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 Shadenuat wrote:
So, Forgeworld:
- Shadow Spectres would have to treck on their own under enemy fire - no transport for them
- No Outrider detach made out of flyers (aww)
- Scorpion, not sure if buffed or nerfed. On one hand, it lost about 10% of it's firepower or so? On the other, it's now stable damage, extra wounds won't be lost when shooting at W3 squads and, say, necron Quantium shields are way less effective against it.

What are you referring to for this information?

 Shadenuat wrote:
So, Forgeworld:
- Shadow Spectres would have to treck on their own under enemy fire - no transport for them.

False. According to FAQs, they are Jump Infantry now. So they use 2 slots each in transport. No mention about can not be embarked.

iacopo wrote:

 Shadenuat wrote:
So, Forgeworld:
- Shadow Spectres would have to treck on their own under enemy fire - no transport for them.

False. According to FAQs, they are Jump Infantry now. So they use 2 slots each in transport. No mention about can not be embarked.

Wave Serpents can no longer carry Jump Infantry. Wraithguard/blades count as 2 each, but nothing else.

First so that we can use all our psychic powers to their fullest, but with so much spite spam it would be good to change it in every new codex for each faction to be different OR to make it a generic shooting attack like it was in some editions.
Keep the buff type psychics in that phase and the shooting/killing in the shooting phase.

Has anyone worked out how to beat horde armies in particular IG players who bring hordes of infantry with tank support? It is the only army i am finding almost impossible to win against.

Generally i'm facing.
100 -150 conscripts backed by commissars.
Plenty of tank/arty support
AT support.
Sentinels for cheap lascannons.

beachedwalrusau wrote:
Has anyone worked out how to beat horde armies in particular IG players who bring hordes of infantry with tank support? It is the only army i am finding almost impossible to win against.

Play objectives, and bring a tough ranged AT unit or three to hurt the tanks.

beachedwalrusau wrote:
Has anyone worked out how to beat horde armies in particular IG players who bring hordes of infantry with tank support? It is the only army i am finding almost impossible to win against.

War walkers would be a good start. Keep em cheap with dual Shuricannons and use their extra move to get close to the enemy. You should be easily able to shoot something up and chrage on Turn 1. Whilst they won't kill a great deal, they won't be at risk from much either so provided you charge something nice and shooty, your opponent's firepower will be hindered while the rest of your army gets up close and personal with him.

Use your Wave Serpents aggressively and don't hesitate to charge with them. Since they can Fly, you can back out of combat in your turn and shoot at full effect. If your opponent withdraws, his shooting will be hindered once again.

Hemlocks with Conceal are great as their D-Scythes are brutal against just about anything and with -2 to Hit, Guard will be looking for 6s to even scratch them.

Thanks, so the idea is to lock up those conscripts in hand to hand with transports/walkers and take out the tanks with AT/planes. I will give that a go! I always forget to charge my vehicles into hand to hand.

so what would you guys think if all Shuriken Catapults were the same.

A Rapid Fire1 18" range.
Dire Avengers would have an ability that they can maximize the weapon to make it Assault 2 in their hands

thoughts?

would it cost more or be about the same?

That's probably about the same for Guardians. It's a little worse for their current best use, which is hopping out of a Serpent and lighting something up. It's a lot better for Guardians which are standing around near a heavy weapons platform, but this could use a buff anyway because I don't see why anyone would take Guardians for this as-is.

It's generally worse for vehicles and they'd be even more likely to upgrade to cannons.

 Selym wrote:

beachedwalrusau wrote:
Has anyone worked out how to beat horde armies in particular IG players who bring hordes of infantry with tank support? It is the only army i am finding almost impossible to win against.

Play objectives, and bring a tough ranged AT unit or three to hurt the tanks.

"Play Objectives" is much easier when they're spread out and Eldar can take advantage of their mobility. My last game with IG was "the relic" and he just sat 100 conscripts on it (had I moved to take it first, I wouldn't have been able to get away from a 400 dice triple buffed* conscript volley... so I decided to wait). In retrospect, I should have tried to soften the conscripts up with all my Shuriken Cannon fire every turn, but that would have meant leaving alive all the heavy weapons teams so... I dunno. By the time I made a final push to steal the relic away it was too late and I didn't have enough left to dent the blob.

I feel like guard deploys with more guardsmen than I have bullets (or... errr... sliced discs of mono-molecule spinning blades) and more tanks than I have AT weapon mounts. They're always going to be a hard match-up.

