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Ait!

Im currently building my inf. only Catachan IG army with a few sentinels.

Is this a good army? or is it so that i need some tanks aswell? Lemon Russ or Basilisk(1-3), or are Hell Hounds a good tank<?

I know for that my opponent will be "abit" surprised when i show them how many models my army will have (150 - 400) on the gaming table.

I would say a Inf. only army should be strictly inf. only

any tanks, sentinels, or vehicles will die FAST

all anti-tank weapons will target them, so if you do take sentinels you need to put them in heavy cover with camo netting, far from DS

I'd be a bit suprised but then I'd get a few vindicators/whirlwinds and a hell of alot of heavy bolters and blast you.

If you take infantry only YOU need anti-tank and a effective way of taking out anti-inf. units. Infiltrators are good. (marbo)

I am not the most tactically astound but I think that may help.

DC

Take 50 man blob squads with commissar and power weapons on the sergeants, those things are actually really nasty against assault units and can put out a ton of anti infantry fire. You will want some lascannon heavy weapon teams somewhere to at least keep whirlwind type stuff from shooting and melta guns to destroy vehicles. I think you could just roll over a lot of armies.

I have seen it done and done well, with out all of the tanks you can end up with a staggering amount of infantry armed with heavy weapons. Don't expect to win on kill points but in objective games you can really put the hurt on people because of the sheer volume of models you can throw at them. 200+ infantry (entirely possible with no vehicles) combined with orders like FRFSRF your new mantra will be "none shall come within in 12"

Straken makes Guardsmen tremendously fighty for their points values. 4 Commissars plus 4 Sergeants plus power weapons is 32 S4 PW attacks on the charge... plus the other 36 guys. It's quite possible to mow down assault Terminators with a big blob of fighty Guardsmen.

Tank Shock will cause problems for you against certain armies. Put meltabombs on everyone squad sergeant.

If you really commit to it, 400 Guardsmen is very powerful. It's also an army that only 1% of players is going to have experience against, so get the benefit of knowing how to play against their army, but them not knowing yours.

Think about it this way:

Reasons to do it:
1) You're doing guardsmen; in theory, with enough lasguns, nothing will end up looking pretty.

2) Lots of options for equipment, Guardsmen have a wide variety of effective weapons.

3) Plenty of HQs that will give them bonuses

4) Anti-Mech is essentially bunk. What? are you going to waste your meltaguns against ONE guardsman?

5) No one expects it.

Reasons not to:

1) No mech. Any trace will be targeted and annihilated. (However, Basalisks would be perfect for this army. Get a few squadrons of those for heavy fire support)

2) Painting and Assembling

3) Making a Guardsman PLATOON is like making an entire army, and you're going to need to make lots and lots of platoons for the blob of death effect.

4) Biggest weakness: high initiative CC based armies. A Dark Eldar army may be your biggest threat if they can get to you fast enough.

5) A fething bitch to set up.

If you go all infantry, it can be brutal, not many armies like the idea of looking at your 15 or so las cannons lined up on the table. The biggest advantage in my opinion, with that many men, you can take a lot of fire and stil come back with a crap load of dice that will hit something, anything that ignores cover is your worst nightmare. When you see your oppenent and decide wiether or not to combine your inf squads, look at your oppenent, if they are close combat nightmares, such as D Eldar or Orcs, or what not, make sure you leave some expendable speed bumps in front, something they take out in a turn and then get to be left out in the open for the massive 1st rank 2nd rank firestorm you reward them with.

Orders orders orders!!!


Be sure to pack Creed since his 4 orders can do a big difference with so many guardsmen (nobody wants to see 50 green dudes with For the Honor of Cadia charging to them)

Never tried it and never played against it but it scares and intrigues me at the same time...

I'd say you would need Creed and/or Straken to pump up your Guardsmen for the inevitable CC they'll find themselves in. Preferably after you FRFSRF with 50 lasguns to the face, of course.

Oh and watch out for flamers!

DoW

EDIT: Somewhat ninja'd by Dakkadood, Creed ftw!

Reasons not to:

1) No mech. Any trace will be targeted and annihilated. (However, Basalisks would be perfect for this army. Get a few squadrons of those for heavy fire support)

2) Painting and Assembling

3) Making a Guardsman PLATOON is like making an entire army, and you're going to need to make lots and lots of platoons for the blob of death effect.

4) Biggest weakness: high initiative CC based armies. A Dark Eldar army may be your biggest threat if they can get to you fast enough.

5) A fething bitch to set up.

no2 and no5 is a bitch.... the rest i can live with, since i paint a 10 man squad in about 1-5 hours, (drying paint time).

All the feed back is nice! Thank you all.

