Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Does anyone else ever run MSU with one or two meatshields? I just built a squad of Sternguard for my Lamenters and was thinking this might be a topic of discussion. I'm adding the extra dude to my MSU for the wound and extra gun in most cases. Plus it satisfies my OCD when putting MSU in Razorbacks. I know Devastators were commonly given the ablative wounds, but where else are people using MSU + 1?

I’ve just been playing crusade, so 6 man units are not worth it. But when discussing unit options, and if it was worth going to 6 men for matched, someone brought up the secondary objective where you need to roll equal or under the unit size to score. So a 6 man squad will never fail, until they loose a guy. That’s kinda nice, and probably worth being a little more susceptible to blast weapons.

Oh yeah, blasts now do damage based on number of models. Right, lol. So now instead of getting six hits with a template I can suffer more hits than dudes in the squad. Derp. Well in my defense I make this army with squads of six back in the day because, reasons. I think it was because I could get three squads + 2 HQ units out of two Tac boxes by using squads of 6.

From your comment, Hairesy, you might be worrying too much about Blasts. for a 6 man squad, Blasts only average slightly more hits than normal - it goes from av 2 to a 3 on D3, and always at least 3 on a D6, but that means an average of 4 instead of 3.5, which isn't massive.

Bigger issues are some stratagems will cost more and squads become less feasible for strategic reserves

I play my Custodes at 4 man units because I hate three model squads. It's irrational I'm aware.

Cheap scoring infantry units are better at 6 dudes than 5 if you need the guaranteed secondary, but expensive multiwounds models do suffer from blasts, sometimes from coherency restrictions too.