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Yeah, BA don't get that particular trick. So yes, a squad of 10 vanilla intercessors can murder a large number of guardsmen at 30". Seems like a bigger problem than the molasses Custodes who can't shoot.

Marines now feel way more elite than Custodes, because they function in every phase of the game. Custodes effectively don't shoot, and this impacts their elite status tremendously.

 Xenomancers wrote:
They should not have been losing ranged shooting battles against guardsmen. Marines should push over gaurdsmen like they weren't even there.

And here we have why using the fluff to inform tabletop abilities is a problem. No, your basic all-rounder generalist troops choice should not, point-for-point, get to 'push over' anyone else's basic troops choice 'like they weren't even there'.

Even without Doctrines, you have longer maximum range, better fire effectiveness beyond 12", benefit vastly more from cover, largely ignore morale, and have a huge advantage in melee ability. If you were sitting at point blank range and losing firefights to Guardsmen, that's your own fault.

No marines should not be able to roll over them. An ig division has more plasma guns than a chapter has marines probably.

I would agree that ONE Marine should outshoot and outmelee ONE Guardsmen significantly. Maybe not as if "he wasn't there" but definitly by a large margin.
But: the Marines weight in Guardsmen should not lag that much behind (in my opinion at least). And since they are quite weak in melee should at least achieve similar output in shooting.

And in m personal opinion: a troop type that is a dedicated melee unit and can not shoot (like genestealers) should, once it is in melee range, dominate a shooting unit point for point. I was quite shocked by the OPs calculation demonstrating that even without Superdoctrines yaddayadda this is not the case.

 catbarf wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
They should not have been losing ranged shooting battles against guardsmen. Marines should push over gaurdsmen like they weren't even there.

And here we have why using the fluff to inform tabletop abilities is a problem. No, your basic all-rounder generalist troops choice should not, point-for-point, get to 'push over' anyone else's basic troops choice 'like they weren't even there'.

Even without Doctrines, you have longer maximum range, better fire effectiveness beyond 12", benefit vastly more from cover, largely ignore morale, and have a huge advantage in melee ability. If you were sitting at point blank range and losing firefights to Guardsmen, that's your own fault.

This, so much. Primaries Marines shouldn’t win gun fights 5 to 1 to guards (or whatever insane number it is right now).

point per point efficiently should not be wildly different across basic troops. Specially not when one basic generalist troop is point efficient in all dimensions (melee toughness and firing).

Martel732 wrote:
Yeah, BA don't get that particular trick. So yes, a squad of 10 vanilla intercessors can murder a large number of guardsmen at 30". Seems like a bigger problem than the molasses Custodes who can't shoot.

Marines now feel way more elite than Custodes, because they function in every phase of the game. Custodes effectively don't shoot, and this impacts their elite status tremendously.

Except they're not a bigger threat, and I mean here's why.

Those intercessors could probably split their fire between two 40 pt infantry squads. So lets say 6+ saves from Tactical doctrine + bolt rifles with the Guardsmen in cover, lets even say with re-rolls to hit by whatever buffs are being used. Statistically they're going to kill 5 Guardsmen in each squad, for a total of 40 points of dead Guardsmen.

To do that, they've had to spend 2 CP and 200 points on the Intercessors. And as a Guard player I couldn't care less because the one infantry list I have tried in the last few months has been Creed + Kell with 8-9 infantry squads. You kill 10 Guardsmen? Big deal. I'm only going to move-move-move another 30 onto the center objective in the following turn. In fact I'd be glad that you wasted 2 CP.

And then I'm going to have a field day wiping out a juicy 10 man squad that makes up almost 1/8th of your list with tanks and artillery when intercessors pose no threat to either of the latter.

If I'm playing against Custodes and a squad of 3-5 2+ save, toughness 5 multi-wound models drop on top of my gunline, I have no choice but to kill them immediately with my limited number of tanks, multi-tasking between that and killing the Shield Captain with Jetbike, 3++ and a million wounds that's practically an auto-take. If you FRFSRF 5 full squads of Guardsmen with every single model perfectly surrounding the Custodes in a 12'' bubble, a setup that costs 276 points + 1 CP minimum to be barely practical (5 IS, one Commissar, 2 Commanders, inspired tactics) statistically you're going to kill one model on average with a chance of a second. And I am reducing this to absurdity to make a point, because you are not going to surround a squad that just deepstriked with all your infantry intact getting into a perfect rapid fire bubble. It just doesn't happen.

