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After perusing through various internet forums, I'm somewhat shocked to see how upset some people are about the new IG book. Most complaints being about the Vendetta and Chimera nerfs, which to me aren't unfounded, and help push the army back to it's intended mechanism.

When I think of an IG army, I think of wave after wave of guardsmen, and lots of heavy tanks. Thematically, I think this codex does a much better job of representing the true IG soul.

With Leman Russ tanks becoming slightly cheaper and the option to take a Warlord in a tank, with his squad counting as HQ, this allows for 15 Leman Russ tanks in a single force organization chart. While very hard to do under 2000 points, I can already see lists featuring at 10-12 Leman Russ variants at the 1999 point level becoming common place if you favor a tank heavy force.

If you played a blob style guard army before, it just got so much better. Better orders, better commissars, and PRIESTS!!! Throw in a line of bullgryns in front of your blob and you are going to have one of the most difficult to kill units in the game, that can get those sweet new order, benefit from a priest allowing them to reroll saves or wound rolls, and a commissar that makes sure your blob will hold true no matter what.

While the style of vendetta spamming and hiding veterans in a chimera and firing away might be gone, strong guard blobs and numerous roaming tanks is going to make for some strong lists.

Most of the coverage I have seen has been generally positive. Obviously there are some bad points, but it is far from widespread upset.

It's a mixed bag.

To start with, I've never understood why people think IG should just be a mass of infantry and a few heavy tanks. There are tons of mechanized and airborne infantry formations in the fluff background, hammering them to "better represent the true IG soul" is ridiculous. Especially after the 6E core rules changes to transports and vehicle survivability already massively hammered them.

Yes, if one plays a blob style army, you may be better off than before, but largely through a couple changes to HQ units. Those lists also require a much larger investment in terms of buying, building, painting, transporting, setting up and cleaning up all those infantry models that doesn't suit everyone.

Meanwhile, large numbers of units that really needed re-working or price cuts didn't really get what they needed (Heavy Weapons squads, Ogryn, Sentinels, Rough Riders), and units like Stormtroopers got reworked into "Scions" and still suffer the fundamental problems they had previously but are just cheaper through cutting their special rules. Most of the characters and several artillery units got outright removed, while others got unnecessarily nerfed, such as the basic Valkyrie, and what happened to the poor Hydra was very sad indeed. Meanwhile the Taurox is largely redundant and an unnecessary addition and the Taurox Prime has a price tag approaching that of many battle tanks after kit but worse than 35pt Rhino level survivability.

Some units got better, the Deathstrike surprisingly might actually be useable, footvets should actually work finally, and Armored Sentinels might actually have a use for once.

Meanwhile the new Wyvern is everything everyone ever complained about with IG Thudd Guns, but on a mobile AV12 platform and ignoring cover and without the need for HQ Ld bolstering and allied Psyker shennanigans.

So, effectively, the army got the CSM/Tyranid treatment, where the book is largely a sidegrade of the previous one with some give and take (some understandable and some completely incomprehensible) rather than a major reworking to the new mechanics of the edition (as Tau and Eldar got) or a moderate reconstruction resulting in a more coherent functioning of the army (as Space Marines got)

Well I think that all of the main styles of Guard list will be perfectly playable in the Codex, and most of them will be pretty effective. Mech still works fine, armoured got a buff, nothing wrong with airborne and infantry is pretty good. The only style that got hit would be artillery, which is still perfectly fine with FW additions and will be better after a DKOK update. The main codex never did artillery very well anyway, it has always been the domain of FW.

 Vaktathi wrote:
It's a mixed bag.

To start with, I've never understood why people think IG should just be a mass of infantry and a few heavy tanks. There are tons of mechanized and airborne infantry formations in the fluff background, hammering them to "better represent the true IG soul" is ridiculous. Especially after the 6E core rules changes to transports and vehicle survivability already massively hammered them.

Yes, if one plays a blob style army, you may be better off than before, but largely through a couple changes to HQ units. Those lists also require a much larger investment in terms of buying, building, painting, transporting, setting up and cleaning up all those infantry models that doesn't suit everyone.

