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Ok, so recently I have a friend who has been complaining to me that IG is OP. More specifically mech-vets and vendettas. He claims that they are OP for their ability to take 3 special weps, they're cheap, and I can take up to 6 and that chimeras are OP because they are cheap and have 5 firing ports. He also claims this because IG have won the Ard' Boyz tourny for the past however many years since their new codex. All in all, he thinks they're basically un-killable/un-beatable (which I don't get b/c he and other people have beaten me...maybe I'm doing something wrong?!?). I'd like to attribute this to the fact that he plays tau, which isn't the most currently competitive army so he judges every other army off of that. But he's beaten me before and acts like it's a miracle when it does happen.

Now I went looking in past general discussions for articles on this and found one that dated back to 2009. Now that we've had a few years with 5th ed. IG and that more new 5th ed. codexes have come out to stand up to them, what are dakka's views on IG in general? Are they op like my friend believes? Or am I right in believing because his army hasn't had an update, his views are a bit skewed as to what is and is not op?

Also, if you do think that there is a specific IG unit you think is op, I'm curious to know what and why you think it is.
Thanks!

Just like every army, it all depends on the general, but IG are rated as top tier. Personally, I haven't lost to them yet, but I know a lot of people have difficulty dealing with them and they can be frustrating. However, if your friend is basing whether they are overpowered or not on the fact that his Tau lose to them, he really needs to read up on tactics and try a different army. Tau are one of the weakest armies out there right now, and if he is basing OP armies off of how Tau play against them, he needs to switch armies. Or play another game. They aren't OP, they're just good. If you want OP, look to Space Wolves and Blood Angels (and in my neck of the woods Daemons-which nobody has been able to figure out how to handle. Hehe...)

IG shoot the pants off of Tau. There's very little that will make his day better because his codex is one of the most outdated whereas mech IG are a fully up to date 5e army.

If you get T1, it's hardly even a game.

I think the Vendetta is under-costed. 130 for three TL LCs is absurdly cheap.

I guess that could them inherently "over-powered" maybe?

That being the case, he probably is just venting some annoyance because the Tau really do need a decent update.

If it has stats, it's beatable. But I agree with your friend. Fighting Imperial Guard is an uphill battle for most other codexes, with cheap options and superficial weaknesses. It pretty much runs hand and hand with the current meta game and I highly doubt they'll ever be dethroned short of an edition change.

IG are near the top of the power bell curve, along with Spacewolves and Blood Angels.

Its not that any of these codecii are inherently cheesy through and through, but that certain units are, and everyone takes them, all the time, everywhere because thet are the 'best' or 'most competative (ie cheesy, generally)...

Vendetta Vets are pretty potent, but not unbeatable, even with tau. Tau struggle agaisnt most things these days (old codex vs power creep) just like Necrons.

I am convinced they are. Their bloody tanks, that's what it is, they roll around the battlefield at will blowing everything to kingdom come and there's nothing I have that even touches them. Their troops are spectacularly poor but that doesn't come close to balancing it.

Oh, and barrages. Ordinance falling arbitarily from the sky seems a tad unfair.

seejay wrote:I am convinced they are. Their bloody tanks, that's what it is, they roll around the battlefield at will blowing everything to kingdom come and there's nothing I have that even touches them. Their troops are spectacularly poor but that doesn't come close to balancing it.

Oh, and barrages. Ordinance falling arbitarily from the sky seems a tad unfair.

Play CSM and use outflanking Chosen with Meltaguns in a rhino, Raptors with Meltaguns and Obliterator spam. Trust me, IG players will HATE you and you can eat them alive. I had one friend insist on using Imperial Armor lists, all tanks, no infantry at all and I blew him to pieces with CSM with ease. 5 Meltaguns to side armor eat units of Leman Russes

Might help if we/I know what army you play to offer suggestions, I'm just offering something that I know will eat IG alive. Bright/Dark lance spam for Eldar will eat most mech alive too, as well as DSing assault squads with melta/combi-meltas. That should give you plenty of armies to choose from that will murder IG.

