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.

All the named guardsmen (Cadian, Catachan, Steel Legion, etc.) are above the cut of other guard regiments. So are the conscripts the level everyone else is at, or is better just mean instead of losing 1,000,000 men to take a hill they lose 999,999?

Too my knowledge, conscripts are recruits that learn to fight through trial by fire basically when reinforcements are needed. They are not guardsmen yet. If that was the case every guardsman could be considered a veteran.

 Midnightdeathblade wrote:
Too my knowledge, conscripts are recruits that learn to fight through trial by fire basically when reinforcements are needed. They are not guardsmen yet. If that was the case every guardsman could be considered a veteran.

They are planetary militia, the best of them are given to the guard.

con·script
noun
noun: conscript; plural noun: conscripts
ˈkänˌskript/
1.
a person enlisted compulsorily.

They are forces that have been forcefully drafted into the IG command structure due to a usually dire need. They are poorly equiped (no grenades or special weapons) and have little training. They are definitely not considered a "normal" imperial guard soldier and are about the same difference from a normal guard as a veteran is in the other direction.

If you look at the codex you should note that their rules actually do an excellent job of representing them with WS and BS of 2 and lacking all the non reusable and expensive IG gear.

The other regiments are not really worse for standard troopers and in fact most use the training methods and gear of the cadians. It is just the cadians have a much higher number of veterans and karskins in their ranks. The other regiments either have notable differences in how they operate which makes them famous or similar to cadia have a high number of certain unit types in their forces which makes them notable.
Examples;
Elysians; a huge number of flyers which the imperial navy specifically allows them
Death Korps of Krieg; vastly different conditioning and training which allows them to absorb extreme casualties without the need of leadership to keep them fighting and makes them kung fu level WS and a notably large amount of siege weaponry and veteran level troops.
Cadians; the karskins and a huge number of veterans
Valhallans; they depend on conscripts, lol. They are noted to be very determined.

No 2 regiments are the same. I dont think the vostroyans get a choice when all their firstborn are sent to battle. Technically conscripted.

Also the regiments you mentioned are no better than any others, They all just specialize in something (like every world).

When you think about the imperial guard never talk about them as a whole, for there is always an exception. Some guard regiments arent even human!.

Its safe to assume though that many guard armies are fully conscripted though. The rules dont reflect this. I personally imagine the conscripts in the rules to be child, elderly and female soldiers drafted as an act of desperation to bolster the current troops. So worse conscripts.

At the end of the day it depends on your regiment. There is no absolutes with the imperial guard.

leivve wrote:
All the named guardsmen (Cadian, Catachan, Steel Legion, etc.) are above the cut of other guard regiments. So are the conscripts the level everyone else is at, or is better just mean instead of losing 1,000,000 men to take a hill they lose 999,999?

The names guard are not "A cut above" the rest. The guard are all trained to a higher level than PDF forces. The guard, in theory, are all the same level. Some regments and squads may have reputaions, but the named ones are not better than the rest just diffrent.

Conscription is just a method of getting men. Some named forces are conscripted, many non named ones are not. As far as I can tell most of the time people are conscripted in to the PDF and then the best are chosen for the guard. They may volunteer to go with the guard after being conscripted in to the PDF, or have little choice.

The Cadians and Catachans are both technicly conscription PDF forces. Noone on chose to join, everyone on the planet is part of the PDF in those cases. It's just that the conscription rate is 100%. From that (Well, not in the case of the Cadians as they are not realy part of the IG, but a PDF) the guards regiment is formed from the best. People forget the IG is technically an elite force.

 Swastakowey wrote:
I personally imagine the conscripts in the rules to be child, elderly and female soldiers drafted as an act of desperation to bolster the current troops.

Same as I would see it. For example, back when some participants in WW2 were getting desperate they'd draft children 17 and below and elderly people to bolster local defenses. Most of the armies were ofc already consripted men, but they had been given longer training and proper equipment. The desperate measures saw boys with old rifles and left-over AT gear trying to defend cities and old men with their hunting rifles sweeping the woods for enemy special forces.

The IG Conscript unit represents this type of ad-hoc formation - they've not been fully trained and don't have all the gear. If the situation wasn't desperate the IG wouldn't be sending them into battle yet.

leivve wrote:
All the named guardsmen (Cadian, Catachan, Steel Legion, etc.) are above the cut of other guard regiments. So are the conscripts the level everyone else is at, or is better just mean instead of losing 1,000,000 men to take a hill they lose 999,999?

Imagine like this: the conscripts are your average US National Guard Reservists; the guardsmen are the USMC OoorahTangoFoxtrotOscarMike guys. One is a civilian with a gun and minimal training, the other is real warrior born to kill and bred to fight. Even though they represent a vastly different level in terms of training and equipment, they are both expendable roughly on the same level. Just the marine will probably do something before he dies, while the reservist will just die.

