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In this age of IG dynamically and cinematically... standing in place statically firing like madmen, how are people preferring to get their troops to cross the board nowadays?

- Power blobs appear to be out by all conventional measures, and power weapons kind of suck now.

- You have to bail out of a vehicle to control/contest objectives, and Chimeras are squishy now anyway.

- Valkyries/Vendettas look appealing, but getting back into them makes them vulnerable.


Discuss.

Well, I think the only way of moving troops across the board is to hope. Guardsmen are squishy. They will die. They will die lots. The best tactic I find is to give your opponent something more pressing to shoot at, like marbo or stoormtroopers, so the infantry squads can advance unhindered.

A few things:

1) Remember, you only have to get out of the vehicle to score at the end of the game. You can spend the early turns sitting in the Chimera/Vendetta, then get out on turn 5, form a wall with your surviving tanks, and hope you've killed enough of your opponent's army that the incoming fire won't be too much to survive.

2) Platoons are crippled on offense, but they're still ok for defending your home objective. Buy an aegis line, put a blob squad (with commissar of course) and a HWS or three behind it on your home objective. It's enough meatshield bodies that removing it will be difficult, and your midfield melta/plasma/tanks/etc should hopefully give your opponent enough urgent threats to deal with that your objective holders are screened from any real fire.

3) Don't forget about allies. If you want to run mech vets and consider them expendable as long as they kill their targets, there's nothing wrong with allying in some tougher troops to hold the objectives. For example, deathwing terminators expensive but have good synergy with a mech list and can do very well at both midfield objective taking/claiming and sitting back with cyclone missiles on a "safe" objective.

 daedalus wrote:

- You have to bail out of a vehicle to control/contest objectives, and Chimeras are squishy now anyway.

What? They are AV12 front and you need three penetrating or glancing hits to kill them without exploding them outright. Don't forget that you can't stop them just by glancing them either. If you have 6 or more of them rolling around you aren't going to get many of them glanced to death.

In my list Al'Rahem and a platoon get there on foot because he comes on from the side The other half of my army is in chimeras. Squishy, yes, but take Lamen Russes and they draw the heavier weapons away from them.

I honestly have a foot platoon of Standard infantry all armed with One missile Launcher ( each squad has one ) throwing rockets downrange while i have a " Platoon " ( im using real life standards ) of Vets armed with x2 Plasma guns a peice riding in Chimeras to tackle objectives , i ussually run x2 units of stormtroopers that deep strike to wreak all sorts of hell . Generally , having a group ( in my case a foot platoon and x2 leman russ's with plasma sponsons ) lobbing shells down range suppresses and kills enough of the enimies heavy AT to allow my Chimeras to run over most resistance , and Chimeras having 3 hull points on front armor 12 , i only think makes them better , no longer are strength 6 weapons going to stop me in my tracks of an advance , i just charge though small arms now

Yes, regular guard infantry melt like snow to the blowtorch now. It doesn't matter if they're in blobs if they're getting blown off the table by shooting first. Being able to advance with foot guard is one of the three major problems facing foot guard right now (the others are "how to I concentrate my killing power well enough?" and "how do I handle fliers?").

Durability is probably the biggest problem for foot units. The way I've personally handled it is by swapping my infantry platoons for vet squads with grenadiers. I've only had two games with them so far, but already the carapace has proven its ability to keep my guys on the field. More importantly, this allows them to advance more, as they're less beholden to cover. Being vets, they also solve the force concentration problem as well.

Other than this, I've been spamming the hell out of strormtroopers, and when they haven't been hideously unlucky with their scatter rolling, they preform phenomenally. They get to attack with BS4 special weapons and Ap3 small arms, anywhere on the board, and your opponent doesnt' get a chance to shoot at them first. It fixes both the durability side of the problem, and the advancing upfield side of the problem. In my last 7 games, my stormies have been my MVP for 6 of them.

Buttons wrote:

 daedalus wrote:

- You have to bail out of a vehicle to control/contest objectives, and Chimeras are squishy now anyway.

What? They are AV12 front and you need three penetrating or glancing hits to kill them without exploding them outright. Don't forget that you can't stop them just by glancing them either. If you have 6 or more of them rolling around you aren't going to get many of them glanced to death.

Maybe I was just always previously lucky with my Chimeras, but I was never afraid of glancing hits until now. Most glances before had a 50% chance of rendering me unable to shoot. Cumulative glances had a 50% chance of rendering me unable to shoot. A chimera is no longer a cheap, disposable means of advancing unless you have 6-8 of them. They're unsuitable for any sort of hybrid army with a heavy static backfield unless you want to have them also backfield firing like pillboxes.

