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Martel732 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
I have a hard time believing 80 marines beat a 2K IG list with any consistency.

I think I play with a different strategic emphasis than you do. I like to double down on lots of marine bodies, it means my heavy weapons fire for longer and it means I have more basic guns to continually pepper little guys with.

But truth be told right now I'm playing Chaos. Which is kinda fun since they get two Heavy Weapons in a basic Squad instead of one.

You need a lot more than peppering to trim down conscript squads. You need 100's of peppering. You'll be below 50 bodies in turn 3 almost guaranteed. I just don't see how your emphasis changes anything. Especially if you guys never make it to assault, you've left a bunch of damage on the table.

What were you saying about Wyvern's that average less than 2 marine kills a turn? "It adds up."

You will run out of marines far before they run out of IG bodies. That's the problem. A wyvern killing 2 marines is not only two boltguns gone, but all the potential assault damage as well. Generalists just don't take the losses as well. The wyvern killing 2 marines is still a win for IG. Peppering 4 or 5 conscripts means nothing to the IG.

Martel732 wrote:
You will run out of marines far before they run out of IG bodies. That's the problem. A wyvern killing 2 marines is not only two boltguns gone, but all the potential assault damage as well. Generalists just don't take the losses as well. The wyvern killing 2 marines is still a win for IG. Peppering 4 or 5 conscripts means nothing to the IG.

But the Lascannons are killing vehicles, and if only 50 marines out of the original 80 marines make it to the conscripts, things look pretty good for me. I'm not sure if you know this, but basic marines are much better at killing conscripts than conscripts are good at killing marines.

 Insectum7 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
You will run out of marines far before they run out of IG bodies. That's the problem. A wyvern killing 2 marines is not only two boltguns gone, but all the potential assault damage as well. Generalists just don't take the losses as well. The wyvern killing 2 marines is still a win for IG. Peppering 4 or 5 conscripts means nothing to the IG.

But the Lascannons are killing vehicles, and if only 50 marines out of the original 80 marines make it to the conscripts, things look pretty good for me. I'm not sure if you know this, but basic marines are much better at killing conscripts than conscripts are good at killing marines.

You still lose with 50 marines. You'll kill a bunch of conscripts, they back out of combat, and then 1500 pts of IG light you up. Rinse and repeat. You will run out of marines before you even get to their tanks. Your lascannons can't see their tanks. Therefore, they can't silence them. Maybe some sparse boards allow you to do this.

You probably don't have 50 marines because your devastators probably aren't moving.

 Insectum7 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
I have a hard time believing 80 marines beat a 2K IG list with any consistency.

I think I play with a different strategic emphasis than you do. I like to double down on lots of marine bodies, it means my heavy weapons fire for longer and it means I have more basic guns to continually pepper little guys with.

But truth be told right now I'm playing Chaos. Which is kinda fun since they get two Heavy Weapons in a basic Squad instead of one.

You need a lot more than peppering to trim down conscript squads. You need 100's of peppering. You'll be below 50 bodies in turn 3 almost guaranteed. I just don't see how your emphasis changes anything. Especially if you guys never make it to assault, you've left a bunch of damage on the table.

What were you saying about Wyvern's that average less than 2 marine kills a turn? "It adds up."

Wyverns are far from the best answer to MEQ in the AM arsenal. Heavy bolter HWT squads kill half their cost in tactical marines each turn, and that's assuming no upgrades. Even the mortar HWT isn't far off, they kill about 42% of their cost in tactical marines. Unless you stay in cover, but then you probably aren't going to be able to assault and you still won't win a shootout.

Martel732 wrote:

You still lose with 50 marines. You'll kill a bunch of conscripts, they back out of combat, and then 1500 pts of IG light you up. Rinse and repeat.

Run the math on that and get back to me.

Okay. Which 1500 pts of IG should I use? They get a lot of cheap plasma. How much plasma?

I just mention wyverns because the guys I play always have 3 for the nid and Ork players. So they aren't even optimizing vs marines and still massacring BA.

Oh, I see. You're assuming that 20 Lascannons for a few turns have been completely ineffective against IG tanks for some reason, and at the same time no damage has been done to the Conscripts with advancing bolter fire in the meantime. Got it.

I'm not interested in this conversation anymore.

Martel732 wrote:
Okay. Which 1500 pts of IG should I use? They get a lot of cheap plasma. How much plasma?

I just mention wyverns because the guys I play always have 3 for the nid and Ork players. So they aren't even optimizing vs marines and still massacring BA.

