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My Raging Heroes miniatures finally came in, which means I'm staring down the barrel of finally putting my Imperial Guard together. So now I need to figure out how to run them. Optimally I'd like to be able to field two different armies. I'd prefer to keep this all in one thread if possible, but if the responses are all slanted towards one path, I'll start a second thread.

Army the first: Mech vets. Either with a tank commander and lots of heavy armor, or with a CCS and up to 5 vet squads. I have a huge Salamander army that I can run as either an allied force, or as a main force for this to be allied to.

Army the second: Militarum Tempestus. With their universal Deep Strike, my idea was to ally them to my Salamanders. The Marines would go melta-heavy (with Vulkan, of course) and try to pop open enemy vehicles, while the paratroopers would come in behind them, (sans scatter thanks to Locator Beacons) and lay down anti-infantry firepower.

Any advice on how to conduct these lists would be welcome. The thing I'm most looking for is how to kit out the infantry squads (CCS, Mech Vets, MT command squads, and MT scions).

Does anyone know of a good basic guide for Imperial Guard, a tactica article or comprehensive unit guide that's worth a toot? In addition, is there an Imperial Guard specific forum out there? I'd appreciate any help possible.

First off, I can only offer advice on IG... I'm not a fan of MT -- they seem like half-baked Marines to me... a "squishy-elite" army. The IG codex has all kinds of toys, but in the end, the strength is in the troops. The biggest difference is in BS -- Vets get +1 over regular troops... so, basic rule of thumb is to give high-shot/blast/template weapons to the guys with poor accuracy, and give the special weapons with shooting values to the Vets with the higher BS. I like flamers or grenade launchers in infantry platoons, along with autocannons (just put them in the squas, not the heavy weapons team.. that way you get more ablative wounds). CCS can get absurdly expensive, but just remember, they're pretty much only there for the "good orders" -- ignore cover, etc. You don't want them to die, and you don't want them in CC... so either give them long range weapons, or better yet, just give them a few advisors and hide them behind your troops to issue orders. Mech vets almost always get melta or plasma.... anything else is a waste of that good BS. I don't waste points on any of the doctrines.. they still die like any other guardsman. "Mixed armies" can work.. but, I personally like about 75/25 one way or the other... either go tank heavy with a little troop bubble-wrapping, or infantry heavy with a little ranged support.. a wyvern maybe. If you go too close to 50/50, your tanks get too pricey and your infantry aren't good at what you want em to do. I like the article/guide on 1d4chan myself.

As for the first option, I find it a bit hard to rely on mech vets. They have super conflicting things about them; the special weapons are short ranged and chimeras are bad transports but good gun platforms while the heavy weapons are at better BS but have no orders.

I've had the most success with airborne guard, but that's not really on your list. An option might be to go with podding marines and valk/vendetta-ing MT or vets.

Another thing to think about is the roles of things. Generally, tanks are good at killing infantry which leaves the infantry responsible for killing tanks. Suicide melta, las cannon blobs, and suicide command squads are the most common options.

Your mech vets might struggle, since they have to get out of their rides to benefit from orders, and they are quite squishy, though the +1 cover save doctrine can help out.

If you like tanks, I'd look into the steel host formation. Hydra tax gets you 5 russes and a command tank with a 12" preferred enemy bubble.

Cadiascreed is a decent blog. He's very upbeat and positive, which might bother you.

MT can be ok at anti-infantry, but I'd hesitate since 12 points is REALLY expensive for what you get.

MTs tricky. I'd usually look to them as suicide meltas, but with vulkan Allies they would do it better. The ground assault formation could be worth a gander. Taurox primes can put out a reasonable amount of dakka. The flying formation is limited (like the codex) of not having vendettas. Wth.

For mech guard check armoured fist. The armoured fist squads are basically a regular guardsmen in a chimera (minus the platoon requirement). It's also 5-10 points cheaper than its constituent parts iirc. Then just autocannon and plasma gun, rinse and repeat. Line them up and pillbox with multi lasers, heavy bolters, autocannons and plasmaguns. Maybe even a heavy stubber if you're adventurous. You only got 2 fire points on a chimera anyway so can't make full use of vets 3 specials. Still worthwhile to take a couple of mech vets though as your mobile squads. Lower BS is a bummer but you have more squads so overall hits usually average out. You just have more ablative bodies/bawkses.

I mean, I really like MT as a concept and think they can be made to work. The trick is how to do it. My best guess is to take them in vendettas with volley guns or plasma guns and combine them with AM orders for ignores cover. Sure they're 3/5 for the hellguns against MEQs, but that ignores an awful lot of the sillyness running around in the form of jinking bikestars.

6-9 vendettas, 2 units of veterans in bunkers or on skyshields, 2 MT platoons (taking 1 squad and 1 command squad each) and 2 HQ command squads with 4x special weapons seems pretty tasty. Lots of special weapons that move fast and are hard to kill until they jump out of their planes.

For points consideration, you could also take most of the army in valkyries and give all the squads melta guns. The down side here is that you're wasting the hellgun fire, which is most of the MT cost.

If you want mech and not sky mech, I wonder why you don't consider blob guard and transports? You can stick 50 grunts with 5 autocannons behind an aegis and use the chimeras or tauroxes for mobile ob sec support and more anti-infantry goodness. Bonus points for using forgeworld artillery in the form of medusa siege guns and/or rapier laser batteries. T7 twinlinked lascannons that can receive orders are pretty tasty. Trouble is getting them good ld and some extra wounds. Allied inquisitors are OK for this, as are primaris psykers and lord commissars.

Ether- I'm trying to minimize my extra purchases. (Which is why I'm not really looking at blob guard. I only have around 50-60 infantry total.)

Question: is there any reason I couldn't put my vets into allied SM drop pods?

If you have the FA slots there isn't.

125 for pod + 3xmelta vets sounds reasonable. Maybe some cloaks too.

If you were wanting to use MT for anti infantry, they aren't that great at it. Even against marines they are only okay. Against many other things they just don't put out enough wounds to be worthwhile.

Hmm. Between the marines and the guard, doesn't it make more sense to have the marines do the meltas and the guard do the flamers? Marines can bring a multi-melta, as well as break down into two separate squads (to pop two vehicles), and the vets can bring two flamers plus a heavy flamer, as opposed to the lone flamer the marine squad could bring.

agreed... leave drop pods for the marines. guard do two things good: cheap bodies (lost of them) or lots of AV 13 tanks. If you want to drop melta vets in, use a Valkyrie..

I don't want to drop melta vets in, though. I was more looking at flamer vets.

Max blob with 5 las cannon teams
Pask punisher with executioner russes
Spam wyverns
Spam medusas
MOAR guardsman

Fin