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WatcherZero wrote:
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2017/11/28/factfile-battleforce-astra-militarum-battlegroup-nov-28gw-homepage-post-4/

How to build your battleforce article

Anyone else read it and think GW were intentionally trying to push people in to making the least effective use of the box contents, even playing up stuff that's getting nerfed in Chapter Approved.

To be fair, saying stuff like 'you can technically make 4 different Leman Russ variants but 3 of them are complete garbage so you might as well stick with the basic one' probably wouldn't go down well with the marketing department.

 vipoid wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
Lets assume you drop two 10 man scion squads and a prime, the squads have four plasma guns. Rapid firing, that's 16 shots. Normally, you get just over 10 hits,, and between two or three guys die. Under Take Aim, that shifts to just over 14 hits, and only about half a guy die.

Your math is badly wrong.

It actually goes from 10.67 hits to 12.44 hits.

You'll lose fewer guys to overheats, sure. But if you didn't buy the Primes, you'd have more guys in the first place.

 Polonius wrote:
A 40 point character adds a 40% kicker to the squads' firepower, and only costs about 15% of the squad.

Again, this is flat out wrong. The Prime is adding a mere 16% to the squad's firepower.

What's more, this is very much a best-case scenario. For most other squads (a 5-man squad with 2 plasmaguns or a Scion Command Squad with 4 Plasmaguns), the Prime is going to be a lot more than 15% of their cost. He's 25% of 2 Scion Command Squads and 29% of 2 5-man Scion Squads, yet only increases their firepower by 16%.


It seems we have very different ideas about what constitutes good value.

Are you not accounting that re-rolls is more chances to roll 6's, and thus fire an extra round from an entire gun, increasing overall total hits, and the relic you've obviously given him allowing him to issue them a second order [On a re-rollable 4+, granted] to also re-roll failed to wounds vs likely targets, or 1's to wound vs anyone else?

WatcherZero wrote:
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2017/11/28/factfile-battleforce-astra-militarum-battlegroup-nov-28gw-homepage-post-4/

How to build your battleforce article

Anyone else read it and think GW were intentionally trying to push people in to making the least effective use of the box contents, even playing up stuff that's getting nerfed in Chapter Approved.

To be fair, that's true of all the battleforce/start collecting previews so far.

4100xpb wrote:
From what I've read, the typical thinking of guardsmen is "more men is better than upgraded men." But the more I work with it, kitting out basic guard squads seems to be insanely good value.

For 40 points, I get 10 dudes with lasguns. For 52 points, I get 10 (technically 9) dudes with 7 lasguns, a bolter, heavy bolter, and a plasma gun. This seems like a stupidly Good Deal(tm).

Yes, guardsman die easily, but with 10 wounds, incidental shooting won't take out a squad - you actually need to dedicate some attention to it if you want to get rid of it.

The firepower, while not crazy, is in my mind sufficient. 1.25 MEQ, or 2.6 GEQ at 24". It's varied enough to deal with just about anything other than heavy armour and the like. And that's all before orders, regiment bonuses, or anything else.

But the real power comes from the cheapness and how it scales. For 260 points you can get five of these squads. Compare that to six squads of lasgun guardsmen for 240 points. This just seems like a ridiculous amount of bodies and decent weaponry for 250ish points. Am I crazy, are you guard folks all running basic dudes with little to no upgrades? Because to me this seems like a no-brainer.

The main reason I tool out my squads is because with 8th dropping, I've usually had problems just getting enough models on the table to play a game as everyone at my store wants 1500-2000pt games. This means that I tend to kit out even my chaff squads because I'm taking so much infantry just to get on the table in the first place, I just don't care if my squads are technically not the most efficient. If I was planning on being as brutally efficient as possible, I would say the best squad you can get for screening would be Plasma/heavy bolter, with maybe a bolter if you're bored or have a few free points. This is simply because not every game you are going to need a screen. This means there will be times where those chaff squads can just act normally with the rest of your army. Without at least some sort of weapon, all they're good for is FRFSRF, which isn't always useful or helpful. As an infantry player, I am drowning in anti infantry firepower already, I don't need units tailored to that. For this reason I would consider at least a plasma gun mandatory on even the cheapest throwaway squads. Heavy weapons usually pay for themselves, but I get why some people don't bother.

