March FAQ - Upcoming Guard Nerf

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**Mesokhornee**

Soup is the worst thing about 40k matched play

**Martel732**

No, that's still undercosted units. Without those, soup doesn't matter.

**RogueApiary**

Martel732 wrote:
What are you going to soup in that's better than IG? Not a marine unit, that's for sure. Maybe Skitarri at 7ppm?

"Shooting resistant". Haven't seen that yet vs IG.

You could try more. I've played against 100+ several times. That's still only 500 pts base, even after the rumored nerf.

Anything with -1 is fairly shooting resistant, I can assure you. My LVO gunline was 3 basilisks, 2 Manticores, an LRBT, LR punisher, and LR Annihilator. Worked amazing against the Orks/Mechanicum, against the four armies with a lot of -1 coverage, not so much.

And actually, I was considering souping in some BA. You know, on account of that combo actually making it to the top 8.

**Mesokhornee**

Martel732 wrote:
No, that's still undercosted units. Without those, soup doesn't matter.

No, the problem is you can take an undercosted unit for your soup army, that unit then gets nerfed which hurts the people trying to actually play that army instead of running slowed soup lists where you just cherry pick the best units out of an entire faction

**Martel732**

You could try that. Probably better to wait for Space Furries, though. I'm sure they will be much better.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Mesokhornee wrote:
Martel732 wrote:
No, that's still undercosted units. Without those, soup doesn't matter.

No, the problem is you can take an undercosted unit for your soup army, that unit then gets nerfed which hurts the people trying to actually play that army instead of running slowed soup lists where you just cherry pick the best units out of an entire faction

The undercosted unit shouldn't be undercosted to begin with. That removes the motivation to soup it in.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

RogueApiary wrote:
Martel732 wrote:
What are you going to soup in that's better than IG? Not a marine unit, that's for sure. Maybe Skitarri at 7ppm?

"Shooting resistant". Haven't seen that yet vs IG.

You could try more. I've played against 100+ several times. That's still only 500 pts base, even after the rumored nerf.

Anything with -1 is fairly shooting resistant, I can assure you. My LVO gunline was 3 basilisks, 2 Manticores, an LRBT, LR punisher, and LR Annihilator. Worked amazing against the Orks/Mechanicum, against the four armies with a lot of -1 coverage, not so much.

And actually, I was considering souping in some BA. You know, on account of that combo actually making it to the top 8.

Yeah... I have no clue how'd I'd even approach that list. 80 guys protecting 9 tanks? GG

**tneva82**

Ordana wrote:
Limiting armies to 1 codex in the current state of the game does nothing to stop the topic of 'Guard keeps getting nerfed'.

Every Imperial army is running Something + Guard because guard is simply the most cost effective codex even at low point investments.
If you limit armies to 1 codex this simply changes to everyone running guard, because they are the most cost effective codex.

Single codex armies start working at the same time as soup armies stop always taking IG.
Namely when there is better balance and Guard are not always the defacto answer for everything except melee combat.

That's why pure guard was dominating LVO right?

**Martel732**

Kneecap dark reapers and see how it goes. The BA soup lists in the final 8 did not inspire confidence. The above list would blast them off the table. He got unlucky and faced 4/6 with -1 to hit tech.

**koooaei**

Daedalus81 wrote:
Vaktathi wrote:

In this regard, them moving to 5ppm isn't going to change much for most people either way. It's not going to ruin guard armies, and its not going to suddenly make other stuff viable, and its not really going to make them any worse screeners. Most armies arent built around enough guardsmen that they cant just jigger some options and swap a couple weapons and emerge mostly at the same point they were before, the archetypal Brigade usually may go up 60pts at 1850/2k? Within the context of IG armies, I don't think this will have the effect most people either dread or hope for. Mostly, if true, it's likely a reflexive response to a much bemoaned by ultimately minor issue.

In lists where people are packing in as much "good stuff" as they can 30 to 60 points means that a whole other unit needs to be forced out, heavy weapons dropped, CP lost, etc. It does little to hurt pure IG like you say, but the soup lists are going to have a harder time having their cake and eating it, too.

Poor guyz, let me wipe their tears with my 27 ppm flash gitz.

**kurhanik**

Did I miss a big rumor release somewhere? Is 5ppm Guardsmen the only thing that has been gleaned yet, or have other buffs/nerfs been spoiled?

