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Seems to me that MSU is the way to go given how you can now
lose a lot of additional models from a large unit due to morale rules.

In a recent game an opponent took a unit of 30 bloodletters because the unit's rules
encourage it (they get a melee bonus if they have over 20 models). I poured fire into the unit and due to their low toughness and poor saves I was easily able to kill 17 of them. Now morale kills another 11 for me with no effort (and it could have been worse, but luckily he rolled a 1).

11 free casualties on a large unit with no saves or ability to resist is brutal imho.

If he had of instead run three 10 man units I would have had to split my fire and some of my shooting would have potentially been overkill/waisted and morale loses would have been per unit and not just a big number taken off one big unit.

Am I right that MSU over large units(squishy ones at least) is a better tactic in 8th or am I missing something?

It's a valid line of thinking.
3x Crisis suits, for example, will never lose people to morale, because 2+6 = 8 (the Ld of a sergeant... which everyone will have, as they don't have any extra cost).

I think that only Ld-mitigating armies, like Tyranids, Orks and AM, will be able to field massed units without problems

 CT GAMER wrote:
Seems to me that MSU is the way to go given how you can now
lose a lot of additional models from a large unit due to morale rules.

In a recent game an opponent took a unit of 30 bloodletters because the unit's rules
encourage it (they get a melee bonus if they have over 20 models). I poured fire into the unit and due to their low toughness and poor saves I was easily able to kill 17 of them. Now morale kills another 11 for me with no effort (and it could have been worse, but luckily he rolled a 1).

11 free casualties on a large unit with no saves or ability to resist is brutal imho.

If he had of instead run three 10 man units I would have had to split my fire and some of my shooting would have potentially been overkill/waisted and morale loses would have been per unit and not just a big number taken off one big unit.

Am I right that MSU over large units(squishy ones at least) is a better tactic in 8th or am I missing something?

That's more of a crappy part of Deamons then MSU. How they have LD 10 in AoS but only 8 in 40k is beyond me. Its the same mechanic for LD tests so.... it should be 10 also. Not saying that fixes the problem but its what it should be.

Deamons are fairly cheap. Bloodletters are 9PPM so only 270 for 30 of them. Also with how summoning is, its not worth it to try to summon the units to avoid them from getting chewed in shooting.

Other fixes would be you get to deep strike X deamon units per greater deamon you have. Would be fluffy and a good way to balance it.

Normal lists that use CSM and Deamons mix, its fine if they are spending time killing your foot deamons, as your hopefully getting transports full of beserkers or other horrible things into their face quickly and undamaged.

If I could take bigger units of Primaris I would. They can easily get LD 10, and are a little harder to die so worth it for bigger units for them possibly.

That's more of a crappy part of Deamons then MSU. How they have LD 10 in AoS but only 8 in 40k is beyond me. Its the same mechanic for LD tests so.... it should be 10 also. Not saying that fixes the problem but its what it should be.

Deamons are fairly cheap. Bloodletters are 9PPM so only 270 for 30 of them. Also with how summoning is, its not worth it to try to summon the units to avoid them from getting chewed in shooting.

Other fixes would be you get to deep strike X deamon units per greater deamon you have. Would be fluffy and a good way to balance it.

Normal lists that use CSM and Deamons mix, its fine if they are spending time killing your foot deamons, as your hopefully getting transports full of beserkers or other horrible things into their face quickly and undamaged.

If I could take bigger units of Primaris I would. They can easily get LD 10, and are a little harder to die so worth it for bigger units for them possibly

I like 8th overall but some of the mechanics seem counter-intuitive and clunky.

To cite your example marines should by fluff be combat squaring and horde type armies should be running massive blobs; yet the rules mechanics as they currently work actually punish horde armies for doing so awhile tougher units can do it due to increased survivability and better leadership.Lazy rules writing imho that punishes a player for trying to play a horde army like a horde and also is in direct conflict with army/unit abilities hat tell you to take bigbunits to get a bonus. Make up your minds GW. Sloppy and confusing.


