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Hi all,
I've been looking through my IG codex recently trying to piece together a list for 6th ed, and Al' Rahem has caught my eye, and I've been playing with the idea of using him ever since.
I'm wondering wether on not he is effective at the 1500pts level, and am also looking for ideas about the loadout ect for his platoon & wether or not his platoon needs to be supported.
I plan on making a semi-Mech that will be used semi-competitively and play against a range of opponents

any help will be appreciated,
Thanks, Orik

You can outflank a platoon. An ENTIRE platoon. That is one hell of a lot of bodies, or chimeras, if you wanted to roll that way.
That squad can get expensive fast though, and you need an astropath to make sure you get the side needed. With a decent mix of special/heavy weapons, you should be ok as far as needing support, just dont send em into a deathstar and expect results. A big foot blob could be used to tie up things, and a lot of lasgun fire does add up(FRFSRF!). Also, getting 5-6 chimeras in your opponents backfield is cause for alarm.

Like the wind is a nice order, as it gives movement+dakka without movement penalty.

Using al'rahem also upps your chances of linebreaker, if the squad is big enough somebody might survive long enough in the backfield.

I have only fought him a couple of times. One time, the whole idea whiffed(came in on wrong side, ate pie plates) and the other they wrecked absolute havoc.

Wow, that sounds kinda mean. Wonder why I've never heard of guys using him before?

Al Rahem is as good as the blob that goes with him. Foot guard in 5th was struggling, and in 6th is flat-out dead. You might get a game where your opponent forgets about him, and you manage to get off a couple of decent orders when he arrives if your opponent was sloppy with placement, but I wouldn't bank on it.

You could have a tonne of outflanking chimeras of course, but then it becomes very expensive and not that good.

He's fun, that's for sure.

Al'rahem's biggest advantage is that he turns one battle into two battles. Your opponent now has to deal with guardsmen on half of the board, rather than just 1/4 of it.

The problem is that you can only gamble on this by splitting your own force in half, in an army that already has force concentration problems. If your opponent just ignores al'rahem and focuses on beating up the stuff you had starting on the board, then all you've managed to do is make it so that your opponent can kill off your army piecemeal, rather than having to deal with all of it at once. If anything, your opponents should thank you for the privilege.

Against opponents who haven't seen it before, or for whatever reason can't see it coming, al'rahem is, in fact, neat, and changes the strategic picture of the game. Against savvier opponents, he hurts you as much as he helps.

Al'Rahem is a tremendous asset, so long as you know how best to build a list around him. Giving your force immediate Line Breaker, forcing your opponent to deal with threats on multiple fronts and enabling you to reach deeply placed objectives can be invaluable. That said, Al'Rahem is only a piece of your army, he can't be the core of it. If you load up on too many points in his platoon, you risk leaving your force on the table depleted, and you funnel a lot of your points into a somewhat limited selection of options for the Imperial Guard. In my own list, I run Al'Rahem in a Chimera with two other Infantry Squads in Chimeras (though to be fair, I also run a Harker Veteran Squad in a Chimera which grants me a fourth outflanking squad), which is a relatively cheap set-up that still gives me tactical flexibility.

That, I would say, speaks to the flaw that Ailaros pointed out. If you take an enormous Al'Rahem platoon then you may literally end up dividing your entire army in two, which will let your opponent destroy you piecemeal while your forces trickle onto the board in support of your depleted main line. Consider Al'Rahem and his platoon as a support unit, not the focal point of your army, and he can be incredibly effective (so much so that I humbly posit that he's the single most underrated unit in the Imperial Guard codex). Keep in mind that he all but requires you to include an Astropath, lest your forces arrive late and out of position.

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:
Wow, that sounds kinda mean. Wonder why I've never heard of guys using him before?

The main reason is because the idea of aggressive blob-usage has very much died out in favor of gunlines.

Al'Rahem can still be done, he just requires a list to be written around him, which is difficult to make perform well.

thanks for that
Any recommendations on PCS loadout with him (or is it just situational)

when you talk about a best build for him, do you mean that a list has to be tailor made for/around him to work?

 Orik wrote:
thanks for that
Any recommendations on PCS loadout with him (or is it just situational)

I'd say 4 meltaguns or plasmaguns. He has BID so he can actually make use of them even though his squad is BS3

I like the idea of almost creating a second front line on the board via an outflank but I dislike the drawbacks. I'm very much an alpha-strike minded player. While your unit isn't on the board, it isn't shooting and therefore, having no contribution to the game. Reserving a huge platoon for this seems expensive and can seriously cut down on the size of force that IS on the board shooting from the word 'go'. My only exception is the storm trooper. I use storm troopers in a way to harass the enemy from a position that gives them the advantage through LOS, cover etc. They're expensive but they cause my opponent to break off a sizable detachment to clear them out. This then causes my opponent the same problems that I would face if i'd outflanked a platoon, having to split their force down to face two different targets. The outflank can work, but if it doesn't it'll cause more problems than it solves. Use with caution.

He is good so long as:

You don't have too much of your army wasting time in reserve
You don't have any heavy weapons coming on
You HAVE an astropath
Your opponent doesn't infiltrate and kroot wall or line the flanks with genestealers so they die on arrival.