So far i gotten 30 guardsmen. when i squad them up, it looks Nice. Can see what it will look like when i do it with 200 - 400 of them.
Will take a picture and post it, when there are more guards.

Im thinking about going heavy on both flamer and heavy flamer. ?

instead of a basilisk getin' some Mortal. Think they might do the trick.
Of course there will be named characters. Creed and much more. Marbo to (show's up behind hq and tosses the demo charge)

A flamer in each squad that blobs is hard to pass up at 5 points each (so a 50 man squad would take 5) and while HF are very nice too, they're 20 points each, which *I* think is overpriced. Then again, I get my heavy flamers from Chimeras so you'll have to think about that.

You mentioned mortars as your heavy weapons? Yuck! Autocannon HWT in the squads, I'd say, and then maybe some Lascannon HWS for tank punching?

I still kinda like the Basilisk idea, however, since you can nestle them in a corner and surround them with a squad for a nice cover save. Toss the camo nets on them and you're golden. But if you're super anti-vehicle then that's ok.

You did mention sentinels... and I like those. The scout variety outflanking with AC is quickly becoming a nice addition to my army and they've paid their points back quite well. Have them pop up far from the action and with a nice LOS to the ass end of a predator or some such and you'll ruin their day

I'm interested to see the colour scheme you have so far, any chance of putting some up in P&M?

DoW

My only issue with max infantry are people who take their time.

In a 2.5 hour game of 1850, having only 3 turns is utterly stupid. (Esp. if the opponent is counting the number of lasgun shot he has, it was a TFG wasting time, and this is after I complained to the TO.)

Priests! Priests! This is where you use them! With Straken, Chenkov and a sprinkling of Priests and Commissars you can keep morale up while making them killy in close combat. A priest on a blob squad or Conscript squad is never going to be targetted in close combat so long as he stays in the back, but his ability functions fine. Mass infantry are almost better in close combat than they are in shooting, so long as you get the charge.

At 1250 (most common games against my fiance's orks) I field only infantry (either 2 3 squad platoons and a vet squad led by harker or 1 4squad platoon and 3 vet squads) this setup shreds orks, and my mates eldar and stands up to marines(force them saves!)

I have a shooty force with creed and kell, and power weapons on all the sgts(for when the enemy inevitably reaches my lines) I generally blob into 20man groups(1 with 2 lascannons, one with 2 heavy bolters and one with 2 autocannons) it puts out alot of fire and rolls lots of dice.

I'd reccomend Creed/Kell and Straken for your HQs, and Lascannons, not meltas for your Heavy Weapon Squads.

Lemme think.... I'd take 1 Lascannon (/Missile Launcher, whatever you've got the points for) and 2 Autocannons per squad of Heavy Weapons, I'd reccomend giving your infantry squads Flamers and Krak Grenades, and every other squad (if not all of them) should have a commissar.

The Elites section is tricky, it all depends on what you bring with the rest of your army. If you have gaps in CC, fill them with Ogryns. If you have gaps in shooting, Fill them with Stormtroopers or Ratlings.

I reccomend Basilisks because you can keep them extremely far from the enemy and do well, and the more you have the better. If you're storming out of the trenches and running at them, sure you'll hit some of your own men, but this is the Imperial Guard! Would you have it any other way?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
You should probably work up a list and get it C&C'd before you buy alot of pieces, and I've always found it helpful to write how you intend to use units and what the grand strategy is. (You could even post it in this thread.)

crazypsyko666 wrote:The Elites section is tricky, it all depends on what you bring with the rest of your army. If you have gaps in CC, fill them with Ogryns. If you have gaps in shooting, Fill them with Stormtroopers or Ratlings.

Honestly I wouldn't bother with any of the above. Maybe the Ratlings, but that's all.

The stormtroopers could be a nice suicide squad, but it's still 105 points for only 5 men, 2 meltas and a re-rollable scatter. Then again, your opponent will have to dedicate at least something to eating them next turn to prevent you from trying to blow something else up.

Ogryns don't do it for me. If they benefited from priests, didn't have atrocious leadership, had power weapons/fists, or weren't the same price as a terminator yet 1/2 as useful then maybe.

Ratlings could be a reasonably efficient addition. They're weird and un-fluffy for a 'human' army but 100 points for 10 BS4 sniper rifles with stealth and infiltrate isn't too shabby. At the very least you can hope to rend the faces off some MEQ or pop some rear armour.

DoW

Yes, Ogryns are expensive, but they're tough. Use them to tie up some squads. I wouldn't reccomend alot of them, but one squad should do the trick for CC support. They're tough, skilled, and survivable. Sure they've got crap saves, but that's normal for IG.

I agree on Stormtroopers, but they're an option worth mentioning.

