Astra Militarum: More Competitive in 8th Edition?

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**STG**

What do you guys think is the general consensus on Heavy weapons teams? i have heard that the autocannon no longer sits on the throne as the king of the Heavy weapons, is this true?

**DoomMouse**

Yes. Lascannons, heavy bolters and mortars are now the best options in general.

My favourite loadout is 1 lascannon and 2 mortars in a backfield HWS for 42pts. A full squad of lascannons is just far too squishy for its points, so the mortars can tank hits while providing great anti-infantry fire for 18pts! This also has the advantage of preventing your enemy from sniping your anti tank HWTs or your anti infantry HWTs if they are mixed.

I also like 3 heavy bolters in a squad for 36pts - they're a cheap, annoying unit with decent firepower.

**necron99**

ajax_xaja wrote:
daedalus wrote:
Bobthehero wrote:
So about them Hotshot Volleys gun? Are they worth their points? I know plasma is all the rage right now, but I got a bunch of Scion rocking the damned things and I wonder how good they would be?

I've heard people musing about going to them if plasma gets nerfhammered. I'm going to cross that bridge when the time comes. Currently, I use plasma almost exclusively with a single squad of meltas thrown in depending on point values. You'd really have to nerf plasma hard to get me to NOT take it though.

I've become convinced the HSVG are worth taking on my two Taurox Primes though, along with the gatling sillygun..

What are people's thoughts on how likely it is that plasma / scion command squads get nerfed again? Is it too early to start buying up new boxes and building up?

Too late for me

I'm running four plasma laden command squads...lol. I didn't realize all of the important functions they can server until I started playing them. The whole "Please deploy your entire army first because I have 8 deep striking units" is hilarious. I usually deep strike two command squads with a single prime within command range. In the end I have two prime's left over I can use for late game objective holding or line breaker.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

argonak wrote:
Is there anything other than plasma for high toughness critters with invuln saves? Seems a waste to shoot them with lascannons when there's a 50/50 chance of it just bouncing off.

Just bring more lascannons?

Well, if they have an invuln save unless they have a 2+ armor save I'd go with the autocannon HWT...6 S7 shots could do the trick

**Otto von Bludd**

argonak wrote:
Is there anything other than plasma for high toughness critters with invuln saves? Seems a waste to shoot them with lascannons when there's a 50/50 chance of it just bouncing off.

Just bring more lascannons?

Basilisks, Manticores, Battle Cannons and of course, the Cyclops Demolition Vehicle.

**rhinoceraids**

I've had Cyclops's one shot robute, demon princes, blight drones, sunsharks....

**necron99**

If my local tournaments didn't restrict FW so much I'd probably pick up some cyclops - they sound hilarious....

**B4cchus**

I've been mathhammering against a Dark Eldar list, a brief look at exactly how good Inferno Cannons are if you get them in range:

Spoiler:

If you really need to sink a Ravager, just use an order, gets it to the same odds as Venom. Hounds got charged? Get back into the Fight! Kabalites not shown because not even funny.

Worth noting that Dark Eldar particularly susceptible to this due to low toughness, push it to 8, and the inferno chokes a bit.

Need a better color scheme for this forum.

**Naix**

Some observations from a game I had:

The artillery park works. Works well. Deploying as per the picture, it's extremely hard for the enemy to break through the conscript screens on both flanks. This was table quarters - but I am sure it would also work well on a refused flank (deploying on one half only - forcing the enemy's far flank that has no one in front of them to waste turns re-positioning and allowing you to focus on half his army. From turn 1 Manticores / Bassies will be blasting them, sentinels will have moved out with scout to extend the bubble, and the moment they engage the conscripts in melee they just fall back and blast them in the face with orders. You then have scions come in and seize their base / destroy their backfield / targets of opportunity.

Also - given the number of drops guard has, a refused flank seems like an extremely viable tactic.

**necron99**

Naix wrote:
Some observations from a game I had:

The artillery park works. Works well. Deploying as per the picture, it's extremely hard for the enemy to break through the conscript screens on both flanks. This was table quarters - but I am sure it would also work well on a refused flank (deploying on one half only - forcing the enemy's far flank that has no one in front of them to waste turns re-positioning and allowing you to focus on half his army. From turn 1 Manticores / Bassies will be blasting them, sentinels will have moved out with scout to extend the bubble, and the moment they engage the conscripts in melee they just fall back and blast them in the face with orders. You then have scions come in and seize their base / destroy their backfield / targets of opportunity.

Also - given the number of drops guard has, a refused flank seems like an extremely viable tactic.

Yeah, I generally do that just because I have a parking lot to begin with and at our club there's almost always one large piece of terrain to hide behind or in for the tanks. So I "deploy" my 4 primes and 4 command squads and hope they don't realize I'll be turtling up in the corner. Although you can only turtle up so much with everything IG has in a 2k list.

