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Right now I'm using Guardsmen on foot, and while I definitely won't argue that they are exceptionally durable, I just don't see how the consensus seems to be that Chimeras are the way to go. I often play against an Orks list that entirely uses transports, and sometimes it's a little depressing to watch a battlewagon explode and only half the Orks come out. With Chimeras side AV of 10, they seem like they'd easily get glanced to death if not exploding earlier. And with guardsmen toughness of 3 explosions would absolutely wreck them.

Again, I've never ran a list with Chimeras, but I can't help but feel a ton of guardsmen behind a Defense Line would fair much better than 5 Chimeras. Am I underestimating the durability of Chimeras?

Well, even if you don't have guardsmen in them you can still use your metal bawkses to block line of sight and provide cover and some modest fire support.

Also, with front armour 12, you can run a line of Chimeras forwards, side by side, thus denying your opponent the chance to shoot the side armour of most of them until they are at his battleline and have served their purpose. And, as Kain said, you get a decent amount of fire support from the multilasers in addition to the transport.

A battle cannon round will glance a Chimera on a 4 and most likely not wreck it outright. A battle cannon round wounds on a 2 and will kill anything it touches.

Lasguns wound Guardsmen on a 4+. Lasgun's can't do diddly squat to a Chimera.

Bolters and Flamers kill Guardsmen on 3's. Bolters and Flamers can only hope to glance a Chimera at the right angle on 6's.

Plus, a line of Chimeras, placed just right, can act as a lotus of doom, screening more important things like Russes/Manticores/whathaveyou, while discouraging things like Farsight Bombs/Drop Pods from getting too close to the important things.

They aren't anywhere near as useful in 6th as they were in 5th, though not quite as bad as 4th. The Chimera in theory effectively acts as a mobile bunker, offering protection from small arms and able to be taken in sufficient quantities as to overwhelm an opponents anti-tank capability. That said, the implementation of HP's and the vehicle CC changes coupled with transport rules changes of 6E have really drastically reduced their utility, and is why you see relatively few mech IG armies these days.

I use mine by hiding them behind lines of leman russes. then at the last turn i rush em forward and drop the troops inside. I also deploy them in mass behind my lines of lemans as well.

tybg wrote:
Again, I've never ran a list with Chimeras, but I can't help but feel a ton of guardsmen behind a Defense Line would fair much better than 5 Chimeras.

This is your problem. Hiding behind an ADL might be good for scoring your "home" objectives, but if you ever want to win games you need to be able to move up and take objectives outside of your own deployment zone. Since running out into the open with infantry is usually a suicidal plan that means taking either Chimeras or Vendettas to deliver your troops.

With chimeras, you have AV12, which is invulnerable against most gunfire. Furthermore, you probably have a lot of AV12, which means your opponent has to choose between attacking transports and attacking the artillery that's currently beating up his face, or those hellhounds getting dangerously close with their main cannons. Worse for your oppponent, you might bring AV14, which is going to soak up their serious anti-tank killing power, leaving the chimeras to only be attacked by things that are strong enough to hurt AV12, but not strong enough to hurt AV14. That's a rather narrow band.

Then throw on the fact that most weapons saw a 50% reduction in the chance to wreck a vehicle outright, and that you can now get cover for a chimera with only 25% of it obscured, and that you can now overwatch against the things that try and make a random charge roll against the chimera, and you're actually sitting pretty good.

Meanwhile, infantry lost by-unit cover, and every new codex since guard has gotten progressively scarier-to-guardsmen killing options. The idea that you can bring more bodies than your opponent brings bullets simply isn't true anymore.

For the most absurd example, look at tau. Foot guard will sit there and be shot with 30" S5 Ap5 ignores cover weapons that will shred them to pieces. Chimeras only need to weather a storm of mostly S7 firepower. The difference between your infantry models only having to face down firewarriors after you've had a few turns to shoot the firewarriors off the board, and not is shocking.

In 5th, you could spend 55 points on a chimera, or 55 points on another guard squad, and it wasn't clear that the chimera gave you much of a durability advantage over twice as many dudes. Now it's nowhere close.

For specific anecdote, when I started playing foot guard at the beginning of 6th, I routinely saw my 100 infantry models more or less thrown off the board turn by the end of turn 4. In the last game I played, I brought only two squads of mechvets, and had 16 of them survive until the end of the game. Roughly the same if not slightly more durable, and much faster, and with much better force concentration, and much, much cheaper for the same number of dudes on the table at the end.

Having played a lot of IG through the last few editions, I must agree with what many have already said:

I'm in agreement with a lot of what's been said above. The two distinct advantages (with sub-points, too!) I can see are:
1) Survivability
1a) Can no longer be killed by small arms fire. Sure, you can flank and bolter it but mathhammer averages you just over 2 glances from a 10 bolters if you're in rapid fire range. Get lucky and you kill it, yes, but why are you letting those marines in to rapid fire range? The same number of marines can wipe or panic the squad fairly reliably (average just over 8 kills).
1b) Can no longer see the whole squad wiped out by one or two good large blast or template hits. Templates will rarely do anything, and blast may glance or pen, as somebody mathed out earlier.
2) Greater mobility
2a) Which means you can relocate if a position is going to be overwhelmed
2b) You can grab points in the last couple of turns or actually reach the point buried deep in your opponent's deployment area
2c) They take up less space when in a chimera, making it easier to put 80 of them on the board.

Now, the question of durability.
1) Armor 12 on the front; side shots are painful, but you should give your opponent other things to fire his anti-armor weapons at, like Leman Russ. Other than their transport capability and a little bit of extra firepower, Chimera aren't a high priority compared to battle tanks, Hellhounds, and Hydras.
2) Maneuver them correctly (by keeping them near your lines, keeping them in their own line, or making sure to skirt cover and board edges) and side shots are less of a problem. I did say less of one; I'd much rather have armor 11 on the sides, but I'll live with 10.

Ideal? No. More survivable than sending them on foot? Yes. But you could get a whole new squad of IG for that! You're getting more heavy weapons if you get the Chimera, for a cheaper cost, and the darn thing is mobile. You lose out on a scoring unit, but you've probably got quite enough of those already.

Now what would be cooler is if we could get Chimera as dedicated transports for heavy and special weapon teams (as opposed to having to play musical chairs on the first turn to accomplish the same thing).

AV12 is impervious to pretty much every standard infantry weapon in the game, save for Gauss. You just have to point the Front Toward Enemy and you'll be fine. You'd also be surprised how often S8 bounces off it.

Part of the balance of Mech IG is your ability to mix AV12 and AV14. In an Eldar, SW, and GK-heavy meta, I like running AV12 Chimeras with AV14 Russes. When playing SW and GK with all of their S8 shooting, I throw the AV14 out front for the coversaves. When playing against Eldar with their lance weapons, I throw the AV12 out front to block for the Russes since it's all the same anyway.

IMO you still want at least one blob to sit back on a home objective and plink from cover. Your ability to get 3+ coversaves in ruins, then Get Back in the Fight, makes it a more resilient option that a Mech Vet Chimera sitting back on that same objective. Most weapons with the range to hit back-field objective campers are going to be of the High S, Low AP variety anyway, so better to give them a more ill-fitting target. 20 guys aren't going to get 1-shotted off of an objective the same was as a Chimera.


RE: Camping behind an Aegis... Cheap Whirlwinds, Heldrakes, and Manticores are going to ROFLstomp anything thinking it's safe behind an Aegis. One lucky Manticore shot will paste an entire platoon. Being behind an Aegis means not being in a ruin, which means being VERY vulnerable to Barrage and Template weapons.