Recommendations on my new Astra Militarum Cadian Army purchase? New IG player! Expert Advise needed!

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**Blastum**

Hi gang,

So I took the plunge and have begun building an IG army. For starters, here is what I have so far:

2x Starter Sets (Heavy Unit, 10 Shock Trooper Guardsmen, 1 Commissar & Leman Russ)
2x Cadian Infantry Sets ( 10 Shock Trooper Guardsmen)

Now, I have only played this army once before with a friends painted army. I really enjoy the idea of an army with tanks storming the battlefield. Plus the idea of running tactics like a WW2 army.

So my question to you experts is what are the best recommendations for a proper 2000 point build. I am interested in fielding a ton of soldiers with heavy tank support. I find strength in numbers is always fun!

Any thoughts? I will be playing against mostly Thousand Sons, Orks, and Space Wolves for now.

Thanks!!!

**Dukeofstuff**

Right now you have something like 250 points infantrymen (assuming you tucked a heavy weapon in each starter squad and a 5 point special weapon (probably grenade) in the storm kit, and 2 tank commanders, commisar or lord commisar. So about 800 points on the table.
You can get another starter kit and feel good about it -- 3 tank commanders has been a solid army addition since back in 8th and that's not changing anytime soon. the 5th 10 man squad still leaves you a bit on the low side (cause there are (cough aggressor 6 man) marine army choices that one unit can kill 50 gaurd in 1 round, you should be very wary of small armies against space wolves). That will put you up around 1100 points.

Then. try swapping a head and arms on the extra commisar model you have to turn it into something like an astropath. That's 1125, but the astropath is very useful if only to strip cover off those marine save 1000 sons and spacewolfs. Against either, you will double your apparent firepower by shifting them up to a 3+ from a 2+ in cover on saves.

ok, so, a single manticore in the back line is a no brainer -- give it tank ace if you want, for 3 points per shot damage, and its a winner pointwise. that brings oyu up to nearly 1200 points.

Another starter box gaurd gives you a fourth LR .. a normal battle tank, to arm a smidge cheaper and put in front, in the hopes the enemy shoots it first, and your sixth infantry squad, filling out the battalion detachment's 3 commander, 6 infantry, and a heavy support pair (manticore, lr). Should get you to 1450 points, ish. If you get creative you might consider making that extra commisar -- new heads, new arms, etc -- into a slightly different model like a ministerium priest stand in (he would need something like a book in one hand and a chainsword in the other, and a very different paint job). Would bring you up to 1490ish.

so 510 points to burn. buuurn. hm.
In this edition transport is a critical item -- it protects your troops on objectives and can hold them.
Two ways to go about this. One way adds scoins to the mix, dear to my heart, the other way, adds chimeras to the mix, which is a commonly available kit and about 100 points per chimera.

Chimera option.
3 chimera with 2 heavy flamers each, and a storm bolter each, abuot 300 points. This gives you a nice ability to rush forward the troops you want to take midfield stuff iwth, and you are up to about 1800 total points.
Perhaps a second manticore and a rinkydink little sentinal with scout move + a missle launcher.

Now in total, you have a fairly balanced army (although it will have a rough time with marines, of course) of ..
3 leman russ tank commander 675
3 platoon commander 75 (easy enough to make out of extra stuff in the gaurd boxes, if you have even a few heavy weapons teams replacing a few soldiers)
6 squads infantry (3 have heavy weapons, I think) (6 grenade launchers + 3 mortars = 60 points wargear) 360
manticore with tank ace (increased by 50 percent its damaged output!) 145
manticore with OTHER tank ace (lost warlord trait but the manticore is dynomite. And that's easy to play with in a new player) 145
3 chimera with dual heavy flamer and stormbolter (I think this is 300 but it might be 315)
leman russ battle tank (the third heavy option) with battle cannon, triple heavy bolter, storm bolter = 200
scout sentinal with missle launcher 50
modified commisar masquerading as an astropath 25
that gives you 1990 points. its not a PERFECT gaurd army, but it would be an easy build, and have good functionality without having to buy lots of the rare and expensive heavy special weaponry that gaurd often uses, meaning melta and plasma.

