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Best way to craft a defensive IG army? I'm not sure what divisions to take or how to make my infantry line not instant dead. Basically I'm looking for a way to have a strong infantry defensive line while my tanks and artillery are blasting away from the back. (Think WW1 tactics). Anyways I was wondering what the best style to run these is. So far it's a Emperor's Shield Company, plain, as well as a lot of psykers and Azrael for the 4++, combined with priests and commissars. After that is Emperor's Wrath for the arty. Is there a weakness to this army? Any ways to improve it?

Maybe you want to have some sort of fortification to hide your infantry in. Fortifications provide a cheap way to protect your back line and the people who use them.
Take one with some sort of weapon system and your fortification will not only add to your units survivability, but also add to your gunline.

Yea there's a formation in stronghold assault called the wall of martyrs imperial defence network which at its minimum consists of 1 imperial bunker, 1 defence line, and 1 defence emplacement. The defence line provides a cover save and the stubborn special rule. The defence emplacement provides cover, stubborn, and weapons with the heavy type (so heavy weapon teams) Re roll ones to hit. And the imperial bunker holds a unit and I think 8 can shoot out of it, Its and AV 14 building that you can also put a quad gun or Icarus lascannon on top that can be manned. Your looking at like 175 points there for the minimum. I dont have the models but I always wanted to try this cause if you had blobs in the defensive emplacements and bunkers you could have a backline of artillery and deep striking would be incredibly difficult for your opponent.

You could also add 1-2 Redoubts which is a bunker that has sentry weapons on the top of it, and 1-2 weapons batteries which is a sentry gun, you can put punisher cannons or battle cannons on it.

The point is though that you can take up much of the volume of your deployment zone with buildings and defensive positions that deep striking would be a nightmare. Either way check out strong hold assault cause it sounds like what you're asking about.

You can also add tank traps and similar as options for some of the buildings, which can help keep vehicles from getting too close, and prevent those annoying drop pod insertions right in front of your guys.

Get an infantry platoon with 50 conscripts with a priest / commissar as your base

I do this with Renegades and Heretics, so it should be the same more or less.

As of now, I use an ADL with a Quad Gun and it has yet to disappoint me.

ADL, Zombies, Artillery.
You could do something similar with ADL, Conscripts, Tanks. Pretty sure you can get camo netting on most tanks so enjoy the 3+, that being said, I don't know if IG can use static artillery, but if it can I would go with that as its a littler tougher sometimes and costs less.

It can be a pain to shift, especially in a meta that favors high strength shooting over horde shooting, lots of armies will struggle to put enough wounds on you. You also have the benefit of all of your shooting being in one place, meaning they have to go through no mans land to close the gap.

You are static. I ally with CSM and run a big Nurgle biker squad with double sorcerers and a Daemon prince to go out and wreck face, youll need to set up something similar, fast and tough, to take objectives, deepstrike units also work.

You suck in combat. Zombies are fearless, IG have to rely on their characters to keep them in the fight. You don't want to be in CC for the most part, unless maybe you can get the charge off or need to tarpit.

Your turns take forever. I played a game with 200 infantry models once, just to see how horde I can get... longest game of my life. Even if you remain static for the most part (sometimes ill shuffle zombies over the ADL to sit on a midfield objective) setting up and taking down is going to take forever. My tournament list has been cut down to 40 zombies due to this. If not in a tornement scene, its not such a big deal... but the one time you play against a green tide... Movement trays might help, Ive never used them though as they just seem a little odd to me. It is something I have been considering though

Hope this helps!

Fortress of Redemption.

You can castle a corner of the map and then hide your Artillery behind it because it blocks LOS.

It provides AA and extra firepower, protects the men you garrison in it (especially if you fork out for Void Shields) and will be a bullet magnet.

In addition, you can buy the standard barricades, tank traps or barbed wire upgrades other fortifications can get in order to extend its protective footprint.

First of, get the emperors wrath artillery company. CCS, maybe a LC, vox must have. Camo everywhere

2nd, get the imperial strongpoint formation, 2 bunkers, 2-3ADL.

3rd, put a pcs with a vox on each bastions, so this way you can overlook the hole map, and give twinlinked to the formation thus reking enemy units.

4th, bastion have a cap of 20, doesn't mean you should use it all. Put a veteran squad in each, with 3 plasma and a LC, now you have created a 24 inch deathzone to meq and teq, oh and don't forget to get an ammo dump in the bastion, now you can reroll 1's. Or put an sws with 3 flamers and escape hatch for some roasting, but rather risky. Putting a platoon in there isn't the best cost effective choice. Maybe a sws with 3 plasma could do the same trick as the vets...

5th, get something to counter deepstrikers and units with scout: interceptor, bubblwrap, void shields, or put the bastions not on the extremities but on the center line, because your opponent will mostly freak about them.

6th, don't forget to put tanglwire in front of your line and bastion, especially in front of your ADL. A 30 man blob, with overwatch shots and dangerous terrain casualties will make your enemy think twice before charging. Barricades are good for protecting your flanks if you have fully used your ADL.

7th, tanktraps may seem good, but your opponent will always find a way, except you spammed them, in case he will use it against you and hide his unit behind them, so I would pass. Or you can put them in bottlenecks (mostly the flank)

8th try to have some mobile units, maybe some DS melta scions or plasma scions, maybe scout units, fliers.Because even LC won't do anything if your opponent has av 14 vehicles coming for your camping butt.

9th, you should really consider playing scions, a whole platoon if you can. DS them in the backfield and sandwich your opponent.

10th, your front line inf is going to die, they will die like flies at the end, because they are going to be the only targets out there. And every army has so many cover ignoring weapons that I don't even bother painting my guys anymore.

11th, don't bother giving upgrades to your inf, most of it is rendered useless exept if you go anti inf, AC and HB are the way to go, AT is always up against front armor.

This is some of the advice I can give.

The problem is that there is a lack of mobility which sometimes can't compensate the damage output. Our artillery has av 12/10/10, enemy arti units will wreck them. Russes are mostly, still overpriced for what they do. The only good ones are the demolisher and the battle tank damage wise, but they got really rendered useless by gdubs in an attempt do save the space marine army of little 12 year old Tom from ds 3 and 2. Getting 2 lrbt are still 300 points for 2 st8 ap 3 blasts...

Generally, gunline guard is dead, since the f#ckstorm of supplements and this and that, and (especially) f#cking eldar cheese you mostly won't win if you haven't enough firepower, but yeah, nearly everything has this save or this special rule.

The only advantage you have is that most opponents won't calculate with this kind of list. Most opponent look forward to LR spam, since foot guard is also dead and will spam AT weapons.

I played gunline guard for 2 years now, and only won like a couple times, I played to the point where I got sick of being tabled again and again. The only time I play gunline is in our garagehammer scenario where we make up scenarios. But even my buddy doesn't stop complaining about the lack of mobility.

Oh and good luck trying to play planetary onslaught with strangers, many don't want to play this book. The additional FOC slots make the line better , or you go unbound, but some people will complain about that if you talk before hand with 'em.


Maybe I'll post some advises later