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So, I've been playing 40K for a couple of years now. My friend who got me into it started 40K around the same time, but he has played WHFB before, so he's more used to playing awsome miniature games.

Anyway, I play BA now, started with regular SM and I'm not the best SM commander of all time, but I feel I have a decent grasp of the rules and tacs, as does my friend who plays IG. Since we started 40K, I've yet to beat him in a classic game of 40K. I've had a few draws and one victory in the Battle Missions: Ambush! scenario, but as far as I'm concerned that one doesn't count as it's a horribly unbalanced scenario.

I've looked around these forums and watched bat reps and tactics to find some tips on how to beat his pesky Cadians.
He allways keeps a cool head and finds a good strategy to beat my own, so I'm asking for anyone that beat IG either on a regular basis or have given them quite the beating with MEQ armies and tacs.

These need to be rather good tactics though, as he's no fool and usually damn good at strategy board games and RTS.
If I deploy lots of pods, he'll often reserve most of his heavies to come out and blast me without endangering himself.
I've thought about DoA, but his screener units of Meat Grinder fodder will often deny me the melta-range I need to pop his Lemons and Banewolves without lucky rolls. And then I'm also stuck in a nice tight circle with a bullseye on my ass for his next shooting phase.
Reserving my own mech will ofc grant me a round without being shot, but I still need to cross the damned board to get to him, as I will smoke most of his units in CC(except Straken and his pancies, ofc).
I can deploy LR's and other heavy stuff, but due to the cost, I can't bring enough to get to him without being lucky. He will in 4/5 games stop me midfield forcing me to footslog it the rest of the way because of the amount of shots he puts in my direction.
Dante and meltas next to a tank won't work either, as there is rarely any room next to his best tanks to land that unit.

The only thing I've had good and scary(for him) results with lately, are Librarians with Fear of the Darkness, causing entire units to run for mommy. Sadly, that doesn't work on Leman Russ'.
I do also believe that the Stormraven is one of my best options of delievering some long lost CC love to his front line, but that damned thing have yet to make it across the center line.

I don't fear playing against him, as we usually have fun, but it's getting frustrating that I hardly seem to give him a big scare. He can play like an idiot and still pull a draw out of his ass due to the amount of bloody guardsmen compared to my Astartes.

So, if you have tips and strats for tipping the odds in my favour, I'd be happy to hear them. Especially if other IG players give me pointers on what causes them the most grief against BA, SM or MEQ.

Your usual armylists would be a good place to start from tactics-wise; as would his.

Also a Quick run-down of models you have, and/or a statement about willingness to Proxy(so we know what you have to work with)

I play both Nilla marines and IG; so should be able to help on both fronts.

Destroy his parking lot and the bubble wrap to win. A thunderfire canon(under appreciated in all fronts) can really cut through the guardsmen surrounding the tanks while also providing a chance to pop them once the infantry is dead. With the dead infantry, get your assault marines forward with PF and punch through the juicy rear armor.

-cgmckenzie

Against BA, nothing makes me more nervous than Blood Lance, especially dropping out of the sky anywhere the board.

Other than that, well placed Sanguinary Priests basically make them immune to all of my conventional weapons, forcing me to get close and use Melta/Plasma, which helps them get into assault faster.

I dont have alot of Exp vs IG. but from what ive seen,
Combat squads are your friend IMO.

Sure guardsmen will probalby take the same amount of time to shoot down ur mairnes, but splitting your marines up helps vs the Lemen Russ's Battle cannons and other artillery. Shooting at a squad of 5 marines is far less rewarding then shooting at 10. A smaller squad is easier to miss entirely with scatter, and when hit a lucky template wont be hittign 6+ marines.

TLR wasting the shooting of some artillery or a squad of 30 guardsmen on 5 marines is much nicer for you then having the same thing shoot at 10.

Squads also let you take advantage of Vanilla SM's Cheapest heavy weapons. CC sergeant, flamer/melta marine and 3 bolters advance on foot or in a rhino/razorback. while 4 bolters and a las cannon sit back poking tanks.

Somewhat riskier is Deep striking Lone land speeders with multi melta's and heavy flamers onto his tanks. Essentially pop in and kill a tank that costs double what if they manage to survive a turn after landing heavy flamers can really clear out alot of infantry. Remember Las guns are worthless versus land speeders 10 armour, so he will have to pull some kind of special weapons fire off your advancing tac marines to deal with the speeders.

Last fun tactic was a way i killed a lemen russ with an un-upgraded 50 point. Land speeder, on it's front armour.
GOGO flat out 21" ram!

Combat squads just insures you get crub stomped in CC, if the IG is running Power Blobs. And if hes screening his tanks with footsloggers, then its most likely a power blob. And if he has straken, then your getting either charged with 16 str 4 int 4 power weapons, plus x amount of regular attacks. Or you getting counter attacked with 16 str 3 power weapon attacks. Kiss your marines good bye please.

