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I must disagree with these mutterings towards platoons; they are excellent choices for troops, but it depends on how they're used and the support they're given. His is one of those cases where there value does not come from direct damage output**, though occasionally a blob can pack a wallop.

Take a 40 man platoon, throw in a priest and a Primaris or two. That is ObSec that will take an entire game to shift, if at all. A large platoon blob makes excellent bubble wrap, as they can prevent deep strikes near a key vehicle unit. And, although it's been demonstrated repeatedly, platoon blobs are one of the best tarpits out there, perhaps excluding things with Stomp. You can get your points' worth back from more than just killing stuff, never forget.

I cannot emphasize enough how much better they get with ample psychic support. Fish that 4+ invul, and the boys are staying on the table much longer than expected, and at much fuller strength by the game's end. If you fish Ignores Cover, that plus prescience makes a HWS (read: part of the platoon, so it counts) not only viable, but quite potent, and your opponent will likely try to commit limited high S fire to double out bases still getting cover saves (right?). Forget mass scatbikes, I play Warhammer, not Cheesehammer, so my point is valid against normal opponents. If you fish the Rending malediction, well... that infantry blob whose main job isn't damage now has potentially high damage output as a cherry on top. I normally take 2 ML2 Psykers, so I generally get two of these better div powers, at worst I've gotten just one, but given that Prescience comes automatically, you'll always be able to get mileage out of Psykers, though the extent of said mileage may vary.

**I'd like to make mention that platoon blobs have the potential for high damage, though it is a secondary or even tertiary role for the unit. Let's use the following plausible scenario as one such instance: a 40 man platoon has a Primaris that generated Misfortune. An enemy Riptide has successfully nova charged it's fusion blaster or whatever, jumped up to blast a Russ squadron currently bubble wrapped by said blob. Hopefully the tank survives with camo and bodies in the way, but perhaps not. Whether from an exploding vehicle, or other units shooting, you're down to 25 lasguns, and some odd special weapons and sergeants. The Riptide JSJs away, but after a 6" move you'll be able to get a number of guardsmen in rapid fire, and you cast Misfortune on the big guy. Order FRFSRF, say 15 are in RF range. That's 65 las shots, 32.5 hits, and 5.42 rending wounds. Well, they charged a weapon to feth up a tank, not their invul. That means 5.42 wounds goes to 3.61 wounds after 5+ invul, and 2.41 wounds after FnP. Suddenly, a Riptide might be half dead from a unit that had no business doing any wounds to it at all. Continue with business as usual as the big robot man seriously reconsiders sticking around. With a little luck, you could roll a few extra 6s to wound and do significantly more damage.

TL;DR platoons are pretty good and can be made very good if treated well. YMMV, but on average they get gak done.

 KommissarKiln wrote:
platoon blobs are one of the best tarpits out there

The problem is that blobs are un-fluffy. IG aren't a mob of Boyz. They're an organized multiple of squads. Blobs are more of an Orky rule than an IG rule.

Ya'll can bash guard characters as being inherently worthless, but Sly Marbo was so good that I literally stopped taking him to keep friendships intact.
And 5th edition characters were great because they buffed guardsmen around them.
Chenkov and Al'Rahem had special orders. Now they're gone
Bastonne gave orders to his own squad. Now he's gone.
Harker gave his squad infiltrate and steath. Now he's a waste of 55pts.
Straken was less expensive, but suffered then as he does now from a lack of Eternal Warrior.
Creed could at one point outflank practically anything from your wildest dreams. Now he gets an extra random trait. MEH.

Don't get me wrong, I don't believe special characters are the solution to our woes. I just think they should be useful, worth their points and focus on buffing guardsmen around them.

I'm glad blobs are un-fluffy for IG because they are a terrible way to play. It is unfortunate that the way the orders system works basically forces you into blobbing if you want to use infantry effectively.

CplPunishment wrote:
Ya'll can bash guard characters as being inherently worthless, but Sly Marbo was so good that I literally stopped taking him to keep friendships intact.

Sly Marbo was a cheap, pop-up Demo Charge. I never once saw anyone use him for anything else.

And 5th edition characters were great because they buffed guardsmen around them.
Chenkov and Al'Rahem had special orders. Now they're gone

Chenkov didn't have special Orders. He had a 12" Stubborn bubble, access to "Move! Move! Move" and "Get Back in the Fight" with the ability to issue two Orders a turn, and the ability to recycle Conscript Squads via "Send In the Next Wave"...which cost you 75 points on top of the Conscript Squad.

Al'Rahem granted mandatory Outflank and a "Shoot->Move D6" in a direction of your choice" Order.

