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PanamaG wrote:To be honest I look at this new guard codex and I see some decent firepower, but the balance is the poor BS and low toughness (in all regards.) Just because we all love guard and want them to be viable doesn't mean they are going to be.

I look at just this thread and I see things mirroring the last space marine release. People excited that the new army that is their favorite might be good, heck even broken (there are still people I play who think marines are broken LOL) but a few months out of the gate we saw that marines weren't anything to even consider. All it was was a lot of toys, and that is what I think this codex is.

It's unfortunate that in order for this codex to stand any chance vs. demons (and thus have a chance competitively) they still have to ally with DH for the mystics. There is no way guard can beat good demons without that.

I disagree with this idea, I think IG has a better matchup against Daemons of the common varieties (ie anything but mono-tzeentch, that is a tough game for IG) than almost everyone else out there.

Kairos is not a threat regardless of whether or not there is an IQ present (in fact you have to deal with Kairos on your turn since you have to Weaken-Resolve him, then pile 9 wounds on him, so the IQ is irrelevent. A PBS is needed though) and if the list doesn't have Kairos/he's already gone, it is pretty simple to shoot what you can, feed whats left tanks that aren't important, and then shoot them off the table on your turns. There will most likely be 10+ meltas on the table, mostly BS4, to deal with things like Grinders. Bring it Down makes sure it dies though on average 3 BS4 meltas at 6" range will kill a tank of any armor value.

Bloodcrushers without Kairos around are going to take a whole lot of damage from 5 plasma cannon shots per tank, or numerous str8+ ap2+ big blasts. The troops choices are dragged down by rate of fire same as always, and FNP on things like PBs gets mitigated by the same weapons that can hurt units like Bloodcrushers so badly (plasma cannons, demolisher cannons, etc).

PanamaG wrote:
It's unfortunate that in order for this codex to stand any chance vs. demons (and thus have a chance competitively) they still have to ally with DH for the mystics. There is no way guard can beat good demons without that.

Agreed.

Same fuss was made over Marines and they have turned to be not as good as the last codex.

G

Here is the thing about Fateweaver. First most people have not played against the Fateweaver and are going on opinion. The fact of the matter is that the Fateweaver runs away more often that you imagine. One turn of shooting all your guns at Fateweaver is all the rest of the big wave needs to get into multi-charge range.

G

Green Blow Fly wrote:Here is the thing about Fateweaver. First most people have not played against the Fateweaver and are going on opinion. The fact of the matter is that the Fateweaver runs away more often that you imagine. One turn of shooting all your guns at Fateweaver is all the rest of the big wave needs to get into multi-charge range.

G

I remember a game w/ FW and two 7 strong squads of BC. He DS right in front of my LRD w/ INQ+2mystics and laughed off my cannon.

Next turn I fired everything I had at FW and got 1 unsaved wound on it (w/ a humble multilaser). Emperor be saved he actually failed his leadership test.

But the damage was done.

2nd turn HUGE multicharge with both BC units and it was all down hill from there.

Still gives me nightmares :( But at least WR helps (so does BiD!).

Green Blow Fly wrote:Here is the thing about Fateweaver. First most people have not played against the Fateweaver and are going on opinion. The fact of the matter is that the Fateweaver runs away more often that you imagine.

I've run 15 games with Fateweaver and he's run away twice. He's still Ld9--he passes that test 5/6 of the time--he'll run far less often than he passes and with a lynchpin like Fateweaver you can't afford to waste all that shooting to put 3 wounds on him. As the other poster noted, if you expend that much ordnance into fateweaver, he's already done his job protecting the other nasties.

Thankfully Weaken Resolve laughs at the space chicken.

sourclams wrote:

Green Blow Fly wrote:
As the other poster noted, if you expend that much ordnance into fateweaver, he's already done his job protecting the other nasties.

Exactly.

The last tournament (local team tourney) I played in Fateweaver ran away twice out of three games. Maybe we working him too hard for a little Tzneetch daemon.

G

Green Blow Fly wrote:Here is the thing about Fateweaver. First most people have not played against the Fateweaver and are going on opinion. The fact of the matter is that the Fateweaver runs away more often that you imagine. One turn of shooting all your guns at Fateweaver is all the rest of the big wave needs to get into multi-charge range.

