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When I run vets I normally don't bother with Carapace or Camo cloaks. I have run with Demolitions before though a few times and love it. I set them up with 3x Meltas, 6x Shotguns and sarge with shotgun and powerfist (Considering converting the cultist guy from DV with the shotgun to be a cool looking sarge. Everyone in the squad gets melta bombs and one also gets a demo charge. I just drop them out of a plane and run around killing things. The have the ability to shoot and assault whatever they want but die horribly to just about anything.

 Ailaros wrote:
If all you're wanting to do is plant a scoring unit somewhere, you can already get a 2+ or 3+ cover save by going to ground in ruins, or behind a hill/aegis.

What camo cloaks do is allow you to get that 2+/3+ cover save without going to ground. So, for example, that Harker squad sitting on the quad gun has a 2+ cover save while still shooting at full effectiveness. And that's important when you're talking about a 100+ point veteran squad. GTG is for platoon meatshields that don't bring enough shooting that you care about losing it.

Meanwhile, the carapace upgrade means that you are proofed against a small class of said weapons (regular flamers, mostly), but, more importantly, that you're not so beholden to cover. With the ability to save against bolters and the like, it means that your vet squad isn't stuck being an expensive, immobile lascannon platform.

But it also means that you never get better than a 4+ without going to ground and being useless. A Harker squad in good cover has a 2+ against everything. A carapace squad moving out into the open has a 4+ against light weapons like bolters, but no save at all against heavier weapons. And since small T3/4+ units still aren't all that durable it's hard to justify paying 30% more points on a melta squad to give it a situational armor save.

I'm sure it varies depending on army build but how do people run their CCS, what equipment do you guys give the squad and what options do you take?

I run a cheap ccs, i use it mainly for the astropath, officer of the fleet or master of ordinance. they mainly sit in a chimera or outta site and only special thing i really do to them is give them a mortar so they can still do some shooting.

im thinking of doing a more aggesive set up tho and maybe have creed in it. My main HQ now tho is the lord commissar, i find his aura of discipline, L10, and stubborn are working better for my more recent lists. I just toss him in a blob and work his magic.

 Warboss Imbad Ironskull wrote:
I'm sure it varies depending on army build but how do people run their CCS, what equipment do you guys give the squad and what options do you take?

4x melta in a Vendetta/Chimera. Now that everyone is getting a new MC I might consider taking 4x plasma instead. The only other upgrade I would even consider is taking 2x plasma pistols on the commander, if I have points to spare and can't think of anything better to do.

I've run a dual Plasma Pistol Commander with 4x Plasma guns. The commander for some reason always rolls a 6 & a 1 when rolling to hit. When I fist started using plasma I was afraid jt was going to kill the whole squad that I ran them with Carapace and a medic. I've since dropped the Medic and I only run carapace if I havw left over points. The beauty of them being in the command squad is that they can command Bring it Down on themselves or Fire on my Target. If yoyr running them in a Vendetta take a Lord Commisar to stick in the back field as the CCS will give away an easy slay the warlord. 130pts for 10 Plasma shots with possible re-roll to hit or forced re-rolls to save can be pretty potent way of spending points. Mist armys will have a target for them to shoot at.

An often over looked tactic with plasma is shooting down flyers. I have had a few a games where a skyfire objective has popped up and the plasma vets have taken it over and shot down a flyer or two. Bring it down has also allowed a few units to re-roll there 1's to not die and even have another shot at rolling a 6 to hit. Divination allies have also helped out this way as well.

I use platoons, to I got a standard for morale and a vox to help with orders. I got with double plasmaguns to give a little AP2 punch to my army, the officer usually have a boltgun to be useful at 24 inches.

Both Standard and Vox got lasguns as well.

I use to run them all with laspistols and CCW with a meltagun and medipack, but the small number of bodies the squad got made them weak overall (only useful at 12 inches, and at that range you'll get assaulted for sure.) and most things can insta death you so I'll use that 30 pts for an astropath instead.

Ive gotten pretty bored with my guard lately, not sure if anyone else has noticed it but with the newest codex's it seems that most of the units in the codex can be used in a competitive way and still be really fun. Now I know there are some units in the codexs that arent competitive or playable but it still seems like the majority are.

With Guard it seems like you need to run artillery, foot horde to sit home and have vendettas fly out and drops guys off to capture late objectives.

