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The IG codex says you can combine IG infantry squads. For a gunline configuration, this has a great potential to get interesting. Making the squads count as one big one makes a vox and commissar much more cost effective for what they do. The sheer number of weapons helps make up for having BS3.

I see two things you can do with this unit- One is as a big honkin' tarpit unit, using the number of men and space they take up to your advantage, trying to get into multiple assaults to protect other valuable assets in your army. Give the Sarges Kraks and PWs, plus 6 grenade launchers total. If you really wanted to go nuts, throw in a special character in there somewhere, like a Priest waaay in the back or Straken nearby. The point here isn't a devastating assault, but more of a pre-emptive/counter assault to tie up as much of your opponent's army as possible.

The other is a shooty unit, making the most out of the 6 heavy weapons you could field. The big disadvantage is that you can only dedicate it to one target. But, I guess if that one target was particularly durable, it might be worth it. Both 'Fire on my command' and 'Bring it down!' would work very well here.

I think you could only go as high as 50. (2-5 infantry squads per the Codex)

the idea could work until you fail a leadership test and get sweeping advanced by a unit of howling banshies or a Tactical squad that made most of their saves.

my point is you better have a way of making that Mega unit fearless, and a vanilla commisar will only work once.

further more this unit is just begging for blast templates.

Vindicators, Heavy flamers, Basilisks, missile launchers, plasma cannons, blast masters, whirlwinds, LR Redeemers, Fire Prisims, Wraithlords, IC dreds...........will all have a field day with this unit. they can either lay down alot of wounds from a distance, tie you in CC for the ENTIRE game and not get hurt, or both.

IC Dreds will especially laugh in your face. not a single weapon the IG can put on a guard squad can hurt AV 13 in CC. and don't tell me you can kill it at range, you CAN melta a dred, but you have a 50% chance of missing and the dred will nearly always pop smoke giving it a 50% chance of surviving.

and the Wraithlord is even worse, your PFs can hurt it on a 6, but that assumes you hit. and it has a few wounds to soak up any fire coming in before CC

Grey Templar wrote:the idea could work until you fail a leadership test and get sweeping advanced by a unit of howling banshies or a Tactical squad that made most of their saves.

my point is you better have a way of making that Mega unit fearless, and a vanilla commisar will only work once.

further more this unit is just begging for blast templates.

Vindicators, Heavy flamers, Basilisks, missile launchers, plasma cannons, blast masters, whirlwinds, LR Redeemers, Fire Prisims, Wraithlords, IC dreds...........will all have a field day with this unit. they can either lay down alot of wounds from a distance, tie you in CC for the ENTIRE game and not get hurt, or both.

IC Dreds will especially laugh in your face. not a single weapon the IG can put on a guard squad can hurt AV 13 in CC. and don't tell me you can kill it at range, you CAN melta a dred, but you have a 50% chance of missing and the dred will nearly always pop smoke giving it a 50% chance of surviving.

and the Wraithlord is even worse, your PFs can hurt it on a 6, but that assumes you hit. and it has a few wounds to soak up any fire coming in before CC

A blob is very unlikely to fail a leadership. They are leaders ship 9 for the commissar, stubborn, can re roll a failed moral check for an execution, and might have a second reroll if the company banner is close enough.

I've seen a 50-man blob take a charge from a 30-boys ork mob and gradually chew the orks to pieces. It look like 3 turns and there weren't many guardsmen left, but they did it.

They had a commissar upgrade character (for stubborn Ld9 with reroll) that made all the difference, because they technically lost combat and had to test every round.

I've been told that 30 is optimal size for blobs, though. So you can take two.

personal fav is

WH army

inducted platoon led by al rahiem
50 man blob unit 5 commisars w/ p weaposn 5 sarges with p weapons
5 attached priests with eviscoratores all out flanking hahahaha

If you are going to throw a priest in, I'd recommend keeping him back a little... he might miss out on the first round of combat, but he is kind of easy to squish. 4++ is neat, but not terribly reliable. And his eviserator can yield surprising results! Commissars are a MUST for 50 man blobs. All the PW attacks from the commissar/Sarge's can have a surprising effect on MEQ's. I've found it a frustrating tarpit to go through in many a game.

thats why I said witch hunter priests not IG priests. They aren't IC's and can't be singled out, in addition also they have 2 wounds a pop

schadenfreude wrote:
A blob is very unlikely to fail a leadership. They are leaders ship 9 for the commissar, stubborn, can re roll a failed moral check for an execution, and might have a second reroll if the company banner is close enough.

A blob of IG can easily lose a CC by 5+, making 9 leadership a nonissue. Only one reroll per roll, by the way, unless there's an IG rule I don't know about.

Just out of curiosity, can a squad that large capture multiple objectives if it spread out?

Gorkamorka wrote:

schadenfreude wrote:
A blob is very unlikely to fail a leadership. They are leaders ship 9 for the commissar, stubborn, can re roll a failed moral check for an execution, and might have a second reroll if the company banner is close enough.

A blob of IG can easily lose a CC by 5+, making 9 leadership a nonissue. Only one reroll per roll, by the way, unless there's an IG rule I don't know about.

