In the lore, these guys are the unbreakable anvil of guard units, holding the line until the last man and following order to the letter, no matter what the cost and i'm glad to say that it appears that they will be as similar on the table top as they can be. Now, its worth noting here, that GW could have gone one of two way for this doctrine, in terms of what regiment to name. The Mordian Iron guard were an obvious choice, but so too were the Praetorians, another regiment known for there iron will and fortitude. Granted, the Praetorians were not a widely available as the Mordians, but they looked better in my opinion. One positive of using the Mordians though, is its a dam sight easier to spell!
But what is the doctrine you say? Well, its this, Parade Drill
Again, we'll split it up in to its various parts, starting with the last part, the Vehicles. This is a simple one really, vehicles get to fire overwatch and now hit on a 5 or 6, instead of just a 6. Now, this is a very useful bonus for most vehicles, who usually have low number of shots, the exception being the punisher armed Russ. In a situation where every shot counts and can really make a difference, especially to the likes of turn 1 charges and charges out of deep strike. This is mostly because, many vehicle weapons then to be high strength or high Ap modifiers, and a successful wound is usually converted in to a kill. and in a situation where even one kill can cause a charge to fail, getting those hits in in critical, with this your looking at doubling the number of hits and therefore increasing the chances of wounding. the only downside to this, is that you need to keep your vehicle close to each other, but that's not always a problem. Running a couple of Leman Russ' together is not a bad idea anyway, nor is running several chimeras together, the downside come when your running things like Hell Hounds or Valkyries. The flyers is fairly obvious, not many people want to keep there flyers next to each other, with the Hell Hound, there are not many people I know who run multiples of them and not normally together, as they tend to go off hunting a specific threat. You could support it with a chimera or maybe a Taurox, but it will outpace most other vehicles. The is one question I have, but I will get to that later in the post, as it will either make this doctrine a but useless or great.
The other part of the doctrine affects infantry and in the day and age of no blast markers, doesn't make any difference to the how close you can position your models. In 6/7th this would have been unthinkable, bunching up was a sure fire way of loosing large parts of your army quickly but in this edition it makes no difference and in this case, its actually a positive. If every model is in base to base, they get a +1 leadership buff and a +1 to overwatch, echoing the vehicle abilities. Now this is an all or nothing doctrine, you cant get one without the other. Its going to mean forgetting everything that you've learnt in the last 7 editions, but I think it is well worth it. A free +1 to leadership, means that you are not going to need to spam Commissars or have to use up valuable CP's on moral tests. Granted it doesn't make your troops invincible to moral, but it does help, meaning that you'll need at least 3 casualties before you even need to think about moral. The +1 to hit for overwatch is also great, as it will massively increase you hits. I cant tell you the amount of times I've fired overwatch, only to look at a bucket load of 5's and not one 6. As I said with the vehicles, increasing your hits from overwatch, increases your chances to wound and therefore kill the enemy before they get in to combat. For guard this is what you need to be doing, as were useless in combat against everyone but the Tau. All that you need to do is remember to keep everything in base to base with each other!
This time around it is veteran squads that are highlighted, mainly to highlight the Mordian special order.
Now, this order is useful but highly situational. At first I though it was great, but much like my assumptions about the Catachan doctrines, once I sat back and properly read it, it has a catch and that catch is RAPID FIRE WEAPONS, so no issuing it to a Lascannon heavy weapons team and watching the carnage, because that would be awesome! No, its rapid fire weapons only, which in reality is sensible and not overpowering. It is situational though, as when we look at the rapid fire weapons the guard have, the list is small, Lasguns, Plasma Guns and errr...... Bolter? Yeah, not a great selection, which is why they have highlighted the vets, as you can pack these guys with 3 plasma guns for maximum punch. I can see this order being used a fair bit, but mostly by said vets with plasma guns and a platoon commander, loaded up in to a chimera for some rapid movement. The plan would be simple, nail it to where you need to be turn 1, de-bus from the chimera, issue order and toast character turn 2, die. I would also be unloading from the chimera in base to base at all costs as your going to need the +1's for the return fire and probable charge that will come back at you. I'm not saying that's the only use for it, but its definitely the best use, it will able be useful for taking out the buffing characters before an enemy charge, but at 24" range, its not going to take a smart opponent to keep any characters out of that range until the last possible minute, meaning you'll probably only have one shooting attempt and you'll have to decide which is more important, the character or the unit that is going to do the damage! I would have like to have seen this order be available to any weapon in veteran or infantry squads, not special or heavy weapon squad, as I think that this would have been better and still not overpowered, plus it would have made more sense, as if your going to shoot at a character, your going to shoot everything at it, not just the flashlights and shoot the big gun at something else.
