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Really people, can we please stop complaining about Conscripts? Oh wup-de-do, the Imperial Guard have one unit that is slightly more powerful than other equivalents, so what? Is it not about time that the Guard where capable of playing on a level field against our opponents?
For goodness sake, has everyone just forgotten about 6th and 7th editions? Or late 5th? Has everyone forgotten just how weak the Guard where all through those dark years?
Or just how powerful Marines, Eldar and Tau where?

Leave Conscript blobs be. They are good, yes, but they are nothing compared to what the Gladius, Cheesetide spam and Wraithbrigade/Scatbike where. yes, we finally have a good unit, LEAVE IT BE.

Those blobs represent years of collecting and hundreds of pounds spent, and quite frankly I do not believe that Conscripts are as bad as so many people make out. Moreover, I honestly feel that this is a reaction to the shock of Guard players finally having something that is competitive, mixed with a little butthurt from certain factions whom find that they cannot just roflstomp Guard armies with ease.

The fact that pretty much all of the nerfs proposed are drastic overkill even if you do concede that conscripts are a little OP does seem to indicate that most of the people suggesting them either don't know what balanced Conscripts would even look like, or don't desire balance so much as the ability to walk over them as if they weren't there.

 master of ordinance wrote:
Really people, can we please stop complaining about Conscripts? Oh wup-de-do, the Imperial Guard have one unit that is slightly more powerful than other equivalents, so what? Is it not about time that the Guard where capable of playing on a level field against our opponents?
For goodness sake, has everyone just forgotten about 6th and 7th editions? Or late 5th? Has everyone forgotten just how weak the Guard where all through those dark years?
Or just how powerful Marines, Eldar and Tau where?

Leave Conscript blobs be. They are good, yes, but they are nothing compared to what the Gladius, Cheesetide spam and Wraithbrigade/Scatbike where. yes, we finally have a good unit, LEAVE IT BE.

Those blobs represent years of collecting and hundreds of pounds spent, and quite frankly I do not believe that Conscripts are as bad as so many people make out. Moreover, I honestly feel that this is a reaction to the shock of Guard players finally having something that is competitive, mixed with a little butthurt from certain factions whom find that they cannot just roflstomp Guard armies with ease.

" is a reaction to the shock of Guard players finally having something that is competitive, mixed with a little butthurt from certain factions whom find that they cannot just roflstomp Guard armies with ease."

No, it's not. I know you can't do math. But the case against conscripts is based on math. IG wasn't as bad as you thought in 7th, and they are better than you think in 8th. I could NEVER roflstomp Guard with my list, so I'm not coming from the perspective you think I am.

I'd start with taking away their armor entirely and see how that plays.

" They are good, yes, but they are nothing compared to what the Gladius, Cheesetide spam and Wraithbrigade/Scatbike where"

It's the principle of it. And the ridiculous narrative. Conscripts are braver than space marines! Okay...

"Those blobs represent years of collecting and hundreds of pounds spent"

Don't care. GW toilet flushed my ENTIRE LIST for two editions. They made both CSM and vanilla marines better at deep striking jump units than the BA. Get over yourself. IG at least was a shooting list, even if they were ghetto Tau.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ross-128 wrote:
The fact that pretty much all of the nerfs proposed are drastic overkill even if you do concede that conscripts are a little OP does seem to indicate that most of the people suggesting them either don't know what balanced Conscripts would even look like, or don't desire balance so much as the ability to walk over them as if they weren't there.

Even with no armor, it still takes 112 BS 4 shots of str 4-5 or 90 shots of BS 4 Str 6+ to kill them. To kill 150 pts of stuff. Really? Cheap immunity to battleshock is HUGE. I have to bring special characters for that.

We seem to have had this argument a lot recently. And since this thread is starting to heat up like all the rest it's on it's last warning now

Martel732 wrote:


" is a reaction to the shock of Guard players finally having something that is competitive, mixed with a little butthurt from certain factions whom find that they cannot just roflstomp Guard armies with ease."

