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Tyranids can't hide all their synapse stuff like IG can, if I want synapse gone I can drop the big bugs pretty quickly. I'm sure there's some smaller stuff that can blend in but it's nowhere near as cheap or as spammable as Commissars were. At the very least they're nowhere near as easy to hide from snipers, considering the commissar is a single human model and can be hidden with even a single chimera or corner of a building. I'm no Nid expert but I don't recall ever having an issue shutting down synapse in 8th.

Orks have a pretty good mechanic, but it still has a counter built in, since if you can gut a couple of boyz mobs they start to fall apart. Conscript mobs, or infantry squad gunlines, were basically fighting at almost full effect because it didn't matter if you had 30 guys or 3, the commissar still worked, still did his job, and the main utility of IG units was just surviving long enough to screen and then make mad dashes for objectives. Shutting down a commissar basically boiled down to "do you have snipers, is the IG player an idiot leaving his commissar in the open, and do you roll hot enough to knock them all out in time?" or plan B "do you have enough dakka to just kill the infantry outright?" Because you weren't dropping in behind him, you certainly weren't getting to him on a 1st turn assault unless the IG player was a moron, and you weren't very likely to catch him with shenanigans like snipers and pyschic abilities.

Space marines being forced to play 5 man squads to ignore morale isn't a great point either, you've basically made it where no one will run full 10 man squads (or black templar Crusader 20 man units) because the more people they have the worse morale can affect them. A 10 man space marine squad that lost say 6 marines was far more likely to have men run than a 10 man IG squad with commissar support was. Yes Ultramarines are LD 9 but that still doesn't account for the fact that most marines were more cowardly than guardsmen with the old commissar rules, which is kind of ridiculous.

IG on the other hand could lose 48 men in the shooting phase with old commissar, and still guarantee only 1 more died to morale. All on a dirt cheap character that was easy to spam across the army and could be hidden incredibly easy if you had even the faintest idea of how to play. I'm sorry but I've watched all of these other amies in action in 8th and none of them held a candle to what a commissar could do. He was basically letting you use "insane bravery" on every unit except instead of paying 2 CP's you were paying 3-4pts per guardsman.

Keep in mind,I agree that the nerf on commissars went too far. I think it's a bit BS as well, but you can't sit here and tell me that the original commissar at 31pt was at any point the appropriate price for him. His massive utility alone should have put him in the 50-60pt range. Properly utilized, he could save 10-20 regular guardsmen a turn, easily double to triple that in conscripts, and deny multiple killpoints. Had he been say 1 wound, or in the 50pt range, he wouldn't have been near as insane as he was. The main issue though was that there was no counter to a commissar that was reasonable. Snipers were hilariously ineffective, fear abilities like Night Lords had no effect, and casualties had no impact either regardless of how bad they were. There was no counterplay, no strategy, no tactics, just a "hope you brought snipers bro" and that's it.

Give the commissar something like "Execute a model, you count as rolling a 1 for your battleshock test" for example, and it would've been a far more interesting and fair rule. You still get a very effective morale buff, it helps professional infantry like vets and infantry squads quite a bit, and still helps conscripts some but doesn't make them fearless. Having it as "kill 1 guy, auto pass" was just insanely good and seems to fly in the face of GW's entire philosophy of how they wanted morale to work in 8th.

slobulous wrote:
Guys, conscripts don't have to be nerfed if you are willing to take them under the Valhallan regiment.

They have a Relic bolt pistol called "Pietrov's Mk 45" which has the following ability:

" Friendly VALHALLAN units within 6" of the bearer can never lose more than one model as a result of any single failed morale test"


Problem solved. Conscripts shall live forever!!!!!!!

My Gawd. He is right. Take a Patrol detachment, put in a commisar HQ and a couple squads of conscripts! This isnt great nor efficent for soup lists, but this very much allows me to keep my Commisar and meatbags charging!!! HOORAH!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, I still don't understand why the nerfed commisars, they should have just added this onto consripts Raw Recruits Rule: due to the iron dicipline of the guard not properly drilled into the unit the Commissars Summary Execution does not work on this unit.

Or lessen it: Models in this unit halve their losses to moral.

Perfectly reasonable and still keeps the commissars' abilities for the rest of the army fully functional. And I must say, I have yet to see anyone complain how commissars worked on regular infantry squads, so with some people trying to bait and switch and retroactively be apologetic for it makes no sense to me.

I am not too concerned about commisars being "meh" for conscripts as I don't really run conscripts outside of lols fun matches. Though I am happy to see that there still is a way for others to play it. I'm super sad to see all the IG players and armies which will never use the commissar again.

 MrMoustaffa wrote:

IG on the other hand could lose 48 men in the shooting phase with old commissar, and still guarantee only 1 more died to morale.

Are those men all from the same squad? If so, the Commissar is only saving 2 men.