As an infantry guy, I've actually been looking heavily into things like more stormtroopers and Leman Russes. My games take much longer now thanks to split fire and how some orders work, so I'm actually trying to get a bit less infantry focused at larger scale games. Even at a 1,000pts I routinely crack a 120 infantry, and anything more than that just gets tiring to play with blobs being gone. I've also found that that much infantry becomes almost impossible for casual opponents to remove, even if it technically was only half my list, so I think there's a certain point where the amount of infantry squads you have starts to offer diminishing returns. My ideal "infantry" list now is looking to be something like 50% infantry squads, 25% stormtroopers, 25% leman russes. Realistically the points mean this isn't quite the shakeup but when you see the army on the table that's how it comes across.

This would be my no friends, I'm going to win this one list at 2,000pts. 82 infantry, 42 stormtroopers, 4 leman russes. It's a little weak to morale but the idea is that the opponent will have very little time to actually shoot at the infantry squads given the Leman Russ tanks in the back and the stormtrooper platoon dropping into their own lines. I preferred full squads because if you drop them in force in a specific spot, you can essentially force the enemy out of part of their own deployment, 42 carapace armored infantry with high AP weaponry and rerolling 1's being surprisingly tough to deal with with proper fire support. The goal of this list is being an infantry focused army in spirit but being able to play much faster with tournaments in mind, hence lest emphasis on orders for the infantry and tanks and more emphasis that the stormtroopers always have orders. I'm not sure how it'd do against the top tables but I've tested the theory behind this list multiple times and its good enough that I don't bring this kind of list against friends for a casual game anymore. If you really wanted to crank this up to 11, you would reconfigure the list a bit to give the stormtroopers their own batallion, that way they get their own regiment trait as well. I could do this by dropping the Executioner command tank and taking more basic stuff, but he's a centerpiece of my army and a good luck charm, so I don't leave home without him.

It was the encouraging 3 heavy weapons in Veteran squads and to take arguably the worst Leman Russ variant the Exterminator I was thinking of in particular. Particularly now the Exterminator weapon only costs 1 point less than putting two autocannons in infantry squads for the same stats.

Edit: Typo I mean Exterminator not Executioner.

AdmiralHalsey wrote:

Are you not accounting that re-rolls is more chances to roll 6's, and thus fire an extra round from an entire gun, increasing overall total hits, and the relic you've obviously given him allowing him to issue them a second order [On a re-rollable 4+, granted] to also re-roll failed to wounds vs likely targets, or 1's to wound vs anyone else?

The OP did not appear to take the 'extra shot on a to-hit roll of 6+' into account, so I ignored it as well. I don't think it would make a huge amount of difference to the % improvement, but I could be wrong. If I have time tomorrow, I'll try to work out the math for it.

I'm not including Relics in this. If the Prime is anywhere near as good as people are claiming he is, then he should be able to stand on his own merits. He certainly shouldn't need a one-per-army relic to make him worthwhile.

Also, even with the relic, 'rerollable 4+' is rather disingenuous. Neither the relic nor the Prime has a native reroll. If you want a reroll, you have to use CPs (and so would also only be able to reroll one of those 4+ rolls each turn).

In an army swimming in command points, 1cp is an exceptionally worthwhile spend for the level of buffing that one prime does for his terribly simple amount of points.

As far as I can tell, your point was, 'Ditch prime, take more stormtroopers'. I strongly suspect my Prime + 10man with 4 plasmas and a plasma pistol and relic, is significantly more effective use of points. It's worked flawlessly in every game I've played thus far. Sure, it requires a relic, but this is the most effective use of said relic available.

The prime has to be costed to take this into account, because this is what it does.

 vipoid wrote:
The OP did not appear to take the 'extra shot on a to-hit roll of 6+' into account, so I ignored it as well. I don't think it would make a huge amount of difference to the % improvement, but I could be wrong. If I have time tomorrow, I'll try to work out the math for it.

On average, it's the same as re-rolling 1s - i.e. a 17% increase.

momerathe wrote:

 vipoid wrote:
The OP did not appear to take the 'extra shot on a to-hit roll of 6+' into account, so I ignored it as well. I don't think it would make a huge amount of difference to the % improvement, but I could be wrong. If I have time tomorrow, I'll try to work out the math for it.

On average, it's the same as re-rolling 1s - i.e. a 17% increase.

Yeah, it's just a pain in terms of factoring in the rerolls as well.

AdmiralHalsey wrote:
In an army swimming in command points, 1cp is an exceptionally worthwhile spend for the level of buffing that one prime does for his terribly simple amount of points.

Firstly, it's not just the matter of spending CPs, it's the fact that you're spending your reroll. Your army could have 100000 CP and you can still only reroll one thing in your shooting phase. It's quite possible that, for example. you'd rather use it to reroll a 1 or 2 on the damage from a Lascannon - which offers far more certainty than using it to reroll an order.

