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I'm starting a new imperial army and am having trouble choosing. I like the idea of massed infantry running into battle but tanks and valkries are really awesome. I've never played guard so I was wondering, is one superior to the other? Or are they both equally effective? I don't have a codex yet ether, getting it this weekend.

Since everyone and their mother is packing mechanized lists and as much anti-tank as they can fit into a list....a foot guard unit serving as a counter to mechanized lists has huge potential. Pick a point level, and find out how many heavy weapon teams you can fit into it - lascannons and autocannons getting twin-linked and stuff.

1 simple fact to remember with guard when building an army. Survivability...

Guards are very easy to wipe out and are expendable... Mass infantry are fine but you need a lot of them. squads + 20 troops.

Alright. Yeah, I do see mostly mech lists...I was thinking with starting with 1000pts, anything essential I could get while I'm getting my codex? I wanna get my hands on some minis!!

Buy a company command squad, then shove it with 4 x plasma or melta.

If your going infantry, you want to start with 2 squads of regular guardsmen. A chimera never hurts, but y'know

Whether vets in chimeras or floot slogging infantry, you are going to need a large bunch of guardsmen. You can't go wrong with a bunch of troop boxes made up with basic weapon load outs for a start so you can work on your camoflauge team etc. An IG player can never have too many soldiers!

You can kind of do both.

30-man combined PIS for troops, Leman Russes for heavy support, Valkyries for fire support. IG are a potent codex with lots of options available to them, don't be afraid to experiment with a list and see what you can come up with, it'll likely be almost as potent as more 'standard' IG lists.

L. Wrex

I'm building an infantry guard army, so here are a couple thoughts:
Infantry are usually worse than tanks and transports under the current rules. For an example, if I take all meched-up guard, and you take as many meltaguns and lascannons as possible, we will have a hard-fought game. If I take all infantry guard, and you take as many flamers/heavy flamers/inferno cannons/large blasts as possible, I will probably get slaughtered. Light infantry are actually pretty pants. The trick is that, because everyone has loads of tanks, people take loads of anti-tank weapons and wind up unprepared to face loads of guardsmen!

So if you do an infantry-based army, go all-out and take as many men as possible (still taking guns everywhere of course). I am using a rule of thumb: I want 1 body in the army for every 10 points. So I need 200 guardsmen for a 2000 pt game.

One more thing - there is loads of advice online for an all-infantry guard army. One thing I'm considering is including 5-man stormtrooper squads with meltaguns, marbo, maybe even 1-2 manticores. Things that do reduce the number of bodies you can take, but also allow you to hit targets regular infantry will struggle to reach effectively.

They're both plenty doable.

Mech guard is good because your opponent needs to bring lots of anti-tank AND lots of anti-light infantry, and gets to shoot its special weapons 6" further away than foot lists.

Foot guard is good because you can easily bring two or three times as much firepower, and you're WAY better in assault. Plus, you make your opponent's anti-tank firepower utterly moot.

Damn...mech is starting to sound pretty good now...can anyone point me into the direction of some 1000-1500pt mech lists? Or post their own to give me some ideas?


Also, thanks a bunch everyone! Great info.

Have the Codex handy?

Do you want artillery or heavy tanks?

Do you want Air Cav, Walkers, or Flamethrowing tanks?

Do you want your troops to have thier own little metal boxes?



Sooo many options for a mech list. it makes me giddy. Personally I've started collecting Valks because air cav is sweet looking and still effective. 6 valks/vendettas 5 Vet squads and a command squad.

Or go with leafblower and run Artillery with a screen of chimeras carrying infantry squads.

You could also run a Leman Russ heavy tank line. (looks nice but a well equiped enemy can tear it up . . . damn longfangs . . .)

sentinels too . . . maybe not your best option points wise, but I love the little guys

Never tried a hellhound/devildog/other one list. It could work tho.

I was going to mention that Ailaros was the guy to talk to... but there he is already

I had an old batrep with an all foot guard army that ended up beating a demon army, with plenty of close combats happening. So I think that is pretty essential reading. Here it is... http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/266817.page

A couple questions. Are you interested in playing either cadians or catachans? Both of those armies have a special character that can be pretty helpful for foot lists at larger points sizes.

