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There has been lots of discussion about the infamous powerblob lately, and it has been well established that they are quite good, especially against cc oriented armies. So, what does an assault squad based BA army do about this type of IG? A furious charge assault squad will make 11 on the charge, and if you do multiple charge the blob, that only comes to 22. As has been established, this will not stop a blob, and all those officers will do some nasty things to your boys. Especially with the standard kit out being one or two meltas and a powerfist per squad, no flamers, what could one do in this situation? And how would one prepare for next time?

Your steam engine dreads w/blood talons do the job 10 times over

But, how would one deliver them?

And more importantly, how would one do it in the BA pure jump list? As in, all infantry?

Thats like saying how do I put anti tank in a tervigon-only list. (I would deliver them with death company in a stormraven but that is alot of points)

You have to make concessions.

you can tank shock them together to flame a crazy number of them at once, or you can focus multiple jump units onto one squad to make sure that you win the combat quickly

Blobs don't do well when they don't have the time to do the magic, so multiple assaults at once can be nice.
Also you have a psychic ability that can pick the commisar out of those squads, then you can sweep them

Deep Striking. Get as many Assault Squads as you can, build them ten strong and then break them down into Combat Squads. Descent of Angels allows you more of a chance to Deep Strike on Turn 2. The lower the turn, the farther you jump away from him. Wait for his army to split up and start chasing after your two or three five man squads, then use Vanguard Vets with PW to assault his Company Command or use Sanguinary Guard with Infernus Pistols or Angelus Boltguns to mow down any special units such as Ratlings, Ogryns, Stormtroopers, etc. You'll need some fluff like Tactical Squads which is rather expensive fluff. I suggest buying vehicles, at least rhinos and razorbacks to give your men cover from small arms fire. 3+ saves are only good when you dont have to roll 50 saves per turn because youre bound to roll some 1s and 2s

Howabout, with the maneuverability a jump list has, and the small number of models, not deep striking, and being able to throw everything you have and taking advantage of this, throwing everything at one blob at a time.

As per the picking commissar out with blood boil, most power blob players will put at least two commissars in a squad for just this reason, and for the extra power attacks.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And, 3+ saves may not do the trick, but that and feel no pain probably will.

Well any time an IG player goes up against any type of SM, he takes marine killer weapons, e.g.; power weapons, melta guns, plasmas, tanks, and anything with low AP. If you dont deep strike and you dont go first, expect of world of hurt to hit your lines because FNP dont protect from wounds that dont allowe armor saves. My brother plays IG and this is what i constantly see. And with Lumbering Behemoth, LRBT have the potential to go 12" and unload with St. 8 AP 3 ordnance shot which means no covers saves and everybody in your arms aside from heroes, terms, and sang guards will take instant wounds. Thatll dwindle your army so when you do assault his numbers beat your better fighting skill

prussia59 wrote:Howabout, with the maneuverability a jump list has, and the small number of models, not deep striking, and being able to throw everything you have and taking advantage of this, throwing everything at one blob at a time

Thats kind of your best choice, ignoring sanguinary because if the IG player is specifically building his army to deal with yours, you are in trouble anyway.

I would say modify your army to allow for breaking blobs. If you are stuck on playing an all jump list with melta weapons then you are at a huge disadvantage against any horde army. not just powerblobs.
1 baal pred with flamer sponsons will lay a powerblob flat in a turn. Giving a squad or two of your assault boys flamers to deal with hordes/guys in cover will soften them up for your charge.
You can definitely add a honour guard with a pack of flamers to add an extra punch if you want to stick with infantry.
And as far as how to deliver a dread into combat? Drop pods, stormravens, and wings of sanguinus have been known to work

All true. I actually brought up wings of sanguinius in an earlier topic, with defenitely mixed reviews. The most down point is that it gives all the enemy antitank weaponry something to shoot at.

In my "general" lists I tend to take about a 50/50 mix of flame pistols and melta weapons... Just throwing your lads into a power blob will kill lots of them, but yours will die as well, net victory for the IG. OTOH, if you can attack from an unexpected angle, you might be able to catch his PWs on the far side giving you a bit of time to work through the fodder...

No thought ofnStorm Ravens?

I don't have my BA or IG codices in front of me but wouldn't Fear of the Darkness be a nice way to get that blob to run away?

I played against all drop/jump BA once with powerblobs and got wiped. Admittedly, some stupidity on my part, but still...

