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So its a rough draft, less some details. Let me know if you have some good tweaks to it:

CS
All with laspistols less a hvy flamer
Regimental standard
Vox caster
Hvy flamer
Bodyguard x2
Carapace
Col iron hand strakken
Chimera

Lord commisar (goes w/ ogryns)
Power fist
Carapace

Ogryn x5
Chimera

PC
Hvy bolter
Grenade launcher
Vox caster

Infantry
Power sword/plasma pistol
Vox caster
Flamer
Chimera

Infantry
Heavy bolter
Vox caster

Veteran unit
Autocannon
Plasma gun
Vox caster

Leman Russ Battle Tank x2 hvy bltr sponsons
Commander Pask

Vendetta x2

Vendetta x2

So I'm not well read on the rules, but I've been researching. If I'm missing something feel free to "wise me up"
I've got my infantry all done and am getting ready to move in to the vehicles. So if I am doing something wrong the sooner the better on the advice! I think the special characters are what I'm skeptical about. I could drop another Leman Russ in with the points:

The biggest advice that I have is for you to strip down your squads. Take the minimum amount of upgrades needed to get the task done. By doing so, you will find yourself able to put a lot more onto the table.

I also can't stress how great good chimeras are. They are the staple of a guard army for a reason, put everything you have in a chimera if possible, there are few exceptions to this.

Couple points:

I would drop all the vox casters.
Plasma weaponry usually isn't that great with the amount of cover save silliness that the rules grant infantry, and against tanks, meltas are much better.
Speaking of meltas, you don't have any. Commands are usually a great place to put them because they are really cheap, and can take up to 4 special weapons if you'd like.

Ogryns just aren't that great. If you really want a counter assault unit, you already have the start of one: Straken command squad. Give them carapace armour, a medic, and a couple bodyguards, and they will be able to take a surprising amount of beating, and for a guardsman... straken is a beast.

Autocannnons are always better than the heavy bolter in heavy weapon teams. Always. They are about as good against infantry because you wound on 2's, and you can shoot at monstrous creatures and transports as well.

I don't like leman russes, even when they hit they aren't particularly devastating. Some artillery on the other hand (manticores and medusas) are. You should also look into some hydras. Point for point they are probably one of the best all around tanks in the game. You can also hide your artillery behind your chimeras, while you cannot hide the leman russes.

So after all of this... you're unfortunately left with straken and his command squad, the vendettas (which are great), then the stripped down infantry platoon and veterans. Work from there. The veterans have access to many special weapons, use them. Keep the cheap infantry squads as cheap as possible. Just a transport and an autocannon.

I understand that this is much more of a 'friendly' list, and getting more units the table will cost more money and such, but it is just something to work towards (if want to, that is, you can play however you'd like) Here is a list I helped my friend with, that looks a bit similar to yours:

Company Command 185
3 Meltas
Heavy Flamer
Officer of the Fleet
Chimera ML/HF

Platoon Command 135
3 Meltas
Heavy Flamer
chimera ml/hf

Infantry squad 115
Autocannon
chimera ml/hf

Infantry squad 115
Autocannon
chimera ml/hf

Infantry squad 115
Autocannon
chimera ml/hf

Veteran squad 155
3 meltas
chimera ml/hf

Vendetta x2 280
HB Sponsons

Vendetta x2 280
HB Sponsons

Vendetta 140
HB Sponsons

Manticore 160

Manticore 160

Manticore 160

2000

You can drop the 5th vendetta and the heavy flamer in the command squad to put in straken, carapace armour, and a medipac if you'd like. But do you see how much more is on the table? You can still drop some more upgrades from the above to get even another vendetta if you really looked for the points.

tjdieter's suggestions all seem sound, although it's obviously a matter of opinion. I definitely do agree that infantry squads should be kept as light as possible, if you're not going all-out horde infantry, everything should be in a chimera.

I would never take any vehicles over 75 points in a squadron. Ever. This cannot be emphasised enough - you sacrifice flexibility, your shooting vehicles become significantly more fragile. Also there are plenty of powerful specialist squads in the game that can cripple 2-3 vehicles simultaneously, so when I play against IG, I'm always glad to see squadrons across the board - nice juicy targets!