No, it's not. I know you can't do math. But the case against conscripts is based on math. IG wasn't as bad as you thought in 7th, and they are better than you think in 8th. I could NEVER roflstomp Guard with my list, so I'm not coming from the perspective you think I am.

In 7th Conscripts came with a 135 point tax and that was before you factored in the special characters needed to stop the entire unit running off the board as soon as anything looked at it too hard. And anything over 10 models would be footslogging and so die to enemy shooting before it did anything, which with BS2 Lasguns was not much anyway.

I'd start with taking away their armor entirely and see how that plays.

Okay. But whilst we are at it can we have -1 rend on all Lasguns? And an extra 6" of range? You know, so that they can still compete somewhat and have their historical (go back to 1st/2nd) range advantage over Bolters?

" They are good, yes, but they are nothing compared to what the Gladius, Cheesetide spam and Wraithbrigade/Scatbike where"

It's the principle of it. And the ridiculous narrative. Conscripts are braver than space marines! Okay...

What, the principle of the matter that a massed mob being forced forwards by something that terrifies them more than demons might be slightly more fanatical than a handful of elite super soldiers?
Or the principle that Conscripts, and indeed several Guard units, no longer break and run at the first sign of any action?

"Those blobs represent years of collecting and hundreds of pounds spent"

Don't care. GW toilet flushed my ENTIRE LIST for two editions. They made both CSM and vanilla marines better at deep striking jump units than the BA. Get over yourself. IG at least was a shooting list, even if they were ghetto Tau.

Boo-hoo
For the past two editions every unit in the Guard codex barring five (of which two are questionable) was overpriced junk. "Leafblower" was thrown about by certain players as a justification for this, although said players seemed to forget that it took a minimal of 2000 points and the allying in of several Inquisition units to make the dreaded "Leafblower" list work. For that slight infringement in stepping on the toes of the glory boys we suffered the loss of everything, our Platoons became useless, our Artillery was reduced to overpriced junk bar one situational piece, our transport options became overpriced IFV or tin foil Tucker Truck, our tanks where violated with huge nerfs and our army shoehorned into a static role at a time when the game became all about mobility. We where an army that needed Baneblades on the field just to have a chance.
Whilst every other faction got shiny new toys we got nothing. Every other faction got formations that where quite frankly amazing (for the most part) and when ours finally rolled out they where initially taken as a sick joke as they where so weak.

Bloodangels? Yes, you suffered but do not make it out to seem that you where the ones hard off when compared to everyone else - or do we need to get the Sisters players in here?

Even with no armor, it still takes 112 BS 4 shots of str 4-5 or 90 shots of BS 4 Str 6+ to kill them. To kill 150 pts of stuff. Really? Cheap immunity to battleshock is HUGE. I have to bring special characters for that.

And guess what the Commissar is?
A character!

As someone in an actual military organization, getting people to follow orders when they don't want to be there is pretty difficult. With that in mind, I think Conscripts shouldn't be able to follow orders. They don't want to be there. They weren't trained. They were given a lasgun and told to shoot at the enemy.

If they are following orders, it is because there is fear of immediate consequences. I almost think that they should lose a Conscript every time they receive orders. The Commissar just blasts one to keep the others in line.

Not able to take orders is the only nerf that is needed.

Haha that's the most absurd correlation ever. Pretty sure in the setting and in life or death combat, they'll follow orders to increase their chances of survival. We're not talking a national guard unit on a weekend training event. Lol

 casvalremdeikun wrote:
As someone in an actual military organization, getting people to follow orders when they don't want to be there is pretty difficult. With that in mind, I think Conscripts shouldn't be able to follow orders. They don't want to be there. They weren't trained. They were given a lasgun and told to shoot at the enemy.

If they are following orders, it is because there is fear of immediate consequences. I almost think that they should lose a Conscript every time they receive orders. The Commissar just blasts one to keep the others in line.

This is an elaborated way to say "the unit should not exists"

Which comes after the neutering of the veterans. I frankly find difficult to remain calm and rational reading this kind of threads and seeing them spammed the whole time.

