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Sup Dakka. I've been playing gunline guard recently (boring, I know). I've ran into a couple speedbumps though, and I'd love some help. I need clearly to reassess both my tactics, and little bits of my list; though I think it's moreso a tactics thing. That in mind, this is what I'm using:


(Updated down the page in a following post)



So after two very telling games with the above list; I've come to some conclusions.

I am far too anti-mech, I have just about zero anti-horde, and once enemies get close to me, I'm boned. This difficulty comes from a few things; I usually run Elysian Aircav; so the whole "sitting still" thing is new to me. I'm never very sure what to do with tanks, or even what to choose, due to my rarely fielding them. Lastly, I have little to no familiarity with space marines, so I always end up wasting my grey hunters/razorbacks. I'd really like to keep the list looking somewhat like it does now, because the idea seems sound, and I enjoy playing a gunline, but I know I have to make quite a few changes in order to find some success.

In my first game this weekend, I played Dark Eldar, and the jetbikes closed the gap in one turn and absolutely tore through my lines.

In my second game, I played Tyranid Tervigon-spam, and was just swamped by hordes of gaunts that I lacked adequate firepower to deal with.

With these things in mind, I have to make the following adjustments:

-Thin out points in my Wolfguard Squad

-Swap my blob's autocannons for lascannons

-Better protect my CCS (I'm thinking a camo-net chimera)

-I need to swap out my leman russ for something better at anti-horde, while still being useful for light-mech (Manticore?)

-I need to enhance my alpha-strike capability; basically I want a guaranteed first-blood


Tactically, my problems are as follows:

-Protecting my CCS

-Dealing with units that can reach me before I get enough shots at them

-Any Gunline deployment tips at all would be awesome

-How should I be using my Grey Hunters; they ideally are my forward-scoring units

-What should my blob's target-priority be?

Any ideas on how to do this? I'd love some help on the matter. Thanks a lot guys,

-The Captain

First of all you've got too many points in upgrades. For example, why a plasma pistol and sniper rifle on the CCS? You're never going to use the pistol, and a single sniper rifle is worthless. Likewise for the wolf guard, what exactly is their place in the list? And of course Pask is just a point sink.

Second, there doesn't seem to be much focus in the list. You've got some infantry gunline, some air cav, and some marine assault/close-range shooting units. You probably want to pick one thing and stick to doing that, adding all these options just makes you mediocre at several different things.

In terms of specific changes:

Remove Pask, add Griffons. Cheap and awesome anti-horde, and can still barrage snipe against even elite armies. And for the cost of Pask you can bring 3-4 of them, which will do a lot to help you against hordes.

Remove the Valkyrie/Vendetta and their troops, replace with punisher cannon Vultures (replacing the Valkyrie's anti-horde) and LC Sabre guns (replacing the Vendetta's anti-tank/AA). You aren't really making good use of the troops inside, so you might as well bring more efficient pure shooting units.

Seriously reconsider what the SW allies are adding to your list. That's a lot of points invested in something that doesn't help your gunline strategy very much, and I don't really see how they're helping in other ways. You can buy a lot of gunline units for those points, so why not do that?

First off, ditch the allies. They are eating up precious points that are not going toward guardsmen.

Second, you have a vanquisher. If that isn't cause for concern, I don't know what is. Ditch it in favor on a exterminator and give it 3x HB. With Pask, it is 220 points of "everything I look at dies".

Both your CCS are... lacking. Your flamer squad WILL get into assault, yet they have no CQC weapons. Throw in a power fist. Your other squad seems to be suffering from ADHD. Give them a banner, maybe a medic and throw them in with your infantry squads to issue orders/ keep up morale. I would drop the Valkyrie for a second vendetta then invest in either some Manticores, Basalisks, or a LRBTs. You need more anti-horde.

Speaking of which, your vet squad needs a rework. They don't have the range to do anything early on. I am a fan of the 3x Plasma, Lascannon and carapace build, but you just need something that has reach.

I don't really think your list is a gunline. It's ishy about the place.

