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Hi Dakka,
I am thinking about Imperial Guard in the future because I like the models and don't particularly like space marines as they just look to me like buzz lightyear. From what I've read they're fairly weak in small numbers and have have more tanks than Soviet Russia but that's about all I know. What are they like to collect and paint? How do they do on the board? And are they a good choice for a fantasy gamer's first step into 40k?

In my mind the only down side to them is that you end up with lots of models, which may not be a down side to everyone. If you go for an infantry based army you can easily have a couple of hundred models. If you go for more vehicles you can still end up with about 10 tank sized models. If you're happy with the model count then they are a great army. It lends itself well to converting and there are a wide range of 3rd party products (heads, weapons, etc) to help you customise your force.

On the table they have a very competitive codex that can lead to a wide range of list types. Also they have Vendettas which are arguably the best flyer in the game

Numbers and Guns. Swarms of infantry blobs packed with heavy weapons to tank hunt, and Tanks with blast templates to murder the crap out of anything that might threaten their cardboard armored troopers.

Exhaustingly repetitive to paint guardsmen.

Incredibly versatile book in terms of differing styles of armies you can make

Powerful vehicles

Book performs quite well currently

Very enjoyable to play the units in the book, especially a few of the more fun options (Manticores, Stormtroopers, Flyers)

A few weaknesses:
Can be boring to paint. Especially if you don't plan your colour scheme ahead.
Fewer epic modelling opportunities.
Troops aren't very durable and struggle at holding objectives.
Can be demoralising to remove 20-30 men in one turn.

To me, the only true downsides to the Guard are technical downsides (like repetitive to paint, expensive to collect, etc.). In game, the Guard can cover most every possible scenario (including Flier Defense with Vendetta's, since Flier Defense seems to be a huge lacking in most codices).

I mean, our troops are very squishy and 15-20 will die most every turn at least, but we have so many of them that it really isn't a downside unless you don't bring enough. Which, in that case, isn't the armies fault it's your list building.

Something from Griddlelol, while there are fewer epic modelling opportunities, we are one of the most open to customization thanks to the large amounts of 3rd party bits or models you can get. Even then, it's possible to make even the lowly Sergeant look like a true, combat hardened bad-ass through some clever bits usage.

 washout77 wrote:


Something from Griddlelol, while there are fewer epic modelling opportunities, we are one of the most open to customization thanks to the large amounts of 3rd party bits or models you can get. Even then, it's possible to make even the lowly Sergeant look like a true, combat hardened bad-ass through some clever bits usage.

I used the word "epic" for a reason. There certainly are some neat little things you can do, and the occasional badass conversion like Marbo, but I've not seen many that really strike me as amazing like the marine or chaos conversions I've seen. The painting opportunities on tanks and fliers on the other hand are immense.

Eh, maybe it's just me.

 Griddlelol wrote:

 washout77 wrote:


Something from Griddlelol, while there are fewer epic modelling opportunities, we are one of the most open to customization thanks to the large amounts of 3rd party bits or models you can get. Even then, it's possible to make even the lowly Sergeant look like a true, combat hardened bad-ass through some clever bits usage.

I used the word "epic" for a reason. There certainly are some neat little things you can do, and the occasional badass conversion like Marbo, but I've not seen many that really strike me as amazing like the marine or chaos conversions I've seen. The painting opportunities on tanks and fliers on the other hand are immense.

Eh, maybe it's just me.

Yeah that's true. I personally haven't seen any conversions that are of "epic" quality that were used for gaming though, all the ones I have seen have been for display usually. The closest to "epic" I have seen from a Guard conversion was a Guardsmen converted to be like leap charging at a Bloodthirster. It was someone at my FLGS, and I don't have a picture of it sadly hahaha. But yeah, I have seen some really really really awesome SM stuff

As a fantasy player painting gakloads of infantry models shouldn't deter you, so go for it.

 Stoned Monkey wrote:
Hi Dakka,
I am thinking about Imperial Guard in the future because I like the models and don't particularly like space marines as they just look to me like buzz lightyear. From what I've read they're fairly weak in small numbers and have have more tanks than Soviet Russia but that's about all I know. What are they like to collect and paint?

For the first part, expensive and time consuming. You need a lot more models than many armies, and they aren't much cheaper. Painting can be as easy or as hard as you want it to be, usually no harder than SM's are though (just more numerous)

How do they do on the board?

Very well, albeit more one-dimensional than SM's, there's not really anything that's going to come out on top in a shooting war over a well built IG army, you can leave the table a cratered hell through which your opponent must advance and close to short range to harm you. You aren't going to make an aggressive assault army out of IG, but you can make some workable counter-assault units and if all else fails you can often simply mob the enemy with bodies, tank shock tests, etc.

And are they a good choice for a fantasy gamer's first step into 40k?

They're not a bad first army, but are expensive and time consuming. Easy to learn right off the bat and do decently with but hard to master perfectly. One must learn to not only accept casualties but embrace them. Nothing is more satisfying than seeing the confidence drain from an opponent after they butcher like 30 dudes in a gory round of CC and feel all mighty about it, and you turn around and say "it's cute you think they mattered". Or when you roll into the board with 15 tanks and twice as many scoring units as they have in an 1850pt game

Ok so expensive, time consuming and will drop like flies but overall not half bad and worth the effort, right?

