8th Edition Guard Discussion

[HenricusTyranicus]

I noticed that todays rules that went up on Warhammer Community (Tau and Primaris Marines) that both datasheets had a Keyword relating to the interfaction organizations ( <Chapter> for Primaris Marines and <Sept> for the Tau).  The <Chapter> for the Primaris Marines of course was to be expected as its most lilkely the source of the Chapter Tactics but the inclusion of <Sept> could be something similar.  If so, could it possibly mean that we could see something similar for the various Guard regiments?

*Prayers to the Emperor intensify

 

GW has been trying to fulfill fan requests a lot lately, and this seems like a really easy one to fit in.  

[Mithrilforge]

I noticed that todays rules that went up on Warhammer Community (Tau and Primaris Marines) that both datasheets had a Keyword relating to the interfaction organizations ( <Chapter> for Primaris Marines and <Sept> for the Tau). The <Chapter> for the Primaris Marines of course was to be expected as its most lilkely the source of the Chapter Tactics but the inclusion of <Sept> could be something similar. If so, could it possibly mean that we could see something similar for the various Guard regiments?

yeah, i'd like to see specific fluffy little faction rules for cadians,catachans,tallarn,mordian etc that would encourage benefits of taking one main force...

that would be the icing on the cake if it did happen

I'm very optimistic for 8th Ed.... come on June

Mithril

[NatBrannigan]

I can't see Tau getting 'Doctrines' for their different septs and Guard not for some of the main regiments. I think the friendly local Commissar would need to pay a visit to Nottingham if that happened...

 

I hope it's not just Cadian and Catachan though, although that would be a start at least! I'm not expecting Preatorian of course but I don't think Mordian is too much to hope for?

 

Cadian: Fairly Generic

Catachan: Stealthy Outflanky Infiltratey

Mordian: Infantry firing bonus

Armageddon: Mech Infantry (but NOT free transports, never free transports...)

Someone else: Armour

 

That would do nicely :)

[Shamansky]

Looking at that tau drones' free 'look out' i think that GW simply must give to the Guard something that would replace lost templates.

Bringing back doctrines would be a fine decision as a compensation. Making a lasgun be able to wound to a titan is not enough. My prayers to The Emperor are all about not letting GW to create 'The Ultimate Win Build' for every faction. Diversity is what i was missing all the 7th edition. 

[Nicodemus Doloroso]

I can't see Tau getting 'Doctrines' for their different septs and Guard not for some of the main regiments. I think the friendly local Commissar would need to pay a visit to Nottingham if that happened...

I hope it's not just Cadian and Catachan though, although that would be a start at least! I'm not expecting Preatorian of course but I don't think Mordian is too much to hope for?

Cadian: Fairly Generic

Catachan: Stealthy Outflanky Infiltratey

Mordian: Infantry firing bonus

Armageddon: Mech Infantry (but NOT free transports, never free transports...)

Someone else: Armour

That would do nicely

Praetorians could certainly use the same rules as Mordians. If they do bring back regimental doctrines, I'd like to see Mordians get some sort of infantry firing bonus and/or a leadership bonus to mitigate battle shock.

Death Korps of Krieg may well get doctrines since they've said all GW and Forgeworld stuff will get rules. So having a 3+ in close combat instead of 4+ and higher leadership would be fitting for them.

I really miss the regimental doctrines from our 3rd edition codex and really hope that it comes back.

Looking at that tau drones' free 'look out' i think that GW simply must give to the Guard something that would replace lost templates.

Bringing back doctrines would be a fine decision as a compensation. Making a lasgun be able to wound to a titan is not enough. My prayers to The Emperor are all about not letting GW to create 'The Ultimate Win Build' for every faction. Diversity is what i was missing all the 7th edition.

I agree with the bold, but all indications are that GW will at least attempt to rectify this in 8th. It remains to be seen whether they are successful, but for the first time ever they seem to be working on balancing the game and have enlisted the aid of some pretty strongly competitive gamers to put it to the test. I remain cautiously optimistic.

