Obviously BS4 is better than BS3, however the question is
are guardians able to use it or are we just paying points for stats that don’t
really matter. For normal shooting it is
clearly good. 1/3 of your misses are now
hits. This makes single shot weaponry
like brightlances usable. Battle focus
may let us get shots off and run away despite our 12 inch range however most of
the time when you shoot a catapult you will be snapfiring it at someone that is
charging you and your BS won’t matter.
Your ballistic skill also won’t matter if you have gone to ground which
will be fairly common for groups assigned to hold objectives.
Storm guardians with fusion guns love the BS4 but flamer storm guardians don’t care at all. Jetbikes benefit but they were already twin-linked except with the cannon and as discussed in It’s a Trap might be best not shooting at all. One of the reasons I don’t mind pathfinders going away as much as others is that I haven’t used pathfinders in a couple years, I would save the points and just send my rangers to ground if they were supposed to hold an objective. Now that guardians can get stealth (and as such a 2+ go to ground save in area terrain) I wouldn't be surprised to see them resting a lot.
Storm guardians with fusion guns love the BS4 but flamer storm guardians don’t care at all. Jetbikes benefit but they were already twin-linked except with the cannon and as discussed in It’s a Trap might be best not shooting at all. One of the reasons I don’t mind pathfinders going away as much as others is that I haven’t used pathfinders in a couple years, I would save the points and just send my rangers to ground if they were supposed to hold an objective. Now that guardians can get stealth (and as such a 2+ go to ground save in area terrain) I wouldn't be surprised to see them resting a lot.
There are going to be times where a 20 man squad is able to
unload on someone and the opposing player will cry but I’m curious how often
that will be. One of the things I plan
to track in my early games with them is how often I am snapfiring and how often
I am shooting at full BS. Obviously I
can’t do anything about what the statline is but how often you snapfire vs.
regular fire does affect other decisions such as what sort of weapon to give
them. My question is what would you
rather have BS3 guardians for 8 points or BS4 for 9. I don’t know but I am looking forward to
finding out.
I tend to use the Guardians in Wave Serpents, they usually don't disembark until there is only little small enemy squads left in the area to mop up. Since the BS4 and new Bladestorm have been gained, I use them as direct attack now. All to often disembarking next to a newly cleared enemy Aegis line. Also, walking up to an Aegis and focus firing on a unit allows you to ignore the front rank and obliterate everyone else in the squad.
ReplyDeleteBut overall, I can see what you mean about BS4 not being amazing for the Guardians and maybe it would be best to not pay the extra point for them, I would say that the one point gets you +1 WS, +1I, Battle Focus and, my personal favorite, Plasma Grenades. I would have paid the extra point for the grenades alone most likely.
I look forward to your further analysis.
I haven't tried regular guardians in a Wave Serpent. They are on my list. looking at your one points gets you all of that it looks like a point well spent, but I think you are actually paying more in the range of 2-3 points for all of those abilities as guardians in the old book were over-costed by today's standards. And as shown in the Tally post, they have performed well in large groups so far, so I'm not trying to bad talk them at all.
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