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Well, as the title says I'm working on a (tentative) ard boys list of guardsmen and I'm trying to determine some holes in it. The idea if anyone is willing is to offer a counter list or something that would counter such an army and still remain competitive, in other words, something someone might feasibly take. Really, any comments or suggestions of any kind would be greatly appreciated.

Company Command Squad- 200
- Straken, Medic, Melta, Regimantal Standard, Master of the Fleet

Platoon I - Wave I - (380) + (200)
Command Squad - 4x plasma gun
3x Squad - Meltagun
2x Squad - Flamer
50x Conscripts

Platoon II - Wave II - (380)
Command Squad - 4x plasma gun
3x Squad - Meltagun
2x Squad - Flamer

Platoon III - Wave III - (330)
Command Squad - 4x plasma gun
4x Sqaud - Meltagun

Platoon IV - Wave IV - (310)
Comman Squad - 2x Autocannon
5x Squad - Autocannons and Sniper Riftles

Hydra Flak Battery (150)
- 2x Vehicles

Banewolf (160)
- Hull Muli-melta
- Extra Armour

Ordinance Battery (150)
- Medusa
- Enclosed Crew

Colossus Seige Mortar (155)
- Enclosed Crew

-2500-

*EDIT* Perhaps I should offer some general deployment tactics, Platoon I and II group into two 30 man (3 melta) and 20 man (2 flamers) squads, while platoon III splits into two 20 man squads, each with 2 meltaguns, finally platoon IV divides into a 30 and 20 man squad or some other combination depending on target saturation. Ordinance hides in the back...
Thanks,
Typhon- lord corruptor

Where are your Commisars? Those blobs only need to take a few casualties and they test on Ld8, even worse if they get embroiled in a CC. Commisars are mandatory in an infantry IG list.

L. Wrex

Banewolfs, Basilisks, flamers, Marbo...

Unless you're leaving stuff out of the list, you really aren't making this army as good as it could be. Consider how your big blob squads will perform in CC against a 10 man Blood Angels Assault Squad with 2 Meltaguns and a Power Fist (the core of a DoA army).

The Assault Squad has 25 regular attacks at WS4 S5 I5, assuming a Sanguinary Priest is nearby, and 3 Power Fist attacks. That works out to 10 dead Guardsmen before they swing, and a total of 12. A 30 man squad will have about 26 attacks back, which works out to 4 wounds. With 3+ armor and FNP, you are likely to not kill anything in return. The Guardsmen will obviously break, and probably get run down. Even the Conscript squad, which has 42 attacks I believe, can only expect to cause 7 wounds for about 1 dead Marine, and will also get swept.

There's an easy fix: You take a Commissar for every blob, and give each Comissar plus each Sergeant a Power Weapon. Now, that 30 man blob has 17 regular attacks back, which still don't do anything, but also has 12 Power Weapon attacks, which will kill 2 Marines. You still lose, but now you have a re-rollable Stubborn Ld9, which you will only fail a little less than 3% of the time. The next round of combat, you have 15 living regular Guardsmen, plus the Comissar and 3 Sergeants. The Blood Angels get 12 regular attacks and 2 Power Fist attacks, which works out to about 5 dead Guardsmen before you swing and 6 total. You still kill 2. Eventually the two squads more or less kill each other.

I would see your swarm and raise you my power blob of DOOM (I actually use it as my main list)!


They would be evenly matched, with your ordnance and fire support being melted by deep-striking stormtroopers and massed lascannon fire, while multiple autocannons would cause some of your non-commissar-supported platoons to break. Flame wall would make a lot of damage and infantry blobs w/commissars would keep positions to the last second.
I'd just love to see our armies facing each other, expecially if they immediately engaged in combat (1500+ dices rolled each combat phase) or shooted each other in rapid fire range, possibly with frfsrf. At the end, your blobs would probably eat mine alive (due to IG +5 sv wasting my pw), but we would probably tarpit each other for the whole game.

