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Gurus,
Have a gent in our group that is returning from 3rd or 4th ed. He has lots of infantry. All nicely painted. Mostly OOP. I think 50 at least including Tallarns, Vostroyens, Halfling snipers, among others. He has one (ONE!) Basilisk. No other tanks. I am trying to guide him, but beyond me saying, "you need more tanks" I am at a loss to say which. We will be playing friendly but matched style likely points but power levels,for now. Any suggestions? How to most strategically magnetize? I am thinking most anything from Imperium Index 2 would be fine, incl knights.

Thanks

Can't go wrong with some Leman Russ I suppose (maybe/probably the demolishers kit is best)... and they're easy to magnatise.

That'll also give him the option of running a tank comander for a bt of variety.

I'm also really liking the look of Manticores these days.

Wyverns were the flavour of 7th ed, so there are loads around. Not sure how good they are in 8th, look useful against infantry hordes though.

And for ultimate tankage.... the Baneblade kit is a great kit. Can be magnetised to varying degrees too depending on effort.

I would stay away from russes, their high point cost don't appeal to me anymore, but getting more bassis, wyverns, a manticore ( with the Moo auto include ) is a viable option. Vehicles who move (expect auto hitting weapons) should not be spammed.
HWS are cheap and put out a good amount of damage, but are still fragile.
Bullgryns in transport ( chimera or valk ) make up a good shock unit, having a +2 save or 4++ and mauls.
Ratlings ( or some sort of sniper unit out there ) are viable too, they can snipe out characters, move after shooting, infiltrating anywhere on the map, and are cheap in points.
Scions for plasma deep strike spam

He's probably not got a lot of special weapons then, because that was before the 5th and the time of veteran special weapon spam. Scions are the infantry hotness, so he should probably do that for infantry if he wants to have a hard list. If he wants something more traditional, infantry squads are the way to go. Note that platoons don't exist as a cohesive unit anymore. Note that infantry squads are considered less competitive than conscripts or scions, but they're definitely closer to what he'd remember IG looking like back in the day. Ratlings aren't bad, but they're not really going to be gamechanging.

As far as vehicles go, Basilisks are hard to beat. Hellhounds are pretty effective too.

If he's open to expensive purchases like Knights, he may wish to consider a Stormlord. It's kind of considered the strongest of the AM superheavies at the moment.

Otherwise, the thread on here by Polonius where he ranks the units is pretty reliable and not too long, and the generic AM tactica thread has some interesting viewpoints on things, but it's a mile and a half long.

 daedalus wrote:


Otherwise, the thread on here by Polonius where he ranks the units is pretty reliable and not too long, and the generic AM tactica thread has some interesting viewpoints on things, but it's a mile and a half long.

Thanks for the shout out!

For a returning IG player, I'd suggest adding a few things, rather than chase the one or two best things. 50 infantry sounds like a lot, but that might be only 600 points in 8th. Still, he should try for a core of infantry squads, heavy weapon squads, and veterans. After that, I would try to find low dollar cost ways to get to at least 1000pts so he can play meaningful games. Here are some good, generally useful units:
Psyker s
Priests
Commissars
Heavy weapons
Scions
Hellhound
Manticore
Assassins

For bigger games, I'd highly recommend a shadowsword or stormlord.

His best bet, of course, is to buy another lot of older models, which will almost certainly give him more infantry, a leman Russ or three, and a chimera. I wouldn't buy the latter two at re tail because they are so common used.

The good thing is that the basic squad hasn't changed in 20 years, so they're still fine.

Hey man. You got me started with your awesome guide for 5th, and you're still doing the good work now. Keep it up and thank you, sir.