A Beginner's Guide to the Guard: Tactica Collection

Now that you have your army assembled and painted, how do you win? Hopefully the tactica below will help out.

First, two from my very own site:
Tactica: Armored Sentinel
The Emperor's Scalpel, Tactica Stormtrooper (part 1, part 2)

From Warseer:
Tactica Imperium

From From The Warp:
Imperial Guard, Sledgehammer of the Imperium

From His Pinkness, Kirby:
Hybrid Blast Spam Army List
Ride of the Valkyries, part 1, part 2, part 3
How to Run a Platoon

There's definitely more out there- I'll add to this page as I find them. Thanks for reading!

A Beginner's Guide to the Guard: Painting ye Average Guardsman

 Now, this won't be some kind of super-fancy guide to painting super awesome looking Guardsmen, as even I can't do that quite yet. This is just for those of us who want something that looks respectable two feet away but want to get through them as quickly as possible.

There are six main parts: the cloth of his uniform, his armor, any exposed skin, his gun, exposed metal and boots. For any metal parts I would recommend using Boltgun Metal for things like bayonets and Mithril Silver for any decorational pieces, like Aquilae. The rest, however, is up to you.

For my guardsmen I chose Bleached Bone armor, Mechrite Red cloth, bronzed/elf/tallarn flesh for skin (I like multiethnicity in my ranks) and bleached bone again for his boots.

As always we start by priming our figure. I tend to cheat a bit these days and use one of the color primers that Army Painter makes (in my case it's Skeleton Bone). This way I have already done half of my basecoating right from the get go.

 

The Unwashed Hordes

Next we need to basecoat any areas that are a different color than his armor. Use foundation paints for this part, as they go on opaque and can therefore easily cover up whatever color you primed with. Don't worry if you make mistakes- you can always clean up at the end.

Once you've cleaned up your base coating you can move on to washes. For the skin I use Ogryn Flesh, for everything else Devlan Mud. Devlan is a great wash that pretty much works on everything and makes it look more "real," and you can probably get away with Mud washing the entire model. You can also try using complimentary colors for the wash, such as Thraka Green on a red color.

After the wash has dried we need to highlight and drybrush using a lighter color. For drybrushing make sure to use a... well, dry brush. Be a bit more careful here but as always mistakes can be corrected.

 

Right: Washed and drybrushed but not highlighted. Left: washed, drybrushed and highlighted.

Once you've finished that step, you've finished your Guardsman! I would recommend doing each step for a squad at a time. That way you can keep on using the same paint for a period of time and get table-ready units all prepared at the same time.

For more info on painting Guard check out the painting section of the Imperial Guard archive on From The Warp or the Imperial Guard articles from Games-Workshop... just stay away from the tactica for the latter, as that's coming tomorrow!

A Beginner's Guide to the Guard: Battleforce Tactics

For reasons to Go Guard, check out the first post in this series.

If you have decided to Go Guard the first question is "What should I buy?" If you want new in box models you can't go wrong with a few battle force boxes.

Each of these forces contains a command squad, two Infantry Squads, three Heavy Weapons Teams and a Sentinel. The command sprue is an especially awesome inclusion as it contains one of every special weapon as well as power sword and fist upgrades. You end up saving approximately $40 US as opposed to buying them individually. Some don't like the inclusion of the Sentinel but you're still saving $15 even if you don't use it, making this an amazing buy.

The Battle force box also has the curious honor of containing all of the models required for a legal list, a feat that I believe was only challenged by the old school Tyranid boxed set. Granted it's not a very good list, but if you want the minimum of effort you can squeeze out almost 500 pts from this box alone if my math is right.

Two of these boxes will give us a good starting point for the army... in fact, good enough that our first two lists will contain ONLY what is inside those boxes. We now have plenty of bodies and a couple of command squads so we can create a small foot-based force. Here's what I would go for at 500 pts:

Company Command Squad, standard, lascannon: 85
Platoon Command Squad, 4 flamers: 50
2 Infantry Squads, grenade launcher/autocannon: 130
Autocannon Heavy Weapon Squad: 75
Veteran squad, 3 grenade launchers, missile launcher: 100
Scout sentinel, autocannon: 40
Scout sentinel, autocannon, Hunter-Killer Missile: 50
Total: 500 pts.

