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Hi Dakka!

Im playing a Guardsman tonight, and (having never played them) was wondering what general tactics to take. I'll be playing Space Marines.

I dont know this fella's list, but he has said he uses Sentinals alot (whether thats always takes a sentinel, or uses alot of them, im not sure).

So, having not seen his army, or aware of his list. What general tactics should i adopt to ensure i go down kicking. (Im almost certain im going to lose )

Thanks

Assault assault assault, IG are squishy.

What type of marines are you running?

Basically, i have a Vulkan list. Im not 100% hot on melta, i have sacraficed some melta for ranged ML and a Pred. But i should be alright for assault. Got my transports and TH/SS Termies.

Thunderfire Cannons sound to be an Awesome asset for you. I bring one everytime I play vs Guard. the cover ignoring blasts, and the Str 6 blasts chew through Sentinels and Guardsman alike. Even side armour transports.

Multi-melta + heavy Flamer armed Speeders also work wonders both vs Transport/tanks/sentinels and versus hordes of Guardsmen.

Deploy Aggressively, guard are typically a large and unweildy force, the less space he has the better.

TH/SS termies arent as good an investment vs Guard imho. They dont throw out enough attacks to chew through massive guard squads quickly, and guard will always escape you since despite winning every assault, termies cant sweeping advance, and due to their low numbers, massive squads that don't break will bog down Termies forever.

Tac marines and Assault marines are more effective vs guard I think.

Bolters are your friend, guardsmen don't get an armour save against them and they wound on a 3+. Massed bolter fire seriously hurts guardsmen and can even hurt regular sentinels.

There are really two flavors of guard that you need to watch out for. Mechanized- featuring a ton of chimera, or Foot- featuring a ton of infantry- expect anywhere from 80-100 bodies at 1500 points.

Infantry guard tend to be in a power blob configuration. You should know that Power blobs will eat your space marines in close combat. We are talking about 2-3 infantry squads grouped together, each with a sargent with a power weapon upgrade. One of the squads has a commissar with a power weapon. Essentially this means a bunch of hidden power weapons with tons and tons of albative wounds. You'll win combat every time but they will almost never break away since the commissar gives them ld9 and stubborn... and they must re roll it. 12 power weapon attacks per turn will wittle down even your terminators. So be weary of that. flamers are your friend since you don't want huge blobs getting a 4+ cover save.

The other extreme is mechanized. Here we are probably talking about 5 or 6 squads of veterans in Chimera or Vendettas all with either triple plasma or triple melta. Vulcan lists should have an easier time with this due to the bonuses to melta, but you are going to be outnumbered and heavily out gunned. This is considered the most competitive build currently.

A few more general things to watch out for:


1) Vendettas are terrifying, if guard has first turn they can use a scout move to quickly deploy Veterans to melta something almost anywhere on the board. If you run a land raider, guard can blow it up in your deployment zone with vendetta alpha strike. Generally if guard has first turn and you deploy- expect to lose a vehicle of guard's choice for every vendetta they have on the field.

2) Most guard lists are going to be backed up by artillery and other heavy support. Manticores are the scariest of the lot. We are talking about d3 strength 10 large blasts per turn. Of course you'll still get armor saves, but this can be absolute murder for your tanks. Do not clump your tanks together against Manticores...

3) Leman Rus Executioners are also scary for Space Marines, essentially being able to throw down 5 plasma cannon shots per shooting phase from an av14 front armor. However Vulcan lists should have no problem meltaing it to death.

Guard are always a tough match up but theres some general things you can do. Scouts work pretty well against them or really anything that can quickly close with their tanks and launch an assault. Space Marines can counter alpha strike guard with either LSS with scouts, or Scout bikers, and get a first turn charge with krak grenades against a huge number of tanks- potentially crippling the guard from the word go. Most guard lists are also going to have trouble with Deep Striking. That way you can close the gap between you without giving him a chance to shoot you as you approach. Try to focus on a flank of his and destroy it, guard are not nearly as good as space marines at redeploying, and as soon as you've forced him to do that hes playing your game and you have the advantage.

I don't actually play space marines so take all of this with a grain of salt, but I've started playing with guard, and these are some things I've noticed.

Karnac wrote:Thunderfire Cannons sound to be an Awesome asset for you. I bring one everytime I play vs Guard. the cover ignoring blasts, and the Str 6 blasts chew through Sentinels and Guardsman alike. Even side armour transports.

Multi-melta + heavy Flamer armed Speeders also work wonders both vs Transport/tanks/sentinels and versus hordes of Guardsmen.

Deploy Aggressively, guard are typically a large and unweildy force, the less space he has the better.

TH/SS termies arent as good an investment vs Guard imho. They dont throw out enough attacks to chew through massive guard squads quickly, and guard will always escape you since despite winning every assault, termies cant sweeping advance, and due to their low numbers, massive squads that don't break will bog down Termies forever.

Tac marines and Assault marines are more effective vs guard I think.

One thing I live by: don't tailor your list to your opponent. You'rbe better off with making a strong list and knowing the ins and outs of it and honing your tactics towards other armies rather than taking different units or options to fight them. Sadly that's all I can offer cause I also don't have much experience with Guard.

I appreciate everything said here.

I have a question, im gonna be playing IG in like an hour and a half, so any response is appreciated.

