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 Zimko wrote:

First of all, wound allocation means overwatch will never result in a longer charge unless you remove the entire unit. They can simply remove boyz from the back.

Secondly, with Waagh, you won't get close enough to rapid fire lasguns into boyz outside of overwatch unless the ork player plays like an idiot.

Your best chance at doing what you described is if stagger multiple blobs of conscripts, sacrificing the front blob so that the second blob can unload. Then a second mob of boyz wipes that blob.... Then a third blob of conscripts wipes that mob... etc. It all comes down to positioning, smart play and some luck. Which honestly is a good thing.

But the thread is about horde vs non-horde. Non-horde doesn't have the numbers to trade blows like that and win. That's why horde is doing well. 8th edition is a very deadly game where having the initiative means everything (ironic since the initiative stat is gone)

1: You are right

2: You are wrong, Rapid fire is 12inches. Boyz can charge 12inches, so in reality what that means is if the Boyz fail their charge they are going to get dakka'd off the table. If I start the turn 20inches from you and move 5 inches closer, then run and get the average roll of 3-4 I am then 11-12inches away, If I then try the charge you get to kill 4ish models and then on your turn you can issue FRFSRF and annihilate them.

3: Your best chance is to charge those boyz with your 1st blob after shooting those orkz, then the orkz will finish kill that blob on their turn, failing that you can retreat them and shoot the hell out of them with the 2nd blobs and so on.

Ok. This debate is getting off topic. The OP is about horde vs non-horde, not which horde does it better. We can agree that it would be a good game between a competant ork horde player and AM conscript player.

 Zimko wrote:
Ok. This debate is getting off topic. The OP is about horde vs non-horde, not which horde does it better. We can agree that it would be a good game between a competant ork horde player and AM conscript player.

No, the topic is "Is horde the new 8th meta to be afraid of" and we are comparing two different hordes versus one another.

So, is your opinion that a conscript horde army should not be weary of an ork horde army?

I think such a match would be a close game.

However, other non-horde armies would have a tough time against either ork horde or conscript horde.

It's a small sample size, but my local shop had a 20 person tournament with competitive lists for the NOVA Open GT and the top 2 armies were both orks. The top was an army of 180 grot with big mek bubbles and grot herders and pain boyz. That was only half his list (grits are 3 pts each). He got max points against all his opponents because they simply couldn't remove that many models off of objectives before the game ended. It's a pretty strong case for horde armies.

The other ork player had 90 boyz and an assortment of tank bustas and stuff.

So in my opinion, yes, horde armies are something to be afraid of in the meta, even if you are also using a horde army.

 Zimko wrote:


First of all, wound allocation means overwatch will never result in a longer charge unless you remove the entire unit. They can simply remove boyz from the back.

You're very right, I forgot about that since I play with vehicles and tipycally throw them to eat overwatch.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Zimko wrote:


So in my opinion, yes, horde armies are something to be afraid of in the meta, even if you are also using a horde army.

It depends on the army and the specific lists involved. I play orks, drukhari and space wolves and I usually change my lists after 10ish games since playing with the same stuff is boring IMHO, and sometimes hordes are hard counters for my lists but sometimes they're not, even if I write the lists trying to keep them as TAC as possible. A drukhari list with tons of dark lances and blasters is quite TAC, common and competitive but it can be completely screwed by a list with only cheap bodies and characters that cannot be targeted like a green tide. Other kinds of drukhari lists, more assault oriented, perform quite well against green tides, but they lack the anti tank they need against another type of horde, the AM one, which is usually supported by tanks.

The grots army can get a tabled result by many other opponents. Rock/paper/scissor game, if you write a list that can do nothing against hordes and play against random guys it's your fault. I'd be afraid only of stuff than auto-wins everytime, certainly not the grots spam and even the conscripts+commissar spam in my opinion.

I guess 'afraid' is the wrong word. To me it just means that hordes are competitive enough to exist in the top tables in one form or another, and therefore has to be considered when building a list.

 Tactica wrote:
I was looking at several armies this weekend and its startling at how good the horde is in 8th ed.

Orks have 3 point gretchin with good BS and you can litterally blanket the field in wounds and even take 4 flamers for 4d6 auto hits a turn.

IG have 3 point conscripts in 50-man squad coupled with commissar get rediculously resilient to morale and add straken and you get better. I'm not sure anyone can ever get you off of the objectives in a 5 turn game.

