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.

I know a lot of people swear by the almighty power blob, but what else can you do with platoons? I wanted to go with a more conventional role, either as a gunline but as something a little more mobile. Is there a way to pull this off?

I guess you could use grenade launchers if you want to be gunline-esque while still retaining mobility.

Some people sweap by power blobs with heavy weapons and grenade launchers, while I swear by assaulty power blobs with assault weapons (flamers and meltas) and no heavy weapons for maximum mobility. You'll normally need Al'Rahem in one power blob if you the latter setup so you show up on a flank and hopefully close to the enemy.

I don't think blobing gunline guards men is the best for shooting. If you have multiple groups, you can spread out the fire to different targets. Autocannon and Grenade launchers work well together in a 10 man squad.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
It is mobile because there are multiple squads coverging in differnt directions instead of a big group going in one direction. thats how mobile you get. Don't put them in chimeras (if the sqaud contains autocannons) because the cannons can't fire if the chimera moves...or am i interupting the rules wrong?

PBS will get rid of a 50 men power blob in heart beat... especially if the blob runs a commissar you'll see him executing alot of guardsman.

Anyway a good load out for a platoon would be a PCS with 3-4 meltas in chimera, and 2 squads with a melta/Hvy wep team in chimeras. Its mobile and good for taking objectives.

SonsofVulkan wrote:PBS will get rid of a 50 men power blob in heart beat... especially if the blob runs a commissar you'll see him executing alot of guardsman.

If they have a Commissar they'll be stubborn and ignore negative modifiers on morale checks. That's half the point of taking a Commissar. Weaken Resolve won't help you break them.

Besides who takes PBS's anymore?

I am a fan of the 41 or 42 man Blob Squad. With 5 Power weapons, 4 melta guns, 1 vox, 1 commissar and sometimes a priest.

I mechanise my platoon and its worked out very, very nicely for me.

L. Wrex

EDIT: And with the re-introduction of the Vindicare you'll probably find the use of power blobs start to decline. Killing the Commisar AND forcing pinning in one shooting round is pretty brutal for a 200+ point unit.

Here is my basic set up of a Platoon

Platoon Command Squad : 50
Flamer x 4

Infantry Squad : 100
Commissar
Grenade Launcher
Autocannon

Infantry Squad : 65
Grenade Launcher
Autocannon

It all comes up to 215 points, not too bad. I have at least 2 of these in 1K games. The blobs can shoot from afar and if the fighting comes close, tie up enemy units. The PCS can help out if enemies get too close.

Lycaeus Wrex wrote:I mechanise my platoon and its worked out very, very nicely for me.

L. Wrex

EDIT: And with the re-introduction of the Vindicare you'll probably find the use of power blobs start to decline. Killing the Commisar AND forcing pinning in one shooting round is pretty brutal for a 200+ point unit.

But not the end of the world. Any officer with a vox caster will be able to unpin the blob next turn, and the Vindicare is far to delicate to survive IG shooting.

Without power weapons in a blob Commissar's only delay the inevitable when a blob gets sucked into CC.

I'm actually a big fan of the plain old 65 point AC/GL infantry squad operating as an independent 10 man squad in objective based games. The squad is cheap, durable if deployed in cover, has great firepower for the price of 4 space marines, and has a decent leadership for such a cheap squad. Best of all they tend to be ignored at the start of the game, and mid game vendettas that have lost their disembarked squads can pick up an infantry squad to become a scoring unit again.

Quad flamer PCS in a Chimera with are amazing.

I don't know that there is a "Best" way to outfit a platoon. It depends on what you want them to do, and what the rest of your list looks like.

A power blob is going to look different then a objective squatting gunline blob, which is very different then an meched out blob.

And even in sub groups there are very different ways to go with each type.

To make things easier I'd decide what you'd like your army to look like overall then tool your platoons to fit that idea.

Actually, if your doing Platoons, which set up would you use?