@Akaean. You say Guard have a problem with Deep Striking units. Well, as i goes, i have 8 Sternguard & Vulkan in a drop pod and TH/SS termies in a LRC. If i deploy the LRC as normal with the Termies in reserve to DS, Now 5 Terminators with 2+ armour saves, 3+ invuln on turn 2 (hopefully) and 8 Sternguard with Vulkan on turn one will really crank up the pressure, which would hopefully take some of the heat of my progressing army.
Generally, would it be advised to DS the termies. 3+ invuln will help against Special Weapons (which the guard has lots of) but i will still be sitting there for a turn.

Or should i just keep them in the LRC?

Deep strike nothing.... Drop the pod in to cork a fire lane empty.... Other wise you are going to make it remarkably easy on him as he will just shoot vulcan and his bros down turn 1 and the gunless termies turn two.... Never go at guard piece meal it's all or nothing.

A drop pod assault would work if you had the dreads ( at least three in pods) and then tac pods but the one is just an appetiser for him....


I play mech IG, and my bro plays foot IG so trust me.... If he is foot, use a denied flank and take advantage of one side. If he is mech you need to deal with his vendettas first and his chimeras second. Once vets are no longer mobile they are much less of a threat...

Thanks for the help guys, i won! something like 9 - 2 on kill points lol.

My Sternguard in a pod wrecked 1 of his Fast Attack tanks (hell hound? Devil Dog? i dont know ), and blew one weapon of the other. My remaining scout sergeant blew up 2 of a 3 vehicle sentinel squad with grenades. And i generally beat the guardsment down

Thanks for the advise all

One thing you'll want to know, if you end movement within 12" of a powerblob, you may as well kiss that unit good bye.

Foot guard has access to a system called Orders that lets our seemingly wimpy little guardsmen pull off all kinds of shenanigans. FRFSRF can let each guardsman pull off 3 shots apiece at rapid fire range (a typical 30 man blob will put out 72 lasgun shots in one FRFSRF, and thats not counting pistols and our special weapons, there are marine players at my group that have lost entire terminator units to a single volley of it) Creed and Straken can give us Furious Charge, where our guardsmen will hit in CC with 4 Init/Strength (the same as your space marines), meaning it'll eat marines alive. We also have "Bring it down" which lets guardsmen fire ALL their weapons in a unit as twin linked against monstrous creatures/vehicles. "Fire on my target" lets us ignore cover saves, and "Incoming!" gives us a souped up cover save (all the way up to a 2+ if they're already in cover) and "Get back in the fight" lets us fire the next turn as though nothing happened.

However, we have to have good LD in the units getting the orders in order for it to succeed. Heavy weapon teams have low LD, so they're not as big of an issue, but his blobs will have LD 9, so they'll pass almost always. If you have a way to hurt the LD on his most important units, you can cripple his army, so remember that. Another little thing, blobs tend to back melta bombs, so be careful about sending dreads into the blobs, less you get a nasty surprise.

Bear in mind this is all for foot guard, I can't provide any advice for Mech. Good luck.

Nice win and good work.

What was his list like? You said hellhound variants, what else did he have with him?

And kp's is the best option going up against guards, typical list bring 15-20 for 2k if not more.

@ UMGuy. He had 2 squads of 3 sentinels. 1 with multilasers, and the other squad with lascannons. They both outflanked. I remained central in my deployment and managed to counter them with 2 HF + MM LS, and a squad of scouts

He also had a Lemun Russ exterminator? S6 large pie plate.

a squad of 2 fast attack choices. Not sure which ones, hellhound and something.

And 5 Chimeras. 2 with vets, 1 Platoon command squad, 2 infantry squads. (I think, they all looked the same ). 2 Squads of 5 ratlings with snipers.

His army was part of a tournament army. He said he was doing Cities of Death with 5 other people in the club and they each brought specific pieces of a guard army, so his might not have been best.

Generally, he played way to defensivly. I had my infantry in transport, and he spent all game trying to get rending with his snipers to get my guys out of the transport. Other than that, as soon as his hellhound squad fell, it was somewhat downhill for him.

Yeah, the walkers, hellhounds and Eradicator (the tank with the str6 large blast) are all tooled for cityfight. The eradicator and hellhound ignore cover, which makes them good in ruins, but they're only AP4, so not so much against marines.

Ratlings also routinely get 2+ cover in cityfight, but aren't as useful in a non-cityfight game.

He probably should have put his sentinels on the table and had them use the chimeras for cover.

Basic tips.

Vendettas are a high priority target, especially in objective based games.

Don't shoot the front armor of a chimers. The side armor is 10.

Plan ahead for what will come out of a chimera. Wrecking one with krak grenades is good, being clustered around the wreck with a demo charge is bad.

Hide in cc by multiassaulting. Assault a chimera and guardsmen at the same time, then only direct one attack into the guardsmen. With any luck cc goes 2 rounds, then dump all attacks into guardsmen on round 2.

One note on infantry guard:
the enemy of infantry guard is force concentration, yes, they are nasty, have a ton of power weapon attacks and ablative wounds.
but they will take a few turns to grind down the enemy, if you dont give them that, either by assaulting with a ton of marines at once, or whittling down the unit first, they can have great difficulties.
They are a unit that can whittle down even paladins over the course of several turns, the trick is the several turns part, against an overwhelming force they quickly die.

I play IG. When facing SM of any variety, I try and see what you have your squads and other units set up with. The armored sentinel is great to tar pit any of your units if there are no power fists or thunder hammers. You need to be able to take on AV 12 without issue.

Thunderfire cannons are the thing I fear the most when it is fielded, so, it is top on the priority list to get off the board.