 TheCaptain wrote:

-Thin out points in my Wolfguard Squad

-Swap my blob's autocannons for lascannons

-Better protect my CCS (I'm thinking a camo-net chimera)

-I need to swap out my leman russ for something better at anti-horde, while still being useful for light-mech (Manticore?)

-I need to enhance my alpha-strike capability; basically I want a guaranteed first-blood

-Get some Lone Wolves with Termi, SS + CF instead?

-ACs are brilliant, they're more point efficient than the other guard HWs.

-That's more of a deployment thing. Give him a LC or AC and a MoO.

-Bog standard leman, Executioner or demolisher would do you good.

Tactically, my problems are as follows:

-Protecting my CCS

-Dealing with units that can reach me before I get enough shots at them

-Any Gunline deployment tips at all would be awesome

-How should I be using my Grey Hunters; they ideally are my forward-scoring units

-What should my blob's target-priority be?

Any ideas on how to do this? I'd love some help on the matter. Thanks a lot guys,

-The Captain

-Deployment. Have him in cover (you have 40 guardsmen and a line, that's not going to be difficult). Don't have him be lots of points, a LC/AC + Standard will do you good. Camo cloaks if you really need them.

-Shoot more stuff. Drop the fliers, you're spending about 500 points in a non alpha strike unit with no guarantee they'll turn up on turn 2.

-A single drop pod into cover. Although since you're wanting to shoot, more shooty. Long fangs + missile launchers will do you good, better than the TL razors.

-Stuff that's in range and already weakened from other shooting. They're cheap units, use them to kill of weakened things.

I'm guessing this is a 2k list due to double FoC ally?


Edit: And the guardsmen post, in mass, with tips! An example of overwhelming posting firepower.

I should have made it slightly more clear:

Grey Hunters are for mobility

Rune priest is for prescience on the blob

Vet squad and Fireball PCS were in the flyers for lategame scoring/situational dropoffs.

Definitely ditching the leman russ, and the sniper and bodyguard in the PCS, as well as switching the valk over for another vendetta.

I'll also be squeezing in a Punisher-Vulture, and am currently grappling with what artillery to put in.

I enjoy the idea of manticores for anti-horde, but am worried about their duality for anti-mech due to AP4; for this reason, I might be considering Medusas


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Blaggard wrote:

I'm guessing this is a 2k list due to double FoC ally?

There's no double FoC, it's 1850

Then the second razor is illegal.

 TheCaptain wrote:
Grey Hunters are for mobility

But with only two small squads of them it's not really much of a mobile element, and isn't likely to do much besides drive up into range of close-range weapons and get massacred since there's nothing else for those close-range guns to shoot at.

Rune priest is for prescience on the blob

I find it hard to believe that this is cost effective compared to just buying more guns, especially when you have BiD and FOMT to improve your firepower without allies.

Vet squad and Fireball PCS were in the flyers for lategame scoring/situational dropoffs.

The problem is that's a non-trivial point sink that doesn't fit very well with a gunline strategy. You want to maximize your firepower, cripple your opponent early, then move onto objectives with whatever units you have left. Holding 150ish points of infantry in flyers until the last turn is a severe drawback for that plan.

I enjoy the idea of manticores for anti-horde, but am worried about their duality for anti-mech due to AP4; for this reason, I might be considering Medusas

The problem with the Medusa is that it's not a barrage weapon, so you have to expose it to return fire. That's an acceptable drawback in a mech list where shooting at the Medusa means not shooting at the wall of Chimeras full of melta/plasma, but you don't really have any other vehicle threats to get target saturation. End result: dead Medusas very quickly.

The Griffon, on the other hand, can barrage snipe from out of LOS, and gives you a lot more anti-horde firepower per point. If you're satisfied with your current anti-tank firepower it's the obvious choice.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Blaggard wrote:
Then the second razor is illegal.

How exactly is it illegal to have two dedicated transports? Perhaps you should go re-read the allies rules?

 Blaggard wrote:
Then the second razor is illegal.

