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Hello all.
I see the Sabre recommended a lot. I love the models.
But to those that use them, or have used them, do they
suffer from the same problems as HWS? Does being immobile hurt?
Thanks for any help

HWS's biggest weakness is vulnerability to instant-death and inability to receive Bring It Down.

Sabres can't be instant-death'd by double-toughness, and they are already twin linked.

Win, and win.

The only thing that hurts them is TOs not allowing their use.

 A Musketeer wrote:
The only thing that hurts them is TOs not allowing their use.

I'm interested in discussing their viability in game play, not legality in tournies. Not to be a jerk either.

 alarmingrick wrote:

 A Musketeer wrote:
The only thing that hurts them is TOs not allowing their use.

I'm interested in discussing their viability in game play, not legality in tournies. Not to be a jerk either.

In that case, like the other guy said "win, win"

 alarmingrick wrote:

 A Musketeer wrote:
The only thing that hurts them is TOs not allowing their use.

I'm interested in discussing their viability in game play, not legality in tournies. Not to be a jerk either.

Sabre Defense Platforms are very strong, but not without weaknesses. Their main weakness is morale-- if they fail a Morale test and fall back, all the guns are abandoned and count as destroyed. This makes them especially vulnerable to Telepathy thanks to their low Leadership. Also, they are immobile and hence can be outmaneuvered in many situations. Overall though they are an extremely powerful unit.

Yeah, the only problems with sabres are moral, not tactical. There's no reason to take basically any anti-tank weapon from the guard codex itself if you're going to be rolling sabres.

Excellent model with very powerful rules. Also one of the only ways to mitigate the need to take vendettas in a guard list.

Just remember that you need to deploy them somewhere with good line of sight as they are immobile and please get a Lord Commissar to mitigate the moral problem.

A neat trick is that the fire on my target order can really help with jink/night fighting.

 Ailaros wrote:
Yeah, the only problems with sabres are moral, not tactical. There's no reason to take basically any anti-tank weapon from the guard codex itself if you're going to be rolling sabres.

To be fair, I think that may have something to do with many of the IG book's rather lackluster long range AT options than the Sabres themselves, especially non-vehicle based options.

If you're looking at heavy AT work, stuff like Lascannons, Lascannon HWS's are some of the least cost effective lascannons in the game not only in terms of damage output per point, and are ludicrously easy to remove, while Vanquishers are...well, hilariously expensive for a long range non-AP1 BS3 meltagun (though they do work very nicely as HQ's/Elites in Armoured Battlegroups with BS4, coax heavy stubbers, and Beast Hunter shells). Then there's...um, lascannon sentinels, enough said about them. There's Medusas with the AT shell, not bad but also very easily destroyed and nearly LRBT cost after usual upgrades, Basilisks which of course tend not to see much use on most tables for obvious reasons, and then Manticores being the only "about right" long range AT option in terms of ability/resiliency/cost. Outside of that, you have, of course, the Vendetta (which is certainly dirtier than Sabres).

Everything else is very short range firepower and largely melta based. Though the Rapier (if we're bringing in FW) is a good choice without being quite as good as the Sabres, lacking interceptor and skyfire, and shorter range along with taking a Heavy Support slot.

Sabers are more balanced than people give them credit for people just don't exploit their weakness.

#1 Morale, which can be countered with a lord commissar attached to 1 group and including others in the bubble. It's not really a weakness imo unless the lord commissar gets gibbed.

#2 CC. Shooting sabers which are scoring units off a home objective is a losing proposition. 2 platforms have 8 wounds at t7, 4 that can g2g for a 2+ cover in the right terrain/behind an aegis and 4 that have a 3+ armor save. Shooting at them is pointless, they will just g2g, absorb huge amounts of dakka, and receive gbintf orders next turn to shoot at full bs at ld 10 thanks to the lord commissar. OMG sabers are the leets unbeatable unit, until the same unit gets into cc and has the same cc ability of 4 regular guardsmen at t3. Just save yourself some trouble and think of a pair of sabers as 104 points of dakka in a 208 point shell of anti dakka durability with 20 points of cc durability. Any 30 point unit should be able to mop the floor with 104 points of tllc sabers in cc, and most 20 point units can take them.

#3 tank shock. The platforms have a t value and cannot move. If they don't blow a tank up with dog the platforms are squished, autogibbed, road kill, tank shock automatically kills them and a pair of sabers turns into 4 regular guardsmen with a stupid look on their face.

But, really...