Its the same on the offense. You're never going to dislodge a Custodes squad on an objective by counting on Guardsmen in any capacity, whereas a big enough swarm of Guardsmen could have a chance to overwhelm some Intercessors if they FRFSRF and hit first in melee. Its simpler just to forget about infantry and focus on the one thing that always works, which is heavy support.

Edit:


But bottom line, I don't disagree that Custodes aren't the most reliable meta list. Its just that knowing that they exist and that there's a realistic chance of me playing one of the few people at my LGS who take them makes it pretty pointless to use infantry as anything other than a blocking and objective utility.

Why cant you just tarpit the cutodes all game with guardsmen?

Martel732 wrote:
Why cant you just tarpit the cutodes all game with guardsmen?

That is exactly the strategy I then have to use. The problem is that all of the points I've invested into Priests, Creed, Kell, Commissars etc are mostly wasted. You can't lock down a rampaging squad of Custodes in melee for more than a turn or two at absolute best, maybe 3 if you really crank your neck and cripple yourself to get one of the few sources of true fearless left (Severina Raine and Ogryn Bodyguard, Valhallan relic, Lord Commissar Warlord etc) and generally its better to hope to tarpit them for a turn while you delete the Shield Captain and then wipe out the Custodes deepstrikers in the next turn.

At the next LGS tournament I'm going to test out the new Armoured Sentinel strategems to see if they make Sentinels work as more efficient tarpit blockers and my infantry are going to be mixed min-cost Scions and a few infantry squads in chimeras to avoid giving away first blood and to see if transports also work economically as blockers. But I haven't spent a single point on making my infantry any more effective than they are in their vanilla setup.

Why are you shooting with infantry squads at custodes infantry with lasguns and expecting to kill them? Just put a couple of plasma guns here and there.

Is not like Imperial Guard has any kind of problem fighting agaisnt a pure custodes list. But I have never find a Imperial Guard player that expected damage from their infantry squads. They are there to gain time for artillery/veterans/tempestus/etc... and die in droves. A single custodian guard costs nearly 20% more than one of your barebones troop choices.

What is going on in this thread? Are people so desperate to avoid the marine discussion that they've resorted to discussing Custodes Vs Guardsmen? I'm half impressed as to how this discussion even came about.

Custodes might be OP, FWIW, but we'll never know in the current meta because Marines just gak all over them. This is true of many factions, including Orks.

Marines are so powerful they are a cut above everything else and it genuinely feels as though they're playing a different game to me. My gut tells me that's wrong.

Gadzilla666 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Auras are a terrible mechanic. This is underscored by the new codex.

Rerolling 1s isn't too bad, but rerolling everything is fething ridiculous.

I think auras are a bad mechanic even when they're 'only' rerolling 1s.

Even if the aura is ideally costed, it's a completely shallow mechanic that adds basically no depth to the game, nor any meaningful tactical or strategic choices.

If auras were rare, I probably wouldn't mind (they've certainly existed in the past in some form or other). My issue is that it was basically made the default ability for the majority of HQ choices.

IMO 8th edition would have been *vastly* improved if GW had ditched both Stratagems and auras, and had instead implemented the CP and Command Ability rules from Age of Sigmar.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
What is going on in this thread? Are people so desperate to avoid the marine discussion that they've resorted to discussing Custodes Vs Guardsmen? I'm half impressed as to how this discussion even came about.

Custodes might be OP, FWIW, but we'll never know in the current meta because Marines just gak all over them. This is true of many factions, including Orks.

Marines are so powerful they are a cut above everything else and it genuinely feels as though they're playing a different game to me. My gut tells me that's wrong.

Everyone has pretty much agreed and said all there's to say about marines/intercessors.
Of course bar one or two people still asserting there is nothing wrong with marines/intercessors and they don't really need nerfing as if the layers and layers of buffs, abilties and rules somehow aren't a problem.
They just outlier head in the sand peeps who are trying really hard to justify the current paradigm..


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 vipoid wrote:

Gadzilla666 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Auras are a terrible mechanic. This is underscored by the new codex.