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
All on a dirt cheap character that was easy to spam across the army and could be hidden incredibly easy if you had even the faintest idea of how to play. I'm sorry but I've watched all of these other amies in action in 8th and none of them held a candle to what a commissar could do. He was basically letting you use "insane bravery" on every unit except instead of paying 2 CP's you were paying 3-4pts per guardsman.

If you're paying 3-4pts per guardsman, then you're basically doubling the cost of your squads (before special/heavy weapons) yet getting no increase in firepower.

Surely there's a argument to be made that, outside of Conscripts, you'd be better off just spending those points on more squads and letting morale take its course?

 MrMoustaffa wrote:

Keep in mind,I agree that the nerf on commissars went too far. I think it's a bit BS as well, but you can't sit here and tell me that the original commissar at 31pt was at any point the appropriate price for him. His massive utility alone should have put him in the 50-60pt range.

Yeah, I'm going to have to disagree with this. Outside of Conscripts, Commissars weren't worth anything like that amount. And the increase in cost of Commissar Lords would have given people even less reason to ever take them.

Put simply, no, they din't save anywhere near enough men to be worth that sort of cost.

Also, I have to raise my eyebrow at 'massive utility'. He does literally one thing - helps with morale. That's it. If you want utility, take a Company Commander or a psyker.

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
Properly utilized, he could save 10-20 regular guardsmen a turn

Yeah, sorry, I'm going to call bull on this. You'd be lucky if multiple Commissars saved that many men in an entire game.

 MrMoustaffa wrote:

Give the commissar something like "Execute a model, you count as rolling a 1 for your battleshock test" for example, and it would've been a far more interesting and fair rule. You still get a very effective morale buff, it helps professional infantry like vets and infantry squads quite a bit, and still helps conscripts some but doesn't make them fearless. Having it as "kill 1 guy, auto pass" was just insanely good and seems to fly in the face of GW's entire philosophy of how they wanted morale to work in 8th.

I'd be fine with this.

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
The main issue though was that there was no counter to a commissar that was reasonable. Snipers were hilariously ineffective, fear abilities like Night Lords had no effect, and casualties had no impact either regardless of how bad they were. There was no counterplay, no strategy, no tactics, just a "hope you brought snipers bro" and that's it.

Quoted for truth.

The problem with Commissars is that is forces the opponents hand, as they knew, 100% of the time, they would not be able to burn down the squad using additional casualties due to morale.

I,e, after a certain base load of casualties (Ld) it becomes a case of additional casualties + D6 in addition wounds.

Now there isn't a guarantee, so the opponents may find it worthwhile to focus fire.

In a roundabout way.. this does mean the conscripts have become a bit more of a fire magnet... which is a good thing

 MrMoustaffa wrote:

Spoiler:

Tyranids can't hide all their synapse stuff like IG can, if I want synapse gone I can drop the big bugs pretty quickly. I'm sure there's some smaller stuff that can blend in but it's nowhere near as cheap or as spammable as Commissars were. At the very least they're nowhere near as easy to hide from snipers, considering the commissar is a single human model and can be hidden with even a single chimera or corner of a building. I'm no Nid expert but I don't recall ever having an issue shutting down synapse in 8th.

Orks have a pretty good mechanic, but it still has a counter built in, since if you can gut a couple of boyz mobs they start to fall apart. Conscript mobs, or infantry squad gunlines, were basically fighting at almost full effect because it didn't matter if you had 30 guys or 3, the commissar still worked, still did his job, and the main utility of IG units was just surviving long enough to screen and then make mad dashes for objectives. Shutting down a commissar basically boiled down to "do you have snipers, is the IG player an idiot leaving his commissar in the open, and do you roll hot enough to knock them all out in time?" or plan B "do you have enough dakka to just kill the infantry outright?" Because you weren't dropping in behind him, you certainly weren't getting to him on a 1st turn assault unless the IG player was a moron, and you weren't very likely to catch him with shenanigans like snipers and pyschic abilities.

Space marines being forced to play 5 man squads to ignore morale isn't a great point either, you've basically made it where no one will run full 10 man squads (or black templar Crusader 20 man units) because the more people they have the worse morale can affect them. A 10 man space marine squad that lost say 6 marines was far more likely to have men run than a 10 man IG squad with commissar support was. Yes Ultramarines are LD 9 but that still doesn't account for the fact that most marines were more cowardly than guardsmen with the old commissar rules, which is kind of ridiculous.

IG on the other hand could lose 48 men in the shooting phase with old commissar, and still guarantee only 1 more died to morale. All on a dirt cheap character that was easy to spam across the army and could be hidden incredibly easy if you had even the faintest idea of how to play. I'm sorry but I've watched all of these other amies in action in 8th and none of them held a candle to what a commissar could do. He was basically letting you use "insane bravery" on every unit except instead of paying 2 CP's you were paying 3-4pts per guardsman.

