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.

Right, this has been needed for a little while now.

Many of you know me, Master of Ordinance, just another Dakkanought whom stomps around these forums. Recently though I feel that I have been turning a little sour in my posts, especially here on the 40K section and especially towards Space Marines. Now obviously this has been causing a little strife and I guess that some of you are wondering why I am getting so bitter about several factions and about my own codex. Well, here it is:

As you all know I am a die hard Imperial Guard player. I love my Guard and the general aspect of them, the notion that against all the odds in a universe inhabited by genetically enginieered tank plate wearing superhumans, bioweapons, ancient terminator egyptians, Demons, super advanced cowfish and other nasties these regular men and women clad in simple armour and armed only with a cheap rifle, a few grenades and balls of pure steel volunteer to go out and fight for their people, their homes, their empire. The volunteer to be hurled through the warp to some back hole planet that noone has ever heard of before and fight and die for the emperor. The Guard are metal as hell.

But recently things have been changing. Being an Imperial Guard player has never really been easy. You have had to cope with the fact that most basic Infantry weapons will ignore your armour, the fact that your troops are not the best in the whole galaxy and the vulnerabilities to assault. There was also the issue of seeing the gunline army status removed entirely with the introduction of a certain new race (totally not looking at you Tau). But a good Guard player with a strong grasp of tactics could fight on and, with a bit of luck, stand a good chance of winning against other armies. The use of tanks to blitz the enemy off objectives and then sending Infantry up to claim them, combined arms tactics and the use of many amazing strategies that baffled opponents would carry you to victory.
But then things changed. 5th became 6th and then very rapidly 7th. In a single codex GW killed the tactical depth in 40K and the factors in winning a game went from 10% army list and 90% tactics too 50% army list, 50% tactics. Things where bad, but we in the Guard where able to hold on and keep going to an extent. Sure, we where playing with 5th edition codex but things could have been worse...... Spoke too soon.
The 6th edition Imperial Guard codex dropped and things went from bad to fubar overnight. Suddenly we had lost many useable units, being reduced down to a grand total of (arguably - some of these are situational/not too good) 6 selections that where actually worth the inordinate amount of points we where paying for them. Our tanks lost the Lumbering Behemoth rule and with it half of their firepower. Units which needed price drops where left standing as they where or even worse given a price hike/nerf. The outcome was bleak but worse was yet to come.
The Necrons codex dropped and with it began the (in)famous line of the 'Decurion style' codex. Swiftly following this came the Eldar and Space Marines with Adeptus Mechanicus trailing in their wake. Now winning a game is 80% army choice and 20% tactics. We in the Guard department where left in the dust. The Tau had taken our gunline, the idiot whom wrote our codex had taken our manoeuvrability and the Space Marines had taken our tank. we have nothing, seriously NOTHING. Playing the Imperial Guard went from being a challenge to a 'how long can I hold out before he feths me over'. Victories went from difficult to nigh on impossible. The learning curve for new IG players actually breached that of the Cryx in Warmachine in elevation.

Now that sounds bad right, but surely at a large and diverse club like the one that I attend there should be some whom play Orcs or Dark Eldar or Imperial Guard for me to get a fun game against? *bitter laughter*
Nope. There WAS another two Imperial Guard players. There WAS an Ork player. There WAS a Dark Eldar player. WAS.
As of the last count I am the only active Imperial Guard player in my club. There is one Sister of Battle player and he attends so infrequently that he may as well not be there. Now guess what all of the others play? We have:

More Space Marine players than can be counted

Several Dark Angels players

A Grey Knight player

A couple of Tyranid players

A few Chaos players... Whom now play vanilla Space Marines

A couple of Tyranid players

A member of the club management whom owns an entire Knight household with Adeptus Mechanicus and Skitarii supporting elements (the army looks epic though and is amazingly well painted) and is still expanding on it

A Spacewolf player

A Tau player

Of these my regular opponents are:

