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If by "small bridge" you mean "gets hideously butchered trying to get in range to fire once", then yeah, it's no big deal. Furthermore, shuriken weapons don't ignore cover saves, and, as mentioned, time is against them as they're not going to get to fire for the first couple of turns. And then when they do, they're going to be killed the turn after, if they weren't already wiped out before they got a chance to shoot.

Guardians don't do more than most troops units - sitting around most of the game twiddling their thumbs and hoping that a target falls into their lap that's weak enough for them to be able to handle.

Mopping up broken squads eventually isn't as good as killing them straight-away right now. Especially since killing power in the beginning of the game has a lot of benefits.

 Ailaros wrote:
If by "small bridge" you mean "gets hideously butchered trying to get in range to fire once", then yeah, it's no big deal. Furthermore, shuriken weapons don't ignore cover saves, and, as mentioned, time is against them as they're not going to get to fire for the first couple of turns. And then when they do, they're going to be killed the turn after, if they weren't already wiped out before they got a chance to shoot.

Guardians don't do more than most troops units - sitting around most of the game twiddling their thumbs and hoping that a target falls into their lap that's weak enough for them to be able to handle.

Mopping up broken squads eventually isn't as good as killing them straight-away right now. Especially since killing power in the beginning of the game has a lot of benefits.

Uh.....They have Rending...or..."rending" so, yeah, they do ignore armor saves. They also have access to Wave Serpents, which it turns out are pretty good in there own right, and keeps them alive and gets them into the fray a lot quicker then you seem to realize.

Plus, if you think its that easy to kill Guardians once they are in range and start dancing in and out of rapid fire range and LOS with Battle Focus, you clearly haven't played a competent Eldar player yet with the new book.

Replace Guardians with DA's and this problem is magnified. Battle Focus, it turns out, is a pretty good ability too.

You missed the key word "cover".

And practically everything in the eldar codex has access to a wave serpent. Filling them with crummy units isn't the best way to go.

And I think guardians are plenty easy to kill. It's called torrent weapons. It's called whirlwinds, colossuses, TFCs, and eradicators. It's called deepstriking flamer weapons.

There are LOTs of weapons out there that can kill off infantry before they get a chance to shoot short-ranged guns of their own.

My guess is that you haven't played against a competent player who knows how to kill scoring units with minimal effort yet.

ShadarLogoth wrote:
Plus, if you think its that easy to kill Guardians once they are in range and start dancing in and out of rapid fire range and LOS with Battle Focus, you clearly haven't played a competent Eldar player yet with the new book.

I think you're really overstating the difficulty here. With a 12" assault weapon you have to be significantly inside 12" to use it (if you're 11.99999" away you can only wound the closest model), and battle focus only takes you D6" away. Your target unit can then move 6" closer to you and return fire. Most of them should be in rapid fire range of at least one model, and the 24" maximum range ensures that your entire unit within range to be wounded even if only a few models are within 12".

Now, you can of course choose to be really cautious and stay at the extreme edge of your range, but then you aren't really killing enough for the unit to matter.

I can agree with some of the dexs' out there. IG except for sabre platforms is either completely inefficient for fire power or semi-inefficient.

Vets can be good if you can get them where they need to be (which can be a challenge but that is a different discussion).

Scoring only troops are not really worth it but for the same reason no one likes hydras or any other unit that is only barely competent to perform 1 task. I think scoring should be judged just like killing purpose. So when you decide to take a vendetta because it is good against both AA and AV killing or broadsides because they are excellent AV killing. You should also judge are the scoring troops you are bringing bringing enough staying power vs fire power utility.

Ailros I believe you will never value any eldar unit as you have many times discounted speed as a benefit. Eldar/D.Eldar both pay a premium for this speed. I have found that the real star of the eldar troops slot are jetbikes, wraithguard, or waveserpents. If I could load waveserpents with cultists from CSM to save points I would. However on that note you should recognize that guardians and direavengers are pretty great against GEQ. This is one unit type the CWE mech lists tend to have relatively little fire power to deal with so they can bring a necessary firepower component to these lists.

