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BrianDavion wrote: I still think making conscripts squads of 10 would be best. the effect won't change too much, but it will make giving all 50 the comissair bubble much harder.
I'd actually consider that a bigger nerf than some suggested. I feel like they struggle as screening units, and don't gain much extra form leaders. 20 might work alright though.
daedalus wrote: I ran conscripts as a test once because everyone was going mental about them. I wasn't any more impressed than I was in previous editions.
My current plan is to do what I'm doing now. My "conscripts" are infantry squads with plasma guns, plasma pistols, and power swords. I have a couple commissars and company commanders to give them orders and reliable staying power. I spent a few more points and get the exact same effect, except they've become significantly more dangerous in shooting, and you get a bit less wound allocation shenanigans. It's basically what I've been doing since 5th edition. Only difference is that instead of Chimeras with vets, I have scions
I face infantry squads like that and have no issue. I can wipe a couple squads easily in a turn, and that actually leaves the commissar and commander vulnerable, whereas wound allocation basically guarantees I'm not punching holes in conscripts, not while my opponent controls who dies. It feels like I actually have counter play options available basically, and the pricing feels less horrifically abusive in the first place.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2017/07/19 04:08:45
Tyel wrote: The problem is this assumption conscripts are bad at killing.
With orders they are not.
Warning mathhammer which some will disagree with - ignore if its going to cause upset.
Take your typical conscript formation vs a blob of 30 ork boys. Well lets be generous and say the Ork Boys start 24" away and get to go first, covering about 9", so they are now 15" away.
The guard player shoots with FRFSRF and does 100/9*5/6= 9.3~ wounds. Lets say 9 die.
The Ork player now moves forward another 5" and is 10" away. He can shoot some sluggas with the closest models. Maybe they get a kill but a good chance they don't.
Now they need a 9" charge. But they get a full burst of overwatch.
Will the whole conscript squad be in rapid fire range? Probably not at this range. So lets say a third are in 12". Another 3 orks die.
So now you are looking at a 9" charge. Initially this is pretty bad odds. If you factor in the ere we go reroll plus the ability to play with command dice its probably better. Its definitely not however guaranteed.
If they connect will it count? Sort of, but not really. Lets be generous and say all 18 Orks get into combat (and there is a good chance they won't). Well they kill 16 conscripts. The Conscripts kill another 3 Orks leaving them with 15. A further Conscript gets blammed reducing them to 33.
The 33 conscripts now leave the combat and get back into the fight in rapid fire range. Killing a further 6 Orks and reducing them to 9.
9 pistol shots kills another conscript. The Orks charge and all 32 are in rapid fire range. So another 3 Orks die. 6 Orks attack killing 5 conscripts. The remaining 27 conscripts attack back and do 2.5 wounds on the Orks - lets say 2.
There are now 4 Orks left, good chance to lose another couple to morale. The conscripts blam another member.
Next turn the conscripts leave again, rapid fire and finish off the orks.
If the Ork player's charge had failed - or the Conscripts had got off an initial volley at 24" range then it would be even more one sided. The only way the Orks win is if they get Da Jump to move far more rapidly across the table, or more likely get much closer while being ignored due to the Guard player shooting at other things.
Its the same with gaunts. If Homagaunts (or Genestealers) can get the double run boost so they can cover the whole table and get a charge off without ever taking a shooting round then sure they are lethal.
If they fail the charge though they are toast. A 200 lasgun volley will kill almost 28 gaunts and nearly 15 genestealers. If a few stragglers from that get into combat with you its not a problem - they are not going to eat through the conscripts.
Stick them in a stand up fight with other basic shooting troops. In every scenario I can think off the conscripts come off better due to their incredibly cheapness and FRFSRF.
As I see it the solution is that conscripts shouldn't be able to take orders. I'd also question whether they need 5+ armour save (but then brimstones definitely shouldn't have their 4++).
I can get 37 real guardsman for the same cost of the conscripts. Round it up to 40 Real guardsmen will hit on 4+, rather than a 5+.
As per your theoretical, at 24" now I'm hitting you with 80 shots, 40 hits, 13 wounds, 11 damage. At which point you still have 26 boyz left by the way. At 12" I'm hitting you for double that. Total cost is 220 points for the two company commanders, and the 40 guardsman.
