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 mrhappyface wrote:
And what do you think dedicated cc units will be getting? Let's say you take it against one of my all time favourite lists: a houndstar supported by Tzeentch psychic battery. Do you think I will care about your number of men when I have close to 200 S5 attacks? Do you think I will care about your power axes when I potentially have a 2++ save?

Well those 200 S5 attacks will be mostly bouncing off IC's 2+ rerollable saves so not too tough.

Have you ever faced IG blob?

tneva82 wrote:

 mrhappyface wrote:
And what do you think dedicated cc units will be getting? Let's say you take it against one of my all time favourite lists: a houndstar supported by Tzeentch psychic battery. Do you think I will care about your number of men when I have close to 200 S5 attacks? Do you think I will care about your power axes when I potentially have a 2++ save?

Well those 200 S5 attacks will be mostly bouncing off IC's 2+ rerollable saves so not too tough.

Have you ever faced IG blob?

Yes, and I have lots of fun tearing them apart. The 2++ re-rollable all depends on getting the right powers, getting them off and not being denide. In those rare occasions where my opponant has got the powers that give them a 2++/invis I still have quite a lot of dice to deny with.

 mrhappyface wrote:
Do you think I will care about your number of men when I have close to 200 S5 attacks?

200 s5 attacks is around 3 wounds to a 2+ character in a blob before fnp. Around 0.75 if they get invis off with libconclave before fnp. Not THAT amazing.

 koooaei wrote:

 mrhappyface wrote:
Do you think I will care about your number of men when I have close to 200 S5 attacks?

200 s5 attacks is around 3 wounds to a 2+ character in a blob. Around 0.75 if they get invis off with libconclave. Not that amazing.

Unless you don't get your powers off.

 mrhappyface wrote:

 koooaei wrote:

 mrhappyface wrote:
Do you think I will care about your number of men when I have close to 200 S5 attacks?

200 s5 attacks is around 3 wounds to a 2+ character in a blob. Around 0.75 if they get invis off with libconclave. Not that amazing.

Unless you don't get your powers off.

Re-rollable saves are pretty easy to get when you have a couple priests - it's not a psy power. Yep, they're ld7, so around 55% to succeed with one. But you can have up to 3. Also, there's potentially an artifact if you happen to be running sororitas.

 koooaei wrote:

 mrhappyface wrote:

 koooaei wrote:

 mrhappyface wrote:
Do you think I will care about your number of men when I have close to 200 S5 attacks?

200 s5 attacks is around 3 wounds to a 2+ character in a blob. Around 0.75 if they get invis off with libconclave. Not that amazing.

Unless you don't get your powers off.

Re-rollable saves are pretty easy to get when you have a couple priests - it's not a psy power. Yep, they're ld7, so around 55% to succeed with one. But you can have up to 3. Also, there's potentially an artifact if you happen to be running sororitas.

Having re-rollable saves won't matter if you don't get the powers off which give you the saves.

 mrhappyface wrote:

 koooaei wrote:

 mrhappyface wrote:

 koooaei wrote:

 mrhappyface wrote:
Do you think I will care about your number of men when I have close to 200 S5 attacks?

200 s5 attacks is around 3 wounds to a 2+ character in a blob. Around 0.75 if they get invis off with libconclave. Not that amazing.

Unless you don't get your powers off.

Re-rollable saves are pretty easy to get when you have a couple priests - it's not a psy power. Yep, they're ld7, so around 55% to succeed with one. But you can have up to 3. Also, there's potentially an artifact if you happen to be running sororitas.

Having re-rollable saves won't matter if you don't get the powers off which give you the saves.

Tank with a character that has 2+ armor. Re-rolls come from priest's hymns. Fish for invis if you really need. Or for null zone - but it's gona be harder to use. Also, unlike daemon stars, you still have some shooting going on when needed.

Also, who told you, YOU're gona charge with dogs and get all 200 attacks in. With the soulswap power, it's an almost guaranteed 1-st turn charge. You'd better bauble wrap your deathstar in case it's not your 1-st turn.

