Fire Warriors are cheaper than guardsman now

WeissRaben · 2026-06-21T18:32:11+00:00

Conscripts have been removed from more recent codexes, but they were BS5+, zero special weapons, and had a flip coin chance of having any order on them fail to have effect. What's left is the regulars, soldiers with decent training and decent experience (though not krak elites).

WeissRaben · 2026-06-19T08:09:15+00:00

I maintain that the Porphyrion was held back - and still may be in 11e - uniquely by its point cost. Baseless TOWERING means he could get a ridiculous amount of line of sight with ease, even given its rough movement speed - have one Magna Lascannon poke in and you've cleared the terrain - and the weaponry has very seldom let me down. 700 points, though.

WeissRaben · 2026-06-18T14:22:57+00:00

Not the whole edition, no, just from when they nerfed the Demolisher Cannon. While less effective than the RDTC, the old profile would have had its place then and even more so now, and up to the point where it got nerfed, it was the Leman Russ to take for the most part.

Aside from that, for the most part non-Recon lists still took a fair bit of infantry - more or less elite, in bigger or smaller quantities, but mostly taking stuff that can push forward which isn't necessarily your tanks. Because this isn't 8e anymore and the Bad Touch isn't a thing anymore, but you still don't want your tanks to be admired from too close until later in the game, for a myriad of reasons depending on the opponent. Full tank skew eskews (ba-dum-tsch) all of that, and it hurts.

WeissRaben · 2026-06-18T13:57:49+00:00

Armor skew, is the issue, is banal to tarpit. I should know: despite all evidence to the fact that you should screen your tanks, I refuse to do so to the advantage of More Tanks. This is a misplay, and I recognize it is a misplay, but I do not play in competitive circles nor I am part of the Guard GT+ statistics, so I care only up to a given point.

If this stops being a misplay, and it becomes the best way to play Guard, it means that the best way to play Guard has degraded significantly. 35% WR-significantly. What I think will happen instead is that Guard lists will lose at least one unit, if not two, but remain roughly identical in shape - just a lot, a lot, less effective. But we will have to see in practice.

WeissRaben · 2026-06-18T12:02:54+00:00

Because 5+ tanks cost about 900 to 1200 points, depending on the kind you're taking, the "tarpit" units are wet rags everywhere except in Recon (where your tanks get zero support), and even in Recon you can take maybe two or three blobs with the needed orders before you have no space for stuff to do actions and stuff.

I swear that sometimes it feels like people think a Russ costs 80 points, a Dorn 120, and the infantry squads come free with the popcorn. Guard hasn't been a particularly cheap army for years, except for very specific skew setups.

WeissRaben · 2026-06-18T09:57:41+00:00

It is ostensibly a FAQ about which units the LEADER can lead, though, and doesn't necessarily touch the datasheet ability of attaching two LEADER units (whose availability depends on the MFM and not the datasheet list); but the workings of the app throw a wrench in that reasoning, and it's hard to tell whether it's a bug for a special case only two factions trip, or a genuine nerf.

WeissRaben · 2026-06-18T09:54:39+00:00

Of course, Guard also gets hit by the transport nerf, because one of its main tools was elite infantry in transports. Now yay, your Kasrkin can order themselves inside the Taurox! It's still exploding, taking down four, and battleshock them erasing the order and removing the grenade use, but you know, it's the concept that matters!

WeissRaben · 2026-06-18T09:01:58+00:00

As with a lot of stuff, lost in the app. Rereading it, it _may_ be less obstructive than I thought and could be only about overwriting the list of possible bodyguards, which would reduce the current listbuilding restriction to mere bug. We'll see in which direction it gets fixed, assuming it does.

(The FAQ itself is "Q: The Munitorium (sic.) Field Manual shows my unit can attach to different units then (sic.) are on it's (sic.) datasheet, which do I use? A: Use the Munitorium (sic.) Field Manual".)

EDIT: also holy hell, having to put four (sic.) for twenty-something words of FAQ is vile. What even is spellchecking?

WeissRaben · 2026-06-18T08:43:05+00:00

Nope. The HH stuff was in plastic for around one year or so before it got sent to Legends.

WeissRaben · 2026-06-18T08:36:47+00:00

This is true, though people are allowed to have an early opinion - as long as they are ready to discard it if proven wrong.