4 heavy tanks (is not perfect but not crap)+ the 6 flamers on the transports gives you a bit more "tank" plus the 2 manticores starts to give you threat saturation against many armies that aren't ready to kill LOTS of armor. Note that the current meta, most armies are pretty good at armor kill.
Some gaurd squads start offboard. some start in armor transports. Result is, you probably don't get wiped on turn 1 by anyone and your 60 gaurd actually get to do something before dying to massed bolterfire. (its likely.)

6 gaurd squad is not the heaviest and perhaps you will find you want to drop a tank or even more and end up with 12 gaurd squad, to offset the killy power of marines. But that is an easy enough option for another day, eh? and lots of painting right now that you probably don't need.

So ok, that's one option.

Other optoin is to go for an air mobile feel, again, we are starting with a mixed armor and transport list with a little indirect support in the wings.

You have 2 LRTC + 40 gaurdsmen + 4 heavy weapons gaurdsmen + 2 commisars right now. I would use the HWT in the squads so as to be able to turn 3 gaurdsmen into platoon commanders, and still have 4 squads.
Purchases for this army would be
1 more starter kit.
1 more 10 man gaurd squad.
1 manticore. (just worth it, darn it.)
so the same 3 TC, 3 platoon, six infantry, 1 manticore base as the other army had. 1255 (depending on exact heavy weapons loadout in the squads and exact side loadouts on the tank commander trio)
that leaves 745 to buy...
2 scions starter kits.
2 valkyrie flyer
This adds a patrol of scions to your army, that can hot drop in on the back or middle of the board, and carry much more powerful weaponry than usual gaurdsmen. Also, 2 solid transports (not incredible, but the taurox prime are not bad).
1 tempest prime (the second detachment patrol commander) with command rod and powersword (45)
1 command squad of scions with 4 meltaguns (dropped in close, its lethal) 80
1 5 man scions squad iwth 2 hotshotvolleyguns 55
1 5 man scions squad with 2 plasma guns and 1 plasma pistol and chainsword 70
1 5 man scions squad with 2 plasma guns and 1 plasma pistol and chainsword 70
Now you have 480 points left to play with.
transport for this setup, you have 2 taurox primes to assemble in the scions starter kits, which you can assemble also to transport regular gaurd if you give them just 2 autocannon each. (they become 90 point transports). But you will probably want them as taurox primes.
taurox prime with gatling cannon, two hotshotvolleyguns,
taurox prime with gatling cannon, two hotshotvolleyguns,
240 points remain.
You can buy a really nice flyer for that, specifically a vendetta, if you want to get one, but you can also get a smaller flyer pair of valkyries.
Now your troops can ride to the fight in style .. the scions can deepstrike or ride the tauroxes (but only scions may!) and two of your six infantry can ride in the valkyries. If you start with the scoins in the valkyries, they can step out and unleash a withering fire on some easy target anywhere on the board (without being auspex scanned, as they are not "reinforcements" if they were in a flyer.) Its also fairly easy to tuck six gaurd squads into reserves and bring them in from board edges all over to rush various objectives, while the scions deepstrike or such.
Those valkyries incidentally would have the cheap loadout .. multiple rocket pods and a multilaser each. You could also opt ot make them with hellstrike missle + lascannon each, but that's a few more points per valky, so you would have to find somewhere to trim a few points off. (I think HS/LC is 125 per valkyrie.)

Finally, if you foudn point for them, the valkyrie can each carry a pair of heavy bolters -- they have decent ballistic skill and are fairly often not shot down because the enemy is concentrating on your tank commanders. So they are a potential way to split the cost around from your TC to other units rather than giving the more expensive side arms to the more likely shot down leman russes. From a modeling perspective, you can build each valkyrie with the heavy bolters and simply tuck them inside if you want to use them in a game without the HB option, and you can build the tank comamnders without gluing the sidearms into their sponsoons, so you can swap those in and out too. The air mobile army has more troops to play with (not many in numbers, but scions punch well above their weight) and a resilience all its own from the 4 rather than 3 transports. However, it requires a bit more skill to play well because more disparate functions of gaurd (deepstrike, flyer, chute drop, close scions assaults, etc) get used.

