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So just curious, for most players and lists, would you say leman Russ tanks are the superior choice for heavy support or would you say basilisk/manticores?

I run valhallan infantry with leman Russ support and a manticore and while most people consider the manticore scary, they will time and again claim my regular leman russe's with hull lascannons as being the part of the list that carries the day.

I had assumed artillery was the better choice for most lists, but when my opponents saw the artillery stats most of them still said they'd rather fight the points in basilisk/manticore than they would my tank line which is usually between 4-6 tanks with about 120-150 infantry in support. I'm guessing for Valhalla specifically tanks are the way to go but I still think a cadian or catachan artillery park would be a terrifying thing to face compared to it's points in leman russe's. Am I missing something here? From what I could tell tournament IG was primarily running either baneblades or artillery of some kind.

Hello fellow Guard players!

Sorry if it has been discussed already, but how do you equip your Valkyries, especially if taking multiples 2-3?

Helstrikes + LC, LC + rocket pods, or keep them cheap with multilaser and pods?

Is it woth it to mix loadouts or just pods all day?

Also what's your opinion on the heavy bolter upgrade?

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
So just curious, for most players and lists, would you say leman Russ tanks are the superior choice for heavy support or would you say basilisk/manticores?

I run valhallan infantry with leman Russ support and a manticore and while most people consider the manticore scary, they will time and again claim my regular leman russe's with hull lascannons as being the part of the list that carries the day.

I had assumed artillery was the better choice for most lists, but when my opponents saw the artillery stats most of them still said they'd rather fight the points in basilisk/manticore than they would my tank line which is usually between 4-6 tanks with about 120-150 infantry in support. I'm guessing for Valhalla specifically tanks are the way to go but I still think a cadian or catachan artillery park would be a terrifying thing to face compared to it's points in leman russe's. Am I missing something here? From what I could tell tournament IG was primarily running either baneblades or artillery of some kind.

MIxing Russes and Artillery can fine. The benefit the Russes have is that they can, somewhat depending on loadout, still move and fire effectively. That means they can help with board control and objectives. The only caveat with Russes is that you need to achieve some level of target saturation, otherwise your aren't making the opponent make difficult choices with his target priority. Russes seem to work best when there's enough of them that the opponent doesn't have enough AT to feel comfy about things. With Artillery you can back board it and hide it as much as possible behind terrain and weather the AT storm a lot better, and thus are less problematic if fielded two or three at a time.

I like Valhallan artillery though - firing into CC is cool. It also fits the Russian style fluff really well.

If the rumored 5 PPM Guard turns out to be true, what do you guys think about Death Korps of Krieg? They're also 5 PPM and don't take morale from shooting. Aren't they now better in *almost* every single way (yes I know they don't have the same orders but their orders are really damn similar)?

lliu wrote:
If the rumored 5 PPM Guard turns out to be true, what do you guys think about Death Korps of Krieg? They're also 5 PPM and don't take morale from shooting. Aren't they now better in *almost* every single way (yes I know they don't have the same orders but their orders are really damn similar)?

Honestly?

I just don't know. I think that if we go to 5ppm on Guardsmen, we might finally see a shift in the soup lists...but not enough of one to convince the powers that be they screwed up. And that's the part that concerns me the most.

Guardsmen can go to 10ppm and we’d be fine. The issue is much deeper than cheap chaff

This might seem apocalyptic, but I think if infantry goes to 5ppm guard is completely screwed. They're already not really competitive. 5ppm will assure you never see another guard model.

As for what's better, russ tanks or basilisks? I think it honestly depends on the type of mission you're playing. If you're using ITC rules where usually they'll say "you can't see through the 1st floor of ruins. period" then getting line of sight to your target is much more difficult and indirect artillery is super useful. They survive longer (don't have to expose themselves) and fire every turn no matter what. If you're able to shoot through every crack and window then russes I think come out on top.

gendoikari87 wrote:
Guardsmen can go to 10ppm and we’d be fine. The issue is much deeper than cheap chaff

Oh hey, it's the guy that went 12-0 at his local store without using any screens saying Guard is busted again. Have you managed to play somebody outside of your store yet or are you still making sweeping balance judgments based on your store's comically weak meta?

ThePorcupine wrote:
This might seem apocalyptic, but I think if infantry goes to 5ppm guard is completely screwed. They're already not really competitive. 5ppm will assure you never see another guard model.

At a competitive level, yeah, but at a competitive level, guard are already screwed. Guard haven't been competitive in tournaments other than being the leading scapegoat for soup since the index.

At any thing less than tournament level, guard is still reasonably competitive, and yet another injustice against guard players won't cause the army to fall apart, and I say that as a footslogging ex-power blob player.

