Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Hi.

I'm an ex-guardsman (gotta love those groundpounders :L) but I've recently returned to the game.

Problem is, I haven't played new edition rules yet - and the last time I was a guardsman, doctrines were still kosher.

I've read the new edition rules, and I reckon i've got a fairly strong grasp of the changes and mechanics of the new system.

Just looking for some advice for the major tactical and strategic changes I ought to expect between Previous Edition Codex and Current Codex, given that it's also in the new rules edition.

Thanks,
Mav.

The big change you are going to hit is the mechanized revolution. You will want your units in chimeras. Chimeras with 5 fire points, and BS4 vets as troops have very much changed the way the guard play. Commissars are now your friend as they keep your blobs of infantry from running away now that your officers do not spread the LD love, also, commissars are no longer ICs, and as such can be hidden in infantry blobs.

You will also find that you want to convert many of the new units. Don't think of it as much as updating your army, as building a new army with old models.

Awesome. So I'ma want to get myself some more chimeras then?

Do I want to start grouping my squads? I've seen a few guard armies talking about combining guard squads, and although I never did it in the last edition, it may be a much better idea now. Is it a smart idea?

Well, in the last edition infantry platoon squads could not combine. Now when combined they actually offer a bit of a "death star" unit to the guard. 30 men with heavy and special weapons together with a commissar can offer superb durability, firepower, and even CC prowess to a Guard army, especially with Straken nearby, but if your opponent has a unit capable of killing them quickly they can be a lot of points in one basket. The new Guard codex has lots of builds that can do well, so enjoy it.

So I seriously want to avoid template weapons at all costs then, with a 30-man squad.

Is it worth kitting out several 30man squads to take a well-rounded balance each, or specialising them?

With the amount you will be spending on each blob, equipping them so they can hurt infantry and vehicles is a must. Also a must, a commissar so they get that ld 9 stubborn that keeps them in the fight.

well... the commissar is almost expected xD

There are pretty much two ways of running blob squad.

1) The gun line: 1 commissar, 1 vox, 3 lascannons /autocannons. Park this squad in cover near your command squad for bring it down or incoming! orders. Ideaally place them on an objective. Some people like to inlice grenade launchers here, I don't. You can also use this squad to bubble wrap you tanks and artillery so that the enemy can't get within 6" of your vulnerable vehicles.

2) The human wave. 1 comiassar, 1 vox, flamers or grenade launchers as a specials and power weapons and melta bombs on the sergeants. Line 'em up and charge them across the field.

Keep in mind that unless you really pack your guys together it can be difficult fitting multiple blobs on the table, especially if you trying to leave room to maneuver your vehicles.

Also, while blob squads are nice, you really do need vehicles to compete in 5e.

One major tactical change is that you can no longer consolidate into combat, very helpful for our many units supporting each other. What kind of army do you like to play?

See, I used to be a major infantry hoarder, but if that's no longer a viable option, I guess i'd better go invest in a few more chimeras :L

Y'know, I don't think infantry armies are necessarily doomed to failure (if they are, I regret my recent purchases) because while vehicles in the newer codexes DO offer tons of cheap advantages, all opponents react to these changes by bringing tons of anti-armour weapons, and usually just a few specialised infantry-killers.

If a guard army brings about 1 body per 10 points of the game (so 150 men in 1500 pts, etc) then it will take a lot to really damage that force. Some people, I know, bring as many infantry as possible. Some would include 3 HS choices as well, ideally long-range firepower that could fire from the back, where guardsmen surround them (by far the easiest way to kill heavy vehicles in this addition is to use 6" melta range, or powerfists/meltabombs in close combat, so this is a good tactic to keep tanks from harm). Another idea might be to include 2-3 valkyries or vendettas with veterans, PCS or SWS inside, these could either outflank or scout, giving your army some initiative, and the opportunity to take out some of the hardest/most dangerous targets.

Summary: all infantry guard CAN still be done, if you play against a group where the etiquette is to bring a solid all-comers list, because people have to prepare themselves to take on hordes of vehicles. Some people just take infantry, some support them with a few well-chosen vehicles to fill in the army's weaknesses.

Welcome back! and revel in the knowledge that you're part of one of strongest if not the strongest 5th edition codexes.

For blobs of Infantry, Id take El'rahim or Creed. These allow for nifty deployment options for infantry.

If it was me...Id go mechanized. Lots of Chimera hulls and special weapons.

