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This is copied from my blog (which I haven't updated for a while...need to get on that) and comprises my thoughts on how best to use a Chimera. To veteran Guard players a lot of what I have to say will be responded with 'well, duh!' but this is more for the newer conscripts looking to get the most out of the primary workhorse for Guard armies.

Without further ado:

'The Chimera is the Imperial Guard's most commonly used armoured troop carries. These ubiquitous vegicles are extremely durable and practical, caparable of mounting an array of support weapons. From within the armoured confines of a Chimera, an embarked Infantry Squad can utiltise the hull-mounted firing points to unleash a lethal fusillade of shots into the foe, protected from all but the most destructive reprisals.'
- Imperial Guard Codex

When assessing how the Chimera can perform on the battlefield, it is first essential to have a look at its statline. With the BS of a standard Guardsmen you can expect to hit 50% of the shots fired, not great, but standard fare for every model in your army. Much more impressive, however, is its front armour value of 12. This makes it very resistant to any weapons upto S8/9, where we begin to fall into dedicated anti-armour (AA) territory. Couple this with the free smoke launchers and the Chimera becomes a rather nice, durable little tank. Care must be taken to ensure that neither the side nor the rear of the vehicle is left exposed, as these are particularly vulnerable to incoming enemy fire.

The basic weaponry that comes fitted onto the Chimera is also fairly impressive. The medium strength guns can easily throw wounds on T4/5 models and force your opponent to take armour saves. Unfortunately, the lack of any significant AP does decrease the effectiveness of the shooting somewhat. You should only very, very rarely feel any desire to switch out the turret-mounted multi-laser as it is an excellent all-round weapon; able to target almost anything from infantry to light vehicles in a pinch. There can be some variance in the hull-mounted weapons, and this will be discussed when we look into exactly how you can use your Chimera on the battlefield.

One of the biggest advantages the Chimera has got going for it is its price. At a mere 10% more than a 'naked' Infantry Squad and touting two heavy weapons to boot its an absoloute steal. The simple affordability of this tank for the Guard means that you should see a lot of them on the table, indeed, some Guard forces that I've seen can field upto 8 of the things at once! Flooding the battlefield with massive amounts of armour is one of the keystones to success in a mechanised Guard army, and the lynchpin for such a list is the humble, yet deadly, Chimera.

The way I see it there are two primary ways you can field Chimeras, and the method you choose changes drastically dependant upon your overall list and what it is exactly you want to get out of your Chimeras. The two main ways that you'll find are:

* Armoured bunkers

Or

* Special weapon delivery systems

The first method involves kitting the Chimera out to make the most of its long range weapons. A multi-laser coupled with a hull-mounted heavy bolter and a heavy stubber can throw out a huge number of shots per turn. This can be used to easily whittle down hordes or maybe even throw a wound or two on a Monstrous Creature (MC). If you want to field your Chimeras in this way, I would recommend putting either an Infantry Squad, or a dedicated Heavy Weapon Team, armed with autocannons, heavy bolters or lascannons inside the tank. Due to the fire points out of the top hatch, the passengers can fire at the enemy with impunity, protected as they are by the Chimera's tough front armour. When coupled with the already fairly impressive firepower of the tank itself, the sheer volume of fire coming from a single tank becomes truly terrifying.

This type of tactic works particularly well when you want to hold objectives on your home turf, as the enemy has to not only destroy the Chimera itself, but then has to work at killing its occupants before you relinquish your hold on said objective.

The second method of use, as a delivery system, is seen far more regularly than the bunker tactic. Often a Chimera will get loaded up with a Veteran Squad armed to the teeth with melta/plasma guns, and sent straight at the enemy; its single purpose being to ensure that the Vets get an opportuntity to devestate the chosen target with their weapons of choice, protected as they are within the Chimera's bulk. Chimeras used in this way will often forgoe any upgrades, keeping it as cheap as possible, and also switch out their heavy bolter in favour of the heavy flamer. Due to the close-range, aggressive nature of this tactic, the template of the flamer synergises much better than the 36" range heavy bolter.

