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A Different Breed (Warhammer 29K)

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Skjadir said:
The militia is going to be totally desolved because they are fucking useless and the detachments are beyond garbage.

The whole argument about the militia detachments being useful runs head first into the problems that they baseline are utter crap. They aren't going to hold anything and are just going to die in pretty much all case and hope to stop them with the mass of bodies which if something lands on our craftworld isn't going to impress.

They are pretty much on the level of civilians grabbing random object to charge something else, with the gear they have.

And we kind of want to disband them now because we have the AP free now, that isn't going to be the case later on when we have the setup to create new detachments /when we have more things to deploy our warhosts/fleets against.
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I don't disagree that they're garbage as far as units, my point is that right now said garbage is a large portion of all we have. Here's how I see our strategic situation:
  1. Our craftworld cannot move. This means no avoiding attacks or escaping from them.
  2. Our allied craftworlds cannot move. Same risks.
  3. The exodite maiden worlds we're befriending cannot move. Same risks.
  4. Our navy and army is likely equivalent to any other eldar military in terms of material (though exact breakdown will differ). In chargen we took the military malus option, so we're almost certainly still woefully behind as far as training and experience. I expect we'd lose 1:1 with no confounding factors.
  5. We may or may not be able to interdict the webway leading to us. Similarly it's unclear how effective any interdiction would be - I expect we shouldn't expect much if any ships making it through, but I think it's likely ground detachments could.
  6. There are orks all over the place near us. We have to be able to deal with any attacks.
  7. It's not unusual (at least in canon future) for eldar to play games to use patsies to fight, so there's potentially extra risk in there being orks around.
  8. We "know" (standard seer vs seer caveats) Biel Tan is coming. They are military minded, so 1:1 equivalent units they're likely to win. They have seers and aren't dumb (for all they have tunnel vision and a goal I find foolish), so I doubt they're sending anything they expect won't be able to do its job. I expect regulars in sufficient numbers to accomplish their goals (raiding and pillaging? convincing other eldar we're not a viable path to survival long term?).
  9. We have not had time to really take advantage of our industrial advantages to set up detachments that are better 1:1 than other eldar.
Anyway, all that stuff boils down to us and our allies are vulnerable, we haven't had time to patch our chargen issues as far as unit quality/training, and we have at least one set of roughly equivalent enemies in Biel Tan that isn't stupid and has their own seers. If an attack is actually coming (ie if they don't change their minds after seer stuff), I'd expect it to be soon and in enough force to do serious damage.

That's why I want to keep even the garbage militia - it's one more thing they have to consider when attacking, one more thing that might tip the scales into not attacking. In the future when we have replacements I'd be comfortable standing them down, but I don't think we should spend dice on it now just because we have the dice available.


Hmm, actually, that has me wondering, @Mechanis can we do some sort of military action to spend AP on for like... extensive training or war games or something? Try to improve our units on a training basis separately from the stewardship stuff.
 
I reconsider about Warrior AP being scarce - it will be when we have enough equipment, for sure. Which is not soon, though. It'll take decades to get the industry running. But that's only more reason to keep militia around because refitting militia will take Steward AP!
 
Vehrec said:
Well, we should at least build the void-guard armor to equip all our hearthguard with them. Seriously, our current troops are all militia, even in Hearthguard detatchments, and a run of brigantine and void guard armor can always be used for better units and vehicle crews later. The Blades of Isha in particular have twelve Guardian Militia assault squads, shouldn't we at least provide them with better protection?

If the argument that we should liquidate all our militia right now is 'because they are crap' then making them slightly less crap saves some lives by not having the crap holding the line when we come under attack. If the argument is 'we should liquidate them now to free up equipment for new units' that's bullshit because we don't want most of their equipment anyways. All their jetbikes, armor, and most of their weapons are going into the trash if we're only raising new pattern units. Hearthguard units have a higher ratio of actually useable equipment, should we be looking at liquidating them?
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The argument to liquidate them is that we are not going to retrofit all of them, and even then we will desolve them later. And that we have the AP for that now that otherwise get wasted.