I do agree they are top tier, but maybe it's because I play guard that I feel they aren't necessarily op. Like Doctor Optimal said, the only thing I consider being likely op in the IG codex is the vendetta, but I use 2 of those. I don't feel overly guilty for it either, b/c they're fun and they get the job done. But I do feel a little bad, when I pull my 2 vendettas out and just hear the other player groan, lol. I personally think any army can beat one of those IG leaf-blower lists, they just have to expect it and build their list accordingly. I often find my own mech-vets have a lot of trouble with horde armies like nids or orks so I don't really see them as unbeatable.

But we'll see, he's starting a space puppies army so maybe I can turn the tables on him and complain how broken they are when he beats me and see how he likes it. Or when I beat him, prepare myself for another barrage of his usual, but often entertaining, rage.

I will admit not knowing guard too terribly well, but while yes some of the guard vehicles are underpriced (looking at you vendetta) I wouldn't call them overpowered. Cheese is usually a state of mind from what I've seen (doesn't mean it doesn't exist though). If you want to shut your friend up about guard being OP try using a non-competitive (maybe even fluff oriented) lists. There arent too many excuses for that if you still beat him. All I have to say is when I'd beat people with 2nd edition dark eldar they'd still find a way to get mad at them for having "this one rule".

Yeah, Russes aren't too hard to pop. For tau, he's got the rail guns which I despise and always target first, which he has come to expect by putting them in cover with a full load out of shield drones. But other than that any deep striking unit or outflanking unit can pretty much clean up russes and basilisk chassis. I actually stopped using bassies b/c I've never had any luck with them before they get melta'd.


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Eura wrote:I will admit not knowing guard too terribly well, but while yes some of the guard vehicles are underpriced (looking at you vendetta) I wouldn't call them overpowered. Cheese is usually a state of mind from what I've seen (doesn't mean it doesn't exist though). If you want to shut your friend up about guard being OP try using a non-competitive (maybe even fluff oriented) lists. There arent too many excuses for that if you still beat him. All I have to say is when I'd beat people with 2nd edition dark eldar they'd still find a way to get mad at them for having "this one rule".

Yeah, I'm planning on trying power blobs against him next time just to show him I can play a different list. But then he might just say the entire codex is op.

timetowaste85 wrote:

seejay wrote:I am convinced they are. Their bloody tanks, that's what it is, they roll around the battlefield at will blowing everything to kingdom come and there's nothing I have that even touches them. Their troops are spectacularly poor but that doesn't come close to balancing it.

Oh, and barrages. Ordinance falling arbitarily from the sky seems a tad unfair.

Play CSM and use outflanking Chosen with Meltaguns in a rhino, Raptors with Meltaguns and Obliterator spam. Trust me, IG players will HATE you and you can eat them alive. I had one friend insist on using Imperial Armor lists, all tanks, no infantry at all and I blew him to pieces with CSM with ease. 5 Meltaguns to side armor eat units of Leman Russes

Might help if we/I know what army you play to offer suggestions, I'm just offering something that I know will eat IG alive. Bright/Dark lance spam for Eldar will eat most mech alive too, as well as DSing assault squads with melta/combi-meltas. That should give you plenty of armies to choose from that will murder IG.

Outflanking units do make IG cry, but with the Astropath (or which ever adviser messes withs reserve) they can easily screw over flanking units.

I collect tau and IG and I'm with your friend on this one, if are more adjustable but tau are very dependable,
They depend on being mobile, they are NOT static shooters like IG, tau excell at range, beyond 30" they outrange antithetical standard issue gun in the game!

Vendetta's are definitely undercosted (at least, as long as you aren't taking them in squadrons of 3). Vets by themselves aren't really so bad. Footslogging they are awful. In Valyries/Vendettas they are suicide units. It's only when married with the Chimera that they become *really* good. The chimera likewise is primarily only decent with command squads and veterans, while being very "meh" on everything else.