Although I wouldn't take them exclusively as tjdieter has suggested, manticores, vendettas and veteran squads in chimeras w/meltaguns are all considered top-notch units. Building a mechanised list, I would take 1-2 CCS in chimera, 4-7 troops squads in chimeras, then fill out 3 heavy support and 3 fast attack choices. Make sure you have specialist units for every eventuality - meltaguns for heavy vehicles, S6-9 long-range weaponry for crippling transports, AP2 for elite infantry, some heavy flamers or similar for hordes, etc.

Good advice for sure. When I used to play Eldar I despised fielding vehicles. I just figured that was what you did with IG.
Couple of questions:
The grand tournament I watched last year the IG players didn't stand a chance in the missions based on "Kill Points", too many units. What is a good way to avoid this without vehicle units?

Are you suggesting if I do use battle tanks to used them as individual units?

tharbickmonopoloid- This is a common fallacy that many many 40k players fall into (trust me, it took a lot of convincing and a lot of games to come to this conclusion as well) that if you build a solid, balanced list, with redundancy and target saturation, you will be able to defeat your opponent (with smart play that is) no matter how many KP's you have. You do not limit the amount of kill points your opponent gets in your list building. Trust me when I say that the advantages of taking many units far outweigh the disadvantages. When you look at a list that has 20+ kill points, you think it is at a disadvantage in kill point games when you play against a list that only has 7. It isn't. This is because a list with few kill points can't accomplish as much in a single turn, they can't fire into as many targets, which means they can't kill as much. If I get to shoot three of my units for every one of yours, guess who is going to win a game of attrition? Just make sure that you don't sacrifice your units willy nilly and you will be just fine, even in a kill point mission.


So yes, take up as many slots of the FOC as possible. DO NOT squadron your vehicles because it will limit the amount of kill points your army has. You want to be able to shoot at as many targets as possible, because you can always focus fire multiple units into one opponent's unit when needed. The same goes with assault. It is very difficult to multi-assault (when you do it correctly, completely by the rules, which many people don't unfortunately) so again, taking up as many slots in the FOC as possible is best. You squadron up your vehicles when you run out of slots, and you want to add more things in. What all of this does is make it so that your army has many many targets, and your opponent will have a hard time with target priority. Making your opponent's decisions difficult is a good thing. It makes it so that he can't focus fire and kill one thing because you have so many other units that will shoot at him anyway. That is how an army with many many units (or KP) wins over a list with few KP

I don't disagree. But when they played a "meatgrinder" (?) I don't think they had an objective. The main reason I was going with "units" of vehicles was that I was told you can allocate damage. I thought that may be an advantage. I had another mechanised list made up with individual tanks but I put a Techmarine unit in it. I was on the fence if that was worth spending points on..?

I don't all of the modern armies in 40k. Are Tau the only one's with weapons that damage mulyiple vehicles?

Yes, you can allocate damage, but remember you do not actually determine the damage result. Also, when you squadron vehicles you downgrade stunned to shaken, but immobilized counts as wrecked.

I do not think that the techmarine is worth it. The biggest problem is that that for him to be effective you need to have servitors, and then he has to be outside of any tank you are trying to fix.. leaving him very exposed, and the unit is quite expensive as well. Just use the points to take more units. You won't be able to fix them.. but you'll just have more anyway. The techmarine can't do much more other than fix the vehicles, while spending the points on more vehicles can accomplish a lot more.

Tau aren't the only one's with enough firepower to damage multiple vehicles in one barrage. IG vendettas, hydras and manticores are very good at it (to name a few) as are space marine dreadnoughts with 2 TL autocannons, their predators with side sponson lascannons can do it, long fangs/devastators, just any unit with multiple heavy weapons can, and of course anything that is squadroned itself puts out more firepower than other single units. I prefer to squadron as little as possible because squadrons turn into big targets, and they aren't as tactically flexible.