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 DoomMouse wrote:
Someone at GW spent a LONG time talking about the values of arguably the worst unit in the guard codex...

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2018/04/13/much-ado-about-deathstrikes-apr-12gw-homepage-post-3/

That article just made me realise that the earthshaker outranges the deathstrike, so either the deathstrike is a really bad ICBM or the earthshaker has a stupendous range, or GW's fluff is once again at odds with in game rules.

 DoomMouse wrote:
Someone at GW spent a LONG time talking about the values of arguably the worst unit in the guard codex...

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2018/04/13/much-ado-about-deathstrikes-apr-12gw-homepage-post-3/

I don't know if it's the worst. It's just meant for casual play. Same for Sly Marbo. They can hit waay above their weight class but are too swingy for tournament play.

Eh, they convinced me. Not like I was doing anything else with all the CP I was getting from the brigade

It was good for a laugh. Not like they're having trouble shifting the kit considering it shared a box with the manticore. It's pretty clearly meant to be a joke article.

 DoomMouse wrote:
Someone at GW spent a LONG time talking about the values of arguably the worst unit in the guard codex...

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2018/04/13/much-ado-about-deathstrikes-apr-12gw-homepage-post-3/

Knotley isn't a GW employee. They do Community submitted articles on occasion, he's someone who has played a few times on their Livestreams though.

Fair enough. It was quite a fun read. I can't help but think that if I ran a deathstrike it would basically never launch, and if it did turn 4 would be a bit late to have much impact on the game, and they didn't talk about any of the drawbacks of a huge investment in them. I wish their rules were just a bit better to justify their use!

Thinking about starting an Astra Militarum army. Is mass infantry remotely competitive?

jotace wrote:
Thinking about starting an Astra Militarum army. Is mass infantry remotely competitive?

What kind of format are you playing in? Local gaming store? ITC?

 DoomMouse wrote:
Fair enough. It was quite a fun read. I can't help but think that if I ran a deathstrike it would basically never launch, and if it did turn 4 would be a bit late to have much impact on the game, and they didn't talk about any of the drawbacks of a huge investment in them. I wish their rules were just a bit better to justify their use!

I mean, he did actually talk about the drawbacks and how it's really a "narrative" army rather than a competitive one.

Alpharius Walks wrote:

jotace wrote:
Thinking about starting an Astra Militarum army. Is mass infantry remotely competitive?

What kind of format are you playing in? Local gaming store? ITC?

Local GW store, just rulebook and chapter approved missions, escalation leagues or games under 2.000

Yes, mass infantry should be perfectly fine in that environment almost no matter how you build it. You can easily have excellent board and objective control with plenty of potential damage output.

In a more competitive and timed environment it becomes a lot trickier to play and I would only recommend it if you know you can play fast using tricks like movement trays and pre-measured dice blocks.

jotace wrote:

Alpharius Walks wrote:

jotace wrote:
Thinking about starting an Astra Militarum army. Is mass infantry remotely competitive?

What kind of format are you playing in? Local gaming store? ITC?

Local GW store, just rulebook and chapter approved missions, escalation leagues or games under 2.000

In that kind of environment you'll be fine. Infantry struggles more in ITC and timed missions but does very well in casual games, especially end of game scoring. Maelstrom is trickier, you'll need to consider ways to get speed for objectives like outflankers, Stormtroopers, and sentinels.

Lots of IG Cadian infantry works well in my local meta. I run nine infantry squads with no upgrades, two commissars, and four company commanders. Together with my two hellhounds and a scout sentinel, they are great for keeping the enemy a good distance away. The enemy is never able to bring reinforcements into my backfield in Matched Play. As noted by others, the drawback is game length and another issue is storing and transporting all of the models. I use Ironheart Artisan movement trays and pack my entire army in one battlefoam cardboard storage box with three foam trays.

The rest of the army is a Pask Plasma Executioner, three Leman Russ battle tanks, two Wyverns, a Primaris, a sniper SWS, and a Spearhead detachment with Ordos Hereticus inquisitors, acolytes, and Jokero.

I also use orders on Mod Cubes, IG cards, and lots of groups of small dice to speed play.

