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the_scotsman wrote:

 BlackoCatto wrote:
Catachan did become the best because it did stay back. STR 4 does really make some difference in melee taking charges and Brutal Strength also just allows them to damage well. Furthermore Guard were never really dominant in 8th if not for a very short while.

Guard were pretty dominant in 8th from index era up until a few codexes after their codex. Their codex blew the marine, GK, necron, Admech, and eldar 'dex out of the water, (they were already winning events fairly conssitently even index vs codex) and they got the first 'dex with non copy/pasted traits.

Yes, by having enough statistical output to simply blow the enemy away with your vehicles or by alpha striking half an army's worth of special weapons exactly where you wanted them and NOT by having the capability to advance TOWARD an objective and displace an enemy.

Your options are either magically appear exactly where you want on the battlefield with no risk and kill/cripple exactly what you want, or sit back and pound them to dust with the LRBTs battle cannon. The battle cannon being the main reason why anyone played Catachan to begin with.



Giving guard a means to ADVANCE ACROSS THE TABLE and take an objective would make the game much more dynamic and fun to play. As is the strategy is essentially mindless. If it has deep strike, alpha strike with that unit. If it has guns stay back and roll dice.

For instance giving guardsmen the ability to move, frfsrf, charge, shoot their lasguns DURING the charge and then engage in a standard combat would be really cool and fluffy.

 Sledgehammer wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

 BlackoCatto wrote:
Catachan did become the best because it did stay back. STR 4 does really make some difference in melee taking charges and Brutal Strength also just allows them to damage well. Furthermore Guard were never really dominant in 8th if not for a very short while.

Guard were pretty dominant in 8th from index era up until a few codexes after their codex. Their codex blew the marine, GK, necron, Admech, and eldar 'dex out of the water, (they were already winning events fairly conssitently even index vs codex) and they got the first 'dex with non copy/pasted traits.

Yes, by having enough statistical output to simply blow the enemy away with your vehicles or by alpha striking half an army's worth of special weapons exactly where you wanted them and NOT by having the capability to advance TOWARD an objective and displace an enemy.

Your options are either magically appear exactly where you want on the battlefield with no risk and kill/cripple exactly what you want, or sit back and pound them to dust with the LRBTs battle cannon. The battle cannon being the main reason why anyone played Catachan to begin with.



Giving guard a means to ADVANCE ACROSS THE TABLE and take an objective would make the game much more dynamic and fun to play. As is the strategy is essentially mindless. If it has deep strike, alpha strike with that unit. If it has guns stay back and roll dice.

For instance giving guardsmen the ability to move, frfsrf, charge, shoot their lasguns DURING the charge and then engage in a standard combat would be really cool and fluffy.

Are you seriously suggesting each Guardsman should be able to fire 6 lasgun shots per turn?

 vict0988 wrote:

 Sledgehammer wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

 BlackoCatto wrote:
Catachan did become the best because it did stay back. STR 4 does really make some difference in melee taking charges and Brutal Strength also just allows them to damage well. Furthermore Guard were never really dominant in 8th if not for a very short while.

Guard were pretty dominant in 8th from index era up until a few codexes after their codex. Their codex blew the marine, GK, necron, Admech, and eldar 'dex out of the water, (they were already winning events fairly conssitently even index vs codex) and they got the first 'dex with non copy/pasted traits.

Yes, by having enough statistical output to simply blow the enemy away with your vehicles or by alpha striking half an army's worth of special weapons exactly where you wanted them and NOT by having the capability to advance TOWARD an objective and displace an enemy.

Your options are either magically appear exactly where you want on the battlefield with no risk and kill/cripple exactly what you want, or sit back and pound them to dust with the LRBTs battle cannon. The battle cannon being the main reason why anyone played Catachan to begin with.



Giving guard a means to ADVANCE ACROSS THE TABLE and take an objective would make the game much more dynamic and fun to play. As is the strategy is essentially mindless. If it has deep strike, alpha strike with that unit. If it has guns stay back and roll dice.

For instance giving guardsmen the ability to move, frfsrf, charge, shoot their lasguns DURING the charge and then engage in a standard combat would be really cool and fluffy.

Are you seriously suggesting each Guardsman should be able to fire 6 lasgun shots per turn?

Yes, and the same should really go for most basic infantry in the game in my opinion.

Standard troopers should be able to be useful in an advance and not just cp farms, body shields, or stand abouts in the back field.

Having talked extensively with a friend who's passionate about the Guard and their current situation, the problem really is that a imperial guard army needs a certain amount of bodies in order to not be cleared off the board, but once the needed stuff is in the list you barely have enough points to have any wiggle room for even special weapon or other support units. Making weapons stronger won't really do anything if you can't even take them. And that makes sense when looking at the points for their vehicles. Something like the Hellhound is expensive for something can't compare even to the ork buggies. The

Even worse is the characters. Yes, much digital blood and tears have been spilt over "FRFSRF too efficient!", but outside of taking that basic combo the usefulness of commanders drops and tank commanders similarly are best used buffing themselves.

Guard can do well, and that's due to effectively using positioning and having more bodies than the average army can kill quickly. But they're still missing out in the objective game, because once they're playing to someone else's tune they're getting ground into the dirt.

The way to actually fix this? The first would be the make their vehicles cheaper, so they're not such a burden. Allow the guard's buffers to be effective with the army as a whole and not just basic guard. There's an overall lack of synergy

Oh, and bring back vets as troops along with their specialization.

On the subject of tau, it *is* possible to do CQC without getting better at melee. breachers are a good idea, but tend to be one and done because they get so close.