Um...Dedicated transport?

"may select a"

Ignore me, didn't see the second grey box

 Blaggard wrote:
"may select a"

Razorbacks are dedicated transports. Which aren't counted in the FoC. I have 2 troop choices, so I can have 2 dedicated transports. One for each.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:

 TheCaptain wrote:
Grey Hunters are for mobility

But with only two small squads of them it's not really much of a mobile element, and isn't likely to do much besides drive up into range of close-range weapons and get massacred since there's nothing else for those close-range guns to shoot at.

By mobility, I moreso mean objective grabbers, rather than "run up and fighters"

Vet squad and Fireball PCS were in the flyers for lategame scoring/situational dropoffs.

The problem is that's a non-trivial point sink that doesn't fit very well with a gunline strategy. You want to maximize your firepower, cripple your opponent early, then move onto objectives with whatever units you have left. Holding 150ish points of infantry in flyers until the last turn is a severe drawback for that plan.

Fair, but nixing the meltasquad would leave me with my one squad of reliable anti-AV14. Solutions?

I enjoy the idea of manticores for anti-horde, but am worried about their duality for anti-mech due to AP4; for this reason, I might be considering Medusas

The problem with the Medusa is that it's not a barrage weapon, so you have to expose it to return fire. That's an acceptable drawback in a mech list where shooting at the Medusa means not shooting at the wall of Chimeras full of melta/plasma, but you don't really have any other vehicle threats to get target saturation. End result: dead Medusas very quickly.

The Griffon, on the other hand, can barrage snipe from out of LOS, and gives you a lot more anti-horde firepower per point. If you're satisfied with your current anti-tank firepower it's the obvious choice.

The thing being, I'm not exactly comfortable with my current anti-tank levels.

Thanks a lot for all the help so far, guys; stuff like this really helps me see the less-obvious-to-me holes in my list, as well as how I should be using it. The whole gunline thing...it's just pretty odd a concept to play.

How is the gunline 40man blob working out? My problem with that is that it's similar to a death star in so many ways. It can only ever kill one unit per turn, which could be a reason you're struggling with horde armies who can bring multiple large units.
The 3 extra wolf guard seem a bit extravagant for their role. What is their role? There's too few of them to have an impact where ever you send them. Those points add up fast for WG too. If you wanted alpha strike, you could switch WG out for more hunters in a drop pod. I started bringing SW allies, and I find this tactic is similar to the 5th vendetta scout move, but in some ways better since you don't need 1st turn for it to work and you are throwing 10 3+ bodies at your opponent compared to 5 5+. Some ways worse, since that's only 2 plasma guns or melta guns compared to 4, but hey if you're taking plasma, the bolters do stuff too.

List looks a little different now;

Chimera Lascannon CCS

Flamer PCS (Valkyrie)

Lascannon/Plasmagun 40 man blob

Meltavets (Valkyrie)

2 Rocketpod Valks

Rune Priest (no termie armor)

2x Melta Grey Hunters in LC Razorbacks

Manticore

Vulture w/ TL Punishers

ADL with Quad gun

I'm left with 150 points left; not sure what to do with it, and not sure what weaknesses I have. I'm pretty bad about spotting weaknesses in gunline style without playing it;

I've decided to hang onto the Valk-mounted meltavets and PCS for now for a couple reasons; The fireball PCS has won me a few games by being a cheap throw-down-and-burn-stuff squad; and I can't think of a better use for such an unremarkable squad. Meltavets are there because I need 2 troop choices for the guard-half, and it's frankly my best way I could think of dealing with a high-priority tank in the backfield, or a Land-raider lumbering at my lines (which is common in my meta)

Grey hunters are sticking around because frankly I need something out of the SW element that can hold objectives. This is a tournament list, and in tournaments I've found guard stuff gets pushed off objectives far too easily. My hopes are that Grey Hunters will do it a bit better.

