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Saw this article come accross in the Dakka news feed, and thought it might bear some discussion here:

http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2011/02/40k-editorial-stop-imperial-guard-hate.html

Now, in my opinion, this editorial is somewhat poorly written, short, and slanted too far to the inflammatory side of things. However, it does bring to the fore a few undercurrents I've seen expressed here that I've been wanting to discuss for a while. Specifically, this editorial puts its finger on two major points of contention I've seen people express with the IG:

1. IG is boring to play against.
2. IG runs too many tanks.

Now, as my 2000 point list is heavily mechanized (all mounted infantry), these two criticisms directly apply to me. With regards to number 1, I've never been able to understand this argument; how is an IG army any worse to play than a BA army that is completely focused on assault? Or a Nid-zilla list? I suppose I could understand this sentiment from a player who faced nothing but Guard armies in their local gaming group, but my impression is that while IG is a popular army, it still falls well short of the various Marine codexes in terms of number of players. As for the second one, I have heard this concern expressed about my army in my FLGS. However, I have then seen the very players expressing this concern either dominate my list or at least fight to a tie. Afterwards, they expressed surprise at how well their army coped with mine. I tend to get the impression that the fear of facing IG tanks is a bit overblown; those 12-13 tank models I put down on the table may look intimidating, but the vast majority only have rear armor 10, and the contents are pretty vulnerable once they are dismounted.

So, why do I care? Well, first of all, I genuinely don't want to field an army that isn't fun for others to play against. As I play in "friendly" (that is, non-tournament) games, I like to make sure my opponent has some fun too so that he will be more willing to play me again in the future. Secondly, I wanted to cast the net wider than my local gaming group on these two issues (as well as any others you might like to bring up) to see how well my thinking survives the scrutiny.

Thoughts?

For my local gaming group, we hate IG so much because every time we play against them it's sit back and watch all of our models get large blast templated right off the table. It's boring to play against a steamroll list, it's boring to have things spammed on you, and it's boring to have your best models instantly killed in the first turn and be left with little right off the bat. These are just my experiences.

I play guard, and often fight against guard armies. I think they're one of the funnest armies to play against, personally.

I mean, you can really sympathise with the guard, being your average human grunts about to get torn to ribons by orks or eaten by nids.

Yes, they can occasioanlly field too many tanks, anything more than 3 russ's n a 1500 point game can be pretty annoying esp when you have a mostly infantry force.

But then again, there noway near as annoying as the inevitable ultramarine force, marneus calgar derp derp lol

The Fragile Breath wrote:For my local gaming group, we hate IG so much because every time we play against them it's sit back and watch all of our models get large blast templated right off the table. It's boring to play against a steamroll list, it's boring to have things spammed on you, and it's boring to have your best models instantly killed in the first turn and be left with little right off the bat. These are just my experiences.

So basically you're saying you don't like the concept of the Imperial Guard as a whole? The IG is traditionally meant to spam infantry squads, spam heavy tanks, and spam so many of them that they crush everyone in front of them. The IG are the steamroller of the 41st millenium. Its their lot in life...complaining that the IG spam, or that they steamroll is like complainging that Chaos is good in close combat, or that Eldar are the living embodiement of crippliing overspecialization.

As for the article, I think it does raise a valid point, however it's an old point. Mechanized IG have been out there for a while now, and they've been out long enough that the meta has changed to counter them. The meta of most armies nowadays is to mech up, and it has been for a long time. People have gotten used to the idea of fighting Chimera and Valkyrie swarms. Not to mention, mechanized IG is far from unfluffy, the Steel Legion is built around the idea of mechanized infantry...people have just flanderized the IG into thinking they're a swarm of infantry and tanks that die. The mass infantry swarm was effective previously, and is just currently eclipsed by the mech swarm. Infantry and Classical IG are still very competitive armies. Heck, I'd say most players nowadays should be more scared of an infantry swarm IG army than a Chimera swarm IG army. I know I'd be. Unless I was running my OWN infantry swarm!

