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Hey All,
    With my Zilla Army almost done, I am setting my eyes on the future.  IG has always interested me, but I have never dared to dip my foot into the vastness that is the Imperial Guard. 

However recently Forge World has changed my mind.  After resisting the Elysians, I feel the need to succumb to the Death corp, but not using the typical death corp rules. 

Below is what I think would be a cool mech Guard list.  I like competitveness, however I like a bit of theme as well.  I invision these guys to have once been a calvary based army and with the coming of the Imperium and the evolving warfare they have gone mostly mechinised, however some have held to tradition, hence the rough riders.  I think I have done the math right, but I could be off. 

My questions are, is this list viable??  Is it legal??  Does Armoured fist squad count towards the typical 2 troop choice requirement??  And what should I do with the left over points??  I thought about bolstering the Rough riders to 2 units of 8 and maybe one unit of 7??  How does that sound??

Any comments, critiques and suggestions are very wanted and welcomed.  Please guys, especially you HBMC, I need to pick your brains to help me solidify this list before I plung into the exspence of a forge world army.  So here is the list, let me have it!

Chappy P

Doctrines:
    Restricted Troops - Rough Riders
    Mechanised
    Iron Discipline
    Close Order Drill

HQ: 161pts
    Command Squad 81
          o Junior Officer - laspistol, ccw, honorifica imperialis, iron discipline
          o Veteran - standard, lasgun
          o 3 Guardsmen - 3 lasguns
    Chimera - Multi-laser 80pts

Elites
    -
Troops: 650pts
    Command Squad 45pts
          o Junior Officer - laspistol, ccw, iron discipline
          o 4 Guardsmen - 4 lasguns
    Chimera - Multi-laser 80pts
    10 Guardsmen - lascannon, plasmagun, 8 lasguns 95pts
        Chimera - Multi-laser 80pts
    10 Guardsmen - lascannon, plasmagun, 8 lasguns 95pts
      Chimera - Multi-laser 80pts

    Armoured Fist Squad
    10 Guardsmen - lascannon, plasmagun, 8 lasguns 95pts
    Chimera - Multi-laser 80pts
   
  
Fast Attack: 165pts
    5 Rough Riders - 5 Hunting Lances 55pts
    5 Rough Riders - 5 Hunting Lances 55pts
    5 Rough Riders - 5 Hunting Lances 55pts

Heavy Support: 459pts
    Lemun Russ Battle Tank - hull heavy bolter, extra armour, smoke launchers 153
    Lemun Russ Battle Tank - hull heavy bolter, extra armour, smoke launchers 153
    Lemun Russ Battle Tank - hull heavy bolter, extra armour, smoke launchers 153

Total: 1435pts

Hellhounds!

@Longshot: Thanks for the reply. If I dropped the rough riders I could put in 2 Hellhounds, but I am kind of keen on the rough riders. It's a bit of a theme thing and I hear that they can be effective. And those Hellhound would be bare bones, and I am not sure if they need anything else besides themselves. As it is, the leman russ' have more options than I would normally give them.

Any other thoughts, keep em coming!

Chappy P

Heavy stubbers?

Hate to say this, but your list needs a little help. My first bit of advice is add heavy bolters to all of the chimera. A 5 point heavy bolter is a bargin that is found in few places, and must be taken advantage of. That is 25 points right there bringing you up to 1460. That gives you a good bit more dakka. However you have a big hole in your list. The only anti-tank I see is three lascannons..... Not going to cut it at 1500 points. You are set against light vehicals, multi-lasers make a mess of av10-11. A list like this is one of the only places I would recommend lascannon sentinals. Drop two squads of rough riders to make room and points for them. The lascannon sentinals must be used in a very specific way. They must be in the REAR of the army, perferably between two vehicals such that the only thing they have line of sight to is their target, and the only thing that has line of sight back to them is the thing they are shooting at. They should always keep out of line of sight unless they are shooting, as a slight wind will blow them away. 5 lascannons are still a little light but better than three. Now we have the problem of 40 more points to spend. A veteran sargent for your one remaining squad of rough riders brings them up to 6 and takes care of 14 points. Upgrade one russ to a demolisher, this gives you that sweet str10 cannon, plus the av13 sides that can anchor the flank of an advance, and keep your army from being so cookie cutter. Leaves us with 16 points just enough to put smoke on all of your chimeras and have a point to spare for a bolt pistol.

The big name of the game with this army is line of sight, you have to keep this in mind every time you touch a model. Also do not be afraid to deploy your troops away from their chimera in non escalation games.

Can't IG take like, 4 meltaguns in their command platoons?

That might really help the antitank. I don't think Lascannon sentinels have a place in a list entirely AV12+.

Yes they can, but the trick is getting them in 6 inches of a target. The best way to do this is via deepstrike. Even with this many chimeras, it is a huge gamble to make them ride, that exposes thoes long av10 sides to enemy fire.

