Questions from a Newbie

[Halfpint100]

You can order it from this saturday. Where it will arrive in store next saturday (7th october)

[NatBrannigan]

Loathed as I am to suggest it you can run an all Militarium Tempestus army if you wanted. Not the biggest selection to choose from mind you. That works well as part of a larger Inquisition themed army but frankly the Inquisition is in an odd place at the moment and I'm not sure they'll be getting their own codex for 8th. Certainly not any time soon.

[Marius Septimus]

Thanks for the additional info on the codex guys.

What I wonderd about was the basilisk, in DoW it has two guys operating the Main gun on a platform, the GW Kit has the platform but no additional models operating it. Are they available separtly or do I need to improvise?

[Vel'Cona]

Not sure on the new kits.  I know the Hydra/Wyvern come with 2 crewmen, and the older Basilisks came with a couple metal dudes.  It's not that hard to convert a crew if you have a few spare bodies around though; the mortar heavy weapon team guardsmen make great crew stand-ins in my experience.

[Marius Septimus]

Not sure on the new kits.  I know the Hydra/Wyvern come with 2 crewmen, and the older Basilisks came with a couple metal dudes.  It's not that hard to convert a crew if you have a few spare bodies around though; the mortar heavy weapon team guardsmen make great crew stand-ins in my experience.

 

Thanks, think I can improvise then the way you mentioned.

[Marius Septimus]

As I looked through GW's webstore, I saw the valkyrie and thought it looked nice, though I am not a big fan of aircrafts in 40 k. Can you field a good army without any air support? Or is air support necessary?

 

Oh and what about Orgryns? Are they like your bullet sponges or more like the heavy hitter type of guys?

Edited September 29, 2017 by Marius Septimus

[Halfpint100]

As I looked through GW's webstore, I saw the valkyrie and thought it looked nice, though I am not a big fan of aircrafts in 40 k. Can you field a good army without any air support? Or is air support necessary?

 

Oh and what about Orgryns? Are they like your bullet sponges or more like the heavy hitter type of guys?

 

I dont use Valkyries and my army works fine. I have one and havent used it since 7th. Never used ogyrns either. I know bullgryns with shields and mauls pack a massive punch in close combat. Also with a astropath following them, casting shield of the emperor on them, they technically get a 1+ save. They still fail on a 1, but an ap -2 weapon is required to take their save to a 3+. 

 

Those 3 units do work well together. Bullgryns in a valkyrie with psyker support. I have never used them and won the majority of my games (necrons with that quantum shielding.......)

[NatBrannigan]

You really don't need air support if you don't want to take it. I like having a Hydra to help against any enemy fliers (and jetpikes / jumppack troops etc) but rarely use my Valkyrie / Vendetta and certainly haven't suffered for it.

 

I'm not sure about Ogryns but Bullgryns are immense. Hard to kill (see above) and hit like a ton of bricks in combat. I have a unit of 8 that caused chaos (pun intended) against a Nurgle army in my last game. The 9th (since they come in packs of 3) is used as Nork Deddog who is a special character Ogryn that acts as a bodyguard to Characters. Since those Characters are so important to Guard he's a solid choice to take.

[Marius Septimus]

Cheers guys, helped me out again :D

[NatBrannigan]

A quick one, if you do Splash out for Bullgryns run them with a Priest for the Extra attacks. If you run them in the numbers I do I'd also splash out on the aformentioned Astropath for the +1 save power and Yarrick for re-rolling 1's to hit (and his normal Commisar powers of cource). Yarricks no slouch in Combat either!

 

I'd also recommend one of the 4+ Invunerable shields in place of a 2+ Slab shield to give our Bullgryns a chance of surving some heavier weapons like Lascannons. I have 2 of 8 modeled this way and there's nothing better than your opponent deciing to shoot his heaviest weapons at your Bullgryns instead of your Tanks, only for those invunerable saves to deny him.

[Marius Septimus]

Well,

today my Command Squad Kit finally arrived.

But before I assemble them I have some questions:

 

1.What profit brings a guardsman with a vox-caster?

 

2.How many special weapons can I give the command squad?