To be honest, I have never encountered the kind of IG hate being described. More importantly, I think the funness of a game is based much more on the attitude of the players than the compositon of the armies. If you have a good opponent, and he's running a horribly WAAC army, but he's cheerful and fun to talk with...well it's going to be a great game! On the other hand, if youi're facing a person running a fluffy army, but he's a rude, annoying TFG, and the game will suck and be horrible. I never hate armies, any army can be fluffy and fun or cheesy and WAAC...but the player you're facing makes a hell of a lot more difference than the army your facing.

Now, as for building an IG army, as far as I can tell there are four reasonably competitive builds for the Troops core:

Mech Vets
Air Cav
Power Blob
Firing Line

For support, IG can go a few different ways too.

Heavy Armor
Heavy Artillery
Air Support
Fast Movers

Mixing and matching these things can give you a multitude of highly competitive armies. Which, in my opinion is what makes the Imperial Guard such a powerful army. It HAS a lot of options for builds.

It can be dull if you move second and your army is half blown off the table by the end of the IG player's first shooting phase.

Of course that is a matter of unit and deployment selection by you, not just the IG player's choices. If you have that experience once, it teaches you to play differently the next time you face IG.

(To some degree, it is a basic flaw in the game system, caused by UGOIGO.)

I don't know how many different, interesting builds can be got out of the codex. The 'netlist' phenomenon means that a lot of players use a small selection of mechanised builds, because they are easy.

The mechanised IG builds get an awful lot of vehicles and cheap firepower. Some armies find that hard to cope with, even if the rear armour is only 10.

I do believe the IG is one of the best and strongest codexes at the moment. I also believe that any army can beat any other army, with some tactics and luck. There isn't an unbridgeable gap even between the best and worst armies.

davij wrote:I play guard, and often fight against guard armies. I think they're one of the funnest armies to play against, personally.

I mean, you can really sympathise with the guard, being your average human grunts about to get torn to ribons by orks or eaten by nids.

Yes, they can occasioanlly field too many tanks, anything more than 3 russ's n a 1500 point game can be pretty annoying esp when you have a mostly infantry force.

But then again, there noway near as annoying as the inevitable ultramarine force, marneus calgar derp derp lol

As far as getting torn to ribbons by orks...

I played a 500 point game against an IG, this being my absolute first game outside my own house, and I almost go tabled. Now this was partially due to interfering terrain, and partly because I suspected a little bit of list tailoring. I.E. having a leman russ exterminator (TL Autocannons) and mobs of heavy flamers.

Having to fight a tank at 500 points with a footslogger list sucks.

Ruckdog wrote:, this editorial is somewhat poorly written, short, and slanted too far to the inflammatory side of things.

A bad article at bLOLs? Say it ain't so!

Guard are my favorite army in the game. I love playing as them, and I love playing against them. Two of my most fun games recently have been Guard vs. Guard, and he was even running the kind of list that most people complain about: mechvets. I ran a pretty standard mixed army. Does IG bring a lot of tanks to the table? You bet. It's their strong suit, and an all-infantry Guard army will often have a real hell of a time trying to win. Having an army with a good mix of units (but not too scattershot) makes for a really rewarding army that's as much fun to play as it is to play against.

I play friendly games exclusively, and I win just as often as I lose with my Guard. My advice to you is to just to build your Guard army however you like and avoid the typical mechvet spam and leafblower type lists. If you do this people will generally have a lot of fun playing against you.

To be honest, all armies do great when used in a certain build.
Gurd need to really mech up to get things done, and long range support plays a big part in making sure you stay alive.

The main thing that annoys me with guard isnt really something that can be prevented, as with other horde armies.
Just a case of timed tournaments being slowed by the long turns.



List wise i have had to change it a bit.
The 2 dakka preds i used to take have been dropped now since they lack what i need.
Did however discover the wonder of the vindi when used in pairs.
I find them far more up to the job as ive often popped more than just a single tank with a round from one of them.


at the end of the day, you just need to change your list a bit to play them, as you would do against alot of armies.
Main problem here being that in a locked roster tournament you need a "all commers" list, which you really cant get the extra shooting needed to face guard.




