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You know what I meant.

And I don't see as much overlap between AV14 and T3 Sv5+ as I think you do.

What I was referring to was more that there are anti-AV14 weapons, very few of which will make a serious dent in a foot horde. Meanwhile, there are a lot of weapons that can handle both hordes and AV11, and some armies (cf. eldar S6 spam), that rely exclusively on these weapons to handle both. As such, they're going to bring them and use them against your troops choices regardless of how many chimeras they are riding in.

 Ailaros wrote:
You know what I meant.

And I don't see as much overlap between AV14 and T3 Sv5+ as I think you do.

What I was referring to was more that there are anti-AV14 weapons, very few of which will make a serious dent in a foot horde. Meanwhile, there are a lot of weapons that can handle both hordes and AV11, and some armies (cf. eldar S6 spam), that rely exclusively on these weapons to handle both. As such, they're going to bring them and use them against your troops choices regardless of how many chimeras they are riding in.

Lascannons and meltaguns vs an all foot list are deadweight, a waste of points.

Lascannons and meltaguns vs a foot list with a couple of tanks just got a lot more important.

For all the strengths of hybrid, being all infantry or all mech (not sure why you think all mech needs to have at least some infantry. My mech guard never did, and for damn good reasons) brings advantages of its own.

Your mech guard brought infantry. They're called vets. You probably also took at least one infantry model for your HQ choice.

But seriously, my point is this: If a list is otherwise all infantry, but contains one vehicle, that doesn't necessarily make it a hybrid list. Likewise, having at least one infantry model in a list that is otherwise comprised of vehicles does not make it a hybrid list. Were that true, there would BE no mech lists, as they all contain at least 21 infantry models, and are thus all hybrid.

The point I'm trying to make is a syntactical one, not one of semantics.

If a foot guard commander takes a russ, saying "tee, hee, hee. You're totally a hybrid commander. GOTCHYA!" is meaningless.

Right, the problems of advancing Troop units on foot are more similar than advancing in Chimeras whether one has fire support in the form of HWSs or Russes. They are still T3/5+ save guys that have to survive advancing toward objectives.

How about 'advancing' in a Vendetta. Granted the squad is near-dead if the Vendetta gets shot down but it seems quite mobile to me and can drop (grav drop??) its troops off at an objective.

Could/Does this work?

Possibly.

Infantry platoons count as a single entity for the purpose of rolling for reserves. Vendettas must start the game in reserves. This means that in order to fly a squad that comes from a platoon in on a vendetta, both the platoon and the flier must start in reserves.

But then things become highly questionable. What happens if the vendetta and the platoon don't both come in on the same turn? The platoon cannot deploy without deploying everything at once. That kind of implies that if the vendetta shows up first, then it shows up without anyone inside, and if the platoon shows up first, then everybody has to go on the table, and, once again, the vendetta shows up without any passengers later.

Were a vendetta a dedicated transport, or the platoon not have indivisibility in reserves, this wouldn't be a problem, but as it is... it is.

 Ailaros wrote:
Your mech guard brought infantry. They're called vets. You probably also took at least one infantry model for your HQ choice.

But seriously, my point is this: If a list is otherwise all infantry, but contains one vehicle, that doesn't necessarily make it a hybrid list. Likewise, having at least one infantry model in a list that is otherwise comprised of vehicles does not make it a hybrid list. Were that true, there would BE no mech lists, as they all contain at least 21 infantry models, and are thus all hybrid.

The point I'm trying to make is a syntactical one, not one of semantics.

If a foot guard commander takes a russ, saying "tee, hee, hee. You're totally a hybrid commander. GOTCHYA!" is meaningless.

If everything that my enemy can shoot at turn 1 has an AV value, then I'm running a mech list. If everything has a Toughness value, it's a footlist. If it's a mix of both, it's hybrid.
The distinction is very important. If my army is full of tanks, then a lot of my enemy's firepower is useless. However if I have a unit of HWTs or a CCS, they're going to be taking heavy bolters to the face like it's no one's business.

Similarly in a foot list with a couple of tanks, your enemy could have 3 las-preds that are wasted points. But if you have a couple of armoured units on the board, they're dead meat.

Testify wrote:If everything that my enemy can shoot at turn 1... If everything has a Toughness value

These two things are different. It's a false analogy.

And it's still syntactic.

 Ailaros wrote:

And it's still syntactic.

It is if you ignore the part of my post that isn't.

And when your opponents break open transports, what, gas comes out? No, infantry models do. Infantry models that anti-infantry weapons are good against.

You have to apply the same standard when labeling two different ends of the same spectrum, or else different terms refer to different things.