I agree, but he has to have more heavy tank, and they can be pretty survivable if you use two tanks to box off line of sight to them so that the only thing that can shoot at them is the smoking crater they blew up last turn. They have to be played smartly, kept at range and unexposed. Heck even a plasma gun will ruin their day.

I think those 3 squads of roughriders kind of gimp you. Take one of your doctrine slots and aren't really that necessary. You can use tank shocking chimeras and tons of mobile firepower to prevent assault from getting to your doorstep.

I think, maybe, you don't need Mechanized to make this list work, and it might be better without it. I mean, why give sit and shoot guys a transport they don't need?

Could just buy deepstriking suicide command platoon, normal infantry platoon with the honorifica thingy?, an armored fist platoon, and 2-3 squads of veterans in chimeras with plasmaguns or meltaguns, a hellhound or two or three, and three russes, or something around there.

I'd also think about maxing the guns on those chimera - hull heavy bolter, stubber, multilaser. Maybe not the stubber but no one is gonna wanna shoot at AV12 tanks for the price Chimeras are and non-scoring, so if you chill them at 36" mostly they should get to do a ton of shooting.

actual guard players might know more than me though heh   

There is the tantalizing hint of Death Korps Grenadiers in the FW release. This list might work better with grenadiers in chimeras, RR and regular infantry platoons with heavy weapons.

my $0.02:

I very much agree with foil that a few more lascannon might be nice, and that Chimeras should just about always get a hull heavy bolter. Also, I concur with stecal that it might work a little better without mechanized, but Grenadiers, as cool as they are, are somewhat suboptimal units for your list. Remember, you don't have Rhinos.

Those extra two chimeras - on the Platoon Infantry as everything else can get an AFV without mechanized - could become another two las/plas squads. That'd bring you to 1480, and give you a slightly more solid platform for your additional two lascannon than the Sentinels foil suggested you take on the assumption that the mechanized doctrine was there to stay. With the remaining 20 I would suggest either Improved Comms, or swopping the vehicle upgrades on the Russes for another six heavy bolters (useful for attacking troops in cover and in case the main gun is destroyed) and possibly a veteran upgrade for a few of the Rough Riders for the extra attack and point of leadership. Extra heavy bolters also make it harder to kill your Russes through rolling multiple "Weapon Destroyed" and "Immobilized" results.

The only change to your squads' equipment that I would possibly advocate would be to possibly give the PHQ instead of the CHQ the HI, but that is almost a matter of preference as to whether you prefer one 45 and one 81 point unit, the latter with standard and each with LD 9, or one 70 and one 51 point unit, the latter with LD8 and a standard and the former with LD10.

A somewhat different approach would be to use IF Basilisks instead of Russes - if you have the models - and put the points towards either Cameleoline - your wrecked "transports" turn into power armour for their former occupants - two more squads of infantry, DS veterans, or another Mechanized Infantry squad. I don't doubt H. shall be along presently with the authoritative version, though your initial list does seem to stick fairly closely to his models of optimizing IG.

Hey Guys,

Thanks for the replies...Hmmm...I guess the list wasn't as great as I thought. Does Mechinised Infantry just suck that bad??

Hmmm...How many LasCannons should an IG list have to be viable?? How many bodies for 1500 points??

What other thoughts are floating around?? HBMC what do you think good sir??

Additional thoughts/opinions are most welcome...while I ponder foil's, Longshot's and Wight_Widow's suggestions.

Chappy P

RE: "the list wasn't as great as I thought" - No, the list IS good - just not AS good as it could be. Nothing in it is really terrible - i.e. you have no grenade launchers, no mortars, no Senior Officers with 100 points of wargear, no all-veteran Command Squads loaded down with wargear, no expensive doctrines, no AT squads, no Ogryns - not even any Storm Troopers - the list goes on and on of the mistakes you can make with the IG Codex, and you don't really make many with your actual choices. All your choices are individually very good, but you can always give the overall list a bit of a tweak. Sometimes this means not taking a good unit to use another unit that just works even better given what else is in your army - and the fact that H. hasn't automatically chimed in is almost a GOOD thing to say about your list, as the people to whose rescue he tends to rush are usually the hardcore uber-noobs who make those kinds of mistakes, and then often proceed to argue about how leet their Refractor Field/Power Fist/Plasma Pistol Senior Officer with ultra-leet body guard of Veterans with Storm Bolters, melta bombs and plasma pistols is that they can't not use it - especially if they don't take closed tops and hunter-killer missiles on their eleven Catachan-pattern Sentinels - while complaining about how cheesy their NMEs are, or the mad skillz it takes to paint pink in their troops' eye sockets. (pardon the brief digression into parody)

Please take everything I say about IG with a grain of salt. All I know is what I've seen and my vague idea of how the army works.

I would say at 1500 about 8-10 lascannons is about the minimum I would want to run with. Enough to reliably stop a landraider.