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 DoomMouse wrote:
My army's core has been a double brigade:

3 company commanders
3 primaris psykers
3 commissars
3 astropaths
10 infantry squads with plasma gun
2 30-man conscript squads
6 rough riders squads with double plasma gun
10 heavy weapons squads with lascannon and 2 mortars.

It leaves about 150pts left over at 2K. Enough to bolt on some scions or Celestine or some snipers.

My question is, what do I spend all the command points on? I have 21, then will be taking kurovs Aquila and the grand strategist warlord trait, so I should basically NEVER run short. My thoughts at the moment are: re-drawing Maelstrom cards, re rolling dice and buying relics.

I'm not sure whether to go cadian or tallarn tactics - both have their advantages and unique stratagems. Any help?

Nice army. I'm currently painting 6x10 man infantry squads for 1 Brigade. I feel your pain. Have you thought about replacing one or two of your rough riders with Devil Dogs or Hellhounds (replacing 3 would take up the 150pts) Using Ambush you could get these within 9" turn 1 allowing the inferno cannon or Melta cannon to do some serious damage. The enemy would have to deal with them, slowing down their advance on your gunline and lascannons.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
This guy did a pretty comprehensive rundown of the stratagems.

http://www.3plusplus.net/2017/10/25-astra-militarum-strategems-reviewed/#more-13821

I hadn't considered hellhounds etc to be honest. They could be an interesting alternative! I tend to try not to use any vehicles if I'm going mainly infantry though as it means opponents have to waste lascannons on HWTs or rough riders .

I'm tempted to try and use ambush with conscripts though...

Cheers for the stratagems link, I'll check that out!

 Trickstick wrote:

- Take cover. The best one. You should probably use this every enemy shooting phase, maybe even in melee if it isn't just going to be a walk over.

One thing to note is that take cover only works in your opponents shooting phase. So using it in melee would be quite hard.

Fire on my position and preliminary bombardment are both a bit weak, which is probably why they aren't talked about much. They can throw out a few mortal wounds but use a lot of CP for what they do. If you have excess CP and already have the voxes though, they are alright.

Take cover can be pretty good to save your characters from snipers or to make those conscripts absorb a bit more fire. Another use would be to lower the damage an infantry squad takes so that the special/heavy survives and can consolidate next turn. The main advantage is that you use it after the opponent declares the target, which helps decision making.

Don't forget that grenadiers isn't an order, so can be combined with orders. I imagine vengeance for cadia plus grenades could be nice. Sure, frfsrf is better in most cases but not all.

Regimental choice is tough. However, don't write off picking both! A Tallarn forward brigade and a Cadian gunline brigade could work well. Just be sure to make it easy to tell them apart. Even just painting the base edges in different colours could be enough.

The fact the melta cannon had dropped from 35pt to 20 wasn't mentioned in a lot of leak posts. Only noticed it when reading through the codex.

I look at your list, and I wish there was a way to split it between your infantry squads, which woudl love to be tallarn, and the heavy weapons, which 100% should be cadian. I think the doctrines more or less even out (shooting after advancing is nice, but so is true twinlinked with take aim).

The cadian relic is bonkers good, and really will help your mobile elements, and the Cadian stratagem is also potent for bringing down tough units. If you have the rough riders, I think that lessens the need for ambush somewhat, as you have some "deep strike" elements (and you can always take the dagger if you want).

I think, in the end, Cadian could be slightly stronger, but I think Tallarn will be more fun, and lends itself to a more aggressive approach. Advancing with conscripts and giving them FRFSRF alone is worth the price of admission.

I think if you went cadian, I'd try to shoehorn in some lascannons into the infantry squads, because with 60 conscripts and 10 squads, not everything needs to be mobile, and nobody has every said "I have too many lascannons."

OTOH, if you went pure Tallan, I'd throw plasma pistols on as many chracters as you can, as you'll get into range a lot easier.

Wow, so much good advice! Cheers guys. Those mortal wound strats do seem to only be borderline worth it now I've read them properly. You're basically trading out CPs for mortal wounds at around a 1:1 ratio... The grenadiers one does seem to lend itself to synergy with orders, character auras and other strats now you've pointed it out!

To be honest, having one brigade of each would be doable. I'd just put 6 HWTs in the cadian one and swap some plasma guns for lascannons for the cadian infantry squads. It does feel a bit gamey though, so I'd not want to do it outside a GT or something though.