On 5ppm Guardsmen, I'll live, and I guess it suddenly makes Veterans more useful at long last indirectly. But it really depends on the other nerfs/buffs come. If the garbage and below average units (Commissar, Vanquisher, etc) get buffs, while the overperforming units (indirect fire artillery/mortar squads) get nerfed, things will balance out well. If the only thing Guard gets is nerfs, then this will be an ugly update.

**Ordana**

RogueApiary wrote:
Martel732 wrote:
Fielding 80 of anything should be expensive. Realize your 80 dudes autowins vs BA or most any other assault army by turning their assaults off. If I can't get to your guns in 2 turns, my army is dead/crippled. Get real here.

Guard indirect fire weapons are way too cheap as it is. Maybe the infantry increase balances that out a bit.

Here is a summary of my six LVO games

Game one
Orks. I won by two points, 2/3 of the Basilisks were tied up in CC, 5/8 infantry squads were dead.

Game two
Alaitoc/Ynnari. Basically tabled on three, but he let a squad live so I could get some points and he moved off of his objectives to get 0 points for the last three rounds. Literally killed zero units.

Game three
Ravenguard. Lost by 15 points. Aggressors infiltrated in the pocket made by his scouts and murdered my entire frontline. Three squads left at round 3/4. By the time I shot the Aggressors off the center of the board, I couldn't get to any objectives in time to get

Game four
Dark Mechanicum. Won pretty handily, but the dude basically had a mishmash of models since his actual army got stolen. I think I might have lost like two squads?

Game five
Dark Angels. Lost by two points. -1 to hit bubble on most of his mainline absorbed a lot of firepower. Return shooting mulched my infantry that moved onto objectives. Had three squads left at the end.

Game six
Alpha Legion/Iron Warriors. Won by four or five points, but the guy was playing AL berserkers without nurglings, so I basically pushed him into his deployment zone with Ratlings/Sentinels. Even still, he mulched five or six squads and had tagged two of the tanks in CC. If he had actually brought Nurglings, my backline would have been easily tied up.

I don't care that eighty dudes 'auto win' against a assault based list. I care that my eighty dudes are barely enough, or as in 3 out of my 6 games at LVO, not enough against people that bring balanced or shooting resistant lists and having 60 dudes will mean I may as well not even bother showing up without soup.

-1 to hit is a problem. Especially when a bunch of armies get it. This was a mistake from GW and one that I am not sure they will fix since its a lot more of a core issue then just modifying points.

**Breng77**

I don't know that sounds like -1 to hit working as intended. Making it non-viable just to sit behind a wall of cheap infantry and blow the other guy off the table. Without -1 to hit ignore LOS shooting wins most games hands down. Now if GW wants to make all shooting that doesn't have LOS -1 to hit, then we can talk about -1 to hit traits being an issue. That trait has perfectly reasonable answers.

1.) Bring assault elements in your list to kill stuff up close.
2.) Bring close shooty units and get within 12"
3.) In the case of Dark Angels kill his darkshroud(s)

The only issue really is for Eldar where it applies to things that already have -1 to hit. Even then it has its answers to some extent.

I will say though that 80 dudes is not auto win against assault armies, especially blood angels. You just need to kill a number of them prior to bringing in your heavy hitters.

**Blackie**

-1 to hit is fine. It's -2 or more that is absurd, and should be removed.

I also agree about 80 guardsmen are not overpowered, AM is very good because of their shooting, which is way too cheap for that volume of fire.

**zerosignal**

The -1 shouldn't stack with other abilities.

Simple fix.

Otherwise, we're back to Invisibility levels of brokenness.

**vaklor4**

Just do what a few other games have done. Cap minus to hit bonuses. Either at -1, or even -2. That way, no matter how many sources of it you have, it never goes beyond a certain mark.

**Daedalus81**

RogueApiary wrote:
Martel732 wrote:
Fielding 80 of anything should be expensive. Realize your 80 dudes autowins vs BA or most any other assault army by turning their assaults off. If I can't get to your guns in 2 turns, my army is dead/crippled. Get real here.

Guard indirect fire weapons are way too cheap as it is. Maybe the infantry increase balances that out a bit.

Here is a summary of my six LVO games

Game one
Orks. I won by two points, 2/3 of the Basilisks were tied up in CC, 5/8 infantry squads were dead.

