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is that you seem to have problems that most players running conscripts don't. Many of the lists above are running one commissar for two or more conscript squads. Some are running two commissars for three squads. The guy with 400 conscripts is running three commissars. Not all of them are running a full complement of commanders but they appear to not need particularly many in any case.
Note that I have never referred to a full unit of 50 conscripts getting rapid fire, that's a ridiculous idea and will never happen. I only ever talk about 24'' range.
Have the results from ETC come in yet? Just because people are bringing it doesn't necessarily mean it will do well. Looking at the top 3 ATC teams' lists. Only one of the top three teams had a member take conscripts, and he brought 80. It is also possible that these players saw how dominant flyer spam was in the first few events of 8th and are trying to counter it by bringing so many bodies the fliers can't possibly chew through them all? I also see some issues with doing well just from time constraints assuming 2.5 hour games. Placing 400 models is going to take a minute. Moving them every turn and rolling shots for those in range, even longer. Trays can help speed that up a bit until they bump into any terrain feature.
You may not have, but I've seen it in used in this thread multiple as 'proof' that Conscripts punch above their weight in terms of damage output.
He's spammed conscripts and primaris, with a couple of vindicares. I'm not entirely sure how he plans to kill vehicles, but it seems the idea of the army is to ignore them and sit on objectives.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/07/21 04:20:10
I think it will help to keep in mind that a lot of these lists are, on purpose, absolutely bats**t insane. They're the epitome of WAAC, so while the conversation of "how strong is this?" is applicable, so is "if I tried to run this at my local store, would my friends punch me in the face for it?"
IMO, this matters. These are not normal lists.
That said, they're really going to be interesting to analyze.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2017/07/21 06:50:29
Wake. Rise. Destroy. Conquer.
We have done so once. We will do so again.
I'm pretty sure he's praying he doesn't end up facing a berserker army, cause he'd get torn to shreds.
The people in the past who convinced themselves to do unspeakable things were no less human than you or I. They made their decisions; the only thing that prevents history from repeating itself is making different ones.
-- Adam Serwer
My blog
He's spammed conscripts and primaris, with a couple of vindicares. I'm not entirely sure how he plans to kill vehicles, but it seems the idea of the army is to ignore them and sit on objectives.
The answer to your vehicle question is in the format. It's not a singles event. The lists are lopsided and one dimensional because the team actually has some input on the matchups.
No decent sane player would be running those lists in a singles event.
What if instead of just making it easier to brute force conscripts or make synergies within the IG army list directly weaker what if we make the commissars and the officers have have more effective counter play (snipers, psychic powers, other anti character stuff) against them?
I feel like those IG characters are some of the best support troops in game and are pretty tough for their cost and support abilities. Decreasing the number of wounds that IG characters get I think might make IG armies that are heavily reliant on characters change up their tactics.
If LoS is a problem with commissars maybe forcing the commissar to have LoS on a whole squad to apply his buffs might make the guy have to play more aggressively and in the open.
Make Imperial guard characters like glass cannons of support sounds like it could be fun to play as and against.
PIUS_2 wrote: What if instead of just making it easier to brute force conscripts or make synergies within the IG army list directly weaker what if we make the commissars and the officers have have more effective counter play (snipers, psychic powers, other anti character stuff) against them?
I feel like those IG characters are some of the best support troops in game and are pretty tough for their cost and support abilities. Decreasing the number of wounds that IG characters get I think might make IG armies that are heavily reliant on characters change up their tactics.
If LoS is a problem with commissars maybe forcing the commissar to have LoS on a whole squad to apply his buffs might make the guy have to play more aggressively and in the open.
Make Imperial guard characters like glass cannons of support sounds like it could be fun to play as and against.
PIUS_2 wrote: What if instead of just making it easier to brute force conscripts or make synergies within the IG army list directly weaker what if we make the commissars and the officers have have more effective counter play (snipers, psychic powers, other anti character stuff) against them?
