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In an all commers lists, how do you load out your armored sentinels?
Plasmas? I always fear those 1's as it seems i trow mor ones then anything else.
Autocannon seems to be most reliable.

I guess it depends what you intend to do with them.

My guess would be: heavy flamers if you intend to use them very agressively, running forward, maybe even charging and interacting with screens. Multilasers if you just want to fill fast attack slots and care more about their foot print.
Lascannon/Missile launcher if you have some 50 points lying around and would aprecciate some more anti tank (there are better AT options of course, but few so cheap) or want something that draws some fire from your other vehicles.
Autocannons if you want to hang back but don't want to be a fire magnet.

I don't think I would be sanguine about using these guys when I could use a single taurox in place of two of them or a single taurox prime in place of 2 of them with lasguns, for example. Each pair of sentinal destroyed is potentially 4.2 victory points for someone thinning the ranks and armor hunting (both common against gaurd) and the tauroxes are only 2.1 each.

So yeah, if you got points for 1, go for it, if you got points for 2, look hard at a taurox (also a transport, and FASTER) or at a taurox prime (also a transport and faster with better weapons). IF you got points for three of them, look hard at swapping them for a single leman russ battle tank!





Automatically Appended Next Post:

 catbarf wrote:
Battlescribe shows W1 on Crusaders for me, so not sure what you're looking at.

Writing off Guardsmen entirely seems like an enormous overreaction. The one secondary objective geared towards killing infantry is a poor choice unless your opponent is fielding 150+ models, so Guardsmen certainly still have a place.

If you try to rely on Bullgryns, Crusaders, or Sentinels for screening, you're not going to have the board presence to both effectively screen for your heavy hitters and take objectives.

Note that the objective geared to killing infantry gets a "counts as 11" for each vehicle that has more than 10 (I think its more than 10) wounds. So if you have a farly conservative gaurd army of 3 tank commander, 3 hellhound, 3 platoon commander, 6 infantry, 2 leman russ and 1 manticore, its "horde" value is back up to 150 "men" from the tanks adding in 10 each, ie, 15 points. If you get tabled. (Also note that army is only around 1924 points so you could put a few weapons in the six squads, sure.)

In ninth, you can get primary objective points up to 45, but you can get 40 of them just by taking and holding 2 objectives for 4 turns. So the enemy (if he takes and holds three) can only beat you by 5 points that way, and its VERY hard to keep someoen from doing that in his side fo the field. Execpt of course, regular gaurd can come in from the side of the board (reserves) for a couple CP, and movemovemove onto the objective site, score something like being in all four fields at the end of your turn, and then, by contesting against the 5 marines on the actual objective, disrupt the ENEMY holding the objective for a turn.

If you have mabye 6 dedicated gaurd troops to stick in reserves, with 3 officers, you can play that game for 2 turns, disrupt the heck out of an MSU style armies' best attempt to hold its objectives, and the notionally "useless" gaurd has all but won you the game, as the enemy is now digging himself out of a 20 point hole (since you probably can interfere on turns 2 and 3, but not beyond, with that trick). The poor guy is probably further in the hole than that, as your own side probably "holds more" if you disrupt his holding that way, so you probably get up to the 45 point max, while he probably gets around 20 to 25 points (even if he does really well in rounds 4 and 5, you can still add in 10 a round to the 30 you got turns 2 and 3).

So yeah, not useless at all! I appreciate this isn't a be all and end all recipe for victory, but its an example of how ninth is just .. different .. from eighth, in a manner that lets even fairly unbalanced armies do things you don't expect. Are 60 gaurdsmen without even a flamer between them going to win any fights? no. But they might win you a 25 point lead that the enemy CANT get back, and that's what this game has become about.

With the changes to 9th edition, would it still be viable to run 100 infantry models in a 2 x 30 conscript blobs for screening and 4 x 10 infantry squads to move up and secure objectives?

While they will be bare bones, I'm wondering if 100 models would be a lot to churn through (as now the HB is very inefficient at chaff clearing due to D2) the worry is of course mass bolt rifle spam. Obviously the army will be supported by tanks, sentinels, etc. But I'm primarily concerned if this amount of infantry is too much or not efficient in its roles played on the table.