Regardless, it seems you missed my point entirely. If you're arguing that a Tempestor Prime is so amazing that he needed an increase in points, then he should be able to stand entirely on his own merits - there should be absolutely no need to include a Relic or CP reroll in the equation (especially since an army can include multiple Primes, but only one would be able to benefit from either of those).

AdmiralHalsey wrote:

As far as I can tell, your point was, 'Ditch prime, take more stormtroopers'.

My initial point was simply that the Prime really didn't need an increase in cost and that his buff was far less than the OP stated.

AdmiralHalsey wrote:
I strongly suspect my Prime + 10man with 4 plasmas and a plasma pistol and relic, is significantly more effective use of points.

But you're not just using points, are you? You're also adding in a Relic and then treating it as if it was a base part of the Prime itself.

When you discuss Company Commanders, do you assume that each one will have the Laurels of Command?

When you discuss Ogryn Bodyguards, do you factor in the Death mask of Ollanius into all their stats?

Again, a model that people are claiming to be super-overpowered should not need to take a Relic in order to be worthwhile.

AdmiralHalsey wrote:
The prime has to be costed to take this into account, because this is what it does.

That's plain nonsense. If you include the Laurels of Command in the Prime's cost, then every subsequent Prime you take will be overcosted (since they won't have that relic).

 vipoid wrote:

Your math is badly wrong.

It actually goes from 10.67 hits to 12.44 hits.

You'll lose fewer guys to overheats, sure. But if you didn't buy the Primes, you'd have more guys in the first place.

Again, this is flat out wrong. The Prime is adding a mere 16% to the squad's firepower.

What's more, this is very much a best-case scenario. For most other squads (a 5-man squad with 2 plasmaguns or a Scion Command Squad with 4 Plasmaguns), the Prime is going to be a lot more than 15% of their cost. He's 25% of 2 Scion Command Squads and 29% of 2 5-man Scion Squads, yet only increases their firepower by 16%.


It seems we have very different ideas about what constitutes good value.

Yeah, I went back to fix the math, but I must have edited after you responded. Thanks for the correct figures.

If you're running a Prime, you're really looking at probably one 10 man Scion squad and a command squad. You can't take two command squads without two primes, and if you're running MSU scions, there is no reason to drop primes, for the reasons you mention.

So take aim almost pays for itself, just on plasma, not counting the five HSLG shots, which aren't nothing. It adds 5/9 of a Hot shot hit, which shakes out to just over 1/3 extra wound on anything T4-T7 and a 3+ save. BTW, that's identical to a plasma pistol shot, so that's five points right there.

So, I'll concede that in raw ecnomics, the prime doesn't pay for itself. I will say that having played scions a bit, the Prime is really quite flexible. It's a unit for linebreaker or objectives, and often, there's a limit to how many plasma guns you can cram into the landing zone available while also having double tap range. The Prime can comfortably slot behind them. While Scions often die the turn after they land, they don't always, and a Prime can give different orders, including most critically Get Back int eh Fight, which has really come in handy.

Under the stormtrooper doctrine, each shot has an additional 1/36 chance of spiking (a one, rerolled to a six), so 16 plasma shots under take aim would have just under 1/2 of an extra shot. That's not nothing, but is a pretty minor buff at about a 3% boost in firepower.

I think you can make an argument that Scions don't need the Prime, but that it's a fine choice for the points.

 MrMoustaffa wrote:

4100xpb wrote:
From what I've read, the typical thinking of guardsmen is "more men is better than upgraded men." But the more I work with it, kitting out basic guard squads seems to be insanely good value.

For 40 points, I get 10 dudes with lasguns. For 52 points, I get 10 (technically 9) dudes with 7 lasguns, a bolter, heavy bolter, and a plasma gun. This seems like a stupidly Good Deal(tm).

Yes, guardsman die easily, but with 10 wounds, incidental shooting won't take out a squad - you actually need to dedicate some attention to it if you want to get rid of it.

The firepower, while not crazy, is in my mind sufficient. 1.25 MEQ, or 2.6 GEQ at 24". It's varied enough to deal with just about anything other than heavy armour and the like. And that's all before orders, regiment bonuses, or anything else.

But the real power comes from the cheapness and how it scales. For 260 points you can get five of these squads. Compare that to six squads of lasgun guardsmen for 240 points. This just seems like a ridiculous amount of bodies and decent weaponry for 250ish points. Am I crazy, are you guard folks all running basic dudes with little to no upgrades? Because to me this seems like a no-brainer.