What's this cadian relic? Thought I'd heard of all the good ones.

 DoomMouse wrote:
Wow, so much good advice! Cheers guys. Those mortal wound strats do seem to only be borderline worth it now I've read them properly. You're basically trading out CPs for mortal wounds at around a 1:1 ratio... The grenadiers one does seem to lend itself to synergy with orders, character auras and other strats now you've pointed it out!

To be honest, having one brigade of each would be doable. I'd just put 6 HWTs in the cadian one and swap some plasma guns for lascannons for the cadian infantry squads. It does feel a bit gamey though, so I'd not want to do it outside a GT or something though.

What's this cadian relic? Thought I'd heard of all the good ones.

Relic of lost Cadia: Once per game, re-roll all hit and wound rolls of 1 for Cadian units within 12″ of the bearer. Re-roll all failed hit and wound rolls for Cadian units targeting Chaos units.

It can boost the accuracy of your mobile units, and helps everything wound.

By the way, am I right in thinking that you can put Techpriests and such in a Militarum Tempest detachment and it will still get the MT Doctrine?

That does sound pretty epic to be fair. Re rolling to wound is pretty powerful considering how easy it is to get rerolls/buffs to hit

Fire on My Position lets a vox operator call an artillery barrage on their position.It's ok - I'm not certain it is worth the points.

Take Cover is 1 CP and is good on almost everything. Whatever you are really worried about dying but need in the next turn.

I'm going to take Preliminary Bombardment for a test spin but it sounds like an Ork players worst nightmare

When it comes to Cadian versus Tallarn I think it comes down to how mobile you want to be on the battlefield. Tallarn is great for city fighting but you need to keep moving to take advantage of the abilities. They love lght tanks like the Hellhound. Cadian loves a good firing line and all the plasma you can carry.

One nice detail I only noticed recently is that Tank Commanders, the MoO and MoF are officers; which means they can take command squads as well.

Tooling around a few Tank Commanders to have 'enough' 8 point snipers is suddenly very appealing.

 malamis wrote:
One nice detail I only noticed recently is that Tank Commanders, the MoO and MoF are officers; which means they can take command squads as well.

Tooling around a few Tank Commanders to have 'enough' 8 point snipers is suddenly very appealing.

I'm curious, why go for command snipers instead of ratlings? I get that rats are more fragile, but I think the combination of infiltrate and shoot and scoot make up for that.

 Polonius wrote:

I'm curious, why go for command snipers instead of ratlings? I get that rats are more fragile, but I think the combination of infiltrate and shoot and scoot make up for that.

The Cadian Doctrine plus Take Aim! lets them re-roll all hits, which I think makes them a bit more appealing than ratlings. For most other regiments ratlings are probably the better buy, though.

I will always have a soft spot for fire on my target after an apocalypse game I once played.

I was defending with my Guard against my friends combination of different chapters. Lots of armour, a thunderhawk, deep striking deathwing, jump pack blood angels, outflanking land raiders, the works. It was really going to be an apocalyptic battle.

The table was arranged in a deep, lengthways fashion with varying layers of defence. It started as ruins and such, changing to trench lines before ending in an uphill slog to a fortress. The idea was for him to advance across the board and take said fortress. Anyway, I deployed a couple of platoons in the ruins to slow down the main advance, which was some sort of scary vindicator formation and a lot of jump marines. They got slaughtered very, very quickly but at the end of the first turn the vox caster had somehow survived. There was an ability I had from the Emperor's Shield formation where if I passed a LD test on a vox caster then I could call down an apocalyptic barrage on him with no scatter. I blew so many marines up that I just love the idea to this day.

It is a shame that it is so weak/expensive now. I guess it is better than it being OP though.

KestrelM1 wrote:

 Polonius wrote:

I'm curious, why go for command snipers instead of ratlings? I get that rats are more fragile, but I think the combination of infiltrate and shoot and scoot make up for that.

The Cadian Doctrine plus Take Aim! lets them re-roll all hits, which I think makes them a bit more appealing than ratlings. For most other regiments ratlings are probably the better buy, though.

Interesting. My rule of thumb is that anything that relis on an order has an extra 15pts in cost, which for such a cheap unit is crippling.

That said, Cadians get a lot of orders to throw around, and a mess of snipers rerolling ones due to the relic of lost cadia could force a lot of mortal wounds.