But would you be happier if orks could walk straight across a field and kill an enemy unit of equivalent points? An enemy unit which happens to be a shooty unit? Then we'll have the IG players screaming their units are worthless because you just walk up and kill them without worrying about anything!
The problem with hordes in general may be the lack of scalability of formerly-template weapons - where you could really punish large hordes before, most template weapons will struggle to kill large groups. Could add a rule to horde units like: Tightly packed! Roll a D6 for every wound if this unit has 15 models or more; on a 5+ the unit suffers a mortal wound in addition to normal damage.
I'll take dealing with odd looking mobs of troops over the excessively time consuming and impossible to point balance template weapon concept. I love not having to futz around with the templates anymore. I wish 8th edition fantasy had ditched them too.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2017/07/19 04:15:28
GhostRecon wrote: Don't think I saw any suggestions/feedback (or really anything to suggest the post was even seen ) as to the two ideas I'd thrown out; feel like, paired, they might balance the 'horde units' a bit better (like Conscripts):
The problem with Conscripts is their synergy with Commissars; with their ability to reduce morale problems to one dead Conscript no matter how horribly you maim the unit itself it becomes harder to attrit them down.
I've mentioned before just giving Conscripts another ability specific to Commissars: Get back in line you rabble!; Instead of restricting casualties due to failed morale checks to one, Commissars and Lord Commissars using the Summary Execution rule halve (rounding up, to a minimum of one) all casualties caused by morale to Conscript units.
The problem with hordes in general may be the lack of scalability of formerly-template weapons - where you could really punish large hordes before, most template weapons will struggle to kill large groups. Could add a rule to horde units like: Tightly packed! Roll a D6 for every wound if this unit has 15 models or more; on a 5+ the unit suffers a mortal wound in addition to normal damage.
Having commissar's be less effective is viable, but it's a question fo whether rules like that are the best way to handle it if other more basic adjustments will do it.
I do think template weapons scaling with size could be a good idea, but at the same time I'm reluctant to do that while other armies (again tyranids and orks) don't feel like they need the extra punishment.
I face infantry squads like that and have no issue. I can wipe a couple squads easily in a turn, and that actually leaves the commissar and commander vulnerable, whereas wound allocation basically guarantees I'm not punching holes in conscripts, not while my opponent controls who dies. It feels like I actually have counter play options available basically, and the pricing feels less horrifically abusive in the first place.
Which is crazy to me, because I watched GK literally bounce off of them. Sure, they were gone by the end of it, but the rest of my army saw to that, and then some. I might have given up 5-6 kill points worth of things that game, and it was less than half my army. As a GK player as well, I feel like there wasn't too much better he could have done against me.
We've gone back and forth with various hypotheticals, but what armies do you actually play, dude? I've not got the number of games in yet that I wished I would have, so I'm curious to what your counters are.to infantry with something other than Eldar or GK..
Conscripts are less effective than most people are afraid of, they have trouble getting in range together and a lot of math hammer throws around the 200 shots from 50 conscripts number but there's pretty much never a full strength conscript unit in rapid fire range with orders left to use in the course of a normal game.
If something is too strong this is the edition where things can and will get rebalanced, but I'm not sure where the line is here because i don't think anyone here is really afraid of conscripts. They're afraid of conscripts backed up by artillery and buff characters and maybe some deepstriking plasma units but that stuff all together is kind of just a good army list of synergizing units using a strategy? The other couple problem lists are much worse culprits of point/rule imbalance so if they do alter conscripts i hope the nerf bat is swung very softly. If someone had asked me before the edition what the most viable list that uses conscripts should look like thematically this close to the ideal and i'm pretty happy with it being one of the big archetypes to beat.
Howscat wrote: So what is everyone's plan for when conscripts get nerfed? IG players will still be bringing 150 infantry to the table but these ones will have flamers and heavy bolters on them. They will also have plenty of points to spam artillery and tanks. instead of taking heavy bolter sponson on their tanks they will put those bolters on their men. If you are struggling to kill 150 conscripts what are you going to do against ones with heavy weapons? Oh and they have better leadership and ballistic skill. Guard players will not struggle to get the number of orders or commissars they need. Can you comfortably kill 150 men that are T3 5+ models with your army?
IG players will not blink an eye from running 150 conscripts to 150 guardsman. What are you going to change about your play style, weapons loadouts, or unit choice to deal with the "threatening" guardsman?
