Editing Warhammer 40,000/8th Edition Tactics/Imperial Guard (section)

==={{W40Kkeyword|[[Elysian Drop Troops]]}}<sup>Forge World</sup>===
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In the grim darkness of the far future, some times the only way forward is feet first into Hell.<br>
Elysians Drop Troops are the paratroopers of the 41st millenium. Guardsman life expectancy is short as is, and Elysians even more so, but its a job that needs to be done and glory never dies.
On the tabletop, Elysians are your airborn support. While they lack heavy armour, their heaviest unit being the Tauros Venator, they make up for it with tactical flexibility and the ability to deploy anywhere they damn well please. <br>

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====Restrictions====
In addition to their unique units, Elysian Drop Troops can only take the following:
*Elites
**Officer of the Fleet 
*Fast Attack
**Tauros and Tauros Venator
***Gains aerial drop.
*Heavy Support
**Cyclops Demolition Vehicle
**Tarantula Battery
*Fliers
**Avenger Strike Fighter
**Lightning Strike Fighter
**Thunderbolt Heavy Fighter
**Valkyrie
**Vendetta
**Vulture

The following weapons cannot be taken by Elysian Drop Troops:
*Autocannon
*Lascannon
*Power Axe
*Power Maul
*Sniper Rifles are carried by specific 2W 2A Elysian Sniper Squad models, who, like their cousins in the Death Korps not actually named Heavy Weapons Teams, curiously only occupy 1 transport spot on a Valkyrie.

====Special Rules====
A few rules that are unique to Elysians and have widespread effects concerning many or most units in the army.
*'''Aerial Drop:''' You can deep strike any Elysian Drop Troops model, including any kind of Tauros. Just don't forget the limits of doing so in matched play.
**Remember, this applies to ''every'' model with the {{W40kKeyword|Elysian Drop Troops}} keywords, which is everything with either {{W40kKeyword|Aeronautica Imperialis}} or {{W40kKeyword|<REGIMENT>}} you can take, i.e. every in-faction model for you, including e.g. turrets and flyers.  Elysia apparently follows Maxim 11: ''"Everything is air-droppable at least once"''.
**Note the wording on this rule and who gets it is rather strange, the unit list states that all {{W40kKeyword|Elysian Drop Troops}} units have this rule, but then adds that Tauros units with the {{W40kKeyword|Elysian Drop Troops}} keyword also get it. Tauros getting aerial drop should have been implied by the first clause of the rule, unless they meant to say that the other units you have in common with regular guard don't get aerial drop. Expect an FAQ, and discuss with opponents before you start deep striking sentry guns and cyclops bombs. 
**With deepstrike rule change, Aerial Drop can't be used until turn 2, so have some durable allies to be your anchor.

*'''Iron Discipline:''' All Elysian officers have an aura buff that gives you the ability to re-roll failed morale. Talk about hardcore soldiers when even junior officers of the Elysian army are inspiring enough to make your guys as brave as space marines. Squads that come with a sergeant will be at ld 8 so the enemy will have to inflict some pretty fucking serious casualties before you start suffering significant losses due to morale.
*'''Strafing Coordinates:''' This is the officers of the fleet target designation rule. He picks a target within 18" and friendly ELYSIAN DROP TROOPS FLYERS shooting at that target gets to re-roll hit rolls of 1. Not as amazing as before due to only affected FLYERS.