Retrofitting is less of an AP burden, but still not free.
As is the plan on retrofitting (somewhat depending on how the refit AP works exactly) is grab some militia assault detachments and upgrade their gear massively and pretty much turn them into a smaller copy of our newly designed troops.

vsh said:
I reconsider about Warrior AP being scarce - it will be when we have enough equipment, for sure. Which is not soon, though. It'll take decades to get the industry running. But that's only more reason to keep militia around because refitting militia will take Steward AP!
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*looks at the forge being pretty much locked into gear production for the next 3-4 turns min*
We are good very fast on gear and should be able to create actual good detachments pretty damn fast.
 
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Skjadir said:
*looks at the forge being pretty much locked into gear production for the next 3-4 turns min*
We are good very fast on gear and should be able to create actual good detachments pretty damn fast.
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Our squads are expensive, like 500-700 EP each, with Mirage included. Forge will spit out about 3 detachments worth of gear per turn. I think we'll actually spend a couple turns on retrofitting current warhosts, then will raise 2-4 detachments per turn for a while while our industry builds up.
 
vsh said:
Our squads are expensive, like 500-700 EP each, with Mirage included. Forge will spit out about 3 detachments worth of gear per turn. I think we'll actually spend a couple turns on retrofitting current warhosts, then will raise 2-4 detachments per turn for a while while our industry builds up.
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Our line infantry is like 200 for a squad. ~> 400 with Mirage
The only ones that are expensive are the assault squads because they each have like 50EP worth of gear.
~800 with Mirage included.

If we cut the Mirages to save on EP we can retro fit a lot in one go after the baseline for the Assault detachments (that are home) in the warhosts is done.

The main reason that the assault detachments get upgraded first is because at the moment they are sending people with no armor and non power melee weapons to fight stuff like orks.
 
I've removed the disbanding in favor of raising a Warhost from our remaining halfway decent units. Broadly, it fields 4 Standard Detachments, 2 Hearthguard Skirmish and 2 Militia Line, backed with 4 Battlecaster Support Detachments to give it a fair amount of psychic clout to hopefully compensate.

But that's it, we don't really have enough Detachments with regulars to form any more past that, just more Militia. And we've got 3 WAP left, I'm not sure what to do with it at this point, since we still can't retrofit anyone until we have a new detachment type, and we're not forming those until next turn because timing rules are weird.
 
One way to do the refit using mostly warrior AP is this:

First design a new detachment that is identical to the Militia line one with one exception: Guardian Militia Fire Squads are replaced by Brightsword Squads(cost 1 steward AP)
next turn disband 2 Militia line and use most of their gear to raise the newly created detachment(only cost will be the gear needed for the Brightsword Squads)

Maybe replace the militia jetbikes with hearthguard ones
 
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Alectai said:
I've removed the disbanding in favor of raising a Warhost from our remaining halfway decent units. Broadly, it fields 4 Standard Detachments, 2 Hearthguard Skirmish and 2 Militia Line, backed with 4 Battlecaster Support Detachments to give it a fair amount of psychic clout to hopefully compensate.

But that's it, we don't really have enough Detachments with regulars to form any more past that, just more Militia. And we've got 3 WAP left, I'm not sure what to do with it at this point, since we still can't retrofit anyone until we have a new detachment type, and we're not forming those until next turn because timing rules are weird.
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To my understanding we don't need a new detachment for retrofiting.
We just grab an old detachment and give them new gear.

We need the new detachments to raise detachments that have our new units included.
 
Alectai said:
Yeah, but we need that new gear in advance, and it won't be ready until next turn.
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There is still a difference there and that matters.