Platoon Command Squad : 125
Meltagun x 4
Chimera w/ Multilaser, Heavy Flamer

Platoon Command Squad : 105
Flamer x 4
Chimera w/ Multilaser, Heavy Flamer

I myself use the 4x Melta option. How about you?

i usualy dont blob squads together.

When using a platoon im usualy using Al'Raheem, and therefore go cc. by having a 20 man squad, and a 10 man squad...only ten people can shoot, and 20 assult. or 20 shoot, and ten assult. but if you split it up into 3-10man squads...you can do more combinations..its an entire different squad for the enemy to shoot at, AND you can still assult w/ 20 men, just two squads assult at the same time.

I ususaly use 3-4 squads in a platoon, stick one or two squads behing covor at an obj, and give them "incoming" each turn by a nearby ccs. Nobody gets close because i kill them, and if they do get close, i use "get back in the fight" I shoot with "fire on my target" then hide with "Incoming" (this is with creed, also why i issued 3 orders)

Platoons are great for blocking line of sight from the enemy to you.

If you line up 20 men in the back of your "spawn" you can block enemy outflankers from coming in. You just hve to make sure that all of your stuff is outflanking, or you move units away on your preciding turn.

If you want to be mobile, then give gr. if you want to pose a threat, and defend something..give ml. but I prefer my vets have Mls and my gaurdsmen are gl.

Guardsmen and conscrips can be quite annoying to your opponent if you want them to be. block outflank, camp in a spot and have amazing covor (GBITF, Incoming---dirty trick) and of coarse massing ten man squads and slowly advance. Your opponent may ignor them and kill bigger threats, while you get close enough to mass assult.

OR

they target the crappy guardsmen, while your artilery, tanks, and snipers destroy them...all of this in theory.

ImpGuardPanzies wrote:i usualy dont blob squads together.

When using a platoon im usualy using Al'Raheem, and therefore go cc. by having a 20 man squad, and a 10 man squad...only ten people can shoot, and 20 assult. or 20 shoot, and ten assult. but if you split it up into 3-10man squads...you can do more combinations..its an entire different squad for the enemy to shoot at, AND you can still assult w/ 20 men, just two squads assult at the same time.

If you're assaulting with IG without Commisars and power weapons you shouldn't be assaulting. 10 T3, S3, 5+ models impress nobody in CC, it's purely the staying power afforded by the Commisar and the damage dealt by the p. weapons that let combined PIS do damage. Also, whilst you roll for reserves using one dice, as the platoon is one FOC selection, you roll for outflanking on squad by squad basis. The more squads you have, the higher the chance of them arriving on the wrong board edge. I hope you bring an Astropath for just this reason.

ImpGuardPanzies wrote:I ususaly use 3-4 squads in a platoon, stick one or two squads behing covor at an obj, and give them "incoming" each turn by a nearby ccs. Nobody gets close because i kill them, and if they do get close, i use "get back in the fight" I shoot with "fire on my target" then hide with "Incoming" (this is with creed, also why i issued 3 orders)

This is illegal. You can only issue one order per squad per shooting phase. For example, you can order the PIS 'Incoming' in Shooting Phase 1, and 'GBITF' in Shooting Phase 2. You can't order the same squad three times. Creed doesn't circumvent this rule; he just lets you order 4 seperate squads per shooting phase rather than two.

ImpGuardPanzies wrote:Platoons are great for blocking line of sight from the enemy to you.

If you line up 20 men in the back of your "spawn" you can block enemy outflankers from coming in. You just hve to make sure that all of your stuff is outflanking, or you move units away on your preciding turn.

If you want to be mobile, then give gr. if you want to pose a threat, and defend something..give ml. but I prefer my vets have Mls and my gaurdsmen are gl.

Guardsmen and conscrips can be quite annoying to your opponent if you want them to be. block outflank, camp in a spot and have amazing covor (GBITF, Incoming---dirty trick) and of coarse massing ten man squads and slowly advance. Your opponent may ignor them and kill bigger threats, while you get close enough to mass assult.

OR

they target the crappy guardsmen, while your artilery, tanks, and snipers destroy them...all of this in theory.

