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The Fragile Breath wrote:I personally see it as an army setup that requires zero tactics, which I believe has no place in a strategy game.

I fail to see how, "Deep Strike and Outflank, assault, shake hands" is a fun game that requires tactics.

Hell, I fail to see how the usual 40k, "Run into close combat and play Yahtzee" requires tactics either.

Polonius wrote:Interestingly enough, at some point, if the builds are all cookie cutter, is that the fault of the players or the fault of the codex?

I'd argue that the Guard CODEX is the least cookie cutter of all the armies right now. Powerblobs, Mechvets, and Air Cav are all competitive IG armies. It's just that Mech Vets dominated the tournament scene one year, so all the WAAC gamers flocked to the internet for putting together the meanest Mechvet, Chimera spam list they could, and then spread that list all over the place.

So, for with the IG, I'd blame the players, not the codex.

The Fragile Breath wrote:
Edit: I'd agree that that most of this should be regarded as "hatred for TFG IG player" and not the army itself.

This sums it up much better, and is something we can agree with. A gakky TFG player can make you hate any army, no matter how good or poor its codex.

Vaktathi wrote:

Edit: I'd agree that that most of this should be regarded as "hatred for TFG IG player" and not the army itself.

This makes much more sense, and can apply to any army, gakky players are not fun period.

I agree very much with this, as I said, I apologize, I have certainly made an ass of myself. I get worked up and forget that I've only played one IG player, and he gets pretty WAAC against us (with Guard), so that is where the bias and rage come from.

Polonius wrote:But here's the thing: are you saying that IG players are inherently less creative? Or more inherently cheesy?

One can most certainly be more or less creative, which fully depends on the person, and most people play to win and will take an effective build. After all, nobody wants to lose.

Polonius wrote:Basically, my question is thus: are IG armies the way they are because of who plays them, or because of how to play IG effectively?

In the end, I would agree with the later. Certain builds/combos work very well together and will always be more popular then others (Stormtroopers/ratlings/ogryn ect ect) so you will see them played more then the lesser options.

It's just how it is.. and will continue to be so with GW's codex design methods.

One of the interesting points that DoP brought up on the first page regarded IG in a tournament setting...maybe this is where so much of the "boring" appellation is coming from? I can't really say, as the tournament scene is way outside my experience. Locally, I seem to be the only mech guard player, and my list is far from a min-maxed tournament list.

I'd say that alot of the stereotyping would come from the tournament scene. I have never seen an actual full blown leaf blower IG army, to be honest. Most IG armies I see in friendly games are mixed forces, and many builds work there.

I think MechVetshave gotten a bad rap because they did so well, so early, and so many bandwagon jumpers jumped onto them that they've been burned into the collective conciousness as the 'new' IG.

like I said before, I have played Mechvets for 10 years, and I will play them for the next 10 (after IG Gets hit by the Nerf hammer, and then gets Buffed again lol), It just P@sses me off i get called a boring player or a noob cookie cutter copyier (say the ten times faster), I came up with the "leafblower" myself, and will continue to play it, even when it sucks (try it with 4th ED rules, ouch)

Players can play whatever is in their codex, I never take offense to that. I blame the Codex writers if an army is boring/tedious to play against. I think Cruddance is a horrible designer and units in his dex are typically God Tier or Garbage Tier. I think it's impossible to not have a 'best build' but in many of the better books...the disparity between units isn't as bad as his books. Yes, someone will now interject with Vanguard Vets in the Vanilla codex, etc and I don't disagree that there are still rotten choices in other books....but less so than his. The old Chaos dex cookie cutter DP/PM/Oblit is the same thing...the product of poor design. Ultimately, therein lays the responsibility.


So now that I've laid the fault at the designers...not the players....so IG players won't get their hair raised at the following; IG---Why are they so loathed? Lack of interaction is my answer. If I play a dual prince/PM/Oblit list (Another cookie cutter army that I believe is the product of a weak dex)...at least I'm going to mix it up with the other player. We're going to get close, rapid fire a bit, get some assault going, etc.

Mech vets, I'm going to roll armor damage tables all day and stare at tanks while his army sits in the sideboard. If I make it in HTH, the game is over...if I don't...the game is over. It's black/white win/lose. He rolls to wound, I roll a d6 to see what happens to the 6th Chimera on the damage table. I'm sorry, this is not enjoyable or exciting.

For all intents and purposes, Cruddance should have given Chimeras 3 turrent mounted, defensive classified melta-guns, made them scoring and saved IG players some money.

