Detachments, which is best?

[Jolemai]

13 hours ago, Xenith said:

 

We need @Jolemai to jump in with his list of Blood Angels Acronyms and slang! 

 

 

[Morticon]

I started out fully and hugely in the GSF camp.  I think it's better and stronger overall.  HOWEVER, it really does depend what you are playing, and by "what" I mean your playstyle and unit choice. 

 

I think if you want to make BA work as a combat army (and combat is SO heavily nerfed this ed), then you need to lean into it, and while the GSF buffs are GREAT and tactical, the extra attack and extra S mean that with the Red Rampage strat, we're in fair position.  Not a GREAT position, mind. But a fair one.  

In short, if you wanna go marine shooty then go GSF, if you want to go fighty and shooty like BA have been billed as from the start, then SOS is not as bad as we originally may have thought. 

[Jolemai]

/thread.

 

Edited June 27, 2023 by Jolemai

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

4 hours ago, Morticon said:

I started out fully and hugely in the GSF camp.  I think it's better and stronger overall.  HOWEVER, it really does depend what you are playing, and by "what" I mean your playstyle and unit choice. 

 

I think if you want to make BA work as a combat army (and combat is SO heavily nerfed this ed), then you need to lean into it, and while the GSF buffs are GREAT and tactical, the extra attack and extra S mean that with the Red Rampage strat, we're in fair position.  Not a GREAT position, mind. But a fair one.  

In short, if you wanna go marine shooty then go GSF, if you want to go fighty and shooty like BA have been billed as from the start, then SOS is not as bad as we originally may have thought. 

SOS definitely isn’t fighty and shooty.

it’s barely fighty, and doesn’t benefit shooting in any way that i can see.

 

being able to advance and shoot gets us into combat quickly without reducing our ability to do damage on the way in.

 

sure we get some benefit in melee from SOS if we initiate combat but if we get charged we have no buffs. 
 

im just not seeing any reason to take SOS even if you lean fully into the theme.

[Morticon]

 

10 hours ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

SOS definitely isn’t fighty and shooty.

it’s barely fighty, and doesn’t benefit shooting in any way that i can see.

 

being able to advance and shoot gets us into combat quickly without reducing our ability to do damage on the way in.

 

sure we get some benefit in melee from SOS if we initiate combat but if we get charged we have no buffs. 
 

im just not seeing any reason to take SOS even if you lean fully into the theme.

 

Space Marines are inherently shooty - the edition is inherently shooty - lore wise we're Fighty/Shooty (ie: codex adherent with a strong lean towards fast attacking combat units).  

That's what I meant there. Defs wasn't suggesting SoS buffs shooting.

 

As for fighty - the threshold numbers are super important.  S4-5 means with RR strat we're wounding up to T9 on 4's, not 5 or 6. S6+ to S6+1 means the same for T10-12.  This is exceptionally useful.  

The extra attack is also incredibly important - especially in squads like ASM and Hammer DC

 

We can advance and charge with a strat, so there's not a huge loss there., and as for getting charged and having no buffs, the exact same is the case for GSF, bar maybe Fallback and charge. 

 

After playing a few games, the first few with GSF, and being a hardcore proponent of the GSF over the SOS (going so far as to label SoS as garbage), Ive begun to see far more benefit to the SoS if we want to play melee units.

 

 

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

8 minutes ago, Morticon said:

 

 

Space Marines are inherently shooty - the edition is inherently shooty - lore wise we're Fighty/Shooty (ie: codex adherent with a strong lean towards fast attacking combat units).  

That's what I meant there. Defs wasn't suggesting SoS buffs shooting.

 

As for fighty - the threshold numbers are super important.  S4-5 means with RR strat we're wounding up to T9 on 4's, not 5 or 6. S6+ to S6+1 means the same for T10-12.  This is exceptionally useful.  

The extra attack is also incredibly important - especially in squads like ASM and Hammer DC

 

We can advance and charge with a strat, so there's not a huge loss there., and as for getting charged and having no buffs, the exact same is the case for GSF, bar maybe Fallback and charge. 

 

After playing a few games, the first few with GSF, and being a hardcore proponent of the GSF over the SOS (going so far as to label SoS as garbage), Ive begun to see far more benefit to the SoS if we want to play melee units.