Between the fact that you have to bail out (with random turn lengths making results equally random) to score/contest objectives and the fact that you're now at a target saturation disadvantage if you're not just blanket AV12 spamming, they're just not a viable transport mechanism.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ailaros wrote:

Durability is probably the biggest problem for foot units. The way I've personally handled it is by swapping my infantry platoons for vet squads with grenadiers. I've only had two games with them so far, but already the carapace has proven its ability to keep my guys on the field. More importantly, this allows them to advance more, as they're less beholden to cover. Being vets, they also solve the force concentration problem as well.

This is interesting. You just march them across the table then, i.e. no chimeras? Do you have any battle reports up on your website illustrating this yet? I'd like to know more.

Other than this, I've been spamming the hell out of strormtroopers, and when they haven't been hideously unlucky with their scatter rolling, they preform phenomenally. They get to attack with BS4 special weapons and Ap3 small arms, anywhere on the board, and your opponent doesnt' get a chance to shoot at them first. It fixes both the durability side of the problem, and the advancing upfield side of the problem. In my last 7 games, my stormies have been my MVP for 6 of them.

You go suicide-style deepstrike with them? Are you using 10 man strong squads, or something smaller? I normally run a 5-man meltagun squad to take out a vehicle and then pretty much die, but I've been considering running them differently given how much easier it is to take vehicles out now. It doesn't help that my local meta knows to anticipate this now, and I've actually had people not take that land-raider simply because they know I have this up my sleeve.

 daedalus wrote:

Buttons wrote:

 daedalus wrote:

- You have to bail out of a vehicle to control/contest objectives, and Chimeras are squishy now anyway.

What? They are AV12 front and you need three penetrating or glancing hits to kill them without exploding them outright. Don't forget that you can't stop them just by glancing them either. If you have 6 or more of them rolling around you aren't going to get many of them glanced to death.

Maybe I was just always previously lucky with my Chimeras, but I was never afraid of glancing hits until now. Most glances before had a 50% chance of rendering me unable to shoot. Cumulative glances had a 50% chance of rendering me unable to shoot. A chimera is no longer a cheap, disposable means of advancing unless you have 6-8 of them. They're unsuitable for any sort of hybrid army with a heavy static backfield unless you want to have them also backfield firing like pillboxes.

Between the fact that you have to bail out (with random turn lengths making results equally random) to score/contest objectives and the fact that you're now at a target saturation disadvantage if you're not just blanket AV12 spamming, they're just not a viable transport mechanism.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ailaros wrote:

Durability is probably the biggest problem for foot units. The way I've personally handled it is by swapping my infantry platoons for vet squads with grenadiers. I've only had two games with them so far, but already the carapace has proven its ability to keep my guys on the field. More importantly, this allows them to advance more, as they're less beholden to cover. Being vets, they also solve the force concentration problem as well.

This is interesting. You just march them across the table then, i.e. no chimeras? Do you have any battle reports up on your website illustrating this yet? I'd like to know more.

Other than this, I've been spamming the hell out of strormtroopers, and when they haven't been hideously unlucky with their scatter rolling, they preform phenomenally. They get to attack with BS4 special weapons and Ap3 small arms, anywhere on the board, and your opponent doesnt' get a chance to shoot at them first. It fixes both the durability side of the problem, and the advancing upfield side of the problem. In my last 7 games, my stormies have been my MVP for 6 of them.

You go suicide-style deepstrike with them? Are you using 10 man strong squads, or something smaller? I normally run a 5-man meltagun squad to take out a vehicle and then pretty much die, but I've been considering running them differently given how much easier it is to take vehicles out now. It doesn't help that my local meta knows to anticipate this now, and I've actually had people not take that land-raider simply because they know I have this up my sleeve.

Chimeras , i think are even more powerful then before , right now i run 3 Armed with Multilasers , Heavy Bolters and HK missiles , makes em 65pts a pop for something that has better armor then anything else of its class " yes please " but goodies inside are what give it alot of punch , i carry x2 plasma guns ..... so think about it like this - Multilaser - Heavy 3 Strength 6 AP 6 Shots --- Heavy Bolter Heavy 3 Strength 5 AP 4 ---- Plasma Gun - Rapid fire , Strength 7 AP 4 ------------ This makes your Effective kill range 24' and gives you a dead zone of about 12' ( double tap plasma range ) i run three in a " Fist " formation


[ ]
[ ] [ ]

( chimera Formation )

And this is run in conunction with three leman russ's lobbing plasma cannon and Battle Cannon templates down range , Not an appealing thought ill give you an example in a 500 point game this is what i brought



