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Ok Dakka, I've been wanting to start a guard army for forever and was really looking into a gunline type guard. I was hoping there was an all infantry army I could run that would still be considered tournament strong. I was thinking a bunch of Heavy weapons squads spamming Las and auto cannons behind an aegis line would be the way to go. Toss in of course a couple of inquisitor allies for some great divination shenanigans. Possibly ally Dark Angels to get the shroud for a +1 cover save and for a 50 infantry blob squad to jog around with azrael for counter assaults / point assaulting. I was mostly considering just using infantry squads instead of veterans since bodies on the board is beneficial over +1 BS. What do you guys think would be a good way to go with this list?

Also for the artillery I was thinking a squadron of 2x Basilisks and 2x Colossus. Squadrons so that I can divination the squad easier. As a side note to that why do I never see Colossus in any guard lists. I have modded 2 basilisks to look like them so that I can run them and str 6 ap 3 ignores cover seems pretty legitimate to me for an artillery piece. I also am trying to buy for these lists so hammering out a good infantry list before making my purchases. I only own 2 Basilisks and 2 Colossus atm.

Very important questions:
Are people accepting of FW where you play?
Would you be happy to include fliers?
Are you looking for mass artillery, or just it in support?

Tournaments and basic players are very against forgeworld in my area.

I'm ok with flyer's, normal meta in my area is the worst flyers we see is a couple opponents run dual drakes, other than that not much spooky stuff that I see. Mass artillery is a cool thing to me as well. I like the idea of foot troops with a bunch of big guns able to shoot over their heads.


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Last winner of one of our tourneys was a dark eldar player with 6 venoms 5/6 ravagers and 3/4 the transport ones filled with grotesques / witches. It was 15 vehicles in total. We do have someone running 7 wave serpents + night spinner and FP, but that player isn't the strongest so very easy to get around him.

Ok artillery isn't as effective without FW, but still doable. The best build is pretty much vendettas, mechvets, and manticores, medusae and collosi, but YMMV.

What most people probably don't like about the Colossus, from what I've gathered, is the fact that there's a 2 foot blind spot and it cannot target things directly. This means that there will be a lot of board safe from its shots, unless it's put in a far corner from action or hammer and anvil deployment. Against assaults lists, it'll be lucky to shoot more than once

That's the main reason I'm not in love with them, but others can probably make it work against shooter armies (COUGH, COUGH, Tau)

Well the minimum range deal got fixed in 6th ed though with the fact that you can indirectly fire a vehicle in it's minimum range which was a huge buff to the artillery imho. I have seen the mechvet list with a bunch of plas / melta in chimera's with artillery as backup, was trying for something without all the vehicles. I may build up to mech vet in the long run, but I think initially it's cheaper to start picking up infantry and working my way up to that list. Although I guess it could be argued I could just pickup all the chimeras and stuff at the same time. Is mechvet still good with only 3 vendettas or is it more now?

icefire78 wrote:
Well the minimum range deal got fixed in 6th ed though with the fact that you can indirectly fire a vehicle in it's minimum range which was a huge buff to the artillery imho. I have seen the mechvet list with a bunch of plas / melta in chimera's with artillery as backup, was trying for something without all the vehicles. I may build up to mech vet in the long run, but I think initially it's cheaper to start picking up infantry and working my way up to that list. Although I guess it could be argued I could just pickup all the chimeras and stuff at the same time. Is mechvet still good with only 3 vendettas or is it more now?

Ordnance battery entry of current C:IG explicitly states: "A Colossus Siege Mortar cannot fire directly." However, what you say makes the Basilisk much, much better with a minimum Barrage range of 36".

So the colossus purely got buffed by allowing it to fire point blank range without any loss of BS since it couldn't direct fire anyways. Mech vet with vendettas / possibly a couple colossus for those annoying people hiding behind an aegis line could work very well. May try to work in a couple of the cheap inquisitors to toss up divination on my artillery to allow it to reroll to hit making that indirect fire more accurate.


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That and Grav gun spam becomes absolutely useless against this army because all it could do is immobilize the vehicles or kill some vets (oh noes!)

Grav guns are actually pretty good against Vehicles, two sixes and a 3 HP vehicle is dead

icefire78 wrote:
So the colossus purely got buffed by allowing it to fire point blank range without any loss of BS since it couldn't direct fire anyways. Mech vet with vendettas / possibly a couple colossus for those annoying people hiding behind an aegis line could work very well. May try to work in a couple of the cheap inquisitors to toss up divination on my artillery to allow it to reroll to hit making that indirect fire more accurate.


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That and Grav gun spam becomes absolutely useless against this army because all it could do is immobilize the vehicles or kill some vets (oh noes!)

Either you don't understand, or I definitely don't understand.
The Basilisk has 36" minimum barrage range, but may fire directly as well because of the rule you mentioned.

The Medusa has 36" range and may only fire directly.

The colossus has 24" minimum barrage range, and cannot fire directly at all, as the codex explicitly states so.

The Griffon has 12" minimum barrage range, and cannot fire directly at all, as the codex explicitly states so.

So, really, the rule you mentioned only applies to the basilisk.

 KommissarKiln wrote:
Either you don't understand, or I definitely don't understand.

You don't understand. You're thinking of the barrage rules from 5th, they have changed significantly in 6th and direct fire no longer exists. Now you always fire a barrage shot, and if you're within the weapon's minimum range or out of LOS you don't subtract your BS from the scatter distance. So what the statement you quoted says is that prescience helps a lot with indirect (inside minimum range or out of LOS) shots because they're not very accurate to start with, so twin-linking the shot makes it a lot more likely to hit something.

The colossus has 24" minimum barrage range, and cannot fire directly at all, as the codex explicitly states so.
The Griffon has 12" minimum barrage range, and cannot fire directly at all, as the codex explicitly states so.

This is no longer true. The 6th edition update for IG removed both of those "indirect only" rules because they don't make any sense in 6th.

IG FAQ removes the reference to direct fire for the artillery in question, it just cant sub BS inside min range if there is any

Ah, so they'll probably have that fixed in the new codex? (I hope)

Also, Yeah, Colossi! I want a Colossus! Let's make those scarabs and Necrons eat gak from a hail of Colossus shots! I'm sorry I doubted you, Colossus. I will use you next game, that is a promise.

The Colossus is pretty good. Give it a go. I usually run either 2 Manticores and 1 Medusa or 2 Medusa and 1 Manticore in my mech list. In my food list I run Artillary Carriages (Forge World) Foot Guard really only shines if you take Forge World. Eg Sabres.

Yeah, the Colossus went from a waste of space, to extremely usable. The only problem is that it's the only IG tank that doesn't have a model at all, from FW or GW.

New codex in a few months...

 Bonde wrote:
Yeah, the Colossus went from a waste of space, to extremely usable. The only problem is that it's the only IG tank that doesn't have a model at all, from FW or GW.

The Imperial Bombard model from Forge World is a Colossus.