Dukeofstuff wrote:
I don't think I would be sanguine about using these guys when I could use a single taurox in place of two of them or a single taurox prime in place of 2 of them with lasguns, for example. Each pair of sentinal destroyed is potentially 4.2 victory points for someone thinning the ranks and armor hunting (both common against gaurd) and the tauroxes are only 2.1 each.

So yeah, if you got points for 1, go for it, if you got points for 2, look hard at a taurox (also a transport, and FASTER) or at a taurox prime (also a transport and faster with better weapons). IF you got points for three of them, look hard at swapping them for a single leman russ battle tank!





Automatically Appended Next Post:

 catbarf wrote:
Battlescribe shows W1 on Crusaders for me, so not sure what you're looking at.

Writing off Guardsmen entirely seems like an enormous overreaction. The one secondary objective geared towards killing infantry is a poor choice unless your opponent is fielding 150+ models, so Guardsmen certainly still have a place.

If you try to rely on Bullgryns, Crusaders, or Sentinels for screening, you're not going to have the board presence to both effectively screen for your heavy hitters and take objectives.

Note that the objective geared to killing infantry gets a "counts as 11" for each vehicle that has more than 10 (I think its more than 10) wounds. So if you have a farly conservative gaurd army of 3 tank commander, 3 hellhound, 3 platoon commander, 6 infantry, 2 leman russ and 1 manticore, its "horde" value is back up to 150 "men" from the tanks adding in 10 each, ie, 15 points. If you get tabled. (Also note that army is only around 1924 points so you could put a few weapons in the six squads, sure.)

In ninth, you can get primary objective points up to 45, but you can get 40 of them just by taking and holding 2 objectives for 4 turns. So the enemy (if he takes and holds three) can only beat you by 5 points that way, and its VERY hard to keep someoen from doing that in his side fo the field. Execpt of course, regular gaurd can come in from the side of the board (reserves) for a couple CP, and movemovemove onto the objective site, score something like being in all four fields at the end of your turn, and then, by contesting against the 5 marines on the actual objective, disrupt the ENEMY holding the objective for a turn.

If you have mabye 6 dedicated gaurd troops to stick in reserves, with 3 officers, you can play that game for 2 turns, disrupt the heck out of an MSU style armies' best attempt to hold its objectives, and the notionally "useless" gaurd has all but won you the game, as the enemy is now digging himself out of a 20 point hole (since you probably can interfere on turns 2 and 3, but not beyond, with that trick). The poor guy is probably further in the hole than that, as your own side probably "holds more" if you disrupt his holding that way, so you probably get up to the 45 point max, while he probably gets around 20 to 25 points (even if he does really well in rounds 4 and 5, you can still add in 10 a round to the 30 you got turns 2 and 3).

So yeah, not useless at all! I appreciate this isn't a be all and end all recipe for victory, but its an example of how ninth is just .. different .. from eighth, in a manner that lets even fairly unbalanced armies do things you don't expect. Are 60 gaurdsmen without even a flamer between them going to win any fights? no. But they might win you a 25 point lead that the enemy CANT get back, and that's what this game has become about.

Can we "move move move" the turn we come from reserves? I thought no movement was allowed but charges and consolidation/pile-in but this might be an 8th edition thing

I assumed it fell away with the eigth edition rules -- there are so many little safegaurds about where the guys can enter, and I know in your own baseline they can even enter directly into melee (free charge from offboard.) So I don't realoly know that you can, and even if not, its still putting a large number of obsec in midfield on turn 2, having not been shot at on turn 1.

And a six man aggressor squad can put out 120 shots, reasonably hit 80 times if unsupported (or 120 if they are marines and someone wrote the ruleset to force even morons to win with them), causing some 56 saves among gaurdsmen. If you have used a bit of cover and perhaps a psyker to augment your saves, you probably still lose about 26 guys from that one squad, or up to 40ish if they are at that time of the month for marine ap. Talk about a priority target!

Of course, if you take three 10-man squads instead of one 30-man Conscript squad, you A) make Blast weapons less useful and B) make him try to gamble on splitting fire, leaving you some options if luck doesn't roll his way.

