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.

Apart from troops choice compulsory (pending on which detachment, but generally 2 for CAD), which people can consider a kind of tax to keep the game balanced and fluffy, does anyone here find troops (in any Codex) really worth taking more than minimum required? I mean, troops are versatile, but it's actually better to run specialized armies where each unit can play limited, but significant instead of multiple, but diluted roles. Tactical Marines, Eldar Guardians and Tau Fire Warriors may look good on paper, but they are less cost effective than what other units in the Codex can do.

One thing that bias my judgement is that troops have Objective Secure, which allow them to win objective contest against those that don't. However, if you kill the enemies, they won't be grabbing any objective anyway. I play 1000 point games, and usually by turn 3-4, one player is clearly going to get tabled (we normally play till the end).

Tell me what you think. Thank you.

Given that I run Farsight Enclave i have the fantastic options of Crisis Suits as troops, they are excellent multi tools and fill nearly any fire power related role in the army with ease. Similarlly I will be allying Eldar to my Saim Hann and can take Guardian Jetbikes as troops, which I fully intend to take beyond the compulsary 2.

Footsloggin' 100 Boyz? Yeah.

I would use more troops over being forced to spend points on HQ any day. I wish the requirement was 3+ troops.

Not sure about your games, but most troops are quite useful in my gaming area. They all have their place when used properly.

Objective secured is quite useful when playing maelstrom missions with random objectives each turn.

People always say "what's the point when you can just kill the enemy". In the OPs original example he only plays 1k games. AT 1500, 1750, 1850, and 2k the game dynamics change quite a bit and quite often it's not as simple as just killing your enemy. Some lists can be set up more for attrition, than wiping the table. Necron decurions with lots of troops (warriors and immortals) are very resilient. Eldar lists with a lot of wraith units that have a high toughness value. Objective secured makes these units quite powerful, and only troops get. There are quite a few good troops in the game. I disagree that tacticals fall short of contributing to the game.

Yes, the minimum Troop and HQ tax has become more arbitrary now that everything is scoring.

Other wargames don't resort to required minimums. Rather, the game mechanics are such that bringing no "core" units is suicidal. Massed core units are often some of the best bang-for-your-buck that you can get, and specialist/elite units are used for specific purposes. In 40k, a lot of the troops choices are just overall inferior choices compared to options, and so you have to be forced to take them.

Orks are an example of doing core troops right. You want to take hordes of boyz. As is farsight enclave - crisis suits are one of the most flexible units in the game. There exist Ork or Farsight lists that minimize troops, but most of them include more than the minimum because players choose to. Compare that to Tyranids, where you get things likethe Pentyrant build, which radically minimize the number of troops because the rest of the codex so outshines them.

I like troops in my armies. For Space Wolves, I do like Grey Hunters as they are quite useful, Always fun to charge them into enemies and cut them down. With my au, I realy like Firewarriors are they have cool models and strong guns. And with my Necrons I realy enjoyed having a large unit of 20 Warriors acompanied by 10 Warriors in Ghost Ark and 2 units of 10 Immortals as the main part of my army. (Havent tried Necrons in their new codex yet though.)

I really like troop tactics in games. The shape of a troop blob has a huge impact on which models get to fight in combat, which ones can shoot, or get shot at.

It's kind of like pawn structure in chess. I think it makes the game a subtle, visual conflict, more than just "did my unit earn it's points back" mathhammer.

Always, unless the theme required otherwise (all First Company, for example). Not only does it makes sense to take them from a fluffy standpoint, but they are usually pretty integral to how an army functions (Ork Boys, IG, Fire Warriors, Cron Warriors/Immortals) or decent units in their own right (Tacticals, Grey Hunters, Cron/Tau/IG/Eldar Troops).

Really depends on the army. Usually my Troops are dedicated objective grabbers. We are talking Land Speeder Storms, Jetbikes, Kroot or Cultists.
When it comes to Orks and IG, I really love my Troops. They have solid bang for their buck.
When it comes to SW, I avoid Troops altogether with Champions of Fenris. I use two lone Servitors as my mandatory choice. 20pts tax ain't bad.