Meanwhile, large numbers of units that really needed re-working or price cuts didn't really get what they needed (Heavy Weapons squads, Ogryn, Sentinels, Rough Riders), and units like Stormtroopers got reworked into "Scions" and still suffer the fundamental problems they had previously but are just cheaper through cutting their special rules. Most of the characters and several artillery units got outright removed, while others got unnecessarily nerfed, such as the basic Valkyrie, and what happened to the poor Hydra was very sad indeed. Meanwhile the Taurox is largely redundant and an unnecessary addition and the Taurox Prime has a price tag approaching that of many battle tanks after kit but worse than 35pt Rhino level survivability.

Some units got better, the Deathstrike surprisingly might actually be useable, footvets should actually work finally, and Armored Sentinels might actually have a use for once.

Meanwhile the new Wyvern is everything everyone ever complained about with IG Thudd Guns, but on a mobile AV12 platform and ignoring cover and without the need for HQ Ld bolstering and allied Psyker shennanigans.

So, effectively, the army got the CSM/Tyranid treatment, where the book is largely a sidegrade of the previous one with some give and take (some understandable and some completely incomprehensible) rather than a major reworking to the new mechanics of the edition (as Tau and Eldar got) or a moderate reconstruction resulting in a more coherent functioning of the army (as Space Marines got)

I agree that in some areas we were scorned by GW, especially in that units that we all wanted to see more play (rough riders, sentinals, etc), but some of units got some good buffs, especially some we all laughed at before *cough cough Priests cough*. The orders are still pretty good and yes some old ones were mixed up abit, yet some got buffed. Also IMHO mech got better with this new codex, especially with the tank commander, vets getting cheaper, LR's getting cheaper; but like I stated early GW gave and took at the same time, vendettas got hit and chimeras got an increased (by only ten but from an IG player who runs a gak ton of chimeras that gak stack up quick). I guess what I'm trying to say is yes in some aspects we have to take it with a grain of salt but are we as bad off as CSM/Nids? No, we more the middle ground alongside the SM realease. Some good, some bad and yes some ugly (Taurox Prime *shudders)

It's not too bad. It is however going to drive the race to the bottom in terms of allies, *cough* primaris to get prescience x 3 *cough*. Add to that orders that take away cover. Blobs already make a mockery of things and it will only get more disgusting.

The point reduction to armoured sentinels will pretty much guarantee you'll never see scout sentinels.

I agree that the IG mostly got cleaned up. Most of the changes were devoted to making awful units playable again, and they did a pretty good job of not throwing in a bunch of overpowered garbage. I don't think I could really hear much for complaints about the guard codex.

Chimeras weren't thundernerfed, they were just restored to a slightly cheaper, slightly better version that they were in the 3.5 codex. This was a change anyone could have expected. Meanwhile, I think vendettas got off light. Their loss of transport capacity was nothing more than a slap on the wrist, as most squads that were transported before were 6 models or fewer anyways. All they got was a bit of a price hike, which, once again, we all knew was coming, and wasn't unnecessarily draconian.

The only serious potential for cheese, I think, is going to be in allying guard in to other armies. Before, guard bore a rather substantial troops and HQ tax before you got to their good units. Now that's much less true. Now you can also take 6 russes and pask as part of a secondary detachment, which means we'll probably see people allying in ABGs.

As a stand-alone codex, though, it's just fine, and doesn't seem like it's going to be able to abuse allies too hard.

And scout sentinels still outflank, hit side and rear armor, and guaranteed get to fire before they get shot at.

I don't think the codex is all that bad. My complaints before the book even come out still stand:

1. We didn't get any cool new hotness.

That's obviously a personal thing, I'm sure some people love the Taurox (buahahaha). The only thing I really like is the Hydra, but the rules suck so my motivation to buy one is low. The Wyvern is ok but every time I look at it I can't help but think "I lost my Colossus for this?"

2. The removal of units. Really, even if the codex is awesome, I never support the removal of things, and we lost a ton of special characters and the 3 artillery tanks.