My foot armies have four elements that are necessary to make them work.

1) Heavy Weapons squads. Gotta have them. Its a shame they can be IDed, as it does give the enemy something to shoot their anti-tank guns at. But they are cheap, they'll always have cover and they can't be shaken or stunned. It will still require a lot of your enemies resources to eliminate them as a threat.

2) Command squads. Command squads are nearly as vital, because they can have both meltaguns and flamers in spades, and you'll need both of those to repel assaults. Land raiders will rush your lines, tank shock and unload cargo, you'll need to melta them. And quad flamer is a great way to quickly wipe out everything up to marines thats gotten in your face. The other quite important thing that these squads bring are orders. Part of what makes foot armies fun is that you get to do a lot of fun orders. It'll bring your HWS lascannons and autocannons in-line with hydras and vendettas, and you'll be firing off a LOT more 'move, move, move' and 'first rank fire, second rank fire'

3) "power blobs" If you aren't already hip to what a power blob is. You should do a search. These are your backbone survivor units, they'll win you plenty of combats, and their 'first rank fire, second rank fire' is actually pretty deadly.

40 The Piquet. Unlike mech armies or hybrid mech armies, you will need to have the ability to prevent a faster assault unit from being able to charge your power blobs. If you have Creed or Straken, then you want to preserve the ability to trigger furious charge, and if you don't have them, at very least you will want to be able to get a 'first rank fire' off at short range, or at least charge to deny them attacks. I generally just use a 10 man infantry squad to do this duty.


I won't point you out a list, as that is taking all of the fun away, but I'll show you that all of those tools are found in the platoon structure of the codex. Making it really easy to access all the things you want.

A note on leman russes... One of the most powerful things about a foot guard army is that it plays spoiler to the metagame. Most people take a large number of anti-tank long range shooting, thanks to the preponderance of mech. Since you've got no armor 12 or 10 in the list, then their expensive guns are very wasted. However, a well screened leman russ tank is VERY difficult for ranged weapons to kill. Some tyranids and tau will be able to do it, as will some other IG armies. But its more likely that you'll be able to shoot all game with them. A foot guard list by no means has to take russes, but it won't weaken your list to bring some armored support.

company command squad 4x meltas
company command squad 4x meltas

Got these guys there to be able to dish out 4 total 'fire on my targets' or 'bring it down' and to have some meltas spread out in my lines. if the meltas become very important, and your opponents prioritize them, you can buy these units camo cloaks.

platoon command squad 4x flamer
infantry squad power weapon commissar power weapon
infantry squad power weapon
infantry squad power weapon
infantry squad
heavy weapons squad 3x autocannons
heavy weapons squad 3x autocannons
heavy weapons squad 3x lascannons
heavy weapons squad 3x lascannons

Here is our first troops choice. We've got the flamers and orders, a power blob, a single piquet and a target for each of our CCS orders.

platoon command squad 4x flamer
infantry squad power weapon commissar power weapon
infantry squad power weapon
infantry squad power weapon
infantry squad

Troop number two, got the piquet, the blob and more orders and flamers.


I think that would be a great place to start. A baseline. there are lots of other opinions on the matter, Ogryns might get used, leman russes, even more blobs. But I think this would be a solid, fun starting point.

my mech IG runs 2 PBS and 2 manticores. thats more than enough to deal with infantry.

even with kommissars they will be getting pinned on ld 2. I will be targeting the command squad first so they dont get to cast any orders to bring them back in the fight. in most cases you can target both since they will most likely be close together.

That is an interesting post Shep. I hadn't thought about using single, naked infantry squads as speedbumps. One change I might make is to put meltaguns in the power blobs. Gives them the ability to resist tank shock, shoot transports etc.

I-bounty-hunt-the-elderly wrote:That is an interesting post Shep. I hadn't thought about using single, naked infantry squads as speedbumps. One change I might make is to put meltaguns in the power blobs. Gives them the ability to resist tank shock, shoot transports etc.

the person doing the tank shocking can easily avoid the melta gun in a powerblob. I'd go with grenade launchers and autocannons for power blobs. gives them cheap anti transports with range. also wy are you worried about tank shocks with a unit that gets ld 9 w/rr

Shep and Ailaros had/have a lot of good advice.