AgeOfEgos wrote:Players can play whatever is in their codex, I never take offense to that. I blame the Codex writers if an army is boring/tedious to play against. I think Cruddance is a horrible designer and units in his dex are typically God Tier or Garbage Tier. I think it's impossible to not have a 'best build' but in many of the better books...the disparity between units isn't as bad as his books. Yes, someone will now interject with Vanguard Vets in the Vanilla codex, etc and I don't disagree that there are still rotten choices in other books....but less so than his. The old Chaos dex cookie cutter DP/PM/Oblit is the same thing...the product of poor design. Ultimately, therein lays the responsibility.


So now that I've laid the fault at the designers...not the players....so IG players won't get their hair raised at the following; IG---Why are they so loathed? Lack of interaction is my answer. If I play a dual prince/PM/Oblit list (Another cookie cutter army that I believe is the product of a weak dex)...at least I'm going to mix it up with the other player. We're going to get close, rapid fire a bit, get some assault going, etc.

Mech vets, I'm going to roll armor damage tables all day and stare at tanks while his army sits in the sideboard. If I make it in HTH, the game is over...if I don't...the game is over. It's black/white win/lose. He rolls to wound, I roll a d6 to see what happens to the 6th Chimera on the damage table. I'm sorry, this is not enjoyable or exciting.

For all intents and purposes, Cruddance simply should have gave Chimeras 3 turrent mounted, defensive classified melta-guns, made them scoring and saved IG players some money.

This i can understand, Im sure you can see my annoyance though, same army for the last decade, and NOW i get called a boring player or a power gamer, it irks me. lol

AgeOfEgos wrote:So now that I've laid the fault at the designers...not the players....so IG players won't get their hair raised at the following; IG---Why are they so loathed? Lack of interaction is my answer. If I play a dual prince/PM/Oblit list (Another cookie cutter army that I believe is the product of a weak dex)...at least I'm going to mix it up with the other player. We're going to get close, rapid fire a bit, get some assault going, etc.

Mech vets, I'm going to roll armor damage tables all day and stare at tanks while his army sits in the sideboard. If I make it in HTH, the game is over...if I don't...the game is over. It's black/white win/lose. He rolls to wound, I roll a d6 to see what happens to the 6th Chimera on the damage table. I'm sorry, this is not enjoyable or exciting.

So very true, you explained it much better than ever I could have. I even tried, and it didn't work.

Edit: I can see your point as well, Formosa, I agree that it's (generally) much more of the codex writer's fault than the player, unless you're being TFG, which I'm not thinking it sounds like you are.

Mech guard is hated because of that one list that everyone copies and because you can win by doing nothing but pointing and rolling dice. A monkey could play guard. Not to say there are interesting tricks, but I just wish other stuff was run rather than tank spam.

Hell my guard list was some infantry, some sentinels, a group of rough riders and some death strikes. Never seen that before have you? Of course not, it's always tank and/or infantry spam.

nah fragile breath im not being TFG, i feel that a host of ThoseFG have decended upon me and others like me, because they think we are just cookie cutting lists off das Net, when I and others like me have been playing the same way for years.

The reason I started Mech/vets is because I was in the Blues and Royals household Cav (Formation Recon), Im a tread head and based my army on this, The 105th Heavy Recon, hell I have my own (poorly written, but i like it lol) fluff for them. Then BANG 5th Ed guard makes me a power gamer/interweb cookie cutting Noob (dakka's words not mine) like i said, irksome it is... verrily .. lol

AgeOfEgos wrote:So now that I've laid the fault at the designers...not the players....so IG players won't get their hair raised at the following; IG---Why are they so loathed? Lack of interaction is my answer. If I play a dual prince/PM/Oblit list (Another cookie cutter army that I believe is the product of a weak dex)...at least I'm going to mix it up with the other player. We're going to get close, rapid fire a bit, get some assault going, etc.

Mech vets, I'm going to roll armor damage tables all day and stare at tanks while his army sits in the sideboard. If I make it in HTH, the game is over...if I don't...the game is over. It's black/white win/lose. He rolls to wound, I roll a d6 to see what happens to the 6th Chimera on the damage table. I'm sorry, this is not enjoyable or exciting.