I feel like those IG characters are some of the best support troops in game and are pretty tough for their cost and support abilities. Decreasing the number of wounds that IG characters get I think might make IG armies that are heavily reliant on characters change up their tactics.
If LoS is a problem with commissars maybe forcing the commissar to have LoS on a whole squad to apply his buffs might make the guy have to play more aggressively and in the open.
Make Imperial guard characters like glass cannons of support sounds like it could be fun to play as and against.
The commissar is a W3 T3 5+ character. The company commander is a W4 T3 5+ character. The commander also has a refractor field. I'm not really sure what you could do these characters to make them more fragile.
Guard already goes second almost always. As a result, guard has to deal with the high likelihood of starting their game already down a point from First Blood, at least against any player that knows what they're doing. Your solution of "making IG characters fragile" not only increases the odds of this happening, but it also, at least with regard to Commanders, increases the odds of Slay the Warlord turn 1. In addition, we're also the army most negatively affected by KP as a scenario. Like, to the point where I pretty much have to table people in order to win KP. Your ideas for changes would force me to play as broken of lists as I possibly can. You just encouraged me to run 400 conscripts. Thanks.
He's spammed conscripts and primaris, with a couple of vindicares. I'm not entirely sure how he plans to kill vehicles, but it seems the idea of the army is to ignore them and sit on objectives.
The answer to your vehicle question is in the format. It's not a singles event. The lists are lopsided and one dimensional because the team actually has some input on the matchups.
No decent sane player would be running those lists in a singles event.
My guess is he intends on spamming Smite, which is actually pretty good at killing fliers and the like.
Regardless of how one feels about Conscripts in this topic, this list is the ultimate 'Conscripts are super OP ubermen' wet dream. Very interested to see the results come August.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/07/21 15:21:35
Spamming psychic is a wonderful way to take down ravens, and many other high toughness things.
Purifiers in the GK codex are actually fairly underrated, their problem is a base cost of 140 for the unit, before wargear. That's a lot for a 3" d6 smite.
I'm not at all surprised to see people building lists around smite spam. You can take bottom of the barrel psykers that have a tiny cost, and they're pretty much on par with the best psykers in the game when it comes to smite.
I played a game - albeit casual - against someone with a raven. he went first, flew across the table, and nuked my storm raven. Sad day! But out of this raven emerged 2 squads of purifiers, who summarily advanced, and did 9 mortal wounds to his raven with smite. This was pretty satisfying.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/07/21 16:22:48
Galas wrote: I remember when Marmatag was a nooby, all shiney and full of joy. How playing the unbalanced mess of Warhammer40k in a ultra-competitive meta has changed you
Bharring wrote: He'll actually *change his mind* in the presence of sufficient/sufficiently defended information. Heretic.
Regardless of how one feels about Conscripts in this topic, this list is the ultimate 'Conscripts are super OP ubermen' wet dream. Very interested to see the results come August.
That looks like a pretty mean list, but he's almost entirely relying on the primaris for anti-tank. I don't know what the specific rules are at play here, but I'd think a three stormlord list with a bunch of its own primaris psykers would be the most obvious counter I would throw (and would still be pretty damn nasty against about anything else).
Melissia wrote: I'm pretty sure he's praying he doesn't end up facing a berserker army, cause he'd get torn to shreds.
Considering there isn't a berzerker army, and are a grand total of 20 berzerkers in the entire tournament, spread over two armies. Because berserkers with a transport run a bit expensive for a unit that will never get more than one fight against most decent players, if even that.
PIUS_2 wrote: What if instead of just making it easier to brute force conscripts or make synergies within the IG army list directly weaker what if we make the commissars and the officers have have more effective counter play (snipers, psychic powers, other anti character stuff) against them?
I feel like those IG characters are some of the best support troops in game and are pretty tough for their cost and support abilities. Decreasing the number of wounds that IG characters get I think might make IG armies that are heavily reliant on characters change up their tactics.
If LoS is a problem with commissars maybe forcing the commissar to have LoS on a whole squad to apply his buffs might make the guy have to play more aggressively and in the open.
