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Just need some general strategies beating my friends with my IG army. I have about 80 guardsmen, 9 hwt's 2 comissars, 4 chimeras, 1 LRBT, 2 demolishers, 3 sentinels, 20 converted penal legion, and a priest.

one friend plays necrons and eldar. the other friend, (a former redshirt) plays grey knights.

None of us have caught on to the mech metagame and generally use transports to move an important troop around. My GK friend is the only one I expect to mech up. I thougght to do the same, but I only have 4 chims and far too few meltaguns. So I was thinking other viable strategies.

Well you could use Power Blobs

Let's separate the discussion into three parts:

Your army:

It is lacking some of IG's best units - executioner, psyker squad, and vendetta. If you don't want to spend the money on them, maybe you can compensate by using the MBT and demolishers, and convert some guardsmen with spare laspistols and some spare SM flagpoles for staves to make the psyker squad. Also, I have seen nice cheap conversions using militia units from Fantasy Battles.

Since you have some many hwt's, it is essentially imperative to take CCS for HQ, possibly upgraded to Creed. The orders will allow you to fire the hwt's twin-linked which is awesome.

I agree powerblobs is an option. If you don't want to buy the metal meltas, convert a few: Cut the lasgun's barrel and glue a piece of wide cylindrical tube at the end. Then you can glue a "hose" under it. If you paint it nicely, it will look very much like a melta at a fraction of the cost.

What are your hwt? They can be very useful in popping the GK transports and the eldar vehicles.

Necron:

Hit necrons where it hurts - they are vulnerable to phaseout, so ignore the monoliths and kill destroyers and warriors. Deny them WBB by strong enough hits - S8 for warriors and S10 for destroyers ensures no WBB rolls unless he brings an orbed lord. Lower the leadership of a warrior unit using a psyker squad, then assault that unit with a powerblob. You will generally kill them in sweeping advance, which precludes WBB even if an orb is present.

Eldar:

Their units are expensive and fragile. Concentrated fire can really hurt them. Your hwt's have the range and strength to smash their vehicles. Autocannons would be particularly effective.

To add to Necrontyr's points

Vendetta Gunships are one of the best units in not only the codex, but in the game. Cheap and deadly.

Against Necrons, if you have Vendettas, use them to snipe Destroyers or Monoliths. Focus fire on targets to ensure they can;t get back up. Necrons are also vulnerable to Power Blobs because sweeping advance denys WBB.

im not too sure how to deal with necrons so id go for the advice that Necrontyr40k gave you but to deal with the eldar there are two man ways.

1: if they are predominantly on foot then heavy bolter spam and try to use fire on my target order to ignore their cover too.

2: if they are predominantly in tanks then dont just use heavy weapons team them to death. A good eldar player will protect his tanks by moving too fast for you to hit them then deploying at the same time with aspects. if you can find a way to make their untis arrive at your battle line one squad at a time then you will be able to deal with it without losing too many units.

Good advice. It did occur to me that necrons are oddly susceptible to PSB. Most of their guys are ld10, but not stubborn. Definitely going to do some converting and put them in a chimera. He likes to deepstrike scarabs (with disruptor fields) and flayed ones. He always takes a monolith.

with his eldar he runs an Avatar, two wrathlords and guardians with bright lance plarforms. Hes also fond of the heavy weapon platform.

What about GK? I know the guy has a landraider and a dread. I'm kind of worried about all his psyker abilities.

With the hwt's, I didnt glue the weapons on them, so I have 3 mortars and 6 more tripods I can mount any weapon on.

the GK's abilities mainly try to damage other psykers and not much elso so that shouldnt be too much of a problem for you

Here's an argument for why using vendettas and artillery pieces is not necessarily the best choice:

http://yesthetruthhurts.com/2011/05/imperial-guard-jargon/

In short, the argument says that vendettas are big flying targets that are impossible to hide, and everyone knows what they can do, and artillery pieces are very lightly armored, are obvious targets, and everybody has something that can deepstrike/outflank and take them out in one turn.