But generally, I dislike Troops. They do not feel strong and more like a burden in most cases. There are three Troops choices I actually like. Windrider Jetbikes, Ork Boys, IG Veterans. Anything beyond just can not compete with specialists.

Depends on the Codex. My fifty-point five-man Guardsman squad with Deep Strike, a Heavy Flamer, and a Valkyrie in D99 is fantastic, the five-man Dire Avenger squad in a Wave Serpent is notorious for breaking the game. Most armies' regular Troops haven't been able to keep up with the arms race; Troops with powerful transports (Valkyries, Wave Serpents, that sort of thing) or massive numbers (Ork Boyz, Guardsman or Cultist Fearless tarpit blobs) tend to be fairly effective but most Troops are an objective-holding tax that don't contribute significantly to the flow of the game.

I play Necrons. Yes, I love to bring troops.

Not always. In CSM's and SM's, for example, I have to make the switch for Plague Marines and Bikers, respectively. Vanilla CSM's are worse for the points, and Tacticals can't take two special weapons (WHICH COULD LITERALLY BE THE EASIEST FIX TO MAKE THEM MORE APPEALING).

Yep, in all my armies my Troops are very important.

Necron Immortals speak for themselves.

Battle Sisters are a highly solid choice capable of being kitted out for multiple roles or specialised to do one very well.

Drop Platoons and Drop Veterans are the heart of an Elysian army.

Defiantly, all that lovely cannon fodder... just kidding, their cheaper than the other categories, thus meaning you can have an extensive amount on there (although with armies like SM they're still really expensive) like Tyranids, troops are nessecary to win.

I have based my armies solidly around troops units for 20 years, unless it's something like Deathwing, obviously. Most of my more uniform armies like Space Marines, Necrons, and Sisters of Battle have enough models to field at least three 10-man troops units.

It feels wrong to field my Ultramarines without a tactical squad or two. I will admit to not fielding more then the basic two squads for a while now, but I don’t mind using the two the FOC insists I take.

I utilize the troops from the corsair list, almost exclusively. Between the corsairs themselves, the jetbikes, and the wasp assault walkers, it is a rare game with them where I have not filled up all available slots with them

Outflanking Kroot blobs allows me to grab mid-to-backfeild objectives arguably quicker without a Devilfish tax.

Also getting the drop on Wraithknights with Infiltrate has been pretty funny with 2/2 knights tallied so far

Tacticals mounted in a Razorback.

5x tactical marines w/ meltagun
techmarine w/ combi-melta & melta bombs
veteran sergeant w/ combi-melta & melta bombs
infernum razorback w/ storm bolter & dozer blade

They're like mini-Sternguard. If you run Clan Raukaan and take two MOTFs, you can deploy six of these. Give one MOTF the Ironstone, and run him up the board with the Razorbacks. They'll have IWND on a 4+ as long as they're in-range, and they absolutely destroy vehicles and high toughness creatures with the melta fire. Sure, they're AV11, but I never knew a winner who didn't bet.

If you wanna be REALLY cool, try some scouts in a LSS.

5x scouts w/ camo cloaks, pistols & ccws
veteran sergeant w/ bolt pistol & ccw
landspeeder storm w/ heavy flamer

These suckers can Outflank when deploying from Reserves. Each turn, they can Blind a unit with the Cerebrus launcher (reducing their WS to 1), thin the very same unit out with the Heavy Flamer (template weapons mitigate a low BS score), and the scouts can then jump out of the LSS (which is conveniently an assault vehicle courtesy of the Open-Topped rule) and pile into assault, cutting down the entire unit by drowning them in wounds (because of the WS difference of 3 to 1). If you have extra points you can give the sergeant a fancy kit, too.

Not too shabby for a codex with "weak" troops choices.

I actually rather like troops in every army but my Blood Angels. My Eldar is about 80% troops, Tyranids always have a few good broods of gribblies, Ultramarines HAVE to have atleast two squads of Tacticals or it feel weird and my Dark Angels will be built with pretty much everything being built as Troops because of Azrael.