Keep in mind,I agree that the nerf on commissars went too far. I think it's a bit BS as well, but you can't sit here and tell me that the original commissar at 31pt was at any point the appropriate price for him. His massive utility alone should have put him in the 50-60pt range. Properly utilized, he could save 10-20 regular guardsmen a turn, easily double to triple that in conscripts, and deny multiple killpoints. Had he been say 1 wound, or in the 50pt range, he wouldn't have been near as insane as he was. The main issue though was that there was no counter to a commissar that was reasonable. Snipers were hilariously ineffective, fear abilities like Night Lords had no effect, and casualties had no impact either regardless of how bad they were. There was no counterplay, no strategy, no tactics, just a "hope you brought snipers bro" and that's it.

Give the commissar something like "Execute a model, you count as rolling a 1 for your battleshock test" for example, and it would've been a far more interesting and fair rule. You still get a very effective morale buff, it helps professional infantry like vets and infantry squads quite a bit, and still helps conscripts some but doesn't make them fearless. Having it as "kill 1 guy, auto pass" was just insanely good and seems to fly in the face of GW's entire philosophy of how they wanted morale to work in 8th.

I like this post. This is a good post.

I'm rather pleased at the concept of Grinding Advance Russ Annihlators; even if they have rendered the Vanquisher completely redundant now.

Too bad they cant be Tank Commanders

 malamis wrote:
I'm rather pleased at the concept of Grinding Advance Russ Annihlators; even if they have rendered the Vanquisher completely redundant now.

Too bad they cant be Tank Commanders

I don't have either of the books on me right now, but couldn't you just buy a tank commander and pay for the twin-linked lascannon? Or did they put the entry in for the annihilator as a distinct tank?

 Blacksails wrote:

 malamis wrote:
I'm rather pleased at the concept of Grinding Advance Russ Annihlators; even if they have rendered the Vanquisher completely redundant now.

Too bad they cant be Tank Commanders

I don't have either of the books on me right now, but couldn't you just buy a tank commander and pay for the twin-linked lascannon? Or did they put the entry in for the annihilator as a distinct tank?

The Annihilator, like the Conqueror, is its own entry.

That may change in the future, but even so, the Tank Commander entry is clear about what guns the Tank Commander can have.

What are the Annihilator and Conqueror again?

 Tsol wrote:
I am hoping they change their stance on commissars in short order. If not, I don't think I'll see them in my opponents lists until 9th edition when they rework the moral system again.

I can't wait for them to nerf the Iyanden trait that does exactly what Summary Execution did.

 Colonel Cross wrote:
I seriously tried a melee force. Granted it was against death guard. I still won, but only because our tanks are beasts now. Even fighting against T3 poxwalkers my Catachans barely did anything.

Don't feel bad, in multiple games I've charged Poxwalkers with a near full unit of Bloodletters and a near full unit of Genestealers and lost both of those combats.....and I wasn't even rolling that badly

Razerous wrote:
What are the Annihilator and Conqueror again?

The Leman Russ Annihilator is the LRBT version of the Predator Annihilator (twin lascannons in the turret, for a total of 5 lascannon blasts from an LRBT that moves half speed or less).

The Leman Russ Conqueror is an LRBT with a cut-down battlecannon, giving it slightly shorter range but making it more accurate and faster.

 Battlesong wrote:

 Colonel Cross wrote:
I seriously tried a melee force. Granted it was against death guard. I still won, but only because our tanks are beasts now. Even fighting against T3 poxwalkers my Catachans barely did anything.

Don't feel bad, in multiple games I've charged Poxwalkers with a near full unit of Bloodletters and a near full unit of Genestealers and lost both of those combats.....and I wasn't even rolling that badly

Just to clarify, with the typical buffs, how tough are pox walkers?

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Blacksails wrote:

 malamis wrote:
I'm rather pleased at the concept of Grinding Advance Russ Annihlators; even if they have rendered the Vanquisher completely redundant now.

Too bad they cant be Tank Commanders

I don't have either of the books on me right now, but couldn't you just buy a tank commander and pay for the twin-linked lascannon? Or did they put the entry in for the annihilator as a distinct tank?

The Annihilator, like the Conqueror, is its own entry.

That may change in the future, but even so, the Tank Commander entry is clear about what guns the Tank Commander can have.

I don't understand how FW and GW can feth up basic things like writing unit entries in the same manner. If we're going to use the absolutely fethed up method they're using nowadays for wargear, might as well stick to one method.

How hard would it have been to simply add "Twin-linked lascannon - XXpts" in the wargear section, or "Conqueror Battle Cannon - XXpts"? Honestly.

/rant

 Blacksails wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Blacksails wrote:

 malamis wrote:
I'm rather pleased at the concept of Grinding Advance Russ Annihlators; even if they have rendered the Vanquisher completely redundant now.

Too bad they cant be Tank Commanders

I don't have either of the books on me right now, but couldn't you just buy a tank commander and pay for the twin-linked lascannon? Or did they put the entry in for the annihilator as a distinct tank?

The Annihilator, like the Conqueror, is its own entry.