 

3. What special weapon should I give them?

[Tyr13]

Id hold off on assembling them just yet. Some rules might change drastically, and whats good today might not be good next week when the codex is out. Voxcasters for instance are currently not very useful, they just add some range to your orders (18"). However, they might well do something more useful in the next iteration. Same with banners, they might seriously change. So... best to hold off, maybe assemble legs, torsos and bases and leave it at that for now. Or just put together some basic lasgun infantry, since those are unlikely to change in significant ways. :)

[NatBrannigan]

So, A vox-caster lets a nearby officer give Orders to another unit with a Vox Caster up to 18" away. I find this very useful but also find giving the Command Squad a Vox is a waste. the officer can use a Vox Caster from an Infantry Squad and that dosen't take up a slot for other more interesting gear. All my Infantry Squads have Vox Casters and that does me just fine.

 

Everyone in the Command Squad can take something. So that's 4 special weapons if that's the route you want to take. Most people here (quite rightly) will say the best use for Command Squads is to give them 4 Plasma Guns and jump them out of a Chimera or Valk to blast something tasty. You can also give them a single Heavy Flamer so 1 Heavy and 3 regular flamers is a good loadout as well. Personally I leave that job to my deep striking Scions and go for a more traditional Command Squad. A Regimental or Platoon Standard gives a useful LD boost. A Medi-Pack can really benefit nearby Characters or Bullgryns by restoring wounds and models to units. Really I just like to have my Regiments Colours on the table behind my Infantry Line!

[Marius Septimus]

So, A vox-caster lets a nearby officer give Orders to another unit with a Vox Caster up to 18" away. I find this very useful but also find giving the Command Squad a Vox is a waste. the officer can use a Vox Caster from an Infantry Squad and that dosen't take up a slot for other more interesting gear. All my Infantry Squads have Vox Casters and that does me just fine.

 

Everyone in the Command Squad can take something. So that's 4 special weapons if that's the route you want to take. Most people here (quite rightly) will say the best use for Command Squads is to give them 4 Plasma Guns and jump them out of a Chimera or Valk to blast something tasty. You can also give them a single Heavy Flamer so 1 Heavy and 3 regular flamers is a good loadout as well. Personally I leave that job to my deep striking Scions and go for a more traditional Command Squad. A Regimental or Platoon Standard gives a useful LD boost. A Medi-Pack can really benefit nearby Characters or Bullgryns by restoring wounds and models to units. Really I just like to have my Regiments Colours on the table behind my Infantry Line!

Right now my plans are: one officer, one regimental standard, one sniper, one medic and a vox caster, so primary a support heavy command squad. Do you think it's a good idea?

 

But I also planned to give all my guardsman squads a vox caster, so like you said I am not sure of giving one in the command squad one, if it's not needed

Edited September 29, 2017 by Marius Septimus

[FallenSoldiers]

I always include a model with a voxcaster, even if I don't pay the points to use it. I just love the look in my squads!

 

I don't know that I'd mix and match in a command squad like that. I find that, if I'm taking them, I'm taking them for one specific purpose. I'm building a full team of them with sniper rifles (since I don't have any ratlings) to support character assassination. Otherwise, 4 plasma guns are a great option right now.

[Tirak]

As I looked through GW's webstore, I saw the valkyrie and thought it looked nice, though I am not a big fan of aircrafts in 40 k. Can you field a good army without any air support? Or is air support necessary?

 

Oh and what about Orgryns? Are they like your bullet sponges or more like the heavy hitter type of guys?

 

So Astra Militarum has access to some pretty nice flyers, but the Valkyrie is not it. It only hits on 5s because it only has Heavy weapons and cannot stop unless you drop down to hover, and they have BS4+. You'd think you could mitigate that with Rocket Pods to just spam out shots, however it's simply not possible to get past the poor BS. The nice thing they can do is dump people out the back while Supersonic. You can 'deepstrike' Meltagun armed infantry on top of tanks. it's cool, but situational and expensive, as the cheapest Valkyrie will run you 160pts. The Vendetta Gunship is the Uber valkyrie. It can't carry ogryns, but has 6 Lascannons, unfortunately it's even more expensive, and still has a BS4+ which because Lascannon's are Heavy, they only will hit on 5s. All in all, the Valkyrie is pretty trash tier.

 

Vulture Gunships have access to the Twin Punisher Cannon, which allows you to lay down 40 shots at S5, and a heavy bolter for 3 more shots. It has BS4+, but also has an ability called "Strafing Run" which adds +1 to your roll against ground targets, meaning you'll hit on 4s if you're flying, and 3s if you hover in place. At 160pts, it's possibly one of our most cost effective flyers, great for dealing with hoards and MEQ.