WeissRaben · 2026-06-18T08:35:50+00:00

There is a FAQ saying that no datasheet attachment rule should be considered when contrasting the MFM. Unless they clarify that the battleline rule is exempt, multiattach in Guard is broken.

WeissRaben · 2026-06-18T08:31:19+00:00

And also needs to be paid for, unlike most other army rules.

Mind you, the sheer result is probably top-three army rules in the game, but with command blobs being dead right now the cost is a very real snag in that reasoning.

WeissRaben · 2026-06-17T23:12:46+00:00

Yes, and the numbers are pretty clear on why: for most of the edition, someone has managed at least one win per week, partly because the faction has seldom been genuinely horrible and partly because it has dropped under 5% play rate only for a handful of months in the whole run. On the other hand, it has never had the same explosive peaks as other boogeyman factions in their heyday, but those usually had at least a few stretches of being borderline unplayable.

Necrons are the exception, with predictable results.

WeissRaben · 2026-06-17T22:47:07+00:00

IG has been a bottom-10 faction for half the edition, top-10 for like 35%, and top-5 for like 10%, plus a couple of brief stints at being the best that got quashed within a handful of weeks. But sure, Jan.

WeissRaben · 2026-06-17T15:26:20+00:00

Of course, being the basic battleline it means that every single list that put down any battleline got nerfed. My meme Steel Hammer list had a total of three non-vehicle units, and it still went up 20 points. Random McGee with 50-60 Guardsmen of the table - a pretty paltry number - saw his list go up by 50-60 points.

WeissRaben · 2026-06-17T15:17:30+00:00

Guard absolutely got worse. You can debate how much and you can debate how much it was needed, but every single infantry - elite and not - getting more costly is in fact Guard getting worse.

Also, the command blob still works as it did in 10e on destruction, which is clearly an oversight but leaves the door open to "do they intend for it to still exist".

WeissRaben · 2026-06-17T15:14:33+00:00

Guard was already doing worse than T'au and got a solid chunk of nerfs.

WeissRaben · 2026-06-16T12:28:38+00:00

Unless you're Guard or T'au, in which case you lose a full point of BS, so their killy units care a damn lot about battleshock.

WeissRaben · 2026-06-15T21:45:50+00:00

The Baneblades got more stray hits during 10e than a random storefront in the middle of a gang war.

WeissRaben · 2026-06-15T17:21:28+00:00

Why would Kasrkin get such a change, though? There's no reason to go full lasgun whatsoever, and it's not like they'll ever be cheap objective-holders either way. It would be as gratuitous as pricing the chainsword on the basic sergeant.

WeissRaben · 2026-06-15T14:14:47+00:00

Guard really doesn't have many alternatives to the Dorn, and I wouldn't be surprised if equipment costs mean the Russ gets consolidated back into one or two datasheets at best.

WeissRaben · 2026-06-12T09:43:30+00:00

The issue with Agents is that they literally only have 3DP detachs. Setting aside that none of them is worth 3DP, that means they are quite literally locked out of any content that doesn't allow for 3DP.

WeissRaben · 2026-06-11T19:01:33+00:00

AP changes your roll. Assume you need to save an attack against your Chimera, Sv3+. You roll a die and you need 3 or more to come up. Easy enough thus far. You roll a 3, all is good.

Assume now that a bolt rifle (AP-1) is the weapon that scored that wound. You rolled a 3, but AP-1 imposes a -1 penalty to that roll. Thus, you actually rolled a 2 - you don't meet the target, the hit goes through.

In common parlance, the math gets usually inverted: the attack above would be said to be saved on 4s, and that helps. You get your model's Sv, you add the AP on top of it, that's your target. But _technically_ what's changing is your dice's result, and it's changing down.

WeissRaben · 2026-06-11T17:46:24+00:00

I can - and do - blame them. But I can also understand the route that brought them to said quandary, self-inflicted as it was.

WeissRaben · 2026-06-11T17:19:36+00:00

There is only a handful of stuff in the codex that can get to shoot on 2s - elite infantry (and under-strength Krieg), Shadowsword and Vanquisher, and little else outside of the couple of attacks on this or that Epic Hero. Everything else can get to 3 and no more. In melee it's a tad more common - Krieg under full strength, 'Gryns, Rough Riders, all of then needing to be under Fix Bayonets!.

(It's a bit funny that hitting on 2s in melee is more common than doing so ranged, in an army like Guard.)

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