That may change in the future, but even so, the Tank Commander entry is clear about what guns the Tank Commander can have.

I don't understand how FW and GW can feth up basic things like writing unit entries in the same manner. If we're going to use the absolutely fethed up method they're using nowadays for wargear, might as well stick to one method.

How hard would it have been to simply add "Twin-linked lascannon - XXpts" in the wargear section, or "Conqueror Battle Cannon - XXpts"? Honestly.

/rant

Yes, this I agree with.

I love what Forge World does and I utilize a lot of their models, but I do regret that they miss the boat oftentimes on combining entries with the GW team.

So now that the Annihilator and Conqueror have been updated let us vigorously hash out which LR variant + regiment is the best. Sure it will depend on situation, but I'm thinking a Catachan Conqueror is the ultimate LR in terms of firepower. You don't need a commander as you have re-rolls at 24", and you re-roll number of shots. You also can easily put out high volume of fire with double stormbolters and heavy bolters, making it double as a mini punisher.

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
Tyranids can't hide all their synapse stuff like IG can, if I want synapse gone I can drop the big bugs pretty quickly. I'm sure there's some smaller stuff that can blend in but it's nowhere near as cheap or as spammable as Commissars were. At the very least they're nowhere near as easy to hide from snipers, considering the commissar is a single human model and can be hidden with even a single chimera or corner of a building. I'm no Nid expert but I don't recall ever having an issue shutting down synapse in 8th.

Tyranid Primes can be hidden. Warriors and Zoanthropes come in units.

And let's not forget that you can park Venomthropes nearby for a sweet, sweet -1 to Hit.

 Otto von Bludd wrote:
So now that the Annihilator and Conqueror have been updated let us vigorously hash out which LR variant + regiment is the best. Sure it will depend on situation, but I'm thinking a Catachan Conqueror is the ultimate LR in terms of firepower. You don't need a commander as you have re-rolls at 24", and you re-roll number of shots. You also can easily put out high volume of fire with double stormbolters and heavy bolters, making it double as a mini punisher.

This is my current plan. Catachan Leman Russ Conqueror with just the heavy bolter and co-axial SB, 165p.

Taking two of those, two earthshakers, and a warlord 5+/5+ command point for a detachment to help my Mechanicus.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
Tyranids can't hide all their synapse stuff like IG can, if I want synapse gone I can drop the big bugs pretty quickly. I'm sure there's some smaller stuff that can blend in but it's nowhere near as cheap or as spammable as Commissars were. At the very least they're nowhere near as easy to hide from snipers, considering the commissar is a single human model and can be hidden with even a single chimera or corner of a building. I'm no Nid expert but I don't recall ever having an issue shutting down synapse in 8th.

Tyranid Primes can be hidden. Warriors and Zoanthropes come in units.

And let's not forget that you can park Venomthropes nearby for a sweet, sweet -1 to Hit.

Broodlords can hide as well as can Malanthropes

Venomthropes -1 to hit only effects infantry so it pairs nicely with warriors and that's about it. They can't keep up with Genestealers move plus advance speed, and Tyranid players aren't going to spend 90 points on venoms to keep 40 points of hormagaunts or termagaunts alive.

Quick Question can Astropaths deny the witch on a 2D6 and manifest powers other than Smite on a 2d6? It seems like it should be 1d6 given their cost but the Rule clearly states when manifesting Smite.

Hey so I was thinking about running 3 20 conscript blobs. Better than 2 squads of 30? Could use the valhallan tactic or whatever but not sure.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Razerous wrote:
What are the Annihilator and Conqueror again?

The Leman Russ Annihilator is the LRBT version of the Predator Annihilator (twin lascannons in the turret, for a total of 5 lascannon blasts from an LRBT that moves half speed or less).

The Leman Russ Conqueror is an LRBT with a cut-down battlecannon, giving it slightly shorter range but making it more accurate and faster.

Cheers.. how much more accurate, I assume that is the co-ax heavy stubber?

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Blacksails wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Blacksails wrote:

 malamis wrote:
I'm rather pleased at the concept of Grinding Advance Russ Annihlators; even if they have rendered the Vanquisher completely redundant now.

Too bad they cant be Tank Commanders

I don't have either of the books on me right now, but couldn't you just buy a tank commander and pay for the twin-linked lascannon? Or did they put the entry in for the annihilator as a distinct tank?

The Annihilator, like the Conqueror, is its own entry.

That may change in the future, but even so, the Tank Commander entry is clear about what guns the Tank Commander can have.

I don't understand how FW and GW can feth up basic things like writing unit entries in the same manner. If we're going to use the absolutely fethed up method they're using nowadays for wargear, might as well stick to one method.

How hard would it have been to simply add "Twin-linked lascannon - XXpts" in the wargear section, or "Conqueror Battle Cannon - XXpts"? Honestly.

/rant

Yes, this I agree with.

