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Questions Regarding Commissars


Whether your an IG player or not, how commonly do you see Commissars on the table?



Did they have a large impact? How?



Do you feel their point cost is on par with their performance?

All the time. Commissars are mandatory unless you're allying with marines and adding LD 10 ICs to your squads.

 Peregrine wrote:
All the time. Commissars are mandatory unless you're allying with marines and adding LD 10 ICs to your squads.

Pretty much agree with this, except for some reason I barely ever see anyone use Commissars except for myself .

Commissars have a big impact on most IG armies as they really do hunker down your infantry units. Definitely compulsory to any list that uses more than 5 squads of any Imperial Guardsman. Personally I think that a Lord Commissar is all you need most of the time thanks to his 6 inch Ld radius, but there's nothing wrong with adding a few to your PCS or some particularly important Guardsman squads.

Worth the points? If I have virtually no fear of my units retreating (which basically wipes out a huge disadvantage of most armies) then I'd say so.

Lord Commissars are in most armies I field. If I don't field a Lord Commissar and don't field a SM IC then I feel commissars are a necessity for platoons. Orders and morale are completely unreliable on a normal guardsman's Ld.

Commissars are essential. They are what make blob squads work (outside of allies).

I thought an imperial guard army isn't an imperial guard army without commissar yarrick...... ;-p

Yep, I always grab a commissar or two for my guard. (I run foot guard). They are very good, and even with an attached SM character still useful, as it means you test with stubborn on LD 10, which is very useful.

Yarrick is really expensive for what he does, if you want him, just take the normal lord commissar; much cheaper and does basically the same job.

 Peregrine wrote:
All the time. Commissars are mandatory unless you're allying with marines and adding LD 10 ICs to your squads.

...or playing veterans.

1. I see them all the time. Pretty much every IG army I see has a peaked hat and bolt pistol somewhere in the mix.

2. They have a huge impact. Anything that keeps that many lasguns on the table and pointed the right way is always going to.

3. They are definitely costed well. The fact that they hold entire blobs worth heaps of points together makes them a worthy investment.

My friend runs a badass Steel Legion Lord Commissar in every game he plays. I can't tell you how many times the LD bubble has significantly helped, or how many of my CSM he has thrashed with that guy. Lucky rolls every time... If I played guard I would definitely bring one. Apparently next edition the Lord Commissar will have a command squad attached.

The Lord is a necessity for my Artillery Carriages, while the regular Commissars are needed to give back Stubborn to my platoon, since they'already take no morale check from shooting casualties, it becomes very hard to break them.

Ask any power blob player that doesn't bring azrael and they will tell you how badly commisars are needed (hint: they are practically compulsory)

I use a Lord Commissar all the time. Cheap-er, can stick him anywhere I want and provides a nice morale boost for his squad when his transport is shot. He has prevented game losses for me a bunch of times.

Commissars should be synonymous with blob lists

I use Commissars literally every game with my Valhallans. Making the blob LD9 is great for getting orders off, stubborn and morale rerolls keep the troops in place. If you're combining IG squads at all, you need Commissars.

Commissars are mandatory. Otherwise Guardsmen will run headlong into battle when they are not suppose to. At least Deaht Korp will anyway.

My friend swears by the Commissar. But not in front of the Commissar. Never in front of the Commissar.

I very rarely use regular commissars; I don't have blobs, and Death Korps can't combine squads. Lord Commissars, however, make pretty regular appearances. They help get orders off to various support squads, help veteran morale a little bit, overall quite useful.

One even punched a Mawloc to death. So there's that.

Regular commissars are priced right for blobs, but if you're not blobbing, they're not worth the investment.

Nope. Commissars were great back when you could play power blobs. As power blobs are long dead, the usefulness of commissars went with them. And that's before you look at specific hits to commissars, like them no longer being a hidden upgrade, and their power weapons getting worse.

Guard leadership isn't that bad relative to the durability of the squads themselves (odds are they'll be killed or neutralized by a round of enemy shooting, which means that even if they pass a morale test they're likely going to be useless anyways), and if you want better leadership, there are cheaper or more effective ways to make up for what few practical deficiencies in leadership you're going to have.

Plus, in order to field regular commissars, you've got to be fielding infantry platoons, which means you're running a foot list, which has much bigger problems than leadership at the moment.

 MajorStoffer wrote:
I very rarely use regular commissars; I don't have blobs, and Death Korps can't combine squads.

I am pretty sure that's a typo, as you could combine squads in 5th ed, but you can't in the new one? That's stupid...

It is almost assuredly a typo as the assault brigade has combine squads and the new pdf is a direct copy paste rip off of that missing a few parts.

You need them in big squads to keep them in place, otherwise they are needed normally.

 ansacs wrote:
It is almost assuredly a typo as the assault brigade has combine squads and the new pdf is a direct copy paste rip off of that missing a few parts.

Look again my friend; the Death Korps infantry platoon in the assault brigade has two special rules; Death Korps and Iron Discipline, no combined squads.

 Ailaros wrote:
Nope. Commissars were great back when you could play power blobs. As power blobs are long dead, the usefulness of commissars went with them. And that's before you look at specific hits to commissars, like them no longer being a hidden upgrade, and their power weapons getting worse.

