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portugus wrote:Ah but if you refuse a challenge the enemy picks one character to not fight or use his leadership (the commissar) stubborn Ld8 is ok but getting risky for so many points. Anyway I have to agree with acekevin8412 that I don't think they are dead. They won't be the unstoppable tar pit they used to, we just have to change how we use them. ICs, we need to start using these guys in the blobs now. 2+ LoS are pretty good.

Oh, you can't use Ld either? Multiple, maybe 2, commissars? It gets expensive, but you can take a power weapon on him too, so it's now all wasted.

Seems to me that shooting blobs are still quite viable, and even have the potential to hold their own in H2H.

1 ) Take moderate (20-30 man) blobs, emphasizing shooting, with one Commissar per blob. PWs seem unnecessary, but plasguns and autocannons seem to synergize well.
2 ) Take a single Lord Commissar in one of the blobs, whichever is least likely to see H2H.

This leaves your opponent with the problem of having to kill both the Lord Commissar and an individual unit's Commissar to break any unit. This double layer of protection should be hard to crack unless they bring massive quantities of snipers. Any close range threats can be neutralized by weight of fire and by up to 12 S7 shots (half at ap2) per blob. That many guns on overwatch should also be relatively effective.

Blobs seemed decent enough in my game against them.
Yeah, the power weapons do drop faster, but with free S4, they do more killing too.
the blobs I fought had an extra 10 men, and two of the sarg's were naked to soak challenges.

Sniper fire is fairly ineffective and killing off enough 1 wound characters to matter. 6+ to hit, 4+ to look out, 4+ to wound, and possible armor saves if it doesn't rend. You're looking at a 3% chance to put a wound on a 5+ save model, in the open. Or, about 1 out of 30 shots.
If you ran 3 full squads of scouts (140 points each), you could expect to drop 1 guy per turn. That's 420 points of shooting for very little return.

What was interesting is that as the blob was grinding down the opponent they did worse and worse against fewer foes. It got to a point where they couldn't get enough scrubs into combat and guy who mattered were dying.

I think the blob still works, but it's worth investing in some shooting, and should you get caught in combat, you'll weaken the foe enough that other units can finish them off with shooting.

-Matt

This is how I plan on running an IG ally blob squad. Its a heft investment, but on paper it looks great.
The Squad
The squad is 375 including the PGs (325 if you use flamers instead). The SW is 120, for a total of 495 / 420 points.
* SW Rune Priest w/Terminator armor
* 50 IG
* 5 PG
* 5 autocannon HW teams

Perks
The rune priest provides the following benefits to the squad
* Counter Attack
* Acute Senses (good if combined with Al'Rahem)
* Counter-Attack
* Precience every turn (re-roll all failed to hit rolls)

Shooting
Since you can re-roll failed 'To-Hit' rolls, the PGs are much less likely to overheat. Becoming twin-linked increases the chance of a LG from 1/20 to 1/9 to kill a MEQ.
Your going to put down enough firepower every turn to do a very nice dent to a 10 man MEQ per turn or kill it.

Overwatch and Flyers
The trick here is that you have TL weapons with Precience, This means that vs. flyers your putting out 3 autocannon hits per turn on them. If they are in range of PGs, you can put a few more hits.

Overwatch is the tricky part.
If you have the ability to fire every gun, your going to land 30 LG hits, 3 PG hits, 3 autocannon hits, and .8 SB hits (from the rune priest) due to Precience -- which lasts until your next turn after casting. This will kill on average ~8 MEQ, making assaulting the blob a lot less of an attractive option. Its also possible that they simply won't be able to get into assault after you have blasted away the front of their squad.

However, the reality is that not all your LGs will be in double tap range, and you will have lost some models from shooting, etc.. At the end your less likely to get as perfect of an overwatch -- though its not unreasonable for you to expect to kill 4-6 MEQ. (or about 10 orks, or 10 wytches). For your opponent, its a double edged sword.

Assault
Once your in assault, you will likely get counter-attack, doubling your base number of attacks. Have a sergeant step up and challenge his overlord bad-ass to a duel, and watch your sergeant get clobbered into the dirt. While this is happening, have your infantry drown him in as many attacks as possible.

If you fail the assault, you will either break away and shoot him again with ATSKNF, or you will not suffer any fearless wounds.

I'm with Labmouse, Rune Priests bring the most to the unit but, counter attack only confers to the models that actually have it.

But the 5+ cover save power and the rest of the normal Wolf powers are awesome and you can depend on having them. Njal would be a good pick, too.

I would also throw a choppy character in there as well to give them some punch.

The Wolf/IG combo is going to be crazy.