I've played a lot against mech IG and Straken foot horde IG. They're both excellent, and top competitors.

IME Straken foot horde is even more powerful, but more of a pain in the neck to build and play. You have to paint a metric ton of models and moving them and shooting them all in games is work; it really helps to use movement trays, and you'll get used to almost never finishing a tournament game before the time's up.

Mech IG is easier & quicker to build, paint, and play.


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mrdabba wrote:

I-bounty-hunt-the-elderly wrote:That is an interesting post Shep. I hadn't thought about using single, naked infantry squads as speedbumps. One change I might make is to put meltaguns in the power blobs. Gives them the ability to resist tank shock, shoot transports etc.

the person doing the tank shocking can easily avoid the melta gun in a powerblob.

Shouldn't be easy if you position properly, and it's never a single meltagun in a powerblob. If it has any, it has one for every ten guys.

mrdabba wrote:I'd go with grenade launchers and autocannons for power blobs. gives them cheap anti transports with range.

I favor meltas, but GLs aren't terrible if you want to save points. If you're doing a blob-focused army, half ACs and half Lascannons is a good mix.

mrdabba wrote:[ also wy are you worried about tank shocks with a unit that gets ld 9 w/rr

The main reason to worry about tank shock is just people bunching up your guys for multi-flamer roasting. The other benefit of meltas against tank shock is it gives you a chance to kill something with shooting on your opponent's turn. Freebie kill.

mrdabba wrote:my mech IG runs 2 PBS and 2 manticores. thats more than enough to deal with infantry.

even with kommissars they will be getting pinned on ld 2. I will be targeting the command squad first so they dont get to cast any orders to bring them back in the fight. in most cases you can target both since they will most likely be close together.

Why would my CCS be close to my infantry blobs or HWS if i saw your strategy deployed across the table?

Lob manticore shots onto my infantry squad, I'll do you a favor and go to ground preemptively. I'll take 3+ cover and your weaken resolve will fall off before I even take my 'get back in the fight' leadership test. You know it only lasts for your own shooting phase right? But why would my power blobs even need to get back in the fight at all against mech IG?

The fact that you aren't aiming your manticore shots at my HWS squads is a little confusing. That's what will be hurting your army. But they'll go to ground if you get a good shot on them, take their 3+ cover, and then possibly even get back in the fight on a 7 (or a 10 with a commissar lord or kell)

almost every all infantry IG army i've played against has no room to play there CCS other than next to other units.

if you had heavy weapons thats totally what I would be going for.

here would be my target priority.

CCS, followed by heavy weapons teams if thats what you have. followed by pinning blobs with heavy weapons teams.

usually missions need you to actually move units rather than sitting there going to ground all game so pinning keeps you from doing those things...say like grabbing other objectives...or shooting at my units with rank fire.

CCS gets shot at with manticores and vendettas priority one. the rest of the chimeras and hydras can shoot at your heavy weapons teams....str 6+ still insta kills them you know. once your ccs is gone your all infantry IG army is just a big sitting duck. the main order you need "get back in the fight" is gone.

I'm going to use death korps models, but I'm using them with the normal IG codex. I don't have one ATM. I LOVE valks and leman russ' so a list with those would be amazing.


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And thanks again everyone! I'm at work right now so it's hard for me to keep up with posts. Will be looking through when I get home in an hour or so.

mrdabba wrote:almost every all infantry IG army i've played against has no room to play there CCS other than next to other units.

if you had heavy weapons thats totally what I would be going for.

here would be my target priority.

CCS, followed by heavy weapons teams if thats what you have. followed by pinning blobs with heavy weapons teams.

usually missions need you to actually move units rather than sitting there going to ground all game so pinning keeps you from doing those things...say like grabbing other objectives...or shooting at my units with rank fire.

CCS gets shot at with manticores and vendettas priority one. the rest of the chimeras and hydras can shoot at your heavy weapons teams....str 6+ still insta kills them you know. once your ccs is gone your all infantry IG army is just a big sitting duck. the main order you need "get back in the fight" is gone.