As you can see, added the Manticore to my gunline, having reasoned myself into its usefulness in duality (anti-mech/anti-horde)

For my remaining 150 points, I was thinking Long-fangs with 2xLC/2xML, but I'm open to suggestions about what else I could use, as well as how I can use what I've got better than how I've explained earlier.

(Tourney is in three days, so adding any FW stuff is kindof out the door for now.)

Additionally, I'd still love some tactical input from gunline players. Kinda' why I put this here, and not in Armylists; I figured that even though my list is what needs improving ultimately, I could get some pointers on how to use it better so that the changes wouldn't be a huge deal.

Thanks,
-Capt

I'd spend the 150 points on some target saturation for the Razorbacks. Maybe a couple of chimeras and Marbo if you move the points around. Not exactly an exciting way to spend the points though.

I don't know how aggressive you're being with GHs but I find I have to be very careful with them because people know what they're for and they like to shoot at them. The massive blob doesn't draw a lot of fire from my experience except for the really scary things like flamers and big blasts. So you need to hide those GHs.

What else do you have to deal with Land Raiders? My melta-vets fluff it every time they're called on to open one up and those GHs won't want to get anywhere near a LR filled with nasty assault troops.

Not familiar with space wolves but don't they have drop pods? That'd be a handy way to get those grey hunters in amongst enemy lines, and that's the biggest hurdle a gunline army has. Your grey hunters would essentially fill the same role Ailaros's stormtroopers do, except your guys are tougher, killier, and can score.

They do, for a bit more cost. You could also bring some Long Fangs for a 3rd, empty, Drop pod to get the 2 GH Squads up front quick.

I like the idea of target saturating; I know my manticore, as well as the razorbacks will be taking a lot of fire. Any way to saturate the medium-AV while improving my Anti-tank?

Furthermore, is Anti-tank even an issue? It feels like it to me. Right now all my AT is in the Lascannons (CCS, blob, and Razorbacks) and the meltavets. Not much, but I do feel better about my coverage of the anti-horde areas.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Or should I actually saturate with more infantry, so my blob doesn't end up soaking a ton of shots and getting wiped? That would be equally bad.

If you want anti horde, yet also want to be able to deal with vehicles, I would suggest a pair of vannila russes; they apsolutely murder infantry in the open, can kill parking lots and have av14
Also, you want a few more scoring units, as with the lack of cover in 6th, your uberblob will die quite often, and a couple of valk mounted squads just won't cut it
Also, the master of ordinance is killer paired with a lascannon CCS.
Also meltabombs may help on your infanty squads

If you're running razors, likegriddlelol said, you need some target saturation, or else they'll get focus fired to death

The 40man blob can retain most of its effectiveness even if it's getting shot constantly. Being able to go to ground and jump straight but up is horribly disheartening for people to see and keeps them from taking too much damage.

Your anti-tank is pretty good. The punishers should be able to handle stuff, coupled with the manticore and a gak ton of twinlinked lascannons.

I'm not sure how you would saturate with infantry without getting something pretty weak that could potentially run. Another platoon running in at 130 with no upgrades wouldn't be scary, or a single vet squad with plasma and LC to mimic the blob? I guess you could take HWSs, they draw fire.

I think the biggest problem you're having with your gunline is that it isn't a gunline. I mean, at 1850 points, you're looking at 4 lascannons and a manticore, and that's pretty much all of the long-range shooting you're doing. Perhaps some of the problems that you're having stem from the fact that the list you've built isn't behaving like the list you thought you built.

If what you want to do is gunline, then I'd drop the allies altogether so that you can get some artillery in there. Also, the hybrid air-cav leaves something to be desired. If you swapped them over to chimeras instead, you'd not only have more armor to keep your heavy hitters alive better, but you'd also have more points for more heavy hitters. Alternately, you can go a foot route and get rid of all of your non-heavy-support vehicles straight away.

If what you want to do is have a mobile force, though, then I'd ditch the illusion of being a gunline. Remove the allies altogether, or put them in drop pods, but don't try to half-ass it. If you got rid of the allies, you'd be able to afford more fliers and more troops, or some stormtroopers, or an al'rahem outflanking squad, or at least some outflanking harker vets or something. If you're going to go big with offensive mobility, then go big. I wouldn't even bother with the manticore here.