Chaos cultists are 3 pnts a model and fielded in up to 40 man squads and you can give them all pistols and brutal combat weapons so you can shoot every turn even in combat and get 2 attacks each...

Tau drones are 8 points each for gun and shield drones or 10 points each for marker drones, and they act as ablative wounds for characters or other units as needed...

Necrons an take a horde of swarms with multi-wound bases and get stuck in pretty good in melee.

I stopped looking.... but for around 1K points, you can litterally 'blanket' the field in crap with legs... but in the new rules, they are actually decent to field as there's now no WS comparison in combat, and to hit rolls in shooting is a flat stat. Even S3 guns can wound most things in the game on 5+... and with the kinds of shots we are talking, in the 100s a turn... and when you can field upwards of 300 wounds, it starts becoming a bit ludicrous in a 1700 point game.

Forget moving all that a turn and getting a tournament done on time... but wow... deploy, camp objectives and start removing wounds from the rear as needed... forget about the enemy 'reserve striking... or whatever' into the game anywhere but their own deployment zone...

What am I missing?

I mean IG can then take another 30 or so auto-cannon heavy weapons and have points to spare... tau can take some commanders to sprinkle in the drones... list goes on and on.

This seems crazy!

Hurricane bolters and twin Assault cannons for the win. Those delete them from the board fast. My Stormraven and Assault Dev squad does (72 bolter shots, 2d6 frag shots, and 4d6 flamer autohits.... wth the 2 lascannons, 4 melta guns, 2 Stormstike missiles going elsewhere to a hard target).

Which is of course how the new meta is unfolding.

 Melissia wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Marines have essentially zero non-stormraven options against conscripts.

You mean aside from all the other options they have.

Have you tried 6 tac squads or many razorbacks or just plain shooting over their heads and pretending they are not their/ playing the objectives.

Conscripts are not broken but they do counter elite spam alpha lists because you wont table wipe them. That's a fault in your list not the conscript

So, with the changes being brought in by Chapter Approved, hordes just got even more difficult to deal with, due to gaining ObSec.

My thoughts on dealing with hordes like boyz spam or 50 man conscript units is - can my army destroy 1 unit a turn whilst also dealing with other threats?

For example - can i kill a unit of 50 conscripts, and put some hurt on a couple of tanks and/or a couple of manticores?

If the answer is yes, then, it doesn't matter whether or not a individual unit is points efficient at removing another, it becomes more about being efficient across the entire army.

Lets say i had 3 stormtalons, 3 basic tac squads and 3 autocannon/las preds. Individually, each one is probably not that efficient at removing individual units of the horde, but i wouldn't need them to be.
3 stormtalons "should" kill 16.6 conscripts a turn, then another 6.6 if you take heavy bolters, totalling 23.2 dead.
15 tac marines will do kill another 4.4 outside of rapid fire range, totalling 27.6 dead.
Pred autocannons kill another 5.5, giving you a total of 33 dead conscripts, whilst still leaving you with another 6 lascannon shots to punish a vehicle or two.
None of this includes any re-rolls etc either.

Now, not exactly points efficient by a LONG way, but its just there to highlight a point. If you can make a large dent in a big squad each turn, while still dealing with the main threats, then, the longer the game goes on,the easier it is for you to keep control. Sure, you might not be able to kill 200 conscripts within 5 turns, but, by killing 150 of them you essentially neuter them. As soon as the big guns are gone the counter threat to you is pretty minimal. Lets face it, 50-200 conscripts outside of rapid fire range isn't really something to be overly worried about, especially if they have to target flyers or tanks.

What i listed above btw, is roughly the same amount of points as 200 conscripts, 3 commissars, 3 company commanders, 3 manticore batteries and 1 earthshaker battery. Again, just an example. Things would potentially be very different in a maelstrom mission, but, if playing for objectives then you get other options as they aren't just holding back as a screen.

Edit addon-
My 2k points list would on average (without counting in re-rolls) be able to kill 78 conscripts a turn via shooting whilst having a dedicated 1st turn CC unit, a 1st turn CC HQ, and 2 units that will shoot and charge first turn, 4 lascannons and some anti-air. I could drop this down to 71 a turn, if i used some plasma to target other units as well.So, in theory, i'd need maybe 4 turns to completely destroy 200 conscripts through shooting alone when taking casualties into account. Adding in melee, i'd expect that to be 3 turns.

U02dah4 wrote:

 Melissia wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Marines have essentially zero non-stormraven options against conscripts.

You mean aside from all the other options they have.