I would recommend the scoins be run as "lambda lions" cause that is my favorite, giving the 2 taurox primes each some 28 S4 shots with the gatling gaining ap-1 and the hsvgs' 8 shots being ap-3. Not too shabby when fighting marines, be they 1000sons or spacewolves.

As your playstyle evolves you will end up picking one or the other style, of course. The flamer tank transport option probably has a more "ww2" feel to it, but I think that a few aircraft and a few paratroopers supported by ground transport and tanks and troops is also a very valid ww2 feel for gaurd.

Also, these are armies I might play -- they are of course reflective of my own playstyle and thougths. Many other people tend to buy a lot of bullygryn and a ministerium preist to run up the middle as a resilient and powerful melee arm, rather than the scions/flyers that I like. That's also a solid option but I leave it to the folks who do it every day to post alternatives to what I done here!

**Togusa**

Blastum wrote:
Hi gang,

So I took the plunge and have begun building an IG army. For starters, here is what I have so far:

2x Starter Sets (Heavy Unit, 10 Shock Trooper Guardsmen, 1 Commissar & Leman Russ)
2x Cadian Infantry Sets ( 10 Shock Trooper Guardsmen)

Now, I have only played this army once before with a friends painted army. I really enjoy the idea of an army with tanks storming the battlefield. Plus the idea of running tactics like a WW2 army.

So my question to you experts is what are the best recommendations for a proper 2000 point build. I am interested in fielding a ton of soldiers with heavy tank support. I find strength in numbers is always fun!

Any thoughts? I will be playing against mostly Thousand Sons, Orks, and Space Wolves for now.

Thanks!!!

The only advice I have my friend wont help you much. But I am expecting (based on conversations with my local rep) that IG will get an army revamp next year. This is probably the worst time to buy into this faction. In either way, best of luck! And happy wargaming!

**the_scotsman**

Well, I think it depends on which army from WW2 you're looking to emulate.

If you like strength in numbers, what I'd recommend is keeping your infantry squads pretty cheap, and rather than running heavy weapons in them, instead running your heavy weapons bases together as Heavy Weapon Squads. The way I see most people running infantry squads is either totally barebones, nothing but lasguns, or with 1 special weapon, like a plasma gun in there.

personally I'd go for the approach of gluing down the gunner and the tripod on the heavy weapon squad, and then leaving the gun not glued, that way, you can swap between autocannon/lascannon/heavy bolter as needed, or just set down a mortar on the base which will look a little funny but ultimately be fine. Right now, I'd probably run with Autocannons, but in future heavy bolters look like they'll be quite good (with an upcoming change)

Leman Russ tanks are pretty much gun turrets, they move very slow, and put out a lot of fire. Vehicles I'd invest into would be vehicles that can be a bit more aggressive and mobile, like Hellhounds, which don't care about getting attacked in melee. A trap a lot of people fall into with Guard is building entirely to be static, not moving, just trying to shoot the enemy off the table with artillery while they lose the game every time by not holding any objectives.

Personally I'm not a huge fan of cadia in terms of rules precisely because it feeds in to that: They want to stand still to get a benefit. I much prefer Catachan, whose tanks still blast the heck out of the enemy, but whose infantry can use buffs like the ministorum priest to actually mix it up with enemy combat units fairly successfully.

**Blastum**

Dukeofstuff wrote:
Right now you have something like 250 points infantrymen (assuming you tucked a heavy weapon in each starter squad and a 5 point special weapon (probably grenade) in the storm kit, and 2 tank commanders, commisar or lord commisar. So about 800 points on the table.
You can get another starter kit and feel good about it -- 3 tank commanders has been a solid army addition since back in 8th and that's not changing anytime soon. the 5th 10 man squad still leaves you a bit on the low side (cause there are (cough aggressor 6 man) marine army choices that one unit can kill 50 gaurd in 1 round, you should be very wary of small armies against space wolves). That will put you up around 1100 points.

