Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Polonius wrote:...My point is not that this discussion is bad or shouldn't occur. My point is rather that entrenching your position as being impregnable and holy quickly makes you look less like a devoted hobbyist and more like a zealot.

Great post, but more importantly, will these Zealots counts as scoring units in the new edition?

sebster wrote:

skyth wrote:Rumor says non-vehicles. Dreads are Vehicles.

Rumour has also said any unit taken as a troop. It's really, really speculative right now.

Got a link to that effect, please? The most recent clarification of the rumour from Brimstone, as posted here, is clear in it's definition of 'non-swarm non-vehicle troops'

Wehrkind wrote:IG shooting at IG wearing carapace armor has a 50% chance to wound, and 50% chance to have it stopped by armor. That would never fly in the real world.

IG don't wear carapace, they wear flak.

Is that an argument, or are you ceding my point that if the US army's main rifle went below 25% effectiveness on a hit, that they would replace it quickly?

Sort of. If we fought against 8-foot tall genetically-engineered, acid-spitting superhumans wearing Power Armour equivalent to a M2 Bradley, to the exclusion of fighting anything else, then yes, I think we might change the basic weapon.

But if we mostly fought unarmored rebels, renegades in flak, thin carapace bugs, and walking fungus, then we might be OK with a slightly upgraded rifle, and just have a couple guys carrying Special or Heavy weapons for those rare occasions in which a superhuman appears that needs killing. Even better, we'd adapt our Tanks to kill those stupid superhumans with Ordnance at range, rather than risking them getting close up.

The problem with the Guard isn't the flashlights, it's that there aren't enough GEQs being played compared to the number of MEQs. That is, the play environment of mostly MEQs doesn't match the Fluff of nearly exclusively GEQ vs GEQ combat.

Besides, we do have specialists with rocket launchers. In fact, in areas where light armor is common, our troops are issued single shot rocket launchers, just so they can ALL deal with tanks, even if Pvt. Dave takes one in the chest. Imagine that! Troops all getting issued weapons to deal with the threat at hand!

Wow, the US military is more flexibile than the absolute rigidity of the galaxy-spanning Imperial Administratum!

2000pts is "huge?" 160 figures is an "army"?

In 40k terms, yes. I prefer to look at 40k battles as the deciding action tip of the lance. It's the 1% to 5% of the battle that is most interesting. It's where the overall thrust will be decided.

Ok, look, I know you are either hyper-optimistic, or have a little GW shrine in your bathroom, or both, or whatever.

Optomistic isn't a word that I would have used.

Butt, yes, I have a little shrine to GW in my bathroom, to which I make a daily "offering" (of sorts). This shine is made of white porcelain, upon which I sit and meditate whilst I drop off my offering in its holy waters.

But seriously, do you honestly believe that the game designers sat down and figured out some logarithmic scale for ground distance, while keeping the figures, terrain and buildings they manufacture all the same size?

Of course not. GW designers aren't quite that clever. But they understand scale and admit that the model scale isn't ground scale. Even going back to RT and WFB6, they had notes on scale, distance, measurement, and time. It's only more recently that GW has stopped making note of this because they have learned that the average GW gamer simply doesn't have mental capacity to comprehend that models are larger than the ground scale would suggest, and trying to explain these things take the game into the muddy waters of realism which doesn't belong in a fantasy universe.

So, how many people have played with only troops and with the new missions to find out really how balanced it is?

I know it's a dead horse, but geesh, getting all bent out of shape about something we know little about is a little premature.

If you had been listening/talking/watching about the M16 and Iraq and you will find that most of the people firing the weapon are irritated that it takes sometimes 3 rounds to put someone down, and even then it may take more. Any body armour and it gets worse. It was the biggest reason the army started looking at 6.5 and 6.8mm rounds. The army decided it was too much cost to upgrade all the weapons AND they had too much surplus. So for now, it kills people so it is "just good enough". Even though a lot of the Spec Ops guys are using all the new rounds because they are so much better.

Sound familiar?

And why oh why do those guardsmen have carapace armour? Not a great example... flak only stops 1/3.