Bastonne gave orders to his own squad. Now he's gone.

Yep. Because reasons. There was a lot of complaining that he shouldn't have been a Cadian, that he should have been a Mordian or some crap.

Harker gave his squad infiltrate and steath. Now he's a waste of 55pts.
Straken was less expensive, but suffered then as he does now from a lack of Eternal Warrior.

Yeah, the Catachans got the shaft. But not really a surprise given that this edition is rough on anything that relies on Cover saves because of Jink.

Creed could at one point outflank practically anything from your wildest dreams. Now he gets an extra random trait. MEH.

Blame the people who abused the hell out of him being able to Outflank "practically anything".

He has 2 Warlord traits instead of 1, allowing you to roll twice on the same table or once each on two different Warlord Traits tables. Plus he can issue 3 Orders a turn; with mandatory re-rolling of failed Orders. With the addition of the Cadian warlord trait tables, he became a hell of a lot more interesting...potentially.

Don't get me wrong, I don't believe special characters are the solution to our woes. I just think they should be useful, worth their points and focus on buffing guardsmen around them.

The point that people are trying to iterate here is that Guard characters, as they stand now, aren't Guard characters. They're a single dude thrown into a Command Squad, with Command Squads currently being used for the plethora of weapons they can take.

Something that I've wanted for a long time (though I doubt that it will ever happen) would the the removal of veterans as their own unit. Instead they should be replace with the ability to upgrade any unit with in the IG army with one of the following: +1 WS, +1 BS, +1 SV. This way you could make your ogryn beast in melee, infantry squad even more shooty, and your ministorum priest survivable. You could also buy this upgrade for vehicles, but as vehicles don't have a BS of a SV you could only upgrade their WS. Thoughts?

say what you will, but the 5th ed characters where fun. Hell, Al'Rahem's ability to outflank an entire PLATOON was amazing, and would be even more so in the current itteration.
It gave the Guard mobility, the ability to move a force of up to 146 models on to the enemies flank - hell right into their deployment zone - and capture objectives/lay down some serious firepower, whilst scaring the living gak out of your opponent as an entire armies worth of models suddenly appeared on his flank.

Sure, platoons are crap, but with the ability to perform an amassed outflank they gained an interesting new lease of life.

Creed outflanking a Reaver titan will never not be funny.

 Kain wrote:
Creed outflanking a Reaver titan will never not be funny.

Two of those new Baneblade formations, each with a Stormlord loaded with Infantry

The mental image of an army failing to notice a hundred foot tall machine with WMDs strapped to each arm and the earth shaking beneath its every foot step until it pops up right next to them on their flanks is just deeply hilarious to me, I imagine it going down like the introduction to Universe at War where these French troops not noticing the giant Hierarchy walker right behind them even when the thing could star in a Godzilla movie and the Hierarchy's already wiped out 90% of humanity in the space of a month so you'd think they'd be quite familiar with the nuke proof plasma spitting death walkers.

Shame he lost that power before they brought in the warlord.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
It was AoS or get out. That's basically what the GW manager said. He said if they don't want to play aos then we don't want you.

That's not the Manager that's saying that. The higher ups at GW are saying that. Since they started AoS, you aren't allowed to play Warhammer Fantasy Battles or The 9th Age at all while in the GW stores. You have to play the current game they are selling (in this case, for Fantasy it is AoS).

SG

 Otto von Bludd wrote:
I'm glad blobs are un-fluffy for IG because they are a terrible way to play. It is unfortunate that the way the orders system works basically forces you into blobbing if you want to use infantry effectively.

It would be easy enough for Orders to affect the ENTIRE PLATOON. Problem solved.

 ServiceGames wrote:

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
It was AoS or get out. That's basically what the GW manager said. He said if they don't want to play aos then we don't want you.

That's not the Manager that's saying that. The higher ups at GW are saying that. Since they started AoS, you aren't allowed to play Warhammer Fantasy Battles or The 9th Age at all while in the GW stores. You have to play the current game they are selling (in this case, for Fantasy it is AoS).

SG

I really don't see why people are so surprised or astonished by this. It's been like this for at least as long as I've been involved with gaming/aware of the existence of GW shops for gaming purposes.

 ServiceGames wrote:

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
It was AoS or get out.

Since they started AoS, you aren't allowed to play Warhammer Fantasy Battles or The 9th Age at all while in the GW stores.