*Buffs: searchlights for +1BS, re-roll 1 aura, and frfsrf
-233 hits, 116 wounds (on T3 Eldar), and that's 71 dead guardians (hint, that's more than I had)

I get the feeling that one way to resolve some balance issues here is to nerf Conscripts (original idea, I know). Rather than a nerf to durability or damage, or a points increase (which could render the unit useless), add the following special rule:

Cowards
Conscripts do not want to be in battle. They only reason they are there is because the Commissar is standing behind them. When the Commissar is not looking, some will attempt to flee.
Whenever this unit would normally take losses due to a failure of morale, but is under the influence of a Commissar, the Commissar is forced to execute 1 Conscripts for every 10 men the unit started with, instead of 1. This means that a unit that started with 50 men will lose 5 men for every Commissar-supported morale failure.

I think pincer tactics are very important for giant blobs of things like guard. In other words, try to attack both ends of the blob at the same time.

The only power hordes have in melee is the ability to pile in and surround you. 3 or 4 orks or whatever don't do much, it's the 15 you need to worry about!

Get your transport attacking first and taking overwatch in the middle, then attack their right flank with the troops and the left flank with another unit.

if you are attacking them like this then the unit's pile in moves will pull it in different directions.

You then give them real hard decisions over where they take their casualties from... probably their best option would be to try and remove models from the side that's not yet attacked - ideally to get the unit that charged to now be more than 1" away and unable to activate. You want to try and make sure they can't easily do that.

Sounds like fun to me

 Silentz wrote:
ideally to get the unit that charged to now be more than 1" away and unable to activate.

Units that charged can always activate

 Deathypoo wrote:

 Silentz wrote:
ideally to get the unit that charged to now be more than 1" away and unable to activate.

Units that charged can always activate

Sometimes I feel this image is 8E in a nutshell:

beachedwalrusau wrote:
Thanks, so the idea is to lock up those conscripts in hand to hand with transports/walkers and take out the tanks with AT/planes. I will give that a go! I always forget to charge my vehicles into hand to hand.

That would be my general approach I think. Guard are pretty poor in assault and if you can deny a conscript blob its shooting for a turn, it could well be worth the likely sacrifice of a War walker to achieve it.

If you can play a mission that requires your opponent to move, that will help a lot too. Guard tanks don't like moving and shooting if they can help it. A static gunline is ideal for them so maybe try maelstrom and play for objectives.

They just take the order to fall back and shoot if you try to "lock" them in close combat, and they already got to shoot overwatch at you, and attack you in close combat as well... you don't gain a whole lot by charging them unless you've got a unit that will actually kill them in close combat. Meanwhile you guarantee them a unit in their 12" rapid fire range.

I'd say it's a situational strategy at best (unless you have a melee unit/army, in which case conscripts make for a fine target)

At least if they are falling back and shooting they don't first rank Fire second rank fire.

Will have to wait until something would be done to conscripts by updates. For their price as they are now, they should have either 6+ save or toughness of 2 and BS 5+ or something.
The most effective unit against them are Guardians - with all the buffs 20 guardians can kill around 30 conscripts with shooting and charging. But only pure foot army can field enough of them to deal with more than 50-100.
I think sniping out comissars also might be crucial there. It's at least worth a try.

Wyldcarde wrote:At least if they are falling back and shooting they don't first rank Fire second rank fire.

Yeah, but compare it to just staying outside of their 12" rapid fire range. At 24" frfsrf gives them 100 shots. If you move in to charge, they get 100 overwatch shots, anywhere from 20 to 50 close combat attacks, then rapid fire for 100 more shots (minus whatever you killed on the charge) after falling back. You better kill a lot of them for that to be worth it. At best, you are redirecting a lot of their attacks towards something they weren't going to waste time with, and after all that they don't really care! Their massive damage potential is mostly just a bonus; they are there to hold ground and get in the way.

By the way, it was mentioned to use single war-walker, but they only need to do a little better than average to kill a war-walker in overwatch and cc alone... and then you've thrown away your war-walker and they still have frfsrf the next turn.

Shadenuat wrote:Will have to wait until something would be done to conscripts by updates. For their price as they are now, they should have either 6+ save or toughness of 2 and BS 5+ or something.
The most effective unit against them are Guardians - with all the buffs 20 guardians can kill around 30 conscripts with shooting and charging. But only pure foot army can field enough of them to deal with more than 50-100.
I think sniping out comissars also might be crucial there. It's at least worth a try.