Lots of eldar units have speed. Good ones, too, that can actually kill stuff.

Anyways, here's another way to think about it. Take a squad of guardsmen, and ask yourself how much you would pay for them if they WEREN'T scoring.

If your answer is more towards "I'd still pay 50 points", that means that scoring isn't a very useful ability. It's 50 points for the guardsmen, and the scoring is free. If, on the other hand, your answer is more like "Without scoring, I'd only pay 10 points for them", then what you're saying is that guard squads are complete and utter garbage. To which I'd say, why are you taking garbage units that aren't good enough to affect the course of the game?

Even if you do think that scoring is useful, and the guardsmen are terrible, when you start to take into account all of the things that make scoring units less important, you're left with pretty much a terrible unit that can only be anywhere near worth their points so long as your opponent doesn't know how to contest objectives, or to bring weapons that can kill scoring units.

Basically, you're spending X number of points for the unit itself, and spending the remainder up to their actual cost on a wager that your opponent is dumb, or didn't bring the right list. Not to say that you can't win on that gamble, but I don't know how much it's worth putting your proverbial money down on purpose most games.

You missed the key word "cover".

Fair enough, sure did. But, then again, just about anything you are comparing them against will have to deal with cover as well. Math Hammer 90 points of Guardians with 95 points of Spiders if you don't believe me, and take cover into account.

And practically everything in the eldar codex has access to a wave serpent. Filling them with crummy units isn't the best way to go.

You are begging the question here. You are saying Guardians (or DA's) are crumy, because they are crummy.

And I think guardians are plenty easy to kill. It's called torrent weapons. It's called whirlwinds, colossuses, TFCs, and eradicators. It's called deepstriking flamer weapons.

And how do those kill 9 point Guardians anymore efficiently then the kill 17 to 19 point aspects? (the answer is they don't)

There are LOTs of weapons out there that can kill off infantry before they get a chance to shoot short-ranged guns of their own.

Not if they are in a Wave Serpent.

My guess is that you haven't played against a competent player who knows how to kill scoring units with minimal effort yet.

Yeah. I can't imagine a meta where such a thing even exists. Your guess, like your dubious position here, would be wrong.

I think you're really overstating the difficulty here. With a 12" assault weapon you have to be significantly inside 12" to use it (if you're 11.99999" away you can only wound the closest model), and battle focus only takes you D6" away. Your target unit can then move 6" closer to you and return fire. Most of them should be in rapid fire range of at least one model, and the 24" maximum range ensures that your entire unit within range to be wounded even if only a few models are within 12".

You are forgetting the casualties the opponent takes widens the gap between you and them. Also, you are forgetting Guardians can take a weapon platform with a 24" range (or more), allowing them to kill anything in the unit even if only one Guardian is 11.9" away

SO..If you kill roughly 3 bases/salvo, and only put yourself within range of the closest base, and kill them plus the next 3 closest bases, then the next base is already 12" plus base plus spacing (generally 2" if you have any templates in the army that are concerned with, which you should...) away. So before even running back, you are already 15 to 21" away. Don't need a very lucky run roll (with a re-roll) to fill in the rest, and get you out of double tap range.

 Peregrine wrote:


What inspired this thought was a tournament last weekend where I took an 1850 list with one scoring unit (a Harker squad camping on a quad gun). This was less of a strategic move and more to run an armored company list and put a tank into the "best painted troops choice" contest, but at no point did I feel like I was lacking anything by taking only a single scoring unit. My games:

The problem is, the moment you face a similar list your solo troop gets blown away by a casual Manticore round. This strategy seems to rely heavily on being the only guy taking advantage of Imperial Big Guns.

 Dakkamite wrote:
The problem is, the moment you face a similar list your solo troop gets blown away by a casual Manticore round. This strategy seems to rely heavily on being the only guy taking advantage of Imperial Big Guns.

So why can't I just return fire, kill their single scoring unit, and win the game on secondaries?

Also, I should point out that the list I took didn't have any Vendettas. If I take a competitive version of the list it's going to have at least 1-2 Vendettas, each with a cheap scoring unit aboard that I can deliver late in the game.