You always want a few infantry minimum to screen and stop deep striking.
Infantry heavy tends to be a very good counter to alpha strike down here.
The ability to disengage from combat really helps. Also properly place your units so the enemy has a hard time consolidating into the next wave or keep enough space between waves of infantry to fall back and have the other unit engage the enemy with shooting.

My favorite tactic so far is simply a shadowsword. Plop it down with psyker, atlas, (sometimes trojan), and tech priest support. This becomes a major target. Jerry rig it every turn healing for a total of 2d3+1, command point rerolling in the movement phase, averaging 5-6 wounds healed. The enemy usually takes all their firepower at it, still survives for 2-3 turns.(CP reroll some saves when required).

This gives enough of a distraction for my Pask (Punisher) and 3 Lemon russ Conquerers to wipe out most of my enemies. If the shadowsword goes down all healing to the rest of my tanks.

If you don't like playing tanks, there are enough heavy weapon team support mixed with scions(for obj grabbing), to shut down most problems. Only issue I've had with 200+ troops is running out of table room and not having big obstacles to hide my characters from snipers.

Hello fellow defenders of the Imperium,

since I came to the conclusion that pure blood angels are not able to win games, I was thinking about adding 500 points of Astra Militarum. My main problem is the ability to clear annoying screen units before I charge with my DC: I was thinking about getting 9 heavy weapon platform with a mortar and 30 guards to protect them, using the cadian doctrine. Is it going to be enough? For anti-tank I have my 3 devastators squads with lascannon

If you are going to play ITC missions with this at some point just remember that every infantry squad should have a heavy weapons team because of The Reaper secondary.

Have you considered something like the below? It is around 500 points on the nose without the priest. You can reduce the infantry count give the sergeants power weapons if you want or want to put specials/heavies in the squads. My thought was that Cadian does not do you a lot of good since you want to be closing and Catachan + Straken gives you lots of S4 attacks.

Regardless of regiment you could also take a conscript blob to buff with the psyker via Mental Fortitude for morale and outflank it and an officer with the dagger relic. You might also like Tallarn for Ambush.

It might be doing some mathhammer to see if the IG is really better (especially when comparing deployment options) than just taking a bunch of pistol/ccw scouts.

Spearhead <CADIAN>

Primaris Psyker or Company Commander
x3 Mortars
x3 Mortars
x3 Mortars

Battalion <CATACHAN>

Straken
Company Commander with Powerfist
Priest if you want to go crazy
Infantry Squad
Infantry Squad
Infantry Squad
Infantry Squad
Infantry Squad
Infantry Squad

Spado wrote:
Hello fellow defenders of the Imperium,
since I came to the conclusion that pure blood angels are not able to win games...

WHAT??? BA is one of the most powerful armies at the moment! The only reason to have allies for it is to get more CP for you excellent stratagems (3D6 charge or insta-jumping across the battlefield to take critical objective and so on). You should be totally able to crush your enemies with BA force and if not -- just learn how to use your forces. Take Death Company, Sanguinary Guard add some characters (Captain with hammer, Meph, banner-dude or Sanguinius) and wreck faces left and right. And you do not need any anti-tank other than a good old thunder-hammer in right hands.

AstraVlad wrote:

Spado wrote:
Hello fellow defenders of the Imperium,
since I came to the conclusion that pure blood angels are not able to win games...

WHAT??? BA is one of the most powerful armies at the moment! The only reason to have allies for it is to get more CP for you excellent stratagems (3D6 charge or insta-jumping across the battlefield to take critical objective and so on). You should be totally able to crush your enemies with BA force and if not -- just learn how to use your forces. Take Death Company, Sanguinary Guard add some characters (Captain with hammer, Meph, banner-dude or Sanguinius) and wreck faces left and right. And you do not need any anti-tank other than a good old thunder-hammer in right hands.

Nice trolling, now go back to your cave and stay there.

Spado wrote:

Nice trolling, now go back to your cave and stay there.

Trolling? Are you serious? Everything I wrote is based on personal experience. Or you can just look for Adepticon results and see how well BA played there. They ARE a top-level army now. One of three I personally see as most difficult to play against with my Imperial Guard (other two being Eldar and new Necron).

If you do not believe it - it is not my problem, it is your lost opportunity to utilise a power of your army in full.

New FAQ changes. Commissars to 15 pts and Lord Commissars to 30. Plus 3 more points per Battalion. Not too shabby for us guard players.

