Sigh. It's not wanting what others have, it's realizing what you need to get ahead and realizing you don't have it.
The answer is not in formations, or price changes. Making things cheaper just means buying more models. That can only go so far.
You can't park a Bassie in the corner and present FA to the whole board. They have narrow fronts which make them have tiny front arcs. And who, exactly, is using Bassies prior to the recent formations?
NooooooBody!
If you are only playing pitched battles (standard 12" along the long table edge) deployment, then you are right. But last time I checked, 2/3 of the deployment types available allowed you to do
exactly that.
If these problems are things that need to be done to make guard competitive again, then why was guard competitive in 4th and 5th edition without these changes in place? Why have Chimeras had the same armour value since 3rd edition and gone through an age when they were all Guard players ever took? Clearly the issue was not with the amount of shots, their armour, or their mobility. The only thing that changed was that they increased 10 points. A points increase that was justified because there is no way they were equal to a Razorback. The tank, as it stands, is a better platform than the Razorback.
Now, I do believe that GW acknowledge that the Russ needed a boost and increased the side armour from 12 to 13. But the strange thing is that they left the rear armour alone. I wonder why that is? Is it because they understand that the tank is not meant to be at the very front of your army, leading the charge, and being placed in a position where it can get beslubbered up by infantry?
As for Bassies not being used, that is because there are better choices in the heavy support section than the Basilisk. The issue there is that the Basilisk is too expensive for what it does. How do you fix that issue? You guessed it, a price correction.
The real solution isn't an Assassin, because that's a different codex. That's not fixing the Guard. It's saying, well, Guard suck so go play something else. Thanks for coming out.
You complain about Invisibility, so I give you a solution. The same solution that every other Imperial player aside from Grey Knights has. An assassin. And FYI, it isn't a different codex. It is a Dataslate that is available online and is open to use.
Your complaint is more or less regarding psychic defence, and how the Guard does not have much of it. Well, feel good that you have at least SOME in your codex. You know who really suffer against a concentrated psychic phase? Tau, Necrons, and Dark Eldar. What do they have for psychic defence? Zilch. Even marines suffer from psychic powers. What is a Librarian going to do against Eldar, Grey Knights, or Tyranids when it comes to stopping psychic powers? Usually the answer is "sweet beslubber all." Use the tools that are available to you or don't. The choice is yours. But if you are having an issue where invisible jetbikes are beslubbering up your Russes, bring a Culexus and watch as those Invisible bikes disappear.
You talk about POTENTIAL damage, but what's the real damage? Nothing. Weak BS, and once you MOVE which you kind of need to do you're oh, beslubber it. You know full well it's a weak codex. You know full well that models go in the bin by the handful. They can't do that if you want IG to have a chance to win. They aren't fast enough, or punchy enough.
Yes, I talk about potential damage. I talk about potential damage because we play this game with these things called "dice." What these "dice" do is they give you random results that indicate how well your unit has done something. The good thing about how the game system works, is that you can work out the probability of how well it will do through this thing called "math." So let us use "math" now to show you why I talk about potential damage.
Let's start with the Storm Bolter on the Drop Pod or Rhino firing at a Tactical Squad (the most common unit of troops):
2 shots x 66% chance to hit
= 1.32 hits x 50% chance to wound
= 0.66 wounds x 33% chance to kill
= 0.2178 wounds done
Now the Chimera:
3 Heavy Bolter shots x 50% chance to hit / 3 Multilaser shots x 50% chance to hit
= 1.5 hits x 66% chance to wound / 1.5 hits x 83% chance to wound
= 0.99 wounds x 33% chance to kill / 1.245 wounds x 33% chance to kill
= 0.3267 wounds done / 0.41085 wounds done
0.3267 + 0.41085 = 0.73755 wounds
Mathematically speaking, the Chimera has three times the potential to kill marines than a Rhino does. And that is just going by odds. Now let's change it to really throw things off. Your dice are rolling really well, and every time you fire a Chimera you are wounding with 6 out of 6 shots. It can happen; it has happened. You have the potential to kill 3 times the number of models a Rhino can, and twice as many as a Razorback. So yeah, you need to discuss potential when you are comparing vastly different vehicles.
You seriously want an army that's slow, fragile, but somehow Shootier than Tau? That's what they would need to be to overcome both weaker mobility and softer vehicles. Tau Jink. Tau have decent side armour. Tau have all the short-ranged tools that Guard can only dream of.
You mean like how the Guard was able to outshoot tau from 3rd edition right up to 6th? And what short range tools are you referring to? Fusion blasters? Guard have those, they call them "Meltas." Plasma? Guard has them too.
