Anti hoard list building challenge

Do bear in mind, that some of the examples people have provided, the points cost for Conscripts should surely include the Command Squad because without orders Conscripts get a lot easier to squish.

Do Conscripts get to use the 1st rank 2nd rank order?  Does this mean they fire twice?  Does this mean that 60 Conscripts would fire 240 times each shooting phase?

Also how does morale work for them?  Do they simply need a company commander for orders or do they need a Commissar as well for the Morale?

IF IF IF they put the price of Conscripts up to 4 points each then I would say without orders or special rules or being immune to morale then a Venom with 5 Trueborn with x4 SC would eventually win vs. 52 Conscripts.

36 SC shots per turn, killing 8 meaning from morale they would lose a further 4-10 averaging 7 meaning after turn one you are now facing 37 Conscripts hitting on 6's vs. the venom. It would take them 2-3 turns to kill the venom while you continue to whittle them down...you should kill them. Its all pointless because they are only 3 points per model but if they change it only slightly then we win.

Dark Elf Dave wrote:

IF IF IF they put the price of Conscripts up to 4 points each then I would say without orders or special rules or being immune to morale then a Venom with 5 Trueborn with x4 SC would eventually win vs. 52 Conscripts.

But they do benefit from orders and the Commissar means they only ever take 1 casualty from morale. And a Commander and Commissar are only 60 points for both and can be safely hidden out of LOS and still confer their benefits to the Conscripts.

Count Adhemar wrote:

Dark Elf Dave wrote:

IF IF IF they put the price of Conscripts up to 4 points each then I would say without orders or special rules or being immune to morale then a Venom with 5 Trueborn with x4 SC would eventually win vs. 52 Conscripts.

But they do benefit from orders and the Commissar means they only ever take 1 casualty from morale. And a Commander and Commissar are only 60 points for both and can be safely hidden out of LOS and still confer their benefits to the Conscripts.

That is fine...but then people should use those additional 60 points in the comparison should they not?

The Commander and the Commissar points wise remove 20 Conscripts from the table.

Also note that, while company commanders can only affect a limited number of units (but those units are  super huge...), a commissar just needs to be close. So with a little bit of imagination and stupid line formations, he can buff a ridiculous amount of conscripts squads.


Comparing a Venom squad to Conscripts and state "oh wait, they have HQs, so the comparison doesn't stand" is a bit off. Don't you also take HQs ? The fact that their HQs are useful doesn't make them any more expensive.

jeah conscripts themselves are cheap but not that badly costed. Yes grots are 3 points and slightly worse. The problem is they are not a full point worse. And conscripts themselves are no problem. The problem is that guard characters are based on giving their buffs to units of 5-10 models.
A comissar with a 10 man unit will save maximum 3 (assuming you rol a 6 on the morale die), with a 50 man blob he can save I think 24 models.
A normal order goes for 10 man. Which means around 15-25 points per 40-90 points spend.
An order for 50 conscripts means it works for 150 points and the best orders for them are much worse for normal squads.
More shots works on lasguns only (which means up to 60 points for veterans).
Shooting after withdrawing is much more effective for a large squad (how much of a normal 10 man guard squad will be left standing after a round of cc?)


The problem is the comissar makes one of their major drawbacks (morale) nonexistant.
The second problem is that with orders they effectively get multiple times the advantage other units get. Make only senior comissars work for conscripts and give those comissars a price increase. And say you need both orders frm a senior commander to issue orders to a conscript squad, and the worse problems are adressed.

@ Dave (yes 50 conscripts would fire 200 shots in rapid fire range with orders)
So yes they need a commander and a commissar (only they can both be bought for around 50-60 points I think) which means roughly 200 points for 50+ bodies who suffer max 1 wound in the morale phase and have 4 s3 shots each.

There are lots of problems with conscripts, and most of them come from the Conscript-HQ interraction, but not all of them.

- Immunity to moral, that's a bummer.
- Immunity to getting tied in CC, because why not.
- The total absence of weapons that punish large squads of infantry.
- The removal of AP5 as a standard value for small fire arms, making Flak armor worth something for the first time in the history of the game ?
- The fact that a Lasgun wounds everything on a 6. Why bother why actual weapons when you can throw rocks at your target and still kill it, if you have enough rocks.
- The fact that a 3pts model can fire 4 times because some cheap ass HQ asked him to do so.

You can't really say that the problems lies within the fact that HQs weren't designed to buff small squads. Unless the guy working on their part of the Index had NEVER heard of the Imperial Guard before, there is NO CHANCE that he might not have the Conscripts in mind when he wrote the Commissar/Company Commander rule. It would be like the 7th edition T'au designer saying "Oh, when i wrote the rules for laser markers, i didn't know they were going to be used by Fire Warriors. I had no idea !".
It's litterally the most predictable use...

|Meavar wrote:

jeah conscripts themselves are cheap but not that badly costed. Yes grots are 3 points and slightly worse. The problem is they are not a full point worse. And conscripts themselves are no problem.

If you could give a unit +1 Movement, +1 S, +1 T, +1 Save, +12" range and double the shots at half range in exchange for losing 1 or 2 from BS and a single point increase, would you do it? Because I think in the vast majority of cases that would be absolutely worth the upgrade.

So the question/problem is not how do you deal with Conscripts but how do you beat an army with Conscripts in?  Because Conscripts (even with a Commander and Commissar) are easy to deal with.

Points for points for example they couldn't bring down a RWJF during the course of a 6 turn game...in fact they couldn't even get in range.

In a game against Guard with loads of tanks and 80 Conscripts there is just no chance.