The Grey Knight player

A Ravenwing player

A Deathwing player

A certain Space Marine player whom loves to bring Primarchs (legal and homebrewed) to friendly games and has a habit of whining about my tanks being overpowered and broken

Now, can people see where my perspective is coming from? When I drop on to these forums and see a Space Marine player complaining about how his 3+ save is useless or how his tactical's are over priced I want to grab him by the collar and shake him whilst screaming "You think you have it bad? YOU THINK YOU HAVE IT BAD?! TRY PLAYING THE GUARD DAMNIT, AT LEAST YOU GET YOUR SAVES VS MOST SMALL ARMS FIRE!!!! When I see these threads where people want to buff the Rhino (an already amazingly good APC which wish my Imperial Guard had access too) still further I want to weep. When I see threads about Tau players wanting MOAR fancy shooty I just stare. Where I see said Tau players wanting to take even more tank and artillery I actually get really pissed, its like they want to strip everything that the Guard have and make it theirs. My guys have NOTHING which can compete with these codex's. Nothing that can counter these powerful units. Nothing which equals a formation.
Hell, even Tyranids are tough as they can bring Monstrous Creatures and, well, we know how THAT ends when placed against the Imperial Guard.
I have players whom have never even played using the Imperial Guard telling me that my Infantry are amazing and that my orders are broken despite the fact that it takes, on average, 200 lasgun shots to put down your regular vanilla 10 man Tactical squad or equivalent. I have a certain Space Marine players complaining that Imperial Guard orders are overpowered and should only be useable once per game because FRFSRF over two turns from a Veteran section with a Heavy bolter killed 5 Devestators. I have Marine and Marine derivative players, telling me that I rely too much on my tanks. What else am I supposed to rely on? Infantry? Like hell that ever works.
Its the same on here, we have Marine players wanting a Rhino to have more survivability than a Leman Russ on a Rhino. We have them wanting AV14 on their Predators. Predators which are already cheaper and faster than Leman Russ (The Russ can only move 6" a turn). We have Tau players wanting even more shooty stuff and artillery support.
Oh, and for a kicker we have the Space Marine players, and the players from the other meta codex's coming along and telling us that the Imperial Guard dont need formations that give us free stuff and dont need buffs to this and that.

You see, from my perspective the game stinks right now. Everything that my army does another army does better, and half the time those armies players want more.
In all honesty I would love to take a break from the game but I cant. Why not? Because 40K is the only game that is really played right now at my club. The Warmachine scene died off so my Cryx sit unused. The Darkage scene was, sadly, stillborn owning to some supply issues. I occasionally see Fantasy but the only real players right now are doing a campaign based off the End Times. AoS is.... Terrible. Infinity MIGHT be a way out but right now I am gauging the future of the scene before I invest in another game and I am trying to get the Bolt Action scene kickstarted.

Sorry for the large wall of text. I hope that this explains, at the very least, some of my bitterness.

On the bright side, Imperial Guard will soon get their codex, and if I were a betting man, I'd guess that the pendulum will finally swing in their favor. They are a faction that is ideal for Core-command-auxiliary formations, and if we're honest about it, GW has made a pretty good job of balancing post 2015 codex releases against each other.

I suspect there will be substantial formation bonuses that make Guard much more viable.

Incidentally, I am waiting for Guard to become better too -- I haven't worked on my IG for a really long time, and there are many kits waiting for my attention

Have you considered getting a new army?
Like eldar or necrons?

Well, or ally in some Space Marines, Imperial Knights, or Adeptus Mechanicus. Then you wouldn't have to replace your whole army

 Mantorok wrote:
Have you considered getting a new army?
Like eldar or necrons?

Ugh no. I used (back in the day) to have a Space Marine army. I got rid of them. I also sold a load of Necrons I was given. I know that this may sound like Scrub talk but I just could not see myself playing them. They just felt.... Wrong form me.

@Talys: I hope so, the new codex can not be quick enough in coming.