Anyway here the quote for that for anyone interested.
Mechanis said:
You pay X to refit Y Detachments, yes, and you are correct in the conclusion that you do indeed have the same squad sizes. (Refits being more ad-hoc than rationalizations, they will be noted in a Detachment or Warhost's description as something along the lines of "these squads have been given XYZ in exchange for ABC")
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Alectai said:
I've removed the disbanding in favor of raising a Warhost from our remaining halfway decent units. Broadly, it fields 4 Standard Detachments, 2 Hearthguard Skirmish and 2 Militia Line, backed with 4 Battlecaster Support Detachments to give it a fair amount of psychic clout to hopefully compensate.

But that's it, we don't really have enough Detachments with regulars to form any more past that, just more Militia. And we've got 3 WAP left, I'm not sure what to do with it at this point, since we still can't retrofit anyone until we have a new detachment type, and we're not forming those until next turn because timing rules are weird.
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I'd prefer to keep psykers in reserve - they will be useful in the real warhost we're going to raise eventually - and make two shitty-ish mostly militia warhosts that will never leave craftworld unless retrofitted.
 
edofthesquid said:
I don't disagree that they're garbage as far as units, my point is that right now said garbage is a large portion of all we have. Here's how I see our strategic situation:
  1. Our craftworld cannot move. This means no avoiding attacks or escaping from them.
  2. Our allied craftworlds cannot move. Same risks.
  3. The exodite maiden worlds we're befriending cannot move. Same risks.
  4. Our navy and army is likely equivalent to any other eldar military in terms of material (though exact breakdown will differ). In chargen we took the military malus option, so we're almost certainly still woefully behind as far as training and experience. I expect we'd lose 1:1 with no confounding factors.
  5. We may or may not be able to interdict the webway leading to us. Similarly it's unclear how effective any interdiction would be - I expect we shouldn't expect much if any ships making it through, but I think it's likely ground detachments could.
  6. There are orks all over the place near us. We have to be able to deal with any attacks.
  7. It's not unusual (at least in canon future) for eldar to play games to use patsies to fight, so there's potentially extra risk in there being orks around.
  8. We "know" (standard seer vs seer caveats) Biel Tan is coming. They are military minded, so 1:1 equivalent units they're likely to win. They have seers and aren't dumb (for all they have tunnel vision and a goal I find foolish), so I doubt they're sending anything they expect won't be able to do its job. I expect regulars in sufficient numbers to accomplish their goals (raiding and pillaging? convincing other eldar we're not a viable path to survival long term?).
  9. We have not had time to really take advantage of our industrial advantages to set up detachments that are better 1:1 than other eldar.
Anyway, all that stuff boils down to us and our allies are vulnerable, we haven't had time to patch our chargen issues as far as unit quality/training, and we have at least one set of roughly equivalent enemies in Biel Tan that isn't stupid and has their own seers. If an attack is actually coming (ie if they don't change their minds after seer stuff), I'd expect it to be soon and in enough force to do serious damage.

That's why I want to keep even the garbage militia - it's one more thing they have to consider when attacking, one more thing that might tip the scales into not attacking. In the future when we have replacements I'd be comfortable standing them down, but I don't think we should spend dice on it now just because we have the dice available.


Hmm, actually, that has me wondering, @Mechanis can we do some sort of military action to spend AP on for like... extensive training or war games or something? Try to improve our units on a training basis separately from the stewardship stuff.
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If they stage their troops now, they could wait until we disband our forces and then attack while we are busy standing up new ones. They have seers. It depends on how often they are scrying us, we dont exactly have defenses up against that sort of thing.
 
Professor Vesca said:
If they stage their troops now, they could wait until we disband our forces and then attack while we are busy standing up new ones. They have seers. It depends on how often they are scrying us, we dont exactly have defenses up against that sort of thing.
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Personally, I think if Biel-Tan attacks us during Turn 2, we're most likely screwed either way. Our VG and Ilthimar-using formations exist only on paper for now. The best thing we could do is use the gear produced by Forge and distribute it to existing warhosts or militia in a "take this yesterday" slapdash refit. We could probably win if we get lucky, but it will leave us immensly vulnerable. I think the gamble of disbanding now and remaking with better gear next turn is worth it. That way we will have at least some decent units in the middle of turn 3 to really stand our ground without resorting to IG-style meatgrinder.
 
