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This is a bit of a slowpoke, but I recently wondered what people thought of the IG codex. It's been years since it's out, and with tried and true tactics, what are the good and bads about it? When it was just released, what was the initial response?

I normally play guard, and I love them, so I'll only say that I enjoyed the Heavy Support section being greatly expanded, as well as the introduction of Valkyries (I don't field Vendettas).

You're going to get three responses here:
1. The codex is good, competitive, and maintains fluff reasonably well.
2. The codex is awful, bland, and takes all character away from Imperial Guard units. This is mostly true if you took some of the more esoteric doctrines in your IG army if you played prior to this codex.
3. The codex is ludicrously overpowered because I once read about the "Leafblower" list and now all army lists with a single chimera in them are just as overpowered!

I fall into the first camp, but can see where the second and third camps come from. The codex does have a few units that are generally not so good, like Ogryn and Rough Riders, grossly undercosted Vendettas, and incredibly potent melta vets. There are a number of viable builds, such as powerblobs, mechanised infantry, gunlines, aircav, or various combinations thereof. I honestly like the codex a lot, but got a little burnt out after playing it pretty much exclusively for a year.

Alright, thanks for the two cents. Ive been wondering due to some anti-IG 'dex posts I've been noticing, and I wondered what exactly was wrong with it in a 5th ed context. I'm not entirely ignorant of the answers, but there might've been something I didn't realize before. Cheers

I see several core problems with it.

1. Certain things are undercosted, severly in parts. Most notably Veterans, the Flyers and Chimeras.

2. The result not only leads to an overabundance of those in the games you see, it also means that most IG-lists you face are "elite BS-4" guys with more special-weapons than Marines can carry that ride about in super-fast skimmers that leave Eldar stuff looking like rusty trash. I.e., these armies don't "feel" very much like what IG should be.

In that, it is similar to the Space Wolves Codex (undercosted Long-Fangs, Rune-Priest Spam, etc.), in that it not only "favours" certain builds, but favours builds that are (IMO) very much at odds with what an archetypical or iconic IG/Space Wolves army would look like and the exact opposite of what the designers/codex writers have stated as the explicit design goals for the armies.

In short:

IG = fairly elite, fast moving, highly effective infantry weaponry.
SW = passive gun-line marines that emphasise having the "enemy come to them"
Also,

Tyranids = low-numbered specialists relying on synergy of special abilites rather than numbers and cc-prowess
Dark Eldar = high-numbered near-horde army spamming absurd MSU quantities.

These 4 armies just miss, to different degrees, the way you would (or at least I would) expect them to play according to the background. As such, I consider them the weaker codexes of 5th Edition. These just don't hit the right "feel" unless you concioulsy go against the "smart/effective choices"

I like the overall feel of the army and the fluff. My good friend (and play-wise my Arch Nemesis too) plays IG.
Competitive army with many options and possible variations in the rooster. Requires good strategy to play well.

One thing I find horribly overpowered.

Psyker Battle Squad...

10 man Elite squad for mere 110 pts.
Those bastards will keep 36" away from you and spam their psionic power...
With 9Ld it rarely fails.

Why are such psykers overpowered?
I'll tell you why...

Power # 1:
S=9*, AP=D6, Assault 1, Large Blast

Seriously? 110pts for a large blast that killed my monolith, whole suquad of warriors and some other things with a bit of luck...
With a good IG player it will be hard as hell to kill them without some long range / blast weapons or a good CC unit that can get to them fast...

But wait, there is more:

Power # 2:
Choose enemy unit within 36" of Psyker Battle Squad. That unit's Ld is lowered by number of psykers in squad to minimum of 2.
So you just need to shoot 25% of that squad and 99% of time it will fall back. For me as Necron player - bye bye Resurrection Protocols / or formerly WBB...

* = equal to number of psykers in squad

Seriously, nothing pisses me off more than Necrons running away with their heads between their legs. So much for Ld 10.

Dark Eldar = high-numbered near-horde army spamming absurd MSU quantities.

Then how are Dark Eldar supposed to be in fluff?

All their stuff is based around boat like, uber fast skimmer ships, which pretty much everyone rides. Fluff wise, that -screams- what DE should be. They hit fast, hard, and in their flying pirate ships.

Trust me dexter, marines hate em too. I normally use a squad of bikers or assault marines to compliment my mechanized army... and without fail, they always flee off the board if my enemy fields a psyker squad. Because I generally field a librarian with jump pack or bike with these units, its like he instantly removes 400 points from my army.

