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So, I've been thinking it is going to be a pretty steep, uphill battle when I finally meet necrons on the fields.

In assault, guard don't win rounds of combat against much of anyone, necrons have a decent change of outlasting the large blob squads unless the guard manage a lucky round, win combat, and sweep
Scarabs pose a problem for blobs, needing sentinals, small squad of ogryns, or similiar to help them out or the tarpit will be tarpitted,
C'tan are straight up invulnerable to S3 fire

in shooting, stacks of autocannons aren't very useful until quantum sheilding goes down
necrons seem to be almost as survivable, and bring better guns to the table than mass lasguns can handle
Many units are T5, making life difficult for S3 to make a dent
S5 guns wound on a 2+, even with cover those aren't great odds to not take severe casualties, it isnt like fighting GK where you have only a few models to deal with and can reduce effective firepower greatly before its in range

It seems like a very uphill battle, the usual war of attrition via shooting and cc both seem to be losing fights

IG got a lot more than just autocannons. They have so many different vehicles to choose from. a squadron of 6 vendettas has what, 18 twin liked las cannons? Tell me how effective quantum shielding is going to be against that? And 6 vendettas cost what, 700 to 750 points?

IG can easily be far more shooty than Necrons.

However this topic is about infantry guard, thank you.

I think if you hamstring the IG player to only taking a small portion of their codex, and stack them up versus 100% of any codex, they will struggle.

Foot IG can have dozens of las cannons, and with no s6 reliable shooting from crons their heavy weapons are fairly safe.

Whats more, if you want to talk about outlasting, what about conscripts with 'send in the next wave?' A recycling 50 man squad is pretty nasty. In addition, most foot IG lists run Al Raheem and Straken for close combat blobs. Thus, while you are s3 normally, you are s4 on the charge and get the benefit of fleet more or less.

Conscripts are terrible.

Though Straken and Al'rahem help foot guard, I think Grundz is right. Not to see that by playing foot guard you auto-lose to Necrons, but it certainly looks that way. Factor in the inevitable night fighting for a few turns and even guard heavy weapons will have a hard time seeing the enemy, let alone hit them.

I don't really have any answers for how to make foot guard viable against Necrons. Power weapons, meltaguns, and a lot of heavy weapons will still hurt Necrons, its just a matter of ensuring the killy 'cron units die before they hit your lines and tear through with relative impunity.

Makes you wish sergeants and commissars could take powerfists in infantry squads.

Blacksails wrote:Conscripts are terrible.

Makes you wish sergeants and commissars could take powerfists in infantry squads.

Yeah, I'm hoping the new guard codex when it comes out in a few years let you play around with infantry a bit more, I'm pretty happy with the forgeworld alt armies for IG,
The usual advantages of infantry guard (denying the opponent the use of anti tank weaponry and resiliance) seem to be totally moot against necrons who can gauss through armor with reasonably good anti infantry weapons.
I totally forgot about night fighting, ugh, and I don't think there's a way to get searchlights or similiar onto infantry, i'll investigate further but pretty sure i'm sunk there.
Another idea I had was to run detpack SWS or vet squads to dissuade the necs from closing into 12" rapid fire range.

With a DKoK list, I'd just bring 9000 powerfists and melta gun blobs backed up by a plethora of heavy weapon squads, a quartermaster for FnP, and an engineer squad for Hades shenanigans.

/dreaming

Night fighting certainly poses a problem I have no solution for, other than bringing vehicles, but then we're talking hybrid lists.

Maybe Ogryn to help with the high toughness guys? Not a lot in the 'Cron codex that poses a significant threat to them, and they work in a foot list with a Lord Commissar for the leadership boost.

Truthfully, haven't played them yet and I likely won't for the foreseeable future. I'd have to play a few games against them to see how bad it really is.

I'm thinking scout sents are just what the doctor ordered
They break from the "no armor" rule sort of, but are cheap and weak enough to justify buying anyway.
with seachlights and autocannons they can outflank av13 transports, spot through nightfighting and/or tarpit scarabs for a turn or two while they knaw through one per combat phase or so (I can assign the av minuses to one sent right?)

Unfortunately they are only s5 in close combat so they can't ID scarabs.

Yeah but who plays foot Guard these days?

It's an unfair match up against an opponent you'll likely never face.

It's like claiming an Abrams would beat a Brachiosaurus.

Miraclefish wrote:Yeah but who plays foot Guard these days?