I feel like rangers are a good choice against IG, with their many small officers that provide useful buffs all being susceptible to smallish number of rangers... but I think they're a waste of points against most armies. 100 points for a basic unit that will output 1-3 wounds per turn depending on the characters being targeted and how many lucky 6's come up. Some armies are going to be fielding characters that will take the whole game to kill just one.

I was thinking Illic, since he's way better than 5 ranger squad. Buff him with Yvraine for lulz.

What else do we have, Death Jesters? DE don't have any snipers correct?

 Shadenuat wrote:
I was thinking Illic, since he's way better than 5 ranger squad.

What else do we have, Death Jesters? DE don't have any snipers correct?

Death Jesters are 80 points of "should have just used a shuricannon instead". They're useless.

Yeah that's a ludicrous price for 3 shuriken shots.

 Shadenuat wrote:
Will have to wait until something would be done to conscripts by updates. For their price as they are now, they should have either 6+ save or toughness of 2 and BS 5+ or something.
The most effective unit against them are Guardians - with all the buffs 20 guardians can kill around 30 conscripts with shooting and charging. But only pure foot army can field enough of them to deal with more than 50-100.
I think sniping out comissars also might be crucial there. It's at least worth a try.

I disagree. Striking Scorpions are the best unit we have against them. Set em up 9 inches away, fire there pistols, spend a command point if you have to and try and get a 8 inch charge and they will get in and rip a bunch to shreds every turn. If they fall back charge them again, if they stay on the objective you get more pistol shots during your shooting phase. Mandiblasters will kill 1 or 2 extra every phase and Exarch with Chainsabres will hopefully generate additional attacks. If they are in cover your hitting on 2's, Str 4 with everything so wounding on 3's wont even need Doom. Maybe toss a Fortune there way from a Farseer but they have 3+ saves so not bad. Multiple units of SS might not be a bad idea vs IG conscript blobs. Use the rest of your army for AT and get rid of those tanks.

I had some success shooting warp spiders into them. Launched them across the board into their face the turn before before guiding them up and shooting twice with word of the Phoenix. Killed probably 40? Or could have moved twice to jump them back out of range to do it again. Hit and running with soulburst can be useful.

 Crusaderobr wrote:

 Shadenuat wrote:
Will have to wait until something would be done to conscripts by updates. For their price as they are now, they should have either 6+ save or toughness of 2 and BS 5+ or something.
The most effective unit against them are Guardians - with all the buffs 20 guardians can kill around 30 conscripts with shooting and charging. But only pure foot army can field enough of them to deal with more than 50-100.
I think sniping out comissars also might be crucial there. It's at least worth a try.

I disagree. Striking Scorpions are the best unit we have against them. Set em up 9 inches away, fire there pistols, spend a command point if you have to and try and get a 8 inch charge and they will get in and rip a bunch to shreds every turn. If they fall back charge them again, if they stay on the objective you get more pistol shots during your shooting phase. Mandiblasters will kill 1 or 2 extra every phase and Exarch with Chainsabres will hopefully generate additional attacks. If they are in cover your hitting on 2's, Str 4 with everything so wounding on 3's wont even need Doom. Maybe toss a Fortune there way from a Farseer but they have 3+ saves so not bad. Multiple units of SS might not be a bad idea vs IG conscript blobs. Use the rest of your army for AT and get rid of those tanks.

Overwatch alone will kill 5 of your scorpions, and then another 1 or 2 in combat assuming you have a full 10 and aren't already wiped out. Your unit could be wiped out by morale before you make them fall back even once.... and oh yes this great counter unit costs about as much as the conscripts AND the buffing characters for the conscripts.

Eldar melee units are some of the worst melee units in the game, for the points, and conscripts are the most points efficient thing in the game. It was never gonna end well

 Crusaderobr wrote:

 Shadenuat wrote:
Will have to wait until something would be done to conscripts by updates. For their price as they are now, they should have either 6+ save or toughness of 2 and BS 5+ or something.
The most effective unit against them are Guardians - with all the buffs 20 guardians can kill around 30 conscripts with shooting and charging. But only pure foot army can field enough of them to deal with more than 50-100.
I think sniping out comissars also might be crucial there. It's at least worth a try.

I disagree. Striking Scorpions are the best unit we have against them. Set em up 9 inches away, fire there pistols, spend a command point if you have to and try and get a 8 inch charge and they will get in and rip a bunch to shreds every turn. If they fall back charge them again, if they stay on the objective you get more pistol shots during your shooting phase. Mandiblasters will kill 1 or 2 extra every phase and Exarch with Chainsabres will hopefully generate additional attacks. If they are in cover your hitting on 2's, Str 4 with everything so wounding on 3's wont even need Doom. Maybe toss a Fortune there way from a Farseer but they have 3+ saves so not bad. Multiple units of SS might not be a bad idea vs IG conscript blobs. Use the rest of your army for AT and get rid of those tanks.