Guard where my first army and have been my primary ever since. I never got to play 4th edition though, I got into the game around the time the 5th ed guard codex dropped.

Overall I like the codex, but there are a few nagging bits.

The crap units are some of my favorites. Ogryn, armored sentinel, ratlings, kasrkin. I want to run them but sadly they just aren't worth the points.

Some of the fluff I don't like. Namely with Chenkov. He uses the battlefield tactics a 4 year old would possess (or an ogryn for that matter) in that whatever the problem is he just sends more troops at it until he wins. Mine fields? Send troops at it. Impenatrable fortress? Send more troops at it. Why he's a colonel is beyond me. Im starting to love vastroyans, but their special character is insanely stupid.

Finally, the rough rider models. The only official ones have mongolians on horseback. I'll suspend belief for a lot of things, but not horses in space. They should have a cadian variant with dirt bikes, or just cadian bodies.

You could probably get some dirt bikes that are the correct size and model the Cadians on them.

I love the codex. The orders allow flexible tactical decisions and amplifies the strengths of the relatively weak individual Guardsmen, which in turn services the fluff. Chimeras may be a little under priced, but the codex is faaaar from broken.

Also, the so called "crap units" can be very effective. I run stormtroopers, armoured sentinels and ratlings and have never regretted using them.

forruner_mercy wrote:You could probably get some dirt bikes that are the correct size and model the Cadians on them.

Aye, that's the plan. I've got a few more units that I need to buy that take higher priority over them, but once that's all sorted out I'm going to snag some dirt bikes off the net and model em with the cadian bodies.

Herr Dexter wrote:
One thing I find horribly overpowered.

Psyker Battle Squad...

That blast is a complete waste of time. There's literally nothing it can do that any number of IG tanks can't do. It's not ordnance so it's actually not as good at killing vehicles either. However, their leadership reducing skill is absolutely nightmarish. Coupled with Ratlings it can actually pin down units, which almost never happens in real games. Also, it can pretty much guarantee that a unit of yours will run off the table if they take too many wounds. I've lost a Nob deathstar that way, and they got chased off by said Ratlings. Kind of funny, but brutal.

I see nothing wrong with it...

Shadelkan wrote:This is a bit of a slowpoke, but I recently wondered what people thought of the IG codex. It's been years since it's out, and with tried and true tactics, what are the good and bads about it? When it was just released, what was the initial response?

I normally play guard, and I love them, so I'll only say that I enjoyed the Heavy Support section being greatly expanded, as well as the introduction of Valkyries (I don't field Vendettas).

It's a very strong codex that has relatively poor internal balance which gets overlooked due to the sheer number of units.

A lot of people complain about Vets, nobody seems to remember you could build a mechanized IG army of BS4 troops with lots of special weapons in the last book.

Horst wrote:Trust me dexter, marines hate em too. I normally use a squad of bikers or assault marines to compliment my mechanized army... and without fail, they always flee off the board if my enemy fields a psyker squad. Because I generally field a librarian with jump pack or bike with these units, its like he instantly removes 400 points from my army.

I hear ya!

Got destroyers removed that way :( In 500 point games I almost never got to roll for WBB with my Necrons as he just killed 3 and forced the unit to fall back. Repeat until win.
Horrid stuffs. And yet I won few games, but that was before he got crafty with that blasted Psyker Squad....

New Codex gives me some hope in form of Spyders with Gloom Prism. I feel for you tho bro, I imagine this beeing pita for any non-fearless army...

Brother SRM wrote:That blast is a complete waste of time. There's literally nothing it can do that any number of IG tanks can't do. It's not ordnance so it's actually not as good at killing vehicles either. However, their leadership reducing skill is absolutely nightmarish. Coupled with Ratlings it can actually pin down units, which almost never happens in real games. Also, it can pretty much guarantee that a unit of yours will run off the table if they take too many wounds. I've lost a Nob deathstar that way, and they got chased off by said Ratlings. Kind of funny, but brutal.

Since all my friends (excluding IG one who has around 1500 pts of IG) are starting their armies, we were all playing around 500 pts. And in small point skrimishes that blast killed my whole squad twice, not to mention killing Monolith in 1000 point game (wouldn't normally field monolith in that pt range but had to make do with what I had in the shelf ). With new codex, and me finally buing some new units I guess we will soon switch to 1000 and than 1500 point games. It won't be such a problem then - Leman Russ Tanks will start to show, and that would be deadly unless they get om nom nom'ed by scarabs

As for Weaken Resolve - as said above, horrible memories. With new Codex I hope to spam some blasts and shield myself with Solar Pulse. Still, those Psykers annoy me with their cost and possible Chimera transport, which doesn't even limit their power. I demand a nerf...

