Know Thy Enemy: Imperial Guard

[Warp Angel]

I'm not going to go into much detail:

 

Creed - gives 4 orders per turn, has unique orders, 24" leadership radius, and gives one unit Scout. Totally fracking awesome.

Kell - allows an officer to give orders based on the officer's leadership, not the recieving squad's leadership.

Straken - Hard to kill, powerfist at initiative equipped, boosts unit he's attached to.

Chenkov - makes conscripts "without number"

Marbo - One man elites force org slot with a demo charge and enough hand to hand and shooting capability to make him annoying in later turns.

Pask - tank commander upgrade, improves BS, makes the tank ignore cover and +1 to AP rolls in some siutations.

Lord Commisar - HQ independent character, all commisars make units stubborn. Lord Commisar has additional benefits.

 

There's a couple other company and platoon commanders I didn't touch, mostly because I don't have my codex with me. One important thing to note is that virtually every upgrade/independent character is worth about one and sometimes MORE guard infantry squads in terms of points cost.

 

Sometime in the next week, I'm going to post a revision of this article based upon a detailed review of the codex that I now own. ;)

[Milchmann]

Hey Warp,

 

first of all, nice work! This has been really nice to read, very informative and true. One thing has bothered me, though, and it's right on the beginning. You say that Rough Riders may Outflank. Now call me an idiot, but I can't find the rules, that state that. Would you mind telling me, where you have found this? Do you possibly mean, that they may outflank if Creed leads the army?

 

Regards,

Milchmann

[ShinyRhino]

Hey Warp,

 

first of all, nice work! This has been really nice to read, very informative and true. One thing has bothered me, though, and it's right on the beginning. You say that Rough Riders may Outflank. Now call me an idiot, but I can't find the rules, that state that. Would you mind telling me, where you have found this? Do you possibly mean, that they may outflank if Creed leads the army?

 

Regards,

Milchmann

 

Do they have the Scout or Infiltrate rules? If so, they can Outflank. Or, they may have it as a special ability in their codex entry. /shrug

[Warp Angel]

At this point, it would take Creed to give them Scouts and the ability to outflank. This article was written from pre-codex release memory and needs an update now that I both own the codex and have a few games with it under my belt.

[Commander Sasha]

A small and inexperienced voice from the back has a question...

 

I play against my first IG opponent next week, and from the brief look at his army last night just before he packed up, it is very mechanised. Not being familiar with IG (I'll be buying C:IG tomorrow!), I believe he kept his compulsory HQ and troops in their transports, and played a very defensive game (Annihilation, Spearhead).

He absolutely mashed a very jump pack-orientated marine army, belonging to a guy who is no novice.

 

The above discussion has been very informative: How would the panel modify their tactics against an IG army that leaves very little meat out in the open?

[Warp Angel]

A small and inexperienced voice from the back has a question...

 

I play against my first IG opponent next week, and from the brief look at his army last night just before he packed up, it is very mechanised. Not being familiar with IG (I'll be buying C:IG tomorrow!), I believe he kept his compulsory HQ and troops in their transports, and played a very defensive game (Annihilation, Spearhead).

He absolutely mashed a very jump pack-orientated marine army, belonging to a guy who is no novice.

 

The above discussion has been very informative: How would the panel modify their tactics against an IG army that leaves very little meat out in the open?

 

As a guard player myself:

 

1) Ironclad dreadnaught in drop pod. It eats tanks and is pretty hard to kill. What melta the guard does have on their armor (if any) will have to turn to engage if you deploy properly and get decent scatter, exposing their side armor to your shooting. They have NO answer to it in hand to hand combat outside of some relatively unique situations.

2) Mobile melta weapons. Speeders, bikes, rhinos with melta gun equipped squads inside.

3) Land Raider Crusader with multi-melta. Between the assault cannons and the multi-melta, they're more than able to put some hurt on enemy tanks while staying relatively immune to all but the most concentrated of guard efforts.

4) Don't footslog. This includes jump packs. They'll pick you apart with low AP template weapons

5) Remember your krak grenades and always, always, always, always assault the guard tanks if you don't have better targets to assault. Krak grenades and a power fist in near full-squad amounts can eat AV10 rear armor if it moves under 6", and WILL eat that armor if it stands still. If it moves, it's less effective in shooting. Being in close proximity to enemy vehicles will also prevent them from using blast weapons against you in some situations since they can't put the template over their own models.

 

Good luck.

[wolf2.3]

I find that the sheer number of troops in a typical army makes them somewhat immobile meaning a good fast closecombatty army should maul them. It works for me very well.

[Warp Angel]

I find that the sheer number of troops in a typical army makes them somewhat immobile meaning a good fast closecombatty army should maul them. It works for me very well.

 

Given that in order to be regularly successful in hand to hand, guard needs to build specifically for it, you're absolutely right.

 

I play guard about as much as I play my marines, so I see first hand how problematic it is to win an assault.

 

It takes 18 basic attacks to kill a Marine. That's exactly equal to 9 guardsmen on the charge. Add in the sergeants that can have power weapons, but not power fists. That means that even with a sergeant's power weapon and 4 attacks (killing a bit less than one Marine), you're lucky to get two Marines killed in an average charge.

 

There's a big problem with this assumption that you can kill two marines on the charge... It's called Initiative 3.

 

The Marines strike first. Assuming 8 surviving tactical marines (we'll ignore sarge for now), that's 8 attacks, 6 hits, 4 wounds, and likely 3 dead guardsmen. That means that the guard are already probably losing combat. That's before taking into account the fact that you've now got 6 less attacks, and 1/3 fewer chances for a kill (likely none) from your basic guardsmen. So the Marines are probably taking just one casualty.

 

Guard make leadership at -2, and get run down because they fail 60% of the time.

 

If you double the number of guardsmen and sergeants with power weapons, You might be able to break even on the number of kills you'll average.

 

There's a second problem though... Guard seldom actually charge. They're more effective in shooting at charge distance (especially with "First Rank...") Which means its a lot more likely that 8 Marines charging 20 guardsmen will kill 6, and not take that many casualties, forcing a Ld5 or lower check.

 

Now, the peanut gallery should be chiming in with "add commisars with power weapons!" at this point. Which is true. They'll probably get you one more Marine each. At the cost of most of an infantry squad. Which means you'll probably win a charge with 20 guardsmen + 1 or 2 commisars, assuming the commisars have power weapons or power fists. But you'll still probably lose if you get charged, though you're far less likely to run if you do.

 

What about ogryns? They're tough, but they don't have power weapons, and they only have Sv 5. A squad of 5 will get 21 S6 attacks on the charge, hitting with 11, wounding with 8, killing 2-3 Marines.

 

Oh, wait. They go after Marines. So the 8 marines hit 6, wound 2, inflicting 2 wounds minor win against the Marines or a draw. Again... I'm not even looking at sarge. With sarge in the mix and power fist/power weapon, there's a fair chance the ogryns lose outright. You can add in a commisar lord, making the squad a beatstick, and probably wrecking a tactical squad's day. But then you've got a 300 point unit on the table, and it should wreck a tactical squad's day.

 

A smart Marine player will simply kill the ogryns with bolter fire from range, since they get no save, even only 4/9 bolter shots will wound. That's still 7 wounds from those 8 marines.

 

The lesson here? Guard almost always suck at hand to hand, so assault the crap out of them.