3. Simultaneously boosting vets and nerfing the Chimera. Chimera vets were taken too much previously, but by making them cheaper (by removing their kraks) and making the Chimera more expensive... they didn't actually make Chimera platoons any more appealing over Chimera vets. They reduced the number of special weapons that a Chimera vet unit can fire... but because they raised the cost of a regular infantry unit in a Chimera there's still no reason to take them.

Despite those points, I don't think the codex is terrible. No where near as bad as the Tyranid codex where entire chunks of the codex are blatantly obviously unbalanced. There's a couple of units that we'll probably never or rarely ever see taken, but overall I think there's a few viable builds which is nice.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
1. We didn't get any cool new hotness.

S10 AP1 10 inch blast with no cover that can be twin linked via primaris, pretty hot. The wyvern is also hot and when spammed will be broken as feth. 9 of them would be 36 small blasts a turn and the initial shot is twin linked, that's pretty hot. That's less than 600pts... pretty hot.


I will say though that codex really heavily incentives blobs.

If we hadn't lost half our artillery options, penal legionnaires, and hadn't had pysker squads and regular ogryn neutered, I would say this is the best codex GW has put out for 6th.

A lot of stuff has legitimate uses or niches, most models got a rules buff, price adjustment, or both, and a lot of units feel "right", for lack of a better word. Yeah the chimera and vendetta things suck, but it was needed. There was simply no way 5 guardsmen could have fired plasma or melts out of that chimera at the same time, and the vendetta having less transport capacity is a good compromise in my eyes to keep it cheaper.

As it sits now, its just pretty good. Had they kept penal legionnaires around and given them larger units, gave them and ogryn relevant price breaks, and kept artillery around, it would be like a 9/10. Unfortunately its just a solid 7 or 8 as it sits now

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
Yeah the chimera and vendetta things suck, but it was needed. There was simply no way 5 guardsmen could have fired plasma or melts out of that chimera at the same time

I'm not so sure. Besides, the Chimera was hardly broken/overpowered/etc in 6E, there wasn't any good balance reason to nerf it.

 Crablezworth wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
1. We didn't get any cool new hotness.

S10 AP1 10 inch blast with no cover that can be twin linked via primaris, pretty hot. The wyvern is also hot and when spammed will be broken as feth. 9 of them would be 36 small blasts a turn and the initial shot is twin linked, that's pretty hot. That's less than 600pts... pretty hot.

I'm going to refuse to play against 9 wyverns, and I play ABG. Three is bad enough, any more than that an the shooting phase is going to take a tediously long amount of time:

1: Work out initial hit location, with reroll.
2: Mark position and note how many hits.
3: Repeat for eleven more blasts, noting each hit location and number of hits separately.
4: Roll each blast's wounds separately, making sure not to mix them up. With rerolls.
5. Allocate each blast's wounds, starting with the first blast fired, working in firing order and using their specific hit locations.
6. Resolve all twelve pools, including look out sirs.

The multiple barrage rules are workable for three large blasts a turn, from manticores or basilisks. Working out 36 blasts in a turn, with rerolls on to hits and wounds, is just ludicrously tedious.

Please tell me I got something wrong, and that the sequence is far simpler than I think. I'm going off the FAQ:

Q: In a multiple barrage, do you determine all of the hits and
all of the Wounds separately for each blast, or do you resolve all
of blasts in one go? (p34)
A: Work out the total number of models hit by each
template, then proceed to allocate Wounds and remove
casualties as normal for the models hit by each seperate
template.

 Crablezworth wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
1. We didn't get any cool new hotness.

S10 AP1 10 inch blast with no cover that can be twin linked via primaris, pretty hot. The wyvern is also hot and when spammed will be broken as feth. 9 of them would be 36 small blasts a turn and the initial shot is twin linked, that's pretty hot. That's less than 600pts... pretty hot.

I was talking more about actual new units/kits. The Deathstrike isn't new. The Wyvern is new, it seems like a good deal for a mortar but I'd like to review it a bit more before I say it's an awesome spammy unit. It's still only S4 AP6, so it seems rather situational to me... Venomthropes are going to hate it. But it's not like IG were ever starved for mid strength low to medium AP weapons.

New: Taurox, Hydra, Wyvern

Lost: Stacks of special characters, penal legions and 3 artillery tanks

The Taurox looks like gak.
AFAIK that's my only real issue...