Well, guard is expensive timewise (you want me to paint HOW many of them?), but not necessarily moneywise, relative to other armies.

The chief weakness with guard is time. Even with a mech guard army, it's going to take a long time to paint everything. It's going to take a relatively long time to unpack, deploy, move, and repack your stuff, especially with a foot horde.

One of the big strengths, though, is something that some mistake for a weakness. Yes, I've personally lost over 40 guardsmen in a single round of shooting before. I still won that game. While some think it's demoralizing to lose guys, I look at it and say "You killed all those guys? Whatever." The plain fact is that you're taking so much stuff, that you don't need to CARE about casualties when you're playing with guard. If you blow up a SM land raider, that's it. Their entire strategy may be ruined as their one precious model was wiped out. If you blow up a Leman Russ, who cares? Here's four more! You wiped out 50 conscripts? You can LITERALLY send in the next wave of them. As often as you like.

There's something about brutal wars of attrition that I really like with guard. I like that you can be mission-focused and not care about things like casualties and at the end of the game they killed 100 guardsmen, but the last 20 of them are still defying the enemy on the objective, winning the game. You can kill my army, but... well... it doesn't matter.

Also going for guard are the aesthetics. All due respect for eldar armies (which can look, by far, the most beautiful), and ork armis (which can also look really, really great), there is something about the gritty realism to the imperial guard that just looks so cool. You show up with a swarm of pathetic nobodies waiting to be killed, followed up by a dozen battle tanks that are FILTHY from constant action, and there they are, yet again, doing their duty despite it all.

Because, I mean, come on:

Well Ailaros, you sold it to me there!
Apart from painting (which I hoped to escape by moving to 40k) I see no problems I can't handle here.
Thanks Dakka, roll on the Valkries!

One major drawback that needs to be mentioned: you will take losses. Even when you win the game (and you'll win, don't worry) you will claim a battlefield filled with your own corpses and/or smoking wrecks of your tanks. You will scoop up handfuls of casualties at a time from your meatshield platoons. You will send veteran squads on suicide melta missions. You will fill your squads with plasma guns and not care about the 1s because you're killing more of the enemy. You will bring a dozen tanks to a game and have none of them still alive at the end of the game. You will spend $100 and 30+ hours painting a beautiful Medusa model so you can fire a single shell and then put it back in your case. If you are the kind of person who can't stand to suffer casualties and stops having fun or panics and gets defensive then IG are not the army for you.


But other than that, there's just the time and money issue. Everything in the army is dirt cheap points-wise so you need to buy a lot of models. This is great for winning games, but you have to really love the models you're painting or you will go insane when you realize you've painted 200 infantry/10 tanks and realize you still have another 200/10 left.

Biggest problem with IG, $40.00 for a box of 10 dudes. Total rip-off. Used to be 20 dudes for $35.00.

So what that means, kids, is that to field a decent platoon it was $70.00, now it's $160 to field an appropriately sized platoon, and that's without support weapons or command.

Biggest upside though is that Leman Russ' come in squadrons as opposed to when each tank filled a heavy slot on the FoC.

xraytango wrote:
Biggest problem with IG, $40.00 for a box of 10 dudes. Total rip-off. Used to be 20 dudes for $35.00.

So what that means, kids, is that to field a decent platoon it was $70.00, now it's $160 to field an appropriately sized platoon, and that's without support weapons or command.

Biggest upside though is that Leman Russ' come in squadrons as opposed to when each tank filled a heavy slot on the FoC.

$40? Have they raised the price again? Last time I checked it was $27 or something like that retail. Then again, I order from The Warstore and pay even less.

Well, if it isn't $40 by now it probably will be before too long. Point is that it used to be a fairly economical army, but when they cut the boxes in half and raised the price 20%, well...

I got mine, used, on the eBay.

But I digress, let me quote my Leman Russ', "Tankity, tankity, tankity, tank, tank, tank, KAPLOWEEE!"

I never get tired of putting my army on the table. People are always gobsmacked by the amount of models and firepower a guard army can bring. Its especially satisfying once its all painted! Sure it took me the better part of a year, but I find 2000 points of fully painted guard is something to be admired.

I also think that theres something to be said about the hordes of ho hum soldiers face the worst horrors of the galaxy. No power armor, or decades of training. Just their steely will (with the aid of a commissar sometimes!) and their trusty lasgun.

The 3rd party options for IG are more numerous and cheaper than any other race, so even the price isn't an issue. I've been planning out an IG army as my next project and I expect to pay less than $350 for 2000 points.

xraytango wrote:
Well, if it isn't $40 by now it probably will be before too long.

Guardsmen are currently £18, which converts to $27. You were off by 33%.

