At last – the Elites choices. These are the expensive and/or super-effective units. Whether or not they’re effective for you depends upon your play style.
Ogryns:
Ah, the lovable, cuddly ogryns. Er, wait. Maybe that’s not the best description. Anyway, this is the hard-hitting assault choice to make others tremble. They can shot decently too. They’re really expensive – they start as a group of only three, and each addition might choke your points wallet a bit. However, they’re three wound cc oriented guys with furious charge and stubborn. If you don’t care about points, and you want the ultimate cc unit, stick Yarrick in a squad of five of these guys in a chimera with two heavy flamers. The only real drawback to these guys, other than their cost, is that they’re a slow moving bullet magnet. They take up two slots in a vehicle and can’t ride the Valkyrie, so for a large group you’ll have to make them walk. Keep them protected. Thenoblewolves has a good tactica thread complete with pictures, here.
Ogryns’ score: 8/10
Ratlings:
Space hobbits. Angry ones. If ogryns are cuddly, these guys look like they might stab you in the eye for a Klondike bar. These are the snipers of the Guard. They’re really cheap for what they do, actually – a bs4 means they benefited from the new sniper rules in 5th edition, while bs3 got nerfed. If you want snipers, use these guys. They have infiltrate and scout, so stick ‘em on the table in some nice cover and start popin’ caps all over. Never, never, never let them get into cc, as they have ws2 and no second cc weapon. Personally, I’m going to use Space Marine scouts as a stand-in here – there’ll be no hobbits in my army.
Ratlings’ score: 7.5/10
Psyker Battle Squad:
Do you trust psykers? If you do, these guys are definitely the choice for you. Fairly cheap for the amount of cheese tactics that can be done with them – I’m not going to go into all of that here, there’s too much and you can find stuff all over the IGMB. The entire squad (four or nine psykers and an overseer) counts as a single unit for using powers. LoS can be drawn from any of them for power resolution. If a perils of the warp test is failed, then the overseer executes d3 of them. If the overseer’s been killed, then the whole squad suffers from the perils of the warp attack (eep!). Soulstorm is a psychic shooting attack whose strength is equal to the number of sanctioned psykers in the squad (so up to nine). The ap is d6, so there’s potential for awesomeness there. It’s an assault, large blast, so you can fire this out the hatch on a chimera. Weaken resolve is another shooting (kinda) power. It lowers the Ld of an enemy unit by the number of sanctioned psykers (to a minimum of two) for the remainder of the turn. They can take their own chimera, and I advise they do.
Psykers’ score: 8/10
Storm Troopers:
I don’t know what to say about them. The hellguns (now ‘hot-shot lasgun’) got the universally desired boost to ap. Now at ap3, they can punch trough power armor. But like a backhand to the face, they stayed s3 – anything that gets a 3+ armor save can laugh at small amounts of s3 fire. Lasguns work by volume of fire. Considering that stormies are now the same price as a Space Marine, it’s not likely you’ll be fielding 30 of them. The hellguns also had their range docked to 18 inches, and the hellpistol to six. Obviously they’re intended to charge after shooting a bit, right? Not so much – same cc stats (except for 4+ armor save) as a regular guardsman means it’s a waste to throw a small unit into cc, unless they outnumber the foe. They can deep strike, and they get some fancy special operations rules. Before deployment you get to choose one of these ‘missions:’ Reconnaissance, Airborne Assault, or Behind Enemy Lines. Recon gives them scouts and move through cover. Air assault lets them re-roll the scatter dice when deep striking. Behind enemy lines gives them infiltrate and gives their weapons pinning the first time they fire. Of course, for pinning to be useful, you need to cause an unsaved wound – and then the enemy needs to fail a pinning test… They can take a dedicated chimera, but why do that, when you can stick them in a Valkyrie/Vendetta?
Storm troopers’ score: 7/10 (until I use them, and decide I still like them)
Sly Marbo:
I wonder if Sylvester Stallone plays 40K… Anyway, this guy is too complex and Reds has already touched on him a bit. We’ll come back to him after a bit of play testing. My current opinion is that he could be a game winner. While trying to fall asleep on night, I was doing some derivation/probability in my head (I’m sick, I know) and came to the conclusion that he has a little less than 10% chance to kill himself with his demo charge (I could be wrong, it was just head math – regardless, it’s not a high likelihood). He’s got a mess of cool toys and rules, and stats to make his a beast. As I said, we’ll get back to him in detail later.