====Weapons and Wargear====
*'''Auxiliary grenade launcher:''' Comes built into your lasgun and boosts the range of frag and krak grenades to 24". It's free, so why wouldn't you take it?
*'''Breacher charges:''' Some Elysian squads can take breacher charges. This is what we get instead of demolition charges. Unlike demolition charges, which are powerful, cheap grenades, breacher charges are 5 times as expensive melee versions which don't let you use your ballistic skill. They do cause mortal wounds, but to be frank, if you do the math, the average damage output of these one-shot weapons is not good. Even assuming you get into melee intact, 6 of these (from, say, 2 special weapon squads armed with 3 each) will put out an average of 10.5 mortal wounds. That won't even kill a rhino, and if you want consistent charges, you'd better be willing to invest in a Valkyrie for those two squads. If you don't, you have to realize that your chance of making a charge out of aerial drop is only 10/36 or about 28% chance. If you do invest in the Valkyrie, you are now spending 260-288 points for a one-shot assault unit that does not even do that much damage; you are substantially better off with meltaguns against absolutely anything durable enough to make you reach for breacher charges in the first place.
**Breacher charges could have been a fun and iconic piece of wargear for Elysians this edition. If they had been 5 points each, or at least auto-hit, they probably would have. Now, instead of throwing a few breachers around your army, making it sort of threatening sometimes in melee, one quickly realizes that a piece of one-use wargear that costs more than 3 plasma guns must have a lot more impact on the game than breacher charges do. Two breacher charges are roughly the same cost as a command squad with plasma guns, and 4 charges are as expensive as a veteran squad with 3 plasma guns and a plasma pistol.
*'''Lascutters:''' Elysian Drop Troops can take lascutters (an S9 AP-3 D1d3 ''melee'' weapon which can only make 1 attack) as ''special'' weapons. From a competitive perspective, these are neither worth the special weapons slots nor the points. Charging from deep strike is about a 28% chance, and charging from Valkyries is expensive. Even if you get your veterans (or whatever squad you put these on) unharmed into melee, it is very hard to imagine a scenario where this would outperform some shooting with a melta or plasma gun. If efficiency is not something that concerns you, it can be quite a bit of fun. Theoretical cool setups include 10 veterans with 3 lascutters, a breacher charge, and a power fist, or 3 command squads with 12 lascutters, or 2 special weapons squads with 6 lascutters.
*'''Shotgun:''' Same as the normal kind, but notable for being a special weapon choice you can take.

====Orders====
Like the Death Korps of Krieg, Elysians have two unique orders.

They give up:
*'''Forwards, for the Emperor!''': Ordered unit can shoot, even if it advanced in the movement phase.
*'''Fix Bayonets!''': May only be issued to units within 1" of an enemy unit. The ordered unit may immediately fight as if it were in the fight phase.

They gain:
*'''Hold the Line!''': The targeted unit ignores models killed during both the Shooting and Fight phases for the purposes of the Morale phase until the next Movement phase. This makes commissars even less useful for Elysians, though you will, in most cases, use the other orders, since your company commanders already grant a re-roll.
*'''Move and Fire!''': All of an {{W40kKeyword|Elysian INFANTRY}} unit's weapons become Assault weapons until the end of the turn. Similar to Forwards, for the Emperor! but also allows Heavy Weapons to fire and move without the normal penalties for doing so. Note that this will make Rapid Fire 1 weapons Assault 1, which is unfortunate, but Heavy, Pistol, and Grenade weapons all get a nice buff.  That last is particularly important, given how widespread access is to frag and krak grenades - other regiments have to pay a CP to throw ten frag grenades, you can throw ten frag, krak grenades and a lasgun shot for free!