The main reason I tool out my squads is because with 8th dropping, I've usually had problems just getting enough models on the table to play a game as everyone at my store wants 1500-2000pt games. This means that I tend to kit out even my chaff squads because I'm taking so much infantry just to get on the table in the first place, I just don't care if my squads are technically not the most efficient. If I was planning on being as brutally efficient as possible, I would say the best squad you can get for screening would be Plasma/heavy bolter, with maybe a bolter if you're bored or have a few free points. This is simply because not every game you are going to need a screen. This means there will be times where those chaff squads can just act normally with the rest of your army. Without at least some sort of weapon, all they're good for is FRFSRF, which isn't always useful or helpful. As an infantry player, I am drowning in anti infantry firepower already, I don't need units tailored to that. For this reason I would consider at least a plasma gun mandatory on even the cheapest throwaway squads. Heavy weapons usually pay for themselves, but I get why some people don't bother.

As an infantry guy, I've actually been looking heavily into things like more stormtroopers and Leman Russes. My games take much longer now thanks to split fire and how some orders work, so I'm actually trying to get a bit less infantry focused at larger scale games. Even at a 1,000pts I routinely crack a 120 infantry, and anything more than that just gets tiring to play with blobs being gone. I've also found that that much infantry becomes almost impossible for casual opponents to remove, even if it technically was only half my list, so I think there's a certain point where the amount of infantry squads you have starts to offer diminishing returns. My ideal "infantry" list now is looking to be something like 50% infantry squads, 25% stormtroopers, 25% leman russes. Realistically the points mean this isn't quite the shakeup but when you see the army on the table that's how it comes across.

This would be my no friends, I'm going to win this one list at 2,000pts. 82 infantry, 42 stormtroopers, 4 leman russes. It's a little weak to morale but the idea is that the opponent will have very little time to actually shoot at the infantry squads given the Leman Russ tanks in the back and the stormtrooper platoon dropping into their own lines. I preferred full squads because if you drop them in force in a specific spot, you can essentially force the enemy out of part of their own deployment, 42 carapace armored infantry with high AP weaponry and rerolling 1's being surprisingly tough to deal with with proper fire support. The goal of this list is being an infantry focused army in spirit but being able to play much faster with tournaments in mind, hence lest emphasis on orders for the infantry and tanks and more emphasis that the stormtroopers always have orders. I'm not sure how it'd do against the top tables but I've tested the theory behind this list multiple times and its good enough that I don't bring this kind of list against friends for a casual game anymore. If you really wanted to crank this up to 11, you would reconfigure the list a bit to give the stormtroopers their own batallion, that way they get their own regiment trait as well. I could do this by dropping the Executioner command tank and taking more basic stuff, but he's a centerpiece of my army and a good luck charm, so I don't leave home without him.

Spoiler:

++ Battalion Detachment +3CP (Imperium - Astra Militarum) ++

Regiment: Cadian

+ HQ +

Company Commander: KUROV’S AQUILA, Power axe, Shotgun, WARLORD TRAIT: SUPERIOR TACTICAL TRAINING

Tank Commander: Lascannon, Plasma Cannons
Command Executioner: Turret-mounted Executioner Plasma Cannon

Tempestor Prime: command rod

+ Troops +

Infantry Squada: plasma, lascannon, bolter

Infantry Squada: plasma, lascannon, bolter

Infantry Squada: plasma, lascannon, bolter

Infantry Squada: plasma, lascannon, bolter

Stormtrooper Troop squad: x5 riflemen, x4 plasma, plasma pistol

Stormtrooper Troop squad: x5 riflemen, x4 plasma, plasma pistol

+ Heavy Support +

Leman Russ Battle Tank: Battle Cannon, Heavy Bolter



++ Battalion Detachment +3CP (Imperium - Astra Militarum) ++

Regiment: Cadian

+ HQ +

Company Commander: Chainsword, shotgun, RELIC OF LOST CADIA

Tempestor Prime: command rod

+ Troops +

Infantry Squada: plasma, lascannon, bolter

Infantry Squada: plasma, lascannon, bolter

Infantry Squada: plasma, lascannon, bolter

Infantry Squada: plasma, lascannon, bolter

Stormtrooper Troop squad: x5 riflemen, x4 plasma, plasma pistol

Stormtrooper Troop squad: x5 riflemen, x4 plasma, plasma pistol

+ Heavy Support +

Leman Russ Battle Tank: Battle Cannon, Heavy Bolter

Leman Russ Battle Tank: Battle Cannon, Heavy Bolter

Created with BattleScribe (https://battlescribe.net)

That's exactly why I rejoiced so much when the codex came out and the Leman Russ was salvaged. I got so tired of taking so long at my FLGS.

