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I didn't say they didn't need a new model. I just don't think that they deserve to be able to hold their own against 500 pound fungus beasts, genetically engineered space elves, TYRANIDS, genetically engineered supersoliders in power assisted armor, or really any of the other things they fight on a daily basis.

The guard tactic to handle assaults is fall back or shoot them to death before they get close enough for melee. Those combat knives are for fighting heretical guardsman and opening cans, they already fight other guardsman pretty well one on one and they can open cans well enough. Not every army should have a close combat specialist troop.



And they don't have the same capacity they had in fourth because of killpoints and a lack of fast mobility. Not because they are somehow weaker in close combat A guard mellee never lasted beyond the second players assault phase. And having your unit shattered on your own turn just means you could never bring your guns to bear. Fifth edition consolidation rules actually helped guardsman, as did the negative leadership modifiers.

And the fact that every army in the game can pretty much get in hand to hand with them by turn 2 no matter what deployment you try. I am sorry, but GW needs to either amp up the firepower so much that the IG can burn an army off of the map in two turns, or they need to give us some real form of counter assault. Be it Ogryns, rough riders, beastmen, or power bayonets.

djones520 wrote:The option to call down an orbital bombardment every turn, on top of this rumor that 3 Leman Russ's will count as a single heavy support choice? The basic guardsmen will get cheaper, so people can afford more pie plates.

I'm sorry but if this is true at all, IG will become the epitomy of broken.

Surely basic guardsmen can't get much cheaper. I mean I don't know the points, but if you had 60 troops in your army and they got 2p cheaper each, you could afford one more Leman Russ. That doesn't sound to terrible considering how weak the IG are at the moment.

ShumaGorath wrote:...they don't have the same capacity they had in fourth because of killpoints and a lack of fast mobility. Not because they are somehow weaker in close combat...

Thats just wrong, yes they did, you could pour more men into a melee and they would stick and pull down a few elite CC units eventually, but now that every model you loose is a minus one for the morale check for all units those days are gone, their capacity for fighting melees with numbers has been completely removed.

ShumaGorath wrote:I just don't think that they deserve to be able to hold their own

I see, well, he who stands with me shall be my brother!

Thats just wrong, yes they did, you could pour more men into a melee and they would stick and pull down a few elite CC units eventually, but now that every model you loose is a minus one for the morale check for all units those days are gone, their capacity for fighting melees with numbers has been completely removed.

Yeah, your guardsmen lose more often in the melee that they have NO business being in. You don't throw in more men to the meat grinder that you will inevitably lose (which you would inevitably lose before in fourth as well). What you do is lose your unit then shoot the assaulting unit to death. The new consolidation rules means that that unit after breaking your 80 point squad of nothings gets shot to death handily. Its about the attrition effort, not about winning combat. Making them pay more dearly for their successes than you do for yours.

That is how guard handle melee encounters, not by picking up swords and killing the ravenous aliens that are twice their height and covered in teeth and hate. The guard army sucks right now because of kill points and an inability to take far away objectives. I'm sure the new codex will somehow fix the killpoint issue, and the valkyrie as well as increased numbers of drop troops will go a long way towards objective taking. The guard are all about attrition, not decisive victory.

I'll have no more of this defeatist talk. We know what you are!

The Commisar wants to see you!

Its not defeatist, its honorable to hold your ground and purge the land of the emperors enemies! Also none of those guardsman are punching anyone but they sure do seem to be shooting someone close by.

Sounds like the guard tactic of counterassaulting with guns!

Bell of Lost Souls wrote:...Plastic Valkyrie is on the way...Kits have been visually spotted...

Anyone have images yet?

I would love to see Stormtroopers become a great IG assault or counter-assault specialist. In the grimdark we all tend to see the Assault phase as only a huge swirling melee (hell, I'm sure it's described that way in the BGB), but I would love to see Stormtroopers' fluff presented as CQB (Close-Quarter Battle) experts. So instead of them ridiculously trying to go mano-a-mano with fisticuffs against a warboss or terminator, Stormtroopers in an Assault are actually charging in with grenades (like a SWAT team with flashbangs) and using their weapons at short range in support of one another.

I would translate that to a rule that when in an Assault, they use the strength of their weapon (like a S4 shotgun) instead of the model's strength, or a Stormtrooper with a Plasma Gun counts as having a S4 Power Weapon, like an ork burna boy, etc. This way an elite infantry unit can perform in CQB like it should, without having to be a genetically enhanced super-human.

Augustus wrote:Believe me, minor tweeks to Roughriders and Ogryns with some plastic models would not turn IG into an assault army.

Exactly. Making Ogryn useful (as opposed to junk like they are now), and a few tweaks to Rough Riders (along with a new kit) would help the Guard quite a lot without changing what the Guard is about (guns!).

BYE

Augustus wrote:

I just realised that the guy on the left isn't actually looking where he's firing his Lasgun...

BYE

H.B.M.C. wrote:
I just realised that the guy on the left isn't actually looking where he's firing his Lasgun...

BYE

No wonder they're BS 3.

H.B.M.C. wrote:

I just realised that the guy on the left isn't actually looking where he's firing his Lasgun...