The thing with BA is that they can take SO MANY power weapons, and they very often have a source of preferred enemy. Add to that blood talons and heroic intervention and the fact that they FLY, and you're basically guaranteed to get the charge if you play right. 5 marines with power weapons put down like 16 rerollable power weapon attacks on the charge. That basically guts a perfectly healthy blob straight away. Then, you'll win combat, and the next combat phase you'll attack before they do, likely wiping the rest of the blob.

Highly mobile BA are actually one of the counters to a blob-based army, because they have the ability to beat them at their own game, and are really tough for the guard to maneuver on the field to counteract them.

If a really good ig blob player goes up against a really good ba jump spam player the winning factor becomes maneuverability which is entirely in favor the ba player.

Power weapons are not very good against marines when you need 4s to hit and 5's to wound.

Most off the time its the dual flamers that will outright kill you. And then theres the rerollable furious charge that wounds on a 2 and rerolls 3's to hit, then the powerfists....

Im sorry but why are we even talking about this =P.


BTW: FNP only stops working if its double strength or ap2. So ap 3 isnt immune to FNP.

Yuber wrote:Power weapons are not very good against marines when you need 4s to hit and 5's to wound.

it's not that they aren't good, it is that the marine player needs to slog through 3-5 bodies per marine to make up their points, all the while sucking down 12-20 power weapon attacks a turn.

The trick to blobs is focus enough rage on them to kill them, you can't out-attrition them

Grundz wrote:

Yuber wrote:Power weapons are not very good against marines when you need 4s to hit and 5's to wound.

it's not that they aren't good, it is that the marine player needs to slog through 3-5 bodies per marine to make up their points, all the while sucking down 12-20 power weapon attacks a turn.

The trick to blobs is focus enough rage on them to kill them, you can't out-attrition them

Well, look at it like this. Your playing jump pack marines. If you cant win the fight, you can just avoid it.

-Are you gonna win assault against a 50-man power blob? hell no. But can you run? yes.
-Can you brutalize a 20 man or 30 man blob? yes? its dead.

Grundz wrote:The trick to blobs is focus enough rage on them to kill them, you can't out-attrition them

Well, that's the problem. There are a few things that CAN beat a power blob in close combat. Most of these things, however, are very susceptible to FRF (a 1x banshee squad, or a 1x wych squad with an HQ choice, or a 30-zlugga boyz squad), and can thus be thinned out to tolerable levels before close combat begins. No such luck against BA, which are tough to get within 12" for an FRF, and are wearing power armor, so don't care as much about lasgun fire as boyz do.

Seriously, when you get hit by a 5x vanguard vet squad with sanguiniary priest, they CAN out-attrition you.

remember that Vanguard Vets with an attached character cannot use heroic Intervention so its would have to be from a nearby squad...

Volkan wrote:remember that Vanguard Vets with an attached character cannot use heroic Intervention so its would have to be from a nearby squad...

The Priest just needs to be within 6" of the unit to give them FNP/FC.

I think hitting the blob with multiple full squads of assault marines, with a sanguinary priest or two in range, and a character, may do it. The power weapons suck, but the masses of regular attacks do too, and the priests' FNP makes those half as effective. The FNP also protects you from taking too much damage from FRFSRF and other misc guns shooting you if you break/wipe out the blog on one of your own turns. The HQ you bring should be a Reclusiarch or Librarian with Unleash Rage to give you re-rolls to hit.

Remember that you can also take hand flamers on your sgts, which, while not amazine, can definitely help thin the blob's numbers by a few models before you go in.

I play a vanilla assault marine army, all infantry, with none of the BA advantages, and I've found that two full assault squads can handle a blob of about 30 guardsmen without excessive casualties. You're taking down about half of them on the charge, before they even get to strike, and 12 power weapon attacks are only picking off about 2 of your guys. They don't break, but you eventually wipe them out just from sheer number of attacks.

I wouldn't send one assault squad in by itself against a blob, though. The (relatively small, but still there) chance of losing 3-4 marines in the first round and the need to sustain your huge number of attacks for 2-3 assault phases mean assaulting with multiple squads is best.

OverwatchCNC wrote:I don't have my BA or IG codices in front of me but wouldn't Fear of the Darkness be a nice way to get that blob to run away?

Commissars add not only their high leadership but the stubborn special rule.