As an IG player, all i'll say is that the big blob of guardsmen isn't as scary as you think. If you have to take a volley, take it, if it means you can get close enough to those Leman Russes (pretty much everything else can be ignored, most errors against IG occur when the enemy focuses on things other than the destruction of the guards' Leman Russes).
So, lots and lots of melta guns, melta bombs. Predators with lascannons are scary too.
Oh and Devestator squads give an IG player nightmares.

For those that wanted a armylist, we usually play either 1000p or 1750p, so I build differently depending on what I want to try that day. Lately I tend to bring a libby more often as we've gotten a GK in our gaming group, so I need to get used to playing with psychic defense. I pretty much allways bring 2x assualt squads with meltas and depening on the points, I take 5 in a Las/plas razorback or 10 in a LR or Stormraven. I haven't played the Stormraven that much, so like I said, it has yet to prove it's worth as other than a nice fat target. If we run 1750 I usually try to bring a Baal Pred or 2, as I believe the Assault Cannon is pretty much the best weapon allround in the game. I've run Vindicators with various results, but it tends to become a target for much fire aswell.
I love Furioso Dreads, so I try to bring a couple of those aswell, as none of my gaming buddies wants one of those in their ranks. But getting it in to assault range can prove troublesome at times.

As for my IG friend, he rarely leaves home without a Leman Russ or more. Against me he's been favoring the Executioner(that's the plasma version, right?) more, aswell as that poison flame tank AP3 bastard, the Banewolf or something.
He hasn't run much powerblobs, even though he's been making lists with those and been talking about it alot, but as he's the more or less undefeated champ in our group, he hasn't really had the need to use anything else than regular troop squads as shields.
Ratlings come and go in his lists, varies in effectiveness. Heavy weapon teams are a common sight, with either las or autocannons. He used that HUGE missile thing once and I was stupid enough to let it fire. Never again, but I've yet to see it in later games.

We both tend to run slightly different lists everytime, so it's damn hard to spec a list to take out his previous one. He's a big fan of artillery, so if he feels the game can benefit from one, he'll make sure he has at least one large template bad boy in the back somewhere.

As models go, we allow a fair amount of proxy as long as it's easy to remember which is what. We can both field a great deal of infantry of various kits, mine tend to be modelled more towards regular SM, but I'm putting more jump packs in my ranks as we speak.
I can field Land Speeders, LR's, quite a few variants of the Rhino chassis, as I've magnetized a couple to become a 5-in-1 tank. And I also have a few of them glued into one configuration. The only thing I don't have models for, are SM Thunderfire cannon I think. And I've been borrowing my friends' Vendetta to proxy as a Stormraven while I build up my own.

Unless you spam them heavily, Razorbacks don't have the AV to be survivable. What will help you? Fast things, deep striking things, and spreading out.


It sounds like he's running mostly Mechanized IG. Running Mechanized BA (unless you spam AV13, in which case it can be nasty) is kind of playing to his strengths. Sang Priests may sound pretty awesome until you realize that he can pack a slowed amount of FNP-ignoring stuff into the army and probably already runs a ton of it.

I'd consider running a Furioso in a pod (or 3 if you have multiples...generally podded things like odd numbers), a few squads of Jump Pack Marines (which will usually be combat squadded) with meltaguns. Keep bounding from cover to cover, keeping out of LOS from as much of his army as possible, for as much of your advance as possible. Learn what 2" coherency actually looks like: A single plasma template should only be able to hit one dude at a time unless it scatters. A unit in a Storm Raven can really feth up a Mech IG players' day. TH/SS Terminators are a mighty fine example: a nice fat squad of TH/SS Terminators (without a sang priest...he's not worth it in this unit as most of the things hitting them will ignore FNP anyway) with a Librarian attached for some blood lance sexiness...Keep your Furioso away from meltaguns to the extent possible. If it's unavoidable, then pod into an area that you think he will want to go, deploy behind the dread, and use it to funnel his movement.

Basically you need to close the distance as fast as possible. How you do this is with Stormravens, Assault Marines, and pods.

as an IG player i'd caution against over-reliance on Storm Ravens. Especially if they're packing terminators and heavy weapons, with AV12 they'll probably be down and out pretty quick.

Joey wrote:as an IG player i'd caution against over-reliance on Storm Ravens. Especially if they're packing terminators and heavy weapons, with AV12 they'll probably be down and out pretty quick.

The point isn't that the SR survives, it's that it delivers a squad of Hammernators and a Libby into your lines on T1.

Bring landraider spam to bear on anything with an AV on his side. At this point, if it works and he's on foot, then use the advantage of speed, since he'll be moving 6" per turn and you'll be flying all over the place.

Bring assault marines right up into his blobs, and neutralize sergeants and commissars quickly./

IG tend to be a lot of distracting cushion surrounding a couple sold units which will buy back all our points. Armies similar to the ones you are describing have the fault of dropping all their points on something shiny, like the executioner. at a fun 230 points (of course he's taking the plasma sponsons) that's a quarter of his list in a 1k list. If he's buying bubble wrap it gets surprising expensive to maintain, and as long a sit serves as wrapping his almost worthless with doing much more than holding initial objectives. Such a list has two big flaws, it has to sit to be effective, and one or two units are half the armies cost, while the other half serves to really only protect those expensive units. What this means is you really only have 1 or 2 large threats to face, with everything else just being a distraction. So how do you handle it?