IG aren't unbeatable by any means. I know, I play IG and I've lost plenty of times, and I've played against IG and beat them plenty of times.


To be fair however, Tau are an army that's designed very closely with the 3E/4E LoS, Skimmer, and Vehicle rules, all of which got majorly changed with 5E, and Tau haven't gotten updated yet.

That said, in 4E, the positions were reversed, Tau armies practically didn't have to lift a finger to defeat Imperial Guard armies, Having to play against Tau was almost an auto-loss for IG players.

seejay wrote:
Oh, and barrages. Ordinance falling arbitarily from the sky seems a tad unfair.

IG have always had this. Nobody seemed to care in previous editions, they didn't really get any better.

I do think that IG could be classified as OP in some ways. I know when i go to FLGS and I see others playing, they always say how they sometimes wonder if they should even unpack their models when they have to play IG, cause one or two turns of shooting and they have to take half off the board. Who knows, things always change in GW, so im sure eventually things will be changed.

Tau are at a disadvantage right now because of their codex and like everyone says, IG are great with the new codex. I don't think the Vendetta's undercosted due to its size and it is easy for every weapon to get LOS to it.

As an IG player, I'm scared of Chaos space marine termies(then again I was playing against a friend who was cheating and he somehow managed to field enough troops and vehicles to outnumber my IG)

Also the majority of battle reports I read I usually see IG lose a lot (esp to Space Wolves)

I think you're forgetting most guard units are bs3, s3, t3, ld7 5+ with quite possibly the worst rifle in the game - I ALWAYS use large blobs and spam frfsrf... with 100+ shots I once killed 1 SM. 1. out of 2 on the table, I managed to kill 1. Who then went on to assault, and run my unit off the table. my own fault for not having a commissar or PW, but it does prove my point.

Yes, LR are pretty strong... but from the rear they can (you gotta be lucky though) be disabled by heavy bolters... Hell, you can charge the rear of a LRBT with a mob of boyz (indeed anything s4 or above) and there's a fair chance you'll get at least 1 glance... even a penetrating or two if they have furious charge - and thats without grenades. Everyone gets so concerned about its massive wall of av14 steel upfront they forget that the armour out back makes Rhino's look sturdy.

everyone looks at them and see's the strengths of a unit. You have to be able to look at a unit and see its weaknesses so you can exploit them, and stop your enemy from exploiting yours. take the vendetta - ooh! its got 3 TL lascannons! its a bs3 flyer. It has to stand still to be able to shoot all three, they're forward facing so if you want to zoom around and hit the rear of your enemies, you're exposing your own - which, btw, is made of paper mache - and it's only av12, and immobilised is destroyed if it moved.

If you have the money for that tanks/artillery/aircraft then yes I would say it is.

timetowaste85 wrote:

seejay wrote:I am convinced they are. Their bloody tanks, that's what it is, they roll around the battlefield at will blowing everything to kingdom come and there's nothing I have that even touches them. Their troops are spectacularly poor but that doesn't come close to balancing it.

Oh, and barrages. Ordinance falling arbitarily from the sky seems a tad unfair.

Play CSM and use outflanking Chosen with Meltaguns in a rhino, Raptors with Meltaguns and Obliterator spam. Trust me, IG players will HATE you and you can eat them alive. I had one friend insist on using Imperial Armor lists, all tanks, no infantry at all and I blew him to pieces with CSM with ease. 5 Meltaguns to side armor eat units of Leman Russes

Might help if we/I know what army you play to offer suggestions, I'm just offering something that I know will eat IG alive. Bright/Dark lance spam for Eldar will eat most mech alive too, as well as DSing assault squads with melta/combi-meltas. That should give you plenty of armies to choose from that will murder IG.

Meh.

IG can do pretty much everything Chaos can do at a greatly reduced cost.

For troops, the cheapest Meltagun spam CSM allows is Plague Marines, and min-maxed squads in Rhinos come in at 170 pts for 2 melta guns. Vets in a Chimera cost 155, come with 3 meltaguns, and a better transport.