Guard leadership isn't that bad relative to the durability of the squads themselves (odds are they'll be killed or neutralized by a round of enemy shooting, which means that even if they pass a morale test they're likely going to be useless anyways), and if you want better leadership, there are cheaper or more effective ways to make up for what few practical deficiencies in leadership you're going to have.

Plus, in order to field regular commissars, you've got to be fielding infantry platoons, which means you're running a foot list, which has much bigger problems than leadership at the moment.

I know you were the #1 powerblob guy, but Commissars are incredibly useful, even in regular blobs. They're helpful to a unit of Guardsmen at range, since with LD9 you're getting those orders off better than ever, and without wasting special weapon slots in command squads with vox casters. That morale reroll is clutch as well, since the last thing you want is your big durable squad of Guardsmen running off the table. A round of enemy shooting shouldn't neutralize a 30-strong blob squad unless for whatever reason they're out in the open. In the age of Aegis Defense Lines, Skyshield Landing Pads, and the ever-present cover, I fail to see how this could happen. What cheaper or more effective ways to make up for leadership do you have? I know you worry that Commissars can be singled out, but when you have multiple sergeants to eat challenges and LoSir rolls, I don't see the problem.

Also, this is the age of the foot list. Rapid Fire still getting to shoot once at full range, even after moving, is awesome. Compound that with FRFSRF and you've got a decent threat bubble. I know you're frustrated that your specific build got changed from 5th, but it seems like you're letting that get in the way a little bit here. I was building the army up as a powerblob list, but the only thing I've had to change is taking out the "power" from the blob! I've done very, very well for myself with blobs this edition, and I owe a lot of that to Commissars.

 MajorStoffer wrote:

 ansacs wrote:
It is almost assuredly a typo as the assault brigade has combine squads and the new pdf is a direct copy paste rip off of that missing a few parts.

Look again my friend; the Death Korps infantry platoon in the assault brigade has two special rules; Death Korps and Iron Discipline, no combined squads.

Your right I was thinking of the elysians that came out about the same time. Kind of crazy that the elysians have it but not the death korps.

If what you cared about was orders, then vox casters are still the way to go. A single 5-point upgrade is cheaper than a 35-point commissar, and will do a much better job of it.

And if you want a big pile of guardsmen to not run off the table before they've been killed to the point of being useless anyways, then run them MSU, and your problems are solved. You still get to use skyshields and aegises as well.

Almost every game I have against five or six persons whom play Guard where I game, it seems some IG players never wll move away from the holwig hordes of men armed with lasguns.

 Ailaros wrote:
If what you cared about was orders, then vox casters are still the way to go. A single 5-point upgrade is cheaper than a 35-point commissar, and will do a much better job of it.

And if you want a big pile of guardsmen to not run off the table before they've been killed to the point of being useless anyways, then run them MSU, and your problems are solved. You still get to use skyshields and aegises as well.

So what if you want units to stick around and take orders? That's what Commissars are for. Your PCS giving FRFSRF to one squad of 10 Guardsmen doesn't compare to giving it to 30, and your CCS should be ordering HWS to Bring it Down!

Those force multipliers are so small it's not really worth it anyway.

A huge disadvantage of blobs in 40k is the short range of the lasgun in comparison to the unit size. Assuming you spread your troops to minimise blast losses, you'll struggle to get within range of most targets since the blob is so large and its movement is so (relatively) small, that the enemy will simply avoid it. They have no reason to engage it and it isn't a long range threat, so unless it's on top of an objective it can be safely avoided.

If we math-hammer it out, let's be very generous and assume that 20 guys are in range of an enemy units, 10 of which are under 12" and get to double tap.

With FRFSRF they get 20+30=50 shots. 25 of those hit, 8.3 of those wound and 2.7 of those kill. With a blob of 40, ignoring extra points for special weapons (which are irrelevent in this comparison), they pay 200 points, plus the commissar (presumably with a power weapon) for a total of 245 points.

That is very weak firepower for what you pay, and it is entirely inflexible - i've had games where a blob of thirty gets off maybe 10 shots in the entire game. Chaos Space Marines (that is the only codex I have on-hand to compare to) will get 6.2 MEQ kills for the same cost as the blob, and for a unit that's not famed for its damage output I think that's saying something.

Now, you could say that blobs aren't supposed to dish out damage, they're supposed to hold ground. Well, they don't. They get gunned down and then when they've been reduced enough in size, they get assaulted and destroyed. There really is no reason to take blobs unless you have a very generous meta.

What games are you playing where a blob only gets off 10 shots? 24" is a pretty solid range to engage things at, and getting to half again their damage output with FRFSRF is great. And that's some lovely comparison of units in a vacuum, but you don't get the same kind of board control with a squad of Marines as you do with a blob of Guard. Yes, Guardsmen get gunned down. That's why you take a lot of them. I'm not claiming to be a hardcore, cutthroat tournament player, but I've been playing Guard (typically in large blobs) for years with the current codex in a multitude of environments and gaming groups and I've always done well.