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MSU BA certainly limits your liability in the shooting phase.

It just provides more threats, 3 7 man DC squads. Will always be more trouble than 2 10 man's. Another thing I do is run bikes now. 2 5-7 man units with 2 priests nets you 4 grav guns, and 4 combi-grav guns. In more friendly games I give them power lances, and vet Sgts, but eh.

Martel...just...just....

So a 2+ armor save, Feel No Pain and a cover save isnt enough? With a 12" move & one of the most accurate Deep Strikes in the game you dont thonk you could secure a cover save most of the time? Nothing in life is guaranteed. That unit is as good as it gets for BAs players. Death Co are great, make a good complimentary unit to the Dante-star or a more affordable alternative. But poo-pooing it as unreliable is weaksauce. Come on frowny bear, stop being our personal, BAs rain cloud.

As much as Martel and I disagree, he does know his stuff. But I do tend to agree about Sanguinary Guard being durable enough to shooting. Recent trends in tournaments have been moving towards more terrain, both in terms of LoS blocking, area and ruins. Finding a 5+ or even 4+ cover save is not hard these days, and dislodging a unit with a 2+/4++/5+++ vs shooting is remarkably difficult.

I don't need to dislodge it. If the Sanguinary guard is cowering in a ruins, I'll just go take every other objective.

The point is that the SG is not durable enough outside the ruins. There's also fun things like marker light Riptide templates that zorf you anyway and WK that just come step on you anyway.

The SG just doesn't provide enough options to me for the cost. They are very good at bullying many units, but can't stand up to fire on a wound/pt basis after factoring in the priest and what not.

That's why I prefer them stark naked. They are gonna get their bully on or they aren't. They are really good to charge into things like Black Knights that are already locked in combat. But they suffer in that they can't take on the hardest targets in the game at all. But even tooled up, they don't provide the solutions I want to the units that I fear the most.

Oh, and I forgot to mention the D-scythes. The Wraithguard lol all over your SG hiding in ruins. At least with MSU DC, I can assault the Wraithguard with multiple units and they can only erase one of them.

Still supporting my double detachment army in 1500pts +.

Take one baal force (primary, good units here)

If out HQs with priests/libs.

CAD second, again fill out the HQs, take two scout units to camp obj in cover, MAYBE, give them snipers.

Two ML2 libs for psyker support, and two priests. Keep em bare, give a lib the staff. Outfit others as needed.

Commence to run mix of CC elites, (DC, SG) supported with strong close quarter shooting, ( bike squads, or ASM plas squads)

Focus on deepstriking/speed. If bikes are used, don't deepstrike. If ASM are used, deepstrike. Ofc this changes, (which is why I prefer bikes+jump troops, gives more flexibility in deploying)

For pure competitiveness, I've found 1 podded in fragioso with 3 units of DC, a SG unit, and several units of Grav bikes works well. This lets you opt to take dante in place of the 2nd detachment, which I would highly recommend against putting him in the SG sqaud. (Creates to large a target). Instead put him, and a priest, in a bike squad. (To keep fleet on charges, only move Dante 6 inches, Kongo line the bikes out.)

But I've found quite often that 2-3 7 man DC, with a fist, 3 6-7bike squads with grav/combi grav a, sang guard and or a fragioso unit and supporting elements does rather well against shooty lists, just focus them in on one point.

To take martels example, enemy has a riptide, focus your bikes on it, AND your CC, ofc if the enemy also has the dreaded suits (which I detest more than riptides). Send a few their way and tie em up. Just focus most of your army of the deadliest things. (I know it can be hard, especially if they have 3+ tides, but I'd rather see trolltide than crisis suit/battle suit spam).

This further supports my 1 pod fragioso, it will literally delete a unit of markerlites, or quite possibly pihranas, or at least have decent chances to shake them.