It's kinda like greentide but with psy powers, priests and lazgun overwatch. So, it's a better greentide than the greentide.

 mrhappyface wrote:

 koooaei wrote:

 mrhappyface wrote:

 koooaei wrote:

 mrhappyface wrote:
Do you think I will care about your number of men when I have close to 200 S5 attacks?

200 s5 attacks is around 3 wounds to a 2+ character in a blob. Around 0.75 if they get invis off with libconclave. Not that amazing.

Unless you don't get your powers off.

Re-rollable saves are pretty easy to get when you have a couple priests - it's not a psy power. Yep, they're ld7, so around 55% to succeed with one. But you can have up to 3. Also, there's potentially an artifact if you happen to be running sororitas.

Having re-rollable saves won't matter if you don't get the powers off which give you the saves.

Rerollable save is not a power. And guess what? Neither is armour save.

You seem to think everything from the squad comes from just the guardsmen when the primary function of the bog standard troop is to be ablative armour when needed(anything that can insta kill IC. Like d attacks etc), provide some extra attacks and table presence(they dominate a lot of space).

There is also flexibility. You can either start murdering things left and right with IC-s and power axes or stick them back a bit and strike with guardsmen for a turn and just stay locked in combat if you need.

That's what things like wuffen or wuf cavalry don't have. They can only murderise everything around.

The bad thing is that if you get your invis denied or indeed happen to overkill the target without invis on, your guardsmen will start melting away pretty quickly vs shooty armies. Not so much vs melee cause if you have Azrael and priests, they're still 4++ re-rollable which is great. On the other hand, you can afford to loose 90% of the squad and still remain capable as most killing comes from IC and sarges anywayz. Kinda like Greentide, indeed.

Now as you're playing guards, you can still have solid artillery like wiverns or even emp's wrath artillery but you still need pods with marines to perform soul swaps effectively. Points will be short.

Ok, i'm bound to run this with my Orka Militarum now.

A 200 point guard blob being buffed into a mediocre melee unit with the addition of >300 points from other factions...

That same blob with a commissar and a senior officer nearby will accomplish more for less with their lasguns.

Nah, you got it wrong. A mediocre ig blob with power weapons for 300+ buffed into a wtf op deathstar with 700pt of characters

I've seen it done with cultists on the csm part. But they have an advantage of having Kharn who can single-handedly murderise imperial knights before they strike. It's harder for imperials without wuf wufs.

Commissar Benny wrote:

can be one shot by power weapons despite their multiple wounds,

They're T5. There are S10 power weapons around but not many. I assume you mean Instant Death by one shot?

 MarsNZ wrote:
A 200 point guard blob being buffed into a mediocre melee unit with the addition of >300 points from other factions...

That same blob with a commissar and a senior officer nearby will accomplish more for less with their lasguns.

Not really. 50 troopers in optimal situations won't even kill 10 tactical marines with their lasguns. And that's assuming anybody is stupid enough to go sitting in their rapid fire range if they are worried about the lasguns.

And really lasguns are not going to kill anything remotely tough. 10 tactical marines aren't much better than 10 IG troopers in term of survivability. Indeed the troopers in this squad are actually lot tougher...

Where are you guys getting 200 attacks from? You'll never be able to get that many guys in btb or within 2" to pull that off?

 Ratius wrote:
Where are you guys getting 200 attacks from? You'll never be able to get that many guys in btb or within 2" to pull that off?

Well that ISN'T actually problem. 50 guardsmen+support stuff takes up lots of space in itself! Especially as one purpose for the blop is board control.

But albeit that's possible that not every attack gets but will be quite a lot.

 morganfreeman wrote:
It seemingly hasn't been mentioned, but massive platoon blobs are pretty scary in melee. Combine 5 infantry platoon, give each sergeant a power axe, and throw in a priest or commissar. The result is an immense tarpit which hates retreating, but can kill most non-deathstar enemies through weight of attacks (be they normal guardsmen or power axes).

It isn't flawless though. Being a gigantic blob of footsloggers it's not great at chasing fast targets and unwieldy as feth all. It's also tough due to sheer model count, so pie-plates or weight of fire will reap a terrible harvest.