 

You can also rig Vulture Gunships as anti tank platforms, giving them Twin Lascannons and 2x Hellstrike Missiles, and of course the nose Heavy Bolter. It's significantly fewer shots and so more finicky, but it can position itself quickly, and is difficult to kill. With luck, one of these can wipe out a Tank/Monster in a turn. With less luck it'll cripple it. With bad luck... well it is a dice game.

 

There's no reason to take the Rocketpod Vultures or the Skystrike vultures. Rocketpods lose out bigtime to Punishers, and shooting Fly rule units doesn't benefit from Strafing Run, so the potential of Skystrikes is wasted.

 

And Officer of the Fleet will allow you to reroll 1s against a marked ground target, however only within 18" and so it can be somewhat difficult to use. However, combined with a Punisher Vulture, it can be an absolutely devastating combination.

 

Arvus Lighters are a discount Valkyrie. They don't have the Gravchute Deployment, meaning they can't just dump people out the back when they fly, but they are cheaper and carry fewer weapons and so are less of a target. i haven't found much of a use for them, as they're just flying Chimeras, and Chimeras aren't that good. If you're in desperate need of high speed transport though, the Arvus is probably the best choice, unless you're dying to have Gravchute Deployment.

 

The Thunderbolt Heavy Fighter is a god. Fullstop. It's amazing and anyone who tells you otherwise either doesn't use it or doesn't understand it. It comes for 190pts with a Twin Lascannon, 2 Twin Autocannons and then a wing hardpoint that can take Skystrikes, Hellstrikes or Tactical Bombs. With Skystrikes, Thunderbolts clear the sky, as they get 6 of them. They have BS3+, which means with skystrikes and moving they still hit on 3s. They're nasty and powerful and you can down a flyer with a single good barrage of Skystrikes, and because you take 6 of them, you can target 6 different units with them. The lascannnon and autocannon hit on 4s, but you shoot enough shots to almost guaranteed a hit. My Tbolts have served me well in every single game I've played, scouring the skies and butchering ground units. With Hellstrikes it becomes a nightmare to ground units as it carries 4 of them. The final fun part is she has 15 wounds, meaning it is difficult to knock her out of a bracket. That extra wound over other flyers has saved me on multiple occasions, and on a 6+ at the start of the shooting phase, you recover a wound.

 

Lightnings are in a bit of a bad spot. Too expensive for cheap interception work, but not good enough to compete with the Thunderbolt. Their Long Barrel autocannon trades the 2 damage of a normal autocannon for d3. It puts out less dakka, and when you hit on 4s, that's much more keenly felt than for say a Space Marine flyer.

 

Avengers used to be the go to flyer, but the lack of a Punisher option makes them inferior at infantry cleanup, and their lackluster Avenger Boltcannon makes them inferior to the stock Thunderbolt. I might try them again in the future, but like the Lightning, they're just slightly out of the useful zone on either side.

 

All supersonic flyers benefit from the Hard To Hit rule, meaning the enemy must subtract 1 from their shooting rolls. This, combined with their high wound counts make them especially dangerous and hard to kill. They will tank heavy weapons and keep on chugging because half of those weapons will miss. They catch the attention of your enemy, they can position themselves to blitz enemy characters and the psychological warfare of zipping into their backline always catches them off guard.

 

You don't need flyers to be competitive, in fact, at the end of the day, flyers are sub optimal, but they're a great viable choice.

[micahwc]

For an anti-tank or anti-flyer flyer, the Xiphon Interceptor is really hard to beat. Technically a marine unit but you can still bring one as an allied imperium air asset if you organize your detachments correctly. +1 to hit flyers, ignores the penalty for moving and firing heavy weapons, has 4 lascannons and a decent missile launcher. 230 points. About as durable as a flying Rhino tank.

[Marius Septimus]

Thanks for the Long and detailed overview of the imperial airforce Tirak, very much appreciated :D, as well as micahwc's reply

[Marius Septimus]

Hey guys,

I finally bought my Start Collecting Edition of the Astra Militarum, preorderd the new Codex and started painting my command Squad, which results I will show in my WiP thread by tomorrow.

 

Now to the question:

How effective is the fix bayonets command? I've seen a lot of memes about it, and I like the kind of heroic touch that comes with a bayonet charge.

Is the command powerful/useful? Or are you just sacrificing your guardsman?

 

The Emperor protects

[Tirak]

Fix Bayonets is situational and depends on what you're fighting. Guard generally try to avoid close combat except in 3 circumstances.