The infantry Horde is still viable(and in fact can be a Winning strategy) especially as most opponents will not expect it in this edition.

Do not try to blend your list though; 1-3 tanks make for 1-3 easy kill points/priority targets/plain ole dead tanks. If you go all Mech; you will want to take Vet squads, because Mechanized Platoons add a ridiculous number of Kill points to your list(the Victory conditions for 1/3 of all standard missions is Kill points, which each unit in the Platoon counts as 1 as does each Chimera)

If you Go all Infantry You will want the Platoons for the cheap bodies and "Blobbing" makes the several units 1 unit and therefore 1 Kill point.

also don't be afraid to experiment with some units that were almost worthless in older editions example would be oygrns and rough riders. all the above are great choices. I have found that putting 1 squad of rough riders behind you wall of chimeras make for a great assault unit in the fact they will kill most anything if they get the charge which is easy with the chimera wall blocking assaults. Also much of the special characters have received huge boosts in effectiveness.

Ckilleen wrote:also don't be afraid to experiment with some units that were almost worthless in older editions example would be oygrns and rough riders. all the above are great choices. I have found that putting 1 squad of rough riders behind you wall of chimeras make for a great assault unit in the fact they will kill most anything if they get the charge which is easy with the chimera wall blocking assaults. Also much of the special characters have received huge boosts in effectiveness.

I have no faith in ogryns, but you are correct on all accounts bar that.

So, back in the day there were several types of guard armies to play (drop troops, mech, etc.). The way you did these types of armies were based on doctrines. As you've noticed, doctrines are no more. That is because most of the play styles have just been plain old incorporated into the list (like veterans and independent commissars), or thrown away alltogether (drop troops, warrior weapons), or a combination of the two (grenadiers).

As well, you probably noticed that the guard got a lot of different shades and subtleties to their old units. They still have the basilisk, but they also have a half dozen other things that do basically the same thing as the basilisk, but are specialized to fit certain tasks. This means that, for most things, you can now buy a unit that does EXACTLY what you want it to do (and, often, nothing more).

Also, of course, many things got cheaper.

What this means is that the guard went from an army that spammed cheap, specialized units to an army that spams cheap, specialized units on crack.

As well, of course, the rules edition changed. The guard of yore focused on efficiency of damage. Namely, you'd take a lot of things that you could hide as safely as possible with as big of guns as possible. Min/maxing troops/HS choices was the norm, and a guard player could value weapons that did damage without being subject to taking as much damage in return.

In 5th ed, however, things are much different. For one, mobility is key. If you don't believe me, just look at the fact that your line infantry can now run, your transports just got 30%-50% cheaper, the number of vehicles with the "fast" rule went from 0 to 5, you can now outflank lots of stuff, and, as if that weren't enough, guard have SKIMMERS now.

This is because most of the missions you play are objectives, where the damage that you can do to your opponent is now only relevant in so much as it allows you to park your butt on strategic parts of the field. Furthermore, the rest of your games will be kill points, and, by far, the fastest way to claim kill points is in close combat thanks to the new combat resolution rules. This means that, generally speaking, being able to get in close is premium, rather than the opposite being true. As such, static lists now suffer.

Furthermore, the strength of static lists came from long range firepower, which took a huge nerf, especially compared to short range power. Tanks get cover saves, and so do infantry just standing out in the open (if there are more infantry in front of them, including your own), which often makes long range shooting literally half as good straight away. Also, the primary benefit of long range weapons is that you get more turns to shoot them. Back in the day, when everything had to come slowly at you across an open field, you got several such turns. Now, infantry move nearly twice as fast, transports are much cheaper, and every army has stuff that just pops out of nowhere through outflanking or some sort of super-deepstriking (drop pods, stormies rerolling scatter die, etc.). This means that the number of turns that you get shooting with said weapons before your opponent gets to your lines has taken a precipitous drop. The only way long range firepower is really worth taking anymore is if you do a LOT of damage on those like 2 turns you get. Have you noticed all the neat new artillery options?

Anyways, redoing a 4th ed list into a 5th ed list is pretty easy, but requires a few things. Firstly, you've got to focus more on mobility. This can involve chimera spam if you want, but it's not necessary. Secondly, you've got to lighten your load of infantry heavy weapons in order to take more weapons that are more appropriate for this rules edition, like special weapons and vehicle-heavy weapons. Thirdly, you're probably going to need more stuff, as all your old stuff got cheaper. I would personally recommend re-designing your list along the lines of one of the new paradigms (styles that have replaced the styles caused by doctrines of old). Personally I'd pick 2 of the following:

Infantry horde
mechanized
artillery
armored
air-cavalry

Any combination has the ability to work, depending on your style. About the only thing common to all of these compared to a 4th ed list is that, unless you were running an infantry horde before, you're very likely going to need more troops choices than you had before.

