. For example, it took about 20 boyz three separate charges on a wyvern to NOT kill it. I think I finished it off with a dakkajet. They're still plenty choppy and do well at anti-infantry, but if you expect to take down knights and dreads with boyz, you're going to be disappointed.

I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining or saying 'BURN YOUR ORK ARMY', however, if you expect to just stomp anything with nothing but a bunch of boyz you're probably going to have a bad time.

Am I missing something? Running/charging, KFF/painboy, and effective immunity to morale for boyz (with the right character combos) sounds strong on paper, until you realize that cover is no help and even KFF/painboy saves are barely enough to keep up with how up-gunned it seems everything's gotten.

I mean, for example, a friend filmed a batrep with me, and out of 60 boyz with the warboss/KFF/painboy/waaagh banner combo, all were dead by turn 3, or maybe 4.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aI0yEcKnPhM&t=149s

I just posted this in the joke thread, but, basically: there is no such thing as an anti-horde weapon in 40k anymore. Those Assault Cannons you mention are actually incredibly specialized anti-MEQ weapons. Boyz are a little special because they cost 50% more than Guardsmen or gants and are paying for T4 instead of a better save, but here was some math on Guardsmen vs Marines:

An anti-horde weapon is one that is most efficiently used to kill hordes. Like old-timey flamers. Low strength meant that they were only good at wounding things with low toughness, AP5 meant that they ignored armor saves against light infantry, and the template meant that they could hit more models in bigger units on smaller bases. Flamers were actually really good at killing hordes -- you'd kill more points of Guardsmen per shot than you would points of much more expensive but individually more durable models like Space Marines.

But now, stuff like a bolter or a mortar or a Space Marine's fist is actually just anti-MEQ. An S4 AP- hit expects to kill 1.78 points of Guardsmen and 2.17 points of Marines (22% better against Marines). A Whirlwind is even more specialized for MEQ-killing because of its higher strength. The supposedly anti-horde castellan launcher fires S6 AP- shots. A S6 AP- hit expects to kill 2.22 points of Guardsmen and 2.89 points of Marines (30% better against Marines). The Whirlwind castellan launcher is better against Marines than against termagants with their 6+ save. Sure, a Lascannon is in some sense better at killing Guardsmen than a bolt pistol is, but that's not an efficient use of a Lascannon.

A Heavy Bolter -- something which has historically been the go-to anti-horde heavy weapon -- is ridiculously specialized for MEQ killing now. A S5 AP-1 hit expects to kill 2.22 points of Guardsmen and 4.33 points of Marines (95% better!).

The game badly needs weapon options which are efficient for killing light infantry. If you want to equip a squad to be great for killing Guardsmen and gants, you should be able to do that. This basically requires either special rules or a points increase to light infantry, though, since even S3 AP- is better at killing Marines than Guardsmen -- even a frag grenade is more efficiently used against MEQs, though it's close. You have to go down to S2 AP- before you get something which is more efficiently used against Guardsmen, and that's still less efficient against Conscripts than Marines.

Hordes aren't necessarily OP, but they are incredibly irritating. There are theoretical downsides to hordes (leadership, cover) that are actually completely irrelevant (because of KFF, Aegis lines, Commissars/Nobz, etc.), which makes them feel kind of unfair, and a lot of them kept the same level of quantity of attacks when almost everyone else got knocked down somewhat (Orks used to have the same number of attacks as Striking Scorpions, but Orks are still three base/four on the charge while Striking Scorpions have been knocked down to two all the time, Conscripts are getting more shooting attacks than they used to...).

So I can't tell you whether they are or aren't OP, I can tell you they are frustrating and proving difficult to adjust to.

(Now Flash Gitz are absolutely OP; the four-point random ablative wound from the Ammo Runts is just stupid. Not only do you have to punch your way through the Battlewagon but then you have to kill ten single-wound models before you can even think of attempting to reduce the amount of shooting the squad gets, and they're somehow costed as T2 additional models despite the fact that you both use the Orks' Toughness and the Runts don't count against morale.)

Part of me just wants to think "About damn time hordes are good. Super-elite uberpowerful god-hammer deathstars have had their day for at least three editions now."

That said, I think the mathhammer here is a bit underwhelming and too theoretical.

I think another point in favor of Hordes is that this is still an objective based game, and objectives are determined by which side has the most models on it.
And both Horde armies basically ignore Morale so you have to kill every single model.

I don't think any of this is OP, but I can see how some would.

Personally, I am sad that Daemons can no longer have a Horde style Incursion. Not because summoning isn't free anymore, but because LD7 isn't high enough to support large 20+ daemon units and their LD buffs are a joke. But apparently Daemon Prince spam is even more of a thing than before.

-

Not going to lie, the way ammo runts work is incredibly useful (and yeah, pretty dumb), though I do hesitate to call them "OP".

I mean, I played with flash gitz and my ammo runts absorbed the fire from the opening volley of my opponent's storm talon's twin assault cannon. And that's pretty great, certainly better than losing 5 gitz, but then they were gone, and the gitz were back to good old 6+ saves which don't go terribly far.

Again, at least in my experience, it is not difficult, at all, to chew through orks, even with KFFs/painboyz. Without them, I doubt they'd stand a chance.

 Kap'n Krump wrote:
Not going to lie, the way ammo runts work is incredibly useful (and yeah, pretty dumb), though I do hesitate to call them "OP".

I mean, I played with flash gitz and my ammo runts absorbed the fire from the opening volley of my opponent's storm talon's twin assault cannon. And that's pretty great, certainly better than losing 5 gitz, but then they were gone, and the gitz were back to good old 6+ saves which don't go terribly far.

Again, at least in my experience, it is not difficult, at all, to chew through orks, even with KFFs/painboyz. Without them, I doubt they'd stand a chance.

In my experience of Flash Gitz I have to commit so much stuff to killing one battlewaggon that I don't have enough stuff left to kill the Flash Gitz inside, and then I lose so much stuff that I can't kill anything else for the rest of the game.

(Disclaimer: This is based on games involving experimental lists that haven't been thoroughly optimized, and a sufficiently small number of games that they may have been unduly influenced by an overabundance of sh***y die rolls, so I may be angrier at ammo runts than they really deserve.)

 Galef wrote:

And both Horde armies basically ignore Morale so you have to kill every single model.

-

I think my biggest disappointment of 8th is how little morale matters - even less than 7th, to be honest. When it was announced, I thought it would be neat for morale to matter, but elite armies like marines don't have large enough squads and reroll tests anyways, necrons are LD10 (on 1D6), IG have commisars, nids have synapse, orks have mob rule.....hell, they probably could have deleted the entire morale phase and could have had little difference on the game.

Curious why people think intervening models do not impact line-of-sight? You must be able to draw line of sight to your target, and you may only ignore models which are in your own unit.

 Elbows wrote:
Curious why people think intervening models do not impact line-of-sight? You must be able to draw line of sight to your target, and you may only ignore models which are in your own unit.

The trick is that the player owning the targets chooses who to allocate wounds to, but the rules specify that the models wounds are allocated to don't have to be in range or LOS. So, if you get 20 wounds on a group of boyz, and only one is in sight and LOS (even partially), up to 20 can die. The only way to be completely safe from shooting is for the ENTIRE target unit to be 100% out of LOS which generally can't happen with hordes.

And, best of all, in the above scenario where you're shooting at boyz but you can only see one's elbow, unless the entire target unit is entirely within cover, they also don't get a bonus to saves, because RAW, shooting through cover or intervening models has zero impact on the shooting phase - provided that you can at least partially see one model from the target unit.

I don't know, I think Morale has a big affect on 8E, but not necessarily in each game, but rather in list building.
For Orks and Nids, you want big untis and synapse creatures.
For Marines, you still want small units

Any other army that doesn't have Morale mitigation has to avoid the "critical mass" unit size that risks losing more models.
Windriders are an example that is near and dear to me and I have zero reason to take units above 3. At 3 models, I can lose 2 and the remaining 1 will only run on a '6'.
If I took bigger units, the enemy could kill more in each unit and let Morale claim the rest.

So Morale has a bigger impact on list building in this edition than before.

-

 Elbows wrote:
Curious why people think intervening models do not impact line-of-sight? You must be able to draw line of sight to your target, and you may only ignore models which are in your own unit.

Because it almost always doesn't matter.

Dionysodorus wrote:
I just posted this in the joke thread, but, basically: there is no such thing as an anti-horde weapon in 40k anymore. Those Assault Cannons you mention are actually incredibly specialized anti-MEQ weapons. Boyz are a little special because they cost 50% more than Guardsmen or gants and are paying for T4 instead of a better save, but here was some math on Guardsmen vs Marines:

An anti-horde weapon is one that is most efficiently used to kill hordes. Like old-timey flamers. Low strength meant that they were only good at wounding things with low toughness, AP5 meant that they ignored armor saves against light infantry, and the template meant that they could hit more models in bigger units on smaller bases. Flamers were actually really good at killing hordes -- you'd kill more points of Guardsmen per shot than you would points of much more expensive but individually more durable models like Space Marines.

But now, stuff like a bolter or a mortar or a Space Marine's fist is actually just anti-MEQ. An S4 AP- hit expects to kill 1.78 points of Guardsmen and 2.17 points of Marines (22% better against Marines). A Whirlwind is even more specialized for MEQ-killing because of its higher strength. The supposedly anti-horde castellan launcher fires S6 AP- shots. A S6 AP- hit expects to kill 2.22 points of Guardsmen and 2.89 points of Marines (30% better against Marines). The Whirlwind castellan launcher is better against Marines than against termagants with their 6+ save. Sure, a Lascannon is in some sense better at killing Guardsmen than a bolt pistol is, but that's not an efficient use of a Lascannon.

A Heavy Bolter -- something which has historically been the go-to anti-horde heavy weapon -- is ridiculously specialized for MEQ killing now. A S5 AP-1 hit expects to kill 2.22 points of Guardsmen and 4.33 points of Marines (95% better!).

The game badly needs weapon options which are efficient for killing light infantry. If you want to equip a squad to be great for killing Guardsmen and gants, you should be able to do that. This basically requires either special rules or a points increase to light infantry, though, since even S3 AP- is better at killing Marines than Guardsmen -- even a frag grenade is more efficiently used against MEQs, though it's close. You have to go down to S2 AP- before you get something which is more efficiently used against Guardsmen, and that's still less efficient against Conscripts than Marines.

This is a great example of a misleading mathematical model. You're making too many assumptions and simplifications (ignoring wargear/variations in point cost between different types of MEQ/GEQ, ignoring cover, ignoring morale, ignoring the BS of the firing model) for your numbers to have any sort of meaningful accuracy, and I also just generally disagree with "points killed per round of shooting by weapon" as a useful metric.

 Kap'n Krump wrote:

 Galef wrote:

And both Horde armies basically ignore Morale so you have to kill every single model.

-

I think my biggest disappointment of 8th is how little morale matters - even less than 7th, to be honest. When it was announced, I thought it would be neat for morale to matter, but elite armies like marines don't have large enough squads and reroll tests anyways, necrons are LD10 (on 1D6), IG have commisars, nids have synapse, orks have mob rule.....hell, they probably could have deleted the entire morale phase and could have had little difference on the game.

It does matter if you can snipe out the Commissars/Nobz/Synapse, but that tends to require too much investment in the sniping. And synapse creatures have the advantage of sometimes coming as monsters that you can't casually snipe out.

 Galef wrote:
I don't know, I think Morale has a big affect on 8E, but not necessarily in each game, but rather in list building.
For Orks and Nids, you want big untis and synapse creatures.
For Marines, you still want small units

Any other army that doesn't have Morale mitigation has to avoid the "critical mass" unit size that risks losing more models.
Windriders are an example that is near and dear to me and I have zero reason to take units above 3. At 3 models, I can lose 2 and the remaining 1 will only run on a '6'.
If I took bigger units, the enemy could kill more in each unit and let Morale claim the rest.

So Morale has a bigger impact on list building in this edition than before.

-

Eh, I wouldn't say list building has been effected massively by morale: even in the random pickup games I've seen, between people who are new to the game and don't know/care about morale, there have only been a couple of times where a unit took damage from morale. As a Night Lords player, the inability to wipe enemy units by simply giving the enemy a look that says "if you don't fall down dead right now I'm gonna stick my arm inside of you, up to the shoulder, and yank until you are turned inside out so that I may use you as a meat cape" is quite frustrating. (Not saying this should be the norm but it might have been nice to put together a list like this if you pay the price of not being able to deal with single model units)

The way I've been seeing morale is that while it's an always on mechanic it really is more of a late game mechanic.
Sure at the start of the game the synapse web has everyone thoroughly covered and all the boys are at 30 strong and ignoring it all.
However, after several turns the web is wearing thin and patchy, all the boys are down to counts where 5 wounds would be a big swing on the test and that's where it really makes the impact.

As someone who loves Hordes I don't feel like they're OP, yet. There's still a lot of ground to cover. I think Hordes have a big advantage in terms of many weapons being bad against them, that's always been their advantage. They also do Missions well but honestly it remains to be seen what Missions are common. The "Score at the end of the game" Missions are irrelevant regardless of build with the exception of the Relic, sometimes. Most games you just obliterate each other and there's a poorly created "table your opponent and you win" rule which shouldn't exist.

Hordes have problems bringing their numbers to bear in all situations and can have issues with Leadership. I think 'Nids are weaker than Orks/IG on the Leadership side as it's a lot easier to deal with Synapse. Hordes also have problems with armor, this is something I've really been struggling with concerning foot Orks. If you bring stuff that helps Hordes against armor it's very easy to pick it out unless it's a Character.

Hordes definitely have a place, we'll just see how much of one. I mean besides Conscript Spam, that list just is OP.

The meta clearly points to hordes. As people have said there are many efficient ways to shoot vehicles/MC, 2-3 wound models or very expensive 1 wound models. Its hard to deal with cheap models that pack good saves.

With that said I still think the meta is evolving. I feel people need to start taking anti-horde weapons en mass before they say its just broken.

But yeah, I think small elite forces are screwed in the current game.

Personally I don't think Hordes are OP; there seems to be many legitimate ways to deal with them.

The problem lies in that all of the ways to deal with them seem tedious at best. I get the feeling that they might end up like the Necrons in 7th edition with the Reclamation Legion; not really that powerful, just incredibly frustrating to play against.

Not to mention there's no longer that catharsis factor when dealing with hordes; it's incredibly satisfying to go through a round of shooting with a single unit and watch your opponent remove swathes of models. It's the complete opposite to do that and your opponent only ticks off the first layer.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

It does matter if you can snipe out the Commissars/Nobz/Synapse, but that tends to require too much investment in the sniping. And synapse creatures have the advantage of sometimes coming as monsters that you can't casually snipe out.

I think you're overplaying the whole "investment in the sniping" bit.

Characters with more than 10W can be targeted without Sniper weapons. Nobs, the unit version, don't get the special protection that Nobs with Waaagh! Banners(a character) would. The monster versions with Synapse(Swarmlords and Tervigons) are 12 and 14 Wounds respectively--meaning they can be targeted without needing sniper weapons or those units being the closest thing.

Which is another bit to take into consideration. Positioning. That rule for characters? It requires you to have other units near you for it to kick in.

Tyel wrote:
The meta clearly points to hordes. As people have said there are many efficient ways to shoot vehicles/MC, 2-3 wound models or very expensive 1 wound models. Its hard to deal with cheap models that pack good saves.

With that said I still think the meta is evolving. I feel people need to start taking anti-horde weapons en mass before they say its just broken.

But yeah, I think small elite forces are screwed in the current game.

I agree with small armies being bad. Everytime I see one go against something it loses unless it's another elite force and then the game is legitimately over by Turn 2. Stuff dies SO fast, expensive MEQ units just cannot make their points back. Taking that sort of list into a Horde in particular is a nightmare, unless maybe it's Knight spam.

Making units immune to morale tests was a mistake. It would have been far better for these buffing units to give them a flat buff to their leadership when taking morale tests.

10 morale conscripts because of a commissar nearby is fine. It's a huge boost and doesn't totally negate the mechanic, for instance.

Dionysodorus wrote:
I just posted this in the joke thread, but, basically: there is no such thing as an anti-horde weapon in 40k anymore. Those Assault Cannons you mention are actually incredibly specialized anti-MEQ weapons. Boyz are a little special because they cost 50% more than Guardsmen or gants and are paying for T4 instead of a better save, but here was some math on Guardsmen vs Marines:

An anti-horde weapon is one that is most efficiently used to kill hordes. Like old-timey flamers. Low strength meant that they were only good at wounding things with low toughness, AP5 meant that they ignored armor saves against light infantry, and the template meant that they could hit more models in bigger units on smaller bases. Flamers were actually really good at killing hordes -- you'd kill more points of Guardsmen per shot than you would points of much more expensive but individually more durable models like Space Marines.

But now, stuff like a bolter or a mortar or a Space Marine's fist is actually just anti-MEQ. An S4 AP- hit expects to kill 1.78 points of Guardsmen and 2.17 points of Marines (22% better against Marines). A Whirlwind is even more specialized for MEQ-killing because of its higher strength. The supposedly anti-horde castellan launcher fires S6 AP- shots. A S6 AP- hit expects to kill 2.22 points of Guardsmen and 2.89 points of Marines (30% better against Marines). The Whirlwind castellan launcher is better against Marines than against termagants with their 6+ save. Sure, a Lascannon is in some sense better at killing Guardsmen than a bolt pistol is, but that's not an efficient use of a Lascannon.

A Heavy Bolter -- something which has historically been the go-to anti-horde heavy weapon -- is ridiculously specialized for MEQ killing now. A S5 AP-1 hit expects to kill 2.22 points of Guardsmen and 4.33 points of Marines (95% better!).

The game badly needs weapon options which are efficient for killing light infantry. If you want to equip a squad to be great for killing Guardsmen and gants, you should be able to do that. This basically requires either special rules or a points increase to light infantry, though, since even S3 AP- is better at killing Marines than Guardsmen -- even a frag grenade is more efficiently used against MEQs, though it's close. You have to go down to S2 AP- before you get something which is more efficiently used against Guardsmen, and that's still less efficient against Conscripts than Marines.

I find this to be strange reasoning, as your math is focussing on "points killed" vs casualty removal. For one, high casualty rates mean tougher morale checks (at least for some). But the other key factor against hordes is the range of engadgement and their ability to bring numbers to bear (Thermopylae). 50 marines vs. 200 gaunts all at once is one thing, but 50 marines vs. 50 gaunts a turn for four turns is another. Weapons like the whirlwind help thin the numbers so that the engagement at close range is more favorable. Weapons like frag grenades raise the casualty rate even higher up close.

And lets not forget that every marine has a bolter too. You dont need specialist anti horde weapons when every model has an adequate anti infantry weapon.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

It does matter if you can snipe out the Commissars/Nobz/Synapse, but that tends to require too much investment in the sniping. And synapse creatures have the advantage of sometimes coming as monsters that you can't casually snipe out.

I think you're overplaying the whole "investment in the sniping" bit.

Characters with more than 10W can be targeted without Sniper weapons. Nobs, the unit version, don't get the special protection that Nobs with Waaagh! Banners(a character) would. The monster versions with Synapse(Swarmlords and Tervigons) are 12 and 14 Wounds respectively--meaning they can be targeted without needing sniper weapons or those units being the closest thing.

Which is another bit to take into consideration. Positioning. That rule for characters? It requires you to have other units near you for it to kick in.

Possibly. I say "over-investment in sniping" because the way I've been using to quickly and reliably get rid of Commissars is two Vindicare Assassins, which are 180pts that put all of two S5 shots downrange a turn once they're out of characters to target. Shots with good AP/damage that ignore invuls and the cover modifier, yes, so they're not entirely purposeless without characters, but they're pretty expensive to take in a general-purpose list and find yourself plinking individual Orks or fishing for 5s to damage vehicles after the characters are all dead.

 Insectum7 wrote:

I find this to be strange reasoning, as your math is focussing on "points killed" vs casualty removal. For one, high casualty rates mean tougher morale checks (at least for some). But the other key factor against hordes is the range of engadgement and their ability to bring numbers to bear (Thermopylae). 50 marines vs. 200 gaunts all at once is one thing, but 50 marines vs. 50 gaunts a turn for four turns is another. Weapons like the whirlwind help thin the numbers so that the engagement at close range is more favorable. Weapons like frag grenades raise the casualty rate even higher up close.

And lets not forget that every marine has a bolter too. You dont need specialist anti horde weapons when every model has an adequate anti infantry weapon.

