Imperial Army Design Tutorial

[Forger of Civilization]

I'm reposting this as a lot of the problems seem to be surfacing again. It'd be great if a mod turned this into an article, or made it sticky.

I have seen many an army list that can be fixed up with basic changes that take nothing away from fluff and can save you a lot of hassles. I invite other veteran IG players to throw their opinions in here. I'll go by subject and design chronology and different ways of going about it.

Imperial Guard
The best thing to remember about Imperial Guard is that an army can be made for anybody. With so many doctrines and alternate organizations, plus the host of Forge World equipment, its a wonder if two armies ever look the same. You can masses of tanks, men, a mix, or just a few elite men in a few upgraded tanks. You can use doctrines from existing armies, or combine them to make your own. Then you get to chose paint schemes and banners and fluff. Next to Orks the Imperial Guard are probably the most versatile army list out there.

The Steps
There are steps involved to making an army, some are optional, some aren't. You can make the decisions in any order you want but here are the ones you must decide upon:
-Doctrines-
There are many, many different Doctrines that do many different things in the various combinations. But here are the problems that pop up most often:

Warrior Weapons- Guard can not compete with anybody but the Tau for CC. And the Tau will rip them to shreds. I'd suggest not using this, unless you are going totally fluffy.

Carapace Armor- The problem here is that everybody need to pay 20 points for a +1 increase. That means that you are paying 8 points per guardsmen. That robs you of the Imperial Guards biggest asset; numbers.

Drop Troops- This is a good filler to take if you can only think of four doctrines. But if you only have infantry, drop troops are your best bet to get across the field quickly.

Iron Disicpline- A must in your line squads. Being able to regroups, and not run away is always good for gaurd

-Basic Army Structure -
There are 2 different army structures you can choose from: Infantry Company, and Tank Army. Each of these have sub-classifications, which can be further chosen from, called alternate organizations: these are for Infantry: Infantry, Mechanized, Grenadier, and tank: Siege or heavy. Each has their merit and reputations so lets look into detail.

-Infantry- This is the army you will see 50-60% of the time. Is has a few tanks, some specialized units and lot and lots of ground pounding infantry. They can have anywhere from 55 to 260 men, and 0-25 vehicles, plus innumerable heavy weapons, such as the heavy bolter, and special weapons, such as the plasma-gun. Different combinations of these can create armies of varying table-top effectiveness, and fluff, or back story, effectiveness.

-Mechanized- This is a rare army to see in the greater model quantities simply because of the monetary cost. Simply put, every unit which is labeled as Imperial Guard Infantry, by the codex, must take a chimera tank. That means, on average, each infantry platoon will cost you $150 US (roughly £60GBP) to make. Plus supplies. If you wish to start this I hope you have lots of money or find a really good deal. For further information I'll direct you here and here.. The person who wrote them is very well versed in the grenadier and mechanized areas, he would be of great help if your interested.

-Grenadiers these are companies formed of the stormtroopers that the Inquisition uses. They are a relatively slight improvement, man for man, over normal guardsmen. Where I have not found any practical use for such units, I do use the doctrine. And for any further question, click on the links mentioned above.

-Allies- Some like to add Demonhunter or Witchhunter allies for an added punch. I'm am a bit of a purist so I don't. But if anybody wants to PM me some info about it, I will add it here.

-Armored Company- This is an army you'll come across as a second or third army more often. Simply because its a very hit-or-miss army. Some armies are geared up enough towards tanks that they will be able to defeat you while barely exercising their brain. While others have little or no anti-tank abilities within them, making them push overs. This is a very popular army however because of set up time, model building and plain coolness factor. Wait to see the look on that GK player's face when you pull out 14 pie plates. You can field 3-17 tanks in one army, and up to 60 infantry. However the downside to Armored company is that, if you lose a single tank, you lose a significant portion of the points you invested. Here are downloadable rules for the Armored Company list.

-Heavy- This army is simply Russes and variants, arguably the best tanks point for point in the whole of 40k.
-Siege- While this army is made of artillery, such as the basilisk and gryphon, very limited in smaller games, but wonderful for 4000+ megagames.

This sums up the alternate army lists and organizations with my opinion on each one.

- Designing a Decent List
Every one of the previously mentioned units has rules and a wide range of models which you can chose from. Many are useful, many more are considered not. This all depends on how you plan to play. For more details on units, click here and here. these will give a basic layout of the units. Now you need to decide which rout your taking. One thing to always keep in mind, I'll underline it so that you can remember it. Every unit has a strength and a weakness. By designing your army to place over-lapping shields, so to speak, over the weaknesses and broadening the strengths you can significantly increase the odds of defeating any given opponent you come up against. In short Create a balanced list!