Great point! This is the kind of thing that I was hoping for when I started the thread. Your theory makes a lot of sense to me actually. I can see how players who are used to a lot of HTH would get turned off by rolling on vehicle damage tables all game long. That other players might have that reaction never occurred to me; I am pretty new to 40k (well, since the fall of 2008, anyway), and the IG is the only army I've played. So, I probably don't have the same conceptions of what a game of 40k "should" be as someone who has been playing a lot more often and/or for a lot longer. In fact, some of my favorite games have been some major tank on tank battles using the Spearhead rules, and it sounds like that kind of game would be very boring to some.

For all intents and purposes, Cruddance should have given Chimeras 3 turrent mounted, defensive classified melta-guns, made them scoring and saved IG players some money.

Agreed, especially given how much I've spent to get enough meltas to fill the two vet squads in my current list!

There's a guy who plays at my flgs, and he runs a guard army with two psycher battle squads in chimeras, an inquisitor and a callidus (I can't remember, the one which disguises itself), standard infanty, a squad of leman russes, and two manticores. It was so effective that when he played a tournament organiser for some national tournament, he was outright banned from ever running that army again in any Australian tournaments. If there's anything that's overpowered in a guard army, it's psycher squads. When used in combination with certain things (specifically inquisitors and assassins), they destroy everything.

My problem with IG is that I hate the look of the infantry models. The only models I actually like are the command squad and I sort of like the Catachan jungle fighters. I hate the look of the Cadians, the Valhallans, everything. I've tried looking through the book multiple times, but I think they look incredibly stupid and I won't play as them. I don't think they're an overpowered/broken codex like BA and SW (and soon GK) are-I just hate the appearance. I won't refuse to play against an IG player, but I have no problem telling them their models like dog . Not the paint job-just the actual models themselves (minus conversions that may look awesome). I'm indifferent to the tanks: they're boxes like SM vehicles-even though a vindicator looks far better than a Leman Russ. If you would like to send me pictures to say "ooo, Timetowaste85, see? My IG look great" I'm sure your paint job is good/fine/great/AMAZING-I just hate the sculpt of your models-no insult to your abilities. This is my rant for hating guard. I feel similarly to Tau crisis/battle suits. I like firewarriors without helmets and the HUGE-@$$ shoulder pad, and I like kroot. The ships are pretty cool too. But crisis suits look like somebody got drunk and violated a gundam suit, then had a mutated donkey-baby. Models influence my gamer hate-IG can have its rules (which I think are actually pretty cool) and I like Marbo, but come on-the range is absolute garbage.

Rant over

timetowaste85 wrote:My problem with IG is that I hate the look of the infantry models. The only models I actually like are the command squad and I sort of like the Catachan jungle fighters. I hate the look of the Cadians, the Valhallans, everything. I've tried looking through the book multiple times, but I think they look incredibly stupid and I won't play as them. I don't think they're an overpowered/broken codex like BA and SW (and soon GK) are-I just hate the appearance. I won't refuse to play against an IG player, but I have no problem telling them their models like dog . Not the paint job-just the actual models themselves (minus conversions that may look awesome). I'm indifferent to the tanks: they're boxes like SM vehicles-even though a vindicator looks far better than a Leman Russ. If you would like to send me pictures to say "ooo, Timetowaste85, see? My IG look great" I'm sure your paint job is good/fine/great/AMAZING-I just hate the sculpt of your models-no insult to your abilities. This is my rant for hating guard. I feel similarly to Tau crisis/battle suits. I like firewarriors without helmets and the HUGE-@$$ shoulder pad, and I like kroot. The ships are pretty cool too. But crisis suits look like somebody got drunk and violated a gundam suit, then had a mutated donkey-baby. Models influence my gamer hate-IG can have its rules (which I think are actually pretty cool) and I like Marbo, but come on-the range is absolute garbage.

Rant over

Yeah, tell me my models look like dogshit. Thanks. Your post is worse than Gary Morley's Dark Eldar.

lalabox wrote:There's a guy who plays at my flgs, and he runs a guard army with two psycher battle squads in chimeras, an inquisitor and a callidus (I can't remember, the one which disguises itself), standard infanty, a squad of leman russes, and two manticores. It was so effective that when he played a tournament organiser for some national tournament, he was outright banned from ever running that army again in any Australian tournaments. If there's anything that's overpowered in a guard army, it's psycher squads. When used in combination with certain things (specifically inquisitors and assassins), they destroy everything.

What? That's completely ridiculous. PBS hasn't been considered scary in the US since before the codex came out. Then everyone realized that it was worthless against mech and stopped caring.

