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I'm curious about how the various options in the Imperial Guard codex
combine into army builds, and how do you shoehorn those builds into the
"world types" of the Imperium? I liked the Doctrines in the previous edition
and how those mixed and matched to fit the various worlds of your
imagination. How does that work out under the current codex?

There are a ton of different possible builds to fit your playstyle/wallet. A few off the top of my head:

Infantry Horde - Lots and lots of infantry supported by a few tanks or artillery pieces. This either takes the form of heavy weapon spam or giant "blob" squads of guard packed full of close combat upgrades.

Armored Company - Maxed out on tanks and artillery, a minimum of infantry (usually veterans) supporting.

Veteran Army - All infantry is veteran squads armed with 3x meltaguns or 3x plasmaguns to take advantage of BS 4 and their absurdly cheap price. Usually combined with either chimeras for mobile pillboxes or lots of valkyries for a mobile air cavalry list

Given the near limitless size of the IG you can justify any build at all that you can make out of the codex.

The new guard codex is so versatile, you could to practically any fluff thing (except for drop troops now).

In my case, the fluff is that my planet is run by a bunch of cheapskates, so they pay their tithes in guardsmen, rather than money. Because arming guard regiments is expensive, they just don't arm them.

As such, my armies have tended to be low on vehicles and fancy weapons. They jerry rig or steal much of what they have at their disposal (who knew you could power a power weapon off of a laspack?)

Guess I should ask people for more of what they're using.

Well, if you were doing Steel Legion, you'd do a mechanized army, probably full of veterans. The fluff says they field their armies almost entirely mounted in Chimeras. I actually talked to a guy or two who were confused because their fluffy army lists turned from garbage in the last codex to gold in the new one!

My Guard started as a Catachan recon company - lots of sentinels, sergeant Harker and his infiltrating veterans, and an army geared towards close range firefights. This grew into a typical Cadian/generic Guard army, with larger platoons of infantry, more heavy weapons, and tanks for fire support. I've also got some Steel Legion on the way so I'll probably need some more Chimeras...

I'm not totally sure what you're asking with this thread. Guard armies come in all shapes and sizes and aside from spammy tournament builds of meltavets in Chimeras and Valkyries, they're usually very different.

Ailaros wrote:The new guard codex is so versatile, you could to practically any fluff thing (except for drop troops now).

In my case, the fluff is that my planet is run by a bunch of cheapskates, so they pay their tithes in guardsmen, rather than money. Because arming guard regiments is expensive, they just don't arm them.

As such, my armies have tended to be low on vehicles and fancy weapons. They jerry rig or steal much of what they have at their disposal (who knew you could power a power weapon off of a laspack?)

Is your avatar an example of this?

I'm going for a plasma / autocannon spam army. 9x plascan sentinels, 3x plascannon leman russ tanks, a few meltagun vet squads in chimeras for hunting the big stuff, and some autocannon wielding basic troops to pop transports.

malfred wrote:I'm curious about how the various options in the Imperial Guard codex
combine into army builds, and how do you shoehorn those builds into the
"world types" of the Imperium? I liked the Doctrines in the previous edition
and how those mixed and matched to fit the various worlds of your
imagination. How does that work out under the current codex?

My IG come from a once fertile (loyalist) planet that was rendered dead by an Ordo Xenos Inquisitor who had a bomb detonated above the planet. This caused atmospheric effects resulting in the sun being blocked out in the name of stemming a Tyranid invasion. The rationale was that if the biomatter was wiped out, it would stunt their spread across the planet. As a result, the planet is now incapable of producing food, so it solely concentrates its effort on producing weapons and warmachines. They trade tanks and guns with nearby system planets in exchange for food.

I represent this army with lots of tanks, vendettas (representing what I consider the more advanced spectrum of the IG) and special/heavy weapons.

The short answer is the current IG Codex is so incredibly flexible that you can reflect any "classic" IG Doctrine school you want quite easily.

Not being the best fluff librarian in the world I can't really speak to the worlds and such, but can throw out the obvious ones:

Melta Vets in Chimeras w/Tanks = Steel Legion, Death Korps of Krieg

Infantry Blobs w/special weapons & Walkers = Catachans, Death Korps

Infantry Blobs w/heavy weapons & Tanks = Mordian, Praetorian

Infantry Blobs w/misc = Valhallan, Praetorian,

Cadians are so large and diverse you could call just about any build Cadian.

