Dealing with popular lists and units

Leadership has an effect on the game. More importantly : armies that were immune to it (Necrons, SM) are now suffering from it (Necrons often field 20 man units, that go down very easily to moral).

It's just that every horde army has a way of ignoring moral. Which is a bit of a shame, since it's supposed to be their primary weakness to begin with.

But when fighting against a non-horde army that fields blobs, oh boy moral is doing great.

Mppqlmd wrote:

It's just that every horde army has a way of ignoring moral. Which is a bit of a shame, since it's supposed to be their primary weakness to begin with.

This. I have a huge problem with this exact topic, the way that guard deal with it is ridiculous at the moment, one troop and you are saved, no matter the wounds, it just reeks of lazy game design. And the rule isn't fluffy; they effectively have better LD than space marines. What!
Also, the commissar shoots one of your men. You all have guns and knives! Who is worse, the enemy or this one guy in the middle of your squad. Make like Ollie and stab john snow, leaving him to bleed out! The emperor isn't going to resurrect him!

Comparatively I enjoy the ork mob rule, as once you pile on 15 wounds of a 30man squad they effectively will take d6 losses.
Its interaction with other squads I like less so, because it makes multi giant squads that snake all over the place a have the same effect as if they are bunched up fighting waaagh, but I get the fluffyness of it. And ease of implementing on a table top.

I had a match against Mechanicum this week and Belisarius Cawl seems to give a lot of army wide buffs and just be a monster in his own right.

Upside is that he's only got a 6" move and a 12" gun, so staying outsixe his bubble keeps things pretty safe if you think you can out shoot the Mechanicum in spite of their rerolls.

I like the ork rule as well.
The problem is not the mob rule, or those ld 10 and such. All of these are fluffy a real pain in the ass, but with big blobs can be worked around.
The problem is comissars and the warboss/runtherd is that you never lose more then 1/d3 models in the morale phase. They should have given them a large ld boost and it would have been fine.
Even something like the death corpse of krieg has is okish (ignoring damage in the shooting phase, is a pain for some armies but workable for others)
But now for orks and guard they can just ignore losses and suffer 1 wound. They should have given them suffer x wound and ignore xd6 morale casualties or something. Still really good, but the morale phase would be something you can play with, and it actually ads something, since they can make sure they only lose a few models (by shooting some more) or shoot a few less and hope you roll good for the morale. It would make big blobs suffer a bit more.

I think the Warboss rule is kinda fine, actually. At least, it's much better than the Commissar rule.

1d3 mortal wounds on an army where the cheapest infantry (not considerign grots) is 6 points still makes you lose 6-18 points. Not a lot, but still something. And when you start shooting expensive orks (burnas for example), does 1d3 mortal wounds are expensive.

1 mortal wound in an army where you have access to 3pts models is... nothing.

While I agree the 6-18 points is a lot more then the 3 pts.
The thing is that those are from units of 30 models, who if played well, will have ld equal to the highest number of orks in any unit. So we start with a ld of 30... Or you have to split fire to get all those units down in size first.
Which means that first you must make an effort to lower their ld. And then you still only deal 6-18 points of bonus damage.
Compare that to the case if there were no special rules, then a unit of 30 would lose 60-90 points of models in the ld phase. Which is to much I agree, but 6-18 is to little in my mind.

Magnus has more than 10 wounds. You can shoot him turn 1.

From my perspective as guard-first and drukhari-curious player (building a coven army right now), my suggestion would be to do what ever you can to pop or cripple the tanks ASAP while mostly ignoring the conscripts and other screening units. Your opponent doesn't fear the soldiers being whittled down. But, even just getting their artillery or Russes down one damage level has them hitting on 5s which is a big drop off. In most game scenarios, they're also going to eventually have to push forward with those blobs as they can't rely purely on suicide scions to capture objectives. When that happens, you'll have space to pop up behind them with mandrakes and/or scourges to kill characters and finish off vehicles. Last step should be dealing with the conscripts who have little to no bite on their own and will go down fast without character support.

Also, just as a note from a guard player, I must say that I'm honestly looking forward to the inevitable codex nerf for some of the shenanigans that have arisen from the index. Granted, IG has been a pretty stale army for a while and needed some kind of a boost, but they benefited from literally all of the macro 8th ed changes, while also getting inexplicable points drops all over the place. I do hope those points get rebalanced because I don't want them to become the new Taudar that loses you all of your friends.

The problem with conscripts isn't even so much that guard players are ruthlessly spamming, its that the index sort of shoves players in that direction. The army has only two troop choices -- conscripts and infantry squads. Inf squads are max 10 units of BS 4+ guardsmen that can take just one heavy weapon and special weapon. No real great use for that. In previous editions you had to take other platoon units to unlock conscripts and you could blob up the infantry guardsmen, which gave both their place. Now, there's just no reason to take individual inf squads. Want heavy weapons? Take a heavy weapons squad (three heavy teams). Want more special weapons? Take a special weapons team (six guardsmen, three with special weapons), or better yet, veterans (up to four special weapons and BS 3+). With detachments pushing you to get as many troops choices as possible and inf squads bad at everything, it's become pretty dumb NOT to fill up troops spots with conscripts because at least they are good at what they do -- board-space eating and being frustratingly survivable. They won't kill much themselves, but can do plenty for low points while your tanks bring the destruction.