Regardless as to which method you prefer, the Chimera is as essential a vehicle as any in the Guard army. Its plethora of heavy weapons, decent armour, flexibility and general affordablity, ensures that the Chimera remains not only one of the best vehicles in the Guard army, but one of the best general, all purpose tanks in the whole of the 41st milennium.

Regards,

L. Wrex

No thoughts on this? :(

L. Wrex (is a saaaaaaaad panda)

So, this is a god overview, but you have a contradiction. Namely, these two ideas conflict with each other:

Lycaeus Wrex wrote:With the BS of a standard Guardsmen you can expect to hit 50% of the shots fired, not great... The medium strength guns can easily throw wounds on T4/5 models and force your opponent to take armour saves. Unfortunately, the lack of any significant AP does decrease the effectiveness of the shooting somewhat.

Lycaeus Wrex wrote:
the turret-mounted multi-laser as it is an excellent all-round weapon... A multi-laser coupled with a hull-mounted heavy bolter and a heavy stubber can throw out a huge number of shots per turn. This can be used to easily whittle down hordes or maybe even throw a wound or two on a Monstrous Creature (MC)

So... are they crappy BS3 weapons with poor AP, or are they an excellent weapon that can easily whittle down hordes?

Also, I'd note that there is a "mobile bunker" way to play with them where you just run around and do drive-by's. Of course, this comes with the liability of getting close to your opponent's stuff.

Also, I'd mention stuff about how you can outflank chimeras through various means.

A third option is to park them in front of your indirect fire units to block line of site or grant cover. Works well for your import and less sturdy collosus / manticore which tend to be targeted real quick.

And a fourth option is to increase the range of your orders by sticking a CCS in it as the range is then measured from the hull which is significantly large than a single model.

Ailaros wrote:So... are they crappy BS3 weapons with poor AP, or are they an excellent weapon that can easily whittle down hordes?

It's a little of column A and a little of column B. If you take Chimeras as a delivery system, the multi-laser can be a little underwhelming, merely giving you another mid-S gun to throw some shots around with. However, if you take them in the bunker role; the multi-laser coupled with the other guns on the tank, really starts to shine as its high S, low AP meshes well with the heavy bolter/stubber.

Ailaros wrote:Also, I'd note that there is a "mobile bunker" way to play with them where you just run around and do drive-by's. Of course, this comes with the liability of getting close to your opponent's stuff.

Also, I'd mention stuff about how you can outflank chimeras through various means.

D'oh, forgot about the drive-by. Which is quite silly as I actually use one in that method too... With regards outflanking, that only really comes into play with Al'Rahem, who will get talked about in the 'Special Characters' segment I'm currently writing.

K-hop; also good inclusions! I do actually use some of those tactics too, but I wrote this off the top of my head and some ideas evidently got missed out.

Thanks for your input!

L. Wrex

Chimeras can also outflank with Creed (another special character, I know), but also with stormies. Not that I'd use either of these options, but just saying...

Also, how do medium-strength, crappy AP weapons mesh well with high-strength, good AP weapons?

Also, to go along with what k hop is saying, you may want to mention something about the leafblower.

Pretty solid description of the Chimera. I'd say that point for point and given it's role in the army, it's the best transport in the game currently.

Couple other minor thoughts...

It doesnt come up often, but don't forget it's amphibious. Water terrain doesnt seem to come into play very much so I've seen Guard players forget they can drive right through it.

If your Chimeras are carrying squads with weapons that need to fire at close range (meltas, flamers, rapid-fire plasma) you might consider paying for the dozer blade. We've all seen games where it's absolutely critical that the transport get into a certain position (contest an objective, get into melta-effect range, etc), only to roll the dreaded 1 and immobilize. Sometimes costing the game in dramatic fashion. Not fun. Dozer blades let the transport virtually ignore rough terrain, opening up a huge amount of movement area. This can be even more important if you're running a heavily mechanized army since traffic jams and bottlenecks WILL occur when there are so many vehicles trying to maneuver around.

Personally I think the Pintle Heavy Stubber (but not the storm bolter) is worth the 10 points. Basically if the Multilaser gets to fire, the stubber will too. I find that my multilasers spend lots of time doing cleanup/whittling shooting at the end of the phase, and having 6 shots instead of 3 helps tremendously when trying to finish off that last 1-2 guys from an enemy squad. It also helps me avoid the temptation to shoot the multilaser at light vehicles (assuming there are any infantry targets instead), which despite being S6, it's really not terribly good at.