The fact that morale imposes straight loses is insane to me. It would have made more sense if instead of additional models lost it was additional wounds taken that the player could then take saves for. Still potentially brutal but at least the player feels like he has a chance to save his models rather than simply removing the rest of his unit because the first half was shot down. No leadership check and no saves is harsh and is a mechanic that is going to shape the meta in a way that is counter to established army fluff and themes (and apparently intended army/unit bonuses).

:shrug

What you're arguing against would make sense if it weren't for all the huge buffs to hordes this edition

GAdvance wrote:
What you're arguing against would make sense if it weren't for all the huge buffs to hordes this edition

Such as?


As it currently stands an opponent buys a big unit and I only have to kill half of it and the other half disappears in a puff of smoke. Buffs don't matter if you essentially payed for models that half of which simply disappear...

I play GK and msu style so this won't be a problem for me, but a rule like this is going to heavily shape the meta and limit army diversity which is something they supposedly wanted to avoid...

 CT GAMER wrote:

GAdvance wrote:
What you're arguing against would make sense if it weren't for all the huge buffs to hordes this edition

Such as?


As it currently stands an opponent buys a big unit and I only have to kill half of it and the other half disappears in a puff of smoke. Buffs don't matter if you essentially payed for models that half of which simply disappear...

I play GK and msu style so this won't be a problem for me, but a rule like this is going to heavily shape the meta and limit army diversity which is something they supposedly wanted to avoid...

The death of templates, the cost increases to everything else, including anti horde weaponry and the pretty well known mathematical advantage per point that horde units like boys, conscripts or gaunts

GAdvance wrote:

 CT GAMER wrote:

GAdvance wrote:
What you're arguing against would make sense if it weren't for all the huge buffs to hordes this edition

Such as?


As it currently stands an opponent buys a big unit and I only have to kill half of it and the other half disappears in a puff of smoke. Buffs don't matter if you essentially payed for models that half of which simply disappear...

I play GK and msu style so this won't be a problem for me, but a rule like this is going to heavily shape the meta and limit army diversity which is something they supposedly wanted to avoid...

The death of templates, the cost increases to everything else, including anti horde weaponry and the pretty well known mathematical advantage per point that horde units like boys, conscripts or gaunts

Is it really a mathematical points advantage if you only have to kill half to make the other half disappear?

My opponent had a 30 model bloodletter unit. I killed 17 and the rest proofed out existence. He actually payed double the listed cost technically . So agin back to my original question: large units seem to be a bait and switch because you pay for say 30 models but your opponent only has to kill half and the remaining disappear.

Shooting is what got a huge boost this addition; four shot storm bolters, deepstriking without scatter allowing you to bring massive amounts of firepower right where and when you need it, not to mention mortal wound spam via smite(for GK anyways). I shot his army off the table with ease and didn't break a sweat as I only had to kill half to make the other half disappear.

Close combat units can be brutal IF you can deliver them and massive blob units COULD be nasty in close combat if they can get there but I'm not seeing how that's going to happen when they are such tempting targets for mass fire that effectively is double the effectiveness thanks to the morale mechanic.

If I was playing horde style Melee army I can't see how it would ever make sense to take big units over multiple smaller units which is unfortunate because some of the army/unit melee bonuses require a big unit to activate them. False promise...

:shrug

You're stuck on the bloodletters, most hordes don't have that problem. Orks and gaunts don't lose half their models from morale.

So yes, it is a mathematical advantage.

Just not for daemons.

Voss wrote:
You're stuck on the bloodletters, most hordes don't have that problem. Orks and gaunts don't lose half their models from morale.

So yes, it is a mathematical advantage.

Just not for daemons.

I think you had better read the morale rules again:

EVERY unit that takes casualties rolls a d6 and adds it to the number of casualties taken and for every point it exceedes their LD they remove an additional model from play with no saves or ability to prevent.