 TheCaptain wrote:
By mobility, I moreso mean objective grabbers, rather than "run up and fighters"

The problem is that they're only 5-man squads, so they aren't very consistent as objective holders. You might as well just save some points and take Chimeras for some of your squads (even if you combine the squads and don't use the Chimera you can just hold them in reserve and pick up a scoring unit late in the game).

Fair, but nixing the meltasquad would leave me with my one squad of reliable anti-AV14. Solutions?

More lascannons.

The thing being, I'm not exactly comfortable with my current anti-tank levels.

IMO you should still look elsewhere for your anti-tank. Look at it this way: as pure infantry IG opposing lascannons have nothing useful to shoot at, they just spend the whole game killing single meatshield guardsmen at a point efficiency way worse than even basic infantry guns. On the other hand if you include a Medusa or three suddenly those lascannons have something effective to shoot at and justify their point cost. And since you only have a small number of valid targets for them your Medusas are going to take concentrated firepower and explode.

 Ailaros wrote:
I think the biggest problem you're having with your gunline is that it isn't a gunline. I mean, at 1850 points, you're looking at 4 lascannons and a manticore, and that's pretty much all of the long-range shooting you're doing. Perhaps some of the problems that you're having stem from the fact that the list you've built isn't behaving like the list you thought you built.

I feel like I agree with you, based on my performance, but I supposed I would have expected it to be a bit better.

It's moreso

1 CCS Lascannon (TL'd with BiD)

4 IS Lascannons (TL'd with Prescience)

2 Razorback Lascannons (TL'd)

Quad Gun (forgot to write this+the Defense line into the update)

Manticore

and what I'm leaning towards dropping those 150 pts on is 2xML/2xLC Longfangs.

I guess my question is; is all that really not enough for a Gunline + Flyers? I suppose I thought I could get away with less guns because they'd all be twin-linked, allowing me to concentrate some points on flyers, but I'm getting a lot of vibes that I'm wrong.

It feels wierd, like you're trying to do 3 things at once. You're trying to have aggressive space marines, and drop troops, and a gunline. Maybe instead of doing 3 things kinda sorta well, you should focus on 2 things and do them REALLY well. Agressive marines/drop troops, gunline/droptroops, Spess mehreen/gunline, etc.

I always found that trying to do too many things at once tended to have bad things happen. Maybe that's the solution man. For example, instead of trying to spend 1/3 of your points on a gunline, and a 1/3 on airpower, and a 1/3 on space marines, maybe you should axe one thing and pour those points into the other 2.

But that's just me spitballing. I've never used space marines ever.

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
It feels wierd, like you're trying to do 3 things at once. You're trying to have aggressive space marines, and drop troops, and a gunline. Maybe instead of doing 3 things kinda sorta well, you should focus on 2 things and do them REALLY well. Agressive marines/drop troops, gunline/droptroops, Spess mehreen/gunline, etc.

I always found that trying to do too many things at once tended to have bad things happen. Maybe that's the solution man. For example, instead of trying to spend 1/3 of your points on a gunline, and a 1/3 on airpower, and a 1/3 on space marines, maybe you should axe one thing and pour those points into the other 2.

But that's just me spitballing. I've never used space marines ever.

I find this to be true as well. I have to work with the models I have, but I find that when I say "lets do this one thing really well" and build my list around maximizing the effectiveness of that one thing, it works better than taking a more conservative, "balanced" list.

So choose. If it's a gunline you want to run, throw points at long-range weaponry. If you want a mobile force, throw points into maximizing close-range firepower.

And also, I think a LRBT would fit your needs quite well. While a manticore is STR 10, it doesn't have that wonderful AP 3, nor is it mounted on a solid AV-14 platform, although either are a solid choice.