I know of 3 people including myself on these forums that do, it is actually a very strong list if you can play quickly enough for a tourney setting where many people will be unprepared.

Miraclefish wrote:Yeah but who plays foot Guard these days?

It's an unfair match up against an opponent you'll likely never face.

It's like claiming an Abrams would beat a Brachiosaurus.

I play foot guard. It is not only a blast to play, but will surprise a number of opponents who expect IG to be 15 tanks. It won't win 'Ard Boyz, but a number of people have done quite well at large tournaments with a foot list.

Grundz, I like the sentinel idea. Heavy flamers are nice against scarabs due to the swarms rule. Autocannons against 'crons won't be as good due to the AV13, but lascannons still work fine. Would give me an excuse to actually field them too, such great models.

Auto cannons will do wonders against scarabs and the like. I wouldn't dismiss them but I would bring some lascannons too. Necrons have a few assaulty units that could handle ogryn (like lychguard). It will be an uphill battle but just keep shooting you can put an awful lot of shots out at one time.

Blacksails wrote:I play foot guard. It is not only a blast to play, but will surprise a number of opponents who expect IG to be 15 tanks. It won't win 'Ard Boyz, but a number of people have done quite well at large tournaments with a foot list.

It could easily have won Ard Boyz last year, and nearly did. It's an excellent list. Low KP, tons of resilency, and a great foil to a number of other lists out there. Purifiers have hurt it a bit, alas, and now Scarabs aren't too nice either.

I play foot guard myself and it's more of a challenge then mech as you don't have the choice of changing your mind instantly of what path you go down. But I just hope I don't end up vs'ing necrons in the tournament i'm going in in January.

You could always build in a vehicle or two and just deploy/move them very defensively. A hellhound or two, or a Collosus or two, can ruin Scarabs' day very quickly.

plasma vets and blobs and melta vets and blobs seem to be the best answer to T5 plasma blobs and autocannons

Blacksails wrote:
Grundz, I like the sentinel idea. Heavy flamers are nice against scarabs due to the swarms rule. Autocannons against 'crons won't be as good due to the AV13, but lascannons still work fine. Would give me an excuse to actually field them too, such great models.

Flamers aren't useful, since scarabs have a very long assault distance the only way you'll get to use them is if a squad gets wiped and the scarabs are stuck out in the open
Forcing scarabs to grind through 23 points of armor per squad of walkers seems like an effective tarpit though!

though, More than a few opponents have been shocked when ive taken a wound on the commisar on purpose, let him die, let them sweep the blob, and absolutely destroyed their big bad assault unit with 300+ lasguns on my turn

When you say foot guard, is it that you hate tanks in general?
high strength pie plates do really mean things to a phalanx just as they do everyone. I guess marbo or other special deployed detonation charges can do that without tanks.

I guess the lack of transports / target saturation is the real problem. A lot of the easy shift fixes are more cumbersome for you.
Anything in the hellhound family is pretty great at that. Necron troops tend to be very dedicated to anti infantry shooting, it's somewhat unpleasant buying them excessive amounts of special weapons, so you will generally find poor distributions of the utility fire (or it was paid for through the teeth.) That often makes openings for cute tactics with flame templates that find themselves in the mid field fairly early in. Flame templates are also somewhat immune to the standard nightfighting trickery usually employed. Just watch out for those scarabs. Try not to let them hit you before you get a gout or two on them.

Sadly, Vehicles are IG's only really effective mobility, aside from reserve stuff. So maybe you are stuck with a gunline. Though I assume you love your army for it's gunline.

It really boils down to the fact that necron troops and transports are very decidedly pigeon hole'd at being very good at getting into mid ranged gunfights with infantry. You happen to be the awkwardly specific thing they were made to do, so it's kind of like letting the baby have it's bottle.. Maybe if you had some way to disrupt the whole, mid range aspect of that... I'm no guard player, but it looks like there isn't much to do about that without mobility.

I keep forgetting scarabs are beasts and have that 12" assault move .

Sentinels should do nicely.

Grundz wrote:So, I've been thinking it is going to be a pretty steep, uphill battle when I finally meet necrons on the fields.

