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I was crunching some numbers and I came up with a potentially cool way to play guard. I am sure that other have thought of this too, but I have not seen it yet.

You blob a squad of 50 Guardsmen, give them a priest with an eviscerator and a commissar with a power weapon.

Give each squad a melta gun, and a power weapon plus melta bombs on the sarge. Possibly even an Inquisitor with Null Rod to make them Psychic proof.

It can move and shoot like mad, on the charge you have 24 str 3 power weapon attacks and 3 eviscerator attacks, plus 90 regular str 3 attacks all with rerolls! Plus you have stubborn Ld 9 with a reroll which means you pass morale checks 11 out of 12 times. If you REALLY want to make the squad dependable, give them Yarrick and ditch the priest, now you have a fearless squad with rerolls, plus Yarrick brings some serious pain. The squad can destroy any vehicle too with shooting or in assault, and with the sheer volume of attacks they beat damn near anything but the craziest assault squads. Plus, they are a scoring unit.

But the real kick to the nuts, take them with Al'Rahem and they outflank! That plus the Astropath means the entire thing comes in on a 3+ turn 2 with an 83% chance of getting the board edge you want. And you can issue them orders with Al'Rahem in a Chimera.

Ordnance and flamer templates murder you, but no squad is perfect.

I am going to try it out, I think it would be pretty tough, at the least, really funny. Has anyone tried this? I think it would be a good laugh and might even be pretty effective.

It might work, but at what cost? how many points is this idea?

I have also been doing some thinking about melee guard, mostly since I play genestealer cultists, and they would be fun to represent with huge meleeing infantry units. And it is quite possible to do some CC with guard, but unfortunately not as effective as one could wish. It is pretty hard to get the charge since it is a big unwieldy unit, and without the charge the priest doesn't help. Any countercharge unit will strike before them and take the edge of them.

A unit like this costs:
10 guardsmen: 50p
1 meltagun: 10p
1 powerweapon: 10p
5 squads: 70x5 = 350p

One comissar w powerweapon: 45p
One priest: 45p (don't bother with the eviscerator, the priest is an IC with t3 and one wound, he will never survive to hit anything in melee)

Grand total 440p. It is a damn lot of points for a tarpit unit.

Compare to a 220p assault marine squad:
10x marines w jumppacks: 190p
2x flamers: 20p
1x powerweapon: 10p (Although I must admit I'd probably have PF or TH when fighting guard)
Take two squads for = 440p

Calculations, most rounding in favour of the guards.
Each squad of marines will jump in, flame twice, hit at least 10 (maybe up to twice as many), kill 8. Shoot 8 BP-shots, hit 6, kill 4. Then charge, make 25 melee attacks, hit 17, wound 11, kill 8. Plus 4 PW attacks, 3 hits, 2 kills. That's 22 people dead, for one squad, so 44 total.

Let's say you manage to keep the 6 people with PWs alive to strike back: 18 pw attacks, 9 hits, 3 kills. Since the comissar is stubborn, they have a 30/36 chance of not breaking away, wich will leave the assault marine units safe from the guard shooting then they overkill the sergeants and commissars and are all free to go charge something else in the marine turn. I agree this is a pretty extreme example of unit matching, but I bet 440p of ork boys, stealers, khorne berserkers, etc etc would do pretty good as well. You could probably tie up a unit of thunderhammer terminators for a few rounds though.

So it looks like I'll keep using the tyranid codex to play my cultists.

460pts at rough workings, using a nacked platoon command squad.

10 orgyns will pwn this squad (i think), resist damage better generally & be more of a threat to a player. It has 30 wounds @ T5, is stubborn, has furious charge, str 5 base & 41 attacks on the charge @ ws 4. All for less points; 410pts.

Yes, but the guard squad puts out a ton of fire power and is scoring. Plus with Yarrick they have countercharge, which makes up for the fact that they will have a tough time getting the charge off as Mellon said.

I think the key is to use Al'Raheem to outflank and come in on a side edge where they can shoot something up and then absorb a charge, or get the charge off themselves.

Hell, it might totally blow, but it is a cool idea. I am gong to play test it for laughs and I will let you guys know how it goes.

Another thing to consider is putting an Inquisitor in there with the power that stops you from charging them without passing a leadership test. You use the psyker battle squad to lower a nasty assault unit to Ld 2 so they can't hit you first.

Another combo like this is to use the Primaris Psyker's ability to do the same thing but with shooting to avoid getting shot up.

10 Ogryns? Yeah, that would be a tough match up for this squad, but Ogryns wouldn't shoot as well and aren't scoring.

We will see, I am just going to laugh my ass off when this squad kills my buddies bezerkers in combat, which statistically it should do with ease.

5x Penal legionnaire squad. (400pts)

(Edit: Oh.. Id say about 2-3 priests to bolter the penal legions with some extra punch + (135pts)
(Edit mk.2 - You roll for the penal legions before deployement to see what type they are. You specificy what HQ's are joining what when you deploy. Put the 2-3 priests with your knife fights & psychopaths! Genious!)

Creed in chimera with 2x Astropaths & a few bits (220pts) - Critically this provides two useful options. He can outflank his chimera or somthing useful. & He can actually provide 'Orders!' support to the penal legions with an effective 30" command radius.

3x Leman russ'es - to outflank - because its just nasty. (450-500pts)

You should have about 300pts left. You could actually make a pretty functional amry with this!

Knife-fighting penal legions with 'For the Honor of cadia!' is quite sickening. 30 str 4 I4 rending attacks. With re-rolls.. crazyness.

Hey Reecius,

I to have been contemplating turning my tallarn army into an IG assault force, however there are a few differences. For 1 I intended to play with Stracken as my HQ choice instead of yarrick. I load him on in a Valkyrie and use him to boost my outflanking forces from all Ra'Heim. This gives all the squads around him furious assault which makes their offensive punch equal to a unit of space marines, not to mention he is better than yarrick in CC because he doesn't strike last with his str 6 power weapon attack. Yarrick's reroll ability is already conferred by the priests and I use Al' Raheim's order to effectively give the blob fleet so long as they don't use their lasguns. I am all with you though on CC guard!!!

This is a great example of the many "fun to play" lists that would be enjoyable in a friendly environment that are possible with the new book.

Sure the book has some problems ( Hell its a GW codex) but I think we can have a heluva lot of fun with this one.

As an ex grunt myself Ive allways wanted to play IG, but never felt the pull from any of the previous books.

This time i dropped a solid grand before the book even came out. And I am loving putting my happy little Valkyries together as we speak!

Go Go Gadget Guardsmen!

Still in the old book with clever use of doctrines something similiar would provide 250 attacks and ws4 and rerolls

The problem with a unit like that though, is that it will always lose combat against anyone who is better in CC.

Nofasse 'Eadhunta wrote:The problem with a unit like that though, is that it will always lose combat against anyone who is better in CC.

Yeah but it won't break because or re-rollable stubborn leadership 9 and will eventually win through attrition.

Still, its an expensive unit. I agree that it would be fun. The only problem is everybody seems to be going mech.

Mech with Strakken is viable. A vet squad (Carapace) and a Strakken command squad charging in can do immense damage, especially if they have priests attached.