Then. try swapping a head and arms on the extra commisar model you have to turn it into something like an astropath. That's 1125, but the astropath is very useful if only to strip cover off those marine save 1000 sons and spacewolfs. Against either, you will double your apparent firepower by shifting them up to a 3+ from a 2+ in cover on saves.

ok, so, a single manticore in the back line is a no brainer -- give it tank ace if you want, for 3 points per shot damage, and its a winner pointwise. that brings oyu up to nearly 1200 points.

Another starter box gaurd gives you a fourth LR .. a normal battle tank, to arm a smidge cheaper and put in front, in the hopes the enemy shoots it first, and your sixth infantry squad, filling out the battalion detachment's 3 commander, 6 infantry, and a heavy support pair (manticore, lr). Should get you to 1450 points, ish. If you get creative you might consider making that extra commisar -- new heads, new arms, etc -- into a slightly different model like a ministerium priest stand in (he would need something like a book in one hand and a chainsword in the other, and a very different paint job). Would bring you up to 1490ish.

so 510 points to burn. buuurn. hm.
In this edition transport is a critical item -- it protects your troops on objectives and can hold them.
Two ways to go about this. One way adds scoins to the mix, dear to my heart, the other way, adds chimeras to the mix, which is a commonly available kit and about 100 points per chimera.

Chimera option.
3 chimera with 2 heavy flamers each, and a storm bolter each, abuot 300 points. This gives you a nice ability to rush forward the troops you want to take midfield stuff iwth, and you are up to about 1800 total points.
Perhaps a second manticore and a rinkydink little sentinal with scout move + a missle launcher.

Now in total, you have a fairly balanced army (although it will have a rough time with marines, of course) of ..
3 leman russ tank commander 675
3 platoon commander 75 (easy enough to make out of extra stuff in the gaurd boxes, if you have even a few heavy weapons teams replacing a few soldiers)
6 squads infantry (3 have heavy weapons, I think) (6 grenade launchers + 3 mortars = 60 points wargear) 360
manticore with tank ace (increased by 50 percent its damaged output!) 145
manticore with OTHER tank ace (lost warlord trait but the manticore is dynomite. And that's easy to play with in a new player) 145
3 chimera with dual heavy flamer and stormbolter (I think this is 300 but it might be 315)
leman russ battle tank (the third heavy option) with battle cannon, triple heavy bolter, storm bolter = 200
scout sentinal with missle launcher 50
modified commisar masquerading as an astropath 25
that gives you 1990 points. its not a PERFECT gaurd army, but it would be an easy build, and have good functionality without having to buy lots of the rare and expensive heavy special weaponry that gaurd often uses, meaning melta and plasma.

4 heavy tanks (is not perfect but not crap)+ the 6 flamers on the transports gives you a bit more "tank" plus the 2 manticores starts to give you threat saturation against many armies that aren't ready to kill LOTS of armor. Note that the current meta, most armies are pretty good at armor kill.
Some gaurd squads start offboard. some start in armor transports. Result is, you probably don't get wiped on turn 1 by anyone and your 60 gaurd actually get to do something before dying to massed bolterfire. (its likely.)

6 gaurd squad is not the heaviest and perhaps you will find you want to drop a tank or even more and end up with 12 gaurd squad, to offset the killy power of marines. But that is an easy enough option for another day, eh? and lots of painting right now that you probably don't need.

So ok, that's one option.

Other optoin is to go for an air mobile feel, again, we are starting with a mixed armor and transport list with a little indirect support in the wings.