BYE

That's SOP for guard armies. Just point your gun in the enemy's general direction and pull the trigger.

just use conscripts, they are cheap, and they shield your better troops. blast away at your enemy, then pound them with Ogryn.

ubermosher wrote:I would love to see Stormtroopers become a great IG assault or counter-assault specialist. In the grimdark we all tend to see the Assault phase as only a huge swirling melee (hell, I'm sure it's described that way in the BGB), but I would love to see Stormtroopers' fluff presented as CQB (Close-Quarter Battle) experts. So instead of them ridiculously trying to go mano-a-mano with fisticuffs against a warboss or terminator, Stormtroopers in an Assault are actually charging in with grenades (like a SWAT team with flashbangs) and using their weapons at short range in support of one another.

I would translate that to a rule that when in an Assault, they use the strength of their weapon (like a S4 shotgun) instead of the model's strength, or a Stormtrooper with a Plasma Gun counts as having a S4 Power Weapon, like an ork burna boy, etc. This way an elite infantry unit can perform in CQB like it should, without having to be a genetically enhanced super-human.

It would be nice to have CQB specialists be able to fire their (assault) weapons a second time in liu of making close combat attacks. Old ork bikes used to do this on the charge. It would be fluffy and fairly effective considering the unit would get a round with the guns before charging.

Kung Fu Jim wrote:just use conscripts, they are cheap, and they shield your better troops. blast away at your enemy, then pound them with Ogryn.

Yeah, and on Bizarroworld, this is a game-winning strategy. Your weak point is, this is Earth.

H.B.M.C. wrote:

Augustus wrote:

I just realised that the guy on the left isn't actually looking where he's firing his Lasgun...

BYE

He must be NATIONAL Guard!

ShumaGorath wrote:
Not every army should have a close combat specialist troop.

That's like saying that not every army should have a troop should specialize in shooting. Oh wait. To my (albeit limited) knowledge, every army has around 1 choice that specializes in shooting.

The pendulum should swing both ways. Every army should have at least 1 combat specialist troop.

Logic like yours confounds me sometimes...

Vladsimpaler wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:
Not every army should have a close combat specialist troop.

That's like saying that not every army should have a troop should specialize in shooting. Oh wait. To my (albeit limited) knowledge, every army has around 1 choice that specializes in shooting.

The pendulum should swing both ways. Every army should have at least 1 combat specialist troop.

Logic like yours confounds me sometimes...

It shouldn't. It's fairly simple. And no, it's nothing like saying that no army should have a unit that specializes in shooting. Certain aspects of this game require a shooting unit. An army without a specialty shooting unit is crippled offensively (try taking an all gaunt swarm against a mech anything list), an army without a dedicated close combat specialist is not hampered in the same way. The guard DON'T NEED a dedicated super close combat troop, because they have no possible offensive close combat role for one. The unit would only serve to be an unfluffy handout by GW to give poor players a counterassault unit. I'm not advocating not upping ogryns usefulness, or the removal of the rough riders (even if horses make no sense in the fluff). I'm just saying the guard shouldn't just get a handout because players can't be bothered to deploy defensively.


A correctly built guard codex shouldn't require a counterassault unit. It didn't in fourth, and it didn't in third. The lack of close combat is not what makes guard armies suck right now.

Guard don't need CC specialists. They don't need defensive grenades. What they need are claymore mines set up with proximity sensors. Bad guys come running up, several explosions go off, a lot less bad guys to charge you.

ShumaGorath wrote:The guard DON'T NEED a dedicated super close combat troop, because they have no possible offensive close combat role for one.

The lack of close combat is not what makes guard armies suck right now.

Agreed on both points. I just think that it would be nice if Guard had adequate close combat units available as Elites and/or Fast, as opposed to an unplayable pseudo-HtH Elite and a throwaway 1-shot counter-charge unit in Fast.

Overpriced core infantry, overpriced Heavy weapons, grossly-overpriced Transport, and exceedingly narrow viable build options are the main problems. A lack of CC merely exacerbates the problem.

HEHE! I just had a funny thought. Guardsmen with re-usable lances riding Ogren into battle!

Centurion.

It should be possible to win the game without close combat troops. Then you can make armies without close combat troops. The other abilities and costs of such an army obviously need to be balanced to make it work. IG is a third edition codex and badly needs a rewrite.

The Imperial Guard fluff supports durable hard hitting close combat troops (Ogryns) and fast 'alpha strike' but fragile close combat troops (Rough Riders) for the Imperial Guard. The Imperial Guard is a diverse organisation the fluff does not support Imperial Guard not having close combat troops.

Ogryns are currently neither durable or hard hitting, rough Riders are merely overcosted.

Expendable assault skirmishers (Beastmen, Kroot, Assault Guardsmen) are perhaps a thing of the past.

What the heck do we need counter assault for? Just bring more men and more guns. Sacrifice your unit that gets assaulted then shoot the bad guys to a bloody pulp next turn when all they can do is just stand there and wave at you.

While I agree that the the battle doctrine of "Shoot, get assaulted, die, shoot" works for IG, there is situations where *not* having the ability to wage any kind of CC is a major disadvantage.

Holding objectives in terrain. If an enemy CC unit hits our squads who are guarding an objective, if all we can do is simply loose a squad a turn and keep shooting them, it puts us in a tactical disadvantage.

It would be nice if we had a unit (ogryn?) that could actually hold an objective in cover against melee. :\

Kung Fu Jim wrote:just use conscripts, they are cheap, and they shield your better troops. blast away at your enemy, then pound them with Ogryn.

and doesn't that give the enemy a cover save since invariably some models will be blocked by the conscripts you're firing through?

Not with this "platoon drill" that appears to be coming in the new codex...

^^lasguns have ap?

Nope, but some targets have worse than Sv4+...