It'll suck, but the only thing I've lost to so far this edition is Eldar. And unlike magic tank-only players, I play people of equal skill to me. Based upon that, my guard, at least, can probably withstand yet one more blow to their overall power level.

Death Korps would be competitive points wise but will not get played in ITC much. The inability to buy a heavy weapon in the squad causes you to give up the Reaper secondary points far too easily to justify the WS and morale benefits unless you are running conscript spam or something else that already surrenders those points.

I think that when 8th dropped, 5ppm guardsmen would have been balanced, and reasonably strong. Now however, mono-guard armies don't place so highly in tournaments. They're still a decent army, but not as cutting edge competitive as many other codexes. So I hope they don't kick us with an infantry nerf now!

Counter intuitively, I think that raising to 5ppm will have very little effect on soup builds. The cheap battalion insert of 2 company commanders and 3 infantry squads will barely be any different if it costs 210pts rather than 180. They're not really taken for killing power per point, they're taken for backfield survivable grunts and 3 CP. 5ppm guardsmen absolutely WILL hurt foot guard as if you're taking, say, 200 guys, then that's 200pts worth of nerf in a 2K list!

Yeah, I played in my first ITC Champions event, and seeing the missions, I realized the days of my guard being top tier were over. When every mission is round by round objectives, plus kill points (essentially), IG need to completely retool. I'm not sure how yet.

Well we can mitigate the "kill unit of 10 or more models" secondary by taking heavy weapons in infantry squads bringing the number down to 9. I also think the prime/command/command deep striking scion combo might not be the best option because it's a suicide mission and you're handing your opponent 3 easy kills (though to be fair I haven't tried).

 Polonius wrote:
Yeah, I played in my first ITC Champions event, and seeing the missions, I realized the days of my guard being top tier were over. When every mission is round by round objectives, plus kill points (essentially), IG need to completely retool. I'm not sure how yet.

Your list priorities need to completely change to win ITC now with IG. As noted earlier the "9 man squad" by taking a heavy weapon is an obvious start.

Units you want to avoid in ITC are ones that give up tons of secondaries easily. For example, a single tank commander can give up 2-3 pts depending on mission. In addition, small, easily killed units like command squads and Stormtroopers can bleed points like you wouldn't believe, especially since there's a bonus for killing more than your opponent. Stormtroopers are still powerful, but I found myself normally just breaking even on points I gained by dropping in once they all died next turn. This led to me dropping Stormtroopers entirely. In their stead's I'm looking at rough riders and plasma SWS's for concentrated plasma, but that then makes these units primarily counterattack units and not something I can use as easily on offense.

It's lead to me taking things normally considered bad from a competitive standpoint, like Lord commissars, since they do not easily give up points compared to the alternative (regimental standard command squad). It's also led to me taking things that give up points in 3's, so the opponent can't max points, like vehicles with 10+ wounds. With guard you're never going to deny all of them, but you can make it incredibly annoying at least. For example I run valhallan conscripts as my first line of screen. Normally things like death company or what have you would obliterate 4-6 infantry squads on the first line giving up death by a thousand cuts once or twice. However two units of 30 means they don't even proc the first one. Since the 2 conscript squads are the only units that size in my army, opponents are hesitant to take it as a 30 man unit gives up the same points as a 20 for Reaper and they would need to focus on killing all 60 to get the 4 points. My opponents may learn that's the better option in the future though, I'm not sure. If that happens I'll do everything I can to make sure they survive morale and then hide them the rest of the game when they take too many casualties.

I'm still getting to grips with it as you can see, and I dont plan on going to a major tournament since the kind of guard I like to play just isn't favorable to ITC. However I do manage a decent showing against my local group that consists of eldar, blood angels, nids, and necrons. I would never take top table but I can still get wins. I'd imagine for guard to be competitive in ITC it will absolutely require allies, as the newest ITC format heavily favors small, fast, elite armies. Not just because of the typical missions, but because if you can only bring a couple of units of each type you make it hard for your opponent to Max out secondaries.

One thing I will note, the kind of armies that seem to be rewarded by ITC really don't like the late game. Every single game I've played so far with the new missions, the later it got the better my win rate became. Whenever we went to the final turn I've pretty much always won. Problem is in a tournament you'd never make it that far thanks to time.

There's a shock, ITC missions that don't actually balance anything but simply shift the meta arbitrarily you say.

BTW if GW keep hitting guard over the head due to balance issues then I am going to start getting that pessimistic feeling I had in 7th.

If you want to fix the game start with three EASY fixes.
1. You only gain the 3 CP bonus as battle forged for going single faction.

