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Is the refractor field worth the 15 pts? I plan on my officers plasma pistol to get some work done, but im not sure if the refractor field is worth it, or if a master crafted plasma pistol would be a better way to spend the points. I only have enough left for 1 or the other.

I've never really seen the use in upgrading the officers that much unless it's a personal preference I'd get rid of his fancy stuff that only helps him. If it IS a preference thing, give im a master crafted plasma pistol

If you're in range to use that plasma pistol, as guard you're probably in trouble. You'll get, what one, two shots off? Now ask yourself, roughly 2 re-rolling plasma shots in the whole game really worth 30 pts?

if those two shots kill 2 terminators....yes

Equipment on an Officer is purely ornamental.

It should never be added to, embelished, upgraded or anything else that might decrease the amount of points you can spend on more men and more guns.

The only upgrades an Officer should ever consider are Iron Discipline, and an Honorifica Imperialis (for your HQ's Junior Officer).

BYE

Yeah, i mean thats usually how i play, theres just so much stuff i never do with a command squad. A fullk kitted and staffed CS seems like t would be a blast, with a priest and commissar all full kitted out it sound devastating.

So what about the infantry HQ are they still better to keep back away from the action? Or suicide. My list is running drop troops mostly. MAy not be perfect, but the fluff for them is as vietcong styled troops so the drop troops counts as them having tunnels around the battlefield.

HMBC is right. Unless you're pimping the HQ squad by placing them in a Chimera and rolling up on an enemy squad and unloaded with the following (see next paragraph), anything on an HQ squad that's not a Heroic Senior, a Master Vox and a Heavy Weapon (mortar or autocannon) is pointless. Hide them. Let your JOs do the crap work, and protect the big guy.

Pimp your HQ Squad

In your Chimera, with smoke:
- Heroic Senior Officer, Power Fist
- Commisar, Power Fist
- Priest, Eviscerator and Rosarius
- Psyker, Honorifica Mundanus and Force Weapon
- Four guardsmen with flamethrowers

Drive up the Chimera on a large-ish squad, open up the back hatch with the flamers on the front line. Drop four flamer templates on squad for multi-wound fun, while shooting your three pistols for the backline (while the Father revs up the chainsaw). Now that you've chewed through the grunts and shot not one rapid fire weapon, assault! Your squad has fourteen wounds on it; hopefully you'll absorb a number of them before getting your chance to go. Fourteen attacks can then occur - four schmucks, five power weapon, two eviscerator and three force weapon attacks get to go off, best case scenario.

369 points. Excessive, yes, but isn't that what pimpin' is all about?

Slight problem with the assaulting from the Chimera.
If you moved the chimera (even just pivoting!) you cant move and/or assault out of it.

bryantsbears wrote:In your Chimera, with smoke:
- Heroic Senior Officer, Power Fist
- Commisar, Power Fist
- Priest, Eviscerator and Rosarius
- Psyker, Honorifica Mundanus and Force Weapon
- Four guardsmen with flamethrowers

369 points.

I love it when the other guy plops down "pimped" units like this.

bryantsbears wrote:HMBC is right. Unless you're pimping the HQ squad by placing them in a Chimera and rolling up on an enemy squad and unloaded with the following (see next paragraph), anything on an HQ squad that's not a Heroic Senior, a Master Vox and a Heavy Weapon (mortar or autocannon) is pointless. Hide them. Let your JOs do the crap work, and protect the big guy.

Pimp your HQ Squad

In your Chimera, with smoke:
- Heroic Senior Officer, Power Fist
- Commisar, Power Fist
- Priest, Eviscerator and Rosarius
- Psyker, Honorifica Mundanus and Force Weapon
- Four guardsmen with flamethrowers

I personally would rather skip the psyker and Priest so I could take some sweet doctrines.

imo I think the whole CC command squad sucks instead to show how much I love them, I deepstrike them as suicide squad OF Course and watch meltaguns pump molten lead. Drop troops doctrine is spare anyway so I couldn't care less. And yes they are 2 kill points, just deepstrike them in a corner instead and make a nice BBQ with their meltaguns.

Ya officers have always just been there for LD and suicide.
I give my Senior Officer ID, a heavy weapon and a master vox and hide him the best i can.
As for Jr Officers, they either plummet to their deaths with melta guns or they get 2 lascannons and sit on a hill somewhere.
Please don't be one of those people who tries to kit out their Officers, it makes me sad.

I've had pretty good luck giving my officers a power weapon (assuming they are not in a drop troop squad). It's not a huge amount of points, and it makes the squad far more likely to inflict some return kills if they get assaulted.

