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Hi all,

Have had some difficulty with Imperial Guard of late. My opponent likes to 'blob' units and sit back and blast me apart with tanks.

I have had some thoughts on how to remedy this.
- Ignore blob units
- Basically get in as quick as possible
- Kill off command squads
- Kill commander Pask
- Use transports e.g. drop pods (have 3), rhinos (have 2), razorback (have 1), landraider (have 1) and/or stormraven (have 1) to get in their face early on.
- Use ironclad dreadnought and assault terminators to get in and smash enemy vehicles
- No heavy weapons in tac squads
- Consider taking sternguard with melta guns as a jack of all trades unit

Wondering how important taking a demi company is in the scheme of things. For chapter tactics I am considering Imperial Fists.

Any advice on which units, configurations and tactics on how to beat these most pesky guard would be much appreciated.
Thanks,
Drew

Since the current meta SM are one of the best armies. Just take a lot of drop pods with Devastators and AM with Eviscerator/PF and Melta Bomb. Also Stormtalons and Stormravens are your friends. Maybe look at some of the formations, like the Raptor Wing or Skyhammer Annihilation Force, altough they are quite cheesy.

I found Thunderfire cannons are extremely effective against guard as they can cause issues for their tanks (dangerous terrain) and murder their blobs with ease as well as take out specific character within the blobs due to barrage.

Welcome to Dakka.

In addition to what others have said, play the mission. it sounds like you are going up against a classic gunline. Not known for their mobility. As long as you have one pair of boots on the needed objectives at the end of the game, you win. You also might want to try the maelstrom missions.

Welcome Drew!

From the sounds of it, your opponent lacks anything to deal with Flyers, so a Storm Talon is likely RIGHT up your alley. As a Flyer with AV12 it'll be very difficult for the guard to kill. If equipped with multi-meltas and hurricane bolters it'll easily kill both tanks and infantry, and the Power of the Machine Spirit lets you accomplish both each turn! Lastly, as an Assault Vehicle, you can have it carry a payload of Space Marines armed for close-range fighting, that will be extra-effective against Guard.

Now, if you can't change up your list because you're kind of stuck with the force you got (lack of funds, etc.), then we need to know what kind of units you have access to in order to help.

That said, here's some general tips. The Imperial Guard have three major weaknesses:
#1 - Lack of mobility.
#2 - Squishy up close.
#3 - Vulnerable to every special rule in the game.

This mean that, when engaging them, you want to capitalize on each of these weaknesses. As has been said, play to the objectives. Space Marines, especially with Drop Pods, can easily and efficiently take and hold objectives from enemies. You don't need to always kill everything in order to have objectives, and as such you don't need to do maximum-upgrades on stuff either. More than anything, avoid upgrading units to make them able to "take on everything". The only reason to do otherwise is if you're breaking up units into Combat Squads, so one part of the squad can do one specialized task, while the other part does a different task.

Secondly, since Guard are squishy up close, get up close! Most Tank's rear armour is 10 in the Guard, so even your close combat attacks can help glance out the vehicle, not to mention you'll get a S6 Krak Grenade hit in close combat too. Guard tanks are also so burly that if you destroy one, it's husk will often hide your units out of Line of Sight or behind cover when the return fire comes. Oftentimes, one Space Marine coming out of a Drop Pod with a meltagun will terminate even a Leman Russ battle tank (while the Combat Squad fires bolters at nearby infantry). It's criminally effective.

Lastly, Imperial Guard really are vulnerable to just about every special rule in the book. With Initiative 3 they fail Blind tests half the time. With Ld7 or 8 (or maybe 9 given the setup), they will fail Fall Back, Pinning, and even Fear tests often enough to matter. In this way, to help thin out units of guard, killing 3 models in 3 units of 10 will often "kill" 16 models (3 from one, 3 from another, and 10 from a unit that ran away), as opposed to killing just straight up 9 models. Spreading out your fire a bit against some guard forces isn't horribly ineffective, and can actually throw some major wrenches in their plans. So, the more Ld tests you force, the better. If they've got a Priest with them, just launch some stuff into close combat with them, and start issuing challenges to eventually take down the Priest. Even easier to do with Drop Pods, since effectively bubble-wrapping him against all sides is nearly impossible.

