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Hi,

it is just a minor thing, but I repeatedly stumbled about the mention of "Imperial Guard Leafblower" or similar, which seemed to have been a thing in 5th edition and is mentioned in a context of an overpowered an unfun list. I'm quite new to warhammer and therefore don't know what that meant? Could anybody give me a short heads up, what the problem was back then? Which mechanic was broken?
It would help me to better understand the context of these comments.

https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2009/09/40k-ard-boys-armylist-the-leafblower.html

So basically IG version of alpha strike. Worked particularly well because tournament where name originally came from was so big armies packed dz which made all the templates superpowerful.

Still can do similar. Just pack one hell of an IG alpha strike.

This was a type of Army List that came up during 5th Edition that was meant to blow the opponent from the table

It was a concept that was famous in the US based around Alpha Strike
2 Medusa, 2 Hydra, 2 Valkyrie and a Manticore together with battle Psyker squads

it did not work that well in Germany/Europe because of the different point size and missions used by that time

In general it referred to a mostly mech IG army which so many high powered blasts and shots from artillery, valkyries, vendettas, psykers and/or various ways to deliver meltas that it aimed to table your opponent - which was actually quite rare to happen in 5th.
Therefore "Leafblower" as it just blew the enemy army off the table. At that time it was one of the armies to beat, basically an IG artillery gunline.

Should we recount the tales of Fateweaver's flying circus for the child's next story?

As we are already at it, why not?

With the original Flying Circus being a Bretonnian list from the good old days of Fantasy Battles....

But a Tzeentch Flying Circus for 40k should still be a thing

https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2012/09/40k-taking-down-the-daemonic-flying-circus.html

It was 5 flying monstrous creatures that all hit like trucks and a bunch of stuff that either hit hard or took a lot to kill.

 Canadian 5th wrote:
https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2012/09/40k-taking-down-the-daemonic-flying-circus.html

It was 5 flying monstrous creatures that all hit like trucks and a bunch of stuff that either hit hard or took a lot to kill.

Please, now the tale of the invincible deathstar, petty please!

(god 7th was a mess....)

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Canadian 5th wrote:
https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2012/09/40k-taking-down-the-daemonic-flying-circus.html

It was 5 flying monstrous creatures that all hit like trucks and a bunch of stuff that either hit hard or took a lot to kill.

Please, now the tale of the invincible deathstar, petty please!

(god 7th was a mess....)

Was it invincible or just invisible? xD

 Canadian 5th wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Canadian 5th wrote:
https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2012/09/40k-taking-down-the-daemonic-flying-circus.html

It was 5 flying monstrous creatures that all hit like trucks and a bunch of stuff that either hit hard or took a lot to kill.

Please, now the tale of the invincible deathstar, petty please!

(god 7th was a mess....)

Was it invincible or just invisible? xD

The story goes like this:
6th - invisibility is insanely powerful
7th - GW buffed invisibility

 Jidmah wrote:
The story goes like this:
6th - invisibility is insanely powerful
7th - GW buffed invisibility

What's the harm in buffing a spell that was already being used to create deathstars?

 Canadian 5th wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
The story goes like this:
6th - invisibility is insanely powerful
7th - GW buffed invisibility

What's the harm in buffing a spell that was already being used to create deathstars?

They nerfed the daemon book though...

Deathstar being a heap of units around a buff character that is hard to remove? Put somewhere on the table and then shooting up everything?

Leafblower, its the name of many a boogeyman and childs story of fear. It was from a time when the word Guard made you wake in a cold sweat and hold your loved one close. For the sounds resounded in the hall, they are coming and then, they were here..it was the end.

It was actually the original LeafBlower list that freed the Balrog in Lord of the Rings, a stray Bassie shell dug too deep, the fools.

Pyroalchi wrote:
Deathstar being a heap of units around a buff character that is hard to remove? Put somewhere on the table and then shooting up everything?

You used to literally have special characters join other units so it was even worse than that.

Even attempts to snipe the character would almost always result in the wounds being passed off to another model, this is without getting into the issues that could be caused by units of multi-wound models all taking unique equipment and passing wounds around such that you'd have to wound every model before you could kill any of them. It was a fun time.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
This is also why I laugh when people say that 8th edition is sooo unbalanced. It's almost perfectly balanced compared to older editions.

Pyroalchi wrote:
it is just a minor thing, but I repeatedly stumbled about the mention of "Imperial Guard Leafblower" or similar, which seemed to have been a thing in 5th edition and is mentioned in a context of an overpowered an unfun list. I'm quite new to warhammer and therefore don't know what that meant? Could anybody give me a short heads up, what the problem was back then? Which mechanic was broken.

Earlier editions were based (up to a point) on unit limits. More than three sources of heavy weaponry/vehicles was rare and limited the amount you could shell your opponent off the board in the early turns, and lists that got around those limits (such as 3.5 chaos) were powerful in that they could both target their opponents long ranged weapons and deal with fast advancing units.

But when 5e guard came out they had squadrons of heavy tanks and artillery, hiding behind cheap massed infantry (with heavy weapons), durable transports (with heavy weapons), fast attack units (with heavy weapons) ... and so on, with some of the heaviest guns sat entirely out of LoS with their indirect fire. Most armies couldn't hope to trade fire, and even if the guard fluffed their shooting they presented a durable armoured/horde front rather than a fragile artillery line.

It didn't help that it came out at 2500pt tournaments. The thing about 5e is that you got those three heavy slots no matter the points and while guard could take a 4th, 5th, 6th tank other armies were running out of options and starting to fill out board space with more targets for the artillery (Dark Eldar before their 5e book started to run out of optimal choices at around 1000pts, for an extreme example).