But all of this is an insanely pointless digression to how a foot guard army should assault. Feel free to continue to press a meaningless syntactic argument all you want. It will be ignored from now on...

I mean, as your signature itself notes...

jcress wrote:Seem super off topic to complain about epistemology on a thread about tactics.

Ailaros, just out of curiosity what kind of units or lists are you facing that can shred 6 to 12 inches of a guardsman advance and have all your HWS's dead by turn two? Are they bringing lots of flamers and the like because it sounds horrific

 Ailaros wrote:
And when your opponents break open transports, what, gas comes out? No, infantry models do. Infantry models that anti-infantry weapons are good against.

A popped transport is empty. The guys inside are already dead as far as I, and a lot of mech commanders, are concerned.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Axemanadam wrote:
Ailaros, just out of curiosity what kind of units or lists are you facing that can shred 6 to 12 inches of a guardsman advance and have all your HWS's dead by turn two? Are they bringing lots of flamers and the like because it sounds horrific

Many "modern" codexes have more than enough dakka to rip guard to shreds.

Grey Knights, Blood Angels, Necrons will all annialate foot guard.

 Axemanadam wrote:
Ailaros, just out of curiosity what kind of units or lists are you facing that can shred 6 to 12 inches of a guardsman advance and have all your HWS's dead by turn two? Are they bringing lots of flamers and the like because it sounds horrific

For the guardsmen, part of it is spacing. If I were to deploy everything in close order, then this wouldn't be that big of an issue, but as I have to spread my troops out to stop myself from losing too much to blasts, it is. If I have a model with a 1" base, and then there's a 1" gap to the second rank of the squad, and those guys are on 1" bases, and the other squad is 1.5" behind the first one, that's 4.5". If, in return, the second rank charges up 6", I'm only really moving 1.5" up the field. Basically, the next wave does little more than make it to the pile of corpses from the first wave. Even if you shorten these distances, you're still just talking about a couple of inches of advancement.

This also creates another problem, that being that you can only fit so many ranks of guardsmen in your deployment zone. Eventually you're going to have troops that spread out left and right, and then they have problems with hypotenusical movement as well (they have to move to the left or right, as well as forward).

As for what's killing so many guardsmen, it's actually relatively mundane stuff. Assault cannon razorbacks, chimeras, fliers with and without missiles, splinter spam, bolters and the like. One of my recent games involved the losing end of a chainsaw massacre vs. BA.

 Testify wrote:

 Ailaros wrote:
And when your opponents break open transports, what, gas comes out? No, infantry models do. Infantry models that anti-infantry weapons are good against.

A popped transport is empty. The guys inside are already dead as far as I, and a lot of mech commanders, are concerned.

I don't hold this view. The guys inside are still a threat or at least a objective grabber. You still have to kill the guys inside.

 ObliviousBlueCaboose wrote:

 Testify wrote:

 Ailaros wrote:
And when your opponents break open transports, what, gas comes out? No, infantry models do. Infantry models that anti-infantry weapons are good against.

A popped transport is empty. The guys inside are already dead as far as I, and a lot of mech commanders, are concerned.

I don't hold this view. The guys inside are still a threat or at least a objective grabber. You still have to kill the guys inside.

Yeah but the enemy has Heavy Bolters, Bolters, Assault Cannons and Frag Missiles that before had nothing to shoot at, and now have one or two squads to concentrate on. And they're an assault target, obviously. Oh and they have to take a pinning test, then a morale test.

Sure if they get popped turn 4 or 5 then MAYBE they might do something. But I played mech guard for about 6 months and once a chimera's popped I just write off the guys inside.

I've been thinking of running an IG foot army once I polish my old Boyz up. At 750 points, I've basically got two two-squad platoons each with a vanilla Russ for them to follow, so their front's covered by AV14 and the single plasma in each and every infantry squad is all that'll keep flankers away. I've got a choice between Ratlings or Marbo in addition. I'm leaning more towards Marbo for the off-chance he can pop a heavy enemy vehicle and attract some fire for a phase. A medieval tactic, yes, but at such a smaller-end game I'm not too worried about my AV14 getting battered.

Then again, I've yet to play a 6th ed game (Let alone as Guard!), so I'm probably talking out of my arse here.

Anybody good at Math-hammering different sized RR squads with the hunting lances vs common targets?

If used as small suicide units meant to cripple (not kill) they could become this sort of safe-zone generating units.

Take down enough marines/enemy guard so your small Infantry unit can charge Marines, stay in combat safe from shooting, end assault on enemy turn and keep marching forward.

