Guard Mont'ka Formations!

[Emicus]

Shadowsword*.  And you'll be banking on sixes on the chart, otherwise you are not popping one a turn (5 wounds each, 2-5 on the D-chart does d3). Spreading out+scatter+invuln saves and you're worse off.
 

[Ulrock]

So what would be the best answer to these guys now? I won't be taking the shadowsword then.

[Lukash_]

MSU and play the objectives. His 600+ points of weaboo battlesuits are cool until all they do is shoot at cover-camping guardsmen, killing barely a tenth of that a turn.

 

Riptides will have a bit of trouble with AV14, so Russes aren't a terrible choice (though if he brings the Optimized **** Cadre they are.)

 

Tarpitting is fun to do to riptides (especially when your force axe primaris psyker gets lucky and ID's the thing.)

 

Kill everything on the table that has a markerlight as soon as possible and Riptide's offensive value drops massively.

[Emicus]

Not even cover since the spacecows don't know what cover is 'lolflashlights'.

​But even if he explodes a 50 point 10man unit of guardsman a turn, every turn, you're still ahead as Lukash_ says :)

[Ulrik_Ironfist]

There is a cycle that these things go through. I used nothing but Decurion detachments with my Necrons, until winning became boring because nothing could compete with it. Then the other Codecies started to follow suit, and while they are fun, they just turn out to be too many rules to keep track of. 

 

Fun as a few of the formations might be, there is so much book keeping to do. 

[cracklingvoice]

Am I wrong, or could the new codex have a different format as it comes to the platoons that make up a squad? The old format has the squads listed separately, but maybe they have a format where the Rifle Squads, HWS, and SWS are all under one entry with different options on points and loadout. It's a longshot, but maybe that's what they're doing.

Then again, I'm pretty upset that there is no option for mech platoons anymore ... looks like the fluff I spent a few days of my life writing will now require a complete overhaul. To me, they split IG into the three main methods they are played in (MechVets, Armor, and Infantry Blobs), with the option for air assault if you want to.

Any word on a change in points? Pretty much every other recent-style 7th edition codex got at least a few reductions in points, if not nearly everything. Plus, with them pushing Squadrons as hard as they have been, I wonder what the squadrons in the new IG/AM will get ...

[Ulrik_Ironfist]

So, I played a game today, where I tried out some of the new formations. I was less than impressed. I tried out the Command, Emperor's Shield Infantry platoon, and the Emperor's Spear. I managed a win against Harlequins and Dark Eldar, but only just barely.  Here's my breakdown of the formations :

 

Command:

It's a Company Command squad. I took it tricked out in a chimera. Stayed alive and held an objective all game, until the very end, but it kept my commander safe along with his MoO and the OotF.  Not much to say other than worth it.

 

Emperor's Shield Infantry Platoon:

The whole thing was just pretty much what you'd expect from a footslogging guard platoon. Squishy and weak. They didn't really do anything except provide my opponent with targets. Which really kept him from targeting things of consequence. The move through cover seems like a buff, but it really doesn't help their mobility. It might just be worth it to take it just for the sentinels. Now I ran it as the bundle, so I ran the PCS, 3 IS, and 2 HWS, for my total 5 squads (as I interpreted it from the bundle). Now it's very possible that this could have been played better, but I had limited options for deployment.

 

Emperor's Spear Aerial Company:

This did exactly what I wanted it to, put my scions right where I wanted them. Unfortunately as March10k predicted, I ended up with a very dead vendetta, first turn it was on. I lost it to interceptor. It worked as advertised, and coupled with the officer of the fleet in the command section it got on the board in a timely manner. Sacrificing Jink is a big deal, don't do it unless you know you can get away with it. The real benefit is the rule getting them on at the same time. With the stormies having MTC and not having to worry about dangerous terrain the grav chute insertion is not such a concern. 

 

The formations were fun, and yes I pulled a win out of it, but I had a CAD of Stormies (from the MT book) as my real core, and a Knight paladin for my big guns. All in all I'm going to have to run these formations a few more times to really get the feel of what they can do. These were just my first impressions.

[defl0]

It's a shame. None of this is really all that useful. A couple tweaks here and there, but really nothing is all that interesting or powerful. 

 

I mean if you wanted to go crazy with it you could take a bunch of medusa artillery in a cad from FW and a ton of command squads and do a combo of breacher and regular shells. 

 

You could also do an odd psykana list, where you use it as huge battery for either summoning or with a ton of astro paths. The amount of psychic shriek you could bring to the table is probably laughable, let alone the force axes :) 

 

Plus the tons of command squads let you make any reserve list have to roll 6s to come in. 

 

You could also do a hilarious amount of artillery bombardment. 