 Canadian 5th wrote:

Pyroalchi wrote:
Deathstar being a heap of units around a buff character that is hard to remove? Put somewhere on the table and then shooting up everything?

You used to literally have special characters join other units so it was even worse than that.

Even attempts to snipe the character would almost always result in the wounds being passed off to another model, this is without getting into the issues that could be caused by units of multi-wound models all taking unique equipment and passing wounds around such that you'd have to wound every model before you could kill any of them. It was a fun time.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
This is also why I laugh when people say that 8th edition is sooo unbalanced. It's almost perfectly balanced compared to older editions.

It even worked the other way around. You could have a 2+/3++ character join a unit of 20 other models and he would tank each and every hit for the entire unit as long as he was the closest to the firer.

 Jidmah wrote:
It even worked the other way around. You could have a 2+/3++ character join a unit of 20 other models and he would tank each and every hit for the entire unit as long as he was the closest to the firer.

Let's not forget sweeping advance, charging into cover without having purchased frag grenades (or equivalent) for your unit, being locked into close combat with a unit you couldn't damage, blocking the opposing player's board edge to force a loss when they couldn't bring in their reserves, and many other 'fun' quirks of editions long gone.

 Canadian 5th wrote:
...blocking the opposing player's board edge to force a loss when they couldn't bring in their reserves

To be fair that was one very specific instance where a player had been null-deploying the entire tournament and chose to keep doing so against an opponent with a horde of infiltrators. Just stubborn adherence to the cheese.

Ah yes, which ever Europe tournament that was, during the edition where null deploying was a valid option to better preserve your forces, and blocking a table edge to prevent them from coming onto the board was near impossible, because there were so many ways to easily bypass the blocking models.

Unfortunately, the null-deploying player in question had 0 of these solutions (no deep strikers, no models able to ignore enemy models during movement, etc.)

Leafblower: A type of list that was feared and hated in 5th. It was so boring to play and unfun to play against that GW made it the standard style of list in 8th edition.

Oh man this thing. The term "leafblower" got monstrously abused. Initially it was what one dude named his list in 5E that swept a competitive tournament series one yeat when he got first turn every game and his opponents didnt counter deploy at all.

Eventually the term came to be applied to any Guard army with a tank in it

 Vaktathi wrote:
Oh man this thing. The term "leafblower" got monstrously abused. Initially it was what one dude named his list in 5E that swept a competitive tournament series one yeat when he got first turn every game and his opponents didnt counter deploy at all.

Eventually the term came to be applied to any Guard army with a tank in it

Leafblower is this terrible ghoul that famously won one tournament, and then largely died competitively*, but proceeded to smash lots and lots of casual tables for a couple of years because whatever you think about 8th, older editions were even worse in terms of "competitive list" "load of stuff I brought" balance.

*Not that it was bad, but good players/lists could counter.

Leafblower was basically using the overwhelming number of S8+ AP3&4 5" blast templates that an IG army puts out to try to clear the board of enemy models circa 5e. IG had the ability to bring three times as many tanks as almost everybody else, and most of those tanks had 5" blast templates. Carpeting the enemy deploy with them was like blowing away infantry with a leafblower, and they were strong enough to inconvenience or destroy all but the heaviest tanks and infantry. It was strictly OK, I would say, didn't really make it to the level of the "egregiously powerful" things that were it's contemporary. It was kind of in that region where your average low-tier casual list probably didn't have a chance, but it didn't really have a chance itself at the top end, so it mostly bullies casual players.

"Better" guard lists, IIRC usually had more embarked special weapons in Chimeras and Vendettas [at that time, guys could shoot from inside a Chimera] than going all in on artillery.

Pyroalchi wrote:
Deathstar being a heap of units around a buff character that is hard to remove? Put somewhere on the table and then shooting up everything?

Usually meleeing up everything more than shooting.

A "typical" death star circa 7e would looks something like a squad of Thunderwolf Cavalry with storm shields and like 4 special characters attached to the unit, with Sancturary and Invisibility cast upon them so they were only hit on 6's [and not targetable by templates, 'cause reasons], were T5, and had a 2++ invul save. Then give them a FNP or something on top of that, and it's basically invincible. And, then, of course, it's loaded with a pile of melee weapons [and a few force weapons in case it hits something with a lot of wounds], and anything it touches dies.

When two death stars meet each other, the world explodes.

The best defense I heard of for it was the Masque doing a little dance and slowing whole the deathstar (which was most of the army) down. Hilarious.

Is this when trolling Guard players by declaring their troops could not disembark from a Valk (stand rendered the model over 2” from the table) was a thing?

Moriarty wrote:
Is this when trolling Guard players by declaring their troops could not disembark from a Valk (stand rendered the model over 2” from the table) was a thing?

I'd assume that it has had a hand in it.

Alas, valkyiries at their implementation had also a lot of issues, especially when they were the only ones with regular available AA.....

otoh it generally didn't hit guard if the player wasn't running leafblower.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Canadian 5th wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Canadian 5th wrote:
https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2012/09/40k-taking-down-the-daemonic-flying-circus.html

It was 5 flying monstrous creatures that all hit like trucks and a bunch of stuff that either hit hard or took a lot to kill.

Please, now the tale of the invincible deathstar, petty please!

(god 7th was a mess....)

Was it invincible or just invisible? xD

Invisibility the spell, invincibility the result.

Both are acurate

I have to say I only played once against a Leafblower style list on a tournament
the guy just wanted to try those famous net-list and see how far he will get

My Space Wolves Scouts had a lot of fun and he ended somewhere in der middle

Not Online!!! wrote:
Alas, valkyiries at their implementation had also a lot of issues, especially when they were the only ones with regular available AA.....

They weren't that bad during 5th, when they originally came out. Don't forget that flyer rules came later, originallly they were just fast skimmers.