In assault, guard don't win rounds of combat against much of anyone, necrons have a decent change of outlasting the large blob squads unless the guard manage a lucky round, win combat, and sweep
Scarabs pose a problem for blobs, needing sentinals, small squad of ogryns, or similiar to help them out or the tarpit will be tarpitted,
C'tan are straight up invulnerable to S3 fire

in shooting, stacks of autocannons aren't very useful until quantum sheilding goes down
necrons seem to be almost as survivable, and bring better guns to the table than mass lasguns can handle
Many units are T5, making life difficult for S3 to make a dent
S5 guns wound on a 2+, even with cover those aren't great odds to not take severe casualties, it isnt like fighting GK where you have only a few models to deal with and can reduce effective firepower greatly before its in range

It seems like a very uphill battle, the usual war of attrition via shooting and cc both seem to be losing fights

In assault, a Guard power blob can be surprisingly resilient against most units in conjunction with Comissars and Priests. Scarabs will just bog them down until they're enevitably destroyed by turn three or four. Normally, enemy squads with higher initiative can usually pick out the Priest and kill him to deny the blobs hit re-rolls, but Necrons are terrible in close combat.

The best way to cripple a Guard Foot list is killing its Command structure. Without orders and a sufficient source of Meltas, Infantry Platoons are slow moving, sitting ducks. And without the Company Command Squad to give the more beneficial orders to Heavy Weapon Teams, there's little the blobs can do outside of close combat, not to mention not being able to order Get Back In the Fight!. If the Imperial Guard do bring tanks, the better, because it denies the extra Troops for holding objectives.

Remember, Scarabs roll to hit, then reduce armor, THEN to pen. They dont have to reduce to zero to destroy the sentinel and in fact far from it. They will start wrecking them fairly quickly.

I don't necessarily hate tanks, its just that without armor saturation i find them unreliably, though I am really considering taking a tank or two to outflank with creed under most situations since I usually don't use it.

The advantage of foot guard is most players bring a huge amount of anti tank, all of which is wasted points, so you are usually running a pretty heavy point advantage against many armies, grey knights psycannon spam is rough, necrons seem insurmountable. I haven't had too many issues with purifiers, since most players see foot guard and go MSU, I return the favor by putting 30+ killpoints on the table as long as the game isnt KP. I lose order effectiveness but it is pretty loltastic when the player is roadblocked by gone-to ground 2+ armor save 10 man squads for the entire game, that he wipes every turn and then eats another 300 lasguns. Its not perfect, but it beats the usual multi-assault shananagins that purifiers try to pull.

Also, you are right, elminiating command structure is a good way of reducing the armies effectiveness. If I managed to lose all 5-6 command units my shooting would suffer a straight-up 25%ish loss in effectiveness, it is very key to hide them well behind cover or out of LOS behind a wall of bodies.

Mannahnin wrote:You could always build in a vehicle or two and just deploy/move them very defensively. A hellhound or two, or a Collosus or two, can ruin Scarabs' day very quickly.

Iron Hand Straken and a few large blob Squad will laugh a Scarab farm off the table, though. Any army that can launch a nasty enough counter charge has a pretty fair chance of beating that list.

I completely disagree that foot guard is dead in the face of the Necrons.

A few weeks ago, beat the tar out of my buddy's 'Crons with foot guard, (Ok, I had... 2 Chimeras that came in off the board edge and parked.).

Trazan and his Lichguard ran into a powerblob platoon and played no further part in the fight. This battle eventually engulfed some Immortals who couldn't tip the scale either.

My "useless" conscripts wasted a big unit of scarabs with FRFSRF, and performed a great job of area denial, keeping a squad of destroyers with a D lord and whatever their jump infantry is called at bay for the rest of the game.

BS2, S3, it doesn't matter. After he got a taste of 150 shots from that squad, he wanted nothing to do with it.

Remember kids, psychology is important, and when you roll a bucket of dice that covers the table and can do it every turn, your "useless" unit becomes one helluva roadblock.

His Annihilation barges were blown up by my HWS lascannons, and the Monolith lasted about a turn longer before going up in smoke. The flayed ones it spat out before dying got lit up by a command section and a few squads with flamers.

I understand the synergy of the guard army pretty darn well, especially since I take a lot of units that are fluffy but "uncompetitive."

One thing I noticed is that taking HWT's in my blob platoon nerfed Trazan's ability to zap all the same kind of models. He was repeatedly frustrated that he wasn't frying hordes of guard each turn as my stalwart HWT's were smacked around by Trazan, but keeping the unit safe.