[Ulrik_Ironfist]

The game is going to become more dice-dependent. And that's what i'm afraid of. You won't need to consider armor facing, anti-template formation, weapon's AP... OK. The game will become faster. But it is going to lose some things that made brain work either. Just roll and pray for better results. It's not a strategy. It is a casino.

This is also what I'm afraid of. My problem is that massed lasgun fire shouldn't be able to bring down a land raider. You should be carrying specialist weapons for that. However, it does seem fair that if you throw enough lasguns at a greater daemon, it could be killed. 

 

I do feel like Tau and Eldar are the genesis for this. Considering that their most popular units are high toughness models.

[Nicodemus Doloroso]

Well, those Tau and Eldar units are so popular because they're way harder to kill than vehicles. So everything having toughness/wounds/armour saves actually just gave a huge boost to all vehicles.

 

The chances of a land raider being killed by lasguns is so infinitesimal as to be essentially impossible, even from what little we know. On 4 to hit and 6 to wound, those are already low chances. Throw in whatever a Land Raider save will be (I'd guess 2+) and you're now having to throw buckets of dice to chip off one wound. Dreadnoughts have been revealed to have, what, 8 wounds? So a Land Raider is going to have a bunch more. I don't think it would actually be possible in-game for lasguns to wreck a land raider unless you had 500 guardsmen all encircling the thing and FRFSRF into it with impunity with no other enemy force to impede them, and even then it would take several rounds. That will never ever happen.

 

I think people are putting WAY too much emphasis on this "everything wounds everything" mechanic. Keep in mind the game is an abstraction. In 99.99% of the instances where people actually use lasguns to shoot at a Land Raider, it might lose one wound, which in the abstraction would be a representation of a lucky hit knocking off a scanner or a targeting lense, bouncing through a viewport, forcing the crew to button-up versus sticking their head out the hatch for better view. This actually works well with the new mechanic where the abilities of the vehicle (# of shots, movement, etc.) are reduced as it takes more wounds. I have many memories of playing Combat Mission on my PC back in the day and being upset when my tanks were forced to button-up under small-arms fire because their aim got a lot worse and they got slower. So that's how I envision lasguns versus land raiders.

[micahwc]

Massed small arms fire can damage a main battle tank. Destroy one? Probably not. Reduce it's combat effectiveness? Certainly yes. There are all kinds of external parts on a main battle tank that are susceptible to damage from small arms fire. Sights, fuel lines, external fuel cans, radio antennae, tracks, etc.

 

A "destroyed" result for a tank (anything short of an explosion) doesn't necessarily mean the tank is completely destroyed; it could just no longer be combat effective without repairs. Plinking a bunch of wounds off a land raider could represent all kinds of things other than actual "destruction" of the tank; you could shoot out all the sights, break the tracks, sever a fuel line, and destroy a bunch of weapons. The remaining tank would be salvageable, but couldn't fight without repair. All of those results are reasonable with a las gun.

 

Edit: Also, once a larger weapon puts a hole in the side of the land raider, small arms fire becomes a lot more dangerous to it in real life. A melta bomb opens up the sides and lasguns can now hit the crew and all the sensitive parts inside the tank.

 

When I was deployed a long time ago we had a stryker that was destroyed in an explosion because an external fuel line caught fire, the fire went inside the stryker and lit off all the stored ammo inside it (including the Javelin missiles). Said external fuel line is now armored on strykers to keep this from happening. Anything that opens the armor opens the tank to possible catastrophic damage.

[Ulrik_Ironfist]

I'm still with Shamansky  on this, I get what you're saying, but there are tactical decisions that a straight toughness score seems to eliminate. As for templates, I hope we see some weapons with a something like Heavy 3+d6, or similar. 

[duz_]

I don't think any of the changes so far, have taken away from the tactical complexity of the game.

In fact its added to it and will make both generals, think more about movement, positioning and target priorty.

