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Hello Dakka!

I have thought about a little problem lately and hope that maybe you can help me.

I have a little gaming group with two friends here; one of them plays IG, one of them plays Tau. I myself, being owner of the AoBR box, have some SM and Orks lying around. However, it was clear from the beginning that IG would be my army of choice, because I simply can relate to them much better than to any other army, have more ideas for their fluff and like their tactical possibilites over those of Orks for example. My reason not to start an IG army was that this one friend of mine did only want to play IG and nothing else; to avoid having very similar armies in our somewhat small gaming group, I went with SM and Orks.

However, at the moment I'm reaching a point where I really think I would like to play IG. Now, my question to you is: How would you create an IG army that is as different as possible to another one?

To answer this question, of course, you need some intel about this other IG army.
My friend basically owns the Cadian IG battleforce at the moment. This means he has 1 PCS, 2 infantry squads, an armored sentinel and 1 HWS. As an addition, he owns a squad of stromtroopers and Commissar Yarrick. He plans on buying two veteran squads as an addition in the nearer future. His paint scheme consists of dark grey/black fatigues and dark red armour parts and details.

Now, this army isn't very specialized on something, like pure gunline or mechvets or aircav. However, I guess there are still some possibilites of making an army as different as possible to this. First and most obvious point would, of course, be the paint scheme. I would definitely go for a more conservative IG look with some kind of camouflage and/or green shades. Next possiblity would be to choose models very different; catachans, vostroyans, steel legion, death korps. However, the catachan squads look a bit too steroidized to me and the other three options just get expensive. Therefore, I'm having some problems with that option.
Anyway, even if it would be possible to make it look different, it wouldn't play that different at the moment.

So the real question to you Dakkaites is: What are the builds and concepts that would playstyle-wise be as different as possbile to his actual army? Footslogging special-ops-style vet force? Fully armored company? Air cavalry? Conscript spam? Let me know!

Thanks in advance,
Witzkatz

I currently have an army of loyal Imperial Guardsmen that contains a roughly even mix of troops and tanks.

However, if I were to start a brand new IG army, I'd want it to be incredibly different from the one I already have. If I were you, I'd make a Chaos-themed Guard army. You don't need to purchase any expensive metal miniatures. Just purchase either Cadian or Catachan plastics and convert them. Be sure to remove all instances of the Imperial Eagle. I would also take the additional step of replacing the heads to make them look more evil. Look at some of the miniature heads offered from this site:
http://www.pig-iron-productions.com/
They're still tournament legal as a majority of the model is still made by Games Workshop. You could also buy the Chaos Mutations accessory sprue from GW and add a few of those to some of your troops.

Painting and modeling aside, I would recommend doing something fluffy for a Chaos army. Make the army with lots of infantry and fewer tanks, as lasguns and portable heavy weapons are probably easier to acquire and maintain than tanks are. Lots of psykers seems right for Chaos as well.

Full mech could help make them seem and play different, or footsloggers

as mentioned before, you can pretty much play an identical army unit/stat-wise to someone and it'll "feel" totally different if you give them a chaos spin and new names. instead of rough riders and ogryns, you have chaos marauder cavalry and huge mutants with blunderbusses.

for an actual different army, you've got a couple of categories that you can mix and match from. for infantry, you can choose from either elite (vets and stormtroopers) or horde (platoons and/or conscripts). if you choose elite you have an additonal choice of deploying them using their normal methods or making them fast via chimeras or valks. finally, you can choose between the scalpel or hammer when it comes to heavy weapons. the valks can do double duty as either anti infantry and the vendettas as anti-armor. heavy weapon teams can do both. the "hammer" option is taking lots of tanks for the heavy weapons with battlecannons and basilisks doing double duty as both anti inf and anti armor.

it looks like your friend (due to basing his force on the battalion box) is going for grunt infantry force. i'd go with a mobile elite force like vets in valks and/or chimeras to have them play differently than your friend's.

Look at the fast attacks and the HQ/special character choices.
From these choices you can have several viable builds and troops do help to define your choices but what you choose in these slots will set the tone to a certain extent.

Valks/Vendettas are Air Cav

Hellhound/Devildog varieties are the lead edge of a tank cav force.

