Tactica Imperial Guard

[FraustyTheSnowman]

Having played deathguard for a long time, often against a guy who's played orcs for a long time, I sympathise. Some armies have a very hard time dealing with plague marines, and when I ran chaos it was as many PMs as I had in rhinos before I even thought about anything else. Other armies don't have that problem. I would be preparing for a serious khit sicking were I to take DG up against a propper guard army.

[LawL LawL]

Any chance someone has a working link for the tactica? I'm borrowing my friend's Guard army for use in a tournament between ourselves and 4 of our buddies, and I'm in need of some assistance. Sadly neither the Rapidshare link, nor the Megaupload link work for me. For separate reasons, but none the less neither are working.

[laudarkul]

You can post some info's about what kind of IG army do you intend to take and army points cost...Maybe if you have some info's about your enemies and then you'll receive some help from on this thread from some fellow comrades ...

[Lord of War]

Whats a good all rounder/starter list for the imperial guard? I been crepping the fourms for a the past year and im now finally buying a battleforce.

[FraustyTheSnowman]

A pair of blob squads (three squads from an infantry platoon with a single commissar) with either autocannons or missile launchers will do well...set your platoon command squads up to handle things that rush you, so flamers and/or melta (if you're new to the game at all, I wouldn't recomend mixing weapons), maybe in a chimera, maybe not...company command can be done quite a few different ways, pending game experience, personal preference. After that a lot of good choices are in heavy support, manticores, griphons, hydras being some of my personal favorites, with various (non punisher or vanquisher) leman russ being popular (I play a lot of armies that laugh at armor 14, so have a hard time justifying it in my own lists). From there, a unit or two of vets in chimeras can be good, equiping them to handle whatever you think your army is lacking (again, I recomend not mixing weapons here unless you've a solid understanding of why you want to do it). Valk/vendettas seem to be all the rage, but I don't use them so can't give much advice their way, but otherwise I can recomend hellhounds (traditional hellhounds as well as devil dog...them chem cannon one isn't something I've ever used) and sentinels in that order.

More info on point values and how competitive you're wanting to be would get you more intel, but I think this is a reasonable start.

[Vestigialante]

Question: Is there anything tactically unsound about maxing my heavy support slots with medusae? 36" S10 AP2 pie-plates just seem like a steal for 135 points apiece.

[madd0ct0r]

36" means you have to get your fragile vehicles quite near the enemy.

[Ariobarzanes]

Question: Is there anything tactically unsound about maxing my heavy support slots with medusae? 36" S10 AP2 pie-plates just seem like a steal for 135 points apiece.

Just bear in mind is an AV 12 open-topped SU-152.
I like them with cammo netting for survival or with Ursakar Creed flankig abilities.
I have had read in this forum that Medusas with bastion breacher shell are a competent AT unit.

[MyNameDidntFit]

Medusas are great... if they get to shoot. Unfortunately, their lack of armour and minimal range does not offset the reaction of "crapcrapcrapS10AP2PIEPLATESKILLTHEMcrapcrapcr ap" that your enemy will often display--lending all sorts of >36" range AT to target them.

They do make *amazing* distractions, though

[russellmoo]

I agree with the previous post- the most useful thing about a Medusa is that your opponents will do everything they can to stop it from shooting- so take one if you have something much more important to your battle plan that you don't want shot at- The medusa is probably one of the only times where certain upgrades actually become useful i.e. camo netting and an armored crew compartment-

[Vestigialante]

Well, really, if I deploy them centrally, almost 12" forward (leaving enough room for my bubblewrap in front to prevent assaulters from punching me square in the rear armor) Then there is only a tiny portion of the board that a 36" gun can't reach. 9 of those landing on 3 spots a turn seems like it'll wreck just about anyone. Fill my fast attack slots with Vendettas, and I can't see how this could really go wrong.

[Lord Cook]

Question: Is there anything tactically unsound about maxing my heavy support slots with medusae? 36" S10 AP2 pie-plates just seem like a steal for 135 points apiece... 9 of those landing on 3 spots a turn seems...

I take it that you're talking about having nine Medusas? I would suggest that would be madness. As an open-topped squadroned vehicle, any damage result of a 3+ will destroy them. Rolling a 2 is little better, as they only have one effective weapon. The vehicles are only modestly armoured, and putting something like crew compartments or camo netting on them will be exorbitantly expensive for little material gain. Remember that the camo netting doesn't work if you move and similarly doesn't work if they don't actually get a cover save, such as at very close range or in combat; the exact situations where vehicles are most vulnerable anyway.