 

 

Using a strat to advance and shoot is a big loss instead of getting it free and army wide, so you can do that and use a that CP for another strat.

 

never said anything about GSF giving a boost when charged, but a fighty army that only gets a fighty buff in very specific situations is not great.

marines are inherently fighty or shooty, it just depends on which units you take.

 

[Rhavien]

18 minutes ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

Using a strat to advance and shoot is a big loss instead of getting it free and army wide, so you can do that and use a that CP for another strat.

 

never said anything about GSF giving a boost when charged, but a fighty army that only gets a fighty buff in very specific situations is not great.

marines are inherently fighty or shooty, it just depends on which units you take.

 

@Xenith which strat do you mean that let us advance and charge in a SoS detachment? I only can find relentless assault, but it say fall back and charge.

 

@Inquisitor_Lensoven but you can only use every doctrine once per game. It's not as your whole army can advance and charge all the time. You have three different doctrines for five rounds. The usefulness and availability of your detachment ability is far from guaranteed in a GSF.

It's not like your whole army is in perfect position to use a doctrine when you pop it. 

 

I say both detachments are useful. There is no obvious winner. 

[Blindhamster]

1 hour ago, Rhavien said:

@Xenith which strat do you mean that let us advance and charge in a SoS detachment? I only can find relentless assault, but it say fall back and charge.

 

@Inquisitor_Lensoven but you can only use every doctrine once per game. It's not as your whole army can advance and charge all the time. You have three different doctrines for five rounds. The usefulness and availability of your detachment ability is far from guaranteed in a GSF.

It's not like your whole army is in perfect position to use a doctrine when you pop it. 

 

I say both detachments are useful. There is no obvious winner. 

With GSF, you can also advance and charge with a strat whereas you cannot with the SOS. With GSF you get:

 

army wide advance and charge the one turn you need it

army wide advance and shoot better

one turn when you need it

army wide fall back, shoot AND charge one turn when you need it

 

plus the ability to take do the above on some units more often via strats. It’s 100% in the control of the player, and can let you pull off big counter assaults, cross the board quickly without giving up combat effectiveness etc.

 

by comparison blood angels get a bonus if they charged, so if they get charged (say… by marines using their tactical doctrine army wide) we are just marines. We have absolutely o useful things to get us to combat at all. We do have a couple things that make us hit harder in combat - but so does GSF. We have a strat to let a single unit fall back and charge and a strat that lets us consolidate further and into engagement range.

 

the last one is really the only interesting strat we really have as it means our sustained assaults will be good as we have a potential to bounce between enemies that is better than most

[Paladin777]

GSF has a 1CP strat that allows you to put a unit into the doctrine of your choice, this includes Tactical doctrine that allows you to fall back, shoot, and charge, which is already better than our fallback and charge strat, even before considering that same strat could be used for advance and charge!

 

I like a lot of the flavor of the SoS detachment, but unless you're going super heavy on jump units, I also think that GSF is probably the way to go...

[Vermintide]

Surely this entirely depends what kind of army you are running?

 

While naturally as sons of Sanguinius we are going to want to run a lot of fighty boys, I don't think that's the deciding factor that will make you want to run Sons of Sanguinius. If those fighty boys are going to have to wait til the second or third turn to get into combat, they are wasting their bonus pretty much half the game. The advantage of the Gladius detachment is the flexibility. If you are forced to spend a turn shooting and a turn slogging up the board, I think you'll just flat out have better results as Red Marines.

 

Where you might want to run SoS is if you have a fast list full of rapid strike units that can reliably get their charges in turn 1 or 2. With the removal of restrictions enabling us to think about stuff like full jump pack or biker lists again, I think that whole "alpha strike" type thing is going to feel a lot more viable than it has done in the last couple of editions. I could be wrong, I haven't got to grips with the new edition yet, but that's my feeling; +1A and +1S makes more of a difference when you're using it on units that are otherwise hitting pretty light, but have the speed to capitalise on it.

 

... I'm going to run it just because it's fluffy, anyway.

[Blindhamster]

1 hour ago, Vermintide said:

... I'm going to run it just because it's fluffy, anyway.

This is likely to be me too, despite me being utterly convinced GSF is pretty much always better for us

[Paladin777]

Once I get my VV's painted I will probably start running SoS, but for right now I'll probably stick with GSF.