Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Tactics: IG firing line

It's time to stop hiding behind neutral tutorials and write an opinion.

Typically I play the mech guard cheese that is demo vets rolling in like bloods to a crip party and lighting everything up leaving only broken 40's and las riddled bodies. Today though, I got it in my head that I want to play a platoon army. I'm sort of meta gaming that whatever I'm fighting will be most interested in coming towards me since the game is so saturated with assault. I'm not sure how this army would do if I had to go get objectives, I'd have to treat it like annihilation.

Without a listing out the army at 1500 points, it's basically a CCS with Straken, a med kit, carapace armor, 3 plasma. 3 platoon squads with power weapon sergeants, a commissar, 3 infantry squads with autocannons in one platoon, missile launchers in another and las in the last. The final bit of cheese I'm throwing on this is 3 battle psyker squads.


Straken-

He's a pretty awesome character and I never found him useful in the mech list but I feel like he's a 8/10 in importance to the firing line. He adds beef to your squads primarily though the use of counter charge. I sprinkled in some power weapons and fists just to really take advantage of the chance of getting a charge. This will really help in potentially causing Ld checks by winning combat or at the least avoiding having to check. In my platoons, for the example list, I have 3 sergeants, and 1 commissar with a power weapon. Thats 16 power weapon attacks. Sure most of it is at WS 3 ST 3 but it's a lot of attacks padded by a lot of bodies and not to mention the other 27 guardsmen rolling up behind them.

Commissar-

A must, 10/10 of importance. One word: Stubborn. Without this guy your 350 point unit just runs when charged by a tactical squad. You need those power weapons to stick around and beat on armor. Also, he bumps you to Ld 9 and lets you reroll a failed Ld at the cost of a sergeant but still, its a pretty big chance you won't be moving off anytime soon with those odds. If I remember high school algebra that's a 97.2% chance you'll pass your Ld. You need this guy. Don't bother with a shooting line without him.

Psyker battle squad-

Hi, my name is psyker battle squad and I'm broken. Where to start with these guys. They have two awesome powers and they're cheap. 60 points for a 4 psyker/5 man squad.

Weaken resolve is the power I'm going for the most with this list. I'm only taking 4 pskers so soulstorm isn't going to be as powerful as it would be if I were a full squad. However, I want these guys to keep the enemy out of the my firing lines, not to smash faces. Taking the Ld of anything within 36 to 4 is the whole reason I wanted to try this list out. Soulstorm is just an added bonus that would be awesome to roll AP3 or less on things.


I feel like the platoon's ability to squad up into 30 man units will be a huge assets and then combined with Straken giving furious charge (like I'll ever be charging, but maybe) and counter-attack makes its a more scarey squad to charge. Added to that the presence of a commissar in each 30 man unit makes them much much harder to pry off objectives. After that do everything I can to cause Ld check and slap those enemy squads with the pskers and hope they don't roll a 4. I'll follow up with my impressions.

Comments are more than welcome! Have I missed something totally obvious? Do you play your firing line completely different? Please add to the knowledge and post a reply, it's always welcome!!

3 comments:

  1. If the intent is firing line, why not maximize firing potential to do just that by replacing Straken with Creed?

    Seems like you're saying it's a foregone conclusion that your shooting will fail and you'll have to be in assault. (but I guess that's the 'metagame' of where you are, so I dunno)

    Otherwise, I'd try to find the points to up those PBSs to 6 psykers...at least then your Soulstorm can guarantee wounds on most models at 2+ and even high leadership (10) units will quake in their boots.

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  2. Justin,

    Totally, I messed up reading the psyker ability. I thought it reduced Ld TO the number of psykers and not BY the number of psykers. I never seconded guessed that because it made sense that these two powers work juxtaposed to each other making larger squads better pie platers and smaller squads better Ld reducers.

    I agree that when making this list i did meta game without really actively trying. I should depend on the firing line doing its job but I just know imp guard hate to roll for me and always miss their shots. I'm a plan for the worst hope for the best kind of guy and Straken is that over Creed.

    The game I played to do my first test of the list was against tau and thus having the counter charge wasn't that great and in fact only used when Straken was charged by the Commander battle suit. (the one special character battle suit army guy, I forget his name) It ended badly for the suit. Otherwise versus tau, creed would have been the better choice, no doubt.

    Also, after reading the "Leaf Blower" list, I'm pretty interested in the inquisitor option. There are just so many deep striking players that I think it'd really pay off to fire 30 guardsmen and 3 missiles into those sternguard or bloodcrushers.

    Thanks for the comments, the creed point is very valid and I'll definitly try that out and see how that plays out. Increasing the PBS's is a must, for sure too. A complete oversight on my part.

    -CSV

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  3. Also, if I go with creed it'll free up needing the power weapons/fists in my platoon squads which might let me actually just add the inquisitor squad into the list.

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