There have been a few questions or examples ot what this may mean. To be honest, it could mean a lot. First off, we veterans cannot emphasize enough don't load up on wargear. Instead buy another heavy weapon, or special weapon much more important. If you picked this army for its heros you picked the wrong army. As far as balanced you need to design a core army. This part of the army will be your major power (For example 2 platoons of infantry). Now look at their strengths (Massed fire power, heavy weapons), and their weaknesses ( Not good in CC, no mobility). Now you need to compensate for these weaknesses (an armored fist squad for mobility, and a throw away squad for CC or more fire power). To be honest there is no set way I or anyone else can say "use this, this, and, this with this, this, and, this. But in time and through asking questions you will be able to figure what works well with what.

How you start isn't all that critical, unless you want to start playing right away. In which case, if your going with a normal Infantry Platoon, you can start with a command squad and two platoons of 25 men, or a command squad, a single platoon, and an armored fist squad. Or you want to just mess around for a bit and eventually meet a predetermined army, then buy them how ever you feel.

There are a few quirks when designing a list that can be of help, both money wise and army wise. I'm sure I'll forget a few so I ask for help from other members.

-When starting off at your command platoon, make your leader a Junior Officer, and give him the Honorifca Imperialis. You get a Heroic Senior officer for a saving of a small amount of points.

-When making storm trooper drop squads, instead off making one unit of ten, make two of five. Then buy two Kasrkin Special weapons blisters. Then put the meltas into one squad and use them for deep striking behind the enemy, and use the other to do the same or spearhead assaults. (The benefits of the Deepstriking Stormies are currently in debate)

-Try to avoid using mortars in line squads, there usefulness is not very apparent there. Instead, put the mortars in to your command squads and keep those squads well away from the fire fights. Use other heavy weapons like the heavy bolter or the missile launcher in its place. These will both give you flexibility in how you play. The general opinion is that mortars are useless. They are effective again low armor saves, and low leadership. So Orcs, Tau, little Nids, and Eldar infantry.

Other little things to remember
1.) First off, great idea, when an army list is submitted to the army list forum, you find a scarily great number of similarities between different lists. Those similarities are often

2.) Too much wargear can take away from the rest of your army. (Does your heroic senior officer really need a powerfist, trademark item, refractor field and a bolt pistol?)

3.). Too much vehicle upgrades (armoured crew compartment on sentinels etc). I and other tread heads disagree, but most upgrades take some creativity to use effectivly.

4.) Weapon mixing. (flamer and a grenadelauncher for your stormtrooper squad, not a good idea)(though this phenomena is GWs fault, since their basic trooper kits doesn't supply you with a large number of plasma or melta guns )[/quote]
Good post. It should be mentioned that it is just fine to use 2 grenade launchers or 2 flamers, just not a mix.

5.) Focus on your strengths. Guard shoot, so try to maximize your shooting ability. The last thing a Guardsmen needs is to be out shot. This is a good

6.) Quanity > Quality. The Imperial Guard have three assets: numbers, numbers, and numbers. Everything a good list should have should be in mutiples. Most lists have around 15-20 heavy weapons. This is nuts for any army. You'll notice we are the favorite for megabattles.

7.) Heavy Weapons are your friend. Take LOTS of them. Unless a squad will have an extremely mobile roll, it should be bringing a Heavy Weapon. There's no excuse not to, they're just too important not to bring! Even if you plan on moving alot, there WILL be many times where you're going to want to blast those charging Nids to hell. A good way use heavy weapons and still move is to take advantage of heavy weapons squads.

8.) Some heavy/special combinations work better than others. Guns that have similar ranges should be grouped together. As well as simlar roles.

9.) Its usually good to have a general goal for your untis to have. Ie, flanking, spearhead, reinforcment, line, etc. That way you can save yourself a few problems.

Come up with some fluff for your army
No one likes to see a millionth Cadian 8th Regiment or the Catachan 7th for the 5th time, Mix it up. Heres an example of some rather in-depth fluff I created for my regiment. here. Now you don't need to come up with something that complex, but it is an example of how far it can go. Fluff can also help you decide how to paint your army, or what units should be in it. In fact, I found it easier to based my army on the German armies of WWII, using roughly the same mix of mechanized, infantry, tanks, and support that they did (I know I'll catch flak for this but its the truth). You can come up with a variety of different themes, some or most, not having anything to do with anything on Earth.

Choosing a paint scheme
My only advice is to keep it simple, and use basic techniques to pass your guard off as a respectable foe. If you try to use more complicated methods on an army with 300 models, you could burn your self out for a while. Guard models aren't expected to be well done, there are just supposed to be a lot of them.



