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I've decided that instead of getting back to the game with space marines, I'd get back in with guard, seeing as I've ran them before. Are mostly-foot troop based armies viable as a somewhat competitive army with guard?

Of course, Ailaros will explain to you in due time that Infantry Blob guard are nigh unstoppable, and that usually proves true.

As long as you hide enough plasma and melta in there, and a commissar here and there, Imperial Guardsmen are very hard to dislodge from a fortified positon.

Glad to see another player tired of playing the game on "Easy!"

Command Squads can have up to 4 special weapons, which I have been told should all be the same (i.e. all Plasma or all Flamer).

My recommendation: get you some neodymium magnets and a pin vice, and magnetize your special weapon carriers! For Guard, you'll want to mount something around 1/8" in the torso, and something smaller in the arms.

You're not going to be taking 1st place at Adepticon any time soon, but I'd say foot IG can still make some mean lists when played correctly. I played a tourney today, and even though literally every mission had killpoints, and 2 out of 3 had a horde opponent (meaning I only got to finish one game) I still did very well I felt, and I took a bunch of silly stuff like penal legion. Tabled a Grey knight guy and beat him on a killpoints mission of all things, so the potential is definitely there.

That said, it very much feels like playing the game on "hard mode". Foot IG is in no way an easy win army. You have to know your abilities inside and out, and make every guardsman count. We're still nailing down the best way to go about it, but the general consensus seems to be you need tons of scrubs on the table turn 1, and then a bunch of support units appearing in the back half via deepstrike/outflank, especially if you're going 100% infantry. I usually run a few leman russes, which work well with infantry, but other than that, most vehicles will be dead weight in your list. Without any armor saturation, the few pieces you take tend to get focused down. Russes fix this problem, but stuff like artillery dies far too fast for me.

Read the Ig threads, as stuff tends to pop up quite a bit about foot and hybrid guard lists on here. We had a great thread on send in the next wave conscripts a few days ago. Should be within the last couple of pages. General advice I'd give is take lots of heavy weapons, special weapons, support units (stormtroopers, marbo, etc) and get an aegis defence line. I made good use today of keeping it for a firebase, and then charging out of it turn 2 or 3 to take the midfield after the deepstrikers had shown up.

Basically I run what MrMoustaffa mentioned above, a gunline behind an aegis defence line with russes, and then support units like Vendettas, stormtroopers and marbo in reserves. Basically when the reserve units come in turn 2 then my tanks and a platoon designed for running out bubble wraps them and they charge forward to assist the reserves. The battle field gets very crazy at that point because my army is full of crazy suicidal plans for my troops but when the plans go through my opponent never knows what hit him!

tankboy145 wrote:
Basically I run what MrMoustaffa mentioned above, a gunline behind an aegis defence line with russes, and then support units like Vendettas, stormtroopers and marbo in reserves. Basically when the reserve units come in turn 2 then my tanks and a platoon designed for running out bubble wraps them and they charge forward to assist the reserves. The battle field gets very crazy at that point because my army is full of crazy suicidal plans for my troops but when the plans go through my opponent never knows what hit him!

Gotta admit, when I pulled it off today, it looks absolutely badass. You feel like Creed almost. Seeing units hitting the opponent from literally every angle has an undeniable appeal to it.

Which is what makes me keep playing foot IG. Yes, it's difficult to run. Yes, it's got a horribly steep learning curve. But once you start learning the tricks to running it, it's probably one of the most rewarding armies to run. Knowing that you beat a crazy list with nothing but guardsmen never gets old

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
You're not going to be taking 1st place at Adepticon any time soon, but I'd say foot IG can still make some mean lists when played correctly. I played a tourney today, and even though literally every mission had killpoints, and 2 out of 3 had a horde opponent (meaning I only got to finish one game) I still did very well I felt, and I took a bunch of silly stuff like penal legion. Tabled a Grey knight guy and beat him on a killpoints mission of all things, so the potential is definitely there.

That said, it very much feels like playing the game on "hard mode". Foot IG is in no way an easy win army. You have to know your abilities inside and out, and make every guardsman count. We're still nailing down the best way to go about it, but the general consensus seems to be you need tons of scrubs on the table turn 1, and then a bunch of support units appearing in the back half via deepstrike/outflank, especially if you're going 100% infantry. I usually run a few leman russes, which work well with infantry, but other than that, most vehicles will be dead weight in your list. Without any armor saturation, the few pieces you take tend to get focused down. Russes fix this problem, but stuff like artillery dies far too fast for me.

Read the Ig threads, as stuff tends to pop up quite a bit about foot and hybrid guard lists on here. We had a great thread on send in the next wave conscripts a few days ago. Should be within the last couple of pages. General advice I'd give is take lots of heavy weapons, special weapons, support units (stormtroopers, marbo, etc) and get an aegis defence line. I made good use today of keeping it for a firebase, and then charging out of it turn 2 or 3 to take the midfield after the deepstrikers had shown up.

Don't tell me what I can't do!

I play a more "hybrid" guard army with lots of tanks and foot dudes. There is no definitive list for footguard right now. Some people, like Ailaros , run lots of 5+ save dudes in platoons and stormtroopers with artilery, while I run foot vets in carapace armor, PBS and Battle Tanks. The choices are all over the map for ground ponders and it is really up to your play style on how you build foot guard. And yes, they are a competitive choice as long as you put some thought into them, but you need to know that foot guard is one of the most difficult armies to play. One wrong move and you lose.

Also, foot guard have 4 phases in the game: Movement, Orders, Shooting and Assault.

Yeah, foot guard was awesome in 5th. I considered it to be equal in power to mech guard lists, even in the day of the dreaded leafblower. Times have certainly changed now, though.

As Moustaffa said, we're still working it out. My biggest successes so far have been with send in the next wave! conscripts to create a zone of permanent scoring units and then relied on more stormtroopers than you'd ever seriously consider fielding to open up a second front upfield. The only trick with this is getting the stormies to score, by, say, bringing some harker vets or something in along with them. Haven't quite figured that out, yet.

In any case, foot guard is hard right now. Of course, like assembling and painting a foot guard army, the best things in life take work.

Honestly, I think foot guard will get its strength from the mass of 4+ saves they can flood the board with. 30 storm troopers is nothing to sneeze at. The only problem there is that your hard counter is daemons, who don't care about your numbers or saves.

 Happygrunt wrote:
Honestly, I think foot guard will get its strength from the mass of 4+ saves they can flood the board with. 30 storm troopers is nothing to sneeze at. The only problem there is that your hard counter is daemons, who don't care about your numbers or saves.

yeah my very first game I tried duravets was against daemons. I got slaughtered. It's probably why I don't really like to bring them anymore

Even when I bring 2-3russes and 1 or 2 hellhounds and 5 chimeras onto the board, I never leave home without almost 100 infantry. A full platoon of 5 squads with heavy bolters and flamers/grenade launchers is only 375 including their similarly armed platoon command squad. That fits neetly into any army and throws so many dice that they tend to be the swing factor in many games. I'm also loving 2 10 strong stormtroopers in chimeras. Give them scouts and drive them up before the game even starts to dictate to your opponant how the battle will play out. The old blob guard style is dead, but blobs can be reworked to play nicely in 6th. Foot heavy guard is a very rewarding style that is super fun to play.