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I was wondering if conscripts were worth it for an infrantry heavy imperial guard army.

No, not really. You pay 1 point less for 1 less BS, 3 less Ld, and no special/heavy weapons. If you want cheap fodder, just take a big Platoon with one of the many Troops slots you have avaliable, except give them a Commissar and make them good in close combat with some Power Weapons.

Not particularly. Although it is fun to have 50 models for 200 points. Sometimes they make great shields for a CCS, but that's all I've used them for

No. It's far, far better to get a big combined squad and put a Commisar wiith them. L9, Stubborn, access to special/heavy weapons, higher BS, Sergeants w/ access to power weapons, all these things Conscipts do not have.

Combined PIS >>>>> Conscipts.

L. Wrex

What about the commander Checknov combo? With a full conscript blob + SitNW, that comes to a bit more than 300 points. It seems pretty difficult to use it in a way that justifies the points.

Has anyone had any luck with using Checknov? Are there any tricks to it?

The only thing where the conscripts win over the combined infantry is in points. So its not too hard to lose them. But they have no (and I mean NO) potential to put up a fight against anyone. So they are just living nothing that costs almost nothing. They can be used to shield vehicles against melta shooting, but any normal combined infantry does that better and defends itself very good too. So conscripts are not worth it. If you add Chenkov the enemy ignores them or mops them up again and again shrugging. If you add a Commissar Lord, you cann just use combined infantry and you will be better off. No, conscripts are mostly useless.

get as many as you can and issue the first rank fire second rank fire order to them as many times as you can when they are close to the enemy

So, I will begin with the disclaimer that neither have I ever used conscripts, nor are they anywhere near as good as all those PISs you're bringing anyways.

That said, I've really got to believe there's a way to make them work. My best guess goes something like this:

You bring chenkov and some conscripts. The conscripts always have someone near chenkov so that they get stubborn without a commissar.

You then deploy them in front of the rest of your army in order to give the rest of your army a 4+ cover save even while out in the open. You then rush forward to cram a hige wad of infantry down their throats.

If your opponent assaults your conscripts, well, they're stubborn, thanks to chenkov, so you can choose to tarpit ANYTHING for the entire game. At any point, if you want to shoot the tarpitted squad, you simply move chenkov away, and the squad instantly breaks. Alternatively, you can just "send in the next wave" and whatever was tarpitted is now out in the open.

If your conscripts get tangled in close combat and you really, really don't want them there, you can always just "send in the next wave" right away. The second wave should be able to make it to the other side by the end of the game.

And, of course, you can always take them off the field near the end of the game and have them surprise take your own objective.

The main problem is that they're expensive. Chenkov + 40 conscripts costs 210 points. This means, at most points level, you can have either al'rahem OR chenkov. I do eversomuch love the outflanking 3x special weapons squads of doom, but once my opponent start catching on, I might decide to do the mass footslogging wave behind a huge blob of stubborn guys routine.

Oh, that and they're expensive money-wise and time-wise as well, as you've got a LOT of guys to buy and paint. This is probably the primary reason you don't see them fielded often.

At Ld5 they'll fail leadership more likely than not even with stubborn. Chance of passing Ld5 is same as failing Ld8. They need at a Lord Commissar nearby or at least a priest to have a fighting chance at staying in the fight.

Similarly using them for lasgun shooting with orders is a silly idea. Not only will the order probably fail, you aren't gaining enough lasguns to make up for the loss in accuracy. 100 points buys 18 lasguns in infantry squads or 25 lasguns in the hands of conscripts. 18/2 = 9 hits, vs 25/3 = 8 hits. Conscripts do have more warm bodies, making them break even with infantry if you assume both units take four casualties before getting the chance to shoot.

I guess you could make it work but it's a whole lot of trouble to go to for what you're getting.

I am not entirely sure if they are very practical in the first place. The only way SitNW really makes any sense, is when you have taken a full squad, even then the conscripts work out to around 5.5 points a piece just considering the cost of SitNW. It would be nice if this strategy had any solid tactics, but it doesn't appear to be the case.

Just a 40-man squad is going to be REALLY hard to make full use of in almost any situation, I don't even want to think how difficult the extra 10 conscripts would make that.

I am quite sure you can have fun using them but doing anything all that competitive is going to be very difficult. They just seem to be way too expensive.

You pay 1 point less for 1 less BS, 3 less Ld, and no special/heavy weapons.

This could definitely be all that can really be said for them. It would be cool to hear any success stories, how is it possible to overcome that obvious of a points sink?

I doubt they could do much besides act as renewable bubble-wrap, tarpitting just seems like it is entirely out of their favor. If you give the squad something with better Ld, you have to pay even more to do so. They might be able to fit into a gunline army, not sure how useful they would be.

Well I tried them actually. I used them in front line to screen the main battleline. I backed them up with a commissar lord to keep them in place and I advanced them slowly followed by a powerblob.
This doubleline was supported by weapon teams and some tanks and chimeras. What the conscripts actually did was killing a single deathwing terminator with lasgunfire and protecting my tanks from multimelta speeders. But they werent the decisive factor in that game. The decisive shot was a lucky lascannon that made the crusader with the Deathwing command go sky high.

My conclusion is, you cannot really use them for good. You can bear with them, if you include them properly and use them as moving impassable terrain for the enemy, but that is nothing, that would frighten me as an enemy.

Wrexasaur wrote:

DarkHound wrote:You pay 1 point less for 1 less BS, 3 less Ld, and no special/heavy weapons.

This could definitely be all that can really be said for them. It would be cool to hear any success stories, how is it possible to overcome that obvious of a points sink?

Ya'vult!

So we've established that their shooting is less cost effective than regular Guardsmen, yeh? Well their CC is more cost effective than Guardsmen. Not more effective, just more cost effective. Let them stand around in close combat for 2 or 3 phases and you'll whittle down a Space Marine squad. Eventually I phased that idea out because propper Powerblobs are better, but they are also 2-3 times more expensive so I can still see some application for Conscripts. They are the cheapest thing you can use to bubble-wrap your tanks. They're also really effective if you have a strong command structure and a Lord Commissar, so at 1500+ they're a solid choice for horde IG. If you already have reliable orders and Ld auras then you fix the otherwise crippling problems with Conscripts and you're left with cheap models.

SitNW is annoying to a Marine player, like me.
Conscripts feel like regenerating speedbumps/tarpits. Every Marine player knows the best way to not get chewed up by Guard heavy support shooting is to assault. But if the thing you're assaulting just goes away as soon as your turn is over? You're left high and dry in the open, with no cover and either LRBTs, Colossi, or FRFSRF Blobs cutting you down.

Conscripts feel like one of those units that takes a very skilled player to pull off, as well as a lot of other moving parts in your army.