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

IG assault platoons were intended for storming urban areas and boarding actions. They are geared for close combat but still being flimsy humans, gameplay wise they work to stall enemy advances, tarpit big nasties, and threaten cc vulerable squads.

New equipment:

Doorknocker- These are special seige rams designed for battering down gates and bulkheads. They deal a single str 8 attack in close combat. Against vehicles, they inflict an additional D6 armor penetration.

Twin heavy flamer- Heavy flamer that rerolls wounds.

New platoon orders:

Storm it!- The squad gains fleet of foot, but may only advance an additional D3".

Platoon command squad: May take up to 4 power weapons. Platoon commander can take a power fist. Entire squad may have krak or meltabombs.

Platoon assault squad: Armed with laspistol/ CCW. Can take up to two special weapons. 1 guardsman can take a power weapon. Can take a Heavy Assault Team (similar to a HWT) armed with a twin heavy flamer or doorknocker.

Veteran assault squad: WS4 and I4 instead of BS4, pistol/ccw, can take 3 PWs or special weapons. Doctorines same. Sarge can take a pfist.

Special weapon squad: Reworked, consist of a sarge and 5 guardsmen with pistol/ccw. Can take demo charge, up to 3 special weapons and/or 3 power weapons, meltabombs.

Heavy Assault Team: consists of 3 Heavy Assault Teams. These are like HWTs (2 guys on a large base) armed either with twin heavy flamers or doorknockers.

Militia: Like conscripts only 2 ccws, same stats/function otherwise.

All guardsmen have frag grenades. All squads small enough may be mounted in a chimera transport. Platoon squads may blob up and take comissars. Any unit with a pistol/ccw may exchange it for a combat shotgun at no cost.

Somanyshotguns.

I am a terrible person, I am great at criticizing and terrible at seeing the merit in ideas. That being said, I like this idea a lot, the ability to field heavy flamers as heavy weapons is cool, as are CQB oriented vets. However, if Vets are in the platoon organization I can see potential problems, such as spamming power weapon vets.

I mean for 70 points you get the vet squad, and for 40 more you get 4 power weapons, allowing you to fight almost on par with marines, while ignoring their armour save. A platoon with a few squads of these can torment the hell out of CQB MEQ armies, hitting at the same time at WS 4 with 4 guardsmen having power weapons.

Buttons wrote:I am a terrible person, I am great at criticizing and terrible at seeing the merit in ideas. That being said, I like this idea a lot, the ability to field heavy flamers as heavy weapons is cool, as are CQB oriented vets. However, if Vets are in the platoon organization I can see potential problems, such as spamming power weapon vets.

I mean for 70 points you get the vet squad, and for 40 more you get 4 power weapons, allowing you to fight almost on par with marines, while ignoring their armour save. A platoon with a few squads of these can torment the hell out of CQB MEQ armies, hitting at the same time at WS 4 with 4 guardsmen having power weapons.

Limit the vets to 1 squad per 3 platoon squads taken? Less spam

Jerjare wrote:

Buttons wrote:I am a terrible person, I am great at criticizing and terrible at seeing the merit in ideas. That being said, I like this idea a lot, the ability to field heavy flamers as heavy weapons is cool, as are CQB oriented vets. However, if Vets are in the platoon organization I can see potential problems, such as spamming power weapon vets.

I mean for 70 points you get the vet squad, and for 40 more you get 4 power weapons, allowing you to fight almost on par with marines, while ignoring their armour save. A platoon with a few squads of these can torment the hell out of CQB MEQ armies, hitting at the same time at WS 4 with 4 guardsmen having power weapons.

Limit the vets to 1 squad per 3 platoon squads taken? Less spam

Wouldn't that mean only 1 vet squad per platoon since platoons only get 5 squads total? Either way, a limit of one or two per squad works as long as one is forced to compensate by buying regular squads.

Too many power weapons.
Honestly though it's difficult to make a unit worthwhile in CC without power weapons.
Maybe sprinkle chainswords (S5 Rending) liberally?
Otherwise I like the idea of meleé orientated guard.

Jesus, I would take S5 Rending over S3 Power any day. If only my howling banshees had those!

Actually yeah just strength 5 would probably do.

Doorknocker....just give them a lascutter. Its literally the same as your idea, just S9.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Doorknocker....just give them a lascutter. Its literally the same as your idea, just S9.

Perhaps, instead of power weapons, they can have power mauls, like the arbites use, or a weaker version, that provide +2 str and rending. It's mildly fluffy, and power mauls aren't exceedingly rare.

I dont think theyre that overpowered. Most will be striking at ws str and I3 meaning youll probably need 4s or 5s to hit and 5s to wound, and thats after everybody but orks and necrons strike before you do.

Jerjare wrote:I dont think theyre that overpowered. Most will be striking at ws str and I3 meaning youll probably need 4s or 5s to hit and 5s to wound, and thats after everybody but orks and necrons strike before you do.

I think most of them are talking about the vets. In that same line I would like to submit my idea. Power bayonet. It is a joke.

Maybe up them to str 4 with chainswords, but it seems only 2 handed weapons usually bestow a +2 bonus
Rending would be over the top, no other chain-blade equipped unit in the game gets rending for that type of weapon.
WS 4, STR 4, Possibly I3 or 4, and you'd have a believable assault unit.

But that being said, I like the idea.

What about current Platoons isn't assault capable?