G

So basically, you're saying that without a PSB its useless (if you're going to pull the WR gimmick then not even close to the entire army will be shooting him, just a few Multilasers or something)? If that is indeed what you're saying, I agree. It is more about the PSB for beating fateweaver than the IQ. I'd say the IQ is less useful against Fateweaver builds than he is against any other Daemons actually. This is because until Fateweaver is gone, your shooting will be largely ineffective. The IG player can also do a bit to control the multicharges by moving his units/tanks in such a way that he dictates what the Daemons get to first.

And... one of the better players around here plays Fateweaver, 23 Bloodcrushers and either a Bloodthirster or 2 Tongue Grinders (depends on his mood I guess lol) at 1750pts. I know exactly what it is capable of.

Remember that crushers are on dreadnaught size bases. Its pretty crazy and they can cover a lot of ground when the multi charge. Basically what I am thinking is that while IG might give strong daemon lists a go it is still far from an auto win.

G

It is certainly not an auto win, I hope I never sounded like that was what I was saying. All I was saying is that IG seem to have a better matchup agaisnt Daemons than the majority of other armies. This still doesn't mean it's a good matchup, just that it has better chances of winning it than other armies.

I got you Caffran. Now that we have our feet solidly planted on the ground we can move ahead and make the best decisions. I do like this core as it can do a lot of things other armies can't.

G

sourclams wrote:

bigtmac68 wrote:Just remember, the Vindi's footprint makes a landraider look like an old school rhino by comparison

There's actually a lot of problems rules-wise with it, and you run into them in just about every game.

For example, the hull is huge, but the actual base is smaller than a Chimera. Since it's on such a tall stand, you can actually pack in a lot of stuff around the base, and although the hull hangs over it, it's "perfectly legal". Unless GW comes out with some other way to define the footprint, there's a lot of space underneath the model that you can utilize.

I have been trying to find RAW to support that and all i can find is the skimmer section where it says that the base of a skimmer is ignored except in the case of assault. If I am missing something then please clue me in. I can see people going hard on the footprint being defined by the model itself in which case it will be very hard to maneuver on most tables.

its not all bad, it does just about double the size of your Mystic Sphere so its not all bad. ( Sanctuary in a valk is just wrong.)

as for converstions Im just using the predator side sponsons, I have 6 on order. Cant wait to get ahold of them. The nose lascannon is very easy to do just cut off the little range finder above the lascannon, and replace it with the barrel from a sponson cannon, looks great and takes 5 minutes.

I was going to use the Lascannons from the LR Terminus conversion kit but I'm worried that they'll be too big. What is the size comparison with the Predator sponsons? Based on the above pic the ones from the Pred work perfectly.

Yeah, the barrel matches perfectly. I only had one set and used them for all my nose guns so I have not had a chance to model the wing pod guns. I dont see a problem though.

I did think that the pred looked to big until I actually modeled it on model and was suprised by the fit.

This has now been brought up several times, I first brought it up several pages ago, but no answer from Sourclams.

Please answer this question, as it is relevant.


Isn't it illegal to park under models? I dont think you can pack stuff around the base of a skimmer, and thus be under it. It specifically says you can move over models, but not stop on top of them. Is there something we are missing? Every time someone asks this question, it is basically passed over and ignored.

If its there somewhere please point it out, so we are all on the same page.



Clay

Primarch wrote:This has now been brought up several times, I first brought it up several pages ago, but no answer from Sourclams.

Please answer this question, as it is relevant.


Isn't it illegal to park under models? I dont think you can pack stuff around the base of a skimmer, and thus be under it. It specifically says you can move over models, but not stop on top of them. Is there something we are missing? Every time someone asks this question, it is basically passed over and ignored.

If its there somewhere please point it out, so we are all on the same page.



Clay

Yes please I would love to have some RAW to back that up but I can not find anything to support it.

It is a major issue due to the size of the valk model

Isn't it illegal to park under models? I don't think you can pack stuff around the base of a skimmer, and thus be under it. It specifically says you can move over models, but not stop on top of them. Is there something we are missing? Every time someone asks this question, it is basically passed over and ignored.

I'll tackle that one head on and go out on a limb to say Yes it is illegal to park under models. My reading of the rules is that it is quite specifically disallowed for any model to 'end the turn' under any other model.
It is inconvenient when it comes to deployment due to the size of the model, but yes it is illegal to park transports and troops under valkyries and vendettas. If anyone can come up with a convincing argument for this to only mean the hull and not the wings, sponson weapons etc that would be a helpful start in the right direction.