Make Imperial guard characters like glass cannons of support sounds like it could be fun to play as and against.
The commissar is a W3 T3 5+ character. The company commander is a W4 T3 5+ character. The commander also has a refractor field. I'm not really sure what you could do these characters to make them more fragile.
Guard already goes second almost always. As a result, guard has to deal with the high likelihood of starting their game already down a point from First Blood, at least against any player that knows what they're doing. Your solution of "making IG characters fragile" not only increases the odds of this happening, but it also, at least with regard to Commanders, increases the odds of Slay the Warlord turn 1. In addition, we're also the army most negatively affected by KP as a scenario. Like, to the point where I pretty much have to table people in order to win KP. Your ideas for changes would force me to play as broken of lists as I possibly can. You just encouraged me to run 400 conscripts. Thanks.
I didn't think about KP and the like. But that seems to be an issue that needs to be a dressed with armies that rely on squishy small and cheap squads anyways. :c
Instead of making IG characters weaker we make them even better at supporting your army but at a greater cost?
Give the imperial guard officers two additional orders each but increase the points cost for each by 40 points (the cost of two platoon commanders.)
Make squads that have to do moral tests under a commissar auto pass except one squad which faces the summary excution but increase the cost of them by 20 points (the cost of not shooting 4 guardsmen with his bolt pistol.)
Increasing their point cost and buff effectiveness I think will make the enemy feel like they have greater counterplay since IG will have very expensive characters so their anti character stuff are making back their points faster (and not killing more or less models) per turn.
IG fans (like myself) might be happy to see that having MSU might be a little more effective, we might not need as many characters on the table, vox casters might see more use, and it might just be more lore friendly to not see a company commander leading only two squads at a time, or a platoon commander only commanding one squad like Sargents.
Give the imperial guard officers two additional orders each but increase the points cost for each by 40 points (the cost of two platoon commanders.)
That's actually a really interesting idea. It seems too expensive on it's own, but I like it because it would potentially give you a reason to take voxcasters. You could consolidate down to fewer commanders (which is arguably how it should be) and then voxcast out to the further squads. Might be an unintended consequence, but that's a change I'd actually be willing to consider playtesting.
Make squads that have to do moral tests under a commissar auto pass except one squad which faces the summary excution but increase the cost of them by 20 points (the cost of not shooting 4 guardsmen with his bolt pistol.)
I'm trying to understand this one. So there would be fewer casualties per turn but the commissar would cost more points? That would scale in conscripts favor over multiple turns if so. I don't know if the anti-conscript people would be okay with that and honestly, I sounds like a boost conscripts genuinely don't need. I might misunderstand though.
Increasing their point cost and buff effectiveness I think will make the enemy feel like they have greater counterplay since IG will have very expensive characters so their anti character stuff are making back their points faster (and not killing more or less models) per turn.
IG fans (like myself) might be happy to see that having MSU might be a little more effective, we might not need as many characters on the table, vox casters might see more use, and it might just be more lore friendly to not see a company commander leading only two squads at a time, or a platoon commander only commanding one squad like Sargents.
Yeah, don't get me wrong, I agree with the sentiment entirely. I just haven't seen an individual implementation that I actually like. I'm really hoping that when the codex comes out, the points remain the same, but the platoon structure as it was in 5th-7th comes back. I kind of does weird things with the detachment system, but it's really the simplest and most elegant solution.
Honestly, I suspect part of the reason why they broke up platoons was to reward IG with more command points (probably in an effort to balance almost always going last) but the conscript spam was kind of an unforseen consequence. I think maybe if platoons were brought back (with conscripts being 0-1 per platoon), then you could give IG +1 CP to make up for the fact that they're paying for a minimum of two more troops than they're reporting in their actual detachment.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Hey, I hate crossposting stuff, but this is pretty relevant to this thread WRT snipers being something worth discussing. Melissa and I both responded the same way, and I think there's a factor here that needs to be discussed more. I ask people read the copypasta below and comment.