 Talys wrote:
Well, or ally in some Space Marines, Imperial Knights, or Adeptus Mechanicus. Then you wouldn't have to replace your whole army

From what I've played against, Imperial Knights is a great supplement for IG.
It lets IK have some ObSec on the field without having to take too many knights, or taking a worse formation.
Also if you play IG, you know how to shoot blast around the board without killing your own guys.

I think the problem isn't that other armies do what you do better, cause every army is going to have it's specialty.
It's that your armies is weak in its own specialty.
Realistically, your army needs to either be able to tarpit better or its tanks need more upgrades/options.
actually the best option is to just make all the models in the cheaper in points cost. Fluffy and effective.
Sells models too.

IG is a fantastic army when combined with allies. Allies are quite essential in modern day 40K.

As I've mentioned in some other threads, I don't personally know a lot of people who play monocodex armies these days. When the option to ally and fix the possible caveats of our army is there, it's basically a person limiting his armies capabilities should he choose to play monocodex. Only if they are running a formation do I see people using a singular Codex.

There's a guard player in my group I've beaten once. And I've played 70 games of 7th edition now, reached that amount of games played with a match against Tau yesterday. Usually this guard player rolls with an Imperial Knight, a few Vendettas, and melta bristling veterans in Chimeras. Occasionally there's a Culexus Assassin or a LRBT for some fire support, and ofcourse, Wyverns. He occasionally makes a horde army and buffs the blobs with Space Marine Librarians, Blood Angels priests or whatnot.

He does just fine, but he is a skilled player.

You can take your boring gunline playsyle from the Tau but to be honest I have no idea why anyone would want to play that way :L

Play another game. Made by a company that doesn't do "Flavor of the Month!" style releases where everyone else languishes with a gakky codex for years at a time.

Try Infinity, get off GWs carousel of screw.

SlaveToDorkness wrote:Play another game. Made by a company that doesn't do "Flavor of the Month!" style releases where everyone else languishes with a gakky codex for years at a time.

Try Infinity, get off GWs carousel of screw.

I am looking in to it, but after what happened to the Warmahordes scene in my area I want to monitor it before I commit time and money to another game. I have close to £130 of Cryx just sat there doing nothing after the local Warmachine scene crashed.
When I get a better budget I probably will though, and until then I am keeping an eye on the Infinity players so I can gauge whether or not to invest when the time comes.

Runic wrote:IG is a fantastic army when combined with allies. Allies are quite essential in modern day 40K.

As I've mentioned in some other threads, I don't personally know a lot of people who play monocodex armies these days. When the option to ally and fix the possible caveats of our army is there, it's basically a person limiting his armies capabilities should he choose to play monocodex. Only if they are running a formation do I see people using a singular Codex.

There's a guard player in my group I've beaten once. And I've played 70 games of 7th edition now, reached that amount of games played with a match against Tau yesterday. Usually this guard player rolls with an Imperial Knight, a few Vendettas, and melta bristling veterans in Chimeras. Occasionally there's a Culexus Assassin or a LRBT for some fire support, and ofcourse, Wyverns. He occasionally makes a horde army and buffs the blobs with Space Marine Librarians, Blood Angels priests or whatnot.

He does just fine, but he is a skilled player.

Sadly very few players at my club use allies. They dont need too and in all honesty a Codex should be able to stand alone. I do have a Vindicaire though.
I would love to get a Knight and some flyers and maybe some Wyverns but sadly they are out of my budget for the foreseeable future.

 SlaveToDorkness wrote:
get off GWs carousel of screw.

The greatest IPs with the worst management.

I'll just give the tau prespective for a moment, you get angry at us for "wanting even more toys", but honestly-we got very little.
Many of our units or weapons are simply pointless and don't do anything. railtech, stealthsuits, auxillary races, our tanks-all are quite ineffective.
The fact AM has it worse means not that others are in perfect shape.


Back to how to help YOU feel better about your army

The first and easy way-allies. I know its not what you want to hear, but it works. and its fluffy. guards call reinforcements-and being IoM you got a huge list to choose from to fill any hole you need.