And not everyone carries an AT-4 even when a lot of armour is around. A person or persons are assigned it, but at 14 pounds how many are you going to lug around with everything else in the squad? You are already carrying too much, it's just not happening.

gorgon wrote:If they want to add balance, my first suggestion would be to add a scalable, or perhaps three-tiered org chart. They could institute one for up to 999 pts, another for 1000-1999 points, and a third from 2000-2999 pts. That system takes you right up to Apoc, and eliminates the problem with say, players fielding 3 HS choices in a 750 point game. That kind of thing is an actual issue.

At the release of 4th edition, I expected GW to follow WFB practice and have a scalable FOC. But GW instead had rules for 40k in 40 minutes & Combat patrol, along with BfM to start on "small" games.

More recently, GW released Apocalypse for "large" games. This appears to have been a resounding success.

Based on the release of Apocalypse, I think GW is in the process of segmenting their games as follows:
- up to 1000 pts = Battle for Macragge
- 1000 up to 2500 pts = Warhammer 40k
- over 2500 pts = Apocalypse!

This allows GW to sell a more-developed "pure" Combat Patrol skirmish game for small stuff, with rules and options for 40k in 40 minutes / Necromunda / Space Hulk / Kill Team. If they can get people to buy things like Mighty Empires and Apocalypse, what makes you think they won't make a try for a stand-alone edition of Combat Patrol in 2008 or 2009?

The first test of this will be when 5th Edition comes out and the small-scale stuff is completely gone from the "big" rulebook.

Toreador wrote:
And not everyone carries an AT-4 even when a lot of armour is around. A person or persons are assigned it, but at 14 pounds how many are you going to lug around with everything else in the squad? You are already carrying too much, it's just not happening.

The Markerlight is an alternative. Lots of examples of modern troops marking targets for aerial bombardment. As long as you control the airspace, it's an alternative to lugging around heavy weapons.

Infantry also called in airstrikes in WWII and were able to pinpoint better than aerial bombardment on its own. It'll be interesting to see how that dynamic plays out in the Planetstrike supplement.

JohnHwangDD wrote:This allows GW to sell a more-developed "pure" Combat Patrol skirmish game for small stuff, with rules and options for 40k in 40 minutes / Necromunda / Space Hulk / Kill Team. If they can get people to buy things like Mighty Empires and Apocalypse, what makes you think they won't make a try for a stand-alone edition of Combat Patrol in 2008 or 2009?

I hope they do. I'd buy it in a second. I'd also buy a squad of Chaos Marines, Fire Warriors, Mandrakes and other units I've passed on because I didn't have time to paint a full army of them.

Asmodai wrote:

JohnHwangDD wrote:This allows GW to sell a more-developed "pure" Combat Patrol skirmish game for small stuff, with rules and options for 40k in 40 minutes / Necromunda / Space Hulk / Kill Team. If they can get people to buy things like Mighty Empires and Apocalypse, what makes you think they won't make a try for a stand-alone edition of Combat Patrol in 2008 or 2009?

I hope they do.

I'd buy it in a second. I'd also buy a squad of Chaos Marines, Fire Warriors, Mandrakes and other units I've passed on because I didn't have time to paint a full army of them.

Me too!

It would be stupid of GW not to do it because it "seeds" players with armies that can eventually grow into regular, full 40k armies. It's evil and insidious.

Yep, in agreement. It would be a nice intro into the bigger games. Smaller, very story oriented missions and such, with a lot more detailed rules. If they wanted to make it Necromundaesque I would be quite happy.

But they don't like us happy :(

JohnHwangDD wrote:More recently, GW released Apocalypse for "large" games. This appears to have been a resounding success.

I think we need more time to see if that's the case. I really don't see Apoc as having even as much staying power as CoD. Apoc has logistical issues (time length, portability, organizing people and scenarios) that create a bit of a ceiling for it.
Doesn't mean it isn't a successful extension of 40K into higher points levels, just that I think it'll end up occupying a pretty small niche.

The first test of this will be when 5th Edition comes out and the small-scale stuff is completely gone from the "big" rulebook.