Honest to Emperor, it's not a case of not knowing how to play. It's a case of "I don't want to fix these two issues by somehow making their shooting so unfathomably powerful that literally anything that's in LOS disappears." I can deal with low mobility. I can deal with weaker than Tau shooting. But something's got to get a buff, and I feel it should be IG's ability to soak damage, without needing to buy twice as many models.
And how do you buff vehicles that are already good, and that have been good for well over a decade? Give them additional rules (like they did by giving Russes Lumbering Behemoth) and change their point cost. As I have said before, the Chimera is a fine vehicle. Is it a good vehicle at 65pts? Might be pushing it. Is it a good vehicle at 55pts? No, it's beslubbering fantastic. So where is the balance? 60pts? Sounds reasonable to me.
Guard fight a war of attrition. Their method of absorbing damage is to have enough bodies that the numbers they lose aren't as crucial as the numbers they inflict. Losing 10 guardsmen, no big deal. Lose 10 marines, has a fairly sizeable impact. Lose 10 Terminators and my game plan has drastically changed.
That you consider the Taurox a viable option is the real joke. A Valkyrie? 140 points for a Flying Chimera! Look out! I've got two large blasts that are weaker than bolters! You've got serious reality issues if you're saying they're viable transports. You got out of the plane? Sorry, those 5 tacticals are going to assault you and you're going to die. Seriously!
You said nothing about viable. You said "the guard have no other transports." I'm sorry, but that is a lie. You want a cheap transport to get your guardsmen from point A to point B, you have 4 standard options. Taurox, Chimera, Valkyrie, Vendetta. Is the Chimera still the best option? Probably. Is it the only option? No. Look at it all comparatively. The Taurox is pretty much a Razorback. Little bit cheaper, better gun, more troop carrying capacity, slightly weaker armour profile, slightly worse BS. For what you are claiming you want, it is pretty much bang on. It gets your Guardsmen from point A to point B and is more or less a pure transport. Or you can spend 15pts more and get the superior Chimera that is more than just a transport.
I have no issue with the idea of the Chimera getting a boost in the side armour value. I do have an issue with it being done at the same point cost it is at right now. You want it to be 12/12/10? Fine. Your stock Chimera is now 100pts. At 12/12/10 your Chimera is a superior vehicle to the Devilfish. More weapons and better armour profile. Minimum 100pt cost at least. Does that seem like a solution that fits the Guard's M.O? Cause that doesn't feel very Guard-like to me.
I can ally a Techie, 5 scouts, and a Drop Pod for the price of one Valk. For the price of two Valks, I could take a Techie, 5 scouts, and *5* pods. If I want to fix mobility, I'd just ally pods, and deliver 5 squads, for certain, instead of hoping on 2 in the birds. Birds that can't fight other birds, and can't support ground troops. Do you have any idea how impracticaly over-costed Valkyries are? Shake thine head, for it is full of misguided and impure thoughts.
I agree that the Valk has issues, which is why you never see them. Interesting that you totally skipped over Vendettas though.
I've justified my reasons. At length. You see what you want. I've done the math. I've recognized the realistic scenarios of what you need to face. You still haven't come up with a way for IG to take a central cluster, by the way. You can't shoot them off the middle AND be able to take it, before you're side-swiped by a faster foe, which is everyone.
Well, considering that has been the strategy of the Guard for as long as the game has been around, yeah... you can. You can try charging them, but that isn't going to work. Or you can park on top of the objective and pray they don't exploit your weakness, which is combat... but that isn't going to work either. What does that leave for a strategy? Oh, right. Shoot the amphetamine parrot out of them. You're concerned about faster moving enemies, reconsider your target priority. Is shooting at that marine squad camped in ruins on an objective on turn two as important as shooting the Grav-Centurions that just drop podded in and wasted a Russ?
Have any of your crew won a "challenging" game with IG? Something that wasn't a pure fluff list? Come on, we're all friends here. You can confide your misleading ways.
If I recall correctly, you play in London and have Dan Platt in your local gaming group, right? If you are aware of the tournament scene in Southern Ontario, then you know who Ricky Johnson is. He played Guard competitively for years until the codex creep got to the point where they were not a top tier army like they used to be. Do you remember the tournament scene when 50% of the armies there were either Grey Knights or Imperial Guard? Because I do.
Chris Mollink brought his guard to a tournament in Niagara Falls that was attended by most of the top players in SW-Ontario (including Dan) and placed 2nd. Is that enough of a "challenge" for you?
If you keep having an issue with your Guard, maybe the problem isn't with the army, but with the general.