On another note, i can see why some players hate them soo badly.
For small elite armies (GK's for example) your low on numbers as it is, after a turn of pies your pretty much gone unless your your in a raider, and even then, the popularity of the pasquisher has risen alot.



Give it time, armies change far too often for any to be a problem for too long.
Chances are tau will get a real boost in the shooting phase now since thats thier speciality.





/Random rambling

Lets be clear, IMO there is nothing wrong with the IG. I play a rather LARGE IG army infact. I also HATE tank spam.

I would rather suggest that IG army is not bad, rather that there are only bad IG players. Sure I have 3 tanks in my army. But I also have over 150 Infantry. This is the ratio I like and seems more "real" to me. Anyone who just takes 6-8 tanks and just Large Blast Marks the hell out of their opponent is just not being a good sport.

I feel the same about Melta Vet lists - Just people that are more concerned about winning the game rather than everyone having a good time.

Even in a competetive sense ... I usually leave half my armor in their cases because the truth of the matter is that most armies just cant deal with the volume of man power that IG can put on the table. You could EASILY run an ALL infantry IG army (without melta vets) and still be very VERY competetive ...

just my two cents

Thanks for the replies guys. Your comments have given me a lot of food for thought.

As for the large blast template spam issue, I've found that there are several mitigating factors:

1. To really spam LR variants, you need to take squadrons. This will ultimately make them more vulnerable due to hit allocations.

2. HS slot competition: It can be tough to figure out how to maximize these slots; there are so many good options that compromises must ultimately be made. For example, Manticores are great, but do you take them in place of an artillery battery that could kick out a similar number of templates with lower AP?

3. Deployment: Most of my opponents who end up losing initiative have taken to reserving everything, to avoid giving me a round of "free" shooting. Given the amount of deepstriking and outflanking stuff out there, this has caused me a lot of trouble.

Overall, I seem to find myself in agreement with what I see as the overall theme of the article; IG aren't that bad to face, and seem to suffer from a "band wagon" effect when it comes to negativity.

While IG is a very powerful army currently no doubt about it, some things are undercosted, and the army is undoubtedly at or near the top of the competitive ladder. However much of the stuff people are complaining about you could do under the old codex. You could run tons of mechanized BS4 infantry with double digits of tanks or huge gobs of heavy weapon toting infantry. Hell, I ran a list with 65 infantry and 11 tanks under 4E, and 60 of those infantry were BS4, and I never got complaints about running a cheesy army.

None of this stuff is new.

The difference is that it all sucked gigantic *** previously.



A big thing I've noted is that many people simply don't expect or don't want IG to ever be "good". They hadn't been seen as anything near a top tier army since their 1998 blackbook list, and even in 2E weren't ever on the same playing field as say Space Wolves or Eldar. Almost every time the IG was brought up in the fluff it was either as an opponent to be destroyed for a xenos or chaos faction or some phyrric victory with the help of the Space Marines. People became accustomed to IG being an army that was there to play, but wasn't really meant to be something to be taken all that seriously. This became an entrenched mindset in many players. Many neither expected, wanted, or thought that IG should be a competitive army after years of this kind of environment for the Imperial Guard.

People never looked at IG armies and consistently expected tough, hardfought games but rather (for the most part) easy games.

Then 5E comes along and all of a sudden IG has the capability to resoundingly defeat people, they are no longer the army people look at and go "easy win this round". People are shocked by this. Their expertly trained and physically superior Aspect Warriors actually are threatened by the mere human soldiers. Their vaunted and nigh invincible Space Marines take casualties and even lose against the mere Guard.

THIS SHOULD NOT BE is really what some players think. I've come across it more than once. I had a game once in 4E where I miraculously managed to beat a Mech Eldar player with my 4E Mech IG and he threw a fit not because he lost, but because his precious Eldar were defeated by the Imperial Guard. It shouldn't be possible for Eldar to lose to the Imperial Guard, that just "doesn't happen". It's "not fluffy".

This is still something that resides in the minds of many players, and like it or not plays a factor in the IG hate. Not all of it of course, but it is most definitely there.