It seems that out of a lot of the codex's guard has a lot of useless units that just dont seem to benefit a lot of the main stream armies that are still mildly competitive(foot and mech guard). Such units would be the ogryns and ratlings, penal legion, storm troops, conscripts, some leman russ, rough riders, Valkyrie, and thats most of them to be said.

you can argue that each of those units has its own roll but it seems like if you use any of those units they wont benefit your army.

To be honest the majority of those units Ive never even seen been played. Storm troops can be good but as others mentioned they come in killing something and thats about it, they are also very pricey and veterans are arguably a better choice.

Never seen rough riders but I could assume they are good for that first charge if they make it across the board with there bad save.

Never seen a list run with penal legion.

Ive seen some ratlings used with gunline armies.

I actually tried chenkov out with a 40 man blob of conscripts and it was rather fun bringing the squad back over and over but I played against x4 daemon prince army so they were essentially usesless no matter how many shots they pumped out.

It sucks the LRBT and demolisher got nerfed a bit, I was sad that a couple of my LRBT's had to lose their sponsons and my older models that had a lascannon hull and bolter sponsons are just shelved now, but I guess its a plus that the other Leman russ are more playable although if shot at are hard to kill but once your opponent assaults them are just as easy to kill as any other russ.

It seems that allies give guard a lot of bonuses such as better scoring units on the other side of the board, and characters to buff guard blobs to hold objectives.

A build I run is with SW's: a Rune priest with divination prescience to buff blob and units around, 2 hunter squads with standards, and MotW with either plasma or melta guns in drop pods and then a long fang squad with a pod that will come in empty. The rune priest buffs blob/ units, long fangs use missile spam and help with gunline shooting. The 2 hunter units will drop in turn 1 and attack what I feel is a good target and will be a successful attack so they manage to still stay alive. The empty pod just comes in to block enemies movement or just use the storm bolter to pick off units.

Ive been looking at other space marine armies and wanting to try many different builds to get some different models and not be so bored with my IG. Ive heard azrael with DA to buff a blob, but what else would you run with the DA's

I also love Leman russ so I would love to hear of some lists with them if anyones got any, Sorry to say I dont have Forge world or the armored battle group would be awesome.

A lot of people like to run there DA's allies as MSU. There basic tact squad of 5 guys with a melta gun and SGT with Combi-melta in a pod. There libby is cheap and access to Div and cam.get wargear that grants night vision and/or a 4++ invo save to units within a certian radius.

tankboy145 wrote:With Guard it seems like you need to run artillery, foot horde to sit home and have vendettas fly out and drops guys off to capture late objectives.

Thankfully, that's not actually true.

Anyone can click here for over a half dozen different ways to play guard. Particularly interesting ones to play for me were the stormtrooper spam, said send in the next wave antics, and mechvets+hellhounds.

Over the last year, I've never run vendettas and have only run artillery a scattering of times. You can do just fine without either.

Oh wow thattt 4++ for a blob would be really nice, It would allow the blob to advance and take less casualties for being in the open.

Ailaros: I will have to read through some of your reports again as Im curious on how to make use of storm troopers and conscripts, I assume conscripts would really only be good with chenkov as you could always hold a home field objective, although if thats the case I usually prefer to have lascannon infantry squads take up my deployment zone instead.

 Ailaros wrote:

tankboy145 wrote:With Guard it seems like you need to run artillery, foot horde to sit home and have vendettas fly out and drops guys off to capture late objectives.

Thankfully, that's not actually true.

Anyone can click here for over a half dozen different ways to play guard. Particularly interesting ones to play for me were the stormtrooper spam, said send in the next wave antics, and mechvets+hellhounds.

Over the last year, I've never run vendettas and have only run artillery a scattering of times. You can do just fine without either.

Just read your batrep where you opponents Vets dropped out of a Vendetta with there attached Warlord and then mishapped and died. You would have definatly scored Slay the warlord but I don't think it would have given up first blood as you didn't personaly kill the unit. I have also been wonding if I was to drop pod in some MEQ Allies and then scatter an Earthshaker round onto top of them and kill them would I get first blood even if they are my units. I should because I killed them. Make sence? I'm pretty sure first isn't given out to the player who doesn't lose the first unit but I'm going to have to look into that one. Something for you all ponder for awhile.

 Ailaros wrote:
Anyone can click here for over a half dozen different ways to play guard.

