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Remember you can’t split fire. And depending on the edition moving and fireing heavy weapons is also impeded. I forget when the switched it from squad to model. Might have been 5th.

It’s the fun guns that are going to do the lifting. Lasguns might plink a wound or two, but spam that plasma..

 Nevelon wrote:
Remember you can’t split fire. And depending on the edition moving and fireing heavy weapons is also impeded. I forget when the switched it from squad to model. Might have been 5th.

It’s the fun guns that are going to do the lifting. Lasguns might plink a wound or two, but spam that plasma..

What do yo uthink for the infantry squads? Plasma gun and heavy bolter? autocannon? Missile launcher? Those seem like they'd combine well enough, but lascannons are tempting too.

So far it seems like...

Command HQ with leader and 4x plasma guns.

Platoon command with 4x plasma guns?
2x infantry squads with 1x plasma gun and 1x heavy each?

I suppose I'm not too hung up on making "the best ever" or optimizing to the max. Maybe it'd be better for 4x grenade launchers? Or keep some melta guns or flamers just in case? I was born and bred in the 40k era when shooting couldn't be split so I'm used to that part of the game.

All my guard experience is from the other side of the table, so take with salt.

There might be some truth in the old joke:
Take 3 of everything. One will die before doing anything, one will miss, but the 3rd will get the job done.

I remember a lot of plasma. Mix of LCs and ACs. But I’m not sure how far back that went. I know ACs were more popular when HP came out.

General consensus is HBs were not good, replace them with something better if you could.

Melta is all or nothing. Very niche, but sometimes you want it for heavy targets.

I didn't play Guard, but Marines instead so also take this with a grain of salt: I like Lascannons in my Infantry units. I like the threat they pose to big units, and I like to shut down those types of units quickly before moving on to other things. In Marines I could only get so many Lascannons typically, but in Guard I think the numbers you could bring will make up for the decrease in accuracy.

Guard also have great access to Ordinance though. Their capacity to bring big, dangerous blasts is a great supplement to the other heavy weapons you can bring.

If you're using 3.5 Imperial Guard, you can play the Deep-striking-Demolition-Charge-with-a-dude-attached Last Chancers...

For Guard is really depends on the codex you use - 5th was more powerful as points went down on a bunch of things (though if you are playing 4th edition the vehicles won't be as strong as they were playing the 5th dex in 5th), and things like hellguns/hot shot guns got ap3. Veterans were moved to troops and i'm pretty sure limitations on how many units could take chimera were dropped. I'll admit I'm not nearly as familiar with the 5th dex as the 3.5, and for both its been a bit, so this is all from memory.

3.5 had the doctrines system, which was fun ways to customize your army that was also very flawed - you could spend all of your doctrine points to get half of the units you lost by taking doctrines and nothing else...

But man it was fun - you could completely change the stateline on your guards and what sorts of units you were taking, playing Tau-lite with carapace armor, or taking camo cloaks so you constantly had good saves in cover, taking stormtroopers as troops, etc.

Now, one thing to note, the badness of heavy bolters is largely due to the fact that Marines - both spikey and non-spikey - are the most common army in the game. Against armies like Orks and Tau and Tyranids and heck, other Guard, they at least have a role. That said, when most of your vehicles just come with them as standard, you tend to have a decent amount already so throwing them in squads is more for extra points / you just happen to like them.

How heavily you want your lads kitted out is entirely dependent on the role you want them for - if they are just cheap roadblockers that are there to soak up fire and screen your tanks with their blood cheaper is better, meanwhile if you want to camp the squad in your deployment zone then something long ranged like a lascannon is really nice, but you might want to save the points on the special weapon for a unit that is going to get more up close and personal. Plasma and Melta have always been king due to low ap and high strength (and instant death on t4 for the melta). The other special/heavy weapons all have their uses - flamers for swarms, grenade launchers for cheapness, autocannons are good jack of all trades and share the same strength as Plasma, etc.

Basically, look at the role you need to fill in your army, and kit the squads out for that, while no one individual squad is going to do much on its own, they are cheap enough per model that you can just throw more bodies at a problem. Also depending on the edition (every edition has slightly different casualty rules) and some luck, a mostly naked squad with a single lascannon is basically a lascannon with 10 wounds your enemy needs to churn through before it stops firing.