**daedalus**

There was exactly one game in 8th I've played that didn't start with me in that same deployment, and I regretted it.

**argonak**

Good pic, but could you spoiler it? Makes it a pain to read this thread on mobile.

**edbradders**

So I'm thinking of starting a DKoK army but, as they don't have an order to re-roll ones to hit, is it still a good idea to give them plasma guns? Or would a different special weapon be better? I know I don't have to over charge the plasma guns but it makes them so much better when you do.

**necron99**

MrMoustaffa wrote:
vonjankmon wrote:
I'm with you MrMoustaffa. I don't really think Conscripts are massively better than taking infantry squads. When the nerf to conscripts eventually comes I think many of the players whining about them currently are in for a surprise when the IG armies they face have a fewer models on the board but more fire power and that the change will make very little difference to the outcome of games.

Oh trust me, conscripts are still better in a competitive sense, I'm mainly just pointing out that at casual level even the humble infantry squad does quite well. I'm mainly chalking up to 3 things.

1. We almost always get our armor saves, means guardsmen in the open are often harder to kill in 8th than guardsmen in cover were in 7th. While infantry squads cost more than conscripts, they're still only one point a model more base and even a pretty decked out squad still comes out to about 6pts per model. This means that while you technically have less guardsmen, you usually end up taking more "useful" ones. I.E. heavy and special weapons. In addition, an infantry squad's firepower remains relatively constant until you deal the last 3 wounds. Being able to take essentially 7 wounds before the special and heavy weapons bite it means that most people just can't afford to focus units down to finish them off. Command points should always be spent to keep units around, both the 2pt inane bravery and the reroll, if only to completely demoralize the opponent when he finally kills a commissar only to realize you had a backup plan. I'm getting pretty confident that my commissars have finished off more of my squads at this point than my opponents.

2. Even a fully decked out squad still puts out 28 lasgun shots with FRFSRF. With BS +4 they get a pretty decent amount of shots and it never ceases to scare people just how many shots a ten man unit can put down if I want them to. Always remember the heavy weapon teams have lasguns and can use them even if the heavy weapon fired. While your pure amount of lasguns is obviously less than conscript spam, they tend to be more consistent and annoying for the opponent due to point 1.

3. Plasma is just absolutely brutal, even at 1 gun a squad with BS 4+, I know I've seen my squads put an unbelievable amount of hurt compared to their weight thanks to plasma. It's not uncommon for me to drop two primaris with a single plasma Gunner, and that's before the rest of the squad even fires. Sometimes I use the "Take Aim" order, sometimes I don't, usually in close range I find it more beneficial to spam FRFSRF unless I know for a fact the squad will survive into the next turn. This still baffles me as to what GW was thinking with IG plasma pricing. Even our "worst" delivery platform for it still feels incredibly efficient using it.

I'm still trying to learn 8E

What are you referring to exactly in #1? 'Cause my hapless infantry squads die to strong breezes...basically anything better than a bolter and I'm either fishing for 6's or not getting a save at all right?

**KommissarKiln**

necron99 wrote:
I'm still trying to learn 8E What are you referring to exactly in #1? 'Cause my hapless infantry squads die to strong breezes...basically anything better than a bolter and I'm either fishing for 6's or not getting a save at all right?

1. 10 man infantry squads are much easier to have entirely in cover than a 20-50 man conscript squad. If you deploy infantry squads right, you should almost always have a 4+, not a 5+. With that said...

2. If your infantry squads are in cover and they're still fishing for just 6+, that means your opponent is shooting AP -2 guns at them, which are going to be limited in number for most armies. If your opponent shoots AP -2 guns at 10 man IG infantry squads, they are playing very poorly and you're probably going to win anyways. In almost every other case, actually having 5+ and 4+ saves makes your dudes much more resilient than they were in previous editions and generally soak up a good deal more small arms fire than your opponent would expect.

**necron99**

In my current deployment setup I've been running my infantry squads up front of my two massive conscript squads. Usually turtling up in a corner as best I can picking the least populated corner. I've been experimenting with advancing the infantry squads (4 of them) into cover so they usually are out in the open to start unless there's cover along my deployment zone line.

I do have 4 units of scion plasma command squads and 4 primes to force my opponent to do a full deploy (and I always make a big deal about all of the DSng supercharged plasma hitting on 3s, rerolling 1s, etc just to mess with their head a bit during deployment). I think I've only gotten in around 10 games so far in 8E and am still getting used to all of the changes.

We're playing ITC missions getting ready for a tournament in October so while I do have some scions to DS they seem to end up being suicide squads - I've been trying to use the infantry as objective holders with really mixed results. The conscripts+cc+commissar+astropath "unit" seems like the best at objective holding but that leaves my bassies and manticore open to assault or being shot at by shorter range dudes.

