Guard as an underrated antitau faction?

[Plague _Lord]

Here me out guys but Tau seems to be the doom and gloom of the upcomming meta and I think that IG actually might have a shot at outshooting the fish commies. Why I think the guard can be especially good against tau?

 

a) Our heavy guns can fire without LOS and we have enough men to screen out any pesky commanders that want to snipe them

b) Our artillery can pick off key tau units with overwhelming firepower - most Tau lists I've seen use broadsides and crisis to do the heavy lifting, hiding from most factions behind cover and using shenanigans to jump to safety after deleting a unit. There is no hiding from manticores. I think taking out a broadside or crisis unit T1 can be detrimental to the Tau war effort and most armies can't actually do this.

c) Montka Tau rely on a T1 alpha with devilfish and a followup T2 beta strike with the aforementioned battlesuits. I think Guard can take the devilfish rush on the chin with screens of conscripts (minimizing the real damage) while our tanks should be able to delete these intruders with not much problem. If we manage to take out one of their key units with our artillery and take out the devilfish rush with the rest of the army we can mop up with our extremely fast infantry.

d) WE have solid deep strikers as an alternative if the above doesn't go to plan. A patrol of stormtroopers with plasmaguns should make short work of crisis.

e) Calidus assassins are starting to look tasty with Tau relying heavily on stratagems in turn 1&2, while the close deepstrike option also could be useful for surprising a badly screened commander or ethereal

 

Of course all of the above will work if we go first... but we also have the means to fill the board with disposable bodies. If you can hide your tanks well, then I think guard stand a solid chance against Tau.

 

Your thoughts fellow Commanders?

[Emperor Ming]

Guard are now pretty much the bottom faction, trying to take on any dex and getting any form of decent score I would say is a win

 

and then there's the marker lights giving them easy access to hitting in 3s. 

 

Trying to win a fire fight now would be tough, esp. when a Russ can disappear in one shot from a railgun

[War of the Eagle]

Almost half the lists I see are farsight enclave bumb rushes that can be just way to close on their first turn.

[OldWherewolf]

Unfortunately, I think we're going to have problems with Tau. (Caveat:  Haven't played against Tau yet).   We're both shooting armies, but currently we can be out-shot by Orks (Freebooterz), and Orks are waaay out-shot by Tau, and we struggle to get our of our DZ when the opponent gets in our face if they get turn 1.

 

While FP Manticores do have play into Broadsides, the Brodsides are 8W each.  A FP manticore usually only hits/wounds/penetrates twice, so that's 6W, unless you poke out for that 3rd hit using Direct Onslaught.  Now you've traded your 155pt Manticore for  a 75point Broadside, and one of your hits just went to 1W because of the drones.  Wyverns also struggle to kill more than 1-2 models of regular infantry.  So we're not much better there.

 

Our best bet is still to play cagey, hiding as best we can and stealing objectives with MMM!  This makes scions our better choice, as 45 points is easier to hide, and less valuable to trade before shooting them up the board

 

The thing we have in common is that we're both counter-punch armies.  hold the line, then move out turns 3, 4 & 5.  So if you play cagey and hide until Montka runs out, that balances the scales. 

 

Just be wary of the devilfish rush.  a lot of times that's a ploy to expose our heavy hitters to their return fire. 

[Diagramdude]

The “advantage” guard has right now is we are so bad that no one is writing their list thinking ‘okay, I’ll put these units in to counter any guard armies I come up against.’

 

Since no one is going to try to counter us, we have more freedom to run skew lists that may be effective in a local meta. Like 300 infantrymen or an artillery park.

 

If Tau become meta and we have an advantage against them, Guard players could get lucky draws at tournaments with Chaos and Tau matchups, since Vengeance for Cadia and first turn is still an automatic win.

[Shamansky]

Almost half the lists I see are farsight enclave bumb rushes that can be just way to close on their first turn.

I'd say even more. Poor wording lets whole Tau units contaning a drone to deep strike no matter the sept or units ability to do so. gee dubs dropped the ball again. 

[TCC]

Just about to watch this https://youtu.be/jKmb-IxB7CY

[Plague _Lord]

The “advantage” guard has right now is we are so bad that no one is writing their list thinking ‘okay, I’ll put these units in to counter any guard armies I come up against.’

 

Since no one is going to try to counter us, we have more freedom to run skew lists that may be effective in a local meta. Like 300 infantrymen or an artillery park.

 

If Tau become meta and we have an advantage against them, Guard players could get lucky draws at tournaments with Chaos and Tau matchups, since Vengeance for Cadia and first turn is still an automatic win.

 

That's the thing though - 300 infantrymen lets ust screen out the board so tightly that even Tau might have a problem with getting to our juicy targets and both our tanks and artillery have the potential to hit hard. If the guard player screens well enough and hides his units then we have to option of withstanding the worst of montka and every turn our big guns are firing unhindered will make the enemy substantially lose firepower or scoring for the mid-late game, where our drop troops and screeners can move in to take objectives.

 

Just think about it - even if all our artillery does turn 1 is kill all the drones in battlesuit squads, then that means our storm troopers and tanks will have a field day on turn 2.

[sairence]

You won't get a whole lot of tanks, artillery and stormtroopers in your list if you frontload it with 300 infantry though.

[tychobi]

Short answer? No.  Long answer?  Astra Militarum are due for a new codex.  Will they punch their ticket on the power creep train? Dunno. For now my estimate is that equal generals on fair terrain 10/1 or so.  Not pretty.

[Diagramdude]

The real question is how long will our codex even be out before they just drop 10th edition and start it all over again.

[TCC]

Just about to watch this https://youtu.be/jKmb-IxB7CY

I watched this battle report - it ended quickly and with no surprises, good video worth the time of day.

[BloodyB]

While the guard are definitely not pulling lots of wins, I have had a little luck with my siege regiment against T'au in the past week. The first time a whole lot of suits got wrecked turn one by earthshakers and mortars, and the second one saw a pair of Hammerheads meet a similar fate, sans the mortars. Both games saw a little bit of luck lead to some serious early gains.

 

Robbing the T'au of their mobility is a difficult, but vital, component of fighting them with Guard. Against any other army, their firepower is the great threat, but against us it is their ability to just avoid being pinned down. I prioritised vehicles and battlesuits first because of this. The Earthshaker is a great tool for most of their mechas, able to put a large number of shots and decent damage on to single models and small units easily. The Manticore can too, but I prefer the AP of the Basilisk, but in either case hide and camp like the scummiest Call of Duty player you can imagine.

 

Sadly, IG aren't a great option in the current meta competitively, but work fine for casual games. Imperial Soup works well with them though, taking some cheap guard squads and a few marines in a detachment, playing aggressive with the marines while scoring objectives with the guard.

[Diagramdude]

Apparently Eldar Fire Prisms are getting the ability to ignore invulnerable saves. Jokes on them, we don’t have any!

[jarms48]

I doubt this. Played against Tau a few times. Each time I was basically neutered by the end of T1.