Anyway, your army could be almost unbeatable if you inserted some commissars in there (your blobs would never run away from objectives), but all-mechanized lists would give you a hard time. Infact, what your army lacks is a bit of long ranged anti-tank. Yes, you can pump out some 22 autocannon shots (hitting half the times), which will work wonders on enemy transports, but will do asolutely nothing against heavier vehicles (they will pop about 1 chimera every turn and stop maybe three more, while doing nothing at all against av 14). In addition, having no ds or fast-moving units, enemy ordnance will splatter your tightly-packed troops.
Another problem of your list could be cc walkers, mcs and meq assault unit, expecially if dsing: without meltabombs, eviscerators and pw it would be almost impossible for you to hurt them and without commissars your blobs will almost immediately run in cc (that could even turn to your advantage if you use your morale-breaking-prone IS as bait to drag valuable enemy unit in rf range of your plasmas; just remember you'll likely lose 4 plasmagunners every turn due to Gets Hot!), even more so for the conscripts.

Anyway, in most objective-based games your enemy will cry in terror at the sheer size of your troop deployment, being simply unable to wipe them all from the board or remove them from an objective.
My congratulations to another loyal imperial infantry commander!

Looks like the start of a gunline foot guard list. Not really a new idea but still can be effective if implemented correctly.

1) commissars, you need lots of commissars. This is a must have for your troops for a few reasons.
- it will up your IS to an expectable leadership.
-will give you unit stubborn
-and will allow reroll to failed moral checks
With out this guy your troops will take a hand full of hits and run right off the board. And heaven forbid your opponent has ordinance barrage weapons.

2) keep in mind at 2500 points every other codex can own you in CC. (even with a tooled out power blob). So you need as much time to shoot at your opponent as possible. As I read it you only have 3 units dedicated to long range anti transport. one is not legal, your PCS can only take a max of 1 HWS. Unless you plan on moving a IS a lot you need to have these in each of your blobs to make them more effective. Since you aren’t spending the points on armor you can pop out more Autocannons. Your hydras are a good choice, I have no critic here.

In short I would load out your IS with more auto cannons for anti transport and let your PCS work on objective capping. Perhaps a couple blobs empty on HWT to move and sit on opposing objectives.

3) Conscripts…..are just bad, your IS are so much better at blobbing up stuff. The problem with them is that they cant have heavy or special weapons and they will always run off the table when charged or shot at. Take the points and field more IS.

4) your special weapons, I am a firm believer that every blob you intend to field should have at least one meltagun. You don’t really need more, tank hunting isn’t what your slow guardsmen good at. Melta guns in this list are used as a deterrent. It keeps players from multi handshaking or ignoring your troops altogether. don’t get me wrong take that shot at a land raider if you have it, just don’t expect some one to just park one 12in from your boys with out a plan on using it. When I see guard line across the table without meltaguns scattered around there force, I proceed to tank shock to move there troops allover the place to mess up there strat. And really they don’t have anything to keep me from doing so. Even if you have a commissar a rhino can push a troop choice off an object with out even needing to brake it.

5) PCS I really think plasma is the way to go on these guys all the way around, even with a BS 3. This makes them a huge threat to meq

6) on to your fast attack, I love the bane wolf. Its my personal favorite of the hound variants. And if this is your only choice for fast attack its far from a poor one. But I feel these slots will be better fit with ether variant of birds. Point for point vendettas are the strongest unit in the codex. I will mention the valk as well I feel it will fill the hole in your army for long rang anti tank (when loaded up with SWS).

7) your heavies, I use a medusa in my ard’ boyz list as well, I love this guy. But I run it open top, I feel if it gets popped I have back ups. And in my list I do. I don’t feel yours does, so its I wont recommend taking off the upgrade.

The colossus is a very cool modal, but when looking at tournament play I don’t think it can hold water. For the cost of a LRBT you get a weapon that cant move an shoot. Drifts a lot and only has a single shot. Yea it may ignore a lot of armor, but volume of shots is better then quality of shots for IG. I would recommend a manticore, IMHO I feel this is the best artillery in the codex. If you want to run tanks, I feel it will force you to retool your list.