I'll admit, I've not played in some time, but I can't help but feel that lower points costs for IG (while justified and in some cases desperately needed) will lead to its own problem now that boards are smaller and (potentially?) more cramped. Now, you don't have space in your list to get the bodies you need and the guns to do the heavy lifting; if things get cheaper, you might not have space on the table to deploy or maneuver the bodies/guns. Reserves are a thing, yes, but having to pay Command Points to be able to field your list isn't good (especially now that Command Points are harder to come by).

would be pretty funny to run out of deployment zone

I feel like it'd only be good for a game or two. I have to imagine fatigue would set in pretty quick if you didn't bump back to at least 6'x4' after that.

There is a specific guard thread further down the page with lots of suggestions. I think implementing some of them becomes tricky with the effects of large numbers of bodies.

My solution to that is making lots of the options default included on tanks and squads, leave bare bones to conscripts, and then pricing them appropriately. Having the less dangerous special (and maybe heavy) weapons free and included in the base cost of the squad would make them have more bite and be costed assuming some playtesting so they are effective, not a waste of points. Still cheap infantry but equipped to actually fight...


Oh, and Storm trooper door snipers for Valkyries.

But otherwise there is loads that could be done for regimental distinctiveness and balance. In my dream world you have a 'Cadian' codex with rules for custom building regiments, then dedicated (electronic?) supplements for other named regiments and possibly custom ones built around them (e.g. Catachan, inf squads come with default flamer and heavy flamer, etc, etc, variant rules ofr making other deathworld/jungle specialists and minor regiments like the Armageddon Ork hunters and so on). Never happen, but nice to dream

the_scotsman wrote:

 BlackoCatto wrote:
Catachan did become the best because it did stay back. STR 4 does really make some difference in melee taking charges and Brutal Strength also just allows them to damage well. Furthermore Guard were never really dominant in 8th if not for a very short while.

Guard were pretty dominant in 8th from index era up until a few codexes after their codex. Their codex blew the marine, GK, necron, Admech, and eldar 'dex out of the water, (they were already winning events fairly conssitently even index vs codex) and they got the first 'dex with non copy/pasted traits.

That is revisionist as Hell.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I really disagree that Tau should get a melee capable unit of any type.

Apologies if this comes across as a bit strong, but weakness to melee isn’t a design oversight - its a deliberate choice.

Tau should suffer in HTH. That’s their intended weakness. Nothing should mitigate that beyond sensible application of firepower to stop the opponent getting into HTH.

This is kinda a trigger point for me, as ever since Tau were released, I’ve seen requests for them to get HTH oriented suits. It’s nothing against posters in this thread, or even this forum

If they remain pure shooting then it means army will remain pretty much impossible to balance and be interesting for game. Extremes rarely work.

The main reason for needing HTH units in 9th are wanting to defend objectives against other melee units and flipping objectives.

Both could be done with some creative rules-writing, by providing other means to defend against getting charged (free overwatch, reducing charge distances, jumping away from chargers, using guns in combat) and by enabling them to grab objecitives after they have shot (jump-shoot-jump).

Giving everyone terminator and daemon prince equivalents is definitely not a good solution.

 BlackoCatto wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

 BlackoCatto wrote:
Catachan did become the best because it did stay back. STR 4 does really make some difference in melee taking charges and Brutal Strength also just allows them to damage well. Furthermore Guard were never really dominant in 8th if not for a very short while.

Guard were pretty dominant in 8th from index era up until a few codexes after their codex. Their codex blew the marine, GK, necron, Admech, and eldar 'dex out of the water, (they were already winning events fairly conssitently even index vs codex) and they got the first 'dex with non copy/pasted traits.

That is revisionist as Hell.

It's been long ago enough that our memory of that time has already started to become hazy, be there definitely was a period where the guardsman was considered the most broken thing in the game and the triple basilisk was a staple.
Sure, it rarely was a pure AM list, but that's because AM had no use for its CP, so you usually took a detachment of some kind to spend them.

Spoletta wrote:

 BlackoCatto wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

 BlackoCatto wrote:
Catachan did become the best because it did stay back. STR 4 does really make some difference in melee taking charges and Brutal Strength also just allows them to damage well. Furthermore Guard were never really dominant in 8th if not for a very short while.

Guard were pretty dominant in 8th from index era up until a few codexes after their codex. Their codex blew the marine, GK, necron, Admech, and eldar 'dex out of the water, (they were already winning events fairly conssitently even index vs codex) and they got the first 'dex with non copy/pasted traits.

That is revisionist as Hell.

It's been long ago enough that our memory of that time has already started to become hazy, be there definitely was a period where the guardsman was considered the most broken thing in the game and the triple basilisk was a staple.
Sure, it rarely was a pure AM list, but that's because AM had no use for its CP, so you usually took a detachment of some kind to spend them.

Imperial Guard dominated both in the index era and when they received a codex.

The Guard Codex was praised in his time as one greatly designed codex, and infantry squads, tempestus scions pre a couple of nerfs, basilisks but specially manticores with catachan rerrolls, etc... all great or even OP units on his time. And lets not forget how the shadowsword and triple baneblade lists made vehicle lists impossible until the imperial knight become a better version of that list.

I died too many times to pure imperial guard artillery for more than a year for imperial guard players to come and tell me "na, in 8th guard was only used as CP batery"

Move to the markerlight stuff into the command phase.
Make the markerlight an item a model can use to mark an enemy unit during the command phase. Those markers can then be spent to do some shenanigans in other phases (rerol 1s to hit, +1 rend, +1 to wound - obviously with different marker cost tiers).

Give the jump pack units something like fallback+shoot / move during the fight phase if not engaged.

I'm not pleading to give the Suits / Firewarriors better CQC abilities. But some viable ally options would be nice (fitting kroot rework?).
Also: give the ethereals abilities similar to a space marine chaplain. Activated in the command phase.

My suggestions are just quickshots and not really well thought through, so excuse any obvious failures...