Temple Guard The unit: The Easiest thing to compare a unit of temple guard to is a brick wall, the unit has a 2+ save in close combat, high ld, and cold blooded. The difference between these and saurus is this, they have light armour, 4WS and options for magical equipement, along with nifty halberds. Not only that, but Temple Guard become stubborn and immune to pshychology when housing the Slann. The unit can have many roles, but most can be broken down into two.... The first of these two and the most obvious choice is to have them house your Slann (which they must if the Slann is in the army). This makes them almost impossible to break. If you give the slaan the BSB, then they will be stubborn, with ld 8 and rerolling all failed break tests. Furthermore, all but 2 temple guard have to die before your Slann is able to be attacked (if you are fighting to the front), and since these hardy lizards have a 2+ save, 4 WS, and 4 Toughness, that is a truly tough feat for most armies. The second choice, and a personal favourite of mine, is the berserker option. Temple guard can hold up to just about anything, and a few players think that sitting them back to protect your lord can be a waste. Without the expensive Slann in their ranks, you can march them up beside saurus warriors. With good options for magical banners. Saurus are elite infantry, but sometimes they just can't hold against troops like chaos warriors, where your temple guard will be able to fight almost toe to claw with! Comparison Saurus are the second most elite core infantry unit in the game, but they have several issues. Such as weaponskill 3. The following is a rundown of the 2 units. 18 Saurus Vs 30 clanrat- Clanrats will ussually go first, and, if we assume they have a 5 frontage, and you a 5, and that saurus are using spears (as they should), then the average number of hits the clanrats will get will be 2.5, with a 0.83333333333 chance of wounding with just one of those attacks, and a 0.41 chance of death to a saurus. Assuming the saurus lives, then you get 24! attacks back! 12 of these will hit and 7.92 will wound. Out of these, 5.28 will result in a kill. So the saurus have achieved 1 wound. But the large unit of clanrats (ussually taken in the 30's) has +3 for ranks, +1 outnumber, banner and musician, you on the other hand have 5 kills, and 2 ranks + banner, meaning the clanrats lost by 3. 16 Temple guard, when fighting 30 clanrats- Assuming clanrats and their higher I strike first again, you can expect 2.5 hits, and 0.83333333333 wounds again, only this time, chances of losing a Temple Guard are only 0.138 percent (because of LA, Scaly skin and shield)! The remaining temple guard will strike back with 10 attacks, because of higher ws, 6.6 of those attacks will hit. 4.356 will wound, and will kill 2.87496 clanrats-around 3 kills. You have 3 kills, 2 ranks and banner. They have 0 kills 3 ranks, outnumber and banner. You will win by 1. As you can see, Temple guard are not as effective against light troops, but now we will visit the other end of the spectrum... You are charged by 5 DE cold one riders. You have 18 saurus, but the elves strike first. Because of higher WS, they hit you on 3's, meaning 3.3 will hit...HOWEVER eternal hatred means they reroll the 1.7 misses, and 1.122 more will hit. Meaning a total of 4.4 will hit you. These attacks, at str 6, will wound on 2's (meaning 3.66666666 ) and the lances will mean you lose your armour save, and a few dead saurus. Then the cold ones attack. Hitting on 4's, 2.5 will hit, and with rerolls, 3.75 will hit. Since they need 4's to wound, 1.875 will get through, and a 5+ save will mean 1.2+3.66666=4.8...So almost 5 saurus dead. Now you have 10 attacks back. All hitting on 4's, 5 will get through. Then, the squishy elves will be wounded on 3's, 3.3 will wound...and with a 3+ save, only 1.06...or 1 cold one will die! Now they have 5 kills, banner, and you have 1 Kill, 2 rank and banner...they win by 2, meaning you need under a 6 on cold blooded LD to not be broken! Because of higher WS, the 16 temple guard are hit on 4,s meaning with hatred, only 3.75 will hit you.3.15 will wound...however, you will have a 5+ save! Leaving around 2 dead temple guard. The cold ones will then attack, 2.5 of them hitting, and only 1.25 wounds...with a 0.2 chance of death! Losing only 2 temple guards (Hooray shields), you get 6 attacks back, 3 of wich will hit, and 2 of which will wound, with 1.32 chance of death. Thanks to your 2+ save, you have only lost 2 guard. YOU outnumber, you have 1 rank, and you got 1 kill. with banners negating each other, you have won by 1 combat res! Even if the DE pass, next turn they will be crushed without the bonus from their lances! So, as you can see, temple guard can be much more effective against heavy opponents then saurus can! When to use what! With the choice of halberds or shields, many people can become power hungry and want to use the +1 Str offered by the halberd. However, this isnt the best option. Halberds should only EVER be used when either a) you wont have an armour save better then 6+, or B) Your charging a unit, such as ogres, that you wish to negate the amount of attacks back as much as possible, and that has low LD and less ranks, to guarantee that if they are beaten they will break. The rest of the time, shields should be your option. They keep more TG alive to fight another day, and since they could be guarding a toad, you'll want as many as possible! Things to watch out for! You should always screen TG from enemy shooters! Bolt throwers and skaven ratling guns (and magic) can desimate the expensive unit if your not careful. Chariots should be looked out for, because of all the temple guard they can kill on impact... Swamps of troops. These should be avoided as TG are more effective elsewhere! ANYTHING INVOLVING INITIATIVE TESTS! AS THEY ARE VERY VERY SLOW IN!!!!! Comments are appreciated, aswell as better updates!