Unless there is inherent value to 10 man squads, such as unit choices, wargear or slot availability.. 5 man squads are just better, especially more mobile / cheaper / both.

10 Orgyns, sure.

Dukeofstuff wrote:
I assumed it fell away with the eigth edition rules -- there are so many little safegaurds about where the guys can enter, and I know in your own baseline they can even enter directly into melee (free charge from offboard.) So I don't realoly know that you can, and even if not, its still putting a large number of obsec in midfield on turn 2, having not been shot at on turn 1.

And a six man aggressor squad can put out 120 shots, reasonably hit 80 times if unsupported (or 120 if they are marines and someone wrote the ruleset to force even morons to win with them), causing some 56 saves among gaurdsmen. If you have used a bit of cover and perhaps a psyker to augment your saves, you probably still lose about 26 guys from that one squad, or up to 40ish if they are at that time of the month for marine ap. Talk about a priority target!

That is probably my biggest fear when it comes to basic Guardsmen.

The worst thing is they can do nothing back. A few 5 Point Plasmaguns are hardly going to be a threat. So they basically just go in to die in mass amounts.

The best option seems to be go pure defensive barebones just to buy as much time as possible while other units do the heavy lifting.

An example:

Batt - Gunnery Ex, Wilderness Surv
CC - Warlord
TC - HB, Executioner
2 x Astropath
6 x Infantry Squad

Spearhead - Gunnery Ex, Spotters
2 x TC - HB, Executioner
3 x Infanty Squad
4 x Thunderer Siege Tank
2 x Tank Ace Manticore

Basically 60 4+ save infantry plus 30 5+ ones who's sole role is to die as slowly as possible and then 7 LR + 2 Tank Ace Manticore with +range and reroll shots kill as fast as they can.

It's a pretty dumb list but its a pretty dumb meta.

I feel slots are more valuable than bodies - that tends to cost CP.

At least for guard.

Maxzero wrote:
What screening?

The units that do automatic T1 charges to your tanks locking them in combat where your heavy weapons get -1 to hit and blast weapons(like most turret weapons) can't even shoot and you could even be forced to spend 2CP(and have 1/6 chance of losing tank automatically) to even fall back to let others shoot(if those didn't get tagged as well due to no screening)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Dukeofstuff wrote:
I assumed it fell away with the eigth edition rules -- there are so many little safegaurds about where the guys can enter, and I know in your own baseline they can even enter directly into melee (free charge from offboard.) So I don't realoly know that you can, and even if not, its still putting a large number of obsec in midfield on turn 2, having not been shot at on turn 1.

Reinforcement units cannot make a Normal Move, Advance, Fall
Back or Remain Stationary in the turn they arrive for any reason, but
they can otherwise act normally (shoot, charge, fight etc.).

So unless you can convince opponent move move move is not making Normal Move then no it still applies.

(page 11 on the free rules PDF on GW site. Under reinforcements)

tneva82 wrote:

Maxzero wrote:
What screening?

The units that do automatic T1 charges to your tanks locking them in combat where your heavy weapons get -1 to hit and blast weapons(like most turret weapons) can't even shoot and you could even be forced to spend 2CP(and have 1/6 chance of losing tank automatically) to even fall back to let others shoot(if those didn't get tagged as well due to no screening)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Dukeofstuff wrote:
I assumed it fell away with the eigth edition rules -- there are so many little safegaurds about where the guys can enter, and I know in your own baseline they can even enter directly into melee (free charge from offboard.) So I don't realoly know that you can, and even if not, its still putting a large number of obsec in midfield on turn 2, having not been shot at on turn 1.

Reinforcement units cannot make a Normal Move, Advance, Fall
Back or Remain Stationary in the turn they arrive for any reason, but
they can otherwise act normally (shoot, charge, fight etc.).

So unless you can convince opponent move move move is not making Normal Move then no it still applies.

(page 11 on the free rules PDF on GW site. Under reinforcements)

Sure and how many armies rely on turn 1 charges now? The vast majority of armies are gunlines.

Do you build for the 90% or the 10%?

Melee elements are fairly common though especially as 9th ed shoot at backline and win doesn't work that well due to it being midfield objective campers.