Thank you. Go ahead & nerf conscripts even though their point cost is the same as 7th where IG languished. Literally changes nothing. I'll still be fielding 100-150+ infantry. Fact of the matter is, most guard players are choosing to run heavy infantry this edition because IG vehicle costs are outrageous & most of the Leman Russ variants are not worth fielding. They weren't worth their point cost in 7th and needed a 20-30% point reduction. Instead their damage output stayed the same or decreased & their point cost increased. So whereas before IG players had 1000pts of armor, now they are rolling with 1000pts of infantry.
Howscat wrote: So what is everyone's plan for when conscripts get nerfed? IG players will still be bringing 150 infantry to the table but these ones will have flamers and heavy bolters on them. They will also have plenty of points to spam artillery and tanks. instead of taking heavy bolter sponson on their tanks they will put those bolters on their men. If you are struggling to kill 150 conscripts what are you going to do against ones with heavy weapons? Oh and they have better leadership and ballistic skill. Guard players will not struggle to get the number of orders or commissars they need. Can you comfortably kill 150 men that are T3 5+ models with your army?
IG players will not blink an eye from running 150 conscripts to 150 guardsman. What are you going to change about your play style, weapons loadouts, or unit choice to deal with the "threatening" guardsman?
Thank you. Go ahead & nerf conscripts even though their point cost is the same as 7th where IG languished. Literally changes nothing. I'll still be fielding 100-150+ infantry. Fact of the matter is, most guard players are choosing to run heavy infantry this edition because IG vehicle costs are outrageous & most of the Leman Russ variants are not worth fielding. They weren't worth their point cost in 7th and needed a 20-30% point reduction. Instead their damage output stayed the same or decreased & their point cost increased. So whereas before IG players had 1000pts of armor, now they are rolling with 1000pts of infantry.
Wooo! And I look forward to having to fight against it with 100 Space Marines. Massed infantry all around!
I face infantry squads like that and have no issue. I can wipe a couple squads easily in a turn, and that actually leaves the commissar and commander vulnerable, whereas wound allocation basically guarantees I'm not punching holes in conscripts, not while my opponent controls who dies. It feels like I actually have counter play options available basically, and the pricing feels less horrifically abusive in the first place.
Which is crazy to me, because I watched GK literally bounce off of them. Sure, they were gone by the end of it, but the rest of my army saw to that, and then some. I might have given up 5-6 kill points worth of things that game, and it was less than half my army. As a GK player as well, I feel like there wasn't too much better he could have done against me.
We've gone back and forth with various hypotheticals, but what armies do you actually play, dude? I've not got the number of games in yet that I wished I would have, so I'm curious to what your counters are.to infantry with something other than Eldar or GK..
Well, my CSM/DG haven't been getting much usage, so I'm not 100% sure what works best. My army is in a bit of a weird spot since the edition change hit. The plague drone is alright, and noise marines and berserkers worked well for anti infantry. I've borrowed some of the new tsons terminators and found they were good.
For my admech, I've been using snipers, then relying on infiltrators, kastelans, and onagers. Infiltrators are my favorites, they are expensive but not absurdly so, and can easily clear a weakened unit with their pistols before charging something else. Icarus array onager sbacked by Cawl are actually really good anti infantry, if the enemy lacks air units to shoot at. They are better for their points than heavy phosphor onagers weirdly.
Vanguard I want to like, but morale is such an issue for them, and we can't afford the slots for MSU. So mostly they have been retired. I am considering some of the electro gauntlet tech priests instead, but am unsure.
Commissar Benny wrote: Thank you. Go ahead & nerf conscripts even though their point cost is the same as 7th where IG languished. Literally changes nothing. I'll still be fielding 100-150+ infantry. Fact of the matter is, most guard players are choosing to run heavy infantry this edition because IG vehicle costs are outrageous & most of the Leman Russ variants are not worth fielding. They weren't worth their point cost in 7th and needed a 20-30% point reduction. Instead their damage output stayed the same or decreased & their point cost increased. So whereas before IG players had 1000pts of armor, now they are rolling with 1000pts of infantry.
Have you noticed those same nerfs to template weapons did a ;lot to make your conscripts more survivable? Plus the nerfs to ap meaning they get way more usage out of their armor? They can now take orders without a leadership test even!
