Requiem for the Imperial Guard

[BigToof]

Hi All,
You know it had to happen, 6th ed. has come and away go the Imperial Guard (quite literally as the name has changed).
I just wanted to setup a kind of topic to reminisce about the good, bad and ugly (broken) times I've had with the Guard (both as my army and opponents).  Hope you will share yours as well to give IG a good send-off!

1.  The Good
THE BLOB
- This was something that you couldn't really do in the 4th ed. Codex, as you only had small squads that were easily rolled in combat, and even though you had superior numbers, you didn't have resiliency.  Then came the IG troop changes the now-infamous Power Blobs (i.e. Commissars and Sgt.'s with Power Weapons in a mass of ablative wounds) which still exist in some forms today.  Really changed how the game played and fit nicely with the fluff.

TANKSTANKSTANKS
- Never before could you spam Chimeras like this, nor could you take vehicle squadrons that let you drown your opponent in armor.  Fun and fluffy.  But also sort of brutal.



2.  The Bad
OGRYN
- Just a miss, as these elites could have been so good.  But, they were doomed from the start with being costed the same as a terminator, and just didn't add much to an otherwise shooty codex.

RATLINGS
- Wait, what?  Cheap snipers that have poor leadership and well...  not doing too much.  Special rules or the like could have made them at least an option...

ROUGH RIDERS
- Viable (barely in 5th), dead in 6th, they were kind of intersting (at least to me), but were only hampered in that they were against Vendettas for a slot.

PENAL LEGIONS
- More than 50% increase in cost for random rules and outflank...  Not the best, I'll tell you...


3.  The Ugly
PSYKER BATTLE SQUADS
- I was temped to put these guys in the good, but they single-handedly took down Nob Bikers from the top spot and still are a major source of shenanigans to this day.  I have my doubts they were ever seriously playtested...

THE VENDETTA
- Undercosted in 5th, MASSIVELY UNDERCOSTED in 6th.  A major source of IG hate to this day.

THE LEAFBLOWER
- For a time, IG was the big bully on the board, and this Alpha-strike build really made it impossible to play for quite a while (until Grey Knights/6th edition).  A bad time to be IG, if only for the bad rap.


So, there in a nutshell are the highlights of my memories with the 5th ed. codex.

A good book that will always be held dear to my heart.

Feel free to share your memories  too, as this soon-to-be antiquated codex goes to the wayside...

Best,
-BT

[The Man They Call Jayne]

To me, the IG is what happens when people stop looking at fluff and just say "Screw it, this would be awesome even though it doesn't fit!"

The Vendetta. . .oh the Vendetta. . .never has a unit been more appropriatly named. It is the antithesis of everything the Guard are supposed to be. Slow, tough(either through armour or weight of numbers), inaccurate.

Lets give it 3 lascannons! Yeah but guard shooting sucks. Ok, Twinlink them! Awesome idea. AND! AND lets let it still carry troops! Because dedicated gunships are moronic! When you have enough Anti Tank weapons to use them as anti infantry, you know you have made an error in judgement.

It looks at every weakness the Guard have, and SHOULD have, and says, Nah, don't want them.

I have and always will hold a place for this unit in the special hell of child molesters and people who talk at the theater.

Ogryns. . .I hate them too. For what they were, I considered them well worth the price. For 260(ish) points you could stick them in a Chimera with an Autocannon (Autocannon for 5 points? Whos bright fucking idea was that? And on a tank you could spam like Monty Python on acid.) and you had a unit that would shrug off wounds from anything less than Demolisher Cannon fire and then shoot you to death with a silly number of shots. And then beat the survivors to death in CC. They weren't worth diverting your real killers to dealing with, but they were too much for your basic infantry to handle. Horrible horrible things. Far worse than a Terminator in my book.

The new Waveserpent, What a piece of shi. . .wait, sorry, getting carried away there. . .

The good stuff?

Well, The classics. The Leman Russ, the Basilisk, the Chimera in general, even if that shooting from the hatch doesn't make it open topped and "Oh look, 4 Flamers in the back, one on the hull and a Heavy one on the turret." wasn't damn foolish.

Orders. . .clever system, well employed. Again, did seem to be doing nothing more than taking away the weaknesses the army had. "Not enough accuracy to make it count? Give each guy 3 shots then." It was a bit rediculous after a while, when you started raiding the drawers and rulebags for more dice. But the system itself wasn't terribly broken.

[Mabbz]

I doubt the new name will ever take for me. The Imperial Guard are too heavily entrenched in my mind. Still, I do love my AdMech, so I'll join in with this.

The Good
Ministorum priests.
They're probably not worth the points, especially since I take them with 140 point veteran squads rather than blobs, but every time I consider swapping them out they do something hilarious like rip open a dreadnought, kill a hive tyrant in a challenge or hold of Mephiston for a few turns (all true stories). So awesome I had to write a tactica for them because I love them so much.

Chimeras.
Cheap transports with reasonable armour and five fire points? Yes please! My only regret is that no one death or glories any more, but for their points I would say these are easily among the most efficient units in the codex.

The Bad
Rough Riders.
Yeah, I know you already said it but I kept using them for a while in 6th to justify the money I spent on converting them. I don't think they have ever made their points back in 6th.

Techpriests.
I took this more for fluff reasons than anything else, but it just wasn't very good. You had to take servitors to make it reliably useful, but for those points you could just buy another vehicle. Shame really.

I never used the ugly. I shall finish with this, which I just cobbled together for sentimental reasons:

They shall be my bravest warriors, these men who give of themselves to me. Like clay I shall mould them, and in the furnace of war forge them. They will be of honest flesh and human muscle. In the toughest armour they shall ride and with the mightiest guns will they be armed. They will be brought low by plague and disease, but will fight on regardless. They will have numbers, strategies and machines so that no foe can best them in battle. They are my hammer that shall smite the Terror. They are Humanity undimmed. They are my Guardsmen and they shall conquer fear.

[CoffeeGrunt]

Oh, Guard...sadly we don't see them played much here, hopefully that changes soon!

The sheer spammability and the unnerving toughness of their tanks juxtaposed with the squishiness of their troops made them so weird and unique to play against. Some armies go for light armour, light tanks like Eldar, some go for heavier armour, heavier tanks like Marines. Guard get even heavier tanks, and lightly armoured troops. I wish I could play against them more often...

[Arguleon-veq]

5th

I played them a bit during 5th, I didn't quite Leafblower them although I had to play against the tournament leafblower llist every week because a mate of ours ran it as his main army. I tried to mix things up a little, usually with some Basilisks and Demols. Still tank heavy though as this was 5th after all

I even tried to run combat guard in 5th a few times, so way before it got popular in 6th. Me and a mate even had a few reverse role games, combat guard vs shooty orks! [again 5th, before all top ork armies were shooty!].

I used them once in a 5th Ed Tourney, getting first place at a Doubles event, allied with my mates Grey Knights. Our list was pretty horrendous though, more Vendettas, Chimeras, Psybacks and Psyrifle Dreads than you could shake a stick at

6th

In 6th I had them as allies for my Wolves, they did fairly well at a few tournaments and then I started to use a blob but by the time I did the game had passed them by really. They performed very well in my local group though and it did mean I finally got a lot of models painted.

[Tactical Genius]

I will miss my very fluffy blitzkrieg army. I hope they dont change too much. I dont like the taros thingy. Looks daft.

[Chris]

I gave my guard away to a friend who was interested in starting 40k. That was 2 years ago, he hasn't started...

Ah well, fresh chance to start them again perhaps... Although I'll be waiting until summer, and then they may be a long term project.