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Hey guys

Ive thought about a second army to get along side my daemons, and i think ive narrowed it down to imperial guard.

i wanted to make a gunline so i thought that guard would be the best solution, but im not to sure about my options with them, can i make an elite imperial guard army?, any special characters i should look out for.

are there standard army lists people seem to abide by?. ive heard vendetta's are great in 6th ed!

any help would be appreciated

Considering gunlines are now borked with new cover rules, vendettas lose their transport usefulness, and various other slaps to the face guard players are getting this edition, I wouldn't bother for now.

On the other hand, I predict some very cheap IG armies coming up for sale soon on ebay. If you just want the fluff and don't care about competition, go for it.

If you're interested in an armoured force, then apparently IG tanks and Vendettas are a good choice.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/468643.page

You can certainly do an elite gunline. The most popular way of doing this is taking hardened veterans (a troops choice that has BS4 and lots of special weapons), and putting them in chimeras, and then backing them up with a bunch of heavy support choices. Ask anyone to help you build a "leafblower" list, and I'm sure you'll find it.

I, myself, have taken a turn towards elite guard as of late. The same vets, but with carapace armor (Sv 4+ instead of the usual flak armor) instead of vehicular transports. Personally, I'm not a big gunline guy, so I try to keep my stationary support units to a minimum. To fill points, I take another elite guard unit - stormtroopers. Same BS and Sv as the vets, but they get Ap3 small arms, and can deepstrike (with rerolls!). In my case, I bring the maximum allowed, and it basically creates a second battle inside the first battle when it works properly.

You can see an example of this list and this style here.

Get artillry, its cheap and can hide out of sight and still shoot.

Start with 2 troops and a HQ

Yup, if you want something small and effective without being too much crap, got with a single CCS and 2 veteran Squads; everyone got BS4, you can pick numerous special weapons, and you have 2 orders per turn with a 12 inch range from your officer. Straight up its under 200 points.

PolecatEZ wrote:
Considering gunlines are now borked with new cover rules, vendettas lose their transport usefulness, and various other slaps to the face guard players are getting this edition, I wouldn't bother for now.

On the other hand, I predict some very cheap IG armies coming up for sale soon on ebay. If you just want the fluff and don't care about competition, go for it.

Gunlines are borked with the new cover rules? You do realize that whatever you're shooting has to deal with the same rules, right? This edition is very pro-shooting, and IG are great at it.

Yeah gunlines are becoming one of the main styles that seems to be thriving this edition, and IG are the kings of gunlines. Our chimeras are still useful, they just follow the same rule as last edition, either bring a ton, or none at all. Vendettas can still transport infantry just fine, perhaps even better now, since they're more mobile and harder to kill. We can always jump out even at full speed thanks to grav chute insertion, and it can be awesome with a team of meltavets with demolitions doctrine.

Elite is kind of an oxymoron for IG though, as all of our units are made to be cheap and to be taken in large numbers. Vets might work well for you, but you'll need ways to handle hordes and hard targets, as vets are terrible on their own, especially on the ground. They NEED some form of support, just like modern day infantry. Tanks like the Leman Russ, artillery like basilisks or colossi, and even air support in the form of vendettas are all viable for this.

Big things to remember if you want a gunline.

1. You'll need a LOT of heavy weapons. Mainly Autocannons and Lascannons, but missile launchers and mortars can be made to work if you're dead set on them.

2. You'll need a way to keep your guys alive. Aegis defense line, camo cloaks, carapace armor, or chimeras, they need something. Vets are just guardsmen after all, they're not space marines.

3. Never just take one thing to handle a threat. Taking only one of a unit is dooming yourself to failure. If it's worth taking one of, take 3, because the first one will miss, the second will kill itself, and the third will survive just because the other ones used up all the bad luck Never take just one lascannon and go "that should be enough". Take 5. And then take 7-8 autocannons, and plasma guns, and meltas, and a battletank, and a vendetta. Just to be sure.

4. The best way to add durability is to have a lot of one thing. Whether this is infantry, chimeras (AV 12), or just infantry and AV 14 (russes) it works by making certain weapons "useless". For example, autocannons are useless against a foot guard list with leman russ support. They're overkill on guardsmen, and can only glance russes on sideshots. Heavy bolters would be useless against a chimera wall, etc.

Hope all that helps!

MrMoustaffa wrote:Yeah gunlines are becoming one of the main styles that seems to be thriving this edition, and IG are the kings of gunlines.

IG WERE the kings of gunlines. They're not anymore.

On the one hand, things for guard got worse. All the problems of new cover really hurt foot guard. In a contest between an autocannon HWS and a rifleman dread, the dread is winning, practically every time. Meanwhile, chimeras got flimsier with the addition of HP. Hydras got straight-up worse, and russes now can't shoot ordnance and hull weapons. Then add new things like fliers that can show up and multi-melta you from within melta range before you really get a chance to shoot at them, and things have gotten absolutely worse for guard.

On the other hand, things have gotten relatively worse for guard. We've had all these new codices over the past couple of years that put guard long-range shooting to shame. Psyflemen, and psy-bolt razorbacks, and joakero doom-squads, and rending psycannons everywhere. Necron "your vehicles are screwed" combined with "we hit more often than we shoot" along with better small arms, more S10 (at longer range). DE venom spam and their still-continuing darklight spam (and their ability to ignore night fight), and gun rails and blasters for cheaper than guard get meltaguns. Several armies got storm ravens.

Guard armies have never been flimsier, and have never had stiffer competition from more armies in the realm of mid- and long-range shooting. No, guard are no longer the undisputed kings of gunlines and everybody else might as well go home. It's now an army that struggles to stay in 1st class at the one thing it's really good at in this edition.