Rogue

Hey Ulfast - thanks for asking. There's been a lot going on recently. On the positive side, I've been painting a lot of not-40k stuff - all of the HeroQuest box, and I'm currently finishing off a Wood Elf BloodBowl team (just a treeman to go (and a pair of back-up catchers, if I can ever track them down on ebay)). On the less positive side, life's been a struggle for a while, and that's really dented my capacity for things like blogs and updates. Even painting and playing has been hard work. The Brotherhood is still ticking over, and continues to fight off the vanguard tendrils of an approaching hive fleet; and hopefully I'll find the energy at some point to pick up some of the extras again.

Hello, Guard players. I'm hoping you can help me out with a bit of list-building. A couple of friends and I are going to play a mini-league between ourselves, with a couple of 1250 point forces each. I have a small GSC Brood Brothers contingent, and figure I can use it as my second force, but I have very little tabletop experience with Guard since maybe 3rd edition. Here's what I have. 3 Leman Russ tanks - all three have magnetised sponsons and hull weapons. Two have magnetised turrets (the standard Russ options, not the demolisher ones); one doesn't - that one is fixed as a battle-cannon. 30 infantry with lasguns 1 officer 2 commissars 1 tech-priest 1 standard bearer 3 grenade launchers 3 mortars I could also potentially borrow some of my GSC models if there's a good match - my magus could be a primaris psyker, for example - as it would fit the general theme of a Cult-infiltrated Guard regiment. My plan 1 tank commander 2 Leman Russ tanks Tech-priest The officer and both commissars would each lead a unit of 10 guardsmen (Krieg-flavour, because mindless self-sacrifice hits those GSC buttons again). 3 chimeras (that I don't yet have, but could proxy short-term), because having mechanised infantry in support of the tanks makes sense in my head. That comes to 1215, leaving 35 points spare for juggling or enhancements. I'm thinking either Hammer of the Emperor (because tanks), or Combined Arms (because tanks and infantry). I'm not aiming for finely-tuned tournament list. Equally, I don't want it to be a complete mess that'll get rolled over in every game. So, what do you think? Any advice/criticism would be appreciated.

In the context of playing against friends (rather than pick-up games against strangers), I've found that fun games have been ones that take the opponent's limitations into consideration. For example, one of my regular opponents is building up a Tyranid force. Until recently, he didn't have much that could deal with my heavier vehicles. Once we'd realised that, I stopped including them in my lists (until just recently, as he's now got some anti-armour bugs). At the same time, he didn't just lean into an anti-infantry build (knowing that that's what I'd have to bring). In that sense, part of the list design process is thinking about your opponent's army at a practical level. Yes, Tyranids (as a faction) can deal with armour, but these Tyranids can't, so going full Outlander Claw isn't going to produce a fun game.

I wonder if the idea of 'tax' units is amplified in armies that have more datasheets (looking at you, marines). I only really play Genestealer Cults at the moment, so that's my reference point. If you ignore characters we only have ten units - three battleline, a transport and six others. So our battleline units do things that our other units either don't do as well, don't do as cheaply, or just don't do at all. And perhaps more to the point, the battleline units do things that you almost always want somewhere in your list - they're valuable as utility units, even when you're skewing the rest of the list into something specific. My guess is that, with something like marines, it's always possible to look at tactical squads and say, "Yeah, but unit X does that better" - you have so many units to choose from that there'll always be something better suited to your needs.

The Determining Visibility section of the rules (under Core Concepts) says that "... an observing model can see through other models in its unit, ..." So can you see (and fire) through models in the same unit, but not through other friendly models in other units. I realise that wasn't the original question, but it's one that's come up in a couple of my games recently.

The movement section of the rules (The Movement Phase: 1. Move units) tells us you can make a Normal move, Advance or Remain Stationary. A Normal move allows you to move up to your movement value, which would include moving 0". I think interpreting a Normal move as Remaining Stationary is playing very fast and loose with the rules, given that Remain Stationary is a specific thing (with capitals), and not just an absence of movement.

I think that idea of "What you're used to" has a big effect here. I mentioned being surprised by how much terrain was on the table at a recent tournament (pleasantly surprised, as it was more than I'd usually use, and so gave me much more cover than I'm used to). A friend of mine (playing Tyranids) kept losing to his regular Imperial Guard opponent, and wasn't sure why - he figured it was just because he was relatively new to the game. Turns out they were just playing with far too little LoS -blocking terrain. Not because of ill intentions on anyone's part, because that's what the opponent was used to and tended to set up for games. At some point, this friend and I played a doubles games into the Guard (with more Guard allied in). I was quite insistent on giving several LoS-blocking pieces around the centre of the table; the Guard player was surprised to find that his super-heavy tank, which was parked in his deployment zone, didn't have targets every turn. He was so used to playing with minimal terrain that he just expected that he could sit and shoot all game long. No wonder the Tyranids wee struggling to win. Again, I'm not suggesting shenanigans here - just if you mostly play garage-hamner in a small group, what's normal to you might be very different to what the designers intended or what most people play.

Felt about right. My doubles partner and I were pretty had three ridgerunners and three doomstalkers between us. We were able to hide them (the runners especially), and couldn't always line up targets, but that's what you want, generally speaking - if we want to shoot things, we need to consider position and anticipate enemy movement; it shouldn't be a shooting gallery. We faced Chaos armigers, a lancer grav-tank, dreadnoughts, a Necron ark, and a big knight across the event, and none of them had significant issues.

