9th Edition Imperial Guard

[The_Worker]

Caveat - I've barely played 9th Edition. I have however been an Imperial Guard player since about 1996...

Anyway I used the Russian Site That Hosts All The Rules to draw up a 2,000 point infantry company list to my satisfaction, and it looks like this:

4x Platoon Command Squads (because there's no Company Command squad or Company Commander any more)
1x Commissar
1x Primaris Psyker
1x Engineseer
9x Infantry Squads (because I like my infantry with heavy weapons, none of this "Catachans can only take flamers" nonsense)
1x Kasrkin Squad
1x Rough Rider Squad
1x Sentinel Squadron - 3 Scout Sentinels
1x Hellhound (the chem-cannon one)
1x Demolisher (with all the guns)
1x Wyvern
1x Field Ordnance Battery with the doublewerfers

Comes to 2,000 on the nose with a bunch of guns. I'm not expecting it to be good, the last time I ran an army like this back in 4th it lost almost every game, but I will enjoy collecting and painting it so there's that.

I'm very confused by many of the design decisions in the Army List though. I mean, I understand the reasons behind them (Chapterhouse, mostly), but still:

Why the flying monkey poo are there FOUR datasheets for ONE squad option? Infantry Squad - Catachan Squad - Death Korps of Krieg Squad - Cadian Shock Troops Squad. Nonsense.

Why is there no Company or Senior Command Squad? If you want your army led by anyone who isn't a Platoon Commander, you're restricted to Cadian Castellan, a special character (like Commissar Guant, but there's no way to make the Tanith properly, so what's the point in that?) or a tank commander. Very silly.

Loss of Veteran Squads is disappointing, ditto Special Weapon Squads, especially as both can be built from standard infantry boxes.

No Senior or Lord Commissar is also very sad. Don't like that, no thank you.

In many ways it feels a lot like a strange attempt to rewrite the 2nd Edition Imperial Guard Codex, but... clumsily.

Overall though, once I got my head round the oddities and loss of things I'm used to - I still mourn the Griffon - it seems like a decent list, and the fact that I could fit a full infantry company with supporting elements into 2,000 points was satisfying.

 

[daveh]

well sometimes games workshop makes strange nonsense decisions and sometimes they make........er .....no i got nothing.
happy emprahmasss to all(not heratics or xenos)

 

[Heart of Storm]

Depends what rules your playing, competition rules normally rely on some mobility, which your army lacks. If your just playing a "shoot eachother off the table" list its probably fine - I'm assuming those infantry squads have heavy weapons in them that you just haven't mentioned?

One observation is you have very little armour, which means every heavy weapon in the enemy army is going to shoot your single Demolisher to pieces on turn one, either field enough armour that some of them survive to shoot back and earn some value, or don't bother.

 

[Bracer]

This list probably wont win. I played old 9e guard, mostly tempestus. I recommend mordian glory's channel for the low down on how to tournament guard.

But i dont think im gonna be playing new guard. The stuff they did immediately banned my build and then they side-graded all of the regular abilities with no clear upgrade in sight. Before playing as a guard player was about keeping the faith that upgrades would be coming down the line. Now that doesnt seem to have happened and people have been given 2+ armour of contempt as a distraction.

But let me not break morale and get blammed. There was a tourney list that came top 3 recently that was guard, just a regular old brick of demolishers and some fancy regiment traits. The Dorn Tank could be a game changer, as well as those artillery pieces.

Thats my two cents for now.

 

[The_Worker]

Oh, yeah, it's absolutely not going to win any games! It didn't win any games back in 4th edition, and it certainly isn't now when the rules are so much more aimed at alpha strike delete enemies on turn 1 stuff.

But! It is going to be fun to collect and build and paint, so there's that.

As for heavy weapons, yes - two missile launchers and an autocannon in each platoon. Nothing to write home about, but it's what strikes me as "realistic" for a Guard Infantry Platoon to be carrying around.