As you say, leadership issues are pretty easy to solve, and, with any amount of sanity in the deployment phase, just how exactly is your opponent going to get into CC with them in 6th edition? Likewise, in order to tank shock, a tank has to SURVIVE to get there... you know... against a sabre platform... or three. Much less anything else in the codex.

If you're a powergamer, and you're using forgeworld expansions at your local store, there is literally no point in failing to spam these as hard as you possibly can.

For the rest of us...

Vaktathi wrote:To be fair, I think that may have something to do with many of the IG book's rather lackluster long range AT options

... comments like this are patently absurd.

Guard have plenty of long range anti-tank options, and guard, in general, shouldn't be having any problems with vehicles, even without sabres.

 schadenfreude wrote:
Sabers are more balanced than people give them credit for people just don't exploit their weakness.

#1 Morale, which can be countered with a lord commissar attached to 1 group and including others in the bubble. It's not really a weakness imo unless the lord commissar gets gibbed.

#2 CC. Shooting sabers which are scoring units off a home objective is a losing proposition. 2 platforms have 8 wounds at t7, 4 that can g2g for a 2+ cover in the right terrain/behind an aegis and 4 that have a 3+ armor save. Shooting at them is pointless, they will just g2g, absorb huge amounts of dakka, and receive gbintf orders next turn to shoot at full bs at ld 10 thanks to the lord commissar. OMG sabers are the leets unbeatable unit, until the same unit gets into cc and has the same cc ability of 4 regular guardsmen at t3. Just save yourself some trouble and think of a pair of sabers as 104 points of dakka in a 208 point shell of anti dakka durability with 20 points of cc durability. Any 30 point unit should be able to mop the floor with 104 points of tllc sabers in cc, and most 20 point units can take them.

#3 tank shock. The platforms have a t value and cannot move. If they don't blow a tank up with dog the platforms are squished, autogibbed, road kill, tank shock automatically kills them and a pair of sabers turns into 4 regular guardsmen with a stupid look on their face.

#1, same Morale as the rest of the army. Being T7 and 3+ armor, they will be taking a lot less morale checks than any proper IG unit.
#2 CC. Same Skill as the rest of the army. Against proper IG you can try to sneak in point blank and get the jump on them. Against Sabers, skyfire+interceptor means they get a free round of shooting at you when you drop in on them. A 30 point unit might mop the floor with them in combat, if it weren't for the fact that they won't make it into combat.
If your sabers are being assaulted, you aren't running enough sabers.
#3 Tank Shock? So if by some insane luck a tank is close enough to tank shock, survives the barrages on the way in, and survives the death or glory, you think that the tank parking on 1 saber and counting it killed is balancing? It would be if you could only take 1; but you can take ~20+ in normal sized games.

Sabres should never have been made with anything other than heavy bolters and heavy stubbers. Slap lascannons on it and it becomes broken.

-Matt

 Ailaros wrote:
But, really...

As you say, leadership issues are pretty easy to solve, and, with any amount of sanity in the deployment phase, just how exactly is your opponent going to get into CC with them in 6th edition? Likewise, in order to tank shock, a tank has to SURVIVE to get there... you know... against a sabre platform... or three. Much less anything else in the codex.

If you're a powergamer, and you're using forgeworld expansions at your local store, there is literally no point in failing to spam these as hard as you possibly can.

For the rest of us...

Vaktathi wrote:To be fair, I think that may have something to do with many of the IG book's rather lackluster long range AT options

... comments like this are patently absurd.

Guard have plenty of long range anti-tank options, and guard, in general, shouldn't be having any problems with vehicles, even without sabres.

Any deep striking or outflanking unit can mop the floor with them. A squad of tac marines can pod in, combat squad, and take out sabers on the next turn. Bikes, jetbikes, fast vehicles capable of tank shock, anything with deepstrike, jump infantry, outflankers. There is a huge list of stuff that can make it to sabers.

Spamming them hard is a bad idea in an all comers list. They are dedicated anti tank, and near useless against a horde. They need a supporting army to keep the enemy from getting them into cc.

The other funny thing about sabres is that in the case of the post above with 20+ you'd not need to bring something with a cheap searchlight because they can be upgraded with one mitigating that nightfight issue, definitely has a one up on the lascannon hwt's which require some vehicle with a searchlight to not be chooched for the turn that nightfight is in effect. I'm on the fence about them, i'm not keen on buying any from FW and I'm not a very competent modeler and they don't seem very Catachan like lol

 Ailaros wrote:
But, really...

As you say, leadership issues are pretty easy to solve, and, with any amount of sanity in the deployment phase, just how exactly is your opponent going to get into CC with them in 6th edition? Likewise, in order to tank shock, a tank has to SURVIVE to get there... you know... against a sabre platform... or three. Much less anything else in the codex.

