Tips for chaos undivided against imperial guard

[apparition]

I havent played against Imperial Guard before and was wondering what tips, tactics strategies the rest of you have in dealing with them? I play a mobile close combat focused Nightlords army but wanted to know the best way of attacking a static army like imperial guard without getting horribly gunned down. Here's a link to my army list, comments and criticism greatly appreciated.

 

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/index.p...howtopic=137847

[Rain]

Well, guard lists can vary, but assuming you are facing a "standard" infantry heavy army, beating them shouldn't be all that hard. Like any swarm list, guard tries to overwhelm you by throwing a lot of dice and letting the law of averages take you out. The key to combating this tends to be force concentration. What I mean is that guard troops tend to crowd each other and there are only so many troops that he can fit in say one table quarter, so as long as you can fit as many or more in that quarter you will probably win.

 

What I mean is, if you bunch your squads together instead of spreading out, some of his squads will be unable to draw sight or range and therefore be useless just by virtue of your units taking up a small amount of space and his army taking up quite a lot of space. Then you assault his flank squads with your entire army, completely obliterating that flank and then move "down the line" if you will killing him piece by piece and using both terrain and his own tanks to block sight from at least a chunk of his troops to yours.

 

As for your list, I honestly don't understand it. You have two 5-man plasma squads (short range weapons), but no transport, which means that he only needs to kill 3 marines to potentially break your entire squad and consider they will be footslogging at a gun line, that's not a tall order. The Chosen can infiltrate, which is good, but again 5 man squads tend to get minced especially when isolated due to infiltration. The raptors are good as they are obviously a special weapon delivery system. Your 10 man CSM squad is quite similar to what I field so I approve by default :P . Oh and what exactly is your predator there for? The lascannon implies anti-tank and the rest implies anti infantry, I really think dropping the chosen lascannon squad and the tank and swapping in obliterators or havocs would work better.

[apparition]

Thanks for the reply Rain! I think i understand what you mean about using the guards large numbers against them. by bunching my squads together do you mean though that each squad should have a tight formation so they can hide behind cover more easily or that each of the units in my army shouldn't be that far apart from one another? If its the first then doesnt that make my squads quite vulnerable to battle cannons?

 

On the topic of my list I see your points as valid. i understand that it has quite a few odd elements but much of that is due to the fact i havent got that many models cos ive just got back into 40k only recently. My predator is a bit odd but though this sounds weird i like the look of the twin linked lascannon on the model so i stuck it together like that! i was hoping i could use it as an anti tank if it moves in 5th and when it stays stationary use it on infantry. I agree with you on the 5 man csms. What do you think about my idea in the second list taking an 8 man chosen squad instead? would it be better if i merged them into one squad? I dont have any obliterators but i could take havocs though im limited to the following heavy weapons models wise: 2x heavy bolters, 3x autocannons, 1x missile launcher and 1x lascannon.

[Lady_Canoness]

In my experience three 3 man Terminator squads do wonders against IG and the like when Deep Striking. If you have the models I would recomened it. Things like combi-flamers will prove priceless, and Terminators (even in small numbers) are far too great a threat to IG. They'll throw A LOT their way, and ignore the rest of your army. Then when some Terminators survive (a few always do) then you have yourself a merry time of wading through guardsmen!

[Rain]

Yeah by "bunch together" I mean the squads, the individual models within the squads which should be staggered like checkerboard squares. The reason I say this is that if (for example) all of your squads are say on the left side of the board, then even if he tries to deploy to the left to bring maximum firepower to bear, just by virtue of his size and the limited size of deployment zones, some of his units will get pushed over to the right where they will have trouble shooting at you, however if you spread out, then so can he, and in theory he would then be able to get maximum efficiency out of his guns as they would all have a target every turn.

 

As for Lady Canoness's terminator suggestion, I agree that it would be a good option since most guard lists do not have many AP2 weapons so terminators can be quite effective (though loyalist terminators much more so than ours because of assault cannons and missile launchers). Still, taking some may be a good idea as they tend to fare well against guard.

 

As for your 8 man chosen idea, it really depends on what you want them to do, one good option is just giving them 4 plasma guns and infiltrating them into some hard cover like a building and then just blasting away with your four str 7 ap2 rapid fire guns, another workable plan is giving them power fists and running them in a rhino next to your berzerkers to quickly tear apart an enemy flank, but then you are in effect "losing" the implicit cost of their infiltration without actually using it.

 

As for havocs, 2x heavy bolters 2x autocannons can make a nasty transport and infantry killing squad, or (if you are willing to spend more money) something like 2x lascannons 2x missile launchers tends to put serious pain on enemy tanks. Again, in my experience predators tend to rarely win back their points, but I have seen some lists on this board with predators made by people that claim to have great win ratios so maybe it's just something I'm missing.

[chillin]

Get into hth ASAP. Don't worry bout expensive cult units like brzrkrs or PM's. Lots and lots of undivided csm's with bolter and bp & ccw. A undivided csm is more then a match for lots of guardsmen, so are daemons for that matter. Arm squads with either a flamer and melta (fry guard and melt their tanks or 2 flamers and have specific melta squads (maybe your raptors). Rinos obviously. Some raptors advancing behind rinos or behind cover. A hvy bolter havoc squad can kill lotsa IG as well.

Good luck

[DuskRaider]

Template weapons. Many template weapons. Arm at least one marine in each squad with a flamer, IG saves are horrible and flame throwers will take them out easy. Vindicators also work well, a large blast, albeit short ranged, and can destroy an entire squad in one shot. For anti-armor, Predators are great. Another great idea? Dreadnaught, with 2 CCWs. You will absolutely annihilate the troops, and if he freaks out? All the better. Defilers, another good choice.

[Rain]

You might want to hold your horses on the vindicators and defilers as high str low ap template weapons are most efficient against expensive units. A guard squad is only worth 60 points, and your defiler needs to kill about 25 guardsmen to make its points back, which given cover and scatter, isn't all that likely. Also consider that the model was designed bearing in mind that it is just as easy to kill 25 marines with it, which would be almost triple the points cost to your opponent. Also, guard armies tend to have a lot of anti tank.

[retlaw83]

If you're playing assault-based chaos marines against IG, you just ram your assault element up one flank. Once they hit the guard's line, it's an all-you-can-eat buffet.

[apparition]

Hey guys thanks for the replies and advice. i ended up fighting tyrannids first today then guard but was a team battle with tau and guard allied whilst i had a death guard ally. Used ur advice and won both games so thanks!

[Chaplain Dak]

Greetings Traitors,

(hardcore BT & IG player)

 

what kind of IG did you face?

[apparition]

I fought against grenadiers with 3 leman russ battle tanks, 3 sentinels, 3 lascannon and missile launcher heavy support teams and two hell hounds. Thankfully there was lots of terrain and we were playing for control of objectives!