 

[Bracer]

Oh, yeah, it's absolutely not going to win any games! It didn't win any games back in 4th edition, and it certainly isn't now when the rules are so much more aimed at alpha strike delete enemies on turn 1 stuff.

But! It is going to be fun to collect and build and paint, so there's that.

As for heavy weapons, yes - two missile launchers and an autocannon in each platoon. Nothing to write home about, but it's what strikes me as "realistic" for a Guard Infantry Platoon to be carrying around.

Thanks for the upbeat reply.

Missile Launchers are surprisingly bad. Lascannons are generally the only thing you'll ever need. Yes i know that it can fire two types of attack but 1d6 s4 is likely only good against grots, and other guard/cultists. It will wound these targets only 66% of the time, so if you roll an average of 3.5 hits they should all hit all wound and then armour save of 4+ will reduce that to two wounds. An armour save of 3+ means no wounds atall. And lets remember marines are 2 wound models. So even if you squeeze one through it still sucks coz hes still shooting AND charging next turn. Better to just hurl a krak at them and take out one marine and if your doing that, then just take a las cannon.

Flamers on the other hand, perform much like the frag, but however they auto hit on overwatch and you can squeeze a few of them (3?) into a squad. And you KNOW you're gonna get charged toting those big companies around. Might as well make it sting. On the other hand plasma guns are still good, and surprisingly when on overcharge and doing Damage 2 they will outperform a melta gun when rapid firing. Think about it, 2 hits totalling damage 4 at 12" thats better than a random 1d6 damage from a melta. And you can just forget about the half range 6" for the melta, its almost impossible to pull off.

So, whats a good selection of regiment traits? I like the sound of Heirloom Weapons and Trophy Hunters combo. If you are still allowed to take the forgeworld Hades Breeching drill you can pack a squad full of shotguns and a heavy flamer and maybe two plasma guns into a drill, when they pop out they have better range and the drill can charge anything monstrous or vehicle or battlesuit and get a bonus to strength if targeting a vehicle. The hades drill has a wicked meltagun and its melee is strong too. It'll one punch allot of things. Im not too sure of the rules myself but if it makes your plasma guns s9 thats gotta be worth something. And yes, shotguns will be S4 at 6" and have a range increase too, and if targeting a vehicle they'll probably become S5, this doesnt make the shotgun "happen" unfortunately, but if its army wide then whoo-doggy its free. This'll be a fun build, also the shotguns are Assault so you can always yeet around onto objective points while hitting on 5s, whereas you could not before. Also as the drill is its own unit, if it charges after appearing via deepstrike it means the thing it charged cannot charge the heirloom shotgunners and cant shoot them either. This is good because guard are natures weakest prey animal in melee. For a long time ive been looking at charging some kind of transport into the enemy to keep the squad safe, and this is it.

I mean if you do this while pushing rough riders up the board that could be quite nice.

 

[Bracer]

Sorry, i just realised that you cant combo Trophy Hunters with Heirloom Weapons. So instead i'd try Armoured Superiority with Heirlooms. Then each drill will count as 5 models (if im reading this right) and Shotguns will have range 16" and S4 at range 8". Flamers and everything else will see a +4" range aswell.

 

[The_Worker]

My doctrines are Heirloom Weapons (+4" range is great!) and Parade Drill to turn all my lasguns and hot-shot lasguns into Heavy 2 weapons if they stay still - so at 28" a squad of 10 Guard kicks out 12 lasgun shots, plus whatever heavy weapon they have - rockets or whatnot.

The rocket launcher has always been underwhelming, absolutely, no question about it, even when a krak rocket would one-shot a Space Marine (although I spent many - many! - games accidentally giving Marine players an armour save because I misread the weapons reference table and thought that Krak rockets were AP4, not AP3, back in the day...). However it does feel right for an infantry squad to be toting around, unlike the heavier stuff. Even the autocannon is only there because the S7 synergises well with the S7 of the same squad's plasmagun.

