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Okay so alot of people who dont actually play IG just think that Gunlines are boring and basic, well as a seasoned IG player I just felt like making this post just to show people that it does take a bit of effort to play a good fun gunline list.

So to start off with you want a proper gunline list, not full mech and not full foot slogging, a mix between a lot of troops (around 80-100 Infantry will do just fine) plus a heavy weapon squad or two and then a good solid mech element, I usually run 3 Leman russ's and 1 Manticore for a very effective fire support.

What you also want to do is to give your company command good protection, so throw them in a chimera with camo netting and out of the way, but also where they can utilize there 12inch order radius. So basically what you want to do is cover you flanks, i run two platoons of 40 guardsmen, so I put 2 twenty man squads on the flanks and then put one in the middle backed up by a heavy weapon crew and the leman russ squadren and then the last is the bait unit which i usuall put in the middle of my center to right flank area. that gives you a basic gunline.

Now you add two vendettas and deepsrtiking stormies for some Dynamism and a way to harrass the enemies backfield. Now i mentioned a bait unit, these guys should be dirt cheap as they just run out there and act as a distraction to assault units as they get closer.

Then you have your support units which are things like battle tanks or heavy weapons squads which should be behind your gunline for a nice squishy meatshield, Then your barrage units such as basilisks or manitcores which are obviously out of sight and with these guys you want to target large heavy infantry units or fast moving assault units and smash them to pieces, while your support generally takes care of the enemy mech.
Your grunts at the frontline just shoot at whatever comes to close, but target priority is important and with guardsmen its what can you actually kill, once you target something shoot it untill its dead trust me. Also your going to want to fall back if hostiles get to close, so usually once something comes within 18 inches of my gunline i fall back and keep on shooting them on the run, this means you will need to give your units room to fall back into and also you may want to leave a unit or two behind as a speed hump so your other squads can keep fighting. Then lastly your dynamic units such as fast attack and deep strikers just either harass the flanks, or pop open enemy vehicles and just generally become a pain in the enemys backside

this is just a basic kind of tactica to new IG players, hope some of my insight has helped and id appreciate to hear how other people play there Gunlines

This could use some formatting. I'm not commenting on the content because it's quite hard to read. It's just a wall of text that's rather off-putting. Headers and categories might help, that way your thoughts won't be quite so disjointed, but also means you can flesh out the areas that you've glossed over.

Basically; try to organise it better and make sure there aren't so many typos

Galactica-actual i am building a Guard army for the first time and this has given some nice in-site for me. as to what needs to be in my army, i was thinking along the same lines but you just helped me make up my mind.

Thanks very much an like Griddlelol said you could do with braking it up a little as it does make it a lot easer on the eye.

Cheers

yeh sorry about that was in a bit of a rush typing, ill do some editting now while im not busy. And glad to of helped Cranney


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okay hopefully that made it easier to read

I like the topic very helpful and I follow the same guidelines for my gunline! How many points do you run this list at? I usually find it hard to squeeze all that stuff in, whats your list look like, if you don't mind, If its mostly what you've posted then I would believe I have a list very identical to be honest lol.

What do you give your infantry platoons?

There's some good advice here but I think you should know that putting your command squad in a Chimera and keeping it out of sight is bad for your orders. Most orders require your officer to have line of sight both to the squad you want to order and to the target you want them to shoot at, so hiding them whilst maintaining good visibility to things you want to use bring it down on AND in a position to use their 12" order radius is difficult.

I'm not convinced on the idea of hybrids. They don't offer anything full mech can't do except for orders early on.

Hybrid lists ignore the mantra of target saturation. How will you convince people that making a hybrid list is the best while providing no formidable AV:12 wall and no massive amount of guardsmen to kill?

Also how can you convince me that HWS are a good idea? They're expensive (considering they have no ablative wounds) and can be murdered by str:6 shots (which are everywhere). They also have only Ld7 compared to a normal squad with Ld8.

It's better, but you need to flesh out why you have taken certain things.

Sorry, it's not terrible advice, but you still haven't established any depth. It all comes down to two things:

1) Deploy in the obvious non-stupid way, with meatshields up front, tanks behind them, and scoring units on all the objectives.

2) Shoot the biggest threat until it's dead, then move on to the next one.

Wow. You guys are harsh.

Galactica-actual wrote:So to start off with you want a proper gunline list...

Now you add two vendettas and deepsrtiking stormies... battle tanks or heavy weapons squads ... barrage units such as basilisks or manitcores

Well, this is sort of the problem. The gist of your advice is "copy a list from the internet, and then add stuff to it". Really, though, you could just say "copy a list from the internet" and be done with it.

The reason that gunlines are shallow and don't have tactics is because of what happens on the table top, not what happens in the list building phase. You generally aren't going to be doing a lot in the movement phase, and you're going to do practically nothing ever in the assault phase. Really, all you're going to do is to deploy, and then shoot stuff most of the time. The shooting takes a little bit of skill (target prioritization, as you mention), but only a little bit, as almost everything that determines what kind of damage you're doing is determined by the list you copied from the internet, and the results of die rolls.

Gunlines are shallow because they use as few of the things that make the game tactically deep and complex as they possibly can. How you build your list won't do much to change that.

-Artillery emplacements are better than tanks. So is regular artillery.

-You say nothing of conscripts, which is interesting.