Hell so far all the games I have played win/loss has been decided who gets to lock opponents army into his deployment zone early up. Automatic T1 charge does that fairly well. By the time you clear the enemy units you have got got too far to score back. You only have 4 turns to score primaries for example so losing even one means you have to max out on them to get max not to mention all the secondaries which generally don't work out that well if you are in your deployment zone clearing enemy units.

Like I said to another on idea of throwing in necron warriors and ghost arks T1 to opponents deployement zone. I dont' CARE if they die. It will still take time to clear out those(especially after getting to fire 60 S5 -2 and 60 S4 -1 shots). If they keep him in his deployment zone and soak up firepower they have done their job.

You assume those T1 chargers is his main threat rather than cheap chaff to tie you up...

Look at tournament winners. They aren't pure gunlines. When 9th ed is "he who controls midfield wins" pure gunline isn't that hot.

tneva82 wrote:
Melee elements are fairly common though especially as 9th ed shoot at backline and win doesn't work that well due to it being midfield objective campers.

Hell so far all the games I have played win/loss has been decided who gets to lock opponents army into his deployment zone early up. Automatic T1 charge does that fairly well. By the time you clear the enemy units you have got got too far to score back. You only have 4 turns to score primaries for example so losing even one means you have to max out on them to get max not to mention all the secondaries which generally don't work out that well if you are in your deployment zone clearing enemy units.

Like I said to another on idea of throwing in necron warriors and ghost arks T1 to opponents deployement zone. I dont' CARE if they die. It will still take time to clear out those(especially after getting to fire 60 S5 -2 and 60 S4 -1 shots). If they keep him in his deployment zone and soak up firepower they have done their job.

You assume those T1 chargers is his main threat rather than cheap chaff to tie you up...

Look at tournament winners. They aren't pure gunlines. When 9th ed is "he who controls midfield wins" pure gunline isn't that hot.

But as you said yourself the units you are throwing into T1 zones are purely expendable. Spending a lot to guard against that isn't a particularily good deal.

I have said later I can see a role for barebones infantry they are purely defensive and expendable.

So that reserves thing brings up a good point, for infantry guard at least. You want to go full horde IG, you no longer have to care how much space you have in your deployment. Feth it, you could throw a 100 guardsmen in reserves with some priests and Bullgryn and just take the opponents deployment for your own. Would work well with Catachans, given they could light up the opponent with FRFSRF and then charge in to finish the job.

I might give that a try this Monday, seems like it'd be interesting. With melta being 5pts a gun may as well chuck those in the squads, and if powerswords become +1S Catachan sarges become pretty nasty for the cost in melee. I guess core would be guardsmen, both to hold the line and flank, with ogryn and hellhounds supporting the flank attack while you use leman Russe's or manticores to soften the opponent up turn 1.

You're going to be hurting on CP but it's not like IG relies on CP to function quite like some armies do. Maybe that's changed a little in 9th but I think that sort of out of the box thinking is going to be what it takes to win in 9th.

Maxzero wrote:


Sure and how many armies rely on turn 1 charges now? The vast majority of armies are gunlines.

Do you build for the 90% or the 10%?

This is not congruent with my experience. Stand and shoot isn't winning, at least from what I've seen, and being aggressive about attacking and contesting the midfield is.



Anyway, I'm debating between Scout Sentinels, Armored Sentinels, and Hellhounds for the Fast Attack slots in my Brigade, because I basically was going to fill the rest of the brigade and then some anyway so I might as well get the whole brigade and not spend the CP on double battalion.

Armored Sentinels are my least favorite option, because they're just heavy weapons platforms, and I've got lots of armored type heavy weapons floating around.

Scout Sentinels are cheap, also carry heavy weapons, and have Vanguard, which means that against non-Space Marines, they'll zone out the turn 1 redeploys and deep strikes [Jump, Gate, etc] and catch some T1 charges.that would otherwise be charging my rifles and tanks and pinning me in my deploy area. And with clever positioning, I can hopefully bait some of those would-be T1 chargers into bad positions from which I can wipe them clear with the loss of only the like 45 point Sentinel.