As this is my first post in this thread I'd like to say thanks to Sourclams, not just for taking the time to formulate these lists and ideas but also for being willing to share them rather than hiding them away as many people do when they've developed something new and effective. It is appreciated.

Back on the original core, there is a lot from that I am likely to incorporate into my own new Guard army, so nice work. A confirmation of the power of hydras, the use of Heavy Flamers rather than HB, the mobile melta vets etc are fantastic.

I've seen the lists you have made based on this core and read the battle reports (again, excellent work), but have two issues regarding them. Note that this isn't quite discussion of the core 900 but rather the full 1750, but this seemed the best thread to raise them.

1) Psykic Choirs. They are fantastic, any Guard player would be advised to consider adding one. The problem is when it comes to two - in my area Eldar are extremely popular, and no list I have ever seen doesn't feature Eldrad. Runes of Warding are a massive nerf to any psyker, and 2 full PSBs squads in chimeras screams of putting a lot of eggs in one basket.
Do you have any thoughts on the likely performance of Choirs vs Eldar?

2) Troops. There just aren't enough in your army list. I read the reports, saw their success and entirely agree with you that the damage output of troops is less than equivalents from other parts of the list (CCS with 4 melta > Vets with 3 melta etc) but the moment your opponents adjust to the fact that your Guard is just 3 scoring units and all they need to do is focus, your chances in objective missions drop precariously.
Like them or loathe them, we need troops. You can probably get away with it once or twice because people expect Guard to be packed full of cheap troops and hardly bother killing them, but if I was to play your list I'd take out the 30 T3 men (admittedly while probably dying horribly to the rest lol).
Or am I just being too cautious?

Thanks

I can weigh in with some thoughts on your points 1 and 2.

1. RoW is a pain for the PBS units to cast through. Taking 1 means yo won't be getting WR when you need it. Taking 2 increases your chances of this. If you take 8 pskers + Overseer in a Chimera it is 155 points and you also ahve another tank out of it. 2 units like that is only 310 points, which is not really a massive amount of points. WR won't help you drop the tanks though and Mech Eldar/Biker Councils are the scariest builds Eldar can bring against a mech type IG army. Hydras help you a lot with the Skimmers, but a squadron of Hydras can only account for 1 skimmer per turn. The PSB won't really be one of your star players against Eldar.

2. 3 units o Vets in Chimeras/Valk/Dettas seems like a tiny amount, but if your opponent is going t otry and kill them early they're going to be ignoring some extremely powerful units to do so (PBS, Execs, Demolishers, etc) and will leave themselves open to take massive amounts of damage from them early. Also in a mech style list, the IG player puts so much armor on the table that isn't altogether difficult to hide units of troops behind them and screen Chimeras from incoming fire, or at the very least get them a cover save. I'm on the fence about if I need more troops or not and it is a very important consideration. I just wante to present some of the reasoning that goes into taking a small number of troops (my current list runs 3 units of Vets, 1 in Chimera 2 in Vendettas, as the only troops) in a mech type IG army.

Yup, when you have that much killy stuff on the table then the opponent can't just focus fire your troops. For starters your not charging them into assault you are hiding them so while he's trying to dig them out all your killy units have tabled him.

Really you don't even need to do any maths to spot the potential for a massive tank horde with templates of all types, meltas and dakka backed up by as many gimmicks as you can fit in to spice it up.

Leotilt wrote:Really you don't even need to do any maths to spot the potential for a massive tank horde with templates of all types, meltas and dakka backed up by as many gimmicks as you can fit in to spice it up.

But when you *do* do the maths, then it just gets terrifying

1. RoW is a pain for the PBS units to cast through. Taking 1 means yo won't be getting WR when you need it. Taking 2 increases your chances of this. If you take 8 pskers + Overseer in a Chimera it is 155 points and you also ahve another tank out of it. 2 units like that is only 310 points, which is not really a massive amount of points

Thats pretty much my point; Even two full PBS units have a less than even chance of succeeding if the opponent has Eldrad or something equivalent. 310 points is a lot of points, its around the cost of 4 Hydras or 6 Special Weapons squads with 3 flamers in each or 3 Valkyries or a host of other options.

However, even having said that I'll probably give it a try because when it does work its effect is so game-changing. In a few months when psychic hoods and anti-psyker tactics become prevalent we can all change back.

Yup, when you have that much killy stuff on the table then the opponent can't just focus fire your troops.