Sentinels are for a flexible Scout/Special Ops theme

Creed is for the massed infantry build and tactical flexibility.

Straken can make a couple of vet squads a lot tougher

Or any command choice-they can be detailed to fit the theme your looking for.

The reason I left Heavy support out is that yes there is a lot of variety but I like the Heavies to detailed to the army as opposed to the other way around. Just me

Hope this helps

Witzkatz wrote:I have a little gaming group with two friends here; one of them plays IG, one of them plays Tau.
IG would be my army of choice,

What are the builds and concepts that would playstyle-wise be as different as possbile to his actual army?

It is awesome that you're in a GEQ gaming group, and are bringing more Guard to the game.

Anyhow, your friend has a basic ground-pounder army, and he could petty easily make it an Inquisitional force based on the color scheme.

If you want to look different, green fatigues & camo is the best answer. Catachans look goofy, and I'd avoid them like the plague. Just paint olive green Cadians, and you'll be fine.

If you want to play different, I'd suggest you go mech / armor with Chimera Transports for the guys and Russes & Hellhounds for firepower, with a Valk for air support. No Storms, Sentinels, HWS, or footsloggers, because those overlap with his stuff. Still, that leaves a lot of the Codex available for your use. As you'll have a bunch of vehicles, maybe buy a couple Chaos spiky bitz sprues and use the spikes & chains to add a little visual impact?

Now, if you *really* wanted to be different, the only other choice that you might consider would be Aspect-based Eldar, but you already said Guard, so that's cool.

Thanks for all your answers!

I have to admit I hadn't even thought of doing a traitor guard. That's an interesting idea, if only for the conversion possibilites; however, as my first guard army, I think I'd rather sway in the direction of the loyalists. It's just that I like the IG for their "normalness" and the heroic deeds of rather normal men; screaming "BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD" now and then may be nice, but it would lessen my identification with the army too much, I fear.

JohnHwang: It's interesting that you mention my friend could make an inquisitorial force out of his guys. In fact, we both have played with the thought of getting inquisitors or even Grey Knights in his case.
At the moment I think it could be nice to get a loyalist guard army in a nice green camo scheme and get an Inquisitor that declares my friend's army heretical and possessed by Chaos influence. It would get even more interesting if he'd get his own inquisitor, each of the guys declaring the other a radical or a naive puritan...that would be very 40k-ish in my eyes, IG slaughtering themselves because the Ordos have some beef with each other. What do you think about that?

About playing Eldar as an alternative: Yes, Eldar is the other army I'd love to try out. I think their playstyle would be nice and different from IG and Tau and I like their fluff; however, there is the question if I could relate to them like I can to the IG. I guess I could buy their codex and have a look...

As for the IG style to play: I'd like to have some mechanized forces; however, as a quite new player, I'm a little bit in fear of painting tanks with brushes. Isn't it quite hard to get the paint nice even and smooth on such big surfaces? To make it look good?

Cheers,
Witzkatz

Hallo, glad to help!

"Loyalist" and "Traitor" is kinda relative in the grimdark 40k universe. The troopers simply do whatever the Inquisitor says, and even in the Horus Heresy, many Traitor Guard units were completely normal, but following a Chaos-corrupted commander.

If you're both adding Inquisitors, I suggest you take the Daemonhunter one, and leave him with the Witch Hunter - Sisters of Battle wear red&black, so his scheme fits WH better. I think it would set up some awesome narrative motivation and battle scenarios, especially when the Tau swoop in during the midst of a civil war.

Eldar play very differently from Tau and Guard - they can actually fight well in HtH! It's up to you. If you like Guard better, then proceed forward!

You can do just fine painting tanks with brushes. Two suggestions: use big brushes so the painting goes faster, and thin your paint so the paint goes on smoother. There is nothing wrong with laying down a two or thee thin coats instead of one blobby one.

Thanks for the quick reply, JohnHwangDD! Nice to hear that my idea of inter-inquisitorial brawl is not so far off.

I think I may pick up the eldar codex sometimes soon and give it a good read, see if I can relate with their character and playstyle. Then I'll borrow my friend's IG codex and look at what may be possible.

