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So, alot of people seem confused over how gunline armies work in 5E.

Are they powerful? Yes. I favor them myself.

Are they weaker than they used to be in 4E?

It's all relative. If your opponent has a living wall of units coming at you, and a long assault range...you are in serious trouble as a gunline army.

Here's an example:

Orks advance against a gunline army with 180 orks.

The gunline is made up of IG. They have 8 AC and 6 Lascannons, and for fun let's say 12 HB and 3 hellhounds.

The Orks will take horrible losses moving forward, this much is obvious.

Let's say the Orks lose 100 orks.

They hit the IG lines, and engage 11 squads--and every single fight is tied together (by the Orks being spread out).

Yes, this really does happen because screening to prevent assaults gives everyone a save, so you don't do it if you can help it...because then you have to rely on your point defense, which for IG isn't very good.

So, the IG all counterattack. Yay!

In the end, the IG with their 110 guys kill 25 Orks.

The Orks kill 50 IG.

Now let's add up those modifiers:

-25 to the morale check.

So, odds are you are going to break.

Fearless for any reason? You're dead, since you now get to take 25 fearless wounds.

Now have I missed a step? Do I misunderstand something in the rules?

If not, this is how you kill a gunline.

It's quite a different game.

Ok, here is how I would defend against that with an IG gunline.

turn 1 orks run, I shoot, orks die.

turn 2 orks run, I redeploy to accept the assualt sending three squads up front and spreading them out with the run. It should not be difficult to use speedbumps and terrain to ensure that the orks cant get past those three squads without either stopping to shot them ( win for me ) or assaulting them ( also a win for me )

the fact that they will annihilate my squads 100% of the time is a wonderful bonus for me as I get to hammer away at them in rapid fire range with everything.

And if the rumor about the guard rule that allows them to shoot through their own units without inducing a cover save is true they will get really sick after the new dex, but that is a separate issue.

This is actually something that Jervis pointed out in the design conference at gamesday.

Yes assaulty units can get there faster, but shooty armies not only get to hammer them after the consolidation, but they can use run as well to redeploy.

It is an entirely new game, but IG can play just as differently using the new rules to take advantage of the new environment.

The redeployment is good, but from my understanding of how 5E works, it seems it's just delaying the inevitable. It probably gives you one more round of firing and for that number of Orks, they'll still probably outnumber your CC kills by 30 to 22 (I'm estimating here, I haven't actually run the numbers).

Doesnt matter how much they outnumber my cc kills by, I dont care about cc kills, I want my units to die in cc.

I see defense in depth as very valid in 5th ed. I could be wrong I suppose, and if you just go by pure math it is. But you have to take into account that terrain will rarely, if ever, simply allow the orcs to march up in a 6' wide line and attack across the board equally.

5th edition is all about maneuver, and gunlines can maneuver too. I think that is the real key to the new edition. Learning to maneuver in combat and use that as a tactical force multiplier.

Honestly its the increased mobility coming to the game that has me so exited to get back into it after 3 years.

And dont forget IG are not the only gunlines in the game.

Tau and SM can present a very impressive gunline as well.

I think that remnant squads will actually be of use in 5e. Run them small, with a flamer. They advance in the early game, staying out of the lines of fire (should be easy enough to manage), and use their run move on turns 2 or 3 to spread out enough to prevent the enemy from just going around them.

I agree with what you say, big.

Orks can do sneaky things, like tank shock a couple ork trukks full of boyz through your screen, jump out, get to your second line, and also charge back into your front screen to tie it all together.

End result...bad for the gunline.

Tau gunlines do not impress me.

Space Marine gunlines are more impressive. If they get the Chaos magic sack, then they'll be troublesome. If they don't, that new Codex better be good. lol

I like my gunline in chaos form. Enemy runs forward. I shoot the closest enemy and Lash the next two units back. Enemy runs forward. I shoot the closesst unit and Lash the next two back. Rinse, repeat, win.

like stelek said: tank shock a couple ork trukks full of boyz through to bypass lash

thehod wrote:like stelek said: tank shock a couple ork trukks full of boyz through to bypass lash

1) A "couple" trukks are not hard for most gunlines to kill on turn 1; and

2) How many trukks can the ork player really afford to bring, along with his 180 boyz?