I'm struggling to understand what you're saying here. Yes, you can screen your flanks to prevent outflanking, but in doing so you are dedicating a portion of your own force to do nothing useful other than board edge hugging. Conscripts are junk, and the reasons have been discussed many times on these forums, and as I said above, having 10-man IG squads without any upgrades charging into CC impresses nobody.

L. Wrex

Lycaeus Wrex wrote:I mechanise my platoon and its worked out very, very nicely for me.

L. Wrex

EDIT: And with the re-introduction of the Vindicare you'll probably find the use of power blobs start to decline. Killing the Commisar AND forcing pinning in one shooting round is pretty brutal for a 200+ point unit.

One option to consider is more than one Commissar. at 35 points a pop before upgrades i don't know how many extra you may want to buy though!

I wouldn't sweat too much about vindicares. It's one 0-1 unit of one of the 15 armies in the game, and vindicares can be shot at now like anything else.

For a non-power weapon platoon, I would go with lascannons, or plasma guns + autocannons. I don't see any point in not taking a commissar if you are taking 3-4 infantry squads in a platoon. You can always allocate a wound to hime if you want a squad to break - or at deployment you can seperate one squad from the blob and use it as a speedbump in front. (be careful to notify your opponent about this)

I've been trying more infantry heavy armies lately, more for nostalgia than anything. I wanted an army that looked sort of like my old 3rd ed army. It ended up being a bunch of plasma/AC squads in one platoon with a power blob for the other platoon. I ended up making 2x 20 man blobs out of the ac platoon, mostly because orders did more with larger squads. It ends to being a 150 point unit, which is pretty decent for what it can do.

In these infantry heavy armies, I've found that the LC is quite handy as a sort of local boost wherever your troops need the most support. I liked this because it felt like he was acting as a commissar should in the game.

I run my blobs as:

IS 1:
Comissar
Plasmagun
Vox

IS 2:
Plasmagun

I plan on adding a third Infantry squad with a plasma gun in 2000 points, but at 1500 two of those blobs serve me well.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh, and for PCS I usually build them for a role, I have one PCS with a PF, 3 flamers, a heavy flamer, a comissar and I attach a priest. They ride in a chimera with my blobs, toss out orders, and flame off an objective or an enemy horde. My second PCS has 2 sniper rifles and a missile launcher for MC/ Elite infantry killing.

if you're assaulting with IG without Commisars and power weapons you shouldn't be assaulting. 10 T3, S3, 5+ models impress nobody in CC, it's purely the staying power afforded by the Commisar and the damage dealt by the p. weapons that let combined PIS do damage. Also, whilst you roll for reserves using one dice, as the platoon is one FOC selection, you roll for outflanking on squad by squad basis. The more squads you have, the higher the chance of them arriving on the wrong board edge. I hope you bring an Astropath for just this reason.

I usualy incorperate 2 p. weapons, and i dont own any commisars, so i dont use them. Sometimes i use astropath, but not always, as i could usualy use more help on either side, and my lists are flexible to adjust as game goes on.

This is illegal. You can only issue one order per squad per shooting phase. For example, you can order the PIS 'Incoming' in Shooting Phase 1, and 'GBITF' in Shooting Phase 2. You can't order the same squad three times. Creed doesn't circumvent this rule; he just lets you order 4 seperate squads per shooting phase rather than two.

Just to clarify; I did not think that creed bypassed this rule. i was refering to the fact that he can issue 4 orders a turn. As far as only one order per shooting phase....i was aware, i thought GBITF was used during movement phase as the description reads "As a result, the ordered squad may shoot and assult as normal this turn"

i usualy dont use creed special rule..it was a poor reference to an idea that wouldnt even fit in this scenerio very well. that one is my mistake.

However, using that order and rolling double ones alows you to imidiatly issue another order, which could be incoming. this would be a risky move and chances of this happening are slim to none.