This list is great, BUT you're SO CLOSE to getting 3 BNs AND keeping the Stormtrooper's doctrine ... I would probably tweak that list a bit if it were mine to find another 45 points. (with CA Command Rod addition)

Alpharius Walks wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Anyone having any success running something along those lines?

I tried armored company and hated it pre-Codex.

Yeah, they were awful.

I had a chance to take the below list to the FLGS for a trial this weekend.


The next thing to try in this vein will be going Catachan to see how I like that and throwing in a super heavy. The draft of that looks like this. Chimera for the characters and squadrons keeps it down to 8 drops even with 3 foot infantry squads.

Looks solid, the Catachan doctrine is pretty ridiculous with random shot weapons, the couple games I played with it easily made it feel over the top, though my initial rolling was often horrific (as is tradition) with my rerolls being fantastic


On a similar note, while daydreaming at work between spreadsheets, the Macharius Vulcan beckoned to me once more in the most ridiculous way. Anyone ever tried going whole-hog in on just spamming armor alone and raw rate of fire?

Something like a 2k list using Cadian doctrines with 3 Macharius Vulcans loaded with stubbers, 4 triple HB Punishers and Pask in a triple HB Punisher? 3 SH's and 5 Russ tanks. There's no infantry screen, but that's 380 shots a turn from the tanks at 24" and under (with 90 S6 AP-2 D2 60" shots to cover stuff at longer ranges), with everything in range it's averaging almost 70 dead Space Marines or 140 Orks a turn or putting about 43 wounds on T7 3+sv vehicles.

I really want to try that...some things would eat that list alive...but so...much...dakka.

@Colonel Cross, yeah I noticed that after fooling around a bit. Basically you'd take away the Executioner command tank and switch it to a normal tank. Then you have a few points to play with, which would be enough give a couple tanks lascannons or something. Basically it would be two identical battalions of

x2 company commander

x4 infantry squad: Plasma, Lascannon, Bolter

x2 Leman Russ

and a batallion of stormtroopers

x2 Stormtrooper commander with rods

x4 10 man units with x4 plasma and plasma pistol

BTW I am accounting for the added points cost added in CA, so this is adjusted for after book drops.

I like that what is essentially a really meat and potatoes army with some stormtrooper drops can make a really powerful list this edition. In any other edition I can remember taking infantry and russes was considered fluffbunny play at absolute best.

Don't forget about the stratagem allowing a tank commander to issue an additional order, that thing is quite handy!

 Colonel Cross wrote:
It depends. Pre codex when Leman Russes were garbage I was running pure infantry. Never lost a game. I ran half of my squads with boltguns, plasma guns, and Las cannons. The other half were the frontline units without heavy weapons. The only thing that was difficult to take out was heavy infantry. I think it would have a hard time dealing with Death Guard now.

Now that I'm including tanks I just take 40 guys with only plasma guns as chaff to eat all the mortal wounds and keep out assault units.

Also, your math is a bit off, your tooled up squads are 56 points, not 52.

And bare bones squads supported with orders can actually do quite well against infantry, which is really all I need them to kill when I have 4 battle tanks and some artillery taking out everything else.

Is that math official now? Last time I checked YMDC points for guard squads with a heavy team was still unsettled.

I agree with you, though, against most infantry lasguns with FRSRF will roll enough dice to kill something.

Okay first league game is over. Unsurprisingly with the super hard 12" LOS "let's start within spitting distance" scenario I lost. I did get one round of shooting(almost got first turn rolling 6 but he had +1 and rolled 5 and reroll I threw 1 right off the bat). Tried with vendetta going to chase the objective but apart from landing on wrong side of ruin(thus shortening distance for talon to get there) I also made tactical mistake of disembarking both squads. As 2nd squad couldn't get into LOS and 8" with flamer anyway should have kept them onboard.

Either way didn't matter due to flamer squad failing to do much of a dent on 5 wyches there. 11 flamer hits, 1 dead. Vendetta tries to drop more, one survives being hit anyway and even had to spend reroll to get 1 to wound roll rerolled. Overwatch dropped just 1 more and that was that.

Brutal game on tough scenario coupled with tons of errors on my part. Like forgetting to move heavy weapons on turn 1 so the could have somebody within 12" LOS or forgetting orders completely. Whoops! Not that it mattered in the end as vendetta&co failed but remember those in future!