I like the ork horde, and I definitely think it is wonderfully competitive. It's strength is in huge numbers of cheap troops, who are effectively fearless for much of the game - a huge advantage in a "Troops-only" scoring situation. But I don't think it's as cut-and-dried as it has been presented. And I'm certain that (reasonably competent) "gunline" players will quickly learn to avoid allowing an ork player to "tie" assaults together, in much the same way as reasonably competent gunline players tended to avoid allowing "Massacre!" moves to engage fresh targets.

Where ork hordes may struggle is when they must deploy first, as an "across the table" deployment invites your opponent to refuse the flank, and leave an appreciable portion of your army out of the fight for 4-5 turns, and a condensed deployment is both inviting death by template and letting your foe deploy for maximum firing time. Flanking (and Snikrot) may be crucial to mitigate those situations where the orks have to guess where their enemy will deploy.

What I think might happen for the ork horde is that you replace your front-line squads with grots, saving 100-odd points-per-unit. The grots are nearly as hard to kill through the cover saves as the boyz are, and, while not fearless, do re-roll their Ld.

If your opponent doesn't shoot the grots, they're going to risk being tied up, and the grots can hold objectives. If they do, they're not shooting boyz, and you're still taking cover saves.

Those freed up points could allow you to buy a trukk-mounted nob squad or two, without eating into your real numbers.

This is all theory, I really haven't done anything with my orks since Adepticon. I just have this feeling that a grot squad or two will open up some other selections in 5th, while actually creating a target that needs to be shot at, and that helps protect the boyz. Also, if it does end up working that way, the force-field mek may not be necessary anymore, and that saves you another 90-odd points to spend on more killy stuff...

Agreed, Redbeard.

Grots at 19 or 29 are quite cheap, and even though you can smush them to paste...that's Orks you ain't killin.

Orks can do lots of things that are annoying in 5E.

Stelek, Redbeard,

Do you think Horde Orks will have a difficult time in tournament play as it is likely that they will never get to turn 6 or maybe even 5? I will guess lots of draws and few massacres because of time constraints.

Personally, I don't really see why only getting to turn 5 is a horrible thing. If you have a clock where you're playing, you can pretty much tell if you'll have time for another turn or if this one will be the last.

If a tournament decides to try and screw over horde armies by instituting a penalty for not finishing 6 rounds on time (or a bonus for finishing 6 rounds, which is the same thing if you think about it), then depending on how severe the penalty is, they might have problems. But if running out of time is only penalized in terms of what happens on the table, no, I don't think it's a big deal.

That said, I do, of course, think you should try and finish as many turns as possible and play as fast as reasonable. Stalling is not acceptable.

I can run my biggest horde armies in under 5 minutes.

That's the whole turn.

A bad habit from my chess days...do my thinking on your turn, take my turn quickly, and back to you.

Oops, gonna get those metagame police to come out now...

I heard the "S" on Superman's costume actually stands for Stelek, cause he can do anything!

Ok, so you're super-human. I cannot move my horde army in 5 minutes. It has nothing to do with thinking, it has to do with having 200 models to move. And something to do with rolling the dice and counting hits and stuff.

I timed myself at Seattle with my 180 gaunt army.

5 minutes.

Granted, I was beat all to hell at the end of the tournament but I did it.

Was it easy? No.

I shoulda brought pie plates or something to move them on, but didn't.

4 minutes then!

Moving 180 Gaunts in a turn, including fleet, is way easier than moving an equivalent amount of Orks, and then conducing your rather lengthy shooting phase.

Use a bingo roller!

The truck shock does add an element of diffuculty, but I do think that a truly good ig army will be balanced, not a pure infantry gunline. And in that case it should have little difficulty dealing with a limited truck rush.

The flanking problem is an entirely different issue, however I think that concentrating into a smaller center deployment zone and engaging into a 3 sided castle with defense in depth and using one platoon as a fanned out speedbump sacrifice can help that.