We are playing low points at the moment, around 600pts per side only. At that point level it may be quite easy to make our armies play different - I guess I'd really like to go with the mechanized theme if I really go for IG. At that point level, a Leman Russ Battle Tank would be awesome I think. Maybe a chimera here or there, too...

...another thing is, that his army seems do go rather in the high-tech camp of the IG. His sentinel fields a plasma cannon, armageddon pattern...and he wants to have lots of plasma guns in his vet squads if he buys them. So I thought I could make my army different also by choosing rather conservative weapon technology - I think the old-school LRBT or the Conqueror may be nice for that, having this quite crude but effective main gun (is the conqueror any good, btw? I think the cannon looks nicer, but I'm not sure where the rules-wise advantage lies). I'm also thinking about a chimera with a forgeworld autocannon; more low-tech and more like today's APCs from the looks. What do you think?

No problem.

Eldar are actually quite malleable - you would have a lot of build choices available.

At the 500-750 pts level, games are still good, but try to keep a limit on the non-Troops picks. Allowing 3 Heavies (or whatever) in such a small game is probably unbalancing. If you play on a standard 4x6 board, movement will actually mean something - fluid play is rewarded.

If you're Mech, you'll do just fine to avoid a lot of Plasma - just take more Meltas.

As far as "simple" weapons go, I am a very big fan of Demolishers: S10 AP2 Large Blast Ordnance. At your game scale, even a regular Russ does quite well (and will be better than a Basilisk). I wouldn't bother with anything else until I had one of each for Heavies, then maybe add a Valk with Rocket Pods.

The Multi-Laser is actually more basic for the Chimera - it's the classic gun. If your Multi-Laser happens to be an Autocannon-looking gun, that's fine, too. Or you can fit a Heavy Bolter on it. For a modern APC look, you'll probably want to fit a pintle-mounted machine-gun.

I guess you're right about not bringing too many heavies to our low point level. In fact, my Space Marine Dreadnought single-handidly stirred up my combined IG/Tau enemies last game, just because they only had three AT weapons, one which was killed turn 1, one which was on the other side of the board and one which did not hit anything. So the big guy just walked through a devilfish and a squad of FWs...

Anyway, I think one Leman Russ should be alright at this point level. We don't want it to be too easy for my foes And they *have* meltas and missile launchers and stuff, so especially the side armour would still be quite vulnerable. And I guess I'd prefer the normal battle tank over the demolisher for the moment because it seems to me like it would be overkill against the momentary lowtech-Tau and IG and it has to get near the melta stuff to fire effectively...with a LRBT, I could keep it out of melta range more effectively, I guess?

My only problem at the moment is...as an owner of the AoBR box and having bought a marine scout squad and a razorback, I only have around 8 painted models at the moment. And I gave a little oath to myself not to buy more minis 'till I painted all the ones that I have at the moment. Guess if I want to play IG I really have to get painting...

You can always sell or trade the AoBR minis...

Well, I guess I could trade them, but, as much as I like IG or Eldar, I think it's nice to have some other armies lying around. I can practice painting on them or could play them against my friends when I'm in the mood for some Waaagh!!! or Space Marine Heroism (tm).

Well, I'll have to see if I break my oath or start to get faster at painting...

If you want to speed your painting:
1. Buy some cans of acrylic spray paint to deal with basecoats
2. Buy the GW Washes to deal with highlighting / shading

Witzkatz wrote:Hello Dakka!

I have thought about a little problem lately and hope that maybe you can help me.

I have a little gaming group with two friends here; one of them plays IG, one of them plays Tau. I myself, being owner of the AoBR box, have some SM and Orks lying around. However, it was clear from the beginning that IG would be my army of choice, because I simply can relate to them much better than to any other army, have more ideas for their fluff and like their tactical possibilites over those of Orks for example. My reason not to start an IG army was that this one friend of mine did only want to play IG and nothing else; to avoid having very similar armies in our somewhat small gaming group, I went with SM and Orks.

However, at the moment I'm reaching a point where I really think I would like to play IG. Now, my question to you is: How would you create an IG army that is as different as possible to another one?

