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Long story short i'm starting my guard again after a long spell with Tau but their not going so well, i have three squads (vets), two command squads, storm troopers, a chimera, two (and soon a third) valkyrie gunship, basilisk and a sentinel. Now i'm, used to hiding my command squad behind my line of troops/heavy weapons with my tau yet to get the command bonus i need to run my commanders behind my men, this seems pretty dangerous when i have the forces of chaos, tau gunlines and demons running at me for close combat. Or should i just hide my men behind my ADL and wait for the troops to come into range...but if i do that...then what was the point of me re-starting my guard if i was just going to use tau tactics again...

TDLR; How can i get the best mobility from this small army since i've been playing lots of objective games.

IG 101

Sit everything behind a wall and bombard the enemy from the other side of the battlefield.


IG102 - what to do if they don't stay there.....

Spray and pray...


Tau gunline and IG gunline aren't much different, sad to say, except that the Tau are better at overwatch and killing cover saves.

Range range range. Range and weight of fire are your friends. And special weapons.

Also, Marbo. cheap and effective large template where you want it (and when he shows up of course)

step 1. get lots of guys
step 2. get MOAR guys
step 3. cram a bunch of guys in a bunch of tanks
step 4. give the rest of the guys the biggest guns arond
step 5: get MOAR of the biggest gun around
step 6: repeat step 4-5 3 more times
step 7: get a crud ton of ammo
step 8: distribute ammo to guys with guns and guys in tanks
step 9: unload said ammo (pointy end first) towards bad guys
step 10: go back to step 1 and repeat as needed

Don't bring horde guard against tau, they can strip cover saves and lay down phenominal firepower, tau can kill mobs of guardsmen far quicker tan they can kill units in a chimera, or huddled in ruins. Frannkly if you bring more infantry than you have cover on the table, then you have too much.

Against Tau I'd advise deep-striking stormtroopers, since tau are flexable and long-ranged but they'll fold like wet paper if you can get storntroopers into double-tap range. Since most of their targets will be 3+ or worse, you might want to consider full squads of ten, probably with two plasma guns.

However, you should get used to the fact that he will butcher your men. But, make him work for that. Make sure you always get the best possible cover saves, and bring lots of smaller units, spread out to minimise losses against blasts.

Hold as many objectives as you can on your side, use your deep-strikers and your valkrie to kill his fleshy scoring units (your heavy support should be popping their transports).You could consider a hellhound, depends if you think it would survive long enough to dash to an objective and clear it.

And if worse comes to worse, concentrate all your firepower on his scoring units. Even though his aggregate firepower is probably much greater than yours, you can probably kill his scoring units quicker than he can, and you will have a *lot* more of them.

gaurd can put ALOT more fire downfield then tau can, at longer range.

i would argue, fill your side with as much long range fire as possible. autocannons, lazcannons, heavy bolters... take as many of those as possible and support with tanks. if he even THINKS about getting into his weapons range that can strip cover, usually 18-24 to really be effective, 30" with pulse rifle, you can just drown him in shots. make the tauplayer avoid YOUR weapons and hide from YOU, not the other way around.

starting a game by going defensive is a good way to loose. go on the attack, and make his army react to yours.

I'm going to start by taking the opposite side of this opinion - guard shooting isn't actually that good. Yes, yes, it's better than a bunch of armies can put out, but it's decent from leafblower top-tier has been pretty meteoric. Problems that it always had against certain target types and in certain situations have been greatly exacerbated.

Because, let's be honest - you're not going to out-shoot tau. Not even close. You're not going to out-shoot eldar anymore. You're not going to out-shoot tau-tau or tau-dar. You're not even necessarily going to out-shoot grey knights (who get cheaper, better, special weapon MSU squads with some very hard hitting close-range stuff), especially not if you're looking at a grey-crons list, or some other allies. Unless you brought a lot of hydras, you're not outshooting a flying bakery either. The list goes on and on of things that just do shooting better now than guard stuck chucking a few pie plates can manage.

Anyways, on to the OP...

tau tse tung wrote: Or should i just hide my men behind my ADL and wait for the troops to come into range...but if i do that...then what was the point of me re-starting my guard if i was just going to use tau tactics again...

There isn't. If what you want to do is gunline, then the only thing switching from tau to guard will do is to lose you a lot more games. Well, that and have a better looking army while you do it, IMO.

The only reason you move from a top-tier army to a mid-tier army is because there are things about it that make it worthwhile to play despite the extra losses you rack up. That, however, isn't something that we can really tell you what it is... you sort of have to have the reasons for yourself.

tau tse tung wrote: How can i get the best mobility from this small army since i've been playing lots of objective games.

Well, firstly, I'd note that 40k is WAY overbilled as an objectives game. It's not really an objectives game if you play Purge, Relic, Will, or Crusade or Big guns with an odd number of objectives. That means that real objectives games are in a small minority of what you're playing.