Grots, orks, cultists, gaunts, anything. This isn't a Daemon specific thing. I used this example because my last game I fought daemons and Thu this mechanic got 45 free "kills". Any large but squishy unit like these that have low toughness, poor armour, etc. can be exploited this way because they too will be easily killed in numbers and then have the kills close to doubled many times. In the past squishy fodder infantry's saving grace was cheap cost and ability to run them in big horde style units. That seems to now actually be a bad idea that kills them quicker than if you ran them in multiple msu Style units. This is an odd byproduct of this mechanic which is easily exploited by many of the high damage output shoots armies.

Varying LD values and army/unit rules may come into effect but the core mechanic effects all models.

The biggest advantages to MSU last edition was not wasting shots (because almost nobody had split fire) and target saturation (because almost nobody had splitfire).

Neither of those apply in 8th. It's a massive boost to large units.

 CT GAMER wrote:


I think you had better read the morale rules again:

EVERY unit that takes casualties rolls a d6 and adds it to the number of casualties taken and for every point it exceedes their LD they remove an additional model from play with no saves or ability to prevent.

Grots, orks, cultists, gaunts, anything. This isn't a Daemon specific thing. I used this example because my last game I fought daemons and Thu this mechanic got 45 free "kills". Any large but squishy unit like these that have low toughness, poor armour, etc. can be exploited this way because they too will be easily killed in numbers and then have the kills close to doubled many times. In the past squishy fodder infantry's saving grace was cheap cost and ability to run them in big horde style units. That seems to now actually be a bad idea that kills them quicker than if you ran them in multiple msu Style units. This is an odd byproduct of this mechanic which is easily exploited by many of the high damage output shoots armies.

Varying LD values and army/unit rules may come into effect but the core mechanic effects all models.

He is talking about the fact that Tyranids do not have to take Ld test, while they are in synapse range and AM units have commisars, which just make the Ld test auto pass and loose one model.
Orks however do lose models when they are small enough. They just have a Ld which is equal their unit size!

honestly morale in 8th is a non issue for many armies:
IG - commissars
Orks - mob rulez
Tyr -synapse
Renagdes and heretics - enforcer
Chaos Marines - huron (crappy, i know, but still)

IDK about eldar/DE/Tau/Necrons

but honestly if you want to ignore morale, you can. With a lot of armies and options.

Also, MSU means you ALWAYS give up going first.

So, yes, daemons suck at hordes and Morale. Who cares. True hordes armies don't. Elite armies don't suck at morale either, due to low model count in any given unit (terminators, bikes, tactical squads, and so on...)
What really rustles my jymmies is it this invalidated one of the first things the Devs said about 8th " No longer Fearless all over the board for 90% of the armies" Yeah. Of course.

 CT GAMER wrote:

That's more of a crappy part of Deamons then MSU. How they have LD 10 in AoS but only 8 in 40k is beyond me. Its the same mechanic for LD tests so.... it should be 10 also. Not saying that fixes the problem but its what it should be.

Deamons are fairly cheap. Bloodletters are 9PPM so only 270 for 30 of them. Also with how summoning is, its not worth it to try to summon the units to avoid them from getting chewed in shooting.

Other fixes would be you get to deep strike X deamon units per greater deamon you have. Would be fluffy and a good way to balance it.

Normal lists that use CSM and Deamons mix, its fine if they are spending time killing your foot deamons, as your hopefully getting transports full of beserkers or other horrible things into their face quickly and undamaged.

If I could take bigger units of Primaris I would. They can easily get LD 10, and are a little harder to die so worth it for bigger units for them possibly

I like 8th overall but some of the mechanics seem counter-intuitive and clunky.

To cite your example marines should by fluff be combat squaring and horde type armies should be running massive blobs; yet the rules mechanics as they currently work actually punish horde armies for doing so awhile tougher units can do it due to increased survivability and better leadership.Lazy rules writing imho that punishes a player for trying to play a horde army like a horde and also is in direct conflict with army/unit abilities hat tell you to take bigbunits to get a bonus. Make up your minds GW. Sloppy and confusing.


