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I haven't picked up a 40K book in quite a while, so I'm out of the loop on things and therefore this might be a bit of a stupid question.

Can the Imperial Guard or Skitarii be realistically constructed/played as a swarm army? Like an "overwhelm the enemy with a hail of bullets/las bolts/etc." kind of swarm?

Yes.
And here in 9th? Your lasguns can now hurt anything - other troops, Marines, tanks, knights, even Titans. All you have to do is roll a 5 if it's something tougher than the weapons str. A 6 if it's Toughness is double the str. And if you pick the right army trait? You can auto-wound on a 6 To-Hit, skipping the wound roll step altogether.

Of course still need to get past 2+/3+ and loads of wounds

10 Guardsmen per Troops slot does not a swarm make...

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
10 Guardsmen per Troops slot does not a swarm make...

Yikes - that's it?! My mind was back in the 5th Ed days when you could have 50 in a slot (like I said, it's been a while since I picked up a 40k book, and longer since I picked up an IG codex). Is that no longer the case?

You can but you'll get a rather unwieldy, hard to play (I mean you will literally be getting tired simply planning, setting and moving your hundreds of models) yet the effect is gonna be mediocre.

Not sure about skiitari after the nerf but I play orks and ig. Starterld as horde armies in 5-th and just moved to more tac with more expensive units later on around 7th.

It's simply much more difficult to play. I like to participate in tourneys and 2-3 games in a row playing unwieldy hordes is just not that fun. I got tired more than I usually get from a hard work day. And you GOT to plan good and move precise cause you have a huge footprint and have low mobility. And you got to countrplay vs your opponents fast hard targets so that they don't get on your swarm's softer sides.

Another problem is that in later editions swarm's just fail to deal enough damage. Basically, your average guards man's damage output has gone up (considering all the buffs) not more than 50% - that's from re-rolls and auto wounding on 6s. Yet your target's durability has almost doubled. And even gone up 4 times for Marines in cover as you have to go through 2+ now. They also deal more damage vs you with more attacks.

I've played mellee catschan at the start of 8th and it was actually playable! They did manage to get some damage at range and some in mellee, got enough attacks to even go through stuff like termies. It was not a strong build by any stretch but it was fun and very enjoyable when you get your unexpected (by everyone) win!

And now it's simply unplayable. You can't kill anything. You die too fast. You basically end up not fighting but running around scoring and roadblocking.

LoreSeeker wrote:
I haven't picked up a 40K book in quite a while, so I'm out of the loop on things and therefore this might be a bit of a stupid question.

Can the Imperial Guard or Skitarii be realistically constructed/played as a swarm army? Like an "overwhelm the enemy with a hail of bullets/las bolts/etc." kind of swarm?

Problem with horde Guard is that if your opponent has fast melee options and gets in your face from T1, it becomes very difficult to get very far out of your deployment zone for the first few turns and so you are always playing catch up on Primaries. Particularly if they have abilities which stop fall back, since you are then slowed down even further or else are leaving opposing units in your backfield, locked into units they are probably about to wipe in your own turn to then play havoc in their own next turn. Also, if playing horde guard, preventing consolidation moves into unengaged units becomes exceedingly difficult.

tneva82 wrote:
Of course still need to get past 2+/3+ and loads of wounds

I never said it was a good way to play Guard.
Just possible.

LoreSeeker wrote:

Yikes - that's it?! My mind was back in the 5th Ed days when you could have 50 in a slot (like I said, it's been a while since I picked up a 40k book, and longer since I picked up an IG codex). Is that no longer the case?

Nope, because Platoons aren't a thing anymore. They're coming back with the new codex but nobody really has a definitive answer as to what they do.

Also, it's not like it was a big deal since you can have a 12 troop slot detachment.

Additionally, "swarms" and "hordes" are pointless monikers. Any army can be played as such.

Depends on what you mean by horde. Or swarm.

GW is slowly reverting point costs to be much more reasonable than they used to. You have less models on the table overall compared to some previous editions.

Which is good.

There was a guy placing pretty high in tournaments just bringing 300 conscripts and some scions.

