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evry time i hear the word carapace armor i hear... no .. more men is better then stronger but lesser men...
but... with carapace armor they dont only get a 4+ save instead of a 5+ save (so they dont get any saves against bolters and ... other horrors that await brave guardsman) they die less so they dont have to take leadership test after each battle... dont know...

Er... about 10:30?

Let me make the call here:

Carapace Armour is a waste of a Doctrine point. Buy more men. You should be in cover anyway, and throwing points at a weakness doesn't make the weakness go away, it just makes your men more expensive.

If you'd like to continue this discussion, please create a thread in the tactics session, and I'll expand on my comments above.

BYE

Part of the reason to play IG is cheap bodies. If you're giving them Carapace armor, you're negating that advantage and the benefit you get from Carapace armor isn't enough to balance that out. If you want 4+ saves, play a SM Scout army, or better yet, just play a power armored army. But carapace just isn't worth it.

I think part of the problem with carapace armor is that you don't save that many lives by using it. My guardsmen don't usually get killed by massed enemy lasgun fire, it's large blast, heavy machine gun type weapons and melee units. Carapace armor won't really help much against any of those threats.

What it will do, however, is limit the number of guns you have on the table to help prevent the above threats. Fewer guns to stop assault marines, kill heavy bolter dev squads, etc. It sucks, because a meaningful carapace armor doctrine would be fluffy and fun to model, but it just ends up weakening the list overall.

True enough, unless the IG player is using an all infantry list. I've seen some do well like that, but not too many. Anyway overall stay away from the evil of the Carapace.

Bastirous, even if the IG player is using an all-infantry list, carapace still limits the number of bodies (and more importantly, HWs) you can put on the table.

And you've better off paying half the cost of Carapace for Cameleoline. You're in cover anyway (or should be), so why spend 20 points for a 4+ armour save that will be ignored by most weapons in the game when you can pay 10 points for an inreased cover save that nothing except for a few weapons can ignore.

BYE

i just said i've seen it done decently, but that's rare and i also don't recommend using the carapace doctrine myself

Carapace has its uses... or should I say, 'use' - singular - in All Drop Troop Guard armies.

And I don't mean Guard armies with a few units that Deep Strike, I mena actual Guard armies that, if they can, start with virtually everything off the table and then fill their opponent's DZ with 100+ warm bodies all toting 4+ saves making bolters (and the like) worthless.

I debate the validity of such armies anyway, but if you were going to go down this route (and it is kinda funny tell your opponent that you'll be deep striking 120 Guardsmen), then look at Carapace.


But always remember, and this applies to the vastly superior Cameleoline as well, that you will eventually reach a state of 'critical mass'. What that means is you will reach a point where the points you've spent on Cameleoline/Carapace armour will begin to eat into just how many men you have on the table.

As I've said before, always consider this:

5 Squads w/Cameleoline = 350 points before weapons = 50 models with a 3+ cover save.
6 Squads w/o Cameleoline = 360 points before weapons = 60 models with a 4+ cover save.

... and then work out which, for you, is more effective.

I'm the type of player who will usually go with the 'more troops' line of thinking.

BYE

Alright well I think its about time I spoke up. I just recently started up an IG army for a escalation league. And I decided to use carapace armor. I for one don't have the money to afford all the extra troops that I could get without the armor, and for another I wanted to try something not allot of people did.

Month one comes around, and here I am setting twenty five guys down on the table twenty of whom have carapace armor. It caught everyone I was fighting off guard, and it payed off wonderfully. Without my extra armor I would have lost so many more games than I have. Knowing that you still get a save against bolters, and the like really made me happy as well. It is those armor saves that win me wars.

I think my heavy armored infantry are well worth the extra 20pts a squad.

Do you think maybe you could be a bit more specific about how exactly carapace won you those games? All I see right now is "I took carapace and pwnt face, saving against bolters is the leet." It does not sound very convincing to me. If you're going to bring in anecdotal evidence, at least make an argument for why this evidence has meaning beyond the anecdotal.

Alright yeah I do realize that i sound kind of vauge. Well being able to make armor saves against bolter's, and pulse rifles was a big part of it. Also a 4+ armor save is a 50% chance of survival thus giving my guys a better chance to save. And also knowing that most of my guys had a better armor save my opponent would have to try, and move his guys with bigger guns into line of sight thus tying up his resources.
PLus still being able to field roughly 100 guys all with 4+ armor saves will give you some room for error. Sure you might not have the 200 cannon fodder men but those left are a bit more likely to make to towards the enemy. Because as my tau playing friend found out. Imperial guard can easily outshoot even the shootiest armies. Also it helped me take less casualties thus less leaderships tests

And why aren't you in cover getting a 4+ save that you can take against any AP value for half the cost of Carapace Armour?

BYE

I carapace armor's defense, I don't normally see enough cover in my deployment area to fit all my troops, so saying all infantry should be getting a cover save is a bit extreme.

That said, much of your infantry should be in cover, and the ones that aren't are still going to die fairly quickly. I have been fairly impressed with the survivability of guardsmen with carapace armor, but I don't think the boost is enough to justify the cost, especially when you are forced to take it for all of your troops. HBMC is right in that it can be fairly useful for drop troops...that's where I run into it (though usually as storm troopers and not a whole army list). My tau firewarriors, who would easily wipe out a regular guard squad with rapid fire, won't kill a full squad with carapace.