Good luck, and welcome back.

...wow. Epically impressed with the level of support.

Was semi-expecting to get trolled like a 12-year-old noob, tbh.

I'll bear this in mind, thanks to all.

...wow. Epically impressed with the level of support.

Was semi-expecting to get trolled like a 12-year-old noob, tbh.

I'll bear this in mind, thanks to all.

Welcome back to the fold Grand Thruster Commander...ermm...Maverick

Just take a look threw the codex and see what takes your fancy.
There is nothing wrong with taking your old list and transpose it on to this codex, you know just to see what the difrence is like in costs.
I would be willing to bet that you will be pleasently surprised and all those times you wished that you could put this bit here or that bit there now probably meens you can.
Tactics wise, still the same as before, we get big tanks and they don't

Ribon Fox wrote:Welcome back to the fold Grand Thruster Commander...ermm...Maverick

Just take a look threw the codex and see what takes your fancy.
There is nothing wrong with taking your old list and transpose it on to this codex, you know just to see what the difrence is like in costs.
I would be willing to bet that you will be pleasently surprised and all those times you wished that you could put this bit here or that bit there now probably meens you can.
Tactics wise, still the same as before, we get big tanks and they don't

...tanks as standard then?

Maverick wrote:

Ribon Fox wrote:Welcome back to the fold Grand Thruster Commander...ermm...Maverick

Just take a look threw the codex and see what takes your fancy.
There is nothing wrong with taking your old list and transpose it on to this codex, you know just to see what the difrence is like in costs.
I would be willing to bet that you will be pleasently surprised and all those times you wished that you could put this bit here or that bit there now probably meens you can.
Tactics wise, still the same as before, we get big tanks and they don't

...tanks as standard then?

Depends on what you mean by tanks. Almost all Imperial Guard vehicles are technically tanks, and they are fantastic. Almost every army has some of them. If you mean Leman Russes, you can get by without them, Guard got a lot of extra heavy support options so AV14 is the only way to go.

Generally speaking, I haven't seen a lot of guard lists that didn't include at least 30 dudes and a couple of vehicles (good ones, at least). While infantry is the meat and potatoes of every guard army, vehicles are the cool ranch doritos... zesty.

Even for the most pro-infantry commander like myself, I can't but include a manticore and think nerdy thoughts about hellhounds and deathstrikes. The only real problem is if you fall into the opposite opinion: that vehicles are so awesome that they're the only thing worth taking, and you should always spend more points on vehicles at the expense of your troops. This was doable back in 4th ed, but you're setting yourself up for some pretty tough games in 5th ed without a healthy dose of groundpounders.

Not to say that you can't do a infantry-only army. It would be just as competitive as it would be laborious to model (says the man who spent 9 months of intense work making a 1k infantry only list a reality).

Maverick wrote:See, I used to be a major infantry hoarder, but if that's no longer a viable option, I guess i'd better go invest in a few more chimeras :L

It's still viable with a couple of tweaks. I've run pure infantry platoon lists a few times and tehy do rather well.
However, my normal list is a couple of platoons, some tanks, and a couple of support units.

See, problem is, my opponents are largely Tau and Tyranids (due to those being the armies my nearest-by-distance wargaming buddy plays)

Both of those mean two very different styles of play.

Against nids;

If I take an infantry horde, i'll get fethed inside out by his gaunt swarms, I can see it happening, and it already has. many, many times. If I take a vehicle-intensive army, I've got a better chance of surviving, and with better armour and weapons, a good chance of doing some damage - his tankbusters have considerably less range than my battlecannons, so I have a fairly decent chance of knocking them out of action before he reaches me. Also, he plays a very, VERY horde-obsessed army, literally buckets upon buckets of nids, meaning a tank army is more effective. Especially my hellhounds (which, obviously, get played as bane wolves in those matches!)

Against his tau, however, it's a very different story.

He claims killpoints like nothing else does against my tanks, because his tau army has a lot of railguns. Too many, if you ask me, but that's because i'm looking down the barrel, not the sight.