Rumors are that the small scale will be gone from the rulebook, and a Combat Patrol/Kill Team/whatever supplement is in the works for 2009 or so. However, note that's still a different-sized game than 1000 pts, and players likely won't be required to use that supplement's rules for smaller games just as they aren't required to use Apoc for larger games. Separate, optional supplements don't eliminate the need for a scalable org chart.

gorgon wrote:Separate, optional supplements don't eliminate the need for a scalable org chart.

That's hard to say. I think you have it backwards. In GW's mind, a static non-scalable FOC for Warhammer 40k helps reinforce the need for players to purchase separate, optional supplements.
Apocalypse dispenses with the FOC entirely, while Combat Patrol will do something different yet again. So, no, GW won't do it, because there won't be a need for a scalable FOC.

I’m another person who was surprised not to see a scaling Force Org chart like they’ve had in Warhammer since 6th edition came out in what, 2000, 2001? I play and enjoy both games, have to say it works pretty darn well in WH, and would really help 40k.

There's no reason that they can't have completely unrelated organization/composition systems for Apoc and Combat Patrol.

It's not that GW can't make a scalable FOC, it's that they don't want to make a scalable FOC. This keeps the main 40k rulebook simpler, along with their job of balancing things against a single FOC.

If you look at what GW has been doing, they've been fumbling with small games for a while (several years), and small games are clearly something they want to support.

But it is obvious to me that GW is moving towards clearer separation between different gaming concepts:

Warhammer 40k is going to be their standard game, with support for tournament gaming. Hence, the fixed FOC and Codices balanced against that structure. This is also why the non-standard FOCs and Attacker/Defender missions are in the big book, not the small book.

Apocalypse is for 2500+ points, for large *fun* (non-competitive) narrative games with big flashy, wacky stuff happening.

Combat Patrol will be for sub-1000 pts scenario gaming. I suspect we'll see uneven points scenarios, to facilitate beginning players who grow their armies at different rates.

Can Warhammer 40k be played small or large? Can Apocalypse play down? Can Combat Patrol be played large? Yes, but the balance is off for all of these when they get out of their balance zones.

Assuming GW operates against a plan with any logic, then this is what makes sense.
____

Also, WRT the variable FOC working for WFB, it is almost entirely 2000+ pt games, with the occasional 3000+ pt game. <2000 pt games tend to be growth leagues, with modifiers.

And as you move up and down, you have big shifts in power. For example, TK *hate* to play <2000 pts because they lose their Lords.

Tribune wrote:Rumour has also said any unit taken as a troop. It's really, really speculative right now.

Got a link to that effect, please? The most recent clarification of the rumour from Brimstone, as posted here, is clear in it's definition of 'non-swarm non-vehicle troops'

Wehrkind wrote:*sigh* Do you really think you need to kill someone to take them out as a casualty? M16's are a lot better at wounding than actually killing, but the wounds they cause put people down and out of the fight. So no, all those lovely things are still needed. But in general, if you hit someone with a bullet from an M16, you have a better than 25% chance to drop them if they are wearing common body armor. IG shooting at IG wearing carapace armor has a 50% chance to wound, and 50% chance to have it stopped by armor. That would never fly in the real world. Worse still, shooting marines, orks, anything T4, the target has a 66% chance of not caring that you shot them.

So, no, riflemen don't always hit and remove enemies as a threat. They do however have a much better chance than 25% to remove them if they do hit, and if they don't, they won't be a relevant part of any force.

Except the lasgun is hitting the target 50% of the time. Which is absurdly accurate - how many rounds are put downfield in modern combat for every hit?

So we can sit here and talk about an exceptionally accurate rifle, fired by troops that rarely suffer suppression and maintain full rates of fire from all healthy troops, that only inflicts significant wounds with a half of all hits, of which 1/3 of which are stopped by armour (taking flak as the most common form of armour).

Or we can accept the system as being pretty simple and largely abstract, where the only figures that really matter are the number of men needed to kill a certain number of enemy models. And even that final result can't be quantified against any real life example, as we don't really know how long a turn of 40k is in 'real time', and over what range the firing is considered to take place.

