AoS Nearly invincible Saurus Guard, Maybe?(just for fun)

Say we have:
20x saurus guard
5x saurus guard
5x saurus guard
1x eternity warden
1x skink starpriest
1x skink priest w/ priestly trappings

and the Eternal Starhost Battalion.

Could you buff the one 20x Saurus Guard unit with mystic shield, Summon Starlight, and Celestial starlight
This would make the Guard have a save roll of 2+ and reroll failed save rolls.
and make them nearly invincible, other than mortal wounds?
(seeing as we completely get all the rolls for the casts)

 

you would have a 2.8% chance of losing a model for every wound you take. and don't forget rend rend 2 isn't that uncommon for heavy units that compare with Gaurd. also that is a very big investment for a 20 wound anvil unit thats what 600 points? very hard to kill yes but it has some bad downsides to.

 

Here's a list I ran against a friends Daughters of Khaine not long ago:

Slann
Scar Veteran on Carnosaur
Eternity Warden
Astrolith Bearer
Starpriest
20 Guard
20 Guard
20 Guard
Eternal Starhost

His DoK list was quite competitive and he had recently placed highly at a local tournament with it. It used a lot of Witch Aelves and Sisters of Slaughter.

Honestly, I went into the game expecting to be destroyed, as my Seraphon typically dont match up well against DoK. But, I was tired of playing Deepkin and so decided to try something new.

The Guard completely mulched virtually all of his battleline by turn 3.

I think he was very gung-ho regarding the capabilities of his Witch Aelves, as they can generally be relied upon to kill anything they touch when fully buffed due to an obscene amount of attacks and rerolled. The Guard didnt care - I lost about 10 models in total before retaliating with the D3 damage swings permitted by the starhost and wiped two 30-strong blobs in a turn. He conceded when he had nothing left to push me off objectives.

So yeah, in some circumstances I think Guard can sometimes do really well, if you're lucky enough to face off against one of those armies that doesn't rely much on mortal wounds. For me at least, the drop to 80pts for 5 has maybe persuaded me to experiment with some other Guard builds.

Make no mistake though, Tzeentch or Legions of Nagash would have a field day against them. It's worth playing around with but I think Daughters might just be a lucky match up.

 

um just to make sure I haven't been doing it wrong.... wouldn't a minimum Eternal be 5+5+5 guard?

 

It absolutely would. You are doing it right.

 

Yeah, its the main issue I had when I tried using it against my girlfriends SCE. She has a lord celestant on dracoth. On a good day he kills half the starhost on his own with his breath in one attack. And the range requirements on their buffs, as well as the low model count does mean the starhost has to clump together more than you'd like which makes hitting all of em with the AoE it's a hell of al ot easier than you'd think. It's quite hilarious. On the other hand, if for whatever reason his breath fails to kill them they'l much whatever enters melee combat with em...

Also, with summoning it is actually fairly doable to summon in guards who are nearly as sturdy as their starhost. All you lose is +1 to save (going to a 3+ re-rollable) and the damage (though their base damage is scary enough). If you find yourself against an army with no mortal wounds they can work wonders with the way summoning works right now. Summon a unit of guards, have a skink priest stand next to them and you can roadblock nearly anything if his mortal wounds are otherwise occupied (or you've killed those by now )

What is common that has rend 2?

 

eels, DoK, certain units of LoN ( the more expensive knights I believe)

 

oruk brutes trogoths most heroes a lot of behemoths kernoth hunters at least two korn battle lines storm feinds skyre acolytes morgasts the above mentioned Dok 2/3 of all artillery i can keep going.

 

From quickly looking at those, most of those are either the 1 guy in a squad with special equipment or a unit has it conditionally (e.g. eels have it on the charge). The remaining ones then tend to be special or expensive units of which you're usually not going to be fielding entire armies (e.g. most armies tend to not field 4 times the same hero, and fielding entire armies of say kurnoth hunters with scythes isn't exactly common either). Calling that "common" is a bit of a stretch imho. There's only a few spammable units in that list.

Admittadly, it is entirely possible that a (local) meta has evolved that spams these particular units, but that's a different matter I guess. Then it's not so much that -2 rend is "common" as much as it is that people just insist on using it as much as humanly possible and skipping over other options even when those other options should be better which probably indicates a general balance issue.

 

i would defend a few of my choices but you don't need an entire army of these units they are elates or storm troops you don't need to kill an intir army of gaurd just the ones protecting the warden if you have all three guard protecting him then you can be safely ignored thanks to guards lack of mobility.

of coarse you wont see most of these at tournaments but you won't see guard ether and this is ignoring all the mortal wound units that are used a lot more but one storm cast balista (witch are very common) or a single eel charge can break a 20 man unit of guard in half and for a lot cheaper.

 

O yeah defeating guard isn't too difficult, and 1 unit with -2 rend will already be liable to devestate them, especially if it's a ranged unit like the balista. I was just wondering about the claim "-2 rend is common". Which based on this I don't think it really is. It's not uncommon enough to ignore, but it's isn't a near-guarantee like mortal wounds are. But yea, yet another glaring weakness for our guard, god they need a rework badly.

On a sidenote, has there ever been a F.A.Q. as to why our shields only work against specific levels of rend? It's such an awkward rule to only work against rend of X or lower, and be useless against any rend that's higher than X.

 

well my original clame was they weren't uncommon and i qualified it but ya i could have been more spasific. sigh i wish they where good temple gaurd is one of our coolest units the hole stand firm and kill hundreds until you die is awesome but it doesn't reflect on the table.

I've been looking and i can't find anything it would be really easy to fix just have it reduse rend by 1 and bam its a lot less clunky. and it wouldn't even break anything our units out side of guard don't have good enuf saves to capitalize on it and guard have a lot of other problems.

 

I’m a little confused how this would get the guards down to 2+, they have a 4+ standard save, 3+ with the starhost but don’t all those spells just help you reroll saves?

 

Wait I’m an idiot, forgot about their ability around hero’s, my bad. Sounds fun to do but too much of an investment imo

 

Their own ability gives them +1 save when near a hero i believe

 

ypu witch the warden counts as so you get it twice from him and once for non battalion heroes. protect those skinks!

 

Meh, the investment isn't even that steep, issue is just that mortal wounds are so stupidly common that unless guard are basicly free they just won't work. You can currently get an eternal starhost going for around 500 points, it's probably one of the cheaper battalions out there and that includes a skink priest for the re-rolls. But they're just so stupidly easy to wipe out that even that isn't enough. As an example just look at the increadibly long list of SCE units that counter the entire starhost on their own. Like half of their units just flat out destroy the starhost at a fraction of the cost since you only need the 1 wizard or the one minimum sized squad to pull it of given the oppertunity which is absurd...