Stubborn means they always take Morale checks at LD 9. Also, they can only make one re-roll as normal. So, the Commissar will always activate and execute a sergeant for cowardice, and then you can choose which of the two re-rolls you would rather use.

Gorkamorka wrote:

schadenfreude wrote:
A blob is very unlikely to fail a leadership. They are leaders ship 9 for the commissar, stubborn, can re roll a failed moral check for an execution, and might have a second reroll if the company banner is close enough.

A blob of IG can easily lose a CC by 5+, making 9 leadership a nonissue. Only one reroll per roll, by the way, unless there's an IG rule I don't know about.

Stubborn eliminates any caring about how bad you lost by - roll 2d6 on 9 leadership and you get a reroll (sure you can still fail, but if you do its kinda meant ta be :-)

30 man is sweet and most useful - 40 to 50 is making the template argument come into play - (I can stretch out a 30 man blob to cover all my tanks and take outflanking assaults from either table edge.....................

Squig_herder wrote:Just out of curiosity, can a squad that large capture multiple objectives if it spread out?

Yes.

Wait what's the point of having the IG priest if you're not going in for a preemptive charge?

I would love nothing more than to watch Khârn Sweeping Advance like 80 guardsmen at once.

Wait what's the point of having the IG priest if you're not going in for a preemptive charge?

personally i dont think there is a reaon to take the IG priest. hes overcosted, an IC so he can be singled out and hes another kill point.

Grey Templar wrote:and the Wraithlord is even worse, your PFs can hurt it on a 6, but that assumes you hit. and it has a few wounds to soak up any fire coming in before CC

Ha! You think that's bad, just wait until I point out that you can't have PFs in your infantry squads. Only squads that can get them are CCS, PCS, and Vet squads. Commissars in infantry squads can only get power weapons, no PFs either. PCS commissars can have PFs, but that's it. The only way to get them into a blob of infantry is by taking ICs, which makes the blob completely pointless to begin with from a melee point of view. Impossible to hit vehicles, T 7 MCs. I've said it countless times, and I'll say it again: There is no way to make IG good at close combat.

Now, if you want to start talking about 5 mortars and grenade launchers in a 50 man squad, thats where things start to get interesting.

daedalus wrote:I've said it countless times, and I'll say it again: There is no way to make IG good at close combat.

Now, if you want to start talking about 5 mortars and grenade launchers in a 50 man squad, thats where things start to get interesting.

I would agree about the five heavy weapons and the specials but don't think they are dismissed in CC. Consider:

T7 Monstrous creature hits your 30 man blob w/Commisar.
Said MC does max three or four casualties per turn.
IG Blob will last nearly the entire game losing three or four guys each round.

Even assuming a turn two assault at that rate it will take you four turns to chew through the blob getting max casualties. There are more ways to nullify a big scary thing than to kill it.

OK my point just got even better



Now some people might say that wraithlord is being bogged down by some cheap units when it could be popping tanks


those guardsmen are worth 500ish points, thats a pretty good tie down ratio for single Wraithlords and Dreds to be keeping from contributing to the battle. The fact the guard may fail a courage test eventually is icing on the cake.

is a 5 guard squad platoon blob squad 1 kill point or 5?

If its 5 it is awfully risky to be offering them up to the mercies of a leadership test, even if its a stubborn one you can still fail

Grey Templar wrote:If its 5 it is awfully risky to be offering them up to the mercies of a leadership test, even if its a stubborn one you can still fail

I think it is only 1. Between the reroll and the stubborn, failure is pretty low - something like a 2% chance? Without the reroll, it is more like a 14% chance, which I wouldn't be nearly as comfortable with, admittedly.

If my math is right...

16.6% chance of failing a single Ld 9 test.

2.7% chance of failing twice.

The problem wih a blob squad is two-fold.

1. The unit will always be more points than anything it can tarpit. This results from the fact that the models you're fielding are still guardsmen i.e. have an allergy to bullets and melee and tend to break out in death. In order to drag a unit down ratios of 3-1 or 4-1 are generally required as the assumption is that whatever you're trying to stop is geared towards combat. So you're spending 15-20 points a model to tar pit an enemy not including the cost of any commisars or power weapons which are a far cry from cheap. Add in priests and the unit balloons to ridiculous costs. Even with all of this, the unit still has the whole problem of being guardsmen and therefore not too terribly hard to kill or diminish to more managable levels. For example, twin lash with oblits is pretty common, what if an opponent with these units lash your guardsmen into a flamer template formation and all of the oblits fire twin-linked heavy flamers? Even if they survive they'll be anti-useful for drgging anything down. Also if you're playing against mech guard they just park a vehicle nearby in the movement phase, weaken resolve the affair and gun down 25% of the unit. Rinse and repeat and the monster investment of points go down the tube.