The Co. Cmd Squad helps anchor the line by allowing your infantry to re-roll failed tests thanks to the standard and can hand out orders to make your squads shoot better. There are tons of autocannons in the list to break light armor and mow down infantry at range, and the Pl. Cmd Squad can rush in with its flamers to clear out any infantry that get too close. The vets especially contribute a large amount of firepower at any target. Finally the Scout Sentinels can outflank to get side shots on armor and contest far flung objectives. I would recommend magnetizing at least the weapons mounts so you can switch them out later. For those who want a challenge, you can magnetize the sentinel such that you can use it as either a Scout or Armored sentinel by following the directions here.

You are well situated to defend home objectives with up to 5 scoring units and can Move, Move, Move! a squad or two plus the SS to take/contest far flung objectives.

We can also move up to 750 points just by adding to this list from our current purchases. We still have 20 infantry and 2 of most of the special weapons left to play with.

Company Command Squad, standard, lascannon: 85
Platoon Command Squad, 4 flamers: 50
2 Infantry Squads, grenade launcher/autocannon: 130
Autocannon Heavy Weapon Squad: 75
Veteran squad, 2 meltaguns: 90
Veteran squad, 2 plasmaguns, Grenadiers doctrine: 130
Veteran squad, 3 grenade launchers, missile launcher: 100
Armored Sentinel, autocannon: 60
Armored Sentinel, autocannon: 60
Total: 750 pts.

I'd love to get some more melta/plasma in those vet squads but we just don't have the tools with two battleforces. Tactics are the same as before, but now we have some low AP shooting from the Melta and Plasma vets and have upgraded our Sentinels to Armored. These boys love charging into combat as few things have a chance of destroying them. Try to avoid power fists if possible, but even then they need a 4 on the penetration roll to even scratch the paint. Check here for my tactica on Armored Sentinels.

The Grenadiers doctrine might require some easy conversion work to make. A few blobs of Greenstuff on their elbows and knees should convey what you want to go for.

Alternatively if you want to keep the scout sentinels from before we could go with this setup:

Company Command Squad, standard, lascannon: 85
Platoon Command Squad, 4 flamers: 50
2 Infantry Squads, grenade launcher/autocannon: 130
Autocannon Heavy Weapon Squad: 75
Veteran squad, 3 grenade launchers, missile launcher: 100
Veteran squad, 2 meltaguns, Grenadiers doctrine: 120
Veteran squad, 2 plasmaguns, plasma pistol, Grenadiers doctrine: 140
Scout sentinel, autocannon: 40
Scout sentinel, autocannon: 40

Our melta vet squad is a bit more survivable now with a 4+ armor save and the plasma squad gets an extra shot with the sarge's plasma pistol.

Expanding from here depends on where you want to take the army. Let's see what we can do to easily take this up to 1k with a few extra purchases. Three Chimeras (1 for the PCS, 2 for the melta/plas vets) while taking out Grenadiers will cost us only 105 points. Getting a Commissar for our blob and giving the sergeants power weapons will cost another 65 bring us to 170. Our last 80 points can either go towards another Autocannon HWS or another squad for the blob. The former leaves us 5 points which is enough to upgrade the plasma pistol to a plasmagun on our vets while the latter, if we leave out an autocannon, gives us 10 which means a third meltagun on the other vets. Purcheses in this phase will run somewhere around $130.

Expanding further depends on what your preference is. If you like mechanized troops, Chimeras are amazing at only 55 pts and Vendettas are one of the most points efficient units in the game. Leman Russes love large infantry bubblewraps which you should have the tools for at this point. If you just want more infantry battleforce boxes are probably the way to go. If you need more special weapons try finding the Marine melta and plasmagun blister packs. At only $6 US for 5 guns they are a steal.

Thanks for reading, and we continue our Beginner's Guide tomorrow.

A Beginner's Guide to the Guard: Why Go Guard?

Over the weekend I had a follower comment on my YouTube profile saying that he was getting started in 40k and wanted my opinion on which army to choose to have a Dakka-filled list. He also mentioned that he had heard that Imperial Guard were a poor choice for starting out.

Naturally I took offense to this last part. Imperial Guard are my first and only 40k army and I believe that they bring a lot of advantages to the table for newcomers to 40k. So, this week I thought that I'd do a few articles on starting out with IG.

First let's talk about the possible reasons that a new player might choose the Imperial Guard for their first army.

1. The Imperial Guard is one of the strongest armies in the game
I know this is not just my opinion- ask any player what they think of Imperial Guard and talk of the dreaded Leafblower, Mech IG and autocannon spam will dominate the conversation. IG has a strong book with relatively few weak options, and even those options can make it into a halfway decent list simply thanks to the efficiency and power of the other choices.

