Iron_Captain wrote:

morfydd wrote:
Orks and AM are both great army's that will allow you to win 99% of the time after you learn to use them. Neither are zero thought gun lines. Both require a great deal of pre planning ..Both require you to know your armys str and weakness.Now that said IG codex took some minor hits last go around. IG's MBT's need to be 4 HP not 3 ..( I think that is IG/AM's Largest problem atm) No other army can feild as many troops or tanks as IG can. No other army has as many Ignor cover weapons organic to it. You can play IG anyway you like and use thier codex to represent any of a hundred variants of army types.
Fun can TAC if you have a good player ..IG is not a Beginner army like Beakies/Tau/Eldar No push this button to WIN laid out for you like Eldar and Tau ...

Oh, so the issue is not that AM is ridiculously underpowered, it is just that AM players don't know how to play? Evidently, all AM players here on Dakka and in tournaments are in need of your supreme tactical guidance. Please master, enlighten us!

the_scotsman wrote:
I've beaten a double-wraithknight plus seerstar/windrider buddies Eldar list with IG.

HoundsofDemos wrote:
When is the last time an IG army won a major tournament as the primary force. That pretty much is the main measure we have of an army being competitive.

 Selym wrote:
I remember the days of 5E, where I could take the classic Russ tank, and my opponents wouldn't laugh at me.

I also remember tearing apart IG armies with CSM, because daemon princes back then were an actual threat.

5E was better, imo.

 Selym wrote:
I remember the days of 5E, where I could take the classic Russ tank, and my opponents wouldn't laugh at me.

I also remember tearing apart IG armies with CSM, because daemon princes back then were an actual threat.

5E was better, imo.

 Vaktathi wrote:
That's also a weird mishmash of IA1 ABG, IG CAD, and white scars biker librarian conclave, though I guess it is IG primary.

Edit: also doesn't look like he had to face many of the more classic top table armies, no necrons or eldar or multi-knight armies, though did have to deal with the ba/skitarii silliness..

 goblinzz wrote:
It's frustrating though, I feel like I've trimmed all the fat out, and optimised this list as far as i can, and still, there's just no way I can really take on most of the insanity you see at even local tournaments.

Yoyoyo wrote:

 goblinzz wrote:
It's frustrating though, I feel like I've trimmed all the fat out, and optimised this list as far as i can, and still, there's just no way I can really take on most of the insanity you see at even local tournaments.

The game is balanced around formations now. You are getting bonuses that aren't tied to the core points value of your CAD units.

Yoyoyo wrote:

 goblinzz wrote:
It's frustrating though, I feel like I've trimmed all the fat out, and optimised this list as far as i can, and still, there's just no way I can really take on most of the insanity you see at even local tournaments.

The game is balanced around formations now. You are getting bonuses that aren't tied to the core points value of your CAD units.

lazarian wrote:The game got more durable and faster, its not just AM that suffer for this. Chaos, Orks and Dark Eldar all have books that would plow the field in a 5th or 4th edition environment. Its just that sadly were not going to see those days again.

Vehicles needed toning down however now its case where multi wound models are in need of the same thing,

 GraywarTS wrote:

And if anyone disagrees with vehicles being able to shoot every weapon in a turn, please show me a games workshop warhammer picture that doesn’t have a tank shooting every weapon in a different direction!

For guard you need to sacrifice shooting if you want mobility. And if you do move, you often end up incredibly close to something that will definitely kill you next turn.

 Selym wrote:

 GraywarTS wrote:

And if anyone disagrees with vehicles being able to shoot every weapon in a turn, please show me a games workshop warhammer picture that doesn’t have a tank shooting every weapon in a different direction!

Stationary Russes.

Selym wrote:I meant images of stationary Russes, like the DoW Winter Assault box art. But yes, this gets rather silly.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:Russes SHOULD at the very least have a rule saying that, if they're stationary, they get to fire the other weapons with full accuracy.

Losing Lumbering Behemoth is utter nonsense.

 Vaktathi wrote:

shyzo wrote:
There's a number of reasons why IG armies have a hard time. The infantry are cheap, but largely worthless, and even at their low cost, not delivering enough to justify their paltry investment. The tanks are better, but are hardly point efficient in 7th edition (just better than the infantry).