You can mitigate the blobbiness by taking few heavy weapon teams. These stay at deployment, then use the 'finger of doom' tactic (leaving a string of men between the autocannons and the body of the herd for coherency) allowing the heavy weapons to hold deployment objectives/shoot at full BS while the bulk of the blob advances forward for some Sommesque human wave crossing of no man's land (or should that be no xenos' land?).

nareik wrote:

 morganfreeman wrote:
It seemingly hasn't been mentioned, but massive platoon blobs are pretty scary in melee. Combine 5 infantry platoon, give each sergeant a power axe, and throw in a priest or commissar. The result is an immense tarpit which hates retreating, but can kill most non-deathstar enemies through weight of attacks (be they normal guardsmen or power axes).

It isn't flawless though. Being a gigantic blob of footsloggers it's not great at chasing fast targets and unwieldy as feth all. It's also tough due to sheer model count, so pie-plates or weight of fire will reap a terrible harvest.

You can mitigate the blobbiness by taking few heavy weapon teams. These stay at deployment, then use the 'finger of doom' tactic (leaving a string of men between the autocannons and the body of the herd for coherency) allowing the heavy weapons to hold deployment objectives/shoot at full BS while the bulk of the blob advances forward for some Sommesque human wave crossing of no man's land (or should that be no xenos' land?).

And then the enemy charges and you ca no longer fire the heavy weapons.

The whole "OP blob with two L2 psykers, power axes, priest and Azreal" has been suggested before, and every time it has been picked apart and shown to be the paper armoured hunk of junk that it is. People are not scared of melee blobs because, aside from being so unwieldy it is unfunny, said blobs are unable to make the most of close combat due to sheer numbers preventing them from all getting in, whilst the enemy can quite happily blast the slow moving blob apart long before it hits home.

I wanted to say what he said ^^

 koooaei wrote:

 mrhappyface wrote:

 koooaei wrote:

 mrhappyface wrote:

 koooaei wrote:

 mrhappyface wrote:
Do you think I will care about your number of men when I have close to 200 S5 attacks?

200 s5 attacks is around 3 wounds to a 2+ character in a blob. Around 0.75 if they get invis off with libconclave. Not that amazing.

Unless you don't get your powers off.

Re-rollable saves are pretty easy to get when you have a couple priests - it's not a psy power. Yep, they're ld7, so around 55% to succeed with one. But you can have up to 3. Also, there's potentially an artifact if you happen to be running sororitas.

Having re-rollable saves won't matter if you don't get the powers off which give you the saves.

Tank with a character that has 2+ armor. Re-rolls come from priest's hymns. Fish for invis if you really need. Or for null zone - but it's gona be harder to use. Also, unlike daemon stars, you still have some shooting going on when needed.

Also, who told you, YOU're gona charge with dogs and get all 200 attacks in. With the soulswap power, it's an almost guaranteed 1-st turn charge. You'd better bauble wrap your deathstar in case it's not your 1-st turn.

It's kinda like greentide but with psy powers, priests and lazgun overwatch. So, it's a better greentide than the greentide.

Who says you are going to get an armour save? Heralds have ap2 attacks and will cut through anything you can throw at them. So you either put the guardsman in base contact and have them slaughtered or put your charactrr in front and hope you pass all of your look out sirs when the Herald attacks.
Also you get the first turn charge via soul swap but now you have used up a lot of your WC to get forward and have less for buffs, and despite you charging me I still get a lot of attacks which still have hatred.

At this point you are focussing a lot of points in a massive blob squad with tank IC, special rules characters, special weapons models and psychic buffs. Is it really worth it?

How many attacks do heralds have? Don't forget, those guardsmen will have 4++ re-rollable. So, you still won't be killing all that much in melee.

Anywayz, this thing is basically similar to a barkbark star but with guardsmen.

I've seen csm doint great with cultists + sorcabal + Kharn. And imperials have pods to help with soul swaps - way more effective than just scouting min squads of dogs as it doesn't rely on 1-st turn that much.