Rerolling 1s isn't too bad, but rerolling everything is fething ridiculous.

I think auras are a bad mechanic even when they're 'only' rerolling 1s.

Even if the aura is ideally costed, it's a completely shallow mechanic that adds basically no depth to the game, nor any meaningful tactical or strategic choices.

If auras were rare, I probably wouldn't mind (they've certainly existed in the past in some form or other). My issue is that it was basically made the default ability for the majority of HQ choices.

IMO 8th edition would have been *vastly* improved if GW had ditched both Stratagems and auras, and had instead implemented the CP and Command Ability rules from Age of Sigmar.

In one of the Blurbs about new SM codex/supplement GW full on said:

".. you will be bale to use new tactical options and on the battlefield****"
**** By which we mean all of the re-rolls!!! lol."

If you want me to go back and trawl through their community website to get the actual quote I can, I think it was the UM supplement or codex 2.0.

So yeah. They know. And they even trolling.
8th is the best edition ever so stream lined, so quick omg omg omg!! Yeh...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Gadzilla666 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
The best off-the-shelf aura bubble counter is to snipe them out with anothe marine unit. Yaaaaay.

Vox scream. Until the cp runs out of course.

Ohh is that a Strat available to everyone somewhere in CA 2019 im not aware of... ?

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
What is going on in this thread? Are people so desperate to avoid the marine discussion that they've resorted to discussing Custodes Vs Guardsmen? I'm half impressed as to how this discussion even came about.

Custodes might be OP, FWIW, but we'll never know in the current meta because Marines just gak all over them. This is true of many factions, including Orks.

Marines are so powerful they are a cut above everything else and it genuinely feels as though they're playing a different game to me. My gut tells me that's wrong.

It's a funny old thing that things don't make sense when you don't read them and then openly admit you haven't read them, though it doesn't seem to have stopped you from taking opportunity to express frankly theatrical levels of sourness

I introduced the comparison to argue that overly efficient 'eliteness' is something that has influenced game balance and quality, but more so from Custodes than Marine troop choices


And if anything the cause of Marines being powerful in the current meta is nothing to do with Tactical Marines getting an extra attack and bolter discipline, and everything to do with Marines getting new strategems which have made existing support units insane (IH Leviathans) and having new primaris units which are just blunt instruments (Aggressors, Repulsors) and designed to be straight up superior to similar blunt instrument units in other armies rather than requiring tactics, as you would expect in an army that's supposed to be themed around tactical level operations.

 Argive wrote:

Gadzilla666 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
The best off-the-shelf aura bubble counter is to snipe them out with anothe marine unit. Yaaaaay.

Vox scream. Until the cp runs out of course.

Ohh is that a Strat available to everyone somewhere in CA 2019 im not aware of... ?

Nope. But everyone doesn't have snipers either so.... *shrug*.

(Also it's kind of nice to finally have something to brag about. Gw doesn't give the Eighth Legion nice things very often. "Yeah we may have the second crappiest legion trait in the game, but we can turn off your fething chapter master and your little primarch too!)

Grey40k wrote:This, so much. Primaries Marines shouldn’t win gun fights 5 to 1 to guards (or whatever insane number it is right now).

point per point efficiently should not be wildly different across basic troops. Specially not when one basic generalist troop is point efficient in all dimensions (melee toughness and firing).

Eh, I'm of the opinion that Marine (of all stripes, loyalist, Chaos, Primaris and Firstborn alike) should all be about that strong when it comes to Guard.

Of course, that doesn't mean I don't think they need recosting.

Going back to the main question, "how elite should Marines feel", I say very. The tradeoff is that a Marine army should be expensive. Basically, I'd rather have Marines cost more and be stronger than cost less and be weaker.

Problem with that is you can't make them too expensive because of lethality in general.

 Argive wrote:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
What is going on in this thread? Are people so desperate to avoid the marine discussion that they've resorted to discussing Custodes Vs Guardsmen? I'm half impressed as to how this discussion even came about.

Custodes might be OP, FWIW, but we'll never know in the current meta because Marines just gak all over them. This is true of many factions, including Orks.

Marines are so powerful they are a cut above everything else and it genuinely feels as though they're playing a different game to me. My gut tells me that's wrong.