The idea that a GW store would allow anyone to play 9A is ludicrous. It'd be like bringing McD's into a BK. What next, expecting GW to allow people to play KoW, or perhaps Warmahordes on their tables?

 master of ordinance wrote:
say what you will, but the 5th ed characters where fun. Hell, Al'Rahem's ability to outflank an entire PLATOON was amazing, and would be even more so in the current itteration.
It gave the Guard mobility, the ability to move a force of up to 146 models on to the enemies flank - hell right into their deployment zone - and capture objectives/lay down some serious firepower, whilst scaring the living gak out of your opponent as an entire armies worth of models suddenly appeared on his flank.

Sure, platoons are crap, but with the ability to perform an amassed outflank they gained an interesting new lease of life.

My sentiments exactly. I personally miss Marbo and the old Harker.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kanluwen wrote:

CplPunishment wrote:
Ya'll can bash guard characters as being inherently worthless, but Sly Marbo was so good that I literally stopped taking him to keep friendships intact.

Sly Marbo was a cheap, pop-up Demo Charge. I never once saw anyone use him for anything else.

And 5th edition characters were great because they buffed guardsmen around them.
Chenkov and Al'Rahem had special orders. Now they're gone

Chenkov didn't have special Orders. He had a 12" Stubborn bubble, access to "Move! Move! Move" and "Get Back in the Fight" with the ability to issue two Orders a turn, and the ability to recycle Conscript Squads via "Send In the Next Wave"...which cost you 75 points on top of the Conscript Squad.

Al'Rahem granted mandatory Outflank and a "Shoot->Move D6" in a direction of your choice" Order.

Bastonne gave orders to his own squad. Now he's gone.

Yep. Because reasons. There was a lot of complaining that he shouldn't have been a Cadian, that he should have been a Mordian or some crap.

Harker gave his squad infiltrate and steath. Now he's a waste of 55pts.
Straken was less expensive, but suffered then as he does now from a lack of Eternal Warrior.

Yeah, the Catachans got the shaft. But not really a surprise given that this edition is rough on anything that relies on Cover saves because of Jink.

Creed could at one point outflank practically anything from your wildest dreams. Now he gets an extra random trait. MEH.

Blame the people who abused the hell out of him being able to Outflank "practically anything".

He has 2 Warlord traits instead of 1, allowing you to roll twice on the same table or once each on two different Warlord Traits tables. Plus he can issue 3 Orders a turn; with mandatory re-rolling of failed Orders. With the addition of the Cadian warlord trait tables, he became a hell of a lot more interesting...potentially.

Don't get me wrong, I don't believe special characters are the solution to our woes. I just think they should be useful, worth their points and focus on buffing guardsmen around them.

The point that people are trying to iterate here is that Guard characters, as they stand now, aren't Guard characters. They're a single dude thrown into a Command Squad, with Command Squads currently being used for the plethora of weapons they can take.

You have an interesting way of making every response sound like a rebuttal, even when your responses don't actually refute or disagree with what I am saying. Are you stuck in the mental mode of "Kanluwen and CplPunishment can't ever agree on anything ever"?

I like that Guard can blob up. Running big units isn't fluffy for some regiments, but I think it can be for others. However, I wish the current orders system didn't make blobbing by far the more effective choice.

I actually wish that we could go the other way too, and split squads into fire teams of 5 like we used to be able to in Codex: Cityfight and how Space Marines can in their current Codex. That way it would make sense to take a heavy weapon and special weapon in the same squad.

 Dakka Flakka Flame wrote:
I like that Guard can blob up. Running big units isn't fluffy for some regiments, but I think it can be for others. However, I wish the current orders system didn't make blobbing by far the more effective choice.

I actually wish that we could go the other way too, and split squads into fire teams of 5 like we used to be able to in Codex: Cityfight and how Space Marines can in their current Codex. That way it would make sense to take a heavy weapon and special weapon in the same squad.

Agreed. Different regiments have different capabilities. Some send in waves of human blobs while others rely on highly-trained squads dropping in or mechanized infantry. Split squads would be an interesting idea. I'll have to dig up my Cityfight codex and check it out.

Also, I really like your username.

I'm pretty sure that was a special rule for Guard in Cityfight. I also think that it allowed us to split heavy weapons squads into three individual teams, but those teams were immobile and if they took a single wound the whole team counted as being killed (that was back when a heavy weapons team was considered two separate models). Cityfight did a lot of interesting stuff. They had rules about model placement and area terrain to make things easier to deal with in cluttered tables that I thought would make things a lot faster in normal 40k. (IIRC they did port some of the rules over to 3.5/4th ed.) I might be remembering some of that wrong, but getting to my old Cityfight book would require a long drive and breaking out the snowshoes.

Dakka Flakka Flame is the name of my Bad Moons Big Mek. I'm glad you like it. I feel a little like a poser though, as I've never actually listened to a Waka Flocka Flame song.

