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Guardsmen, Reporting!

So I am loving Ratlings and am thinking of getting a few to hunt HQs and characters. But I am wondering how many I should take. I am thinking it would be a good idea to run them in their own detachment as Mordian for the extra hits on 6s!! Emperor be praised! Should I run them to debuff my opponents while the rest of my army sweeps them up? And what HQ do you recommend for them? I have no idea who would do the most good for them. Please correct me or add recommendations! I only as that you be thorough in your replies! Thank you!!!

Ratlings don't have the <Regiment> keyword, so they cannot get regimental bonuses. They also cannot receive orders.

From personal experience, they have been more successful in a squad of five as a deepstrike/reserves deterrent than as actual snipers. This is because you can deploy them after the enemy finishes deploying, so you can essentially extend your front line with these guys to prevent enemy units deepstriking/reserve moving into your more powerful back-field units.

If you did want to take them as dedicated character hunters, you'd have more success with a full squad of 10 ratlings. They shoot well enough, but you want to maximize 6's on wounds, and plus once they start taking enemy fire, they drop like flies.

Zero. Ratlings were barely useful before the points bump in December. Now, they are irredeemable garbage. Toughness 2, LD 5 means they get wiped out from even stray Bolter fire... which means you are obligated to use their move shoot move ability to keep them alive... which lowers their chance to hit... which means they're doing about equal damage output to an equivalent number of guardsmen with sniper rifles.

Also, both Nurglings and Scouts cock block their special deployment.

I want to build this list for funsies, but I don't use ratlings.

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/756251.page

0.

Character sniping isn't worth as much as just outright destroying the unit they're buffing. Also, we ain't havin' no theivin' muties 'round here.

Ratlings don't bring anything you need to the table, so they can be safely passed on in favor of more infantry and artillery.

0.

Currently, we can wipe out screens fairly easily. At that point, shoot the character.

Or, if a character is backfielding it, you can probably drop Scions with plasma behind them, and shoot them that way. In any case, the drop Scions are more versatile.

Or ally something choppy to melee the target. You can assault characters, if I recall. Put a meat shield around a cc beast character and deliver that way?

In general, Guard are better at swinging a sledgehammer than excising with a scalpel. Play to the strength.

Thanks for the help, everyone! I appreciate it!

If you want to character hunt, you're better off bringing in a detachment of vindicares, or using special weapons squads with snipers and/or vet squads with snipers. The vet squads have ablative wounds too.

3 Vindicares for all your anti-special character needs. Maybe they aren't the most competitive thing out there but with how cheap everything is in Guard you can have 200 points in vindicares without a problem.
The psychological presure they put in your opponent is just priceless.

 Galas wrote:
3 Vindicares for all your anti-special character needs. Maybe they aren't the most competitive thing out there but with how cheap everything is in Guard you can have 200 points in vindicares without a problem.
The psychological presure they put in your opponent is just priceless.

10 ratlings will do more then 1 Vindicare and costs about half.
3 vindicares or 54 ratlings... no contest there.

 Ordana wrote:

 Galas wrote:
3 Vindicares for all your anti-special character needs. Maybe they aren't the most competitive thing out there but with how cheap everything is in Guard you can have 200 points in vindicares without a problem.
The psychological presure they put in your opponent is just priceless.

10 ratlings will do more then 1 Vindicare and costs about half.
3 vindicares or 54 ratlings... no contest there.

Survivability is a big factor, 54 ratlings still die like flies.

 Ordana wrote:

 Galas wrote:
3 Vindicares for all your anti-special character needs. Maybe they aren't the most competitive thing out there but with how cheap everything is in Guard you can have 200 points in vindicares without a problem.
The psychological presure they put in your opponent is just priceless.

10 ratlings will do more then 1 Vindicare and costs about half.
3 vindicares or 54 ratlings... no contest there.

I can promise you, by turn 2 I will still have my three vindicares. I doubt you'll have more than 20 ratlings.

 Galas wrote:

 Ordana wrote:

 Galas wrote:
3 Vindicares for all your anti-special character needs. Maybe they aren't the most competitive thing out there but with how cheap everything is in Guard you can have 200 points in vindicares without a problem.
The psychological presure they put in your opponent is just priceless.

10 ratlings will do more then 1 Vindicare and costs about half.
3 vindicares or 54 ratlings... no contest there.

I can promise you, by turn 2 I will still have my three vindicares. I doubt you'll have more than 20 ratlings.

Agreed, vindicare has twice the toughness, 5 wounds, is a -character-, and if you sit him in cover it's -2 to shooting attacks against him. He also ignores cover bonuses, and he can deepstrike. All of that makes him hands down 5× more durable than a squad of ratlings. Oh, and did we mention the range? 72" means you will never need to worry about anything except LoS.

They will struggle to make their points back, but whatever character you point 3 vindicares at is likely going to be dead in 1 shooting phase, and that can seriously shut down a lot of synergy in opponents armies.

You can't look at snipers as a unit that needs to make his points back, because in 8th a character or psyker don't cost just what he cost, but you need to have in account all the buffs, auras, he provides, as you said. Chrispy.