It's only Blood Angels that I have to use the Deathstorm troop choices to be happy or just Scouts. And I'll just say, them friggin Scouts have ruined lists before.

I primarily play Necrons

my Troops are the backbone of my army, and do pretty much everything to an ok degree in the new book

bibotot wrote:
Apart from troops choice compulsory (pending on which detachment, but generally 2 for CAD), which people can consider a kind of tax to keep the game balanced and fluffy, does anyone here find troops (in any Codex) really worth taking more than minimum required? I mean, troops are versatile, but it's actually better to run specialized armies where each unit can play limited, but significant instead of multiple, but diluted roles. Tactical Marines, Eldar Guardians and Tau Fire Warriors may look good on paper, but they are less cost effective than what other units in the Codex can do.

One thing that bias my judgement is that troops have Objective Secure, which allow them to win objective contest against those that don't. However, if you kill the enemies, they won't be grabbing any objective anyway. I play 1000 point games, and usually by turn 3-4, one player is clearly going to get tabled (we normally play till the end).

Tell me what you think. Thank you.

Well, to some extent it is a "style" thing. I use Lots of Troops (I play Nids) but plenty of others avoid them. They win games by not taking them, I win games by taking them...Potato, Poh-tah-toe.. If I played Space Marines, I think I would want to full strength Tac squads, just because that suits my style (likely I would Combat squad them most of the time).

I like Tactical Marines, I just wish they did more. Scouts are decent objective holders with Camo Cloaks.

Plague Bearers and Pink Horrors are pretty good troops, as are Daemonettes. Bloodletters are so so.

Depends on the army.

Some armies have relatively elite, hard hitting units as Troops, like Grey Knights. I don't consider taking GKT's to be a waste a tall. Likewise, in my CSM army, my basic CSM's are there to give the army some staying power and something other than just shooting platforms, even if they're usually the most expendable units.

With IG, I'm somewhat conflicted. Previously, with the old codex, I really liked fielding mechanized platoons. They went *way* up in cost (up 40pts for a minimum sized mechanized platoon) for zero gain, and it's difficult to justify their presence now, particularly as Vets stayed the same price with cheaper doctrines, however I find myself minimizing with the Vets in ways I didn't with the Platoons, and largely they're just there to metla stuff that gets too close to everything else at this point. My IG I think are the only army I would consider not taking Troops in if I did not have to.

For my DKoK Assault Brigade, the Troops are by far the weakest link in the army and notably the least effective units, but they're also why I built the army in the first place, so...

Demons get Pink horrors squads of 11 for 2 WC that can go to ground for 3+ cover that rerolls 1s. They also get deep strike nurglings with shrouding to get 2+ saves on far objectives.

Also, Dire Avengers with wave serpent.

If IG troops were different I would probably want more, but the units cost too much for what they do and have close 0 mobility and even less resilience.
Maybe in 8th GW will remove all the cover ignoring stuff and fixs shunt, making IG troops better.

- I like troops with Necrons.

- I used to like troops with Nids, prior to the 6th edition book

- With my DE I'm somewhat conflicted. I use a lot of troops, but I can't help but think that I'm using them for their Venoms, rather than for their own merits. Also, I suspect that I'd replace any raider ones with Ravagers, if I owned more Ravager models.

- With my IG, I use a lot of troops simply because I don't have enough vehicles to flood the field with tanks. It's really aggravating, because I really want to use a lot of infantry, but they just don't do nearly as much as my vehicles. I have tried the occasional all-infantry army, but it's a laughable concept these days. My weapons can barely dent units - even en masse and with FRFSRF, but just about any unit in the game can make a huge dent in one of my platoons - and many weapons just remove whole swathes of guardsmen.

SM bike troops are very good unit. Tacticals are not so bad because ATSKNF.

The way I play Necrons mostly, I find myself wondering how many troops I am losing by adding this or that unit.

On the other hand, with Nids, I must admit that I view troops as a tax. 95% of the time we are playing CAD, so everyone needs 2 troops. At least Nid trooops are cheap, and if you get multiple units of Hormogants going they add pressure to the opponent because they're up in your face in 2 turns typically.