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Last step should be dealing with the conscripts who have little to no bite on their own and will go down fast without character support.

We don't have the same experience (trauma would be more appropriate for me) of Conscripts lists.

First, you can't "DS behind them and kill the HQs". They are not stupid, the HQs are located between 100 conscripts, and at no angle are you allowed to shoot at them.

Second, Conscripts do have a huge bite, that's the whole problem with them. 180 conscripts shots kill a raider. 45 conscripts do that. In one turn.

Mppqlmd wrote:

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Last step should be dealing with the conscripts who have little to no bite on their own and will go down fast without character support.

We don't have the same experience (trauma would be more appropriate for me) of Conscripts lists.

First, you can't "DS behind them and kill the HQs". They are not stupid, the HQs are located between 100 conscripts, and at no angle are you allowed to shoot at them.

Second, Conscripts do have a huge bite, that's the whole problem with them. 180 conscripts shots kill a raider. 45 conscripts do that. In one turn.

That's interesting. It hasn't been my experience on the other end of the board but I have been mostly playing against MEQ armies where even 50 conscripts will likely just plink off 2-3 wounds per turn from anything other than enemy infantry.

Either way, in order for them to get 180 shots on your Raider, they would need 45 conscripts within 12" rapid fire range receiving the First Rank Second Rank order. Conscript blobs do not move quickly, and generally I've found that in order to keep them doing their job of bubble-wrapping tanks and characters, I have to amoeba them around and rarely get much more than half of the unit in rapid-fire range of something, even if that thing is standing right in front of the unit. LoS-blocking terrain also drops that number down. When I do get more than half on target, it's usually due to an ill-advised move by my opponent.

That's part of my point. I think the best move is to keep your distance from the gunline in general and only engage with your long-range stuff beating up their tanks initially. Lasguns also only have just 24" range and if you're patient they are going to have to stretch out towards you eventually unless the mission has placed all of the objectives in their deployment zone for some reason. In that regard, DE players have time on their side that IG doesn't. Unless they have literally tons of scions, they probably intend on some units from their deployment zone capping an objective or two on your side by game's end. in that case, they pretty much need to have those units start schlepping in that direction on Turn 1. DE by contrast have the speed to outmaneuver them and wait until the gunline starts breaking up to deal with individual pieces of it at a time.

One more thing I just thought of is that if you do need to get Raiders and Venoms close to blobs, it might worthwhile to try and dismount and advance up a Haemonculus to give the pirate ships his +1 T buff. That makes lasguns wound them on a 6+ rather than 5+, which is also going to drop their damage output by a lot.

My experience with IG so far :
- I have always been able to kill his leman russes (and sometimes bigger stuff, like Baneblade) by the end of turn 2, and sometimes turn 1.
- But then what ? I cannot kill the infantry before the end of the game, and they will sit on more objectives than me. I had to make it an egality in most of my games, countering the VP from objectives with linebreaker and FB. One game i threw myself all in, charged in with kabalites, raiders, everything really. I managed to push them away from 1 objective, which made me win. But it was luck, and i could have lost the game as easily.

It's really frustrating because i've had only victories in 8th edition so far (in 30ish games), except vs the IG where my opponent sits quietly eating carrots while i have to scratch my head, wondering how i'm going to achieve an egality.

Yeah I feel you. I have basically not lost any games with my guard army yet this edition beyond the initial learning games and it's part of what's pushed me to put them on the shelf for a while and focus on my Coven project. Right now IG are so out of whack that there are basically no bad lists and it doesn't take much of a strategy to win.

The best I can say is I think it's going to be a temporary problem that will be adjusted with the codices. IG is rumored to be coming in the next round in either October or November.

Also, I think placing objectives tactically is going to be big for DE-IG matchups. While it's probably the opposite to a DE player's usual approach, I think it makes sense to deploy as many objectives as far away from the guard guy as possible. Mobility is their biggest weakness and you want to force them to come to you because it puts them off balance. A corollary of that is trying to get more terrain on the board than usual. IG don't need to hug ruins like they used to -- those are pure obstacles and blocks to fields of fire to them now.

Another thing to consider is that if you aren't opposed to the clowns, there's a lot that Harlies can do against guard -- my only losses this edition were two to Harlies and Ynnari. Guard don't have many ways to dish out mortal wounds so the 4++ and -1 to hit is big. Since Harlies essentially have Fly they can charge through walls and avoid overwatch and they are real blenders in CC. Then they can disengage and go charge something or tie up a tank or whatever else they want to. The Solitaire and Death Jester are also better about wiping our characters.

Ynnari in particular cause guard problems. Once they get in an IG player's lines it's just bad news all around.

I have nothing against harlies, and i can see how they would work vs the IG. My only problem with them is that i do not own them

Thanks for your input, anyway. It's always precious.

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I had a match against Mechanicum this week and Belisarius Cawl seems to give a lot of army wide buffs and just be a monster in his own right.

Upside is that he's only got a 6" move and a 12" gun, so staying outsixe his bubble keeps things pretty safe if you think you can out shoot the Mechanicum in spite of their rerolls.

Yeah, well, you probably didnt saw Cawl and six shooty robots of death on shooting protocol. Thats 108 S6 Ap-2 shots at rerolable 4+ to hit and 36' range. Add to that mars stratagem - on each 6 to wound there is mortal wound. Its death. You cant outshoot a mechanicum with DE, if they are geared towards shooting with Cawl.