-Deep Striking stormies have no place in a gunline.
You should have plenty of stuff with AP3 or Anti-tank behind your Aegis.

-You mention Heavy Weapon Squads, which are awful, and should be replaced with Sabres

-You say really basic stuff like "use tanks/artillery/heavy weapons" with out giving any advice on what exactly gunlines benefit from; what synergizes well, etc.

-No commentary on allies or any diversification suggestion.

You kindof just told us how you play guard but vagued-up the names of your units.

-Captain

yeh everything i mentioned is in my list, and Chimeras are command vehicles so you can issue an order from any point of its hull man


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My infantry platoons have 40 men all squads have autocannons and two have vox casters, and the second one has a las cannon HWS


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And im not trying to convince anyone to take anything really, just trying to offer some advice and how I play my gunline


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oh and tankboy this is based off of my 2000pt list
i run company command-chimera
2 platoons of 40 Infantry and a HWS
2 leman russes and a manticore
a squad of storm troopers and a Primaris Psyker in a chimera(for fun )
and to vendettas

 Galactica-actual wrote:

And im not trying to convince anyone to take anything really, just trying to offer some advice and how I play my gunline

Sorry, what I meant was you really need explanations for why. If you just say "take X and Y" the person reading doesn't necessarily know what to do with them. Or why they are better than other options. If you provide reasons why then it's much better for the reader as they can actually rationalise if they agree with you, or if they believe there are better choices for each role.

If I tell my baby sister "don't touch that" she'll touch it. If I say "don't touch that, it's hot and it'll hurt" she'll leave it alone. Rationalising your advice helps people come to their own conclusions which with good rationalisation may well be the same as your conclusions.

fair point fair point well ill edit the main post and say it here to. I take heavy weapon (lascannons) just simply because if they survive which mine do becuase i place them well. they can take down monstrous creatures, vehicles and characters and they seem to work for me they are expensive and weak but if used correctly can really punish the foe.


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And im not a competative player, so i take hybrids for fun thats just my choice really.

 Galactica-actual wrote:

And im not a competative player, so i take hybrids for fun thats just my choice really.

But then why give advice for competitive listbuilding?

 TheCaptain wrote:

 Galactica-actual wrote:

And im not a competative player, so i take hybrids for fun thats just my choice really.

But then why give advice for competitive listbuilding?

To be fair, I don't think that it ever stated it was for 'competitive' gaming.

 Trickstick wrote:

 TheCaptain wrote:

 Galactica-actual wrote:

And im not a competative player, so i take hybrids for fun thats just my choice really.

But then why give advice for competitive listbuilding?

To be fair, I don't think that it ever stated it was for 'competitive' gaming.

But then why give people advice on how to have fun?

Everyone has their own fun in their own way.

The only real purpose of advice is to increase competitiveness.

There is a decent purpose in discussing less competitive units and army compositions. Some people just want to know how to use what they have to a better degree. To use an example, penal legion are pretty rubbish. There is still useful discussion to be had about the best way to use them.

Tactics discussions can have a broader reach than simply trying to find the most competitive ways to play the game. The can be about improving the information available on a particular topic, such as Guard gunline.

To add to the topic at hand, I haven't run gunline much in 6th but I would advise that a mobile element is required for it to work. You need at least a couple of denial units that can attempt to score line breaker or deny an objective. Off the top of my head, things like Al'rahem, vendetta drops, stormtroopers and penal legion (if you are desperate, they are not that good) give you greater reach than a simple "line up and shoot" gunline list.

So I should just not give advice on anything? That's what your saying bro? Hahaha


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Just Shoosh your trying to make an argumet so just don't bother is I'm incredibly passive


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That was to the captain btw


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Last point, I agree with you Trickstick, if your not dynamic and don't have a balance you won't have a good army

 Trickstick wrote:
There is a decent purpose in discussing less competitive units and army compositions. Some people just want to know how to use what they have to a better degree. To use an example, penal legion are pretty rubbish. There is still useful discussion to be had about the best way to use them.

Tactics discussions can have a broader reach than simply trying to find the most competitive ways to play the game. The can be about improving the information available on a particular topic, such as Guard gunline.

This, a thousand times and more. You couldn't have put it any better. Players who don't play competitively are still players. Players who don't use/aren't allowed to use FW are still players. Players who prefer certain units because they like them are still players. Why dismiss anything that's not competitive?

I personally enjoy seeing different points of view and suggestions on fun builds, and indeed I enjoyed exploring this thread although it's clearly not meant to be competitive (CCS in a Chimera with, what? Camo netting? ). If you give someone a 500 pt army and tell him to have fun, he won't know what to do. If you show him some stuff he can do with it, he'll enjoy it all the better. That said, I agree with Griddlelol that the post could have been a bit clearer and better supported.

I do agree that a gunline is tactically simple, but it can pack a punch. IG can bring a lot of good old-fashioned firepower to make it work, too. I'd certainly be interested in seeing the deeper reasoning behind your choices.

 Galactica-actual wrote:
So I should just not give advice on anything? That's what your saying bro? Hahaha

No. Or, well, maybe.

Just give better advice. That's what I'm saying.

Or at least make it clear that the advice is for casual players.

Just Shoosh your trying to make an argumet so just don't bother is I'm incredibly passive

Nope.

Not making any argument. Merely inputting my critique.