Personally if I knew the opponent was relying on 30 guardsmen (veterans or not) I'd focus on getting to them regardless of 'killy stuff'.
Optimisation is fantastic, but this seems to be slicing it a bit fine.

Most of the talk have been about 1500~1850....I wonder if 2500 IG lists would look different. One can do crazy AV14 spam that no one can stop by shooting, and still pack enough men to clog up charges... Probably need another heavy slot for that though...

Green Blow Fly wrote:Remember that crushers are on dreadnaught size bases. Its pretty crazy and they can cover a lot of ground when the multi charge. Basically what I am thinking is that while IG might give strong daemon lists a go it is still far from an auto win.

G

Yes. It is going to be hard for IG to stop crusher spam. Focus on Fateweaver and your one free turn of shooting is wasted. Focus on the crushers and you kill a couple but I get into your stuff with a reroll. Even guard with fists cant manhandle crushers with a reroll.

Edit:Grammar and misspellings. I'm not typing like GBF on purpose

That's why I love my mono Khorne.



G

GMMStudios wrote:

Green Blow Fly wrote:Remember that crushers are on dreadnaught size bases. Its pretty crazy and they can cover a lot of ground when the multi charge. Basically what I am thinking is that while IG might give strong daemon lists a go it is still far from an auto win.

G

Yes. It is going to be hard for IG to stop crusher spam. Focus on Fateweaver and your one free turn of shooting is wasted. Focus on the crushers and you kill a couple but I get into your stuff with a reroll. Even guard with fists cant manhandle crushers with a reroll.

Edit:Grammar and misspellings. I'm not typing like GBF on purpose

3 Hydras and a Chimera average a wound on Fateweaver through his 3++ rerollable. WR before you start shooting him and he's gone. This is a fraction of the army's firepower, and in no way wastes your entire phase. The rest of the army (which could/probably will include multiple execs and/or demolishers with plasma cannon sponsons) is now free to shoot the crushers, who no longer have rerollable saves. 10 plasma cannon blasts (assuming a list like mine with 2 execs) will kill more than acouple of bloodcrushers. I don't think that 1 turn of Guard shooting is enough to kill fatecrusher spam at all, and it is absolutely a very hard matchup for IG (and IOM the fatecrusher list still has higher odds of winning than the IG list). I just think the IG player is going to do more damage than you're alluding to with his free turn of shooting.

Matt-ShadowLord wrote:

1. RoW is a pain for the PBS units to cast through. Taking 1 means yo won't be getting WR when you need it. Taking 2 increases your chances of this. If you take 8 pskers + Overseer in a Chimera it is 155 points and you also ahve another tank out of it. 2 units like that is only 310 points, which is not really a massive amount of points

Thats pretty much my point; Even two full PBS units have a less than even chance of succeeding if the opponent has Eldrad or something equivalent. 310 points is a lot of points, its around the cost of 4 Hydras or 6 Special Weapons squads with 3 flamers in each or 3 Valkyries or a host of other options.

However, even having said that I'll probably give it a try because when it does work its effect is so game-changing. In a few months when psychic hoods and anti-psyker tactics become prevalent we can all change back.

Yup, when you have that much killy stuff on the table then the opponent can't just focus fire your troops.

Personally if I knew the opponent was relying on 30 guardsmen (veterans or not) I'd focus on getting to them regardless of 'killy stuff'.
Optimisation is fantastic, but this seems to be slicing it a bit fine.

Certainly the PBS isn't the end all be all, I hope everyone realizes that. There are things (lots and lots of things actually) that stop it. The number of PBS in an army list shold be mostly related to the metagame and what you can expect to see when you play. It happens to be very powerful against the lists that are currently in the top tier of the game, so people will tend towards using more than one unit. When the meta shifts a bit, you'll probably see less PBS in armies.

With lists like Shep's, if you try and shoot the troops for the first couple of turns then you're letting him bring all of his guns to bear on you. Your army is going to get crippled very, very quickly. The key seems to be to disrupt the powerful shooting for long enough to gain advantage on everything else (this means not shooting troops early on until things like Execs/PBS/Dettas/etc) are unable to shoot back).

Caffran9 wrote:3 Hydras and a Chimera average a wound on Fateweaver through his 3++ rerollable. WR before you start shooting him and he's gone. This is a fraction of the army's firepower, and in no way wastes your entire phase. The rest of the army (which could/probably will include multiple execs and/or demolishers with plasma cannon sponsons) is now free to shoot the crushers, who no longer have rerollable saves. 10 plasma cannon blasts (assuming a list like mine with 2 execs) will kill more than acouple of bloodcrushers. I don't think that 1 turn of Guard shooting is enough to kill fatecrusher spam at all, and it is absolutely a very hard matchup for IG (and IOM the fatecrusher list still has higher odds of winning than the IG list). I just think the IG player is going to do more damage than you're alluding to with his free turn of shooting.