Brother SRM wrote:

timetowaste85 wrote:My problem with IG is that I hate the look of the infantry models. The only models I actually like are the command squad and I sort of like the Catachan jungle fighters. I hate the look of the Cadians, the Valhallans, everything. I've tried looking through the book multiple times, but I think they look incredibly stupid and I won't play as them. I don't think they're an overpowered/broken codex like BA and SW (and soon GK) are-I just hate the appearance. I won't refuse to play against an IG player, but I have no problem telling them their models like dog . Not the paint job-just the actual models themselves (minus conversions that may look awesome). I'm indifferent to the tanks: they're boxes like SM vehicles-even though a vindicator looks far better than a Leman Russ. If you would like to send me pictures to say "ooo, Timetowaste85, see? My IG look great" I'm sure your paint job is good/fine/great/AMAZING-I just hate the sculpt of your models-no insult to your abilities. This is my rant for hating guard. I feel similarly to Tau crisis/battle suits. I like firewarriors without helmets and the HUGE-@$$ shoulder pad, and I like kroot. The ships are pretty cool too. But crisis suits look like somebody got drunk and violated a gundam suit, then had a mutated donkey-baby. Models influence my gamer hate-IG can have its rules (which I think are actually pretty cool) and I like Marbo, but come on-the range is absolute garbage.

Rant over

Yeah, tell me my models look like dogshit. Thanks. Your post is worse than Gary Morley's Dark Eldar.

As I said, I hate the sculpts-not paintjobs, not custom work-just the sculpts-as in GWs build. It's not a personal attack-its an attack on the sculpts and my reason for hating them. At least it's different from hating the rules

-edit-However, maybe it would be more fair if I said that I'd have no problem telling my opponents that I think IG models look like dog instead of actually saying "their models look like it." Apologies for the way it came out, but I think IG models look worse than the Chibihawk AND the pumbagor ever could.

ph34r wrote:

What? That's completely ridiculous. PBS hasn't been considered scary in the US since before the codex came out. Then everyone realized that it was worthless against mech and stopped caring.

Brother SRM wrote:

timetowaste85 wrote:My problem with IG is that I hate the look of the infantry models. The only models I actually like are the command squad and I sort of like the Catachan jungle fighters. I hate the look of the Cadians, the Valhallans, everything. I've tried looking through the book multiple times, but I think they look incredibly stupid and I won't play as them. I don't think they're an overpowered/broken codex like BA and SW (and soon GK) are-I just hate the appearance. I won't refuse to play against an IG player, but I have no problem telling them their models like dog . Not the paint job-just the actual models themselves (minus conversions that may look awesome). I'm indifferent to the tanks: they're boxes like SM vehicles-even though a vindicator looks far better than a Leman Russ. If you would like to send me pictures to say "ooo, Timetowaste85, see? My IG look great" I'm sure your paint job is good/fine/great/AMAZING-I just hate the sculpt of your models-no insult to your abilities. This is my rant for hating guard. I feel similarly to Tau crisis/battle suits. I like firewarriors without helmets and the HUGE-@$$ shoulder pad, and I like kroot. The ships are pretty cool too. But crisis suits look like somebody got drunk and violated a gundam suit, then had a mutated donkey-baby. Models influence my gamer hate-IG can have its rules (which I think are actually pretty cool) and I like Marbo, but come on-the range is absolute garbage.

Rant over

Yeah, tell me my models look like dogshit. Thanks. Your post is worse than Gary Morley's Dark Eldar.

I laughed. Well done sir!

So, what I see here is people who play IG defending it, because they only like that army, or its been a notoriously underpowered army before.

Both of which are, frankly, bs excuses.

While I see other people who don't play IG saying that it is boring to play because they either encounter the same core list over and over (chimeras, vendettas, manticore, hydra) or they just don't like the general aesthetic of them, because it is rather boring losing the game before you even have a chance to do anything apart from deployment.

The first part I don't really understand. As JP has stated, most, if not all armies, have this list.

The second part can't be helped, as this is how GW has meant them to be. Yeah, its unfortunate that they can really only be played in one way: shoot the gak out of them, but that's how GW decided to make them.

In my opinion, IG have the options to make much more than the mechanized, its just people don't. Which leads me to believe that the reason people hate IG is not because of the army itself, its that they play with a bunch of douches that play the cookie cutter build in a casual fashion.

Now, if we are playing in a tournament, all bets are off. You are expected to make the cheesiest list possible.

Brother SRM wrote:

ph34r wrote:What? That's completely ridiculous. PBS hasn't been considered scary in the US since before the codex came out. Then everyone realized that it was worthless against mech and stopped caring.

