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I am very new to Warhammer 40k, and I was interested in starting an Imperial Guard Army. I've read over the forums and looked at army lists, and almost all of them suggest getting lots of Chimeras and Meltas. Before I go out and start buying stuff, I was just wondering if you had to play the IG that way in order to be competitive in the game. I was also wondering if Commissars had any place in an army like that (I'm guessing no). Lastly, any tips or advice anyone would like to share about fighting Orks would be greatly appreciated.

Don't get in combat with Orks

Mech is stronger than non-mech for most armies in 5th edition, including IG, space marines (all kinds), tau and chaos.

You can make a semi-mech guard army that has about 3-4 units in chimeras (carrying vets and command squads), a mix of manticore, hydra & other artillery in the heavies, 2-3 valks or hellhounds, plus an infantry platoon:

One big platoon with 3 infantry squads and maybe some autcannon squads. You put a commisar upgrade with power weapon, into one of the infantry squads, give all the sergeants power weapons, and that's a unit that is able to tarpit and do damage with a lot of different kinds of opponents. The commisar makes the whole 30-man unit stubborn Ld9 with a reroll if they fail, and none of the power weapon guys can be picked out in HtH. It's a pretty solid guard army.


Oh, and even melta-heavy mech armies can handle orks pretty easily because you put heavy flamers on all your tanks.

No, Mech IG is not the only way to play competetively, it's just one of the more popular options.

Flavius pretty much said what I was going to.

Straken and commissars make combined platoons really difficult to deal with by shooting or assault. You can shoot the combined platoon and watch as innumerable lasgun carrying grunts are removed, and the heavy weapons fire ceaselessly, or you can try to assault it, but risk being destroyed by the mass of attacks that will come from countercharging guardsmen.

Well as a former non-mech IG player I have to say this. Feel No Pain is rapidly becoming a true universal special rule by which I mean its everywhere. Guardsmen have a very hard time getting through FNP. The Guard tanks have no problem getting through FNP but if you only have one or two tanks in your list, then they become the target of every heavy weapon in the opponents army. The sad truth is that 5th edition is the edition of spamming. To be competitive you need to spam one attribute and hope that you overwhelm your opponents ability to deal with it. Mech spam is the best kind of spam that the guard have

Faced Horde Guard once...he had more bodies than the most maxed out ork list...not a single piece of armor.

It freaking rocked.

Of course this guy is an IG Veteran and knows what he's doing.

I play DH...tanks cause us problems...I would rather face a leafblower than horde guard.

IF your going fully meched, my advice would be take the primas psyker, or commisar lord as your HQ, your units inside transports cannot take orders and when the trasnport is totalled they can't keep up with the rest of the army.

the main problem with mob IG is buying, painting, carrying, deploying, moving, fireing, assaulting, removing casualties and repacking a 200+ body list. Games take forever to finish.

Horde IG suffer one massive set back in the tournament setting. If you honestly expect to get to past turn 2 in the normal time allotment then you are high on something. I brought one to a tournament once. I knew they took a long time, and I knew tournaments run a time limit, but I never put 2 and 2 together until I was there. But Like I said earlier they have a very hard time dealing with FNP. I fought a plague marine army and he rampaged through my army. I had nothing to stop him

You may need to buy some fantasy movement trays lol.

Volkov wrote:Horde IG suffer one massive set back in the tournament setting. If you honestly expect to get to past turn 2 in the normal time allotment then you are high on something.

Not entirely true. One of my regular opponents can easily complete an 'Ard Boyz scale battle with his orks (close to 200 in number) in the alloted time. It takes practice, a thorough understanding of the rules, discipline, and practice. Oh, and practice.

This is not simply a horde army issue (though, obviously, that is the most common trigger)--if you are unable to complete at least 5 turns in your 'half' of the time alloted with *any* given army, then you have no business using that army in a tournament setting until you are able to do so.

Take as long as you want in a non-tournament game. If there's a time limit, though, there's just no excuse.

Right.

The thing is that mech became better for a lot of metagame reasons, and the transports just nearly halved in price, so it's obvious to see why they're popular.

As for horde, you can EASILY fit 100 dudes in 1000 points, and that's without conscripts. I defy you to show up with 250 models in a 2000 point tournament and see if your opponents don't break a little sweat. As mentioned, they need practice to move quickly (and something different than a standard foam army case to deploy with any sense of reason), and you need to focus much harder during your turn to prevent it going long (chat it up during your opponent's turn, not yours), but horde lists are at least one viable alternative.

Thanks for all the info.

Ailaros wrote:Right.

The thing is that mech became better for a lot of metagame reasons, and the transports just nearly halved in price, so it's obvious to see why they're popular.

As for horde, you can EASILY fit 100 dudes in 1000 points, and that's without conscripts. I defy you to show up with 250 models in a 2000 point tournament and see if your opponents don't break a little sweat. As mentioned, they need practice to move quickly (and something different than a standard foam army case to deploy with any sense of reason), and you need to focus much harder during your turn to prevent it going long (chat it up during your opponent's turn, not yours), but horde lists are at least one viable alternative.

An IG infantry horde is a competitive army. All of your opponents anti tank weapons like lascannons, plasma, and melta guns will be reduced to killing single guardsmen who might make a cover save to add insult to injury.

I played an infantry swarm up to 1,000 points in an escalation league. It won a lot of games, Commissars absolutely rock, but I didn't like it for 2 reasons.

#1 It plays slow. Your turns can take a very long time, and as Ailaros already pointed out it's a difficult task to keep your turns short playing a 250 man army in a 2,000 point tournament.

#2 It's a gunline. After playing enough games with them I remembered that I don't like playing a gunline, but that's just my playstyle. Mech IG is also a gunline, so either way it's a gunline. There is nothing wrong with playing a gunline, it's just whatever your personal preference is for playstyle.

They are correct when they say, it's all about playstyle too. Remember you can only tailor your army in a certain way, say mech-guard or heavy infantry guard,then leave it to chance. Like the 'leafblower' lists which are essentially alpha-strike lists.
Thats also the reason some IG player, take the hybrid approach,that means they have heavy-infantry squads,then they also have mobile squads like melta-vets in chimeras.

Mech is not the only competitive way to play. In a 2k point army you can fit more HWs than see possible to fit on the field lol. If its not DOW your opponent won't make it past half field only vehicals you need are Medusas and Colossus. They are amazing heavy fire power. The army is very competitive and I have shot many competitive armies off the field.