 

Really, I think this list is supposed to be geared to tread heads and heavy infantry lovers. I mean the infantry does get to move and fire and re roll 1s and walk through cover quickly. But the true strength of infantry these days is that it's fearless and can ignore cover with Low Ap weapons. So the opportunity cost alone of the infantry order is not worth it, and the ambiguity of the support units like priests is just annoying. 

 

Really, they could have just let the infantry order be given to  tanks and the codex would be instantly viable. 

[HenricusTyranicus]

As I see it, here is how you should use the Emperors shield platoon. 50 man guard blob, 5 heavy weapons teams in it, commissar for laughs. Issue fire and advance order at will. The blob will be distracting from your tanks, have a nice damage output, and will hold objectives like nothing else. 

[Phubar]

As said before (or in onother topic?) those are Cadian specific formations, in the new IG codex we will have another "decurion" that will be the plain one.

[defl0]

Hopefully!

[march10k]

MSU and play the objectives. His 600+ points of weaboo battlesuits are cool until all they do is shoot at cover-camping guardsmen, killing barely a tenth of that a turn.

 

Riptides will have a bit of trouble with AV14, so Russes aren't a terrible choice (though if he brings the Optimized **** Cadre they are.)

 

 

MSU is a really good counter, but only if you're slavish about it.  If you have 580 points of MSU and can't resist also having some units that actually do something productive, he'll just ignore those naked 50 point squads and kill the juicy stuff...you hurt yourself more than him.

 

AV14 is problematic for riptides, and OSC is a hard counter  for AV14 (I should know, I took 8/9 HP off of a full vindicator squadron (poncey giga-pieplate cheese...) with just my two ghostkeels and then felt cheated that I had to "waste" a stealth team (stripped seven more hull points with those 24 shots) to get that last hull point.  However...OSCs are not invincible.  Here's how you handle both:

 

Put three BS4 vanquishers with hull lascannons on top of a skyshield.  Put two or three wyverns behind them.  Wyverns target the stealth drones protecting  the ghostkeel(s) in the OSC...obliterating the drones, probably overflowing to obliterate the ghostkeels.  If the Ghostkeels live, they lost their portable cover save, and you blast them...but they're probably dead.  If they are dead already, the stealth suits lose the special rules, so they're no longer a threat.    The vanquishers are great for punching riptides (up to 6 wounds a turn)...and any other monstrous creature.

 

Shadowsword*.  And you'll be banking on sixes on the chart, otherwise you are not popping one a turn (5 wounds each, 2-5 on the D-chart does d3). Spreading out+scatter+invuln saves and you're worse off.

 

 

A shadowsword might have trouble getting that magic 6, but if you add in four lascannons per turn, it's not half bad.

[Ulrik_Ironfist]

The formations can work well, you just have to cherry pick what you want, and what you want it to do. The Aerial Company formation is nice, since it can get your fliers on all at once, and it's bringing whatever you put in it with it. On the other hand, Elysians do it better with their ability to bring fliers on first turn. 

[Emicus]

Woah 4 lascannons for 100 points. Such bargain >_> and on the same platform so when your opponent goes 'Im afraid of that superheavy D template dropping tank' and rams it with everything he has, you're just down even more.

 

But I suppose the takeaway from your message is "not half bad" which I read as approx 47% bad. Compared to a WK? I dunno being 300 pnts wouldn't be half bad (no saves, no jump, single shot).

 

Sure the template will hit more.. But I reckon we could get a nice tank properly costed regardless :)

[march10k]

I'll forgive your sarcasm...

It's more than "4 lascannons for 100 points," besides which, isn't that the going rate for a lascannon on a T3 model with flak armor? It's actually 4 independently targetable lascannons that are immune to "weapon destroyed" results on an AV14/13/12 (the rear armor is critical in consideration of an optimized stealth team....immune to burst cannons, and ion rakers glance on 5s instead of 3s) platform with 9 HP, with four bonus twinlinked heavy bolters, also independently targetable, and gee, aren't there a fair few tau models that don't react well to heavy bolter fire?

I'd say that a naked shadowsword is a horrible deal at, what is it, 455 points? ONE gun? But for something like 110 points more, you jump to TEN guns...that's pretty sweet! The OSC is a perfect answer to Tau's struggles with AV14...but hold on, with rear armor of 12 or better, the OSC doesn't really answer the mail. It takes a 190 point stealth team with a 195 point shadowsun attached to really do the AV14 (thinking of land raiders) rear armor thing. A fully kitted shadowsword may not kill 7.3 riptides per turn, but it will kill them, and it (baneblade class tanks more generally) is the only tank in the IG arsenal that is relatively immune to OSC cheese. Even putting them on top of a skyshield is mediocre protection for standard russes, it merely doubles the number of shots required to kill them. Shots that are plentiful.