An infantry horde in that scenario has a good chance of surviving longer than the tanks, because to shoot his battlesuits and hammerheads, I have to advance my tanks to within range of the railguns. If I send in a large amount of infantry, It'll almost negate the effectiveness of his railguns.

Incase you haven't noticed, I soil myself every time I see railguns get deployed against me, they're deadly against my formations.

He has a nasty habit of deploying his infantry in cover forwards of the broadside positions, and when I have to advance my tanks and troops, he markerlights the living crap out of them, and blows them to smithereens with the broadsides. And that's just not british fair play, is it?

I dont believe in tuning an army to face a certain opponent, if you have to react to your enemy you already are at a disadvantage.

lascannon vendettas can maul broadsides, Vehicles, MC's, and aren't that expensive, you could even have them outflank, fly out, drop off troops and fire all in the same turn, or if you have first turn scout move them super far and get first turn rapid fire/melta/assault veterans right in his face.

a couple hydras, basks, or lemans in the back line can take care of business from across the board and are effective against both, remember instant death, aS8+ ap2+ template is going to annihilate those broadsides.

psychic battle squad can break any non fearless unit in the game at 36", PCS a broadside unit and then shoot one down and odds are he's going for a walk and never coming back, they are also effective against most tyranid medium creatures.

flamethrowers of any type are horrifically good against tau in cover. if you really want to go after tau, you need to provide more threats than he can deal with quickly, tau have great firepower but have to direct it, when you are paying 100-150pts for infantry in a chimera with special weapons, and field a half dozen or more of them, as well as run with support firepower, there's only so much that 3 railgun units can do.

Tyranids are a reasonably weak army, the trick to beating them is sacrificing vehicles which allow no consolidate, and screening good units with infantry so they can't be assaulted.

Also make sure he's using markerlight rules properly.

BishopX wrote:There are pretty much two ways of running blob squad.

1) The gun line: 1 commissar, 1 vox, 3 lascannons /autocannons. Park this squad in cover near your command squad for bring it down or incoming! orders. Ideaally place them on an objective. Some people like to inlice grenade launchers here, I don't. You can also use this squad to bubble wrap you tanks and artillery so that the enemy can't get within 6" of your vulnerable vehicles.

2) The human wave. 1 comiassar, 1 vox, flamers or grenade launchers as a specials and power weapons and melta bombs on the sergeants. Line 'em up and charge them across the field.

Keep in mind that unless you really pack your guys together it can be difficult fitting multiple blobs on the table, especially if you trying to leave room to maneuver your vehicles.

Also, while blob squads are nice, you really do need vehicles to compete in 5e.

There's also option number 3 if fielding Creed and/or Al'Raheem, and outflanking with the human wave totting meltaguns instead of grenade launchers/flamers. And then there's option 4 with Straken, where you take the gunline variant and give them power weapons too. Then you have a shooty unit that also packs surprising punch when assaulted.

I often add plasmaguns to my gunline guard squads.

Yeah, you can be creative with blobs.

Anyways, infantry is still plenty viable, but it doesnt' play like an infantry army of yore. You need to play a new type of infantry horde based primarily on blob squads and special weapons, rather than lots of little squads and heavy ones.

If infantry is what you like, I'd go with that. The only question then is how to take down tyranid. As mentioned, a guard infantry horde can take an awful lot of plasma guns, and Al'Rahem would be useful not only because he can outflank them straight into the big bug, but al'rahem himself comes with a weapon which inflicts instant death.

For the little ones, you can popcorn+ flamer like you used to, or you can laugh as a squad of charging hormagaunts absolutely BOUNCES off of a 33-man power blob.

See, I'm a tank player. I love new challenges though, which is where the all infantry list comes into play.

Unfortunately, I've got a deep, resounding hatred for all things containing the words "Tallarn" and "Al'Rahem"...

That includes a hatred for rough riders, and an especial hatred of ogryns and ratlings. If it aint human, or in the case of the riders, common sense, it aint finding its way into my army list.

Thanks to GW's immortal wisdom, the drop troops doctrine was removed - so I can no longer have my EPIC airdrops of massive infantry hordes all around everywhere. Especially deadly with meltaguns and flamers, because that really gaks all over the enemy's breakfast.

Maverick
I have some advice for you...as a returning guardsman player. If you lose... never... never... blame your codex. you will be laughed at.
AF

AbaddonFidelis wrote:Maverick
I have some advice for you...as a returning guardsman player. If you lose... never... never... blame your codex. you will be laughed at.
AF

What makes you think i'm going to lose? xD