Have you tried 6 tac squads or many razorbacks or just plain shooting over their heads and pretending they are not their/ playing the objectives.

Conscripts are not broken but they do counter elite spam alpha lists because you wont table wipe them. That's a fault in your list not the conscript

That loses to basically every other list in the game, and probably loses to the conscripts as well. Tac marines are miserable.

Martel732 wrote:

U02dah4 wrote:

 Melissia wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Marines have essentially zero non-stormraven options against conscripts.

You mean aside from all the other options they have.

Have you tried 6 tac squads or many razorbacks or just plain shooting over their heads and pretending they are not their/ playing the objectives.

Conscripts are not broken but they do counter elite spam alpha lists because you wont table wipe them. That's a fault in your list not the conscript

That loses to basically every other list in the game, and probably loses to the conscripts as well. Tac marines are miserable.

Unless said Tac Marines are next to a Girlyman bubble, then they become pretty damn good, especially if you take some good heavy/special weapons.

But you are right, by themselves tacs aren't worth much. Which is why I don't see them often and usually my SM opponent is taking Dev Squads and Predators/Razorbacks and putting them next to girlyman or other buff characters.

Tac squads were in 7th. Now they are better especially when number of drops vecomes less important due to chapter approved changes.

Have you heard of salamanders because 6 tactical squads all with lascannons that can reroll rolls to hit and wound which gives you a fair number of bolter shots to smash some Conscripts with and rediculously strong av and no giulliman tax for the rerolls. Which means your lost can take more guns

It's funny how people find they can't deal with conscripts while deriding the tools they have to deal with them

In my local meta, we have a player who is using the conscripts blobs, commissars, and mortars to win. But the added caveat is his 12 Callidus assassins. Nerf turn 1 stratagems, pop out of the conscript squads where he needs them, and are characters. I don't think anyone has come up with a decent way, other than flyer spam, to deal with his army.

He was also talking about adding a primaris psyker as well. Not sure if this will make too big a difference though.

Can you post his list ?

So we can think a bit about counters ?

scions are probably better than calidus and do the same job really

U02dah4 wrote:
Tac squads were in 7th. Now they are better especially when number of drops vecomes less important due to chapter approved changes.

Have you heard of salamanders because 6 tactical squads all with lascannons that can reroll rolls to hit and wound which gives you a fair number of bolter shots to smash some Conscripts with and rediculously strong av and no giulliman tax for the rerolls. Which means your lost can take more guns

It's funny how people find they can't deal with conscripts while deriding the tools they have to deal with them

List tailoring is not a viable solution. And that's exactly what you advocate.

How is it list tailoring to suggest that a strong salamanders list should contain multiple tac squads as it helps you deal with both hoards and elite vehicles which makes up most of the meta particularly when reducing unit numbers is going to be less important

PandatheWarrior wrote:
Can you post his list ?

So we can think a bit about counters ?

I am not 100% sure what it is now, but he was running 12 or 13 callidus assassins, 1 commisar, 2 commanders, 4 or 5 conscripts blobs, and 4 or 5 heavy weapons mortar teams. He has stated that he cannot deal with fliers or armor, but does not really need to. He simply denies the majority of the table through the blobs, hits things too far away from the blobs with the mortars, and uses the assassins to murder his opponents infantry or characters. I don't think he has finished a whole game with the army either. His turns take a half hour to 45 minutes depending on how much he moves (and talks. He is definitely a talker!). His opponent is usually so bored by the time his turns end that the game ends up not being very fun and they either get tabled or quit.

U02dah4 wrote:
Tac squads were in 7th. Now they are better especially when number of drops vecomes less important due to chapter approved changes.

Have you heard of salamanders because 6 tactical squads all with lascannons that can reroll rolls to hit and wound which gives you a fair number of bolter shots to smash some Conscripts with and rediculously strong av and no giulliman tax for the rerolls. Which means your lost can take more guns

It's funny how people find they can't deal with conscripts while deriding the tools they have to deal with them

That is a bad solution, too inefficient in terms of pts killed per pts used to be viable. I'm deriding the suggested tools because even though they look like good solutions when you only look at the models on a tabletop, they aren't good solutions in terms of game mechanics.

U02dah4 wrote:
How is it list tailoring to suggest that a strong salamanders list should contain multiple tac squads as it helps you deal with both hoards and elite vehicles which makes up most of the meta particularly when reducing unit numbers is going to be less important

I'm ba not sallies.