I would agree with the idea that was proposed placing a limit of 1 or two per platoon so that regular squads will still be needed. I suppose

I could have sworn there was some mention in the background of power weapons being rare and valuable things, not mass-produced trash handed out to just any random Imperial Guard grunt...Storm Guardians manage to fill a niche in the Eldar list without any power weapons at all, why not use them as a general guide? Grenades, CCW and pistol, light armor, fleet, the option to take a Sergeant with cool gear, and you've made assault troops. The only big change I could see the Guard Codex needing to make it into an assault force is giving regular guys pistol/CCW and letting them take two special weapons instead of a special and a heavy.

Remember, simpler is better. Plus, giving Imperial Guard a greater power-weapons-per-squad density than Space Marines is silly.

This is only a problem because chainswords are not represented in any way. There are practically entire books dedicated, dedicated to chainsword dueling, and how it's such a noble sport within the commissar-ery. Personally a proponent of chainswords being in the game somewhere.

chrisrawr wrote:This is only a problem because chainswords are not represented in any way. There are practically entire books dedicated, dedicated to chainsword dueling, and how it's such a noble sport within the commissar-ery. Personally a proponent of chainswords being in the game somewhere.

Yep, the only two things you can have in CC are basically rending or power weapons. Improving strength makes them imabalanced vs monsterous creatures, it's difficult to make humans effective in close combat vs MEQ and balance it point and fluff wise.

DarknessEternal wrote:What about current Platoons isn't assault capable?

That idea is turrible.

Assaulting with current platoons simply requires taking bodies at the expense of guns. Full Conscript platoons and the like.

"Remember, if your enemy looks across the field and thinks 'there's no way I can kill all of that', you've already won."

While I think having an assault 'possible' Guard blob is a good idea, just don't do it with power weapons. The twin-linked heavy flamer and Las Cutter seem a pretty good fit, but instead of throwing CCW's into their hands, give them shotguns/carbines rule that counts as an additional CCW in assault:

Shotguns/Las Carbines/Auto-Carbines: Assault 2, 12", S3, AP-, Counts as an additional CCW in assault.

Then the only thing would be bumping up their cost a point or two. The Guard Blobs could take them as whole whole for maybe 10 points a squad.

As for the Doctrines, you could really replace Forward Sentries with Combat Engineers; give them smoke grenades that make enemy models strike at I1 the first round of combat and a couple Demolition Charges.

Sounds good. You're right, the number of power weapons is kind of overkill but I thought it would be ok because a guardsman is only WS3 S3 and I3 meaning not many will actually hit, particularly before the guys they're fighting are beating them around like ragdolls.

Also with melee conscripts it seems kind of fluffy to have just a mob of guys the IG depudized thrown into a fray, just piling on weak attacks and sandblasting bigger things to death

Buy a Commisar with a power weapon. Buy power weapons for all the sergeants. There, you now have an assault platoon.

Seriously, this already exists.

I am personally more interested in the heavy weapon squad equivalent with 3 heavy flamers.

DarknessEternal wrote:Buy a Commisar with a power weapon. Buy power weapons for all the sergeants. There, you now have an assault platoon.

Seriously, this already exists.

K now I fly over your blob and assault you from the back.

K now I assault you with wytches.

K now 45pt killa kans.

Blood Talons.

Wraithlord.

Any AV11 front walker

75 points of kroot

10 sisters of battle with a couple flamers


Seriously, almost anything can chew through this. It's a gimmick idea meant to play on the weaknesses of a few poorly balanced 'anti-meta' lists.
And sure you might be stubborn, but that just means I get to munch you for a bit longer.

Assault from the back: Sure. Fine. How badly do you think you'll get shot up by the rest of the army on the way?

Wyches: How many? Sixty Wyches? That's your full Troops allotment there. Guard can put a hundred and fifty men on the table with one Troops choice. Are you still so confident of your Wyches' victory? How are you going to get them to close-combat without being chewed up by the blob squad's guns or it's supporting fire?

Kans/Blood Talons: Grenades on everyone, power fists on Commissar/officer.

Wraithlord: It has two Attacks. Assault it with one squad. There. It will never get anywhere or do anything for the rest of the game unless it gets a supporting assault. Congratulation. You've neutralized a 100+-pt-model with a 50-pt Guard squad.

AV11 front walker: Again, grenades. Volume of attacks will handle the whole 'roll against WS to plant' problem.

Kroot: How are you proposing to get into assault without getting shot to bits by the blob squad/their fire support?

10 Sisters with two flamers: Lasguns. Lots and lots of lasguns.

The point of the Guard assault unit in the current Codex isn't to kill stuff per se, it's to make sure all the stuff doesn't kill you. If the other guy's running an assault army, a thick wall of melee grunts in between them and the tanks can make the difference between life and death.

DarknessEternal wrote:Buy a Commisar with a power weapon. Buy power weapons for all the sergeants. There, you now have an assault platoon.

Seriously, this already exists.

I think you're confusing the Tar Pits of Today with being an 'Assault' Platoon... I'm not saying they don't win at assaults, but they usually win/lose through attrition...

You obviously haven't seen those 'Tar Pits' tear through their opponents. Those 'Tar Pits' are pretty nasty attrition machines.

pretre wrote:You obviously haven't seen those 'Tar Pits' tear through their opponents. Those 'Tar Pits' are pretty nasty attrition machines.

I have seen Blobs in action, but I wouldn't call them 'Assault' Platoons for the sake of them being able to bog down an enemy with numbers for two-three turns. What comes to my mind in 'Assault' Platoons is winning a majority of assaults on the first turn, through actual combat and not throwing bodies at the blades...

You want a platoon of normal humans to take down superhuman armored marines, giant ork killers, daemons, aeons-old eldar, etc so on in the first turn? You might be asking a bit much of your guard.