You have 2 LRTC + 40 gaurdsmen + 4 heavy weapons gaurdsmen + 2 commisars right now. I would use the HWT in the squads so as to be able to turn 3 gaurdsmen into platoon commanders, and still have 4 squads.
Purchases for this army would be
1 more starter kit.
1 more 10 man gaurd squad.
1 manticore. (just worth it, darn it.)
so the same 3 TC, 3 platoon, six infantry, 1 manticore base as the other army had. 1255 (depending on exact heavy weapons loadout in the squads and exact side loadouts on the tank commander trio)
that leaves 745 to buy...
2 scions starter kits.
2 valkyrie flyer
This adds a patrol of scions to your army, that can hot drop in on the back or middle of the board, and carry much more powerful weaponry than usual gaurdsmen. Also, 2 solid transports (not incredible, but the taurox prime are not bad).
1 tempest prime (the second detachment patrol commander) with command rod and powersword (45)
1 command squad of scions with 4 meltaguns (dropped in close, its lethal) 80
1 5 man scions squad iwth 2 hotshotvolleyguns 55
1 5 man scions squad with 2 plasma guns and 1 plasma pistol and chainsword 70
1 5 man scions squad with 2 plasma guns and 1 plasma pistol and chainsword 70
Now you have 480 points left to play with.
transport for this setup, you have 2 taurox primes to assemble in the scions starter kits, which you can assemble also to transport regular gaurd if you give them just 2 autocannon each. (they become 90 point transports). But you will probably want them as taurox primes.
taurox prime with gatling cannon, two hotshotvolleyguns,
taurox prime with gatling cannon, two hotshotvolleyguns,
240 points remain.
You can buy a really nice flyer for that, specifically a vendetta, if you want to get one, but you can also get a smaller flyer pair of valkyries.
Now your troops can ride to the fight in style .. the scions can deepstrike or ride the tauroxes (but only scions may!) and two of your six infantry can ride in the valkyries. If you start with the scoins in the valkyries, they can step out and unleash a withering fire on some easy target anywhere on the board (without being auspex scanned, as they are not "reinforcements" if they were in a flyer.) Its also fairly easy to tuck six gaurd squads into reserves and bring them in from board edges all over to rush various objectives, while the scions deepstrike or such.
Those valkyries incidentally would have the cheap loadout .. multiple rocket pods and a multilaser each. You could also opt ot make them with hellstrike missle + lascannon each, but that's a few more points per valky, so you would have to find somewhere to trim a few points off. (I think HS/LC is 125 per valkyrie.)

Finally, if you foudn point for them, the valkyrie can each carry a pair of heavy bolters -- they have decent ballistic skill and are fairly often not shot down because the enemy is concentrating on your tank commanders. So they are a potential way to split the cost around from your TC to other units rather than giving the more expensive side arms to the more likely shot down leman russes. From a modeling perspective, you can build each valkyrie with the heavy bolters and simply tuck them inside if you want to use them in a game without the HB option, and you can build the tank comamnders without gluing the sidearms into their sponsoons, so you can swap those in and out too. The air mobile army has more troops to play with (not many in numbers, but scions punch well above their weight) and a resilience all its own from the 4 rather than 3 transports. However, it requires a bit more skill to play well because more disparate functions of gaurd (deepstrike, flyer, chute drop, close scions assaults, etc) get used.

I would recommend the scoins be run as "lambda lions" cause that is my favorite, giving the 2 taurox primes each some 28 S4 shots with the gatling gaining ap-1 and the hsvgs' 8 shots being ap-3. Not too shabby when fighting marines, be they 1000sons or spacewolves.

As your playstyle evolves you will end up picking one or the other style, of course. The flamer tank transport option probably has a more "ww2" feel to it, but I think that a few aircraft and a few paratroopers supported by ground transport and tanks and troops is also a very valid ww2 feel for gaurd.

Also, these are armies I might play -- they are of course reflective of my own playstyle and thougths. Many other people tend to buy a lot of bullygryn and a ministerium preist to run up the middle as a resilient and powerful melee arm, rather than the scions/flyers that I like. That's also a solid option but I leave it to the folks who do it every day to post alternatives to what I done here!

My goodness...this is some serious thinking. Thank you!!! I like the idea of multiple tank commanders and running a lot of vehicles. Some questions I do have are:

- How do I deal with assault driven armies. Say for instance and ork WAAARGH or Khorne onslaught? Methinks having a ton of infantry would be great to soak up damage once they connect is key, while tanks and vehicles help secure objectives.

- Does it make sense to run a detachment of Marines or Knights to help protect the guard? Is that even allowed?

- Manticores and Chimeras? The former makes total sense. Barraging the opponent to thin them out. Hence, I would need the initiative first. Chimeras make sense but once the passengers are deployed they have little to protect them. It might make more sense to keep the Chimeras empty and use them to seize objectives. More a strategy comment, I know.