Just curious what everyone else is doing about objective campers and protecting the backfield...

**Razerous**

Isn't the rule 1 max for command squads, surely?

**daedalus**

One max per tempestor prime.

**Stus67**

I can't really decide if I want to run my Scions in 10 man squads or a bunch of smaller 5 man squads

**daedalus**

Stus67 wrote:
I can't really decide if I want to run my Scions in 10 man squads or a bunch of smaller 5 man squads

vipoid and I went back and forth (in what was probably the second most civil conversation I've had on dakka) on that somewhere for a couple pages.

We never found consensus in the end, but the take-away from that for us both was basically the following IIRC:
2x5 allows you to min-max plasma pistols for that extra plasma shot, and people have to intelligently split fire you to cause significant damage, but you lose one plasma pistol and it's an extra drop. You can also put both five man squad more than 2" from each other.
1x10 decreases firepower somewhat (the second PP), but it gives you better economy on orders, and five wounds have to be dealt to your unit before you start losing special weapons, but you get no benefits of MSU.

More food for thought was that average case on 10 die rolls from BS 3+ bolters (i.e. 5 tacs or scouts firing at 12" range) is 2 dead scions, but it's important to note that they also still have a 40% chance of doing 3+ wounds, so a 10 man squad split firing has a 36% (drunk, so maybe screwing that up) chance of only doing 2 wounds each 5 man squad if you split them up. Odds are that they're going to wipe out at least one special weapon or sarge in one squad or another. They only have about a 30% chance of doing 6+ wounds, so in that case, the 1x10 would be the better choice. But on the other, OTHER hand, if you don't care about your sergeants or you're not giving them plasma pistols? Might as well go 2x5, because that gives you 6 total ablative wounds between the two, and morale caps out much lower.

I dunno. I mostly like 1x10 because you need half the babysitters you would with 2x5, but there's real appeal behind 2x5 that I can't argue with. Ultimately, I think the solution is to just give it a go and see what suits your play style more.

**necron99**

I feel I'm not really making the best use of orders in my games mostly because I tend to use FRFSRF pretty exclusively and Get Back In The Fight. I keep looking at Fix Bayonets and think like I'm missing something there. Are you shooting AND fighting? If it's only fighting then how's that going to cause more damage then FRFSRF?

**Stus67**

necron99 wrote:
I feel I'm not really making the best use of orders in my games mostly because I tend to use FRFSRF pretty exclusively and Get Back In The Fight. I keep looking at Fix Bayonets and think like I'm missing something there. Are you shooting AND fighting? If it's only fighting then how's that going to cause more damage then FRFSRF?

Fix Bayonets! makes a unit that's locked in combat make an immediate attack as if it were the fight phase. Basically letting it have two fight phases.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

daedalus wrote:
Stus67 wrote:
I can't really decide if I want to run my Scions in 10 man squads or a bunch of smaller 5 man squads

vipoid and I went back and forth (in what was probably the second most civil conversation I've had on dakka) on that somewhere for a couple pages.

We never found consensus in the end, but the take-away from that for us both was basically the following IIRC:
2x5 allows you to min-max plasma pistols for that extra plasma shot, and people have to intelligently split fire you to cause significant damage, but you lose one plasma pistol and it's an extra drop. You can also put both five man squad more than 2" from each other.
1x10 decreases firepower somewhat (the second PP), but it gives you better economy on orders, and five wounds have to be dealt to your unit before you start losing special weapons, but you get no benefits of MSU.

More food for thought was that average case on 10 die rolls from BS 3+ bolters (i.e. 5 tacs or scouts firing at 12" range) is 2 dead scions, but it's important to note that they also still have a 40% chance of doing 3+ wounds, so a 10 man squad split firing has a 36% (drunk, so maybe screwing that up) chance of only doing 2 wounds each 5 man squad if you split them up. Odds are that they're going to wipe out at least one special weapon or sarge in one squad or another. They only have about a 30% chance of doing 6+ wounds, so in that case, the 1x10 would be the better choice. But on the other, OTHER hand, if you don't care about your sergeants or you're not giving them plasma pistols? Might as well go 2x5, because that gives you 6 total ablative wounds between the two, and morale caps out much lower.

I dunno. I mostly like 1x10 because you need half the babysitters you would with 2x5, but there's real appeal behind 2x5 that I can't argue with. Ultimately, I think the solution is to just give it a go and see what suits your play style more.

I was running 10 man squads before and just recently played a game where I split them into 5 man squads and i'm not sure how I feel about them. The smaller units felt more versatile but they were getting shot off the board way quicker. Also have you used the HSVG to any extent yet? I was considering running a squad or two filled with them to deal with higher model count opponents.