And as of those who say that "It's been tried - it didn't work". It didn't work cause they couldn't perform a 1-st turn assault. Magic has propelled forward since than.

the problem i'm seeing is that you still need to get out of some combats. And that's either 200 pt in Sammael or wasted soul swaps.

 master of ordinance wrote:
The whole "OP blob with two L2 psykers, power axes, priest and Azreal" has been suggested before, and every time it has been picked apart and shown to be the paper armoured hunk of junk that it is. People are not scared of melee blobs because, aside from being so unwieldy it is unfunny, said blobs are unable to make the most of close combat due to sheer numbers preventing them from all getting in, whilst the enemy can quite happily blast the slow moving blob apart long before it hits home.

It's not tournament winner but has had success.

The blasting apart might be harder than you think. Remember that's 4++ cheap troopers with high save guys tanking wounds from AP3 or worse shots.

With IG you can easily have two decent sized conscript blobs for the price of a tooled up deathstar. There just aren't many things that can kill enough fearless conscripts point-for point.

Absorb the initial punch on one conscript blob and charge in with the second. Now the enemy deathstar has to kill its way through 100+ guardsmen that will be re-rolling any armour saves they get.

My charging conscripts have killed entire deathstars before, and make mincemeat of smaller suboptimal CC units e.g. sicarian infiltrators, hammernators.

My advancing infantry force (if going pure guard) would be two units of 50 conscripts with a priest + commissar in each. If an enemy has spent >400pts on a deathstar, then it has to kill all of these guys before it has made itself points-effective on the melee front. If they're not assaulted they can chip away with their lasguns against any infantry in the midfield. They have a great track record of pinging FMCs out of the sky too.

That's only the Black Mace. No other Daemon Weapon does that.

Edit: Welp, I missed an entire page. This post is still relevant-I think-but perhaps a tad bit late.

 master of ordinance wrote:

nareik wrote:

 morganfreeman wrote:
It seemingly hasn't been mentioned, but massive platoon blobs are pretty scary in melee. Combine 5 infantry platoon, give each sergeant a power axe, and throw in a priest or commissar. The result is an immense tarpit which hates retreating, but can kill most non-deathstar enemies through weight of attacks (be they normal guardsmen or power axes).

It isn't flawless though. Being a gigantic blob of footsloggers it's not great at chasing fast targets and unwieldy as feth all. It's also tough due to sheer model count, so pie-plates or weight of fire will reap a terrible harvest.

You can mitigate the blobbiness by taking few heavy weapon teams. These stay at deployment, then use the 'finger of doom' tactic (leaving a string of men between the autocannons and the body of the herd for coherency) allowing the heavy weapons to hold deployment objectives/shoot at full BS while the bulk of the blob advances forward for some Sommesque human wave crossing of no man's land (or should that be no xenos' land?).

And then the enemy charges and you ca no longer fire the heavy weapons.

The whole "OP blob with two L2 psykers, power axes, priest and Azreal" has been suggested before, and every time it has been picked apart and shown to be the paper armoured hunk of junk that it is. People are not scared of melee blobs because, aside from being so unwieldy it is unfunny, said blobs are unable to make the most of close combat due to sheer numbers preventing them from all getting in, whilst the enemy can quite happily blast the slow moving blob apart long before it hits home.

I'm gonna go with what i've seen work and jancoran and others on this.

Martel732 wrote:

 master of ordinance wrote:

nareik wrote:

 morganfreeman wrote:
It seemingly hasn't been mentioned, but massive platoon blobs are pretty scary in melee. Combine 5 infantry platoon, give each sergeant a power axe, and throw in a priest or commissar. The result is an immense tarpit which hates retreating, but can kill most non-deathstar enemies through weight of attacks (be they normal guardsmen or power axes).

It isn't flawless though. Being a gigantic blob of footsloggers it's not great at chasing fast targets and unwieldy as feth all. It's also tough due to sheer model count, so pie-plates or weight of fire will reap a terrible harvest.

