Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Do other IG players get asked this question alot? I am asked this question from just about everyone I meet in the hobby. I had a interaction just today that I wanted to share.

"Why would you play as humans? That is boring/unoriginal. Why not play as Tau or Space Marines?"

My reasoning has always been that I find the IG appealing because they are but men. Men armed with little more than a lasgun, courage, & perhaps their faith in the emperor or to protect those they love. They experience emotions just like you or me, fear, anxiety, hopelessness. They are the backbone of the imperium & without the courage of these fragile men/women it would collapse. Perhaps I lack imagination, but I find I can relate to them. Sometimes I like to put myself in their shoes & ask myself:


How would I react staring down the sight of a lasgun & seeing a monolith or creature of nightmare descending upon me?

My answer? "Because aircraft are awesome!"

I play Elysians, so I don't have many boots on the ground. What I do have is overwhelming airpower that sweeps in at just the right moment, plowing the road then dropping infantry into the newly created gaps to hold the ground until the heavy equipment can be moved up, seeking out specific targets and fragging it...

I could play Marines, but their planes just aren't as cool (although I am planning a landspeeder-based army), and using fragile, vulnerable guard just adds that human element that keeps things interesting.

"Because I fething want to, alright?"

Done.

Couple big reasons to play IG. As you say, we're the weakest race individually in 40k. For me a big one is that from a hobby perspective, they're the most exciting race imo, you can use any range of human models, convert them, kitbash them, paint them however you want and so on. Can be any racial history, or your own unique one. Third party ranges such as Vic minis have great options, as do many others. Eldar craftworlds are just different coloured Eldar, same with Tau, SMs etc. IG... armies can be truly unique! Orks have the option for this but it's rarer and much harder to do I think.

It certainly is not a power reason lol.

I've wanted to play guard from 2nd edition on. It was the average joe facing the universe with nothing but a little gun and a lot of guts and a lotta guys. I used to play meq and wanted an army of people who weren't supermen. it was also an army that you rarely saw. not many people played them and I wanted to be different.

I've always thought understanding why people IG was easy, they played toy soldiers when they were little and now they play toy soldiers now they're adults
In all seriousness, I do know people who play Guard for that reason.

I started Guard when I was 9 because they were humans . That's not being boring, that's being original and "keeping it real"

Also, Guard truly are the underdogs of the universe. It takes a General of great courage and valour to lead them not only to victory, but into the history books of 40k.

G.A

Honestly a better question is why don't you? (I didn't because of cost, but oh well...)

I used to be an artillery crew member when I was in the US Army and the Guard is the closest it comes. While my main army is CSM, I still have a love for the big guns that only the guard can bring.

 thepowerfulwill wrote:
Honestly a better question is why don't you? (I didn't because of cost, but oh well...)

I have 4 guard armies *sheepish*

Tanith First (wood elves, cadians, third party)
Traitor guard (allied detachment for CSM, beastmen, ratmen etc)
DKK (~60 infantry, no vehicles yet)
Eisenkern

Love the variety you get with guard.

I used to have this outlook towards guard when I was younger. As an adult I can now appreciate the idea of average humans being thrown into the chaos of the 40k universe.

I play IG because the Dreamforge Eisenkern models are awesome.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
I play IG because the Dreamforge Eisenkern models are awesome.

Best guard models without a doubt imo.

"Because I have a ton of tanks and you don't. Your argument is invalid".

Love the model-making opportunities, love having inexpensive units (because I don't feel as bad when a guardsman dies as I would when a super-elite unit like a Space Marine dies), and I find them the most compelling, narrative-wise. A guardsman is very mortal, and a lot easier to identify with than an alien whose mind works differently or the often irrational (or insane, or otherwise unrelatable) motivations of the forces of Chaos. My own fluff for my army expands the whole issue of mortality further, taking the local setting away from the grimderp and actually valuing human lives as something more than 'the cheapest commodity of the Imperium." No human should be a resource.

To quote Braveheart: 'FREEEEEEDOM!'

Seriously, though, that's where my love of IG comes from. There's complete freedom to do whatever you want with them. Models? Anything with 4 limbs, a head and a gun goes Gameplay? Infantry horde or tank batallion? Done. Fluff? Death world, agri-world, underhivers, lost colony? You can do pretty much any model style, playstyle, fluff and paint scheme with IG without raising any eyebrows.

My own IG army is certainly the one I've put most time into. It can now field over close to 200 models, all painted, has scratch-built tanks that took weeks each, and even has a fiction series and fully established background. Every major character is named. They are a dream come true for a modeller, a painter, a writer and a player.

The real question? Why wouldn't you play IG?

I don't own an IG army, but I like them. Why?

I really like the look of their tanks. The leman russ is pretty butch.

I also like the look of their infantry. I'm torn between Cadians and Death Korps of Krieg, were I to do a unit. I hate the Catachans, though. Vietnam doesn't do it for me.

I like the orders system.