2. Hit mods never stack. I don't care how many sources of -1 or +1 a unit has on them, only ever apply one from each and opposing mods cancel one another.

3. Fix detachments. Makes zero sense when looking at the CP bonuses. A battalion is worth three but vanguard, outrider and spearhead are 1. If a battalion is worth 3 then it should require 1 of each, elite, FA and heavy as well, sort of like 1/3 a brigade.

 Red Corsair wrote:

3. Fix detachments. Makes zero sense when looking at the CP bonuses. A battalion is worth three but vanguard, outrider and spearhead are 1. If a battalion is worth 3 then it should require 1 of each, elite, FA and heavy as well, sort of like 1/3 a brigade.

I agree with everything except this. Battalion is there to reward people for taking the troop tax. It deserves more than vanguard/outrider/spearhead, because those are the "we give up, just pretend your FOC is whatever feels good" choices. I kind of feel like those shouldn't even give any CP, to be honest, but then again, I also like drinking the tears of the SM players who only want to play the elite half of their armies.

 DoomMouse wrote:
I think that when 8th dropped, 5ppm guardsmen would have been balanced, and reasonably strong. Now however, mono-guard armies don't place so highly in tournaments. They're still a decent army, but not as cutting edge competitive as many other codexes. So I hope they don't kick us with an infantry nerf now!

Counter intuitively, I think that raising to 5ppm will have very little effect on soup builds. The cheap battalion insert of 2 company commanders and 3 infantry squads will barely be any different if it costs 210pts rather than 180. They're not really taken for killing power per point, they're taken for backfield survivable grunts and 3 CP. 5ppm guardsmen absolutely WILL hurt foot guard as if you're taking, say, 200 guys, then that's 200pts worth of nerf in a 2K list!

That's not because guard are weak. Take a pure guard army against any other ingredient pure from an imperial soup list, and guard will win almost every time. Against pure, eg not ynnari abusing, eldar, I'd favor guard. Against a pure chaos army, I'd take guard.

This is the edition of soup, competitive armies are gonna be soupy. And until blood angels, guard were pretty much 70 to 80 percent of all imperial soup. Now they're 'only' 50ish percent. Oh no

stratigo wrote:

 DoomMouse wrote:
I think that when 8th dropped, 5ppm guardsmen would have been balanced, and reasonably strong. Now however, mono-guard armies don't place so highly in tournaments. They're still a decent army, but not as cutting edge competitive as many other codexes. So I hope they don't kick us with an infantry nerf now!

Counter intuitively, I think that raising to 5ppm will have very little effect on soup builds. The cheap battalion insert of 2 company commanders and 3 infantry squads will barely be any different if it costs 210pts rather than 180. They're not really taken for killing power per point, they're taken for backfield survivable grunts and 3 CP. 5ppm guardsmen absolutely WILL hurt foot guard as if you're taking, say, 200 guys, then that's 200pts worth of nerf in a 2K list!

That's not because guard are weak. Take a pure guard army against any other ingredient pure from an imperial soup list, and guard will win almost every time. Against pure, eg not ynnari abusing, eldar, I'd favor guard. Against a pure chaos army, I'd take guard.

This is the edition of soup, competitive armies are gonna be soupy. And until blood angels, guard were pretty much 70 to 80 percent of all imperial soup. Now they're 'only' 50ish percent. Oh no

While I agree that pure Guard will tend to beat pure other Imperial armies, I’d hesitate to say they beat everyone else as well – especially Eldar. I’ve not lost to pure Guard in a tournament this year, using Eldar (no Ynnari OR Dark Reapers in my list). Guard just simply struggle to hit Eldar, while Eldar have the ability to quickly lock the tanks in combat and nuke screens.

It will be interesting to see what happens between Guard and T’au once the codex is released.

Slabshield bullgryns supported by a custodes vexilus praetor results in 2+/3++ t5 3w ld8 rerollable cc monsters. 5 attacks on the charge if they’re supported by a priest. Two squads of 9 won’t have an issue fitting within the 9” radius bubble. 895pts for 18 of them with the priest and vexilus praetor who is himself a beast in cc. I’m thinking of running them with an astropath and a primaris psycher so I can deny the witch, smite and cast nightshroud.

There is even room under the 9” radius bubble to fit one of the ITC 9 man infantry squads to give this death star objective secured.

CaptainO wrote:
Slabshield bullgryns supported by a custodes vexilus praetor results in 2+/3++ t5 3w ld8 rerollable cc monsters. 5 attacks on the charge if they’re supported by a priest. Two squads of 9 won’t have an issue fitting within the 9” radius bubble. 895pts for 18 of them with the priest and vexilus praetor who is himself a beast in cc. I’m thinking of running them with an astropath and a primaris psycher so I can deny the witch, smite and cast nightshroud.