I'm struggling to understand what you're saying here. Yes, you can screen your flanks to prevent outflanking, but in doing so you are dedicating a portion of your own force to do nothing useful other than board edge hugging.

merly a point filler should you have nothing better to do. Once an enemy gets close, i usualy use them to assult THIS time using creeds order as it is allowed and would help greatly considering the suckiness in cc from a guardsmen. (these squads usualy have 1 power weapon for every 2 squads) NOTE: i never use more than two squads for this tactic

A few things I saw.
pg94 of the big rule book. The outflank paragraph says "When an outflanking unit arrives from reserve" roll for the squad.
pg96 of the IG codex. The very top under infantry platoon says "Each infantry platoon counts as a single troops choice on the force organisation chart when deploying, and is rolled for collectively when rolling for reserves."
So your entire platoon comes in on a single die no matter if you outflank or just hold them in plain reserve without Al'reham. Keeping in mind they are seperate for Dawn of war, so only 2 squads and HQ.

The Incoming! Get back in the fight! trick is somethings going to shoot at a squad thats holding an objective so you order Incoming! (on your shooting phase as all orders are issued in the shooting phase) then on your next turn you order Get back in the Fight! on the gone to ground squad so they can stand up and shoot that shooting phase instead of sitting there till the end of your turn.
So lay down and get 2+ cover (normal 4+ minus 2 from the order=2+) and your next shooting phase get up and shoot something. (keeping in mind Get back in the fight! is the only order that can be issued to troops falling back or gone to ground)

Not trying to be a dick just want everybody that reads this thread to have correct information.

My platoons, I had 2 with heavy bolters stand in front and hopefully a little lower then my heavy weapon squads as a meat shield.
Then I had 2 with flamers stand in front of my 2 SWS and PCS as they all charged. It worked ok but recently I tried a 40 man power blob with commissar and they ate 5 terminators, one of which was a champion. 40 is too many, I'm trying a 20 man one in my next game but I hear 30 is the magic number.
My PCS always has 4 flamers, really any troop with BS3 has template or blast weapons.

I never bought any commissars but I made 3 out of bitz. The head, arms and shoulder pads from the hell hound and the legs and torso from the company command sprew. Also you can make one from the bane blade sprew.

just a tiny bit of green stuff on the face to cover the face and used a resperator from the CCS sprew.

Nice commisar, th way i do it is have my pcs with no upgrades and every infantry squad with plasma guns and vox casters and have power weapons on sargents rarely


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And i charge them forward and have my artillery pounde the enemy to bits then finish off survivors with ratlings then when the infantry squas close enough to shoot they stop moving then shoot evrything that exhists and i have a mass infantry army with little too no heavy weapons and 2 leman russ battle tank this always works as the infantry rarely get shot.

Am I the only one who likes min-maxed platoons? I.E. 5 squads in a platoon, blobbed into a squad of 20 and a squad of 30, with little/no upgrades at all? That allows you to get more bodies into the army plus I can then load up on heavy weapon squads.

I've always liked separate squads for tactical purposes (shooting, moving, transports and so on), but last game I ran 3 powerblobs of 40 guardsmen, 4GL and a vox + commissar, 4 PW all in all and that worked out remarkably well against CSM, though it was partly due to some immensely unlucky rolls from my opponent. One squad was locked in close combat for 3 complete turns, charged first by 10 lesser demons and then 3 terminators that survived a plasma fusillade, the final Terminator was gutted by Guardsman Stevens using a trusty (rusty) bayonet.

However, a 4 squad blob felt very unwieldy and i think they will be the charged rather than chargee's more often than not. Next game I'm thinking of fielding a mobile blob of 30, flamers or plasma + commissar (and maybe a priest) and a 20 blob (read meatshield) with 2 plasma + 2 LC tucked away in cover behind the running loonies. To this, add a PCS in a chimera with 4 meltas as a backup against anything armored and we are go.
If possible I wouldn't add a commissar to the second blob but the low leadership is slightly worrying especially when its ordertime.

What I Do know is beware of other IG players if you like blobs, a few well aimed shots from a BC will repaint the landscape blood red, commissar or no.

I love this game