Clearly, not enough people have played against foot guard.

It may be boring to play against an opponent who plays a static steel wall and blows your stuff up with artillery with little recourse, but it's less boring to blow 120 guardsmen off the table (even if you still wind up losing).

As for too many tanks... yeah... hasn't played against foot guard...

Who actually runs foot guard instead of 8 tanks or 9 vendettas
?

Requia wrote:Who actually runs foot guard instead of 8 tanks or 9 vendettas
?

Who runs 9 vendettas? That's an incredibly easy army to take down.

The "All or nothing" aspect of IG is, IMO, what contributes to the current state of Rocks-Paper-Scissorshammer.

Competitive IG will blow certain armies off the table in one turn. Against other armies it doesn't stand a chance, and there's really hardly any middle ground.

Every time I hear someone cry about how over powered IG are, I laugh a little harder on the inside while smiling directly to their face.

I have played guard since 2nd edition, and have had to suffer through years of crappy codex's and making do. Now that we finally have a descent codex, all the damn space marine players complain cause they ain't top dog anymore while everyone else conveniently forgets that IG used to be the rear end of 40k jokes for countless years from sucking so bad.

Deal with it.

My problem with Guard is this:

When I play against Orks, its always pleasantly surprising to see what kind of army has been concocted.

When I play against Space Wolves, while there are basic staples I expect (triple long fangs and rune priests), its always nice to see different flavors from there.

When I play against Tyranids, there's a vast array of different Tyranid combinations that people use.

When I play against <insert army here> I see variety.

When I play against Mech IG, its always the same. 6-9 chimeras, 2-3 vendettas, a PBS possibly with an inquisitor to support, a manticore, and depending on points, hydras. Sub something out for a leman russ. IG *is* the cookie-cutter army, where a bunch of drones play the same thing. Every game against Mech IG is like every other game against Mech IG, and they *are* boring to play against. Every time I see an IG opponent, I'm desperate to see some flair, some originality, some personal touch in their army. I'm told that some of the competitive folks I respect are working on revamping IG to present an unbelievable foot swarm with ridiculous numbers of special weapons; I look forward to it eagerly...because its different.

I played a game against Mech IG in a tournament yesterday - at the beginning, he said, "Alright, lets roll a dice to see who wins" instead of "Lets roll a dice to see who goes first." Mech IG are the biggest single-dimensional army that we have, and playing against them brings no flavor to my gaming experience. I'll play against Mech IG, and I'll win or I'll lose. I win more than I lose. But either way, the game won't be exciting or memorable because its a monotonous repetition of dozens of games against other opponents running the same army list.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

jp400 wrote:Every time I hear someone cry about how over powered IG are, I laugh a little harder on the inside while smiling directly to their face.

I have played guard since 2nd edition, and have had to suffer through years of crappy codex's and making do. Now that we finally have a descent codex, all the damn space marine players complain cause they ain't top dog anymore while everyone else conveniently forgets that IG used to be the rear end of 40k jokes for countless years from sucking so bad.

Deal with it.

I played Dark Eldar when half the codex didn't even work. And I play Necrons now. Just because your codex wasn't top dog throughout the editions doesn't mean that criticism of how people use it isn't valid.

Requia wrote:Who actually runs foot guard instead of 8 tanks or 9 vendettas?

Well, I do, for one.

Dashofpepper wrote: IG *is* the cookie-cutter army, where a bunch of drones play the same thing.

The thing is, though, ALL armies can be cookie-cutter. Don't tell me you've never seen a deathwing dark angels army or a double-prince+obliterator chaos army or a green tide ork army or a kan wall or a drop pod marine army, or, or, or...

All armies have had a few lists that have floated to the top, usually for how well they compete over very short periods of time in very high point games (aka tournaments). If a 40k player has a cookie cutter list, that's the PLAYER'S choice, not something to do with the ARMY that they're playing.

If one wanted to make the point that guard players who play leafblowers are boring and uncreative, then fine, but that doesn't mean that the IG somehow existentially IS the cookie cutter...