Also summary execution is no longer mandatory.

Gnollu wrote:
Also summary execution is no longer mandatory.

I totally missed that part! Sounds like Commissars are an option again.

Commissars are back to being decent leadership bubbles now at least. I might bring one or two back now.

 necrontyrOG wrote:
New FAQ changes. Commissars to 15 pts and Lord Commissars to 30. Plus 3 more points per Battalion. Not too shabby for us guard players.

+2 for a battalion.

Also, they forgot about the Elysian Commissar, so, i'm now slightly more worried that they are planning on squatting the model line as per the rumour :(


Automatically Appended Next Post:

AstraVlad wrote:

Spado wrote:

Nice trolling, now go back to your cave and stay there.

Trolling? Are you serious? Everything I wrote is based on personal experience. Or you can just look for Adepticon results and see how well BA played there. They ARE a top-level army now. One of three I personally see as most difficult to play against with my Imperial Guard (other two being Eldar and new Necron).

If you do not believe it - it is not my problem, it is your lost opportunity to utilise a power of your army in full.

The problem with BA now, is that they can't deep strike on turn 1. If you're playing against BA, all you have to do is swap the mid field table and your deployment zone in turn 1, and he can't deep strike anywhere close to being useful even with the 3d6 charge.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
So, i just saw the Index Imperium 2 FAQ update...

Q: Can Tallarn Rough Riders benefit from the Tallarn
Regimental Doctrine in Codex: Astra Militarum?
A: No.

RIP non codex units in the future.

Somehow, IG actually came out on top with this FAQ. I think we benefit greatly from character targeting, and we at least break even with the smite rule and the rule of three. Commissars going from useless to "meh," coupled with a points drop, make them interesting choices for cheap brigades.

The big loss is going to be capping ourselves at three heavy weapon teams, which is just annoying.

We will now rarely outspend our CPs, to the point where I think we can look harder at non-Grand Stragist warlord traits. Especially since there is less reason to run spearheads, I see building a lot of Brigade/Battalion combos with a cadian warlord for Superior Tactical training. (Hell.. maybe even Creed can make a comeback?)




Automatically Appended Next Post:

Kdash wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:
So, i just saw the Index Imperium 2 FAQ update...

Q: Can Tallarn Rough Riders benefit from the Tallarn
Regimental Doctrine in Codex: Astra Militarum?
A: No.

RIP non codex units in the future.

I dont' think its because they're index units, but because they are neither infantry nor vehicles, and doctrines only affect those two keywords.

 Stus67 wrote:
Commissars are back to being decent leadership bubbles now at least. I might bring one or two back now.

That's my thinking as well. I'll be adding a few to the painting queue for the Zenobian 7th. If they're no longer actively counter-productive they'll be fine for friendlier games which is what I tend to play.

Is there no more grinding advance?

 Naix wrote:
Is there no more grinding advance?

What? Why would that be changed? As far as I can tell, grinding advance is alive and well.

Kdash wrote:

The problem with BA now, is that they can't deep strike on turn 1. If you're playing against BA, all you have to do is swap the mid field table and your deployment zone in turn 1, and he can't deep strike anywhere close to being useful even with the 3d6 charge.

It's a Beta rule and probably will not be mandatory for half a year (if it ever will). It's plenty of time to win some events, have fun and prepare some new tactics for a future changes.

By the way, have you noticed an auxiliary grenade launchers for Elisia (free!) and ability to take two pistols for Krieg? Both options look interesting.

AstraVlad wrote:

Kdash wrote:

The problem with BA now, is that they can't deep strike on turn 1. If you're playing against BA, all you have to do is swap the mid field table and your deployment zone in turn 1, and he can't deep strike anywhere close to being useful even with the 3d6 charge.

It's a Beta rule and probably will not be mandatory for half a year (if it ever will). It's plenty of time to win some events, have fun and prepare some new tactics for a future changes.

By the way, have you noticed an auxiliary grenade launchers for Elisia (free!) and ability to take two pistols for Krieg? Both options look interesting.

I fully expect all the beta rules to be in effect at the london GT and another event i'm going to this year, i'm afraid :/

Yeah, noticed that! Pretty interesting. It's also interesting how Elysians can deep strike in valkryies and then disembark. Not sure how useful it'll be but, interesting.