If youre taking an all infantry list, id suggest taking Mephistion. Hes super strong, got more wounds than anybody else, and with his force weapon he can kill a Lord Commissar in one hit. I mean St and T 6? Thats gonna blow up some tanks if you get it close enough

25 attacks on the charge without the pfist for a regular 10 man assault marine squad that has 2 melta guns.

2/3 hit 5/6 wound 2/3 failed armor saves=20/54 with FC, or 37%

8/9 hit 5/6 wound 2/3 failed armor saves=80/162 with FC and unleash rage or 49%

2/3 hit 2/3 wound 2/3 failed armor saves=8/27 without FC, or 29%

So the initial hit is going to be between 37% and 49% fatality rate for the normal non power weapon attacks.

At 37% 25 attacks will only kill 9.25 guardsmen, followed by 16 attacks killing 4.64 on the next round. All of this is completely ignoring the pfist sergeant and priest, but even with a few more casualties we're looking at 3 to 4 combat rounds with the guardsmen and quite likely 3 rounds of power weapons swinging back with every single one of them directed at the priest. With 12 power weapon swings per phase and 2 to 3 phases of combat the slow grind can result in 24 to 36 ig power weapon swings going off before the blob dies, which is 4 to 6 dead meq. 10 assault marines with a priest charging a power blob is almost a fair fight, and fair fights get your priests killed so they should be avoided whenever possible.


2 squads of assault marines against a 30 man power blob is a completely unfair fight that will massacre the power blob by round 2 and place single regular wounds on power weapons and/or the commissar within in the first round of combat. As long as the assault marines avoid a fair fights 20 of them should be able to steamroll through 30 man power blobs without breaking a sweat. There is no reason to lose half your squad destroying an IG power blob when a combined assault from 2 squads can do it without killing a single marine.

I play IG, and have been running a 30 man power blob a lot lately. I have done bad things to jump BA lists in CC, but ironically it's their shooting that's done the blob in. Flamers are one of the power blobs worst enemies, particularly if you get get the blob while it's tightly packed. I've lost my blob several times to flamers, very rarely to combat.

Though it's been suggested already, I'd advise dropping some melta in your assualt squads for flamers. If you're willing to make some more concesions, I'd say take a Dread with blood talons.

But if you're really stubborn about not changing your current list, just gather as many assualt squads as you can and bolt pistol the blob to death. Then you have a softer target to assualt the next turn.

Why wait till the next turn? Shoot the pistols and then assault the unit you shot at.

Ailaros wrote:

Grundz wrote:The trick to blobs is focus enough rage on them to kill them, you can't out-attrition them

Well, that's the problem. There are a few things that CAN beat a power blob in close combat. Most of these things, however, are very susceptible to FRF (a 1x banshee squad, or a 1x wych squad with an HQ choice, or a 30-zlugga boyz squad), and can thus be thinned out to tolerable levels before close combat begins. No such luck against BA, which are tough to get within 12" for an FRF, and are wearing power armor, so don't care as much about lasgun fire as boyz do.

Seriously, when you get hit by a 5x vanguard vet squad with sanguiniary priest, they CAN out-attrition you.

OT, but I dig your reports. Keep em comin. They are very entertaining.

I'll note that a 30-man blob + commissar w/ 4 Power Weapons is 225 points without any Special Weapons added in. An Assault Squad w/ 2 Meltas and a Power Fist is 235 points. If the Marines grind down the blob and survive, even losing 70% of their numbers, they are still coming out ahead in the exchange. And if board position dictates that this is a bad trade the Assault Marines have superior speed and maneuverability, so they can certainly refuse to the exchange for a more favorable target.

Don't forget shooting the Blob before you charge in. It is quite important. It kills like 5 guardsmen outright unless the Blob is bogged down in cover.

Beyond that, if you plan on going on jumpers without the necessary fire-support against Hordes that Heavy Weapons and Vehicles provide then you should seriously consider running Anti-Horde Jump Infantry in addition to the stock Tank-Hunter configurations of 2 Meltas and a Power Fist. An Assault Squad w/ 2 Flamers and a Power Weapon can do a serious number on a horde.

- Marty Lund

SanguinaryGuard wrote:Why wait till the next turn? Shoot the pistols and then assault the unit you shot at.

Because you probably deep struck in.

If you didn't, I'd still almost suggest waiting a turn to assualt anyways. Let one 5 man squad get vaporized by the charging power blob (after they inflict some causalties themselves), and then charge in for the kill. But this is more a matter of personal preference, and since every BA jump list I've seen deep strikes in against guard...so it's almost a non-issue anyways.