Astra Millitarum FAQ/Errata

Dark Elf Dave wrote:

Maybe I am crazy but the more casualties you take the more scared your troops should be...and that is how morale should work for most units in the game.

You might have missed the point that it's frequently worse to have a Commissar now than it is not to have one, and that's pretty messed up!

Yep. The current commissar is unusable.
My 2c on what a commissar should have been :

"When a unit within 6" of a commissar has to roll a moral test, you can remove 1 model from that unit. If so, you only need to pay 1 CP to autopass the moral test".

Jeah there are lots of usefull options that could be done that would have made the commissar usefull and not as insane as it was before or as bad as it is now.

But right now I see no reason to buy one. The good thing is that the banner is now slightly usefull again.
In the local group people are now trying to convince everyone that we should make the shooting optional. Then at least it won't be usually worse to have him around and you can still use him as an HQ/ld bubble.

So wait...do they not have a choice to re-roll the morale test?  Do they have to re-roll it and auto lose a model anyway?

Should just make him LD 10 and lends his LD...that's more than enough.

Banners already give leadership boost

The GW nerf bat is just too damn heavy. 14 point RWF? Unnecessary

With the current wording, yes.

And I gree it should have been something like the option to shoot a model and then get a boost to ld or reduced morale dead or something similar.

I think it would actually be good so the banner and comissar support each other. The banner always giving a small benefit, and the comissar giving a larger benefit but at the cost of a model.

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If I was your opponent I think I'd politely decline. Sorry, but if I put effort into attacking an expensive or dangerous squad and forced a morale test I'd be pretty peeved if you instead start removing 3 point Conscripts when that unit fails the test. I also can't really see the fluff justification for an elite unit passing a morale test because a nearby officer executed some nameless grunt whose only job is in fact to die anyway.

An understandable concern, but I said my Guard friend, and no offense to him, but he uses a Med-Pack on a stock infantry squad. Lord no, I wouldn't give this advantage to an competitive player

Just passing through to say:

a) that I like GW doing something AGAINST Infantry spam for once,
and
b) had I writtewn the rule, I would have just said that a Guard Infantry unit within 6" of a Commisar can use remove models instead of cp to pay for the auto-pass strategem.

Oh well.

I think this is better than it was.

For me the problem with the rule is that it includes killing off a model. They want the Commissar to kill a model and gain greatly from being so ruthless...which is cool, we all like that idea. But the rule was too strong and made a mockery of the morale phase.

If the new rule went something like - if you fail a morale test, and the unit is within 6" of a Commissar then you can half the number that flee rounding up, this represents the Commissar shooting those that start to flee, persuading the rest to remain and fight.

Jeah a lot of options would have been a viable alternative. Even the current new ruling would have been ok if it was an you can shoot a model to reroll the test. But as it is now, having a comissar is the same as paying 2/3 times the cost of the banner and giving your enemy the tools to make you lose more models.

Though it is an advantage to squads with decent leadership.

That said, yeah, I'm probably just sticking to the Lord Commissar and losing about 4 guys to stay totally secure.

Well, that's sad. I wish they'd done something different with Send in the Next Wave. I can't understand why you'd ever use it as-is.

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Well, that's sad. I wish they'd done something different with Send in the Next Wave. I can't understand why you'd ever use it as-is.

If you don't have enough infantry to field all at once? I'm all for toning guard down a bit, but they did kinda screw them a bit with this. A much better solution would've been to change it so the unit would be replenished, i.e, if you have one conscription left, you can drop 2CPs to refill his unit, but if the unit is wiped you're SOL.

The only use I see is to have around 72 points in store, and be able to rebuy a unit that was destroyed.
It can help to be able to pick if you want the heavy weapon team for extra anti tank, a conscript squad for extra bodies, or even an command squad for more plasma.
But in most cases I agree it is not worth it to spend 2 command points and having to pay the points.

I must say I don't mind the changes to much, the guard are still a good faction, but it just makes a unit in the codex unplayable. And nearly everything still is ok. So losing 1 unit is not that bad, it is not that they now suddenly have to spam the same thing over and over to stand a chance in normal play.

I think we can conclude GW has a tendency to over react to units. (our razorwing flocks, guard commissar, cult genestealers (first going from 18 to 10 points before comming at a more reasonable 15).

I don't think Conscripts are unplayable. There are not spammable, and won't singlehandedly win games. They are kinda in the same spot as Orkz Gretchins : disposing a squad on one of your flank is a cheap way to achieve a null-flank deployement.
Still very useful, but not the allmighty unit they used to be.

People should also bear in mind that Guard infantry benefit greatly from the new rule structure to the game. T3, 5+ save models with S3 weapons are one of the biggest winners from the new rules for wounding and armour saves...

So I don't feel too sorry for them.

Honestly? I can think of two fixes for Send in the Next Wave:
1: It has no points cost, but it costs as many CP as the unit's power level.
2: It has full points cost, but costs no CP and is simply a guard army rule rather than a stratagem.

Neither make it fantastic, but both are a marked improvement on its current state.

Better than having to pay twice in sense yeah ^ CP's and pts is harsh.

Makes you think doesn't it...it might actually be better that when the codex is released that there is no way you look OP and that way you don't get the GW nerf bat to the face and become UP.

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Makes you think doesn't it...it might actually be better that when the codex is released that there is no way you look OP and that way you don't get the GW nerf bat to the face and become UP.

Guard is hardly underpowered, they just don't have a 31 point solution to a core concept of the game.

Guard still have plenty of ways to increase leadership, through the standard, relics, and don't forget that Commissars still grant Leadership 8. I think they're still at the top of the meta

Edit: To clarify, Commissars are bad. Really really bad. But there's still ways for a guard player to get around it, even if it is a little tougher and inconvenient. The people who took the biggest hit from this are the Imperial Soup players, who just wanted a 121 Point invincibility shield.

"To each of us there falls a task, and all the Emperor requires of us guardsmen is that we stand the line and we die fighting. It's what we do best: We die standing."

Had another thought for fixing Commissars without breaking them: Units within 6" of a Commissar that take casualties from leadership reduce the number of casualties by 4, to a minimum of 1.

Commissars suddenly become great for mitigating a bad roll, but if you lose 15 conscripts in a single turn he isn't going to turn the tide of fleeing units.

Or you could even make it work like the Ratling gun in WHFB :
- The commissar can kill a model to improve the LD of the unit by 1d6, 2d6 or 3d6 (your choice). But if you roll a double, the commissar takes the double's result in mortal wounds and the skill doesn't work.