Aren't you the same person who constantly posts about how foot guard is dead and Chimera spam is the only way to win (because Vendettas are either too overpowered or too weak)?

You can do just fine without either.

But you'll do better with both. The only reason not to take Vendettas is if you're playing under arbitrary self-imposed limits about playing with powerful units.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Ailaros wrote:
Anyone can click here for over a half dozen different ways to play guard.

Aren't you the same person who constantly posts about how foot guard is dead and Chimera spam is the only way to win (because Vendettas are either too overpowered or too weak)?

You can do just fine without either.

But you'll do better with both. The only reason not to take Vendettas is if you're playing under arbitrary self-imposed limits about playing with powerful units.

If we are going to open this can of worms and discus everything IG related then how many Vendettas would you say is good at the common point levels of 1000, 1250, 1500, 1850, and 2000 (with and without double FOC) respectively? And what do they they synergize with best mech or foot, or a combination of both?

 Spartan089 wrote:
If we are going to open this can of worms and discus everything IG related then how many Vendettas would you say is good at the common point levels of 1000, 1250, 1500, 1850, and 2000 (with and without double FOC) respectively?

Minimum of 1 at all times (except maybe in a 500 point game where you're taking LRBTs), 2-3 Vulture/Vendetta at 1000-1250, automatic three at anything larger (and considering Avengers at higher point levels). If you're playing double FOC at 2000 you're taking 4+, but I don't know why you'd want to play at 2000+ or use double FOC.

And what do they they synergize with best mech or foot, or a combination of both?

Either, but somewhat leaning foot. Aircraft are their own target type so target saturation works about as well both ways (especially with Sabres and earthshakers in a foot list to saturate mid-strength shooting), but mech and Vendettas is a bit redundant since both are delivering small squads with lots of special weapons and you don't really have a good objective holder. With a foot list you can have the foot blob lock down your "home" objectives while the Vendettas take the other half of the table.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Ailaros wrote:
Anyone can click here for over a half dozen different ways to play guard.

Aren't you the same person who constantly posts about how foot guard is dead and Chimera spam is the only way to win (because Vendettas are either too overpowered or too weak)?

You can do just fine without either.

But you'll do better with both. The only reason not to take Vendettas is if you're playing under arbitrary self-imposed limits about playing with powerful units.

Aren't you the same person who constantly posts as if nobody can enjoy playing this game in a manner other than beating their opponent with copy-pasted lists? There are a ton of reasons to not take Vendettas in an Imperial Guard army; your inability to remove yourself from a dogmatic and unimaginative WAAC mindset is astounding and your assertions are insulting.

tankboy, I don't remember him using Conscripts for anything other than Chenkov's special rule. Normal conscripts are 80% the cost of normal guard squads and seem to lose way more stats than that 20% cost decrease justifies, so they seem like a poor choice to use naked when an IG army will almost never run out of space for infantry blobs.

After your thread about the new IA3 I will be taking 2x Vendetras and 2 Vultures at the 1850pts level.

 Talore wrote:
There are a ton of reasons to not take Vendettas in an Imperial Guard army; your inability to remove yourself from a dogmatic and unimaginative WAAC mindset is astounding and your assertions are insulting.

Like what? Keep in mind that we're in the tactics forum, not the modeling and painting forum or the "I have fun with this unit" forum, so discussion is expected to be focused on how to win the game and not subjective ideas about what is "fun" for each person.

Whelp. It's good to know not much has changed since I've been on a few month's haitus.

Page 1: New guard topic
Page 2: FW debate
Page 3: Ailaros and Peregrine fight. TO THE DEATH

I swear I think those two have a hate-crush on each other sometimes.

If we are going to open this can of worms and discus everything IG related then how many Vendettas would you say is good at the common point levels of 1000, 1250, 1500, 1850, and 2000 (with and without double FOC) respectively? And what do they they synergize with best mech or foot, or a combination of both?

At lower points, you have to design your list around the 'dettas, because they are more of an investment. At medium to high points, vendettas are more of a complement to a solid core of the list, and not the core of it. Unless you're doing something crazy, like air calv.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Talore wrote:
There are a ton of reasons to not take Vendettas in an Imperial Guard army; your inability to remove yourself from a dogmatic and unimaginative WAAC mindset is astounding and your assertions are insulting.