Frankly, you seem a lot more interested in telling people your army could beat them up, than in adding anything to the discussion. It's a bit pointless to describe a target priority plan for 40k as if that will bring you victory 100% of the time. Your opponent gets turns too, y'know, and I'm sure if he's a half decent player he has some targets in mind as well.

The reason I am going with melta guns in blobs is mostly against tank shock for objectives. I play eldar, so I regularly spend the last turns tank shocking enemy objective-holders. With 3 meltaguns (31-man blobs) it should be perfectly simple to position them so that your opponent cannot approach within 3" of the objective before the death or glory.


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TinyWhale wrote:I'm going to use death korps models, but I'm using them with the normal IG codex. I don't have one ATM. I LOVE valks and leman russ' so a list with those would be amazing.


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And thanks again everyone! I'm at work right now so it's hard for me to keep up with posts. Will be looking through when I get home in an hour or so.

Actually, one of the things the DKOK siege regiment army list (you can download it off the forgeworld site) excels at is power blobs. The fairly cheap close combat/morale bonuses krieg gets, combined with the ability to take powerfists(!) on infantry sergeants, make it probably better than the codex list for power-blob guard, although you can't get straken and the HWS options are a bit more limited.

I-bounty-hunt-the-elderly wrote:

mrdabba wrote:almost every all infantry IG army i've played against has no room to play there CCS other than next to other units.

if you had heavy weapons thats totally what I would be going for.

here would be my target priority.

CCS, followed by heavy weapons teams if thats what you have. followed by pinning blobs with heavy weapons teams.

usually missions need you to actually move units rather than sitting there going to ground all game so pinning keeps you from doing those things...say like grabbing other objectives...or shooting at my units with rank fire.

CCS gets shot at with manticores and vendettas priority one. the rest of the chimeras and hydras can shoot at your heavy weapons teams....str 6+ still insta kills them you know. once your ccs is gone your all infantry IG army is just a big sitting duck. the main order you need "get back in the fight" is gone.

Frankly, you seem a lot more interested in telling people your army could beat them up, than in adding anything to the discussion. It's a bit pointless to describe a target priority plan for 40k as if that will bring you victory 100% of the time. Your opponent gets turns too, y'know, and I'm sure if he's a half decent player he has some targets in mind as well.

The reason I am going with melta guns in blobs is mostly against tank shock for objectives. I play eldar, so I regularly spend the last turns tank shocking enemy objective-holders. With 3 meltaguns (31-man blobs) it should be perfectly simple to position them so that your opponent cannot approach within 3" of the objective before the death or glory.


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TinyWhale wrote:I'm going to use death korps models, but I'm using them with the normal IG codex. I don't have one ATM. I LOVE valks and leman russ' so a list with those would be amazing.


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And thanks again everyone! I'm at work right now so it's hard for me to keep up with posts. Will be looking through when I get home in an hour or so.

Actually, one of the things the DKOK siege regiment army list (you can download it off the forgeworld site) excels at is power blobs. The fairly cheap close combat/morale bonuses krieg gets, combined with the ability to take powerfists(!) on infantry sergeants, make it probably better than the codex list for power-blob guard, although you can't get straken and the HWS options are a bit more limited.

You can't use the DKOK codex thing in tournaments though right? If so, I'd rather stick with the god ol' fashion IG codex.

I-bounty-hunt-the-elderly wrote:Actually, one of the things the DKOK siege regiment army list (you can download it off the forgeworld site) excels at is power blobs. The fairly cheap close combat/morale bonuses krieg gets, combined with the ability to take powerfists(!) on infantry sergeants, make it probably better than the codex list for power-blob guard, although you can't get straken and the HWS options are a bit more limited.

Krieg HWS gain a few points over their codex counterparts as well. Their lascannon squad is actually cheaper than the codex IG equivalent by ten points. The big thing is that Krieg HWS gain the combined squad special rule. Blob up some heavy squads with an infantry squad and you offset the codex IG weaknesses of lack of meatshields and leadership.