"They weren't trained. They were given a lasgun and told to shoot at the enemy." 5+

 casvalremdeikun wrote:
As someone in an actual military organization, getting people to follow orders when they don't want to be there is pretty difficult. With that in mind, I think Conscripts shouldn't be able to follow orders. They don't want to be there. They weren't trained. They were given a lasgun and told to shoot at the enemy.

If they are following orders, it is because there is fear of immediate consequences. I almost think that they should lose a Conscript every time they receive orders. The Commissar just blasts one to keep the others in line.

I dont think current military(especially modern western military) experience holds much water when we're talking about conscripts that will be shot on the spot for their lack of discipline in the face of galactic alien threat. Fighting for an actual god emperor, at that.

I think their lack of discipline is already taken into account with their 5+ BS. The fact that they need a Comissar around to ensure they dont flee in droves amounts to the same.

This is getting ridiculous. I didn't see this much flip out over scatterbikes and riptide spam. Just take their orders and be done with it.

 Talamare wrote:

The core difference between Markerlights and Orders is that...

Markerlights is Tau's primary, and arguably only advantage.

Markerlights count for the entire army. Commands do not, and IG are designed to have far more squads than they have available commands.

Commands are a resource.
Markerlights are a tool.

IMO, they are almost non-comparable.

"Okay. But whilst we are at it can we have -1 rend on all Lasguns? And an extra 6" of range? You know, so that they can still compete somewhat and have their historical (go back to 1st/2nd) range advantage over Bolters? "

No. Because they are still overpowered with no armor at all. Because 3 pts wound that never break are ridiculous.

" or do we need to get the Sisters players in here? "

Sisters were better off in 6/7th than BA. Don't even try.

New edition, same fallacious arguments. Conscripts are way too good for their price. Not sorta too good. WAY too good. Sorry if you can't accept this, but the math doesn't lie. The IG WERE a powerhouse in 5th with or without the leafblower, and they got hosed a LOT less than BA in 6/7th. You just couldn't stand there and kill everyone without moving, so it seemed like the IG apocalypse.

Unfair units are unfair, no matter which list they are in. And conscripts are unfair.

"A character! "

Not a 140 pt special character. Again, math. Get some.

"d but do not make it out to seem that you where the ones hard off when compared to everyone els"

The menagerie of dead last tourney results say otherwise. Try using some factual arguments.

Well, I must admit, disagree though I did, I didn't think anyone was going to go so far as to force me to add "( ) Strawman" to the list of approaches on my standard form. Huh.

People place way too much emphasis on the math of things in this game. You wanna cry about math? Look at the comparison of capabilities vs cost of SM flyers vs IG ones. You can make dozens of arguments in this game based on math, yet it's pointless to do so. Make the arguments for actual experiences and act like an adult playing a table top strategy game lol. Everyone complaining about conscripts are doing so because they have lists designed for "cool" alpha strikes or taking out flyer spam or knights. Then that list meets a horde list and is hopefully unprepared.

You don't like conscripts? Take freaking troops to deal with them. Assault cannons are absolute death. You know what isn't the answer? Small, elite, hard hitting units which became the norm in 7th edition.

As far as I'm concerned the only folks who should be able to complain are players with armies who lack snipers. And guess what? Most of those armies are capable of deleting 50 conscripts easily ie: Tyranids, orks, and necrons.

 Colonel Cross wrote:
People place way too much emphasis on the math of things in this game. You wanna cry about math? Look at the comparison of capabilities vs cost of SM flyers vs IG ones. You can make dozens of arguments in this game based on math, yet it's pointless to do so. Make the arguments for actual experiences and act like an adult playing a table top strategy game lol. Everyone complaining about conscripts are doing so because they have lists designed for "cool" alpha strikes or taking out flyer spam or knights. Then that list meets a horde list and is hopefully unprepared.

You don't like conscripts? Take freaking troops to deal with them. Assault cannons are absolute death. You know what isn't the answer? Small, elite, hard hitting units which became the norm in 7th edition.