Anyway next scenario is bit better. It's basically last stand type scenario with side A starting on middle in 24" circle with player B starting on all 4 corners with edges going from middle of edge to middle of adjacent edges. Minimum 3" distance between armies so AGAIN I need to cram stuff far from my edges or eat quaranteed turn 1 charges. Sigh. With IG I'm not likely to get +1 on first turn either. And having lost game I'm likely the one starting in the middle. If I face player who won his game I'm in the middle as I lost.

45 power levels this time, one patrol detachment. Next 2 times I will at least have battallion while last game I get brigade to ease up my chronic lack of FOC slots.

Current plan is company commander, Pask all plasma'ed up, 3 infantry squads, vendetta, special weapon squad and manticore. Or maybe drop SWS and manticore and get another russ for some mobile firepower. I think I might need to try to break out toward one side.

One squad is probably used as sacrificial pawns to give me at least one round of shooting before enemy gets right in my face. Second squad used rear guard to keep anybody from there tagging tanks hopefully bit later.

Vendetta could also be swapped for another russ.

Like the scenario otherwise but damn this spitting range deployments are getting on my nerves.

Dude I hate to be that guy but why are you doing this to yourself? Whoever has made this league has such a bone to pick with shooting armies that it sounds like they've done everything but say "Shooting isn't allowed". I would talk to this guy and tell him these missions are insane, if he has any idea of what balance is there's no way he can look at these scenarios and call them fair.

Forget IG for a moment, what would Tau do in this kind of scenario? They don't even get token melee units like guard does with Ogryn. I'm pretty sure it's actually impossible for them to win in this kind of scenario.

4100xpb wrote:

 Colonel Cross wrote:
It depends. Pre codex when Leman Russes were garbage I was running pure infantry. Never lost a game. I ran half of my squads with boltguns, plasma guns, and Las cannons. The other half were the frontline units without heavy weapons. The only thing that was difficult to take out was heavy infantry. I think it would have a hard time dealing with Death Guard now.

Now that I'm including tanks I just take 40 guys with only plasma guns as chaff to eat all the mortal wounds and keep out assault units.

Also, your math is a bit off, your tooled up squads are 56 points, not 52.

And bare bones squads supported with orders can actually do quite well against infantry, which is really all I need them to kill when I have 4 battle tanks and some artillery taking out everything else.

Is that math official now? Last time I checked YMDC points for guard squads with a heavy team was still unsettled.

I agree with you, though, against most infantry lasguns with FRSRF will roll enough dice to kill something.

40 pts base + 1 for boltgun + 7 for plasma gun + 8 for heavy bolter = 56. Haha one of us is missing something!

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
Dude I hate to be that guy but why are you doing this to yourself? Whoever has made this league has such a bone to pick with shooting armies that it sounds like they've done everything but say "Shooting isn't allowed". I would talk to this guy and tell him these missions are insane, if he has any idea of what balance is there's no way he can look at these scenarios and call them fair.

Forget IG for a moment, what would Tau do in this kind of scenario? They don't even get token melee units like guard does with Ogryn. I'm pretty sure it's actually impossible for them to win in this kind of scenario.

Well don't have other game available on the days and maybe it gets better. Funny thing is organizer is running shooty army himself and yesterday had to fend off ork horde.

tneva82 wrote:

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
Dude I hate to be that guy but why are you doing this to yourself? Whoever has made this league has such a bone to pick with shooting armies that it sounds like they've done everything but say "Shooting isn't allowed". I would talk to this guy and tell him these missions are insane, if he has any idea of what balance is there's no way he can look at these scenarios and call them fair.

Forget IG for a moment, what would Tau do in this kind of scenario? They don't even get token melee units like guard does with Ogryn. I'm pretty sure it's actually impossible for them to win in this kind of scenario.

Well don't have other game available on the days and maybe it gets better. Funny thing is organizer is running shooty army himself and yesterday had to fend off ork horde.

It might be worth checking to see if later scenarios will favour shooty more? Otherwise, at least you're playing and making friends.

I'd suggest this might even be a good scenario for mech - with twin flamer chimeras you can at least do good overwatch, then disembark and shoot with the contents next turn. It would also lower your drops considerably.

Anyone else feel like we might be getting beat down into middle tier?

The commissar nerf (urgh, wtf were they thinking making summary execution only benefit units that lost models to morale by a bad dice roll, while essentially adding a +1 to the rolls on high losses?) + the conscript pts increase killed the unit entirely, meltaguns went up in cost as though we were undecided whether or not plasma was better, and ratlings went up?