Well, two points about this. First, as many people have noted, horde armies typically have pretty easy access to ways to ignore morale. Second, with the removal of templates, hordes are now much more able to squeeze into small spaces.

The point is not about the absolute numbers -- even in that post I was focusing much more on the percentage differences -- but that there's been a huge change in the effectiveness of what are supposed to be anti-horde guns against hordes. Sure, maybe you can make an argument about how hordes are in some cases a little more vulnerable to morale (I'm not sure this is generally true, though). Or maybe you should penalize them for having so many models because kills thin the herd (though now you can pull casualties from wherever you want). These are details. A heavy bolter used to kill 3.75 Guardsmen in the time it would take it to kill a Marine. Now it's 1.67 Guardsmen per Marine. A regular bolter used to kill 4 Guardsmen per Marine. Now it's 2.67. Hordes are now hugely more durable in the face of anti-horde firepower, relative to Marines. You're not making up for differences like that with little things about positioning and tougher morale tests -- and remember that what's really important here is what's changed since the last edition. I just think it's really striking that you almost literally cannot find something that's more efficient for killing naked Guardsmen than Marines. This was very, very easy in previous editions.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I want to add that in general in games like this an important balancing mechanism is that it's possible to tailor a list to take on particular kinds of enemies. If the meta swings too far one way, people start including more counters, and that causes the meta to be self-correcting.

And so it's sort of worrying when there really aren't many choices you can make to strongly tailor your list against hordes. Like, an old-timey flamer might expect 4 or 5 hits, wounding on 3s, with no save. Flamers were an extremely specialized anti-horde weapon, and so they were great investments against hordes specifically. If your list was struggling against hordes you could add some of those and shore up your weaknesses.

That's just a lot harder to do now. If you're running up against lots of high cost per wound invulnerable saves, you bring mortal wounds -- these pay off in proportion to what the enemy is paying per wound. If you're up against lots of tanks, you bring lascannons and meltas -- these are strong enough to wound them, have good AP to beat their saves, and do multiple damage. If you're up against heavy infantry, you bring plasma, which can even kill the multi-wound stuff in one shot. These options are all pretty specialized. Mortal wounds are much less efficient against 13 point-per-wound tactical marines than against 25 point-per-wound characters. Lascannons are way too expensive to efficiently deal with regular infantry. Plasma guns don't really have the damage to threaten the biggest tanks and are too expensive for light infantry.

But there's not really anything you can bring to solidly counter a horde. The very best you can do is small arms, and ultimately these are about as good against a lot of other stuff. And so you can't expect to just add a few hundred points of small arms and make serious progress towards fixing your horde problem.

If the best counter to hordes is taking more tactical squads, I am all in on that. If this really shifts the meta towards more basic infantry on the table in general, esp in tournaments, i will sing the praises of 8th to the heavens.

*i dont mean to be glib, but im one handed and on my phone atm. Apologies.

So far as I can see, it's not the hordes themselves that are OP. It's the buffs which can be provided to hordes, especially in the morale phase, that are OP.

3 ppm conscripts shouldn't be virtually immune to the battle shock phase. That's just unfair.

 Traditio wrote:
So far as I can see, it's not the hordes themselves that are OP. It's the buffs which can be provided to hordes, especially in the morale phase, that are OP.

3 ppm conscripts shouldn't be virtually immune to the battle shock phase. That's just unfair.

Eh, it gives assault marines something to do. Doesn't chainswording through a bolter/whirlwind depleted mob sound fun? It does to me.

Insectum7 wrote:Eh, it gives assault marines something to do. Doesn't chainswording through a bolter/whirlwind depleted mob sound fun? It does to me.

It's not worth it.

Here's what's going to happen, assuming a 30 man conscript blob with commissar.

3 assault marines with chainswords and boltpistols.
2 assault marines with flamers.

Deploy from rhino within a few inches of the conscripts.

Discharge flamers. Average damage:

7/1 X 2/3 X 2/3 = 28/9 unsaved wounds

2 bolt pistols fire:

2/1 X 2/3 X 2/3 X 2/3 = 16/27 unsaved wounds.

Toss frag grenade:

7/2 X 2/3 X 1/2 X 2/3 =28/36 unsaved wounds

Result in shooting phase:

About 5 unsaved wounds

Assault marines charge.

25 conscripts fire overwatch:

50/1 X 1/3 X 1/3 X 1/3 = 50/27, or about 2 unsaved wounds.

Flamer marines die.

Bolt pistol and chainsword marines attack:

7/1 X 2/3 X 2/3 X 2/3 = 56/27, or about 2 unsaved wounds.

23 conscripts counter-attack:

23/1 X 1/3 X 1/3 X 1/3 = 23/27

Close to one unsaved wound.

In the morale phase, commissar BLAMS a conscript.

On the following turn, conscripts ball back, get back in the fight, and rapidfire lasguns:

44/1 X 1/3 X 1/3 X 1/3 = 44/27

Just that one commissar blob, on average, will wipe most of the assault squad, an assault squad that costs 83 points, not counting the rhino.

How many points of conscripts did they kill? 8. 24 points worth of conscripts.

It's not fair.

Conscripts need to be more expensive, and commissars need to be nerfed. Get rid of the BLAM rule, or else, treat it like ATSKNF.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, "Get Back in the Fight" needs to die. It' an unfair order. It shouldn't exist.

Also, IG should have to roll for their orders again. Auto-pass is too much of an advantage (especially given the fact that I don't even have chapter tactics any more!), and it unduly benefits conscripts.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Basically, here is the problem with horde armies like IG:

IG is supposed to have very clear advantages (shooting) and disadvantages (merely average stats; very little close combat capabilities, weakness to morale tests).

Except, oh, wait, those disadvantages don't even matter, because they have special rules to pretty much completely ignore them.

8th ed IG are unfair in the same way that 7th ed. Tau were unfair.

 Traditio wrote:
So far as I can see, it's not the hordes themselves that are OP. It's the buffs which can be provided to hordes, especially in the morale phase, that are OP.

3 ppm conscripts shouldn't be virtually immune to the battle shock phase. That's just unfair.

Why not? They've always been effectively so.

In fact, in 7e, regular guardsmen can come in 50-man blobs, are basically morale-proof, and are even more devastating in shooting. I've shot to pieces Tervigons using Bring it Down! and evaporated terminators with First Rank, FIRE! Second Rank, FIRE!.

Conscripts and their characteristics are nothing new, and even getting their 5+ save they're not particularly survivable. As I said, the right gun for the job can absolutely rip through them.

Compared to a 50-man block of regular guardsmen, conscripts are cheaper but offer much poorer shooting and assault, but the same survivability. And that's the point. They're really not 200 points worth of destructive power. Also, compared to other things that are resilient and 200 points, like a Leman Russ Punisher Tank, they have about equal firepower, at best, at full strength. The Lasguns are mostly harmless. The conscripts, at full strength, in rapid fire range, can deal about 10 wounds a turn to Necron Warriors, which is pretty fair for 200 points. They won't beat the warriors if they do't get first salvo, but they can if they do. Marines will survive better than Necrons against conscripts, and chew through them fairly quickly too. Worth mention, so will Orks, and Tyranids, extremely quickly. Falling back from combat and getting "Get Back in the Fight" isn't a big deal because 1: the resulting devastated unit isn't really worth the order compared to "First Rank, FIRE! Second Rank, FIRE!" on an intact unit, and 2: it's a consolation prize for what's left of the unit.

Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:Why not?

Because it's OP.

They've always been effectively so.

And SMs have had chapter tactics since 6th edition.

Sternguard have had special issue ammunition since 5th edition.

The fact that conscripts have "always been effectively so" does not make them balanced or indicate that they should still have it. In case you haven't noticed, we are currently talking about a new edition of 40k, in effect, an entirely new game with an entirely new set of rules.

As I said, the right gun for the job can absolutely rip through them.

What "right gun" for the job? Did you see the math I did for flamers?

The simple fact is that conscripts are now more durable and more killy.

Points costs and rules need to change to compensate for that.

 Traditio wrote:

Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:Why not?

Because it's OP.

They've always been effectively so.

And SMs have had chapter tactics since 6th edition.

Sternguard have had special issue ammunition since 5th edition.

The fact that conscripts have "always been effectively so" does not make them balanced or indicate that they should still have it. In case you haven't noticed, we are currently talking about a new edition of 40k, in effect, an entirely new game with an entirely new set of rules.

As I said, the right gun for the job can absolutely rip through them.

What "right gun" for the job? Did you see the math I did for flamers?

The simple fact is that conscripts are now more durable and more killy.

Points costs and rules need to change to compensate for that.

Punisher Gatling Cannon and 3x Heavy Bolters with a Tank Commander. Pretty much the same price as they are too!

Also, 4x Flamer, 1x Combi-Flamer, and 1x Immolation Flamer.

Also, 30 Boyz. Or 30 'gaunts.

They're not particularly more durable. The improvement is fairly marginal, considering that mine have a 4+ save right now! I paid 50 points for that save, but I have it.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

 Traditio wrote:
So far as I can see, it's not the hordes themselves that are OP. It's the buffs which can be provided to hordes, especially in the morale phase, that are OP.

3 ppm conscripts shouldn't be virtually immune to the battle shock phase. That's just unfair.

Why not? They've always been effectively so.

In fact, in 7e, regular guardsmen can come in 50-man blobs, are basically morale-proof, and are even more devastating in shooting. I've shot to pieces Tervigons using Bring it Down! and evaporated terminators with First Rank, FIRE! Second Rank, FIRE!.

Conscripts and their characteristics are nothing new, and even getting their 5+ save they're not particularly survivable. As I said, the right gun for the job can absolutely rip through them.

Compared to a 50-man block of regular guardsmen, conscripts are cheaper but offer much poorer shooting and assault, but the same survivability. And that's the point. They're really not 200 points worth of destructive power. Also, compared to other things that are resilient and 200 points, like a Leman Russ Punisher Tank, they have about equal firepower, at best, at full strength. The Lasguns are mostly harmless. The conscripts, at full strength, in rapid fire range, can deal about 10 wounds a turn to Necron Warriors, which is pretty fair for 200 points. They won't beat the warriors if they do't get first salvo, but they can if they do. Marines will survive better than Necrons against conscripts, and chew through them fairly quickly too. Worth mention, so will Orks, and Tyranids, extremely quickly. Falling back from combat and getting "Get Back in the Fight" isn't a big deal because 1: the resulting devastated unit isn't really worth the order compared to "First Rank, FIRE! Second Rank, FIRE!" on an intact unit, and 2: it's a consolation prize for what's left of the unit.

In previous editions you would have a much better time whittling down those hordes with mass bolter/h. bolter fire and template weapons. If you did get into assault you would also be safe because they could't just fall back on a whim and then 'get back into the fight'. In this edition, one of the primary mechanisms for killing more models in the absence templates is morale, which these hordes conveniently ignore.

GorillaWarfare wrote:


In previous editions you would have a much better time whittling down those hordes with mass bolter/h. bolter fire and template weapons. If you did get into assault you would also be safe because they could't just fall back on a whim and then 'get back into the fight'. In this edition, one of the primary mechanisms for killing more models in the absence templates is morale, which these hordes conveniently ignore.

You know what also conveniently ignores morale? MSU.

Bolter fire still works. So does Flamers. So does Lasguns. If you used it last edition, it still works.


Also, Get Back In The Fight is absolutely terrible. It give half the shooting power of First Rank, Fire! Second Rank, Fire!

Imperial Guardsmen with FRFSRF get 37 shots and 19 hits.
In order for Conscripts to be worth the order after falling back, there needs to be 30 conscripts left in the squad after your melee.

Try it, it's not that hard.

10x Seraphim, 4x Hand Flamer, 134 points, way less than the cost of the Conscripts, or the Punisher. Shooting kills an average of 11 right there, and you can assault to kill a couple more. Tell me that assault marines, who get actually dangerous melee, can't take care of them?

Or try Orks. 30 boys gets 120 attacks, resulting in an output of 35 wounds. That's no-more-Conscripts right there. Hormagaunts are similar, and hit on turn 1 too.




I'm not finding a problem with conscripts. They do what they've always done, and they're not particularly better at it. And considering that Marines are now 12 points a pop instead of 16, I feel 3 points a conscript is fair, considering my "delete Marines" button is gone.

I feel it should be noted with cover, because saves are technically taken in sequence, you can allocate to models outside of cover, kill them off until the remaining units are 100% are in cover, at which point they get the +1 bonus

Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:Punisher Gatling Cannon and 3x Heavy Bolters with a Tank Commander. Pretty much the same price as they are too!

Also, 4x Flamer, 1x Combi-Flamer, and 1x Immolation Flamer.

None of these things is a problem.

First and foremost, one can make relatively short work of these things with dedicated AT weapons. You cannot make short work of conscripts with anti-infantry weapons. Boltguns, flamers, frag grenades, frag missiles, etc. are not reliable, points-efficient methods of taking out conscripts.

Second, if you don't want to deal with these things, you don't have to do so.

1. You can charge these things and deny them a round of shooting on the next turn.

2. Their battlefield footprint isn't that big.

Conscripts can fall back, shoot and can take up an enormous amount of space.

Also, 30 Boyz

Boyz are twice as expensive as conscripts, save on 6s, and have increasingly worse morale as they lose numbers.

Not comparable.

Or 30 'gaunts.

Tyrranids are OP.

 Kap'n Krump wrote:
Am I missing something?

The short anwser? Yes.

The long anwser? Yes, tactics.

Try bringing more then just 30 man squads of boys.

Ugh, i'll be right back...So that took 10 seconds Da Jump use it.

Other than gaining the ability to wound above T6, guardsman blobs haven't gotten any more killy since 7th ed. Arguably they've gotten a bit less, since true blobbing is restricted to conscripts now. They haven't gotten any less vulnerable to morale either, Commissars in 7th had the same deal of blam one guy, ignore morale. No change there, except that Commissars went from 25 points to 31 points.

The main thing that has changed for them is the removal of templates. Templates used to be far and away the best way to sweep a horde off the table, because a proper horde has far too many models to use 2" spacing. Now, templates are gone and hordes are hard to remove. It's really that simple, and it applies to every single horde army, not just guardsmen.

I don't think they'll be strong enough to be gamebreaking, but they will be strong enough to be meta. Some kind of dakkaboat unit, or some kind of melee blender unit, will be an important consideration for dealing with any hordes you might encounter. For example, the +1 attack on chainswords and their equivalents may turn out to be rather valuable for filling that role.

 ross-128 wrote:
Other than gaining the ability to wound above T6, guardsman blobs haven't gotten any more killy since 7th ed.

"Other than gaining the ability to wound above T6"? That's a MASSIVE increase in killiness. The fact that conscripts can wound rhinos is definitely a substantial increase in killiness which must be accounted for. You can't just hand-wave that away. Second, you're not taking into account that conscripts now wound T5 on 5s. That's also a substantial increase in killing power. Third, you're failing to take into account the ability to fall back and then shoot. Or even fall back without shooting in order that something else can shoot.

All of that amounts to much more killy conscripts, whether directly or indirectly.

Now, templates are gone and hordes are hard to remove. It's really that simple, and it applies to every single horde army, not just guardsmen.

It amounts to the same thing: conscripts (and hordes in general) have become much more durable. That means that they need a points increase, and the rules need to change to compensate. If I can't kill your conscripts en masse in the shooting phase, then you need to lose large numbers of them in the battleshock phase.

It's that simple.

For example, the +1 attack on chainswords and their equivalents may turn out to be rather valuable for filling that role.

No, they're not.

Do the math.

 Traditio wrote:

Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:Punisher Gatling Cannon and 3x Heavy Bolters with a Tank Commander. Pretty much the same price as they are too!

Also, 4x Flamer, 1x Combi-Flamer, and 1x Immolation Flamer.

None of these things is a problem.

First and foremost, one can make relatively short work of these things with dedicated AT weapons. You cannot make short work of conscripts with anti-infantry weapons. Boltguns, flamers, frag grenades, frag missiles, etc. are not reliable, points-efficient methods of taking out conscripts.

Second, if you don't want to deal with these things, you don't have to do so.

1. You can charge these things and deny them a round of shooting on the next turn.

2. Their battlefield footprint isn't that big.

Conscripts can fall back, shoot and can take up an enormous amount of space.

Also, 30 Boyz

Boyz are twice as expensive as conscripts, save on 6s, and have increasingly worse morale as they lose numbers.

Not comparable.

Or 30 'gaunts.

Tyrranids are OP

Which means that 30 boys is roughly equal to the conscripts and the support to not make them evaporate, yes? If boyz are 6 a pop, then 30 boys goes for 180 points, with 20 points to spare on something to buff them. Are they really not comparable?

You picked the lamest anti-infantry weapons in the book. That's like asking an autocannon to make short work of a Land Raider. Pick real anti-infantry options other than the goddamn tactical marines you seem to think should be the be all and end all of 40k, who are really the vanilla of the vanilla and are neither good at anything nor terrible at anything. Tac Marines will never and should never outshoot guardsmen point-for-point.

Anyway, what about Seraphim? You can't stop them by getting into assault, because they use pistols, and use them in assault. They also can potentially shoot twice, or move twice, or assault twice, or do any of that fun stuff thanks to Act of Faith, and then they'll really chew through Conscripts. Point-for-point they'll rip the Conscripts apart.

What I'm getting out of you is: If it's something that's supposed to be effective against lots and lots of guys, then it doesn't count. If it's not actually supposed to be amazing at clearing hordes, and can't clear them, then hordes are OP because goddamn Frag Grenades, which I remind you are terrible, aren't ripping a vast swathe through them.

Why don't you try twin assault canonon Razorbacks for your transports. Your problems with conscripts will go away. Or Twin Heavy Flamer Razorbacks, works too.


Also worth mention, Conscripts put just over half the damage downrange as the Punisher. Both come up to about the same cost, so it makes sense that the Conscripts are a bit tougher than the Leman Russ.


There are lots of options that are really good at killing hordes, hordes of Ork Boyz to Punisher Gatling Cannons to Sisters Seraphim. You just have to use them.

Anyway, you want assault troop math? I'll do it for you.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
Assault Marines: 130 points, vs. Conscripts



Look at that! For just over half the price of Conscripts and their support, you're killing ten of them a turn! Are you not satisfied?

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
Why not? They've always been effectively so.

Why cant we own slaves, people have been doing that since forever. Oh man what a gak argument.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
Conscripts and their characteristics are nothing new.

Sharks have been the same for a long time, and are lretty scary in large bodies of water, but drop one off in the Sahara and it wont survive long.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
Compared to a 50-man block of regular guardsmen, conscripts are cheaper but offer much poorer shooting and assault, but the same survivability. And that's the point.

So what your saying is you can double the surviveablity of your good troops allowing them to put out 2.5x the damage for a for a 75% increase in price. Yeah whats OP about that.

Punishers... don't kill conscripts all that well. I'm not why you think they do, but you keep saying it.

20 shots, half miss. only .666 of those 10 hits actually wound, since S5 is worse against T3.

No AP on those shots, so a third of those 6.66 wounds are saved, half if they can somehow claim cover. Assume they can't, so 4 or 5 dead conscripts out of 50. Huzzah.

That could lead to 3-5 more morale casualties, but commissars so they don't.

I'm underwhelmed by your go-to example of anti infantry.


The problem with conscripts isn't their killing ability (which is poor). It's the magical immunity that prevents the opponent from fighting the actual army that lies behind them. You know, actually playing the game. Conscripts are essentially a troll strategy. Great for winning, bad for a fun game.

Look at that! For just over half the price of Conscripts and their support, you're killing ten of them a turn! Are you not satisfied?

That chart is hilariously uninformative, but if ~10 is the result, yeah, I'm pretty unsatisfied. 5 full turns for assault specialists to be tied up slowly grinding down a garbage unit? That's really awful. Especially since it won't be that rosey, as the assault marines will also take casualties, and do increasingly less than ten on each subsequent turn.

Punisher, Assault Marines, Seraphim


The Seraphim are 134, the Assault Marines are 130, and the Punisher is 211.

Our hypothetical Conscript target is 200 [since otherwise it's not morale-proof]

This looks pretty good.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

Voss wrote:

Look at that! For just over half the price of Conscripts and their support, you're killing ten of them a turn! Are you not satisfied?

That chart is hilariously uninformative, but if ~10 is the result, yeah, I'm pretty unsatisfied. 5 full turns for assault specialists to be tied up slowly grinding down a garbage unit? That's really awful. Especially since it won't be that rosey, as the assault marines will also take casualties, and do increasingly less than ten on each subsequent turn.