Game two
Alaitoc/Ynnari. Basically tabled on three, but he let a squad live so I could get some points and he moved off of his objectives to get 0 points for the last three rounds. Literally killed zero units.

Game three
Ravenguard. Lost by 15 points. Aggressors infiltrated in the pocket made by his scouts and murdered my entire frontline. Three squads left at round 3/4. By the time I shot the Aggressors off the center of the board, I couldn't get to any objectives in time to get

Game four
Dark Mechanicum. Won pretty handily, but the dude basically had a mishmash of models since his actual army got stolen. I think I might have lost like two squads?

Game five
Dark Angels. Lost by two points. -1 to hit bubble on most of his mainline absorbed a lot of firepower. Return shooting mulched my infantry that moved onto objectives. Had three squads left at the end.

Game six
Alpha Legion/Iron Warriors. Won by four or five points, but the guy was playing AL berserkers without nurglings, so I basically pushed him into his deployment zone with Ratlings/Sentinels. Even still, he mulched five or six squads and had tagged two of the tanks in CC. If he had actually brought Nurglings, my backline would have been easily tied up.

I don't care that eighty dudes 'auto win' against a assault based list. I care that my eighty dudes are barely enough, or as in 3 out of my 6 games at LVO, not enough against people that bring balanced or shooting resistant lists and having 60 dudes will mean I may as well not even bother showing up without soup.

Anecdotes are not useful. We need all their lists and your full list to have a real discussion.

e.g. I have a hard time envisioning how scouts blow a hole in 80 guard. Was that over more than one turn? Did you fail morale?

**pismakron**

1) Eighty Guardsmen are not an extreme amount. As an Ork player I expect to lose about 50-60 boyz per turn in my opponents first two shooting phases. And I will usually still have enough left afterwards to easily eat 80 Guardsmen alive.

2) Guard is severely disadvantaged by negative modifiers to hit. Some other factions are as well, but IG really does not have any solid counters.

3) The problem is not the unit-specific or spell-induced -1 to hit, like Eldar rangers or Glamour of Tzeench. The problem is with the army-wide abilities like Alpha Legion, Ravenguard and Alaitoc. -1 to hit auras like the pre-nerf Changeling are also bad.

**Kanluwen**

Martel732 wrote:
What are you going to soup in that's better than IG? Not a marine unit, that's for sure. Maybe Skitarri at 7ppm?

It's one variant that is 7ppm(Rangers). And in order to 'soup in' Skitarii, you're needing an HQ that is sitting around 47 ppm(cheapest HQ option is the Techpriest Enginseer).

"Shooting resistant". Haven't seen that yet vs IG.

Martel having problems strictly playing assault armies, who knew that could happen!

You could try more. I've played against 100+ several times. That's still only 500 pts base, even after the rumored nerf. It's actually quite hard to kill guardsmen with bolters and the like in a reasonable time frame. WIth 10 man squads, you can even get cover and blow a CP to get 3+.

You can't field Guard Infantry Squads(or Veterans for that matter) in anything except 10 man squads...that's part of the whole reason why they had a fixed points cost of 40points for a squad. You can't "min/max" them like many other armies can with their 'basic' troop type.

**Peregrine**

Martel732 wrote:
The undercosted unit shouldn't be undercosted to begin with. That removes the motivation to soup it in.

That's not how balance works. Undercosted units are fine when they are balanced out by weaknesses elsewhere in the list. For example, IG can have undercosted horde infantry to encourage you to play a mass human wave army of expendable cannon fodder. But maybe the drawback is that you don't have good elite infantry, leaving a major weakness against threats that can clear out hordes of weak infantry. Your overall list strength is average, even though some of its individual elements are above or below the average.

The problem comes in when you remove the restrictions on mixing factions. Instead of having an army with strong units and weak units you can suddenly build an army of nothing but strong units, assuming you're lucky enough to play the faction that gets vastly more choices than anyone else. You take the best IG horde infantry, the best space marine primarch, the best elite infantry from a different space marine chapter, the best tanks, etc. Whatever the best units in the game are you take them. Nerfing one unit without nerfing soup in general just makes that particular unit unplayable. It hurts pure-faction armies that depend on the unit, while soup lists just move on to the next overpowered option.