- I didn't realize Cadians had different rules than Catachan. I have the latest AM codex but maybe I didn't read it hard enough?

- Also, what are some great options to outfit those Leman Russ vehicles?

Thank again!

Automatically Appended Next Post:

the_scotsman wrote:
Well, I think it depends on which army from WW2 you're looking to emulate.

If you like strength in numbers, what I'd recommend is keeping your infantry squads pretty cheap, and rather than running heavy weapons in them, instead running your heavy weapons bases together as Heavy Weapon Squads. The way I see most people running infantry squads is either totally barebones, nothing but lasguns, or with 1 special weapon, like a plasma gun in there.

personally I'd go for the approach of gluing down the gunner and the tripod on the heavy weapon squad, and then leaving the gun not glued, that way, you can swap between autocannon/lascannon/heavy bolter as needed, or just set down a mortar on the base which will look a little funny but ultimately be fine. Right now, I'd probably run with Autocannons, but in future heavy bolters look like they'll be quite good (with an upcoming change)

Leman Russ tanks are pretty much gun turrets, they move very slow, and put out a lot of fire. Vehicles I'd invest into would be vehicles that can be a bit more aggressive and mobile, like Hellhounds, which don't care about getting attacked in melee. A trap a lot of people fall into with Guard is building entirely to be static, not moving, just trying to shoot the enemy off the table with artillery while they lose the game every time by not holding any objectives.

Personally I'm not a huge fan of cadia in terms of rules precisely because it feeds in to that: They want to stand still to get a benefit. I much prefer Catachan, whose tanks still blast the heck out of the enemy, but whose infantry can use buffs like the ministorum priest to actually mix it up with enemy combat units fairly successfully.

Great stuff!

Can you divulge more about your tanks are turret comments? It intrigues me.

When I use to play 3rd edition with my massive ORK horde, my guard enemies would just sit and shoot there until I assaulted them. Then it was game over.

I am hoping to not just sit there but actually move troops and tanks as a commander should do!
Is it still the same broken routine where IG sit and fires until the assault army mops them up when they charge? Are there ways to mitigate the onslaught to less bloody outcomes? I know with lower point costs you get what you paid for. Yes, I am OK with massive casualties but wish to be able to a real threat to anyone fielding an assault based army.

**the_scotsman**

excellent, excellent! That was my problem with guard as well, and there are a number of ways you can handle it.

you have three main options:

Option 1 allies. The Imperium of Man has many different assault oriented factions, including such glorious comrades as Imperial Knights. This strategy of course was in vogue through much of last edition, thanks to the fact that guardsmen were excellent for generating command points for your allies to use. After all, you can spend 1 command point on a small, 50 point guardsman squad, OR you can use it to make your 450-point knight fight better! Uh, your choice?

Now bringing allies actually COSTS you Command Points, which is not a bad thing tbh, but many people are still finding allies to be worth a couple of CP's.

Option 2 Bullgryns. These beefy lads are more than happy to stand in front of your squishy infantry. What you want is all clubs, and the big slab shields, which give you a 2+ armor save, which you can improve by 1 using a psychic power, and by 1 more by using a stratagem. Oh, but what about the 4+ invulnerable shields you might ask? Who needs 'em! If you use the "Get Down" stratagem on the 2+ armor shields, you get a 4+ even against a lascannon! You want to support your Bullgryns with an astropath (a supremely cheap 25-point psyker who takes the +1 save power) and a Priest (A support unit who gives them an extra attack)

Option 3: Come and Get It Guardsmen.

This is the one my buddy goes for and let me tell you it is HILARIOUS to watch. His models are cadians (because that's what you can buy) but his fluff is that they're street-fighter specialists who are often sent to warzones where they fight genestealer cultists, Orks and chaos cultists, who try to charge them in melee often. So he uses the Catachan doctrine, and runs custom-built versions of the characters "Sgt Harker" and "Colonel Straken".

Catachans trait grants you +1s on your infantry, so your guardsmen are S4.

