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Discussion about Conscripts keeps overflowing into other threads, and the last one got locked because people were breaking Daka's rules.

I think it's a topic that needs to be discussed since if you're playing against IG, you're probably going to have to kill some conscripts in order to win.

Questions:

0) Are conscripts OP?

1) Are they priced fairly?

2) Should they be able to take orders?

3) Should Commissars be able to keep them in line, or should they kill him and run away after he's shot several of them?

4) Is it physically possible to get all 50 conscripts into rapid fire range?

5) Are conscripts indicative of more core problems related to infantry spam in 8th edition?

6) Are conscript squads fine as they are?

7) What are good ways to kill lots of conscripts in one turn, and can it be done for less than 400 points or so (cost of conscripts + commissar + commander x 2 or so) for every army?

8) Should anti-conscript units be a requirement for TAC lists?

9) How many points should it cost, in general, to counter tarpit units that specialize in not dying quickly?

10) How can you build good anti-tarpit units that can also do other things?

etc...

1ppm more I feel is enough, they're too cheap for what they offer right now. In an army where everything is hilariously cheap, these are the biggest laugh for what they offer.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
If they could take orders they go from very strong to hilariously OP

They can take orders. They just can't take a voxcaster, so the commander has to be within 6" of the unit and give them orders directly.

On the bright side, a platoon commander is only 20 points.

 Klowny wrote:
If they could take orders they go from very strong to hilariously OP

What would prevent them from taking orders?

I think part of the problem is their sheer size, reduce their max size to 20 and conscripts become a LOT less potent.

Possibly orders are too efficient with Conscripts, but that's about the only thing they've got going on that strikes me as being particularly out of line with similar options.

There is a general problem with cheap low-toughness bad-save wounds in 8th, though. They are just too durable for their cost -- there's no way to efficiently deal with them. Conscripts are the standard example, but honestly regular Guardsmen are a problem too. Brimstone Horrors are 2 points for T3 4++ and so are even more durable than Conscripts. Razorwing Flocks are 7 points for T2 W4 7+, making them comparable to Conscripts against many weapons.

Meanwhile, no one actually has guns which are good for killing T3 5+ at their current prices. Lascannons murder multi-wound high-toughness good-save models -- they're several times more efficient against their preferred target than against single-wound infantry -- and they do it from far away. Rapid-firing plasma is ridiculously good against two-wound heavy infantry. Heavy Bolters and Assault Cannons shred MEQs. There's nothing that's great at killing Conscripts. You would expect something like a lasgun to be good for this -- they're low-strength with no AP -- but actually lasguns expect to kill more points of Marines than points of Conscripts (significantly more; this is not close).

The state of the game right now is as if we had all of these new multi-wound vehicles at their current costs and not a single multi-damage weapon. For everything else in the game, there are options I can take which are excellent counters to it. If I'm running into armies that use a lot of some kind of unit, I can bring a lot of guns that are good against that kind of unit and be heavily favored to win. This is an important mechanism for achieving a balanced meta -- you don't need things to be balanced in some absolute, objective sense, you just need to reach an equilibrium where people are preferentially tailoring their lists against the stronger stuff out there. But you can't do this to deal with hordes of cheap wounds. Basically anything you might take is actually an anti-MEQ gun in disguise. One can imagine an equilibrium where hordes and lots of vehicles (with lots of anti-infantry guns) are both viable, but this would drive out MEQs almost entirely.

I think they're probably, on paper, a bit too good for the points. Same points cost as Gretchin, but with better stats, better guns, larger max unit size, and better buff availability. If they couldn't take orders (which would make perfect sense, fluff-wise – this is a mass of chumps who've been thrown lasguns and flak armour, not a well-drilled military unit), and there were some sort of mitigation to the Commissar buff, I think they'd be fine.

How about Vultures? A single Vulture can brrrrt 40 shots with +1 to hit.

I think matched play should restrict power level AND point values.

When conscripts are eating up power level at the same rate as guardsmen and scions you suddenly can't flood the table with them as effectively.

 CragHack wrote:
How about Vultures? A single Vulture can brrrrt 40 shots with +1 to hit.

People have suggested that Vultures are overpowered themselves. But regardless, yeah, a Vulture will kill about 9 Conscripts in a turn. It will also kill half that many Marines who each cost four times as much. Vultures have a somewhat-specialized anti-MEQ gun that can be used inefficiently against GEQs if you don't have better targets.