In short: ban soup, fix the game. Put the game back to single codex, single FOC like it was in 5th edition.

**koooaei**

Peregrine wrote:
Martel732 wrote:
The undercosted unit shouldn't be undercosted to begin with. That removes the motivation to soup it in.

That's not how balance works. Undercosted units are fine when they are balanced out by weaknesses elsewhere in the list. For example, IG can have undercosted horde infantry to encourage you to play a mass human wave army of expendable cannon fodder. But maybe the drawback is that you don't have good elite infantry, leaving a major weakness against threats that can clear out hordes of weak infantry. Your overall list strength is average, even though some of its individual elements are above or below the average.

The problem comes in when you remove the restrictions on mixing factions. Instead of having an army with strong units and weak units you can suddenly build an army of nothing but strong units, assuming you're lucky enough to play the faction that gets vastly more choices than anyone else. You take the best IG horde infantry, the best space marine primarch, the best elite infantry from a different space marine chapter, the best tanks, etc. Whatever the best units in the game are you take them. Nerfing one unit without nerfing soup in general just makes that particular unit unplayable. It hurts pure-faction armies that depend on the unit, while soup lists just move on to the next overpowered option.

In short: ban soup, fix the game. Put the game back to single codex, single FOC like it was in 5th edition.

That's like saying that 7-th eldar were balanced because they had banshees. Practice shows that "strong elements" + "weak elements" approach just doesn't come into play all that often in competitive listbuilding. In practice it's usually "as many strong elements as you can get".

How to really fix this? Bring in the real target saturation - not the shooting gallery stuff we have here. There should be restrictions for shooting stuff that's further away. And now people can really bring in mixed lists. In fact, you're forced to bring mixed lists to more effectively deal with emidiate threats and not just delete best targets avaliable.

**tneva82**

Next he's saying special characters deserve discount because you can only have 1.

**RogueApiary**

Daedalus81 wrote:
RogueApiary wrote:
Martel732 wrote:
Fielding 80 of anything should be expensive. Realize your 80 dudes autowins vs BA or most any other assault army by turning their assaults off. If I can't get to your guns in 2 turns, my army is dead/crippled. Get real here.

Guard indirect fire weapons are way too cheap as it is. Maybe the infantry increase balances that out a bit.

Here is a summary of my six LVO games

Game one
Orks. I won by two points, 2/3 of the Basilisks were tied up in CC, 5/8 infantry squads were dead.

Game two
Alaitoc/Ynnari. Basically tabled on three, but he let a squad live so I could get some points and he moved off of his objectives to get 0 points for the last three rounds. Literally killed zero units.

Game three
Ravenguard. Lost by 15 points. Aggressors infiltrated in the pocket made by his scouts and murdered my entire frontline. Three squads left at round 3/4. By the time I shot the Aggressors off the center of the board, I couldn't get to any objectives in time to get

Game four
Dark Mechanicum. Won pretty handily, but the dude basically had a mishmash of models since his actual army got stolen. I think I might have lost like two squads?

Game five
Dark Angels. Lost by two points. -1 to hit bubble on most of his mainline absorbed a lot of firepower. Return shooting mulched my infantry that moved onto objectives. Had three squads left at the end.

Game six
Alpha Legion/Iron Warriors. Won by four or five points, but the guy was playing AL berserkers without nurglings, so I basically pushed him into his deployment zone with Ratlings/Sentinels. Even still, he mulched five or six squads and had tagged two of the tanks in CC. If he had actually brought Nurglings, my backline would have been easily tied up.

I don't care that eighty dudes 'auto win' against a assault based list. I care that my eighty dudes are barely enough, or as in 3 out of my 6 games at LVO, not enough against people that bring balanced or shooting resistant lists and having 60 dudes will mean I may as well not even bother showing up without soup.

Anecdotes are not useful. We need all their lists and your full list to have a real discussion.

e.g. I have a hard time envisioning how scouts blow a hole in 80 guard. Was that over more than one turn? Did you fail morale?

The scouts didn't kill anything. But they deployed in such a way as to guarantee a forward drop zone for his aggressors in a multi story building in the middle of the map, which then proceeded to tear up my entire front. What didn't get shredded couldn't move forward. And clearing 12 aggressors with -1 to hit and cover is harder than you'd think.