There is even room under the 9” radius bubble to fit one of the ITC 9 man infantry squads to give this death star objective secured.

I've run a similar deathstar with Celestine to give the initial invuln save. The biggest problem I've found is that it's not going to get anywhere quick enough to matter unless up against berserkers or the like.

So, how important are the screens in 8th edition? I played armored company in 6th-7th, but now it seems like there are too many turn-1 charge threats. Is it possible to succeed with tanks and few/no infantry units? Or is buying/painting 50 basic guardsmen a prerequisite for every list?

(This is for standard 40k, not any particular tournament house rules.)

RogueApiary wrote:

CaptainO wrote:
Slabshield bullgryns supported by a custodes vexilus praetor results in 2+/3++ t5 3w ld8 rerollable cc monsters. 5 attacks on the charge if they’re supported by a priest. Two squads of 9 won’t have an issue fitting within the 9” radius bubble. 895pts for 18 of them with the priest and vexilus praetor who is himself a beast in cc. I’m thinking of running them with an astropath and a primaris psycher so I can deny the witch, smite and cast nightshroud.

There is even room under the 9” radius bubble to fit one of the ITC 9 man infantry squads to give this death star objective secured.

I've run a similar deathstar with Celestine to give the initial invuln save. The biggest problem I've found is that it's not going to get anywhere quick enough to matter unless up against berserkers or the like.

That seems to be the main issue. How many bullgryns do you run with celestine? Do you run the "death star" with a priest and psychers (i figure its going to be a prime target for smite and mortal wounds so having a few deny the witch is a must) Having celestine with them would at least allow the death star to project its power by using her double move to get her into combat fast. Also her invulnerable doesn't require the unit to be wholly underneath as far as I can remember although its 6" range rather than 9" wholly covered.

On the other hand The vexilus is half the cost, results in an improved invulnerable save (3++ is the new black and all that) allows a reroll of morale which you'd want to minimize the effects of with a unit this expensive. The vexilus is no slouch in combat either with significantly higher toughness although he does have less wounds and resultant attack strength and number of attacks is slightly worse... I think it would be hard to resist launching celestine at the enemy and therefore removing the invulnerable save. The fact the vexilus has the same range as bullgryns means their more likely to stay together.

I'm looking at running the bullgryns with the mauls for higher strength (and cheaper). They'll still have the frag grenades. A large unit of bullgryns would be ideal for the grenadier stratagem allowing a full squad to fire off 9 x D6 S4 AP0 shots at 6" for the price of a CP. Thats not nothing... I don't have the rule book to hand but isn't there a rule that means grenades into a building always get 6 attacks???

 Peregrine wrote:
So, how important are the screens in 8th edition? I played armored company in 6th-7th, but now it seems like there are too many turn-1 charge threats. Is it possible to succeed with tanks and few/no infantry units? Or is buying/painting 50 basic guardsmen a prerequisite for every list?

(This is for standard 40k, not any particular tournament house rules.)

You need some kind of screen or you will lose against a competent opponent. Some things you might want to consider as a screen, depending upon how many drops you want to add to your army (all tanks can be very low giving you a good chance of getting the +1):

One large conscript squad deployed in a line
Scout sentinels
Space marine scouts if you are comfortable with soup
Infantry squads

 Peregrine wrote:
So, how important are the screens in 8th edition? I played armored company in 6th-7th, but now it seems like there are too many turn-1 charge threats. Is it possible to succeed with tanks and few/no infantry units? Or is buying/painting 50 basic guardsmen a prerequisite for every list?

(This is for standard 40k, not any particular tournament house rules.)

Conventional wisdom is that they're required. Some users around here have claimed that they've run tank companies with zero infantry overwhelmingly successfully, but honestly if that were that the case I would find their opponents pretty suspect, especially when those users claim they're undefeated after more than ten games of doing it. Either someone is telling stories, or someone's opponents have a hard time learning their lesson.

Don't get me wrong, a zero screen list COULD work, but it'd be very situational. I've run successful GK + Scion lists that didn't have any screen, but there's a whole lot of lists that would have easily ended me by the end of turn 1.

Alpharius Walks wrote:
You need some kind of screen or you will lose against a competent opponent. Some things you might want to consider as a screen, depending upon how many drops you want to add to your army (all tanks can be very low giving you a good chance of getting the +1):

One large conscript squad deployed in a line
Scout sentinels
Space marine scouts if you are comfortable with soup
Infantry squads

Zero interest in soup. How do the Sentinels work as a screen? Is it sufficient to just have a larger no deep strike bubble, even though melee units can easily move around them to reach a target (since their footprint is very low)?