There not so bad? Anything on foot now is dead, and unlike my Tau army i can MOVE while killing them too. I'm going to load up my Vets in Chimeras and Valkyries (They can have a single lascannon on them) and drop each team by a objective. Meanwhile buff these units with pretty amazing commands over the vox system while my multiple rocket pods just mow down anything that comes near my men. The Basilisk and deathstrike will stay behind a defense line hammering off rounds until pretty much I've taken most of the board.

With servo skulls and such i'm really looking forward to these buffs and i'm sure to invest in the regimental advisers now.

Yeah, wyverns are going to be insanely tedious to do all the rolling and rerolling for.

Thankfully, they're just multi-shot blast lasguns. It shouldn't take people too long to figure out that they're overrated.

But how did regular ogryn get neutered? They're virtually the same.

 Ailaros wrote:
It shouldn't take people too long to figure out that they're overrated.

Why would you say they're overrated?


Let's see, so it can't hurt toughness 8 models or vehicles with av11+ on the side. Still quite a bit out there it can hurt.

Because they're basically blast lasguns.

Their strength is super low, so they're only hurting infantry units, and their Ap is so bad, that infantry units are nearly always getting armor saves.

They're more accurate than usual, and you get four small blast templates, but their damage profile is the same as mortars (which no one took because they're too weak), which is roughly the same as frag-mode grenade launchers (which no one took because they're too weak - and they at least had a krak mode.

They make a lot of bark, but have very little bite. What's extra harsh is that they're blatantly unecessary, as you should already have lots of anti-infantry with FRF lasguns or chimera heavy weapons. Plus they have to compete against other anti-infantry options (like hellhounds) and against other anti-infantry options in their own HS slot (like cheaper, better punishers).

There's not a lot going for them other than that they have cool fluff.

 Ailaros wrote:
Because they're basically blast lasguns.

Lasguns are S3, aren't twin linked,don't have shred and don't deny cover saves.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ailaros wrote:
Their strength is super low, so they're only hurting infantry units

S4 with a re-roll to wound won't only be wounding infantry.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ailaros wrote:
their Ap is so bad, that infantry units are nearly always getting armor saves.

You're not taking it for the AP, units in area terrain will go from a 2+ or 3+ cover save to whatever their armour save is, which is likely gak if they're baseline infantry.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ailaros wrote:
They're more accurate than usual

They get direct hits over 50% of the time, that's incredibly significant,


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ailaros wrote:
their damage profile is the same as mortars

No their weapon profile is not the same, mortas aren't twin-linked, don't deny a cover save and don't have shred.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ailaros wrote:
they're blatantly unecessary, as you should already have lots of anti-infantry with FRF lasguns or chimera heavy weapons.

I'm not entirely understanding the comparisson between a barrage weapon and a flashlight.

Yes, it's a bit better, but it's a bit.

It has shred, so what? It's still S4, which means you're still reaching for a 4's or worse to wound. Getting to reroll 6's to wound is still rolling 6's to wound, and anything that has that high of toughness is going to have a good armor save and just make a mockery of the wyvern.

It's more accurate, so what? You get a couple of extra hits. Hits that are worse than bolter hits.

It has ignores cover, so what? it's already shooting over a big pile of cover saves, which means it only works against area terrain and, being barrage, doesn't work against targets hiding in ruins. This leaves the only time it could even begin to be useful is against stuff in craters and forests, which is a minority of terrain. And even then, all you're doing is forcing them to take armor saves. There are lots of things that can hide in cover that also have good armor saves.

Ignores cover means that you make the save a little worse on a small band of units in a small band of terrain types. Extremely narrow niche, at best.

And not even nearly the best in this niche. You have other sources of ignores cover that are Ap5, and that are Ap4 (and even Ap3), plus orders. It's not even the best thing to take for this narrow niche.

Really, the best thing to compare the wyvern to is a 4x grenade launcher PCS. Yes, the wyvern is better, but not leaps and bounds better, and it's better than a GRENADE LAUNCHER PCS, which is widely recognized as one of the worst possible units a guard player could take.

The killing power is awful, which is very bad in general, but especially since it shares HS slots with things that have good killing power.