I know vindicares are ignored online because in the net-listing narrative and LVO and Adepticon tournaments where 2-3 turns are the norm, they just don't work. But in 5-6 turn games Vindicares are beasts. But you can't buy one and expect him to do a ton. You need 2-3 minimum. More is to expensive I believe.

The real question isn't how many vindicares or ratlings do you need to kill characters, it's if you need someone to do that job anyway.

The answer is pretty much no. As I said, there are specific things the character is buffing, blow them up instead, it'll have a greater effect.

Also, if your snipers don't succeed in neutralizing the target character on the first turn, they're probably a waste of points. If the buff was up for turns 1-3, then it was up long enough and losing it late game only become relevant if the game is somehow still really close.

Many times destroying the unit the character is buffing is more easy said than done. The same happens if the units are just shields and the character is something like a Liutenaunt or a Cadre Fireblade buffing a ton of shooting units.

That mentality, as I said, is based in the alpha strike meta of tournaments that last 2-3 turns. Or by virtue of you playing gunline-guard, and being able to shoot whatever you want whenever you want. And I don't say this as an attack agaisnt you. But different armies have different needs.

As a Space Marine, 3 Vindicares offer me something I can't do otherwise. And the amount of firepower I can buy with those points isn't really greater than the tool they offer me.

 ziggurattt wrote:
If you did want to take them as dedicated character hunters, you'd have more success with a full squad of 10 ratlings. They shoot well enough, but you want to maximize 6's on wounds, and plus once they start taking enemy fire, they drop like flies.

Well apart from ratlings simply sucking note that in terms of survivability 2x5 is lot better than 1x10. For one LD is lesser issue as your unit is often wiped anyway and secondly enemy has bigger chance of wasted shots. Caused 7 wounds? Bohoo I only had 5 to lose anyway. With 10 squad you would have lost 7 and likely rest for morale.

Never take more than 5 until you have to. With rule of 3(bohoo 6x5 ratlings soooooooo broken cheese!) you have max 15 before you have to take bigger squads so start with max 3x5 and if you really want more ratlings THEN start increasing unit sizes. Obviously first 3x6, then 3x7 etc.

 Galas wrote:
Many times destroying the unit the character is buffing is more easy said than done. The same happens if the units are just shields and the character is something like a Liutenaunt or a Cadre Fireblade buffing a ton of shooting units.

That mentality, as I said, is based in the alpha strike meta of tournaments that last 2-3 turns. Or by virtue of you playing gunline-guard, and being able to shoot whatever you want whenever you want. And I don't say this as an attack agaisnt you. But different armies have different needs.

As a Space Marine, 3 Vindicares offer me something I can't do otherwise. And the amount of firepower I can buy with those points isn't really greater than the tool they offer me.

Except... we were talking about how many snipers the Imperial Guard needs.

Also, it's easy enough to hide a character completely out of LoS behind a tank, snipers are just useless.


Also, I think it's completely valid to say, even in a non-tournament setting, that if you have a unit not brought to recoup it's cost in damage but to destroy a specific critical enemy unit then it needs to be able to do that on T1, T2 at latest. It's not about eventually putting him down, if eventually putting him down was a tolerable alternative, then spend the points on something that can butcher its way through his bodyguard. You want to kill him before his buffs have had time to work. Turn 4 or 5 is too late, the game's in cleanup phase by then and the player who won/will win is just consolidating his victory. You want him dead before the heaviest action occurs, before his buff is most valuable.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:


Except... we were talking about how many snipers the Imperial Guard needs.

Also, it's easy enough to hide a character completely out of LoS behind a tank, snipers are just useless.


Also, I think it's completely valid to say, even in a non-tournament setting, that if you have a unit not brought to recoup it's cost in damage but to destroy a specific critical enemy unit then it needs to be able to do that on T1, T2 at latest. It's not about eventually putting him down, if eventually putting him down was a tolerable alternative, then spend the points on something that can butcher its way through his bodyguard. You want to kill him before his buffs have had time to work. Turn 4 or 5 is too late, the game's in cleanup phase by then and the player who won/will win is just consolidating his victory. You want him dead before the heaviest action occurs, before his buff is most valuable.

Taking out W4 characters like Shamans and Weirdboyz can be a bit easier and very damaging (if they're in LOS). Also if it's ITC it could help you earn secondaries. And there can be psychological damage where a player doesn't commit their wounded character to the fray for fear of losing it.

Sniper rifles don't always need to shoot characters either. 9 BS3 sniper shots comes to 2 marines dead. 9 Hot Shot lasguns do the same damage at range. Snipers are longer range so think of it like a long range single shot hot shot.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Taking out W4 characters like Shamans and Weirdboyz can be a bit easier and very damaging (if they're in LOS). Also if it's ITC it could help you earn secondaries. And there can be psychological damage where a player doesn't commit their wounded character to the fray for fear of losing it.

Well certainly couple wounds on weirdboy and ork player needs to position it further away from orks to ensure no +3 or +4 to casting which increases chance of peril which then could easily blow him up and cause spell to fail. And less casting bonus, higher chance of failure. Nothing more annoying for ork player than unit that first couldn't advance to prepare for da jump and then da jump failing.