Saying they'd be useless at the same cost as in 7th ignores how many buffs conscripts received due to the edition change.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/07/19 06:11:29
Fair enough. CSM have been a blind spot for me this edition since I don't play anyone who has them since I gave up on competitive play. I never bothered to learn Mechanicus either because I quit in early 7th because I took one look at formations and saw the beginning of the end well before Mechanicus was even a realization..
Give me a day. Let me see if I can come up with a list with one of your armies that I think can either deal with or ignore 1-2 conscript squads. I mean, I gotta work in about 5 hours, but I think i'll find time to take a look at it, and if I fail, then I just make my argument look more like the TFG one, right?
As an aside, if anyone has any reasonable counters for me, let me know. I have the stuff to prove it so long as I know what it is.
Berzerkers do a solid number on Conscripts since they get to fight twice and have a bonus natural attack, plus a chainsword for 3 Attacks per model, twice for 6 total. Hackttyhackittyhackittyhackitty.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/07/19 07:13:14
SilverAlien wrote: Have you noticed those same nerfs to template weapons did a ;lot to make your conscripts more survivable? Plus the nerfs to ap meaning they get way more usage out of their armor? They can now take orders without a leadership test even! Saying they'd be useless at the same cost as in 7th ignores how many buffs conscripts received due to the edition change.
The nerf to template weapons has been a boon to all horde armies yes. I also agree that the changes to AP on many weapons have allowed horde armies to get more usage out of their armor. The leadership change was also a very nice improvement for IG players. My reference to useless units in 8th edition was referring to Leman Russ tanks. There is very little reason to take them. They required a point reduction in 7th, had no increase in damage output in 8th, yet increased in points.
Now if we were to judge conscripts solely based off what we just listed above, yeah I could see how many might feel like they are OP. What they don't realize is that the inclusion of conscripts as a troop choice came at a price. Combined squads is gone. We use to be able to take multiple infantry squads & combine them. You can't do that anymore. That is big deal. If we could do that in 8th edition that would be amazing.
If they want to increase the cost of conscripts to 4ppm fine. Here is the problem though. If conscripts are 4ppm, infantry squads need to be 5ppm. If infantry squads are 5ppm, the cost of heavy weapons teams increase as well. So now, by increasing the cost of 1 unit, you just increased the cost of 1/2 the army.
The whole point of the guard since its inception has been to "drown your opponent in bodies", to win through war of attrition & for the first time the tabletop accurately reflects that & the community at large is losing their mind.
Benny don't get all hyperbolic; at this point its about a unit that is overperforming, it needs to change. Can you list one reason why conscripts should stay EXACTLY as they are?
Because a strategy that takes as little thought as "spam infantry, move forward, win" isn't exactly compelling in the first place. An army whose central element is that should have really obvious counters which blow it out of the water.
Which is true when nids, orks, and demons try the "drown you in bodies" strategy. But for guard... nothing clears conscripts efficiently. Nothing. No infantry unit has the absurd resilience of conscripts, and they have better damage output than many thanks to FRFSRF.
I don't know how to make this more clear, it could be effective without being broken. It currently is broken. You can look at every other unit and army and see nothing takes that sort of dedicated firepower to kill. It's overpowered.
SilverAlien wrote: Tbh I actually think commissar not effecting conscripts would be too much. Reduced effectiveness would be acceptable however.
6+ armor is much the same as 4ppm, still leaves them a bit better than many compareable units, but in a much better place balance wise. No orders is also probably needed.
It could also simply be that Commissars are too good for their points.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/07/19 08:17:27
Wake. Rise. Destroy. Conquer.
We have done so once. We will do so again.
SilverAlien wrote: Tbh I actually think commissar not effecting conscripts would be too much. Reduced effectiveness would be acceptable however.
6+ armor is much the same as 4ppm, still leaves them a bit better than many compareable units, but in a much better place balance wise. No orders is also probably needed.
It could also simply be that Commissars are too good for their points.
The problem is the Commissars is fine with 10 man squads, but without any scaling, their ability becomes too strong with 50 man blobs. If Commissars got a price hike that goes beyond a mild slap on the wrist, it would reach a point where there is no point to taking one with standard Infantry Squads. That is why the best ideas in my opinion simply add a scaling to the ability, as the Commissar has to BLAM more ill trained Conscripts to keep them in order than he would with a standard well trained squad.
crimsondave wrote: Can we wait just a little while before we nerf IG? I haven't even been able to play a game yet. Last edition there was no reason for us Guard players to even waste our time playing a game against Eldar, Necrons, or most Marine lists. Can we please be good for a little while?