It would also cost an enormous amount of points in total, for which you would be able to split fire between only three targets. Your force would be slow, reliant on large numbers of static shielding infantry, and weak at close range (unless the game is very large, such as 3,000+ points).

Having lots of huge guns doesn't necessarily make you more powerful. You need supporting units, mobility, and scoring troops who are free to try and capture things.

I like them with cammo netting for survival or with Ursakar Creed flanking abilities.

I'm not sure what can be better achieved by outflanking them. What is gained in return for deploying much more unreliably?

[Brother Jones]

what are the best special/heavy weapons to take with veteran squads? I want to make a small 650-1000 point list with veterans and penal legion as a core so I was wondering in that field of points what would be good.

I was thinking of having 1-2 squads of them as stationary units and fielding them with missile launchers and the moving squads with meltas and plasmas.

[FraustyTheSnowman]

How set are you on the penal legion?

[ColShaw]

what are the best special/heavy weapons to take with veteran squads? I want to make a small 650-1000 point list with veterans and penal legion as a core so I was wondering in that field of points what would be good.

I was thinking of having 1-2 squads of them as stationary units and fielding them with missile launchers and the moving squads with meltas and plasmas.

Using a Vet Squad as a stationary heavy weapon platform is not really playing to their strength, which is the multiple Special option. Honestly, if you want stationary units, the Infantry Platoon is probably a better bet. But yes, 3 Plasmas/3 Meltas are both good options, especially with transport.

[Brother Jones]

I put the penal legion in there because I heard they were quite useful, I am using a small 750 list where the core would be the vets standing back with the hq but thinking about it I could just take 2 platoons for roughly similar costs.

[Lord of War]

What should I do with a IG cadian starter kit? should i make one big blob or two units of 10?

[FraustyTheSnowman]

Brother Jones...I think you'll be better off with two platoons, or a platoon and vet squad, but I'm not the hugest fan of vets (platoon command squads are cheaper and have more special weapons)

Lord of War...depends a lot on what else you have available.

[hangnail]

Lord of War - you can make a legal army out of the starter box, but I wouldn't want to have to! To have a blob squad, you would need to use the command squad box for your platoon command, giving you one minimal troops choice - Platoon Command, 2 infantry squads and a heavy weapons squad (or if you spread the heavy weapons team around, you could make a company command squad too, but that's still only 1HQ and 1 troop, and most likely under-equipped)(unless you have friendly opponents who let you field the heavy weapons not on 60mm bases, in which case you can have both - heavy weapons squad plus heavy weapons IN squads...).
The other option is a company command plus 2 veteran squads (1 HQ and 2 troops), but to include your heavy weapons they would need to go into squads, as you haven't 'unlocked' the heavy weapons squad option.
Bottom line, you need more stuff. More bodies mainly... if you could get a second starter box, that would be a big help - it gives you more bodies at a discount, more gear to specialise your squads, and if you are going to go Sentinels, you don't just want one. The you can start investing in vehicles.

[Colonel Jacka]

An entirely valid point, but this is a discussion forum, not a book. It's not intended to be read from the beginning. There is a rather extensive document linked in the first post that some enterprising yet hopelessly foolish soul stitched together from various contributors. That may help, but I'm afraid it's rather out of date and had some pretty glaring weaknesses even when it was in date. Probably the aforementioned fool's fault, no doubt.

Given that we're expecting a new edition of the game in the not-too-distant future, an update of the PDF right now would be rather pointless, I agree. It would be excellent to pull together an update when the new edition comes around, particularly with regard to all the new army styles (such as Necrons) that have been released since the original.

Crank! Crank! Crank! Bugger is that the big wheel turning again! Cookie you are a masochists! How time flies. So there is a PDF at the beginning of this thread. Well I'll be buggered! Who would have thought! LoL! Cookie, I told you this would happen.

"Dear Reader, welcome!
Warseer has once again proved itself nothing if not willing to share some more heaps of dubiously objective opinion, so after a great deal of discussion, begging, pleading,and outright flaming, we finally have something to offer. What follows is a collection of articles from an assorted group of authors, giving their thoughts and opinions on units and tactics for the Imperial Guard Codex. We trust you may find some gleaming
morsels of wisdom among our interminable ranting."

Quote from the Lord Cook some five years ago!