 Axemanadam wrote:
Ailaros, just out of curiosity what kind of units or lists are you facing that can shred 6 to 12 inches of a guardsman advance and have all your HWS's dead by turn two? Are they bringing lots of flamers and the like because it sounds horrific

Seeing as an Autocannon can kill a base in one shot, it is not hard to kill HWS.

Dakkadood wrote:Anybody good at Math-hammering different sized RR squads with the hunting lances vs common targets?

They actually do pretty decent damage when they get to strike stuff in close combat.

Of course, because of this, they will get picked off early. Given that they're only 5-10 guardsmen, this isn't a difficult thing to do.

As such, the most useful piece of math with regards to rough riders is:

0 surviving rough riders x 2 attacks apiece x 5/6ths chance to wound = 0 dead anything.

 MrMoustaffa wrote:


As for the whole foot/hybrid/mech, I really see it as how many chimeras do you bring. Do you bring none? You're a foot guard player. Doesn't matter how many other tanks and other things you cram in, your infantry are all on foot. Hybrid tends to have 2 or 3 chimeras, but there is still a platoon that has some sort of job that is filled by being on foot. It's a hybrid of a foot and a mech list, hence the name. A mech list would be a list that literally has all, or almost all, infantry inside chimeras. That's how it delivers its troops, and that's how it's played.

Hence why you'll get foot IG players with 6 leman russes or a mech player that literally runs nothing but chimeras. The mindset of how you take your troops, to me at least, seems to define what kind of mindset your army follows above all else.

This.

There is also Air Cavalry list, which uses Planes to deliver its troops. Its really all about how you get your infantry to the field. I hate chimeras look and I do not like valkyrie spam so I am stuck with foot lists.

to Axemanadam: What can shred infantry so bad? Necron warrior spam, grey knights with storm bolter spam, eldar S6 spam, dark eldar venom spam, IG chimera veteran spam, shooty boyz spam, Chaos with lash of submission and ANY template weapons, tau firewarrior + crisis suit spam,... There are many options and those lists are actually most common...at least in my meta. Which is the reason my foot guard hardly win any battles in 5th edition. In 6th edition power blobs become meaningless so I adapted and changed to shooty foot guard mixed with a few vendettas and allies. Infantry is still getting anihilated every game, but the army as a whole can win.

to Testify: If your enemy pops a transport with a squad of melta/plazma vets inside, how can you consider them dead? They are very dangerous until killed.

If you have game plan that requires T3 5+ models moving up the field on foot I think your army qualifies as "foot guard" regardless of the chimera count.

While a "pure" list (only T3 5+ men) seems viable at lower points (as most enemy will be limited to mostly troop choices) my mind is struggling to see something that would work in 1000 pts + games.

I'm a wh40k noob, so I will not claim to present any solutions. Instead I'll have a go at structuring the problem a bit by breaking it up in three parts that can be discussed separately:

- Game plan
- List design
- Playing the game


Game plan
=======================

Running a "pure" foot list in a world of tanks, artillery and gun emplacements is plain stupidity. It has been tried in practice and the results are well known: http://www.toptenz.net/top-10-bloodiest-battles-of-world-war-i.php

Expect your casualties to be horrific and that every "victory" will feel hollow. To all except the cigar smoking generals who put the objective markers on the map in the first place that is...

Games on the other hand are not won by killing the enemy, but by victory points.

A large part of those comes from objectives. Having a horde of scoring units may be the main strength of a "pure" foot list!

Another strength is the fact that such a list has no Fast Attack or Heavy Support entries.

The kill points weakness is huge.


List design
=======================

Keeping scoring units alive (target saturation)

- Many bodies (someone said 200ish for 2000pts)
- Many units (force enemy to spread fire)
- Many scoring units (to claim objectives)

Killing enemy units that contest objectives (target priority)

- Kill enemy scoring units.
- Kill enemy denial units.
- Ignore other units that can't easily kill a lot of guardsmen.

Deployment

- Need space to manouver. Can't cram all 200 men in the deployment zone. Reserves, outflank or deep strike required!

Troubleshooters

- Rapid response troops to take out 1 or 2 select targets per game.



Playing the game
=======================

Foot is slow

You need to plan ahead. I think the overall game plan must be more or less ready already at deployment.


Foot is weak

The game plan can not rely on your army holding any point of the table. Instead you must move around your enemy avoiding his strength. Use the 6" move before firing and don't be afraid to make sacrifices if it means allowing other units to perform.


Keep you men on the field

Target saturation. There must always be more (visible and equally important) targets than the enemy can destroy.
Stay in cover when possible.
Regimental standards and CCS to rally troops?


Protect your damage dealers

Make sure the heavy and special weapons are properly placed. Make the enemy kill lasgunners. Advance with the lasguns as a shield.