/edit/

Mind you, a superheavy tank has no place in an all comers list at 1850, it's too many points in a single model, but it absolutely is something that tau cheese will struggle with....except possibly markerlight-guided destroyer missiles. Good news is, they only have four per stormsurge, that's not likely to kill a shadowsword. I played a team game with tau this weekend, our stormsurge fired three missiles at a knight...only one of them had any effect...thankfully, that was a 6 on the D table, netting precisely 6HP, detonating the damned thing...but that was an exceptional result.

[Captain Caine 24th]

• Psykana Division.
  • I had forgotten about psykers being able to cast a number of powers up to their mastery level. So, imagine a lvl2 primaris with 15+ wyrdvane nearby to add mastery lvl's to him up to lvl 5. Even though the primaris couldn't generate new powers himself, the formation says he knows the wyrdvanes' powers. So, I could see him being able to cast 5 powers (admittedly debatable if you'd have the necessary warp charges). So, this formation could potentially pair well with a really strong unit (deathstar) or a strong flanking movement. Alternatively this set up could help get you the one power you really need by having whatever wyrdvane unit that rolled what you wanted near the primaris.

• (a decent deny the witch for that deathstar too)

The commissar executing a wyrdvane preventing a roll on the perils table isn't bad. Capturing warp charges on a 2+ is good--when it really matters you just roll your dice and accept the commissar's "it's for your own good" shot. 

A lot of this could depend on the cost of commissars and wyrdvanes in the new codex as well as access to disciplines. 

I'm still not sold on the 'core detachments' as in the context of the psykana division many powers require being a part of the unit (namely ignore cover) though I can think of other divination powers like prescience or that 4+ invuln would be very helpful to a tank commander. 

The problem I see is that these guys are not particularly durable and need to be in a chimera or taurox or stormlord, etc. Transports are also nice for mobility. But, in doing that they'd lose the ability to cast a lot of powers. 

Battle Group Command

• Alright, I'm prepared for backlash on this one, but indulge me for a moment.

command squads are a 1+ section so I don't think you need a 0-3 core or any auxillary sections. The premise of this is that you could take as many as you want and thereore this might be the new spam. If I'm wrong, ignore the following ramblings completely. 

But, for the sake of argument, You've got better orders: longer range (huge), 3 orders, better chance of them going off (forget the vox's & save the points). 

BA flesh tearers strike force: 6 command squads each with 4x melta/plasma + astropath for psychic shriek + maybe officers of the fleet to mess up reserves. (read as: ignore cover/monster hunter all day long).  Might pair well (in terms of generating WC) with the Psykana if you can figure out the points to get a psykic heavy list going. Might also work if these cheap pods drop down as a hammer while you actually have a huge infantry mass (anvil) maneuvering freely in the backfield. (but remember these guys are toast the next turn, assuming they survive interceptor) Of course maybe you still want those vox's to help the auxillary artillery battery be hyper accurate (though the vox might have to be on the table at the start of the turn to call it in...). The Tank heavy core choice might synergize with the pod idea in that the pods could strike high priority targets, freeing up the tanks from having to worry about their rear armour and forcing the enemy to face a unified AV14. But who has the points for all this? And, if so, I'm not entirely sure the rules will ultimately allow for these shenanigans. As it stands, grav centurions seem to be the heavy hitter pod of choice, but theyre very expensive and require a lot of protection. It's the imperial guard's cheap points cost that makes me think they might have a niche as a cheap but hard hitting pod passenger. 

Chimera fleet: Again command squads everywhere, but in chimeras (each with maybe master of ordnance?). Pair this with the tank core to confuse the opponent's target priority--its not the lemans he should be worrying about in this case. As always mech forces can find bad match ups as there are a lot of high strength high volume of fire enemies out there now. A chimera heavy army could be vaporized real quick. 

[Ulrik_Ironfist]

We've discussed podded guard in other topics, but I'll give you the short version.

 

1) It's not fluffy, because that impact would likely crush the passengers, as drop pods are made for Astartes.

2) There isn't a lot that Space Marines bring to the table that guard don't. Sure there's grav, but the Guard has other ways to deal with MC's. 

3) It smells like a WAAC list, and that's fine for a tournament, but not for friendly games. 

 

The Formations do offer quite a bit though. The ability to get my 2 valks and my vendetta on the table all at once and whatever is riding in them is very nice. Good support for my Stormies. The ability to get a platoon of troops on the field with heavy weapons and sentinels is also nice. I'm ok with them not having ObSec since I'd be tacking them on to a CAD of MT, which does have ObSec. 

 

Looking over the rules for the Aerial Company, only the aircraft making the precision drop has to give up it's jink. So if you're like me, and you have a Vendetta along with your two Valkyries, you don't need to give up your jink and possibly lose your vendetta. Now, with MTC on the Stormies you don't need to worry about dangerous terrain tests. So it's not like you need to worry about losing stormies with a grav chute scatter. Also, if you use inquisitors or the grav chute commando warlord trait you can scatter 1d6 rather than 2.