Biggest problem with guard infantry (assuming you go Cadian since Catachan are crappy, though the metal armies are expensive and you get far fewer parts than the plastic Cadians) is that you don't get the useful special weapons - melta and plasma, which have to be bought seperately . Running infantry squads, either in platoons or veterans, without special weapons, is pointless. If you've got infantry, they should be having special weapons. Personally I prefer melta since I'm sick of having squads blow themselves up and flee.

Okay, so I was off, but if you can find the price per box when there were 20 dudes in it I think you will find my point to still be valid.

xraytango wrote:
Okay, so I was off, but if you can find the price per box when there were 20 dudes in it I think you will find my point to still be valid.

Well it means that the price doubled over a given time period. What year did they go from 20 to 10 men?

I think it was 2007-08.

5 years ago, guardsmen cost $1.75 apiece. Now, they cost $3 apiece. 5 years ago, a fifth of Smirnoff vodka cost $14, while now it costs $22. Roughly the same rate. Inflation happens, get over it.

And seriously, compare it across armies. 250 points of a decent guard platoon costs $125 (and you can get even more points out of it with a little creativity). A plasma vet squad in a chimera gives you 170 points for roughly $75, depending on where you get your plasma bitz. Meanwhile, a 10-man tac squad in a drop pod costs you $75, and gets you about 200 points.

Foot guard is roughly 2 points per dollar, while mech guard is roughly 2.25 points to the dollar and the space marines are about 2.6. Is guard more expensive? Yes. Is it very much more expensive? No.

I gotta throw in a plug for my preferred solution to the Guard infantry expense problem:

http://wargamesfactory.com/webstore/alien-suns

18 guys for $20 with the aesthetics of Death Korps. Won't work if you play at a GW store, but otherwise I think it's the best way to get Guard up and running. You will need to either declare which of the weapons are melta and/or plasma. or buy loose guns from GW direct. The rifles and flamers (and grenade launchers, but that's irrelevant) are well differentiated, but there's nothing that resembles a melta or plasma gun well enough to not require explanation or modding.

 Ailaros wrote:
5 years ago, guardsmen cost $1.75 apiece. Now, they cost $3 apiece. 5 years ago, a fifth of Smirnoff vodka cost $14, while now it costs $22. Roughly the same rate. Inflation happens, get over it.

At the average rate of inflation going by the Consumer Price Index over the last 5 years, Guardsmen should be $1.93-$2.03. Neither of those two item's increases are representational in any way of average inflation, but rather 3-400% what average inflation has been.

I fund the WGF troops to be adequate, and a reasonable price for goods.

What I don't get is why I can get a 125 figure starter army from Warlord for $90 but the same figure count in an IG army will force a second mortgage?

Don't want this to become a pricing thread.

Two forty man platoons for troop selections, scoot some elite units around in a couple of Chimaeras, outflank with your choice of fast attack and you're good to go.

Vaktathi wrote:the Consumer Price Index

... right. Because taking an overgeneralized look at the economy and then gutting anything useful from participating in the number is going to be a good gauge of anything. I bet you believe that when thousands of people leave the workforce that it's a good thing for the economy because the unemployment number went down...

xraytango wrote:What I don't get is why I can get a 125 figure starter army from Warlord for $90 but the same figure count in an IG army will force a second mortgage?

Because warlord is just miniatures. GW is a lot more. Better miniatures, a game to play it with, people to play with, places to play, a rich background, literature, hobby guides, etc. etc.

Like they say for buying Apple products - it's not the product you buy into, it's the ecosystem.

 Ailaros wrote:

Vaktathi wrote:the Consumer Price Index

... right. Because taking an overgeneralized look at the economy and then gutting anything useful from participating in the number is going to be a good gauge of anything. I bet you believe that when thousands of people leave the workforce that it's a good thing for the economy because the unemployment number went down...

So...instead of attacking my actual argument, you just hand-wave it away and attempt to insult my intelligence? Smooth. That's what we call an ad-hominem fallacy.

No, such increases are not in line with any realistic inflation. Inputs, overhead, labor, etc have not risen by anything near that amount.

Or are you really going to try and hold that a constant 11.5% inflation rate for the last 5 years is a realistic number for...anything, much less a number that accurately reflects the Real inflation rate and increases in GW's costs, and reflects is in line with average consumer buying power that GW is targeting along with the relative strength of any major currency relative to its previous years' incarnations?

Because...if so, I'll need to grab some popcorn.

(also, I don't think I've seen a fifth of Smirnoff for more than $15.99 anywhere, ever, it's still $13.99 off the shelf at my local Vons/Albertsons/Ralphs, and $11.99 at my local BevMo)

You're going to use a metric that ignores changes in the price of food, energy, rent/mortgages, and car payments. You know, what 90% of people spend almost all their money on.

Yes, compared to the price of yachts, diamonds, and inter-bank loan rates, GW's prices have been going up rapidly. Compared to everything else, they haven't.

And guard STILL isn't much more expensive than other armies. And 40k is STILL a phenominal value compared to smoking, drinking, watching movies, putting gas in your car, eating out, and dozens of other habits you could be spending your money on instead.

If marginal price adjustments are clouding your ability to see this, then you can go and get all the popcorn you want.