What about medusas instead of basilisks? That way you don't have to get close to kill the tanks. And if they try to get close you have a 400 man meatshield with grenade launchers and autocannons. (best combination of weapons for this I think)

You wont have to manuever as much like this, which will save time during movement. Which you have to think of with 400+ men.

Three squads of rough riders would be a nice addition and fit in with the no-mech theme. They also give you a quick reactionary counter-charge unit. They are cheap and meant to die after using their lances.

augustus5 wrote:Three squads of rough riders would be a nice addition and fit in with the no-mech theme. They also give you a quick reactionary counter-charge unit. They are cheap and meant to die after using their lances.

yeah! why not? rought riders on coldones?

I would have said yes. before the newer codexes came out. before that an all inf. catachan army was awsome out of the old supplement. But now their just normal guard so tanks is the way to go i guess.

Osyr wrote:What about medusas instead of basilisks? That way you don't have to get close to kill the tanks.

What? Medusas have a range of 36" (48" with Bastion Breachers) and Basilisks have a range of 36"-240". What the hell, man?

I'm assuming he meant you don't have to get close with melta guns to kill tanks. The basilisk isn't really an anti-tank weapon. It can be, but that's not it's main job.

Drop the sentinels, they might get a single shot off and then die.

Infantry only works well if you do it right. You gotta gunline with infantry squads and tons of autocannons, give orders well, and make sure you have enough mobile melta to get rid of powerful threats.
I suggest a unit or 2 of stormtroopers with dual meltaguns.

Looking at a pure infantry list at 2,500 points I came up with this:

HQ
CCS, 1 AC
Lord Commisar

Troops
PCS 4x Plasma - 50 Troops, 5 AC, Vox
PCS 4x Plasma - 50 Troops, 5 AC, Vox
PCS 4x Plasma - 50 Troops, 5 AC, Vox
PCS 4x Plasma - 50 Troops, 5 AC, Vox
PCS 4x Plasma - 50 Troops, 5 Lascannon, Vox
PCS 4x Plasma - 50 Troops, 5 Lascannon, Vox

This list has 21 Auto-cannons, 10 lascannons, 20 Plasma Guns, and 336 models to be interlaced for cover save fun. Rapid fire FRF! SRF! would send 120 las gun, and 20 Autocannon shots into things. Enough to nearly wipe out a ten man tactical squad on average.

Both Lascannon teams focus firing w/o orders will score on average 1.66 damage results versus AV 14 out of cover giving a 55.6% chance a turn to immobilize or destroy a Land Raider. In cover it drops to 25% which sucks. However if there is terrain work to your advantage Termies in cover could eat a lot of Plasma and Lasguns before they can charge.

I Like that Norade.

It's a nice list aswell. look realy cool.

A guy in our gaming group used to play it. All lasguns for the troops, then 15+ Missile launchers. I watched him gun down equal points of orks due to sheer volume of troops. Extras were Creed and Kell & Marbo. He knew how to command them and they were very effective.

That list is probably as close to what you want as you are going to get. The only change I might make is in the weaponry per platoons and exchanging the Lord Commisar for marbo. But that is just preference. The basic layout of maxing the platoons is THE way to go for all infantry guard army.

Norade wrote:Looking at a pure infantry list at 2,500 points I came up with this:

HQ
CCS, 1 AC
Lord Commisar

Troops
PCS 4x Plasma - 50 Troops, 5 AC, Vox
PCS 4x Plasma - 50 Troops, 5 AC, Vox
PCS 4x Plasma - 50 Troops, 5 AC, Vox
PCS 4x Plasma - 50 Troops, 5 AC, Vox
PCS 4x Plasma - 50 Troops, 5 Lascannon, Vox
PCS 4x Plasma - 50 Troops, 5 Lascannon, Vox

This list has 21 Auto-cannons, 10 lascannons, 20 Plasma Guns, and 336 models to be interlaced for cover save fun. Rapid fire FRF! SRF! would send 120 las gun, and 20 Autocannon shots into things. Enough to nearly wipe out a ten man tactical squad on average.

Both Lascannon teams focus firing w/o orders will score on average 1.66 damage results versus AV 14 out of cover giving a 55.6% chance a turn to immobilize or destroy a Land Raider. In cover it drops to 25% which sucks. However if there is terrain work to your advantage Termies in cover could eat a lot of Plasma and Lasguns before they can charge.

360 points are spent on plasma guns that could be spent on other things.
Plasma guns on 5+ save models are risky at best and foolhardy at worst.
I would spend those points on a master of ordnance, some stormtroopers, a pbs, and some ratlings.
However, this is an excellent base for a guard horde list.

You're right, in double tap range any single model has a 44.4% chance to die on the spot. Thus odds favor losing 1 model a round on average.