In my opinion, though, a power fist on any guardsman is one of the biggest wastes of points in the game. Strike last at S6 for how many points?. Good luck with getting a 5-man guard unit to survive long enough in melee to get one round of attacks with that fist, let alone more. At least the PW gets to go at initiative.

I've done the super-duper Command Section before. Even added Xenos-Hunters and Hardened Fighters to it. Cost over 300 points (w/o the Chimera), and annihilated a unit of Striking Scorpions on the charge.

Loads of fun. Totally worthless unit. Would never do it again in any sort of serious capacity.

And this was in a 1000 point game mind you - that's a lot of points to throw into 8 models.

BYE

Balzac wrote:I've had pretty good luck giving my officers a power weapon (assuming they are not in a drop troop squad). It's not a huge amount of points, and it makes the squad far more likely to inflict some return kills if they get assaulted.

Assuming they ever get to swing.

5 points also buys your Iron Discipline.

So what's better:

5 points for a weapon that will statistically kill half a Marine a turn, or 5 pointds for an upgrade that keeps your squads fighting after they fall below 50%, keeping your heavy weapons and only scoring units in the game.

BYE

My friends IG command squad gets loaded up on plasma and meltaguns and camps out in its chimera until a dreadnaut or monstrous creature gets up close. Then they unload and put a stop to that nonsense. It's important to keep things with giant pincers from the tank line.

H.B.M.C. wrote:

Balzac wrote:I've had pretty good luck giving my officers a power weapon (assuming they are not in a drop troop squad). It's not a huge amount of points, and it makes the squad far more likely to inflict some return kills if they get assaulted.

Assuming they ever get to swing.

5 points also buys your Iron Discipline.

So what's better:

5 points for a weapon that will statistically kill half a Marine a turn, or 5 pointds for an upgrade that keeps your squads fighting after they fall below 50%, keeping your heavy weapons and only scoring units in the game.

BYE

That's not a fair assessment, as 1) Iron Discipline is ridiculously good for its price and 2) You're not forced to choose between Iron Discipline and a Power Weapon.

Consider this instead: 5 points for a power weapon that will statistically kill half a Marine a turn, or 6 points for a flamer that will kill a marine or two in shooting.

You can justifiably make an argument for the flamer, but I think there are times when it's not unreasonable to pay 5 points for a power weapon. No you don't want to get into close combat as a Guard player, but sometimes situations arise where you wish you had some small ability to deal with a depleted enemy squad in close combat.

most guard players look down on having any sort of fancy stuff on a command squad, for good reason. The more you spend there- the less you have elsewhere. However, having a command squad that can do some damage on the charge is not a bad thing. Advisors are generally a waste, but giving the officer a powerfist may be reducing you by one lascannon, but it's also giving you a fair chance of winning a CC round that you otherwise would not have. Also, those pimped out officers are fun to paint.

The only cost-effective upgrade you can possibly give your Officer is a 1-point Bolt Pistol.

If you want to waste a few points to make the squad slightly better at failing close combat, give him a Power Sword. If you tack on two Flamethrowers to the Guardsmen that follow him, they become a quasi-useful counter-charge unit.

My Command Squad typically looks like this:

HSO w/ Bolt Pistol, Power Sword
Gaurdsmen (4) w/ 2 Flamethrowers
Commissar w/ Bolt Pistol, Power Sword
Chimera

Runs me a decent number of points, but it dishes out 9 Power Weapon attacks on the charge, which follows 2 Templates. Not great, but better than naked Guardsmen.

CK

With wound allocation, I wonder if taking advisors is sort of worth it. I mean, you want that unit alive to keep your squads from running, but with extra bodies and how the wound allocation works you could be prolonging the squads life. I don't take advisors, since I can't assault out of a transport anymore. I'd take them again if I could do that, because they do make a decent counter assault unit when you could counter assault out of a vehicle. It's a shame too, because I love the commissar models.

Capt K

CaptKaruthors wrote:With wound allocation, I wonder if taking advisors is sort of worth it. I mean, you want that unit alive to keep your squads from running, but with extra bodies and how the wound allocation works you could be prolonging the squads life. I don't take advisors, since I can't assault out of a transport anymore. I'd take them again if I could do that, because they do make a decent counter assault unit when you could counter assault out of a vehicle. It's a shame too, because I love the commissar models.

Capt K

I love those commissar models too. Especially the one reading the infantryman's book.

The only reason I even considered putting a Commissar in my army was because a friend of mine bought the Death Korps resin model for me for Christmas last year.

It looks pretty glorious.

CK