As far as I'm concerned the only folks who should be able to complain are players with armies who lack snipers. And guess what? Most of those armies are capable of deleting 50 conscripts easily ie: Tyranids, orks, and necrons.

IG players can easily hide the commissars out of line of site.

Math dominates this game in terms of cost effectiveness analysis. Yes, some games can be outliers, but the math still dominates. Experiences are overrated because they are anecdotal.

What's the problem with conscripts? Just take more anti infantries. A lot of people complain about them because they don't want to change their lists. Luckily 8th edition has some list based on troops spam which was something I wanted since 5th edition.

AM was IMHO among the worst armies in 7th, now they appear to be the best one. But that's not because of conscripts, it's because they can spam a lot of discounted deep striking plasma guns.

Maybe BA suck in this edition like they did in 8th and they can't defeat AM in any possible way but there are 20+ other factions to consider, if I face AM with orks,SW or drukhari I will have different calculations since the units that I can field, and their weapons, are very different.

BA with 3 razorbacks with twin assault cannons and 1-2 stormravens should be able to deal with them without tailoring the AM list since those ones are basic options, am I wrong?

I've not played tons of games against the new AM since the edition is pretty new but 200 conscripts are not scary. Solid, but I can deal with them. Scions spam is the real nightmare.

 Colonel Cross wrote:
Haha that's the most absurd correlation ever. Pretty sure in the setting and in life or death combat, they'll follow orders to increase their chances of survival. We're not talking a national guard unit on a weekend training event. Lol

Removing orders from conscripts should be done with respect to game-balance not for fluff reasons.

Conscripts right now needs a nerf, but I dislike all the other balancing-options. Commisars or IG orders in general are not overpowered when applied to guard squads, and I don't like nerfing either mechanism in order to balance conscripts, and there really isn't a window for jacking up the price of conscripts or reducing their statline. Regards

 Insectum7 wrote:

 casvalremdeikun wrote:
As someone in an actual military organization, getting people to follow orders when they don't want to be there is pretty difficult. With that in mind, I think Conscripts shouldn't be able to follow orders. They don't want to be there. They weren't trained. They were given a lasgun and told to shoot at the enemy.

If they are following orders, it is because there is fear of immediate consequences. I almost think that they should lose a Conscript every time they receive orders. The Commissar just blasts one to keep the others in line.

I dont think current military(especially modern western military) experience holds much water when we're talking about conscripts that will be shot on the spot for their lack of discipline in the face of galactic alien threat. Fighting for an actual god emperor, at that.

I think their lack of discipline is already taken into account with their 5+ BS. The fact that they need a Comissar around to ensure they dont flee in droves amounts to the same.

We're not just talking about the willingness of the Conscripts to follow a barked order whilst in shock, we're also considering the capability of the traumatised horde to organise themselves to do so in a timely fashion (providing a characterful basis for a correction), and the game balance concern of them auto-passing an order with a far, far higher yield (16/32 extra hits, on average) when delivered to them than to better trained riflemen.

 Blackie wrote:
What's the problem with conscripts? Just take more anti infantries. A lot of people complain about them because they don't want to change their lists. Luckily 8th edition has some list based on troops spam which was something I wanted since 5th edition.

[...]

BA with 3 razorbacks with twin assault cannons and 1-2 stormravens should be able to deal with them without tailoring the AM list since those ones are basic options, am I wrong?

I've not played tons of games against the new AM since the edition is pretty new but 200 conscripts are not scary. Solid, but I can deal with them. Scions spam is the real nightmare.

3 twin AC razorbacks and 2 stormravens (922 pts) would on avg kill 42 conscripts per turn (roughly 150 pts including support), so you would still have to spend 5 turns to get through 200 of them if you tried. It's just not feasible to build half your list to kill one third of the opponents list over the course of a game.

200 conscripts are 600 points. Giving each a Commissar w/ bolt pistol & Chainsword and 2 CCs is 784 points. Plus, where did the idea come from that you had to kill ALL of them to get past them?

