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You can try a bit of artillery to hit stuff from your own deployment zone, without worrying much about closing the distance, at the very least it will allow you to take down the elements that reap down your advancing lines.

I mean, guard is THE artillery army, they got so much, so powerful heavy guns. why not pack a few?



Transports for the vets might also do the trick. chimera is not a land raider, but dropping the number of sluggers in order to make a few of them mechanized infantry could end up with more of them reaching the goal.

You run close-combat russ anyway, so the enemy WILL have target saturation for his anti-armor that way. either try to take down the russ, or put down the chimera. and a chimera with x2 heavy bolters is a nice "heavy weapon team" in a way, or x2 heavy flamers to wreck havok in point-blank.

It will also be unexpected with the drop in armor lately. and as armor drops in numbers, anti armor drops in numbers. their meta-gaming will be their own undoing.

Guard artillery isn't actually all that it's made out to be, though. None of it can shoot at fliers, and none but the colossus can ignore jink saves (and even then, it's only T6 and worse than Ap2, so it's probably just peeling off HP). Really, the only thing that guard artillery is particularly effective against is infantry, and that's the one thing that guard armies generally don't have a problem with.

No, the best shooting is multi-shot high strength. Its psyflemen and longfangs and gauss weapons (for what they do to vehicles), and the like. Single BS3 splatguns really just aren't what they used to be.

Of course, I could start running a mech guard army, but in order to do this properly, I'd need something like 9 chimeras or 6 and 3 vendettas. If I'm going to spend that kind of time and money, then really, I'm starting another army.

If I'm starting another army anyways, I might as well start one that I know for certain is going to get me what I want.

How about BA? Couple drop pod DC units. Blender dreads. Sanguinary guard. Storm ravens.

I play BA first and IG second. A BA list can have a lot of variety as you said it can shoot or fight. If you are worried about it having enough firepower, ally in your IG.

I am also holding my breath for the new DA and CSM codexes so I can figure out which dark vengeance army to build off of.

I am not aware of BA that can be decent in a gunfight?

 Brother SRM wrote:

 captain collius wrote:

or you could be a donkey and bring them both (not competitive but fracking hilarious

Sounds more expensive than hilarious! You can only benefit from one of their Chapter Tactics. Pedro's is really good for the sustainability of the army since he buffs attacks by +1 on every squad within 12" of him. Assaulting armies will have a hard time fighting Sternguard with 3 base attacks each, and shooting armies won't want to get charged by them.

True i forgot about that. If it sways your opinion at all i saw several stern drop pod armies they still look pretty good.

Guard have one of the better anti-flyer measures ATM; Hydras. Take Hydras and Russes/arty and your game suddenly got a bit more dangerous. I've been playing Guard since the old 3rd ed 'Dex, and the hammer/anvil tactics of combined arms warfare (infantry supported by armor) works out really well. You've got a blob to chill on an objective, while a few Veterans scoot around in Chimeras (like, 2-3 or so). Russes/Arty provide ranged support/AP2 death/pie plate fun, and Hydras take down flyers and trollface at Jetbikes. The only other folks who can rip flyers apart like Guard can (even with AV12 flyers) are Tau, and they've got a long shot (spam Markerlights at flyer. Pray for a 6. Use Seeker Missile and giggle).

Just mix up your game a bit; failing that, I'm sure you'd like BA, for reasons that others have said.

just remember hydras hit ground targets on 6 due to no interceptor

True, but you've got the whole rest of your army to deal with ground threats.

My friend has had good results with dealing with GL armies in the following method:

1: Al Raheim
2: Russ / Valkyrie (AKA flying dump-truck)
3: Astropath

With these 3, he regularly outflanks with an entire platoon after a couple turns of softening up both sides with the Russ's battle cannon or the Valk's everything. Meanwhile, he is marching forward with Sentinels and cans loaded with various guardsmen..

As for armies that can break gun lines, I think the Guard are some of the best at it (just because AL'Raheim and mass numbers of ok weapons) followed closely by Drop pod armies. Another option could be Daemons as they MUST deep strike. You could also go with Eldar and the 2X Autarch + outflanking/deepstriking everything strategy. Unfortunately, I've yet to see such a strategy really pay off beyond the initial attack -_-.

So, to address a few of the problems you seem to have with your foot guard taken from your batreps:

1. Lack of movement. You can't seem to make any meaningful advances aside from storm troopers.

2. Lack of force concentration. Foot guard is highly spread out, making it harder to bring firepower to bear against flank/focused attacks.

3. Lack of survivability. T3 4+, while seeming to get steadily better for you, still lacks staying power.

The answer to this seems to have been mentioned several times before. Drop Pods (SM). They are one of the few armies that can pull off a null deployment strategy and give you a cheap and (relatively) safe way to bring down troops and elites into the enemy's deployment zone. So, with movement, you can dictate roughly where you want your forces to come down, giving your opponent a headache in terms of how he deploys and making you the aggressive acting player, while forcing the other to be a passive, reacting player.

With force concentration, while a single tactical squad is not anything to be scared off, three or four showing up in the same area of the board (say, on a weak flank next to an objective) suddenly become a lot more potent. With a strong armor save and toughness, and the ability to place exactly where your firepower will go, you dictate the flow of the game as well as get to grips with the enemy.

Survivabiltiy is improved as well. T4 3+ speaks for itself.

It's also cheaper than most other armys. You can make a drop pod from an empty coke can and some plasticard. And if you want cheap tactical squads, there are a myriad of them floating around for bottom dollar. Look at the DV Dark Angels Tactical Squad. If you can file off the chapter symbols you can net yourself one for 13.50 (lowest I found.)

Addendum: I will say that as I have never played this type of army, this is all theory hammer. This is how a drop pod army should work on paper, but paper stats often differ from actual table top experience.

Addendum #2: I always find it amusing that no matter how hard you try, your thread always devolves at some point into an ethical debate about your opinions of the social aspects of 40k, regardless of whether or not it returns to on topic discussions.