Well assuming your opponent has built a more TAC list, he will have more scoring units that need firepower allocated to them than you do.

I think by taking very few troops (especially in a codex that gives easy access to very cheap troops) is a bit of gamble, one I certainly wouldn't take in a competitive setting. But that is also a bit of personal preference, I'll always take the army with a higher floor, even if it also has a lower ceiling.

 LValx wrote:
Well assuming your opponent has built a more TAC list, he will have more scoring units that need firepower allocated to them than you do.

But the hypothetical there was facing a similar list. And if my opponent brings the same list I don't really see much of a problem, mirror matches are often 50/50 coin flips so saying "you struggle with the mirror match" isn't really saying very much.

By similar I'm referring more to the IG Barrage Weapons aspect than the solo troop choice. Anything that can kill your one troop through cover, aegis etc is gonna leave you with a maximum possible 3 VP without Big Guns Never Tire and such.

 Dakkamite wrote:
By similar I'm referring more to the IG Barrage Weapons aspect than the solo troop choice. Anything that can kill your one troop through cover, aegis etc is gonna leave you with a maximum possible 3 VP without Big Guns Never Tire and such.

Well, like I said, in the competitive version of the list my 1-2 troops will be aboard 1-2 Vendettas until late in the game, so the barrage threat is a lot less impressive.

Sticking them in Vendettas makes it slightly more viable, but not by much. Cron Air works because it has 4 of them. 2 Vendettas isn't terrible difficult for most armies to shoot down.

I just dont see what you gain by dropping troops to the minimum. At 1750 and above you can easily fill out most of your non-troops slots while still fielding a lot of troops. For example, Andrew Gonyo's (and MVBs) "Skytide":

2x Ethereal
6x ~20 Kroot
2-3 Pathfinders
3 Riptide
3 Skyray

That was taken at 1850 points.

Guard can also do this quite easily. And since you are for the inclusion of FW you can just grab Sabres which are both much more resilient than regular troops and offer useful supporting fire that rivals what is available in other slots.

I'm just not sure you are gaining enough firepower to make up for the flexibility you lose in taking a multitude of troops.

 LValx wrote:
I just dont see what you gain by dropping troops to the minimum.

Points. That list has 720 points spent on Kroot, which is over a third of your points spent on units that aren't going to contribute very much until you count objectives at the end of the game.

And since you are for the inclusion of FW you can just grab Sabres which are both much more resilient than regular troops and offer useful supporting fire that rivals what is available in other slots.

I admit that Sabre spam makes this plan pointless, since they're powerful shooting units you'd bring even if they weren't troops, on top of being excellent objective holders. But since Sabres are so hated (when they aren't outright banned) I've been looking at ways of playing IG without them. Which, TBH, makes things more interesting. I know I can build a Sabre spam list and do well, and there isn't really much to discuss about it.

 Peregrine wrote:

 LValx wrote:
I just dont see what you gain by dropping troops to the minimum.

Points. That list has 720 points spent on Kroot, which is over a third of your points spent on units that aren't going to contribute very much until you count objectives at the end of the game.

And since you are for the inclusion of FW you can just grab Sabres which are both much more resilient than regular troops and offer useful supporting fire that rivals what is available in other slots.

I admit that Sabre spam makes this plan pointless, since they're powerful shooting units you'd bring even if they weren't troops, on top of being excellent objective holders. But since Sabres are so hated (when they aren't outright banned) I've been looking at ways of playing IG without them. Which, TBH, makes things more interesting. I know I can build a Sabre spam list and do well, and there isn't really much to discuss about it.

If you honestly think those Kroot only contribute by scoring and staying alive, you are really out of touch with the Tau codex. Outflanking Kroot will almost always alphastrike and with Ethereal support they can do a great deal of damage.