If you're a powergamer, and you're using forgeworld expansions at your local store, there is literally no point in failing to spam these as hard as you possibly can.

For the rest of us...

Vaktathi wrote:To be fair, I think that may have something to do with many of the IG book's rather lackluster long range AT options

... comments like this are patently absurd.

Guard have plenty of long range anti-tank options

I didn't say they didn't have lots of them them, I said that many/most of them aren't particularly effective (and are almost entirely vehicle based) and gave my reasoning as to such statements (which I noticed you didn't try and address before simply calling it absurd), and as such the fact that the Sabres are better isn't the problem it is being made out to be, with the alternatives being what they are.

and guard, in general, shouldn't be having any problems with vehicles, even without sabres.

A different argument entirely as tank hunting can be approached many ways (long range, short range, assaults), I only addressed the long range AT.

 SwampRats45MK wrote:
The other funny thing about sabres is that in the case of the post above with 20+ you'd not need to bring something with a cheap searchlight because they can be upgraded with one mitigating that nightfight issue, definitely has a one up on the lascannon hwt's which require some vehicle with a searchlight to not be chooched for the turn that nightfight is in effect. I'm on the fence about them, i'm not keen on buying any from FW and I'm not a very competent modeler and they don't seem very Catachan like lol

Not true, the newest rules for them (IA1ed2) makes you replace the gun for the searchlight...yuck.


They are a good unit. No doubt. A true power gamer would never bother with the things as they would field venddettas with SW allies or just have thrown this "trash" codex out the window and fielded necron/Chaos SM so they could do their dragon/nightscyth combo (probably the strongest list ATM).

I like the IG and so do all of you so we play that codex. To do so in the new edition we need anti-air at a cost effective way. The vendetta does this in spades+++ . However it is a ridiculous unit if you wanted to field a real IG army and not an IG+Imperial Navy army.(yeah, we guard take allies even when we don't take allies, deal with it tyranids )

So what are the options? Ailros has tried the ignore the fliers and the spam lascannon and hope for 6s approaches and they kinda work, but not well. There are the hydra batteries but they just don't work like they should(why O'God did they not give these intercept even if it was a +25 pts upgrade?). That leaves other sub-par choices and the need to be "creative" (read - loose if you don't vastly outplay/outluck the enemy) or use the wonderful options that FW gave us.

Honestly how does an IG gunline even exist without fixed anti air batteries? I cannot imagine an actual defense force that would lack anti air firepower like the non FW codices do. The sabre platforms may be slightly under costed but not so badly that they are by any means an auto win or auto take. Heck they are worthless against all horde units and if you are truly having a problem play on a board with some real LoS blocking terrain and you will know how awful immobile is on a direct fire unit.

Oops my bad misread that.

 Ailaros wrote:
Guard have plenty of long range anti-tank options, and guard, in general, shouldn't be having any problems with vehicles, even without sabres.

Really?

Viable codex anti-tank options at medium to long range:

1) Vendetta (which doesn't exist for you).
2) LR Vanquisher (very narrow in role).
3) Manticore.
4) Medusa.

And that's about it. HWS have a long list of problems, infantry blob LCs are way too expensive, and pretty much everything else is just a bad version of one of those four units. And give how tough the competition for IG heavy support slots is you have to get some anti-tank in other slots. So a lot of the reason Sabres are an automatic choice is simply because they're the only viable non-Vendetta anti-tank unit outside of heavy support.

I have been considering taking a few and then putting a commissar LRBT with infernus shells next to them, creating a strong fire base bubble wrapped with a platoon and behind an aegis. The commissar tank seems a much better option than the lord commissar, as it can actually put down some extra fire power which ignores cover. ABG is also an ally you can take with no real "ally tax", as the HQ is the best bit and you only need one other troop tank.

What do people think about the 6" scout redeployment that you can do with the sabre? I can imagine that it would be useful but cannot think of the best way to use it.

I use the scout movement to place the line in a better position behind a slightly foward Aegis or something like that, especially when there's a big terrain piece just slightly outside of the deployment zone (be on top of the hill instead of the wrong slope for instance)

Didn't think about the commissar tank to be honest, I tend to put a Lord commissar in there manning the AA gun of the Aegis (giving a 3+ cover save a well of course)

TanKoL wrote:
Didn't think about the commissar tank to be honest, I tend to put a Lord commissar in there manning the AA gun of the Aegis (giving a 3+ cover save a well of course)

That is a decent use for him, although I usually give that job to a platoon commander. I just really hate taking both a CCS and a LC, it seems like a waste of points to me. Using a banner and a commissar tank gives the same LD10 with reroll that the LC would, but without the execution risk.