Thankfully, a submunition will, so no issue...

Grimaldi wrote:

Thankfully, a submunition will, so no issue...

That's the nub of the issue, in my experience. I won't deny that CA does wonders to provide armor saves from bolters. The problem is that this protection is limited to AP5 shooting, which means it's mostly limited to rapid fire shooting, which IG don't normally worry too much about. Fire warriors are just about the only troop choice in 40k, however, that's going to forsake assault to shoot you more. CA helps a little in close combat, but not against any remotely dedicated assault unit.

My point is that while CA helps a lot against bolters, those bolters do very few of the casualties IG normally suffer.

Guardsmen are just not worth 8 points each when they're given a 4+ save. There are even arguments that they're not worth 7 points each with Cameleoline (as I've said, eventually 'more men' will beat out a better save - your army reaches critical mass).

And not always having enough cover for everyone isn't a good reason to spend +2 points per model (or +4 per model in command sections) to get a save that won't protect you from Sub-Munitions/Heavy Bolters/Battle Cannons etc. Protection from Bolters simply isn't worth that much.

Furthermore, and I'm going to harp on about this again, taking Carapace Armour is throwing points at a weakness in the hope that that weakness will just 'go away' once each Guardsmen gets expensive enough. It's the same reason why taking Hardened Fighters is a bad idea. 15 points per squad for +1WS doesn't make the squad better at HTH, it just makes them worth +15 more VPs when they're wiped out in HTH combat.

By the same token, that +20 points per squad for Carapace is just extra VPs when your opponent kills your T3 W1 models, which isn't hard to do whether they have a 4+ or a 5+ save.

You should never play to your weaknesses - it's your opponent's job to do that - and you should always play to your strengths.

Guard have terrible armour saves. Their troops are weak. No amount of points are going to make this problem go away. The only way Guard players have to protect their troops is by doing one or both of the following:

1. Bring them in such large numbers that casualties are irrelevent (the 'more men' doctrine of thinking that I subscribe to).
2. Put them in cover so they can get a save against everything. It's free, it helps you in more ways than one, so use it.

These two should actually always be combined where ever possible, meaning that the only Special Equipment Doctrine that has any remote use is Cameleoline, because it's improving something that you're getting for free anyway (in the same way a Standard Bearer improves the Leadership bubble that you get for free, and why Voxes are a terrible idea because it's spending points on something you're already getting without having to pay for it - but that's a separate issue).

So stick to your strengths - shooting - don't spend points on things that won't increase that strength - armour save improvements - and use your list rather than expensive abilities to mitigate the weaknesses that your list holds. Guardsmen are never going to be able to compete with anyone - the only troops worse than them in the game are Conscripts and Gretchin - just accept this, move on, and start adding more guns! It's what you're good at!

BYE

This is true. Carapace is a waste. If you are going to pay for it give to a unit that will benefit from it. Like assaulty hardened vets can be pretty nasty if two of them charge marines. However that can get expensive.

smart_alex wrote:This is true. Carapace is a waste. If you are going to pay for it give to a unit that will benefit from it. Like assaulty hardened vets can be pretty nasty if two of them charge marines. However that can get expensive.

If you take the Carapace Armour Doctrine, or any of the special equipment Doctrines, every single Guard Infantry squad has to take it, so you can't just give it to Hardened Veterans alone.

which is why it is such a waste in any guard army.

See Carapace Armour would have a use if Special Equipment was done on a Platoon-by-Platoon basis.

When we first heard about the Doctrines before the Guard Codex came out, I was really excited about the different Special Equipment Doctrines. I wanted to do a Heavy & Light infantry army, with a Heavy Infantry platoon with all Carapace and a Light Infantry platoon with Light Infantry and Cameleoline.

Then the Codex comes out and you have to give the Doctrine to everyone that can have it, making them a complete waste (never mind that 75% of the Doctrines in the book are just utter overpriced useless junk anyway - ooh Cybernetic Enhancements, Hardened Fighters and Xenos Hunters! YAY!).

I was very dissapointed, and it's one of the main reasons why in the Revisited Project that our group is writing, I'm ditching the whole Doctrine system completely and giving platoons a list of choices (so a Platoon can be a Mechanised Platoon, Drop Platoon, Light Infantry Platoon, Heavy Infantry Platoon etc.), with certain ones being compatible with one another (MechInf w/Heavy Infantry, or Light Infantry w/Cameleoline) and some impossible (Light Infantry w/Drop Platoon etc.) as well as making things like Iron Discipline and Close Order Drill just part of the main list.

The Doctrine system, like the Marine Traits systems, are classic examples of GW rules writing. Utterly fantastic idea - a concept that is a true winner and allows great variety and actual real depth in army lists - but their execution of their great idea was, as usual, horrendous, flawed and, inevitably, a complete failure. And GW is always doing that. Great idea, bad execution.

Oh well... it's not like Doctrines are going to be around in the next Codex anyway. Say good bye to any variety with that one...

BYE

I think that the main problem is that well armored guardsmen still aren't an better at killing stuff than a guardsmen without carapace. The amount of killing that IG does with lasguns is only a small fraction of the total killing that guard inflict with most coming from heavy weapons, plasma, templates and ordinance. An 8pt Guardsmen still sucks at killing just about anything.

And 8 point Guardsmen means less Guardsmen overall which means less other guns.

BYE