Guard blobs, Marines, Warriors/Immortals, Tervigons, etc. There are plenty of troops that can contribute in meaningful ways to an army. In fact, i'd say that useless "deck chairs" are in the minority with Plaguebearers and Cultists being the two popular units that best exemplify such a role. I do agree that it is harder to stomach investing massive amounts of points in such units. But you can easily field 60 Cultists for little cost and by doing so greatly increase the probability of winning a game by holding objectives. Plaguebearers are quite hardy for their cost against all armies not named Tau.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And I understand you gain points, obviously that is a given. What point level are we talking about? What does your list look like? How many HS, Elites and FA do you still have available? Then tell me exactly what you are trading troops to gain. Once we've got all that info I think it becomes a bit easier to debate the usefulness of skimping on troops.

 LValx wrote:
If you honestly think those Kroot only contribute by scoring and staying alive, you are really out of touch with the Tau codex. Outflanking Kroot will almost always alphastrike and with Ethereal support they can do a great deal of damage.

I don't really see it. Even at close range with the ethereal bonus it's just a bunch of bolter shots from a T3/no-save unit. I guess you just hope your opponent isn't playing a mech list, or MEQs/TEQs, or willing to GTG in decent cover?

 Peregrine wrote:

 LValx wrote:
If you honestly think those Kroot only contribute by scoring and staying alive, you are really out of touch with the Tau codex. Outflanking Kroot will almost always alphastrike and with Ethereal support they can do a great deal of damage.

I don't really see it. Even at close range with the ethereal bonus it's just a bunch of bolter shots. I guess you just hope your opponent isn't playing a mech list, or MEQs/TEQs, or willing to GTG in decent cover?

20 Kroot will put out 60 Bolter shots with the bonus. Without markerlights thats an average of 15 wounds on T4. That's half a squad of marines dead, or a few TEQs. Lots of Guard vehicles have AV10 side, meaning the Kroot will likely wreck the vehicle. With accurate outflank it also isn't otherworldly to think that the Kroot could get rear armor, which is likely 10 as well. GTG is usually going to be a 3+ and the models GTG will most likely be T3 meaning more wounds to save. Add in the ability for Markerlights to boost them heavily and you start to get an idea of how devastating it can be. You may not believe it works, but coming from someone who has tested the Tau codex heavily, I can say with full confidence that Kroot are a great tool for any army to have.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
Kroot have very little defensive capability, but a savvy Tau player should be focusing on removing things that can ignore cover, etc, early on, that way the Kroot can better abuse rules such as GTG to vastly increase their durability. With Markerlight shenanigans and mass shots the Kroot can even do damage while snapshotting, so they could still contribute even after having GTG.

I know I'm getting in kind of late, but I dig on my troops. As a Salamander pod player, I get a lot of mileage out of my tactical squads. I also frequently take a scout sniper squad, although if I had access to better snipers, I would probably be tempted to take those instead.

Still, I've been fairly satisfied with my troops. I've got several units in my codex that I'm not a fan of, but my troops are way down the list.

Necessary? Probably not. But worth it? I think so.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Kingsley wrote:
One issue with minimal scoring is that it's very hard to protect any given unit against someone who brings the right things. A Manticore will wipe out guys hiding behind an Aegis, Go to Ground or no Go to Ground. A unit with camo-cloaks in area terrain may be able to get a 2+ from Going to Ground, but then cover-ignoring weapons like the Colossus, Thunderfire Cannon, or any Tau unit with Markerlight support

Right, but the question here is which option helps more with this problem: bringing more scoring units to die helplessly against those threats, or bringing more killing units to remove them from the table faster.

In practice, bringing more scoring units seems more effective. As I said earlier, I think that taking minimal scoring-- like most unbalanced builds-- is a "trap option" that can wreck low-level players but ends up killing you against high-level players.

Basically, this thread boils down to "There is more than one way to build a list" and "it is important you have a clear battleplan in mind when deciding how many troops to take," does it not?

I would suggest that you either need to minimise the number of troops you take, whilst not denying yourself a chance of winning, or find a way to build your list in which your troops can still be effective, without denying yourself other effective options from your codex.