BanjoJohn wrote:
Platoon command with 4x plasma guns?
2x infantry squads with 1x plasma gun and 1x heavy each?

Remember to pick up sharpshooters on your plasma command squads - it will have a big impact.

When it comes to packing squads with weapons the two things to consider are mobility and durability. Units that are packed with special or heavy weapons have few or no ablative wounds so each hit is stripping points off your army, only take as many as you can protect or hide.
Anything with a heavy weapon is also static or not firing it so don't weigh a screening unit down with a lascannon or the like unless it is planning on staying exactly where it is (and definitely take screening units to spread out against deepstrikes and charges on your artillery).

A.T. wrote:

BanjoJohn wrote:
Platoon command with 4x plasma guns?
2x infantry squads with 1x plasma gun and 1x heavy each?

Remember to pick up sharpshooters on your plasma command squads - it will have a big impact.

When it comes to packing squads with weapons the two things to consider are mobility and durability. Units that are packed with special or heavy weapons have few or no ablative wounds so each hit is stripping points off your army, only take as many as you can protect or hide.
Anything with a heavy weapon is also static or not firing it so don't weigh a screening unit down with a lascannon or the like unless it is planning on staying exactly where it is (and definitely take screening units to spread out against deepstrikes and charges on your artillery).

Sadly, Sharpshooters explicitly does not apply to Plasma (or Sniper):

3.5 IG Codex, pg 57 wrote:The Sharpshooter ability has no effect when firing plasma weapons (which few men survive using long enough to master) or sniper weapons (where the slightest inaccuracy ruins the shot).

Kinda dumb, since it seems like those are the two special weapons where you'd want it most (and it leads to the odd case of a grenadier being more of a sniper than a designated marksman), but w/e.

Also, re: Heavy Bolters - in addition to what's already been mentioned, almost every vehicle in the Codex (and almost all the vehicles from Imperial Armor as well) comes with at least one Heavy Bolter standard, and many can take more. If you're doing an infantry-only list, sure, you might need or want to splash in some HBs somewhere, but if you're taking vehicles at all you might as well leave the HBs to them and let the infantry pick up something juicier.

 waefre_1 wrote:
The Sharpshooter ability has no effect when firing plasma weapons

Ah, missed that.

Still I can't argue with the principle that most plasma command squads don't survive long enough to get any practice in :p

 waefre_1 wrote:
Not to derail the thread further,

I made this thread for basically Old Hammer Shinanigans. If it moves to IG, 3rd e to 7th e I don't mind, or care. :-) Hence the name being more about general questions, and theorizing, rather than a like... a rule to follow lol.

Well, speaking of which. I'm looking for more missions than those in the 3d edition book, has anyone ever made any ladder campaigns? Or are there any new missions from other editions that still work well in 3rd edition?

BanjoJohn wrote:
Well, speaking of which. I'm looking for more missions than those in the 3d edition book, has anyone ever made any ladder campaigns? Or are there any new missions from other editions that still work well in 3rd edition?

Planetary Empires had a ruleset for taking and holding a hex map.

There was the planetstrike book for attacking/defending fortifications, though it tended to devolve into a lot of pre-first turn bombing and it favoured some factions over others - playing it in 5th edition with things like the new BA book was pointless.

There was also spearhead which was a vehicle based set of missions. Again has to be played somewhat with the spirit of the game rather than writing lists to win. Cities of death for city fighting.

The latter 5e missions were simplified and easy to understand (though kill points rewarded the player with the fewest units).
-Killpoints: 1vp per unit killed, 3 or 5 objectives: 1vp per objective held at the end of the game (typically one in each deployment and the rest in no-mans land). Deployment half, quarters, and night fighting (1 HQ and 2 troops on board, the rest arrive from the table edge at the start of turn 1 or from reserves later).

If you just want MOAR MISSIONS! Battle Missions was just that.

They're often a bit dumb (the defenders in Slave Raid capturing slaves to win...) but they're relatively edition non-specific.