 Peregrine wrote:

Alpharius Walks wrote:
You need some kind of screen or you will lose against a competent opponent. Some things you might want to consider as a screen, depending upon how many drops you want to add to your army (all tanks can be very low giving you a good chance of getting the +1):

One large conscript squad deployed in a line
Scout sentinels
Space marine scouts if you are comfortable with soup
Infantry squads

Zero interest in soup. How do the Sentinels work as a screen? Is it sufficient to just have a larger no deep strike bubble, even though melee units can easily move around them to reach a target (since their footprint is very low)?

depends on deployment and list. Some lists, like the death company shenanigans that can charge 3d6", will just hop over any screen you have anyways, meaning that on the drop at least sentinels work about as well as guardsmen. However after the initial drop I think you'd find infantry more useful. Sentinels big advantage is that big scout move at the start of the game, but it only works if your opponent doesn't bring things like scouts to shut you down.

I think after turn 1 you'll find that some infantry would help, but on the other hand any list worth it's salt can kill 60 guardsmen a turn easy. You would probably find any guardsmen in a position to screen would be cleared turn 1 and you're back at square one anyways. My main list runs about 120 line infantry as the screen (many have plasma lascannon for additional firepower, while others are barebones), about 20-30 specialist guardsmen, 3 scout sentinels, 4 russe's and a manticore. Usually 1/2 to 2/3rds of my guardsmen are dead by turn 3. That said I rarely lose my tanks unless I'm stuck on a very unfavorable deployment like Dawn of war. If I can get something like hammer and anvil, I won't have a tank even at risk of being charged till turn 3 even if my entire screen had died turn 1. If you can keep the tanks alive and firing to that point you're golden, especially if you can kill the mobile assault units in turn 2-3 to let you move up. It doesn't matter that I have maybe 40 infantry alive, all my tanks are up and running and at that point I've either neutered the enemy's AT or I lost the game because I did something sloppy/stupid.

I've been trying pure tank companies at a thousand points and found the only way to keep pure tanks alive is to spread out and accept that against an alpha charge list you will lose a couple on the first turn. Having cheap vehicles like sentinels or hellhounds to act as bait would be your best bet more than likely, unless you have baneblades. The tanks must be more than 4" apart to keep the enemy from piling into additional tanks at the end of combat. You're still at somewhat of a risk to multicharges but at least there the opponent has to split his attacks.

I'm sure there are some treadheads who have some additional tips, that's just what I've noticed as an infantry player. Tanks have a much steeper learning curve in my opinion as a pure army. Feels very different from running them without infantry support.

It seems like trying to protect my infantry from morale losses is a lost cause at this point.

I've run infantry squads, next to a commander + regimental standard, + Catachan Doctrine giving +1ld to units within 6" of an officer, and my units still die almost 100% of the time from morale. Typically the units either get wiped by some crazy shooting, or die the rest of the way from morale, or both.

Anybody have any tricks up their sleeve for this? I've started looking at infantry squads as essentially ablative wounds, just enough to survive one turn of enemy shooting.

 Cothonian wrote:
It seems like trying to protect my infantry from morale losses is a lost cause at this point.

I've run infantry squads, next to a commander + regimental standard, + Catachan Doctrine giving +1ld to units within 6" of an officer, and my units still die almost 100% of the time from morale. Typically the units either get wiped by some crazy shooting, or die the rest of the way from morale, or both.

Anybody have any tricks up their sleeve for this? I've started looking at infantry squads as essentially ablative wounds, just enough to survive one turn of enemy shooting.

I don't have any sage advice but i actually like that morale is an issue for guard. It should be. Just wish some other armies, where it fits the background, would suffer from it.

 Cothonian wrote:
It seems like trying to protect my infantry from morale losses is a lost cause at this point.

It really is. The IG solution to losses is not to dump points into trying to prevent losses, it's to bring more copies of the unit so that when the first one dies you still have replacements. How many points are you investing in those morale buffs, compared to just bringing another infantry squad or three? And, with only 10-man squads, how effective is that damaged squad you're trying to protect once it has taken enough losses for morale to be a significant issue?

If the unit needs to survive for mission purposes or wanting to keep a heavy/special around the stratagems will save a couple per turn. If it is not important just let it die and bring redundant squads instead of morale buffs.

As far as scout sentinels, they are not always valuable but against any opponents that rely on deep strike (and equivalent psychic powers) or outflanking to get close you can use the scout move to build a huge first turn denial bubble.