_____________________________________

I have given you the basics and I hope you find collecting an Imperial Guard army easier because of me. Here are a list of other sites you may, or may not find useful.
Basic link to beginning IG and other adivce
A site to advanced army list models, such as armored and air calvary.
Sample lists from your fellow LOers, not necessarily well thought out
Infantry/Armor mixed
Mechanized
Mostly Infantry
And lastly
Armored Company

PS To those that have something to add or correct, please do so. I've just been seeing a lot of people telling a lot of other people the basics of building an army. And if some one could find me a doctrine break down, I'll add that as well.

[Forger of Civilization]

Something I need to add and a few people should talk to me, conversion advice. It seems that some people get discouraged because they can't convert a whole army, but they don't realize that they don't need to, to create an effectively unique army.

[Ubernyaw]

a few things I thought of

About creating your own fluff, in addition to helping you decide on a paint scheme and basic theme, it should also give you a good idea of what units you'll be using or not using. IE If you're building an army that's suppose to feel like, say, a Napoleonic era Black Watch regiment, you would obviously know that you want maybe a heavy emphasis on infantry, probably die-hards, but the mechanized doctrine would kinda look assanine. The Imperial Guard allows a really clean slate that you can make your regiment preeeety much whatever you want fluffwise. If it's a group of people, they probably have a guard regiment. That's part of what really burns me about seeing a lot of Cadians everywhere, it's basically turning a blind eye to a lot of creative possibilities.

About a paint scheme, a guard army takes grotesquely long to paint, each individual model requires an assanine amount of attention, so keeping it simple is the best idea. However, I would say that going to town on storm troopers or hardened vets can really add to their lustre. Your rank and file guardsmen may not be able to get a lot of tlc, but the officers and the like should at least be taken seriously. Anyway, my advice for painting line squads is to do it as an assembly line, grab about 20-30 guardsmen, and do each step of the painting process at once, one color at a time. Painting the gun? Paint the boltgun metal part of the lasgun (if you're painting it boltgun metal, that is) on each model all at once. It keeps you from having to change colors and makes it much quicker.

For conversion advice, the guard only have 2 plastic lines, 1 of them is pretty much crap, and the other is kinda select, as they're modeled with carapace armor. There's metal and resin guardsmen of all sorts of other types, but the plastic ones are the easiest to work with, and cheapest. Feel free to mix and match and sprues to create your own desired effect. And, in doing so, don't be afraid to bring in plastic models from other ranges. Fantasy has a plethora of human sized models that seam in pretty easily with the imperial guard, and with a little though can be made to look pretty cool. For instance, to create some feral type guardsmen, I mixed the catachan sprue with the marauder (fantasy chaos) and got some really interesting results. What also makes these fun is the interesting juxtapositon of viking looking guys holding lasguns and other high tech stuff. And, on the other end, adding in low tech stuff to other guardsmen. From the same maruaders and catachans box, I managed to make a pretty sweet look sergant with a marauder torso, but holding a laspistol and using a large flail as his close combat weapon. Sprue swaping like that is generally pretty easy (though you may have to get creative when some things don't quite fit right) and the result is generally pretty good.

[Forger of Civilization]

So far to people have admitted to finding this useful. I hope there's more. Here's a chance for people to see it again.

[clwacdc]

I notice you forgot one type of army: Drop Troops.

[Hard A**]

I'm gonna sticky this thread for a few months to see how people respond to it.

Aun.

[Triumph Of Man]

Then buy two Kasrkin Special weapons blisters. Then put the meltas into one squad and use them for deep striking behind the enemy, and use the other to do the same or spearhead assaults.

Do remember that Hardened Veterans are by far more effective than stormies.

[Marrius]

Originally Posted by Triumph Of Man

Do remember that Hardened Veterans are by far more effective than stormies.

That really depends on how the player uses them Triumph. I for am glad to see this post because it does say the most important thing about building an Imperial Guard army: Make a Balanced List.

[Triumph Of Man]

For the purposes of suicide Deepstriking? Veterans win out because of a the greater volume of guns for the same cost.

Of course if you aren't using Drop Troops then you are limited to Stormies, But IMO you should consider which doctrines to take before building an army.

[Forger of Civilization]

I need help remembering all the strategys.

Better yet, if anybody would be able to dig up the old strategy thread that'd be nice. PM me the link, and I'll boil it down.

As well as PMing me ideas for doctorine tips.

And anybody who would like ot be considered an Imperial Gaurd Mentor please pm me.