I love what Forge World does and I utilize a lot of their models, but I do regret that they miss the boat oftentimes on combining entries with the GW team.

I like FW models, but their rules utterly suck almost entirely across the board. Have you ever cracked open the chaos index?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I'll clarify that by suck I mean all over the place. Some things will make your friends enemies while others are written so poorly and sloppily that it is hard to even use them correctly.

Razerous wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Razerous wrote:
What are the Annihilator and Conqueror again?

The Leman Russ Annihilator is the LRBT version of the Predator Annihilator (twin lascannons in the turret, for a total of 5 lascannon blasts from an LRBT that moves half speed or less).

The Leman Russ Conqueror is an LRBT with a cut-down battlecannon, giving it slightly shorter range but making it more accurate and faster.

Cheers.. how much more accurate, I assume that is the co-ax heavy stubber?

Co-ax storm bolter, but yes, if you fire that at the same target as the main armament, the main armament re-rolls its to-hit rolls. It's THAT good.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Razerous wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Razerous wrote:
What are the Annihilator and Conqueror again?

The Leman Russ Annihilator is the LRBT version of the Predator Annihilator (twin lascannons in the turret, for a total of 5 lascannon blasts from an LRBT that moves half speed or less).

The Leman Russ Conqueror is an LRBT with a cut-down battlecannon, giving it slightly shorter range but making it more accurate and faster.

Cheers.. how much more accurate, I assume that is the co-ax heavy stubber?

Co-ax storm bolter, but yes, if you fire that at the same target as the main armament, the main armament re-rolls its to-hit rolls. It's THAT good.

oh bejesus. That combined with catachans could force a complete rethink of the army. I mean... that's really good.

36" range? 165pts ish you say?

 Kanluwen wrote:

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
Tyranids can't hide all their synapse stuff like IG can, if I want synapse gone I can drop the big bugs pretty quickly. I'm sure there's some smaller stuff that can blend in but it's nowhere near as cheap or as spammable as Commissars were. At the very least they're nowhere near as easy to hide from snipers, considering the commissar is a single human model and can be hidden with even a single chimera or corner of a building. I'm no Nid expert but I don't recall ever having an issue shutting down synapse in 8th.

Tyranid Primes can be hidden. Warriors and Zoanthropes come in units.

And let's not forget that you can park Venomthropes nearby for a sweet, sweet -1 to Hit.

Broodlords can be hidden as well.

Something else to consider is that, whilst these units are indeed more expensive than Commissars, they also contribute far more to the battle. Commissars basically do one thing and one thing only - stop units running. other than that, they can maybe bring a Bolter.

A Tyranid Prime can wield an Assault Heavy Bolter, can have 5 attacks with S5 AP-2 melee weapons, and gives all Warriors +1 to hit.

A Broodlord is practically a monstrous creature in terms of melee ability. It has 6 S5 AP-3 Dd3 attacks, rerolls failed to-wound rolls and any to-wound rolls of 6+ are resolved at AP-6 and do 3 damage. It also gives nearby genestealers +1 to hit and is a psyker to boot. Oh, and like genestealers it can charge after Advancing.

They're also considerably tougher than Commissars, having T5, 6 wounds apiece with a 3+ save and a 4+/5+ save on the Prime and Broodlord, respectively.

 Otto von Bludd wrote:
So now that the Annihilator and Conqueror have been updated let us vigorously hash out which LR variant + regiment is the best. Sure it will depend on situation, but I'm thinking a Catachan Conqueror is the ultimate LR in terms of firepower. You don't need a commander as you have re-rolls at 24", and you re-roll number of shots. You also can easily put out high volume of fire with double stormbolters and heavy bolters, making it double as a mini punisher.

Trying to catch up on this thread, when did the Conqueror get updated to the new Grinding Advance rules? That's seriously awesome, they're already my fav tank before and now they can shoot twice and re-roll to hit if you catch someone with the storm bolter!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Razerous wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Razerous wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Razerous wrote:
What are the Annihilator and Conqueror again?

The Leman Russ Annihilator is the LRBT version of the Predator Annihilator (twin lascannons in the turret, for a total of 5 lascannon blasts from an LRBT that moves half speed or less).

The Leman Russ Conqueror is an LRBT with a cut-down battlecannon, giving it slightly shorter range but making it more accurate and faster.

Cheers.. how much more accurate, I assume that is the co-ax heavy stubber?

Co-ax storm bolter, but yes, if you fire that at the same target as the main armament, the main armament re-rolls its to-hit rolls. It's THAT good.

oh bejesus. That combined with catachans could force a complete rethink of the army. I mean... that's really good.

36" range? 165pts ish you say?

It's a 48" battle cannon, if you HIT with the coaxial storm bolter (24" range) then you get to re-roll, but it really suits my style of play so I love them.

You definitely don't have to hit with the co-ax.

Just have to fire at the same target.

 vipoid wrote:

Spoiler:

 MrMoustaffa wrote:

IG on the other hand could lose 48 men in the shooting phase with old commissar, and still guarantee only 1 more died to morale.

