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So i'm taking a bit of time out from my Orks to start up an IG army. Picked up 2 squads of shock troops and a CCS to start.

What would be the best way to go? What's the best HQ choices? is Yarrik any good? Is it best to field as many tanks as possible? Are the elite choices any good?

Sorry for all the newbie questions but they seem pretty different compared to armies like Orks and Space Marines.

If you're just picking up IG, then check out the link in the second line of my sig, it is an article I wrote that covered every unit in the codex and how to use them, as well as all the key playstyles. It's long, but will answer most if not all of your questions

It all depends what kind of guard you wish to play brother, I mean there's mass bodies and shots, tons and tons of armor, mass pie plates guards really diverse when it comes to the tables. Now on the topic of yarrick I would call him a solid choice for an hq depending on your meta.

Yeah, I'd first try and hammer out what kind of guard army you want. If you're going to play mechvets, you're going to be buying different minis than if you're going for a foot horde, and you're certainly going to be having a different go of it if you're playing with artillery vs. tanks vs. fliers.

I'd go looking through the armylists or battle reports to get ideas of what other guard players are doing to look for a little inspiration. Or you can come up with a description of what you're looking for and post it in the armylist forum and ask people to build a list for you. Or just pick your favorite unit in the codex and ask people how to build a list around it. There are only a few units this won't work for - a sign of how robust the guard codex still is.

As for HQ, the best is the CCS... unless you're playing mech, in which case you can still definitely take the CCS in a chimera, but a primaris psyker or a lord commissar will be cheaper. The special characters in the codex are largely fine for what you get, but they usually come with special rules that make it kind of tricky to really get the most out of those special rules you're forced to spend points on. I'd start without them at first, until you get a better idea of what their non-special equivalents can do.

As for tanks, if you're running a tank army, then yes, take as many as you can. There are a few ways to do this, from the iron line russ spam, or the ultrafast hellhound-chassised chimera highland charge. It's up to you.

For elites, yeah, they can be all right. Ratlings don't do much damage, but at least they're cheap, and PBSs are out of favor at the moment now that they can't cast weaken resolve out of a chimera anymore (and they're super fragile, and now your opponent can deny the witch, etc.). Ogryn, if you bring a lot, can work well as a linebacker unit for foot hordes, but they do have hard counters, so you've got to be careful with them. The also basically require a lord commissar to fix leadership issues.

Stormtroopers are the overall best of the elite slot. They have a bunch of stuff that mitigates the problems of regular guard infantry - deepstrike fixes mobility, carapace fixes everything ignoring armor saves, Ap3 fixes the fact that lasguns don't do anything, etc. If you take a lot of them, you can basically open up a second front in a game. And they're very cool. If you're not willing to go all-in with 30 of them, though, they still make nice little meltagun suicide units on the cheap. One of the most efficient anti-tank weapons in the guard arsenal, actually.

Thanks for your input guys, Paradigm that tactica is providing very useful! I was thinking of having a foothorde army, backed up by some artillery like a few Basilisks in the back field, and a couple of Leman Russ' backing up the infantry.

I like the idea of Storm troopers, they seem pretty solid and i'm really tempted with Marbo, he seems like such an epic elite choice, but is he worth it? Is he actually as good as made out to be? Being an Ork at heart, I really like the idea of Yarrik, however at almost 200 points, he's pretty expensive, can a normal commissar do the same thing?

My codex should be here this week hopefully, so I can proper scour through that.

A foot horde with AV support is good, so long as you have every base covered. For example, you'll
want at least 3 platoons of around 30, so gear one for AT/objective-sitting (probably just LCs), one for advancing (flamers/meltas/power weapons) and possibly one with a trick, like an Al'rahem platoon for mobile scoring. Then for the artillery/tanks, you want something to handle anti-tank/MC (LC/PC Vanquisher), something for horde control (2x griffons). Once you've got this covered, you can go with the more adventurous stuff, like Stormies.

With stormies, I like to go big, as in take 20+marbo or 30 without him, so I can use the mobility and firepower to basically choose a bit of the board and clear it out, allowing the infantry to move into it and meaning the enemy has to face me on 2 fronts (3 if I then use an outflanking platoon).

Marbo is great, you really have to think hard for a reason not to take him. For 65 points, the ability to get anywhere and drop an S8 AP2 large blast is just a steal, and it great for killing hard targets like Tau crisis suits, SM terminators and ork Meganobs.

As for Yarrik, he is cool, but for the price, you could get a Lord Commissar (For Ld) and a Priest (for re-rolls/Eviscerator) with points to spare, so I'd leave him out of anything under around 1700 points.

Marbo is a one-shot blast weapon. Sometimes that one blast does very cool things. Usually it doesn't.

As for foot lists, you've sort of got two options. The first is to hide them behind an ADL in a gunline, and the second is getting used to losing 30-40 guardsmen in a turn and getting nearly tabled by turn 4.

And just not playing against tau.

Vendetta Gunships. You want those.

I'd read Paradigm article and Ailaros batreps, that helped me get into IG.