This is the list Im going to play mostly because I have all the exact models in DKOK unless of course its just a pain for my opponents and way to strong.

Brigade (regiment Cadian)
HQ-Company commander-kurov Aquila(relic), bolt pistol, grand strategist(warlord trait)
HQ-Knight commander pask-punisher- hull lascannon
HQ-primarus psyker- night schroud/psychic barrier- force staff

Troops- conscripts x30
Troops x5- infantry platoon

Elite-astropath-psychic barrier-telepathic staff
Elite-commissar- bolt pistol
Elite- ogryn bodyguard-huge knife,ripper gun

Fast attack-hellhound- hull flamer
Fast attack x2- Tauros venator- twin linked lascannons

Heavy support- cyclops demo vehicles x3
Heavy support- earthshaker carriage battery x2
Heavy support- manticore
Heavy support- Leman russ- executioner
Heavy support- sabre defense searchlight

Patrol detachment-(militarum tempestus)
HQ-tempestor prime-tempestus command rod, powerfist, Laurels of command (relic)

Troop-militarum tempestus scions x10, plasmagun x4, plasma pistol
Troop-militarum tempestus scions x10, plasmagun x4

Elite-militarum tempestus command squad, meltagun x4


manticore-basilisk-basilisk-
bodyguard-company commander-searchlight-commissar
pask-executioner-conscripts-tauros-tauros
infantry-primarus--7in back from demos--astropath-hellhound
infantry-infantry -7in-demo-6in-demo-6in-demo-7in-infantry-infantry


so that's the setup. meaning anyone who charges the front Cyclops line takes a massive amount of mortal wounds damage. I will use the astropath and primaris to make the Cyclops extremely hard to shoot down and after I can use those to buff up the hellhound to 2+ sv and executioner tank to -2 to hit with smoke and fire order. The bodyguard eats wounds on pask/primarus/or company commander (if in range). The company commander farms command points and gives orders to the 3x infantry platoon that I will combine eventually and the commissar keeps the 2x infantry and conscript blob in line. Obviously the scions all deepstrike and take out their appropriate targets with the prime giving orders and hopefully doubling up on orders w his relic for reroll 1 and reroll to wound w a chance at triple shot. The tauros and hellhound will zoom around to get shots on targets and gain tauros invul saves and the leman russes will stay put if they have a shot for the cadian doctrine of reroll 1s.

What do you guys think of the different Doctrines?

And do you think any of them are best suited to particular builds?

 vipoid wrote:
What do you guys think of the different Doctrines?

And do you think any of them are best suited to particular builds?

without some faqs fixing valhallan or steel legion(should be our mech regiment). (send in next wave not costing reinforcement points and allowing disembark and embarking with the steel legion order) there is really only 3 very competitive doctrines (not counting tempestus which I still consider separate) and all three favor certain builds.

cadians is strong because I gives universal reroll 1 to hit favoring heavy use of plasma and it comes with 2 strong characters in pask and creed. it doesn't hurt that their relic, order, and stratagem are all decent. This regiment favors gunlines

catachan is strong because it gives you a greater chance at more shots with variable shot weapons. This one prefers artillery and flamers. They also have 2 strong characters (marbo where are you!!!) that further reinforces this doctrine with straken giving more atks on 4 str troops and harker providing that reroll 1s that's so beneficial. Its not that catachan makes guard a melee army but they can handle their own en masse. They shine with artillery and screens w flamers.

Tallarn is strong because it provides a lot of mobility and makes a few units that aren't good with any other regiment decent. their unique stratagem mixed with their doctrine provides a double wollop of fast hard hitting units that don't suffer -1 to hit from moving. units like devil dogs and sentinals are decent as well. sponsons are great here as well since they don't suffer from -1 to hit with heavy and moving. This is more your tank company army because it makes every vehicle better.

 Polonius wrote:

KestrelM1 wrote:

 Polonius wrote:

I'm curious, why go for command snipers instead of ratlings? I get that rats are more fragile, but I think the combination of infiltrate and shoot and scoot make up for that.

The Cadian Doctrine plus Take Aim! lets them re-roll all hits, which I think makes them a bit more appealing than ratlings. For most other regiments ratlings are probably the better buy, though.

Interesting. My rule of thumb is that anything that relis on an order has an extra 15pts in cost, which for such a cheap unit is crippling.