Principally, the way I'm building this army is very much not to win games, but to look good losing them

 

[daveh]

cool rules
i always pack missiles with my guard

 

[Bracer]

My doctrines are Heirloom Weapons (+4" range is great!) and Parade Drill to turn all my lasguns and hot-shot lasguns into Heavy 2 weapons if they stay still - so at 28" a squad of 10 Guard kicks out 12 lasgun shots, plus whatever heavy weapon they have - rockets or whatnot.

The rocket launcher has always been underwhelming, absolutely, no question about it, even when a krak rocket would one-shot a Space Marine (although I spent many - many! - games accidentally giving Marine players an armour save because I misread the weapons reference table and thought that Krak rockets were AP4, not AP3, back in the day...). However it does feel right for an infantry squad to be toting around, unlike the heavier stuff. Even the autocannon is only there because the S7 synergises well with the S7 of the same squad's plasmagun.

Principally, the way I'm building this army is very much not to win games, but to look good losing them

I see...

I have a hard enough time winning a game whether i want to or not,

Like, ive thrown games just to teach newbies... and accidentally won anyway... which means i lost... because i was intending to lose the game.

At this stage i just make the most rock-awesome list i can do and watch what happens like a movie. I try not to try because trying hurts when you lose. So instead i just make cool things happen on the board.

That doesnt mean it doesnt go right sometimes. I generally surprise the top tier opponents at my flgs with my shenanigans. While they have a discerning eye which i have yet to attain, almost all 3 of them to a man are meta chasers who practice pay-to-win. Like; they generally run either Grey Knights, Thousand Suns, forgeworld titans or Sisters (as a retaliation to all the psyker lists they bring). Like, if i can impress those guys i might not be all that bad! Like theyve been surprised by my -3 ld reiver build that can increase to -6 if theres two 5 man reiver squads around, then hurling in anything else that happens to be in range for an additional -1 ld, and all i need to do is knock off one of your squad members to force a ld test. Ive also shocked people by running assault hellblaseters around using the advance rules so they run forward 6" turn 1, then another 1d6 and then unload overcharged plasma shots (which are now in range), rerolling 1s. Ive deleted half a death guad squad and an entire ultramarines intercessor squad this way. Almost everybody forgets the advance rules. You can run around shooting anything thats assault at -1bs, making assault weapons insanely mobile! Players will decry hitting on 4+ but to guard players like us thats nothing new and when the shot is an entire squad of assault plasmaguns with 3 shots each it is hardly a trifle.

I do think that Parade Drill is redundant with frfsrf that the officer does. I'd use that spicey regimental doctrine on something else. Winning isnt the be-all and end-all and it doesnt make you the GOAT. But it tracks progress.

 

[The_Worker]

I think that FRFSRF is handy, but sometimes you aren't gonna get your orders off or need them to be something other than FRFSRF, you know? So it's nice to have the inbuilt Heavy 2 option.

 

[Grognard Gluefingers]

To me an ideal tabletop game system would be so balanced that there would be no such thing as power combos. List-building and codex power creep would not be the primary determinant of who wins but barely a factor. (If taken to an extreme this wouldn't really work out or maybe not even be possible.) 5 Elites could take out 15 grunts and 15 grunts could take out 5 elites, fair points costs across the board.

At the other extreme from pure balance is pure gimmicks. Instead of buying models you're buying special ability combinations and then working backwards to see what models would fit that. Boosts that are thematic are plundered for their raw utility and efficiency or left behind if the rules are weaker. This is why I barely ever play or buy rules anymore. I want any army I field (with some variety, not spam) to have a chance against any other varied army of the same points cost. Otherwise the points costs are just wrong.

Back in old 6mm Epic there was a guideline that Chaos should play with 500 points handicap in a 2,000-2,500 point game. I fought against this until I realized just how powerful Greater Daemons were if you saved their special ability cards to just use up to cancel wounds. Any GD could use up any card from your hand for this purpose and you started the game with 3 cards per GD. They were already tough and powerful, with an extra 9-12 kill nullifications from a shared pool they were unstoppable. From that point I looked at points values with a skeptical eye.