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So do you consider the Vindicare to be the same thing as Marine Snipers?
Illic the same as Aeldari Rangers?
Jackal Alphus and Sanctus the same thing?

One unit(Ratlings) would be devoted solely to slinging sniper rounds downrange as a blobbed up unit of 10 models, with evasion traits.

The other Regimental unit would be multifunction, bought in smaller numbers(6 wounds across 3 bases, deployable as 3 individual units) and potentially have a buffing mechanism that can be utilized by friendly units. Ideally, one could take this opportunity to also further differentiate things by digging into the lore and bringing the "Hellshot" rifle up.

The "Hellshot" was an antimaterial rifle, basically a stripped down lascannon that was manportable but required a bipod to be steadied for firing.

Boosting the stat for a sniper rifle and making it a Guard heavy weapon option would be fine. Just stick two guys on a base like we did for lots of the old metals. Could say perhaps that the option is for a sniper rifle and vox if you want to talk about spotting and stuff.

Then give it a decent profile and have it as a cheap 5 point heavy weapon option. Maybe something like

Add to heavy weapon options
5 points - Hotshot Long Las and Vox-caster

Hotshot Long Las 36" Heavy 1 Str3 Sv -2 D2
Special rules - Sniper, ignore the 'Look Out, Sir' rule. Spotter, add 1 to that attack’s hit roll. Targets do not receive the benefits of cover against attacks made with this weapon. Headshot, an unmodified wound roll of 6 inflicts 1 mortal wound on the target in addition to its normal damage.

Note I feel heavy weapon squads that start the game on the table should be able to say they are entrenched and get the benefit of being in light cover until they move, otherwise the three element squad is just too vulnerable for their cost.

Likewise the old splitting off the heavy weapon team, while vaguely real world, should be abstracted away in 40k and is too fiddly, especially now squads can split fire.

(As an aside the vox-caster rule should be a lot more straightforward - friendly (regiment) officers within 3 inches can issue orders to any (regiment) squad with a vox-caster)

Combat Squad is literally a thing for Marines.

Nothing saying we can't get a Heavy Weapon Team only version for Guard.

Splitting into two five man squads is slightly abd noticeably different from splitting off 2 men though. And 2 Guardsmen at that.

I see this as achieving nothing other than being bothersome as people are forced to fire 3 bolter over here, 3 bolter over there, and 3 bolter over there.
That's just tripled the dice rolling for your opponent for no significant benefit.

It's not any different than, say, splitting vehicle squadrons.
It's not any different than, say, splitting monsters that come in groups.

Etc. Etc. Etc.

What it "achieves" is giving Guard a way to remain a "horde" army while allowing for an actual increase in the quality of the troops and a revision to the mechanisms that have been extremely poorly managed for over a decade.

Transauranic Arquebus is a "fire OR move" weapon. You gonna sit there and tell me that it's harder to use than a tripod mounted heavy bolter with a loader feeding rounds into it?

It is different, because in all those examples all the split groups are fully capable combat units.

A single heavy weapon squad isn't. It's 2 T3 wounds with a 5+ save, it's nothing but a speedbump.
If "horde" do you means "forcing your opponent to roll 3 different attacks every time their unit shoots" then we fundamentally disagree.
Because, to me, that's just time wasting.

I'm not entirely sure why you're bringing up Arquebuses?
If you want heavy weapon teams to be move or fire we can have that discussion, in face that's something I brought up at the very start of 8th! It doesn't make much sense to me.

And there's one part of the issue: you keep using "heavy weapons team" as interchangeable with "heavy weapons squad".

Heavy Weapons Squad is a unit of 3 2W models, with each toting a Heavy Weapon and a Lasgun. Having them be a "buy a unit, get 3 individual units out of it" is far, far from a silly thing. Or are you simply objecting to the idea because "All they'll do is just die because of their stats!"? Because if that's your objection, that's a bit daft.

Heavy Weapons Teams are the components that make up a Heavy Weapons Squad and can be purchased for an Infantry, Veteran, or Command Squad.

Setting Heavy Weapons Teams(because remember! an Infantry Squad swaps out two models for a single Heavy Weapons Team!) up as a thing that get a special rule called "Entrench", giving up their Movement and Shooting for a turn to gain a better cover save for following turns and also making it a thing that Heavy Weapons Teams "form their own unit once deployed" is not going to break the game if Combat Squads or Drones haven't broken the game for years.

I think things you ignore with resurrecting the rule from previous editions are that targeting rules have changed and this is just a fiddly measure for enemy targeting to account for. You also give up easy squad kills which comes to the main utility of the Guard infantry squad, that is they are ablative wounds for your special and heavy weapons if you are taking them (otherwise they are slot fillers and ground occupiers).