Somebody fielding 200 conscripts is ridiculous, though. I don't play tourneyments, but I don't doubt somebody pulls that. Not much you can do with the WAAC crowd in tourneys. One of the few things I liked about 7th was the platoon. Conscripts were an option in a platoon, but you had to take a platoon command squad and at least 2 squads to just be able to field one unit of them.

"Somebody fielding 200 conscripts is ridiculous, though. "

Have you met the community? Dual WK, screamerstar, mass scatterbike? People will do it.

sossen wrote:

 Blackie wrote:
What's the problem with conscripts? Just take more anti infantries. A lot of people complain about them because they don't want to change their lists. Luckily 8th edition has some list based on troops spam which was something I wanted since 5th edition.

[...]

BA with 3 razorbacks with twin assault cannons and 1-2 stormravens should be able to deal with them without tailoring the AM list since those ones are basic options, am I wrong?

I've not played tons of games against the new AM since the edition is pretty new but 200 conscripts are not scary. Solid, but I can deal with them. Scions spam is the real nightmare.

3 twin AC razorbacks and 2 stormravens (922 pts) would on avg kill 42 conscripts per turn (roughly 150 pts including support), so you would still have to spend 5 turns to get through 200 of them if you tried. It's just not feasible to build half your list to kill one fourth of the opponents list over the course of a game.

You don't have to kill every single one of them to win a game. Just crippling one blob per turn is a big deal. I don't know about BA cause no one in may area played them since a while, and I only made a general suggestion not an effort to tailor the AM list. SM lists with 1-2 flyers and 3 razorbacks are quite common, and we're only talking about standard transports which you may want even if you don't face 200 conscripts.

As I said before those 200 guardsmen alone won't achieve anything. They can't really kill something valuable with their shooting, not to mention their melee stats. They only sit on objectives and screen some tanks, so you just have to kill the model you need to remove in a turn to score points or for the purpose of future points.

 Blackie wrote:
You don't have to kill every single one of them to win a game. Just crippling one blob per turn is a big deal. I don't know about BA cause no one in may area played them since a while, and I only made a general suggestion not an effort to tailor the AM list. SM lists with 1-2 flyers and 3 razorbacks are quite common, and we're only talking about standard transports which you may want even if you don't face 200 conscripts.

You don't have to kill every single one, no, but just 50 of them can still bubblewrap the whole backline. In general you might not even have to aim at them if your army is all long range anyway, the backline is generally softer and better at shooting. Still, they can definitely pose a threat with orders and they are incredibly good at blocking assault armies and holding ground, denying deep strike anti-tank units etc.

 Blackie wrote:
As I said before those 200 guardsmen alone won't achieve anything. They can't really kill something valuable with their shooting, not to mention their melee stats. They only sit on objectives and screen some tanks, so you just have to kill the model you need to remove in a turn to score points or for the purpose of future points.

They are capable of killing any targets with T5 and below quite efficiently. 50 of them with FRFSRF can kill 9-10 ork boyz outside of rapid fire range. That's pretty good for a unit that only costs about 180-200 pts including support. For reference two twin AC razorbacks (200 pts) are killing 10-11 ork boyz. When judging their melee stats you have to take into account the effect of the order that allows them to fall back and shoot as well.

I agree that Schrödinger's Conscripts need to be toned down.

These almighty units that are capable of bubble-wrapping every unit in the IG army, being close enough to protect them from flying assault troops whilst simultaneously being far enough away to fend off all deep-strikers from every possible direction.

Even more incredibly, they are able to get every model into rapid-fire range of any enemy (regardless of distance), without sacrificing either of the above. Not only that, but they will always rapid-fire with a full unit, no matter how many casualties they appeared to suffer in prior turns.

What's more, they are apparently able to fluctuate in size, hopping from a mere 50 to 200+ and then back in an instant.

Finally, they can cause free support units to spontaneously appear whenever they're needed.