You are aware that the Assault Marines are 130 [without support] and the conscripts are 200 [with support]? And those are un-upgraded assault marines, because I don't have a clue what's good for them.

Also, I'm using the Tank Command Punisher, which is considerably better than the regular one. 3+ BS is worth a lot.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
Assault Marines: 130 points, vs. Conscripts



Look at that! For just over half the price of Conscripts and their support, you're killing ten of them a turn! Are you not satisfied?

How much do you think conscripts cost? There 3 PPM you could get 30 conscripts and a commisar it would take them 3 turns to kill that unit and the would lose half thier squad in the process.

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:

Assault Marines: 130 points, vs. Conscripts



Look at that! For just over half the price of Conscripts and their support, you're killing ten of them a turn! Are you not satisfied?

How much do you think conscripts cost? There 3 PPM you could get 30 conscripts and a commisar it would take them 3 turns to kill that unit and the would lose half thier squad in the process.

200 points

Conscripts are 3 points a model, so that's 150 points for 50 conscripts. A commissar, to keep them in place, since the complaint is about them is that they're morale proof, is 30 points. That's 180 points. Then, because the second complaint is that they can fall back and shoot, they need a 20-point Platoon Commander to give them that ability. That totals up to 200 points. You can't cry about them being morale-proof and able to fall back from combat without including the cost of the upgrades that allow them to do so!

I think that Assault Marines are pretty good at it for their price. Remember, Conscripts aren't heavy weapons teams, they pay for durability, so they're supposed to be vaguely durable and a decent tarpit. And for 200 points, you do get a decent tarpit. It can hold it's own points cost down for 3 turns, which is pretty fair for a tarpit.



I'm not sure what you space marine players want out of our units? All our units are apparently too tough and too lethal for the points we pay, because your space marines can't kill off our entire army in one turn and simultaneously take all of our shooting without losing a model. My big blob of guys shouldn't die in one turn to a unit half their cost. Especially considering their damage output, even when fully buffed, isn't spectacular, they shouldn't be dying in one turn to a unit equal to their cost! They're a dedicated tarpit!

I have to agree with Katherine here. Especially considering you're trying to have you cake and eat it to, having conscripts "ignore morale" while not actually taking in to consideration the literal cost of them "ignoring morale".

 Traditio wrote:

Insectum7 wrote:Eh, it gives assault marines something to do. Doesn't chainswording through a bolter/whirlwind depleted mob sound fun? It does to me.

It's not worth it.

Here's what's going to happen, assuming a 30 man conscript blob with commissar.

3 assault marines with chainswords and boltpistols.
2 assault marines with flamers.

Deploy from rhino within a few inches of the conscripts.

Discharge flamers. Average damage:

7/1 X 2/3 X 2/3 = 28/9 unsaved wounds

2 bolt pistols fire:

2/1 X 2/3 X 2/3 X 2/3 = 16/27 unsaved wounds.

Toss frag grenade:

7/2 X 2/3 X 1/2 X 2/3 =28/36 unsaved wounds

Result in shooting phase:

About 5 unsaved wounds

Assault marines charge.

25 conscripts fire overwatch:

50/1 X 1/3 X 1/3 X 1/3 = 50/27, or about 2 unsaved wounds.

Flamer marines die.

Bolt pistol and chainsword marines attack:

7/1 X 2/3 X 2/3 X 2/3 = 56/27, or about 2 unsaved wounds.

23 conscripts counter-attack:

23/1 X 1/3 X 1/3 X 1/3 = 23/27

Close to one unsaved wound.

In the morale phase, commissar BLAMS a conscript.

On the following turn, conscripts ball back, get back in the fight, and rapidfire lasguns:

44/1 X 1/3 X 1/3 X 1/3 = 44/27

Just that one commissar blob, on average, will wipe most of the assault squad, an assault squad that costs 83 points, not counting the rhino.

How many points of conscripts did they kill? 8. 24 points worth of conscripts.

It's not fair.

Conscripts need to be more expensive, and commissars need to be nerfed. Get rid of the BLAM rule, or else, treat it like ATSKNF.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, "Get Back in the Fight" needs to die. It' an unfair order. It shouldn't exist.

Also, IG should have to roll for their orders again. Auto-pass is too much of an advantage (especially given the fact that I don't even have chapter tactics any more!), and it unduly benefits conscripts.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Basically, here is the problem with horde armies like IG:

IG is supposed to have very clear advantages (shooting) and disadvantages (merely average stats; very little close combat capabilities, weakness to morale tests).

Except, oh, wait, those disadvantages don't even matter, because they have special rules to pretty much completely ignore them.

8th ed IG are unfair in the same way that 7th ed. Tau were unfair.

Why would you assume I'd only send five guys in a rhino? I mean, set yourself up for failure and yeah, you'll fail.

No those buffs also apply to any other infantry unit around it as well. Since you will have a platoon command squad anyway for your other infantry IF you were going in infantry blobs anyway, the cost comes down with each effective blob. You can easily daisy chain 4 blobs to a PCS and Commisar, remember you choose what models to remove. The costs themselves are also minimal in they also fill up more detachment slots for more CP.

The fact autopass orders are a thing now means that PCS pays for itself after essentially the first 2 orders.

And how the feth is 3ppm paying for durability?

 Quickjager wrote:
No those buffs also apply to any other infantry unit around it as well. Since you will have a platoon command squad anyway for your other infantry IF you were going in infantry blobs anyway, the cost comes down with each effective blob. You can easily daisy chain 4 blobs to a PCS and Commisar, remember you choose what models to remove. The costs themselves are also minimal in they also fill up more detachment slots for more CP.

The fact autopass orders are a thing now means that PCS pays for itself after essentially the first 2 orders.

And how the feth is 3ppm paying for durability?

That's not actually true. A PCS can service one squad at a time, and no more than one squad. A commissar can service up to probably a hypothetical 4. Maybe if you're clever you can get more, but you won't be able to get all your conscripts within 12" then. Really, it's about 1 Commissar per 2 squads, and 1 CC per 2 squads. which puts our hypothetical unit at 150+150+30+30=360 points.

Of course the unit price is paying for durability! What else is a conscript squad but a big blob that takes up space and doesn't die! It's certainly not a unit with tremendous shooting power.

Don't mind me
200 / 8 = 25
25 * 2 * 1/2 * 2/3 * 2/3 = 11.11
25 * 2 * 21/36 * 2/3 * 2/3 = 12.96
Hmm that feels a little weak...

What about...
25 * 4 * 1/3 * 2/3 * 2/3 = 14.81
25 * 4 * 14/36 * 2/3 * 2/3 = 17.28
Damn, quite a bit better!

What if supported instead?
(200 - 40) / 8 = 20
20 * 6 * 1/3 * 2/3 * 2/3 = 17.77
20 * 6 * 14/36 * 2/3 * 2/3 = 20.74
A little better, but feeling like a sidegrade

Final support?
(200 - 40 - 40) / 8 = 15
15 * 6 * 21/36 * 2/3 * 2/3 = 23.33
Good to see it still better, but definitely worth investing more than a total of 200 if going full support.

Carry on!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Insectum7 wrote:

Why would you assume I'd only send five guys in a rhino? I mean, set yourself up for failure and yeah, you'll fail.

because otherwise you would be sending way way more points to kill your target.
Which would mean that they would have more points to kill the additional guys you would send.

 Quickjager wrote:
No those buffs also apply to any other infantry unit around it as well. Since you will have a platoon command squad anyway for your other infantry IF you were going in infantry blobs anyway, the cost comes down with each effective blob. You can easily daisy chain 4 blobs to a PCS and Commisar, remember you choose what models to remove. The costs themselves are also minimal in they also fill up more detachment slots for more CP.

The fact autopass orders are a thing now means that PCS pays for itself after essentially the first 2 orders.

And how the feth is 3ppm paying for durability?

This works for Commissars, not so much for PCS, because you only get one order a turn. You can bump up to CCS, which get you two, but even then half of your conscripts will be without orders. And they are bad without orders.

3ppm is paying for durability when you need 50 of them for the unit to be durable. If you go for smaller units, they die faster and don't get as much mileage out of orders, which they pretty much need to function. It also gets harder to daisy chain them like you suggest.

Are conscripts good? Yeah, looks like it. Are they unbeatable hordes of doom that will sweep aside all in their path, choking the living with their dead and drowning those who oppose them with their blood, all at the behest of an uncaring corpse upon a faraway throne? Probably not.

Units don't need to be unbeatable to be endgame, meta defining influences.

They just need to be a bit more efficent than everthing else and then you get Serpent Shield Spam. In this case you get objective holders that will almost always outnumber the opponent (therefore holding the objective) that will always get a significant portion of their points back.

 SuspiciousSucculent wrote:

 Quickjager wrote:
No those buffs also apply to any other infantry unit around it as well. Since you will have a platoon command squad anyway for your other infantry IF you were going in infantry blobs anyway, the cost comes down with each effective blob. You can easily daisy chain 4 blobs to a PCS and Commisar, remember you choose what models to remove. The costs themselves are also minimal in they also fill up more detachment slots for more CP.

The fact autopass orders are a thing now means that PCS pays for itself after essentially the first 2 orders.

And how the feth is 3ppm paying for durability?

This works for Commissars, not so much for PCS, because you only get one order a turn. You can bump up to CCS, which get you two, but even then half of your conscripts will be without orders. And they are bad without orders.

3ppm is paying for durability when you need 50 of them for the unit to be durable. If you go for smaller units, they die faster and don't get as much mileage out of orders, which they pretty much need to function. It also gets harder to daisy chain them like you suggest.

Are conscripts good? Yeah, looks like it. Are they unbeatable hordes of doom that will sweep aside all in their path, choking the living with their dead and drowning those who oppose them with their blood, all at the behest of an uncaring corpse upon a faraway throne? Probably not.

Never the claim.
They don't even need orders to do what they do best - serve as a roadblock. They just need a commissar nearby* having a smoke. They can fall back an inch and a bit at a time, and keep the enemy from engaging the murder-stuff. That is what they are for, and they do it perfectly for basically nothing. Enjoy 3-4 rounds of what is probably the best shooting in the game while you try to chop through the layers. *That* is the problem.

*and 'nearby' is a wacky generous world where you can daisy chain a trailing line of conscripts back to within 6" of the commissar's perfectly safe position, which can be the inside corner of a bog-standard GW ruin.

Yeesh, I didn't know playful hyperbole had been outlawed.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:

Assault Marines: 130 points, vs. Conscripts



Look at that! For just over half the price of Conscripts and their support, you're killing ten of them a turn! Are you not satisfied?

How much do you think conscripts cost? There 3 PPM you could get 30 conscripts and a commisar it would take them 3 turns to kill that unit and the would lose half thier squad in the process.

200 points

Conscripts are 3 points a model, so that's 150 points for 50 conscripts. A commissar, to keep them in place, since the complaint is about them is that they're morale proof, is 30 points. That's 180 points. Then, because the second complaint is that they can fall back and shoot, they need a 20-point Platoon Commander to give them that ability. That totals up to 200 points. You can't cry about them being morale-proof and able to fall back from combat without including the cost of the upgrades that allow them to do so!

I think that Assault Marines are pretty good at it for their price. Remember, Conscripts aren't heavy weapons teams, they pay for durability, so they're supposed to be vaguely durable and a decent tarpit. And for 200 points, you do get a decent tarpit. It can hold it's own points cost down for 3 turns, which is pretty fair for a tarpit.



I'm not sure what you space marine players want out of our units? All our units are apparently too tough and too lethal for the points we pay, because your space marines can't kill off our entire army in one turn and simultaneously take all of our shooting without losing a model. My big blob of guys shouldn't die in one turn to a unit half their cost. Especially considering their damage output, even when fully buffed, isn't spectacular, they shouldn't be dying in one turn to a unit equal to their cost! They're a dedicated tarpit!

Okay lets try this what happens to a 10 man unit of Rubrics Marines (346 points) with all flamers goes up to an equal amount of guardsman with proprer support.

So what would the guard player take?

30 conscripts 90 points
Commisar 30 points
2 Company Commanders 30 points
4 platoons of guardsman 160 points
310 points
And you are even down by 30 points

And we will assume that I some how magically got my flamer unit close enough to your conscripts to shoot them with out being shot, and that I managed to do so while being able to fire.

You can run the math if you want but in the end my 346 point unit takes 2 turns to kill your 90 point unit, and in that time your 120 points of guardsman kill my 346 poimt unit over 3 turns. So either my models are massivly overpriced or your models are massivly under priced.

Because according to you there is no way units that cost 120 points should be able to kill a 346 unit over 3 turns since that gets you 360 points of shooting total.

Edit: also keep in mind that my 346 unit with all flamers can't kill your 90 point unitin a single turn despite being nearly 4x the points.

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:


Okay lets try this what happens to a 10 man unit of Rubrics Marines (346 points) with all flamers goes up to an equal amount of guardsman with proprer support.

So what would the guard player take?

30 conscripts 90 points
Commisar 30 points
2 Company Commanders 30 points
4 platoons of guardsman 160 points
310 points
And you are even down by 30 points

And we will assume that I some how magically got my flamer unit close enough to your conscripts to shoot them with out being shot, and that I managed to do so while being able to fire.

You can run the math if you want but in the end my 346 point unit takes 2 turns to kill you 90 poimt unit, and in that time you 120 points of guardsman kill my 346 poimt unit over 3 turns. So either my models are massivly overpriced or your models are massivly under priced.

Because according to you there is no way units that cost 120 points should be able to kill a 346 unit over 3 turns since that gets you 360 points of shooting total.

There's got to be something in those 346 points you're not using, because I have no damn clue how 10 guys with flamers costs 346. Unless there's something special about them, and you're using them on the wrong target.

Sisters get 4 with flamers in a tank with what's essentially a double-heavy flamer and scout for something like 200 points. Or 4 Flamers and 16 Bolt Pistols on a Jump Infantry platform for 134 points.

Hell, my off-the-top-of-my-head calculation for SM's with Flamers if it was possible to take 10 with nothing but flamers is still only like 200 something.

There's got to be something you're not using eating up all those points, or the Rubrics are the wrong unit for the job.

Also, I messed up the Seraphim simulation. Forgot they autohit with Hand Flamers:


They're very scary. And how far ahead of the other two their line is makes me happy.

I think you're doing something wrong with the Rubrics. If they really are 346 points, and are 10 tactical guys with flamers, they might be one of the worst deals out there. Like, seriously.

If the Sisters get 10 models with Flamers, we can get a transport to go with them for that price. And, of course, there's the aforementioned Seraphim, who come it at significantly less than 346, pack half the number of flamers and another 16 bolt pistols, and can move 24" on turn 1, and are still Sv3+.

They have AP -2 are Str 4 they are literally perfect for killing conscripts. If you add everything up even psy power and charging you still end up woth 5 guys left.

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:
They have AP -2 are Str 4 they are literally perfect for killing conscripts. If you add everything up even psy power and charging you still end up woth 5 guys left.

With 10 AP-2 Flamers I'm computing 24 guys on average spontaneously ceasing to exist from just the flamer attacks.



Your guys are also expensive because they're really good against marines as well, while mine [Sera, Doms] will trail off in effectiveness very rapidly. Seems fair. I'm sure there's more cost efficient options in your book too, that isn't AP-2. The AP-2 is driving up the price hilariously, and you've got a unit that's fairly resilient and extremely killy.

 SuspiciousSucculent wrote:
Yeesh, I didn't know playful hyperbole had been outlawed.

It's fine up until you try to dismiss people with it, you know, like you just did.

What's actually missing from the game are shrapnel cannons with a profile like 5D6, S2, AP 0, 1D.

Strength 2 just isn't really in the game, but it's the one instance you can more efficiently take points off a 4 ppm guard squad than a 13 ppm marine squad.

It'd take 18 hits to kill a marine, 4.5 hits to kill a guardsman.


You could also have negative armor piercing, or AP + 1,

An S2, AP +1, 1D takes:

6*6= 36 shots to kill a marine,
3*2 = 6 shots to kill a guardsman.

There need to be some weapons that are more efficient at dealing with blobs of unarmored, unprotected infantry out of cover.

Shrapnel artillery was exactly that historically.

steerpike92 wrote:
What's actually missing from the game are shrapnel cannons with a profile like 5D6, S2, AP 0, 1D.

Strength 2 just isn't really in the game, but it's the one instance you can more efficiently take points off a 4 ppm guard squad than a 13 ppm marine squad.

It'd take 18 shots to kill a marine, 4.5 shots to kill a guardsman.

Stormshard Mortars are pretty close. 4d6 shots, S4, AP0, 1D, Shred. They're also airbursting flechette launchers.

It takes about 3 shots to kill a guardsman, 8 to kill a marine.

Those charts are perfectly meaningless. They tell us nothing about the underlying assumptions. They don't actually show us your work. They are poorly labeled.

My guys being good against marines is irrelevent. This is the best unit i have to take out those conscripts. The next best thing would be Tzzangors and with 5 units for 350 points they would delete the conscripts and then all die to lasgun fire. But then I would probably lose 2 squads beforenthey even got to combat so.

 Traditio wrote:
Those charts are perfectly meaningless. They tell us nothing about the underlying assumptions. They don't actually show us your work. They are poorly labeled.

The rubric one? Yes. I made it in 30 seconds and didn't label it.

For each one, I used a python code that executed an attack, and recorded the number of wounds inflicted. Then, I ran the script 10000 times, and recorded each result.

I think they should have made Large Blast into

Heavy d3, This weapon increases to Heavy d6 if targeting a unit with more than 1 model, and Heavy 2d6 if targeting a unit with more than 5 models.

I don't know about you, but I usually expected to hit about 5-10 dudes with Large Blasts in previous editions.

Small Blasts could have been
Heavy 1, This weapon increases to Heavy d3 if targeting a unit with more than 1 model, and Heavy d6 if targeting a unit with more than 5 models.

Tho, I suppose... this is clearly too complex...

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:
My guys being good against marines is irrelevent. This is the best unit i have to take out those conscripts. The next best thing would be Tzzangors and with 5 units for 350 points they would delete the conscripts and then all die to lasgun fire. But then I would probably lose 2 squads beforenthey even got to combat so.

What about Raptors? Aren't they basically assault marines? Points-for-points, Assault Marines seem to work out pretty okay.

You're guys are good at it. They're really good at it. But they're also paying a lot of points for the utility against heavy troops, which makes them less points-efficient.

Being good against marines is incredibly relevant, because you pay points for the versatility. You pay a lot.

They already have that type of profile for bombers and the Imperial Knight melta cannon. They just didn't give it to flamers, OR give flamer ignore cover which I find questionable.

 Quickjager wrote:

 SuspiciousSucculent wrote:
Yeesh, I didn't know playful hyperbole had been outlawed.

It's fine up until you try to dismiss people with it, you know, like you just did.

Pretty sure you're reading that in to what I said.

Given that A) I'm not dismissing people that say conscripts are good (I led with that point) and B) I don't think anyone seriously believes that they are an OP deathstar of a unit that will singlehandedly drive Chaos from the Eye of Terror, etc. etc., I fail to see you anyone could reasonably interpret it as dismissing people. At worst I could see it taken as a humorous ribbing at those who are overly afraid of the unit, not a dismissal of those who are seriously trying to figure out counters to what seems to be a good unit. Unless adding a little humor is against a forum rule that I am unaware of, I fail to see the problem.

To stay on topic at least a little, does anyone know offhand how some of the killy-er monstrous creatures fair versus hordes? They seem like they might be durable enough to wade through if they are costed appropriately.

I'm not sure what's up with the whole "conscripts are invincible" thing. I was mildly annoyed that they could exceed the damage output of a Leman Russ Battle Tank, but I'm less annoyed now.

I've worked out how to make my tanks functional, and found weaknesses to enemy conscripts.

I'm seriously worried about 'gaunts though. I can't beat the 'nids in drops, and even the best conscript bubble wrap will melt away on turn 1 from 'gaunts. If I do set up to go first, I'm not sure what combo of units is both expensive and really killy to sufficiently thin the horde.

Mostly, I focus on beating conscripts down point-for-point. Seraphim, as mentioned, are definitely really good at this. Punishers are pretty good at chewing them up too, but don't quite hit the points-efficiency mark. They've got the range, though, and the resilience.