Again, they have highlighted a particular unit from the codex in general, in this case its the Leman Russ and particularly the Punisher. They seem to be doing this for similar reason as they did with the Deathstrike, purely to highlight a rule that is not linked to a particular doctrine. In this case there are three items of note. The first is the comment about points costs adjustment, a small one downwards, which is good. how small this adjustment is I don't know, but any points reduction is welcomed.
The second item of note is the new rules for the Leman Russ; Grinding Advance.
This is encouraging you to go slow and steady with your tanks, rolling up the field, demolishing everything in its path. Now, this is really good, although it affects some tanks more than others. the likes of the Demolishers, Nova and Battle cannon tanks will benefit from this, as will the executioner, even more so if they are using the Catachan doctrine and rerolling the number of shots. Autocannons should be putting out double the number of shots anyway, so this just makes them what they should be but only at half speed. The Vanquisher is a real winner in my opinion, its got good range, ap and damage but was always hampered by the single shot, with this, you can have some backup and be confident that you should hit at least one of the shots. However the real winner here is the Punisher, being a high volume, low strength weapon, hits are vital, and doubling the number of shots on such a weapon is a massive boost. I cant think of a weapon that can kick out that kind of volume of shots, apart from ones on super heavy vehicles. yes, you have a short treat range, just under 30", but once your in range, your a massive threat, even to the likes of marines. Toss in a tank order as well and things get even better. The Leman Russ is a great vehicle, solid and resilient and now it has the fire power to match.
Talking of fire power, the Defensive Gunners Stratagem is also really good.
As I've mentioned a few times, when firing with guard, volume is key, and with overwatch, killing a model can be the difference between a successful charge and not. With this stratagem you are doubling the number of potential hits and with that the number of wounds and kills. Its simple and for only 1 CP I would definitely be considering this every time a vehicle gets charged. There really isn't a lot to say, its good, use it.
Now, skipping back a few points, back to the Mordian doctrine. This allows vehicle to +1 to there hit rolls for overwatch, therefore turning 5's in to 6's, but it also turns 4's in to 5's. Can you see where I'm going with this? Yeah, charging a Mordian vehicle just got serious. Charging a Mordian Leman Russ Battle Tank? Well, there they're hitting at normal ballistic skill, for overwatch. Yep, scary stuff. Can you imaging a punisher doing this? hey, if you moved in your movement phase, you might actually be hitting on a lower dice than you did in your own shooting phase!
Mordians are going to be a very hard army to fight against. They are going to struggle in Mealstrom games, where they want to stay close and move slowly, but they are going to be a hard army to fight against, especially if your a combat based army. Once your in combat, well, you'll cut through them no bother, but you've got to get there first and with these boys that's going to be no easy task.
As things stand, these guys maybe useful for the Hildasay PDF, in support of the Dagr Ormr Militarium Tempestus. They aren't going to be moving much, and the leadership and overwatch bonus' would be useful, especially as most of the units don't have Sergeants. I'm not going to set that in stone yet though, as we still have 5 more guard doctrines to come, the next of which I'm very interested to read about, that of the Vostroyans.
(Again, all the images are from the warhammer community page)
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