With sabres, I think it would be possible to drop the quad gun in favour of a comms relay. With a vulture and some storm troopers in reserve, the reroll would really help the precision of reserves. Getting two squads of STs down in a single turn has a far greater impact, and the relay is far better than a astropath. It is cheaper, more reliable and can be used to delay your reserves if you want to.

 TheCaptain wrote:
HWS's biggest weakness is vulnerability to instant-death and inability to receive Bring It Down.

Sabres can't be instant-death'd by double-toughness, and they are already twin linked.

Win, and win.

Why can't HWS receive BID orders?

 necron99 wrote:

 TheCaptain wrote:
HWS's biggest weakness is vulnerability to instant-death and inability to receive Bring It Down.

Sabres can't be instant-death'd by double-toughness, and they are already twin linked.

Win, and win.

Why can't HWS receive BID orders?

I assume that TheCaptain is referring to their poor leadership making orders unreliable, rather than not being able to receive them at all.

Roger that

Today I will be facing an Eldar/IG ally running blob squad, seer council and a bunch of sabre platforms in preparation for a tournament (he is going, not I). He's asked to face my dreaded necron cheddar-wing and I am happy to oblige with my 4 flyer necron list.

I see the sabres as being a decent anti-flyer deterrent. However, they still won't be able to beat my crons, at least that is my prediction.

 Trickstick wrote:
What do people think about the 6" scout redeployment that you can do with the sabre? I can imagine that it would be useful but cannot think of the best way to use it.

There isn't really any way to use it. It's just there as an emergency "oops I deployed this in the wrong spot" thing. Pretty much the only strategic plan you can have is if you're going first you can deploy them where you think you want them and then adjust them 6" once you see where your opponent has deployed (better LOS, etc).

The scout redployment is nice for getting on terrain that may be slightly out of reach or redploying due to an unexpected enemy deployment.

The commissar tank is actually a great idea. Gives some dakka output, tough as nails, and does the Ld 10 work needed.

I'm trying to write a list whilst I think about picking some up, but I am not sure what numbers are best. I'm pretty sure that the extra crew are a good idea but I hate having 2 pt upgrades. Is it better to group them up into units of three or go with individual platforms? There are pros and cons to both:

Individually, with 2 crew, you could put one of the crew in front and the other behind. This would mean 3 wounds to take the gun out, although you are taking a break test after just one wound. You can't use orders as well but avoid the risk of over kill.

A group of 3, with 6 crew, would mean that you need to lose 5 wounds to lose a gun and 3 for a test. FomT would work really well with these, especially against fliers.

List wise, I am thinking a Chenkov platoon allied to my ABG, with 20 conscripts and a CCS. Plenty of meat, behing an aegis, to shield the guns, with an infernus shell commissar tank and a banner to keep it all together. This would be the anvil, to go with my demolishers and command tank as the hammer.

 schadenfreude wrote:


Any deep striking or outflanking unit can mop the floor with them. A squad of tac marines can pod in, combat squad, and take out sabers on the next turn. Bikes, jetbikes, fast vehicles capable of tank shock, anything with deepstrike, jump infantry, outflankers. There is a huge list of stuff that can make it to sabers.

Spamming them hard is a bad idea in an all comers list. They are dedicated anti tank, and near useless against a horde. They need a supporting army to keep the enemy from getting them into cc.

A Strike Squad hanging nearby takes care of deepstrikers. You can bubblewrap the edge of the board with guardsmen to protect from outflankers.

There's things you can do to mitigate the issues the platforms have, but that holds true for HWS as well.

Another problem people havent taken into account in this thread: point efficiency. At 50 points per lascannon, you are paying quite a lot. 150 for 3 TL lascannons is ok, but considering that the enemy will always get cover thanks to the tiny profile of the guns and they arent as omfg as people think. 3 shots, 2.25 hits, 1.125 pens on AV12, .75 pens after 5+ cover, .25 explosion results. Therefore it takes ~3 teams to reliably kill one by stripping hull points. At 450 points, thats pretty meh. Are they strong? yes. Are they a bit too strong? maybe. Are they OP to the point of banning? im not sure. Personally i run them with heavy stubbers and autocannons as anti-infantry rather than with the expensive lascannon. DKOK lascannon teams are simply more effective for killing AV12 vehicles, though admittedly they do not kill fliers as well.