Two methods work well against the armor and foot bubble
First, it is a sad day a when a guard player watches all his "expendable" bubble wrap disappear to bolter fire, only to realize by turn 3 that he lost his last troop. You might not scratch his armor, but you don't have to so long as they can not hold objectives.

Second, Masters of the forge are not cool. I have yet to face one, but special weapon they get is actually pretty vicious at a distance, plus increasing your possible number of deep striking dread naughts from drop pods makes for a sickeningly intense enemy to face. Add in the under appreciated thunder fire canon and you have a force capable of hiding from the big guns of the IG while raining fire which reeks havoc among the tightly packed and wrapped armor. Outfit some dreads as cheep blob incinerators and some as multimelta tank poppers and you have a force which will at the very least make him reconsider his strategy.

As a IG player i love to see expensive units thrown my way, and fear the cheaper units. Against guard paying for upgrades is usually just an expensive way to provide me with less targets to have to choose between. Armies which are viable tend to be razorback spams as they saturate the target choices, but lets face it they are kinda dull to play. What i don't like to see coming my way is cheap dreadnoughts with flame throwers. I usually have to throw a lot more fire power at them then they cost to bring one down when its walking my way. When it strolls out of a drop pod right on top of my blob its a very bad day.

Following that line of thought, i don't know if it would be cheaper but combat tac squads with flamer and melta might not be a bad idea out of a pod. one to flame the squad and make way for the melta to hit a tank? or if they are in chimera's one to pop the chimera and the flamer to hit the troops as the bail out (combat squads makes it possible).

Keep it cheap, numerous and force him to spend his first turn advancing/repositioning before shooting if you can. (the 36" range of the executioner is key)

I dont try to defeat the IG army, i try to defeat the ig player. I do this in 3 ways.

1-Put on the passive aggressive angry face. I dont make eye contact, argue rules, and just generally stay a dill weed all throughout the game.

2-Tell my local gamer group to exclude such and such player for running more than 2 tanks in his army, or anything else I dont like.

3-I then go on forums to try and prevent even more people from ever running ig.

I don't know much about beating IG, but iof it were me, I would take a whole lot of Blendernauts.


Astorath
5 Deathcompany with JP, or 10 without
DCD with Blood Talons and Magna Grapple for vehicles
All mounted in a Stormraven with MM, Assault cannon and Hurricaine Sponsons, deepstriking in, and MM the vehicles, pwoer blobs taker the rest, and then drop the DCD into a blob. Astorath and DC go off to tackle HWS or isolated units.

A few anti IG tips.

If he's running power blobs kill Straken with dakka. It should be easy since he's stuck in a squad of 4 other guardsmen.

CCS and their transport should also be a high priority target. It removes orders, but most importantly it removes a BS4 squad with quad meltas or quad plasmas.

Unless the dakka in question is a double dice melta shot don't bother with dakka against a Lemun Russ. Krak grenades work just fine, but over all I don't consider the Russ a high priority target except for an executioner which is a 200 pointish monster. I know a Russ can be scary, but marines have more to fear from vendettas, melta + demo vets, and the artillery than a Russ tank.

Against mech...

Avoid shooting the AV12 of a Chimera. If there is no side shot go for the AV12 artillery or AV12 Vendetta.

With or without the extra penetration dice meltas shred AV10 side armor of a chimera.

Block the access hatch during an assault. 1 Marine will usually suffice.

Beware of demo charges. Melta vets with demo charges can quickly ruin a marine's day. Don't cluster together to wreck a chimera in CC only to be caught in the open eating 3 melta shots and a demo charge. Spread out in CC as much as possible, and try to multi assault the mechanized infantry.

Don't kill the mechanized infantry in a multi assault. Well at least not on turn 1. The goal is to keep as many marines as possible out of cc on turn 1, have the IG pass their morale test on turn 1, and have the IG fail their morale test on their turn. It keeps marines from being caught out in the open after guardsmen crumble in cc.

I think DoA is your best option. Even if his tanks are bubble-wrapped, if you drop your entire army all at once right in his face, he'll get exactly one turn of shooting before your guys are on him. There's no way any guard army can muster enough firepower to kill that many marines in a single turn.

Bring sanguinary priests to be sure that massed lasgun fire doesn't cause excessive casualties. Then all you really have to worry about is the big guns.

If bubblewrap prevents you from killing tanks on the drop with meltaguns, then run in the shooting phase to scatter your guys out and avoid template death. Run or drop into cover if you have to (the dangerous terrain test is less dangerous than a battlecannon shot).

Then, if you survive the turn 2 shooting, you're in assault range with all your stuff and you've nerfed the majority of his shooting. As a guard player, nothing gives me more problems than an army that comes in right in my face.