Are those men all from the same squad? If so, the Commissar is only saving 2 men.

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
All on a dirt cheap character that was easy to spam across the army and could be hidden incredibly easy if you had even the faintest idea of how to play. I'm sorry but I've watched all of these other amies in action in 8th and none of them held a candle to what a commissar could do. He was basically letting you use "insane bravery" on every unit except instead of paying 2 CP's you were paying 3-4pts per guardsman.

If you're paying 3-4pts per guardsman, then you're basically doubling the cost of your squads (before special/heavy weapons) yet getting no increase in firepower.

Surely there's a argument to be made that, outside of Conscripts, you'd be better off just spending those points on more squads and letting morale take its course?

 MrMoustaffa wrote:

Keep in mind,I agree that the nerf on commissars went too far. I think it's a bit BS as well, but you can't sit here and tell me that the original commissar at 31pt was at any point the appropriate price for him. His massive utility alone should have put him in the 50-60pt range.

Yeah, I'm going to have to disagree with this. Outside of Conscripts, Commissars weren't worth anything like that amount. And the increase in cost of Commissar Lords would have given people even less reason to ever take them.

Put simply, no, they din't save anywhere near enough men to be worth that sort of cost.

Also, I have to raise my eyebrow at 'massive utility'. He does literally one thing - helps with morale. That's it. If you want utility, take a Company Commander or a psyker.

Right so I need to clarify a bit, posting at 4 AM is a heck of a drug. Hope I don't come across as pissy or anything, I'm basically just going to disagree with you a bit here and explain myself better. Keep in mind I run infantry squad spam IG right now, so when I talk about how commissars work, it's usually with anywhere from 10-15 Infantry squads running around and, depending on how annoying my opponent is, conscripts on top of that. Essentially the perfect storm for a commissar and any other morale mechanic. I knew how to abuse the absolute feth out of Commissars in my area and they were pretty thoroughly hated by everyone I knew. Even brand new players could tell after the first turn that commissars were stupidly powerful.

#1: Yes, he was only saving two men, or in the case of a 50 man conscript squad, one. But you only need one with objective secured to hold an objective and win a game. Every IG player out there should know the value of keeping a few men alive here and there. This can be the difference in first blood, a killpoint, or denying a maelstom mission that involves destroying units. Especially infantry squads which will lead into number 2

#2 Sorry, I worded this badly. What I should have typed is "Except instead of spending 2 CP's, you spend 3-4 pts to pop a guardsman instead." Basically what I'm arguing is the commissar ability let you spam "Insane Bravery" multiple times a turn for at worst maybe 20-30pts worth of models. That is huge. I cannot tell you how powerful that is in an infantry squad list. I basically guarantee that my lascannons and plasma guns will fight to the very end, and an opponent HAS to kill me down to one model or wipe the unit to prevent that. An infantry squad could lose 8 wounds, fail the test, and still have a lascannon firing at full effect into the next turn, or hold an objective, or just even have a random guardsman charge a vehicle to tie it up. That is massive. Mechanically you're getting 10 or so "free" command points a turn to spam Insane Bravery, and you even got to ignore the "once per turn" limit strategems have in matched play. This leads me into point number 3

#3 Commissars could save a massive amount of points in infantry (at least in the mind of an IG player) every turn. Take the infantry squad example. With the old commissar rules, that could save a 20pt lascannon and give me another turn to fire with it, with 0 CP investment. I now have a spare command point to merge that lascannon into another squad, both denying a kill point for those kind of missions and ensuring that I continue to fire that weapon. So in a single turn with that one example, I've essentially saved 28pts, allowed a lascannon another crucial shot, and denied a killpoint. In one single action, the commissar has essentially paid for himself. Now take into account that this aura can affect everything around him. Depending on line of sight and what your opponent has they may not be able to wipe every single unit like they want to, so you can end up with 2 or 3 squads like this in any given turn. All with their firepower essentially unchanged, all still holding their objectives, all still denying their kill points. A single well placed commissar with a clever player could save well over a hundred points of infantry in a game with a little luck and proper positioning. This is of course ignoring things like conscripts, where a unit could take say 16 casualties and yet still have 13 left at the end of the phase, meaning that commissar saved 39pts worth of models in a single morale phase for a single unit. In that case, even counting the conscript the commissar shot, he was making a 5pt profit, essentially giving the IG player a free extra 5pts in his list.

This becomes doubly important in assault, as keeping these infantry alive prevents an assault player from getting as perfect of a consolidation as he would if he wipes the unit. Inevitably a few will have to go around the survivors and lose a couple of inches in movement. If you're clever enough to countercharge properly, and you can do this, you can potentially tie up units like Beserkers or Genestealers going into the opponents turn. So long as one guardsman stands, and the enemy unit doesn't have a "fall back and charge again" rule, you've stolen that unit's initiative and drastically cut down it's threat radius. In an instance like this yes, mechanically the commissar only saved maybe one or two guardsman, but strategically he could save massive swathes of your army. Yes he's dangerously close to the enemy unit you countercharged, but if you're an infantry player you should have more than one running around. Not to mention they're so cheap it's really not a big deal to sacrifice one here and there if the infantry he's supposed to watch over have been destroyed.


