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yakface wrote:
Quick Question guys:

@HBMC: What's a "SWS"?

Special Weapon Squad.

BYE

hasan said it. And I will to. Sentinel are the best close combat weapon you can get.

not because it will kill a lot. (cause it will not)
because it can lock a squad in closecombat forever.

Exemple: a nasty squad of spacemarine just droppod in your line?
Assault it with one sentinal. Voila, 2 or 3 turn to reposition your army

A huge mob or ork? a squad of bike is assaulting your flank?
a sentinal!

Is it me, or would Grey Knights be useful? A squad or two with justicars and maybe either psycannons or incinerators. Why? Because they add mid range shooting with their storm bolters and/or psycannons, and they can rip it up in hand to hand. And they can tarpit for a little while as well. And with the new ork codex coming out, and the possible return of the large mobs hoarding their way up the board, Holocaust may actually become useful! Of course a radical inquisitor and some daemonhosts could be fun. As could some death cult assassins. Heck, an Eversor assassin would be some decent counter charge.

No use.

Counter-Assault has to be taken, but not at the sacrifice of the army. This is why counter-assault should always be cheap, ensuring more points can be spent on the strengths of the army. Grey Knights are anything but cheap.

Not only that, but the Daemonic Infestation rules mean that taking even a single Daemon = death vs deamon armies, not that deamons are all that scary nowadays, but still.

BYE

Big flaw: requires that your environment allows IA units.

Your rough riders should not be exposed to Pod or Deep-striking fire, as there shouldn't be a safe spot to land behind the terrain where you've parked your ponies. And most armies with indirect fire aren't heavily assault oriented (so long, Mr. Defiler, we'll miss you).

Pods and Deepstrikers don't necessarily have to land close when they are carrying termies with assault cannons, or Librarians with Fury to line up the best shots.

Lastly, you are correct about the IA units not being allowed. If that is the case, I use those points for more guns.

Capt K

50 Conscripts + Ibram Gaunt = Tarpit of Doom.

Seems like a good idea, but way too many points and Gaunt isn't going to last long. His IC status is his undoing, focus on taking him down and the unit falls like a house of cards. I'd rather have 2 hellhounds with stubbers for the cost of that squad. Also remember that a unit lead by gaunt has to charge the enemy if they are in range.

Capt K

Stelek wrote:Uhh right. Lots of interesting views.

Stick with the Conscript Platoon.

I can't imagine why anyone would let them get run down, seems silly.

50 Conscripts + Ibram Gaunt = Tarpit of Doom.

275 Points, but boy it holds up well against everything but massive flamers.

Uhh right. Except that's illegal.

It's my #1 pet peeve about (in)experienced IG players. Getting COD wrong would be #2 but there are plenty of others.

Why is the guant conscirpt combi illegal? I know why it's not very good, but why would it be illegal?

I dont know - at a guess because conscripts are not one of the Tanith 1st doctrines.

Not that it matters if you take conscripts and any independent commissar yuou can do this trick. It is genuinely useful for tying up large Forgeworld stuff - but with that sort of junk on the tabletop we are not talking about the metagame here anymore.

It is legal. Guant isn't restricted to Tanith armies, just one of his special rules is inactive.

Yes you can use Gaunt with a bunch of conscripts, but IMHO conscripts are not really counter charge but tar-pit. I think RR'S could be good in this role,but nowadays im thinking about an Inquisitor with lighting claws. What do you think about it?

I love my RR on cold ones. I've also had some success with giving them flamers. If they're close enough to use em, they inflict more wounds total than they would with lances.

Green Blow Fly wrote:Power fists on the officers and sergeants is always a good thing in my opinion.

- G

Uhhh, yeah......
Except that Sgts (barring Hardened Vet Sgts) cannot have powerfists and giving a PF to IG officers is just asking for them to die before they get to swing, as most of them are T3 one-wound ICs. The only place I've found a PF remotely useful is the aforementioned HV Sgt and/or a non-IC Commissar.

