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Alright, so I went to the local bunker to play some games with my new IG. The big game I had was a 1000 point game vs a VERY experienced chaos player. My list was as follows.

CCS with Power weapon, 2x plasma guns, plasma pistol, vox, banner and MoO.
Chimera with Heavy Stubber, Multi-laser and heavy flamer
Marbo
3 ratlings
Platoon 1:
PCS with 4x flamers, Powerfist and Comissar
(blobbed up)
IS1:
Comissar
Vox
GL
AC
IS:
Vox
GL
AC
Platoon 2:
PCS with 4 meltas
(blobbed up)
IS1:
Comissar
Vox
GL
AC
IS:
Vox
GL
AC
Scout Sentinal with AC and HKM
Scout Sentinal with AC and HKM

His list was something like:

Deamon Prince with MoS and Warptime
10 marines with a mark and 2 melta's in a rhino
10 marines with a mark and 2 melta's in a rhino
3 Obliterators
2 oblitorators

So it was Seize ground with 3 objectives and Table Quarters. We each had one objective in our deployment zones and one outside on a hill.

I deployed first, blobing my infantry up in front of my chimera. He had 2 columes of Rhinos/ oblitoraters and his Deamon Prince.

Turn one sees him steal the initiative, and open up on my blobs and flamer PCS with his oblitorators. He killed all the lasguns in one blob squad, and I had the PC and a flamer left in the PCS. I moved my sentinals into range to fire everything into his deamon prince. They combined cause 1 wound, firing everything they had. AC fired at his rhinos, but they had popped smoke, so I didnt do much. Thinking I could get past his armour, my plasma guns fire into his rhinos. They both overheat and kill themselves. My orbital strike failed to hit anything. The only upside I can see is that my ratlings are high up on the roof of a 3 story building, and my objective is on a second story being camped by my melta squad.

Turn two he moved his rhinos up, jumped out, and rapid fired into the hurting blob. His deamon prince moved up and assaulted one of my sentinals, which was locked in combat for the turn, reciving a weapon destroyed result. I avenged my fallen blob by moving my second blob squad around his rhino so they could see the chaos marines, then FRFSRF into them with 35 shots. I killed one marine. The grenade launchers killed 4. The 2 sargents and the comissar killed another. He passed his moral test. My flamer PCS flamed the second unit and charged it. They were slaughtered, but I thought it would be better to deny them the charge. Snipers and artillery continued to miss. My chimera continued to be stunned, and lost its HF to obliterators.

Turns 3-5 were spent with him bolt pistoling and assaulting my other blob, His deamon prince killing my PCS with 3 wounds left, my chimera exploding, and every shot from my army missing. I would go into more detail, but basically I failed all of my saves from cover, and because bolters dont give guard an armour save, I was gunned down out in the open. The only serious damage was Marbo poping up in time to demo charge his deamon prince and a quarter of his 5 man marine squad.

What I learned: Heavy weapons do not belong in blobs. As soon as I get another 60 dollars, I will buy more guard and a HWS to fill out my blobs and fill out two HWS with Autocannons and ML. And my chimera dose not need a multilaser, but a HB instead. Also, marines kill guardsmen really well.

Hero of the game: My sentinals, who distracted the deamon prince for a while, and did more wounds then a demo charge. Plus, they scared my opponents rhinos.

MVP: Grenade launchers. They killed more units then my lasguns.

Oh, and my oponent suggested I drop my platoons and start mech guard, more or less.

I know the report isnt perfect, but I didnt bring a camera. My other game was against a little 8 year old who really didnt know how to play. But my MoO killed half his army in that game, so what are you gunna do?

Sad to see a fellow Guard Commander laid low by the forces of Chaos... but it's happened to me plenty of times so don't feel bad! Sounded like you had atrocious luck with some of your rolling (ouch at the Gets Hot! wounds) but I think your opponent was playing with a quite competitive Chaos list. 5 oblits in 1000pts isn't messing around.

