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Am I just really bad at playing them? I know that they are suppose to be middle tier, but; I just have been able to preform well with them. Some of you saw my post from a couple of weeks ago here: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/716582.page#9182019

Well, like a chump I agreed to again play a game that I wasn't looking for. My opponent is relatively new to the game (I think he said it was his 6th time playing) and was running gene stealer cult. Decided on a 1200 point game, Eternal war: the Scouring. Not really knowing what to expect and wanted to try something completely different I ran unbound Knights supported by unbound guards. 2 knights, one errant and one paladin on with a company command squad (with MoO), two squads of bets with meltas, and three wyverns. I thought it was a good in the middle of the path army. The knights would do most of the work, the wyverns would handle infantry and the vets would vehicles.

Only the knights and one of the wyverns made it to turn two. GS, it would seem, have some pretty cool rules that let them put units down really close to you starting off. My opponent rolled a bunch of 5 and 6es for showing up in front of me and was able to charge on his first turn (he went first as well). He multi charged my bubble wrapped wyverns and that rear armor of 10 might as well be paper. Vets and CCS fell to the way side of claws and exploding wyverns took out my infantry. After that he just started glancing my knights. We called it at the end of turn 2, he had to many units and they were to spread out for me to do any real harm, and he was getting close to glancing the knights to death.

We talked about afterwards, if I had brought a platoon instead of vets and given them flamers and maybe some chrimeas with heavy flamers I would have done better, but; that is a really specific build. And I want to play in such a way that I'll hold my own no matter whats thrown at me. I don't mind losing, it's just that all of my games seem so one sided. Now, for the reason for my title, I had heard the GS were a rather crappy army, put playing against this guy, and talking about some of his special rules made them sound really solid. Especially next to my guardsmen. I will never be a good player, I like the fluff of my army more than I like to play them, but I honestly think that I would have done better today not fielding any of the guardsmen and just letting the other guy have a point advantage. That just doesn't seem right.

As a side thought, what other army's are getting to the point where they are not playable?

Guard are...in a very poor place right now. Really they always have been save for 5th and a couple goofy artillery builds in 6E.

The army lacks largely everything that's particularly powerful right now, and is fundamentally heavily reliant on weapons and units that are somewhat...hobbled.

Blast weapons don't match the raw RoF of other armies, other armies that ostensibly are generalist armies can match or exceed the IG for firepower, they're particularly slow, non-skimmer vehicles are rather crappy with the introduction of HP's, the humble Lasgun just cannot bring reasonable firepower to bear even in great masses to hurt many common units on the battlefield, and barring big artillery style weapons and the like most of their specialist characters and infantry are just flat out inferior to alternatives on both an absolute and relative basis, and the army just can't bring the same tricks that others can. They also aren't the beneficiaries of formation and detachment shennanigans in the way some other armies are.

That said, it doesn't mean IG can't ever win games, and they're not the worst army out there, but in a competitive sense, they are not at all particularly viable, especially without allies.

The problem here isn't that Guard aren't viable, it's that GSC are an out-of-context problem you weren't expecting to be dealing with. Putting two Knights in a 1,200pt list means you're tossing a massive amount of points into a very tiny basket, and Knights aren't great against spread-out low-value targets, so we're looking at a 1,200pt GSC army wipe about 500pts of Guardsmen on the charge and then sit around playing keep-away with the Knights. If you'd been playing a 1,200pt Guard army that had target saturation so the GSC couldn't cripple your game plan turn one, and if you had Conscripts so you could actually bubble-wrap your vehicles instead of trying to bubble-wrap with twenty melta-Vets, and had template weapons in case you ran up against an army that they were useful against, you'd have done better.

Bottom line: Guard aren't weak. You played rock-paper-scissors with them and lost. Try a less skewey list next time.

Well, no. I'm pretty sure that most people agree that the Imperial Guard ARE weak in the current meta. They're just not unwinnably weak. They're capable of winning with the right tactics, it's just they just don't have the right combination of firepower and survivability that the most competitive armies have to consistently place in the top scorers at tournaments.

1st - How is 2 knights, a CCS, 2x Vets and 3x Wyverns unbound?
2nd - Guard are, IMHO, well and truely bottom tier with Orks and DE. That doesn't mean you can't win a game at all, especially against other trash tier codecies, but it's going to be difficult if you're trying to take on anything optimised.
3rd - Almost any army facing GSC who have 1st turn and roll a bunch of 5's and 6's for infiltrate dare in huge trouble

From what I got, Guard excells in lower points game. Up to 1000p let's say, because you are able to field 2 to 4 times more men than your enemy. In those game only few people take dedicated anti-tank weaponry and this gives your tanks some breathing space. One or two tanks can change the tide of battle fairly easily and for this puspose, Armoured Shield formation is really good, as for 250 points you have Commissar, Infantry squad and a Leman Russ tank of your choice with 4+cover all around. And with infantry platoon with 2-3 squads you cover considerable part of the table as well.

The main mistake I see is that you are using melta vets as bubble wrap, which is not their optimal role since they are expensive. 2 of those will be at minimum 180pts. More if you buy doctrines. That's almost enough to buy a platoon command, 2 infantry squads and 20 conscripts all for 190pts. Now that's what I call bubble wrap. The key to guard is understanding every unit's strength and purpose, then using them accordingly. Vets have their place, but they shouldn't be used as bubble wrap. That is what you have platoons for.

2 knights in such a small game seems a bit unbalanced so when he got the jump on you your army crumbled.

What other units do you have at your disposal?

You bring two knights and 3 wyverns to a 1200 point game against GS and lose? I don't think its the IG codex's fault

KayTwo wrote:
We talked about afterwards, if I had brought a platoon instead of vets and given them flamers and maybe some chimeras with heavy flamers I would have done better, but...

Whenever playing against nids, GSC, orks always bring flamers. Some might suggest grenade launchers, but if your opponent is smart they will space out their infantry. Flamers are dirt cheap and at the very least make your opponent think twice before assaulting guardsmen. Wall of death can be devastating and almost always insures your flamer investment makes a return.

Hellhounds use to be a solid choice, but I can't recommend them anymore since they cost nearly as much as a leman russ. They basically need to be dropped 40-50% in points for them to be viable again. Chimeras as you mentioned, aren't a bad choice. Don't beat yourself up to much. GSC performance is heavily reliant on making those ambush rolls. If he rolled a bunch of 5's & 6's right from the get go allowing him to assault turn 1-2, that is very difficult to deal with.

Are guard viable? They can win if they get lucky, but most of us are waiting for an update. We are several editions behind in terms of competitiveness.

What's on the hulls of your wyverns? Heavy bolters?
Also, were they squadroned or separate?

Imperial Guard and Viable are two words which are not associated with each other any more.

Don't run knights in low poimt games against MSU armies.