Yes, it's anecdotal, but there is no way to gather the actual data on the average number of Guardsmen that get killed in a competitive environment. Six games is a small sample size, but it's not like I'm saying 'well, this one time my guardsmen got wiped!'. I will also add that my experience at LVO matches with the casualties I typically suffered in the practice games leading up to LVO, with maybe 2-3 of the 8 squads making it to turn three.

**bullyboy**

Mesokhornee wrote:
Soup is the worst thing about 40k matched play

Yet soup is a godsend to narrative/casual play.
Soup does not need to be addressed by GW, it needs to be addressed by TOs.

**Daedalus81**

bullyboy wrote:
Mesokhornee wrote:
Soup is the worst thing about 40k matched play

Yet soup is a godsend to narrative/casual play.
Soup does not need to be addressed by GW, it needs to be addressed by TOs.

Not that I disagree, but would no soup have stopped the Eldar at LVO?

**Asmodai**

bullyboy wrote:
Mesokhornee wrote:
Soup is the worst thing about 40k matched play

Yet soup is a godsend to narrative/casual play.
Soup does not need to be addressed by GW, it needs to be addressed by TOs.

Soup can be restricted or eliminated from Matched Play by GW without touching Narrative/Casual play one bit.

**Leo_the_Rat**

Asmodai wrote:
bullyboy wrote:
Mesokhornee wrote:
Soup is the worst thing about 40k matched play

Yet soup is a godsend to narrative/casual play.
Soup does not need to be addressed by GW, it needs to be addressed by TOs.

Soup can be restricted or eliminated from Matched Play by any TO without touching Narrative/Casual play one bit.

Fixed that for you.

**pismakron**

Asmodai wrote:
bullyboy wrote:
Mesokhornee wrote:
Soup is the worst thing about 40k matched play

Yet soup is a godsend to narrative/casual play.
Soup does not need to be addressed by GW, it needs to be addressed by TOs.

Soup can be restricted or eliminated from Matched Play by GW without touching Narrative/Casual play one bit.

Soup can me stopped or mitigated by anyone, by playing games restricted to, say, a single brigade or batallion detachment. I don't think it will solve anything, though. The spam would just be seasoned with a different flavour

**Unit1126PLL**

Well, I certainly missed a lot in this thread.

I do think it's safe to say there's tons of hyperbole on both sides, at least.

**Kanluwen**

Daedalus81 wrote:
bullyboy wrote:
Mesokhornee wrote:
Soup is the worst thing about 40k matched play

Yet soup is a godsend to narrative/casual play.
Soup does not need to be addressed by GW, it needs to be addressed by TOs.

Not that I disagree, but would no soup have stopped the Eldar at LVO?

Possibly, depending on if the LVO organizers believe soup to be possible with monocodex lists or if they go with "It can't be soup if it's all from one book--even if you have different factions present".

**Formosa**

I will be honest my point of view is from an old fart, I still have the outdated mind set that there should be no allies, no soup, just pick a codex and thats what you have, want allies? get a mate to bring his/her army and play doubles, its the way I still play, but its not for everyone I understand.

**Martel732**

Peregrine wrote:
Martel732 wrote:
The undercosted unit shouldn't be undercosted to begin with. That removes the motivation to soup it in.

That's not how balance works. Undercosted units are fine when they are balanced out by weaknesses elsewhere in the list. For example, IG can have undercosted horde infantry to encourage you to play a mass human wave army of expendable cannon fodder. But maybe the drawback is that you don't have good elite infantry, leaving a major weakness against threats that can clear out hordes of weak infantry. Your overall list strength is average, even though some of its individual elements are above or below the average.

The problem comes in when you remove the restrictions on mixing factions. Instead of having an army with strong units and weak units you can suddenly build an army of nothing but strong units, assuming you're lucky enough to play the faction that gets vastly more choices than anyone else. You take the best IG horde infantry, the best space marine primarch, the best elite infantry from a different space marine chapter, the best tanks, etc. Whatever the best units in the game are you take them. Nerfing one unit without nerfing soup in general just makes that particular unit unplayable. It hurts pure-faction armies that depend on the unit, while soup lists just move on to the next overpowered option.

In short: ban soup, fix the game. Put the game back to single codex, single FOC like it was in 5th edition.

I completely disagree. I don't think you can balance out undercosted units like that. Players can spam the undercosted units and avoid the others.