Okay, so I made a little spreadsheet in Libre office and counted up all the detachments. By my count, the army of Vau-Vulkesh stands at:

Eight Battlecaster Support Detachments
Eight Hearthguard Light Support Detachments
Twenty-nine Militia Light Support Detachments
Twenty-five Militia Line Detachments
Twenty Militia Assault Detachments
Eight hearthguard Skirmish Detachments
Five Bladestorm Detachments
Ten Milita Heavy Detachments
Four Hearthguard Armor Detachments
Four Hearthguard Line Detachments
Two Armored Assault Detachments
and Two Mechanized Headquarters Detachments

Each of these contains varrying levels of outdated equipment, but the total count stands at:
  • 905 laspistols
  • 1336 lascarbine
  • 1407 lasguns
  • 4432 Wraithbone Trauma Plate
  • 529 Wraithweave Voidsuits
  • 2682 Wraithbone Hardsuits
Replacing all those hardsuits with Void Guard Armor would take about 3 Forge of Vaul actions and two Bonesinger points, replacing all the trauma-plate and voidsuits with Brigantine takes 2 more, and replacing all our Lasweapons with needlers, takes 3 more forge of Vaul actions, plus a little extra from a Bonesinger AP or two. Call it seven or eight forge actions, more if we want to actually replace old-model jetbikes.

ETA: I also estimated the cost for replacing one of our Bladestorm detatchments with an All-Ithilmar force, 3 squads of Forgefire and 3 squads of their melta-and-grav hammer kin represented by...3 more squads of Forgefires, plus the Mirage transports. 4842 EP spent on one detachment.
 
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Probably worth spending some non-forge actions on foundries for the stuff we don't need as much of, or that we'll want to be making constantly. See if we can save an ap or two
 
So, I was reading up on some High Tech... the Mechanicus apparently also has Shielding technology based on Stasis Fields.
Eldar don't normally touch time manipulation, but we might.
Compared to our current shields, they seem to be of the type "Nullify any number of attacks, regardless of their strength that are happening within a short span of time, and then stop for recharge"

Dark eldar have Void mines, which deploy a force field in the first part of the shot, and then deploy antimatter within that sphere.
Mindphase are debuff weapons, which might be useful to install on melee troops.
They not only have the Glass Plague, but also a shatterfield missile, which freezes and then shatters the victims.
The Monoscythe missile seems to be another application of weaponized force fields, like the Ork's Bubba blasta.

Most of the rest of their weapons are just exceessively sadistic, and I don't think we want anything to do with them.

The Craftworlders also have D-Scythes, which seem to be AOE "Your soul is now in the warp" weapons. This comes with a heavy cultural taboo against "usurping the gods" which we may want to respect. Dark eldar also have this kind of weapon, but they're even meaner about it...
Direswords are insta-kill force weapons, but require a spirit-stone in their construction. Probably not something we will be using.
Ghosthelms might be an interesting to start producing in larger numbers for raids into crone-worlds.

The Hexagraphe is a technology that uses psychic pulses to create mental maps.
Depending on how much of our psyker potential we retain/regain from fixing our souls, Hexegraphe tech would be something extremely useful. Imagine a telepathically connected squad with perfect awareness.
And then add weapons that don't care about cover/armour (Such as Meson Blasters, but there could be others...)
Needless to say, it would also be a formidable thing to have in a defence scenario.

And this concludes my effortpost/presentation :)
 
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vsh said:
We don't need to disband. We don't need to gamble. If we want new detachments and not refits we can just raise new ones. The only resource they compete for is CP which we have an overabundance of.
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So this turn we would need to produce a chunk of equipment and design a detachment to make use of it. The issue is what to do with Warrior points then... If it was allowed, I think the idea of running a military excercise to give our troops at least some experience could be nice.
 
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