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Yeah that scout dump has me worried
GOing to line up a game soon so will keep all this in mind

Wait a sec, in regards to the madicore losing all it's rockets if it suffers a weapon destroyed result, what happens if you use a tech-preist to repair the damage?

It might just be me, but when I play an IG army with my SM army I almost always do well if I simply leave out vehicles unless they're rhinos and focus on the Dev. squads, tac squads, and bring in some mobile forces.

Biker squads with tank killing equipment usually do well enough as they can take a bit of fire from infantry and are fast enough to get in range of a few tanks and down them. My chaplain with jump pack, dig. laser, melta bomb, and pistol generally get high marks as well.

Chaplain HQ choice, nice!

There are many things to be scared about the Imperial Guard. Here is a list 1: Ok BS but a lot of shots 2: AWSOME TANKS 3: Alot of walls of meat (infantry) 4: low points cost for units!
For example when I was facing my friend in a 1000 point battle, he was able to field alot more units. He won and my SM were killed. All I destroyed were his only Leman Russ, Commisoner Yarrek, and 3 Storm Troopers! He destroyed my Dreadnought, 3 Tactical Marines, Chapter Master w/t jump pack (hey the reason he died was cause i made him fight Yarrek one on one so i made him go inside a swarm of infantry to get to him, not the best decision ) and 3 Sternguard vets.

Ramseh wrote:It might just be me, but when I play an IG army with my SM army I almost always do well if I simply leave out vehicles unless they're rhinos and focus on the Dev. squads, tac squads, and bring in some mobile forces.

It probably has more to do with your opponent's army list than yours.

Deffinatly your opponents list. Here's a hint from a Guard Player to all of you SM players out there who are concerned about not having enough firepower to contend with our tanks. You have a BS: 4 which means you hit on a 3+. Don't sink your Heavy Weapons and points into Devistator squads, because they can only shoot ONE TANK AT A TIME.

"Gee I know there will be four Chimeras coming at me who will be able to reach me by the start of turn 3. I'm just going to put all of my HWs into one squad and hope that I pop the two I get a chance to shoot at knowing that my Tac squads which could have the HWs will be happy to shoot their bolters ineffectivly at AV12 armor."

Does this sound like you? There is no reason to put so much fire power into one squad if you are that sure you will hit your target and pop it on %50 of the time, and if you don't kill it then just tell the next Tac squad to shoot their HW at it. What are you giving up? Two bolter rounds? I'm sure killing two infantry while ignoring tanks is a tactic that has won countless matches </sarcasm> :p

Gearhead wrote:As was already mentioned, IG's heavy use of template weapons, especially VERY strong ones like the Manticore's rockets (which are ridiculously long-range, and drop D3 warheads each, IIRC) and the Demolisher cannon, go a long way towards making up for their BS3.

Most of my time when playing guard, in my opponents turn, i have a smoke (or a few) and roll some cover saves whilst they rabble on about their big guns they are shooting and i go "yeah whatever". Then when its my turn again i look at what i have and go "well. gak. Fair 'nuff." And then start thinking again.


It's less demoralizing when you think of every mini you put on the table as a future corpse

I haven't had that many problems with IG, and I beat a spamtastic tank list at Ard Boyz, DH Mystics and all.

Stick to the mission, eliminate what's most dangerous to you(melta vets in my case) and cross your fingers that they get really bad scatter rolls!

And Weapon Destroyed results get rid of all of a Manticore's missiles, and the TechPriest fixing them would bring back the Missiles with the number of shots that they had when they were destroyed.

My 2 cents on that particular subject...

Grambo wrote:Gaurd are spamtastic.Also,there heavy weapons kill everything.So,the only way to beat guard with csm is to stay in cover and wait for them to come to you,picking off tanks with las cannons.

This is possibly the worst advice I've ever seen on the tactics forum. If you sit at range, the guard will *never* come to you, because they don't have to, they're just fine killing you from afar.

There are a couple of reasons people have issues with guard.

The first, psycology. You are going to be facing 4-5 tanks or more and a tonne of guys. Even playing my nids I feel a little overmatched.

The second, no win unit. Come on guys everyone has a cheese super expensive unit that usually wins them every game. My termies with vulcan in a LR is instant win once it hits the opponents lines. Things like space marines riding wolves, juggernaughts, fiends, etc. Guard can remove this overcost unit on the first turn. Blam and 500-1000 points of your army is gone and well now you cry a little.

Play guard like guard, lots of unit with very specific roles. Run in from the sides or rear. Unless you are actually good at it do not try to outshoot them you will not win. Get them into combat, hell a single termie can kill most of a guard squad over time.

Basically try to come from unexpected areas, DS outflank and scout. Kill things off in order of how much damage they are going to cause you and no more super units. You do this and I promise you you will do much better playing guard and will increase your win ratio.

You're acting as if having DH mystics means that the list is going to be played competently

ComputerGeek01:

You are aware of the Space Marine rule Combat Squads, right? Because that rule allows the Space Marine player to split squads such as Tactical Squads and Devastators squads into two five-man squads.