Spoiler:
So lets have a look at some tables I see people playing on. Maybe we can work through this, and I'll see if I can show you just what we're talking about in a way that will help you understand our viewpoint.
That's Adepticon. Adepticon's usually pretty spare, but that's sparse even for Adeption to be honest, but it happens sometimes. Now, you probably don't know since you appear to be a casual player from your immediate hatred of all things from Forge World (and yes, FW is allowed there, so there's a double whammy) but it's a pretty big tournament scene. Like, the biggest in North America that I'm aware of. Maybe even the biggest if you count the non-gw games that go on there too. But, so anyway, that's kinda what competitive players expect. So that's one of the tables there. Not too many places to hide a commissar if you ask me. Sure, there's a couple. It'd be pretty hard to keep them out of LOS of a deep striking sniper though, and there's quite a few of those. You might not even have to move too much. You could probably blam him turn 1 even. Yeah, sure, if someone spams conscripts, it might get tricky, but I find you usually have that problem with just about any unit in the game. That other table's looking about the same too. But we can't see that too well. Lets keep going.
Not actually sure where this one is happening, to be honest, but man, I'd love to snipe some gak there.
Oh, we might have found one. Those buildings look like they have closed fronts! Sides look pretty open too. You'd have to really work to not be able to get a shot in through one of those windows.
Yeah, this place has some tall hills. I wouldn't be too worried with a couple Vindicares or some Ratlings though. Hell, that looks like a bigger table than normal, though that could be perspective, so you might even being able to deploy those scouts in no-man's land where they could do something.
Out of sincere curiosity, how are these tables matching up for you? Because they look about right to me, and I've been to Adepticon, oh, maybe 3-4 years, and play local tournaments, and have spent time watching the games at Gencon. They ALL basically look like this. Maybe a few tables will have a bit more terrain, but not enough where I'd expect genuine LOS issues. The joke my Adepticon Team has is "Hey, they might have cover, but you always get the shot."
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2017/07/22 00:37:41
So, I think I have something that might satisfy both parties without nerfing Guard/Conscripts into the ground.
Change the Commissar's abilities to 'units wholly within' and increase the bubble to 9 or 12 inches. This stops spaghetti lines to cover and requires each Conscript blob to have a Commissar without damaging the impact they have on line squads.
RogueApiary wrote: So, I think I have something that might satisfy both parties without nerfing Guard/Conscripts into the ground.
Change the Commissar's abilities to 'units wholly within' and increase the bubble to 9 or 12 inches. This stops spaghetti lines to cover and requires each Conscript blob to have a Commissar without damaging the impact they have on line squads.
Oh now that's interesting. Same wording as for the ork force field. I think this is a good solution.
The people in the past who convinced themselves to do unspeakable things were no less human than you or I. They made their decisions; the only thing that prevents history from repeating itself is making different ones.
-- Adam Serwer
My blog
How so? 12 inches wholly within should be able to cover more than one infantry squad or a 50 man conscript squad pretty easily. It makes them vulnerable to snipers, but that'd be kind of the point of the change, in which case you take advantage of the fact that he's 31 points and take a second as sniper insurance. It basically makes them the tax on the conscript squad without screwing up their ability to service 2+ infantry squads.
You could even change my proposal to be if the unit is within the combined radius of one or more Commissars, it gets the buffs, but that might slow the game up with extra measuring.
Because let's be honest, running a conga line of 50 dudes back to a wall so he can execute the closest one is kinda goofy and not exactly a sign of tactical genius.
Because it impacts their use to normal guardsmen, when the problem isn't normal guardsmen.
Normally, one does not perform surgery with a halberd when a scalpel is present.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/07/23 03:40:38
The people in the past who convinced themselves to do unspeakable things were no less human than you or I. They made their decisions; the only thing that prevents history from repeating itself is making different ones.
-- Adam Serwer
My blog
Because it impacts their use to normal guardsmen, when the problem isn't normal guardsmen.