This is a very disappointing thing to see. So you're fine with the game being unbalanced as long as you're the one on top. Some of us would rather there just not be any blatantly busted units, ours or the opponent's. Y'know, because some of us have some measure of sportsmanship.
I have a question for those of you who have had frustrating games against conscripts: what did they actually do?
I ask because I keep hearing that they are used as bubble-wrap for artillery/tanks and that they were a pain to kill.
But, given that intervening models don't provide cover in this edition (and there's no way conscripts can completely block LoS to a tank), could you not have just shot the artillery and largely ignored the conscripts? I would assume that the bulk of the enemy fire was from the tanks/artillery and not the conscripts (otherwise, why bother even using the former?), so by taking those out first you leave the enemy with a unit that is quite tough but severely lacking in firepower.
blood reaper wrote: I will respect human rights and trans people but I will never under any circumstances use the phrase 'folks' or 'ya'll'. I would rather be killed by firing squad.
the_scotsman wrote: Yeah, when i read the small novel that is the Death Guard unit options and think about resolving the attacks from a melee-oriented min size death guard squad, the thing that springs to mind is "Accessible!"
Argive wrote: GW seems to have a crystal ball and just pulls hairbrained ideas out of their backside for the most part.
You're not. If you're worried about your opponent using 'fake' rules, you're having fun the wrong way. This hobby isn't about rules. It's about buying Citadel miniatures.
Please report to your nearest GW store for attitude readjustment. Take your wallet.
SilverAlien wrote: Tbh I actually think commissar not effecting conscripts would be too much. Reduced effectiveness would be acceptable however.
6+ armor is much the same as 4ppm, still leaves them a bit better than many compareable units, but in a much better place balance wise. No orders is also probably needed.
It could also simply be that Commissars are too good for their points.
Commissars are only too good for Conscripts. Normal Guardsmen units are max 10 models at Ld7, To have a chance of actually losing a few models, you will need to basically roll above a 8 on the morale die with modifier, which has a 50% chance if 4 models die. Instead, you pay 31 points to make sure that you only lose 1 model instead of 1-3 in this case, in a unit that has already lost ~40% of its fighting strength. If you benefit 4 squads, which is probably among the best possible scenarios, you earn your points back if you would have lost 3 models per squad to morale in a game. In this case, they are only good and definitely not "too good". Some minor increase could perhaps be justified, but when you start being able to buy another infantry squad, it's gone too far.
Instead, if you want to nerf them even more, just increase it to 1 executed model per 10 models in the starting unit (or the actual leadership loss result, whichever is lowest). So a full Conscript squad would lose at most 5 models, whereas an Infantry squad, Special Weapons squad or any other squad would only lose 1.
~5000 points of IG and DKoK
I'm awful at reading private messages, so just reply to the threads I'm visiting.
vipoid wrote: I have a question for those of you who have had frustrating games against conscripts: what did they actually do?
I ask because I keep hearing that they are used as bubble-wrap for artillery/tanks and that they were a pain to kill.
But, given that intervening models don't provide cover in this edition (and there's no way conscripts can completely block LoS to a tank), could you not have just shot the artillery and largely ignored the conscripts? I would assume that the bulk of the enemy fire was from the tanks/artillery and not the conscripts (otherwise, why bother even using the former?), so by taking those out first you leave the enemy with a unit that is quite tough but severely lacking in firepower.
I mean, yeah, Conscripts don't do a whole lot in the face of lots of long-range shooting, but not everyone is running an army that stands at 48" and shoots. They're excellent against CC units -- though again IME they're not that much better for this than regular infantry squads -- and the standard counter to the kind of long-range firepower Guard can put out, for armies that can't straight-up outshoot them, is to tie up their artillery in CC. Of course they also prevent Deep Striking, and it's very hard to remove a Conscript screen -- you can kill a squad of Deep Strike denying Ratlings very quickly, but the Conscripts are going to stop you from coming in anywhere near where you want to be for multiple turns. Any other sort of close-range shooting is going to have similar issues, and it's hard to just ignore the Conscripts because if you try to get close enough to them to shoot past them at the artillery they can do quite a bit of damage to you.