====Units====

=====HQ=====
*'''Elysian Company Commander:''' Compared to the basic company commander, the Elysian version loses the shotgun and chainsword but gains an extra point of Ld and allows friendly Elysian Drop Troops within 6" of him to reroll failed morale tests.
** You will be forced to take these guys to fill out HQ slots. He is a superior choice to the commissar in most cases and is a damned fine buffing character. We can also assume that he unlocks command squads for us which are quite points efficient. Elysian orders are good and these guys will spread them around to your troops. Has the benefit over Tempestors of both giving two orders and taking a plasma pistol.
** There are two approaches to taking Company Commanders, take as few as possible or take a lot of them. The first approach gives you more "real" units to aerial drop. The second gives you more command squads and better saturation of orders. I have tried both and will usually land somewhere in between though I think going for a few commanders is probably better.
*'''Elysian Lord Commissar:'''This Lord Commissar loses the Power Sword (which is an upgrade, since he can still buy one if you wanted it, and can swap his bolt pistol out for a boltgun), and like the Company Commander he allows friendly Elysian Drop Troops within 6" of him to re-roll failed morale tests as an extra defense against morale checks.
** Not great for us and you will rarely see any one take a Lord Commissar. He is more expensive than a normal commissar lord but the problem is we do not have conscripts. Since our Company Commanders offer ld re-rolls in addition to being cheaper and giving out orders he is a natural choice. The biggest unit size Elysians have are 10 man squads and while it is quite easy to create theoretical scenarios where a commissar would be better as morale buffing char than a commander it will rarely impact the game in practice. This is especially true when you consider Elysian commanders have a morale buffing order they can drop in a pinch.
** As with Death Korps Commissars, he can technically be taken by any regiment rather than just his own, of course once again his aura abilities won't affect anyone, not from Elysia, but he can still BLAM regular guardsmen or mercy kill exploding psykers. Probably not worth it considering that, unlike with the Death Korps Commissar, regular Commissar Lords actually do have a non-regiment aura of discipline, and to make matters worse he was not FAQ'd to have the same reduced cost as the codex version, meaning you'll pay almost double the points for him, but if for some reason you wanted a deep striking Commissar with krak grenades and a shotgun, he's here for you.

=====Troops=====
*'''Elysian Drop Trooper Squad:''' More expensive than basic Guardsmen and also lack heavy weapons access, but have an extra point in Ld and the whole unit can take krak grenades for free. The sergeant can replace his laspistol with a lasgun since the faq.
**'''The problem with breacher charges:'''Breacher charges are super cool but expensive and ineffective, even when we get to use them. 25 points is a ''lot'' for a piece of equipment, especially when that equipment is one use only (faq 1.0). Remember that the entire base cost of the squad is only 50 points. Even when we get to use them they don't do that much damage. Since they only work 50% of the time they will score an average of 1.75 mortal wounds on vehicles, buildings, or monsters, and only 1 on everything else. Combined with the abysmal likelihood of making the charge after aerial dropping in, we can only expect to land 0.5 wounds on a vehicle with an infantry squad.
**'''Alternate opinion:''' Our infantry squads are not very tempting compared to other options. If you are going to take them to keep them dirt cheap and expendable because they will not have the punch of veterans or special weapon squads. If you want to have something aerial dropping and killy in the troop slot take some scions. A cheap unit of infantry can be very useful in 8th edition. You can drop them on to objectives, this is especially relevant in progressive scoring missions. You can deploy them as a screening unit for your long-range shooting, and it's not like you can take Conscripts since they're not allowed in the army list.

