Allies

[Vulkan81]

Good afternoon,

 

Does anyone use allies like the imperial guard?  The issue I run into is a lack of heavy weapons in my army.  My budy gave me an old baneblade for painting his Guilliman model and I was thinking about including that in my larger army lists.  Can anyone provide any guidance/experience with this?

[Panzer]

Imperial Guard are planned for my last 400p or so. Mainly to get some bodies on the board and maybd some artillery too.

I've got no experiance with that tho. It's just how I want to see my army on the board once it's done. ^^

[dakkamasta]

The main reason people take IG with any marine army is for bodies and CP. You can get 30 infantry and 2 company commanders for under 200 pts and that gets you decent screening and 5 CP with the new FAQ. Honestly I take it every game it's just too good to pass up. If you already like Guard then you may as well but I understand that a lot of people prefer pure marines.

 

The best heavy weapon additions would probably be the artillery vehicles like Basilisks and Manticores, and maybe Leman Russes. This is because they give us incredibly long range firepower for a relatively low cost. The Baneblade like you mentioned while good, is going to dig in a lot into your points. It also benefits a lot from a psyker or two for defensive buffs so you'll want to take the Battalion anyway. If you're playing over 2250+ points then it will probably fit fine. Any less and you'll probably find you don't have many actual Blood Angels on the table.

[Karhedron]

Yup. A Battalion of Guard will not cost you too many points, will give you plenty of bodies, heavy weapons and CPs and give you access to some nice tasty artillery pieces. I prefer the Manticore to the Basilisk as it has almost double the firepower. Granted that firepower only lasts for 4 turns but I find most games are decided by then anyway.

[The Unseen]

I'm kind've going the opposite way, and just dropped a hefty chunk into Anvils Daughters of the Burning Rose kickstarter, for some sisters allies. I love the models, and they could easily also pull alternate duty as guard equivalents or even admech pretty easily, but a battalion of sisters proper is still super cheap (2 canoness' and 3 battle sister squads could run you as little as I think 215), retribution squads are ridiculously cheap sources of BS3+ heavy weapons (as long as those weapons are heavy bolters or multimeltas) seraphim+Celestine is nuts, and even the generic battle sisters put tacticals to shame. 51 pts gets you 5 sisters, with 2 bolters and 3 stormbolters. Or, alternatively, 5 sisters, 2 bolters, 2 stormbolters, and a heavy bolter are still cheaper than a naked 5 man tactical squad. And the 3+ armor save matters a lot more than T4 does in my opinion.

 

Plan is Celestine+Seraphim gives me an equivalent to what I used to be able to do with pure BA before the FaQ, with deep strikers. Instead, now it'll be Celestine and bodyguard, along with a forlorn fury squad of DC, and somebody will pop DoA, to have 4 turn 1 melee threats. (Well, 3.5. Seraphim aren't great in combat, but hidden melta pistols are solid, and they can easily tie up a shooty unit just fine)

 

This, backed up with a second DC squad in reserve along with Lemartes, plus the usual threat overload for me of pistol+blade scouts, scout bikes to clear chaff, 3 units of Sisters for objective holding, 2 units of 5 seraphim for dropping onto objectives turn 2/3, and 2 retribution squads with 4 heavy bolters each with a baby-sitting cannoness, for yet more infantry killing firepower. Chaff? What Chaff? Ohh, you mean that mound of bolter ridden corpses over there!
Or at least, that is the plan.