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But, Ala Celestine, the commander is once again part of the command squad, and the command squad is a mandatory purchase with every company commander and junior officer.

This should help give some survivability to a 4 man +5 toughness three unit that can cheerfully be shot from anywhere on the board, but cut down on some commander spam by making them cost almost twice as much.

Thoughts?

Not sure the command squad's survivability is that much of a problem, and this would give the commander a bunch of extra ablative wounds against sniper fire.

I think you want to be really careful with handing out the character rule to shooty units. Scion plasma squads are good because they get to shoot before they get shot. Character command squads get to shoot before they get shot and probably survive to do it again next turn. This seems really abusable with Elysians and Scions, but even with regular Guard it seems very strong.

If you want to reduce Commander spam, just give us an HQ worth taking that isn't a Commander. The Lord Commissar is junk after the commissar nerf (and even before was only borderline), the Tank Commander is upwards of 200 points stock, the Primaris Psyker loses effectiveness as you bring more, becoming a smite-bot... so we have Special Characters and Company Commanders left. But with IG, we're cheap enough to spam detachments, so...

we need more HQs.

No, I'm sorry. This would give Guard 4 BS 3+ plasmaguns (and orders) on an untargettable platform for cheaper than most other armies can pay for a squad with a single plasmagun.

I would be okay with the standard bearer getting broken out as a character potentially though, if his price was adjusted higher.

Well you could stack it with a points increase and modifications to what it can take. [No, every single man can have a plasma gun, for example.]

But you're looking at 44 points with a junior officer before sticking plasma guns on it, which is a whole 6 points less than a Scion squad before sticking plasma's on them, the Scions have deepstrike, and a better armour save, and better guns, where as the command squad are harder to target.

Remember for plasma guns, to really be a threat you need to be in rapid fire range, and if you're a guard squad within 12 inches, you're not likely to live to long even with some slight shooting protection.

This does arise from my frustration from the Medic and Standard bearer being stuck attached to a very easily shot squad with zero protection, mind. No-one buys guard medics, it increases the cost of the squad by almost 50% and 4 toughness 3 wounds seperate the squad from oblivion. Likewise they're a really bad platform for a heavy weapon team, you're paying just as much for one in a Veteran squad, but for 6 less ablative wounds! The only use for Command Squads presently is shoving them full of special weapons and outflanking or transporting them.

Which is like. So unrealistic. You're using them as special weapons squads, and those exist in the book, but are objectively _worse_ at being special weapon squads, and there is zero reason for them to hang with their officer as they can't even intercept words.

I'd be marginally more happy if the medic and the standard bearer became characters themselves, but I really feel command squads need re-doing as a whole.

[Make them characters with their officers, restrict them to 2 special weapons at most, and drop their BS to 4+, maybe?]

I agree with you there. Command Squads don't feel very ... command-y.

I get where they're going with the "this is the support staff and HQ command cadre with the officer" but they totally flubbed it.

IMHO, they already split off the characters who are actually "command support staff" e.g. the regimental advisors. Fleet lieutenants for air liason, astrotelepaths for long-range comms, FSO's in the form of Masters of Ordnance - all their own characters. It's why my "Regimental Command" cadre in my superheavy tank detachment has so many elites choices, and barely any are actually Command Squads, lol.

Yes, those guys were all supposed to be command squad upgrades, but unlike the poor standard and medic, get to run off and be characters somewhere.
Which I'm fine with if they applied it across the board, or not across the board, but doing it with some and not others makes less sense.

Why can a space marine with a giant bloody standard be impossible to shoot, but a tiny guardsman is a blindly obvious target?

I dunno, I'm still kind of bewildered at the idea of people shooting at banners and medics to be honest. In most of my games, I would consider myself lucky if that were to happen. I do Mordian though, so I'm spoiled for Leadership.

I'm not a fan of stripping options from the Command Squad, because as-is, it's backward compatible going all the way back to 5th edition, maybe earlier. That's awesome, and sadly becoming more and more rare.

I'd be onboard with the commander being able to become a permanent part of the squad, but I'd still want it not to be a character. The upside is that you have those four bodies to get through before you get to your commander, or you have your commander to get through before you lose your flag. Adds more durability without exploiting weird all or nothing targetting rules that really screw up the game mechanics otherwise.