 Ailaros wrote:
. Plus they have to compete against other anti-infantry options (like hellhounds) and against other anti-infantry options in their own HS slot (like cheaper, better punishers).

Compete with hellhounds? What are you talking about?

Punishers aren't cheaper than 65pts and have a 24 inch range, how is that comparable to something with twice the range that doesn't even need to see the thing it's trying to kill?

Punishers are cheaper than they were before, not cheaper than wyverns. And they're still a lot better, and can handle a wider array of targets. Or you could take an exterminator, which is Ap4, so actually good at what it does (and can take anti-tank hull weapons to make it good against basically everything, unlike the wyvern, which is only hurt by things that a weapon somewhere between a lasgun and a bolter can hurt).

And yeah, it doesn't need line of sight. That's only useful if it's ever going to actually kill stuff that's completely out of line of sight. If you wanted to do that, though, you have plenty of options, like the basilisk, deathstrike, manticore, deepstriking scions, etc. etc.

And likewise, a wyvern definitely competes with a hellhound, but a hellhound is better because torrent auto-hits is better than extra-accuracy small blast. And it's Ap4 instead of Ap pointless. And it can take a multimelta, and is closed top, and has better armor, so it doesn't instantly disintegrate at the first angry stare like a wyvern.

Multiple barrage is only bad when the player doesn't know how to do it quickly if you ever played thud guns you will have figured it out now. The secret is to just roll them all and leave dice to mark the import stuff. I do hope they simplify the rules in 7ed though.

For the people saying artillery was removed. It wasn't as far as GW was concerned. They took a FW unit, put it into the codex, and then removed it from the codex but it is still in FW, with the exact same rules except some additional options. The problem is that many people play by special house rules which preclude these units. If you still want to use the artillery you have been using you can you just need to run them as forgeworld units now.

I love how deathstrikes became useful finally. Though they are not automatically their maximum blast (12" was the max) and in some ways the change to a blast marker was a nerf as before if you were within the range you got hit (ie multi level ruins protect units now). Still actually getting one launched is a big improvement.

While I will be rocking a Wyvern tomorrow (since I don't have any other use for my Griffon model), I think it does suffer from being a Heavy Support choice in a codex full of better HS choices. Are the points better spent on something like more pskyers? Sure. But what fun would that be?

The Wyvern is nasty. Hitting 4 time with shred will likely stack ~6 wounds per wyvern at 65 pts a pop you can easily get a unit of 3 which will be hard to kill considering barrage and 48" range.

Getting ride of cover saves and not just being barrage is very significant against stuff like Tau pathfinders and invisible units.

Stripping cover saves won't matter much since a lot of things are going to make their Invulnerable or armor saves. Ignores Cover is huge for AP2 shooting. It's underwhelming for AP6.

But it shoots AQUILAS! The shrapnel is little souvenir aquila ninjastars. It's too dopey not to use.

Sounds lame to me.

 Ailaros wrote:
Punishers are cheaper than they were before, not cheaper than wyverns.

You're the one making the comparisson..


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 Ailaros wrote:
And they're still a lot better, and can handle a wider array of targets.

better doesn't mean anything, better at x for example would mean something. As for "can handle a wider array of targets" that's simply not true if you factor in, you know, having to see the thing you want to target. As for the whopping +1 bump in strength, congratulations, you can now hurt T8 and AV11... a massive boost indeed..

DaddyWarcrimes wrote:
Stripping cover saves won't matter much since a lot of things are going to make their Invulnerable or armor saves. Ignores Cover is huge for AP2 shooting. It's underwhelming for AP6.

But it shoots AQUILAS! The shrapnel is little souvenir aquila ninjastars. It's too dopey not to use.

The ignores cover means lighter units can't rely on cover saves better than their own, which in many cases can be pretty huge. Eldar Pathfinders in Ruins? Guess they get to roll their 5+ armor for those 13 wounds instead of that sweet, sweet 2+ cover. Blob platoon went to ground in area terrain? Welp, no 3+ cover for them, they get to roll with that 5+ armor.

Granted it's certainly not as powerful as if it were AP2, but there'll be a lot of units that will feel it.