I beg to differ. The problem are not tanks, but conscripts.
My usual list will clear any tank from the table by turn 2, or turn 1 if there aren't that much. But then, what happens ? I'm facing an army of models that i can't approach (less they kill me), that i can't kill even if i focus fire them the entire game, and that can hold objectives better than i do.


How can you play against an army that you don't have enough shots to kill in 10 turns, that can OS you if you come close, and that holds objectives better than you do ?
You hope that your objectives cards will be better than his. It works sometimes, but then you're basically playing a sophisticate and extremely expensive version of poker.

But surely Conscripts are only lethal when in rapid fire range?

Objectives would be difficult to get if he has massed troops sitting on every one...but to do that they have to cross the table.  It could take half the game to do that...if he has transports then like you say you kill them early.

In terms of objectives, yes the Conscript blob wins at holding objectives but it loses out with things like big game hunter etc...they just don't have enough range as long as you play it clever.

Another army would perhaps take a couple of Vindicare Assassins and take out the characters giving out orders.

As hard as it would be to play this type of list, I would really enjoy seeing how it turns out.

So far it seems as though our weapons are strong against elite armies...but not so good against horde armies. I think that suits the DE.

Uh oh, IF I started another inside joke, that's my bad mate.

It'd be a decent bit easier if they were T2.

Plus as unlikely as it is to happen, I'd enjoy a game or two of playing conscript herder with our chittering Taloi

What if instead of ignoring morale, appropriately buffed conscript blobs just halved their casualties from it?

Jimsolo wrote:

What if instead of ignoring morale, appropriately buffed conscript blobs just halved their casualties from it?

Erm...points to comment on the previous page

I miss the old slave nets. When you could zoom over squads and grapple them in your nets.

Cheers boys! It's harvest time!

They are either going to make them take moral OR you are limited buy how many you can take.

You cant really increase their points, if they are equal points to guardsmen then they need guardsmen stats.

I personally wish there was no Ignore Moral and everything was more similar to how Orks does it.

Quote :

I personally wish everything was more similar to how Orks does it

This applies to the real world. Why complicate everything when a simple burst of violence and adrenaline feels so good and requires almost no talking ?

Mppqlmd wrote:

Quote :

I personally wish everything was more similar to how Orks does it

This applies to the real world. Why complicate everything when a simple burst of violence and adrenaline feels so good and requires almost no talking ?

lol

But just to add to my old post, different armies can be different thing, IG could be, if you fail by 1-10, then only lose D6 models, if its more than 10 then lose D6+6

Nids are the only one that should be immune also, they already have a negative effect for having no Synapse, so Synapse giving them immunity is fine.

Just some things for thought.

I would like to see a commissar rule like this :

When a commissar is nearby a unit making a moral check, roll 1d6. On 2+, remove one model from the fleeing unit but don't make the moral check. On a result of 1, make the moral check normally, and the commissar takes 1d3 mortal wound as he gets trampled by deserters.

I just notice that conscripts are 5+ save....

amishprn86 wrote:

They are either going to make them take moral OR you are limited buy how many you can take.

You cant really increase their points, if they are equal points to guardsmen then they need guardsmen stats.

I personally wish there was no Ignore Moral and everything was more similar to how Orks does it.

So do you think then that rather than hiking the points for Conscripts that instead they increase the points for the characters that buff them so damn well for so damn cheap

I think IMO it should be these 2 changes.

1) they are a 6+ armor base (5+ ffs thats to much for such a cheap model)
2) 1 Unit per character, and the Characters cost more.

On the topic of conscripts...as far as pure offensive potential goes, they're really indistinguishable from regular Guardsmen. 120 points of Conscripts will kill 5.92 Marines with orders. Equivalent points of Guardsmen will kill 6.67 with the same orders. They aren't meant to be heavy hitters, but in all honesty, they don't have a weakness.

From a lot of what I've been seeing, a lot of the utter rage of Conscripts is that no one brings only Conscripts. Two squads of 50, a Company Commander, and a Commissar run you 361 points. That nets you a hundred and two models on the table, granting you basically total control of whatever objective you can reach, oh, and almost total immunity to deep strike. That's the annoying thing in my head, you can use a third of your army for uncontestable control of Objectives, decent firepower, and completely nullify a positioning mechanic to boot...and you still have to deal with over 1600 points of whatever else your opponent has lined up to kill you as well.

I'd say cap their unit sizes at something more reasonable, and make them ineligible for orders, but that'll still do nothing to mitigate the pure weight of board control alloted by the unit.

Until the fundamental nature of the game shifts from giving every advantage, and no weaknesses, to hordes, no strategy can effectively deal with them.

It's grim, but from what I've witnessed, not even a conscript horde can displace another conscript horde.

Making them from 50 to 30 wouldnt help, players would just take 3 units over 2, or 6 units over 3.

They need to be either moral effected some way to thin them down faster, or they need to be limited in how you take them.

1 per HQ with a more costly HQ would make that 400pts up to 700pts if not more. When you can take away 3 tanks from that army they lost enough fire power to make them to weak to play (in this style) and will take less conscripts as a result.

Edit: You could increase the tanks also, and lower the transports (imo this would be fine too, but idk if that will happen)

@Barrywise how do Khymerea stack up? At ten points a model they seem almost reasonable.

I'll run the stats tomorrow. An early hypothesis though, Im guessing they are paying a premium in defensive abilities with that Invuln save, thus don't stack up as well offensively.

And @Everyone, try to focus on what we as DE players can do, instead of wishing that conscripts were worse.