Depends on what you're fighting. I was playing a fairly mechanized Ork army, and had a big Nob deathstar wreaking havoc. Most armies have to get out of their vehicles at some point! Anyway, his PBS knocked my leadership down to 2, and enough combined fire made my Nobz fall back. He chased them off with Ratlings.
Ratlings.

It's mostly dropping leadership stuff, with moving their models around with the callidus, making it so that they have to pass a leadership test to shoot at leadership 2, and generally being annoying. If they are not a threat, then they are not being played right. But then again, everyone in the store refers to him as cheddar. Although, this list required no 'rules interpretations'.

Ruckdog wrote:One of the interesting points that DoP brought up on the first page regarded IG in a tournament setting...maybe this is where so much of the "boring" appellation is coming from? I can't really say, as the tournament scene is way outside my experience. Locally, I seem to be the only mech guard player, and my list is far from a min-maxed tournament list.

He couldn't possibly be talking about the tournament scene specifically, as blob-squad spam was completely out of control at 'Ard Boyz last year.

There are three or four major strong tournament builds in IG. One of them is easier to build and run than the others.

Dash, didn't you play against the infantry horde in any GTs last year?

Wow, this is a depressing thread. As a future IG player(as soon as I buy the minis), I planned to buy 2 CCS, 3 Vet squads, Chimeras, Valk/Vend, 1 Manticore, Hydras and an Executioner, because my fluff says they are High tech Guard. And Valk/Vends, Missile Artillery, Auto-Targeting Hydras, and a Plasma Tank are High Tech IMHO, but it's sad to know that I'll probably be painted as a Cheesy Noob as soon as I show up at my LFGS.

Now, I plan on getting Elysians, and all those Vehicles, because I want a nice looking army that I can be proud of. But it still kind of sad that there is a possibility that people won't want to play with me right away. :(

Steelspectre, there is more whining and complaining on the internet than in real life. Paint it nicely and be a nice dude to play with, and you will not lack for opponents.

Mannahnin wrote:Steelspectre, there is more whining and complaining on the internet than in real life. Paint it nicely and be a nice dude to play with, and you will not lack for opponents.

Seconded.

The lists taken don't dictate the quality of a game, the behavior of the players do. Use the army you want to.

I love how people will come into a thread and tell Dash he doesnt know what he's talking about. Specially when he's played in more tournaments and faced of against more different people than the people criticizing him could imagine.

It's also funny that he described a Guard army that I faced off against this weekend at an RTT....exactly....EXACTLY. I lost, it would've been boring but I'm playing a brand new army that I'm learning still....so I was engaged. If I was playing my sisters or another list that I'm used to, I wouldve been napping in between my turns.

Yea, he doesnt know what he's talking about. Not in the least. Dash doesnt have a clue as to what successful guard players bring to the table...he's such a noob.

If you want to play guard, do it, but dont get all defensive and whiny when someone calls you out on the lack of imagination in your army. You chose it, stand by it, but don't deny that people hate it, and CERTAINLY don't deny that your army is boring to play against. That opinion is reserved for your opponents.

SteelSpectre wrote:Wow, this is a depressing thread. As a future IG player(as soon as I buy the minis), I planned to buy 2 CCS, 3 Vet squads, Chimeras, Valk/Vend, 1 Manticore, Hydras and an Executioner, because my fluff says they are High tech Guard. And Valk/Vends, Missile Artillery, Auto-Targeting Hydras, and a Plasma Tank are High Tech IMHO, but it's sad to know that I'll probably be painted as a Cheesy Noob as soon as I show up at my LFGS.

Now, I plan on getting Elysians, and all those Vehicles, because I want a nice looking army that I can be proud of. But it still kind of sad that there is a possibility that people won't want to play with me right away. :(

When you try hard to make your army look like you put a lot of effort into it people will generally like it a lot more than if it looks like you just scraped it together to win more. You'll be fine.

Deadshane1 wrote:Yea, he doesnt know what he's talking about. Not in the least. Dash doesnt have a clue as to what successful guard players bring to the table...he's such a noob.

Come on, man... No one said that.

I wasn't at as many tournaments as the aforementioned poster (nor would I want to be ) but in the humble few GTs and 'Ard Boyz events (Qualifiers, Semfinals) that I attended there were multiple incarnations of IG lists and the horde did better than any of them. It's anecdotal, I know, but anyone else's tournament experience is as well.