Dashofpepper wrote:My problem with Guard is this:

When I play against Orks, its always pleasantly surprising to see what kind of army has been concocted.

When I play against Space Wolves, while there are basic staples I expect (triple long fangs and rune priests), its always nice to see different flavors from there.

When I play against Tyranids, there's a vast array of different Tyranid combinations that people use.

When I play against <insert army here> I see variety.

When I play against Mech IG, its always the same. 6-9 chimeras, 2-3 vendettas, a PBS possibly with an inquisitor to support, a manticore, and depending on points, hydras. Sub something out for a leman russ. IG *is* the cookie-cutter army, where a bunch of drones play the same thing. Every game against Mech IG is like every other game against Mech IG, and they *are* boring to play against. Every time I see an IG opponent, I'm desperate to see some flair, some originality, some personal touch in their army. I'm told that some of the competitive folks I respect are working on revamping IG to present an unbelievable foot swarm with ridiculous numbers of special weapons; I look forward to it eagerly...because its different.

I played a game against Mech IG in a tournament yesterday - at the beginning, he said, "Alright, lets roll a dice to see who wins" instead of "Lets roll a dice to see who goes first." Mech IG are the biggest single-dimensional army that we have, and playing against them brings no flavor to my gaming experience. I'll play against Mech IG, and I'll win or I'll lose. I win more than I lose. But either way, the game won't be exciting or memorable because its a monotonous repetition of dozens of games against other opponents running the same army list.

And space marines arn't cookie cutter and don't dominate 1/2-3/4 of the player base?

"Well, I'll believe that when me gak turns purple and smells like rainbow sherbet."

Ailaros wrote:

Requia wrote:Who actually runs foot guard instead of 8 tanks or 9 vendettas?

Well, I do, for one.

Dashofpepper wrote: IG *is* the cookie-cutter army, where a bunch of drones play the same thing.

The thing is, though, ALL armies can be cookie-cutter. Don't tell me you've never seen a deathwing dark angels army or a double-prince+obliterator chaos army or a green tide ork army or a kan wall or a drop pod marine army, or, or, or...

All armies have had a few lists that have floated to the top, usually for how well they compete over very short periods of time in very high point games (aka tournaments). If a 40k player has a cookie cutter list, that's the PLAYER'S choice, not something to do with the ARMY that they're playing.

If one wanted to make the point that guard players who play leafblowers are boring and uncreative, then fine, but that doesn't mean that the IG somehow existentially IS the cookie cutter...

All armies *can* be cookie-cutter, and have particularly popular build.

No army *is* cookie-cutter like IG, with a single build that every player uses.

Dashofpepper wrote:
No army *is* cookie-cutter like IG, with a single build that every player uses.

bs.

Lash Dp x2, Max PM's, 9x Oblits?

Just to name one off the top of my head.

To be fair, half of that "cookie-cutterness", the chimeras, is no different than almost all SM armies we see now in rhino's & razorbacks or Eldar and Waveserpents, and the chimeras are available to almost every IG infantry unit. You can have a huge variety of infantry with lots of chimeras. Company Command Squads, Platoon Command Squads, Veterans, Infantry Squads, Psyker Battle Squads, Stormtroopers, Ogryns, and Lord Commissars can all take Chimeras.

IG are certainly no more cookie cutter than SW's, SM's, CSM's, or Eldar at this point. Hell, it's been years since I've played against an Eldar army that *didn't* include Eldrad.

In regards to the cookie-cutter nature of the army, I think the problem is that every single vehicle in the army aside from the aircraft is built off of either a Leman Russ or Chimera chassis. Now THAT is cookie cutter!

NuggzTheNinja wrote:In regards to the cookie-cutter nature of the army, I think the problem is that every single vehicle in the army aside from the aircraft is built off of either a Leman Russ or Chimera chassis. Now THAT is cookie cutter!

Kinda like space marines and the Rhino? (let's be real here, all armies are like that cause it frigging saves GW money on development and design.)

jp400: That's a chaos list. It is not the *only* chaos list that people run. That's the difference - there's pretty much only one IG list that people run.