The thing with IG tanks is, individually, they're pretty much crap, and since I was matching point-for-point I wasn't getting good results from them. But if you build tanks hard, and have Pask and Tank Commanders and tanks for the TC's to buff, then your crappy tanks get a lot better for their points. So I'm happy now, and don't have a problem with conscripts.

And really, conscripts are the same way. One unit of conscripts, and its support, won't contribute much. It's a mild roadblock if you brought it to take up space for a tank heavy army. But, if you really focused on infantry, then they're quite good.

I'm actually hoping now the knee-jerk reaction to Conscripts and Boyz and 'Gaunts is going to lead to people over-equipping for hordes and lacking antitank weapons in the meta, which would make it very fun to play with a load of heavy tanks.

Conscripts are underpriced; plain and simple.

200 points of models are damn near unkillable by any reasonable amount of force; and if you do somehow manage to get into melee with them, they just fall back and double tap your face, and you've just lost your unit.

To fully kill 50 Conscripts in one turn;

Hitting on 4+ (BS3)
Wounding on 3+ (S4-5)
Conscript 5+ armor save (AP-0)

Requires 150.15 shots to reasonably kill them in one round. No one has this much firepower; let alone at ~200 points equivalent.

Sure, you might say I'm talking about standard issue infantry guns (ish); but the simple fact is - it isn't reasonable to expect to be able to kill a Conscript Squad, at all. And that's just one squad - that doesn't account for the other 1800 points of army behind them.

Simply, at 200 points - they're too strong for what they do. They shouldn't be immune to morale, and shouldn't be able to accept orders - you should be able to delay them a turn if you get the charge on them.

Orders in 8th edition are based around 10 model infantry squads - this alone means an order on a full Conscript squad is 5x as effective as it has any right to be; there needs to be a limiter of some kind (either 1/6 odd of actually accepting the order, only 1/5 of the units benefit from the order, or straight - no orders for Conscripts).


Automatically Appended Next Post:
With regards to the initial discussion posted in the thread - I don't think Horde armies are OP.

I think people aren't bringing enough anti-infantry weaponry, and aren't using their vehicles/units to tie up hordes in a turn, forcing them to fall back and waste their turn, or sit there and fight a combat they can't do much in.

I suspect that very soon, people will realize the strength that Vehicles/Monsters bring to the table - good luck having enough anti-armor firepower in any reasonable list, while still being able to deal with Hordes.

Not to keep harping on them but - Imperial Guard are the only ones that can effectively handle both jobs at any price point; other armies have to focus on one or the other (or, if they're Xenos, hope that they can accomplish even one of the two to begin with).

Hordes aren't OP, people just aren't used to them. As Tyranids being to munch people, players will get better at positioning, screening, and tying things up in melee/using vehicles to block charge lanes.

Goodluck killing those blocking vehicles, they're too damn tanky this time around; at leas in comparison to their points cost. That doesn't even begin to factor in the supreme weaponry Imperial vehicles can mount for around 100 points total.

The funny thing is to cover your conscripts from other hordes, especially melee hordes, you want baneblade variants. That ability to be in melee and still shoot is great, i'm interested in how IG lists turn out and fully expect one SHV in each.

 Quickjager wrote:
The funny thing is to cover your conscripts from other hordes, especially melee hordes, you want baneblade variants. That ability to be in melee and still shoot is great, i'm interested in how IG lists turn out and fully expect one SHV in each.

Not even joking, this bit is stupid. Baneblades should NOT under ANY circumstances WANT to be in combat. I see what they were trying to do flavor-wise, but the end result gameplay-wise is mindbendingly absurd.

fe40k wrote:
Conscripts are underpriced; plain and simple.

200 points of models are damn near unkillable by any reasonable amount of force; and if you do somehow manage to get into melee with them, they just fall back and double tap your face, and you've just lost your unit.

To fully kill 50 Conscripts in one turn;

Hitting on 4+ (BS3)
Wounding on 3+ (S4-5)
Conscript 5+ armor save (AP-0)

Requires 150.15 shots to reasonably kill them in one round. No one has this much firepower; let alone at ~200 points equivalent.

Sure, you might say I'm talking about standard issue infantry guns (ish); but the simple fact is - it isn't reasonable to expect to be able to kill a Conscript Squad, at all. And that's just one squad - that doesn't account for the other 1800 points of army behind them.

Simply, at 200 points - they're too strong for what they do. They shouldn't be immune to morale, and shouldn't be able to accept orders - you should be able to delay them a turn if you get the charge on them.

Orders in 8th edition are based around 10 model infantry squads - this alone means an order on a full Conscript squad is 5x as effective as it has any right to be; there needs to be a limiter of some kind (either 1/6 odd of actually accepting the order, only 1/5 of the units benefit from the order, or straight - no orders for Conscripts).


Automatically Appended Next Post:
With regards to the initial discussion posted in the thread - I don't think Horde armies are OP.

I think people aren't bringing enough anti-infantry weaponry, and aren't using their vehicles/units to tie up hordes in a turn, forcing them to fall back and waste their turn, or sit there and fight a combat they can't do much in.

I suspect that very soon, people will realize the strength that Vehicles/Monsters bring to the table - good luck having enough anti-armor firepower in any reasonable list, while still being able to deal with Hordes.

Not to keep harping on them but - Imperial Guard are the only ones that can effectively handle both jobs at any price point; other armies have to focus on one or the other (or, if they're Xenos, hope that they can accomplish even one of the two to begin with).

Hordes aren't OP, people just aren't used to them. As Tyranids being to munch people, players will get better at positioning, screening, and tying things up in melee/using vehicles to block charge lanes.

Goodluck killing those blocking vehicles, they're too damn tanky this time around; at leas in comparison to their points cost. That doesn't even begin to factor in the supreme weaponry Imperial vehicles can mount for around 100 points total.

Just FYI: they can't double-tap your face if they fall back from combat. They have to use Get Back in the Fight, which doesn't allows First Rank, Fire! Second Rank, Fire!

Second, there's nothing that can wipe out it's cost in units in one turn anymore. Even Heavy Weapons Sections, notorious for being glass cannons, won't die outright to 72 points of firepower.

Third, nothing in their price range should be able to wipe conscripts out in one turn. They're a unit built on resilience, so against all but the most lethal of shooting the unit should be able to stick around for a few turns.

This is the same "problem" people are apparently having with 'crons. There's nothing in their cost range [240] that can take them out in one turn, or two.

Baneblades/other IG super heavy tanks are nuts this edition - charge into melee, and then sit back and blast everything with immunity.

I fully expect to see at least 1 in a couple tournament lists (if not 2-3); they bring a TREMENDOUS amount of firepower for ~550 points.

26 wounds is no joke either; 3+ armor save (or 2+ with Astropath) means it's going to take a LOT to bring down even one of these beasts.

One thing that I think is great is that the baneblade can use any flamers it has against the hordes while in combat. That would have been a great universal vehicle rule imo, very fluffy.

fe40k wrote:
They shouldn't be immune to morale

Given how they reworked morale for this edition, I think this is where adjustments should be made. Morale was supposed to be the things that handicapped large units, but the way the Commissar works, it doesn't scale with unit size. If the Commissar reduced the max losses to morale to one out of every 10 in the unit at the start of that turn (min 1), it wouldn't affect how they interact with infantry squads, but would help a lot when it comes to conscripts. Then if you kill 10 guys (reasonably done) you get to kill an extra 5 for free. The numbers can be played with as needed for balance, but I think the whole reason they are good for their points is commissars.

I'm not sure how much adjustment actually needs to be made here to keep them from dominating. Maybe only a bit (what I personally suspect), maybe a lot (as others here propose), but I think playing with how conscripts interact with commissars is all you'd need to change one way or the other.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Quickjager wrote:
One thing that I think is great is that the baneblade can use any flamers it has against the hordes while in combat. That would have been a great universal vehicle rule imo, very fluffy.

It's certainly great if you're playing with them in your army, but for the sake of balance, if they can shoot out, everyone else should be able to shoot in. Would actually be pretty flavorful for most superheavy units, actually...

fe40k wrote:Baneblades/other IG super heavy tanks are nuts this edition - charge into melee, and then sit back and blast everything with immunity.

I fully expect to see at least 1 in a couple tournament lists (if not 2-3); they bring a TREMENDOUS amount of firepower for ~550 points.

26 wounds is no joke either; 3+ armor save (or 2+ with Astropath) means it's going to take a LOT to bring down even one of these beasts.

Oh hell yes. I can't keep a straight face about the fact that my Shadowsword is my ultimate melee unit. What a silly, silly rule.

Quickjager wrote:One thing that I think is great is that the baneblade can use any flamers it has against the hordes while in combat. That would have been a great universal vehicle rule imo, very fluffy.

Oh yes. Flame Tanks are already awfully scary, this would make Immolators, Hellhounds, Flamestorm Predators, etc. broken as all hell.

Scout, Move, Burn, Charge to soak overwatch and be safe in assault, Burn again!

fe40k wrote:
Conscripts are underpriced; plain and simple.

200 points of models are damn near unkillable by any reasonable amount of force; and if you do somehow manage to get into melee with them, they just fall back and double tap your face, and you've just lost your unit.

To fully kill 50 Conscripts in one turn;

Requires 150.15 shots to reasonably kill them in one round. No one has this much firepower; let alone at ~200 points equivalent..

Tau Gun Drones assuming 5 Markerlights on the 50 Blob
49 / (28/36) / (2/3) / (2/3) = 141.75
49 because the 50th, the Commissar kills

142 / 6 = 23.66
24 * 8 = 192 points (+80 points of support)

fe40k wrote:
To fully kill 50 Conscripts in one turn;

Hitting on 4+ (BS3)
Wounding on 3+ (S4-5)
Conscript 5+ armor save (AP-0)

Requires 150.15 shots to reasonably kill them in one round. No one has this much firepower; let alone at ~200 points equivalent.

Hang on a second. If the argument is that it should be possible to remove a unit in one turn with a similar amount of points, wouldn't that mean that if each army has equal points, the one that goes first ought to be able to wipe out the enemy army before it can have a turn? Am I misinterpreting you here? Or are we using this absurd standard? And how am I only just now realizing this?

 SuspiciousSucculent wrote:

fe40k wrote:
To fully kill 50 Conscripts in one turn;

Hitting on 4+ (BS3)
Wounding on 3+ (S4-5)
Conscript 5+ armor save (AP-0)

Requires 150.15 shots to reasonably kill them in one round. No one has this much firepower; let alone at ~200 points equivalent.

Hang on a second. If the argument is that it should be possible to remove a unit in one turn with a similar amount of points, wouldn't that mean that if each army has equal points, the one that goes first ought to be able to wipe out the enemy army before it can have a turn? Am I misinterpreting you here? Or are we using this absurd standard? And how am I only just now realizing this?

My apologies - I should not have added "in one round"; it was more a comment on the amount of firepower required to remove a 3ppm 50 man guard squad; and the statistics I was using to calculate such.

This has no bearing on if units should be able to wipe eachother at a 1:1 standard (and to be fair, they probably shouldn't - not in one turn anyways; as you said - this would mean that the army that went first would always win).

I was just calculating that at those stats (BS3, S4/5, and Sv5+), it takes a ludicrous amount of firepower to dislodge a single squad; you can't count on morale kill thanks for the Commissar either.

General thoughts on the matter:

You see this virtually every time something both is and is called OP.

You saw these discussions about grav.

You saw these discussions about wave serpents.

You saw these discussions about wraithknights.

You saw these discussions about riptides.

You saw these discussions about the gladius strike force.

In fact, you probably saw these discussions about 5th edition transports and leafblower IG lists.

You know a pretty reliable way to know that something is OP?

A large number of people are complaining that it's OP, and a very vocal, very predictable number of people are insisting that it's not...and many of those people just so happen to use the thing that you're complaining about.

How can you confirm that it's OP?

Ask the person how you should deal with it. If he talks about list-building rather than in-game strategy, it's probably OP.

You saw this with Galef: "If you play SMs competitively, then you have no excuse not to use a white scars battle company with Khan...and everyone takes grav cannons in rhinos. If you don't take this, don't complain about my wraithknights and scatter bikes." Quoting from memory, but I believe that this was roughly the sentiment.

Did anyone notice this above in this thread?

"But Traditio, you mentioned all of the subpar options. You need to take razorbacks with assault cannons!"

But really, at the end of the day, what's the point of this discussion anyway?

Either GW will fix the problem or they won't.

fe40k wrote:
My apologies - I should not have added "in one round"; it was more a comment on the amount of firepower required to remove a 3ppm 50 man guard squad; and the statistics I was using to calculate such.

This has no bearing on if units should be able to wipe eachother at a 1:1 standard (and to be fair, they probably shouldn't - not in one turn anyways; as you said - this would mean that the army that went first would always win).

I was just calculating that at those stats (BS3, S4/5, and Sv5+), it takes a ludicrous amount of firepower to dislodge a single squad; you can't count on morale kill thanks for the Commissar either.

Ah, that's much more reasonable. Thanks for clarifying. I agree that some tinkering needs to happen with the conscript-commissar interaction. I don't think it needs too much change, but hey, I've been wrong before, and either way it should be a pretty simple fix. Assuming GW fixes anything, of course.

 Traditio wrote:
General thoughts on the matter:

You see this virtually every time something both is and is called OP.

You saw these discussions about grav.

You saw these discussions about wave serpents.

You saw these discussions about wraithknights.

You saw these discussions about riptides.

You saw these discussions about the gladius strike force.

In fact, you probably saw these discussions about 5th edition transports and leafblower IG lists.

You know a pretty reliable way to know that something is OP?

A large number of people are complaining that it's OP, and a very vocal, very predictable number of people are insisting that it's not...and many of those people just so happen to use the thing that you're complaining about.

How can you confirm that it's OP?

Ask the person how you should deal with it. If he talks about list-building rather than in-game strategy, it's probably OP.

You saw this with Galef: "If you play SMs competitively, then you have no excuse not to use a white scars battle company with Khan...and everyone takes grav cannons in rhinos. If you don't take this, don't complain about my wraithknights and scatter bikes." Quoting from memory, but I believe that this was roughly the sentiment.

Did anyone notice this above in this thread?

"But Traditio, you mentioned all of the subpar options. You need to take razorbacks with assault cannons!"

But really, at the end of the day, what's the point of this discussion anyway?

Either GW will fix the problem or they won't.

I haven't used conscripts since Chenkov went away.

You want on-the-board tactics for dealing with them? First, you have to have something that's not engineered to be crap.

I'm bringing a Pask Battle Tank w/ MM and Las, Punisher w/ 3x HB, and Stormtrooper squad tomorrow at 500. No Conscripts.

Asking you to bring a balanced and vaguely competent list is different from saying you need to bring the most optimal list. Your list at least has to have an idea about how it's going to meet the threats out there.

I suggested 2 different units you could use to kill conscripts: Razorbacks, and Assault Marines. That should doubly satisfy you, because those are "classic" space marine units that should be more than acceptable to field one or two of, Also, you could customize devastator squads for this purpose. 4x HB Devs will mangle their way through conscripts fairly okay, but that might be a waste of Dev's potential.

There are a wide variety of flexible options to deal with the Conscripts. If the Sisters of Battle, and our total of 10 units, can have multiple efficient ways to killing them, I'm certain that the Space Marines have more options.

Consider a Land Raider Crusader, maybe. It puts downrange what, 24 bolter shots and 12 assault cannon shots? That's working out to on the order of 13 wounds a turn. It's expensive, but it's also got other utility besides killing conscripts.


3 turns of absorbed fire really is pretty reasonable for a 200-point roadblock squad. It's a fairly expensive bullet magnet, comparable in cost to tanks.


Also, I've faced Tau a lot over the course of 6th and 7th Edition, and I don't see what all the fuss about Riptides is. They're not that scary. Bring the right gun, and poof, problem solved. My preferred solution is to bring Leman Russ Vanquisher Beast Hunter Tank Commanders, because they're ID a 72" range. I use a lot of armor and a fair amount of screening infantry with heavy weapons, and a lot of DS-Denial, and it works out well.

Further point. Check out the poll of this thread:

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/30/728857.page

I'm not the only person who thinks that IG and Tyrranids have OP options.

I don't want to see that there's a consensus about it, but I will say that, if you take IG and Tyrranids together, about 40 percent of poll respondents think that they are top tier.

And it's not because of LRBTs.

This whole thread is meaningless because no one ever bothered to define what OP means. There's ample evidence available that horde armies aren't an auto win button in 8th, which rules out that definition as accurate. Personally, that's the definition I care about so I don't consider them to be OP.

I don't think that the "but I can't take any combination of units I feel like and win" argument is a valid reason that something is OP. Most of the arguments for horde armies in general, and conscript spam in particular, boil down to some version of that.

Also, a lot of the pro-OP arguments involve math that shows hordes being point efficient because of rare edge cases where they roll well or the opponent rolls poorly. Almost none of those same mathhammer scenarios take into account the opposite. If you are going to argue that a conscript blob can take 12 wounds off of a vehicle then you also have to take into account that a unit of wyverns can make a conscript blob combat ineffective in one round of shooting, as a completely random example.

Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:I haven't used conscripts since Chenkov went away.

Have you played a game of 8th edition with conscripts and commissars?

Have you read a battle report of a game of 8th edition where one side used conscripts and commissars, and the other player was NOT playing IG or Tyrranids?

I'm not speaking from a position of pure theoretical speculation, and neither, I am sure, are other people who are posting in this thread or voting in the poll that I cited.

Assault Marines

Assault marines are not a viable option. I don't need to look at your charts to know this. Ask anyone who has used assault marines vs. 8th edition conscripts, and he'll tell you exactly what I am telling you:

Assault marines vs. conscripts are not only wasted points, but it's downright suicidal.

At any rate, my same answer is going to apply to literally anything you throw at me from the SM codex:

It's not worth it. Conscripts are too points efficient. Their losses are never going to matter. We are always going to be at a marked disadvantage.

@Inquisitor Lord Katherine/Traditio:

Just because you're not using Conscripts doesn't mean they're reasonably priced, and not overpowered; it just means you're gimping yourself.

Conscripts are not able to be dealt with in a reasonable fashion; 50 wounds of 5+ armor save, that can shoot you with up to 200 Lasgun shots, and/or fall back from assault and still shoot you: it's too much.

That's just one squad; all you have to do is take 2/3 squads for 400-600 points, and your entire 1400-1600 point backline is covered from assault (at 2000 points). For Imperium/Astra Militarium armies, thats a LOT of firepower hiding behind 150+ wounds.

It doesn't matter if they die "quick", 50*squad number of wounds, with an armor save (5 fething + too; I with Ork boyz had that), that's immune to morale, and can benefit from orders - it's too much for a 3ppm squad.

Try being a Xenos or non-Imperium army, and tell me how you'd reasonably deal with it.

We don't have 2 entire Indexes to draw our troops from (Imperium...), we have 1 if Chaos, and 1/3 if any other faction (1/3+1/3+1/3 for Tyranid/GSC/AM converts).

Oh, and Xenos don't get snipers, so you're never going to be able to take out the supports.

 Traditio wrote:

Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:I haven't used conscripts since Chenkov went away.

Have you played a game of 8th edition with conscripts and commissars?

Have you read a battle report of a game of 8th edition where one side used conscripts and commissars, and the other player was NOT playing IG or Tyrranids?

I'm not speaking from a position of pure theoretical speculation, and neither, I am sure, are other people who are posting in this thread or voting in the poll that I cited.

Assault Marines

Assault marines are not a viable option. I don't need to look at your charts to know this. Ask anyone who has used assault marines vs. 8th edition conscripts, and he'll tell you exactly what I am telling you:

Assault marines vs. conscripts are not only wasted points, but it's downright suicidal.

At any rate, my same answer is going to apply to literally anything you throw at me from the SM codex:

It's not worth it. Conscripts are too points efficient. Their losses are never going to matter. We are always going to be at a marked disadvantage.

Uh no, because I inherently don't care about battle reports that don't feature the Imperial Guard or Sisters of Battle. It comes with the territory of being, you know, a Guard and Sisters player.

But, if you want a battle report, Tanks + Scions versus Conscripts and Artillery:

Manticores hurt. Basilisks don't. Conscripts make great bubble wrap, and putting all my eggs in one basket as it were [all AT was on Pask's Tank], wasn't a great move. But I did do a number on the conscripts, and they didn't do anything meaningful to the tanks. It was basically Manticore vs. Punisher. Leman Russes are decent when they're buffing each other. Scions weren't very useful, but I hope they'll be more useful against marines tommorrow.