Granted, Vultures can be very annoying for Conscript blobs because they can afford to just go into hover mode and charge the Conscripts to tie them up, but this is something that you would want to be doing with anything else you've got with T6+.

BrianDavion wrote:
I think part of the problem is their sheer size, reduce their max size to 20 and conscripts become a LOT less potent.

this... spam isn't going anywhere but lowering thier unit size makes them less efficient with orders and harder to keep a commissar in range. Once you remove the efficiency conscripts become crappy. But honestly right now conscripts are barely the biggest issue this edition.
I think plasma guns and pistols needs to be nerfed to str6 and str7 overcharged across the board for every army
I think stormravens needs a decent point cost increase
Brimstone horrors need thier invul nerfed to 5+
GSC genestealers needs it's priced fixed so that talons aren't free for them
razorwing flock spam nerf 1 wound off them giving them 3 instead of 4.

Spam will continue to exist this edition as people play Rock Paper Scissors and decide what's the most efficient list not what's well rounded. However I have no idea what gw was thinking with the plasmagun it is literally mathematically the best special weapon in most situations compared to all other Comparable choices.

 Arandmoor wrote:


7) What are good ways to kill lots of conscripts in one turn, and can it be done for less than 400 points or so (cost of conscripts + commissar + commander x 2 or so) for every army?

Why is this important? Why should something be able to kill its point value every turn? And if we're going to say that something should, then shouldn't that apply to the conscripts as well?

 argonak wrote:

 Arandmoor wrote:


7) What are good ways to kill lots of conscripts in one turn, and can it be done for less than 400 points or so (cost of conscripts + commissar + commander x 2 or so) for every army?

Why is this important? Why should something be able to kill its point value every turn? And if we're going to say that something should, then shouldn't that apply to the conscripts as well?

Here's the problem. A whirlwind with a castellan launcher kills roughly 2.6 conscripts per salvo. That's 115 pts of whirlwind dedicated to killing low T targets with bad saves. There should be units that act as efficient answers to certain types of units, but even the best conscript killers are bad at it.

 argonak wrote:

 Arandmoor wrote:


7) What are good ways to kill lots of conscripts in one turn, and can it be done for less than 400 points or so (cost of conscripts + commissar + commander x 2 or so) for every army?

Why is this important? Why should something be able to kill its point value every turn? And if we're going to say that something should, then shouldn't that apply to the conscripts as well?

Probably because on the other side of the spectrum, it's pretty easy to remove things on the heavier side (say, tanks) with heavy weapons like lascannons. The hard counter weapons you're supposed to take vs infantry very much no longer function.

A flamer used to be the anti infantry equivalent of the melta gun. Very short range, situation dependent, but capable of blowing away its point cost or more very easily if you manage to position correctly. A good flamer template would easily remove 5-6 GEQ with one shot. A flamer now averages about 1. That is basically the same number as a plasma gun, which makes no sense given the range differential and how much worse it is vs elites/vehicles.

Some kind of anti light infantry weapon should exist because it would prevent super-spam like we're seeing right now. Ditto for anti air weapons - we're in the same boat we were in 7th where AA weapons were absurdly weak as a baseline, so the fact that they work normally vs flyers doesn't help. AA weapons should get solid bonuses against flyers, but be able to flex to a less efficient anti infantry or anti tank role if there are no flyers.

The problem with conscripts is that they are easily spammed.

Give them a squadronsize of 10-30 and make it so you can only have 1 squadron per every 3 infantry squadrons or something.

 argonak wrote:

 Arandmoor wrote:


7) What are good ways to kill lots of conscripts in one turn, and can it be done for less than 400 points or so (cost of conscripts + commissar + commander x 2 or so) for every army?

Why is this important? Why should something be able to kill its point value every turn? And if we're going to say that something should, then shouldn't that apply to the conscripts as well?

No not everything should be able to kill its point value in a turn. Some units have other roles like being mobile, providing buffs, being tanky etc. But for units that specialize in killing, they should absolutely be whipping it out and measuring to see if they're at least making their points back. If they aren't, odds are there's a unit in their codex that needs to take their spot in the list. Why would you spend points on a unit for the damage dealing role if other units in the army do it better?

For general killing I'd say a damage-dealing unit needs to be able to average its own points in two-three turns. For a super specialized unit engaging their preferred target at their preferred range? They should get damn close to making their points in one turn.