Longshot wrote:I kinda hate the 50 man conscript platoon. anyone who brings one of those against me in a tournament is basically guaranteed a victory because it limits the game to 3 rounds while he moves his conscripts a half hour at a time. the shorter the game the better for a shootie army, right?

I only mention this because I've seen this happen a number of times with IG players and their 200 model armies in tournaments - they never finish a game and do well by virtue of denying their opponent turns.

Plus, RR just look cooler!

In my experience this is really very tournament dependent. If the tournament makes it clear beforehand (as in 'Ardboyz and Adepticon) that objective grabbing is priority, and actually follows through, then a Guard player will likely want as many turns as possible. We have no units to jump and grab objectives like speeders, bikes, falcons, etc., so we need the extra time to get to the objective(s) with enough force to take it.

Inquisitor is S3/T3 with 2 wounds. You can make him cost alot of points if you really want to, but he won't kill anyone.

Uhm... not to threadomancy here, but I notice the consensus seems to be "Ogryns are useless". As I've just started using Ogryn (on a random whim, since I had the models nearby) and plan to get more, as they're working rather well for me so far, I'd really like to know why everyone seems to agree Ogryn suck?

Is there an explaination for this anywhere maybe? I'm seriously reconsidering buying more now..

I think the consensus is self-evidently correct. Rough Riders are the IG counterassault unit of choice.

Advantages:
Cheapness: Really a bit too cheap for what they do, Scarab levels of awesome here
Mobility: They should be able to sit behind terrain with full confidence that if anyone assaults they can emerge, fleet and countercharge to anywhere in your gunline
Lethality + lack of sticking power: First round they gut the attackers, then in the enemy's turn they lose combat and get run down. Perfection.

I think the Sentinel is the other worthwhile counterassaulter, and he's mostly a part of the gunline. Sentinels have a few sweet spot targets (scarabs w/o d fields, Snikrot's mob, etc, but also do alright vs. s4 things as a roadbump. It takes a lot of s4 attacks to drop a 2 sentinel unit.

I've never used RR's in any of my guard iterations.

Why someone would think Gaunt is vulnerable at the back of 50 guardsmen is way beyond me.

Ogryns are junk because they die to EVERYTHING. They aren't effective in the slightest, never will be. They're the minotaurs of 40K. Look cool, and suck.

I have only seen Ogryns be effective against Orks but not if thiers a Klaw hidden in the unit.

AlexCage wrote:Uhm... not to threadomancy here, but I notice the consensus seems to be "Ogryns are useless". As I've just started using Ogryn (on a random whim, since I had the models nearby) and plan to get more, as they're working rather well for me so far, I'd really like to know why everyone seems to agree Ogryn suck?

Is there an explaination for this anywhere maybe? I'm seriously reconsidering buying more now..

There are two big reasons Ogryns are considered weak:
1) deceptively fragile. Basic wounds will melt off quick, and Krak Missiles and powerfists will evaporate an ogryn squad in a hurry.
2) Not enough choppy. With no powerweapon, only 2attacks each, and WS4, Ogryn really have a hard time doing damage against most enemies, as they will hit on 4's, wound on 2's, and then give an armor save. Assuming all hits wound, it takes three ogryn to kill a single MEQ.

If you fight a lot of stealers/harlies/lesser daemons/wyches, then ogryn become less bad. They've got plenty of wounds to give up, and those units have either light armor or an invulnerable save. They're good against Orks, but only if there is no Klaw, and who doesn't take the claw?

was looking at the Gaunt +conscripts option. besides getting shot to absolute crap on the way across the board, what's the obvious weakness? I seem to behaving a hard time seeing it.

Also, ocnsidered using indie commie as well, but once you Summary Execution once, you're just running off the indie commies LD. It's a high LD value, but that does not equate to fearless. It seems this would be significantly less effective than using Ibram Gaunt. Educate me, please.