Turn 1: Tanks go first. Punisher rips up some conscripts, Pask moves and puts a shot on the Manticore, but doesn't cripple it.
Turn 1: Manticore fires at Pask, Conscripts fire at Pask from far away, Basilisk fires at Pask. Pask drops a threshold, mostly from the Manticore, which rolled well.
Turn 2: Pask moves up and beans the Manticore, kicking it down damage threshold. not in Multimelta range. Punisher continues to churn up conscripts. Scions drop, kill a few conscripts.
Turn 2: Manticore tries, rolls bad doesn't do anything. Basilisk tries, kicks Pask down another threshold, Pask is almost dead [2W]. Conscripts kill scions.
Turn 3: Punisher continues to kill conscripts, who are now too weak to really be a threat. Pask makes a final go at the Manticore, and it's almost dead.
Turn 3: Basilisk doesn't do anything. Conscripts try to finish Pask, but fail, Manticore, launches at Pask, fails, leftover Conscripts charge and lock Pask.
Turn 4: Punisher glances down Manticore, Pask in CQC with a dozen conscripts does nothing.
Turn 4: Conscripts fall back, fire for no effect, Basilisk fires, kills Pask.
Turn 5: Punisher rips up the Conscripts. there's about 5 left, and they're out of position.
Turn 5: Basilisk fires, no effect, Conscripts have no effect.

End.

Technically, the Conscripts and Artillery won. The Basilisk was sitting on a point, as were the neglected guardsmen, while the Punisher could only hold one point. I should have ignored the Conscripts once they were under 20 and wiped away the Guardsmen, but that's that.

There's really no way to get at the Commissar and CC without snipers. Mostly the artillery blocked any reasonable Deep Strike to assassinate them. The Conscripts were incredibly unimpressive, though. They didn't do anything, were too unwieldy to move, and couldn't actually get in range to use their supposed damage output. Same goes for Multimeltas on Pask, but ideally there will be non-artillery and infantry lists to use them on tommorrow. Pask also rolled bad on his # of shots rolls on early turns.

Also, turn 1 HKM strike isn't a good plan for the artillery. It requires them to not be out of LoS, and isn't reliable. It is cheap, and perhaps in larger numbers though.

Lists:
Pask Battle Tank
Punisher
Scions

CC
Commissar
Infantry
Conscripts
Basilisk + HKM
Manticore + HKM


So, anyway, if you're not going to consider anything other than my soldiers committing ritual suicide at the presence of your unit worthwhile, you're never going to find anything.

I'm thinking of just throwing a nasty Grey Hunters unit at them with the Space Wolves, for the record. I've done it in 7th, so I'm sure it will work just fine in 8th.

fe40k wrote:Oh, and Xenos don't get snipers, so you're never going to be able to take out the supports.

This actually isn't true.

If you read the rules for characters, it only prevents you from targeting them in the shooting phase unless they are the closest visible models.

You can target anyone you want, including characters, in the assault phase.

So one way to kill the support characters is to focus fire down the conscripts in the shooting phase, and then multi-charge through the gaps in the assault phase.

That said, this is still hilariously inefficient, and you are still probably going to lose.

Fair enough - but it requires your opponent to have poor positioning; leaving their supports in range of a multicharge (9+ from deepstrikers will be the most common), and not removing key models that might block the charge.

But true, you can multicharge into them and try to kill them.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

 Traditio wrote:
So far as I can see, it's not the hordes themselves that are OP. It's the buffs which can be provided to hordes, especially in the morale phase, that are OP.

3 ppm conscripts shouldn't be virtually immune to the battle shock phase. That's just unfair.

Why not? They've always been effectively so.

In fact, in 7e, regular guardsmen can come in 50-man blobs, are basically morale-proof, and are even more devastating in shooting. I've shot to pieces Tervigons using Bring it Down! and evaporated terminators with First Rank, FIRE! Second Rank, FIRE!.

Conscripts and their characteristics are nothing new, and even getting their 5+ save they're not particularly survivable. As I said, the right gun for the job can absolutely rip through them.

Compared to a 50-man block of regular guardsmen, conscripts are cheaper but offer much poorer shooting and assault, but the same survivability. And that's the point. They're really not 200 points worth of destructive power. Also, compared to other things that are resilient and 200 points, like a Leman Russ Punisher Tank, they have about equal firepower, at best, at full strength. The Lasguns are mostly harmless. The conscripts, at full strength, in rapid fire range, can deal about 10 wounds a turn to Necron Warriors, which is pretty fair for 200 points. They won't beat the warriors if they do't get first salvo, but they can if they do. Marines will survive better than Necrons against conscripts, and chew through them fairly quickly too. Worth mention, so will Orks, and Tyranids, extremely quickly. Falling back from combat and getting "Get Back in the Fight" isn't a big deal because 1: the resulting devastated unit isn't really worth the order compared to "First Rank, FIRE! Second Rank, FIRE!" on an intact unit, and 2: it's a consolation prize for what's left of the unit.

There is no right gun for the right job, all anti infantry guns are bad at killing conscripts.

Don't eldar and tau both get reasonable sniper units? Orks are gimped in the sniping department for no good reason (Think of the awesome conversions that would fit an Ork's idea of a sniper weapon), Necrons get snipers, Dark eldar get snipers, Chaos are also randomly without snipers, though their sorcerers can target characters for mortal wounds to do a little bit of character damage.

It really just seems like Orks and Chaos that are out of luck here. And GW should probably see about fixing that as there is no reason they should be :/

 Jaxler wrote:


There is no right gun for the right job, all anti infantry guns are bad at killing conscripts.

Really? I sound like the people who were telling me not to expect so much out of the Russ-tanks now, but I didn't have a problem taking out a number of them with a Punisher. Really, just old-fashioned shooting them up worked fine.

And from my statistical modelling, Hand Flamers on Seraphim ought to do the trick. So should a big unit of Orks, or 'gaunts.

I'm sure you can fish up a good unit in whatever army you play.

The reel reason hordes are OP, everything can hurt everything and the game uses D6's.

All your conscripts need to do is roll enough 6's and they can kill anything.

Warlord titan, roll a couple of hundred 6's and turn and wait for it to roll 1's for it's saves.

How many conscript blobs can you get for the cost of a warlord?

 Tamereth wrote:
The reel reason hordes are OP, everything can hurt everything and the game uses D6's.

All your conscripts need to do is roll enough 6's and they can kill anything.

Warlord titan, roll a couple of hundred 6's and turn and wait for it to roll 1's for it's saves.

How many conscript blobs can you get for the cost of a warlord?

1150 conscripts, 22CC's, and 6 Commissars.

They could hypothetically deal 40 wounds on average a turn to the thing, if it were actually possible to fit 1150 conscripts within 12" of it. It is, unfortunately, entirely impossible to do that.

I've found that conscripts are basically harmless. They just can't get within 12" of an enemy that doesn't want to be within 12".

 SuspiciousSucculent wrote:
Don't eldar and tau both get reasonable sniper units? Orks are gimped in the sniping department for no good reason (Think of the awesome conversions that would fit an Ork's idea of a sniper weapon), Necrons get snipers, Dark eldar get snipers, Chaos are also randomly without snipers, though their sorcerers can target characters for mortal wounds to do a little bit of character damage.

It really just seems like Orks and Chaos that are out of luck here. And GW should probably see about fixing that as there is no reason they should be :/

Ork snipers should be Grot Snipers - Ratlings with BS4+, and S2 T2. Points cost would be interesting to place; but I'd be fine with 7ppm as per Ratlings.

I'd totally take them - hilarious, fun, and fulfills a niche roll. Grot troops are notable for actually being able to hit things (4+ vs 5+), so it make sense they'd be the Ratling equivalent.

Or a gatling gun with a bunch of useless scopes strapped to it wielded by a flashgit? Long range, high rate of fire, but poor accuracy? Heavy 6 sniper?

There are just too many cool ways to do this that it is criminal that they haven't!

Heck, what about a gun that shoots grot ninjas at characters? Or a teleporter gun that swaps the enemy character's brain with a squig's?

For the record, ILK:

Here are the numbers on the punisher cannon vs. conscripts:

20/1 (number of attacks) X 1/2 (chance to hit) X 2/3 (chance to wound) X 2/3 (chance to bypass saves) = 80/18 or 40/9

That's less than five unsaved wounds. If there is a commissar present, that might not even require you to BLAM one of your conscripts. But even if you do BLAM a conscript, that is less than 6 conscripts. 18 points worth of models or less.

Do you know how much the punisher cannon does to space marines out of cover?

20/1 X 1/2 X 2/3 X 1/3 = 40/18, or 20/9.

2 dead marines. That's 26 points worth of models.

The fact that conscripts are now equally resilient against S4 and S5 shooting, as well as the fact that conscripts will get their armor save most of the time, massively increases their durability, especially combined with the fact that they are virtually immune to morale.

This is a problem.

 Traditio wrote:
For the record, ILK:

Here are the numbers on the punisher cannon vs. conscripts:

20/1 (number of attacks) X 1/2 (chance to hit) X 2/3 (chance to wound) X 2/3 (chance to bypass saves) = 80/18 or 40/9

That's less than five unsaved wounds. If there is a commissar present, that might not even require you to BLAM one of your conscripts. But even if you do BLAM a conscript, that is less than 6 conscripts. 18 points worth of models or less.

Do you know how much the punisher cannon does to space marines out of cover?

20/1 X 1/2 X 2/3 X 1/3 = 40/18, or 20/9.

2 dead marines. That's 26 points worth of models.

The fact that conscripts are now equally resilient against S4 and S5 shooting, as well as the fact that conscripts will get their armor save most of the time, massively increases their durability, especially combined with the fact that they are virtually immune to morale.

This is a problem.

Further demonstrating why you're a meme. He specifically used tank commanders for his example for multiple times in this thread. Yet you continue use a normal LRBT with 4+ BS so you can underplay the gun in order to make it fit into your argument.
Lies by omission.

Conscrips shouldn't take orders. They are conscrips and not trained guardsmen for a reason.


And Comissar should be reworked for something as others have said like 1 guy killed for every 10 guys in the unit to ignore morale (So if you have 50 conscripts, lose 10, the Comisar kills 4 and you end with 46 conscripts)

That way you have still the most point-efficient tartip and chaff in the game, but they have weaknessess.

Zewrath:

Even if we assume BS 3+ shooting, this is the result:

20/1 X 2/3 X 2/3 X 2/3 = 160/27

That's slightly less than 6 dead conscripts, and slightly less than 7 if the commissar BLAMS a conscript.

Do you want to assume BS 2+ shooting?

20/1 X 5/6 X 2/3 X 2/3 = 400/54 or 200/27

That's less than 8 dead conscripts, less than 9 if the commissar BLAMS a conscript.

Do you want to assume shooting that automatically hits?

20/1 X 2/3 X 2/3 = 80/9

That's slightly less than 9 dead conscripts, slightly less than 10 if the commissar BLAMS a conscript.

So no, even if you had the magical supreme anti-conscript flamer weapon of death as described in the last set of calculations...

...you STILL aren't getting through those conscripts.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
What about Raptors? Aren't they basically assault marines? Points-for-points, Assault Marines seem to work out pretty okay.

You're guys are good at it. They're really good at it. But they're also paying a lot of points for the utility against heavy troops, which makes them less points-efficient.

Being good against marines is incredibly relevant, because you pay points for the versatility. You pay a lot.

1.) Can't bring raptors in a TS detachment.

2.) That 436 point squad would kill 11 marines a turn, you can kill 12 with 170 points of guardsman and orders in a turn.

3.) Its totally irrelevant, you can bring 11 conscripts for the cost of 1 Rubric with a warp flamer, if I brought a 20 man squad you could put 220+ models on the table. Does that seem balanced to you at all? that 20 wounds to your over 200.

You know what?

It occurs to me.

Do conscripts even have a model?

If not, then conscripts should just be squatted.

If you want infantry, bring guardsmen. And those guardsmen should cost at least 5 ppm, not 4.

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
What about Raptors? Aren't they basically assault marines? Points-for-points, Assault Marines seem to work out pretty okay.

You're guys are good at it. They're really good at it. But they're also paying a lot of points for the utility against heavy troops, which makes them less points-efficient.

Being good against marines is incredibly relevant, because you pay points for the versatility. You pay a lot.

1.) Can't bring raptors in a TS detachment.

2.) That 436 point squad would kill 11 marines a turn, you can kill 12 with 170 points of guardsman and orders in a turn.

3.) Its totally irrelevant, you can bring 11 conscripts for the cost of 1 Rubric with a warp flamer, if I brought a 20 man squad you could put 220+ models on the table. Does that seem balanced to you at all? that 20 wounds to your over 200.

Oh, definitely. Even if the a Rubric would be the equal of 5 Conscripts it would be unfair.

But seriously, how many people bring 200+ models to a bloody game? For die-hard WAAC people, I can perhaps see the allure, but they would have used the most broken things anyway. If Rhinos were the most OP units in the game, they would bring nothing but Rhinos. I love using infantry hordes to play, and I would never be willing to use more than 100-120 infantry models.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Traditio wrote:
You know what?

It occurs to me.

Do conscripts even have a model?

If not, then conscripts should just be squatted.

If you want infantry, bring guardsmen. And those guardsmen should cost at least 5 ppm, not 4.

The Infantry Squads don't have models either. They are Cadian Shock Troops, or Steel Legion Squads or whatever. Neither do Tank Commanders, or Rough Riders.

Seriously, don't start this discussion. If they were to be squatted it should be for balance and not for a lack of models.

Aenarian wrote:The Infantry Squads don't have models either. They are Cadian Shock Troops, or Steel Legion Squads or whatever. Neither do Tank Commanders, or Rough Riders.

Seriously, don't start this discussion. If they were to be squatted it should be for balance and not for a lack of models.

I think that both are relevant.

The negative reason to squat conscripts is because they don't have models. If conscripts get squatted, nobody would find themselves with a bunch of conscripts models that they can't use. Why? Those models don't exist. And any model that you use to represent a conscript could just as easily represent a guardsman.

The positive reason to squat conscripts is because they are too points efficient, and not only that, but they are conceptually redundant. Infantry squads already exist.

 Traditio wrote:
Zewrath:

Even if we assume BS 3+ shooting, this is the result:

20/1 X 2/3 X 2/3 X 2/3 = 160/27

That's slightly less than 6 dead conscripts, and slightly less than 7 if the commissar BLAMS a conscript.

Do you want to assume BS 2+ shooting?

20/1 X 5/6 X 2/3 X 2/3 = 400/54 or 200/27

That's less than 8 dead conscripts, less than 9 if the commissar BLAMS a conscript.

Do you want to assume shooting that automatically hits?

20/1 X 2/3 X 2/3 = 80/9

That's slightly less than 9 dead conscripts, slightly less than 10 if the commissar BLAMS a conscript.

So no, even if you had the magical supreme anti-conscript flamer weapon of death as described in the last set of calculations...

...you STILL aren't getting through those conscripts.

Do you pride yourself on terrible examples? Why are you ignoring the stormbolter and the 3 heavybolters/heavyflamers on the tank? Why do you read "punisher tank vs conscripts" and then proceed to ignore 3/4 of the guns on the punisher. This baffles the mind.

Also, what exactly are you advocating for here? Units for ~ 150 points should be easily capable of wiping 50 bodies? Because unless the option doesn't cost EXACTLY the same as the conscripts, you instantly dismiss it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Traditio wrote:
You know what?

It occurs to me.

Do conscripts even have a model?

If not, then conscripts should just be squatted.

If you want infantry, bring guardsmen. And those guardsmen should cost at least 5 ppm, not 4.

Zewrath wrote:

That's how much a cultist costs. Guardsmen shouldn't be cheaper than cultists. At the very least, they should cost the same.

 Traditio wrote:

Zewrath wrote:

That's how much a cultist costs. Guardsmen shouldn't be cheaper than cultists. At the very least, they should cost the same.

I actually agree with you on that. I was laughing at the idea of squatting conscripts because you don't think they have models.... which they do..

Zewrath wrote:I actually agree with you on that. I was laughing at the idea of squatting conscripts because you don't think they have models.... which they do..

Could you provide a link to a product on the GW webstore that can represent a conscript but cannot represent a "normal" guardsman?

 Traditio wrote:

Zewrath wrote:I actually agree with you on that. I was laughing at the idea of squatting conscripts because you don't think they have models.... which they do..

Could you provide a link to a product on the GW webstore that can represent a conscript but cannot represent a "normal" guardsman?

If we get blobs back, I think 5pt guardsmen are fair. As for models that can represent conscripts but not normal guardsmen, that depends on what you mean by represent, as people can get very creative with that one.

With enough work (and sometimes surprisingly little), you can make anything from WHFB models to GSC cultists represent normal guardsmen. For a reasonable definition of represent, though, the snap-fit cadians perfectly represent all the wargear options for conscripts, while lacking even the mandatory sergeant needed for regular guard infantry, and so DO represent conscripts, but as-is, do not represent infantry squads. https://www.games-workshop.com/en-US/Imperial-Guard-Cadians-5-models

 Traditio wrote:

Zewrath wrote:I actually agree with you on that. I was laughing at the idea of squatting conscripts because you don't think they have models.... which they do..

Could you provide a link to a product on the GW webstore that can represent a conscript but cannot represent a "normal" guardsman?

Imperial Guard codex. Made official by GW. I don't care that you don't like the fact they can't also represent a normal Guardsman, this is the official model by GW.

 Traditio wrote:
Could you provide a link to a product on the GW webstore that can represent a conscript but cannot represent a "normal" guardsman?

By this ridiculous argument we can squat most of the marine codex. Your sternguard? You can use them as tactical marines, squatted. Shiny new primaris marines? Tactical squads, squatted. Razorback/Predator? You can take the turret off and use it as Rhino, squatted. Devastators? Yep, you got it, squatted and used as tactical marines. And you certainly aren't going to have special characters, chapter special rules, etc, anymore.

Yeah, the "if something is OP, just delete it" isn't a very good argument...

Units should be deleted from the rules if they present a problem from a thematical or faction-balance/redundance standpoint. But not because they are OP. If they are OP, just fix them.

If theres a argument to squat Conscripts is because redundance in the Imperial Guard faction. But I think they can be balanced agains't other chaff in the game and again'st normal guardsmen.

The Punisher tank commander with heavy bolters does this:

20*2/3*2/3*2/3= Just shy of 6 kills.
9*2/3*2/3*5/6=3.33
So about 9-10 kills, Commissar kills one.

40 lasgun shots back (20+FRFSRF)
40*1/3*1/6*1/3=0.74 wounds.
1.5 wounds if you are somehow within 12" (and there is no real reason the tank needs to allow you this close in this scenario).

In other words over 3 turns the tank will mow through the conscripts while they can only tickle it.

 SuspiciousSucculent wrote:
Don't eldar and tau both get reasonable sniper units?

Dark Eldar certainly don't. They have one (the Hexrifle), which was bad in 5th and has been nerfed in every edition since.

- In 5th it was an Assault 1 36" AP4 Sniper weapon. A model that suffered an unsaved wound had to pass a characteristic test based on its remaining wounds or else be removed from play. The odds certainly weren't in your favour for most units worth firing at, however, it wasn't too expensive, could be fired on the move and got round Eternal Warrior.

- In 7th it changed such that a to-hit roll of 6 caused Instant Death. The trouble was, this rarely coincided with getting a to-wound of 6 (for AP2). So in that one turn when you roll a 6 to hit, the character or MC you're firing at still gets their normal armour save. And if you are firing at a character, they get their LoS roll as well. It was also irritating in that the Haemonculus's BS5 was basically irrelevant (since all that really mattered was whether you rolled a 6). This was also the edition that brought in Gargantuan Creatures and made them basically immune to sniper weapons.

- In 8th, not only have they removed the Instant Death part, they've also made it a Heavy 1 weapon.

Here's the thing - this might have been a passable weapon if it was available on a unit. The trouble is, it's only ever been available on an HQ and on a single model in a melee unit. But I guess doing anything else would have required GW to actually give the slightest damn about DE.

Actually, here's an idea:

I've said before that I think the real worry here is that there's basically just no gun you can take which actually specializes your unit or army towards killing hordes, given their point costs. The things that you might think are good for this are actually better at killing Marines, for cost. Certainly relative to past editions hordes are now hugely more durable against things like small arms and heavy bolters, while Marines are now actually more vulnerable to the usual anti-horde heavy weapons like heavy bolters. I said earlier that it's hard to see how to make an anti-horde weapon without special rules, but I was wrong.

