Topic: How to kill GEQ

[Wyldhunt]

As you can see, output seems to be roughly consistent across infantry in different armies, provided you take into account the auto-include upgrades.

Yeah, I think GW is finally starting to listen to all of the players who nag them to price units according to actual performance.  They're still a bit fuzzy on how to take mobility options into account, but hey, at least they're improving.   Now, if only they could tighten the quality control at Forge World...

Let's take it easy on Forgeworld though. A somewhat recent death in the company is believed to be responsible for a lot of the recent disarray.

@Fenris: 
I know the assumption of this thread is that you positively, absolutely have to kill every last guard body on the table, but I think it's worth mentioning that this usually isn't the case.  Now that conscript spam + commissar shenanigans have been reigned in, it's pretty easy to force morale tests that will remove huge chunks of blobs.  If commissars are still causing a problem, the recently price-reduced rangers and our nifty new warlord trait to let you snipe out enemy characters (combined with the FAQ saying we can still take reaper launchers on autarchs) means that we should have plenty of ways of taking out said commissars. Heck. Even Illic isn't a terrible investment for his points! 

And even if you don't want to/can't morale the guard blobs to death, our new stratagems make it pretty easy for us to mostly bypass the blobs and go after whatever units are doing the real damage.  With guard, this tends to be either flyers (dark reapers and crimson hunters counter these well) or tanks.  Between the ability to fall back and charge with a stratagem, Saim-Hann's craftworld ability, and Webway Assault, we can probably make it into melee with guard tanks to tie them up. Position yourself right, and the tank won't be able to fall back meaning your opponent's guns aren't firing until those guardsmen charge in and eventually bludgeon enough points of eldar to death to break the stranglehold. At which point you've effectively silenced a tank for a huge chunk of the game.

[TheEldarGuy]

Guard, Nids and Orks.
These guys are always going to give us grief, Eldar weaponry is fine for laying smack on a single unit, but when there are 8 squads of Guard infantry alone (not to mention the other supporting squads of special weapons, heavy weapons teams and the like) in standard games, we're looking to figure out either:
1. is the objective worth more than the effort
2. is split fire viable at the correct ratio

In the first part, I watched a battle recently where the Eldar player was hilariously outnumbered, and even by Turn 5, the Eldar Autarch, a Falcon and Wave Serpent were about the only units left. Eldar player 'won' 8VP to 5VP. On the battlefield, if the game had gone to Turn 7 or more, Guard would have wiped the Eldar off the board.

In the second part, if we run full squads of guardians, and split between shooting Guard Squad1 and Guard squad2, maybe we can break even in the war of attrition. In the current ruleset, a Commissar only forces a re-roll of Morale, so if a Guard squad loses 5 of the squad, it's a quick rationalisation to determine if losing the Guardsman to re-roll is worth it.

I'm the guy who at 2000pts has 8 Guard squads (one of them a 30 string Conscript unit), three Special Weapons teams and three Heavy Weapons Teams which I think is about 900pts. It is very hard to kill everything, and players who often run with 'Kill em all' as the game plan, simply run out of time.

The question isn't just 'How do we kill GEQ', but also 'How do we deal with swarms'.

[DuckWake]

I didn't look at any numbers for Swooping Hawks previously as I assumed that they would be pretty average to mediocre.

The final numbers express the points destroyed per invested per round of attacks, using the following formula:
WoundsCaused * TargetPointsPerWoun d / AttackersPoints

4 Hawks + Exarch vs Guard: 4.44 * 4 / 65 = 0.27
4 Hawks + Exarch w/ Hawks Talon vs Guard: (3.55 + 1.19) * 4/68 = 0.28
4 Hawks + Exarch w/ Sun Rifle vs Guard: (3.55 + 1.33) * 4/69 = 0.28

10 Guard, 9 shots vs 4 Hawks+Exarch: 1.125 * (65/6)/40 = 0.30
10 Guard, 9 shots vs 4 Hawks+Exarch w Talon: 1.125 * (68/6)/40 = 0.32
10 Guard, 9 shots vs 4 Hawks+Exarch w Sun Rifle: 1.125 * (69/6)/40 = 0.32

But as people have been indicating, if the Hawks stay outside of rapid fire range of the Guardsmen then they can comfortably stand toe to toe with them. If you factor in the Hawks mobility, superior leadership, grenade packs, deep strike and Craftworld attributes, then Hawks have the potential to really dominate Guardsmen. Alaitoc Hawks would be very potent.

However if they stray to within rapid fire range they will crumple fast.

4 Hawks + Exarch vs Marine: 1.48 * 13/65 = 0.296
5 Marines, 5 shots vs Hawks+Exarch: 1.11 * (65/6)/65 = 0.185

4 Hawks + Exarch vs Orc: 3.7 * 6/65 = 0.34
10 Shoota Boys, 10 shots vs Hawks+Exarch: 1.11 * (65/6)/60 = 0.2

Swooping Hawks are even more effective against Marines and Orcs than Guard, and if they have the room to maneuver can completely dominate these opponents.

I'm beginning to think that an Alaitoc outrider detachment of Hawks is going to be a must take.

[The Mattler]

I didn't look at any numbers for Swooping Hawks previously as I assumed that they would be pretty average to mediocre.

