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 An Actual Englishman wrote:

 xttz wrote:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:

Wait, so a "Brood Brothers" detachment in a 'Forces of the Hivemind' army has access to all of the AM stratagems?! Dayummm. So a buff to AM strats is potentially a buff to GSC too? Right?

Depending on the wording, that could be right. A lot of their strats refer to ASTRA MILITARUM only, so most only affect the Brood Brothers detachment.

However this one refers to friendly units so can easily apply to GSC or Tyranids in the same army. What's more funny is that the new Maleceptor strat to reduce ranged weapon strength on friendly units is worded the same way, so can buff Brood Brothers AM units.

Interesting! Sounds unintended to me, though. I'd hate to be a Guard player (or AM or whatever) and have all of my tasty strats also ported over to another faction that has it's own (hopefully?) tasty strats. Feels like there's no incentive to play mono-Guard, which is poor design IMO.

Wich regiment you pick is very important for guard in order of getting advantages and even gamestile, since brood brothers don’t get that it’s not that much of a problem.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:

 xttz wrote:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:

Wait, so a "Brood Brothers" detachment in a 'Forces of the Hivemind' army has access to all of the AM stratagems?! Dayummm. So a buff to AM strats is potentially a buff to GSC too? Right?

Depending on the wording, that could be right. A lot of their strats refer to ASTRA MILITARUM only, so most only affect the Brood Brothers detachment.

However this one refers to friendly units so can easily apply to GSC or Tyranids in the same army. What's more funny is that the new Maleceptor strat to reduce ranged weapon strength on friendly units is worded the same way, so can buff Brood Brothers AM units.

Interesting! Sounds unintended to me, though. I'd hate to be a Guard player (or AM or whatever) and have all of my tasty strats also ported over to another faction that has it's own (hopefully?) tasty strats. Feels like there's no incentive to play mono-Guard, which is poor design IMO.

Considering how prominent Loyal 32 was/is and being an Imperial army often souped with for that reason, we might see a Mono-Only benefit in the same vain as Space Marines.

tneva82 wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Yeah, the hit penalties for heavy weapons shouldn't apply to vehicles. That's a stupid rule.
About as stupid as not being able to shoot a character out in the open because there happens to be a grot hiding being a wall just a fraction of an inch closer.

Feel free to come up with better rule that doesn't result in rhino sniping like in earlier edition

How about can't target a character if there's a visible enemy unit within 6" of it that's closer?
Also, what is Rhino sniping?

 An Actual Englishman wrote:

 xttz wrote:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:

Wait, so a "Brood Brothers" detachment in a 'Forces of the Hivemind' army has access to all of the AM stratagems?! Dayummm. So a buff to AM strats is potentially a buff to GSC too? Right?

Depending on the wording, that could be right. A lot of their strats refer to ASTRA MILITARUM only, so most only affect the Brood Brothers detachment.

However this one refers to friendly units so can easily apply to GSC or Tyranids in the same army. What's more funny is that the new Maleceptor strat to reduce ranged weapon strength on friendly units is worded the same way, so can buff Brood Brothers AM units.

Interesting! Sounds unintended to me, though. I'd hate to be a Guard player (or AM or whatever) and have all of my tasty strats also ported over to another faction that has it's own (hopefully?) tasty strats. Feels like there's no incentive to play mono-Guard, which is poor design IMO.

Brood bros dont get gsc strats. They get their own stratagems and only if uou take a detachment of brood brothers.

They work like allied guard to a SM list works just with no regiment trait.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Yeah, the hit penalties for heavy weapons shouldn't apply to vehicles. That's a stupid rule.
About as stupid as not being able to shoot a character out in the open because there happens to be a grot hiding being a wall just a fraction of an inch closer.

Feel free to come up with better rule that doesn't result in rhino sniping like in earlier edition

How about can't target a character if there's a visible enemy unit within 6" of it that's closer?
Also, what is Rhino sniping?

Rhino sniping is using Rhino's (or similar) in a manner that intentionally blocks line of sight to allow the shooting unit to target a unit that would otherwise be an un-targetable unit.

 oni wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Yeah, the hit penalties for heavy weapons shouldn't apply to vehicles. That's a stupid rule.
About as stupid as not being able to shoot a character out in the open because there happens to be a grot hiding being a wall just a fraction of an inch closer.

Feel free to come up with better rule that doesn't result in rhino sniping like in earlier edition

How about can't target a character if there's a visible enemy unit within 6" of it that's closer?
Also, what is Rhino sniping?