The fact that morale imposes straight loses is insane to me. It would have made more sense if instead of additional models lost it was additional wounds taken that the player could then take saves for. Still potentially brutal but at least the player feels like he has a chance to save his models rather than simply removing the rest of his unit because the first half was shot down. No leadership check and no saves is harsh and is a mechanic that is going to shape the meta in a way that is counter to established army fluff and themes (and apparently intended army/unit bonuses).

:shrug

Synapse, commissar, mob rule

Holy gak it's like getting realized they would need to mitigate morale for horde armies and gave them special rules to do that! THE FIENDS

 CT GAMER wrote:

Voss wrote:
You're stuck on the bloodletters, most hordes don't have that problem. Orks and gaunts don't lose half their models from morale.

So yes, it is a mathematical advantage.

Just not for daemons.

I think you had better read the morale rules again:

EVERY unit that takes casualties rolls a d6 and adds it to the number of casualties taken and for every point it exceedes their LD they remove an additional model from play with no saves or ability to prevent.

Grots, orks, cultists, gaunts, anything. This isn't a Daemon specific thing. I used this example because my last game I fought daemons and Thu this mechanic got 45 free "kills". Any large but squishy unit like these that have low toughness, poor armour, etc. can be exploited this way because they too will be easily killed in numbers and then have the kills close to doubled many times. In the past squishy fodder infantry's saving grace was cheap cost and ability to run them in big horde style units. That seems to now actually be a bad idea that kills them quicker than if you ran them in multiple msu Style units. This is an odd byproduct of this mechanic which is easily exploited by many of the high damage output shoots armies.

Varying LD values and army/unit rules may come into effect but the core mechanic effects all models.

So IG, Tyranids, and Orks have rules that easily allow them to bypass the morale rules.

For IG: Commissars have a 3" bubble where they give their ld to friendly guard units, which is nice but the other part of their bubble effect is that they limit the penalty of failing a morale test to one model. So a blob of conscripts backed by a commissar is at most only going to lose one guy a turn to morale tests.

Tyranids: Synapse creatures have a shorter range than they used to but it still makes them fearless (AKA auto-pass morale tests).

Orks: Mob rule. They can substitute the number of models in their unit as their ld value. Additionally they can also just take the ld value from any squad within 6" inches. Meaning you could do the morale trick of killing a bunch of them and watching them run one one mob. But not on 2 mobs next to each other.

Without some kind of rule that lets you ignore morale tests I don't see anyone running large units ever. You could use 2 Commands points to autopass that test. I guess you could factor that into your strategy if you have a bunch of command points.

 CT GAMER wrote:

That's more of a crappy part of Deamons then MSU. How they have LD 10 in AoS but only 8 in 40k is beyond me. Its the same mechanic for LD tests so.... it should be 10 also. Not saying that fixes the problem but its what it should be.

Deamons are fairly cheap. Bloodletters are 9PPM so only 270 for 30 of them. Also with how summoning is, its not worth it to try to summon the units to avoid them from getting chewed in shooting.

Other fixes would be you get to deep strike X deamon units per greater deamon you have. Would be fluffy and a good way to balance it.

Normal lists that use CSM and Deamons mix, its fine if they are spending time killing your foot deamons, as your hopefully getting transports full of beserkers or other horrible things into their face quickly and undamaged.

If I could take bigger units of Primaris I would. They can easily get LD 10, and are a little harder to die so worth it for bigger units for them possibly

I like 8th overall but some of the mechanics seem counter-intuitive and clunky.

To cite your example marines should by fluff be combat squaring and horde type armies should be running massive blobs; yet the rules mechanics as they currently work actually punish horde armies for doing so awhile tougher units can do it due to increased survivability and better leadership.Lazy rules writing imho that punishes a player for trying to play a horde army like a horde and also is in direct conflict with army/unit abilities hat tell you to take bigbunits to get a bonus. Make up your minds GW. Sloppy and confusing.


The fact that morale imposes straight loses is insane to me. It would have made more sense if instead of additional models lost it was additional wounds taken that the player could then take saves for. Still potentially brutal but at least the player feels like he has a chance to save his models rather than simply removing the rest of his unit because the first half was shot down. No leadership check and no saves is harsh and is a mechanic that is going to shape the meta in a way that is counter to established army fluff and themes (and apparently intended army/unit bonuses).