JohnHwangDD wrote:Optomistic isn't a word that I would have used.

"Optomistic" isn't a word PERIOD.

sebster wrote:

Wehrkind wrote:*sigh* Do you really think you need to kill someone to take them out as a casualty? M16's are a lot better at wounding than actually killing, but the wounds they cause put people down and out of the fight. So no, all those lovely things are still needed. But in general, if you hit someone with a bullet from an M16, you have a better than 25% chance to drop them if they are wearing common body armor. IG shooting at IG wearing carapace armor has a 50% chance to wound, and 50% chance to have it stopped by armor. That would never fly in the real world. Worse still, shooting marines, orks, anything T4, the target has a 66% chance of not caring that you shot them.

So, no, riflemen don't always hit and remove enemies as a threat. They do however have a much better chance than 25% to remove them if they do hit, and if they don't, they won't be a relevant part of any force.

Except the lasgun is hitting the target 50% of the time. Which is absurdly accurate - how many rounds are put downfield in modern combat for every hit?

So we can sit here and talk about an exceptionally accurate rifle, fired by troops that rarely suffer suppression and maintain full rates of fire from all healthy troops, that only inflicts significant wounds with a half of all hits, of which 1/3 of which are stopped by armour (taking flak as the most common form of armour).

Or we can accept the system as being pretty simple and largely abstract, where the only figures that really matter are the number of men needed to kill a certain number of enemy models. And even that final result can't be quantified against any real life example, as we don't really know how long a turn of 40k is in 'real time', and over what range the firing is considered to take place.

Exactly right, the system is an abstraction. An average IG soldier has a 50% chance of hitting something with X number of shots fired in Y minutes. This has no doubt been carefully calculated by GW based on the rate of casualties they want to occur every round of firing.

Carefully calculated?

This gives me happy visions of games-design interns being lined up and shot at while Phil Kelly looks on with a stopwatch. "Got two in 30 seconds there. Not bad, Gav!"

The abstraction of the weapon hitting or missing when fired by Pvt. Grunty is irrelevant to what happens when it hits. If they want to say IG are a rough analogue of WW2 Russian troops, with poor training and morale etc., that's fine. Their ability to hit is some function of weapon skill, rate of fire, etc. that we don't have insight to.
We do know, however, what happens when they hit. In the case of shooting a guardsman in carapace (which they can wear after all) they have a terrible chance of doing anything. One in four hits on average is going to do anything. Even compared to Toreador's 3 shots for one man, that is pretty bad.

I agree with JHDD that guardsmen are not necessarily supposed to be fighting Marines every day, so rocking with Str5 Ap3 weapons on everone isn't needed. But what are they fighting most? Other IG types with or without any armor? So a 50%-75% of doing nothing per hit. Throw in Eldar and it pushes it towards the 75% bracket (Eldar generally have T3 and Sv3 or 4+, if I recall). Orks are T4 now, and what, 5+? So ~75% chance to do nothing. I don't know Tyranids well, but they are generally T3 Sv4+ are they not? So another 75%. Necrons and Marines ~10% to kill on a hit. Tau, 75% chance to do nothing.
So, while in theory IG are supposed to be fighting GEQ or worse 90% of the time, in reality they seem to fight much tougher things. Even assuming they only fight GEQ, they are still toting a pretty pathetic weapon for that purpose. If you want to look at how many people it takes to kill one guy, it takes between 3 and 4 guardsmen to reliably put down one guardsmen depending on whether he is wearing a t-shirt or a wet t-shirt, assuming all hit.