The other option is the sneaky one.
Do the reverse of your local CSM players-and play chaos rules as count-as imperials.
What does it mean?
Forgeworld "renegades and heretics" lists-they don't have orders, but are FAR more flexible than AM codex is, unlock whole new strategies and do some better than codex AM (while worse at others)

Varks lists are especially potent in this, Ordenance Tyrant makes some of the more amazing "artillery overload" lists, especially with Purge list, while the Unending Host makes the ultimate "drown them in bodies" IG list.

The biggest downside of this path, is that it twists your allies-but if you run no allies anyway-it doesn't effect you.

They play a bit different, but if you like horde infantry, cheapness at the cost of low BS (get around with blast/template weapons), and general feel of "my guys suck, but I've got enough" that guard imposes-they are good.
And non-allied RnH are sure stronger than non-allied AM.


Beyond that, there are varius FW lists that are AM spinoff likes the death korps, who might strike your fancy, if their specialties are lined up with your playstyle.

 master of ordinance wrote:
I know that this may sound like Scrub talk but I just could not see myself playing them.

I don't think you need to go specifically to Sirlin's taxonomy to figure out what's going on here, I think you're just having a bit of a tantrum. One that's somewhat understandable, given the state of the game, but a tantrum nonetheless.

You've been offered plenty of possible solutions or work arounds, and you've rejected every one, mostly for reasons that boil down to "that's not what I want."

All I can do is point out that you cannot control what the people around you play, how competitively they build lists, or what the rules for IG and/or 40k in general are like. You can control what army you play, what game you play, and how you spend your hobby time.

Focusing on what you cannot control will always bring in negative emotions. Focusing on what you can control might take you out of your comfort zone, but might bring rewards as well.

I dislike allies as well, but luckily the army that called to me was Space Marines, so that's not generally an issue. However, if you had to get an ally, you couldn't go terribly wrong with an Imperial Knight or two - assuming that fits your budget. They're stellar models and many of their loadouts mesh quite well with an IG gunline.

That said, I strongly feel that your problem is not so much your army as your opponents'. Especially your one foe that brings homebrew characters and 30k Primarchs to "friendly" games. That is either massively misunderstanding the definition of "friendly" or he's a total toolbag. I don't know where you live exactly or how feasible it is but I would look to find another gaming group if at all possible because it sounds like your friends are totally unwilling to alter their playstyle for the sake of creating a fun gaming space for all.

 Polonius wrote:

 master of ordinance wrote:
I know that this may sound like Scrub talk but I just could not see myself playing them.

I don't think you need to go specifically to Sirlin's taxonomy to figure out what's going on here, I think you're just having a bit of a tantrum. One that's somewhat understandable, given the state of the game, but a tantrum nonetheless.

You've been offered plenty of possible solutions or work arounds, and you've rejected every one, mostly for reasons that boil down to "that's not what I want."

All I can do is point out that you cannot control what the people around you play, how competitively they build lists, or what the rules for IG and/or 40k in general are like. You can control what army you play, what game you play, and how you spend your hobby time.

Focusing on what you cannot control will always bring in negative emotions. Focusing on what you can control might take you out of your comfort zone, but might bring rewards as well.

Its not just that I do not want them, I can not physically afford to start a whole new allied army and purchase the latest meta unit. Hell I cant even afford a Knight. I sure as hell can not afford to drop this army and start a whole new one from scratch. I have to work within my budget.

So what about the suggestion of using the rules of renegades/death korps/etc?

You can probably run much of the same army, just more effectively. I doubt your owned/used ratio is 100%-and these alternate lists may allow you to field your own army in a better way.

 BoomWolf wrote:
So what about the suggestion of using the rules of renegades/death korps/etc?

You can probably run much of the same army, just more effectively. I doubt your owned/used ratio is 100%-and these alternate lists may allow you to field your own army in a better way.

I am looking at them and they do sound like a possible alternative

I do know of one version of the game where the Guard do just fine; Kill Team!