So here's what I want: a gun with positive AP.

S3 AP+1 is a genuinely anti-horde profile. It's relatively efficient against T3 and relatively efficient against bad saves (except that it doesn't care about the difference between a 3+ and a 2+). S2 AP+1 would be even more specialized as far as infantry are concerned, but given how many shots such a gun would need it probably ends up being weirdly effective against T8 2+ where it's functionally S4 AP-.

Dionysodorus wrote:
better at killing Marines, for cost.

Hollow argument
This is just saying that Marines cost more points.

Necron Immortals also have 4 Toughness and +3 Saves, and they are rated at 8ppm.
So around 8ppm is how much Marines pay for survivability. The other 5 points they are paying for other advantages such as ATSKNF.

 Talamare wrote:

Dionysodorus wrote:
better at killing Marines, for cost.

Hollow argument
This is just saying that Marines cost more points.

Necron Immortals also have 4 Toughness and +3 Saves, and they are rated at 8ppm.
So around 8ppm is how much Marines pay for survivability. The other 5 points they are paying for other advantages such as ATSKNF.

Huh? No. Immortals are not 8 points per model. You're confused because the cost of an Immortal is split between its body and its gun. They actually cost 17 points per model regardless of wargear choice and so are generally significantly more fragile than tactical marines per point.

Just to be sure we're on the same page: obviously the way that prices are split between wargear-less models and their mandatory wargear does not represent some attempt to come up with a "balanced" price for the body sans gun. Why would GW even bother to try to do this? Instead their approach appears to be that, where possible, wargear should cost 0. Sometimes, however, other units' choices require giving certain wargear a non-zero cost, and then this has to carry over to units where the wargear is mandatory. So their naked price gets reduced to compensate. So with Immortals, the issue is that Tomb Blades can also choose between the same two guns as well as a particle beamer, and then Canoptek Spyders are allowed but not required to take particle beamers. So the particle beamers have to be priced appropriately for the Spyders as an option, but then they have to have the same price for the Tomb Blades. This means that the tesla carbine and gauss blaster need to be priced appropriately in comparison, but then they have to cost the same for the Immortals. If either Tomb Blades or Canoptek Spyders didn't exist, then the Immortals' guns would probably just cost 0 and their bodies would cost 17.

Tactical marines are actually one of the more efficient ways of getting a T4 3+ profile, because their gun is relatively bad.

 Traditio wrote:

Assault marines are not a viable option. I don't need to look at your charts to know this. Ask anyone who has used assault marines vs. 8th edition conscripts, and he'll tell you exactly what I am telling you:

Assault marines vs. conscripts are not only wasted points, but it's downright suicidal.

Only if you use them in the way you propose. You'll note my original scenario was sending Assault Marines against a Whirlwind and Bolter depleted Conscript squad. Whirlwinds look like a good buy, and a Marine army ought to have Bolters a-plenty to spend on Conscripts while Heavy Weapons (now splitting fire) are hitting something else.

In your scenario featuring five guys in Rhino, not only did you choose a poor unit combo to engage the conscript unit with, you cocked it up by not charging with the Rhino first to soak overwatch.

10 Assault Marines makes two Combat Squads for two Frags.

Flamers 3.1 Unsaved wounds.
Frags 2.3 Unsaved Wounds
Bolt Pistols 1.7 Unsaved Wounds

Charge some other unit in to screen Overwatch.

Chainswords+2 Flamer guys 5.6 Unsaved Wounds. (slightly more if you count a fancy weapon on the Champion)

By my math a smart engagement gives you 12.7 kills. (Then another +1 for the morale) So as long as you've done your duty and killed some of the 30 man blob with supporting bolter/whirlwind/whatever fire, a well used Assault Squad will bring it home.

Dionysodorus wrote:

 Talamare wrote:

Dionysodorus wrote:
better at killing Marines, for cost.

Hollow argument
This is just saying that Marines cost more points.

Necron Immortals also have 4 Toughness and +3 Saves, and they are rated at 8ppm.
So around 8ppm is how much Marines pay for survivability. The other 5 points they are paying for other advantages such as ATSKNF.

Huh? No. Immortals are not 8 points per model. You're confused because the cost of an Immortal is split between its body and its gun. They actually cost 17 points per model regardless of wargear choice and so are generally significantly more fragile than tactical marines per point.

Just to be sure we're on the same page: obviously the way that prices are split between wargear-less models and their mandatory wargear does not represent some attempt to come up with a "balanced" price for the body sans gun. Why would GW even bother to try to do this? Instead their approach appears to be that, where possible, wargear should cost 0. Sometimes, however, other units' choices require giving certain wargear a non-zero cost, and then this has to carry over to units where the wargear is mandatory. So their naked price gets reduced to compensate. So with Immortals, the issue is that Tomb Blades can also choose between the same two guns as well as a particle beamer, and then Canoptek Spyders are allowed but not required to take particle beamers. So the particle beamers have to be priced appropriately for the Spyders as an option, but then they have to have the same price for the Tomb Blades. This means that the tesla carbine and gauss blaster need to be priced appropriately in comparison, but then they have to cost the same for the Immortals. If either Tomb Blades or Canoptek Spyders didn't exist, then the Immortals' guns would probably just cost 0 and their bodies would cost 17.

Tactical marines are actually one of the more efficient ways of getting a T4 3+ profile, because their gun is relatively bad.

I'm pretty sure he's using immortals as an example for exactly that reason: they have no free weapon, so they're crystal clear about how much they're paying for their model, and how much they're paying for their weapon.

A Marine gets a bolter and bolt pistol for free, which on a model that doesn't get them for free is 1 point each. Those 2 points are baked into the space marine's base cost. A space marine with a lasgun would theoretically cost 10 points. ATSKNF goes into it, S4 goes into it, WS3+ and BS3+ go into it, LD goes into it, though we obviously don't know how much each individually contributes (some are probably only worth fractions of a point).

For example, the only difference between Conscripts, Guardsmen, and Veterans is their WS and BS scores (5+/4+/3+ respectively). This allows us to isolate what WS and BS are worth in GW's eyes: going from 5/5 to 4/4 is worth 1 point to them, going from 4/4 to 3/3 is worth 2 points. So a 5/5 space marine with a lasgun would theoretically cost 7 points, while still being T4/3+ along with S4, LD7, and ATSKNF.

Basically, the reason conscripts are so good at putting wounds on the table is that they're min-maxed to do exactly that. They're one T3/5+ wound with a gun and not much else. The only model that min-maxes that parameter harder is brimstone horrors, because they sacrifice having a ranged weapon to squeeze down to 2 points (though obviously, having no ranged weapon at all compromises their offense pretty severely). When you pick up other features, of course you sacrifice wound-per-point efficiency because those other features raise your cost without increasing your wounds.

It's just that with the change to templates and the wound chart, "putting wounds on the table" now happens to be a strong parameter to optimize for.

 ross-128 wrote:


For example, the only difference between Conscripts, Guardsmen, and Veterans is their WS and BS scores (5+/4+/3+ respectively). This allows us to isolate what WS and BS are worth in GW's eyes: going from 5/5 to 4/4 is worth 1 point to them, going from 4/4 to 3/3 is worth 2 points. So a 5/5 space marine with a lasgun would theoretically cost 7 points, while still being T4/3+ along with S4, LD7, and ATSKNF.

If the point costs are calculated like that, why are guardsmen 4 ppm and cultists 5 ppm while having same stats but a worse save?

 ross-128 wrote:

I'm pretty sure he's using immortals as an example for exactly that reason: they have no free weapon, so they're crystal clear about how much they're paying for their model, and how much they're paying for their weapon.

A Marine gets a bolter and bolt pistol for free, which on a model that doesn't get them for free is 1 point each. Those 2 points are baked into the space marine's base cost. A space marine with a lasgun would theoretically cost 10 points. ATSKNF goes into it, S4 goes into it, WS3+ and BS3+ go into it, LD goes into it, though we obviously don't know how much each individually contributes (some are probably only worth fractions of a point).

For example, the only difference between Conscripts, Guardsmen, and Veterans is their WS and BS scores (5+/4+/3+ respectively). This allows us to isolate what WS and BS are worth in GW's eyes: going from 5/5 to 4/4 is worth 1 point to them, going from 4/4 to 3/3 is worth 2 points. So a 5/5 space marine with a lasgun would theoretically cost 7 points, while still being T4/3+ along with S4, LD7, and ATSKNF.

Basically, the reason conscripts are so good at putting wounds on the table is that they're min-maxed to do exactly that. They're one T3/5+ wound with a gun and not much else. The only model that min-maxes that parameter harder is brimstone horrors, because they sacrifice having a ranged weapon to squeeze down to 2 points (though obviously, having no ranged weapon at all compromises their offense pretty severely). When you pick up other features, of course you sacrifice wound-per-point efficiency because those other features raise your cost without increasing your wounds.

It's just that with the change to templates and the wound chart, "putting wounds on the table" now happens to be a strong parameter to optimize for.

Yes, I think my post shows that I understood what he was trying to do. I explained at some length why this makes no sense -- the actual division of point costs between base models and mandatory wargear has no relationship to anything involved in actually playing the game, and there's no reason to think it should. It is mostly a function of what options other units in the same index have access to.

What you're suggesting also makes no sense. This is a terrible way to try to think about how many points different things are worth -- you can't consider all of these stats independently of the others. I mean, obviously the difference between a BS3+ Warlord Titan and a BS5+ Warlord Titan should be more than 2 points. Right? Ultimately, in almost all cases BS just acts as a multiplier to firepower -- a gun firing at BS3+ will do about twice as much damage as a gun firing at BS5+. Going from BS5+ to BS3+ is a lot like doubling the number of shots all of a model's guns get, and so would be worth similar points. The value of BS basically depends on how much firepower a model has, though of course it also depends on how durable it is since being durable lets you stick around and shoot for longer. So Marines are actually pretty bad at shooting -- 13 points per model for a BS3+ bolter is not very scary.

As people have pointed out many times, Guardsmen -- even Conscripts -- don't actually have bad firepower. They're not min-maxed for wounds on the board at all. It's bizarre to talk like BS4+ and a lasgun are bad buys for 4 points per model. Guardsmen outshoot Marines against literally everything for cost. Conscripts outshoot Marines against literally everything for cost, though just barely against T6 and T7 and of course in many situations you'll have a hard time squeezing them all in. The point is that these are not notably low-firepower units compared to other infantry, even if maybe in real situations they're often not actually better at shooting than Marines (though of course Orders are also a thing, so in many real situations they are much better). It's at least clear that they're not meaningfully sacrificing shootiness for wound-per-point efficiency. What they're actually sacrificing, of course, is toughness and armor. It's just that toughness doesn't matter as much anymore and a 5+ save is much better relative to a 3+ save now than it used to be. So the new rules are a massive buff to models like this.

Because they aren't calculated like that. GW arrives at a ballpark number sort of like that, then adjusts it up or down depending on how it feels to them.

It shows up really well in the craftworld index, where some bits of gear are baked in and others very much not, but basic eldar models range from 5 to 17 points. even naked ones like dark reapers and fire dragons that pay for their weapons have a high variance with very similar profiles.

Dionysodorus wrote:

 ross-128 wrote:

I'm pretty sure he's using immortals as an example for exactly that reason: they have no free weapon, so they're crystal clear about how much they're paying for their model, and how much they're paying for their weapon.

A Marine gets a bolter and bolt pistol for free, which on a model that doesn't get them for free is 1 point each. Those 2 points are baked into the space marine's base cost. A space marine with a lasgun would theoretically cost 10 points. ATSKNF goes into it, S4 goes into it, WS3+ and BS3+ go into it, LD goes into it, though we obviously don't know how much each individually contributes (some are probably only worth fractions of a point).

For example, the only difference between Conscripts, Guardsmen, and Veterans is their WS and BS scores (5+/4+/3+ respectively). This allows us to isolate what WS and BS are worth in GW's eyes: going from 5/5 to 4/4 is worth 1 point to them, going from 4/4 to 3/3 is worth 2 points. So a 5/5 space marine with a lasgun would theoretically cost 7 points, while still being T4/3+ along with S4, LD7, and ATSKNF.

Basically, the reason conscripts are so good at putting wounds on the table is that they're min-maxed to do exactly that. They're one T3/5+ wound with a gun and not much else. The only model that min-maxes that parameter harder is brimstone horrors, because they sacrifice having a ranged weapon to squeeze down to 2 points (though obviously, having no ranged weapon at all compromises their offense pretty severely). When you pick up other features, of course you sacrifice wound-per-point efficiency because those other features raise your cost without increasing your wounds.

It's just that with the change to templates and the wound chart, "putting wounds on the table" now happens to be a strong parameter to optimize for.

Yes, I think my post shows that I understood what he was trying to do. I explained at some length why this makes no sense -- the actual division of point costs between base models and mandatory wargear has no relationship to anything involved in actually playing the game, and there's no reason to think it should. It is mostly a function of what options other units in the same index have access to.

What you're suggesting also makes no sense. This is a terrible way to try to think about how many points different things are worth -- you can't consider all of these stats independently of the others. I mean, obviously the difference between a BS3+ Warlord Titan and a BS5+ Warlord Titan should be more than 2 points. Right? Ultimately, in almost all cases BS just acts as a multiplier to firepower -- a gun firing at BS3+ will do about twice as much damage as a gun firing at BS5+. Going from BS5+ to BS3+ is a lot like doubling the number of shots all of a model's guns get, and so would be worth similar points. The value of BS basically depends on how much firepower a model has, though of course it also depends on how durable it is since being durable lets you stick around and shoot for longer. So Marines are actually pretty bad at shooting -- 13 points per model for a BS3+ bolter is not very scary.

As people have pointed out many times, Guardsmen -- even Conscripts -- don't actually have bad firepower. They're not min-maxed for wounds on the board at all. It's bizarre to talk like BS4+ and a lasgun are bad buys for 4 points per model. Guardsmen outshoot Marines against literally everything for cost. Conscripts outshoot Marines against literally everything for cost, though just barely against T6 and T7 and of course in many situations you'll have a hard time squeezing them all in. The point is that these are not notably low-firepower units compared to other infantry, even if maybe in real situations they're often not actually better at shooting than Marines (though of course Orders are also a thing, so in many real situations they are much better). It's at least clear that they're not meaningfully sacrificing shootiness for wound-per-point efficiency. What they're actually sacrificing, of course, is toughness and armor. It's just that toughness doesn't matter as much anymore and a 5+ save is much better relative to a 3+ save now than it used to be. So the new rules are a massive buff to models like this.

That kind of separation between model and weapon does need to be accounted for though. For example, if I complained about how terrible a lascannon HWT was at putting wounds on the table (24 points for 2 T3/5+ wounds!), while completely ignoring the fact that it has a lascannon, surely you'd point out that the wounds aren't what I'm paying for? (or more accurately, I'm only paying 4 points for those wounds, the other 20 is the lascannon).

 ross-128 wrote:

That kind of separation between model and weapon does need to be accounted for though. For example, if I complained about how terrible a lascannon HWT was at putting wounds on the table (24 points for 2 T3/5+ wounds!), while completely ignoring the fact that it has a lascannon, surely you'd point out that the wounds aren't what I'm paying for? (or more accurately, I'm only paying 4 points for those wounds, the other 20 is the lascannon).

Yeah, of course. Obviously when you're evaluating units you need to be thinking about all this stuff. It's just sort of a mistake to talk like the wounds and the firepower are separable. You're paying 24 points for the wounds and the lascannon. If your heavy weapon is in a unit with lasgun infantry then you need to evaluate the whole unit. You want to think about what it can kill at what range and how tough it is to kill and how its firepower degrades as it takes hits. And of course how fast it is matters, and a bunch of other stuff.

But, like, a lascannon heavy weapon team really is sacrificing durability for shootiness. It's a lot better against many targets for cost, and from farther away. It takes only about 24 points of lascannon heavy weapon team to expect to put a wound on T8 W6 3+ from 48". It takes 351 points of tactical marines to do that from 24". Or 144 points of lasgun Guardsmen. This is real firepower. Meanwhile, of course, it dies easier than 8 points of Guardsmen. These are important things to think about when considering the unit. Looking at this, you might conclude that it makes more sense to put your lascannon team in an infantry squad so that your enemy has to get through 8 cheap lasgun Guardsmen to get to the high-firepower lascannon team, while putting much cheaper heavy weapons like mortars on your heavy weapon squads.

My point was that Guardsmen and Conscripts don't actually sacrifice firepower in exchange for their increased durability over Marines. They're better against literally everything for cost, in a pack-everything-into-24"-and-shoot sense, and are rarely that much worse even accounting for Marines having a much easier time getting everyone into range. Like, if a lascannon team cost 300 points you'd be crazy to take it, and it'd make no sense to argue that it's somehow trading lower durability for increased firepower -- it wouldn't really have significantly increased firepower for its cost. You'd be paying an incredible amount of points for a range advantage while giving up a huge amount of durability.

Going back to the idea of anti-horde weapons for a moment, one point I'd like to make is that I think such weapons should be exclusively anti-horde.

One of the issues in past editions was that a lot of weapons were basically good against hordes by default (simply by virtue of being blast/template weapons), without needing to sacrifice strength or AP.

Dionysodorus wrote:

 ross-128 wrote:

That kind of separation between model and weapon does need to be accounted for though. For example, if I complained about how terrible a lascannon HWT was at putting wounds on the table (24 points for 2 T3/5+ wounds!), while completely ignoring the fact that it has a lascannon, surely you'd point out that the wounds aren't what I'm paying for? (or more accurately, I'm only paying 4 points for those wounds, the other 20 is the lascannon).

Yeah, of course. Obviously when you're evaluating units you need to be thinking about all this stuff. It's just sort of a mistake to talk like the wounds and the firepower are separable. You're paying 24 points for the wounds and the lascannon. If your heavy weapon is in a unit with lasgun infantry then you need to evaluate the whole unit. You want to think about what it can kill at what range and how tough it is to kill and how its firepower degrades as it takes hits. And of course how fast it is matters, and a bunch of other stuff.

But, like, a lascannon heavy weapon team really is sacrificing durability for shootiness. It's a lot better against many targets for cost, and from farther away. It takes only about 24 points of lascannon heavy weapon team to expect to put a wound on T8 W6 3+ from 48". It takes 351 points of tactical marines to do that from 24". Or 144 points of lasgun Guardsmen. This is real firepower. Meanwhile, of course, it dies easier than 8 points of Guardsmen. These are important things to think about when considering the unit. Looking at this, you might conclude that it makes more sense to put your lascannon team in an infantry squad so that your enemy has to get through 8 cheap lasgun Guardsmen to get to the high-firepower lascannon team, while putting much cheaper heavy weapons like mortars on your heavy weapon squads.

My point was that Guardsmen and Conscripts don't actually sacrifice firepower in exchange for their increased durability over Marines. They're better against literally everything for cost, in a pack-everything-into-24"-and-shoot sense, and are rarely that much worse even accounting for Marines having a much easier time getting everyone into range. Like, if a lascannon team cost 300 points you'd be crazy to take it, and it'd make no sense to argue that it's somehow trading lower durability for increased firepower -- it wouldn't really have significantly increased firepower for its cost.

What Space Marines pay for is "a little bit of everything".

BS3+ with a S4 weapon is undeniably better than 5+ at S3 when both are Rapid 1 24", no? So they pay for it. You can argue that they pay too much for it perhaps, but you can't possibly argue that they shouldn't pay for it at all.

They also have a WS3+ and S4 melee attack. Two of them, if you include the pistol. They pay for that. It doesn't help their durability or their shooting at all, but they pay for it even when they're not using it.

They have LD8/7 (depending on if the sergeant is alive) and re-roll morale tests. They pay for that, even if they're not making a morale test.

And of course, they're T4 with 3+. They have to pay for that too, even when they're getting shot by a weapon that ignores both.

That's why Space Marines don't excel at any one thing. No matter what they're doing at the time, they're paying for "dead weight" that they're not using. That's the cost of their flexibility.

None of those things single-handedly account for the cost alone. Some of them might not even be worth a full point on their own. But they do add up when you have ALL of them.

Just like that HWT has to pay for that lascannon, even if he's somehow managed to get stuck in melee. What makes the HWT efficient at putting that lascannon on the table is that it does literally nothing else, so as long as it's sitting in the back doing its job, it has zero dead weight.