Spamming units is always going to be a staple of competitive play outside of a Highlander style format.

My issue with conscripts is their morale immunity. Morale basically doubles the effectiveness of weapons against hordes of models. The counter to infantry spam is built in right there. Certain armies can simply mitigate morale way too easily. Perhaps if they changed the Commissar's summary execution on conscripts to be "executes D6 models to autopass the test", it would make them easier to shift. Conscripts are far less disciplined that their career equivalents, are far less used to the iron hard on the commisariat. Might make sense that it would take just a little bit more encouragement to keep a mob of hive labourers in the fight than the comparatively elite imperial guard.

EDIT: Typo

I like the idea of nerfing their synergy with the commissar.

Against hordes in general, I think any shooting at a unit of 20+ models should get +1 to hit, and any "random number of shots" weapons get to add 1 shot per die. (castellan launcher for example would be 2d6+2.) To represent that when there's that many dudes there, it's kinda hard to miss.

The problem with Conscripts is their synergy with Commissars; with their ability to reduce morale problems to one dead Conscript no matter how horribly you maim the unit itself it becomes harder to attrit them down.

I've mentioned before just giving Conscripts another ability specific to Commissars: Get back in line you rabble!; Instead of restricting casualties due to failed morale checks to one, Commissars and Lord Commissars using the Summary Execution rule halve (rounding up, to a minimum of one) all casualties caused by morale to Conscript units.

The problem with hordes in general may be the lack of scalability of formerly-template weapons - where you could really punish large hordes before, most template weapons will struggle to kill large groups. Could add a rule to horde units like: Tightly packed! Roll a D6 for every wound if this unit has 15 models or more; on a 5+ the unit suffers a mortal wound in addition to normal damage.

Battleshock should be their weakness. They should be easily scared and not be able to be able to ignore morale. If they were not affected by the commissar.. I think the problem is solved. In AoS, battleshock is the bane of cheap lightly armored troops. When there is a huge blob of maruaders, you know that if you can take out 6 or 7, another 7-8-9 will run away.

I don't think anyone would take them if they had no morale mitigation at all at Ld 4. You'd just use infantry squads.

0) When set up right, they are pretty much unstoppable.
1) Yes. Until you beef up their numbers and start adding Commissars. Who, btw, are themselves not overly bad. It's just a synergistic problem.
2) No. I mean, logically, yes. But the IG's order system? No. They are extremely poorly trained and terrified out of their mind.
3) I would put it that the Commissar executes one for cowardice, but because there are so many of them a handful of others runs away while he's not paying attention.
4) Take 2 blobs of 50. The answer is now yes.
5) No. I hear nobody complaining about footspam Marines or Eldar. There was some early contention about Necrons getting up so damn much but that's a WBB issue.
6) Not when they are used as they are right now. Blocks of a couple of dozen dudes with no Commissar are not going to exactly be game breakers.
7) 180 x 3 = 540 points. 540 points of generic units is the number to aim for, as that is on par with the destructive potential of most other units. Find me a proper dedicated AI unit this edition, and it'll be different. But we lack dedicated AI this edition.
8) Is a TAC list going to face them? It's like asking if TAC lists should have to have AT weapons or not.
9) 2.5-3x the points cost. TO eliminate in one turn. 1-1.5x to significantly damage or hold up the unit. 0.5-1x to just delay it.
10) I don't know, but I do know that you can't do it with Eldar without spamming SfD to make your Aspect units viable.

0) No. They were always a competitive choice even in 7th ed. The big reason people have problems with them is they spam powerful weapons and not small arms. If you wanted a OP unit let guard players use our old infantry platoons all combined.

1) Yes. They don't do much damage and are easy to kill. Again, people need to bring more small arms and less anti tank/ monster. They are a walking wall.

2) Yes. Even if they didn't they would still be there tar pitting and acting like a wall.

3) Yes. If you get rid of the commissar they crumble. If you take away their leadership buffs then tyranids and orks should have their leadership nerfed just as hard.

4) Yes. It is very hard but it can be done. Last tournament I had my 50 man blob fire 187 shots (SOOOO CLOSE).

5) Yes/No. IG have always been a infantry spam army. Would we prefer to go back to riptide/ scatbike spam? Players always spam certain units. It is just that suddenly the IG are competitive and people are not used to that. Almost nothing changed in IG play-style or lists from 7th to 8th.

6)Yes.