 Swastakowey wrote:

Its safe to assume though that many guard armies are fully conscripted though. The rules dont reflect this. I personally imagine the conscripts in the rules to be child, elderly and female soldiers drafted as an act of desperation to bolster the current troops. So worse conscripts.

At the end of the day it depends on your regiment. There is no absolutes with the imperial guard.

Well, not female. The guard explicitly contain both mixed gender and all female regiments, so it's unlikely that a female soldier would be any more of a conscript than the male soldier.

I believe this question refers specifically to the Conscripts squad in the Guard Platoon, however. In which case, as stated, it varies from regiment to regiment.

In Cadian regiments, 'Conscripts' represent cadets pressed into active duty, nicknamed Whiteshields because of their helmet markings. So there's Swatokewey's 'children' soldiers. Since Cadian recruitment rate is equal to birth rate, there will be female soldiers there as well, but for some reason, GW won;t give us the dang models.

In Valhallan regiments, 'Conscripts' represent local troops and camp followers pressed into combat service when there aren't enough trained soldiers to get the job done.

In Elysian regiments, there are no Conscripts. The option is replaced with Drop Sentinels. Elysians are truly a 'cut apart from the rest' - they are special forces, basically SAS compared to the Army that is, for example, a Cadian regiment. This is represented by their Deep Strike and Iron Discipline rules. Although with their combat record, they're more SEALS than SAS. :p

In Tallarn regiments, 'Conscripts' represent frateris militia - ordinary Imperial civilians, whipped up into a religious frenzy to match the highly pious Tallarn troopers and encouraged to hurl themselves into battle.

Semantically, yes, because EVERYONE in the galaxy is, in theory, a potential Guard recruit, and if they need you, the Munitorum will take you if they can. The only way to avoid that is to volunteer. Whether 'conscript' actually means 'poorly trained/untrained grunt' is another matter entirely, since the Munitorum has all sorts of conscription sources (poaching the local PDF routinely, for example.)

As a rule (tenatively) they tend to prefer to go for PDFs before they go after civilians. Because if you strip out civilian populations they can't slave away in the factories and on the farms to maintain your army. This is also why hive worlds are so favorable as recruiting grounds, because there's always more humans than is safe and they can strip out whole underhives for military recruits, colonists, experimental test subjects, corpse starch, etc.

But the unstructured, decentralized way the Imperium operates means they don't really have a real 'standard' per se... except perhaps in the broadest sense. There's no way to institute centrally-administered, standardized training or logistics, they have to delegate and hope for the best. This means that 'conscription' like most things in 40K will probably vary dramatically in any case (in 40K everything is 'variable.' Variable should be the default answer to most things, since interpretation plays a huge part of what 'reality' is for 40k.)

 Furyou Miko wrote:

 Swastakowey wrote:

Its safe to assume though that many guard armies are fully conscripted though. The rules dont reflect this. I personally imagine the conscripts in the rules to be child, elderly and female soldiers drafted as an act of desperation to bolster the current troops. So worse conscripts.

At the end of the day it depends on your regiment. There is no absolutes with the imperial guard.

Well, not female. The guard explicitly contain both mixed gender and all female regiments, so it's unlikely that a female soldier would be any more of a conscript than the male soldier.

Depends entirely on the home world. On mine the women, children and elderly are drafted as desperate measures. Blanket statements mean nothing in the guard. Cant even say they all have guns haha. It always depends on the homeworld.

... and then you have the Xenan Legions, which are a studio army of all-female IG.

Yeah, okay, I'm sorry. That was me falling into the Cadia-centric trap, just like I always tell other people off for doing. ><

Technically, the Death Korps are conscripts, no? And they have better discipline and martial skills than most regiments.

Make that of what you will. You could argue that the whole IG is made out of conscripts.

The majority of IG regiments are conscripts, in that they are drafted into their planet's PDF and then tithed to the IG as part of the planet's due. However, there are those regiments who are an all-volunteer force, so are not, technically, conscripts.

Bobthehero wrote:Technically, the Death Korps are conscripts, no? And they have better discipline and martial skills than most regiments.

Make that of what you will. You could argue that the whole IG is made out of conscripts.

Actually the vast majority of DKoK are volunteer forces...just they have been brainwashed before birth to volunteer.

There is a big difference between conscripts and volunteers. That being a conscript doesn't want to be there and the volunteer does. If you tell one they will dishonorably discharged if they don't try harder the conscript throws a party while the volunteer redoubles efforts.

Most of the famous IG regiments are volunteer. Though they are highly indoctrinated to the point you could argue a lack of free will. DKoK is a great example where people who don't want to fight for the IG are not killed nor are they arrested, they are not worth the resources and so they are just put out of the society and have to try and survive a death world on their own with little to no supplies. Interestingly enough there are references to these individuals surviving in abandoned habs. Even the failed recruits in the DKoK want to be there so much they fight as training materials until they die and don't even care that their "commander" is a vox recording. That isn't a conscript as that individual wants to be there and is not being forced, in fact if he deserted nobody would even notice.