Beat the mathhammer

Take care of the remnants. As someone pointed out a unit of 1-3 guardsmen can still score and if it is still carrying a heavy or special weapon it still poses a threat. To kill this remnant the enemy is likely to waste firepower.

okay, so hackneyed stereotypes aside, I'm going to post a list recently put up by red corsair on my recent battle report, and my response.

Red Corsair 471464 4684783 wrote:50- Aegis DL

65- CCS with standard

105- (5) Stormies with 2 melta
105- (5) Stormies with 2 melta
105- (5) Stormies with 2 melta

40- PCS with Auto C
65- PIS Plasma G
65- PIS Plasma G
65- PIS Plasma G
65- PIS Plasma G

40- PCS with Auto C
65- PIS Plasma G
65- PIS Plasma G
65- PIS Plasma G
65- PIS Plasma G

75- HWS (3) Auto C
75- HWS (3) Auto C
75- HWS (3) Auto C
75- HWS (3) Auto C
75- HWS (3) Auto C

125- Basilisk
160- Manticore
160- Manticore

1850

Ailaros 471464 4685229 wrote:I keep acid testing this, and it keeps out coming clean, so to speak. I also like the style. I especially love the S7 spam EVERYWHERE. That said, I'll have to apologize for not exactly being bowled over.

Basically it suffers from a problem that hordes have always suffered from, except worse, that of force concentration. If you took all of the units in that list (except the stormies), and packed them in at a near-suicidally close 5 square inches per model (and the appropriate margin for heavy weapons bases and vehicles), the army you've presented takes up 715 square inches. On a deployment zone that's 6 feet by 12", there are only 864 possible square inches. That's 5/6ths of the deployment zone. That's practically the entire deployment zone packed to bursting with guys. Guys just BEGGING for some blast templates to be thrown their way.

Once the couple of pieces of AV12 are shut down (or, well, enough of them), and a few of the HWSs picked off (which is really easy), the killing power is about as concentrated as a gallon of blood in a swimming pool. A gallon of blood sounds icky, but you'd scarcely notice it over that much space. An opponent that spent his time focusing in any one place would easily be able to gain fire superiority. The multiple squad thing would help, but still...

There's also the movement problem. That packed of a DZ doesn't exactly giving you maneuvering space on the one hand. On the other, it would take so long for something on one side to get over to support the other (causing even more problems against blast weapons in the process), that the enemy really does have time to take it apart piecemeal. Furthermore, it has some very nice staying power in the DZ, but I hesitate to think how well it would do on the offense. 80 guardsmen is a lot, I'll grant you, but I've seen that many guardsmen taken down in just a couple of turns before.

Put another way, this seems very unwieldy.

Had I the models to do this (I don't have all the extra autocannons or plasma guns just lying about), I might actually want to give this a try, and at lower points I might, as this does seem to be a way of doing a more classical version of foot horde guard. If I've learned anything over these last few games, though, it's that I'm not entirely certain that the classical foot guard actually works anymore.

I'd love to see a few, proper battle reports, but it seems like the main problem with foot guard at the moment - the crippling lack of durability, especially on a by-unit basis - is still a problem here.

 Lothar wrote:

to Testify: If your enemy pops a transport with a squad of melta/plazma vets inside, how can you consider them dead? They are very dangerous until killed.

Nah... They are dead. If not from the explosion (where you will lose ~5 guys and have to take Pinning/Morale) then from the aftermath (assault, leftover random enemy units shooting at them). Even if their Chimera is only wrecked they are a fire-magnet for all the bored enemy AP firepower that was useless so far.

If by some miracle they survive then it could mean two things:
- You have some random guys with short-ranged special weapons but without mobility and durability. Do whatever you want with them. they are essentially a 'bonus' unit.
- The end of the game is night, and your enemy is already destroyed, so nobody cares about those footsloggers .

 Ailaros wrote:
To be fair, though, being a foot guard player never required you to use ONLY INFANTRY EVER. I mean, I consider myself a foot guard player, and in like 3/4 of my games (including 100% of the games played above 1000 points) I ran at least a couple of russes or artillery pieces or something.

Aesthetically speaking, I consider the foot-hybrid-mech spectrum to relate to the inchimeradness of the troops and HQ sections, rather than if there are any vehicles at all.

Nice word there, "inchimeradness".