That said, Cadians get a lot of orders to throw around, and a mess of snipers rerolling ones due to the relic of lost cadia could force a lot of mortal wounds.

Rerolling 1s for hits and thens 1s to wound so as to fish for the mortal wounds is fairly helpful. There's also the factor of ratlings considerably lower toughness profile, getting wounded on 2s from bolters and heavy bolters unlike the Gmen who cost 1 point more, and effectively have the same armor result when in cover.

The only plus for ratlings is their scout deploy; it's notable to be sure but their even greater fragility, means it could even be a liability that you're paying 1 point more per dead marine average compared to static Cadian CS teams *without* orders.

That and they're metal/finecast. Hence, Cadian Snipers all the day long here

 vipoid wrote:
What do you guys think of the different Doctrines?

And do you think any of them are best suited to particular builds?

I agree with Gungo, but to put it simply:

Catachans love vehicle blasts/flamers, regardless of if they move or not.

Cadians love static shooting.

Tallarns allow more/better shooting when moving.

The second tier are:
Vostroyans get better range and a +1 to hit strategem.
Valhallans keep units effective even after being shot up. So, not really more durable, but dont' degrade as badly.
Mordians get bonuses to overwatch.
Steel legion has longer range rapid fire, slightly more durable tanks, and some transport tricks.

...and Praetorians get spiffy hats.

Anyone tried Hellhounds and Devil dogs yet? They actually seem pretty good for the cost now, especially since the devil dog's main cannon is an assault weapon, which means it can move and shoot without penalty. The codex suggests running them in pairs of Hellhound/Devil Dogs and Im actually tempted to try it as an aggressive element to tie up the opponent as my infantry and tanks rumble up the board.

Tanks are all probably going to be Tallarn or Valhallan. I really like how tough the Valhallan tanks are to shut down since in my meta people like to cripple one tank and move on to the next. With a couple tech priests I can essentially force people to kill my tanks or risk theyre back up to full effect even from potentially a single wound between jury rig and tech priests. Alternatively Tallarn make my tanks far more aggressive and I like being more mobile with my army. Would match my metallica Skitarii pretty well tactics wise as well. I hate gunline guard with a passion and it annoys me to no end that a major chunk of my army is cadians saddled with that doctrine.

Either one would work well with hellhound variants I think. Vallhallans must be killed or they will keep chasing you down, Tallarn are just stupid fast and capable of outflanking your opponent.


As a random aside, anyone else pleased by all the little tactics advice blurbs the IG codex has in it? I know most were in previous books but I really like how theyre placed throughout the book, like theyre there to warn players about potential pitfalls units have. Theres one under the ogryn entry for example that talks about the risks of running an army purely meant to assault will get shot up that I got a good laugh out of, considering we see so many people complain that pure melee has such a struggle against IG. Theyre pretty solid big picture advice and I noticed a lot of the Tactica Imperialis and Solar Macharius quots tend to echo things I've heard as advice on these very forums.

The Tactica Imperialis is a giant collection of treatise which would take up buildings worth of space. It is collected from throughout history and from all over the Galaxy, with most people only having a small part of it at any one time. So, forum advice could be a canonical part of the Tactica Imperialis!

On the subject of Hellhounds, I am tempted to run Tallarn Hellhounds with bolters. You are not forced to close to 8" like you would be with a flamer hull mount, allowing you to kite at 16". That is a pretty decent range to engage an enemy from, as it forces them to make a 9" charge whilst eating inferno overwatch. They also seem like a good unit to use with Ambush. The problem I have been having when deciding on Ambush units how to make them not just die after shooting once. With any melta vehicles you want to be within 12", which is dangerously close to the enemy and can lead to you just getting charged and tied in melee. Another thing to think about is track guards. Expensive at 10 pts but will keep your inferno cannon kiting effectively until the tank dies.

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
Anyone tried Hellhounds and Devil dogs yet? They actually seem pretty good for the cost now, especially since the devil dog's main cannon is an assault weapon, which means it can move and shoot without penalty. The codex suggests running them in pairs of Hellhound/Devil Dogs and Im actually tempted to try it as an aggressive element to tie up the opponent as my infantry and tanks rumble up the board.

I've never really stopped loving hellhounds since 5th edition. The reduction in damage and increase in shots is an overall improvement for them against their preferred target (not-vehicles) and they didn't go up in price, so I'm considering it an win-win. I run mine with heavy bolter so I can kite things at max range. I don't really do the variants though. Just never had any interest in them.