I always thought I had a lot of terrain on my table - four of the old Imperial Sector buildings, the killteam cathedral, lots of Mechanicus bits, half a dozen containers - until I played in a small doubles tournament at my FLGS last month. They had two big three-sided ruins in the middle, huge pieces in each deployment zone, and small bits elsewhere. Suddenly, I could deploy all my infiltrators in cover - like, ten genestealers and a patriarch completely hidden unless my opponent was practically in my deployment zone. And there were whole areas of the board that were hard to target without significant repositioning. It felt like a different game. And that's coming from someone who thought there was a lot of terrain on my own table. Apparently not.

Yeah, it was certainly a fun way to play. Very proactive, close-combat units getting to do their thing, rolling buckets of dice knowing that you just need a fairly average result to wipe something off the table :)

A friend and I play a local doubles tournament every year, and this weekend just gone was the first time I've taken the Cult (alongside Necrons). We won all three games and placed second overall (the only other team that won three scored way more battle-points than us) - it's very exciting, as we've capped out at 2-1 a couple of times, and never previously gone undefeated. I was running Biosanctic Broodsurge, with this list: Patriarch (biomorph adaptation) Primus Biophagus (predatory instincts) 10 neophytes 10 acolytes - six mining tools 10 genestealers 10 genetealers 3 ridgerunners (two mining lasers, one mortar) The Patriarch led one unit of genestealers; the Primus and Biophagus teamed up with the acolytes. We usually infiltrated both units of genestealers and the acolytes, but then used the Primus to pick up the acolytes into a turn one deep strike. The Neophytes and the mortar buggy held the home objective, and the other two went wherever they were needed. My friend brought three doomstalkers, a reanimator, six wraiths with a technomancer, three tomb-blades, three wraith-like destroyers. The wraiths could also infiltrate, the blades and destroyers played objectives, and the stalkers provided fire-support. We were able to use the combat units (genestealers, acolytes, wraiths) to apply tons of early pressure and gain control of the board - with so many threats active from turn one, we had a surprisingly good survival rate, as we often killed everything in the immediate vicinity, limiting how much damage we could take in return. The Patriarch's stealers were good into various hard targets, including armigers, sanguinary guard and custodes wardens; and having enough resurgence points to bring back which ever unit of stealers died first meant that I could be really aggressive and still have turn two/three threats. The acolytes were a bit of a surprise package, and chewed through whatever was put in front of them. In the third game, they finished off a warden unit after the Patriarch's unit fell short - the acolytes deleted the last two and an attached hero in a single turn, then turned around and counter-charged a knight, taking nine wounds off and leaving it ripe for death by doomstalker in our turn two. The combination of the Primus, Biophagus and Biosanctic was really strong: they get +1 to charge, and then +1 attacks when they do, meaning 18 mining weapon attacks that hit on 3s with full rerolls and lethal hits; they can either get +1 to wound infantry from the Biophagus, or +1 to wound vehicles and monsters from a stratagem (on top of native anti-vehicle 4+) - it means you're looking at around 16 hits, wounding on 2s into most infantry, -2AP (or -3 with crossfire from a ridgerunner) and 3 damage (enough to one-shot a custodes, as it turns out). I'm not sure how I'd turn this into a 2000 point list of pure GSC, but I think I'd look at three Rockgrinders as fire-support, then small neophyte and acolyte units for objective play. Maybe aberrants, but it would be tempting to go with another 10 genestealers, just to have 30 of them infiltrating into midfield from the get-go...

I've quite enjoyed it, so far. I was finding the random element frustrating, and generally disheartening - I usually felt that I was rolling low for returning units, and in the few games where I rolled high, I then felt bad for my opponent. With the resurgence points, I can plan my list and tactics around returning units. For example, at 1000 points and 6 resurgence points, U can bring back 10 genestealers, or ten acolytes and 5 acolytes, or three lots of five acolytes. All three options have potential uses, depending on how the game goes. I have a tournament coming up next week - it's a doubles thing at the local place. My 1000 points includes 20 genestealers and 10 acolytes, all of which are likely to pile straight into the enemy lines turn one. Knowing that I can definitely recycle one of those units (probably the genestealers) means I have a free second wave coming in, and effectively having 30 stealers feels like a handy psychological weapon too.

Thanks everyone - that's been helpful.

Thanks chaps. One clarifying question. If we're playing that ruins are always LoS blocking on the ground floor (regardless of any windows or gaps on the ruin piece), does that extend to the whole ruin footprint? Or is the footprint just conferring benefit of cover if my unit can be seen across it? What if there were two corner pieces on adjacent corners of the same footprint, with a gap (say 1") between them - would a model visible through that gap be visible or obscured?

I see a lot of battlefield photos with ruins standing on square or rectangular bases - often clear perspex or similar. In a lot of cases, the rectangular footprint might only have a single corner ruin on it. How does that work in game? Is the whole footprint counted as a ruin? How does that work if line-of-sight doesn't cross any part of the physical ruin piece? Could I drive a vehicle over the footprint if it doesn't pass through the physical ruin? And if not, what's the point of the footprint? I realise this is aching obvious to lots of people, but I've never used footprints like that, and I'd really like to know what they're about. Thanks in advance.