The list in the linked post proposes some alternatives to vendettas and artillery that are viable because they're less obvious and easier to protect.

Some more points in view of the above comments:

Eldar vehicles getting cover saves will lose them against hydra cannons (due to targeting sensors) and colossi (because they ignore cover saves). So, hydras will pop tanks and jetbikes, while colossi would be deadly against jetbikes. Also, for the particular player, he will probably have the support platforms in cover, thinking he is safe. But, colossi ignore cover.

Scarabs are fearless, so the PBS trick will not work on them. Since he takes monoliths, I must reiterate that you should ignore them and hit the destroyers and warriors in that order. Also, scarabs are swarms, which means they take more wounds from blasts. They get excellent cover saves (2+ if turboboosted or in cover), so flamers in your blobs would be deadly. Colossi would be particularly deadly to scarabs, as they ignore the cover saves and have S6 AP3 which instant-kills a model with T3 W3, and because the attack is a blast, the swarm rule gives them double the caused wounds, each of which is instant kill. So, a single colossus blast hitting and wounding 4 models will kill 8 models of 3 wounds each!

Sorry to say but mortars are the absolutely worst hwt choice. Since you have not glued the weapons, change them to something else. Autocannons are arguably the best choice, followed by ML and LC.

Seeing as you said you don't have many meltas and it looks like you don't have the means to get them where they need to go fast, I would suggest taking 2 squads of 5 guys with 2 melta guns in each and deep strike them as storm troopers. It is generally a suicide unit, but works wonders for popping vehicles.

Other than that, how many points are you looking at in a general game? It seems from the list you've given most of your games would be 1500pts or less. At this amount of points you should be able to pull off power-blobbing pretty handily. Out flank with sentinels (don't squad them up since you have the open Fast Attack slots). Run your PCS and CCS in chimeras behind your blobs and use orders to usher them forward into the breach! And behind those have your LRBTs.

This is working with what you got. The other suggestions are good too if you want to invest in more units.

It also wouldn't hurt to get some plasma in there somehow too. Probably in your CCS with a medic.

I second WhiteWolf's point about the suiciding Stormies - with Meltas they really can work wonders against enemy armour. The tried & tested suiciding Melta Vet / Valk combo is another equally viable (in fact, probably superior) option.

For a little less than the cost of one suiciding vet/valk unit, you can get two 5-man stormtrooper squads with 2 meltas each, plus an astropath.

Take airborne assault, deepstrike in behind what you want to kill, (or outflank with reroll if it's on a table edge) and you have a suicidal tankbuster unit that doesn't need to depend on a valk surviving in order to get in close enough for a melta shot. Also you don't have to sacrifice a scoring unit.

Flavius Infernus wrote:For a little less than the cost of one suiciding vet/valk unit, you can get two 5-man stormtrooper squads with 2 meltas each, plus an astropath.

Take airborne assault, deepstrike in behind what you want to kill, (or outflank with reroll if it's on a table edge) and you have a suicidal tankbuster unit that doesn't need to depend on a valk surviving in order to get in close enough for a melta shot. Also you don't have to sacrifice a scoring unit.

Have to disagree there. For roughly the same pts, a Valk/Vet combo is by far the better option.

It's not that Stormies are that bad, it's just that they are way over-priced. The only reason that you would take them is for DSing behind enemy line, which granted they are quite good at what with the extra roll for DS, but the fact that Vets are scoring will always mean that they will be better than units that are more expensive and un-scoring. A squad of Vets (even with carapace) costs less, can take 1 extra special weapon and is scoring.

With regards to Valks, they are truly wicked at anti-infantry, especially those rocket pods - two of those plus a multi-laser provide some pretty good anti-infantry firepower that can still fire after moving 12” - this should really eat into Ork and Tyranid hordes.

An outflanking Valk dropping off it's unit of Melta-Vets can genuinely set up 1st turn Landraider kills. Valks give the IG mobility that makes the Eldar jealous at a price that is way below what one would expect to pay for it.