 Ailaros wrote:
Punishers are cheaper than they were before, not cheaper than wyverns. And they're still a lot better, and can handle a wider array of targets.

If you're kitting the punisher strictly for anti-infantry killing? then the range of targets is only negligibly larger and the range far shorter. If you're multi-kitting the Punisher with say Lascannons and multi melta sponsons or something, the Wyverns are going to be way more cost effective for the role and your tank will have to do more to justify its cost while not being as capable as it's otherwise specialized role and merely potentially possible of doing something else as opposed to being competent at it. The Wyvern, point for point, will deliver more average wounds, and do it at a significantly longer range, than a Punisher will. And with the Punisher starting at the price more than twice that of a Wyvern (and quite possibly ending up at the price of 3 after upgrades), the Wyvern can fit in a whole lot of hurt.

Or you could take an exterminator, which is Ap4

Which, against targets in cover where the AP4 would matter, is going to be less effective than the Wyvern and against targets in the open the Wyvern is generating a lot more raw wounds (point for point) so the sheer number of hits is likely to make up for that AP4.

so actually good at what it does (and can take anti-tank hull weapons to make it good against basically everything, unlike the wyvern, which is only hurt by things that a weapon somewhere between a lasgun and a bolter can hurt).

You take an Exterminator when you need a generalist tank. If you're running Wyvern's they're obviously anti-infantry wound generators and little else, but you're probably building your list around that. Same part of the above applies, and an Exterminator is basically never going to generate a larger number of wounds against infantry than equivalent points of Wyverns will and will have to spend time not doing the jobs the Wyverns will to make use of its other capabilities.

And yeah, it doesn't need line of sight. That's only useful if it's ever going to actually kill stuff that's completely out of line of sight. If you wanted to do that, though, you have plenty of options, like the basilisk, deathstrike, manticore, deepstriking scions, etc. etc.

All of which cost significantly more, two of which have limited ammo, and all of which are much more likely to have other targets that their capabilities will be required against.

And likewise, a wyvern definitely competes with a hellhound, but a hellhound is better because torrent auto-hits is better than extra-accuracy small blast. And it's Ap4 instead of Ap pointless. And it can take a multimelta, and is closed top, and has better armor, so it doesn't instantly disintegrate at the first angry stare like a wyvern.

A Hellhound's frontal armor and HP count are no better than that of the Wyvern's. A hellhound has half the range of the Wyvern. A Hellhound has to move about the board a whole lot more and face a whole lot more enemy fire from more angles while a Wyvern can sit in the back without needing to expose the weaker sides. A Hellhound is twice the cost of a Wyvern. For the same price as a Hellhound, you can get two AV12/10/01 OT'd 3HP tanks and 8 S4 Shred/Ignores Cover/Twin Linked 48" Barrage Small Blasts instead of one AV12/12/10 3HP tank with an S6 AP4 Torrent Flamer.

Also something to note, against T3 targets, S4 w/Shred is actually more effective than the Hellhound's S6 is (which comprise the majority of units the Hellhound is usually tasked with eliminating) while being similarly slightly less effective against T4 targets (most of which the Hellhounds AP4 doesn't matter against).

The Wyvern is highly situational, much like a Hydra, and should be thought of as such. Usually you'll want one or the other in your army, rarely both. Magnetize, Magnetize people.

In my small FLGS of 4 players, Space Wolves, Grey Knights, Chaos Daemonettes (with 4+->2+invuls) a Wyvern is a waste and will never be useful enough to bring so I lement the loss of the Medusa and Colossus for the mediocrity of the Basilisk. I will not give FW money to use vehicles I already have in the past.

If I were to shoot the Wyvern at Space Wolves, I'd get about 8-10 hits, 6-7 wounds and maybe 2 dead space wolves which is pathetic compared to 4 dead space wolves from the colossus. Yes 2 Wyverns will get the same results with more durability but $130+ is a joke.

*edit for Crablezworth a Punisher cannon and will strip HPs off of flyers, especially with a little prescience, it will also lay down more unsaved wounds against 2+SV models. Both of these things are much more common for me to see then: Guard or Tau or Eldar troops in cover.