Jarms48 wrote:
There was a guy placing pretty high in tournaments just bringing 300 conscripts and some scions.

Speaking of, are Chenkov and his infinitely respawning conscript squads still available for IG?

IIRC, Chenkov got dropped from the 6e 'dex and hasn't been back since. We had a Valhallan strat to respawn units in the 8e 'dex, but at some point the strat got changed so that you had to pay points for the respawned unit, so that's no longer a replacement for Chenkov's ability.

Aren't horde armies undesirable these days anyway due to how squishy and expensive they are?

GW's pricing scheme doesn't lend itself to fielding vast amounts of expendable infantry. Which is quite ironic, actually.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Aren't horde armies undesirable these days anyway due to how squishy and expensive they are?

GW's pricing scheme doesn't lend itself to fielding vast amounts of expendable infantry. Which is quite ironic, actually.

Fielding a swarm army is about the only way I can see to win. My dice hate me with a passion, doubly so at critical moments, so in my experience (Astartes in 40K), "quality over quantity" approaches don't really work for me.

LoreSeeker wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Aren't horde armies undesirable these days anyway due to how squishy and expensive they are?

GW's pricing scheme doesn't lend itself to fielding vast amounts of expendable infantry. Which is quite ironic, actually.

Fielding a swarm army is about the only way I can see to win. My dice hate me with a passion, doubly so at critical moments, so in my experience (Astartes in 40K), "quality over quantity" approaches don't really work for me.

Continuing on the quoted subject, about the only way I can think of to make "quality over quantity" armies work for me (considering my dice luck) is reroll options.

Last time I had a Space Marine codex was 8th edition, and I seem to remember they had some reroll options (the chaplain's "reroll melee attacks" ability, I think the Captain had a "reroll ones on shooting attacks" ability). Is stuff like that still part of the Astartes codex?

 waefre_1 wrote:
IIRC, Chenkov got dropped from the 6e 'dex and hasn't been back since. We had a Valhallan strat to respawn units in the 8e 'dex, but at some point the strat got changed so that you had to pay points for the respawned unit, so that's no longer a replacement for Chenkov's ability.

This, 6th edition was the final nail in the coffin for all the other regiment characters.

LoreSeeker wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
10 Guardsmen per Troops slot does not a swarm make...

Yikes - that's it?! My mind was back in the 5th Ed days when you could have 50 in a slot (like I said, it's been a while since I picked up a 40k book, and longer since I picked up an IG codex). Is that no longer the case?

You can get up to 30 per slot with conscripts, but if you go heavy on conscripts you'll want to save command points for the CADIAN stratagem 'whiteshields' to get them to listen to orders reliably. Or you could spend the CP on more and bigger Detachments of regular guard, which are more capable but come with more prerequisite HQs (and prerequisite everything else, for brigades).

Note that there may be changes in the new book floating around out there.

 waefre_1 wrote:
IIRC, Chenkov got dropped from the 6e 'dex and hasn't been back since. We had a Valhallan strat to respawn units in the 8e 'dex, but at some point the strat got changed so that you had to pay points for the respawned unit, so that's no longer a replacement for Chenkov's ability.

It seems that Valhallans will get a retcon in some way or another in the future. They already changed the Tallarn aesthetic in the new art so this might be an indication of also moving away from the callous Soviet approach of throwing an endless amount of troops into the meat grinder. Otherwise they wouldn´t have neglected the Not-Russians in the last codices.

Valhallns get neglected because you can't buy their models.

 Lord Damocles wrote:
Valhallns get neglected because you can't buy their models.

This, with Yarrick likely dead that's the last link to Armageddon gone too. So likely that named regiment recruiting world will be destroyed.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

locarno24 wrote:
You can get up to 30 per slot with conscripts, but if you go heavy on conscripts you'll want to save command points for the CADIAN stratagem 'whiteshields' to get them to listen to orders reliably. Or you could spend the CP on more and bigger Detachments of regular guard, which are more capable but come with more prerequisite HQs (and prerequisite everything else, for brigades).

Note that there may be changes in the new book floating around out there.

Plenty of people were taking 18 infantry squads to tournaments too.