It seems to me that the way I have found foot guard to survive best is to spread out as much as possible. Granted I have only played 2 games of 6th ed with them and both of those were 1000 point games but I was starting to come to that conclusion at the end of 5th as well. If you take 3 platoons with 3 PIS each, a HWT or two for each and 1-2 special weapon squads of flamers as a speed bump unit you can then deploy a squad each on each side of your deployment zone and one in the middle. Granted you loose the concetrated firepower of clumping them all togather however with that much spacing between them all you don't have to worry about fighting your opponants entire army at once. If you put your CCS in a Chimera in the back field (or take 2 CCS if your hell bent on no Chimeras) They can zip back and forth to provide support where it's needed most. throw a couple of LRBT or even Hellhounds or Sentinals in between the flanking and center units and you can help to soften up the incomming threats reasonably well.

Like I said I haven't gotten many games in yet but it seems to me when I bunched up and deployed in one section for support I got my kicked in the teeth by Dark Eldar but when I spread out I was able to shoot down the Raiders and make his witches walk further to get to me all the while taking fire. I need to test this some more but it seems sound to me.

P.S. This may only work well if you deploy second.

Why are people ignoring Rough Riders? IIRC Hunting Lances are AP3 and don't they get Hammer of Wrath as well? 100~ points for 21 S5 I5 attacks on the charge doesn't seem bad to me.

 Amaya wrote:
Why are people ignoring Rough Riders? IIRC Hunting Lances are AP3 and don't they get Hammer of Wrath as well? 100~ points for 21 S5 I5 attacks on the charge doesn't seem bad to me.

Because they die like regular guardsmen, and with that damage output they'll be a fire magnet.

 AtoMaki wrote:

 Lothar wrote:

to Testify: If your enemy pops a transport with a squad of melta/plazma vets inside, how can you consider them dead? They are very dangerous until killed.

Nah... They are dead. If not from the explosion (where you will lose ~5 guys and have to take Pinning/Morale) then from the aftermath (assault, leftover random enemy units shooting at them). Even if their Chimera is only wrecked they are a fire-magnet for all the bored enemy AP firepower that was useless so far.

If by some miracle they survive then it could mean two things:
- You have some random guys with short-ranged special weapons but without mobility and durability. Do whatever you want with them. they are essentially a 'bonus' unit.
- The end of the game is night, and your enemy is already destroyed, so nobody cares about those footsloggers .

Gotta agree with the mech players here. There's a reason they treat their guys as dead the moment the transport pops, because for all intents and purposes, they are. It's like for foot guard players who have an infantry squad lose its heavy and special weapon. Yeah, it's still alive, but it cant do anything useful, besides pray it gets ignored. Some of the mech players in my store will just remove the guys as casualties in friendly games, just because they really don't care. Speaking of which, you thought us Foot IG players don't care about their troops? Watch a veteran treadhead play sometime. We have an IG player at my store who said this once.

"If I could tie guardsmen to the front of my tanks to give them coversaves I would."

Those dismounted guardsmen squads have lost their range, their mobility, their ability to provide a good counterattack, and pretty much everything else that a Mech commander buys them for in the first place. They are quite literally, dead the moment their tin can is gone.

Also, I noticed that this thread has sort of spiraled off of just being a foot IG discussion and just become "aggression for IG" in general. Not that I mind, I love seeing all the different ways of play discussing tactics about this, just thought it was funny. I'll be changing the title to reflect that.

Because of their flimsiness they are not an offensive unit, but a counter charge unit kept hidden until you need them to get the enemy off you.

 Ailaros wrote:
Possibly.

Infantry platoons count as a single entity for the purpose of rolling for reserves. Vendettas must start the game in reserves. This means that in order to fly a squad that comes from a platoon in on a vendetta, both the platoon and the flier must start in reserves.

Now now, this isn't entirely true.

RAW is just that an entire platoon is rolled for collectively when rolling for reserves. Say I have two infantry squads and a PCS in the same platoon. Both the infantry squads are reserved, the PCS starts on the board. Turn 2 comes around, I roll reserves, and a 5 comes up on my reserve die. Yay! My platoon comes in! Both infantry squads come on, and the PCS is already on the board so it's reserve roll didn't affect it.

RAW says nothing about having to reserve it all, just that a reserve roll affects the whole platoon in reserves.

To target the OP; I've taken to plopping two plasvet squads in Valkyries, and a SWS with two flamers and a demo charge in a Vendetta. Come turn 5 they hover, drop their cargo right next to some poor sods, and everything dies. Everything. Linebreaker, Slay the Warlord, and maybe an objective or two are mine.

TheCaptain wrote:RAW says nothing about having to reserve it all, just that a reserve roll affects the whole platoon in reserves.

Guard were FAQed to make it so, though. I don't know if it carried into 6th ed or not, but in 5th ed FAQs they explicitly said you couldn't start with some of a platoon on the table and some of it in reserve.