Everyone has pretty much agreed and said all there's to say about marines/intercessors.
Of course bar one or two people still asserting there is nothing wrong with marines/intercessors and they don't really need nerfing as if the layers and layers of buffs, abilties and rules somehow aren't a problem.
They just outlier head in the sand peeps who are trying really hard to justify the current paradigm..

Got it, as I suspected, thanks for the clarification.

 Mr.Omega wrote:

It's a funny old thing that things don't make sense when you don't read them and then openly admit you haven't read them, though it doesn't seem to have stopped you from taking opportunity to express frankly theatrical levels of sourness

I introduced the comparison to argue that overly efficient 'eliteness' is something that has influenced game balance and quality, but more so from Custodes than Marine troop choices


And if anything the cause of Marines being powerful in the current meta is nothing to do with Tactical Marines getting an extra attack and bolter discipline, and everything to do with Marines getting new strategems which have made existing support units insane (IH Leviathans) and having new primaris units which are just blunt instruments (Aggressors, Repulsors) and designed to be straight up superior to similar blunt instrument units in other armies rather than requiring tactics, as you would expect in an army that's supposed to be themed around tactical level operations.

That's a lot of words to express 'the sand tastes lovely, thank you'. Very odd.

Remind me, how much do Custodes cost compared to an Intercessor?

I'm sure the cause of Marines being powerful in the current meta is absolutely to do with bolter discipline and an extra, free attack as much as new stratagems, actually. GW has repeatedly given SM free buff after free buff before allowing the meta to settle. They just kept piling them on. This is how we've ended up in such an awful position.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
Eh, I'm of the opinion that Marine (of all stripes, loyalist, Chaos, Primaris and Firstborn alike) should all be about that strong when it comes to Guard.

Of course, that doesn't mean I don't think they need recosting.

Going back to the main question, "how elite should Marines feel", I say very. The tradeoff is that a Marine army should be expensive. Basically, I'd rather have Marines cost more and be stronger than cost less and be weaker.

It just doesn't work, IMHO.

At this point, you would need to bring literal buckets of guardsmen to beat effictively intercessors in a gun fight (and forget about close combat unless you are catachan and even then). Once you factor in real world costs, and timed matches, it is a losing option.

Of course from a point efficient perspective it doesn't seem to be working at all. If my mathhammer is wrong, please correct me, but this is what I find (I didn't account for morale, stratagems, bubbles, orders since I think those favor intercessors anyway).

An intercessor with an autobolt rifle can expect to kill, without rerolls or anything else, 1 guardsman per turn (assault 3 profile for autbolt). That is, 18 points kill 4 points of guard.
4 guardsmen with lasguns can expect to deal about 1/4 of a wound per turn to an intercessor. That's 16 points killing 1/8th of an intercessor or a little over 2 points of marines.

In other guards, either you lower the cost of those guards to half and then bring 8 guards per marine (which might suit your fluffy cartoon stories, but it is unsustainable in the game) or you double the cost of the intercessor.

Please proof me wrong, because this looks absurd.

Before intercessors, marine tacs where not so point efficient, I believe, at least until bolter discipline was introduced.

A 12 points tac marine would kill 1/3 guard per round. 12 points of marines kill 1.3 points of guard.
3 guardsmen deal 0.17 wounds per turn to the marine. That is 12 points of guards killing 0.17*12=2 points of marines.

Bolter discipline doubled the damage output of the marine, meaning that a tac became about as point efficient at shooting as that guardman.

Intercessors killed that sort of balance, badly.

Again, please correct me if I am wrong.

It also doesn't work because GW like money and the more Marines they sell the more money they make.

Marines aren't about to double in ppm. No way.

Then you'd have to consider how an ultra elite army such as that would function - how would they hold objectives or hope to have a semblance of board control? There are answers to these questions (allow Marine/Custodes units to hold objectives from 6" away rather than 3" for example, limit enemy Deep Striking against such armies/increase the mobility of the elite faction), but I don't think GW are interested in them

Thinking about it one could argue, that even though the nonelite/horde troops like guardsmen are seemingly weaker in shooting and no match at all in melee compared to their weight in space marines, their higher number is an advantage if you try to hold objectives. If I can shovel 4 guardsmen for every intercessor in range of an objective I can still hold it and score points - theoretically. But I'm not sure that really balances it out.

