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I've got about 1k(by new book standards of taking vets and tooled our russes and finagling a lot of minitures around) of guard that I had originally used in my Daemon Hunters army as essentially meat shields. I didn't touch them at all in 5th but started taking them as allies for my GK in this edition to give my army more of a long range punch. I've recently gotten the itch to play them as a full guard army but I'm looking for more of a theme list. What I would like to do theme wise is a scouting/first wave force. In a scifi setting think of the ISA in killzone, or in a more historical setting the allies pushing through France in the first weeks of the European campaign before they landed the bulk of their armor. Fluffwise they are used by the Inquisition to put down chaos uprisings or other annoyances caused by cults or xenos to the imperium.

I was thinking the list would be rather infantry and sentinel heavy with only a few battle tanks as support rather than transports. I was wondering if anyone could give me some direction on what to get to make it a viable list? Also I don't play in a very competitive group.

What I have:
3rd ed battleforce ( missile launcher HW teams, LR HB sponsion and lascannon hull)
3 lascannon teams(my only opponent at the time was a marine player )
squad of tallarn to use as vets (7 with lasgun, 2 plasma and 1 sgt.)
3 guardsmen with meltaguns
3 guardsmen with plasma gun
1 officer with plasma pistol and power sword
1 officer with bolt pistol and chainsword
1 old multilaser sentinel ( I'm going to pop the weapon off maybe model on some extra armor)

I really like missile launchers, something satisfying about them idk lol and I have liked how the autocannon sentinel has preformed. there is another identical squad of tallarns at my FLGS I plan to pick up and I was also thinking about sticking some snipers in one of the vet squads but are snipers really any good?

thats a lot of stream of conscious style information but what do you guys think?

The best way to breathe life into an army is to pick a theme for it.

Pick a regiment. Since you like infantry and sentinels, maybe go for a drop regiment - given your lascannons, I'd suggest Harakoni Warhawks rather than Elysians, since they tend to use heavier equipment. Or you could homebrew some fluff for a new regiment, which I find always makes me more enthusiastic for something and gives you a lot more flexibility.

Since you've got a mix of Cadians and Tallarns, perhaps the Tallarn/Veterans are recruited from the wild people of your regiment's homeworld, something like the Fremen of Dune, while the regular infantry are raised from the 'civilised' peoples of the temperate areas.

As far as expanding your army goes, I'd suggest you get the Tallarns - plasmaguns are awesome, and Tallarns are nice models.

Sniper Rifles aren't brilliant - if you want snipers, your best bet is Ratlings since they're BS4 and only 10 points/model. That said, most people online don't rate sniper rifles as especially effective and are more likely to recommend no Elites over Ratlings.

I'd suggest that you will want some more resilient support units. A single Leman Russ is nice, and if you don't want to go down the tanks route, you could look at investing in some aircraft. Vendettas are brokenly awesome, but Valkyries and some of the Forge World fliers are nice without being game-breaking, and if you're mostly a casual player I can't imagine you'll have too many Forge World arguments (just... don't touch that subject online, because there are three camps and none of them like each other very much).

Sounds like what you want is Elysian drop troops. Light infantry with Valkyries as dedicated transports and Vendettas/Sentinels/Thunderbolts/etc instead of tanks.

Current rules are in this book: http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/New_Stuff/IMPERIAL_ARMOUR_VOLUME_THREE_SECOND_EDITION_-_THE_TAROS_CAMPAIGN.html

Pere, I was trying to avoid invalidating half his current collection :p

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Pere, I was trying to avoid invalidating half his current collection :p

How does playing Elysians invalidate anything? All the OP has is a bunch of infantry that work just fine with the Elysian rules, and a Sentinel that just needs a weapon swap to a multimelta. The only thing that would work anymore is the single LRBT.