Seriously though, try doing something new in 40k. New missions, new versions. Try to come up with new ways of using you Guard not as a tactical force, but as a story-telling force. Get together with friends and start a campaign. You're the beleaguered Planetary Defence Force, and you need help. Try other styles of games, like Kill Team. Seriously, a full platoon is actually scary to fight against in Kill Team.

Good luck!

seriously? This sucks. I just got into this, and I fell in love with IG for the same reason. I discounted them because of that whole "commissars that shoot their own side" garbage. If I didn't have to deal with that, I would play them in a heartbeat.

 Priest Foxley wrote:
seriously? This sucks. I just got into this, and I fell in love with IG for the same reason. I discounted them because of that whole "commissars that shoot their own side" garbage. If I didn't have to deal with that, I would play them in a heartbeat.

It's fairly simple to field an IG/AM army without Commissars.

To be honest, I felt the same as you did about my guard...then I decided to actually think and do something about it. And now, given that every single game I can go toe to toe with and beat every single army in the game (my winrate isn't exactly high against wraithknight spam but I HAVE beaten them, killing three WKs in a single game)

As people have said, allies are pretty damn good with guard, but not in the "shoot now I have to buy 10000$ of new models" no. My guard went from doormat to force to be reckoned with with 3 models: Culexus Assassin, Coteaz, Regular Inquisitor. That, and a classic guard list with an infantry line, Leman Russ tanks, and artillery can slug it out with whatever I want.

In a lot of ways I feel bad for the whole "scrub" attitude but god damn is it frustrating in person. There are always people who, when GW says "here have a new edition, TOYS FOR EVERYONE!!" Will say "no, my preconceived notions and personal code of restraints prevents me from using those toys, I refuse!" And then they will sit in the corner complaining that those toys are overpowered.

"The psychic phase is so broken and my psykers suck! Invisibility is OP!" -which is why you can take super versatile inquisitorial psykers or an assassin that straight turns off all psychic powers.

"Everyone's got a whole bunch of cool detachments!" Which is why all the IG forgeworld stuff is now legal.

List of army detachments you can add to IG with the purchase of one (1) single model kit, and what they do to power multiply the Guard:

Inquisition: Protection from deep strike alphastrike tactics. Blast weapon power boost. Cheap, efficient psykers. Cheap chimeras. Access to the Land Raider and Rhino (SURPRISE, you DO have that!). Cheap power multipliers for infantry squads.

Assassins: Powerful melee threats. Anti-psychic shutdown. Sniper that actually works in a satisfying manner. Board control through infiltration.

Skiitari: (yes, one detachment=1 box of troops) access to awesome special weapons that just love being stuck in a chimera. Infiltrators that debuff enemy close combat units. A sweet points efficient dedicated anti air tank or anti tank tank.

Knights: small-points customizable Superheavies, for when the IG's half a dozen don't do it for ya. Stomp, D-weapons, absolutely loves being screened by conscript blobs.

All those armies aren't "play in place of guard" they're "play with guard to multiply guards' strengths and mitigate their weaknesses. A guy at my club plays an absolutely brutal Guard-Inquisition-Skiitari list that has less than 500 points of the latter two (one inquisitor 3 min-sized skiitari units) and watching enemy Death Stars try to attack his blob is god damn hilarious - Strength down, toughness down, take a blind check, now roll for psychotrokes, now I get to reroll to hit and to wound, oh you paid how much for your T3 Thunderwolves?

Yes. Guard does not have a post-decurion Dex. Join the club-3/4ths of the armies in the game are in it, and we've been waiting 4 months because of age of Sigmar. No, I'm not going to join in your pity party.

 j31c3n wrote:

 Priest Foxley wrote:
seriously? This sucks. I just got into this, and I fell in love with IG for the same reason. I discounted them because of that whole "commissars that shoot their own side" garbage. If I didn't have to deal with that, I would play them in a heartbeat.

It's fairly simple to field an IG/AM army without Commissars.

yeah, but I was under the impression that IG infantry without that morale bonus from summary execution was asking for trouble.