And besides from that it's still crazy that dedicated melee units (looking at the examples of genestealers and Eldar units) have that hard of a time if they reach melee with a very competent shooting unit (Intercessors)

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
It also doesn't work because GW like money and the more Marines they sell the more money they make.

Marines aren't about to double in ppm. No way.

Then you'd have to consider how an ultra elite army such as that would function - how would they hold objectives or hope to have a semblance of board control? There are answers to these questions (allow Marine/Custodes units to hold objectives from 6" away rather than 3" for example, limit enemy Deep Striking against such armies/increase the mobility of the elite faction), but I don't think GW are interested in them

Giving them cheaper troops for board control (scouts and similar stuff), hence the marine player having to make trade offs.

Primaris are just better at everything, including being point efficient in all the relevant dimensions (toughness, firing, melee) via their intercessors.

Even though this is a fantasy wargame, it is supposed to have some sort of internal logic to it. Right now it looks totally absurd.

A sniper rifle that doesn't need line of sight? What the heck!
Try bubbles in a battlefield with AoE weapons, see how that works.
Freaking border deployments for gunlines.

Armies of pure elites do not work in all theaters of war, for all functions. Perverting point efficiency to make them work just means you destroy balance.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Pyroalchi wrote:
Thinking about it one could argue, that even though the nonelite/horde troops like guardsmen are seemingly weaker in shooting and no match at all in melee compared to their weight in space marines, their higher number is an advantage if you try to hold objectives. If I can shovel 4 guardsmen for every intercessor in range of an objective I can still hold it and score points - theoretically. But I'm not sure that really balances it out.

I don't think it would work. Specially once you consider morale and the fact that autobolts are assault weapons (so they can shoot, then charge).

No matter how you put it, once you make some baselines so much weaker you end up in unsustainable situations.

Pyroalchi wrote:
And besides from that it's still crazy that dedicated melee units (looking at the examples of genestealers and Eldar units) have that hard of a time if they reach melee with a very competent shooting unit (Intercessors)

I agree.

Being a long gone veteran, I really hope I am misreading the new rules because it is brutally discouraging.

@ Grey40k: I agree that the board control stuff is of dubious use. I have no practical experience so far, so I tried to word it as a more theoretical point.


On a whole different point, and please read this as just a thought, not a "NERF MARINES!!!" rant:
regarding the whole point that Marines should feel that elite one could argue that their units while strong should be small in numbers. And I don't just mean total unit count but also the number of models of specific units you can take. What would happen if for example Marines would have a rule of two instead of rule of three (they have enough options that they could still easily fill detachments) and a rule of three also for their troops and the unit sizes would be smaller. So maybe (!) Intercessors with 3 units base, 5 units max instead of 5/10. You would need at least two different troop choices to fill a brigade and that brigade would have 30 troop models at best. Than the fluff Image of the outnumbered elite would be brought more in front.
But I'm not familiar enough with Marines to guess if that would make matters even worse because they have to spend less on their troops. So again: its nothing more than a thought I wanted to put out here.

Considering the rule of 2 would, then spill in to other marines, including those that do not have access to primaris or majority of marine stuff, I am dead against it.

Marines would just run more FW, more mixs of primaris stuff. Little impact for a small game play change. Others on the other hand be hurt a lot.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:

 Mr.Omega wrote:

It's a funny old thing that things don't make sense when you don't read them and then openly admit you haven't read them, though it doesn't seem to have stopped you from taking opportunity to express frankly theatrical levels of sourness

I introduced the comparison to argue that overly efficient 'eliteness' is something that has influenced game balance and quality, but more so from Custodes than Marine troop choices


And if anything the cause of Marines being powerful in the current meta is nothing to do with Tactical Marines getting an extra attack and bolter discipline, and everything to do with Marines getting new strategems which have made existing support units insane (IH Leviathans) and having new primaris units which are just blunt instruments (Aggressors, Repulsors) and designed to be straight up superior to similar blunt instrument units in other armies rather than requiring tactics, as you would expect in an army that's supposed to be themed around tactical level operations.

That's a lot of words to express 'the sand tastes lovely, thank you'. Very odd.

Remind me, how much do Custodes cost compared to an Intercessor?