Its a bit different with the dedicated squad because they are ridiculously fragile in a point vs toughness way, but the answer there is something like the entrench idea I put above, not making them perhaps survive because the enemy didn't split fire correctly.

Incidentally their fragility is one reason why i think the basic squad should be more flexible but have upgrades priced in to differentiate from the human horde like cultists and make them a better points choice while still having meaningful firepower.

Hell if you won't give heavy weapons squads some kind of defensive upgrade (a squad of lascannon is just gifting points to the oppo) a more multirole squad that covers heavy support and infantry duties would sub for them. Something like a squad may include 2 special weapons or form the two troopers into a heavy weapon stand. A squad may also add a heavy weapons stand (taking the squad size to 12).

My dream infantry squad for (Cadian and similar) guard would be-

Infantry Squad 65 points
1 Sarge - Frags, Lasgun or Las pistol and choice of close combat weapon (cost of weapon)
9 Guardsmen - Frags and lasguns
-1 may be a marksman and exchange his lasgun for a sniper rifle (free)
-1 may be a vox operator and carry a vox (free)
-2 may be gunners and carry a special weapon or heavy stubber (free). Alternatively they may be formed in a heavy weapons team and given a heavy weapon (cost of weapon)
A heavy weapons team may be added to the squad for 10 points + cost of weapon (this takes the squad to 12 men and the limit of a Chimera)

Essentially you get to cover the basic, special and heavy weapons options with one entry and give added survivability to those weapons.

If a heavy weapon squad splits into 3 individual bases, you have 3 individual weapon teams, do you not?

So as I said, each individual weapon team is so squishy as to be nothing but a speed bump. An annoying speed bump because it'll mean your opponent needs to split-fire everything and greatly multiply the amount of time it takes to roll their attacks.

I think one of the mistakes we're making is that we want the guard squads to be really effective. 9th is a trading game, and a basic guard squad is 10 guys for 55 points. That's a nice, cheap ObSec unit that I can put up on a point. I can even throw it away, as losing 55 points is nothing compared to a 90 point space marine unit.

I can Move Move Move! a guard squad onto one of the enemy objectives that doesn't have ObSec and take it away from them, denying 5VPs for 55 points (45 for scions). Even if the enemy squad is ObSec, it's not a 10-man ObSec (Assuming I can get enough models onto the point).

But the rest of my army has to compensate for a squad's lack of lethality, and that's the rub. So that makes my guard squads overcosted for what they contribute, and the rest of my army has to be undercosted, which is really tough to balance.

Having separate HWTs compounds this problem, as I can throw away a 15 point unit with ObSec to take away a point (very OP). But, this forces my opponent to divert fire from a main push and my main killy units (TCs, and balanced), but the IG BS4 and random shots means we're really swingy, either killing everything or killing nothing.

We fill an IG army with TCs because their better BS makes them more consistent, and thus more effective. What I think guard need, including the regular squads, is re-rolls to make them more consistent. I like the Platoon ideas, as having the Lt can provide re-rolls of 1 to wound and enough orders to make squads effective. Taking artillery in units with a Master of Ordinance to provide re-rolls to hit and re-rolls on the number of shots will provide more consistency, and thus more effectiveness.

With BS4, having a re-roll of 1 to hit is about an 8% improvement, to about a BS of 3.5, not as good as a marine, but still better, and slightly less swingy. I think that's where we need to start.

The problem is that everyone assumes Guardsmen are the expendable, conscript meatshield variants rather than the trained soldier variants.

Trained soldiers in a universe of genetic superhumans, near immortal roboskeletons, different flavors of space elfs that have in common that lots of them have trained a specific way of war for decades if not centuries, walking fungi whose whole culture is build around war, space locusts whose whole existence is build around war and killing and literal demons...

And most of these have unarguably better weapons.

I get where you are comming from Kanluwen: Guardsmen are (at least a lot of them) well trained human soldiers and their equipment is quite good if one takes into acount what kind of equipment a baseline human can carry and use. If the universe were full of other baseline humans (like the Star Trek universe for example) I would completely agree that they are more an elite fighting force and not expendable meatshields. But in the 40k universe... I kind of agree that they cannot compete with what they fight against. I find it very hard to see guardsmen on par with the baseline units of other forces (except cultists, genestealer or chaos, gaunts and the lowest of boyz). On a point per point basis: yes, but on a model basis a guardsman should be much weaker than almost everything else.

Weaker in what regard?

Right now, GSC Neophytes are arguably better than their Brood Brother "allies". That's just stupid that a bunch of miners have better deployment methods/shenanigans, access to more diverse wargear, and broadly equivalent statlines to trained soldiery.