Sadly, I kind of agree with you about the game as a whole (I know, this coming from a Necron player). This game is just....I don't even know anymore. I love it, don't get me wrong. But I hate the power creep.

I personally hated the 5th edition Necron codex for numerous, similar reasons to you not liking the Guard one. What I did to cope was start a second army and mess around with them and only played Necrons occasionally. Then, my new codex came out, and I've barely touched my Nids. I can foresee the next Guard codex being epic, and until then, you just gotta hold on!

 Priest Foxley wrote:
seriously? This sucks. I just got into this, and I fell in love with IG for the same reason. I discounted them because of that whole "commissars that shoot their own side" garbage. If I didn't have to deal with that, I would play them in a heartbeat.

Priests do the same thing but slightly different for the same points. Or just go mech guard where you don't use either.

 Priest Foxley wrote:
seriously? This sucks. I just got into this, and I fell in love with IG for the same reason. I discounted them because of that whole "commissars that shoot their own side" garbage. If I didn't have to deal with that, I would play them in a heartbeat.

The Summary Execution rule is optional - you can choose not to shoot your own guys. Though one Conscript's life vs the whole unit getting swept in close combat? I know which one is the correct choice

As for the OP, maybe you just need a break? Take some time out to avoid burn out. Catch up on some painting, finish some conversions, surely there's something hobby related you can do?

Dont expect to see orks make a resurgence anytime soon. They just recently recieved the worst codex they have ever had. Playing for fun with nifty conversions is nice and all, but if you are interested in winning at all, you have an uphill battle. Dont think I have beat the new necrons with my orks yet. Or eldar for that matter.

 Orock wrote:
Dont expect to see orks make a resurgence anytime soon. They just recently recieved the worst codex they have ever had. Playing for fun with nifty conversions is nice and all, but if you are interested in winning at all, you have an uphill battle. Dont think I have beat the new necrons with my orks yet. Or eldar for that matter.

Funny how they have the advantage against both in competitive play. Green Tide and D-weapon Eldar is why there have been practically no Necrons in top tables at recent tourneys, and ork MSU can clobber Eldar, especially if the Eldar player is using Warhost.

My current "I feel like being mean" ork list features two CAD detachments, every one of which has every slot filled, and each troops slot brings a Trukk. But my usual Blitz Brigade list has no trouble against 95% of lists out there. It's just specifically power gaming Eldar lists I feel the need to take the jerk list.

I understand how master of ordinance feels, i haven't used my guard in months since everything they can do my marines can do better

 Priest Foxley wrote:
seriously? This sucks. I just got into this, and I fell in love with IG for the same reason. I discounted them because of that whole "commissars that shoot their own side" garbage. If I didn't have to deal with that, I would play them in a heartbeat.

It'll come up in maybe one out of ten games you play, and then it's a 2/3 chance you take a lasgun away. If you're that worried about losing a single guardsman then you made the right choice playing something else. I'd suggest Necrons.

I too am feeling the IG burn. If it's a maelstrom game the best I can hope for is to score at least one or two points and avoid a downtrail. My other army is CSM and even that dex feels playable compared to IG atm.

MarsNZ wrote:

 Priest Foxley wrote:
seriously? This sucks. I just got into this, and I fell in love with IG for the same reason. I discounted them because of that whole "commissars that shoot their own side" garbage. If I didn't have to deal with that, I would play them in a heartbeat.

It'll come up in maybe one out of ten games you play, and then it's a 2/3 chance you take a lasgun away. If you're that worried about losing a single guardsman then you made the right choice playing something else. I'd suggest Necrons.

I too am feeling the IG burn. If it's a maelstrom game the best I can hope for is to score at least one or two points and avoid a downtrail. My other army is CSM and even that dex feels playable compared to IG atm.

Take some allied infiltrator units to establish board control while you move your army into position and hammer the opposing line? Take some force multipliers to turn a large blob into a giant Obsec tarpit? Use your 25 point upgrade that grants you 2+ reserve rolls to bring in some deep strikers/out flankers?