With the addition of Razorbacks, three squads of Devastators can be split into six squads and engage nine different targets. Even better, you can shoot with a single unit and then decide whether to follow up with the next unit, or more onto another target, and when Battlecannons destroy three of your units, you still have six left.

The Devastators then crack open the Chimeras, and the Tactical squads that are moving up the field shoot the survivors out of the wreckage or crater.

In Europe most tournaments are 1750 or even 1500. IG aren't that bad until you get to 1850. They scale better than any other army it seems. In addition, 'allies' are not allowed.

olympia wrote:In addition, 'allies' are not allowed.

Yeah, they rarely use base GW rules, just their own house rules.

I'm pretty sure that the Allies rules are only found in the Inquisitor codices rather than in the basic rules for 5th edition.

Nurglitch wrote:I'm pretty sure that the Allies rules are only found in the Inquisitor codices rather than in the basic rules for 5th edition.

And that matters worth a damn, how? Just because some random tournament organizer doesn't like Allies doesn't mean allies aren't a part of the official GW rules. They even FAQed the rules recently.

Welll, olympia pointed out that in Europe most tournaments don't allow the use of the Allies rules. To which you replied, somewhat curiously, that "they rarely use base GW rules, just their own house rules".

So my point was that the Allies rules are not part of the basic Warhammer 40,000 rules. They are, however, part of an out-of-date expansion designed for a previous edition. It's not unreasonable to presume that they'll be left out of whatever 5th edition treatment the Inquisition codices ever get.

Nurglitch wrote:So my point was that the Allies rules are not part of the basic Warhammer 40,000 rules.

Yes, they are. The codices ARE part of the base 40k rules. Without the codices you cannot play 40k.

Not allowing Allies is like not letting Tau players take kroot, or not letting CSM players take summoned daemons, or not letting Guard players take leman russ tanks. As much as people might b**** about it, Allies are part of the official GW rules and therefor a legal choice, and not allowing them is houseruling-- just like not allowing the choices I mentioned in the first sentence of this paragraph.

Despite being designed for previous editions, they are current codices, and as such are "core" GW rules.

@Nurglitch: No acctually I thought that was specifically a SW thing, that changes things a bit but targeting works the other way around to. Being able to shoot all of the Chimera's from one squad doesn't do much good if I can layinto that squad with a mass of firepower, where as spreading them out in Tac squads makes them a little harder to sweep in one strike.

EDIT: There are also issues such as line of sight that are more flexable when HW's are spread out.

willydstyle:

Nope, the "base rules" are what you find in the Rulebook. Anything beyond the rulebook is in addition to the basic rules. See my reply to Melissia for further details.

Melissia:

Do you know what the difference is between taking Inquisitorial units in an Imperial Guard army and taking Kroot in a Tau Empire army? The difference is that there are Kroot units in the army list of Codex: Tau Empire. Likewise Lesser Daemons are specifically a unit in the armylist in Codex: Chaos Space Marine and Leman Russes are in Codex: Imperial Guard.

What it is actually like is ignoring wargear rules that affect a unit's target priority test. In other words ignoring a rule that has no extension in the current basic rules, just as Tau Target Lock has no effect in 5th edition (despite being part of the core rules by your special definition), is following the basic rules of the game.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
ComputerGeek01:

Okay, quick rule review: The Space Wolf Heavy Support unit called "Long Fangs" have a Squad Leader model with a rule called "Fire Control". This allows a single unit of Long Fangs to split its shotting between two targets; they still have to declare the unit's target(s) and then shoot.

Combat Squads allows a unit of Space Marines (including Blood Angels) to become two units of Space Marines. That's why I said "three squads of Devastators can be split into six squads" and pointed out that they would double the number of targets for the Imperial Guard to engage.

The advantage of Combat Squads over Fire Control is thus threefold: (1) Increase the number of units for the enemy to engage, (2) Allows more efficient distribution of firepower, (3) Is not lost if a single model is removed as a casualty.

So yeah, putting all your eggs into one basket is bad, but Combat Squads will allow you to put all your eggs into two baskets, double their efficiency, and not waste points on units that will be moving to mop up dismounted Imperial Guard infantry units.

And none of your post matters when faced with the fact that official Games Workshop rules says otherwise. Just because some crappy tournament organizers don't like it doesn't change this fact.

And I don't buy for an INSTANT your argument that codices aren't a part of the base rules. It's just silly. You cannot play 40k with just the rulebook.

Melissia:

That's my point: the official Games Workshop do not say otherwise, and therefore tournament organizers have to make a judgment call just like they would with Target Lock and other extensionless rules.

That's an interesting point that you, and many others, seem to miss entirely about Warhammer 40,000, that it takes a lot of judgment to implement the suggestions found in the basic rulebook and its expansions as a game between opposing players.

If you don't like that judgment, then that's your problem. Maybe you shouldn't play in European tournaments where you can't bring your Inquisition crutch to hold up your regiment of Imperial Guard Fail.

