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swagmasteryolo wrote:
Also, asides from having good models and genuinely decent fluff, you can always convert your models to whatever standard you want. I've got a Cadian, feral and traitor IG companies. Also, its pretty fun to paint.

Necromancy if shunned around here...
And welcome to Dakka

The average guardsman has two months of training. Almost every one of them has never been off-planet or seen a creature more exotic than a grox (a sort of lizard-cow, if you're not familiar). Many of them only know of the Imperium and space travel as half-forgotten legends. But they are swept up by the ships of the Departmento Munitorum, and trained for as long as it takes the ship to arrive in a war zone a thousand light years from anything they've ever known.

Their equipment, considered on its own merits, is excellent. A lasgun that can vaporize concrete at a hundred meters. A flak vest and helmet that can shrug off any weapon they might have seen before their conscription. But compared with the horrors that await them, these marvels of technology well deserve their reputation as "a flashlight and a T-shirt."

They are sent marching into the jaws of an enemy they know nothing about, aside from the propaganda they received in their briefings, designed more to keep them from fleeing the battlefield than give them the information they need to survive. Once they have faced the enemies of Mankind, the only thing that keeps many of them from fleeing is the Commissar lurking at their rear, face stony and bolt pistol ready. The average lifespan of a Guardsman from the point he makes contact with the enemy is a matter of seconds. Were it not for the thousand Guardsmen at his side and the thousands more marching forward to replace him, the enemy would never even slow down.

So why, given all the deficiencies and disadvantages of the Guardsman, is he the ultimate hero of the far future? Because, despite his powerlessness before the wrath of the xenos, the heretic, and the demon,

He.
Will.
Hold.

I play Guard because I want to send waves upon waves of my own men to achieve an objective, many will die for the emperor, some will be forced through a fine mesh screen for the Emperor, they will be the luckiest of all....

I play Guard because of my love for the history of WWII and reading Gaunt's Ghosts.

The sheer /concept/ of a massive wave of guardsmen crashing down upon the enemy line, rows upon ROWS of artillery reducing their armor and infantry to dust, a veritable steel wall of arguably the best standard tank in the game just bringing the enemy's plans to rubble.

A desperate man fighting amidst the trenches, a pilot raining missiles from his Valkyrie while air-dropping elite Stormtroopers to complete a deadly mission, the opponent's look when he sets down his 25 marines and 4 tanks and you have 8 tanks and over a hundred men ready and able to face him.

With Guard, you have multiples of EVERY unit. They literally cannot take out your tanks before you get a chance to return fire, because you will have 5-10 of them. They cannot wipe out your infantry with a few lucky shots and a large blast, because you have 100 infantrymen ready to fight and die. You will be in a position to allow them to charge and wipe out a squad of 20 just so your other 80 can get around them unmolested and form a kill-box.

It's thrilling to me, the fluff, the concept, and vision of seeing all those models on the field and knowing that they are yours to command. And make no mistake, those guardsmen have their own standard-issue balls of STEEL, and they will hold the line for you. Woe betide the foe who belittles the guardsmen, because alone he may be small, but alongside his brothers he is a force to be reckoned with.

It's why I run a hybrid list with huge blobs of guard. It's how cinematic and captivating a table looks when they have but 3 small squads of marines and you've covered your deployment zone with men and steel.

when i get enough money im going IG. ive started reading the first guants ghosts and i have to fight myself to stop reading

I play guard for several reasons:

Only army (I am aware of) that can technically outflank roughly 150 models

Only army that can have guaranteed endless respawning units

1 unit can potentially fire 150 shots, for only 200pts. Yeah those shots may be rubbish, but that only makes that daemon princes/ terminator squad/ massive walking death monster demise even funnier!

But my main attraction towards the guard is that we are the only army that cannot be out horded. Ever. Both in game and in fluff.

They are also the army that produces the funniest stories you can tell your mates later. My personal favourite:

"I once gave the order to one of my platoons to fix bayonets and charge a squad of genestealers. If they believed in the emperor hard enough they could win... I don't think they believed enough..."

"I once gave the order to one of my platoons to fix bayonets and charge a squad of genestealers. If they believed in the emperor hard enough they could win... I don't think they believed enough..."

Priceless

They(to me) are easy to paint to a tabletop standard. They are like the ultimate badasses. They know they'll die, but they fight anyway. And there are a lot of builds. As 1d4chan put it, " When recruits are inducted into the Imperial Guard, they are given four things. Their regulation flashlight (commonly referred to by the troops as "lasguns" for some reason), their regulation cardboard box (which certain regiments have taken to cutting up and wearing into battle, calling it "flak armor"), a large stack of toilet paper (which the recruiters refer to as the "Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer"), and the regulation extra large wheelbarrow that allows them to cart their massive brazen balls into battle."

Closed for threadomancy -