Normally, one does not perform surgery with a halberd when a scalpel is present.
You can easily fit 4 infantry squads wholly within said 12" bubble, in fact, here's 6 of them. How is this nerfing their ability to buff normal infantry again? Less pithy one liners, more actual arguments please.
EDIT: I'd like to add that the photo is not even the best case scenario for the regular infantry squads assuming a 12" wholly within bubble. Since morale checks that are likely to cause dudes to run are usually after 3-4 guys die you could push each of those squads out a couple inches and take casualties from the ones outside the bubble until you end up with the 5-7 survivors still within the bubble. The enemy either kills too few to force a morale check likely to cause fleeing models, or it's business as usual and the Commissar blams one.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2017/07/23 04:14:47
Because it impacts their use to normal guardsmen, when the problem isn't normal guardsmen.
Normally, one does not perform surgery with a halberd when a scalpel is present.
You can easily fit 4 infantry squads wholly within said 12" bubble, in fact, here's 6 of them. How is this nerfing their ability to buff normal infantry again? Less pithy one liners, more actual arguments please.
EDIT: I'd like to add that the photo is not even the best case scenario for the regular infantry squads assuming a 12" wholly within bubble. Since morale checks that are likely to cause dudes to run are usually after 3-4 guys die you could push each of those squads out a couple inches and take casualties from the ones outside the bubble until you end up with the 5-7 survivors still within the bubble. The enemy either kills too few to force a morale check likely to cause fleeing models, or it's business as usual and the Commissar blams one.
This really doesn't do anything to solve the problem, though - Conscripts will remain an effective block of bodies that are very difficult to whittle down; and that durability, paired with Orders, makes them arguably too efficient. Nerfing their ability to take Orders - from what some have suggested, by adding a chance for the Order to fail all the way to the nuclear option of outright removing their ability to take them - still doesn't really fix the crux of the imbalance with Conscripts: their durability thanks to their synergy with a Commissar.
Even suggestions to tweak a Commissar's 'Summary Execution' (SE) rule to cause D3 or D6 casualties instead of only one, ever, to Conscripts would work well. It is clear with their stat-line and equipping them with lasguns that the idea was to let them be threatening with the storm of shots they can put out - with a tweak to SE, now when they suffer enough casualties to cause a morale check they're losing more than one model most of the time.
That was the idea behind my own suggestion, Get Back In Line You Rabble! - where SE reduces Conscript morale losses by half instead of by one. Paired with the Commissar's LD bubble, you wouldn't actually begin to lose more than 1 or 2 until the Conscript unit is taking heavy casualties. By scaling it you'd end up 'rewarding' your opponent for trying to focus them down, whereas just whittling at the unit would only cause a couple of SE casualties at a time.
For example, even with 8 casualties and a 6 in the morale roll, my idea would only result in 3 SE casualties. 16 casualties? A minimum of 5 (rounding up) to a maximum of 7. It even works thematically/fluff-wise; they're a poorly trained unit with very low morale, after all... it'd take a much sterner line to convince 34 freshly conscripted former-civilians to continue to fight if 16 of their number were instantly cut down around them... some probably slinking off or playing dead, even, in the chaos of the moment while the commissar works to reassert control. I think it was Necropolis where Commissar Knowles had to gun down a handful of PDF to motivate them - they were getting annhilated, of course, but that's the point and why I like the scalability of the suggestion. It incentivizes an opponent to do more than nibble at the unit if he really wants to thin their numbers, and unlike the current SE or even the d3/d6 suggestions doesn't punish him for dedicating all that firepower with a fixed, modest number of battle shock losses - but, still preserves a good chunk of the durability having a Commissar bestows upon Conscripts.
Regardless - half, D6, D3 - I think an adjustment to SE is the best way to balance Conscripts effectively. By reducing their durability you allow an opponent to actually attrit them effectively; by not neutering their viability in numbers and the threat they provide with Orders, they're not an ignorable threat either.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2017/07/23 04:58:27
20000+ points