This is just in general something Guard should be doing. Putting cheap infantry around your artillery makes your artillery much harder to deal with for several whole factions and many popular builds for other factions.
SilverAlien wrote: Because a strategy that takes as little thought as "spam infantry, move forward, win" isn't exactly compelling in the first place. An army whose central element is that should have really obvious counters which blow it out of the water.
Which is true when nids, orks, and demons try the "drown you in bodies" strategy. But for guard... nothing clears conscripts efficiently. Nothing. No infantry unit has the absurd resilience of conscripts, and they have better damage output than many thanks to FRFSRF.
I don't know how to make this more clear, it could be effective without being broken. It currently is broken. You can look at every other unit and army and see nothing takes that sort of dedicated firepower to kill. It's overpowered.
7th ed meta: Spam riptides, sit, hellfire. Spam Drop-pod/Grav, null deploy, drop. Spam Scatbikes, turbo boost, shoot. Spam Pink Horrors, Summon, Invisibility. 8th ed meta: Spam troops/ spam flyers/ spam super heavies.
So, the meta has shifted and now we all need to be taking massed anti-infantry weapons. Even when conscripts get nerfed they will still be running 150 guardsmen every game because they need to keep you off their tanks/artillery. What are you going to do about orks? Can you kill 120 orks with 5++, can teleport, and have heavy walkers? This is looking to be the edition of massed infantry and transports.
I play Militarum Tempestus and everyone and their dog is spamming plasma. I expect plasma to get a huge points increase with the codex so I am not running more than 2 units of plasma. But you know what unit has done the most damage in all my games? Volley Gun squads. Those decent range, medium strength, medium ap shots have the tactical flexibility to wound most units and put out enough shots to work their way through hoards.
Something I'll say is that if conscripts need to be nerfed, I think we need to consider a few things:
- We should look to make the nerf(s) relatively minor at first and then progress from there. After all, one of the most frequent complaints against GW is their policy of nerfing units with a sledgehammer when a slight tweak would have done the job.
- We should look for nerfs that impact Conscripts and only Conscripts. Changing Commissars (which are fine for all other units) seems like a terrible idea. The same goes for pushing up the cost of Conscripts, as it's likely to result in IG infantry increasing in cost across the board.
- We should try to keep the fluff in mind and, at the very least, do our best not to completely contradict it.
Howscat wrote: But you know what unit has done the most damage in all my games? Volley Gun squads. Those decent range, medium strength, medium ap shots have the tactical flexibility to wound most units and put out enough shots to work their way through hoards.
Forgive me for going off topic but how do you use Volley-Gun squads? 5-man? 10-man? And do you seep-strike them, put them in vehicles or set them up on the field?
blood reaper wrote: I will respect human rights and trans people but I will never under any circumstances use the phrase 'folks' or 'ya'll'. I would rather be killed by firing squad.
the_scotsman wrote: Yeah, when i read the small novel that is the Death Guard unit options and think about resolving the attacks from a melee-oriented min size death guard squad, the thing that springs to mind is "Accessible!"
Argive wrote: GW seems to have a crystal ball and just pulls hairbrained ideas out of their backside for the most part.
You're not. If you're worried about your opponent using 'fake' rules, you're having fun the wrong way. This hobby isn't about rules. It's about buying Citadel miniatures.
Please report to your nearest GW store for attitude readjustment. Take your wallet.
vipoid wrote: I have a question for those of you who have had frustrating games against conscripts: what did they actually do?
I ask because I keep hearing that they are used as bubble-wrap for artillery/tanks and that they were a pain to kill.
But, given that intervening models don't provide cover in this edition (and there's no way conscripts can completely block LoS to a tank), could you not have just shot the artillery and largely ignored the conscripts? I would assume that the bulk of the enemy fire was from the tanks/artillery and not the conscripts (otherwise, why bother even using the former?), so by taking those out first you leave the enemy with a unit that is quite tough but severely lacking in firepower.
I mean, yeah, Conscripts don't do a whole lot in the face of lots of long-range shooting, but not everyone is running an army that stands at 48" and shoots. They're excellent against CC units -- though again IME they're not that much better for this than regular infantry squads -- and the standard counter to the kind of long-range firepower Guard can put out, for armies that can't straight-up outshoot them, is to tie up their artillery in CC. Of course they also prevent Deep Striking, and it's very hard to remove a Conscript screen -- you can kill a squad of Deep Strike denying Ratlings very quickly, but the Conscripts are going to stop you from coming in anywhere near where you want to be for multiple turns. Any other sort of close-range shooting is going to have similar issues, and it's hard to just ignore the Conscripts because if you try to get close enough to them to shoot past them at the artillery they can do quite a bit of damage to you.
