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Astra militarum, imperial guard or whatever you want to call it, I would like some help on what to get for my army. I have a box of infantrymen from once upon a time and am going to get the cadian defence force as my first big purchase. But what about after that? I will only have about 600 points so any tips for what unit to get next? Any insight would be helpful.

Come up with a theme and then build to suit that theme.

Do you want mechanized, footslogging, artillery, defenses etc. etc. Once you have a theme in mind, you can then add units to taste.

Yeah that makes sense, the guard do have quite a bit of themes so to speak. What would a defence or artillary themed army consist of? Just wondering for some ideas.

You'd get kind of a trench line fortification. Maybe an Aegis defense line with infantry squads screening for Basilisks, Wyverns, and whatever else you like

Other themes:

Armored Division: Tank Commander/Pask with several Leman Russ tanks, two Chimeras full of veterans escorted by Hellhounds to clear out infantry.

Jungle assault: Catachans as veteran squads, at least one Valkyrie to deliver more troops and because Vietnam, Hellhounds to flush out the enemy. Rely on outflanking and melta and other close range anti tank options while you clear out and hug cover with your flamers.

Hammer of the Emperor (my buddy runs this, it's awesome ): an enormous strike force straight off the drop ships. Huge blobs of charging infantry bolstered by commissars and covered by Russes. Commanded by a Lord Commissar as no command squad would be damn fool enough to put himself on the first wave. The entire strategy is just to swarm in and take and hold as much ground as you can with implacable waves of troops in cover.

Precision Drop (played against this yesterday): start with a small defensive force hunkering down on objectives as hard as it can, with an Astropath calling down your reserves. Then put the other half of your points in a large platoon of Tempestus with maybe a vendetta as cover, and strike and overwhelm the weakest defended enemy objective. Then use your superior positioning to catch the enemy in a pincer where they can't assault one of your strongpoints without eating fire from the other.

I'd recommend playing a bit to figure out what style of play you buy too much stuff. Pick up a few things to get you to about 1,000 points and after a few games you'll have a better idea of what you want more of.

No matter what style you end up playing, you can't go wrong by having at least one artillery platform -- I'd recommend a Manticore -- and one Valkyrie/Vendetta in addition to the stuff you're going to get with the Defense Force. Also, I don't know how many guardsmen you have currently, but you're always going to want more, particularly if you want to play a gun line.

You mentioned that you might be interested in playing a more defensive style. Just know that Guard are pretty much the slowest army in the game, which is a huge disadvantage in maelstrom missions. Even if you want to have a stout gun line, you're going to need stuff that can make it to objectives all over the board. Valkyrie vets are good for that, as are Hellhounds, but cheap outflanking Scout Sentinels usually end up winning me a few points by the end of the game. For 45 points with a lascannon, a scout sentinel can shoot at the back armor of enemy tanks, run around to backfield objectives or at least give you linebreaker if you keep it alive by the end of the game. That could be the winning difference.