Colonel Straken gives you +1A if you're within 6" of him, so that's 2 attacks S4.

and a Ministorum Priest gives you +1A if you're within 6" of him, so that's 3 attacks S4.

Getting into a prolonged combat with his army is an absolute nightmare, because if you ever start the turn with one of his infantry squads within engagement range, he'll order them to "fix bayonets" which means they attack once in the shooting phase, and once in the combat phase. And he backs them up with such fun vehicles as a Leman Russ Punisher with triple heavy flamers and a Hellhound tank with heavy flamers.

Meanwhile, standing in the back of his army, you've got the reason why you actually want to get through the infantry: Sergeant Harker standing in the back with all the heavy weapon squads and artillery tanks, so every single Manticore and Leman Russ tank is rerolling the number of shots they make with their random shot weapons and rerolling 1s to hit.

Note: I say tanks are turrets because you never dont want to use the ability "Grinding Advance" which allows the turret to shoot twice if you move under 1/2 speed. So Leman Russes basically move 6" per turn, compared to the usual 12" for vehicles. You can move them up with your infantry, which is how my buddy uses them, but they're still slower than your other tanks.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Here's an example 2000pt list:

Catachan Brigade

HQ: Col Straken
HQ: Company Commander (Warlord trait: Master strategist, Relic: Catachan special power sword)
HQ: Tank Commander, Punisher tank, 3x Heavy Flamer. (Tank Ace: -1AP on turret weapon)

Troops: 1x Guardsman squad with nothing
Troops: 4x Guardsman squad with Plasma Gun
Troops: 2x Guardsman squad with Flamer

(The special catachan order removes Cover from a squad, this is occasionally helpful for tagging a space marine squad hunkered down in a ruin or something)

Elites: Ministorum Priest
Elites: 5x Bullgryns (Slabshields+Mauls)
Elites: Astropath (+1 to save power)
Elites: Sgt Harker

Fast: 4x Armored Sentinels, Autocannons, Hunter Killer Missiles

(These have two good stratagems to use. One gives them +2 to hit in the first round, which means thanks to harker they hit on 2s, reroll 1s with all their single-shot missiles and autocannons. And one makes them reduce all damage by 1/2, which is great for when your opponent doesn't want you to use that first stratagem so they try to shoot the sentinels before that!)

Fast: Hellhound with Heavy Flamer, Track Guards
Fast: Scout Sentinel with Heavy Flamer

Heavy: 2x Basilisks
Heavy: Leman Russ Battle Cannon
Heavy: Manticore (Tank Ace: Full Payload)

The general strategy of this list is to focus on removing things that are a threat to your infantry early. The Manticore specifically is a flat 3 damage strength 10 weapon, so it's perfect for blowing away units like Aggressors, who could potentially delete multiple infantry squads each turn, and the Basilisks, Battlecannon and Hunter Killer Missiles can pick a heavy target turn 1 across the map and just blow it away. You present the enemy with a lot of conflicting targets for their anti-tank weaponry: First they have Bullgryns running at them which SEEM like a perfect target for high AP, but thanks to +1 potentially +2 to save, can still have very good regular armor saves even against ap-3/-2. Then they have Armored Sentinels which if they get first turn they'll be tempted to try and destroy before they get their "hit on 2s rerolling 1s" shot off, but they can halve damage for 1cp. Then they have the long range fire base obviously including the manticore, but also the commander and hellhound who will be operating in the middle of the board wiping units off of objectives.

**Blastum**

Another question.

Is it possible to run mostly tanks in my army? So how many tanks could i run in a 1500-2000 point list.
I was thinking of running a force of soldiers (maybe 60-70) and the rest all armor (Chimeras, Lemans, Matnicores, etc.)

1) Whats the maximum number of tanks/vehicles I could run legally?

2) How flexible would it be?

3) Anyone ever tried it?

Thanks! The army is coming along so far as. Here is what I have built in the last 3 days.

3x Leman Russ
5x Infantry with Flamer/Rocket Launcher/ Heavy Team w/ Missle Launchers
1x Manticore
3x Psychers
3x Commissars
1x Primaris Psycher

Thoughts?