Good description of its uses. Downsides include extremely long sides that have an amazing AV of...10. So Land Speeders and the like can easily flank them and take them out.

Personally, I like to use them to roll Plasma Squads around (Plasvets, Plas CCS) and rapid-fire something into oblivion. Pretty much, they're gunboats to me. More of a portable bunker than a drop-off transport, as Guard kind of die quickly in the open.

Ailaros wrote:Also, how do medium-strength, crappy AP weapons mesh well with high-strength, good AP weapons?

I reallllly don't want to start the multi-laser debate again. Suffice to say that multi-laser is high strength, 'crappy' AP, whilst the heavy bolter is medium strength and (ahem) 'good' AP (you seem to have them the wrong way round). They both have exactly the same range and the same target priority, the one difference being your Orks and IG get armour saves from one gun, but not the other.

Thanks again for the input guys, I'm currently revising the article and you should see an edited version shortly!

L. Wrex

Oh, you were comparing the ML and the HB. I thought you were talking about synergy with the army (so, like chimeras and LRBTs), not about synergy on just the one vehicle.

I guess it's really a definition of "shine", then. To me, spending 130 points on 2 HBs, 2 Multilasers and 2 heavy stubbers isn't nearly as good as spending 125 points for 1HB and 1 eathshaker cannon. I mean, chimeras can be used as tanks, but the guard has access to real tanks that do the job better.

I used to run a 2xHB+stubber armored fist with an HB. While the 4x machine gun tank of doom was cool, it never really did anything over the many, many games I played with it.

The synergy of the Chimeras with Guard ordinance is that the ordinance is actually pretty lousy at killing small numbers of models in cover, or single models. A chimera, more often than not (about 2/3rds of the time), will kill a single marine with its ML/HB combo, so a few chimeras will clean up what the ordinance leaves behind. Lasguns perform a similar role, but lack range, and have a lot of problems w/ toughness 5 stuff like bikes.

Yeah. A lot of things can pick off stragglers though. I mean, if your chimera isn't doing something else, then it might as well, but then I'd wonder why the chimera isn't doing something else.

Also, there are units that do both blasting and picking. For the price of a chimera and a basilisk, you can buy a bolter bolt russ, for example.

This is useful to me, as I have had trouble employing my Chimeras effectively. I currenlty use 3 in my 2,000 point list; one for my CCS (with a mix of advisors), one for my PCS (3x flamer, 1 heavy flamer), and one for a plasma vet squad. What I seem to have the most trouble with is getting them into a postion where they can do some good; they seem to get blown up short of objcectives, and I seem to make silly mistakes with their deployment that prevents the officers inside from being able to do much with issuing orders.

honer's unbeatable chimera tactic -

take as many as possible.

point guns at enemy

try not to fall asleep as he removes models by the bucket.

sprinkle with melta weapons and artillery to taste.

I always attach the H/K missile. It is 10 points and more often than not misses....but it does give the Chimera an ability to Krak a SM Dread, or a chance at a Whirlwind...not to mention a great Coup de grace on a last SM SGT or Captain/Chaplain......but at 65pts it is effective for my style of Mech combat.

Plus i modeled them after the old Soviet BMD-1 APCs and i think they look great....http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/41/BMDgraphic1.jpg

My Loadouts on my Chimeras are all ML with HF...i pack them with Plasma Vet troopers or Melta CCS. These are great for Rushing first turn and then debarking on turn 2 and now there are double the units for your opponent to shoot at... It has given me some great opportunity to use Rapid Fire Plasma on Termies/SM Bike squads....

My two cents on the ML loadout....in my case i need to get Wounds on those SMs....and the Multilaser gives you a few more over the course of the game than an HB....the AP doesnt matter for them so.....the higher St. wins out.

The nice thing about the chimera is it's cheap enough and has enough utility that in any given game it might be useful for completely different reasons that the previous game.

Biophysical wrote:The nice thing about the chimera is it's cheap enough and has enough utility that in any given game it might be useful for completely different reasons that the previous game.

Interesting and intelligent.