Beachymike123 Posted June 3, 2013 Share Posted June 3, 2013 some may question why collect a guard army? after all, in a game of sci-fi fantasy, why just be a human when you can be a genetically engineered hero/super villain, space borne elf with supernatural reflexes, ancient machine who hates life or an ork? however, whatever you choose to play (and i have at least most of that list to be fair) i think there's a humbleness to the guard. they embody a human element to our imaginations, and almost keep us grounded in a way. everyone expects their khorne marked lord to do well in combat, but what about when your lowly guardsman holds his ground when the rest of his squad has been slaughtered and he therefore denies the objective? and yes, the attraction of an entire army with flesh is a big ambition, as i have certainly discovered lately, but worth the rewards. so, what then fellow guard players,attracts you to the most humbling of armies? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Biaz Posted June 3, 2013 Share Posted June 3, 2013 Because when you play Space Marines, you can dream of being a Space Marine, an unstoppable lord of war. Not when you play Guard; being in the Guard would be a nightmare. Guard are the grimmest of the dark in 40k. Because these are regular people, like you an me, and you can imagine how horrible it would be. People say war is Hell now, in when you're a Guardsman in 40k it must be like super-ultra-Hell. Thats why I love them, for their real Grimdark. GW doesn't have to go into their fantasy tropes to portray how terrifying and horrible life is for them, they just have to sit regular people in the existing setting. And thats why I like to play Guard, huge blogs charging into the jaws of Hell, under the command of officers who will shoot them in the head on a whim, while their own forces lob shells at the very position they're charging, and no one knows if they'll stop once you get there. I remember thats the chilling feel I got when I first read the 4th ed Rulebook, and the Guard keep that going. Of course, the grimmest darkest aspect of the guard is buying and painting them all... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kierdale Posted June 3, 2013 Share Posted June 3, 2013 The chance to play the mortal man (or dozens of them) facing the myriad horrors of the 40k universe is one of the big reasons. Oh, I forgot to add in "backed up by lots of tanks" ;) There's also the modelling opportunities: representing the different cultures and home worlds of the Guard, which in my case meant adding in and converting some Fantasy Battle miniatures too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WarriorFish Posted June 3, 2013 Share Posted June 3, 2013 For a Chaos Lord to defeat Guardsmen is normal and to be expected - nobody is impressed, but when Guardsmen take down Genestealers with no more than a bayonet and some guts behind it and bludgeon haughty Eldar aspects to paste with their rifles people will remember. To be the underdog is to write stores of glory and heroism impossible for other armies I love tanks and fielding a large army of soldiers, all painted up the same. It looks great on the table Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quintus Khan Posted June 3, 2013 Share Posted June 3, 2013 Odd that people think the guard are so helpless, but I have been playing guard for a long time and have around 30,000 points worth of them. Most people I play with would agree that they are one of the scariest armies to play against (if played correctly), and all the grimmdark fluff pales in comparison to fielding the most troops on the field and the most powerful tanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WarriorFish Posted June 3, 2013 Share Posted June 3, 2013 Guardsmen being weak isn't the same as Guard as an army being weak, something I think all our foes can attest to We're talking about what attracts us as players to the army, and I think it's safe to say it's generally an unreasonable love of tanks and/or relishing being "the little guy" (and his hundred mates ). I reckon I could identify another Guard player at 10 paces with an 80% success rate Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
librisrouge Posted June 3, 2013 Share Posted June 3, 2013 I have firepower. Lots and lots of firepower. It comes in a variety of forms and is defended by a multitude of men with a varying level of skill. That is then supported by some of the best heavy armor in the game and watched over by aircraft, officers, and men of strict discipline. To round out the force we have mutant brutes, skilled psykers, midget snipers, and cavalry (CAVALRY!!!) If you don't like IG it must be because your just jealous about all of the sexy, sexy variety (and firepower) that we have. Wusses Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sviar Posted June 3, 2013 Share Posted June 3, 2013 Of course, the grimmest darkest aspect of the guard is buying and painting them all... Haha I have always liked the Imperial Guard, and reading fifteen hours enhanced that feeling. An orinary man/woman with only a flak and a lasgun is shipped out to meet all the horrors that the universe can throw at them, and you can really put yourself in their situation. I really like the tanks (LeMan Russ is a classic). And of course a hugh dicemountain in both of your hands And if you feel like personalize your army, you can make up almost whatever you want. Like fauna, cultur, hollidays(mine have two), the mindset of people, what the world is like etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FashaTheDog Posted June 4, 2013 Share Posted June 4, 2013 I mostly play Death Korps of Krieg so they're not your ordinary Joe. They have been shaped and molded from birth/decanting into stoic fanatics, living only so that they may sacrifice their lives in the name of the Emperor. Even their homeworld is amazing; Colonel Jurten plunged the rebelling world into a half millennium of brutal civil war by nuking his world into a radioactive wasteland on the 40K equivalent of Christmas and Easter rolled into one holiday. After that the Administratum figured Krieg could slowly make up for being in arrears, but no. Krieg had a number of well trained battle hardened veterans ready to go and has since tithed about 50,000,000 men a year. Think about that, in a century and a half, Krieg will have sent out more soldiers than the current population of Earth and in seven years will have tithed more men than the entire population of the United States. To top it off, these soldiers are of the highest quality; men who joyfully, relatively speaking, will march to certain death without question or hesitation as the high casualty rates of training weed out all but the best. How then are these highly disciplined men handled? They are thrown en mass against the hardest of foes in the harshest of conditions with the men treated as being as expendable, if not more so, as ammunition. Their method of war is to calculate how many men need to be expended to defeat a foe and then leave the rest to time and attrition. To assist in the record keeping they are not given names, just serial numbers to ensure quick and accurate body counts. Officers may earn one, but you have to love how Krieg embodies the very heart of the Imperium, a massive unstoppable behemoth that devours men in great numbers and with no regard for their well being, except to note their use and expenditure in the vast ledgers maintained by the bureaucracy. That is why I play them. They are recognizable to us, yet are unsettling in how far they take it; you see the World War I style warfare, but then turn it up to eleven and remove something human from them. In a way Space Marines, Orks, Daemons, even Necrons can elicit more sympathy and show more humanity than the Death Korps. You can't really put yourself in their boots and yet after playing them for a while you come think like them; shrugging off 80-90% casualties as "light" losses, suicidally charging things Guardsmen have no business charging like Genestealers, Nobs, Bloodthirsters, Berserkers, or any other big scary assault unit, yet you do it so you can scatter some artillery into the melee, and you know you can with the amount you brought to the table. You consider friendly fire from scattering templates to be normal and expected and when you play a different army you are genuinely surprised at the end that you did not lose a couple dozen men to your own ordnance. If you were to say to me that you could only read one 40K book and wanted to know which one, I would recommend Dead Men Walking. It is about the Death Korps of Krieg defending a Hive World and is so grimdark that it makes most other 40K books look as grimdark as My Little Pony by comparison. Colonel 186 is one of my favorite Black Library characters too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ponderius Posted June 8, 2013 Share Posted June 8, 2013 I chose to play Imperial Guard, because the lowly Guardsmen is the "little guy", it's like a chance for the average, every-day human being to stick it to the genetically modified and mutated monstrosities that threaten the human way of life. Also tanks. I have a love of tanks that borders on the erotic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Koremu Posted June 8, 2013 Share Posted June 8, 2013 Some people think they can outfight me. Maybe. Maybe. I have yet to meet one who can outfight Tank. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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