 

1. They're fighting Tau

2. They're fighting gigantic daemons.

3. You've charged a strong gunline.

 

1 is obvious. Tau suck at close combat, so if you get there, you can laugh.

 

Now why is number 2 there? Tarpit. A Conscript squad, even one like will be in the new codex, is 30 wounds. It's 30 wounds that cost 3pts apiece. That's some of the cheapest wounds to put on the table. If you charge an enemy with that blob, it is going to take them time to cut their way through it all. If they don't fly, then you can surround them and they will not get away, effectivly locking them into close combat with a 90pt 30 wound model and keeping them away from your expensive cool stuff. In that circumstance, if you've got an extra order to spare, toss in Fix Bayonets and you might get an extra wound out of it.

 

Number 3 is related to number 1. If the enemy gunline is stronger than yours, charging into them and keeping in close combat keeps their powerful guns away. You may both be equally sucky at close combat too, and if that's the case, the Guard with Fix Bayonets can actually come out ontop, force their enemy to fall back to get shot at and recharged.

 

Catachans are going to make better use of that rule, being S4, and Kriegers with their WS3+ also make greater use of it, but really it's just nice to have. If used in a tarpit, maybe you'll take off an extra wound before they die. If you've charged an equally sucky gunline, maybe you'll be able to break them.

 

99% of the time though, you'll want to fall back, then "Get Back In The Fight", rapid fire the squad, and then shell the crap out of it with heavy artillery.

[Halfpint100]

I use it on my company commanders that end up in combat if they have a power weapon. Or i really need to keep them in that postion. The order also does not stop you from shooting if you bayonet that last ork in combat with you. So it cant be really useful to kill that last model and get your squad out and shooting somewhere else!

[Marius Septimus]

Cheers guys, as always an easy to understand and good answer :D

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Instead of making a new thread I hope Marius doesn't mind if I tag on some question here for relative noob to 8th and Guard. 

 

1) While digging out my Vostroyans, I discovered I have 12 heavy weapon teams: 4 lascannon, 4 HB, and 4 mortars. I know lascannons are good, but how are mortars? The stat line doesn't look amazing but has good range, potential for a good number of hits, and can shoot things outside LoS. If they're crap, I'll use the figures for something else. 

 

2) Another heavy weapon team question: It seems logical to me to take autocannons over HBs because while they I have 1 shot less and the same AP as HBs, they have longer range and do 2 wounds per shot, but then I have no practical experience and could be completely wrong like more shots is better because of mediocre BS. (I have thing for autocannons.)

 

3) Will it be a bigger benefit to do detachments of different regiments to play to the strengths of regimental doctrines (Catachan tanks, Steel Legion transports, etc), or better to stick to battle forged armies?

 

4) Is it worth equipping HQs or sergeants with melee weapons?

[Tirak]

Mortars are cheap. 5 points. They're usually used in 3 ways. Spammed to absolute death to the point where you're rolling 15-20D6 shots at anything you can't see, or used as a cheap way to fill out your Heavy Support requirement. The third way is as points filler. Got a few points left? See if you can't shoehorn in a mortar team just for the extra dakka.

 

Heavy Bolter Uber Alles. It's 8 points. The autocannon is 15. Autocannons are hilariously expensive for not much to be done. Either go for the Heavy bolter for cheap crowd control, or spring the 5 more points it'll cost you to bring a S9 AP-3 D6 damage lascannon.

 

If all your stuff is in detachments, you're battle forged. Mix and matching I don't think will be practical on a large scale. Cool for some small scale specialist work, but bringing a Spear Head Detachment of Catachan Tanks, a Battalion of Steel Legion and a Vanguard Detachment of Tallarn will leave you comically low on command points, and overflowing on commanders who can only order parts of your army, and we have a lot of stratagems worth using.

 

Yes and no. Power weapons, especially the power maul, can be super useful if you find yourself in close, and the ability to heroic intervention your Lord Commissar with a Power Axe into a conscript platoon to dish out some pain can be tempting, but unless you're running Catachans, there's often times better places for those points to be spent, but I know guard players who swear by giving everyone power mauls. The only universal advice given prior to Catachan's coming out is that Powerswords sucked. Now that they're out, the rule is Powerswords suck for everyone except Catachans, and even then an Axe or a Maul will likely do better.

[Marius Septimus]

Don't mind me Kage, more questions means more answers which means more knowledge for me, muhaha >:D