Now, I agree with you guys that it is a gap between fluff and rules. But at the same time, the system should reflect that it is cheaper to have 9 guys with fairly useless guns and one man with a good gun. It it quite historically accurate to have troops fighting with outdated weapons because they fight outdated armies. The Brits did this for a long time before WW1 and there is an argument to be made that the US is finding itself in a similar position now.
However, I think that suggests more that IG should have the option of upgrading the weapons for every model in the unit, not that they should all have a powerful laser pointer. All squads could have the option of a "bolter-lite" maybe St4 Ap- for +1 point, or a heavy weapon for every 2 men, but at a much higher cost than the HW now. Basically let every squad turn into a heavy weapons platoon. The question would be of balancing the cost of a lascannon or whatever against the cost of X IG. So while you could in theory just field a mess of heavy weapons, you would find yourself short on bodies, bodies that die pretty easily. Or you could go to the other extreme and have just a few heavies and a lot more flashlights. Or you could go in the middle for a more "modern" type force where you had more heavy weapons and useful guns, but less troops, etc.

In other words you would have lots of flexibility and options on how you want your army to work instead of "Las/Plas and 8 ablative wounds * X units"

Butt, yes, I have a little shrine to GW in my bathroom, to which I make a daily "offering" (of sorts). This shine is made of white porcelain, upon which I sit and meditate whilst I drop off my offering in its holy waters.

Very nicely put!

"If they want to say IG are a rough analogue of WW2 Russian troops, with poor training and morale etc., that's fine."

They're not. Maybe Valhallan Conscripts are.

Most Imperial Guard (Praetorians, Cadians, etc.) are well trained and disciplined troops. They're not super-human and immune to fear, but it's a mistake to think of them as being press-ganged conscripts.

The Marines in Aliens, the soldiers in the Starship Troopers movie, and the USMC in Space Above and Beyond are better analogies.

The Imperial Guard tends to be a bit of an elite. They're not Planetary Defense Forces which have never seen real combat. Most Guard Regiments have experience fighting hundreds of battles on dozens of planets. Their rules should reflect that.

And we don't see a lot of the lesser things that the guard are supposedly put up against.

Most rable and cultist types that are presented are mostly autoguns and heavy stubbas. Against that type of thing the guard are looked upon as elite.

And you have given a lot more armour to their opponents.

Orks T4 Sv 6+
Eldar T3 Sv 5+ (guardians are the eldar guard)
Gaunts T3 6+

Against those types of targets the guard do well enough. They have a lot of heavy support and tanks to support the basic grunt, along with command squads and vets with even more specialist weapons. Overall they can be quite well armed, it's just that the basic grunt has a simple lasgun. It works "well enough" because of need, simplicity, and numbers.

It's one reason I would like to see more emphasis placed on Traitor guard and cultist lists. Having opponents that are even crappier than the guard themselves would help show what forces like the Sisters and Guard are really up against mostly.

I am just saying that no matter what you consider the guard to be in real life, my analysis doesn't consider how many shots they put down range, but only what happens when those shots connect.
I agree about the rabble types, but they don't exist as a proper army in 40k.
I did think that Eldar were more of a majority of 4+ or better... maybe I just don't see many guardians around here (I don't play Eldar much.)
'Nids I can see the guns being pretty good against too.

Still, I think GW just needs to come up with a decent system for allowing different builds of troops for IG, not just sticking with silly weapons that are not good vs. different types. I think allowing upgrades to more powerful basic weapons would be a nice option to make an army that is more focused on killing Xenos, etc. That's all. I really want more options.

Asmodai wrote:"If they want to say IG are a rough analogue of WW2 Russian troops, with poor training and morale etc., that's fine."

They're not. Maybe Valhallan Conscripts are.

Most Imperial Guard (Praetorians, Cadians, etc.) are well trained and disciplined troops. They're not super-human and immune to fear, but it's a mistake to think of them as being press-ganged conscripts.

The Marines in Aliens, the soldiers in the Starship Troopers movie, and the USMC in Space Above and Beyond are better analogies.

The Imperial Guard tends to be a bit of an elite. They're not Planetary Defense Forces which have never seen real combat. Most Guard Regiments have experience fighting hundreds of battles on dozens of planets. Their rules should reflect that.

Generally agreed.

Yes, Guardsmen are still faceless dog soldiers. But they're well-trained, obedient dog soldiers, with good training (WS3 BS3) decent discipline (don't freeze when seeing big bug) and reasonable equipment (Flak).

They just look bad because they face off in games against genetically-engineered superhumans far too often.