HQ - CCS with 2 Sniper Rifles ( 50 pt squad and 5 pts a rifle )


Troops -

Vet Squad -x2 Plasma guns ( 70 point squad and 30 pts for plasma ) -- Chimera ( bare bones 55pts)

Vet Squad -x2 Plasma Guns ( 70 Points Squad and 30 pts for plasma- Chimera ( bare bones 55 pts )


Fast Attack -

Vendetta Gunship ( 130 Points )


Now no one is prepared to face a full mech list in a 500 point game , of the 10/12 opponents i faced i tabled them with a smile on my face , the other two actually killed a portion of my troops ,

One Occasion is i had Dante ( blood angels guy with wings right ? ) charging me with a unit of Assualt Marines......" ohh thats nice " i oblitirated his troops by the top of Turn 2 ............ Never Under estimate the power of the Death Taxi..........never....

So, my dura-vets and stormie platoon are still a bit of a work in progress. The idea really seems sound, but with only 2 games under my belt, I still haven't quite figured things out on the tabletop yet.

You can see the two games I've played with it so far ;here and here. The second of those two gets closest to what I'm trying to accomplish here.

Basically, the troops on my side of the board are kept safer by the stormtroopers creating a separate battle within a battle that my opponent has to deal with. Ideally, they would then be supported by my infantry moving up, and my opponent would thus be pinned and then defeated in his deployment zone. It's going to take a little bit of work to make this actually happen, though, and, as mentioned, I've got a bit of work to do to pull this off properly.

Im in the same boat as Ailaros. I've gotten rid of all my chimeras and instead run MSU up the field. I run between 6-8 squads w/ autocannons, split between having plasma and melta. The melta squads clear the way of any tanks, while the plasma with its longer range stays close to take down any tough units.

Meanwhile, Marbo and storm trooper squads DS in the enemy's deployment zone, to be a pain in the ass and take the heat off the infantry.

The whole thing is rounded off with LR support, to soak up fire, with a pair of basilisks to send pie plates downfield.

Without chimeras though, the guardsmen will die in large numbers, so you have to use cover and movement effectively to get them across. Ill often have one squad run from cover to cover in lieu of shooting, while the one behind covers them.

With the new faq grav chut works anytime a vendetta moves over 6". Cheap bare bones pis may be the way to go for a mid to late game grav chut objective grab.

Cheap msu squads work very well in any type of area terrain in which they can go to ground.

I'm still using Chimeras. The difference is I need to take off the heavy flamers I put on there in the good old days of 5th and replace them with heavy bolters. I put an autocannon inside, to give them more firepower when not on the move and a couple of S7 snapshots when they move at combat speed, usually the second turn when moving in to cover.

One thing that worked for me is to take a hellhound and run it with the chimeras, usually a bit in front. It's a fire magnet, usually enough of one to allow the transports to survive the first turn. That has been enough the couple of times I've tried it.

I've had success combining carapace vets with a 5 squad platoon armed with heavy bolters and grenade launchers and a pcs the same. The Heavy bolters toss out so many dice that they just wear down infantry and at only str 5, I'm not really tempted to keep them still just to take a couple of shots at a vehicle. Heavy weapon squads provide the big guns, along with storm troopers, and a 30 man conscript squad with a Lord commissar marches up field. Between not caring about the conscripts and not having the temptation to keep an autocannon still, by the end of the last game I had two mostly uninjured squads in my enemy's deployment zone, and the remnants of the rest gunning down his last model just over the center line, on my side. I'm thinking of taking a defence line as well, to put just outside my deployment zone, to really give me some solid incetive to spend turn 1 advancing everything.

I agree with Karskin, I ran a similar list a few days ago but without the Valkyrie, I used more heavy weapons in my two vet squads and kept them troops buttoned up inside until I had to drop them off. I think that the HP system changes the way I use my chimeras, but not in a bad way. One thing I hated was being glanced into irrelevance early in the game, now, I can advance early on and shoot which makes a big difference to me in the early stages.

Chimera's are mean't (at least in my mind) to be used in bulk so if you have enough then you shouldn't really be having too many issues with them.

 Jihadnik wrote:
Chimera's are mean't (at least in my mind) to be used in bulk so if you have enough then you shouldn't really be having too many issues with them.

Actually the opposite is true. A small number of Chimeras (and other AV 12) means that your opponent has easy target priority choices, and can focus all of their anti-transport firepower very efficiently. End result: your Chimeras are quickly destroyed, and in many cases you would have been better off taking no Chimeras at all and saving the points. On the other hand, if you bring a wall of Chimeras supported by other AV 12 target priority gets a lot harder, and you're a lot more likely to have enough Chimeras survive to get the job done.