:shrug

Taking wounds though is pretty much the same. Even if it made it mortal wounds. Your stuff that's going to take big losses like that is going to have single wounds. If you lost a crap ton of multi wound models in a unit , your screwed eitherway.

It also sounds like your opponent didn't have CP left? or chose not to use them? 2 CP makes you auto pass moral test. So if I lost that many, youd bet id spend the 2 CP to keep them around.

Taking wounds makes perfect sense. The models are literally running off the board. How does being scared make you take wounds?

Anyway, AM, Orks & Nids can do horde lists because they have rules that either ignore Morale or make it basically irrelevant.

Marines, Eldar, DE, T'au, etc are definitely better for MSU. They have higher LD and their units are generally made to be around 5 models or so. Marines also re-roll Morale and Eldar have the Avatar (Fearless bubble)

Daemons are the odd ball. They have units that can MSU, such as Flamers, Seekers, Beasts of Nurgle, or even single model units like Princes and Chariots. The lesser Daemons get shafted though and I agree they should have been LD10, or Icons could have given +2LD. Or Heralds could be LD9 and grant it to nearby units.
There were so many ways to make Daemon Hordes possible, but GW chose the crappy Greater Daemon buff* and near useless Icon rule**

*Same aligned units within 6" can use their LD. This would have been good if A) the range was at least 12", instead of the worthless 6" and B) if Greater Daemons were even worth taking in the first place. Honestly, this would have been the better rule for Heralds

**Seriously a 1 in 6 chance not to lose models is crap. This should have been a re-roll for Morale or a +2LD.

-

Actually, Sisters and Cult Mechanicus have the same problem.

Battle Sister Squads can be taken of units of 5-15 (used to be 5-20), Electropriests can be taken in units of 5-20, and have no means to mitigate the effects of casualties on morale outside of taking an Inquisitor to get to Ld 9/10.

Sisters have that issue for larger squads but you can take Dominions and Retributors in 5 model squads. Then every model can have a special weapon. 20 sisters with 8 flamers, 8 heavy flamers, and 4 combi flamers is pretty sick.

Depends entirely on the army. Most horde armies have ways to basically pretend the morale phase doesn't exist.

Daemons are a horde army who have zero battleshock mitigation, but that isn't commentary on hordes vs MSU so much as it's commentary on how terribly daemons were designed this edition and how apparent it is that the people who designed them didn't care about the faction on any level beyond "nerf factories, nerf 2+ re-rolls, nerf invisibility!"

Meanwhile, MSU is always going to have a hell of a time against any army it can't basically table or at least cripple due to how scoring objectives work now.

Basically, you need some kind of morale mitigation to run a large unit effectively. Fortunately, armies whose rules center around running large units also have some kind of morale mitigation. The armies that don't have morale mitigation are able to MSU effectively, so they don't need it.

Although that does mean that morale losses are still largely an edge case that will rarely happen. Either the army is MSU with high LD, so it's difficult for them to fail a morale check in the first place, or they have some kind of mitigation to prevent it. Of course, if you kill the unit providing the mitigation you can force the matter.

 Astmeister wrote:

 CT GAMER wrote:


I think you had better read the morale rules again:

EVERY unit that takes casualties rolls a d6 and adds it to the number of casualties taken and for every point it exceedes their LD they remove an additional model from play with no saves or ability to prevent.

Grots, orks, cultists, gaunts, anything. This isn't a Daemon specific thing. I used this example because my last game I fought daemons and Thu this mechanic got 45 free "kills". Any large but squishy unit like these that have low toughness, poor armour, etc. can be exploited this way because they too will be easily killed in numbers and then have the kills close to doubled many times. In the past squishy fodder infantry's saving grace was cheap cost and ability to run them in big horde style units. That seems to now actually be a bad idea that kills them quicker than if you ran them in multiple msu Style units. This is an odd byproduct of this mechanic which is easily exploited by many of the high damage output shoots armies.