ALSO, IF indie commie works pretty well in the same vein as gaunt, would it be worht it to use a Infantry Platoon + Indie Commie, maybe Light Inf or Drop Troops docs to get a decent shot at them getting to the enemy with more wounds on hand, rather than walking the WHOLE way and getting shot up each turn? Take the command squad with a HW maybe, or whatever other purpose, put them someplace else, just send the Inf Sqds. Say, 4 sqds + Ind Com for tarpit duty; DS or Infiltrate in (assuming it's in the scenario). A bit more expensive for 4/5's the bodies, however those 4 sqds and commisar come out ot 5 points more than gaunt and full conscripts, and stand a good chance of deploying much closer to the enemy with less time walking through fire to do their job of dying.

grizgrin wrote:was looking at the Gaunt +conscripts option. besides getting shot to absolute crap on the way across the board, what's the obvious weakness? I seem to behaving a hard time seeing it.

Why exactly are you marching them across the board? They are a counter assault unit, not an assault unit. They tarpit opposing assault units from reaching your plethora of Heavy Weapons.

The Gaunt/conscript Tarpit of Doom is quite effective. The issue becomes when you make it a point sink-51 bodies will last a long time, but there are ways of killing it. The thing to be careful with is placement of Gaunt-he is an independent character with no invuln and a 5+ normal save, so if the enemy gets him in base-to-base, its probably over for him. If you are playing Black Templars, do not place him anywhere near the Emperor's Champion. So, yes it is good, but it does have some limitations that need to be addressed.

A useful independent commissar is going to end up costing close to as much as Gaunt and will not be nearly as good.

Independent Commissars in general are not too good for their points. You are paying more to place them where you want, but making them Indpendent Characters negates their CC usefulness. There are enough other ways to get good leadership without resorting to them.

Well, they aren't expected to go ALL the way across. I try to intercept incoming assault elements further away from my lines if I can, there by controling where they are intercepted a little more than if the tarpit was just sitting in my deployment zone. Also, I have found that this gives me the opportunity of leaving my fire lanes a little more open; or it at least gives me some options in that direction. Last thing I want to do is tarpit someone in front of a fire base and leave me with all lanes block.

When said "march across the board", I guess I wasn't very clear. I just like to try and get them out there, pre-positioned for the intercept IF the situation is conducive. It is not always so.

grizgrin wrote:Well, they aren't expected to go ALL the way across. I try to intercept incoming assault elements further away from my lines if I can, there by controling where they are intercepted a little more than if the tarpit was just sitting in my deployment zone. Also, I have found that this gives me the opportunity of leaving my fire lanes a little more open; or it at least gives me some options in that direction. Last thing I want to do is tarpit someone in front of a fire base and leave me with all lanes block.

The danger here is that if something happens to undue the tarpit (Gaunt dies, basically) you may be too far away to reinforce the conscripts if they start going down. Also, LOS blocking is always going to be an issue with this type of huge unit-smart opponents will find ways of making it work against you. This can actually be worsened if the tarpit gets too far ahead of your opponent and they can walk some Size 3 monstrosity that you can't hurt into CC. Keeping in mind that you cannot pile into fresh enemy, improper deployment may feed your enemy a giant Size 3 terrain piece in the middle of the board and effectively neutralize 300 pts. of your army.

True. These are just some of the issues involved with this tactic. Nothing's foolproof.

What about 2 little units of 20 conscripts at the front of your lines? They get attacked, they swamp the enemy, they die, then your whole army can open up on them?

Dead Horse wrote:What about 2 little units of 20 conscripts at the front of your lines? They get attacked, they swamp the enemy, they die, then your whole army can open up on them?

You can do that with 76 point HB/Flamer squads. As long as they die on the charge, and you've got no one nearby to get swept into, it works fine.

It just works better if you slam some RR's into the unit as well.

BYE

I like a combo of PHQ w/ flamers, rough riders, and hb/fl squads sprinkled all around the gun line to ensure adequate coverage and decent counter assault ability.