No single list will ever have an answer to every possibility here. One side of this argument needs to admit that whilst a low troop strategy may be very effective, it won't win you every single game (and I don't think Peregrine is trying to argue such a list will win every match, just that it will often be very effective. Forgive me for putting words in your mouth though) and the other side need to admit that just because you can find situations that will counter this strategy, it doesn't make it a bad strategy (and I am not sure some of the more vocal opponents realise that imperfect != bad)

The title of the thread assumes troops are weak units, and the tripe of an army list.

GK termies, strikes, grey hunters, csm, tervigons, gjb, wraithguard, ork shoota boys, venomspam, sabres, henchmen, and tesla imortals are not tripe.

Competitive troops can really make or break some armies.

I believe the argument is to advocate taking fewer scoring troops and focus on other units who have much better skills or stats or what have you to make your list more effective.

 schadenfreude wrote:
The title of the thread assumes troops are weak units, and the tripe of an army list.

I didn't think it assumed anything. It seems pretty clear that Peregrine was attempting to start a useful discussion over the validity of troops over other, possibly (possibly not) more competitive unit choices. Like you, I don't agree with the stance that troops are not worth it, but that's no reason to think the thread was unjustified. It's a legitimate question based on some real-world experiences, and worthy of some closer examination.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Gornall wrote:
You probably should not say tournaments are invalid when the main point of reference is an IA list.

First of all, the IA list is part of standard 40k. Weird tournament scenarios that reward one-sided massacres more than a narrow victory are not part of standard 40k.

Second, I only took the ABG list because I wanted to enter a tank in the "best painted troops choice" contest. I could have taken the same kind of list, except probably more powerful, with a codex IG list + allies.

ShadarLogoth wrote:
You don't pick them, they do.

Of course I do. If I toss a few Basilisk shots at your scoring unit I've chosen to make it go to ground and be useless next turn (or just die). So you're staying alive, but now your expensive legitimate troops unit is no better than my cheap penal legion squad.

And when the units primary purpose is to score, as delineated by the OP, then they really don't care if they aren't moving or shooting next turn.

But they still cost points. The whole point here is that you're spending a lot of points on units which don't contribute anything until the game is over, while I'm spending those points on units that are killing stuff all game. So really we're playing a 1500 vs 1000 point game for 5-7 turns while your point sink scoring units hide behind an ADL.

Breng77 wrote:
So essentially you are saying if you don't play tournaments, because here are no brb rules for declaring a tournament winner and a majority of events factor in margin of victory as a way to break ties between players with identical records.

All you have to do is play enough rounds that you have a single undefeated winner.

Anyway, the point is that tournaments have a huge range of house rules. Some play straight win/lose/draw with enough rounds to determine a winner, some play margin of victory with a short event, some have various weird victory conditions, etc. There's no point in trying to analyze a general strategy that covers all of them, so we stick to the standard rules as a default.

A relatively few gts have enough rounds to have a single undefeated players and single day event almost never do (once you have more than 8 players most 3 round events are too short, and once you go to more than 16 one day events will not be win loss.). So when looking at general tournaments we would be better served looking at margin of victory as a typical rule.

SlaveToDorkness wrote:The difference is he's stacking his deck with LRMBTs.

It's hard to see the importance of Infantry when your requisite units have battlecannons.

Battlecannons are overrated when your playing Xenos armies.

Peregrine wrote:I think you're really overstating the difficulty here. With a 12" assault weapon you have to be significantly inside 12" to use it (if you're 11.99999" away you can only wound the closest model), and battle focus only takes you D6" away. Your target unit can then move 6" closer to you and return fire. Most of them should be in rapid fire range of at least one model, and the 24" maximum range ensures that your entire unit within range to be wounded even if only a few models are within 12".

Now, you can of course choose to be really cautious and stay at the extreme edge of your range, but then you aren't really killing enough for the unit to matter.

That's why you stick at heavy weapons platform in the guardian squad. Maybe you should read the FAQs again.

Q: When making a Shooting attack against a unit, can Wounds
from the Wound Pool be allocated to models that were not within
range any of the shooting models when To Hit rolls were made (i.e.
half the targeted model are in the shooting models’ range, and half
are not)? (p15)
A: No.