Tournament guard lists will have 6+ manticores or wyverns, or a mix of both. This isn't anything new, and you can easily reference this content.

When you're rolling 12D6 to determine your shots, it gets a bit nuts.

I hope you like having marines in squads of 10. In reality the guard player doesn't need to kill all 10. 7 should be enough. And they shall absolutely know fear, and flee if brought in squads of 10.

Oh and Death Company absolutely get the morale shaft. Leadership 7 for a DC squad. That is the same as a base Guard squad. #balanced.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Oh, I see. You're assuming that 20 Lascannons for a few turns have been completely ineffective against IG tanks for some reason, and at the same time no damage has been done to the Conscripts with advancing bolter fire in the meantime. Got it.

I'm not interested in this conversation anymore.

Because manticores and wyverns. We're trying to explain the competitive meta to you, you're just not accepting it. To be fair, people do bring devastator squads to tournaments - just not a lot of people do - and they use missile launchers, they're more flexible than lascannons.

 Deathypoo wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

And if the tail is being used, then you're losing some firepower from the Conscripts by doing so.

The guardsmen fit in about a block 6~7" to a side. The officers can stand 6" behind the back. That means you need to get 12-13" past the front of the conscript unit just to reach the officer on the charge even before they add a tail. Each conscript in the tail extends that range by a further 3" It's not like the tail is base-to-base guardsmen across the table, I've never seen one get longer than 4 guys, and that was just sloppy placement that could easily have been 3.

6% of the unit, aka 9 points, "wasted" to ensure the officers that are absolutely vital to its function are allowed to survive. It doesn't take a genius guard player to figure it out.

It also doesn't take a genius Guard player to figure out that your math has been garbage, seeing as how it has been continuously talking about 50 Conscripts firing.

Each marine equivalent has at least 3 bolter equivalent attacks between shooting and assault. These 3 attacks kill 0.88 conscripts. Determination of the effects of special/heavy weapons is a bit difficult. Notably, sternguard get 2 shots and 2 attacks, but these are rare in 8th from what I've seen.

Now the next issue is all 50 marines going after one blob, or are they spread across the battlefield somewhat?

At any rate, let's say your 50 marines get to the conscript line and all get to double tap range. The total damage output is 44 from bolteresque attacks. Now this is neglecting special/heavy and overwatch.

Marines are losing damage from meltaguns, gaining with plasma, and gaining with flamers.

Meltaguns are -0.3 conscripts
Plasmaguns are +0.5 conscripts
Flamers are +0.9 conscripts

Notice here that you are paying quite a bit for weapons that are only netting you 3 pts tops extra damage! That's the power of 3pt wounds with 5+ armor.

So let's say 15 of your dudes are up a net 1.1 in damage. That's an even spread of flamer, plasma, melta. So that's 44+15 = 59 conscripts dead total. So, you've killed one blob or knocked two down to 40%. With 50 marines and maxxed wargear.

Somewhere in here, you lose two dudes to overwatch in the assault and the surviving conscripts kill 1.5 more marines in CC.

59 conscripts is 177 pts, and you only paid 45.5 pts do it. However, the rest of the IG list is almost certainly going to cause far in excess of 131.5 pts of damage to your remaining 46-47 marines. AND the conscripts still have two 40% blobs or one full blob. So, you have to do the same thing next turn. Again, the conscripts are buying TIME more than anything else. And they are getting this time for a pittance.

Assuming you wipe them in shooting, you have still been prevented from moving forward fully and you take yet ANOTHER barrage from the rest of the IG list. Even if these barrages only wipe say 10 marines each, you are now down to 27 marines tops to take out all the remaining tanks and cap objectives. I must tell you 1000+ IG only killing 10 marines is VERY optimistic.

The threat of beta strike from plasma scions alone makes this almost certain suicide.

 Marmatag wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Oh, I see. You're assuming that 20 Lascannons for a few turns have been completely ineffective against IG tanks for some reason, and at the same time no damage has been done to the Conscripts with advancing bolter fire in the meantime. Got it.

I'm not interested in this conversation anymore.

Because manticores and wyverns. We're trying to explain the competitive meta to you, you're just not accepting it. To be fair, people do bring devastator squads to tournaments - just not a lot of people do - and they use missile launchers, they're more flexible than lascannons.

Tournament tables I've seen don't offer the type of cover to completely hide 6 tanks. That's why I don't buy it. I believe the bit about Missile Launchers, and have experimented with putting more in my army, but traditionally I'm a Lascannon guy, and since I tend towards more bodies (aka more Bolters) I probably tend to favor Lascannons more than average as I have more Bolters around.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Oh, I see. You're assuming that 20 Lascannons for a few turns have been completely ineffective against IG tanks for some reason, and at the same time no damage has been done to the Conscripts with advancing bolter fire in the meantime. Got it.

