BoLS Hybrid Editorital

Well I said I'd post something later today but John made me go find this and wtf >.<.

GWvsJohn's original post can be found here. The BoLS article can be found here.

Now let's get things straight here (again). Mech is good in 5th. Fullstop. See here. If you haven't figured it out yet, go hug a tree. Now Hybrid takes ADVANTAGE of mech and uses different troop types to accentuate those advantages or improve them. For example, two very common bubble-wrap units used by Tau (kroot) and Imperial Guard (combined infantry platoon). These bubble-wrap units help defend against alpha strikes (keep your meltas out of melta range thanks!) and keep opponents in the killing field (like away from your guns and stuff). Now there are viable foot armies (Calvary SW and Tyranids) but lists like Space Marines adore mech. I'll quote GWvsJohn later to review this.

So now that we've covered the bloody obvious...

GWvsJohn says nearly everything that needs to be said in his reply (you'll have to find it yourself; and I like how jwolf ignores him :P) but I'll add a few bits and emphasize the rest. First off this is only about Imperial armies, so SWolf, IG, SM, WH and DH so keep that in mind.

#10) If you still have tanks, they still die. What the hell is the point of this point? And when you have an all foot army guns like railguns (why the hell did you use that example?) shoot a S6 5" blast. That was fun. Otherwise because an army list should contain duality and/or shouldn't be paying out the wazoo for a single focus unit (like a trip-las pred) those couple of high S shots don't cripple the opponent's army.

#9) So I can get 17 bolt shots and a special weapon when I jump out of my Rhino or I can get a special/heavy out of the top hatch (and not move) or a special/bolter, etc. Oh ya, and I survive cause I'm in a damned transport. When you need to get out you can you know. It's not like you're forced to stay in your transport until it blows up. Add in how dirt cheap they are or transports like Immolators, RBacks and Chimeras all of which give a unit more firepower and I'm calling bullshit.

#8) You want me to target your infantry with my blasts rather than your tanks? Uh ok, that's what they were designed for you know. Ordnance has the nice addition of being quite effective at damaging vehicles but it's not your primary anti-tank as it's not reliable enough (ask an Eldar player how their Fire Prisms fair as anti-tank compared to anti-infantry). Players with blasts/large blasts WANT to shoot your infantry with them and not tanks. You've given them a free go of not having to shoot the transports first. In a proper Hybrid list (IG and Tau) you don't care if they die, they are meant to. They are defensive layers (though the IG one for 30 pts extra can put out 6 S7 AP4 shots).

#7) I didn't know foot units had a magic "confusion" button. 50% of the time does the opponent damage himself? (really bad reference lol)

#6) 6+D6 =/= 12" particularly when moving through terrain. You have 2 dice rolls to navigate whilst the tank has 1. Yes immob on terrain is annoying. a) try and immob near an objective or where you can affect the battlefield b) you can get out of your transport...

#5) A fair point if you can't read and play 40k well. Look at Daemons at the beginning of 5th. Full of fail yet kept winning because people didn't know what to do. This works against mediocre players. Good players know your book inside and out and if they don't, they're not good.

#4) Another fair point except you're paying for the transport and not using it...? Empty pods, ok, but your infantry unit still has to overcome all the other points you've failed to consider. Yay I have a Rhino/Chimera/Immolator to annoy the opponent with. Boo I lost twice to four times the points in infantry from that Battle Cannon. When you drop off your cargo (i.e. Melta Vets) then that transport can be a very effective unit late game but why give your opponent an advantage with an empty transport from the get go? (again other than pods). If you've got an empty transport put something in it (like allied ISTs) or pay the points for something that will help you win the game rather than "hope this sucker survives so I can contest that objective over there!".

#3) Yes 'non-linear' units can supplement a mech list. That's why we call it Hybrid. Remember the bubble-wrap unit examples? A single pod isn't going to, nor are a couple of outflanking units. Remember your example with the outflank? What happens when you get refuse flanked? And isn't that Chosen unit better in a Rhino anyways? Or that pod comes in T1 and gets wasted because it's all alone? Etc.

#2) My army lists have pretty much stayed the same. Why? BECAUSE THEY CAN DEAL WITH EVERYTHING. It's called balanced. Hybrid Tau, Mech Eldar, Mech SM and working on Calvary SWolf. Every list can deal with any other list. Wtf is adapting your list to what someone else in your group plays when you go to a tournament and get owned by a balanced list? Oh right, it's called fail.

#1) Wait wait wait. Did you just say Combat squad w/PFist? First of all, wtf is a PFist doing in a Tac squad? 2nd, wtf are you doing making the PFist more vulnerable? Ok glad we got that out of the way. Synergy is a "hybrid" only concept? Excuse me for wtfing again and walking away.

Oh and this gem of a comment from jwolf:
Orks are very scary on foot, but scarier with a Big Mek in a Battlewagon keeping the lines moving.

Ya scary for my kill ratio. Orks are not scary on foot because it's so easy to stop them. See the why Mech > Foot post. Again. Then read all 10 points above. Again. It's not rocket science.

And to round out I'll drop a line from GWvsJohn:
Sorry Jwolf, for vanilla Marines, hybrid is not the way to go. All it does is expose your troops earlier and make decisions for your opponents easier. Hybrid SM is like the opposite of the new 'Nids. A big plus of the new 'Nids is how t4 Warriors and t6 MC force your opponent to choose where to spend his high S shots. Every time your opponent has to make that decision, there's a chance he'll get it wrong. That's good for you. Mech does the same thing. In a Mech list, the non-scary, but scoring Tacticals demand the same AT fire as the Speeders and Dreads that are killing you. That forces decisions. In a hybrid list, AT can focus on threats while anti-troop can kill your slow, exposed marines.