=====Elites=====
*'''Elysian Special Weapons Squad:''' Like the vanilla counterpart, but swaps the demolition charge option for breacher charges, and, ''critically'', takes their special weapons ''in addition to'' their lasguns - a 6-man vanilla squad is 3 lasguns and 3 specials, but an Elysian Squad is 6 lasguns and 3 specials, all of which can fire in 8E. Good as suicide melta units. Also effective for getting plasma guns into Rapid Fire range; plasma spamming is probably the best option for them if you want to deep strike them, though running them with flamers and meltaguns isn't a bad move either. A cheaper alternative to Veterans if you can ignore the lower BS.
**Remember, a 3-flamer unit is 6 lasguns and 3 flamers, and ''very'' cheap.
**'''Alternate opinion''' This squad suffers badly from sharing a slot with Veterans and Command squads. They have 1 worse BS and can't take heavy flamers. The two things that make this unit unique is the squad size and the ability to take more than one breacher charge. The first is kind of nice if you consider putting them in valkyries or have plenty of elite slots to spare (which is surprisingly rare when making lists at 2k+). If you are putting them in valkyries they get expensive quickly, though. And get the stupid idea of taking two squads with 6 breacher charges in a valkyrie out of your head right now; that is an insane amount of points, and even if you get to dump 6 breachers onto a vehicle, it's only an average of 10.5 wounds. 10.5 wounds and you spent 150 points on breachers, another 60 for the men, and the valkyrie on top of that. Buy something reasonable instead, like melta guns or flamers, if you want to run them in a Valkyrie.
**If you're spamming aerial drops, this unit is far cheaper than a Veterans squad, making it more efficient for drop-plasma, even after accounting for the Veteran's other benefits, assuming no orders are being handed out to the dropped units; while it is simply worse than a Command Squad, it's also not constrained by Commander count, which Command Squads are and is BS 4+, so Plasma Guns are cheaper.  That makes these great in any context where you want to simply drop in some suicide plasma.
*'''Elysian Veteran Squad:''' Lost their most important option, ''forward sentries'', so now you longer have any source of homing beacons in the entire codex. Identical to vanilla veteran squads (statline is the same but options/orders differ), but gain deep strike. These guys can take four flamers and jump from a transport into a horde, giving you 3d6 flamer and d6 heavy flamer overwatch hits, or you know, just burn the fuckers if they don't charge you. Giving them shotguns can also be surprisingly effective, especially given how Move and Fire turn grenades into Assault weapons RAW. Note that since the faq the sergeant can take a lasgun and replace it with a shotgun if you want to (fw has confirmed the shotgun swap through email).
**If you're taking these guys to cram them into a Valkyrie or Vendetta, remember that their Weapons Team ''does not'' have '''Heavy''' anywhere in its name, so the model only takes up one slot on a Transport, allowing you to fit the entire unit plus ''three'' more people on, if you take the Team.  Also, a Team with a Mortar ends up running you 2 points ''less'' than the pair of Veterans it replaces, which can improve efficiency, although the Team goes from 6 weapons to 1 when pulling off the Assault order trick, which is seldom worth it on its own.
**Heavy Weapons choice should be Missile Launchers for Anti-Tank, Mortars for Anti-GEQ and Heavy Bolters for Anti-MEQ and Anti-TEQ.
**Lascutters + breacher charge + power fist is cute and could be fun to play, but the range weapons will put out more damage and can put out that damage reliably. Remember rolling a 9+ to charge is not very likely (you will roll 9 or more in only 10 out of 36 cases) and the breacher charges are crazy expensive for a one-use item that only works in melee. Besides, even when you get there it only deals an average of 1.75 mortal wounds against vehicles, buildings, and monsters, and an average of 1 to everything else. When factoring in the chance to charge out of deep strike this becomes a sad 0.28 mortal wounds on average against infantry. The lascutters are not great either. Str 9 is impressive and so are the d3 wounds. But after taking into consideration your lower chance to hit a melta gun is more reliable, keeps you out of melee (if you want to be in melee you can charge after firing the melta gun) and does more damage.
**'''Alternate Opinion:''' Mathematically, this unit is great at doing aerial drops with 3 plasma/melta + plasma pistol. I would advise staying away from superfluous equipment like breacher charges and taking things like missile launchers and heavy flamers on them without thinking about it. Keep them focused on a task and fairly cheap and they will serve you well. I would also keep them out of transports in general. It is quite tempting to put them with full flamer load out inside a valkyrie but as soon as you do that the price of putting the unit on the board goes through the roof. With the potential of rerolling 1s to hit and to wound from a commander and officer of the fleet, this unit is second in efficiency only to command squads in putting out deadly plasma fire at a cheap price.
*'''Elysian Sniper Squad:''' A two wound BS3+ squad with a sniper plus deep strike for seven points each? Quite possibly the best value sniper unit in the game. May have lost the breacher charges and magnoculars for D-99 but got a crazy point reduction so it worked out well. Works wonders with "Move and Fire" (why would you waste your orders on a 21 point unit?) giving you assault snipers negating the move penalty of heavy weapons, combine that with deep strike and you can put these snipers exactly where you want them and dominate the table with them. Feel free to spam vanguard detachments with these guys, a company commander with three units of snipers is 103 points, a great beginning to any Elysian list this edition. You probably have to in order to take a decent amount of them, the Elites slot in your case is crowded as hell. 
**These guys are not bad for the points comparing them to other snipers in the game. Keep in mind though that killing high wound characters with good saves will take a lot of these guys. Roboute won´t lay down just because half a dozen of these squads shoot at him (a bog-standard Astartes captain will take 23 or so sniper shots to bring down). Something like a Commissar on the other hand is possible to kill with a few units. A reasonable expectation of snipers is for them to be annoying for your opponent, sit on objectives, and allow you to aerial drop more veterans.
**Each of these is like a heavy weapons team (2 wounds, carries an extra lasgun, etc), but because it isn't called that anywhere in its keywords, it will only occupy 1 capacity in a transport, which may be worth remembering.
**Aerial Drop three units of snipers (9 teams) and 1 officer of the fleet into your opponent's deployment and have a field day as you fuck with his characters with snipers plus an air raid.
*'''Elysian Command Squad:'''Super cheap and deadly, the best configuration is generally going to be 4x plasma/melta, with the first being cheaper and generally more useful. Most of the time you are forced to take at least 3 company commanders and you should pretty much always take the maximum allowed of these guys.
**As of the most recent FAQ, these are now limited to 1 per officer, like all other Command Squads.
*'''Elysian Platoon Commander:'''Gets to take melta bombs for free which is cool. Though with only one order and competing with officer of the fleet for the slot you would be hard-pressed to actually find a place for these guys. Officer of the fleet is cheaper, a better buffer in most cases and drops some mortal wounds on the enemy for you. He does unlock more command squads, though, and is passable if you don't intend to run a deep-strike intensive force. 
*'''Elysian Drop Sentinels:''' They are more expensive than regular guard sentinels but can aerial drop. It's super cool to have your guys dropping in via grav-chutes but beyond the narrative etc applications it's hard to fit them in a list. A better idea is probably taking the regular guard version unless you are dead set on pulling off distracting charges from deep strike. They don't get the cc weapons of normal sentinels though and if you are thinking of investing in a Sky Talon to get them in Ogryns seem like a better choice.
** '''Alternate Take:''' You're deep striking a Multi Melta for 55 points now, which is pretty good. Having 6 wounds on T5 means they are gonna get killed, but a unit of three can force your opponent to completely change their strategy, allowing you to counter their movements. What makes these useful is their ability to stay out of anti deep string bubbles while still firing at full effect, and they will require your opponent to prioritize them. They also possess the scout vehicle rule, allowing you to deploy them on the board and strike hard and fast if you need to. Otherwise, using them as tough(ish) suicide Multi Melta units seems to be the only useful role for them.