This was the true value of commissars that people rarely mention, Commissars essentially gave you extra guardsmen by ignoring the morale mechanic. Any given turn, you were saving far more men than you shot, men who would've ran otherwise, which meant even a 40pt infantry squad was in reality fighting like it had 50, potentially 60pts worth of guardsmen in it. In an army built from the ground up to wear down it's opponent by attrition, this is absolutely massive. You are getting more lascannon shots, more plasma shots, holding onto ground longer, every turn of every game. He was like a space marine banner except more consistent, on top of the fact that he let the model live to continue fighting. Not to mention what I said earlier about it literally being "insane bravery" for a paltry cost of points instead of CP's, and the fact that it could be used army wide, and it gave out LD 8, and it could be hidden, all for the hilariously low price of 31pts. Commissars would've been worth every point at 50pts guaranteed, possibly even more, it's just the higher you go the more he becomes a dedicated infantry list unit only. I can see a tank player with only one or two conscript screens balking at the idea of a 50pt commissar but any infantry player worth his salt knew that Commissars were your most powerful tool in your army and would still buy them in a heartbeat. They were that good.

And again, just to reiterate, I'm very annoyed about the commisar change too, probably more than anyone else here as I own 15 of the things. But I cannot sit here with a straight face and even remotely try to act like commissars weren't an issue in and of themselves. They were bar none the most powerful morale mechanic in the game and put 1,000 year old space knights, unkillable space skeletons, unending hordes of greenskins, 10,000 year old space hell marines, and many other horrors of the galaxy to shame by simply having a guy in a fancy hat with a bolt pistol.

 MrMoustaffa wrote:

Right so I need to clarify a bit, posting at 4 AM is a heck of a drug. Hope I don't come across as pissy or anything, I'm basically just going to disagree with you a bit here and explain myself better.

No worries.

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
Keep in mind I run infantry squad spam IG right now, so when I talk about how commissars work, it's usually with anywhere from 10-15 Infantry squads running around and, depending on how annoying my opponent is, conscripts on top of that. Essentially the perfect storm for a commissar and any other morale mechanic. I knew how to abuse the absolute feth out of Commissars in my area and they were pretty thoroughly hated by everyone I knew. Even brand new players could tell after the first turn that commissars were stupidly powerful.

Is there any chance you could post your armies?

I like playing Infantry armies myself and am always keen to see what others are running in that regard.

 MrMoustaffa wrote:

#1: Yes, he was only saving two men, or in the case of a 50 man conscript squad, one. But you only need one with objective secured to hold an objective and win a game. Every IG player out there should know the value of keeping a few men alive here and there. This can be the difference in first blood, a killpoint, or denying a maelstom mission that involves destroying units. Especially infantry squads which will lead into number 2

Granted, but when a Commissar can buy you 10 more Conscripts, saving just 2 doesn't really seem to be earning his keep.

I bring it up mainly because you talked about Commissars in terms of how many points they could save.

 MrMoustaffa wrote:

#2 Sorry, I worded this badly. What I should have typed is "Except instead of spending 2 CP's, you spend 3-4 pts to pop a guardsman instead." Basically what I'm arguing is the commissar ability let you spam "Insane Bravery" multiple times a turn for at worst maybe 20-30pts worth of models. That is huge. I cannot tell you how powerful that is in an infantry squad list. I basically guarantee that my lascannons and plasma guns will fight to the very end, and an opponent HAS to kill me down to one model or wipe the unit to prevent that. An infantry squad could lose 8 wounds, fail the test, and still have a lascannon firing at full effect into the next turn, or hold an objective, or just even have a random guardsman charge a vehicle to tie it up. That is massive. Mechanically you're getting 10 or so "free" command points a turn to spam Insane Bravery, and you even got to ignore the "once per turn" limit strategems have in matched play.

To be fair, Insane Bravery doesn't cost you points (not many points, but still), nor does it kill one of your models anyway. The latter is quite important, since if a squad is down to just the plasmagun and lascannon, insane bravery would let you keep both, whilst the Commissar only lets you keep one of them.

More than that though, does this not illustrate how impractical Insane Bravery and such would be for an IG army? Even with the considerable number of CPs we can get, we'd basically have to spend our entire allowance each turn. Does that not illustrate how impractical the standard tools would be for us?