I'm sure the cause of Marines being powerful in the current meta is absolutely to do with bolter discipline and an extra, free attack as much as new stratagems, actually. GW has repeatedly given SM free buff after free buff before allowing the meta to settle. They just kept piling them on. This is how we've ended up in such an awful position.

What's the point of trying to make a quip if the only meaning to it is "you're wrong?" It's about witty as throwing a brick into a washing machine.

Something of a minuscule post from me even compared to the other relatively modest posts I've made in the thread, but I'm glad you've addresed why you didn't read the argument that I made and evidently still haven't bothered to read even as I've reduced the crux down to a single sentence, as you still somehow managed to have reduced the word "efficiency" down to "cost" as if "Custodes are more expensive" is somehow profound news to me

So let's repeat what I said at the top of the page, in fewer words:

A single infantry squad and a platoon officer issuing FRFSRF statistically results in a single dead 17pt Intercessor for 60 points.

A setup wiith 5 Infantry squads, 3 Commanders and a Commissar for morale, assuming absolutely perfect and virtually impossible conditions of unity of close-rapid fire range and that no models have been lost before the engagement, only results in a single 49pt Custodes being dead on average, for 306 points. With 4-5 plasma guns, which wouldn't be particularly worth taking in any other situation, also assuming perfect conditions, will kill another Custodes, so at max you're going to kill 2 Custodes a turn on average.


A single infantry squad is a fraction of your total infantry contingent, 5 Infantry Squad and four supporting officers is either your entire contingent or most of it and then is subject to a lot of other strategic constraints because of how unwieldy 50 Guardsmen are to position perfectly.

Custodes are significantly more efficient. They're not necessarily overpowered on the competitive level, but its that eliteness and efficiency that singlehandedly rules out taking a Guard infantry list. A few MSU Intercessor Squads with maybe one maxed out squad thrown in for the strategem is not a massive concern.

Oh and I'm sure that you're sure that miscellaneous buffs to a unit that's otherwise mediocre and to another unit that's renowned for being one of the worst units in the game (Tacs) are the cause of Marines being suddenly super competitive. It would helpful if you actually explained and substantiated why.

Since when are Intercessor 20 points? Your comparison doesn't make sense, points cost aside

 Mr.Omega wrote:

A single infantry squad and a platoon officer issuing FRFSRF statistically results in a single dead 20pt Intercessor for 60 points.

To get this, you have assumed rapid fire range. Outside of rapid fire range, your 10 lasgun shots only deal half a wound. (I am using stats engine: https://warhammer-stats-engine.herokuapp.com/)

Even in that favorable scenario, you are getting a return of 2.22 wounds per 60 points or (60/2.22) 27 points per wound. The intercessor is getting 18/0.89=20 points per wound (an intercessor with autobolt costs 18 points as per the latest CA).

That is, intercessor points per wound beat you even in the most favorable scenario. If we actually play it out, including morale, this would probably only get worse. Specially once we account for ranges and close combat.

A few MSU Intercessor Squads with maybe one maxed out squad thrown in for the strategem is not a massive concern.

I am failing to see how you'd beat new marines in an infantry fight with guards.

KurtAngle2 wrote:
Since when are Intercessor 20 points? Your comparison doesn't make sense, points cost aside

Not that long ago, as it happens. Start of 8th they were 20 pts as I recall. Amended for truth, though doesn't make a tremendous amount of difference on the strategic level to me.

In my defense, I haven't paid much attention to Marine internal balance since I figured out that the new Codex is still bland for someone who isn't interested in Primaris, and thinks the army should be focused around tactical flexibility rather than a test of how many rules you can stack onto a dreadnought to make it unkillable or how much raw firepower you can bring with Repulsors and Aggressors.

I do think that the current rules salad Marines get is silly, but mostly because it doesn't address the actual problems with a unit like the Tactical Squad, which is that it's only effective against one class of enemy unit, and then it can't specialize effectively and is extremely inflexible. So instead the rules writers just added rules to make them better blunt instruments. Its silly.

The comparison is apt enough. Every model in a Primaris army is at least T4 2W 3+, every model in a Custodes army is at least T5 3W 2+. Guardsmen can actually contribute to killing T4 2W in a meaningful capacity, they can't contribute meaningfully to killing T5 3W. AM Infantry are passable against SM infantry but deadweight other than as blockers against Custodes. That's the point.