 

Lasguns may not take down a landraider, but if one lucky shot might drop it down that 1 wound. To limit its in game effectiveness, I may well take that gamble! Otherwise my AT weapons will take pot shots at it. While the rest of the squad, use its automatic orders, to lay down covering fire and blast some nearby space marines. Where a squad that was just engaged with them fall back and regroup. :)

[Nicodemus Doloroso]

I agree that the removal of armour facings does remove one element of tactics from the game. On the other hand I'm not sure how huge of a deal it was for Guard ... it's exceptionally easy to get a side shot on a chimera unless it's bunkered way back with stuff around it. So while it is a chance I don't know how big of a change it will be and it seems that in "exchange" we'll have plenty of other new decisions to make.

[HenricusTyranicus]

Curious, based on the battlecannon, what do you guys think the other Russ weapon profiles will be? I suspect they'll slash the Punisher's shots, but give it an AP. Demolisher I could see either going d6 shots with d6 damage, or 2d6 shots with d3 damage. If Executioner is 3d3 shots, and we have to roll for getting hot on all of them, I will weep. 

 

Final note of speculation from me, I suspect the Russ will hit things on a 3+ when it's at full wounds. 

[WarriorFish]

Demolishers were good albeit expensive, enough to regularly find a place in my lists - as much for the AP2 as anything. Hopefully 8th will see the variants be solid across the board - the Executioner and Punisher could do with some improvement. Punisher just didn't hit hard enough despite all the shots (when at BS3), Executioner needs a reprieve from Gets Hot...

[VulkansDynasty]

First off, as has been stated, this is my new haven. There is a markedly lesser amount of vitrol and hate towards the game in this sub, and I have been pondering what I wanted to say.

I like the changes to 8th, everything so far seems to be a well rounded system that allows for (on paper) EVERYTHING to be used. Vehicles don't die in one turn to one gun. Infantry that aren't MSU style will be good again, and the character changes are pretty neat.

For guard I have been looking at the fact that nearly any play style will be viable. Massed infantry with FRFSRF, and the fallback mechanic will let us avoid terrible combat situations. Even then with the though of having massive numbers of infantry on the board for this style we can hopefully expect that we can use some key bait units to draw in or shield other gunner units to deal at range with them. combo with Rough riders and Bullgryns (hopefully) and we can actually play a tactics game that lets us bait, shoot, and flank.

Mech guard (my fav) will also see a boost I think. The conceptual ability to field transports that are more effective at both staying alive, and providing fire support to their occupants seems awesome. I wanna go back through and take off all the heavy bolters on my Chimeras and put Flamers on them! The rest of the tanks in the Guard will last longer, I hope, allowing for more kills and such. Should be great!

The think I have seen nobody talk about yet, anywhere, has been the fact that the new FOCs are much more streamlined, and much more forgiving to allow whatever we want to play. No more "I gotta take this formation" (not much of a problem for the guard ) but, all the forgeworld stuff is open to every faction in a much easier to use fashion. (when we get FW rules for everything). Tactically speaking I expect to see more FW models in my opponents armies, which will be fun to play with and against. (I know my Salamanders are gonna use all kinds of stuff!)

I am excited, I look forward to fielding my guard for the first time ever in 8th and actually having options and not worrying about something I like sucking too much. Things are looking balanced so far, and I hope that keeps up.

[Shamansky]

I almost posted a wall of text explaining that i'm not arguing with 'all kill all', why armour values and pancakes were good, but that looked like an oldman's grunting. So i've desided to stop and wait till i get the 8th BRB (or what it would be) in front of my eyes. then i'll play a couple of games against tau, eldars, girlyman's old new toy-boys, and maybe after that i will paint 500 guardsmen or may be sell my 4 armies. See you all in this topic after they release it.