I haven't even considered how they combine with doctrines. Mixing forces might be fluffy, but it kind of feels unnecessary to me to min-max the doctrines at this point. I genuinely have basically everything I could ever want.

 daedalus wrote:

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
Anyone tried Hellhounds and Devil dogs yet? They actually seem pretty good for the cost now, especially since the devil dog's main cannon is an assault weapon, which means it can move and shoot without penalty. The codex suggests running them in pairs of Hellhound/Devil Dogs and Im actually tempted to try it as an aggressive element to tie up the opponent as my infantry and tanks rumble up the board.

I've never really stopped loving hellhounds since 5th edition. The reduction in damage and increase in shots is an overall improvement for them against their preferred target (not-vehicles) and they didn't go up in price, so I'm considering it an win-win. I run mine with heavy bolter so I can kite things at max range. I don't really do the variants though. Just never had any interest in them.

I haven't even considered how they combine with doctrines. Mixing forces might be fluffy, but it kind of feels unnecessary to me to min-max the doctrines at this point. I genuinely have basically everything I could ever want.

Im mainly looking at other regiments because Cadian and Catachan vehicles feel like a bit of overkill for my meta and dont really take much strategy to make work. With Tallarn and Valhallans I'll actually have to make a decision besides "do I stay still/reroll a dice" so I think theyll be more fun and rewarding to play.

Not to knock Catachan/Cadian players of course, I just find their tank abilities a bit boring to use. I'm basically trying to keep myself from being a boring gunline player and the Cadian doctrine just tempts me way too hard to stay still and reroll 1's.

I am hopeful for a quick FW index update, although I know it'll be 9th before we get it. The Artemia Hellhound was awesome. For +7pts you got a reroll on number of shots. It really helped power up the Hellhound a bit.

I doubt FW updates anything. I am still waiting for their promised datasheets in their last faq from June.

If anything it was said chapter approved will have forgeworld updates within the book. I expect those datasheets to be included in there and several point adjustments and rules changes. But then again that is rumoured due in December.





Automatically Appended Next Post:

 MrMoustaffa wrote:

 daedalus wrote:

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
Anyone tried Hellhounds and Devil dogs yet? They actually seem pretty good for the cost now, especially since the devil dog's main cannon is an assault weapon, which means it can move and shoot without penalty. The codex suggests running them in pairs of Hellhound/Devil Dogs and Im actually tempted to try it as an aggressive element to tie up the opponent as my infantry and tanks rumble up the board.

I've never really stopped loving hellhounds since 5th edition. The reduction in damage and increase in shots is an overall improvement for them against their preferred target (not-vehicles) and they didn't go up in price, so I'm considering it an win-win. I run mine with heavy bolter so I can kite things at max range. I don't really do the variants though. Just never had any interest in them.

I haven't even considered how they combine with doctrines. Mixing forces might be fluffy, but it kind of feels unnecessary to me to min-max the doctrines at this point. I genuinely have basically everything I could ever want.

Im mainly looking at other regiments because Cadian and Catachan vehicles feel like a bit of overkill for my meta and dont really take much strategy to make work. With Tallarn and Valhallans I'll actually have to make a decision besides "do I stay still/reroll a dice" so I think theyll be more fun and rewarding to play.

Not to knock Catachan/Cadian players of course, I just find their tank abilities a bit boring to use. I'm basically trying to keep myself from being a boring gunline player and the Cadian doctrine just tempts me way too hard to stay still and reroll 1's.

play tallarn its the most varied and makes certain units like sentinals decent. and you can have fun with deepstriking units without going the scion route.

 DoomMouse wrote:


The cadia/tallarn debate I'm having is really close. Extra movement is more interesting and potentially very powerful, and the ambush stratagem is lovely, but the cadian doctrine combined with 'overlapping fields' is an insane buff to my HWTs. It's a really tough choice! They'll both be fun to try out

Why not both? Cadian infantry battalion/bde + tallarn spearhead. Two great tastes. Tastes great together.

Any opinions on bolter sergeants? +1str for 1pt seems ok. I've been thinking about 60 infnatry to make a Tallarn brigade, with bolter and plasma. All three guns have the same range and type, which seems good to me. The idea is to advance around and shoot at 12", probably screening for tanks. Have been considering voxes too, so that there is a lot greater freedom of movement and you don't have to cluster around officers.