**the_scotsman**

Blastum wrote:
Another question.

Is it possible to run mostly tanks in my army? So how many tanks could i run in a 1500-2000 point list.
I was thinking of running a force of soldiers (maybe 60-70) and the rest all armor (Chimeras, Lemans, Matnicores, etc.)

1) Whats the maximum number of tanks/vehicles I could run legally?

2) How flexible would it be?

3) Anyone ever tried it?

Thanks! The army is coming along so far as. Here is what I have built in the last 3 days.

3x Leman Russ
5x Infantry with Flamer/Rocket Launcher/ Heavy Team w/ Missle Launchers
1x Manticore
3x Psychers
3x Commissars
1x Primaris Psycher

Thoughts?

Oh, sure. A completely mechanized guard army is possible, particularly in the new edition where vehicles can hurt infantry even if they're in close combat.

What you want to make sure to do is have designed "front line" vehicles (stuff like Hellhounds, maybe Scout Sentinels, Chimeras, Leman Russ Punishers with heavy flamers, stuff like that) and designated "Back Line" vehicles that are meant to go behind them. If an enemy unit of orks charges a hellhound...well, it probably doesn't care! if those orks get to a Basilisk, it's basically turned off at that point.

If you're running infantry in Chimeras, you want to keep them fairly cheap, and you want to have weaponry that is taking advantage of the close range they'll be at once they hop out of their ride. an infantry squad with a flamer, or an infantry squad with a melta, would be my two go-to choices. I would not take Heavy Weapons on them in order to keep them cheaper.

for HQs, Tank Commanders are the obvious choice, and you can include some supporting units like MInistorum Priests, Commanders, etc.

Looking at your collection so far, you won't need Commissars much in a tank list, I'm assuming that's just from all the Start Collecting boxes so they were basically free to you, no worries. I would run your psykers as "Astropaths" instead, which means they can either hide behind your tank and cast something like the -1 to hit or +1 to save power on your Tank Commander, or they can take the power where you roll mortal wound on a 2+, then a 3+, then a 4+ etc and roll with your Infantry squads in a chimera.

In terms of vehicles to purchase, I would limit yourself to just 1 manticore. The main reason to have one is to use the "Tank Aces" stratagem to give it "always roll max damage on random shot weapons" which just turns it into a death machine. But only one tank in your army can have each Ace power.

What I'd advise you to do right now is, and I know for a fact you'll hate to hear this: Stop collecting for a bit.

You're good, play a bunch of games. You've probably got a solid 1000pts right now. That many models in 3 days is a lot.The only change your list needs is just run a couple of your commissars as Company Commanders instead. Then, you'll have a perfectly functional list.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Here's the list I'd run, based on how your models seem to be built:

Army: Catachans
HQ: Tank Commander, Battle Tank, Hull Lascannon, Plasma Cannons, Hunter Killer Missile

Tank Ace: Steel Commander (-1CP)
Warlord Trait: Master of Command

HQ: Company Commander, Power Sword, Plasma Pistol (this guy is one of the Commissar models. What I'd do is paint him to match your army's colors, and paint the one you want to be a Commissar in black instead)

Relic: Kurov's Aquila

HQ: Company Commander, Power Sword, Plasma Pistol

Troops: 10x Infantry, Flamer
Troops: 10x Infantry, Flamer
Troops: 10x Infantry, Flamer
Troops: 10x Infantry, Flamer

Elites: Astropath (-1 to hit power, or +1 to save power)
Elites: Astropath (mortal wounds on 2+ then 3+ etc power)

Heavy: 3x Missile Launcher HWT
Heavy: 2x Leman Russ Battle Tanks, Hull Heavy Bolter

Your tank commander is upgraded so that he can issue 3 orders per round, including to himself, so he and his two buddies both reroll 1s to hit.

Your company commanders should mostly hang with the infantry, as it's more important that they be "first rank fire second rank fire" than it is for the rockets to reroll 1s to hit.

Going for Catachans means you'll maximise the effectiveness of those 3 battlecannon tanks, which will be your main way to kill marines and vehicles.