I am really trying to find a way for the blob/rune priest combo to fail, but I just can't see it. I'm going to run this list for a game on Thursday:

CCS
AC
Bodyguard

PCS
4x Flamer

5 "Labmouse" IS
PG
AC

Vendetta

LRBT w/HB Sponsons
LRBT w/HB Sponsons

Aegis Line w/Quad

Rune Priest w/TDA

GH x5
MG
Razorback with TL/LC

GH x5
MG
Razorback with TL/LC

That's 1500 points.

Those Grey Hunters are going to have to survive to take/contest objectives. I will probably reserve them. With all that firepower, I may be able to do enough damage to enemy troop units for it not to matter. The big thing I have to remember is to place the line right at the 12" mark for the new DoW deployment so the blob doesn't run off the board edge. Because, you know, that would suck.

Any comments?

bb

Let me know how it goes!

I tried something like that yesterday. Worked great! Only problem I ran into was that the Grey Hunters tended to outpace the IG and they found themselves unsupported. I also ran 2 PG and a PP on a 10 man GH squad. Also like to point out that the Rune Priest with Divination was better than with the powers in the SW codex. Misfortune was extremely useful dislodging units with good invuls and cover saves.

The blob Labmouse is talking about is exactly the thing I also think about. With the exeption of Rune priest upgrades. I would run him naked. It is cheaper and I do not think he will get hit in 50-man blob. If he do get hit, he has 2+ look out, so why bother with termi armour?

btw. My 1000 points list:

-CCS, 4x plazma, PP
1. Platoon
-PCS, 1x GL
-4x Infantry, 4x plazma, 4xAC

-Veterans, 3x melta
-2x Vendetta
-Allies: Runepriest, 5 GH + plasma

CCS and veterans go into Vendettas. GHs will try not to die. Blob with priest and Leftenant will kill stuff.

How about CSM?
Take a big ol' blob of guardsmen with the usual commisars, sgts, special weapons, etc and add in some overkill Chaos melee IC like Kharn, Typhus, or a Khorne lord on a juggernaught with a daemon weapon. That sounds amusing...and quite fluffy as I can see the Chaos character goading on some horde of traitor guard like that.

TR

You can only add allied IC to your squads if your ally is battle brother....(for IG this means Marines, Sisters,...but NOT Chaos)

Edit : Ninja'ed

Lothar wrote:You can only add allied IC to your squads if your ally is battle brother....(for IG this means Marines, Sisters,...but NOT Chaos)

Ah. Then I stand corrected. That's what I get for posting at work without my rulebook in front of me!

TR

So what I plan on doing for my traitor guard is to run CSM allies "Counts as" either SW or BA.

If I use BA, I can actually use raptors!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

A Musketeer wrote:I tried something like that yesterday. Worked great! Only problem I ran into was that the Grey Hunters tended to outpace the IG and they found themselves unsupported. I also ran 2 PG and a PP on a 10 man GH squad. Also like to point out that the Rune Priest with Divination was better than with the powers in the SW codex. Misfortune was extremely useful dislodging units with good invuls and cover saves.

Glad to hear it. I hope to try this out this coming weekend.

I would also like to test it, but I can only do that against Eldar player atm. And against Eldar, this is not possible. (no divination, no help with gets hot!)

Trench-Raider wrote:How about CSM?
Take a big ol' blob of guardsmen with the usual commisars, sgts, special weapons, etc and add in some overkill Chaos melee IC like Kharn, Typhus, or a Khorne lord on a juggernaught with a daemon weapon. That sounds amusing...and quite fluffy as I can see the Chaos character goading on some horde of traitor guard like that.

TR

no matter how much it makes sense to have Chaos leading traitor guard, GW felt it was a bad idea to go with the fluff.

Even if you could do it, Chaos don't have ATSSNF and most characters dont have fearless if I am right. the blob needs to autopass leadership, thats the whole point in this cheese

Exergy wrote:Even if you could do it, Chaos don't have ATSSNF and most characters dont have fearless if I am right. the blob needs to autopass leadership, thats the whole point in this cheese

Lol, this is hardly cheese.
Btw. ATSKNF is not the whole point of this blob build. Primary Divination spell is the biggest bonus here! It is build around it (plazma shooty blob). ATSKNF is very good bonus which helps against enemy CC units. So is the wonderful magic protection from runic weapon (4+ good bye, witch!). So is the LD 10 (hello, IG orders and morale tests).

Well, lets face it guys, were talking about a 500+ point unit when including ICs. It can only claim one objective, and can be bogged down for the entire game by a clever opponent.
Basically you assault it with one squad to burn the overwatch shooting, then assault it with a tarpit squad, or a squad that can handle guard blobs quickly -- like 30 ork slugga boys.

Is it a powerful deathstar that can be very hard to counter -- yes. But its a far cry from the draigowing seen in the twilight of 5th edition.

Edit : Runes of warding can also shut down your game, and fast.