7) Small arms fire. Every forces most basic weapon will do superbly against them. Snipers/close combat are good ways of dealing with characters. The key is not to waste your shooting on them and fire at the IGs other units. i cannot stress this enough that you DO NOT shoot them. The entire purpose of conscripts is to be killed so don't do it.

8) Yes. 8th ed. made small arms fire king. Strength 4-5 weapon spam is king for its ability to reliably hurt most units on a 5-3 dice roll.

9) Rule of 3rds. 1/3 of your army should be anti infantry (Strength 3-5 weapons). 1/3 of your force should be anti heavy tank/ monster (strength 8+ weapons with good ap). 1/3 should be medium weapons that can do both depending on what is needed ( Strength 6-8 weapons with ap-1 or better).

10) NEVER EVER EVER focus on the tarpit! That is its entire job. That is what your opponent wants you to do. Kill the other units first and use the leftover firepower on them at the end.

someone said this in the other post

Grots are only overpriced until you consider that they're one of the only ways Orks can get BS4+ shooting. Since Orks are not a shooting army, they pay a premium for anything that isn't BS5+ or worse.

This is garbage because a Grot can only ever carry a pistol. So all that BS4 is WASTED due to lack of weapons. Ironically Grots do man our Artillery as well but those grots only cost 2ppm. So overall, Grots suck except as a cheap horde to stick on top of an objective and forget about.

The issue is that not the price of the conscripts, the issue is that they can be taken alone, and thus are easily spammed.

I think the platoon set up should be brought back. For those unaware, the platoons in 7th addition required a minimum of a platoon command squad and two infantry squads, after which you could take conscripts.

In the new addition, a platoon's minimum requirements could probably be a Platoon Commander and two infantry squads, with the rest of the command squad being optional.

Bringing back the platoon would be both fluffy, and put a tax of sorts on the conscripts. For every unit of conscripts, you would NEED to take along two regular squads of infantry and a platoon commander minimum.

They are not particularly overpowered in and of themselves, being just a mass of meat, but they benefit a lot of the support guard can bring. An order will benefit 20-50 Conscripts instead of 10 guardsmen, a Commissar will prevent a lot of them running away, making battleshock as irrelevant for an Ld4 unit as it is for a Ld7 unit.

Removing their ability to benefit from orders, making battleshock hit them harder and/or reducing their unit size will all go a long way of making them less desirable. One could also reintroduce something similar to the platoon rules, making a Conscript unit require one (or more) units of normal guardsmen.

About the general tendency of weapons being much more efficient against MEQ, this is no real surprise. You get more than 4 Conscripts per Marine, and if we take an S4 AP- weapon, it only kills ~2.67 Conscripts per Marine hit. Lasguns kill 3 Conscripts per Marine, and more powerful weapons just makes the ratio worse, with S8+ higher AP killing almost as many Marines as Conscripts per hit. But on the other hand, if we remove their ability to benefit from orders and Commissars, this is the only benefit they have. They deal little damage apart from seriously skewed calculations.

I think you could fix the problem with two easy changes.

1) Limit the conscript squad size to 20

2) Tweak the Commissar rule so that they can only choose one unit in the moral phase to use their ability on. (and the choice is made before rolling for moral)

These changes limit the squad size to a sane level and then force you to either take a whole boat load of Commissars or force a decision in game about which squads you protect.

I would be interested to know what the people who think conscripts are a problem thought of IG blobs back in 5th edition.

Honestly, conscripts have been good for a while (referring to previous addition.) The unit itself doesn't need a nerf, I honestly think just having a note saying "for every two infantry squads, one unit of conscripts may be taken" would iron it right out.

Messing with the effectiveness of commissars or reducing the stats of conscripts even more wouldn't be a good thing.

 Cothonian wrote:
Honestly, conscripts have been good for a while (referring to previous addition.) The unit itself doesn't need a nerf, I honestly think just having a note saying "for every two infantry squads, one unit of conscripts may be taken" would iron it right out.

Messing with the effectiveness of commissars or reducing the stats of conscripts even more wouldn't be a good thing.

This is entirely the most intelligent means of 'balancing' conscripts I've seen since the indexes appeared. The problem isn't conscripts themselves. Bring back the platoon and then move them back to 0-1 per platoon and the problem dissolves. because of that extra 80 points you have to take in other models.

Of course, at that point, you just redouble the scion spam. But I'm sure someone will come along with a 'simple solution' for that soon too.