Like what? Keep in mind that we're in the tactics forum, not the modeling and painting forum or the "I have fun with this unit" forum, so discussion is expected to be focused on how to win the game and not subjective ideas about what is "fun" for each person.

Keep in mind that we're in the tactics forum, not the WAAC forum or the "let's pretend that this is a video game rather than a hobby" forum. Discussion is expected to be focused on tactics, as in the methods to utilize battlefield resources and not making ignorant blanket statements about people that decide to not use vendettas using the excuse of the tactics forum.

One may experiment with units. One may be facing an opponent or a metagame which overcompensates on attacking air units. One may face other (local) metagame considerations which leave vendettas as an subpar or unfavourable choice. One may have legitimate doubts as to the universal superiority of a vendetta in every list ever. One may not own the models. One may be running a themed list. One may not be an effective player of flying units or specifically vendettas. One may have a list where the points would be better spent in different areas or different roles.

I could go on but this isn't really the point. The point is that this is a hobby and that tactics encompass more than how you think the game should be played. So don't demean people by claiming that the only reason they wouldn't play the game like you want them to is because they have "arbitrary self-imposed limits about playing with powerful units." You don't know every circumstance that an IG player will face, so making blanket statements like that is ridiculously ignorant.

Ive noticed that after a couple games with the conscripts they just didnt seem to ever really do much, with a gunline army I usually had infantry squads with lascannons sitting in my back field so the conscripts were out of place.

I will experiment with the storm troopers a little bit and see how they go. All the doctrines seem interesting as well. I might try throwing the guys in a chimera to add to a mechanized list and have them scout ahead of the rest.

 Talore wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Talore wrote:
There are a ton of reasons to not take Vendettas in an Imperial Guard army; your inability to remove yourself from a dogmatic and unimaginative WAAC mindset is astounding and your assertions are insulting.

Like what? Keep in mind that we're in the tactics forum, not the modeling and painting forum or the "I have fun with this unit" forum, so discussion is expected to be focused on how to win the game and not subjective ideas about what is "fun" for each person.

Keep in mind that we're in the tactics forum, not the WAAC forum or the "let's pretend that this is a video game rather than a hobby" forum. Discussion is expected to be focused on tactics, as in the methods to utilize battlefield resources and not making ignorant blanket statements about people that decide to not use vendettas using the excuse of the tactics forum.

One may experiment with units. One may be facing an opponent or a metagame which overcompensates on attacking air units. One may face other (local) metagame considerations which leave vendettas as an subpar or unfavourable choice. One may have legitimate doubts as to the universal superiority of a vendetta in every list ever. One may not own the models. One may be running a themed list. One may not be an effective player of flying units or specifically vendettas. One may have a list where the points would be better spent in different areas or different roles.

I could go on but this isn't really the point. The point is that this is a hobby and that tactics encompass more than how you think the game should be played. So don't demean people by claiming that the only reason they wouldn't play the game like you want them to is because they have "arbitrary self-imposed limits about playing with powerful units." You don't know every circumstance that an IG player will face, so making blanket statements like that is ridiculously ignorant.

+1

A tactics thread is NOT focused on "absolute best way to win every game as provided by one person". It's a discussion of various options and possibilities for everyone to use covering most if not all options.

..... We already had the tactics arguement on page two, lets get back to talking about units please,

@tankboy145 I haven't used conscripts but I do use storm troopers often, I mainly go with the suicide squads with meltas to pop my opponents heavy stuff that might be out of my line of sight, but if I go against MEQ I find a 10 with their hotshots eat marines up and will survive some light Bolter fire to boot. It's fun to play around with the doctrines to see what tactics you can come up with but for now I usually get my value from deepstrike


Automatically Appended Next Post:
@talore peregrine is just stubborn, some of his advice is solid but just take the rest with a shovel of salt and don't feed into him. Your right in your views for tactics so let's just keep the ball rolling with that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
@ailaros way awesome site, thank you for sharing that. I will for sure be a regular to it now lol love the set up. props bro, props

Try not to be off-put by Peregrine's tone. His advice is solid.
So is Ailaros on occasion.
Those two just don't see eye-to-eye. Still, the value of their discussion is there, so ignoring one or the other hurts the discussion more than it helps.