To answer this question, of course, you need some intel about this other IG army.
My friend basically owns the Cadian IG battleforce at the moment. This means he has 1 PCS, 2 infantry squads, an armored sentinel and 1 HWS. As an addition, he owns a squad of stromtroopers and Commissar Yarrick. He plans on buying two veteran squads as an addition in the nearer future. His paint scheme consists of dark grey/black fatigues and dark red armour parts and details.

Now, this army isn't very specialized on something, like pure gunline or mechvets or aircav. However, I guess there are still some possibilites of making an army as different as possible to this. First and most obvious point would, of course, be the paint scheme. I would definitely go for a more conservative IG look with some kind of camouflage and/or green shades. Next possiblity would be to choose models very different; catachans, vostroyans, steel legion, death korps. However, the catachan squads look a bit too steroidized to me and the other three options just get expensive. Therefore, I'm having some problems with that option.
Anyway, even if it would be possible to make it look different, it wouldn't play that different at the moment.

So the real question to you Dakkaites is: What are the builds and concepts that would playstyle-wise be as different as possbile to his actual army? Footslogging special-ops-style vet force? Fully armored company? Air cavalry? Conscript spam? Let me know!

Thanks in advance,
Witzkatz

Two words my friend.

ARMORED COMPANY


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oralternatively for kicks and something less common:

Artillery park

Thanks for your posts, somehow I missed them the last days.

JohnHwangDD: I use washes on all my models, really like them to change the colour a nuance and give the thing some shadows. Unfortunately, that still leaves me with highlighting, at which I'm rather hesitant, being a novice painter.

Frazzled: Both variants are tempting. I mean, really tempting. I can imagine that so well...either two earth-shaking Leman Russ Battle Tanks advancing slowly, all guns blazing, or a Basilisk battery pounding the hell out of the enemy lines...*sigh*

I just made up the smallest possible force going into the full mech direction...

CCS, chimera
2x vet squad, chimeras
2x leman russ or basilisk

...just to look up the money I'd need to put down for that. Ah, it's tempting, but also so expensive. It's a shame there's no possibility of knowing if an army will suit you before you buy it - well, I guess I could playtest it on vassal...

Does anybody know with which options the normal LRBT box comes? I guess only with the basic battle cannon version and the options for LC/HB front and HB sponsons, right?

And: Could artillery park with basilisks work? I don't own the codex yet, but I think I remember the basilsik to have quite an annoying minimal range?

i think the regular russ comes with a heavy stubber, storm bolter, officer on top, cow catchter plow, tank tread covers, comm system, and searchlight as well as a few bits like backpacks/carbine lasgun/etc. basically, every option the OLD imperial guard armory let you put on a vehicle.

as for testing it out, just talk to your opponent. soap trays/wood blocks/bricks/dead hamsters/etc can be used as vehicles (i don't personally recommend that last one though!). infantry can be small coins. as long as you're playing against a friend, i can't see why they wouldn't mind suffering for a game or two one night to try out the force. with the points values you're talking about, a game shouldn't last more than 1.5 hours.

Thanks for the answer, warboss I just ordered the IG and Eldar codex to look into today, so I guess I'll have a good read about what options IG has, because I'm just working on forum reads and a faint memory of looking into the new IG codex. Maybe then I'll try and put together a list for a small armored force and ask you guys what you think about it.

Easiest solution to your dilemma: Buy non GW minis to use as Proxxies! There are plenty of other 28mm "Heroic" scale mini lines out there to use as your infantry. GW tanks are fine - All the IG's tanks are based off of 3 Chassis designs so no need to look elsewhere there unless you really want to be 100% apart from the mold.

Pig Iron has some really good minis, though they're all Pewter so that can be a bit of a pain to convert. If you want to stick to GW bits, you can always use Scout torsos with different heads and arms too. Catachan Beret heads might look good - can find them on any Bitz order site.

As for playstyle, ArmCav seems to be the preferred option. You'll spend a lot on tanks but that means you'll have a very fast army with a lot of Dakka. If you're looking to learn the ropes of an IG army, ArmCav might be your best option.

EDIT: Forgot, you can also use the IG codex and make a Gue'Vesa army. Just mix some Tau bits onto your Guardsmen and Tanks, give them a suitably Tau color scheme, and there you go. You've got a renegade Imperial Guard army that left the Imperium to join the Tau.