Secondly, even on those games where objectives matter, it's still usually rather trivial to force games to be decided by secondary objectives. Thankfully, imperial guard can still play this game somewhat decently. With a lord commissar in carapace armor hiding out of LOS, warlord points can be hard to score, and while guard gunlines are inferior to others, there's still a chance you can pull off first blood, especially if you focus on large infantry squads and russes for first blood denial. Plus, there are plenty of units that are good at snagging linebreaker. The best of which is probably Marbo, who you can just place far away and out of LOS.

As for how to get mobility in general, there are a lot of ways. You can either turtle up and move forward slowly in a russ shell, or you can chimera highland charge forward with a mech army filled with hellhounds (I particularly liked that one). You can also build an army around stormtroopers, where you take 100+ dudes in carapace armor, 30 of which deepstrike and open up a second front, allowing your dudes to advance. And that's not to disclude tactical level mobility like just taking harker or al'rahem to outflank, or throwing some dudes into a valkyrie and flying them somewhere. Lots of options.

None of them will make a difference against a serious gunline, of course, but if you wanted to compete against a serious gunline, as you say, you'd go back to playing tau.

Well if your going gunline guard there isnt much difference than tau. If that they are far better at it. I would say bring russes as tau has a hard time killing them. But russes wont have the killing power to do much to tau as tau will be hiding in cover or out of sight. so Artillery isnt bad but you will probably want to bring a lot and hide it out of sight.

Guard are slow unless you pay out the ass for vehicles.

Ways around this include penal legionaries, alrheam, creed and other outflankers.

You can always use allies.

Now you can always use chimeras, but their armor is bad. They would allow you fire 5 guys out the hatch, playing like tau that stay inside a protective shell. All the while you can provide support fire from home turf.

In truth just keep at it, find the method that works for you. Guard have lots of options, all of them good.

i gotta disagree with ailaros.

without getting into the silliness thats allies, (and my opinion on that is probally heresey here - so a topic for another day)

guard can take an autocannon in a troop selection. your single troop slot can be
platoon command with 2 heavy weapons, and 2 x 10 man units with 1 heavy weapon each. this costs on average something like 200 pts give or take, depending on the weapon. 25 bodies, packing 4 autocannons. from ONE troop slot. ive seen IG armies with no less then 15 autocanons, 9 laz, and a few missiles and heavy bolters to boot. factor in a few fast response vet teams with plasma or melta (NOT in a chimera as thats suicide - and why suicide your counter teams?) pack in a few more special weapons into units, and bunker down. i dont care what it is... if its getting within 48" LOS its taking so much fire... it will be dead or very close to it. combined with orders, nothing will even get close. let alone 18" burst cannon / melta or rapid fire plasma range.

now obviuously this hinges on having a proper command structure, and knowing your orders, and when to use them, and on what. the IG gunline no longer is an easy i win button, and actully requires some thinking. but in a direct comparison:

- both armies fire at BS3 standard
- both have ways to improve that, either via twinlinking, or boosts to BS, or both.
- IG have acsess to more long range mid/high str weapons then tau via weapons teams. really the only weapons tau can fire past 36" is hammerhead weapons, riptides and broadside rail cannons. all of wich can be shot back almost just as easy.
- tau are a bit more mobile and can make use of cover better,
- tau can deny cover, but only if they get into 36" range, wich is the perfect spot for EVERYTHING barring lazguns and special weapons to be shot back. and generally tau marker units can not take such a pounding, even in cover.

i would state that a well built and played IG army can take care of tau at range before they get into markerlight shenanigan range, and start deniying cover and stripping off those heavyweapons. i wish i was wrong, i play tau more then IG, but i have seen a well played IG list just ...decimate the other guy without so much as a whimper. to date, my venomspam DE list has only lost to one army in cose to 50 games... and that was IG gunline.

tau can win with objectives, and might be able to tough out a win in killpoints, but you gotta be super careful, and not give the guard anything to shoot at, wich often means you're relying on MSJ tatics, and one wrong move = dead unit.

I would say alot of what Darth Spader and ailaros are saying has to do with the board.

If you get long edge deployment type, and objectives, you might have a hard time than short edges and one objective or kill points.

Deployment type and mission type can really screw with an army and tip the scales.

If you're in a Forgeworld Friendly environment you could run the Hobby Killer list.

You'll win a lot of games; lose a lot of friends. Win/win….right?

DarthSpader wrote: this costs on average something like 200 pts give or take, depending on the weapon. 25 bodies, packing 4 autocannons.

And that's your problem. Spending 200 points for 4 autocannon hits per turn is terrible, not only because autocannons are crappy to begin with, and not only because you're lacking serious volume of fire (compare guard autocannons to tesla weapons or tau missiles and you see what REAL S7 spam is), but the cost is huge.

Guard infantry firepower has never been all that terribly cost effective. The reason why you would do it anyways is because you were relying on an extra turn or two of shooting (due to the extra durability of infantry squads) to even things out by the end of the game. The problem is that foot hordes are now so hurting in the durability department (especially relative to their alternatives) that you don't get that extra turn or two of shooting. Instead, you're just paying more for the same guns.

I mean, for 200 points, you could also get 5 autocannon sentinels, which puts out more firepower, and is arguably more durable. And given that nobody takes sentinels because their firepower is too crappy, why should people take infantry platoons which are even worse? At least you can outflank the sentinels...