Hope these things help!

All this being said, it's kind of not cool to list tailor. So try taking an army meant for any possible foe and put in some anti-infantry and anti-tank and see if you can leverage that stuff in the game.

DrewTempest wrote:
Hi all,

Have had some difficulty with Imperial Guard of late. My opponent likes to 'blob' units and sit back and blast me apart with tanks.

I have had some thoughts on how to remedy this.
- Ignore blob units
- Basically get in as quick as possible
- Kill off command squads
- Kill commander Pask
- Use transports e.g. drop pods (have 3), rhinos (have 2), razorback (have 1), landraider (have 1) and/or stormraven (have 1) to get in their face early on.
- Use ironclad dreadnought and assault terminators to get in and smash enemy vehicles
- No heavy weapons in tac squads
- Consider taking sternguard with melta guns as a jack of all trades unit

Wondering how important taking a demi company is in the scheme of things. For chapter tactics I am considering Imperial Fists.

Any advice on which units, configurations and tactics on how to beat these most pesky guard would be much appreciated.
Thanks,
Drew

Pretty much this. If you try and stand still and lob heavy weapons fire back and forth across the board, you will lose.
If you try and assault head-first into the blobs.....you won't necessarily lose, but you won't cut through them in time to do anything useful aside from kill a couple of hundred points of guardsmen.

Bypassing the infantry line with drop pods and gunships is a good trick. Getting to objectives and digging in is another - because then he has to come to you.

Librarians can be useful, too. Guard tend to not be well equipped to deal with psykers and you can get a lot of useful abilities in a librarius conclave, especially with the 4 astartes disciplines. "every model in the unit takes a dangerous terrain test with no armour saves allowed" is murder on big blob squads".

Sternguard with melta (or combi-melta) are more like a kamikaze unit, drop in a pod, pop a tank, prepare to die.

That said, you have enough drop pods to run a skyhammer formation. Drop in two devastator squads and assault marine squads on your favourite flank and assault them that same turn. That doesn't count towards your first turn drop pod either, so either put down another to let the ironclad mop up something the devs don't kill, or place those suisternguard somewhere closer to the tanks, either way, forcing your opponent to pick target priorities other than 'that squad's in range now'.

Space Marines generally shouldnt have trouble with IG armies in 7E. The aforementioned Skyhammer formation can basically break an IG army on the first turn and effectively end the game there for example. IG are really generally in a very poor spot right now as an army.



In general, as long as you dont try to outshoot them from across the board or footslog marines across open terrain, you should be able to deal with them without too much of an issue. Units in dop pods tae out key elements be they command squads or AT units or whatnot, and your other units clean up whats left.

WHY would you ever choose to footslog Space Marines? That's one of the worst ideas you could use.

Ironclad Dreads are exactly the unit you need. Sling in two flamers and go to town on infantry, and you got S10 vs tanks in melee.

Do you really want to make his day hell? If so then:

Take 1 squadron of three vindicators and 1 Librarius Conclave of three Level 2 Librarians.
Now draw your powers from Telepathy until you get Invisibility and then draw the rest from whichever power you like.
Deploy the three vindicators in a line hull to hull and deploy the Librarians behind them. Each turn advance up whilst casting Invisibility on the Vindicators. Your opponent will not be able to shoot the Vindicators with anything meaningful whilst the Librarians (and anything else that wants too) will be able to advance behind them because they still technically block LoS.

Welcome to Dakka Dakka!

There really isn't anything for me to add that hasn't been said by the others above me. Don't despair! You have options, and a lot of good ideas have been presented to you! It also sounds like you have the tools available to defeat the IG. Your thought processes and ideas are all moving in the right direction.

Good luck, and remember to have fun playing 40K!

That fails because you can wyvern snipe/colossus gun snipe the libbies to death pretty easily. Plus outflankers and air cav. Space marine libbies need to be in the squad getting invised to be effective. Hence, centstar.