 

There's a lot of synergy that you can get going on that will really make a good list better.

[defl0]

My head goes to ignore cover medusa artillery and command squads. Sure. You could do this before but now you can do it better.

 

Also you can make people come in from reserves on a 6... that's a string combo.

[HenricusTyranicus]

 

2) There isn't a lot that Space Marines bring to the table that guard don't. Sure there's grav, but the Guard has other ways to deal with MC's. 

As a Guard/Marine player, I would seriously challenge this assertion. Agree with most everything else though. 

 

 

 

 

Also you can make people come in from reserves on a 6... that's a string combo.

What's a trifle irritating is that now with formations, anyone can bring a casual company command squad to the table with zero tax for some cheap reserve manipulation, some bassie shots, and a heavy weapons team which can ignore cover, pin, etc. And depending on how you interpret the rules, they can even throw in 3 priests with only the CCS as a tax. That bit is a touch more dubious though. 

[Akrim]

Coming from an old school Guard player, I'm stoked about these formations. Just a note to some of the posters, note that you can run single formations from Mont'ka as a "Formation Detachment" without running the Cadian Battle Group detachment.

 

I ran an Emperors Wrath Artillery company last game vs gun line Tau:

CCS - MoO, Chimera

2x Basilisk

2x Wyvern

Deathstrike

Enginseer

 

WOW! This thing caused some severe casualties. Pinning on the Wyverns, Ignores Cover on the Bassies. Twin-linked the Deathstrike onto an Infiltration Cadre using a vox call, nasty stuff. The rest of my list I filled in with mass infantry and Aegis and a Vendetta. Quite potent.

 

The Armoured Company formation has some serious potential, BS4 around Punishers and such could be fairly nasty. Talon, Psykana and Blade formations certainly appeal to me.

 

Why they wouldn't give Emperors Shield platoons ObSec is beyond me though, but you aren't forced to take them to fill the core requirement,

[marti350]

 

• Psykana Division.
  • I had forgotten about psykers being able to cast a number of powers up to their mastery level. So, imagine a lvl2 primaris with 15+ wyrdvane nearby to add mastery lvl's to him up to lvl 5. Even though the primaris couldn't generate new powers himself, the formation says he knows the wyrdvanes' powers. So, I could see him being able to cast 5 powers (admittedly debatable if you'd have the necessary warp charges). So, this formation could potentially pair well with a really strong unit (deathstar) or a strong flanking movement. Alternatively this set up could help get you the one power you really need by having whatever wyrdvane unit that rolled what you wanted near the primaris.

 

One correction to this, as far as I can tell 7th edition no longer restricts the number of powers you can cast based on your mastery level. The only limit is the number of dice you have to throw and how many powers your psyker knows.

[defl0]

 

 

 

Also you can make people come in from reserves on a 6... that's a string combo.

What's a trifle irritating is that now with formations, anyone can bring a casual company command squad to the table with zero tax for some cheap reserve manipulation, some bassie shots, and a heavy weapons team which can ignore cover, pin, etc. And depending on how you interpret the rules, they can even throw in 3 priests with only the CCS as a tax. That bit is a touch more dubious though.

 

Why is this a bad thing? You could always do this with 2 CADs. IG have been basically unplayable as a tourny army for years.

 

Maybe you will actually see them again...

[HenricusTyranicus]

 

 

Also you can make people come in from reserves on a 6... that's a string combo.

What's a trifle irritating is that now with formations, anyone can bring a casual company command squad to the table with zero tax for some cheap reserve manipulation, some bassie shots, and a heavy weapons team which can ignore cover, pin, etc. And depending on how you interpret the rules, they can even throw in 3 priests with only the CCS as a tax. That bit is a touch more dubious though.

 

Why is this a bad thing? You could always do this with 2 CADs. IG have been basically unplayable as a tourny army for years.

 

Maybe you will actually see them again...

 

I guess it isn't really a bad thing, it just means that an Eldar player can get almost as much leverage from our release as we did. In the long run that would be good, since more people buying guard means more support for guard, but in the short run it kinda means there's not THAT much we got for being guard players, if you know what I mean.

 

Kinda envious and petty of me, I shouldn't have said that. 

[duz_]

One correction to this, as far as I can tell 7th edition no longer restricts the number of powers you can cast based on your mastery level. The only limit is the number of dice you have to throw and how many powers your psyker knows.

Yes that's certainly the case but if you have a look at any tournament faq they're still stuck in the 6th ed interpretation...

[HenricusTyranicus]

Well, you also can't cast the same power twice in a turn. Which, TBH, is nearly the same thing.