BTW: None of us has anything to do with Eldar or Grey Knights - does any of those armies have any similar Psychic ability?

Psyker Battle Squads are very, very fragile which is their weakness. If you can blow up their transport, they're as vulnerable as guardsmen. Having them blow up a Monolith is the dumbest of luck, since it's only a strength 9 blast. Unless he rolled a 1 for AP, that's nothing a lascannon couldn't do. A basilisk would be more effective, and a demolisher would be significantly more effective. In small, combat patrol games I can see that power being pretty deadly though. Still, Weaken Resolve is why I'm scared of em.

Namica wrote:

Dark Eldar = high-numbered near-horde army spamming absurd MSU quantities.

Then how are Dark Eldar supposed to be in fluff?

All their stuff is based around boat like, uber fast skimmer ships, which pretty much everyone rides. Fluff wise, that -screams- what DE should be. They hit fast, hard, and in their flying pirate ships.

Less numbers. More dirty tricks and trickery. More tactics. More backstabbing.

Straightforward MSU-rush down the board to bury your opponent in dice isn't it, that's for sure.

Necroshea wrote:Finally, the rough rider models. The only official ones have mongolians on horseback. I'll suspend belief for a lot of things, but not horses in space.

Why not? With a million worlds within the Imperium & varying levels of technological capability it makes sense that some worlds will have regressed to a point where the horse is a valuable, possibly even dominant, tool for war, or perhaps a world will have progressed from that level of technology to a point where, whilst they're still in use, horses have mostly disappeared except for small units mounted on horseback for scouting or to go where the armoured vehicles can not (but then there are Sentinels who could do the same). Preference I suppose but I do love Rough Riders - horses in space suits me fine.

They should have a cadian variant with dirt bikes, or just cadian bodies.

Quite frankly it's about time they did them. There was a tutorial on the GW site years ago about making Cadian Rough Riders on bikes, and there's another one here, but GW should finally do something about those ancient models - not everyone will be able to 'cough up' £170 for 10 FW Rough Riders (whether Krieg or Tallarn) if they want some decent Rough Rider models. Ratlings got an update, so why not Rough Riders? Perhaps with the next Codex edition? Maybe we should lobby GW to tell them that players want them?

Chenkov is Valhallan, not Vostroyan.

As to the topic: Half is good, half is just laughably bad, and 3-5 things are undercosted. Competitive and versatile, even if it favors mechanized heavily you can still do a classic foot list too.

I feel that the Codex is competitive, but at this point everyone is aware of it's tricks and is pretty familiar with how to beat it. Not that it's easy to beat them, though.

There are a few odd ducks that missed the boat. like Ogryns, Sentinels, and Ratlings, but those units are still quite useable and the codex has a lot of options. Overall, I quite like it.

Am I the only one that feels the current edition is terribly bland? It comes to the point where regardless of what your list is, people will always say 'Where's your meltas? Plasmas? Don't put flamers in Vets! Heavy Bolters are fail! All you need is Autocannons!' or that old chestnut 'Where's your Manticore? Vendettas and Valkyries are all you need!'. Bah... It's so... Flavorless... Characterless

4th Edition was funner. My first Imperial Guard armies were a drop guard regiment and a stalking tigers regiments where the entire army infiltrated, with rockets and heavybolters. Light Infantry and Sharp Shooters and Camo Cloaks were so awsome because you give them to the entire army.

You can't immitate real Guard Regiments anymore. Tanith 1st, Catachan Jungle Fighters, Terax Guard, the Praetorians, Tallarn, Mordian Iron Guard, etc. Instead of awsome doctrines, I get orders and useless Vox Casters.

I'm trying to stave from this post from becoming a complete rant fest, but I just stopped playing Guard and went back to Tau. I'm so bummed out right now...

I loved my Stalking Tigers...

Having played a mechanized Stormtrooper army in the previous codex with Doctrines, my only issue with the new codex in that regard is that what I used to play became too "mainstream"

/hipster IG.

Laughably so, Vaktathi.

I always wanted an entirely mechanized IG list. Now that its easier, and mech-lists became a must, it became mainstream. The only original way to play guard now, it seems, is to play them like classic guard. Ironic, doesn't anyone think?

My IG buddy enjoys blowing up my space marines.

They don't suck. He sometimes drops down shooty blobs. Sometimes I face a crap-ton of tanks. Sometimes he does the melta vets in vendettas.

Our fights are never boring, that's for sure.