IG infantry options are largely garbage. Thus, the army relies on its vehicles. The rules for non-skimmer vehicles in this edition (sadly, like most editions), are pretty bad. They're basically treated like MC's...but without saves and any time "to-wound" roll exceeds the minimum required to "wound" them, they are crippled in some way or risk getting one-shotted by weapons of low enough AP. The HP system hamfisted in really was not terribly well thought out, and makes most IG vehicles very vulnerable to massed "multirole" firepower like scatterlasers and autocannons. There's also simply just more ways than ever to quickly and effectively strip HP's without having to worry about the AV, stuff like Haywire, Gauss, Grav, Destroyer, etc.

IG vehicles also largely are still costed and built around 5E effectiveness, when they aren't offering that sort of capability anymore in terms of lifespan or firepower output. A lot of IG vehicles also are just quite simply highly overcosted (even for their 5E functionality), units like Hellhounds, Sentinels, etc. 130pts for an AV12 torrent S6 flamer? really? The price increase on the Chimera was a hamfisted reaction to perceived issues in 5th just weeks before the release of 7th. The poor Hydra got absolutely raped by the "AM" codex, making it open-topped and removing its "ignores Jink" ability for no discernible reason. The whole army really is like that.

What used to make IG scary in many ways was access to huge numbers of blast templates. The problem is that these no longer have the capability they once did. A blast template can only ever put a single wound on an MC, they can't hit fliers or FMC's, and with the general increase in toughness & Instant Death resistance on units like Bikers, TWC's, Necron Wraiths, etc the utilty of such blasts has decreased dramatically. To add-on to the blast thing as well, in anti-tank roles, the utility of heavy hitting but low RoF guns has decreased there as well, as quantity of fire to strip HP's matters a lot more than being able to punch through and roll on the damage chart. To further compound the issue, the "Heavy" designation does not override the restrictions on ordnance weapons and other weapons firing, so platforms like Leman Russ tanks that rely on such weaponry are notably less capable than they were in 5E.

Then of course, we get into the infantry. The scale of the game has completely outpaced the point of infantry like those that IG have. When we've got things like Wraighknights, Stormsurges, Transcandent C'tan, and Baneblades as completely acceptable normal game units, and things like Necron Wraiths that can be kitted to require nearly a thousand lasgun shots to kill a unit or more S10 AP1 fire to kill than a Warhound Titan, the point of infantry like Guardsmen, becomes little more than board control. Even against things they can harm, they're just monstrously overcosted and undercapable. IG heavy weapons squads are probably both the least effectivee, most easily killed/broken, least mobile and most expensive (per gun) heavy weapons units in the game. Basic Guardsmen struggle to hurt just about anything even in absurdly large numbers.

Even relatively "elite" IG units, like Ogryns or Stormtroopers/Scions. they're just awful. Ogryns have to deal with absurdly poor leadership and a cost tied to them that makes them completely unable to engage anything else of similar role and cost on anything near an equal level (no...an Ogryn is not going to 1v1 a TWC or Necron Wraith, nor have the speed or resiliency of one). Scions get Deep Strike and AP3...on S3 guns that struggle to hurt *anything* with even shorter range than normal Lasguns and an otherwise basically identical statline to a Veteran that's half the cost and is an Objective Secured Troop unit.

IG Psykers likewise are rather poor, they don't get any of the nifty abilities other races psykers do and are generally restricted to rather low psy ratings, and can't make effective use of many powers the way other factions can (e.g. Iron Arm, Warp Speed, or Endurance isn't doing as much for you on an S3 T3 I3 W2 model the way it is on a T5 S5 Rune Priest on a TWC or a Daemon GUO).

EDIT: also, the army has really very little mobility. Most of the army is slow, either foot infantry or normal movement vehicles or even Heavy vehicles that can only move 6"/turn regardless, and, more to the point, has a very strong incentive not to move because the closer it gets to the enemy, the easier it is for the opponent to destroy generally (often trivially easy), while there's no corresponding increase in capability for being close for many IG units. Meanwhile, the army has almost nothing capable of Deep Striking, almost no Fast vehicles, no Skimmers, no Bikes/Jetbikes, no Jump/Jet infantry, only one Cavalry unit (that happens to be one of the most useless units in the game), leaving largely just the Valkyrie/Vendetta for "real" mobility.

TL;DR the army is built (in a mediocre fashion) to the standards of an edition long since past, suffers from the massive scope creep the game has introduced, is crippled in terms of mobility, and largely just suffers from everything being painfully expensive for what it brings.

Okay so I'very gathered you know alot about IG. So I have a question. You say that tanks have been nerfed, and the mobility of the IG is poor at best right now. What about the Elysian Drop Troops? I know they get Valks and Vendettas as transports, and can deep strike everything. How do they fair with out tanks, and in 7th edition over all?