Conscripts were a mistake, Guard need to be burnt down and rebuilt. At the minimum, we should be seeing the following setup for a Guard Infantry Squad:

6" BS4+ WS 5+ S3 T3 W1 LD7 5+ Save

Special Rules
One Foot in the Grave:
Guardsmen learn early on to dig in. The galaxy wants to kill you, make it work for it. When remaining stationary, this unit can choose to utilize this as an activation and gain the benefits of being in Light Cover.

The BS 3, WS 3 is the baseline trained soldier standard for 40k (4+ now). Giving the baseline troops WS 2/5+ makes no sense...

Rather than re-rolls I think the orders system is the way to boost, but please god have it cut down on dice rolling not increase it.

Weaker in "when I take a Necron warrior/Battlesister/Marine as normal soldier (as there are much bigger things running around), than a guardsman looks like an expandable neat shield."

Note: 1 guardsman in comparison to one Marine etc. Not 20 points of guardsmen vs. 20 points in marines

That's a kind of silly metric though.

Necron Warriors are literally expendable, but somehow they should be better than Guardsmen?

 Kanluwen wrote:
That's a kind of silly metric though.

Necron Warriors are literally expendable, but somehow they should be better than Guardsmen?

Ordinary, if well trained, human on one end.
Immortal robot built of living metal armed with far more advanced technology on the other.

Yes, a singular Guardsman should be worse than a singular Warrior.
They should also be cheaper-so point for point, they can compete.

 Kanluwen wrote:
Weaker in what regard?

Right now, GSC Neophytes are arguably better than their Brood Brother "allies". That's just stupid that a bunch of miners have better deployment methods/shenanigans, access to more diverse wargear, and broadly equivalent statlines to trained soldiery.

Conscripts were a mistake, Guard need to be burnt down and rebuilt. At the minimum, we should be seeing the following setup for a Guard Infantry Squad:

6" BS4+ WS 5+ S3 T3 W1 LD7 5+ Save

Special Rules
One Foot in the Grave:
Guardsmen learn early on to dig in. The galaxy wants to kill you, make it work for it. When remaining stationary, this unit can choose to utilize this as an activation and gain the benefits of being in Light Cover.

LOL that's stupid. Imagine any other army not doing this EXCEPT Guard. That looks like something that should be a general ability for activation not for Infantry in general.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kanluwen wrote:
That's a kind of silly metric though.

Necron Warriors are literally expendable, but somehow they should be better than Guardsmen?

Uh yes that is correct.

 Kanluwen wrote:
Weaker in what regard?

Right now, GSC Neophytes are arguably better than their Brood Brother "allies". That's just stupid that a bunch of miners have better deployment methods/shenanigans, access to more diverse wargear, and broadly equivalent statlines to trained soldiery.

Conscripts were a mistake, Guard need to be burnt down and rebuilt. At the minimum, we should be seeing the following setup for a Guard Infantry Squad:

6" BS4+ WS 5+ S3 T3 W1 LD7 5+ Save

Special Rules
One Foot in the Grave:
Guardsmen learn early on to dig in. The galaxy wants to kill you, make it work for it. When remaining stationary, this unit can choose to utilize this as an activation and gain the benefits of being in Light Cover.

Conscripts are fine. They just need that Raw Recruits ability removed. Then they'd be individually weaker than Infantry Squads, but are better sources of receiving buffs. 1 order can buff 10 Guardsmen or 20-30 Conscripts.

One Foot in the Grave is stupid. Just bring back the old Prepared Positions general stratagem as an Imperial Guard one. 2 CP and all your Astra Militarum units receive the benefit of light cover until they move for the first time. This represents the army digging trenches, fighting positions or foxholes in preparation of the battle.

Raw Recruits was added for a reason, if anything it was an undernerf.

That reason is because people whined that they had to be able to keep Conscripts as a Troops choice that anyone could ally in.

It could have been solved by simply putting them as Auxilia.

 Kanluwen wrote:
Raw Recruits was added for a reason, if anything it was an undernerf.

That reason is because people whined that they had to be able to keep Conscripts as a Troops choice that anyone could ally in.

It could have been solved by simply putting them as Auxilia.

I don't understand, you say Conscripts are terrible but don't want to fix the very rule holding them back.

Even if they buffed Raw Recruits to a "fail only on a 1" would be nice and make them viable again. Alternatively change Raw Recruits and make it prevent them from getting Regiment traits would be better as well.

Jarms48 wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
Raw Recruits was added for a reason, if anything it was an undernerf.

That reason is because people whined that they had to be able to keep Conscripts as a Troops choice that anyone could ally in.

