techsoldaten wrote:Just trying to put the outrage about nerfing Commissars into perspective.
Was there ever a time, in previous editions, when Commissars were able to buff conscripts as effectively as they did at the start of 8th edition?
I honestly don't know, I played
IG for a short time but never even looked into conscripts. Can't remember ever seeing them on the table before 8th edition.
I get the idea that a lot of people based their 8th edition lists around Conscript spam and this change is a setback for those armies. But
GW promised to actively maintain balance this edition. It feels like everyone was forewarned this could happen, it was heavily rumored this would happen, and now it has happened.
But it doesn't feel like this is something that affects people who had 7th edition armies that were already built that way. Pardon me if I am assuming too much, but was this really some backbreaking nerf that destroys years worth of work? It feels like it's a mechanic that was tested at the outset of a new edition and adjusted based on actual playtesting.
7th ed infantry
IG actually relied quite heavily on conscripts. In the days of super friends, wolf stars, riptides, taudar, etc. they were about the only way an infantry guard player could survive into turns 2 and 3. You needed to have so many models that it was almost impossible to wipe you from the board. Commissars were actually quite powerful back then as well, they were just disliked because priests made conscripts fearless, whereas commissars made you
LD 9 and gave you a reroll on the test with an immunity to modifiers. Priests are essentially what your early 8th commissar was, a way to guarantee the conscripts never ran and held their ground as meatshields, whereas commissars gave them a leadership buff and way more flexibility by allowing them to reliably pass orders, fall back from combat, go to ground, etc. which the priest couldn't do thanks to Fearless. Commissars were also "attached" to a unit, and weren't independent characters for the most part, so a commissar only affected one unit at a time.
Usually you didn't see conscripts because most
IG players weren't insane enough to buy 200+ guardsmen to run them, so any infantry running around would just be infantry squads to eat up points. Meant less models to move around and more special/heavy weapons, which were incredibly important then just as they are now. To give you an idea of what kind of insanity it took to run an infantry guard list back then, watch some of Mordian Glory's old videos he has from 7th edition, he ran his army similar to how I would run mine. Anything less than 200 guardsmen was considered suicide and conscripts were an important part of your list just to keep you alive.
Conscripts were actually just as cheap then as they are now and could be bought in 50 man units. Heck even in 5th they were only 4pts per model and back then you could take Chenkov and an upgrade to get unlimited conscripts for the entire game! They were ignored for infantry squad blobs back in 6th and 7th by the same players that run soup now, as back then you'd take a space marine Librarian and stick him in the blob for
ATSKNF and pyschic buffs.
IG have been abused as cheap cannon fodder for a good 3 editions now by space marine players, this isn't really a new development, commissar conscript is just the newest version. As long as Allies are in the game, Space Marines, and by lesser extension, other Imperium armies will continue to do this as long as
IG is even remotely viable. This is part of the trouble with allies, and indeed any balancing you try to do to
IG. Essentially you're not just adjusting
IG, you're adjusting every single Imperium army in the game, because
IG will almost always be the cheapest meatshields Imperium armies can get. In an edition with 1st turn charge and the ability to deny deepstrikes with spread out deployment,
IG will be a staple in many lists just so points can be spent elsewhere on firepower.
This in turn is why you see a lot of hate for
IG and why a lot of people just assume the whole codex is overpowered. Many never even see a full
IG army, they just see space marine players picking and choosing the best bits to screen their armies and that's about it.
