|
Guard ally tactics for 7th edition
It's no secret that the power level of the I.G. is currently in the pits. Most of our tools are clearly priced for 5th edition, and the new codex introduced a number of truly bizarre rules interactions that do not allow equipment to function. We lost several special characters who could enable interesting playstyles (Al Raheim, Marbo and others) and what we gained wasn't much.
So how to spice up the Guard? How to feel like you stand more of a competitive chance, or make your guard army feel a bit more fun? Why not allies? The best thing about allies for Guard is you really don't need many, models or points wise, which means pumping your list up might be cheaper and easier than you think. (Please note that I absolutely do not advocate obtaining rules for your Games Workshop models using any method besides purchasing them for full price from the GW webstore and burning them when new rules are released.)
1) Forgeworld. The two standouts I consistently find myself coming back to are the Earthshaker Artillery Carriage and the Vulture gunship. The Vulture gives some solid mid-strength weight of fire shooting as well as better anti-air than the Vendetta for the price. And the Earthshaker boasts the points cost that the basilisk should really be at, along with the advantage of being an infantry-borne artillery piece, with all the glorious orders-related benefits that go along with that. Eat your heart out, riptides, our ignores-cover marine melting pie plate is a third of the cost of you.
2) Imperial Assassins. They're all good, but one is particularly satisfying to employ with the Guard. The Culexus Assassin, darling of tournament play. For a modest price, you can have the wonderful satisfaction of flattening a no longer invisible death star with a well placed battlecannon or executioner barrage, on top of some really solid melee deterrent. Just infiltrate him out of line of sight in front of your main gunline and watch your opponent falter a lot more than he would have before. The Vindicare is also handy, if just for a reliable S10 AP2 Ignores Cover shot, but my guard tend to find themselves shaking their fists at enemy psykers than enemy special characters.
3) Inquisition. My personal favorite. There's really no way to go wrong with these guys and the Guard, they were practically made for one another. Not only do you get access to Rhinos, Land Raiders, or Discount Chimeras, but you get power multipliers coming out of every orifice with the Inquisitors themselves. So I'll divide this one up into subsections because there's just so much in here that we like.
-Regular Inquisitors (I most commonly find myself going Ordo Xenos). They're cheap and they bring upgrades that are worth their weight in gold. First, servo skulls. I have never fielded a guard army where I wanted to leave home without them, just for the deployment advantage, shutting down scout and infiltrate. Past that point, pinpoint accurate artillery barrages are never bad. Even in games where they accomplish very little, at 3 points apiece the price is right. Inquisitors can also bring Rad grenades and Psychotroke grenades, wonderful melee deterrents in a blob squad, and they're conveniently psykers, at a similar points cost but with a better statline than the Primaris psyker. As a cherry on top, if you like your IC's actually making themselves useful while they sit in the backlines, they can bring a Conversion Beamer, a nasty weapon made even nastier if you issue the blob an Ignores Cover order.
-Inquisitor Coteaz. Though a shadow of his former bonkers 5th edition iteration, Coteaz is a serious boon for an infantry IG list. he's a solid counter to deep strikers, which means he can help protect vulnerable rear facings and artillery vehicles from the dreaded drop pod or other drop melta, and he brings solid melee power with psychic buffs. A lot of his value lies in what he deters your opponent from doing, rather than what he actually personally accomplishes, so I encourage someone who wants to try him to look at his worth from a strategic perspective.
-Inquisitor Karamazoff. While he might not be the most efficient option, you'd be hard pressed to find a more thematic-feeling addition to a guard force. Karamazoff has proven himself to be most invaluable in my eyes when standing right in front of a command squad. Not only did he provide a solid 4W worth of 2+ armor saves to the squad, he brings the fantastic and hilarious combination of his Orbital Strike Relay and By Any Means Necessary. If you feel like buffing up your little guardsmen until they fight enemy melee units and win is counter to the whole Imperial Guard aesthetic, then this rule is the CC counter for you. Just blow away your opponents' precious melee units right along with your own! Their sacrifice will be recorded somewhere, for some length of time, probably. For the emperor! Karamazov definitely wins the "most fluffy" award for imperial guard allies.
4) Space Marines. While the much-derided "just stick your vets in pods maaaaan" list does exist, much of my focus on space marine allies has been their shiny new Librarius Conclave formation. Having enough psychic points to buff up every single shooting unit in your backfield is really quite awesome. Given guard's huge synergy with the Divination table, I would argue the Libby conclave might even be better with IG than it is with Space Marines.
5) Imperial Knights. What do you use to counter superheavies? Well...this is one option. Knights are nice as they are a one-man detachment, meaning no troop tax is needed, and their general playstyle is really quite compatible with the guard. You've got a cc behemoth with some decent shooting who really wants bodies to screen him from fast moving shooty enemies, paired with a shooty army that really doesn't like cc. A match made in heaven, surely.
|