Vaktathi: Everyone using Eldrad in their army is different than everyone running the exact same Eldar list. Which is the problem with IG. You mentioned some Stormtroopers, Ogryns, and Lord Commissars all able to take chimeras. But I never see anyone USE any of those.

Plop me in a grand tournament, and tell me there are IG players there. Without seeing their list or models, I bet I can build their list within 80% of correctness. There's simply so little deviation between one IG list and the next. Even marines have a variety of lists.

Dashofpepper wrote:jp400: That's a chaos list. It is not the *only* chaos list that people run. That's the difference - there's pretty much only one IG list that people run.

This... argument makes absolutely NO sense and even goes against everything you have tried to argue even. It is also complete and utter bull gak and you know it.

Your cries are about a certain build of IG list. It is not the *only* IG list that people run. That's the difference.



Are you done yet? if not keep talking.. I have the short bus all fueled up and ready to take you back to school.

jp400 wrote:

NuggzTheNinja wrote:In regards to the cookie-cutter nature of the army, I think the problem is that every single vehicle in the army aside from the aircraft is built off of either a Leman Russ or Chimera chassis. Now THAT is cookie cutter!

Kinda like space marines and the Rhino? (let's be real here, all armies are like that cause it frigging saves GW money on development and design.)

Kind of, except that Space Marine competitive builds utilize different transports, ie: Rhino Rush and Razorback spam, Land Raider stuff, Drop Pod-themed armies, Bikers, etc. Orks are very similar with either a footslogging Green Tide, mech Orks in Battlewagons, or Nob Bikers.


The key is that all of those Marine builds are played differently: Rhino Rush is a midfield army, Razorback spam is more of a gunline, Drop Pod is in-your-face, and bikers are what they are. The IG builds are all pretty much played the same way.

Sure not all of them are used, but that still leaves Platoon & Company command squads, Veterans, Infantry Squads and Psyker Battle Squads. 4 common units that all use chimeras. No worse than most marine armies and rhinos or Eldar armies and Wave Serpents.

As to the other units you mentioned, 3 of them are Heavy Support (hydras, manticores, LR's) and one has 7 different iterations. That's not insignificant diversity there, it's more stuff than you see typically taken out of Eldar, Tau or Tyranids HS for instance.

I'm not trying to say that many IG armies can't be cookie cutter, but to proclaim IG as clearly *THE* cookie cutter army is a wee bit silly. The only common thread I really see is Chimeras, which I'm not sure counts, and in my experiences in multiple metro areas in multiple gaming stores/clubs the IG armies certainly aren't as uniform as your experience seems to suggest.

NuggzTheNinja wrote:

jp400 wrote:

NuggzTheNinja wrote:In regards to the cookie-cutter nature of the army, I think the problem is that every single vehicle in the army aside from the aircraft is built off of either a Leman Russ or Chimera chassis. Now THAT is cookie cutter!

Kinda like space marines and the Rhino? (let's be real here, all armies are like that cause it frigging saves GW money on development and design.)

Kind of, except that Space Marine competitive builds utilize different transports, ie: Rhino Rush and Razorback spam, Land Raider stuff, Drop Pod-themed armies, Bikers, etc. Orks are very similar with either a footslogging Green Tide, mech Orks in Battlewagons, or Nob Bikers.


The key is that all of those Marine builds are played differently: Rhino Rush is a midfield army, Razorback spam is more of a gunline, Drop Pod is in-your-face, and bikers are what they are. The IG builds are all pretty much played the same way.

Not really, have to respectfully disagree with you.

Granted, chimera's are everywhere... as they should be. However guard do have a large selection of HW's that can be used and played differently in much the same way as your example with the SM's.

Arty/Manti/HWT's for gun line
LRBT(S) for mobile support or ranged support
Valks for Alpha strikes/AT/Melta Vet bombs

ect ect.

Guys, as I've said before, this isn't even an argument about toy soldiers.

It's an argument about toy space elf soldiers from the year 41,000 who fight with magic and spears.

Let's try not to take things so seriously!



Eh?