Not that I am going to have much chance to try it as I will not be buying guard until the next codex comes out.

saving up for my three valkyrie kits!!!

I don't think gunlines will die in 5th but I think a lot of people will have to rethink their use. With the abundance of cover saves less orcs (or nids or whatever) are going to die before they reach the gunline. I think this will force people to be able to move and redeploy their gunline quickly or to spend some more points on dedicated counter-assault units. But hey this is speculation until we actually see these played out.

I would agree that gunlines are going to be on the decline in 5th. With cover saves becoming ubiquitous all of the fast moving assault armies are going to completely savage the old SAFH gunline army model. I foresee the new vogue for dakka addicts switching to things like destroyer spam necrons, suit spam tau, or jetbike spam eldar... add raider spam DE to flavor.

I really hope 5th puts the spotlight back on rapidly moving flexible armies instead of the "park the tanks and line up the lascannons boys, it's a nid turkey shoot!" mentality that has been dominating for a while.

What fun is a gunline without any close combat support? I take at least 20 roughriders in my IG but with the new rules, who knows how long they will live without getting shot up =). Sentinal Squadrons can tie units up in combat fairly well too imo.

I thought only vehicles classed as Tank could tank shock? Ork Trukks are classed as just vehicles with the fast and open topped trait.

Anyways, as a guard player, I find that the enemy not being able to consolidate into new squads make things extremely easier. Short range weapons like the flame thrower are far more usefull as they will get a chance to fire, as opposed to just getting consolidated into. A few command sections with flame throwers, combined with remnant squads with flame throwers, can put the hurt onto any units that come close. Additionally, I can advance my squads without having to worry about the enemy assaulting me and getting all kinds of additional movement and consolidation moves, because I know I will be able to continue firing.

I find I am getting the oppurtunity to rapid fire my lasguns a lot more, and they do their fair share of damage.

Just last night, I was playing Tyranids. Due to poor deployment of my hellhounds, (they were assaulted to destroyed very early) I was in the hole almost the entire game. Threw advancing certain units, I was able to bring flame throwers against alot of the bugs and kill many. As the hormagaunts were unable to consolidate threw my lines I was able to bring nearly 40 lasgun shots against them from nearby squads, who would have otherwise been tied up in combat from consolidation. I was also able to have many more squads concentrated together, I was not constrained by trying to keep everyone 4 inches apart. The game ended in a draw. Had I been more mind full with my hellhounds, it would have likely been a victory.

Ekranoplan wrote:I thought only vehicles classed as Tank could tank shock? Ork Trukks are classed as just vehicles with the fast and open topped trait.

Reinforced Ram lets them Tank Shock.

It will be a new kind of game, with new things to target #1 and another way to use tarpitting/sacrifical units. But all in all both gunline and horde assult is pretty viable.

What is on the loosing end this edition is small specialised assult units. The ones who are quite dominant at the moment, pretty much like GW always been. What goes up must obviously come down as a burnt pancake.

GW burns pancakes now too?!

Gah, first the bathwater now this?!

That's it, I am going to go play Requiem!

Stelek wrote:
In the end, the IG with their 110 guys kill 25 Orks.

The Orks kill 50 IG.

Now let's add up those modifiers:

-25 to the morale check.

So, odds are you are going to break.

Fearless for any reason? You're dead, since you now get to take 25 fearless wounds.

Now have I missed a step? Do I misunderstand something in the rules?

I believe fearless casualties come from how much you're outnumbered by, not how much you lost the combat by.

I think that's the only time outnumbering comes into play in 5E whatsoever, as it certainly doesn't affect the break test or the combat results.

I doubt a few units of Tank shocking Orks are really going to do anything, especially against a half decent IG army. One shooting phase should be able to cripple that threat.

IG Hellhounds will be a must in most tournament games (at least 2) and they can reach out and touch ork units beyound screens.

Orks don't really have an answer at range for the 2 or 3 Leman Russ varients that will be chuking pie plates at them.

Needless to say, I doubt that IG will be on the low end of the stick when it comes to answers for Horde Orks.