**Altruizine**

I just got some Scions to bolster my GSC army, but the wording of their upgrade entry is confusing me.

"For every five models in the unit, up to two other Tempestus Scions may replace their hot-shot lasgun with a flamer, meltagun, plasmagun, grenade launcher or hot-shot volleygun."

The bolded "other" is what's unclear to me. Does that mean that a unit needs to have 7 models in order to contain 2 special weapons? And that a unit of 10 cannot have 4x specials?

**Stus67**

Altruizine wrote:
I just got some Scions to bolster my GSC army, but the wording of their upgrade entry is confusing me.

"For every five models in the unit, up to two other Tempestus Scions may replace their hot-shot lasgun with a flamer, meltagun, plasmagun, grenade launcher or hot-shot volleygun."

The bolded "other" is what's unclear to me. Does that mean that a unit needs to have 7 models in order to contain 2 special weapons? And that a unit of 10 cannot have 4x specials?

A five-man unit can have two scions replace their hot-shots with two special weapons. So you have a sergeant, two hot-shot scions, and two special weapons.

**Altruizine**

Stus67 wrote:
Altruizine wrote:
I just got some Scions to bolster my GSC army, but the wording of their upgrade entry is confusing me.

"For every five models in the unit, up to two other Tempestus Scions may replace their hot-shot lasgun with a flamer, meltagun, plasmagun, grenade launcher or hot-shot volleygun."

The bolded "other" is what's unclear to me. Does that mean that a unit needs to have 7 models in order to contain 2 special weapons? And that a unit of 10 cannot have 4x specials?

A five-man unit can have two scions replace their hot-shots with two special weapons. So you have a sergeant, two hot-shot scions, and two special weapons.

That's what I expected from general knowledge of the way special weapon upgrades have worked for years (plus hearsay about how Scions play in 8th)... but I don't see how that squares with the RAW?

The inclusion of that "other" seems to make it a requirement to have 5 models with stock hot shots before you can give spec weaps to anyone else.

**edbradders**

The "other" is there to interact with the statement above it saying that one scion may replace his HSLG with a HSLP and vox. Basically you can't have a guy with a vox and a special weapon.

**greatgut**

What's everyone doing for serious anti tank? I run a mostly infantry list with a manticore and basilisk, but just finding cracking armour open difficult.

**More Dakka**

If we're being cheeky, what's the best number of Cyclops Demolition Vehicles to take in a 2K list?

Also, 10" move, what do you do, hide them behind other tanks to advance them, or hide them in terrain if you're facing an enemy that wants to close on you?

**Unit1126PLL**

I don't really fit into the normal AM meta with my superheavy tank company, but:

Do you guys think Enginseers will preserve the AM keyword and therefore a Supreme Command detachment of Enginseers is a possibility? Or at least Enginseer HQs?

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Never mind. Just checked a codex review. The Enginseer Lost the AM keyword.

Looks like they won't be joining my army sadly.

**necron99**

Unit1126PLL wrote:
I don't really fit into the normal AM meta with my superheavy tank company, but:

Do you guys think Enginseers will preserve the AM keyword and therefore a Supreme Command detachment of Enginseers is a possibility? Or at least Enginseer HQs?

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Never mind. Just checked a codex review. The Enginseer Lost the AM keyword.

Looks like they won't be joining my army sadly.

These keywords are going to drive me batty. Isn't having the Imperium keyword good enough or is AM a requirement? I've added a tech-priest enginseer to my supreme command detachment just so I can have him baby sitting the parking lot changing tires, etc.

**Unit1126PLL**

necron99 wrote:
Unit1126PLL wrote:
I don't really fit into the normal AM meta with my superheavy tank company, but:

Do you guys think Enginseers will preserve the AM keyword and therefore a Supreme Command detachment of Enginseers is a possibility? Or at least Enginseer HQs?

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Never mind. Just checked a codex review. The Enginseer Lost the AM keyword.

Looks like they won't be joining my army sadly.

These keywords are going to drive me batty. Isn't having the Imperium keyword good enough or is AM a requirement? I've added a tech-priest enginseer to my supreme command detachment just so I can have him baby sitting the parking lot changing tires, etc.

The issue is that I am trying to run a Imperial Superheavy Tank Regiment. Everything has to keep up with the tanks, both on the table-top in a literal sense and in the fluffy sense. The fact that Techpriest Enginseers can no longer ride in either the Stormlord regimental command vehicle, 7th Heavy Transport Company's Banehammers, or the Support Company's Trojans is derpy.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
The upshot is I suppose I can model my "head enginseer" riding in the Salamander. Still can't repair things (just a modeling choice to put on the open deck), but at least would be fluffy.