It could have been solved by simply putting them as Auxilia.

I don't understand, you say Conscripts are terrible but don't want to fix the very rule holding them back.

I've said that Conscripts are a terrible idea. I outright said earlier in this thread that they need to be differentiated better from Guard Infantry Squads. Right now the only difference is a few stats, no sergeant(which isn't as bad as people make it out to be, given that it means another lasgunner for FRFSRF), and larger unit sizes.

Even if they buffed Raw Recruits to a "fail only on a 1" would be nice and make them viable again. Alternatively change Raw Recruits and make it prevent them from getting Regiment traits would be better as well.

They "ceased being viable" to people outside of Guard because of points, not Raw Recruits. People taking Conscripts+1x Commissar+1x Senior Officer from the Index(which is what led to Raw Recruits being a thing, in case you forgot) didn't give one flying crap about them taking Orders reliably. They were mainly there for the bodies.

So make them Auxilia, give them a 6+ save and autoguns rather than lasguns. Bam. They can be the cheap, expendable "Planetary Defense Force" stand-ins that everyone seems to want.

 Kanluwen wrote:

They were mainly there for the bodies.

That right there is why conscripts are viable. 20 bodies on a point take a lot of firepower to delete (excluding plasma inceptors... the 'magic erasers' for 40k), as it takes ~70 bolter shots to delete all 20, and failing that, we still have an ObSec body on a point. The problem is they can't give anything in return besides being bodies on a point. 20 of them, hitting on 5s wounding on 5s is 2 lasgun hits, 4 with FRFSRF. So Conscripts are priced correctly for the body count, just not for their output as they need other units to give them (ignored...) orders and better Ld.

 Kanluwen wrote:

The other Regimental unit would be multifunction, bought in smaller numbers(6 wounds across 3 bases, deployable as 3 individual units) and potentially have a buffing mechanism that can be utilized by friendly units. Ideally, one could take this opportunity to also further differentiate things by digging into the lore and bringing the "Hellshot" rifle up.

The "Hellshot" was an antimaterial rifle, basically a stripped down lascannon that was manportable but required a bipod to be steadied for firing.

Doesn't the Hellshot use autocannon ammo? It's an anti-material rifle, not a las weapon.

Honestly, I wouldn't mind Astra Militarum sniper weapons to be definited as:
- Long-las: 2 points. 36 Inch. Heavy 1. S4. AP-2. D1. Each time you select a target for this weapon, you can ignore the Look Out, Sir rule. Each time an attack is made with this weapon, an unmodified wound roll of 6 inflicts 1 mortal wound on the target in addition to any normal damage.

- Hellshot: 5 points. 36 inch. Heavy 1. S7. AP-1. D2. Each time you select a target for this weapon, you can ignore the Look Out, Sir rule. Each time an attack is made with this weapon, an unmodified wound roll of 6 inflicts 1 mortal wound on the target in addition to any normal damage.

The Long-las would be your commonly available sniper weapon. Available as your normal special weapon, and the main weapon of Ratlings. The Hellshot would the main weapon of a Regiment Sniper Team. Something like:

Sniper Squad: 50 Points.
- Statline: Movement 6 Inch. WS4+. BS3+. S3. T3. W2. A2. Ld6. Sv 5+.
- Composition: This unit contains 3 Sniper Teams. Each model is armed with a hellshot, lasgun, frag and smoke grenades.

Wargear:
- Camo Cloaks: Each time a ranged attack is allocated to the bearer while it is receiving the benefits of cover, add an additional 1 to any armour saving throw made against that attack.
Other Wargear:
- Artillery Barrage: 5 Points. See Master of Ordnance for statline. Blast. This weapon can only be fired once per battle, and cannot be used if the bearer moves. You may only use one artillery barrage per turn.
- Designator: 10 Points. At the start of your Shooting phase, you can select one enemy unit that is within 18" of and visible to a model in this unit. Until the end of the phase, add 1 to hit rolls for shooting attacks made by friendly <Regiment> units that target the selected unit whilst they are within 6" of this unit.

- Faction Keywords: Imperium, Astra Militarum, <Regiment>
- Keywords: Infantry, Smokescreen, Sniper Squad

What does "smokescreen" as keyword do again?

 Pyroalchi wrote:
What does "smokescreen" as keyword do again?

It’s currently a marine stratagem. For 1 CP you can give a squad a -1 to hit in the enemy shooting phase. Makes sense for Guard to have it too.

They removed all abilities like smoke launchers and made them a stratagem.
'SMOKESCREEN' allows you to be targeted by that stratagem (it's given to all vehicles/models that used to have smoke as an ability).