You can mitigate the blobbiness by taking few heavy weapon teams. These stay at deployment, then use the 'finger of doom' tactic (leaving a string of men between the autocannons and the body of the herd for coherency) allowing the heavy weapons to hold deployment objectives/shoot at full BS while the bulk of the blob advances forward for some Sommesque human wave crossing of no man's land (or should that be no xenos' land?).

And then the enemy charges and you ca no longer fire the heavy weapons.

The whole "OP blob with two L2 psykers, power axes, priest and Azreal" has been suggested before, and every time it has been picked apart and shown to be the paper armoured hunk of junk that it is. People are not scared of melee blobs because, aside from being so unwieldy it is unfunny, said blobs are unable to make the most of close combat due to sheer numbers preventing them from all getting in, whilst the enemy can quite happily blast the slow moving blob apart long before it hits home.

I'm gonna go with what i've seen work and jancoran and others on this.

The 4++ you can get with Azreal, at great cost. The rerolling, etc, all require you to have psykers who get the correct psychic powers, and you are then left with an extremely expensive and very slow moving blob that will do little over the course of the entire game except perhaps scare an inexperienced opponent a little.
[Edit]
OP, if you are looking for melee units then look elsewhere. If you really do want to include them with your Imperial Guard take the Sisters of Silence or Custodians formation (the sisters one will help deal with enemy psykers too) and/or ally with Deathwatch and Inquisition.

The heavy weapons aren't going to shoot because it will be in combat but it won't be in combat because it is too slow...

I'm confused.

I've always resisted the giant power blob and just spent more points on tanks and guns. I include 4 squads of basic guardsmen to hold corners and act as assault screens for my hard hitting stuff. In my opinion, every point spent on a power axe could've been spent on a plasma gun instead. To me, melee combat is to be avoided with the IG. Yes you can make a terrifying cc squad with a lot of points and a lot of allies, but it doesn't feel "guard like" to me. I like being crap at melee, I know I will lose combat and be run down allowing me another salvo at the unengaged opponent. Let the enemy assault troops have a few small victories here and there. Its more fun for them, and you can still continue to pour fire into them until they die. I will happily trade a unit or two of crunchies and a Chimera for Smashfucker and a biker command squad...

nareik wrote:
The heavy weapons aren't going to shoot because it will be in combat but it won't be in combat because it is too slow...

I'm confused.

Basically you have a choice. You either build you blob for CC and spend the entire game trudging across the board, nerfing your own HW shooting in the process, getting shot to bits and finally making it into CC. Or you build your blob as a shooting blob, spend the game ineffectually plinking a single unit a turn and eventually your opponent just locks you down in CC, thus removing all shooting.

 master of ordinance wrote:

nareik wrote:
The heavy weapons aren't going to shoot because it will be in combat but it won't be in combat because it is too slow...

I'm confused.

Basically you have a choice. You either build you blob for CC and spend the entire game trudging across the board, nerfing your own HW shooting in the process, getting shot to bits and finally making it into CC. Or you build your blob as a shooting blob, spend the game ineffectually plinking a single unit a turn and eventually your opponent just locks you down in CC, thus removing all shooting.

Or you take a third option and put them in a Gorgon. And then once your 50-model blob has trundled across the table in 400pts of perfect comfort they can charge out of it and get beaten to death while doing very little in return.

tneva82 wrote:

 MarsNZ wrote:
A 200 point guard blob being buffed into a mediocre melee unit with the addition of >300 points from other factions...

That same blob with a commissar and a senior officer nearby will accomplish more for less with their lasguns.

Not really. 50 troopers in optimal situations won't even kill 10 tactical marines with their lasguns. And that's assuming anybody is stupid enough to go sitting in their rapid fire range if they are worried about the lasguns.

And really lasguns are not going to kill anything remotely tough. 10 tactical marines aren't much better than 10 IG troopers in term of survivability. Indeed the troopers in this squad are actually lot tougher...

You're arguing that they should go into melee instead, where they get less S3 attacks and do less damage overall. Strange position to be arguing. As for the tac marines being barely more survivable than guardsmen, I'm guessing you're trolling or have never played guard or marines.