Thing is, if you play IG you need to outnumber your enemy. Badly. You've got a smeg-load of points sunk into allies that could go into how many more guardsmen bodies? You've got melta-vets, which I approve of, but without a Chimera they're just expensive fodder. I'm a fan of your infantry platoon apart from the flamers on the PCS, you just need one or two more. Seriously, just try adding a Chimera and duplicating your infantry platoon as much as you can for the points you get back by dropping your allies and see how different your game is.

 Guardsman Bane wrote:
Seriously, just try adding a Chimera and duplicating your infantry platoon as much as you can for the points you get back by dropping your allies and see how different your game is.

I get what your saying; my problem is that math disagrees.

The rune priest costs 100 points and increases the hits that 340pt blob will dish out by 25% (prescience), as well as giving it LD10, and ATSKNF; plus like 300 points of two razorbacks and two SV3+ 5 man squads.

Ditching all my allies would get me another blob, and that's it. Leaving me with 4 scoring units, one of which is a pcs.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh and the rune priest can nullify any psychic power cast within 24" on a 4+.

Like...he's worth it. That's not my problem.

But it is. Yes, fine the rune priest is great. 300 points for a couple of lascannon razorbacks really, really isn't.

I mean, what are you likely to do more damage with, prescience on a blob and a couple of lascannons, or three basilisks? What about two more vendettas? What about 80 conscripts? Heck, what about 9 ogryn?

The problem is that in order to take that rune priest, you've got to sink a huge number of points into what is effectively the most expensive lascannon sentinels in the game. You're getting killed on carrier costs here.

Plus, I don't get why you're taking a rune priest for prescience and better leadership. If you want to do more damage, you can just take a CCS with a standard. Rerollable Ld8 is better than Ld10 anyways, and they can always twin-link those lascannons against targets you'd want to shoot lascannons against with Bring it Down! anyways.

And it costs a fifth of what you're spending on your allied contingent. There are a lot of things other than merely another blob you could spend your points on. I mean, you could even take a pair of foot vet squads with lascannons, plasma guns, and camo cloaks for the same price. Same number of scoring units, same number of lascannon shots, but much more survivable and with a lot more short-ranged killing power.

 Ailaros wrote:

Plus, I don't get why you're taking a rune priest for prescience and better leadership. If you want to do more damage, you can just take a CCS with a standard.

The thing is the Rune Priest provides more than just twin linking and LD. He prevents the 40man blob from being swept, allows instant regrouping if the CCS is dead, gives them Counter attack which is incredible for a 40 man blob whilst all the time throwing out a 24" psychic power denial zone. The RP is worth the points. The problem is, the grey hunters seem too weak for the role they've been given.

That all still doesn't add up to 400 points to me.

It may make a blob tougher in close combat, but it will do nothing to stop them from getting shot off the table, and the regrouping thing isn't nearly so much of an issue with 6th ed morale rules.

400 points for what basically amounts to what a CCS can already do for much cheaper and a couple of lascannons still seems like a terrible value to me,

Actually, it sounds like the classic guard overbuff problem. People don't take medics and camo nets and the like because it's usually better to just spend the points on more stuff, rather than to make the stuff you have more survivable. In this case, if you spent those 400 points on blobs, you could have a 50-man lascannon blob with a commissar. Instead of being a little better in close combat, they're over twice as good. Instead of being a little better in shooting, they're over twice as good at shooting, etc.

I was talking solely about the Rune Priest which is 100pts. The Grey Hunters do have a use, I would just use them differently (i.e. with a drop pod and a 10 man squad), so you can't simply count them as a tax. They fill the niché of actually being able to take forward objectives without being shot to pieces in one turn which guard can't do without slowly moving a blob forward.

In this case, though, it really is a tax. 2 razorbacks and 2 5-man space marine squads isn't a lot for your opponent to destroy. I can't imagine they'll be doing a charge up the field just the two of them, much less surviving once they get there.

There isn't a lot of firepower, there isn't a lot of practical mobility, and there isn't a lot of durability. Put another way, they're not really doing all that much in their current form. And you have to pay a ton of points for them.