8) oh, your CCS. Straken is a good melee choice, but its really w/e if you want to run him. I feel there aren’t any named characters that are worth there points. But like I said that’s me. And if you are planning on getting in to CC with him, you don’t have a bad build for it. MoF is a must at 2500. ( I know you are running him, just incase you are thinking of taking him out)

that’s about all I got, I get a bit long winded. So, if you made it this far good for you

*EDIT* Snipers are very poor

How I would beat it? First since you are lacking commisars as others have pointed out. I would get in CC with you, preferably with Khorne bezerkers with Kharn, then I would deepstrike Terminators followed up by Havoc and Predator fire at your vehicels. Or use Vinicators for sofening up before assult I you.

Id take a couple of unites of Swooping Hawks with skyleap and watch the grenade packs fly. I'd also take fire prism and lots of rangers for those lovely panic tests.

I'd beat it with my IG... but if I were to beat it with another army, I would use Tyranid Mawlocs, ore Genestealers...

Your lack of Leadership is a great advantage to your enemy. Don't let them feast on it.

At 'ard Boys? Time will defeat this army.

More specifically, the 2-hours per round time limit.

I've played in 'ard Boyz against horde armies not even this big, and the game goes like this:

My turn 1: move tanks around & shoot a couple things (5 minutes)
My horde opponent's turn 1: shuffle models around and shoot a lot of weapons that miss and bounce off but have complicated orders/scatters/barrage rules (1 hour)
My turn 2: move tanks into position to win game (30 seconds)
My horde opponent's turn 2: Repeat turn 1 (most of another hour)

Tournament organizer calls time, I win.

My opponent winges about two hour time limit until next round begins.

Seriously, the way to do well at 'ard Boyz preliminaries is to take an army that can play fast and move quickly enough to score all the necessary victory conditions in 2-3 turns, because there'll pretty much always be at least one opponent who can't do his own turn in less than 45 minutes. And also you don't want to be that guy.

1) Commissar ftw. Without them, it makes no sense to write an anti-list. Just any list with decent assault will beat you easily.
Straken is great if you can keep him alive long enough to help the charge of a 20-30 men blob with Commissar and power weapons!

2) What do you think will happen to you few tanks? 90% of your opponents will bring at least some dedicated anti-tank units. That can mean two things for you: a) your few tanks are dead immediately because your opponent has nothing else to shoot at with his dedicated anti-tank or b) your opponent wasted a lot of points for a unit that has no good targets to shoot at.
Now if you do want to bring some armor, go for artillery and hope there are lots of big LoS blockers on the table.

3) You need Melta Guns and Melta Bombs. What komosunder said in 4)

4) Tool up some of your IS with Las Cannons. You need some anti-tank at range.

Also, I suggest you just take the models from your list and actually try to set them up on a regular-size gaming table. You will find that you will stand in your own way too much.

Good choice on the Hydra Flak tank. With that Dark Eldar Razorwing on the shelves people can unleash some serious anti-infantry missile action.

If you are running infantry guard

-you need to go all out, that means very minimal or no vehicles, unless you are confident they can be out of line of sight. Yes vehicles are better for the points, but by taking none you are basically telling your opponent every point spent on anti tank firepower is wasted

-- Commisars and power weapons on the sarges can be pretty mean, they can be the most cost efficient CC option in the game when combined with furious charge.

-- Lots of autocannons, outflanking platoons, deep striking suicide melta, ect. ect. you either need to reduce enemy mobility by killing all the transports or cut off half the board with bodies so his speed doesn't mean much.

Imho i think there should be a LR in there some where i find they would serve you better than your current artillery as they are less easily taken out and can multi-task as they are good against both tanks and troops.

I'd run 9 basilisks in 'Ard Boyz. So, swarm armies are my bread and butter.

You definitely need Commissars no matter what. I'd also consider trying to go all assault or all gunline, instead of mixign and matching, since allot of time your own troops will get int he way of your fire lanes.

If it's for your FLGS, then it'll probably be fine. You have too many bodies on the table to really lose, unfortunately lack of mobility means that winning might be a problem.

If you plan heading to a tournament, practice taking your turns as quickly as possible. Ask your opponent if you can just move the front rank and fill in behind, use moving trays that sort of thing.

It's unfortunate, but Flavius has hit the nail on the head. Nearly all tournaments have a time limit, and horde armies just can't get it down that fast. A shame, really.