Varying LD values and army/unit rules may come into effect but the core mechanic effects all models.

He is talking about the fact that Tyranids do not have to take Ld test, while they are in synapse range and AM units have commisars, which just make the Ld test auto pass and loose one model.
Orks however do lose models when they are small enough. They just have a Ld which is equal their unit size!

Or just have a Warboss kill D3 like the Commissar and it's fine xD

 BlaxicanX wrote:
Depends entirely on the army. Most horde armies have ways to basically pretend the morale phase doesn't exist.

Daemons are a horde army who have zero battleshock mitigation, but that isn't commentary on hordes vs MSU so much as it's commentary on how terribly daemons were designed this edition and how apparent it is that the people who designed them didn't care about the faction on any level beyond "nerf factories, nerf 2+ re-rolls, nerf invisibility!"

Meanwhile, MSU is always going to have a hell of a time against any army it can't basically table or at least cripple due to how scoring objectives work now.

Maybe the intended battleshock "mitigation" is that Daemon armies have all these greater daemons that force the enemy to make tough choices. "Do I lay all my firepower into the bloodthirster that's going to break my lines next turn, or the 30 strong bloodletter unit". That's less powerful than Tyranids (who effectively have the same thing, except they make the choice for your enemy - shoot the Synapse) against skilled opponents but it's something to consider.

Daemons do have some morale mitigation. It's fairly weak, but I think that's because large blobs are not supposed to be a centerpiece of their army despite having the option to field them. They're kind of in a funny in-between position.

Greater daemons grant their LD10 to any daemons of the same god nearby, and icons allow them to ignore losses and recover models on a roll of 1. Amusingly, the recovery can trigger on a test that they would have passed anyway. So if a daemon unit with an icon only loses one model, it can still take a morale test, get a 1, and recover d6 models. It's not as reliable as a warboss or commissar, but it does help them hold together and can have funny results on a lucky roll.

Well if icons do that what's all the complaining about

Rihgu wrote:

 BlaxicanX wrote:
Depends entirely on the army. Most horde armies have ways to basically pretend the morale phase doesn't exist.

Daemons are a horde army who have zero battleshock mitigation, but that isn't commentary on hordes vs MSU so much as it's commentary on how terribly daemons were designed this edition and how apparent it is that the people who designed them didn't care about the faction on any level beyond "nerf factories, nerf 2+ re-rolls, nerf invisibility!"

Meanwhile, MSU is always going to have a hell of a time against any army it can't basically table or at least cripple due to how scoring objectives work now.

Maybe the intended battleshock "mitigation" is that Daemon armies have all these greater daemons that force the enemy to make tough choices. "Do I lay all my firepower into the bloodthirster that's going to break my lines next turn, or the 30 strong bloodletter unit". That's less powerful than Tyranids (who effectively have the same thing, except they make the choice for your enemy - shoot the Synapse) against skilled opponents but it's something to consider.

Nope, because you can split fire freely. Greater daemons get the heavy weapons, lesser daemons get the basic weapons.


Also, feed the greaters something small and petty and fall back if they survive. No reason to let it near your lines.

GAdvance wrote:
Well if icons do that what's all the complaining about

They do it on a 1. On a 2+ it does nothing.

Large units are better than MSu in terms of leadership if you have command points you are willing to use.

A 30 person/thing unit can suffer 20 casualties in a turn and you spend 2 cps and morale is not an issue. If the same casualties were spread across 6 MSU units you at most can spend cp to save one, the others are suffering morale checks with a strong possibility to lose more models past the original 20 total. Yeah the chance is low, but with LD 8 and 4 models lost you are losing the last model on a roll of 5+. When you have to make 4-5 of those rolls you are looking at losing models when the horde unit isn't.

Horde units are great, just devote some CP to them the first couple of turns.

It's a very important thing to consider.

Because if you can focus fire, at a certain point, weapons become double-damage* (or better).

*Double casualty causing

Love Pappa Nurgle's response to morale tests.
Brainless.
They might get scared and run away? Don't give them enough brainpower to imagine fear.