It was. And also it exists in the fluff, too.

Just let us make IA13 style lists. I stopped playing guard codex when that came out and I've never regretted it. It solves most of our problems with making everything adjustable. Want elite drop units? Blobs of conscripts? Artillery? Tank hoard? Any combination of heros/villains in each squad... That's what the guard codex should look like.

Not just split squads in half, but allow dual heavy or special weapons in a squad. Would essentially be like blobbing 2 squads and then separating into 2 different squads. While we're at it, would be awesome if he officers had a coordinate fire order where they could trade move and shoot to give units their BS.

Weaselfish wrote:
Not just split squads in half, but allow dual heavy or special weapons in a squad. Would essentially be like blobbing 2 squads and then separating into 2 different squads.

Maybe allow IG to merge 3 Heavy Weapons teams together? Ot take 3 Special Weapons in a squad? If only the IG could do that...

In the past I was in favor of allowing all infantry and heavy weapon squads from the same platoon to combine together. I figured that the only way to make it work would be to remove the option for the infantry squads to take heavy weapons, just so that things don't become mixed up. So a unit with 20 regular infantry models and 3 heavy weapons would be two infantry squads and a heavy weapon squad combined. Easy for your opponent to understand. These days I'm not so sure about this anymore.

In future though, the concept of troops might change. Right now we're usually limited to 6, which is why we have Infantry platoons in the first place, as a way around that. If it went down the AoS route however, there would be a minimum amount of troops required with no limit to the amount you can take. No limits would help us a lot. It would mean that we'd no longer need platoons as a way to deal with the FOC, and instead they could become proper formations.

So a PCS might be an HQ choice or something like that? Maybe one that doesn't take up a slot and is tied to the number of infantry squads you have, kind of like how commissars are limited by the number of command squads?

 Dakka Flakka Flame wrote:
So a PCS might be an HQ choice or something like that? Maybe one that doesn't take up a slot and is tied to the number of infantry squads you have, kind of like how commissars are limited by the number of command squads?

Yeah, that was what I was thinking. Could make it possible to build an army around a single platoon.

I think this may have been mentioned earlier in the thread, but since someone mentioned new orders that'd be awfully beneficial, couldn't there be some sort of Fix Bayonets! order that makes lasguns Assault 2 or something along those lines?

tbh heavy weapons squads aren't really work taking in the slightest. Too fragile, too expensive, bases make them a pain to place in cover or vantage points.

Wanna put a HWT on the roof of a building? Nahhhhh too big. Especially when using official GW scenery, which is a pain seeing most my games are at Warhammer world.

Also to the people saying GW don't allow warhammer fantasy played in their stores.... that's rubbish we see it all the time. It's akin to them banning people playing 3rd ed etc of 40k.

 Future War Cultist wrote:


In future though, the concept of troops might change. Right now we're usually limited to 6, which is why we have Infantry platoons in the first place, as a way around that. If it went down the AoS route however, there would be a minimum amount of troops required with no limit to the amount you can take. No limits would help us a lot. It would mean that we'd no longer need platoons as a way to deal with the FOC, and instead they could become proper formations.

A vanila infantry platoon is already a formation you can take on its own in the montka book. You can also take an astra militarum tempestus platoon on its own as a formation.

The other day for grins I figured out what the maximum cost of a single infantry platoon could be. The number I came up with was 2791 points. This was taking the most expensive upgrades and options possible, including a lot of really silly things like giving krak grenades to the heavy weapon squads. It didn't include anything from outside the platoon, like commissars or priests.

I'm not familiar with the formation in the Mont'ka book, but it would be pretty funny to show up to a 2,500 point game with a single infantry platoon.

 Dakka Flakka Flame wrote:
The other day for grins I figured out what the maximum cost of a single infantry platoon could be. The number I came up with was 2791 points. This was taking the most expensive upgrades and options possible, including a lot of really silly things like giving krak grenades to the heavy weapon squads. It didn't include anything from outside the platoon, like commissars or priests.

I'm not familiar with the formation in the Mont'ka book, but it would be pretty funny to show up to a 2,500 point game with a single infantry platoon.

If you were going to max out a platoon it would be better to take the Emperor's Shield Infantry Platoon which unlike the vanila platoon formation actually doles out some buffs but with the restriction that you have to take at least 5 infantry squads, which is something you would be doing anyway if maxing it out.

I'm seriously tempted to make an 1850pt army based around the ESIC (the company not the platoon) just for the lulz. 165+ bodies and 1005 pts barebones rest of points on HWT and Special weapons. It might even do quite well against grav spam and any list that over invests in anti-tank.