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Noob here, on the fence about finally dipping into 40K. I like the IG models, I dig the whole tank thing, love the idea of a Valkyrie dropping a unit in. I even borrowed a 2013 Codex from the local library. I was at the game store on the weekend and almost made it to the checkout with the Start Collecting box when I decided to have one more think on it....

The consensus seems clear: even though IG got some love in 8th, it is still based on fielding an insane, at times unmanageable, number of models. I just dont think that bringing dozens of 1 wound pieces to the table is my style of play.

Other than declaring every unit as Veteran (not even sure thats allowed, and I'm guessing doesn't really go that far in terms of shrinking the model count), are there alternate ways to play IG that dont call for unit trays? I'm really not attracted the whole Ogryn thing and ironically the Scion models arnt to my taste (exposed faces if the guardsmen is one of the things I like most about IG).

I gather one could easily play Marines/Ultramarines with half the model count (though perhaps double the $), and the models are....ok, but they seem so ubiquitous.

Thoughts?

I am going to suggest building a Scion force. Don’t worry about not having faces. All the Scions come with alternative heads that are exposed faces with berets.

You can allways ally in a castellan to reduce model count. It can win you many matches om it's own too.

Here is an example of the berets.

Gitdakka wrote:
You can allways ally in a castellan to reduce model count. It can win you many matches om it's own too.

Don’t do this if you want friends, do this if you don’t... or if you wanna be hyper competetive. There are other imperial knights you could use instead

Short answer: Not really.

I play in a fairly casual meta and we have several players who play troops-light IG lists. They struggle fairly hard against anything that moves fairly fast. The trouble is that they field an absolute ton of vehicles (enough that their deployment zone is usually a bumper to bumper parking lot) and none of them have Fly, meaning if they get into melee combat, they're essentially 'turned off'. Many people will tag them with even models that aren't melee models to keep them from firing. I've seen a player with a tau list continuously charging one of the guys' tanklines with his battlesuits just to keep them tied up.

If you want an elite, characterful force of humans with a low model count, I would encourage you to look towards deathwatch, Custodes, etc. If you want to field an army of mostly vehicles, I'd say one of the factions with flying vehicles might work better, like Eldar, Necrons, Drukhari or Tau.

Pain4Pleasure wrote:

Gitdakka wrote:
You can allways ally in a castellan to reduce model count. It can win you many matches om it's own too.

Don’t do this if you want friends, do this if you don’t... or if you wanna be hyper competetive. There are other imperial knights you could use instead

The other Knights all have weaknesses that can be exploited. I use Gallants with my Guard army, they're melee only, so if you screen very well you have a turn or two of shooting at them before they actually hurt you. Unlike a Castellan, where turn 1 it just removes 2 vehicles automatically.

 Horst wrote:

Pain4Pleasure wrote:

Gitdakka wrote:
You can allways ally in a castellan to reduce model count. It can win you many matches om it's own too.

Don’t do this if you want friends, do this if you don’t... or if you wanna be hyper competetive. There are other imperial knights you could use instead

The other Knights all have weaknesses that can be exploited. I use Gallants with my Guard army, they're melee only, so if you screen very well you have a turn or two of shooting at them before they actually hurt you. Unlike a Castellan, where turn 1 it just removes 2 vehicles automatically.

Hence why I told him run it if he wants to just win, run any other knight if he is looking for fun.

 Apple Peel wrote:
I am going to suggest building a Scion force. Don’t worry about not having faces. All the Scions come with alternative heads that are exposed faces with berets.

I did not know that! (and GW certainly doesn't promote it). Might be cool. Comparing the basic troops, my quick math says they are (about) 2x the points per model of Cadians? Still only 1 wound, slightly better save roll, and the Hot-Shot gives up a bit of distance in favor of some AP, do I read that right? Can Scions still do the whole Leman Russ thang etc?

 Sunsanvil wrote:
Noob here, on the fence about finally dipping into 40K. I like the IG models, I dig the whole tank thing, love the idea of a Valkyrie dropping a unit in. I even borrowed a 2013 Codex from the local library. I was at the game store on the weekend and almost made it to the checkout with the Start Collecting box when I decided to have one more think on it....

The consensus seems clear: even though IG got some love in 8th, it is still based on fielding an insane, at times unmanageable, number of models. I just dont think that bringing dozens of 1 wound pieces to the table is my style of play.

Other than declaring every unit as Veteran (not even sure thats allowed, and I'm guessing doesn't really go that far in terms of shrinking the model count), are there alternate ways to play IG that dont call for unit trays? I'm really not attracted the whole Ogryn thing and ironically the Scion models arnt to my taste (exposed faces if the guardsmen is one of the things I like most about IG).

I gather one could easily play Marines/Ultramarines with half the model count (though perhaps double the $), and the models are....ok, but they seem so ubiquitous.

Thoughts?