I look at other armies, tyranids especially (why are hiveguard the best LoS-ignoring artillery in the game? 36" range is hardly a crippling handicap to trade for the great value/point compared to something like a basilisk), and don't see what we can do better than they can. And everyone and their heretical mother can seemingly pile on -1 to hit buffs.

Maybe I just need someone to cheer me up? Now that summary executions don't bring a smile to my face. Otherwise maybe I'd grab some min GSC and run AM/GSC/Nids... help me stay pure!

 Commissar_Rex wrote:
Anyone else feel like we might be getting beat down into middle tier?

Not even slightly.

What's happened is the no-brainers which everyone went out and bought/abused have been beaten back into a bit more of a reasonable setup (albeit with GW's characteristic careless approach). Let's not get cute and pretend anyone in the world had more than a token investment in their conscript army, with perhaps the exception of persons with some exotic personalities.

We treadheads are yawning since we're still reducing 1/3rd of the enemy to radioactive fog every turn - with the expectation that we'll be eaten alive in close combat.

Guard still has the cheapest High Str High ROF and High AP weapons in the game, now at least there's a need to *think* about how to employ it instead of parking behind a mono-build wall of bodies and dragging the game down to a chore.

 Commissar_Rex wrote:
Anyone else feel like we might be getting beat down into middle tier?

The commissar nerf (urgh, wtf were they thinking making summary execution only benefit units that lost models to morale by a bad dice roll, while essentially adding a +1 to the rolls on high losses?) + the conscript pts increase killed the unit entirely, meltaguns went up in cost as though we were undecided whether or not plasma was better, and ratlings went up?

I look at other armies, tyranids especially (why are hiveguard the best LoS-ignoring artillery in the game? 36" range is hardly a crippling handicap to trade for the great value/point compared to something like a basilisk), and don't see what we can do better than they can. And everyone and their heretical mother can seemingly pile on -1 to hit buffs.

Maybe I just need someone to cheer me up? Now that summary executions don't bring a smile to my face. Otherwise maybe I'd grab some min GSC and run AM/GSC/Nids... help me stay pure!

Nope. In fact, my lists may be even better because now instead of messing about with Astropaths, Cyclops, Commissars, Ratlings, and Heavy Mortars, I'm now just ditching them completely and just running way more guardsmen and battle tanks. My lists are more boring and less varied, but just as deadly, if not more so.

The -1 to hit buffs are tough to deal with, but I think unless it is a Stygies FW list I can probably still just outshoot them.

 Colonel Cross wrote:

4100xpb wrote:

 Colonel Cross wrote:
It depends. Pre codex when Leman Russes were garbage I was running pure infantry. Never lost a game. I ran half of my squads with boltguns, plasma guns, and Las cannons. The other half were the frontline units without heavy weapons. The only thing that was difficult to take out was heavy infantry. I think it would have a hard time dealing with Death Guard now.

Now that I'm including tanks I just take 40 guys with only plasma guns as chaff to eat all the mortal wounds and keep out assault units.

Also, your math is a bit off, your tooled up squads are 56 points, not 52.

And bare bones squads supported with orders can actually do quite well against infantry, which is really all I need them to kill when I have 4 battle tanks and some artillery taking out everything else.

Is that math official now? Last time I checked YMDC points for guard squads with a heavy team was still unsettled.

I agree with you, though, against most infantry lasguns with FRSRF will roll enough dice to kill something.

40 pts base + 1 for boltgun + 7 for plasma gun + 8 for heavy bolter = 56. Haha one of us is missing something!

Or both of us are Alternate take: Guard squad is 4 points per model. Squad with HWT is 9 models. So 4x9 = 36 base, +1 +7 +8 = 52. There was an FAQ somewhere that 'clarified' you don't pay extra points for the HWT, but it didn't actually clear up how many points you pay. so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

4100xpb wrote:

Or both of us are Alternate take: Guard squad is 4 points per model. Squad with HWT is 9 models. So 4x9 = 36 base, +1 +7 +8 = 52. There was an FAQ somewhere that 'clarified' you don't pay extra points for the HWT, but it didn't actually clear up how many points you pay. so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'm going to regret this, but the place where you get the points says that squad size is 10 models, so it's not unreasonable to assume that you pay for 10 models even if you only have 9, particularly since you bought 10, because it was your only option, and then made the decision to have two of them form a heavy weapon squad.

"This unit contains 1 Sergeant and 9 Guardsmen." Not 1 Sergeant and either 9 Guardsmen or 7 Guardsmen and a HWT.