Martel732 wrote:
That fails because you can wyvern snipe/colossus gun snipe the libbies to death pretty easily. Plus outflankers and air cav. Space marine libbies need to be in the squad getting invised to be effective. Hence, centstar.

Colossus does not exist outside of IA any more, and Wyverns are only good if they hit and wound.

" Wyverns are only good if they hit and wound."

That is perhaps the most tautological statement I've seen on this board.

"Colossus does not exist outside of IA any more"

So?

So.. I agree with most of the posters comments here, but the advice will largely depend on just how many blobs your foe deploys, if he's using priests to make them fearless, and if he knows how to use them correctly. I will tell you right now, having fought skyhammer, that skyhammer and/or lots of pods is not an auto-win button. If your opponent is deploying his blobs properly, there will literally be no space to put your pods or models behind his lines, you will be forced to get something into meelee with his blobs.

Denying his overwatch and charging on the turn your assault marines is great and all, but assault marines will still most likely lose that combat and then they're tied up while his surviving tanks rip into your devastators.

I'm going to assume the point of your post is to be a little more competitive against this player's army, not list tailor to beat him. That said:
-Flamers and heavy flamers are effective for dealing with blobs, not auto-win as some people seem to think, but effective.
-Thunderfire cannons are good too.
-Melee is only truly effective on command squads and vehicles as fearless blobs will just tarpit you forever.
-Play to the objectives and keep his blobs from moving forward. It won't matter how many marines he kills if all he's controlling is his deployment zone. Win with objectives.
-Vindicator Formation with the ignores cover blast will probably wipe out more than half a blob in 1 shot. This is an effective formation and good for killing tank commanders too.
-Libarians or Tigurius formation will out psyker IG easily. Guard have bad Psykers for the most part.

Martel732 wrote:
" Wyverns are only good if they hit and wound."

That is perhaps the most tautological statement I've seen on this board.

But a fair point. Against amassed infantry the Wyvern is good. Against three figures whom are hiding and thus being shot at indirectly, not so good.

"Colossus does not exist outside of IA any more"

So?

Very few players have the rules and even fewer can afford a very much overpriced one trick pony.

DrewTempest wrote:
Hi all,

Have had some difficulty with Imperial Guard of late. My opponent likes to 'blob' units and sit back and blast me apart with tanks.

I have had some thoughts on how to remedy this.
- Ignore blob units
- Basically get in as quick as possible
- Kill off command squads
- Kill commander Pask
- Use transports e.g. drop pods (have 3), rhinos (have 2), razorback (have 1), landraider (have 1) and/or stormraven (have 1) to get in their face early on.
- Use ironclad dreadnought and assault terminators to get in and smash enemy vehicles
- No heavy weapons in tac squads
- Consider taking sternguard with melta guns as a jack of all trades unit

Wondering how important taking a demi company is in the scheme of things. For chapter tactics I am considering Imperial Fists.

Any advice on which units, configurations and tactics on how to beat these most pesky guard would be much appreciated.
Thanks,
Drew

Consider the Smashbane build with Iron Hands Tactics. Iron Hands can build an absurdly durable Chapter Master and Command Squad.

Does he use an Aegis Defense Line? Guard tanks with camo-netting can get absurdly durable behind an Aegis or the right terrain.

Martel732 wrote:
All this being said, it's kind of not cool to list tailor. So try taking an army meant for any possible foe and put in some anti-infantry and anti-tank and see if you can leverage that stuff in the game.

Depends on one's local meta I guess. I don't have any issue with people list tailoring against me. In all the years I've played 40k I've never heard a single complaint.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Space Marines generally shouldnt have trouble with IG armies in 7E. The aforementioned Skyhammer formation can basically break an IG army on the first turn and effectively end the game there for example. IG are really generally in a very poor spot right now as an army.



In general, as long as you dont try to outshoot them from across the board or footslog marines across open terrain, you should be able to deal with them without too much of an issue. Units in dop pods tae out key elements be they command squads or AT units or whatnot, and your other units clean up whats left.

