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Welcome to the Guard. In all honesty your best bet is to skip straight through to 8th edition and pray that we get a massive fix.

If you do wish to play now then be prepared to limit yourself to:
-Company Command Squads
-Veteran Sections
-Valkyries
-Leman Russ tanks
-Wyverns
-Maybe Armoured Sentinels and/or Chimeras

Forget the Elites section as nothing is worth taking from there, Fast attack is largely pointless too and as for troops, well Penal units where too fun and had to be removed whilst platoons are utterly terrible. Lord Commissars are bad, Primaris Psykers are only ten points cheaper than the vastly superior SM Librarians and Priests lost access to the Evisicrator (which has now magically appeared in the hands of everyones favourite Mary Sue's).

Formations wise, the Emperors Wrath artillery battery is good, provided you have plenty of LoS blocking cover to hide behind, the two Leman Russ formations are okay and the Baneblade formation is so-so, but after that just forget it. The other formations are an utter joke, culminating in the 'Guardcurion' which requires a bare minimum of 1083 points of infantry to use, and yes that is before any upgrades are taken.

 koooaei wrote:
Conscripts got a 25% point reduction without any nerfs.

Ah forgot they got cheaper, had to double check. I cannot recall the last time I saw an army use them.

They're one of the most point-effecient swarms in the game right now.

They're cheap, but have to be babysat by add on characters and orders, and pretty much are only good for board control, and have tons of common hardcounters, which is generally why you dont see them terribly often, especially when a Combined Squad blob, while.more expensive, usually offers dramatically more capabilities in terms of firepower and being able to operate without as much suppory, and they still arent stellar units.

IG aren't a cutthroat-tourney-winning army but they have a lot of good things there. Best swarms in the game - orks are nowhere near as good as 3 ppm fearless conscripts with 5+ armor.

Hrm, the Orks are still probably better. The differencr in armor save is mostly trivial, the Orks higher T matters a lot more, and the Orks have dramatically more killing power, particularly with a hidden Powerklaw. The morale issue is the only area the Conscripts really have a good leg up on, and while valuable, if we are talking anything but simple board control, I dont think makes them the best swarms in the game. They certainly arent a cornerstone of highly competitive IG armies. The conscripts arent awful, but theyre hardly anything to write home about sadly.

I think the best swarms are probably the Fearless 3ppm FNP sprorting Renegades and Heretics Plague Zombies

Strong artillery. Hard to deny the effectiveness of emp's wrath and wiverns.

Wyverns are great but have a limited array of effectiveness. The other artillery is only useful if it can be used in the formation, and even then doesnt match the firepower that other armies can put out. Pieplates have increasingly limited usefulness these days, particularly if not S10, raw volume of shots matters a whole lot more.not that the artillery is pointless, but the heavier guns are hardly exceptional in 7E.

Superheavy tanks that are good but not broken.

At best they match equivalent points of Leman Russ tanks typically, which are pretty mediocre. As far as superheavy units go, theyre amongst the least effective in the game, particularly next to things like Knights and GMC's and the Eldar and SM superheavies. SM's can do the S10 Ignores Cover superheavy thing much more cost efficiently for example, while Eldar get to run around with their D-Pieplate toting Titan Holofield protected Fast Skimmer superheavies with twice as many shots at higher BS (and potentially even Twin Linked) than the IG Shadowsword equivalent.

 koooaei wrote:
IG aren't a cutthroat-tourney-winning army but they have a lot of good things there. Best swarms in the game - orks are nowhere near as good as 3 ppm fearless conscripts with 5+ armor. Strong artillery. Hard to deny the effectiveness of emp's wrath and wiverns. Superheavy tanks that are good but not broken.

I didn't get IG for swarms of conscripts. And Tanks are cooler than fixed Arty. IG Superheavies are the weakest of all the LOW. No thanks.