Compared to Guard, Marines are both easier to fit into cover and on balance get way more out of it. Going from a 3+ save to a 2+ save is a huge deal vs basic weapons

MaxT wrote:
Compared to Guard, Marines are both easier to fit into cover and on balance get way more out of it. Going from a 3+ save to a 2+ save is a huge deal vs basic weapons

For the curious, the benefits of cover explained:

7+ save -> 6+ save: Probably doesn't help much. Goes from auto-taking it to a 6+ save against AP0 small arms for a 20% upgrade in survivability; it takes 1.2 wounds to deal an unsaved wound instead of 1.
6+ save->5+ save: Slightly more significant. Going from a 6+ save to a 5+ save against AP0 small arms is a 25% upgrade in survivability; it takes 1.5 wounds to deal an unsaved wound instead of 1.2.
5+ save->4+ save: Better still. You start to have a meaningful save against AP-1 machine-gun attacks, and you've got a 33% upgrade in survivability against AP0 small arms; 2 wounds to deal one unsaved wound instead of 1.5.
4+ save->3+ save: Quite good. 50% increase in survivability against AP0 small arms (3 wounds to deal one unsaved instead of 2), and you're getting a meaningful save against anything short of dedicated anti-armour weapons. Not necessarily meaningful enough given that this is the point where you start needing to pay a lot more for your models (you can get 5+-armour dudes for 5pts, but you start needing to pay 10pts for 4+-armour dudes), but still quite an improvement.
3+ save->2+ save: Awesome. 100% increase in survivability against AP0 small arms (6 wounds needed to deal one unsaved instead of 3), you start to make anti-armour attacks sit up and take notice.
2+ save->1+ save: Now you're just showing off.
1+ save->0+ save: Really? Why is this even here? (The Scarab Occult, in case anyone was both curious and wanted to see someone getting a 2+ save against Flash Gitz as a middle finger to their Flashiness.)

(So yes. Cover is worth about 3x as much to Marines as it is to Guard against most small arms.)

 ross-128 wrote:

What Space Marines pay for is "a little bit of everything".

BS3+ with a S4 weapon is undeniably better than 5+ at S3 when both are Rapid 1 24", no? So they pay for it. You can argue that they pay too much for it perhaps, but you can't possibly argue that they shouldn't pay for it at all.

They also have a WS3+ and S4 melee attack. Two of them, if you include the pistol. They pay for that. It doesn't help their durability or their shooting at all, but they pay for it even when they're not using it.

They have LD8/7 (depending on if the sergeant is alive) and re-roll morale tests. They pay for that, even if they're not making a morale test.

And of course, they're T4 with 3+. They have to pay for that too, even when they're getting shot by a weapon that ignores both.

That's why Space Marines don't excel at any one thing. No matter what they're doing at the time, they're paying for "dead weight" that they're not using. That's the cost of their flexibility.

None of those things single-handedly account for the cost alone. Some of them might not even be worth a full point on their own. But they do add up when you have ALL of them.

Just like that HWT has to pay for that lascannon, even if he's somehow managed to get stuck in melee. What makes the HWT efficient at putting that lascannon on the table is that it does literally nothing else, so as long as it's sitting in the back doing its job, it has zero dead weight.

I don't think this is addressing the argument. Yes, obviously if you have two models that are identical except that one is BS3+ with an S4 gun and the other is BS5+ with an S3 gun, then the one with worse shooting should cost less, assuming that you have enough granularity in your point system to represent that difference. Obviously if you have... except that one is T4 3+ and the other is T3 5+, then the less durable one should cost less. And so on. From this we conclude that Space Marines should cost at least 5 points. But what you can't get from this is that they should cost exactly 3.25 times as much as a Guardsman. Like, if Guardsmen cost 6 points instead of 4 points you could make exactly this argument about how the relative prices make perfect sense, but we're talking about a 50% increase in price! The difference there has absolutely massive implications for game balance, and it's just invisible to the kind of argument you're making here. This is just useless as anything other than gesturing at a range from, say, 8 to 20 points that a Marine could plausibly cost in a world of 4-point Guardsmen.

You need a way to think a lot more precisely about what Marines are going to be worth relative to Guardsmen. And that's why I'm not really trying to argue that I can determine from the rules and the math precisely what Marines are worth relative to Guardsmen -- I think you can get an estimate, and I think we have reason to think that Guardsmen are really efficient, but I'm not saying "therefore obviously Guardsmen are too cheap at 4 points". What I want to get across is really just two things. First, Guardsmen are actually really efficient at a bunch of things that lots of people would expect Marines to be better for. You talk about Marines being better in CC, but, again, that's ignoring that the Guardsmen get 3 times as many attacks and have 3 times as many wounds for their cost (though it's true that Marines fare better in CC relative to shooting if it's a prolonged combat and their bolt pistols come in handy). Second, the new rules are a massive buff to hordes. You'll note that I've been giving Marines every advantage in trying to analyze them -- I didn't talk about how each kind of model fares against plasma guns. Nobody's surprised that plasma is specialized for killing Marines. You say that Marines are paying for T4 3+, and I agree. What I'm pointing out is that, where paying lots extra for that used to be a good deal against bolters and heavy bolters, now it's not. Now bolters and heavy bolters are actually more efficiently used against Marines than against Guardsmen.

Now, maybe this doesn't mean that hordes are OP. Maybe you think that they used to be so underpowered that these massive buffs just make them even. I don't really care to fight about that, and it's awfully hard to adjudicate short of seeing how the meta shakes out. Like I've said, my worry about the meta is that it's not really possible to add anti-horde elements to a list anymore. Almost anything you add to help you kill Guardsmen, while it will help you kill Guardsmen, will work even better against Marines. And so my worry is that there will be very little use for heavy infantry of any kind, with the meta being basically light infantry and big monsters, which unlike MEQs actually do tend to be more resistant to anti-horde guns than Guardsmen are.

Dionysodorus wrote:
Actually, here's an idea:

I've said before that I think the real worry here is that there's basically just no gun you can take which actually specializes your unit or army towards killing hordes, given their point costs. The things that you might think are good for this are actually better at killing Marines, for cost. Certainly relative to past editions hordes are now hugely more durable against things like small arms and heavy bolters, while Marines are now actually more vulnerable to the usual anti-horde heavy weapons like heavy bolters. I said earlier that it's hard to see how to make an anti-horde weapon without special rules, but I was wrong.

So here's what I want: a gun with positive AP.

S3 AP+1 is a genuinely anti-horde profile. It's relatively efficient against T3 and relatively efficient against bad saves (except that it doesn't care about the difference between a 3+ and a 2+). S2 AP+1 would be even more specialized as far as infantry are concerned, but given how many shots such a gun would need it probably ends up being weirdly effective against T8 2+ where it's functionally S4 AP-.

Wyvern. It doesn't have positive AP, but it's 3 times more effective against guardsmen than marines.

Mortars too, I think. We have a lot of weapons very efficient at killing GEQ but not very good at all vs. MEQ

 vipoid wrote:
Going back to the idea of anti-horde weapons for a moment, one point I'd like to make is that I think such weapons should be exclusively anti-horde.

I am firmly of the belief that there is no need for such a weapon.

Not only that, but I'm also of the belief that now that the game is more favorable to infantry, we should do nothing to discourage the taking of infantry.

All this "Hordes are too good" stuff appears to be knee-jerk mathammer based, and mostly unplayed by the community. The rules have been out for only two weeks. It seems nuts that people are already asking for a new weapon here.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

Wyvern. It doesn't have positive AP, but it's 3 times more effective against guardsmen than marines.

Mortars too, I think. We have a lot of weapons very efficient at killing GEQ but not very good at all vs. MEQ

I've said this several times, but this is absolutely not true relative to the cost of the targets. Like, yes, you will kill at least as many Guardsmen with some weapon as you will Marines. They're easier to wound and they have a worse save. But S4 AP- attacks will kill more points of Marines than points of Guardsmen.

Again, it's not that therefore Guardsmen are overpowered. But this is a huge change for the game. It used to be the case that small arms and anti-horde heavy weapons like the heavy bolter were significantly more efficient against Guardsmen than against Marines. The change is clearly a massive buff to Guardsmen. Possibly it's an appropriate one, though again I think it's worrying that there's really no way you can actually tailor a list to take on hordes without accidentally tailoring even more strongly to take on marines.

Dionysodorus wrote:

I've said this several times, but this is absolutely not true relative to the cost of the targets. Like, yes, you will kill at least as many Guardsmen with some weapon as you will Marines. They're easier to wound and they have a worse save. But S4 AP- attacks will kill more points of Marines than points of Guardsmen..

Basically the game needs more S2 weaponry?

 Insectum7 wrote:

I am firmly of the belief that there is no need for such a weapon.

I agree. What I'm saying though is that I'd want such a weapon to only be good against hordes (and to be taken in place of stuff like plasmaguns or lascannons). So if you want to tailor against hordes you can, but it will cost you in other areas.

As opposed to just making every blast and template weapon much better against infantry, without any actual sacrifice.

 Insectum7 wrote:

Not only that, but I'm also of the belief that now that the game is more favorable to infantry, we should do nothing to discourage the taking of infantry.

Agreed entirely. Infantry have been neglected for far too long.

But what are tactical marines, if not semi-elite hordes? Thats why they are so unfluffy in how they play.

 Talamare wrote:

Dionysodorus wrote:

I've said this several times, but this is absolutely not true relative to the cost of the targets. Like, yes, you will kill at least as many Guardsmen with some weapon as you will Marines. They're easier to wound and they have a worse save. But S4 AP- attacks will kill more points of Marines than points of Guardsmen..

Basically the game needs more S2 weaponry?

Yeah, S2 is a little more efficient against Guardsmen than Marines, though it's not like it's a huge difference. For example, it still doesn't kill Conscripts more efficiently than it does Marines. But as I said, my main worry with S2 weaponry is that you need so many shots to have something that can do respectable damage to a Guardsmen squad -- you need twice as many S2 hits to do the same damage as you would with S4 hits -- that you risk producing a weirdly efficient anti-tank gun. For example, a hurricane bolter can put out 12 S4 shots at close range. You might design a comparable S2 weapon to put out 30 shots -- that's 25% better against T3 and 17% worse against T4. But then it's better against T5 and up because of the way the wound chart works. The S2 gun is 2.5 times better against T8 than the S4 gun -- it's almost as good as a Lascannon against T8 3+. MaybeT8 is rare enough that it's not worth worrying about, but it's sort of a bizarre result.

There are weapons that do more shots against large units (like Demolisher cannons) but most of them have Ap of at least -3 for some reason.

This isn't a complex problem, hordes should just simply not be immune to morale. They've already built in an anti-horde mechanic, the problem is they've negated it completely where it matters.

Space Marines in squads of 10 are more at risk of running like cowards off the battlefield than Guard. That is a weird result.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Sonic Keyboard wrote:
There are weapons that do more shots against large units (like Demolisher cannons) but most of them have Ap of at least -3 for some reason.

Well you need Ap-2 to get around guard saves.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:


1150 conscripts, 22CC's, and 6 Commissars.

They could hypothetically deal 40 wounds on average a turn to the thing, if it were actually possible to fit 1150 conscripts within 12" of it. It is, unfortunately, entirely impossible to do that.

I've found that conscripts are basically harmless. They just can't get within 12" of an enemy that doesn't want to be within 12".

in a 2ft by 4 ft deployment zone you have 1152 sq. in. you could get 22 CC 6 Commissars 1124 conscripts, not including impassable terrain.

you could do 80 wounds a turn to MEQ

or 161 MEQ in rapid fire range.

161 marines costs 2,093 points base.

Well, only if all those Conscripts are within range. Which is just a silly assumption. You know, a blast template could kill all those Conscripts in previous editions if you stacked them on top of each other like a tower of cannonfodder.

 Galas wrote:
But what are tactical marines, if not semi-elite hordes? Thats why they are so unfluffy in how they play.

Step right up and buy some Primaris!

But more seriously, they've rareley ever been anything else. Ive played 60+ man marine armies since 3rd. The way marines function like the fluff is requiring to be deployed effectively in order to bring their advantages to bear. Marines in rhinos outmaneuvering conscript-level troops is how to do it. Or in this edition, getting your marines in cover and defending against the horde works too. Have you worked out how many shots it takes for conscripts to kill marines? You need like 15 guys to kill one marine, bare bones.

And dont forget, the seminal piece of 40k artwork, the cover of rogue trader, is a picture of a dwindling pile of marine bodies.

But those where normal humans, corrupt policemen of a supresive regimen, not the Gods of War and Angels of Death that Space Marines are today.

But Is obvious that if GW wants to survive, they can't make their most selled kit a 40points for model unit.

Thats why, besides the fluff point, I love Primaris. At last, Space Marines that rules-wise (at least slightly better) and model wise are like the fluff!

But I don't want to make this thread a "Space Marines are Gods, look at all this books!" vs "No! They are IMperial propaganda, look at all those other books where they die like flyes!"

 Galas wrote:
But those where normal humans, corrupt policemen of a supresive regimen, not the Gods of War and Angels of Death that Space Marines are today.

But Is obvious that if GW wants to survive, they can't make their most selled kit a 40points for model unit.

Thats why, besides the fluff point, I love Primaris. At last, Space Marines that rules-wise (at least slightly better) and model wise are like the fluff!

But I don't want to make this thread a "Space Marines are Gods, look at all this books!" vs "No! They are IMperial propaganda, look at all those other books where they die like flyes!"

Oh totally, i get it. I'll take my grimdark with an extra helping of heroic futility, and not everyone is into that. But as ive said in the previous few editions, you can get the more heroic space marine with Sternguard, and more relevant to the "conscript threat", they bring a better range, more attacks in cc and AP -2.

It's as easy to loose a squad of 30 orks as before. But they are at least somewhat faster, hit harder and aren't as annoying to move.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Galas wrote:
But what are tactical marines, if not semi-elite hordes? Thats why they are so unfluffy in how they play.

Step right up and buy some Primaris!

But more seriously, they've rareley ever been anything else. Ive played 60+ man marine armies since 3rd. The way marines function like the fluff is requiring to be deployed effectively in order to bring their advantages to bear. Marines in rhinos outmaneuvering conscript-level troops is how to do it. Or in this edition, getting your marines in cover and defending against the horde works too. Have you worked out how many shots it takes for conscripts to kill marines? You need like 15 guys to kill one marine, bare bones.

And dont forget, the seminal piece of 40k artwork, the cover of rogue trader, is a picture of a dwindling pile of marine bodies.

Primaris are surprisingly bad for being the Big New Thing. They actually magnify the problem being discussed here: yet more points for even less firepower. And with multiwound weapons being cheap as chips and amazingly prevalent, their survivability strategy is actually awful.


However, conscripts killing marines isn't the issue. Its that they prevent the approach of enemies, protecting the stuff that actually does the killing.

The other side of it is due to the way-too-effective morale immunity delivered by the commissar, it combines with their absurd squad size to make conscripts behave defensively as the most effective unit in the game. Again, their offensive ability doesn't matter, it''s that they block melee and meltagun access to the things that do have offensive power, and they do so by behaving in the most unfluffy fashion possible, by being immobile bricks that indifferently endure tons of casualties each round. If they were capped at a reasonable unit size (~20), it wouldn't be an issue, or if they were too green to care that a commissar is killing one guy for every 10+ that die, they wouldn't be a problem. In short, conscripts don't behave at all like conscripts.

On a 10 man infantry squad, the commissar bonus is nice, but not overpowering. To even trigger it, they have to lose 3 or more of the 10 models in the unit (as they use the commissar's LD8) Within a round or two, you can easily get to the point where the unit will die. On a 50 man squad, it is simply ridiculous.

With tyranids, their morale immunity largely can't hide (the prime can, but it's much harder- they don't fit in ruins quite as well, and don't have any tanks to form an improvised box to hide inside), and the tyranids don't have the cheap and long range and effective and no-LOS shooting to dump on the heads of any armies that have to walk up to the wall of flesh and impotently beat on it for a while (and the unit sizes are significantly smaller at 30 rather than 50, with a worse save to boot).

With orks, their 'immunity' actually degrades, even with a warboss blocking the really big morale checks. So those big footslogger units are going to become less and less 'immune' as they cross the field. Sure a weirdboy can try to 'Jump' the unit closer, but that can be pretty risky.
Its also worth noting that the punisher is more effective against orks than it is against conscripts. S5 wounds t3 and t4 the same, and orks have a worse save.

Im totally fine with "conscripts" behaving like chem-stupored, hypno-indoctrined, commissar-induced-fear-of-god, walls of meat for the grinder "shields" for the Emperor's holy war machines.

That is SO IG.

Percentage points killed as a measure of a weapon or units efficiency is ultimately a meaningless statistic. Expected number of GEQ/MEQ/TEQ killed or wounds dealt to a particular target is far more meaningful on the tabletop. You fight with your whole army, not one unit in isolation. If that means dedicating more points that an opponent's unit's worth of firepower to kill it or achieve an objective, then so be it. A win is a win, no matter how "inefficiently" you achieve it.

Yes, large blobs of infantry are powerful and have ways of negating their chief weakness: morale casualties. This does not mean they do not have other weaknesses. They cannot benefit from cover unless the terrain piece is suitably massive, and terrain will similarly slow down or otherwise reduce the effectiveness of large infantry blobs.

And furthermore, we are not talking about 20-strong mobs of CSM or other more elite units here. We are talking about mobs of Ork Boyz, Gaunts, and Conscripts. Every basic infantry gun in the game is capable of killing these models with massed fire, regardless of any "point efficiency". And once a blob has been reduced in size, its effectiveness on the tabletop is greatly reduced.

In short, horde armies are not OP. They may appear so on paper due to mistaken analysis and theorycrafting, but there are clear counters available in every army in terms of weapons and tactics a player can use on the tabletop.

Man this thread is all over the place. I think the simple issue boils down to that Conscripts are under-priced and are very good with and without support. You can bubble wrap much more important models without Orders, without a Commissar. They did their job if that's the role you took them in. Conscripts are a multi-role unit, they're insanely flexible and fit into any Imperium list which already has too many options. That's another discussion but honestly if you couldn't cross Faction within the umbrella of Imperium, this would be LESS of an issue.

Conscripts are going to be a very powerful unit in the competitive meta, full stop. Marine Gunlines will use them, IG will use them a ton. Most people aren't going to spam them to the max, some will though, but they're going to be very prevalent. I agree that there are no good solutions to them, the way certain guns were changed makes Infantry super powerful and I believe that was intended. GW just has a history of not accounting for spam, again that's another topic.

Pure Conscripts probably won't be the apocalypse they're imagined to be, but a combined IG army with a lot of Conscripts backed with suitable HWs will be extremely powerful. A ton of Lascannons camping the back board edge, LoS blocked in some situations, will get through the Tanks that Conscripts can't hurt. Conscripts are then amazing at killing Infantry and you get double-duty out of your Company Commanders, even the Commissars can pull double-duty with their Leadership bubble. Slap the anti-Sniper Character in and call it a day.

Any small change to Conscripts would bring them in line, there are a lot of Infantry spam lists going around for Orks and 'Nids but they all have plenty of counter-play. Conscripts are a point too cheap and they benefit from Orders, get rid of one of those and it'll be fine. Until then I hope Conscript Spam, in varying amounts, DOES become a thing so GW can take notice and adjust it in...a year I guess.

To be honest I think they have just screwed up the numbers.

You can say its meaningless but ultimately damage/point figures don't lie. They are why you try to shoot anti-vehicle guns into vehicles/MC and why you shoot anti infantry guns into infantry. You kill more stuff with what you have on the table and as a result you go on to win the game.

People are saying things like "oh well marines kill hordes".
Well - they don't. The damage output per point is very poor - far weaker than what that horde will do to basic marines.

At the end of the day things like lascannons are very efficient against vehicles. Plasma is very efficient against 2 wound or expensive elite infantry. I can't see anything that is pushing 30-50% points return vs cheap infantry. Mass flamers, mass heavy bolters, mass guns which were previously small blast were meant to qualify and they don't.

Which is why the meta is going to be towards hordes which carry amongst their number sufficient heavy guns to take out vehicles and more elite infantry (not that they do too badly against such infantry anyway).

This isn't just mathhammer either. We are seeing it across games of 8th. Killing cheap infantry should not be this difficult.

Tyel wrote:
To be honest I think they have just screwed up the numbers.

You can say its meaningless but ultimately damage/point figures don't lie. They are why you try to shoot anti-vehicle guns into vehicles/MC and why you shoot anti infantry guns into infantry. You kill more stuff with what you have on the table and as a result you go on to win the game.