[FlamingDeth]

Curious, based on the battlecannon, what do you guys think the other Russ weapon profiles will be? I suspect they'll slash the Punisher's shots, but give it an AP. Demolisher I could see either going d6 shots with d6 damage, or 2d6 shots with d3 damage. If Executioner is 3d3 shots, and we have to roll for getting hot on all of them, I will weep.

 

Final note of speculation from me, I suspect the Russ will hit things on a 3+ when it's at full wounds.

The demolisher cannon is a line breaking siege weapon, so I'm gonna guess that its D6 + D6. Massive damage! Destroy those buildings!

[Otto von Bludd]

Everything I have read about 8th, and the Guard in 8th, has impressed me, I am very optimistic.  I was also struck with a wave of motivation to finally finish converting and painting my rough riders!  They will make their debut in 8th.  http://i.imgur.com/3XbTUad.jpg

[duz_]

They look slick!

[Ulrik_Ironfist]

Everything I have read about 8th, and the Guard in 8th, has impressed me, I am very optimistic.  I was also struck with a wave of motivation to finally finish converting and painting my rough riders!  They will make their debut in 8th.  http://i.imgur.com/3XbTUad.jpg

What models are those, I assume, sentinels?

[FlamingDeth]

By first glance I would assume dust tactics or konflict 47.

[WarriorFish]

Nice, I hope GW takes notice and makes Rough Riders a force to be reckoned with

I'm having a last hurrah to 7th game soon, the 144th will march to glory once more. My first 8th game will be Guard too naturally

[Indefragable]

I noticed that todays rules that went up on Warhammer Community (Tau and Primaris Marines) that both datasheets had a Keyword relating to the interfaction organizations ( <Chapter> for Primaris Marines and <Sept> for the Tau). The <Chapter> for the Primaris Marines of course was to be expected as its most lilkely the source of the Chapter Tactics but the inclusion of <Sept> could be something similar. If so, could it possibly mean that we could see something similar for the various Guard regiments?

I noticed that as well. For Tau it's probably 1) Tau proper 2) Farsight Enclaves 3) Lost 4th Expansion force

 

I would love for this to be a sign of Regimental Doctrines, but realistically I imagine it just means you have to declare what Chapter/et al each model is for keyword purposes. So it's more of a guardrail then special sauce.

[Otto von Bludd]

Thanks for the encouragement!  They were a lot of fun to build.  I am confident they will actually have a purpose in 8th unlike now.

 

Everything I have read about 8th, and the Guard in 8th, has impressed me, I am very optimistic.  I was also struck with a wave of motivation to finally finish converting and painting my rough riders!  They will make their debut in 8th.  http://i.imgur.com/3XbTUad.jpg

What models are those, I assume, sentinels?

 

 

Those are my count as sentinels yes, they are slightly converted Dust Tactics Steel Guard.  I really liked the models but they only cost 11$ for 3!  Naturally I stocked up on 9 sentinels for that price.

 

http://www.miniaturemarket.com/bfmdt058.html  If anyone is interested.  They are about an inch shorter than a sentinel standing up tall, but if anyone raises the issue I remind them that you can model your sentinel to be even shorter than these walkers if you pose it in a crouch.  

[VulkansDynasty]

Another thing I thought about, with the removal of facing on vehicles, GW no longer ties their own hands at designing new tanks as much. Maybe we will start seeing some more unconventional tanks wih a more futuristic/modern look? (Well maybe not, cause we are the guard and nobody gives us new things )

[NatBrannigan]

Let those pretty boy Marines have new toys, i'm happy with my Old school chunky tanks!

 

The new deep strike rules seem interesting. Looks like they are taking from AoS so no rolling for reserves and no scatter, but you have to deploy 9" away from enemy units. You can also now charge after deep striking. Seems a good balance to me.

 

I am very interested now to see what an Officer of the Fleet does? I've recently finishing making mine (Napoleonic British Naval Captain style naturally) and he drove my opponent to distraction is the couple of games I used him in my delaying reserves. I doubt he'll be doing that any more but he does have a GW model so should be around in 8th. Interesting stuff!