 MrMoustaffa wrote:

#3 Commissars could save a massive amount of points in infantry (at least in the mind of an IG player) every turn. Take the infantry squad example. With the old commissar rules, that could save a 20pt lascannon and give me another turn to fire with it, with 0 CP investment. I now have a spare command point to merge that lascannon into another squad, both denying a kill point for those kind of missions and ensuring that I continue to fire that weapon. So in a single turn with that one example, I've essentially saved 28pts, allowed a lascannon another crucial shot, and denied a killpoint. In one single action, the commissar has essentially paid for himself. Now take into account that this aura can affect everything around him. Depending on line of sight and what your opponent has they may not be able to wipe every single unit like they want to, so you can end up with 2 or 3 squads like this in any given turn. All with their firepower essentially unchanged, all still holding their objectives, all still denying their kill points. A single well placed commissar with a clever player could save well over a hundred points of infantry in a game with a little luck and proper positioning. This is of course ignoring things like conscripts, where a unit could take say 16 casualties and yet still have 13 left at the end of the phase, meaning that commissar saved 39pts worth of models in a single morale phase for a single unit. In that case, even counting the conscript the commissar shot, he was making a 5pt profit, essentially giving the IG player a free extra 5pts in his list.

Again though, does this not illustrate the problem with morale for guard?

Let's say that your Commissar saves your plasmagun and lascannon. That comes to 35pts (including the guardsmen holding them), out of a ~67pt squad. So let's say that he's saved half the squad (in pts). Okay, sure, that's a good deal.

However, if you take the Commissar out of the equation, then that squad is losing half its pts to morale. In fact, once we factor in the Commissar's Ld and the man he executed, the squad has actually lost 43pts to morale. So it's actually lost 2/3 of its cost just to morale. Is that any more reasonable?

I think we either have to look at this differently (assuming a squad's cost is spread evenly), or else admit that morale is really screwy. with or without Commissars.

 MrMoustaffa wrote:

This becomes doubly important in assault, as keeping these infantry alive prevents an assault player from getting as perfect of a consolidation as he would if he wipes the unit. Inevitably a few will have to go around the survivors and lose a couple of inches in movement. If you're clever enough to countercharge properly, and you can do this, you can potentially tie up units like Beserkers or Genestealers going into the opponents turn. So long as one guardsman stands, and the enemy unit doesn't have a "fall back and charge again" rule, you've stolen that unit's initiative and drastically cut down it's threat radius. In an instance like this yes, mechanically the commissar only saved maybe one or two guardsman, but strategically he could save massive swathes of your army. Yes he's dangerously close to the enemy unit you countercharged, but if you're an infantry player you should have more than one running around. Not to mention they're so cheap it's really not a big deal to sacrifice one here and there if the infantry he's supposed to watch over have been destroyed.

It's possible, but outside of Conscripts (which I think we've all agreed were an issue), I've yet to see an Infantry Squad survive an assault from Beserkers or Genestealersin the first place.

 MrMoustaffa wrote:

This was the true value of commissars that people rarely mention, Commissars essentially gave you extra guardsmen by ignoring the morale mechanic. Any given turn, you were saving far more men than you shot, men who would've ran otherwise, which meant even a 40pt infantry squad was in reality fighting like it had 50, potentially 60pts worth of guardsmen in it. In an army built from the ground up to wear down it's opponent by attrition, this is absolutely massive. You are getting more lascannon shots, more plasma shots, holding onto ground longer, every turn of every game. He was like a space marine banner except more consistent, on top of the fact that he let the model live to continue fighting. Not to mention what I said earlier about it literally being "insane bravery" for a paltry cost of points instead of CP's, and the fact that it could be used army wide, and it gave out LD 8, and it could be hidden, all for the hilariously low price of 31pts. Commissars would've been worth every point at 50pts guaranteed, possibly even more, it's just the higher you go the more he becomes a dedicated infantry list unit only. I can see a tank player with only one or two conscript screens balking at the idea of a 50pt commissar but any infantry player worth his salt knew that Commissars were your most powerful tool in your army and would still buy them in a heartbeat. They were that good.

As above though, this logic also applies to morale when Commissars aren't present. it means that an opponent can kill just 1/3 of a squad's value and have the other 2/3 melt to morale. Is that really a more reasonable situation?

 MrMoustaffa wrote:

And again, just to reiterate, I'm very annoyed about the commisar change too, probably more than anyone else here as I own 15 of the things. But I cannot sit here with a straight face and even remotely try to act like commissars weren't an issue in and of themselves. They were bar none the most powerful morale mechanic in the game and put 1,000 year old space knights, unkillable space skeletons, unending hordes of greenskins, 10,000 year old space hell marines, and many other horrors of the galaxy to shame by simply having a guy in a fancy hat with a bolt pistol.

I don't see how you can call them the most powerful morale mechanic in the game. Perhaps the most cost-effective (since they basically did morale and nothing else) or the best with respect to their army, but Synapse was still better.

Regardless, I do agree with what you said earlier - that 'kill a model to count a failed morale test as having rolled a 1' would be a better mechanic. It would hurt Conscripts while leaving other Infantry largely unchanged. However, it would also allow other factors to enter in - such as Ld debuffs.