The problem is that 40k doesn't have enough crap to reflect untrained raw civilians (Rebel - WS1 BS1 A1 Ld5 Sv-) or even guys with 2 weeks basic training and no experience (Conscript - WS2 BS2 A1 Ld6 Sv-). If 40k had more games of IG & PDF against the Rebels & Conscripts, IG would look a lot better.

Wehrkind wrote:The abstraction of the weapon hitting or missing when fired by Pvt. Grunty is irrelevant to what happens when it hits.

No, it isn't. It's a really common element of game design to inflate the chance to hit a target while deflating the likelihood of causing significant damage. Most wargames and almost every roleplaying game does the same thing, giving people 4 and 5 times as much chance of hitting, but making hits considerably less likely.

Games have adopted this model for a couple of reasons. If firing were based on something closer to reality, with hitting unlikely you'd basically have two sides rolling their dices needing 6s to hit, but then having most hits be lethal (or sufficiently damaging to take the model off the field). We'd be playing a battle of who can roll the most 6s, and it would suck.

Secondly, using middle of the road numbers for hitting, wounding and beating armour allows for more variation. If hitting was based around needing 6s, a better shot will move to 5s, meaning he'll hit twice as often, while a poorer shot has no target number unless you start stuffing around with needing a second roll after managing the first 6. The same thing would exist for the rolls to wound, you'd have little variation, when you start modelling more powerful weapons or higher toughness you have little room for probability manipulation.

The whole hit, wound and beat armour system is one single system, with an end result that works well enough. The only real problem comes when people want to start navel gazing and looking for direct simulation within individual parts of the dice roll, when no such thing is meant to exist.

Wehrkind wrote:It it quite historically accurate to have troops fighting with outdated weapons because they fight outdated armies.

However, I think that suggests more that IG should have the option of upgrading the weapons for every model in the unit, not that they should all have a powerful laser pointer. All squads could have the option of a "bolter-lite" maybe St4 Ap- for +1 point,

or a heavy weapon for every 2 men, but at a much higher cost than the HW now. Basically let every squad turn into a heavy weapons platoon.

In other words you would have lots of flexibility and options on how you want your army to work instead of "Las/Plas and 8 ablative wounds * X units"

I'm generally OK with this line of reasoning.

As you brought up WW1 and equipment, it's worth noting that the Germans observed that they were overgunned with their standard rifles. The extra cost and carrying weight of the rifle was not worth the greater range and accuracy in the hands of the average soldier at the distances typically engaged. They ended up downgrading them in later years.

With Doctrines, for a cost of +4 pts / model, you can upgrade 3 squads of Guardsmen to carry AP5 Flashlights with BS4 Targeters and Sv4+ Carapace. With Heavy Weapon Platoons, you can have Heavy Weapons for every 2 men, at full price. You can take 3 such Platoons instead of taking Russes / Bassies.

FWIW, those 8 wounds aren't very expensive (and likely to get noticeably cheaper). They're helpful in preventing Torrent against the Heavy & Special.

Wehrkind wrote:The abstraction of the weapon hitting or missing when fired by Pvt. Grunty is irrelevant to what happens when it hits. If they want to say IG are a rough analogue of WW2 Russian troops, with poor training and morale etc., that's fine. Their ability to hit is some function of weapon skill, rate of fire, etc. that we don't have insight to.
We do know, however, what happens when they hit. In the case of shooting a guardsman in carapace (which they can wear after all) they have a terrible chance of doing anything. One in four hits on average is going to do anything. Even compared to Toreador's 3 shots for one man, that is pretty bad.

...
...

The wounding and saving is also part of the abstraction.

GW very carefully calculated that they wanted an IG to knock out an SM once in every hundred shots (or whatever) so they assigned very carefully thought out rates of fire, To Hit/Wound/Save in order to achieve that result.

Probably.