This is quickly becoming a major pet peeve, and the sooner people realise how it works the sooner we can stop people spreading crazy ideas like this. When you set up the Scorpions you have to be OVER 9" away, which means in order to charge you need to roll a 9. They also get overwatch in this theoretical scenario and will be able to strike back with a large number of attacks. I would also like to see an actual practical scenario where a unit of Conscripts is in cover - its rare to see 10 man units getting entirely within a terrain feature now let alone a 50 man blob.

So, just to theory this out a bit more. You set up over 9" away, you fire pistols and kill 2 or 3 - which will likely increase the charge numbers you need by 1" (I am assuming here that your opponent has a brain, and will take the closest models to you). You then declare a charge, at which point they get lets say 10 guys in Rapid Fire range and the rest outside, so 57 shots = 1-2 dead Scorpions (this obviously get much worse if the unit is compressed and are all within 12" some how). Then you need to roll a 9 (possibly even a 10 if you shot too well), which is barely a 50% chance to get in assuming you burn a command point for this. If you do get in they lose a couple to Mandiblasters, then you get 14 attacks with your remaining guys, netting just over 4 kills on average + another 1-2 from the Exarch. At this point they get to strike back, which again is very tricky to work out because it depends greatly on how spread the unit is. I'm going to assume 25 guys get to swing (which is basically the front rank of ~10 guys you engaged with the Scorpions and a rank behind that), which kills another Scorpion.

So overall we have killed 11 Conscripts (rounding everything up here), and have lost 3 Scorpions. The Commisar kills one more and they hold, and you are already down on the trade if you compare points. If you purely left those to units there to grind it out the Conscripts likely come out on top (things only get worse for the Scorpions as they lose attacks and the Conscripts all pile in), and here we are talking about a 190pt unit making a 50/50 charge and then losing a straight up fight to a 150pt unit (+ the Commissar I guess, but he wasn't involved in the combat in this scenario either). That also ignores the main reason that Conscripts are in a list in the first place, which is to absorb charges like this, then simply fall back out of combat and let other units shoot the Scorpions to pieces.

Tbh this really highlights a couple of major problems - firstly that the removal of AP from basic infantry weapons has left cheap screening units being dis-proportionally hard to removal. Secondly that sniping out the Commissar isn't actually that valuable unless you are focusing the Conscripts down (which means shooting them with multiple units), because in this scenario they lose another 10 or so guys and then just back out of combat. Finally it also highlights the existing problems with Aspect Warriors haven't gone away at all, Banshees still bounce off of power armoured targets, Scorpions don't completely massacre light infantry etc etc.

Scorpions are even less effective against light infantry than Banshees actually, especially if infantry could get a 4+ armor save. The most effective melee are Harlequins. Warp Spiders are as effective as Shuriken cannon jetbikes.

Lead with a Wraithlord to absob Overwatch, follow with Scorpions. The 'Lord will yawn at Lasgun shots that hit on 6 and wound on 6 (with no AP), the Scorpions should launch 10-ish wounds from melee (on top of a few from shooting), morale will take out aboth 5-10. It's a huge Tarpit, but it only lasts a couple of rounds against the one-two punch. (Remember, 50 Conscripts + Commissar is still around 200 points. Don't be afraid to send as much against them as they cost!)

Now we're talking ~150 pts of Wraithlord + 190 pts of Scorpions against 180 pts of guard. And still we are far from a statistically reliable result of shifting that blob of conscripts.
I concur that the mentioned units SHOULD be hard counters to flimsy guardsmen once they get to them. But they arem't in the concurrent scenario of rules and points costs.
Best bet would be concentration of force to things that can't be dodged, artillery and such. then kite immobile infantry and play to objectives. It is an uphill battle agaibst guard. But it is for everyone atm.
Besides, doomed conscripts die quickly to focussed fire. That leaves tje rest of the army to do whatever they want though...
Afterthought: Swooping Hawks do really good against GEQ, plus the blind softens return fire a bit. Still far from optimal, but pointswise per conscript killed, it's the best i could come up with so far. A full unit could hover around the 24" and kill 5 GEQ a turn for a mild cost plus the option to jump in and rapid fire/ charge.