I'm not interested in this conversation anymore.

Because manticores and wyverns. We're trying to explain the competitive meta to you, you're just not accepting it. To be fair, people do bring devastator squads to tournaments - just not a lot of people do - and they use missile launchers, they're more flexible than lascannons.

Tournament tables I've seen don't offer the type of cover to completely hide 6 tanks. That's why I don't buy it. I believe the bit about Missile Launchers, and have experimented with putting more in my army, but traditionally I'm a Lascannon guy, and since I tend towards more bodies (aka more Bolters) I probably tend to favor Lascannons more than average as I have more Bolters around.

Many ITC boards have pieces where you can hide 3, though. If the deployment is right, 6 is possible, but you can count on 3. Shooting a wyvern is highly inefficient anyway due to their cost.

Martel732 wrote:
Each marine equivalent has at least 3 bolter equivalent attacks between shooting and assault. These 3 attacks kill 0.88 conscripts. Determination of the effects of special/heavy weapons is a bit difficult. Notably, sternguard get 2 shots and 2 attacks, but these are rare in 8th from what I've seen.

Now the next issue is all 50 marines going after one blob, or are they spread across the battlefield somewhat?

At any rate, let's say your 50 marines get to the conscript line and all get to double tap range. The total damage output is 44 from bolteresque attacks. Now this is neglecting special/heavy and overwatch.

Marines are losing damage from meltaguns, gaining with plasma, and gaining with flamers.

Meltaguns are -0.3 conscripts
Plasmaguns are +0.5 conscripts
Flamers are +0.9 conscripts

Notice here that you are paying quite a bit for weapons that are only netting you 3 pts tops extra damage! That's the power of 3pt wounds with 5+ armor.

So let's say 15 of your dudes are up a net 1.1 in damage. That's an even spread of flamer, plasma, melta. So that's 44+15 = 59 conscripts dead total. So, you've killed one blob or knocked two down to 40%. With 50 marines and maxxed wargear.

Somewhere in here, you lose two dudes to overwatch in the assault and the surviving conscripts kill 1.5 more marines in CC.

59 conscripts is 177 pts, and you only paid 45.5 pts do it. However, the rest of the IG list is almost certainly going to cause far in excess of 131.5 pts of damage to your remaining 46-47 marines. AND the conscripts still have two 40% blobs or one full blob. So, you have to do the same thing next turn. Again, the conscripts are buying TIME more than anything else. And they are getting this time for a pittance.

Assuming you wipe them in shooting, you have still been prevented from moving forward fully and you take yet ANOTHER barrage from the rest of the IG list. Even if these barrages only wipe say 10 marines each, you are now down to 27 marines tops to take out all the remaining tanks and cap objectives. I must tell you 1000+ IG only killing 10 marines is VERY optimistic.

The threat of beta strike from plasma scions alone makes this almost certain suicide.

Like I said, not interested anymore. Don't waste your typing.

It's also not certain you can get 50/80 marines up the conscripts, as you will march through optimal quadratap range. That is very bad. I can jump over it, and they still come out ahead.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
So the theme is pro-IG stomping off. Got it.

 Insectum7 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Each marine equivalent has at least 3 bolter equivalent attacks between shooting and assault. These 3 attacks kill 0.88 conscripts. Determination of the effects of special/heavy weapons is a bit difficult. Notably, sternguard get 2 shots and 2 attacks, but these are rare in 8th from what I've seen.

Now the next issue is all 50 marines going after one blob, or are they spread across the battlefield somewhat?

At any rate, let's say your 50 marines get to the conscript line and all get to double tap range. The total damage output is 44 from bolteresque attacks. Now this is neglecting special/heavy and overwatch.

Marines are losing damage from meltaguns, gaining with plasma, and gaining with flamers.

Meltaguns are -0.3 conscripts
Plasmaguns are +0.5 conscripts
Flamers are +0.9 conscripts

Notice here that you are paying quite a bit for weapons that are only netting you 3 pts tops extra damage! That's the power of 3pt wounds with 5+ armor.

So let's say 15 of your dudes are up a net 1.1 in damage. That's an even spread of flamer, plasma, melta. So that's 44+15 = 59 conscripts dead total. So, you've killed one blob or knocked two down to 40%. With 50 marines and maxxed wargear.