I like the huge blob squads and the surgical teams (vet squads). You have your base of operations and your guys that "get gak done". It's a cool army with lots of flare and fluff.

You don't have to be superhuman to be a hero.

Dem models, Forgeworld DKoK are pretty also the fact that I almost always play a human in games.

I have a couple of reasons myself.

Normal humans are more interesting than ultra powerful super soldiers for the same reason that Batman is more interesting than Superman.

Artillery. Covering the table with pie plates is fun, especially from across the board. Also I find the 20' range of the Basilisk hilarious.

I love realism (well in 40k its the closest army to it), variety, obolute customisation of the fluff and appearance and given they look like whatever i feel like spending money on they are my dream army. They can be elite or average, be very specialized or very general and can go vehicle heavy or the other way. Unfortunately i dont see much variety with most guard players but the potential is there.

I like the real life touch to 40k. I like the tanks! So IG all the way.

Because they have the best tanks in the game as far as raw stats and firepower goes.

And because they have the Armored Battlegroup list.

Tanks
You can see it as a modern army, which helps you to "identify yourself with your army". Not the slightest idea on why this would matter, yet I have heard of people that want to "identify" with their armies.
Tanks
Lots of conversions.
Death Korps of Krieg models.
Good fluff, not particularly stupid
Tanks
Looks great

 da001 wrote:
You can see it as a modern army, which helps you to "identify yourself with your army".

This is also a reason to play Tau... They do play like a modern army, or at least they can do so very efficiently. Vehicles for mobility, tech for targeting, heavy firepower brought to bear on targets in the right order.

The reason I would play IG is that they're "ordinary men" going against the horrors of the galaxy armed only with lasguns (and tanks, and heavy weapons) and their discipline. Creatures designed and bred for battle, warriors raised for their role or modified to perfection, soldiers carrying the peak of weaponry their race can produce or soldiers made into mechanical battle units - and yet the IG will stand against them.

I'm starting a Guard army because I found some really awesome third party miniatures to serve as stand-ins. (The miniatures make perfect Guard models, and I wanted to buy them. The 40k army they make is just a flimsy excuse to buy them.)

Spetulhu wrote:

 da001 wrote:
You can see it as a modern army, which helps you to "identify yourself with your army".

This is also a reason to play Tau... They do play like a modern army, or at least they can do so very efficiently. Vehicles for mobility, tech for targeting, heavy firepower brought to bear on targets in the right order.

The reason I would play IG is that they're "ordinary men" going against the horrors of the galaxy armed only with lasguns (and tanks, and heavy weapons) and their discipline. Creatures designed and bred for battle, warriors raised for their role or modified to perfection, soldiers carrying the peak of weaponry their race can produce or soldiers made into mechanical battle units - and yet the IG will stand against them.

^Two good points here.

There's a number of reasons I started IG.

Modelling: They're humans, and there's lots of human models out there. I love conversions, and before my army was recently stolen from my car, I had my entire army converted on a model-by model basis; every single model was completely unique in pose, equipment, attitude, etc. I think I only had 4 dudes with classic lasguns and only 7 or 8 out of 60 total doing the normal "Stand and shoot" pose. There's so much to do with them, whereas with many other armies things get in the way of advanced modelling and conversions. Like Shoulder Pads.

Fluff: Whooo lordy the IG is the crown of "Choose Your Own Adventure!" With so many millions of worlds in the Imperium, you can make up pretty much any stories you want about your army and their style and no player should give you flak about it "not fitting the setting." For example, my entire IG army got stolen, as I mentioned, and now I'm thinking of re-making a similar army but modelling them all to look like ghosts or specters (Ghosts of the old army, get it?) and I can make up some random story about a lost regiment yadda yadda... If you tried that with Space Marines, many players might start to go on about how catalogued each chapter is and how you should just play with the Legion of the Damned, etc...

Gameplay: Barring Tau, IG is one of the few armies that toys with real-world tactics despite said tactics revolving around the equivalent of WW2-era equipment. I enjoy the dynamic of playing an "Artillery Regiment" or a "Tank Company" and actually having to think about the use of my firepower in the classic way, as opposed to "Oh, there's armor there. Looks like that's exactly where my Fire Dragons are going." Or "Big bugs smash big things, little bugs eat little things" and such. I'm not knocking the other armies here, just saying that the IG tactical mindset is closer to real-world warfare than most other armies and I enjoy that.

Simple answer: I love tanks and the armoured battle group is simply awesome fluff-wise.

I don't really care about a competitive army, just love the tanks and overall aesthetic appeal of rows upon rows of tanks, with BIG guns.

I am no huge fan of how IG are represented stats and model wise. It always felt a bit immersion-breaking to see Guardsmen models actually taller than Marine models in full plate.

I otherwise have no dislike for the faction as a whole, but I would not play them unless I or those I played with used heavily modified models and rules.

Because nobody does aricraft, tanks, or guts like IG. Not even remotely.