2. So there were conversations about tar-pitting a wraithlord or dread with a 400-500 point unit. You know what else costs that much and can bring down either with relative ease? 3x Vendettas. This is the biggest problem with trying to tar-pit anyting with IG, you don't have to, you can just kill the damn thing and waste less points in the process. IG have more than enough hitting power to mow down any of the units you could ever want to tar pit and in the vast majority of cases it can be done for far less points. A single 140 pt vendetta can drop a wraithlord or dread in 2 turns.

I'd just enjoy dropping biovore shots on them. I would destroy that unit in a couple turns. Wound on threes, 3 shot barrage, no saves, and a pinning check. I'd probably force a Morlae check every turn until they died or broke. It'd be hilarious.

Mastershake wrote:The problem wih a blob squad is two-fold.

1. The unit will always be more points than anything it can tarpit. This results from the fact that the models you're fielding are still guardsmen i.e. have an allergy to bullets and melee and tend to break out in death. In order to drag a unit down ratios of 3-1 or 4-1 are generally required as the assumption is that whatever you're trying to stop is geared towards combat. So you're spending 15-20 points a model to tar pit an enemy not including the cost of any commisars or power weapons which are a far cry from cheap. Add in priests and the unit balloons to ridiculous costs. Even with all of this, the unit still has the whole problem of being guardsmen and therefore not too terribly hard to kill or diminish to more managable levels. For example, twin lash with oblits is pretty common, what if an opponent with these units lash your guardsmen into a flamer template formation and all of the oblits fire twin-linked heavy flamers? Even if they survive they'll be anti-useful for drgging anything down. Also if you're playing against mech guard they just park a vehicle nearby in the movement phase, weaken resolve the affair and gun down 25% of the unit. Rinse and repeat and the monster investment of points go down the tube.

2. So there were conversations about tar-pitting a wraithlord or dread with a 400-500 point unit. You know what else costs that much and can bring down either with relative ease? 3x Vendettas. This is the biggest problem with trying to tar-pit anyting with IG, you don't have to, you can just kill the damn thing and waste less points in the process. IG have more than enough hitting power to mow down any of the units you could ever want to tar pit and in the vast majority of cases it can be done for far less points. A single 140 pt vendetta can drop a wraithlord or dread in 2 turns.

QFT

blob squad is pointless

As an ork player, I would LOVE it if you ran that unit, even if Fearless, as you would get to lose twice as many guys. My burna boyz could drop 15 burna templates and hitting 6 each on a unit that size wouldn't be too large of an estimate. That's 90 hits, 60 wounds, no saves (AP5). Bye bye.

If I get to charge with 30 sluggas including PK nob... 116 attacks, 77.3 hits, 51.5 wounds, 34.5 dead. Nob would kill 2 more at end of round. Even if you were at 60, you'd toss your 60 attacks back, 30 hits, 10 wounds, about 8.33 dead. Id've killed 36.5 to your 8.33, or winning combat by 28 or so. You'd flee or Fearless would kill off most, if not all, the remainder.

Now, you might whittle down the sluggas and/or transports before they reach you, but they don't travel alone. A couple trukk mobz or a trukk mob and battlewagon mob is about the same as the 30-man slugga unit.

Nids could do the same, especially out of deepstrike/sporepod.

My point, I guess, is why? IG is better in smaller units to maximize the different number of targets you can shoot per turn (and have the versatility to combine fire on single units as needed), and a gunline army would be better served to have small, throwaway units to take an assault so that you can pepper them with fire after they win and stand out in the open. Tarpitting would seem to work against you when you have so many good guns.

I find If you put more than 31 in the squad you're wasting points. thirty men and a commissar with PW sarges and grenade launchers comes in at less than 250pts. Sure that's a hefty outlay, but I can't tell you how much fire they draw away from my more effective units, and on the off chance they get a good 1R2R volley in it can be devastating. I wiped out a 10 man Skyclaw squad in one round! When they do get engaged in combat they can deal a good amount of damage before they die with 4 pws. If I'm up against something extra killy I can just take the Commissar as a casualty during their turn and run away leaving the killy thing standing in front of my whole army. The Blob has it's place. Not in every game or for every list, but I find it a very effective defensive unit.

You can't take things in a vacuum. No guard army is all blob squads.

That said, 40 is the max I would consider taking out of C:IG. 50 in the Stelek WH build.

You're right you can't take it in a vaccum, specifically the vaccum of how much damage output you could get from any number of other IG units for the same or less points. Some players want to tar pit the enemy, others just want to kill them. My choice is the latter.

And my choice is to bubblewrap all my really killy stuff (Manticores, HWTs, etc.) so that I get an extra turn of shooting. It's basically buying a free shooting phase (one that you wouldn't get otherwise) that comes with some early-game ranged punch and is a hard counter to Hammernators and MCs.

Iron_Chaos_Brute wrote:And my choice is to bubblewrap all my really killy stuff (Manticores, HWTs, etc.) so that I get an extra turn of shooting. It's basically buying a free shooting phase (one that you wouldn't get otherwise) that comes with some early-game ranged punch and is a hard counter to Hammernators and MCs.

Even so, it would be better to bubblewrap with multiple, smaller squads so they'd crumple to a charge and allow you free shots. If the enemy is stuck in a tarpit, you can't shoot at them.