40K: The Conscription Bypass
Guard Commanders, are you bummed about your Conscripts? Well perk-up! we’ve got some good news that might just make your day.
Let’s get real for a moment – Conscripts got a much needed nerf. Taking a Squad of 50 and enabling them to fire off orders with little-to-no issues was a bit much. By most accounts, the drop to a max size of 30 and having orders work on them only on a 4+ seems like a good fix…But not if you’re a Guardsmen!
That’s the breaks – sorry Guardsmen
That Raw Recruits seems like a pretty raw deal, right? It can really hinder you ability to issue an order to this unit. But remember that phrase: “issue an order” – it’s going to come up again shortly.
So what is a commander to do? “Well what about that stratagem you can use to help consolidate those squads?” You mean Consolidate Squads?
Except – NOPE! That only applies to Infantry Squads (pg 93) which are a separate unit entry. Nice try though. “Okay, so what can we do?”
Give them orders without giving them orders! Confused? Don’t worry, I got you covered. All it takes is a couple of Cadian units which you can slide in your list.
You’re going to want to take an Officer of some type – I personally prefer the Company Commander. Dirt cheap and can issue up to 3 orders a turn (before other shenanigans). Next up, you’ll want your Conscripts and another Infantry unit or two to all be within 6″ of the same Officer. Oh, and you’ll want them all to be Cadians so you can have access to this little gem when you make that Officer your Warlord:
That’s right – each time your Warlord issues an order or tank order you roll a dice. On a 4+ that order can affect an additional Cadian Unit of the same type (Infantry or Leman Russ).
The key words here are the phrase “that order can affect an additional Cadian Unit” – see the difference? Basically, you’re going to issue an order to one unit, let’s say “Take Aim!” and on a 4+ that order now affects the Conscripts! You’re not issuing them an order, they are just getting the benefits.
So now you don’t even need to issue an order to those Conscripts directly – you’ve just committed your first Conscription Bypass! Congratulations, you’re not ready to go forth and put an Imperially whoppin’ on your enemy.
There’s lots more in the book than this little trick – Codex: Astra Militarum is out today – Go read it for yourself!
