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I understand the idea i really do but depending on game type it can make you or break you. I realize for armies like my dark eldar it can be needed but if you do kill points a lot then MSU is very, very bad. I mean think about it. You have 65 pts a piece for a venom. Lots and lots of those are pretty easy to kill a piece. Ok i kill this unit, now this one and this one. Sure for an army that spams fire on one unit and can kill a horde unit in one go it can save more squads but if you bleed kill points the end result will quickly be that you need to table your opponent to win. I mean if the enemy has 6-8 units and i have like 16 it's going to be an uphill battle as it already is for dark eldar. I've fought games in kill points where i've killed about an even number of points in models but the kill points are quite uneven. It just seems to really hurt armies like dark eldar even more when it's hard enough as it is. Thing is in Warhammer Fantasy (the old one) they went by victory points which while taking longer to calculate made MSU much more practical and was more fair than kill points. In fact it was practically encouraged to MSU with the use of chaff.

Anyway i realize it'll keep you alive in games but in kill points it's just one more way to make things harder for you.

Some armies don't have good options for putting too many points into.

Well my army is Swordwind Eldar so there's not much choice.

Kill points is 1/6 missions, and besides, you can do Dark Eldar with a less MSU approach - bring more Elites!
I don't know if you're talking about the old edition or something when referring to Dark Eldar as an 'uphill battle', on the contrary they are shaping up to be one of the stronger armies in this early part of 8th edition.

Some armies simply don't have the tools to run non-MSU lists effectively (Deldar and GK come to mind).

But I do agree in general that horde armies will be stronger on average then MSU armies will, principally due to how scoring works now.

high leadership units-like 10, are basically fearless when taken in a groups of 5.

More bodies is always better, but for some armies like my Grey Knights it's just not feasible.

Not sure about 8th edition yet but in 7th orks and DE were very effective with MSU and only with that style.

The point with MSU is that you have an army that is composed by units that are very weak on their own and a max unit with full upgrades is not more resilient than a min sized one, but it costs way more points.

Even in KPs if the opponent easily kills 4-5 min units, he only killed a smaller part of the army and the remaining units can do their work. If you play armies like DE or orks without MSU in KPs you may lose a lot of units in the first turn anyway and you've certaintly lost the game.

With MSU you can force valuable enemy units that can put a lot of wounds to overkill a cheap unit. You can also grab a lot of objectives without having to sacrifice units that you may want somewhere else, maybe in combat.

Take orks lootas for example, you may have 15 of them in a single unit. But being LD7 and with a 6+ save, after a few casualties with an average shooting you may lose the entire unit. 4 dead, morale test failed, and the entire unit is gone. Take 3 units of 5 instead and the opponent must fire with 3 different units to kill them all, 6 dead instead of 4 to make all you lootas test the discipline and with 3 tests you should pass some of them. Not to mention that you get first turn 15 lootas may overkill an enemy unit and having 3x5 means you can aim at something else if the first 1-2 units have accomplished their task.

The 8th edition is different though and the MSU approach will probably work in another way, with different pros and cons.

I see MSU as being important for Elite armies that want to cut down on losing units due to morale. Other armies will be reprimanded for using MSU due to the army strengths. For example I don't see many Orks and Necrons wanting to run a lot of MSU as they are stronger in numbers. More Necrons in a Squad means you can do more RP over the game, and more Orks in a squad means you are stronger against Morale issues.

Eldarsif wrote:
I see MSU as being important for Elite armies that want to cut down on losing units due to morale. Other armies will be reprimanded for using MSU due to the army strengths. For example I don't see many Orks and Necrons wanting to run a lot of MSU as they are stronger in numbers. More Necrons in a Squad means you can do more RP over the game, and more Orks in a squad means you are stronger against Morale issues.

Right about orks' morale but footslogging boyz are a tax unless you play a green tide list (which doesn't see so effective either), they have no decent shooting and never reach combat, they're very squishy. Now that you can use a single transports for many units a MSU approach can still be viable. For example a trukk can carry nobz, burnas, flash gitz and tankbustas in any combination, and a battlewagon offers even more possibilities with its transport capacity of 20. A min unit of 45 kommandos is quite harassing for the opponents, same for solo koptas. And you can take 3 single mek gunz and an HQ for another command point, using the spearhead detachment. A 30 points unit of grots has its usage too. With a MSU style an ork player can even use the brigade detachment at 2000 points.

so that one 5-man squad can fall back while the other can perform normally. Also, it forces overkill. Especially for mellee opponents. Smaller units are also more flexible with movement and have easier access to cover. Try getting cover for 30 boyz.

I imagine I'll keep playing Adepta Sororitas MSU to spam cheap power armor, hopefully in cover, and plentiful special weapons, especially now that flamers and stormbolters have had a nice boost to make them worth considering alongside melta spam. I may be tempted to add some Tempestus Scions plasma spam, also MSU style. Yeah, I'll probably get wrecked in that one mission that includes kill points, but there's always tabling your opponent with massive amounts of up-close special weapon love to compensate for how many KPs you've given up with 5-man squads.

Our gaming group plays mostly Maelstrom missions, so we don't worry about Kill Points, and grabbing objectives is alot easier with more units on the board.

As stated above, there are several reasons to MSU

1) Morale. There is a 'critical mass' for every unit in which it can suffer casualties without needing to take Morale. For example, a LD8 unit can lose 2 models and no dice roll for Morale is needed (because even a roll of '6' would not exceed their LD)
Therefore, small 3-man units are basically immune to Morale entirely as losing 3 models would be dead. However and 5+ man unit is more at risk as losing 4 models means your last few guys might run.
So MSU makes your opponent work harder to kill all your stuff instead of allowing them to kill only half of each unit and Morale kills the rest.
This obviously does not apply to Nids or Orks, so yes, MSU for them is not the best.

2) Although units can split fire, it is often the case that you wouldn't want to anyway. Anyone who has played Kill Team can tell you how ineffective shooting can be on a 1-to-1 basis.
By having your army MSU, you increase the chances that an opponent may want to split their fire up and make a mistake, or increase the chance of 'bad luck'.
Do you fire all your Bolters at that 1 unit and make sure it dies? Or do you split up the bolters and hope that hits, wounds and saves go statistically? You could end up doing less and both your targets living to do stuff in their turn.
Anything you can do to make hard decisions for your opponent is never a bad idea

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