Hellhounds, though, are another good option that is very attractive. Especially Devil Dogs when the Melta change rolls out. These are legitimately tanks, increasing the saturation of armor-type targets I've got. They're fast and dangerous and well armed, meaning they're much more of an active threat than the Sentinels are, but they can't Vanguard. They can also be used to charge enemy units that can't fight them so good, and either be invulnerable to everyone else's shooting before blowing that unit away on its turn, or they fall back and give up position and the objectives.

Sure and how many armies rely on turn 1 charges now? The vast majority of armies are gunlines.

Do you build for the 90% or the 10%?

*laughs in Ork* Well, orks at least have quite a few options for first turn charges. I'd imagine Eldar would have a fair few as well. And the good old smash captains (or a unit of death company) I remember there's a combo to have a melee knight in your deployment zone as well. If warptime can affect non-infantry then anything in the chaos roster with a decent movespeed can do it.

Maybe Valkyries? But I think they nerfed them a while back. Sadly no ogryn rush any more.

On the subject of Hellhound chassis... Be advised that their propensity for exploding has lost me games in the past when the enemy focused on them while they were still in my deployment zone. With how packed Guard armies were the carnage was... spectacular.

cody.d. wrote:

Sure and how many armies rely on turn 1 charges now? The vast majority of armies are gunlines.

Do you build for the 90% or the 10%?

*laughs in Ork* Well, orks at least have quite a few options for first turn charges. I'd imagine Eldar would have a fair few as well. And the good old smash captains (or a unit of death company) I remember there's a combo to have a melee knight in your deployment zone as well. If warptime can affect non-infantry then anything in the chaos roster with a decent movespeed can do it.

Maybe Valkyries? But I think they nerfed them a while back. Sadly no ogryn rush any more.

And nids to. Even more easily then orks i guess.
Genestealers who can advance and charge and have abilities to pile in and consolidate up ton12 inch iirc.

I think guard can also still pull off a turn 1 charge, namely with Scout Sentinels and, should they be usable, Salamander Scout Tanks and Death Korps Centaur Light Assault Carriers.

With their scout move + normal move + advance + charge (with crush them) they should be able to cover quite some distance, shouldn't they?
For the Scout Sentinels it's 9+9+D6+2D6= on average 28.5'', for the other two 3'' more, so 31.5 on average rolls.

Of course we don't RELY on turn 1 charges, but I think (!) it might be an option now and then. Also if the point is not so much charging as "getting as near as possible towards the enemy deployment zone to get him boxed in", Deathriders with the "Move Move Move" order are also really fast (20 + 2D6'')

Valkyrie and Vendetta (both are useable in ninth) can run 45 inches up the board, dump their troops (and a few gaurd may die, the horror) and leave that as an emergency blocker force against someone moving his big knight down an alleyway between terrain, or getting his turn 1 charge on your main body.

BUT.

Gaurd doesn't HAVE to be just gaurd. You could buy for pretty cheap a pair of scout marines in the ravengaurd tradition and a single chaplain to lead the basterds, pay your 3 cp, add a single squad of 6 aggressors to your gaurd army. You will start out down 5 cp, but your position gains many of the advantages of a marine army while still having points leftoever to make a good gaurd gunline. Against a fellow gaurd army, boom, you just poured 138 bolter shots into their screen park, and then rushed your aggressors into combat with some unlucky tank. The flexibility from master of ambush (the aggressors can relocate anywhere outside 9 inch from enemy deploy as a pregame "move" and THEN infiltrate forward a move, and THEN count as having not moved... or you could stick them in deepstrike at the last moment after your enemy has gone ragged trying to figure out how to screen against that exact action on turn 0, and then deepstrike in on top of the worst spot after your gaurd guns clear a few screens. In the VERY worst case scenario, a chaplain + 6 aggressors serves the gaurd as the countercharge in the backfield that you might otherwise not have had, cause you can also deepstrike back there in a pinch (or MoA move back there instead of the enemy deployment line).

I think its a really good (and fairly inexpensive) synergy for a cadian gunline, make a brigade with creed and then add those few marines on top of it.