As a Guard player who does not bring Inquisition, I still don't begrudge players who like the anti-psyker support.

Also, whether or not the codices are "core" rules can be answered by the following question:

Q: Can you play 40k without your codex?

A: No, therefore it is "core."

Nurglitch wrote:That's my point: the official Games Workshop do not say otherwise

If that is your point, you are failing at proving it.

Codex: Witch Hunters, the official rules for the Witch Hunters army, and Codex: Daemonhunters, the official rules for the Daemonhunters army, and the FAQs for the same, are ALL official Games Workshop rules.. It doesn't matter how much the whiny tournament organizers say otherwise, this fact remains, and their decisions mean that they are altering the rules so that they are not official GW rules.

@ Nurglitch: This still leaves an issue with soaking up wounds from the IG's previously mentioned firepower but I'll conceed; the Devastators are a much more viable option then I previously thought thank you for bringing that to light.

Melissia wrote:

Nurglitch wrote:That's my point: the official Games Workshop do not say otherwise

If that is your point, you are failing at proving it.

Codex: Witch Hunters, the official rules for the Witch Hunters army, and Codex: Daemonhunters, the official rules for the Daemonhunters army, and the FAQs for the same, are ALL official Games Workshop rules.. It doesn't matter how much the whiny tournament organizers say otherwise, this fact remains, and their decisions mean that they are altering the rules so that they are not official GW rules.

I heard somewhere that GW is..... steering away from allies, so C:WH and DH are probably not going to be able to field allies in their next codices.

willydstyle:

Of course you can play 40k without a codex. Just use the numbers in the back of the book as a guideline and plunk down some models. Of course, you'll need an imagination to play with a codex, but something tells me that really shouldn't be a problem.

Melissia:

Hey, no worries. It's all those whiny tournament organizers. How dare they, eh?

ComputerGeek01:

Two Combat Squads will soak the same number of wounds as a full Devastator squad, although the Devastator squad will soak more than any single Combat Squad before losing vital personnel such as the Sergeant with the Signum or a Heavy Weapon specialist.

However, consider that by the core rules (i.e.: those in the rule book) each unit can only shoot one other other. Extra rules need to be added to these basic rules in order for a unit to fire at more than one unit. Fire Control and the Power of the Machine Spirit rules are examples of special rules that enable the units bearing them to 'break' the base rules. The rules for Blast markers also allow multiple units to suffer casualties, but they don't allow units bearing Blast weapons to target multiple enemy units.

This is significant because if a unit (A) can destroy a full Devastator Squad (D) as easily as it can a Combat Squad (C1), and it has no special rule allowing it to shoot at two different units, then having two units (C1 & C2) instead of one reduces the damage inflicted by at least 50%.

This is relevant to the topic of this thread because Imperial Guard really really really benefit from having what is known as "Multiple Small Units", which allow them to outnumber the enemy in terms of the number of units on the table. It's been mentioned before that the Imperial Guard have an advantage by having no "Deathstar" unit that can be destroy to disrupt their strategy, if we define a Deathstar unit as one of sufficient investment that no other unit in the army can pick up its function if it goes down.

The Imperial Guard, by contrast, can have redundant units within Force Organization Chart slots. Instead of using up one slot in one unit and its dedicated transport, and perhaps using up some Elite and HQ slots to make the unit extra deadly, they can have Infantry Platoons: small armies with their own HQ, Elite, Troops, Light Support and Heavy Support. That means that they can win purely on economic grounds of trading unit for unit.

That's incidentally why I don't think that the ability of Imperial Guard Infantry squads to 'mob up' is much of an advantage since it concentrates all those cheap models into a single unit to target. In this sense a Heavy Bolter is more effective against Terminators than against Guardsmen, because you can have 8 Imperial Guardsmen for the same cost as a single Terminator. A Heavy Bolter (BS4) can expect 3 shots, 2 hits, 1.35 wounds, 0.22 casualties against a Terminator. The same can expect 3 shots, 2 hits, 1.66 casualties against the 7 Guardsmen. It would take a minimum of three turns to kill all the Guardsmen, and only one to kill the Terminator. All split into separate units, the Heavy Bolter should destroy an Imperial Guard unit a turn, but it'll take seven turns, while the Terminator should go down after five.

Working backwards one Terminator casualty should be the result of six saving throws with one failure, those saving throws should be the result of six wounds, which would require nine hits, and fifteen shots at three shots a turn is five turns.

Similarly if a Terminator Squad piles into a Platoon of Imperial Guardsmen with Commissars and the works, they may lose a couple to the odds and may win, but if they pile into a single Infantry squad and wipe them out, then they're exposed to however many Lasguns, Flamers, Melta Guns, and so on. That ability to trade a cheap unit for an expensive unit makes them scary to Warhammer 40,000 players who think on the unit level rather than the army level.

Nurglitch wrote:Melissia:

Hey, no worries. It's all those whiny tournament organizers. How dare they, eh?

Sarcasm this may be, but yes. Arbitrary and poorly thought out rules changes are one of the reasons why I don't go to tournaments.