Elysians can't take lascannons on their infantry, Peregrine.

if I'm looking at that preview image correctly they can take drop sentinels as troops? thats pretty snazy. I picked up the tallarns today as well as a second hand unpainted hellhound on the cheap. An air cav drop list is incredibly tempting, especially after facing my friends outflanking triple vendetta list with my grey knights. I'm still icing those wounds lol I would still like to use some armor just not as much as normally seen.

as far as fliers go I think I'd be down with a valk or vendetta with a vulture or thunderbolt. I do have a heldrake in my group flying around toasting everything so I have that to take care of too lol

are devil dogs worth taking over hellhounds? 10 points less and a pretty cool melta weapon. I just wonder if you guys have seen any success with them. (i might try to track down the turret bitz to just swap it out as needed)

as far as armored sentinels squadrons go is it better to equip them for multi tasks or stick to the same weapons? having a unit of 3 with 1 plasma cannon and maybe two auto cannons seems like a cool combo to me.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Elysians can't take lascannons on their infantry, Peregrine.

And heavy weapon sprues are cheap, so you can easily swap the LCs for MLs/HBs and keep most of the model.

Yes, a unit of Drop Sentinels can be included in an Elysian infantry platoon. They can also come as Elites choices - in both cases, they can take a Valkyrie Sky Talon as a dedicated transport if the squad only contains two Sentinels.

As far as fliers go, I can't recommend the Avenger Strike Fighter enough.

anything with a giant gattling cannon is beautiful in my eyes lol (I had a slight obsession with the A10 thunderbolt as a child, hell still do) what is the statline for the bolt cannon?

Not sure about Range, but it's on a Flyer so that barely matters. S6 AP3 Heavy 7 though.

And yeah, the Avenger is basically the Evil Overlord's Beautiful Daughter, where the Evil Overlord is a Stuka and the Voice Behind the Throne is an A-10.

Oh, and the nanny was a Corsair.

The Avenger butchers Tyranid monstrous creatures and makes MEQs cry. Although why it doesn't have rending is unfathomable to me.

Because everyone's forgotten that chaingun=rending since the assault cannon was designed. :p

 Peregrine wrote:

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Pere, I was trying to avoid invalidating half his current collection :p

How does playing Elysians invalidate anything? All the OP has is a bunch of infantry that work just fine with the Elysian rules, and a Sentinel that just needs a weapon swap to a multimelta. The only thing that would work anymore is the single LRBT.

Even the LRBT is okay - you can take regular guard as allies.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Because everyone's forgotten that chaingun=rending since the assault cannon was designed. :p

Gatling gun, chaingun means the rounds are fed into the gun via electrical motors, an apache has a chaingun for example.

I'm sorry it's just one of my pet peeves.

Sorry, yes, you're right. The fact that a chain feed is the only reliable way to keep a gatling gun fed is actually fairly irrelevant.

>> It's almost like that "A square is a rectangle but a rectangle is not a square" thing.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Sorry, yes, you're right. The fact that a chain feed is the only reliable way to keep a gatling gun fed is actually fairly irrelevant.

>> It's almost like that "A square is a rectangle but a rectangle is not a square" thing.

A rectangle is a square but a square is not necessarily a rectangle.

(or am I getting things mixed up?... squares just have 90 degree corners, right?)

 Purifier wrote:

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Sorry, yes, you're right. The fact that a chain feed is the only reliable way to keep a gatling gun fed is actually fairly irrelevant.

>> It's almost like that "A square is a rectangle but a rectangle is not a square" thing.

A rectangle is a square but a square is not necessarily a rectangle.

(or am I getting things mixed up?... squares just have 90 degree corners, right?)

Rectangles have four 90 degree corners....

 Purifier wrote:

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Sorry, yes, you're right. The fact that a chain feed is the only reliable way to keep a gatling gun fed is actually fairly irrelevant.

>> It's almost like that "A square is a rectangle but a rectangle is not a square" thing.

A rectangle is a square but a square is not necessarily a rectangle.

(or am I getting things mixed up?... squares just have 90 degree corners, right?)

No that's a rectangle, a square has to have all sides equal as well.