Oh. Final thought.
valkyrie + precision drop + 5 scions with 2 plasma, plasma pistol, and powersword or fist (doctrine lambda lions) x 2 + tempest prime with lambda lions 1 reroll (shooting) and 5++ shield aura / rod of command and powerfist + tempest prime with rod of command and powerfist, deathmask of oleanus. So your little suicide group (I assume you are adding a scion patrol to a regular gaurd army here) can really slow someone down a tad on turn 1, by basically appearing in melee with a couple of their units they may have needed to have in play.

If you MUST turn 1 charge, this puts 4 individual tiny and admittedly somewhat fragile units right next to your enemy (you could also do it with a 9 scion group, 2 tempest primes, and a ministerium priest who steps out 9 inches away. Trail the scions a bit to get the bonus swinging their sargent weapon).

Point is, you have to roll a 4 out of 12 to get a charge turn 1. and if you do it with 4 units, (I guess instead of putting your GOOD units there, you could throw in 2 5 man squads that you doun't care much about, and let the chips fall where they may) you could potentially pick your adversary to force the enemy to waste his overwatch on one of the 2 5 man squads, and get the other into combat with something he doesn't want tied up from shooting or deploy zone locked on turn 1.

Lambda scions are not great in melee, but its a bit like the resilience of marine scouts, surprisingly decent, and their ap-1 buff means even their little s3 swings have effect when you wouldn't really expect it.

I probably would not do this one myself, but it IS theoretically possible and maybe it will have a place in the evolving meta of nine. There is a similar ploy with 3 x 3 man crusader squads and a ministerium priest, to try to tag a few enemy units on turn 1 and generally throw a block out 9 inches from the foe.

Are Vox Casters worth it now. I figure with you having to move your dudes around the board now, the company commanders staying back with a Vet gunline while ordering infantry squads towards the objectives may be more feasible now.

In 8, gaurd was better off usually buying more officers. In 9, with character assassination a major score against gaurd pointwise, they may have a role to keep fragile gaurd leadership out of the way of the bullets at the front.

I ain't sure yet.

 Pyroalchi wrote:
I think guard can also still pull off a turn 1 charge, namely with Scout Sentinels and, should they be usable, Salamander Scout Tanks and Death Korps Centaur Light Assault Carriers.

With their scout move + normal move + advance + charge (with crush them) they should be able to cover quite some distance, shouldn't they?
For the Scout Sentinels it's 9+9+D6+2D6= on average 28.5'', for the other two 3'' more, so 31.5 on average rolls.

Of course we don't RELY on turn 1 charges, but I think (!) it might be an option now and then. Also if the point is not so much charging as "getting as near as possible towards the enemy deployment zone to get him boxed in", Deathriders with the "Move Move Move" order are also really fast (20 + 2D6'')

Oh yeah, scout sentinels would be fairly decent. Regardless what you arm them with there would be value in sprinting in and tagging a few units. Forcing them to move and or give up some shooting. Depending on the situation it could be well worth the trade.

 Esmer wrote:
Are Vox Casters worth it now. I figure with you having to move your dudes around the board now, the company commanders staying back with a Vet gunline while ordering infantry squads towards the objectives may be more feasible now.

Eh, maybe, but guard always has an issue with little things adding up to be a big deal. If you're to the point of buying 4-5 voxes, I would just buy more officers instead. Your two main regiments (Catachan and Cadian) can both get a 4th Company commander by named characters and I've never really felt low on orders thanks to that. You could event take platoon commanders if you absolutely felt like you must.

Anywho, got to try my weird outflanking Catachan guard horde list. Pretty fun, need to play some more games to know if it's actually good but I got 82 pts vs a DG list, so it's a promising start. List for those wondering. Plan on dropping one guard squad, the plasma pistols, and marbo to fit in 3 more bullgryn


Whole idea is to put about 50 guardsmen, a couple buff characters, and something like a Hellhound or two in reserve, deploy the rest. You can vary this too, you could throw all 3 Hellhounds in for example, or even all 3 Hellhounds with say 30 guardsmen and a company commander. The cp really is a small price to pay for the mobility it gives. You could also hold back the Bullgryn if you expect lots of units going into your backline to pick off the manticores for example. 50 guardsmen, a company commander, and a priest is 19pl for 2cp, you really can't beat that (sorry tallarn)


One game, even a very effective one, is not a trend, I plan to keep trying this them for a while and let you know how it goes. I will say Catachans do it very well, you can pack a really solid second wave into 3-4cp and just overwhelm the opponent. It's basic tactics, a large army hitting over a wide front where the elite opponent can't be everywhere at once, but it won't work vs everyone. We played mission 9 which felt very well suited to this approach. You could always just deploy the whole army if needed but I feel like you want at least 30 guardsmen or so for grabbing late objectives in reserve.