I only wish I could find their entry in my IG codex. I know it's supposed to be there, but every time I open my book to see, it ceases to exist.

 vipoid wrote:
These almighty units that are capable of bubble-wrapping every unit in the IG army, being close enough to protect them from flying assault troops whilst simultaneously being far enough away to fend off all deep-strikers from every possible direction.

You generally only need them to do one of the above against a given army, and even if they have to do two or three you can easily have enough to fulfill those roles. Have you ever seen 100 conscripts on a table?

 vipoid wrote:
Even more incredibly, they are able to get every model into rapid-fire range of any enemy (regardless of distance), without sacrificing either of the above. Not only that, but they will always rapid-fire with a full unit, no matter how many casualties they appeared to suffer in prior turns.

Who in this thread has even mentioned any need to get into rapid fire range?

 vipoid wrote:
What's more, they are apparently able to fluctuate in size, hopping from a mere 50 to 200+ and then back in an instant.

The 200+ is an example of how many you can take while 50 is what each unit contains, which means that doing the math on 50 at a time is more useful.

 vipoid wrote:
Finally, they can cause free support units to spontaneously appear whenever they're needed.

Who has said or implied that they are free?

 vipoid wrote:
I only wish I could find their entry in my IG codex. I know it's supposed to be there, but every time I open my book to see, it ceases to exist.

Maybe you need glasses.

Sigh. I see my post went over your head entirely.

But whatever, I look forward to more endless moving of goalposts.

 vipoid wrote:
These almighty units that are capable of bubble-wrapping every unit in the IG army, being close enough to protect them from flying assault troops whilst simultaneously being far enough away to fend off all deep-strikers from every possible direction.

They only really need to be able to provide a line several inches deep in front of the Guard army to cut of any deep strike attack attempts against the meaty guard units.

Even more incredibly, they are able to get every model into rapid-fire range of any enemy (regardless of distance), without sacrificing either of the above. Not only that, but they will always rapid-fire with a full unit, no matter how many casualties they appeared to suffer in prior turns.

Could it be that perhaps different people in this thread have had different experiences with conscripts! :O It would be crazy to think one IG player used them for bubble wrap and another used them for Flashlight batteries.

What's more, they are apparently able to fluctuate in size, hopping from a mere 50 to 200+ and then back in an instant.

Oh my god! More differing experiences! It's almost as if each game of 40k is unique from every other due to different units, Generals, etc.

Finally, they can cause free support units to spontaneously appear whenever they're needed.

I wonder how an Imperial Guard player could fit support units into a 2000pt list when they've already used up a whole 150pts on Conscripts! It's just impossible!

I only wish I could find their entry in my IG codex. I know it's supposed to be there, but every time I open my book to see, it ceases to exist.

I can't find the Strawman entry in the Imperium 2 Index either. :(


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 vipoid wrote:
Sigh. I see my post went over your head entirely.

But whatever, I look forward to more endless moving of goalposts.

What do you expect people to do when you make a post like that?

 mrhappyface wrote:

What do you expect people to do when you make a post like that?

Stop moving the goalposts. Yeah, I know, what a crazy idea.

Can you really not see how ridiculous it is for one side to start down the line of 'conscripts are silly when you have 200 of them', then as soon as that line starts to look shaky they drop it back down to 50 conscripts?

 vipoid wrote:

 mrhappyface wrote:

What do you expect people to do when you make a post like that?

Stop moving the goalposts. Yeah, I know, what a crazy idea.

Can you really not see how ridiculous it is for one side to start down the line of 'conscripts are silly when you have 200 of them', then as soon as that line starts to look shaky they drop it back down to 50 conscripts?

What is shaky about running 200 or 50 conscripts? You can do either, in either case the conscripts are useful. I prefer to talk about 100 since that seems to be both cheap and able to do all of the above roles depending on matchup. But if someone suggests that killing 200 conscripts with X vehicles is easy, I have to base the math on 200 conscripts no?

Where is someone basing one argument on 50 total in an army and another argument on 200 total in an army?