People are saying things like "oh well marines kill hordes".
Well - they don't. The damage output per point is very poor - far weaker than what that horde will do to basic marines.

At the end of the day things like lascannons are very efficient against vehicles. Plasma is very efficient against 2 wound or expensive elite infantry. I can't see anything that is pushing 30-50% points return vs cheap infantry. Mass flamers, mass heavy bolters, mass guns which were previously small blast were meant to qualify and they don't.

Which is why the meta is going to be towards hordes which carry amongst their number sufficient heavy guns to take out vehicles and more elite infantry (not that they do too badly against such infantry anyway).

This isn't just mathhammer either. We are seeing it across games of 8th. Killing cheap infantry should not be this difficult.

Is that bad on a macro level though? I can only speak for myself of course but I love having big Infantry games. Now that individual models die quicker now, on average, it's not as cumbersome as it could have been in the past which was a huge knock against big list on big list. Now for purposes of this discussion there are some issues with things like Conscripts, like Gaunts, being maybe a point too cheap in some situations.

Now at a game level this can be an issue, for example Marines seem like they can do fine against Hordes....if you take 100+ Marines and their necessary support. That I can see being a problem because I'll admit, the typical 2k lists I see from more elite armies can't do anything to my Green Tide list. I'm not sure what can be done about that, the anti-Morale tools and lack of specialized guns paints a bad picture. And even if you sell out against hordes....people are going to play mech and then you'll get stomped. That COULD lead to P/R/S but it's not clear yet.

It's funny that a bunch of people who don't play horde armies are saying hordes will be wildly overpowered, and a bunch of people who do play horde armies are saying that practical concerns with getting your models in position, range, etc. make them worse than one might expect.

Yes, losing blast templates is a buff to massed units - I used to play two Thunderfire Cannons to destroy hordes, and they're not even close to efficient now - but there are a lot of other things that hit them hard. When I played most frequently, in 5th edition, 4+ cover was more or less guaranteed under normal circumstances. Now, that's gone. Many horde units have in practice become significantly less resilient as a result. Tesla weapons still work, people are building Razorbacks and Taurox Primes with huge numbers of basic shots, etc.

We'll see how it goes, but I think that hordes - while strong - won't be as all-consuming as people seem to think. The guys over at Frontline Gaming seem to think that all-vehicle armies may be prevalent, which certainly put a bit of a damper on horde attacks.

On the points efficiency of hordes vs marines.

A 10-man space marine squad in cover will have an average points removed per turn to points spent ratio of about 0.14 versus guardsmen in rapid fire range.

A 50 man conscript squad will have an average points removed per turn to points spent ratio against the marines of 0.16 assuming no buffs and all in rapid fire range, or 0.12 assuming no buffs and half in rapid fire range (more likely). When buffed (assuming commissar and company commander are servicing two units, so only including half their cost in the calculations) they have a points removed per turn to points spent ratio of 0.27 assuming all in rapid fire range, or 0.20 assuming half in rapid fire range (more likely).

So unbuffed conscripts are basically terrible in terms of damage output, being less points efficient than marines unless you can get most of them into rapid fire range. Buffed conscripts are where it gets scary, which is why I think modifying how conscripts interact with buffs is where adjustments should be made for balance.

I put the marines in cover, as they can reliably get cover saves while the conscripts will find it nearly impossible to do so. Keep in mind, however, that if instead of doing the infantry rush, the conscripts are just playing roadblock, the marines may have to go to them, in which case the conscripts basically double in points efficiency.

Bumping conscripts to 4ppm boosts the marines' ratio to 0.18 points removed per turn for each point spent.

You know, I know this is a crazy idea, but since models don't block LoS, the marines can just shoot whatever the conscripts are protecting.

 Melissia wrote:
You know, I know this is a crazy idea, but since models don't block LoS, the marines can just shoot whatever the conscripts are protecting.

Models do, but only the enemy models. You can ignore your own models to drawn LOS. But I agree that is very very difficult to block units behind other units if they are all infantry.


EDIT: Or maybe I'm completely wrong because something like this would allow you to shoot enemies behind your vehicles without they shooting you. So probably I'm wrong here, I don't remember why I think I have read that rule for 8th.

If I remember correctly-- and I may very well not-- they don't block LoS at all in 8th?

 Galas wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
You know, I know this is a crazy idea, but since models don't block LoS, the marines can just shoot whatever the conscripts are protecting.

Models do, but only the enemy models. You can ignore your own models to drawn LOS. But I agree that is very very difficult to block units behind other units if they are all infantry.


EDIT: Or maybe I'm completely wrong because something like this would allow you to shoot enemies behind your vehicles without they shooting you. So probably I'm wrong here, I don't remember why I think I have read that rule for 8th.

Close - you can ignore models in your own unit for shooting, but not models from other units in your army.

Ok, Thanks! That was what I read!

But other than that, they do nothing - there's no cover for shooting through a unit, so unless you bunch things up super-close, it's unlikely that infantry models will deny LOS to other infantry at all.

With massive hordes of conscripts you dont need to block LoS when you can just straight up block range of meltas, rokkets and the like or at the very least keep things like plasma out of rapid fire range. With big hordes you can block off entire parts of the map so the enemy cant deep strike behind your lines to get to the things that actually hurt.

And a personal favorite of mine is that you could just also use their mass of bodies to screen your baneblades in melee. A baneblade in melee can fire its flamers and bolters into the mass while firing its nice things outside of melee all the while being not too bad in said melee but also being immune to return fire.

Tyel wrote:

At the end of the day things like lascannons are very efficient against vehicles.

They're not as efficient as one might think. It takes roughly 8 Lascannons at BS 3+ to knock out a Rhino.

 Insectum7 wrote:

Tyel wrote:

At the end of the day things like lascannons are very efficient against vehicles.

They're not as efficient as one might think. It takes roughly 8 Lascannons at BS 3+ to knock out a Rhino.

It means a lascannon marine gets close to 25% of his points back a shot. This isnt bad. More over its low because the rhino is cheap. Shoot say a predator and you double your effectiveness. (Perhaps more practically - its 50% more efficient to shoot a razorback)
By contrast a marine outside rapid fire range gets about 7% back shooting conscripts. You will be there all day.
A heavy bolter gets just 15% - so its essentially the same as having the points invested in regular marines at rapid fire range.
Things are a bit better vs 4 point guardsmen but its the same issue. There do not seem to be dedicated anti infantry weapons. Flamers are only about 21%.

Why does this matter? Well it matters because it means you won't shoot hordes off the table. Which means they will be able to clump up on objectives.
Meanwhile they have a chance to shoot you off the table or fight you on objectives. So the meta will tend to go their way.

I can see vehicle spam being a possible counter skew - but at the same time it rewards your opponent for taking anti-armour guns. I would suspect the risk vs reward factor to tell against it in a tournament.

I don't think this "percentage of points back per shot" style of analysis is much good - when you get right down to it, games aren't won or lost in a spreadsheet, but on the table.

Movement, range, cover, and other complexities tend to get abstracted away with these calculations, and almost all of these factors tend to favor smaller armies rather than hordes. Similarly, hordes rely on buff characters that can potentially be sniped and they need support elements to deal with some targets - it takes 108 Conscript lasgun shots on average to put one wound on a Stormtalon, for instance, and Ork Boyz can't charge one at all!

I'm not saying hordes are garbage - they clearly have some strengths, and in fact I expect them to do quite well - but I think people vastly overstate the extent to which hordes will be able to bring all their power to bear in the course of a normal game.

 Kingsley wrote:
It's funny that a bunch of people who don't play horde armies are saying hordes will be wildly overpowered, and a bunch of people who do play horde armies are saying that practical concerns with getting your models in position, range, etc. make them worse than one might expect...

We'll see how it goes, but I think that hordes - while strong - won't be as all-consuming as people seem to think. The guys over at Frontline Gaming seem to think that all-vehicle armies may be prevalent, which certainly put a bit of a damper on horde attacks.

Totally agree. Everyone seems to be overestimating / underestimating their effectiveness by a big margin.

Played against Orks with CSMs, bringing 4 squads of Noise Marines with full sonics against a force with 4 squads of 30 boys each. My opponent's mobs had a hard time moving, I was able to just focus on a couple mobs at a time. The fall back mechanics worked against him, I was able to charge 2 mobs with Rhinos to tie them up until I was ready to shoot at them.

While I am sure the tactics will improve over time, my initial impression was that there are a lot of ways to make hordes ineffective. Faced with sufficient firepower, horde armies can be very vulnerable.

 SuspiciousSucculent wrote:
I put the marines in cover, as they can reliably get cover saves while the conscripts will find it nearly impossible to do so. Keep in mind, however, that if instead of doing the infantry rush, the conscripts are just playing roadblock, the marines may have to go to them, in which case the conscripts basically double in points efficiency.

How many conscripts does it take to block off a noticeable section of the map?

 techsoldaten wrote:

 Kingsley wrote:
It's funny that a bunch of people who don't play horde armies are saying hordes will be wildly overpowered, and a bunch of people who do play horde armies are saying that practical concerns with getting your models in position, range, etc. make them worse than one might expect...

We'll see how it goes, but I think that hordes - while strong - won't be as all-consuming as people seem to think. The guys over at Frontline Gaming seem to think that all-vehicle armies may be prevalent, which certainly put a bit of a damper on horde attacks.

Totally agree. Everyone seems to be overestimating / underestimating their effectiveness by a big margin.

Played against Orks with CSMs, bringing 4 squads of Noise Marines with full sonics against a force with 4 squads of 30 boys each. My opponent's mobs had a hard time moving, I was able to just focus on a couple mobs at a time. The fall back mechanics worked against him, I was able to charge 2 mobs with Rhinos to tie them up until I was ready to shoot at them.

While I am sure the tactics will improve over time, my initial impression was that there are a lot of ways to make hordes ineffective. Faced with sufficient firepower, horde armies can be very vulnerable.

Yeah, the stronger vehicles of this edition coupled with the new fall back rules = just charge them with a vehicle; they probably can't kill it - in which case they're tied up; even if they fall back, theyve wasted the turn. And if they can kill it, it's not likely it'll be in two rounds of combat - in which case you can then fall back and continue to shoot them.

Hordes will be countered by the new and improved vehicles; 100 points of Rhino/Razorback can tie up over 180 points of Boyz, and continue to block charge lanes/LoS until they're dealt with.

My personal experience has been that vehicles are TOO strong now; their durability wouldn't be a problem if you could move out of combat with them and continue towards the enemy at no cost - but getting tied up in combat with a vehicle, that's too much.

On the other hand; this means you can tie down a vehicle with a throwaway unit/model; but for horde players, too much of the board is tied up between your mobs and the opponents vehicles for everything to just not get in the way. There's no room to maneuver for a horde anymore.

 techsoldaten wrote:
Totally agree. Everyone seems to be overestimating / underestimating their effectiveness by a big margin.

Played against Orks with CSMs, bringing 4 squads of Noise Marines with full sonics against a force with 4 squads of 30 boys each. My opponent's mobs had a hard time moving, I was able to just focus on a couple mobs at a time. The fall back mechanics worked against him, I was able to charge 2 mobs with Rhinos to tie them up until I was ready to shoot at them.

While I am sure the tactics will improve over time, my initial impression was that there are a lot of ways to make hordes ineffective. Faced with sufficient firepower, horde armies can be very vulnerable.

Wait till your friend realizes what he should do then you will be gaking your pants.

He will drop a 30 man blob on your army turn 1 and will have another 30 man blob moving up the board to engage, 10 man and 20 man squads will cap objectives as they move up as well. That initial blob can get up to 5 attacks per model, and can make that 9" charge about 70% of the time. He will trash half your units in the first turn with his 150 attacks. In fact he will eat 430 points of CSM in a single turn with this 215 Point unit.

How did your Rhinos survive longer then a turn? 30 man Squads can get 100 attacks EASY not including 5 Power Klaw attacks from a Nob which can half kill the Rhino by itself.

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:

 techsoldaten wrote:

 Kingsley wrote:
It's funny that a bunch of people who don't play horde armies are saying hordes will be wildly overpowered, and a bunch of people who do play horde armies are saying that practical concerns with getting your models in position, range, etc. make them worse than one might expect...

We'll see how it goes, but I think that hordes - while strong - won't be as all-consuming as people seem to think. The guys over at Frontline Gaming seem to think that all-vehicle armies may be prevalent, which certainly put a bit of a damper on horde attacks.

Totally agree. Everyone seems to be overestimating / underestimating their effectiveness by a big margin.

Played against Orks with CSMs, bringing 4 squads of Noise Marines with full sonics against a force with 4 squads of 30 boys each. My opponent's mobs had a hard time moving, I was able to just focus on a couple mobs at a time. The fall back mechanics worked against him, I was able to charge 2 mobs with Rhinos to tie them up until I was ready to shoot at them.

While I am sure the tactics will improve over time, my initial impression was that there are a lot of ways to make hordes ineffective. Faced with sufficient firepower, horde armies can be very vulnerable.

Wait till your friend realizes what he should do then you will be gaking your pants.

He will drop a 30 man blob on your army turn 1 and will have another 30 man blob moving up the board to engage, 10 man and 20 man squads will cap objectives as they move up as well. That initial blob can get up to 5 attacks per model, and can make that 9" charge about 70% of the time. He will trash half your units in the first turn with his 150 attacks. In fact he will eat 430 points of CSM in a single turn with this 215 Point unit.

IT will cost more to have 150 attacks, and to jump. So in reality that is 340 points minimum. And if the CSM player wraps with cultists, that 30 man blob will murder 100 points worth of Cultists. Every tactic has a counter tactic.

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:

 SuspiciousSucculent wrote:
I put the marines in cover, as they can reliably get cover saves while the conscripts will find it nearly impossible to do so. Keep in mind, however, that if instead of doing the infantry rush, the conscripts are just playing roadblock, the marines may have to go to them, in which case the conscripts basically double in points efficiency.

How many conscripts does it take to block off a noticeable section of the map?

Depends on how they are deployed. If deployed in close order to try to get most of the lasguns in range, so they actually do anything, not that much. If you space them out to maximum to cover more of the table, your shooting basically becomes worthless. At max spacing with two rows, you can just about cover the front of your deployment zone if you deploy on short table edges with a 50 man squad. They will have next to no damage output, and if you start taking casualties, you will open up your flanks. And you have to remove models from the ends of the line and open up your flanks, or you will lose coherency, and given how fragile they are on a per model basis, it's fairly easy to lose enough that you cannot move to get back into coherency, at which point you lose the ability to move them at all, according to the FAQ.

Breng77 wrote:


IT will cost more to have 150 attacks, and to jump. So in reality that is 340 points minimum. And if the CSM player wraps with cultists, that 30 man blob will murder 100 points worth of Cultists. Every tactic has a counter tactic.

Okay the 340 Point unit will kill 430 points of SM, but the other thing how are you going to wrap 30 CSM with 20 Cultists? Not to mention The Orks get to shoot and will probably kill some of the cultists before. Finally they would kill 260 points of Cultists, so they could kill 53 Cultists in a turn.

Alternatively just charge the Ork blob with equal points in Khorne Bezerkers + lord + sorcerer and wipe the unit in a turn.

How dare you suggest both a fluffy and effective method!

 SuspiciousSucculent wrote:

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:

 SuspiciousSucculent wrote:
I put the marines in cover, as they can reliably get cover saves while the conscripts will find it nearly impossible to do so. Keep in mind, however, that if instead of doing the infantry rush, the conscripts are just playing roadblock, the marines may have to go to them, in which case the conscripts basically double in points efficiency.

How many conscripts does it take to block off a noticeable section of the map?

Depends on how they are deployed. If deployed in close order to try to get most of the lasguns in range, so they actually do anything, not that much. If you space them out to maximum to cover more of the table, your shooting basically becomes worthless. At max spacing with two rows, you can just about cover the front of your deployment zone if you deploy on short table edges with a 50 man squad. They will have next to no damage output, and if you start taking casualties, you will open up your flanks. And you have to remove models from the ends of the line and open up your flanks, or you will lose coherency, and given how fragile they are on a per model basis, it's fairly easy to lose enough that you cannot move to get back into coherency, at which point you lose the ability to move them at all, according to the FAQ.

24 models will get you a 9" x 24" strip that you can put down. With 2 of those you can cut the board into two sections. I'm not sure why your taking from the flanks when you can just pick across the front line.

I don't care about damage output, there are much more efficient ways to do that.

So I got a game in last night against horde Nids with some monster support. Horde armies certainly got stronger in the new edition, but things like weapon range are definitely a concern for them. Sure that big unit of Boyz is scary looking, but getting them all into shooting range and/or choppy range is going to be an issue for them.

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:

Breng77 wrote:


IT will cost more to have 150 attacks, and to jump. So in reality that is 340 points minimum. And if the CSM player wraps with cultists, that 30 man blob will murder 100 points worth of Cultists. Every tactic has a counter tactic.

Okay the 340 Point unit will kill 430 points of SM, but the other thing how are you going to wrap 30 CSM with 20 Cultists? Not to mention The Orks get to shoot and will probably kill some of the cultists before. Finally they would kill 260 points of Cultists, so they could kill 53 Cultists in a turn.

Easy spread the cultists out with 2" coherency. You can only jump 9" away, so they leave a 2" gap to their better units. So even if you shoot them you now need a 12" charge at best. You kill 20 cultists (120 points) they shoot and counter charge.

If you have multiple units, one charges the thinly spread out horde, doesn't the horde have to try to pile in if you don't wipe them out in one turn?

 Melissia wrote:
If you have multiple units, one charges the thinly spread out horde, doesn't the horde have to try to pile in if you don't wipe them out in one turn?

No pile in is optional. But even then now it isn't 1 x 30 boyz and 2 weirdboyz it is 2x 30
Or more. If the first squad gets killed after they charge it starts to look less promising for the orks

More thinking of cultists and conscripts. What does the rest of the squad do then when they're not in melee, can they fire?

Did you guys read the designer notes? You know that if you have 20 orks in a squad, one is exposed, and 19 are in cover, if you wake damage, you only need to remove the one guy out in the open to make the rest concealed. That way, they get the cover.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Q: When determining whether a model benefits from
cover, does the model’s entire unit need to be fully on
or within terrain, or just the model making a particular
saving throw?

A: All of the models in a unit need to be at least partially
on or within terrain if any of the models are to receive
the +1 bonus to their saving throw.

Note, however, that it is possible for a unit to gain the benefit
of cover as it suffers casualties during the Shooting phase by
removing those models that are not on, or within terrain. As
soon as the last model that was not on or within terrain is
slain, the res

Slave wrote:
Did you guys read the designer notes? You know that if you have 20 orks in a squad, one is exposed, and 19 are in cover, if you wake damage, you only need to remove the one guy out in the open to make the rest concealed. That way, they get the cover.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Q: When determining whether a model benefits from
cover, does the model’s entire unit need to be fully on
or within terrain, or just the model making a particular
saving throw?

A: All of the models in a unit need to be at least partially
on or within terrain if any of the models are to receive
the +1 bonus to their saving throw.

Note, however, that it is possible for a unit to gain the benefit
of cover as it suffers casualties during the Shooting phase by
removing those models that are not on, or within terrain. As
soon as the last model that was not on or within terrain is
slain, the res

Small problem: cover doesn't work the way it used to. It only really provides a good bonus if you already have a good save, and the whole unit has to be in cover for it to count.

If you have a horde of bodies with a 5+ save or worse, don't even bother with cover. Most anything with a decent AP value will punch through it anyway, your screen won't be as effective, and it will only slow down your movement.

The strength of the blob is that you have a lot of bodies to chew through. The downside is that the units you want to use in large blobs are either too expensive or lose a lot of their capabilities to casualties.

Slave wrote:
Did you guys read the designer notes? You know that if you have 20 orks in a squad, one is exposed, and 19 are in cover, if you wake damage, you only need to remove the one guy out in the open to make the rest concealed. That way, they get the cover.

Yep. In practice these rules are still a huge nerf to horde army resilience, though. In 5th edition, units almost always had 4+ cover if you were playing well, so Orks being shot by small arms would save half the time. Now units will usually not have cover, and when they do it's +1 to save - so an Ork will get a 5+ save instead of a 4+ even under a good scenario, they can't go to ground, and their save will be affected by AP.

Interestingly, these rules are also a big buff to elite army resilience. A Marine (or Sisters) squad gets cover a lot more easily than an Ork squad, and when the Marines get cover it takes their 3+ save to a 2+!