My Thinking
My thinking on this army is fairly simple. I think setting out my thoughts should help explain my approach to all of my unit selections and if there are any flaws or problems with my ideas then people can point them out to me. For instance the Heavy Weapon Platoon has either got to be filled up or got rid of. I favour the latter of those options that the moment.
Anyways, my approach to my IG army.
Rule One,
Average cost per wound must be less than 10 points. That means an average of 4 points of kit for each guardsman. My thinking here is that many armies are loaded with high net worth individuals. Librarians, powerful HQ's, Tanks, Skimmers, Terminators etc. A lot of these models are limited in their ability to kill miniatures. For instance a space marine with a bolter can only fire one shot per turn or two once he is close enough to rapidfire. A predator destructor can let off five shots per turn and very occassionally eight. If my average value is very low then I can limit the effectiveness of these awesome units by restricting the number of points of troops that they can slay each game turn. For instance that Predator can only kill 50 points worth of stuff each turn, meaning that it has to kill almost 100% of its capacity to break even by the end of turn three. On the other hand my missile launcher carrying guardsman who is lucky enough to pop that predator will earn more than 12 times his points value back instantly. Sounds good to me.
My general in this list comes in at an enormous 21 points. How many armies can say that their general is worth that little? That means a terminator would have to kill him twice just to pay for himself... I hope you can see where I am coming from here.
I think this leads me pretty naturally to my next rule...
Rule Two, espouse volume over quality of fire wherever possible. That means that flamers are in! AP3 weaponry is not very important, the aim of the game is to make your opponent roll as many armour saves as possible. Think of it this way. Imagine I told you that my troops have a special lasgun battery that makes the laser bolt toxic to Space Marines. In my army you roll to hit, roll to wound and then you roll for poison. You roll once for every wound and on a 5 or a 6 the marine dies with no armour save. I think that sounds pretty cool. Well guess what? Every player is already playing those rules. For every wound inflicted by a lasgun there is a 33% change of a marine failing his save, by rolling a 1 or 2 and dying. So every three wounds equals a dead marine. Forget ignoring his save, let's just shoot him more often!
So anyway, I got off the point. Volume. I want to include as many weapons as possible. More than that I want to fire as many weapons as possible, as effectively as possible, every turn of the game. That means that I want single target priority units. Lasguns are anti-infantry and so I supplement them with antiinfantry or anti-transport weapons. Units with heavy weapons are kitted out with CC weapons as a back up where possible as they will remain static firing their weapons until charged. Then for no extra points any lucky-enough -to-survive guard will then get two attacks back instead of one. Increasing their tiny chances of wounding someone.
So, that's my answer with response to the Vets. With 3 grenade launchers they are a small mobile unit, capable of dishing out accurate s6 hits every turn which moving. Their effective range of 30" puts them on a par with fire warriors and I see these guys helping take out tough opponents while moving to grab objectives. The alternative is to park them in a decent spot with a lascannon and scanner right at the start of the game and try to pop enemy armour with their more accurate lascannon fire. I am just cautious about handing a guardsman a gun that costs more than twice as much as he does...
Ahem. I want to revise this list but the advice that I have been given has really given me pause for thought on a couple of issues. Thanks to all those who have commented, to those of you who have not yet had your say, please feel free.