Space Marines generally shouldn't have trouble with alot of armies, yet I've repeatedly lost to Orks and Tyranids. Generally speaking I find that skill and experience tend to matter more. From what it sounds like in the OP, the Guard player really knows how to properly utilize his army.

I can't speak for the OP and only to my own experience, but I've always found games against IG to be very close with my Marines. (Though granted, my usual Guard opponent likes to take a Knight Crusader as an ally in every list). After my first few games with Drop Pods and deep strikers, my Guard opponents quickly learn the value of an Aegis Line and bubble wrap with infantry to protect tanks and command squads.

Sure there are tactics to reduce drop pod effectiveness and a good IG player will utilize them, but SM's also have tools to remove those. SM's have tons of cover save ignoring weapons and abilities to bypass or clear meatshields out. A couple thunderfire cannons are absolute murder on groups like that for example (also against side AV10 tanks like Wyverns and Chimeras). IG really generally struggle as they're functionally a 5E army book and have few reasonable answers to things like the Skyhammer formation. IG dont really have any functional major advantages to bring to bear over SM's when looking at the totality of capabilities of each army.

 master of ordinance wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
" Wyverns are only good if they hit and wound."

That is perhaps the most tautological statement I've seen on this board.

But a fair point. Against amassed infantry the Wyvern is good. Against three figures whom are hiding and thus being shot at indirectly, not so good.

"Colossus does not exist outside of IA any more"

So?

Very few players have the rules and even fewer can afford a very much overpriced one trick pony.

Pretty sure it doesn't matter with the wyvern against the conclave. The conclave is a huge force multiplier. The wyvern is dirt cheap. It's twinlinked and has shread. You it 1 marine and if you get any more spot on's after that you move the blast to hit 2 marines, being twinlinked it's pretty easy to do so. Then needing 4's rerolling because of shred? That's wounding 75% of the time? Don't you only need to cause 3-4 wounds to statistically kill a marine with 3+ armor? Focus on the guy that's got invisibility and if it really requires using 2-3 wyverns in a turn then do so because that's only 195 points if I'm correct to expose the fragile vindicators. I can't say I know of many people who would run the conclave without an escort unit that they aren't using invisibility on themselves because they aren't that hard to kill.

 master of ordinance wrote:

"Colossus does not exist outside of IA any more"

So?

Very few players have the rules and even fewer can afford a very much overpriced one trick pony.

FW units are commonplace in some metas, unheard of in others. It might be worth checking to see which one we're dealing with when giving advice.

 tankboy145 wrote:

 master of ordinance wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
" Wyverns are only good if they hit and wound."

That is perhaps the most tautological statement I've seen on this board.

But a fair point. Against amassed infantry the Wyvern is good. Against three figures whom are hiding and thus being shot at indirectly, not so good.

"Colossus does not exist outside of IA any more"

So?

Very few players have the rules and even fewer can afford a very much overpriced one trick pony.

Pretty sure it doesn't matter with the wyvern against the conclave. The conclave is a huge force multiplier. The wyvern is dirt cheap. It's twinlinked and has shread. You it 1 marine and if you get any more spot on's after that you move the blast to hit 2 marines, being twinlinked it's pretty easy to do so. Then needing 4's rerolling because of shred? That's wounding 75% of the time? Don't you only need to cause 3-4 wounds to statistically kill a marine with 3+ armor? Focus on the guy that's got invisibility and if it really requires using 2-3 wyverns in a turn then do so because that's only 195 points if I'm correct to expose the fragile vindicators. I can't say I know of many people who would run the conclave without an escort unit that they aren't using invisibility on themselves because they aren't that hard to kill.

Exactly. Wyverns are good against anything T5 and below. It doesn't matter that you have AP6 when you can just pile on wound after wound after wound.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
...Exactly. Wyverns are good against anything T5 and below. It doesn't matter that you have AP6 when you can just pile on wound after wound after wound.

I'm still not entirely sure how you expect to kill a Librarian in one turn with them. If he deploys with a squad in a vehicle you can't touch him, if he's standing with a squad you've got to kill everyone else in the unit to get to him (in an arbitrarily-sized unit you've got to hit 48 times on average to punch through Look Out, Sir! and get him to fail saves, if he's attached to a five-man squad it's 32 hits to wipe them; if your opponent knows enough to not cluster up you're looking at a lot of Wyverns or a lot of time).