Just to nit pick (sorry, bad habit of mine I'm trying to cut) you mentioned that after the combat with the Dark Elf Cold one knights the saurus would get 1 for ranks when they would have gotten a 2 as ranks are given BEFORE the combat occurs that round, that is considering you said they were five wide so 18 gives you 3 full ranks and three fellas in the back. Its not much but just for the sake of completion I thought I would point it out. Aside from that its a pretty solid write up that will, hopefully, evolve with the help of the members here into a definite case for using our most powerful infantry unit. I would also like to add that Temple Guard form an incredible anvil unit in High numbers (15+) and excellent flank refusal units (-15).
Firstly only the TG become stubborn, not the slann, so they are stubborn Ld 8 or non-stubborn Ld 9. Secondly it's actually all but two TG have to die before the Slann (not slaan! He is an evil god in something I think) has to be in combat as your rear rank cannot be wider than your front rank (see armybook p41, the example with skrox).
You did some pretty harsh rounding here. First you rounded 3.66 wounds up to 4, fair enough, but then you added that rounded value to 1.2 wounds rounded up to 2. You should add all the wounds with fractions together then round up or down for an actual number. 3.66 kills from the riders + 1.2 from the CO's makes 4.88, or just under 5 kills rather than 6. I'm not sure how you worked out they were up by only 2 after 6 kills either. Banners cancel, they have 6 kills, you have 2 ranks and outnumber (you killed one of them remember), should be up by 3. But of course reducing the kills to 5 brings it back to 2 anyway. You did a point by point analysis right? Equal points of everything you used. Really if you are going to use a unit of 18 saurus in the example, they would probably be 6x3 rather than 5x3 with a few extras, which gives them 4 extra attacks. You need to optomise what you have because on the battlefield you certainly will be trying to use units to their full capability. You would use the CO's as 2x2 with one extra at the back would you? 2 wounds on the the DE CO's, and 1.32 die? Don't the TG have s4 since you took shields, so the CO's still get a 3+ save? That means only .66 die not 1.32, so you cannot rely on a kill. Ok stats aside now, I think we need a little more on how to actually use TG on the battlefield, a few good things to equip them with, good unit sizes etc. Also, a lot of people have said (before this thread) that TG will make a good flanking unit in a unit of 10. Has anyone actually tried this to see how it works? I know I have theorised that it would be good, and intend to try it, but you can't ignore the fact that they are only M4 and you need to move better and quicker to get into good flanking positions. Would be interesting to see how it works in practice.
Thanks! I guess I was just a little tired after the school day....Ill change the saurus' stuff now Ill keep it at 5 frontage, for this example, if I were to do Saurus vs clanrats, many players will note that the saurus have much larger bases, meaning 6 saurus ussually dont get into contact...ive tried this and ussually only 5 will make it at max... 18 saurus with musician and standard are 234 points 16 TG with full cmd-guardian=277 So a 43 point difference...not amazingly high, but a slight shift....the general point is still seen though....
Unfortunately I can't Illustrate this, but 4 saurus are 100mm wide (4 x 25mm) as are 5 Clanrats (5 x 20mm) so if the saurus are 6 models wide the 2 hanging over the ends, when maximised, are in corner to corner contact with the clanrats.
Hmmm, must be angles of the charge.....but still, even 5 wide saurus are better then TG's at taking down hordes...Ill fix
i have indeed tried to use TG as flankers, they got hit in the flank by a unit of marauder horse men and broke. these are terrible as flankers.they are too slow, will be dealing with fast cav or skirmishers. they can dance around you all game. not pretty. good luck geeting me to take these guys as anything but guards for my slann. though i am interested to here about this beserking.
10 of them have a kill count of 28 plaguemonks, and the only reason they stopped their was Warplightning.. in another game, 10 black orcs, a bigboss (RUN down!), like 20 goblins with spears...and a troll ( cut up by awesometastic halberds!)
Ussually a +1 (warbanner) and with my Revered_Guardian having sword of the hornet to not allow as many attacks against me incase im charged
If some people are confused by my remark about TG being good flank refusal units allow me to clarify. A small unit of temple guard placed on one side of the table and advancing along side the rest of the army is a hard enough unit that the opponent must either dedicate several units and turns to remove them or not use that table edge for flanking your larger and more important units. This unit is likely to become either mushy pulp or bored to death. It is also very handy lined up in front and to the side of a salamander hunting pack ---------TTTTT ---------TTTTT ---S----------- --s--s--------- ---s----------- as such it can allow the salamanders to focus on firing at targets that will result in optimal outcomes, instead of becoming focused on and tied up by a unit of, for example, savage boyz that are aimed at and rapidly approaching said salamander.