Somewhere in here, you lose two dudes to overwatch in the assault and the surviving conscripts kill 1.5 more marines in CC.

59 conscripts is 177 pts, and you only paid 45.5 pts do it. However, the rest of the IG list is almost certainly going to cause far in excess of 131.5 pts of damage to your remaining 46-47 marines. AND the conscripts still have two 40% blobs or one full blob. So, you have to do the same thing next turn. Again, the conscripts are buying TIME more than anything else. And they are getting this time for a pittance.

Assuming you wipe them in shooting, you have still been prevented from moving forward fully and you take yet ANOTHER barrage from the rest of the IG list. Even if these barrages only wipe say 10 marines each, you are now down to 27 marines tops to take out all the remaining tanks and cap objectives. I must tell you 1000+ IG only killing 10 marines is VERY optimistic.

The threat of beta strike from plasma scions alone makes this almost certain suicide.

Like I said, not interested anymore. Don't waste your typing.

He literally presented the math.

I have been looking some more and found that there is a unit capable of killing 1/3 of its value in conscripts per turn at a considerable range without LOS, namely AM mortar HWT squads. So I guess that's part of the solution for an army that wants to kill them. But if you want to protect those from getting assaulted by other armies you'd need a screen, and getting a screen from the imperium means getting conscripts. At that point you are almost playing AM yourself.

Another unit that is more efficient than anything else I found in the SM list is the new aggressor squad. They are actually killing slightly below 1/4 of their cost at a decent enough range, and are only slightly less durable than terminators. Although terminators are quite squishy themselves. If you can get the double fire to work the aggressors can actually reach very respectable kill numbers, but that requires you to get within 18'' the turn before. I doubt that they will last that long.

Maybe someone else will look at it and find a problem/comment.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Deathypoo wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

And if the tail is being used, then you're losing some firepower from the Conscripts by doing so.

The guardsmen fit in about a block 6~7" to a side. The officers can stand 6" behind the back. That means you need to get 12-13" past the front of the conscript unit just to reach the officer on the charge even before they add a tail. Each conscript in the tail extends that range by a further 3" It's not like the tail is base-to-base guardsmen across the table, I've never seen one get longer than 4 guys, and that was just sloppy placement that could easily have been 3.

6% of the unit, aka 9 points, "wasted" to ensure the officers that are absolutely vital to its function are allowed to survive. It doesn't take a genius guard player to figure it out.

It also doesn't take a genius Guard player to figure out that your math has been garbage, seeing as how it has been continuously talking about 50 Conscripts firing.

I said 6% of the unit not firing is the most I've ever seen, not the standard. It's only there at all on a situational basis. But sure, go back and chop off 6% of the firepower for any of my posts on conscript math. It doesn't matter because I don't see conscripts barely edging other things out, they are overwhelmingly dominant in points efficiency.

Also, playing an army with 12" range for my default guns, I'm not too sympathetic to the idea that getting with 24" is such a struggle. If the back of the conscript block only counts as having a 17-18" range, that's still more than my standard unit even after you count the added movement at my disposal due to being fast with battle focus.

I think the thread is now an echo chamber. It's very disappointing , but it's exactly the same as Riptide and Scatterbike threads in 7th.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

He literally presented the math.

He did. But by that time I realized that his scenario appeared to be assuming that the only damage done in the game, so far, was to my army. And that nothing had been done to the IG player. The scenario appeared to have been constructed entirely in bad faith, so it's not even worth looking at.

That's not true at all. I stated 1000+ of IG shooting back. There was originally 1500 pts of IG. So your devs have neutralized 100-400 ish pts of IG.

Oh, maybe I didn't state that. At any rate, I don't post such long things in bad faith.

No, I said it at the end. Maybe I should have said 1000-1200? I don't think lascannons are knocking out that many points of IG in 2-3 turns, really.

Hey, I figured I'd come back and talk about the simulation I was going to run at some point with one of my friends. He think conscripts are very strong too, and offered to use stand-ins for a 100-150 conscript list while I try to beat on it with the nastiest things I can. We have to simulate because I don't think either of us own enough guardsmen to do it. He's out of town this weekend though, and that's really the only chance we have to play, so it'll probably be next weekend. Maybe I'll get a lucky weeknight game, but it'd probably be at lower points than would be ideal.

Martel732 wrote:

So the theme is pro-IG stomping off. Got it.