Not to mention the problem of what happens when Bikes enter the equation and drop you from 75% to wound to 55% to wound...

Take a space marine army with the carcharodon chapter tactics (fear, extra attack in cc for 1 point, rage if killed a unit in assault). Take the sky hammer formation with multimeltas, and full assault squads (can shoot with the heavies and assault with the assault squads turn 1). The rest of the army should be drop pods of marines, some centurions, and some veterans with your warlord.

Turn 1 pop many of their tanks with meltas right as you exit your pods From the sky hammer formation. Then assault their guard squads with low leadership, saves, etc, with your fear creating assault units. This causes death, disarray and chaos in his bubble style army.

As his units maneuver, try to get away, reposition, etc, your other pods fall and add to the chaos while your centurions walk up and blow things to bits.

God I love the carcharodons... so violent, scary, fun, and beautiful

Funny how that list would be completely useless agaisnt a Krieg artillery list, eh.

 Bobthehero wrote:
Funny how that list would be completely useless agaisnt a Krieg artillery list, eh.

Funny how the 7e Artillery unit type is terribly written, eh.

Getting back on topic to the OP I will say your instinct on getting in close as fast as possible is absolutely correct; it's a major weakness of Guard and it's the greatest strength of the Space Marines.

There's also the immunity to fear to take in account, and the lack of platoon making the whole thing a bit more complex.

My dark angels do really well at taking out guard

Run in with bikes, with plasma talons makes quick work of most tanks. Then deep strike in terminators, its good times

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
...Exactly. Wyverns are good against anything T5 and below. It doesn't matter that you have AP6 when you can just pile on wound after wound after wound.

I'm still not entirely sure how you expect to kill a Librarian in one turn with them. If he deploys with a squad in a vehicle you can't touch him, if he's standing with a squad you've got to kill everyone else in the unit to get to him (in an arbitrarily-sized unit you've got to hit 48 times on average to punch through Look Out, Sir! and get him to fail saves, if he's attached to a five-man squad it's 32 hits to wipe them; if your opponent knows enough to not cluster up you're looking at a lot of Wyverns or a lot of time).

Not to mention the problem of what happens when Bikes enter the equation and drop you from 75% to wound to 55% to wound...

You originally said the librarius conclave would be walking behind the vindicators.

You put said librarians in a vehicle if I'm correct then they cannot cast invisibility as only witch fires can be cast out.

And if they are in a you it to soak up wounds then you can't spread out too much or other units will be able to draw line of sight to the marines sticking out from the sides as 3 vindies side by side doesn't provide much cover.

You add bikes into the equation and it doesn't change the fact that 3 wyverns each in their own unit for 195pts total is dirt cheap and they stack wounds like crazy. A 3+ save is not that great, better than most saves but still goes down to weight of wounds.

Mimicking what many others have pointed out already, IG have numerous weaknesses. Which is why you see so many IG players like myself constantly complaining about our codex and why you'll rarely if ever see us going anywhere in tournaments. We have absolutely nothing to deal with close combat. Rough riders are a joke. Ogryn are mediocre in melee, 33% more expensive in points than they should be, only 1/3 of their loadouts is counter assault which just so happens to be the most expensive loadout, have a high armor save & no feel no pain despite being one of the few units in the entire setting that should definitely have it. Blob squads with a priest work better as a tarpit for the enemy than actually kill anything. Yarrick's melee is mediocre and he is severely overpriced.

IG has no mobility. They only have a few options. Take a taurox/chimera/valkyrie with vets inside and watch them die horribly they moment they disembark to secure objective. March infantry behind slab shield ogryn which is laughable at best. Deepstrike stormtroopers and watch them die horribly shortly after they arrive.

Take a skyhammer formation and win the game turn one.

IG in a nutshell:

Great range
Mediocre accuracy
Mediocre moral
Abysmal melee
Abysmal mobility
Army specific ability (Orders) mediocre and can be completely negated if officer/commander dies.