Rhino sniping is using Rhino's (or similar) in a manner that intentionally blocks line of sight to allow the shooting unit to target a unit that would otherwise be an un-targetable unit.

Oh so that's why they designed the targeting rules as they are...even though it would be less awkward to either allow characters to join units again or make characters untargetable if they are within a certain distance of a unit. But intuitive design is verboten apparently

 FatBoyNoSlim wrote:
I dont think anyone is argueing that the autogun strat is super powerful, I kinda like it and I am not even saying its great.

I just think that is a good example of what a 1CP strat should be like, a nice little buff that has some tactical flexibility. A 1CP strat SHOULD only let you kill an extra marine whilst getting to deploy much further away, it shouldnt delete a whole enemy unit!

The problem is simply that Marines have broken the game as many of their strats/abilities are extremely powerful but still only cost 1 CP. Now everyone compares anything new with what marines got. But that also means that most new releases are met with disappointment and negativity.

I disagree, it has so little effect that using a limited resource on it makes it terrible, but using the opposite extreme of an undercosted but extremely powerful strat doesn't help matters. There are plenty of strats out there that are 1CP, have a notable effect without being overpowered.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:

 xttz wrote:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:

Wait, so a "Brood Brothers" detachment in a 'Forces of the Hivemind' army has access to all of the AM stratagems?! Dayummm. So a buff to AM strats is potentially a buff to GSC too? Right?

Depending on the wording, that could be right. A lot of their strats refer to ASTRA MILITARUM only, so most only affect the Brood Brothers detachment.

However this one refers to friendly units so can easily apply to GSC or Tyranids in the same army. What's more funny is that the new Maleceptor strat to reduce ranged weapon strength on friendly units is worded the same way, so can buff Brood Brothers AM units.

Interesting! Sounds unintended to me, though. I'd hate to be a Guard player (or AM or whatever) and have all of my tasty strats also ported over to another faction that has it's own (hopefully?) tasty strats. Feels like there's no incentive to play mono-Guard, which is poor design IMO.

Sounds like another case of GW not paying any attention to their own keyword system. Remember how Agents of Vect could technically be used by any Drukhari detachment because it didn't require a Kabal of the Black Heart unit to activate.

1 CP to make weapons that are all but ornamental slightly more effective seems like a waste of time.

Well you never know there might be some decent traits.
Everyone slept on CWE traits and master crafters and exarch powers has been really positive for me in terms of making army composition.

Fingers crossed for those crazy Nid worshipping whackos!
However its not looking good.

https://i.redd.it/dd3r7itk34f41.jpg new guard strategem

 Twoshoes23 wrote:
https://i.redd.it/dd3r7itk34f41.jpg new guard strategem

Reading that strat, I feel like the English language has been strained through a cat, decanted into tiny porcelain cups for mice, who promptly knocked the table over and walked away.


"-1 to hit guard units near a Bullgryn unit." Done.
And, as a bonus, better enough that you might think about using it.

Voss wrote:

 Twoshoes23 wrote:
https://i.redd.it/dd3r7itk34f41.jpg new guard strategem

Reading that strat, I feel like the English language has been strained through a cat, decanted into tiny porcelain cups for mice, who promptly knocked the table over and walked away.


"-1 to hit guard units near a Bullgryn unit." Done.
And, as a bonus, better enough that you might think about using it.

Do you know who's also near a Bullgryn unit? The Bullgryn unit itself. Better write that wording to ensure the rule doesn't work on the unit itself.

They could also have specified "non-BULLGRYN" unit or whatever keyword's easiest, I suppose.

The stratagem seems useful, its very presence in the "options deck" of a Guard player means one's opponent has to re-weigh their targeting priorities a bit. I expect it won't actually come into play very often, but the possibility of it being used means Bullgryns will have to tank more shots that might otherwise have been aimed at squishier units near them.

On the other hand, I don't know what unit you'd want within 3" of your own Bullgryns, who I think would want to be in in the thick of it for most of a game.

 FatBoyNoSlim wrote:
That new GSC autogun strat is not as worthless as some people believe.

As an almost pure neophyte Cult player, I often run multiple full sized blobs of neophytes, armed with Mining Lasers and Grenade Launchers. One of the big problems I have found is being able to cram all my deepstriking shooting into rapid fire range. I have previously got round this by using the Lying in Wait strat to let me get within 3" but it still causes me a big headache when I am Ambushing 120 infantry in a turn.
This lets me have another full blob of infantry Ambush comfortably without losing out on any firepower.