Seems pretty resilient to me with decent damage output vs vehicles and passible vs conscript but I haven't had enough time to field test as the salamanders tactic is newly out. It would be a list for playing to win not table if that's what you mean but most of the lists struggling to beat hoards are those that have to table


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Martel732 wrote:

U02dah4 wrote:
How is it list tailoring to suggest that a strong salamanders list should contain multiple tac squads as it helps you deal with both hoards and elite vehicles which makes up most of the meta particularly when reducing unit numbers is going to be less important

I'm ba not sallies.

Then optimally you are a sideboard of lemartes and at most 3 dc units with a couple of baal predators which is sad because I have 10k of them. But BA are just not up to SM at least till a codex comes out

So I can't take on the Index Guard with Index BA? That seems like a poor omen.

It's the most playtested edition ever

U02dah4 wrote:
It's the most playtested edition ever

Polish a turd its still a turd.

It does certainly feel that if not 'hordes', then at least volume of fire matters a ton more than accuracy. To give you an example:

Take the Leman Russ Punisher. You can't really spam these in large numbers, but say you even took two of them with bolter load outs. That's 40 Punisher Gatling gun shots total plus 18 Heavy Bolter shots total. In this edition, since everything has a chance to hurt, that can take down ta good amount of units. Sure, not everything will die to that, but it will make a dent at least.

Now tons of shots tends to lend itself to hordes since that's usually the most cost effective way of doing massed shots. Not the only way, but it is certainly one of the ways.

 deltaKshatriya wrote:
It does certainly feel that if not 'hordes', then at least volume of fire matters a ton more than accuracy. To give you an example:

Take the Leman Russ Punisher. You can't really spam these in large numbers, but say you even took two of them with bolter load outs. That's 40 Punisher Gatling gun shots total plus 18 Heavy Bolter shots total. In this edition, since everything has a chance to hurt, that can take down ta good amount of units. Sure, not everything will die to that, but it will make a dent at least.

Now tons of shots tends to lend itself to hordes since that's usually the most cost effective way of doing massed shots. Not the only way, but it is certainly one of the ways.

Which is why I say that Hordes aren't the new hotness. Gun lines are great against everything except maybe alpha strike and even that is debatable. So hordes are really only good against non-gunline armies and those are usually crap across the board so people don't take them.

Welcome to 8th edition Rock paper scissors.

SemperMortis wrote:

 deltaKshatriya wrote:
It does certainly feel that if not 'hordes', then at least volume of fire matters a ton more than accuracy. To give you an example:

Take the Leman Russ Punisher. You can't really spam these in large numbers, but say you even took two of them with bolter load outs. That's 40 Punisher Gatling gun shots total plus 18 Heavy Bolter shots total. In this edition, since everything has a chance to hurt, that can take down ta good amount of units. Sure, not everything will die to that, but it will make a dent at least.

Now tons of shots tends to lend itself to hordes since that's usually the most cost effective way of doing massed shots. Not the only way, but it is certainly one of the ways.

Which is why I say that Hordes aren't the new hotness. Gun lines are great against everything except maybe alpha strike and even that is debatable. So hordes are really only good against non-gunline armies and those are usually crap across the board so people don't take them.

Welcome to 8th edition Rock paper scissors.

Hordes are good against gunlines cause your gunline can't kill the horde fast enough, unless your gunline is also a horde.

A horde isn't just about numbers. It's about using the numbers to protect your more vulnerable assets. You can't get to hidden earthshakers through 200 conscripts, and then scions come in to take out all your heavy units.

Actually, unless your opponent is using an absurdly restrictive set of terrain, usually you can in fact get to their artillery through the conscripts by, you know, shooting them.

If they're using abusively restrictive terrain, you probably should stop playing with them.

 Melissia wrote:
Actually, unless your opponent is using an absurdly restrictive set of terrain, usually you can in fact get to their artillery through the conscripts by, you know, shooting them.

If they're using abusively restrictive terrain, you probably should stop playing with them.

You can't unless your terrain is gak, and you may as well not play with terrain at all if you can just shoot anything from anywhere.

stratigo wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
Actually, unless your opponent is using an absurdly restrictive set of terrain, usually you can in fact get to their artillery through the conscripts by, you know, shooting them.

If they're using abusively restrictive terrain, you probably should stop playing with them.

You can't unless your terrain is gak, and you may as well not play with terrain at all if you can just shoot anything from anywhere.

So GW's official terrain pieces are gak?

Becaues they don't hide half the board from the other half, like so many people pretend they do.