*Looks at 1500+ points of Tau sitting on desk*
*Looks at the 3000 points of Grey Knights magnetized in open case on the table*
*Stares down at the Primaris slowly getting painted today for Disciples of Caliban owned since Megaforces were a thing*

Oh, that's right! Uhh...
*Scratches his head while he tries to remember where his 40 Mordians and Scions are*

Well, good luck with your problems. I'd continue trying to help, but I think I'm a little too biased, and definitely not patient enough.

 daedalus wrote:
Hey, I figured I'd come back and talk about the simulation I was going to run at some point with one of my friends. He think conscripts are very strong too, and offered to use stand-ins for a 100-150 conscript list while I try to beat on it with the nastiest things I can. We have to simulate because I don't think either of us own enough guardsmen to do it. He's out of town this weekend though, and that's really the only chance we have to play, so it'll probably be next weekend. Maybe I'll get a lucky weeknight game, but it'd probably be at lower points than would be ideal.

What are you bringing?

Haven't worked that out yet. We just agreed to give it a shot. Right now I'm leaning toward a tac-heavy rhino rush list with maybe using Melissia's first suggest as a base, simply because that's mostly what I have, but counts-as was never really an issue between us. I'm going to try to refrain from any sort of allies as much as I can avoid, though I might also include some Assassins.

Whatever I wind up with, I'll try to maintain reasonable amounts of detail and pictures. I don't think either of us are probably willing to do a videotaped thing, cause I know that would get on my nerves.

Any kind of empirical test of this tac heavy stuff vs conscript blobs would be useful.

 daedalus wrote:
Haven't worked that out yet. We just agreed to give it a shot. Right now I'm leaning toward a tac-heavy rhino rush list with maybe using Melissia's first suggest as a base, simply because that's mostly what I have, but counts-as was never really an issue between us. I'm going to try to refrain from any sort of allies as much as I can avoid, though I might also include some Assassins.

Whatever I wind up with, I'll try to maintain reasonable amounts of detail and pictures. I don't think either of us are probably willing to do a videotaped thing, cause I know that would get on my nerves.

Sounds interesting and fun, good luck.

Ok, theoretical way to fight conscripts...
- take 1000 pts of assault marines and/or terminators and deep strike/charge everything first turn. 70% chance to go first and ~50% chance per unit to succeed with charges if you use Black Templars or command rerolls.
- overwatch likely wont kill terminators, and only kills around 2 marines. how many conscripts you kill in return here is irrelevant, the only goal is to get units to combat
- Guard turn 1: conscripts fall back 6" into his back line, now the guard player has 1 turn to try to kill 50+ marines and/or terminators without FRFSRF (which is basically impossible)
-Marine turn 2+: you can now charge/shoot anything you like and the guard player has no room to fall back anymore, and isn't getting any objectives any time soon.

Lykanthar wrote:
Ok, theoretical way to fight conscripts...
- take 1000 pts of assault marines and/or terminators and deep strike/charge everything first turn. 70% chance to go first and ~50% chance per unit to succeed with charges if you use Black Templars or command rerolls.
- overwatch likely wont kill terminators, and only kills around 2 marines. how many conscripts you kill in return here is irrelevant, the only goal is to get units to combat
- Guard turn 1: conscripts fall back 6" into his back line, now the guard player has 1 turn to try to kill 50+ marines and/or terminators without FRFSRF (which is basically impossible)
-Marine turn 2+: you can now charge/shoot anything you like and the guard player has no room to fall back anymore, and isn't getting any objectives any time soon.

He doesn't have to fall back very far each time, and probably doesn't want to. The conscript formation can be quite loose without having to leave room for enemy models to squeeze between them and the backline. Just reducing these spaces slightly each time he wants to fall back and falling back the minimum distance each time is enough. But your plan could certainly work if the AM player isn't aware of the capabilities of jump pack infantry.

Lykanthar wrote:
Ok, theoretical way to fight conscripts...
- take 1000 pts of assault marines and/or terminators and deep strike/charge everything first turn. 70% chance to go first and ~50% chance per unit to succeed with charges if you use Black Templars or command rerolls.
- overwatch likely wont kill terminators, and only kills around 2 marines. how many conscripts you kill in return here is irrelevant, the only goal is to get units to combat
- Guard turn 1: conscripts fall back 6" into his back line, now the guard player has 1 turn to try to kill 50+ marines and/or terminators without FRFSRF (which is basically impossible)
-Marine turn 2+: you can now charge/shoot anything you like and the guard player has no room to fall back anymore, and isn't getting any objectives any time soon.

Why did the guard player fall back 6" once instead of 1.5" four times? Also, he doesn't have frfsrf but he does have rapid fire an the entire rest of his army...