Does the Tau strat allow for more raw damage output. Sure. But the cult strat is a good tool to have and gives the cult more tactical flexibility.

I am personally quite happy with this strat, because it has some good tactical uses, is only 1 CP but isn't totally broken. It is a great example of what a stratagem should be!

I am not a GW fan boy by any means, I think the current state of 8th is really bad thanks to marines. But People cry when GW releases OP stuff and then they also cry when GW releases normal power level stuff. I guess we all wish GW could just be more consistent.

I seem to recall a very recent video I watched saying just this same thing. That starts should be strategic in nature and give you options and not just be spend the points and delete something with the unit that used it. I think I'm picking up what you're putting down.

 Agamemnon2 wrote:
They could also have specified "non-BULLGRYN" unit or whatever keyword's easiest, I suppose.

The stratagem seems useful, its very presence in the "options deck" of a Guard player means one's opponent has to re-weigh their targeting priorities a bit. I expect it won't actually come into play very often, but the possibility of it being used means Bullgryns will have to tank more shots that might otherwise have been aimed at squishier units near them.

On the other hand, I don't know what unit you'd want within 3" of your own Bullgryns, who I think would want to be in in the thick of it for most of a game.

Another unit of Bullgryn?

 cuda1179 wrote:

 Agamemnon2 wrote:
On the other hand, I don't know what unit you'd want within 3" of your own Bullgryns, who I think would want to be in in the thick of it for most of a game.

Another unit of Bullgryn?

Good point. Still, it's not going to be that hard to winnow down the ablative unit of bullgryns or maneuver around them (trying to shield a large unit with a small one usually only works across a limited arc at a time).

 Agamemnon2 wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:

 Agamemnon2 wrote:
On the other hand, I don't know what unit you'd want within 3" of your own Bullgryns, who I think would want to be in in the thick of it for most of a game.

Another unit of Bullgryn?

Good point. Still, it's not going to be that hard to winnow down the ablative unit of bullgryns or maneuver around them (trying to shield a large unit with a small one usually only works across a limited arc at a time).

I could also see this working if you had a minimum squad of Bullgryn set way back in a defensive position to screen a conscript squad sitting on an objective.

The gem in the bullgryn strat is that it's also a 1 point strat in a list that should have loads of CP and it gives options and they give the defense buff with -1 to hit to any infantry units within 3 of them and not closer to the shooter.

The key there is infantry units, not guard infantry units. Now I don't get why they'd want to entice more soup lists but the strat does give some nice options of units they can tank for then.

Though out of hand if they FAQ it just to guard infantry its pretty useless as most single squads just aren't very worth while to keep safe like that. Making it pretty situational. It's not useless and for 1 point, eh could be good.

It really comes down to if they make it only work for guard infantry or keep it up for soup consideration for if it has some real goodness etched into it.

As for the ambush strat, it won't give you much bang for your buck but I look at it as giving options for force multipliers. More guns, coming in at range for fire and have choice of targets, even just with a lasgun is still useful. They don't have to rock the enemy apart but putting more pressure can be a good tool in the belt.

As someone else said, we have been spoiled with 1 pt strats, most strats we see as good are all the most broke, no brainer choices found for some factions. GW has really broked whatever balance they may have tried to find with strats at this point.

Now is the ambush strategy good ? I'd say its a middle of the road strat but it does offer choices. Again, I think we're looking at the straight killy nature of the strat too heavily, thats not really its purpose. Sometimes a unit coming in and putting out all that fire even if its bad fire, can be enough to draw shots in return, make the enemy nervous, get more units to an area so they can all get their shots in and that may be enough massed up to mean something.

So some may say, and rightly so, it's too weak. For the current meta, it is. However that isn't all the strats fault thats the fact this game has gone off the rails with broke strats and factions so that when we get something usable but not OP it gets put into the worthless column.

Heck, I'm as prone to this as anyone else, just looking at the items power and thinking that sucks. That was my first impression with the Bullgryn strat however looking deeper, it may have some merit. I think the ambush one can as well if only for increasing at small cost force applied to a more targeted area for a turn. Nothing to write home about but being as the game is random, it could have a higher impact depending on the dice.

Not every roll comes out exactly mathhammer and for those times and for things you can't quantify with a die roll is where it'll be worth the point or a waste of time.