If you want to play IG but want to play something low model count, you can just build an army of Russ tanks. Spearhead detachments allow Russ Tanks to get ObSec, if you don't mind running with a relatively small amount of CP, you can build an IG list with less than a dozen models and still have some functionality

Imperial guard and most imperial codexes work best competatively as soup. as a mono army guard is still very strong and fun. really as for what to get I would say yes lots of infantry is a necessity. fortunately the start collecting boxes are a good place to start. buying 1 at a time is ~$75 and you get a leman russ plus 10 guardsmen, a heavy weapons team, and a HQ for basically the cost of the leman russ and guardsman.3 boxes and you have a pretty decently sized army on its own and even at one box you an start doing smaller games. If you are patient and OK with used models you cna often fins pretty good deals on Ebay for used models often new on sprue or even fully painted and assembled if you prefer that.

 Sunsanvil wrote:

 Apple Peel wrote:
I am going to suggest building a Scion force. Don’t worry about not having faces. All the Scions come with alternative heads that are exposed faces with berets.

I did not know that! (and GW certainly doesn't promote it). Might be cool. Comparing the basic troops, my quick math says they are (about) 2x the points per model of Cadians? Still only 1 wound, slightly better save roll, and the Hot-Shot gives up a bit of distance in favor of some AP, do I read that right? Can Scions still do the whole Leman Russ thang etc?

Scions are a little weird when it comes to the force org. chart.

They have a special doctrine that you only get if the only units in the detachment are Militarum Tempestus or the other minor keywords that don't break your detachment benefit (like Aeronautic Imperialis and Officio Prefectorum etc)

What you see most people doing with their tempestus armies is to take one detachment of tempestus, and one detachment of other units. So for example, you can have

detachment 1:

2 scion Primes as HQs, 3 scion squads as troops, Taurox Prime scion transports or Valkyries

Detachment 2, using a different doctrine since they can't benefit from Scion doctrine:

1 Tank Commander as HQ, 3 heavy support units.

Personally I think if you want to use scions as your troops you want to avoid using them in deep strike, since you want them on the board distracting from your tanks. I would put them in either Valkyries or in Taurox Primes as their transports.

8th ed forces do not need to take troop choices, as Vaktathi says.
A Vanguard detachment is just 1 HQ and 3 elites, at a minimum. A Spearhead is 1 HQ and 3 heavies. And so on.
You do not have to take troops if you don't want to.

Doing this, you just take a couple of commanders (tank commanders are an option) and maybe a command squad for flavour, with as few bodies as you like.

The best way to start a MT scions army would be by buying a few of the Start Collecting! Sets for them. That is, if you don't mind the Taurox Prime (some people are not a fan of it visually, I think it looks OK)

On average, IG does tend to have more models than comparable lists, but it doesn't mean it's impossible to run a smaller IG army.

As others have noted, mechanized list revolving around obsec LR's with a bane variant list will net you around 40~60 models (batt + spearhead + super heavy).

And on contrary to IG necessarily having to soup to stay competitive, the standard IG+knight+flavor of the month is simply more competitive than a pure IG list using bane variant instead of the knight. The latter list is still quite competitive.

Fairly confident you could just load up on tanks - although it might not be the most efficient approach.

3 tank commanders are about 600 points I think.

Just build tanks and Valkyries, Scions, and the loyal 32.

You don't need 100s of bodies, but you should have SOME troops.

Play a mechanized regiment, say for each squad a Chimera, that will cut down a lot of units, add to that some ObSec leman russes and you should still get a lot of tanks but not that many models overall.

Leman Russ Command Tank + other Leman Russ tanks. CAn get down to five or six models depending on your points level.

Guard work “best” through attrition. Having cheap bodies in the way is like having pawns in chess. You give up an Infantry Squad to kill a squad of marines.

You drop a few units of Scions behind an advancing enemy so they either give you the objective or they break momentum to head back to contest the objective.

Guard work by piece trading. Cheap infantry let you “trade up” in value. At 1500 points, I can’t imagine playing *fewer* than 60 infantry, and 100 would be my personal top end for that size. You still “need” vehicles to be your heavy hitters, I don’t feel the Guard works well as pure infantry.

Thanks all for the thoughts shared so far.

On the notion of playing all armour, or even mostly armour, my gut says thats a pretty boring game (unless you are on an unusually large table). In pretty much all of the batrep vids I've watched, a handfull of LRs get deployed, and start shooting, or get shot, pretty much exactly where they sit. Might move once, and even then just an inch or two to get/correct LOS. I'm sure there have been countless debates on their size vs. typical table size and all that. The Vanquisher's 6-FOOT range seems crazy. LOL.

 greatbigtree wrote:
I can’t imagine playing *fewer* than 60 infantry, and 100 would be my personal top end for that size

Thats what scares me.

Regarding tanks not moving--just make sure you have enough LOS blocking terrain. If you can see all the objectives from one spot in your deployment, then you need more terrain.

Plus, I'd bet those battle reports were pre-CA2018 with the acceptable casualties rule. Capping objectives early is more important now since tabling doesn't automatically win the game.