Completely agreed. SM was simply put, designed to do mech. At 1500 points they can put down a ridiculous amount of armor, all of which is a threat, still threaten you at range and be that much better at <24". Start adding in non-mech elements outside of a baser sitter (i.e. Scouts) and your army takes less cohesiveness and is therefore more vulnerable to a properly balanced army, not to mention what has been said above (i.e. anti-infantry guns shooting from T1). IG and Space Wolves (and armies like Tau and Tyranids) are not SM. They are much more able to build different type of lists than SM. Whilst I love the variety of the new books in ability to make different feeling lists, the SM one is the worst of the 4 (SM, IG, SW, Tyranids) but has so many combinations under the heading Mech it makes up for it.

From the recent codex trend it seems GW is trying to give a specific book a "go-to" army list so to speak. I.e. SM = full mech. IG = hybrid mech. SW = calvary. Tyranids = MC/foot. Under these general banners are a lot of potential lists but it seems as if GW wants someone new to come in and say:

"I like tons of guys!" or "I like moving quickly but hate tanks." etc. and the salesman to go "This army is for you."

Bit of a tangent there but whatcanyoudo.

Back to the BoLS article. Hybrid is good, but for 10 other reasons than you listed. But let's think of some good Mech examples and make them Hybrid. Let's take Immo spam. 10 Immos, 2 Rhinos, 20 Sisters, 20 Celestians, 15 Dominions, a ton of melta and flamers. Let's go hybrid...wait I just ruined the list and can now field less melta, less flamers, less vehicles and less heavy-flamers leaving me with less mobility and less firepower because the only FoC slots that aren't filled are Troops and 1 HQ. Since I'm running 150pt dualmelta Celestians in Immos (that's a 12" move, 2 meltaguns and a heavy-flamer) or 138pt dualflamer Dominions in Immos it's hard to get more efficiency than that. I could run more sisters? yay slower flamers. Or Heavy Weapon sisters? Yay a static unit in a mobile list that doesn't hold objectives or gets a cover bonus. So Hybriding WH fails.

Edit: me = fail. Forgot about adding in a platoon from IG for some autocannons. This is completely viable though changes the dynamics of the list slightly as you have a bit less of a midfield presence but a much bigger backfield presence + ability to fire as you move up. However, every unit bar the one platoon in the backfield is mounted and like an SM list with a scout objective holder we shall not call this hybrid.

SM mech? Well a basis of 3xRifleDread, 3xflamer/mm/rhino tac, 6x MM/HF speeder, 3x ACLC pred and a scout squad + HQ + sometimes allied Inquisitor. You've got a tiny foot unit in the scouts which sometimes includes an inquisitor or not and generally a MotF. 2+ save and barely does any damage in itself so it can soak up any fire directed at it until a flamer gets there. So it doesn't suffer from being blasted away early on when they aren't in a transport. So that's an okay unit to use in a mech army, particularly since it holds an objective and can hide characters which can do some damage (MotF w/beamer or Inq/Libby w/psycannon/spells + anti psychic abilities) just like the platoon in the WH Immo army. Now let's try and hybrid this up extensively. We could add some Sternguard? Nah lose a lot of long range firepower, no matter how much you say 150pt 2x Lascannon sternguard are worth, my 125pt Rifledread is better. Pod? Alphastrike then dead. Vanguard? They suck. Foot Marines? Wohoo! wait, what do they do again? Ok let's try and combat squad with a lascannon and meltas. Well the lascannon squad kinda sucks as you're paying 90 pts for it and single lascannons aren't that great. Beyond the fact a nice stiff wind can blow them away and your midfield presence is terrible (5 man marine squads don't hold diddly) and we shall pass on that. Okay, how about some drop pods? Well they are going to be all alone for quite a bit and therefore generally die. You're essentially coming in two waves then (like Daemons) and if you attempt to full drop pod, there are a lot of counters out there for it (which means it isn't balanced, which means it fails). So, SM don't like it either.

We've covered IG (they do like it but don't go overboard with it. Your foot units need a purpose and that purpose is to protect your army, alphastrike and DIE and if they don't die they can do something like hold objectives or shoot you or tie you up in combat forever, etc.). SWolves are a different story. I don't like Hybrid SWolf because SM do Mech better and SWolves unique aspects are foot units (Long Fangs, Calvary, Lone Wolves, etc.) and those units don't often like mech (mainly the calvary as it blocks charge lanes and clogs the board) but those type of lists can work I just think pure foot lists for SWolves are more efficient.

Again, Hybrid is viable for certain books. Other books can't pull it off. Those cheap transports for SM and WH make the whole army better. Not taking 105 pts worth of Rhinos makes the army worse and what are you going to buy for 105 pts? Not much.

People need to learn what this game is about. It's not about evolution to other's army lists. That's tailoring. I take a very similar list to the table nearly everytime we play (unless for shits and giggles) and my friend adapted his list. I whipped out another army and dropped the heavy end of the hammer on his crappy tailoring. He doesn't tailor anymore. That's why I have multiple armies that I enjoy and play differently. I don't get bored and when someone does tailor to one of my armies I can pick another one and show him how sill that is. If it's not about tailoring army lists, what is it? It's about understanding the rules and how they interact with the rules of your army book and your opponent's army book. Since 5th has been out for so long this should of been done ages ago. New book = new understanding. All the Imperial books are not new anymore.

John look what you made me do! Argh, bed time.