Although I agree with what you've said, let's not forget that Bloodcrushers are stupidly slow. 6" move with no ability to get through terrain faster than an average infantry model means that they have to drop in close, which also means that they're eating free shots from the Mystics before the turn that they actually get shot up. Likewise the Dreadnought-sized base isn't really good or bad for protecting them from blasts; fewer models will be hit on a non-scattering roll, but it's almost impossible to scatter completely off of a full squad. A 'hit' will still land on 3 models, a scatter will likely land on two. Likewise on the initial drop it is by no means certain that Fateweaver is properly positioned to cover Crusher units, and I say this from personal experience with the build.

I would disagree that Fatecrusher has higher odds of winning than mech IG; having played both I know that I can competitively play the Daemons with the Guard, but taking out that many tanks with such slow units when my lynchpin is probably going to go flying off the board turn 1... that's not very good odds. Likewise, Fatecrusher is *not* cheap; max Crushers and Fateweaver alone cost 1293 points minimum. That's a huge chunk that doesn't leave much room for scoring units or Soulgrinders.

Well, I will be testing the matchup pretty extensivel in in the next 2 weeks or so. The list I'll be testing against is:

Fateweaver

8x Bloodcrushers
8x Bloodcrushers
7x Bloodcrushers

Soulgrinder w/Tongue
Soulgrinder w/Tongue

As man Plague Bearers as the rest of the points can fit into the list, in as many squads as possible (I think its like 4 squads of 5 or something).

He likes to run a Bloodthirster isntead of the Grinders sometimes, but I think that the Grinders are much better for him, especially against new IG. If the preferred wave lands, there is nowhere to run, the Crushers are everywhere. If the second wave lands then it is a pretty simply win for IG though (IMO) since its a few PB units and the OotF hinders the reserves enough that the rest come in one or two units at a time. I'm scared of list like this because they put too many resilient wounds onto the table too close to my army to kill quickly. Even without rending, Crushers weigh in with enough attacks to shred through rear armor 10. Rear armor 11 gives them trouble, but against that they stop it from shooting at the very least.

Well certainly let us (me) know how it goes. I think that your army is far more maneuverable and that he's going to have a stupidly hard time putting you down before a turn 5 skimmer objective grab.

I would love to see the BT on the table as a Guard player, because it means 2 fewer Soulgrinders.

Are you going to go for a double corner castle and sacrifice whatever corner he lands more Crushers on? I could see that working really well, as from there you just have to shoot his troops off of objectives and drive circles around him.

At the moment I think I'm going to deploy my IQ in one of the Vendettas and let a unit of Vets walk to try and screen the tanks from combat for a turn. I also think I'm going to deploy both Dettas and use their scout move to get forward and force his deepstrike to land as far abck as possible. I also may try and take first turn so I can spread out and push his drops as far back as possible. Then on my turn I can back up and gain some more distance between me and his force, buying me a turn of shooting. I feel like I want to make my army as big as possible before he drops, so he has to start from a bit far back on the table. Then I can contract to buy turns of shooting, and play strong to one flank after the majority of his army has dropped. the OotF helps this a lot because the rest of his army trickles in rather than comes in chunks, making it easier for me to resposition and push a flank over.

Dont forget he actually has to fail the leadership test. How many Hydras and Chimeras on average need to fire to get through that or to kill him is what matters.

sourclams wrote:Well certainly let us (me) know how it goes. I think that your army is far more maneuverable and that he's going to have a stupidly hard time putting you down before a turn 5 skimmer objective grab.

I would love to see the BT on the table as a Guard player, because it means 2 fewer Soulgrinders.

Are you going to go for a double corner castle and sacrifice whatever corner he lands more Crushers on? I could see that working really well, as from there you just have to shoot his troops off of objectives and drive circles around him.

The only thing getting through 24 crushers though are skimmers. You can easily cover and encircle a large guard army with 24 60mms. Just my .02.

I also think that list would be better if he dropped some crushers for both FW and BT. I also really like the changeling, just brutal against guard, and I think the weaker PHs with changeling are a good trade off for one unit of PBs.