The Green Git wrote:The short answer is the current IG Codex is so incredibly flexible that you can reflect any "classic" IG Doctrine school you want quite easily.

Not being the best fluff librarian in the world I can't really speak to the worlds and such, but can throw out the obvious ones:

Melta Vets in Chimeras w/Tanks = Steel Legion, Death Korps of Krieg

Infantry Blobs w/special weapons & Walkers = Catachans, Death Korps

Infantry Blobs w/heavy weapons & Tanks = Mordian, Praetorian

Infantry Blobs w/misc = Valhallan, Praetorian,

Cadians are so large and diverse you could call just about any build Cadian.

Wouldn't the Valhallen use a lot of artillery?

L_Dawg wrote:Is your avatar an example of this?

Yeah, my avatar is my guardsmen's senior officer.

Everyone in the Foleran First Army gets a set of flak armor, a lasgun or pistol with spare clip, a frag grenade, and a canteen. As for anything else (including sometimes even the transportation to the battlefield), they've got to figure it out on their own.

My officers have gorgets, but if they don't take them from dead officers (there's a lot of re-use of equipment), they have to find some other way to supply them. Daxos P. Clinton III was rich enough to afford his own, and to commission a refractor field generator (what the thing on his back is).

daedalus wrote:My IG come from a once fertile (loyalist) planet that was rendered dead by an Ordo Xenos Inquisitor who had a bomb detonated above the planet. This caused atmospheric effects resulting in the sun being blocked out in the name of stemming a Tyranid invasion. The rationale was that if the biomatter was wiped out, it would stunt their spread across the planet. As a result, the planet is now incapable of producing food, so it solely concentrates its effort on producing weapons and warmachines. They trade tanks and guns with nearby system planets in exchange for food.

I like this fluff.

@malf: perhaps give the people are few fluff concepts and see how they crunch them out?

I don't know. I'm curious what's out there.

My favorite part about Gaunt's ghosts wasn't the ghosts, but reading
about all the other guard, where they came from, and what equipment
they had.

Ailaros wrote:

L_Dawg wrote:Is your avatar an example of this?

Yeah, my avatar is my guardsmen's senior officer.

Everyone in the Foleran First Army gets a set of flak armor, a lasgun or pistol with spare clip, a frag grenade, and a canteen. As for anything else (including sometimes even the transportation to the battlefield), they've got to figure it out on their own.

My officers have gorgets, but if they don't take them from dead officers (there's a lot of re-use of equipment), they have to find some other way to supply them. Daxos P. Clinton III was rich enough to afford his own, and to commission a refractor field generator (what the thing on his back is).

daedalus wrote:My IG come from a once fertile (loyalist) planet that was rendered dead by an Ordo Xenos Inquisitor who had a bomb detonated above the planet. This caused atmospheric effects resulting in the sun being blocked out in the name of stemming a Tyranid invasion. The rationale was that if the biomatter was wiped out, it would stunt their spread across the planet. As a result, the planet is now incapable of producing food, so it solely concentrates its effort on producing weapons and warmachines. They trade tanks and guns with nearby system planets in exchange for food.

I like this fluff.

This makes the fluff I make up look like crap.

L_Dawg wrote:

Ailaros wrote:

L_Dawg wrote:Is your avatar an example of this?

Yeah, my avatar is my guardsmen's senior officer.

Everyone in the Foleran First Army gets a set of flak armor, a lasgun or pistol with spare clip, a frag grenade, and a canteen. As for anything else (including sometimes even the transportation to the battlefield), they've got to figure it out on their own.

My officers have gorgets, but if they don't take them from dead officers (there's a lot of re-use of equipment), they have to find some other way to supply them. Daxos P. Clinton III was rich enough to afford his own, and to commission a refractor field generator (what the thing on his back is).

daedalus wrote:My IG come from a once fertile (loyalist) planet that was rendered dead by an Ordo Xenos Inquisitor who had a bomb detonated above the planet. This caused atmospheric effects resulting in the sun being blocked out in the name of stemming a Tyranid invasion. The rationale was that if the biomatter was wiped out, it would stunt their spread across the planet. As a result, the planet is now incapable of producing food, so it solely concentrates its effort on producing weapons and warmachines. They trade tanks and guns with nearby system planets in exchange for food.

I like this fluff.

This makes the fluff I make up look like crap.

Now I want to read it.