I think 6th edition has moved to a much more deadly game than 5th. Vehicles aren't the indestructible boxes of doom they once were. Gone are the days of the universal 4+ cover save. Shooting got much deadlier, moving around got much harder. You have to take minimal troops choices or you have to take a troops choice that is durable or offensively front loaded. You take a gamble on drawing and winning objective missions in exchange for some drop off in firepower-per-point or you take a gamble in the other direction, minimum troops, maximum offensive potential.

Examples of durable troops with decent firepower: Ork Shoota Blobs, Chaos Space Marine Blobs, Scoring Terminators

Examples of front loaded offensive troops: IG Vets, Full Purifier Squads (With Crowe of course), Min Plague Marine squads with dual plasmas

I don't like it, but I think that it is an absolutely valid, and EFFECTIVE, strategy to minimize your troops. Pay the minimum tax, some crappy troops going to ground every turn and then load up on your havocs, vindicators, leman russ, etc. It's possible that, with the extra firepower, you'll table a troop heavy army before the game ends. This game favors offensive power. That being said, I like to make sure that none of my list is dead weight. My 20 x CSM with dual specials is a unit that is durable, scoring, and can offer appreciable anti infantry and anti tank/TEQ. It's a great generalist unit. I'd rather have two strong blobs of them, than some min squads of cultists that do absolute gak. I'd probably be able to fit in a few more havoc squads, maybe more Chaos Termies or oblits if I chose to do so, but I like having all the models on the table be good for something other than sitting on their ass.

Frankly speaking, unless you have a codex that has a very strong troops choice, I'd say you're right Peregrine. Troops aren't really worth it based solely on their ability to score, especially considering two of the scenarios allow your fast attack or heavy support to score as well.

Considering we now have 3 VPs for getting all the secondaries, it's very possible that you can win without taking a single objective. Especially if you blow the other troops choices to gak. Then if you nab first blood and warlord while protecting you're own then you've won, even if they decided to try and blow up your paltry squads of 10 cultists sitting in the back field.

 gpfunk wrote:

Considering we now have 3 VPs for getting all the secondaries, it's very possible that you can win without taking a single objective. Especially if you blow the other troops choices to gak. Then if you nab first blood and warlord while protecting you're own then you've won, even if they decided to try and blow up your paltry squads of 10 cultists sitting in the back field.

This.

First blood and warlord are mostly the defining factor the games I play. In many games, it isn't enough to hold the objective, you have to be able to stop the opponent contesting the objective in order to get the points. Given that in at least 2 of the objective missions you'll "get" scoring units from Fast Attack and Heavy Support I will often run minimal troops units. I think that the key issue is to make sure that you can contest objectives at the right time, even if you can't score them.

I recently started a GK army (for a change from Crons) which was interesting. After a few games, despite how good the GKSS are (compared to warriors!), I converted up some warrior acolytes for troops. I've found my army works better with more interceptors and another DK. I guess I value mobility over scoring.

Even with the Crons, I'll happily reduce troops to free up points for something else - and I don't play Cron Air.

edit : remembered something after I posted

I think this argument suffers from a lack of stasis. The two people who are staunchly in favor of minimizing troops in a unilateral sense are both those who hold minority viewpoints--one plays with strange limitations and consistently argues against the accepted norm for attention, the other believes that all tournaments are a perversion of standard 40k. The term "house rules" are thrown around in a disparaging manner in some vague attempt to discredit tourneys.

The truth is that if we are arguing competitive 40k, one must include tournaments, which consistently feature troop heavy armies at the top tables. There are departures to this, and some armies do very well by minimizing troops. However, this is more of the exception. I also tend to find the same type of lists excel when simply rolling out of the book.

It really isn't worth arguing straight book missions, as there are few major events that run them (even those usually limit things like mysterious terrain). In addition, the book contains no set instructions as to how to place terrain, so one could argue that every event is creating "house rules."

The only thing to say is that if min troops really do win games, prove it. Go to these events, or hold your own. Hook up with people here on Vassal and make bat reps. If one wants to discredit the accepted norm, some kind of evidence is useful.