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Ok here's my problem, I've got :

-30 IG Guardsmen
-10 Stormtroopers
-1 Hellhound

I've bought :
-1 IG Battleforce
-2 Leman Russ
-1 Leman Russ Demolisher
-1 StormLord

With the battle force I get you know :
- 20 IG Guardsmen
-1 Command Squad
-1 Heavyweapons Squad
-1 Sentinel

So I was thinking should I use the Heavyweapons for boosting my squads or use it a regular Heavyweapons squad?

Put them in your squads, autocannons are definitely the way to go; wounding Marines on twos and popping transports like nothing.

If you 'put all your eggs in one basket' and make dedicated HWS units, you have to fire all of those weapons at one target and you can't fluff them up with normal infantry to soak up wounds. In short, if you put three lascannons in one squad, I am dropping my meanest templates on you and instant death'ing your precious t3 two wound models, and there's nothing you can allocate to stop it

I run a Guard gunline with ACs and you will find that you can deal some serious damage with them and not waste your lasgun shooting; you should, if you have enough units, be able to pop transports before they get into lasgun range...

Heavy weapon squads aren't bad, but their low leadership makes orders a chore, and any S6 weapons will be trained on them as soon as possible. As for the issue of wasting shots because you have so many? I don't see that happening very often. You're only hitting half the time, so on average that's three autocannon hits. Mortar teams are kind of weak in the damage department, but you can hide them behind something (maybe even on an objective!) and blast some dudes with impunity.

I haven't played my guard army too many times yet, but thus far my experience has been that a lascannon HWS is pretty worth it. Deploy it in cover and it's got decent survivability, and the opponent has to either focus weapons on it that could threaten my tanks otherwise or let them rack up the vehicle damage.

I do agree about autocannon teams in infantry squads being awesome, though. My current list uses both integrated ACs and separate lascannons.

I had forgotten about mortars.

I do run a heavy weapon team of three mortars to use in conjunction with Psyker Battle Squads: they use their leadership reduction thingymabob and then the mortars pin the opponent. Rather hilarious to use on Marines

I run my Heavy Weapons Teams in regular squads (platoon and vet):

1. Ability to independent target.
2. Regular Guardsmen Provide "Ablative Shielding" for the HWS.
3. Can hide the rest of the squad behind cover and leave the HWS exposed and still have a cover save.
4. Sergent's higher leadership and the option for vox-casters improve the chance leadership tests for orders will pass.

I'd start with them in your squads. HWSs are better, but until you know what you're doing, they're pretty fragile. Once you've got a bit more experience under your belt, then I'd transition them into HWSs, but until then, I'd start them in the squads. No point in trying to learn one of the glassiest cannon units in the game while you're also learning how to play guard in general.

As for which to take, don't bog yourself down with a choice now.

Take a regular guard model on it's 20mm base and use it as a loader, and then make a gunner and attach it to its own 20mm base. That way, you can swap weapons in and out quickly and cheaply without needing to buy or assemble new stuff.

For example...









With a based 60mm base, a guy as a loader, a guy holding a missile launcher, a guy holding a mortar, a guy holding onto a trigger, a gun chassis, and a painted lascannon, autocannon, and heavy bolter, you can make literally any guard heavy weapons team out of a single heavy weapons box.

Because trust me, if you make the mistake of starting out with only autocannons, and no way to remedy it, you'll regret it both in time and money.

Very nice idea, i like your suggestion. Are the HW carriages scratch built or a different product range?

On my guard ive have only glued the tripod to the base i just swap out the weapon top. The crewman firing is sometimes a little bit back from the weapon. But my loader has a lasrifle on the base so i can double him up as kneeling infantry and run him elsewhere.

brainscan wrote:Very nice idea, i like your suggestion. Are the HW carriages scratch built or a different product range?

I made them myself.

brainscan wrote:On my guard ive have only glued the tripod to the base i just swap out the weapon top. The crewman firing is sometimes a little bit back from the weapon. But my loader has a lasrifle on the base so i can double him up as kneeling infantry and run him elsewhere.

Sure, you could just glue down the tripod. So long as you don't glue down the gunner, you can always scoot him forward or backward depending on the gun used. That, or to change where the gun mount lugs are on the guns themselves.

Ailaros your heavy weapons are great! But I'm more in glue than swapping things so what would you all recommend for heavy weapons ? BTW I usually play against SM and Eldars?

And now than I have experimented IG players what do you think of veterans squads?

Why against gluing?

The problem that you're going to have is that what heavy weapons teams you're going to want is going to depend on

1.) your local meta
2.) what the rest of your list looks like
3.) what the current rulebook says.

In roughly that order. The problem is that all three of things change over time, which means that you're going to wind up constantly wanting to play with different heavy weapons. I, personally, have used every possible heavy weapon over the course of my days. Once I'm done with my current batch of guard upgrades, I'm going to have 3 heavy bolter teams, 9 mortar teams, 6 missile launcher teams, 6 autocannon teams, and 20 lascannon teams. Because of the system I use, all of this is over just 55 models. If I made everything in such a way where I glued everything down, I'd have to do it over 88 models, and it would have cost me an arm and a leg because most of those would be spending $15 for a pair of guys in a heavy weapons team instead of $35 for 10. Not only is it way, way cheaper, both in money and time, but it's also more space-efficient in my army case, which is already bulged to overflowing with all the guys I need.

If you insist on gluing, I'd first scope out your local meta and see how many of what kind of mech lists there are. If there's a lot of mech, then your heavy weapons should probably be tailored to handle that. If there's more than one guard player, or players who like bringing monstrous creatures or other heavier vehicles like dreadnoughts, predetors, or land raiders, then your best bet is to make up lascannons, as they can handle most of the targets in the game without too much bother. If you notice at least one eldar player of either stripe, or a mech ork player, you may want to consider missile launchers or autocannons (depending on what the rest of your list looks like). Currently, mortars and heavy bolters aren't really all that much worth taking. They were in 4th ed, though, so they may be again in 6th, we'll just have to see.

As for vets, they trade in half of their durability to take more defensive weapons (short-range weapons) and close combat, which means the trick is getting them to survive until they can deliver their payload. For a vast majority of players, this means giving them a ride in a chimera (or to a lesser extent, a vendetta), as they have survivability issues outside of transports. They can still be used as a support unit in foot lists, though, like a better, more expensive SWS, but once again, it depends on what the rest of your list looks like.

I wish that I'd made my crewmembers detachable; thataway I could represent wounds...

I use a total of 5 HWS in my tournament list (3*3 autocannons, 3 lascannons, 3 Missile Launchers)
And I allways keep 1 CCS near 3 of those HWS to issue out orders and the other CCS that follows my veterans around is keep near the 2 other at the start of the game to give them some quick orders before driving of into the fight.

And as people say the often draw alot of fire (thou my 2 demolishers get the heaviest toll).
Sadly I must add that in Sweden we use comp so can't really take my list or tactic as a 100% valid choice since comp weakens the lists you use.