Random small things
*Meltas only got off maybe 3 real shots all game, easily made their points back and then some by nailing careless characters on the flanks. Melta hedge may have some merit again, not sold yet though
*Power swords were ok, but death guard didn't really give them a chance to shine.
*The manticores are insane. It's like having two hammer of sunderance that don't even need to see the target and are S10. Mvp's easy, especially with new LOS
*Bullgryn are a key unit for pure IG, I would say borderline autoinclude. I plan on bumping up to 6 immediately. We need a bully unit to push the center, they're very good at it, especially with Catachan support.
*Artemia hellhounds are very good at making no go zones for the opponent. Park them on objectives the opponent wants to hold and basically threaten to kill everyone nearby by charging their melee powerhouse units. May be one of the better choices for reserve but they have merit as an initial deployment too, still figuring out ideal way to run them.
*It's weird running a guard list that's not super heavy on an initial alpha strike but it was a lot of fun. Even if this doesn't turn out to be a super optimal way to play, I'd highly encourage guard players to try it, it's not something the average person expects IG to do. 9th gives us a lot more options how to play, we don't need to limit ourselves to gunlines and killpoints.

To get more midfield I'm running + 2 Hellhounds and looking into sentinals

Leaving CC behind obscuring terrain with vox team near can protect Grand Strategist WL while still being able to issue orders. Also it could potentialy deny the enemy 3 points for assasinate secondary (and we usually field some easy to kill characters). OTOH one need 2 vox casters (transmitter and receiver) to actually benefit from them. It is worth looking into IMO

Ok, so mostly posting because my phone doesn't want me to see the rest of the thread; it's simply showing me a cached version and I can't get out of it, so this is an attempt to do so. Might as well ask a question while I'm at it.

There's a lot of talk regarding Crusaders, but last edition, they were worse Bullgryns. If I don't have Bullgryns yet, but do have Crusaders, can I just bring those or do I desperately need the Bullgryns too?

I am posting this half to test if the thread is really cache-locked for some reason, and half to answer a question about vox casters.
In nine, I believe vox caster use can be a gaurd strategy to minimize the bleeding of VP points that having our commanders up near the front lines (3vp each one dead) otherwise makes very easy. It even gives a possible role for a cheap, hide it out of line of sight command squad with a voxcaster, to put near the officer in cover somewhere, thus protecting him and extending range to the main body of troops up ahead.

This is also a test. To see if I can read it myself, once its posted.

Edit. Insaniak the Mod reported this was a known glitch and has repaired the thread, so it can be read normally and posted to normally again!


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Crusaders.
Cheaper.
More attacks.
Harder to kill the same value of points (each shot from a shadowsword still only can kill 1 crusader when it passes the invuln)
Easier by far to shuttle aroudn the board (drop from a valkyire to take the backfield objective on turn 1, even, and use your crazy resilience ot hold it. Try stuffing enough bullygryn in valkyries to do that, bucko!)

10 crusaders + minispriest + astropath (+1 to save including invuln) can be really hard to shift, and costs ... ah .. I think 260 points?

I think bullygryn may be a better offense weapon, but you could build an army with these guys to camp a pair of objectives and then throw the rest of your effort into offense.

I'm convinced one of the best regiments for 9th is Valhallan. Their order is great, fire into a combat hitting friendlies on 1s. Artifact lets you use conscripts and the strat lets you bring them back onto a home objective later. The WL trait is a defensive buff, never bad (use Tank Ace ability instead). Finally, the regimental trait is solid, 1/2 the models flee from morale and vehicles double #'s of wounds for dmg table stats.

Lastly I have a question I need sorted, can a hull mounted Heavy Flamer fire in combat like a Heavy Bolter can?