I mean it's better than some strats which are literally worthless. Such as that preliminary bombardment strat which I've only ever seen do maybe 1 damage somewhere for a reasonable 2 CPs.

GW is just very inconsistent with ideas of power, use or both.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Yeah, the hit penalties for heavy weapons shouldn't apply to vehicles. That's a stupid rule.
About as stupid as not being able to shoot a character out in the open because there happens to be a grot hiding being a wall just a fraction of an inch closer.

Feel free to come up with better rule that doesn't result in rhino sniping like in earlier edition

How about can't target a character if there's a visible enemy unit within 6" of it that's closer?
Also, what is Rhino sniping?

You just enabled rhino sniping. It's moving 1+ rhino so there's only tiniest sliver visible to intended target. It used to work like you suggest. People then used rhino's to bypass character protection so suddenly character inside unit was killed just like that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Oh so that's why they designed the targeting rules as they are...even though it would be less awkward to either allow characters to join units again or make characters untargetable if they are within a certain distance of a unit. But intuitive design is verboten apparently

Character could be IN unit but as it was only visible target all hits were allocated to him rather than unit he was in.

Rhino sniping, the height of tacticool movement.

Voss wrote:

 Twoshoes23 wrote:
https://i.redd.it/dd3r7itk34f41.jpg new guard strategem

Reading that strat, I feel like the English language has been strained through a cat, decanted into tiny porcelain cups for mice, who promptly knocked the table over and walked away.


"-1 to hit guard units near a Bullgryn unit." Done.
And, as a bonus, better enough that you might think about using it.

...and you just created a strat for all Bullgryn units to pop to be -1 to hit any time they like. On a unit that is already super-durable that would be a very questionable idea.

The one they wrote is better. The clunky wording is because they are trying to cut down on abuse by clever players interpreting RAW - which is largely what we are asking them to do.

Anyway it is a very good strat. It works well in soup list as there are all sorts of things you might want to protect behind a durable unit of bullgryns. It still has utility in pure guard lists - in early game to screen heavy weapons teams or protect characters from snipers and in the late game for the remains of a bullgryn unit to screen off a unit scoring an objective. Nice little 1CP strat, works with an already top tier unit, will see fairly regular use.

happy_inquisitor wrote:

Voss wrote:

 Twoshoes23 wrote:
https://i.redd.it/dd3r7itk34f41.jpg new guard strategem

Reading that strat, I feel like the English language has been strained through a cat, decanted into tiny porcelain cups for mice, who promptly knocked the table over and walked away.


"-1 to hit guard units near a Bullgryn unit." Done.
And, as a bonus, better enough that you might think about using it.

...and you just created a strat for all Bullgryn units to pop to be -1 to hit any time they like. On a unit that is already super-durable that would be a very questionable idea.

The one they wrote is better. The clunky wording is because they are trying to cut down on abuse by clever players interpreting RAW - which is largely what we are asking them to do.

Anyway it is a very good strat. It works well in soup list as there are all sorts of things you might want to protect behind a durable unit of bullgryns. It still has utility in pure guard lists - in early game to screen heavy weapons teams or protect characters from snipers and in the late game for the remains of a bullgryn unit to screen off a unit scoring an objective. Nice little 1CP strat, works with an already top tier unit, will see fairly regular use.

That is only if they don't errata it away to say only guard units can benefit from it. GW isn't exactly not known for near immediate changes to published rules that drastically change the useful nature of the strat or rule in question. " Well we just didn't imagine a player would use Bullgryns to screen - insert unit you want to keep safe in a soup list - so we're changing it to be only guard units " then bam it's lost a good chunk of its charm and yes still has use but ends up very changed. That is what I'm worried about each time I see a GW rule and think " This could be cool ".

I'm kinda disappointed GW dedicated a custom Cult Creed trait to a single unit in the GSC roster.

"When a Psychic test is taken for a <Cult> model with this Cult Creed within 6" of another friendly <Cult> unit, you can re-roll any or all dice rolls of 1"

The Patriarch doesn't gain the bonus from Cult Creeds, so this only applies to the psychic test made by a Magus

Additionally we're limited to a single Magus per-detachment, and they're subpar single-cast psykers, so most lists only take one for the extra warlord trait from the Broodcoven strategem...

Yes. And if you do take the Magus for the Brood Coven WL trait, you probably want him to be Bladed Cog for wound re-rolls, 4AE for extra CP, maybe even Hive Cult these days for some shooty re-rolls, etc..