If the IG are taking a Superheavy, it had better be a dual-twin-Turbo Warhound for firepower with a Knight or two for close-in work. Then, try to squeeze in some IG for looks and Objective holding.

Eh, the Stormsword is not too bad, provided you are facing a list with Infantry/bikes. Especially Eldar scatbike spam and Space Marines. Even Tau can be vulnerable.
It is just too bad that you are paying 100+ more points than anyone else for the damn thing.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 koooaei wrote:
IG aren't a cutthroat-tourney-winning army but they have a lot of good things there. Best swarms in the game - orks are nowhere near as good as 3 ppm fearless conscripts with 5+ armor. Strong artillery. Hard to deny the effectiveness of emp's wrath and wiverns. Superheavy tanks that are good but not broken.

I didn't get IG for swarms of conscripts. And Tanks are cooler than fixed Arty. IG Superheavies are the weakest of all the LOW. No thanks.

If the IG are taking a Superheavy, it had better be a dual-twin-Turbo Warhound for firepower with a Knight or two for close-in work. Then, try to squeeze in some IG for looks and Objective holding.

But the Stormlord is the funniest of the Lords of War. Load it up with guns, Allies, and a counter-assault unit and drive around the field setting things on fire.

If we're playing against Orks or CSM for funsies, sure! Take the Stormlord! Take all the goofy stuff! Just don't expect to win.

If we're intending to compete with Eldar / SM and their Supers, a Shadowsword doesn't cut it against similar points in Eldar / SM Supers.

I built my IG at the tail end of 5th edition, but they've treated me well up through 7th. I've largely ignored formations, but I'm not playing them against hardcore tournament lists (well, often anyway) and the army still plays like I feel it should. The good units are still good, the garbage units are still garbage, the army still plays in a pretty similar fashion.

Oh, and there's Wyverns, which are stupidly effective artillery tanks.They beat the pants off my Basilisks for effectiveness.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
If we're playing against Orks or CSM for funsies, sure! Take the Stormlord! Take all the goofy stuff! Just don't expect to win.

If we're intending to compete with Eldar / SM and their Supers, a Shadowsword doesn't cut it against similar points in Eldar / SM Supers.

(Disclaimer: 'funny' does not equate to 'useful for fighting Titans'. The post author's Stormlord has only seen play as a slightly doctored Salamanders Legion Stormlord in a 30k environment. The Stormlord does not meet US or EU emissions standards. Your results may vary. If your Stormlord gets destroyed on turn one multiple games in a row report to your local Tech-Priest immediately.)

 Vaktathi wrote:
are only good for board control, and have tons of common hardcounters, which is generally why you dont see them terribly often

Board controle is the name of the game. The only hardcounter i can think of is barrage. And even so, there's not much barrage nowadays that's not wasted firing at conscripts when there are your own artillery guns with ignore cover and possibly twin-linked.

The reason you don't see them this often is because it's a ton of models that you need to get somewhere and preferably paint.

Needing lots of models and painting time is definitely a hindrance, I wony argue that, but as there generally will only be one such blob, and the total model count will likely still be below that of something like a Green Tide list or a horse nid army, that alone does not explain their rarity

As for hardcounters, most basic weapons ignore their armor. Plenty of units can wipe such a blob in CC relatively easily. RoF had spiked, and ignores cover is more common than ever. Markerlight supported pulse rifles, scatterbikes, stomp attacks preceded by multiple pieplates or giant flame templates, thunderfire cannons, wyverns, etc are all highly effective and common tools at removing such units.

A conscript blob isnt awful, its just not a shining star, its slow, has pathetic killing power, and is vulnerable to a wide array of common muppetmunching weaponry that makes most such units relatively ineffective in 7E.

You miss the most important point. If something is trying to kill conscripts at any given time, they've allready earned their points back. And a ton of lazgun shots is bound to kill something even with bs2.

Or, those Conscripts are just a stepping-stone that lets something larger not get shot at during the IG turn...

Depending on how you look at it ;D