I am failing to see how you'd beat new marines in an infantry fight with guards.

You don't. You take a sustainable number of casualties each turn to long range bolt rifle fire and then watch as Intercessor squads suffer critical existence failure one after another as your heavy support destroys them from a distance. If the enemy list is alpha-striking, then you get good mileage out of close range FRFSRF as an added bonus.

The thing about Custodes is that you have to kill them fast with units that have to multi-task against killing other immediate threats like grav tanks and jetbike captains since your infantry are useless.

 Mr.Omega wrote:


You don't. You take a sustainable number of casualties each turn to long range bolt rifle fire and then watch as Intercessor squads suffer critical existence failure one after another as your heavy support destroys them from a distance. If the enemy list is alpha-striking, then you get good mileage out of close range FRFSRF as an added bonus.

The thing about Custodes is that you have to kill them fast with units that have to multi-task against killing other immediate threats like grav tanks and jetbike captains since your infantry are useless.

I think that is moving away a bit from the point of the thread, which is that intercessors are too point efficient in many roles.

I compared them against guards because those are the generalist troops of another faction. Others have compared them even against specialist units which should beat them at their role and don't; specially not from a point efficient perspective.

You said you cannot beat custodes with a guard infantry list but that intercessors didn't scare you as much. My point was to show you that even in the most favorable trade (rapid fire range and a unit with orders) your point efficiency is worse than that of an intercessor; and that's even without accounting for rerolls, weird raven cover mechanics, invulnerable saves, you failing morale saves after guards start falling, and so on.

For clarity: when your point efficiency is worse, you can always expect to lose.

By the way looking at guard: as Custodes sometimes also have inv (like custodian guard with T5, 2+, 3++), above 12'' the humble grenade launcher is as efficient at killing them than overcharged plasma while costing less (especially on Command and Veteran Squads). S6 vs. S8 doesn't matter in wounding, AP-1 is enough to trigger the inv. and D3 damage is on average the same as plasmas 2 with the added possibility to kill in one shot.
I just mention this because saying you need plasma to kill custodes might not be the most points efficient approach:

Command Squad: 68 Points (Plasma) vs. 36 Points (GL)
Veteran Squad (3 Specials): 83 (Plasma) vs. 59 (GL)
Special weapons squad: 51 (Plasma) vs. 33 (GL)

Grey40k wrote:

 Mr.Omega wrote:


To get this, you have assumed rapid fire range. Outside of rapid fire range, your 10 lasgun shots only deal half a wound. (I am using stats engine: https://warhammer-stats-engine.herokuapp.com/)

Even in that favorable scenario, you are getting a return of 2.22 wounds per 60 points or (60/2.22) 27 points per wound. The intercessor is getting 18/0.89=20 points per wound (an intercessor with autobolt costs 18 points as per the latest CA).

That is, intercessor points per wound beat you even in the most favorable scenario. If we actually play it out, including morale, this would probably only get worse. Specially once we account for ranges and close combat.

To get this, you have assumed rapid fire range. Outside of rapid fire range, your 10 lasgun shots only deal half a wound. (I am using stats engine: https://warhammer-stats-engine.herokuapp.com/)

Even in that favorable scenario, you are getting a return of 2.22 wounds per 60 points or (60/2.22) 27 points per wound. The intercessor is getting 18/0.89=20 points per wound (an intercessor with autobolt costs 18 points as per the latest CA).

That is, intercessor points per wound beat you even in the most favorable scenario. If we actually play it out, including morale, this would probably only get worse. Specially once we account for ranges and close combat.

I'm not disputing that Intercessors are more efficient. The statistics I came up with obviously demonstrate that Intercessors are efficient at soaking up fire from Guardsmen. The difference is when you apply constraints within a practical context, its easier to gun down a decent number of Intercessors with Guardsmen than it is to put a dent in the advance of some Custodes.

Getting a single full squad of Guardsmen into rapid fire range when you're on the defensive or navigating a mid-field firefight on an LOS blocker heavy board is pretty easy, especially when you have 5-9 of them. Getting 5 squads of Guardsmen into rapid fire range for FRFSRF is extremely difficult.