For heavy support, Hydras and Russ Variants > Oblits. You want to fire lascannons? OK, here's a Vendetta that comes with 3 of them, twin linked, and costs less than 2 oblits. Want Plasma Cannons? Take an Executioner and you get 5 of them that won't get hot. Maxing out Oblits costs you 675 points. 3 Vendettas is 390 and gives you just as many lascannons, twin linked. With the points left over, buy an Executioner. More firepower, more dakka, etc. It's just better.


I play both CSM and Guard, and the IG dex allows for a greater number of vastly more competitive builds. Seriously. CSM has literally ONE competitive build: Oblit spam, min-maxed PM squads, and lash sorcerors. Guard can do gunline, mech vets, leafblower, aircav, so on and so forth.


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papathrax wrote:I think you're forgetting most guard units are bs3, s3, t3, ld7 5+ with quite possibly the worst rifle in the game - I ALWAYS use large blobs and spam frfsrf... with 100+ shots I once killed 1 SM. 1. out of 2 on the table, I managed to kill 1. Who then went on to assault, and run my unit off the table. my own fault for not having a commissar or PW, but it does prove my point.

Yes, LR are pretty strong... but from the rear they can (you gotta be lucky though) be disabled by heavy bolters... Hell, you can charge the rear of a LRBT with a mob of boyz (indeed anything s4 or above) and there's a fair chance you'll get at least 1 glance... even a penetrating or two if they have furious charge - and thats without grenades. Everyone gets so concerned about its massive wall of av14 steel upfront they forget that the armour out back makes Rhino's look sturdy.

everyone looks at them and see's the strengths of a unit. You have to be able to look at a unit and see its weaknesses so you can exploit them, and stop your enemy from exploiting yours. take the vendetta - ooh! its got 3 TL lascannons! its a bs3 flyer. It has to stand still to be able to shoot all three, they're forward facing so if you want to zoom around and hit the rear of your enemies, you're exposing your own - which, btw, is made of paper mache - and it's only av12, and immobilised is destroyed if it moved.

Faux weaknesses IMO.

Mech Vets don't really have much that's BS3 and is hurt by it. Ordnance "hits" 1/3 of the time regardless of BS and often 1" of scatter isn't fatal, and Vets, which are arguably the more competitive choice, are BS4. Vendettas' lascannons are twin-linked (and TL-BS3 > BS4).

Those Vendettas that are "only" AV12 can also scout move and outflank, take a pair of heavy bolters for a meager 10 points, comes with extra armor, AND transports models...and you need to read the rules for Skimmers because immobilized does NOT equal destroyed for skimmers, and it does NOT need to stay still to fire all 3 lascannons. It's a "fast" vehicle.

I think he meant if you fly flat-out. Then if you score an immobilized result it is destroyed.

Yeah, thats what I meant. I apologise for the misunderstanding.

Still, they're not as scary as everyone wants to believe.

My hatred for guard knows no bounds.

Vehicle squadrons? As if they didn't have enough firepower.

Massive amounts of infantry with hidden power weapons/fists, in a shooting army? Say it isn't so!

More templates than a pizza shop? And the ability to force me to re-roll successful cover saves? FFFFFFFF

Orders... I don't really know what needs to be said.

A single transport unit that puts eldar speed to shame? Really?

The codex can do most everything, and better than most armies. It shoots better than anything else and has the ability to not suck that hard in melee, or actually do well... I'm looking at your priests.

Guard do crazy well in the current game due to cover saves imo. That and their ability to overload the saves of other armies so they die before they reach melee, something my tau TRY to do, but fail.

It's that army that if you have the money, you own everything barring terrible tactics and bad rolls. On average, you own face.

IG is one of the only armies that i've played that in the hands of a DECENT list and a decent player (not even a good player) that has almost no weakness

Everything that can go wrong can be fixed fairly easy where as most other armies have flat out bad match ups.. even space wolves (Missile spam can get messed up by dark eldar if they go first for example)

Ilike the way that people allways vote the top 3 armies and they are allways imperial armiea sw ig ba. cheers gw!