Yes, but the Germans were not trying to shoot down a tide of muscle bound green skins. Though it would make for a good movie.
The distinction I am trying to make is between your German example "Wow, we are really overkilling it here. We could save money and have just about the same end result against all our opponants" vs. "Well, we are saving money, but against a good percentage of our enemies our weapons are pretty piss poor." I just think the Codex would be better if you had the options of making the decision of what manner of weapons to give your squads yourself, with out being stuck into "1 heavy/special per 10." I just don't think it would be imbalancing to have all the guardsmen with better weapons at a higher price, or all with heavies, or some mix, depending on how you wanted the army to play.

I would much rather have a Russ than a heavy weapons platoon, thanks Though replacing some las/plas platoons with heavy weapons would be nice. Or maybe getting some sniper teams of two men. Or really any more options than "las/plas gunline" and "plasma/melta drop troops." For supposedly being a hugely varied organization, the IG really has a lot less options of how the forces really work than say Marines.

And don't talk to me about Hellguns. The only thing I want to know is who the hell thought they were worth the same points on an IC as a Bolter. (Sorry, couldn't resist the pun, but they are still pretty weak.)

Didn't GW define "normal" human as 3 stats across the board save for Ld? Or was that "normal human soldier?" Still, until GW releases real Lost and Damned (or confused and irritated at least) so we have more "human level" armies, the lasgun only just doesn't make sense.

It occurs to me that this is getting so off topic as to be laughable. Perhaps moving the posts to Proposed Rules: I Want a Different Bleedin' IG Codex! would be a good thing.

sebster wrote:

Tribune wrote:Got a link to that effect, please? The most recent clarification of the rumour from Brimstone, as posted here, is clear in it's definition of 'non-swarm non-vehicle troops'

Not in the slightest

I've read a few threads and one of the rumours stated 'anything taken in a troops slot'. It could have even been from any of the threads, maybe even this one.

Then sadly I would have to say your information was either incorrect or already outdated by the time you posted. Not to worry.

I've always seen the Guard as huge, monolithic bloc. While the guys may come from a million worlds, they're more similar in equipment, doctrine, and tactics than different.

This is why I really *hate* Doctrines. Guard shouldn't be so special. They should be perfectly ordinary in as many ways as possible. To me, the point is that Guardsmen are all the same - interchangeable, faceless, soulless dog soldiers who give their lives in service to the military machine of the Imperium.

I can see that for inner planets, or those that are closely regulated by Terra. But there are billions of different planets and cultures, all more or less closely watched over by the High Lords. It makes more sense to me that there be a lot of variation in how each PDF or galactic region's units fight.

I mean, even the most hide bound beaurocracy loses control at the fringes, and planets on the fringe of the Ork sectors are going to have weapons and tactics focused on taking them out, just as those near Tyranid areas are going to be focused more on those, etc.

Plus, not to say you are wrong in how you play, but I think such a huge galaxy spanning organization should allow different players the flexibility they want. I think the codex should allow for the faceless human tide like you want, more elite veterans like the Tanith, dedicated Xeno hunters with special weapons, highly mechanized forces like the Steel Legion, and everything inbetween.

I understand that GW wants to simplify their codexes, but I think that interest and variance in the game is the price they pay past a point.

JohnHwangDD wrote:I've always seen the Guard as huge, monolithic bloc. While the guys may come from a million worlds, they're more similar in equipment, doctrine, and tactics than different.

This is why I really *hate* Doctrines. Guard shouldn't be so special. They should be perfectly ordinary in as many ways as possible. To me, the point is that Guardsmen are all the same - interchangeable, faceless, soulless dog soldiers who give their lives in service to the military machine of the Imperium.

That's an interesting view. How do you reconcile that with the fluff which generally paints Guard Regiments as being drastically different?

Some are dogfaces, others are stealth specialists (whether jungle, urban or 'other'), some of nomadic horse-riding desert raiders, and others are elite nobility with a Chimera for every squad, and the finest carapace armor and weaponry that their houses (or the Schola Progenium) can afford.

Guardsmen haven't been at all uniform since RT. I'm not sure what the reason would be for completely changing that now. Players that want faceless soulless interchangeable soldiers can already play Necrons. A lot of players are attracted to the Guard because with human faces and the really posable models you can give every individual a distinct personality.