Having more power in a list means that a new player can make a few more mistakes and still manage to put up a good fight. This is opposed to an older/less powerful book like Eldar or Tau that have a few good builds that require consummate player skill to use and master. IG's raw power level enables them to be a sledgehammer in the command of a newer player, grinding out victories simply through sheer mass.

2. The Imperial Guard have a lot of flexibility

This is along the same lines as point 1. Because so many of the options in the book are good the Guard is capable of a frightening array of options that can cater to pretty much any player.

Like huge gunlines? Play with platoons backed up by heavy weapon teams, tanks and artillery.

Like tank companies? Imperial Guard has TONS of tanks, and their mechanized forces are second to none thanks to the awesomeness that are Veterans.

Want to play Air Cav? Guard invented the term, and Valkyries look damn cool to boot. You can even branch out into Elysians if this is your particular cup of tea.

Enjoy the reserves game? With options like the Astropath, Master of the Fleet, Al'Rahem and CREEEEED! you can boost your reserves, hurt the enemy's and outflank with the best of them.

Even if you like having some close combat Guard can make a halfway-decent build with Straken backing up platoons and plenty of firepower backing him up. While they might not deal a ton of damage hidden nigh-unbreakable power weapons in platoons will take down any opponent given enough time.

If there is a type of force that you want to play, Imperial Guard can almost certainly build it.

3. Through sheer numbers the army is very forgiving

The Guard has always been known for its quantity rather than its quality (though it certainly has both!). With a force like Space Marines losing a unit can be a huge deal, simply because you don't have that many of them. With the Guard you fully expect certain members of your force to die, as you will have plenty more where they came from.

More than any other army the Guard can abuse the Force Organization Chart. Whether it's through bloated platoons that can easily encompass over 50 men or entire squadrons of tanks and planes the Guard will usually simply have more and tougher threats than an opposing army. Platoons don't care if you annihilate 20 of their number- as long as the Commissar holds they aren't going anywhere. Squadrons of tanks are hard to shut down and can enable staggering amounts of firepower to be brought to bear.

This also applies to simple probability. There is a wargaming truism that goes "if you throw enough dice at a problem it will go away." This is the Guard maxim in a nutshell. You will almost always have enough guns or attacks that you can accurately predict how a given unit will perform simply because they have so much redundancy. Where one battle cannon won't do the job three probably will.

Just remember the Imperial Guard motto- bring three to do a job as one will miss and one will be dead.

4. Assembling lots of models builds skills quickly

Because the Guard has so many models it can be a bit daunting at first. However after building and painting a few squads of infantry you will build your skills quickly, making the rest a breeze to do. Plus most of the models in the Guard range are easy to paint and assemble- even with three colors and a wash your average Guardsmen will be looking pretty snazzy indeed.

5. The Guard are not Space Marines

I'm going to catch a bit of flak for this one, but it's true. Some people have a stigma with going for Space Marines for a couple of reasons. I know that I was one of those when I first started out. Marines have all of the advantages going for them- multiple codices, fancy power armor, genetic engineering... pshaw! Who needs it?

The Guard appealed to me because they were just mere mortals standing in front of all of the horrors of the universe, ordinary people tasked with fighting and dying to protect peoples and planets that they have never seen let alone heard of. While your average Guardsman doesn't match up to a Space Marine they have plenty of friends to back them up and see victory in the face of even the greatest odds.

6. The Imperial Guard are Fun!

This last point might be a bit biased, but IG are fun to use! Do you like throwing buckets of dice at things? Making *vroom* *VROOM!* noises as you maneuver tanks around the battle field? Placing huge explosion markers that wreck the competition? Enjoy the fact that your gun is bigger than theirs? Then you'll like the Guard!

Strangely, one of the reasons I like the Guard is how unlikely making a save is or hitting with certain units. Unlike power armor where you are crushed when you don't make that crucial save with the Guard you are ecstatic when that 5+ miraculously comes around. Likewise when firing with a whole platoon at a hard target like Terminators seeing sheer weight of numbers force failed saves on 2+ armor is a brilliant feeling.

The same goes for winning or only narrowly losing close combat. I'll never forget the day that an old school Hive Tyrant charged a squad of Veterans and they held combat. Next turn a squad of Marines charged in, flailed about but failed to do anything. My Sergeant, chainsword in hand, spat on the ground and leapt onto the giant beast and felled it. The Dark Angels tried not to look too ashamed...

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Those are my top reasons to start with a Guard army. Throughout the rest of the week we'll be looking at where to start when building a Guard army, good places to look for Guard Tactics, tips on painting your average Guardsman, and some good pics. For you experienced generals out there, what are some of YOUR favorite reasons to GO GUARD?