Custom Cult-for-one-unit just kills that. Not to mention that GSC seems to be getting some cult specific spells (despite being limited to only two-one-spell-a-turn-casters-per-detachment-plus-maybe-some-familiars), which were arguably the best thing for Tyranids in Blood of Baal, but made custom hive fleets even less attractive there as well.

At least the Craftworld version of psychic custom trait has the possiblity of going to a Supreme Command of Psykers with plenty of Psykers in there, and even that is less popular than the copy&paste ones taken from Marines like Expert Crafters.

happy_inquisitor wrote:

Voss wrote:

 Twoshoes23 wrote:
https://i.redd.it/dd3r7itk34f41.jpg new guard strategem

Reading that strat, I feel like the English language has been strained through a cat, decanted into tiny porcelain cups for mice, who promptly knocked the table over and walked away.


"-1 to hit guard units near a Bullgryn unit." Done.
And, as a bonus, better enough that you might think about using it.

...and you just created a strat for all Bullgryn units to pop to be -1 to hit any time they like. On a unit that is already super-durable that would be a very questionable idea.

The one they wrote is better. The clunky wording is because they are trying to cut down on abuse by clever players interpreting RAW - which is largely what we are asking them to do.

Anyway it is a very good strat. It works well in soup list as there are all sorts of things you might want to protect behind a durable unit of bullgryns. It still has utility in pure guard lists - in early game to screen heavy weapons teams or protect characters from snipers and in the late game for the remains of a bullgryn unit to screen off a unit scoring an objective. Nice little 1CP strat, works with an already top tier unit, will see fairly regular use.

What's interesting though is that the bullgryn don't die. Its basically the same sort of thing as grot shields and even costs the same amount of CP, but the user doesn't lose any models because of it.
I hope they apply this sort of system to other armies.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

happy_inquisitor wrote:

Voss wrote:

 Twoshoes23 wrote:
https://i.redd.it/dd3r7itk34f41.jpg new guard strategem

Reading that strat, I feel like the English language has been strained through a cat, decanted into tiny porcelain cups for mice, who promptly knocked the table over and walked away.


"-1 to hit guard units near a Bullgryn unit." Done.
And, as a bonus, better enough that you might think about using it.

...and you just created a strat for all Bullgryn units to pop to be -1 to hit any time they like. On a unit that is already super-durable that would be a very questionable idea.

The one they wrote is better. The clunky wording is because they are trying to cut down on abuse by clever players interpreting RAW - which is largely what we are asking them to do.

Anyway it is a very good strat. It works well in soup list as there are all sorts of things you might want to protect behind a durable unit of bullgryns. It still has utility in pure guard lists - in early game to screen heavy weapons teams or protect characters from snipers and in the late game for the remains of a bullgryn unit to screen off a unit scoring an objective. Nice little 1CP strat, works with an already top tier unit, will see fairly regular use.

What's interesting though is that the bullgryn don't die. Its basically the same sort of thing as grot shields and even costs the same amount of CP, but the user doesn't lose any models because of it.
I hope they apply this sort of system to other armies.

Gw's been trying to give us a way to screen our guys wiuth various strts etc, their first attempt was the salamanders strat, which was, perhaps too good, this one though hits all the right makrs for me. it doesn't mean you can't shoot other units, but it does mean you might wanna shift your targeting priority

Grot shields predate the salamanders strat though.
Did they ever patch the salamanders strat so it can't be abused? I remember the initial wording on that strat made it so that you can basically hide a unit, designate that as the "sacrifice" and make everything within 6" of that unit immortal.

I mean, if you are going to introduce the Iron Curtain (Red Alert reference) to the game, at least make it a LoW unit or a pricey strat.

The bullgryn stratagem seems ok, as it offers a protection for characters being sniped by eliminators..

Bullgryn strat is great, but it's value is almost exclusively in soup IMO, not so much in pure Guard (except maybe some gamey ITC Engineers shenanigans).

To save AM characters, you're probably better off with an Ogryn Bodyguard, especially since snipers could bait that stratagem with (usually) several squishy AM infantry characters about.

Using Bullgryns to shield a pricey allied unit seems to pay off more, especially if you can stack it with another -1 from AdMech Stygies VIII in imperial soup or a Malanthrope in a GSC/Nids soup.

And better wait for FAQ just in case. I wouldn't rush off buying bullgryns to add to your soup just yet.