Marbo’s score: ?
Ogryns:
Ah, the lovable, cuddly ogryns. Er, wait. Maybe that’s not the best description. Anyway, this is the hard-hitting assault choice to make others tremble. They can shot decently too. They’re really expensive – they start as a group of only three, and each addition might choke your points wallet a bit. However, they’re three wound cc oriented guys with furious charge and stubborn. If you don’t care about points, and you want the ultimate cc unit, stick Yarrick in a squad of five of these guys in a chimera with two heavy flamers. The only real drawback to these guys, other than their cost, is that they’re a slow moving bullet magnet. They take up two slots in a vehicle and can’t ride the Valkyrie, so for a large group you’ll have to make them walk. Keep them protected. Thenoblewolves has a good tactica thread complete with pictures, here.
Ogryns’ score: 8/10
Ratlings:
Space hobbits. Angry ones. If ogryns are cuddly, these guys look like they might stab you in the eye for a Klondike bar. These are the snipers of the Guard. They’re really cheap for what they do, actually – a bs4 means they benefited from the new sniper rules in 5th edition, while bs3 got nerfed. If you want snipers, use these guys. They have infiltrate and scout, so stick ‘em on the table in some nice cover and start popin’ caps all over. Never, never, never let them get into cc, as they have ws2 and no second cc weapon. Personally, I’m going to use Space Marine scouts as a stand-in here – there’ll be no hobbits in my army.
Ratlings’ score: 7.5/10
Psyker Battle Squad:
Do you trust psykers? If you do, these guys are definitely the choice for you. Fairly cheap for the amount of cheese tactics that can be done with them – I’m not going to go into all of that here, there’s too much and you can find stuff all over the IGMB. The entire squad (four or nine psykers and an overseer) counts as a single unit for using powers. LoS can be drawn from any of them for power resolution. If a perils of the warp test is failed, then the overseer executes d3 of them. If the overseer’s been killed, then the whole squad suffers from the perils of the warp attack (eep!). Soulstorm is a psychic shooting attack whose strength is equal to the number of sanctioned psykers in the squad (so up to nine). The ap is d6, so there’s potential for awesomeness there. It’s an assault, large blast, so you can fire this out the hatch on a chimera. Weaken resolve is another shooting (kinda) power. It lowers the Ld of an enemy unit by the number of sanctioned psykers (to a minimum of two) for the remainder of the turn. They can take their own chimera, and I advise they do.
Psykers’ score: 8/10
Storm Troopers:
I don’t know what to say about them. The hellguns (now ‘hot-shot lasgun’) got the universally desired boost to ap. Now at ap3, they can punch trough power armor. But like a backhand to the face, they stayed s3 – anything that gets a 3+ armor save can laugh at small amounts of s3 fire. Lasguns work by volume of fire. Considering that stormies are now the same price as a Space Marine, it’s not likely you’ll be fielding 30 of them. The hellguns also had their range docked to 18 inches, and the hellpistol to six. Obviously they’re intended to charge after shooting a bit, right? Not so much – same cc stats (except for 4+ armor save) as a regular guardsman means it’s a waste to throw a small unit into cc, unless they outnumber the foe. They can deep strike, and they get some fancy special operations rules. Before deployment you get to choose one of these ‘missions:’ Reconnaissance, Airborne Assault, or Behind Enemy Lines. Recon gives them scouts and move through cover. Air assault lets them re-roll the scatter dice when deep striking. Behind enemy lines gives them infiltrate and gives their weapons pinning the first time they fire. Of course, for pinning to be useful, you need to cause an unsaved wound – and then the enemy needs to fail a pinning test… They can take a dedicated chimera, but why do that, when you can stick them in a Valkyrie/Vendetta?
Storm troopers’ score: 7/10 (until I use them, and decide I still like them)
Sly Marbo:
I wonder if Sylvester Stallone plays 40K… Anyway, this guy is too complex and Reds has already touched on him a bit. We’ll come back to him after a bit of play testing. My current opinion is that he could be a game winner. While trying to fall asleep on night, I was doing some derivation/probability in my head (I’m sick, I know) and came to the conclusion that he has a little less than 10% chance to kill himself with his demo charge (I could be wrong, it was just head math – regardless, it’s not a high likelihood). He’s got a mess of cool toys and rules, and stats to make his a beast. As I said, we’ll get back to him in detail later.
Marbo’s score: ?
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