Properly done, foot guard are amazing. Entropic Strike LOLWUT? Oh, noes! Instead of a 5+, I have a 6+ on a 6pt model? Ok, eat that squad, then eat flamer.

I need to run some stormies next time I play just for extra lulz.

"Remember kids.." are you trying to make friends? This was a interesting and civil discussion. It's be nice to see it stay that way.

Draigo, I apologize.

That is just a phrase I use in common conversation, it wasn't meant to be demeaning, or insinuate any age, intelligence level, or maturity difference between myself and anyone who might read my post.

That being said, I'm not here to make friends, hook up, or play farmville. I'll go to facebook if those are the diversions I seek.

I was merely expressing my views on the situation based on my personal experience. I did not in any way intend to insult anyone who is/feels young, especially since we are on a forum where we openly discuss playing with plastic/pewter/resin/yougetthepoint men.

I have done so for years, and will continue to do so as long as I can.

I would also humbly submit that the thread on flamers posted here was far more... shall I say "inflammatory" than my post, but standards vary in everyone's eyes.

Either way, from my personal experience, foot Guard can be very effective, even against the new books. Look at Nob Bikers. Psyfleman spam. Mephiston. DC in a StormRaven with a DC dread. All supposedly overpowered and game breaking, yet now they are regarded as old tricks that most opponents can easily work around.

Newcrons are nothing special, no race or book really is. Sure some things seem overpowered/costed or what have you, but if the game was so fundamentally broken by such units, none of us would play.

kustom wrote:I completely disagree that foot guard is dead in the face of the Necrons.

A few weeks ago, beat the tar out of my buddy's 'Crons with foot guard, (Ok, I had... 2 Chimeras that came in off the board edge and parked.).

Trazan and his Lichguard ran into a powerblob platoon and played no further part in the fight. This battle eventually engulfed some Immortals who couldn't tip the scale either.

My "useless" conscripts wasted a big unit of scarabs with FRFSRF, and performed a great job of area denial, keeping a squad of destroyers with a D lord and whatever their jump infantry is called at bay for the rest of the game.

BS2, S3, it doesn't matter. After he got a taste of 150 shots from that squad, he wanted nothing to do with it.

Remember kids, psychology is important, and when you roll a bucket of dice that covers the table and can do it every turn, your "useless" unit becomes one helluva roadblock.

His Annihilation barges were blown up by my HWS lascannons, and the Monolith lasted about a turn longer before going up in smoke. The flayed ones t spat out before dying got lit up by a command section and a few squads with flamers.

I understand the synergy of the guard army pretty darn well, especially since I take a lot of units that are fluffy but "uncompetitive."

One thing I noticed is that taking HWT's in my blob platoon nerfed Trazan's ability to zap all the same kind of models. He was repeatedly frustrated that he wasn't frying hordes of guard each turn as my stalwart HWT's were smacked around by Trazan, but keeping the unit safe.

Properly done, foot guard are amazing. Entropic Strike LOLWUT? Oh, noes! Instead of a 5+, I have a 6+ on a 6pt model? Ok, eat that squad, then eat flamer.

I need to run some stormies next time I play just for extra lulz.

Well, now that you've successfully stomped the worst models and/or combinations in the codex, let us know how you do vs the better ones

Foot Guard? Sounds tasty for my Wraiths.

King Pariah wrote:Foot Guard? Sounds tasty for my Wraiths.

While wraiths will rack up some major casualties, they don't seem to be that much of a threat.

If you pile in all your wraiths on one blob, i'll sac the blob and shoot them up next round, one blob should be able to war-of-attrition single units down with weight of attacks over a turn or two, I'm not afraid of wraiths too much. But yeah, they will really rack up some dead guardsmen

conscripts are still bad IMHO, if you want to run your foot guard as a gunline you can keep getting back in the fight and assaulting, but eventually that unit is going to get swept. for 1 more pt a model you get 1 more bs with infantry platoon, much better IMHO.

The issues I have are primarily with immortal/warrior spam (which is viable it seems) bringing the thunder down /and/ seemingly being more resiliant per-point than guardsmen in cover, which is somewhat horrifying.

Grundz wrote:The issues I have are primarily with immortal/warrior spam (which is viable it seems) bringing the thunder down /and/ seemingly being more resiliant per-point than guardsmen in cover, which is somewhat horrifying.

And Scarabs w/ Tomb Spiders. Unless you give your blobs power fists, you're going to be in a long, losing fight.