This is just in general something Guard should be doing. Putting cheap infantry around your artillery makes your artillery much harder to deal with for several whole factions and many popular builds for other factions.
I sort of empathize with this comment, but from a different direction:
If conscripts have niches where they're not good (e.g. protecting against enemy long-range shooting) and niches where they are good (e.g. screening) isn't that what you want out of a unit? Situations where it performs well and situations where it performs poorly? And wouldn't the onus be on the opponent to ensure that they do not play to the strengths of the enemy's units?
I get that outshooting guard at long range is essentially impossible for some armies, and it might be that which is why conscripts are strong - they are good screening units, forcing the enemy to fight at long range, where the Guard's firepower can lay them low.
That just sounds like good tactics, imo, though. In a vacuum, conscripts don't impress me - my Baneblade (and especially Stormhammer) company has waltzed over quite a few. This tells me that the strength of Conscripts isn't the conscripts themselves but rather the army behind them, and that just strikes me as good tactics.
"Shoot the fighty and chop the shooty" is how you win games, so it's refreshing to see Conscripts, who don't fit that paradigm, exist. They're not really shooty or fighty, just kinda there. Like a wall.
Bump their maximum numbers down to 20-30. They can still swarm, they're still cheap, but it makes their numbers more manageable. If you're having a problem dealing with T3/S5 infantry at that point then you're doing something wrong and need to take a look at your list.
Making them 1p more expensive makes them otherwise pointless next to Infantry Squads for anything less than spamming 50 of, which ironically might exacerbate the problem some.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2017/07/19 13:28:39
Arbitrator wrote: Bump their maximum numbers down to 20-30. They can still swarm, they're still cheap, but it makes their numbers more manageable. If you're having a problem dealing with T3/S5 infantry at that point then you're doing something wrong and need to take a look at your list.
Making them 1p more expensive makes them otherwise pointless next to Infantry Squads for anything less than spamming 50 of, which ironically might exacerbate the problem some.
No one cares about the toughness, everyone cares about the fact there isn't an efficient way to remove the sheer number of them. If you don't understand that then you probably don't have a history of play with or against horde armies.
Quickjager wrote: A Baneblade is literally a direct counter, good comparison point; takes an IG unit to beat an IG unit. Used to only say that about Eldar...
Like I said earlier blobs of infantry are easy kills for Stealers. This is also true for Khorne Beserkers I think. They are also very susceptible to Leadership based Psychic powers and similar shenanigans. My armies seem to deal with them without too much issue. Some kill the commissar, some mulch the conscripts. Generally, they are the road block they are supposed to be, but still just a speedbump.
I think Genestealers are going to have their price increased a bit in the future based off what my Tyranid friend said; they don't pay for their claws apparently?
As for the Khorne Flakes I've been looking for a B. report for them to see their general effectiveness. They should be good in practice but I'm wondering how possible it is for them to actually kill too many conscripts to get that 2nd fight phase ironically.
As for LD psy powers, they use the Commissar LDship so that's pointless.
Arbitrator wrote: Bump their maximum numbers down to 20-30. They can still swarm, they're still cheap, but it makes their numbers more manageable. If you're having a problem dealing with T3/S5 infantry at that point then you're doing something wrong and need to take a look at your list.
Making them 1p more expensive makes them otherwise pointless next to Infantry Squads for anything less than spamming 50 of, which ironically might exacerbate the problem some.
No one cares about the toughness, everyone cares about the fact there isn't an efficient way to remove the sheer number of them. If you don't understand that then you probably don't have a history of play with or against horde armies.
If you're having such a problem with hordes then being anti-horde kit. You're a Space Muhreen player right? Not as if you don't have a tool for every situation spoonfed to you anyway. Yeah, hordes may suck to fight against when you're bringing an All-Comerslist but if you know what you're going to be up against... well, plan accordingly.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/07/19 13:39:17
) as to the two ideas I'd thrown out; feel like, paired, they might balance the 'horde units' a bit better (like Conscripts):
20000+ points
~5000 points of IG and DKoK 