Happygrunt wrote:Oh, and my oponent suggested I drop my platoons and start mech guard, more or less.

I wouldn't let him turn you away from footslogging guard so quickly (although mech is king in 5th edition, true enough) as there are plenty of good things about having tonnes of bodies!

Happygrunt wrote:What I learned: Heavy weapons do not belong in blobs. As soon as I get another 60 dollars, I will buy more guard and a HWS to fill out my blobs and fill out two HWS with Autocannons and ML. And my chimera dose not need a multilaser, but a HB instead. Also, marines kill guardsmen really well.

Heavy weapons can go in blobs, but you need 3 of them in a blob of 30 for them to start being effective. HWS are a pain because they're Ld7 and so easy to instakill. A Lord Commissar helps but that's an HQ slot and 70 points. Autocannons are awesome, as are Lascannons but Missile Launchers don't do it for me. 1 less S than a LC and 1 less shot than an AC. Blah.

Stick with the Multi-laser on the Chimera, you've got +1S over a Heavy Bolter so you're wounding T4 on 2+ (and more likely to wound Daemon Princes too) with the same 3 shots. Marines get their armour save vs a Heavy Bolter or a Multi-laser so it's not really worth it to trade out. Plus you can penetrate Rhinos and glance dreadnoughts.

Yeah, Marines are nasty, it's true. But they're considerably more expensive than Guardsmen and you can field a LOT more big guns than they can for the price. 4 plasma guns in a CCS are merciless to marines and if you get a FRFSRF order from a 30 man blob you're going to be doing enough wounds to make them fail at least a few saves.

If you're interested in any other pointers, I'd recommend checking out the Army Lists forum for some other IG lists people have posted or even putting up your own and seeing what people have to say.

Good luck!

DoW

Happygrunt wrote:Heavy weapons do not belong in blobs. As soon as I get another 60 dollars, I will buy more guard and a HWS to fill out my blobs and fill out two HWS with Autocannons and ML. And my chimera dose not need a multilaser, but a HB instead.

Well, at least it only took you one game to learn these lessons

Happygrunt wrote:I would go into more detail, but basically I failed all of my saves from cover, and because bolters dont give guard an armour save, I was gunned down out in the open... Also, marines kill guardsmen really well.

Right, against marines there are only two safe places: in cover, and in close combat. If you can't make either a cover save or an armor save, you just get chewed up and spit out with little recourse. Against CSM, close combat is more dangerous, but it's still better than sitting out in the open and getting gunned down...

Foot guard movement takes a bit of finesse to make it so that you're not just horribly slaughtered. I'm sure you'll pick up some of the finer points as you go.

Happygrunt wrote:MVP: Grenade launchers. They killed more units then my lasguns.

Well, yes, but that's because they're basically ultra-lasguns. Just think how much more effective they would have been if they were plasma guns. So long, demon prince!

Happygrunt wrote:Oh, and my oponent suggested I drop my platoons and start mech guard, more or less.

Boo. This advice can be safely ignored.

If you want to play mech, then play mech, but if you don't, then don't. "Chimera" is not the only synonym for "competitive" in the guard codex.

My plan is to expand to 1250 with 2 HWS containing 2 autocannons and a Lascannon each, take the plasma guns out of my CCS to be replaced with a missile launcher, replace the GL with Plasma guns (From my CCS models) in the infantry blobs, and finish building my vendeta. I will post that list latter. What I noticed, especially compared to the two games I had, was that the MoO is really hit or miss. It is VERY easy for him to earn his points back or VERY hard for him.

Oh well, learned that I still hate chaos, but I am learning how to play guard thanks to dakka, Ailaros' Batreps, and trail and error. Thanks for the feed back!

I recommend you don't mix heavy weapons in your HWS. Either all 3 Lascannons or all 3 Autocannons.

Remember they are very different weapons, with different AP and are designed to kill different things. Lascannons are for Heavy Armour (or zapping obliterators!) and Autocannons are for light armour and transports. Mixing them up is going to make both weapons less effective at what they do best.

DoW