You then choose to include a HWT which has the side effect of reducing the number of guardsmen as a wargear option.

It's not clarified in a FAQ, it's clarified on the points page in the Codex. "If models from these units form Heavy Weapons Teams, there is no additional points costs." Well, you don't have models to form a HWT until after you've paid the points for the models, right? Also, note the "additional" points. You have to pay the first set of points, but not any "additional".

Contrast Conscripts, which reads "This unit contains 20 Conscripts. It can include up to 10 additional Conscripts...".

The problem with that is that you don't pay for models "as you go", e.g. I pay for ten, then have 9, then buy a heavy weapon.

Otherwise, you'd have to pay for the Leman Russ, it's Battlecannon, it's Heavy Bolter, then its Executioner Cannon, then it's Lascannon. Because the Executioner Cannon says it replaces the battlecannon, so you had to buy the battlecannon first right?

 daedalus wrote:

4100xpb wrote:

Or both of us are Alternate take: Guard squad is 4 points per model. Squad with HWT is 9 models. So 4x9 = 36 base, +1 +7 +8 = 52. There was an FAQ somewhere that 'clarified' you don't pay extra points for the HWT, but it didn't actually clear up how many points you pay. so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'm going to regret this, but the place where you get the points says that squad size is 10 models, so it's not unreasonable to assume that you pay for 10 models even if you only have 9, particularly since you bought 10, because it was your only option, and then made the decision to have two of them form a heavy weapon squad.

"This unit contains 1 Sergeant and 9 Guardsmen." Not 1 Sergeant and either 9 Guardsmen or 7 Guardsmen and a HWT.

You then choose to include a HWT which has the side effect of reducing the number of guardsmen as a wargear option.

It's not clarified in a FAQ, it's clarified on the points page in the Codex. "If models from these units form Heavy Weapons Teams, there is no additional points costs." Well, you don't have models to form a HWT until after you've paid the points for the models, right? Also, note the "additional" points. You have to pay the first set of points, but not any "additional".

Contrast Conscripts, which reads "This unit contains 20 Conscripts. It can include up to 10 additional Conscripts...".

Yeah, I'm not trying to re-open the whole debate, just wondering if GW has fully clarified it. I agree, yours is a perfectly valid interpretation, and quite likely RAI are 40 points regardless. But I still think it's ambiguous RAW.

I just checked all the FAQs for Index 2 and our codex and did not see anything about heavy weapons teams. But with the way things are evolving in 8th, it could be out there somewhere.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
The problem with that is that you don't pay for models "as you go", e.g. I pay for ten, then have 9, then buy a heavy weapon.

Otherwise, you'd have to pay for the Leman Russ, it's Battlecannon, it's Heavy Bolter, then its Executioner Cannon, then it's Lascannon. Because the Executioner Cannon says it replaces the battlecannon, so you had to buy the battlecannon first right?

See? I was right! I regret it already!

My only thought is that it doesn't say that you replace two guardsmen with a HWT. It was that two guardsmen may form a HWT. That suggests that it must somehow be different from every other option that says to "replace", like the LRBT. Alternatively, you can't ever have a legal infantry squad with a HWT because it's impossible to buy one, because you can't use two guardmen for anything without actually having bought them in the first place. Same for storm troopers or space marines and their "For every five models..." rules. If you have an undefined number of models in the unit, how can you buy the weapons for every five of them?

Of course, there's nothing in the rules supporting either of these notions, nor anything in the rules I'm aware of that actually says you can use any of these codexes, or not use the codexes from any other edition, or not use a piece of paper that I've scrawled "Codecs: Mperial Gaurd" on. Here's also where I remind everyone that the damage statistic in DA ROOLZ actually says that it's the amount of damage you inflict upon a successful hit.

This isn't a serious debate other than just theory and pointing out sloppy writing right? It's brutally clear what RAI is here, otherwise an infantry squad with a mortar would only cost 1 more point than a barebones squad.

If people are taking infantry squads and seriously thinking they only need to pay for 9 guardsmen because there are 9 models I'm not even entirely sure how to react to that. That's a level of reaching I don't think I've ever seen before. Especially considering you still clearly have 10 men in the squad, it's just GW decided to treat IG heavy weapons in a really dumb fashion and it's interacted oddly with the rules ever since.

2 guardsmen may form a heavy weapons team. The heavy weapons team before weapons does not cost anything. Those two infantry models combine into one heavy weapon team, but they still had to be bought in the first place. All infantry squads would start at 40pts, then go from there. Meaning the cheapest option, squad with mortar, would be 45pts.