There's a reason for that..

Kirasu wrote:IG is one of the only armies that i've played that in the hands of a DECENT list and a decent player (not even a good player) that has almost no weakness

Besides close combat?

Everything that can go wrong can be fixed fairly easy where as most other armies have flat out bad match ups.. even space wolves (Missile spam can get messed up by dark eldar if they go first for example)

How so just out of curiosity? I won't deny that IG are strong, but IG can definitely get screwed out the gate like any other army.

juraigamer wrote:

Vehicle squadrons? As if they didn't have enough firepower.

Have you read the 5E vehicle squadron rules? They're awful. There's a reason you don't see vehicle squadrons in competitive armies, at least not of anything bigger than Hydras or Griffons. 5E squadron rules are probably the most punitive and restrictive unit rules in the game.

It's also not like Eldar, Space Marines, Tau, Orks and Witch Hunters don't have access to units of vehicle squadrons either.

Massive amounts of infantry with hidden power weapons/fists, in a shooting army? Say it isn't so!

WS3 T3 S3 I3 5+sv powerweapons...not that scary, and cost twice as much as they did in the last codex. Even the PFists are only S6. Did nobody notice these in every IG army list before this? They're only halfway decent in Blob platoons, and if they are kitted for that it means they either aren't kitted for shooting or have a lot of points invested in stuff that quite often will simply be wasted.

More templates than a pizza shop? And the ability to force me to re-roll successful cover saves? FFFFFFFF

Again, did you not notice in every previous edition the templates that IG are capable of putting out? Nothing new. The only templates that are going to be able to force you to reroll cover saves (and only if an order is issued to them) are Mortars, Frag Missiles, Frag Grenades, and possibly an Officer of the Fleet. The first three are S3/4 AP6, so if you've got a 4+ or better armor it won't make a difference, and if you've got a 5+ you can take that instead of having to reroll the cover save, and the last can't hit the broad side of a planet.

Vehicles can't be issued orders. You do know this right?

Orders... I don't really know what needs to be said.

It's the IG's army wide special rule, like SM's Combat Tactics/ATSKNF or BA's Descent of Angels/ATSKNF/RedThirst, etc. and is far more restricted than other armies army-wide special rules.

A single transport unit that puts eldar speed to shame? Really?

A Valkyrie puts Eldar speed to shame? Um, how so? It's a Fast Skimmer, but it's not *faster* than anything Eldar have, it's on *par* with any other Fast Skimmer (not just Eldar), but certainly not faster, especially not moreso than something with Star Engines. They also aren't anywhere near as survivable without Energy/Holo fields.

The codex can do most everything, and better than most armies. It shoots better than anything else and has the ability to not suck that hard in melee, or actually do well... I'm looking at your priests.

Priests are a joke. It's an IC that'll get killed before it gets a chance to do anything, costs a ton of points, and really is only useful in one unit (blob platoons) and only does anything if the Guardsmen are charging (meaning they aren't doing what they are best at, which is shooting).

They're just an army with some really good options that people often rely heavily on, like Vendettas and mechvets. They also play to the metagame's strengths, since they can take so much melta in so many vehilcles. They're beatable as long as you have mobility and cover, which any good army and any good battlefield should have.

Yeah, Necrons have mobility down 6'' of unhideable slow building.. That said it's immune to melta

The rest of the good stuff is pretty mobile


Orks don'r need meltaspam to kill them, as their vehicles are made from squig beer kegs and explode for kicks anyway

My main armies don't fear Mechvets near as much as pieplate spam from hell..

The valk/vendetta's gruesomely cheap las-loadout i have issues with, but they're not too hard to knock down, if the opponent has actually left you anything to knock tyhem down with after the shells and lascannons pause...

Getting first turn vs Guard really tips the odds, as they're stacked agaisnt you if they go first and take the usual list...

Yes they are


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