Hawks are one of those sleeper units that have been terrible for a long time aside from occasional, bizarre utility (e.g., killing Imperial Knights in melee with Haywire Grenades), so I'm not surprised that players' eyes glaze over while reading their datasheet.  Their plummeting points cost met their rising firepower in a pretty sensible place, so now they can compete with other staple units.  For example, let's take a look at how their points per wound numbers measure up against Dire Avengers.  The (+G) entry includes the Grenade Pack, which I limited to one grenade against the three vehicle profiles.

5DAEASC 5 Dire Avengers w/Exarch, additional Avenger Shuriken Catapult
5SHEHT 5 Swooping Hawks w/Exarch, Hawk's Talon

	GEQ	MEQ	TEQ	BEQ	LVEQ	MVEQ	HVEQ
5DAEASC	16.00	32.00	48.00	41.14	41.14	41.14	57.60
5SHEHT	14.34	38.25	76.50	41.72	76.50	76.50	76.50
5SHEHT(+G)	12.20	26.04	39.48	27.61	64.42	64.42	64.42

As long as they aren't targeting vehicles, Hawks are quite efficient.  If they hover near max Lasblaster range, they're annoying andsurprisingly durable if they're Alaitoc.  If they close in to use their grenades, they become roughly as efficient against non-vehicles as Guardian Defenders (scary) at the cost of their resilience.

I'm beginning to think that an Alaitoc outrider detachment of Hawks is going to be a must take.

Oh yeah, that's why it was an easy choice to put 15 Swooping Hawks into this list.  My Reapers and Prisms covered everything else.  Why stop at an Outrider detachment when it's so easy to get an Alaitoc utility Battalion with 3x5 Rangers and a couple of Spiritseers for 3CP instead of 1CP?  That's a great way to spend 474pts, and it scales up nicely with all the long range options in the Codex. Only the Elites have little to offer Alaitoc, but as I showed with that list, a Brigade is still a possibility.

[Lord of Winter and War]

Looking at their cost and number of shots, it's no surprise Hawks are good. I've been saying this ever since their new cost was revealed. Taking 40 Hawks is a small investment of points, and 160 shots at 24". Good thing about 8th, is that S3 can hurt everything in the game, and things which they 'really' can't hurt, you can spend the rest of your army in buying units to help with. Wraithguard in webway portals are amazing assassins for example.

[Fenris]

@Wyldhunt: I don't disagree with you, however morale is something you get to anyway irregardless of wether your unit kills 3 guardsmen or 6.

Astra militarum tanks are usually not a problem, just soften them up with brightlances, drag them down with reapers and then finish them of with shuriken. Any points spent on tanks is mostly wasted against eldar IMO. This is unless you play Iyanden-style with a lot of wraithconstructs, then the tanks might cause trouble for eldar.

Shooting GEQ to make them flee you need to inflict about 7 kills to be sure they will vaporise. Commissars don't really matter with the FAQ.
Knowing when to split fire and when to focus will be key against GEQ.
Another very effective strategy against GEQ-blobs is flanking them, by attacking on only one flank you can neuter 1/3 o their shooting by simply being out of range, and due to them stumbling on eachother they can't get in range even if they had the speed, which they also don't.

This of course requires speed, but it's a rock/paper/scissors game where speed beats shooting, shooting beats melee and melee beats speed.

That's the basic ones, we could of course expand it to rock/paper/scissors/lizard/Spock or even further, but the center of it all is to know what beats what, especially when facing a rocklizard with scissors, you may need a spockrock or a paper lizard.
The purpose was to determine wether the spockrock or the paper lizard was best.
Throwing a spocklizard into the mix on what you need to beat is simply not helpful.

[The Mattler]

Throwing a spocklizard into the mix on what you need to beat is simply not helpful.

Shuriken weaponry is the pinnacle of antiSpocklizardry in 40k.  It's the general solution to virtually all cornercase target priority problems. 

[Wyldhunt]

Throwing a spocklizard into the mix on what you need to beat is simply not helpful.

Shuriken weaponry is the pinnacle of antiSpocklizardry in 40k.  It's the general solution to virtually all cornercase target priority problems. 

Well, I know that my shuriken weaponry works just fine on Vulkan's Salamanders, so spocklizards probably don't care for it either. XD

[SeekingOne]

Hey guys, what's that "spocklizard" thing you're talking about?!

[The Mattler]

Hey guys, what's that "spocklizard" thing you're talking about?!

This of course requires speed, but it's a rock/paper/scissors game where speed beats shooting, shooting beats melee and melee beats speed.

That's the basic ones, we could of course expand it to rock/paper/scissors/lizard/Spock or even further, but the center of it all is to know what beats what, especially when facing a rocklizard with scissors, you may need a spockrock or a paper lizard.
The purpose was to determine wether the spockrock or the paper lizard was best.
Throwing a spocklizard into the mix on what you need to beat is simply not helpful.

Seems self-explanatory to me. 
(It's 0430 here right now, and I'm trying not to wake up my roommates by laughing.)

[Fenris]

Maybe this picture would help?
http://www.purplefrogsystems.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/RockPaperScissorsLizardSpock2.jpg

My original point was that how to kill an AM parking lot is something entirely different of how you beat GEQ or even MEQ while not so unsimiliar, but still somewhat similiar to what it is to beat a family of Rhinos.

A spocklizard is something that could be either disproved by a paper or smashed by a rock but neither supereffective as it can both vaporize rock and eat paper, but is most effectively used for smashing scissors.