 Sunsanvil wrote:
Thanks all for the thoughts shared so far.

On the notion of playing all armour, or even mostly armour, my gut says thats a pretty boring game (unless you are on an unusually large table). In pretty much all of the batrep vids I've watched, a handfull of LRs get deployed, and start shooting, or get shot, pretty much exactly where they sit. Might move once, and even then just an inch or two to get/correct LOS. I'm sure there have been countless debates on their size vs. typical table size and all that. The Vanquisher's 6-FOOT range seems crazy. LOL.

 greatbigtree wrote:
I can’t imagine playing *fewer* than 60 infantry, and 100 would be my personal top end for that size

Thats what scares me.

You are 100% not wrong.

IG is a very static gunline army in almost every normal build you are going to see. It is the nature of the beast - since they don't have any real close combat capability, and many of their weapons are Heavy with extremely long ranges, there is not much call for IG to not be simply stationary.

The big exception units are the militarum tempestus (who have shorter ranged weaponry so a lot of reason to be moving around) and bullgryns, who are obviously a close combat type unit that wants to be in the enemy's face. valkyries are also very mobile, and you can combine the two to create a fairly dynamic unit. However due to their nature of being big, 150-point vehicles, valkyries tend not to make terribly effective screens for vehicles.

In short guard are like Tau: If you're very deliberate about it, you can create a dynamic, mobile, interesting to play army. But by default, you'll be making a gunline, and if you have a piece of a gunline in place...wellll then you probably want to be using the rest of your points in more gunline.

I've been having a lot of fun with my Guard/Knights army... Knights are 2 Gallants and a Helverin, and I'm also using an Assassin. Gives me 4 very powerful, very mobile models. I have 60 Infantry, but after turn 2 they're absolutely not static... they're advancing forward rapidly with MOVE MOVE MOVE to grab objectives from the enemy. I usually keep them back to zone out deep strikers / assault elements on turns 1-2, but after that job is done they rush forward to grab objectives. My Mortars and Tanks are definitely static though.

It also looks pretty cool IMO, so that's a plus

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/354363-2000-pts-militarum-tempestus-army-and-strategy/

This is a list I am building that is all Scions and Advisors and Auxillia units.

Just go more vehicle heavy then.

My 2k army isn't that model heavy for a guard army.

3 infantry squads
Pask
3 LRBT
2 wyverns
2 basalisks
1 vet squad
1 command squad
1 valkaryie
1 ratling squad
2 company commanders
commisar and lord commisar
celestine with gemeni

66 models in total, so not to many. Just bring most units with the upgrades.

I've faced grey knights that have had a higher model count than me so its not to much.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sunsanvil wrote:
Thanks all for the thoughts shared so far.

On the notion of playing all armour, or even mostly armour, my gut says thats a pretty boring game (unless you are on an unusually large table). In pretty much all of the batrep vids I've watched, a handfull of LRs get deployed, and start shooting, or get shot, pretty much exactly where they sit. Might move once, and even then just an inch or two to get/correct LOS. I'm sure there have been countless debates on their size vs. typical table size and all that. The Vanquisher's 6-FOOT range seems crazy. LOL.

 greatbigtree wrote:
I can’t imagine playing *fewer* than 60 infantry, and 100 would be my personal top end for that size

Thats what scares me.

vanquisher range is tiny. its the basalisk's 20 foot range that's big. not one table has ever been big enough that it can't hit anything.

I think it would be something to equalise horde armies with elite armies by having the horde armies able to recycle units onto the tabletop. To a degree this happens, but I like the notion of it happening more so softer units can co-exist on the table like harder units. I also feel strongly that the game is better the longer your models get to spend on the table.

Just find people who value what looks cool over what performs well. You'll have some one sided games. This is 40k, after all. But, at least you should all be able to take them in stride.

That's the sales pitch.

The reality is that casual players are the worst losers in the game, and in general produce the WAAC attitudes you see complained about here. Discussions of "what is good," or "what is unfair to bring," etc, all derive from the idea that you need to establish a "fair baseline" that exists outside of the rules.

You need to paint a ton of guardsmen to play guard. Because guardsmen are the best troops in the game, bring amazing utility, and are a complete swiss army knife in an objective based game.

If you're looking for a way to play tanks without bringing a ton of guardsmen, Imperial Guard is probably not for you.

Slightly OT noob question: screwing around with Roster Editor, it lets me load up Tank Commander (or Pask) as a single HQ model. The (outdated) codex I have says (several times) that a tank commander MUST be accompanied by 1-2 additional LRs...but Roster Editor is not forcing or flagging that. Was the requirement dumped in recent versions?

 Sunsanvil wrote:
Slightly OT noob question: screwing around with Roster Editor, it lets me load up Tank Commander (or Pask) as a single HQ model. The (outdated) codex I have says (several times) that a tank commander MUST be accompanied by 1-2 additional LRs...but Roster Editor is not forcing or flagging that. Was the requirement dumped in recent versions?

It was dropped, there are no such requirements in the current edition.