I'd like to see a discussion of the other options available to the Valkyrie/Vendetta. I find that I lean towards the Valk more if I don't need a dedicated anti-air role. IMO, the real value of the transport is keeping whatever is inside alive rather than it's killing potential. I find that the HB sponsons combined with the MRP on the normal Valk can stack enough wounds on marines to make up for the lack of low AP, and can deal way more damage to hordes.

I'm still considering the usefulness of the helldetta, the vendetta with hellfury missiles and heavy bolter sponsons replacing 2 lascannons. If I just need something to buzz around long enough to drop some vets on an objective later, I'm not going to shoot those missiles much anyway due to the restrictions on flier movement (and I'm not going to hover if my focus is keeping the vets inside alive for a late-game objective grab), and ignoring cover is a nice thing to have when there's a unit of pathfinders ducking behind some ruins, or a guard blob hugging their defence line. It's basically a Valkyrie+, and you get a TL lascannon for free.

Thoughts?

I feel like the helldetta is trying to do to much. The lascannon would be great for armor, flyers, and teq but the missiles seem to be good against horde. I think the missle pods and a multi laser and the vendetta is about the best you will get.

Problem with the missile pods is that they're ordinance so you can only fire one and snap shoot the rest. Otherwise I'd have invested in some valkyries ages ago.

 BryllCream wrote:
Problem with the missile pods is that they're ordinance so you can only fire one and snap shoot the rest. Otherwise I'd have invested in some valkyries ages ago.

No your thinking of their standard hellstrike missiles which are s8 ap 3 orndance 1 shot. The missile pods are s4 ap6 large blast, hell fury missiles are s4 ap 5 large blast 1 shot.

Damn you're right. I thought the missile pods were ordinance for some reason.

 tankboy145 wrote:

 BryllCream wrote:
Problem with the missile pods is that they're ordinance so you can only fire one and snap shoot the rest. Otherwise I'd have invested in some valkyries ages ago.

No your thinking of their standard hellstrike missiles which are s8 ap 3 orndance 1 shot. The missile pods are s4 ap6 large blast, hell fury missiles are s4 ap 5 large blast 1 shot.

Ignores cover too. If it was AP 4, I'd be completely sold on the helldetta.

But think about it, If I'm only going to get a good shot in once (since I'll be primarily boosting it off board to keep le vets safe until the objective), it may as well ignore cover and have 1 better AP,plus, I get a TL lascannon for my trouble.

 kestril wrote:
I'm still considering the usefulness of the helldetta, the vendetta with hellfury missiles and heavy bolter sponsons replacing 2 lascannons.

Not worth it. 2x TL LCs is just too powerful to give up. It was a decent idea in 5th when those LCs could be replaced by any other LCs in your list, but now you need the Vendetta for AA. If you want hellfury missiles put them on an Avenger.

Also, I'm not sure what you mean about flyer movement being a problem. Vendettas with either weapon have full-table range, so you shouldn't have any problems shooting with them.

 Talore wrote:
Discussion is expected to be focused on tactics, as in the methods to utilize battlefield resources and not making ignorant blanket statements about people that decide to not use vendettas using the excuse of the tactics forum.

List building is tactics. And the simple fact is that it is extremely hard to justify not taking Vendettas from a pure tactics perspective. The only way to do it is to talk about "fun" or "fluff", things that are completely subjective and inappropriate for this forum. We can't tell you how to have fun, so that leaves telling you how to win.

One may experiment with units.

Sure, the problem is that the IG codex is old. Everything has already been experimented with. There's still some room for choices, but some things are just obvious at this point. Deathstrike missiles are terrible and should never be used, Vendettas are overpowered and should always be used. You can "experiment" all you want if you stubbornly refuse to take advice until you've discover it yourself, but in the end you're going to come to the exact same conclusion as the rest of us.

One may be facing an opponent or a metagame which overcompensates on attacking air units.

In which case you're screwed anyway, since any metagame that is so dangerous for Vendettas that you can't use them is going to be just as hostile to every other IG list. Chimeras will die instantly, and infantry hordes will be trapped in their own deployment zone and lose every objective game.

So don't demean people by claiming that the only reason they wouldn't play the game like you want them to is because they have "arbitrary self-imposed limits about playing with powerful units."

Sorry, but in this case it's true. Ailaros often gives bad advice because he plays under self-imposed limits about not taking overpowered Vendettas or FW units (and then tells everyone how terrible those units are anyway).