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TinyWhale wrote:You can't use the DKOK codex thing in tournaments though right? If so, I'd rather stick with the god ol' fashion IG codex.

Depends on the tournament, ask the organizer. True, you can almost always count on codex IG being allowed but you can't rely on the same for Kreig.

Raxmei wrote:

I-bounty-hunt-the-elderly wrote:Actually, one of the things the DKOK siege regiment army list (you can download it off the forgeworld site) excels at is power blobs. The fairly cheap close combat/morale bonuses krieg gets, combined with the ability to take powerfists(!) on infantry sergeants, make it probably better than the codex list for power-blob guard, although you can't get straken and the HWS options are a bit more limited.

Krieg HWS gain a few points over their codex counterparts as well. Their lascannon squad is actually cheaper than the codex IG equivalent by ten points. The big thing is that Krieg HWS gain the combined squad special rule. Blob up some heavy squads with an infantry squad and you offset the codex IG weaknesses of lack of meatshields and leadership.


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TinyWhale wrote:You can't use the DKOK codex thing in tournaments though right? If so, I'd rather stick with the god ol' fashion IG codex.

Depends on the tournament, ask the organizer. True, you can almost always count on codex IG being allowed but you can't rely on the same for Kreig.

Whoah, that combined squads thing is huge!

And I agree with Tinywhale, one big reason not to do that army list, is that it's mystifying to casual opponents and possibly not allowed. The other is that I don't really have any 'theme' reason for my army to be a siege regiment, and I'd feel a bit of a scrub taking a seperate army list just to mount a better bayonet charge.


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Maybe in a really big game where I really wanted to win, just to get one over a mate. "Well, look, all my guardmen are WS4 and the hidden weapons are powerfists! And my HWS? Oh, can't get to them just yet, gotta make me fail 10 cover saves first!"

LOL.
I wouldn't feel right using it. I would rather not feel like I was cheating and use the official codex, just have the korps subbed in for my normals guards.

Straken is a huge asset, anyway. A friend of mine was going to run infantry horde guard in the ETC, but that event bans special characters, and he couldn't get it to work reliably enough without Straken, so he wound up running mech for that event instead.

If you're on a budget infantry guard will be easier on you than mech guard.

The strength of mech guard is that you have two armies: an army of 12+ vehicles, and an army of 70+ men.

The downside is that building that list costs as much as two armies.

All-infantry guard will be cheaper (but still expensive, due to the sheer number of kits you'll have to buy) but also has problems.

Remmeber that 1/3 of missions will be Dawn of War, and another 1/3 will be spearhead. You'll have huge problems moving your men onto and around the table. Dawn of War will be especially problematic for heavy weapon teams.

Contrary to popular belief, you don't just plonk IG down on the table and start shooting. The movement phase is the trickiest one to play through because you have lots of models, and getting them to navigate each other while staying clear of other squads' firing lanes and making their way to the objectives can actually be quite tricky.

sourclams wrote:If you're on a budget infantry guard will be easier on you than mech guard.

The strength of mech guard is that you have two armies: an army of 12+ vehicles, and an army of 70+ men.

The downside is that building that list costs as much as two armies.

All-infantry guard will be cheaper (but still expensive, due to the sheer number of kits you'll have to buy) but also has problems.

Remmeber that 1/3 of missions will be Dawn of War, and another 1/3 will be spearhead. You'll have huge problems moving your men onto and around the table. Dawn of War will be especially problematic for heavy weapon teams.

Contrary to popular belief, you don't just plonk IG down on the table and start shooting. The movement phase is the trickiest one to play through because you have lots of models, and getting them to navigate each other while staying clear of other squads' firing lanes and making their way to the objectives can actually be quite tricky.

Budget isn't a problem. With mech guard I'll still have tons of troops though??

70+ dudes is still a pretty good number of models. By comparison one of my typical Chaos armies at 1750-2000pts might run 45-60 total models; and that's including the vehicles.

TinyWhale wrote:
Budget isn't a problem. With mech guard I'll still have tons of troops though??

Well not as much as blob, and you won't actually have to set those troops up or take them out of their case (Me being lazy in casual games) until their transport explodes/wrecked or you disembark.