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Used them more as defensive units, like how the orks are using shoota boy mobs now. Moving up, holding mid field and shooting the enemy till they're forced to charge them. Then they tie the enemy up most of the game, like they did in 5th. Pretty straightfoward. Like I said, need more games to nail them down and make sure it wasn't a "fluke", but they performed very well. They're only 200-300pt guardsmen units, they are not walking across the board murdering everything in sight. Just like in 5th, they can't beat the real crazy assault units, but that's because those crazy assault units are double their points. But in anything even remotely close to a fair fight, they held their own. Of course, i was fighting units that had very few characters. Let me fight a nob squad or some paladins and we'll see what they're really capable of then.

They take a lot more work now, and I wouldn't build an entire army around them, but they still make good central units to hold the line it seems. 1 or 2, and then bring lots of smaller infantry squads seems like it wouldn't be a bad idea for example.

Also, while marbo is a "one hit wonder", he is far more reliable, and one third the cost of your storm trooper squads. He pops up and doesn't scatter, and with BS 5, doesn't scatter very often. Try him and use him to pick off warlords or pesky support units. That's what he's made for after all. We're calling him a hitman for a reason.

As for the russ, fair enough, but after a few games with the exterminator, I learned pretty quickly why people never shot at it, because it never really posed as much of a threat as a regular russ does. And with all the heavy weapons I bring, I usually just end up spamming bring it down until the fliers I care about die. Or just ignore them and kill things that can actually control the board, whichever works.

I agree with much of what MrMoustaffa says.

Actually I got my self worked up yesterday doing the numbers on a blob boosted by the "reroll to hit" spell. That would be an awesome unit shooting at about BS 4.5, snapfiring at the equivalent of BS 2 and then rerolling hits in CC if charged.

Then when I tried to build a list around this idea I relized our psyker cannot take divination... And then we have the "It's for your own good" rule... Well, well, I would consider bringing in an ally just to try this combo out though.

Running a Lord Commisar warlord and putting him in a blob could also mean you get some use of the warlord traits and (for better or worse?) be fairly confident you opponent will focus on this unit.

Marbo is great. I hear you when you say you want some staying power in the back field, but I wonder if that staying power might not be improved if you replaced the flamer ST with Marbo. He has a much more reliable alpha strike and could probably remove one of the most urgent threats to your remaining 2 ST giving them better survivability. As well as saving about 100pts.

Still don't see marbo. I ran him for awhile in 5th ed, and I can't imagine he's much different in 6th. BS5 looks great, but when you consider that an average scatter is 7", that still all but scatters off what you were pointing at. With even mildly bad luck, marbo's one shot of glory is just wasted. Quick math shows that marbo COMPLETELY misses what he throws his demo charge at a third of the time. That's right, it's the equivalent of a single BS4 earthshaker round. Given that he doesn't bust cover or come with multi-shot weapons, it seems like he'd be the same as before - occasionally awesome, occasionally a waste of an elites choice, and usually worth roughly only 65 points of nuisance before he dies.

Yes, he can "snipe" now, but with the relatively few hits you're likely to put down, LoS! becomes a real issue.

As for blobs, I suppose I'd agree that they'd only work in CC as a countercharge unit. You'd still have to keep them alive, though. The other thing I've noticed is that the only way people are being able to even remotely consider blobs is with a hard IC leading them, whether a rune priest or a lord commissar, or whatever. This makes me think that you really can only have as many blobs as you have tough ICs to lead them.

... and you still have to keep them alive...

On an unrelated note, wow, over 90 posts in this thread? That's nearly double of the most commented upon blood conquers report.

Yeah I see myself using them as counter charge units or as something to hold an objective in a dangerous area. They can't walk across the board though and kick teeth in, that's obvious. They make a great unit for guarding heavy weapon crews and tanks though.

But when orks can't walk across the board either, it might not be so much IG, as just that's the way this edition is. A lot of ork players I know are just walking their shootas halfway up the board, shooting all game, and forcing the enemy to assault them to pull them off. I'm going to try blobs in this way as well just to see how they do, but probably won't be running into the enemy deployment unless I'm against another IG or a Tau player

As for the precision shot thing, one thing I've noticed about the units that have it, is that they were units that annihilated us in close combat anyways back in 5th. Nobs, paladins, etc. they all wiped blobs easily back in 5th. Now they just do it in a different way. Most regular squads only have 1 or 2 characters in them, so they don't seem to get many precision shots off. We've got like 4 or 5, so we're pretty much guaranteed at least one or two 6's. I found that to be almost as much of a boon as power mauls and axes are. However, I've gotta admit that wounding on a 3 or a 4 against marines is awesome as well Still split on which to take though, they're both amazing when you can get them against their preferred targets.

What you're describing is basically how I've run blobs a few times in 6th. Keep them simple and cheap, use them to go after a midfield objective and hang on to it.

As far as Marbo is concerned, I've run him a number of times. He's a gamble, but so are Stormtroopers, they're just a different kind of gamble. With Marbo, you're gambling that the Demo Charge hits. If it doesn't he's not going to earn his points back, but they still have to deal with him, because he's got fleet meltabombs. He's not hard to deal with, as he only has two wounds, but he's not easy to deal with, as he's got Stealth, and will be in cover unless you're dumb. Stormtroopers are gambling on their Deep Strike roll, which is about a 55% chance of spot on success, and is a bit higher if you include scatters that don't suck. Nevertheless, it's a gamble either way, especially if you use heavily placement dependent weapons like Flamers.

And seriously, like 1/3rd the price of a full size Stormtrooper squad. That's another squad of Grenadier meltavets.

Yes, but it's a 55% chance that marbo will do NOTHING while it's a 55% chance that the stormtroopers will merely be delayed or be in a less than ideal position when they land. A single guardsmen doing nothing and then dying, and the above with 10 stormtroopers are not analogous. You do really get what you pay for with the stormies.

Yes, it's possible for stormies to scatter in the exact wrong direction the exact wrong number of inches and then roll a 1 on the mishap table (as these two games show), but it's also possible for Marbo to do nothing but blow himself up either.

I'd also add that people are highballing the stormie scatter. Yes, it's a .55 to hit, but that's not the only acceptable result. If I put down my melta stormtroopers 6" away from a vehicle, they can scatter in (almost) any direction up to 5" and still be in range. They can scatter up to 6" in most directions and still be in range. Hell, there are some directions that they can scatter 12" (say, directly over the vehicle and on the other side), and still be in range.

If you allow for the stormies to be good if they roll a hit OR roll a scatter of 6" or less, that brings acceptable stormie scattering from .55 all the way up to .85. That sounds pretty reliable to me, especially since half of mishaps are merely delayed. Really, what you've been seeing is nearly the trashiest luck I could have with them.