=====Fast Attack=====
*'''Tauros Assault Vehicle:''' BS4+ with either a twinned grenade launcher or a heavy flamer, same stats as the Venator which has worthwhile weapon options. Pass.
**Another way of looking at it is that in a pure Elysian force this is the cheapest fast attack choice we get. The grenade launcher is no doubt horrible (priced as a lascannon) but the heavy flamer can make for a mobile cheap-ish unit that lets us reserve more veterans and be annoying for the opponent. To be fair, though, taking regular AM scout sentinels is probably a better idea.
*'''Tauros Venator:''' Either a twinned multilaser or a twinned lascannon; multilasers can actually annoy 5+ or worse infantry as the laser is S6. Lascannons will usually hit once with BS4+. Ignores movement for Heavy weapons, which means that achieving the 5++ for moving minimum 10" is now worthwhile. Is this Jink brought back in 8th, you ask? Maybe. Three of these pump out the same amount of shots as a Vendetta while being able to move and shoot, as well as having a 5++, for 48 more points. Consider these if you want something meatier than infantry but you can't fit in a flyer. Don't bother putting these in a sky-talon; with the range of these weapons, you want to stay back and harass from a distance.
**These suffer from the standard problem of anything with twin lascannons, which is that Forge World decided every weapon ''except'' lascannons deserved to be less than twice as expensive when twinned due to the inability to fire it at multiple targets - meaning the twin multilaser ''does'' cost less than two multilasers, which has a tendency to modify the math on which weapon loadout is the most efficient.  At 18 points, the twin multilaser is surprisingly good at busting up TEQs and other 3++ targets where the lack of AP basically doesn't matter, as it delivers a lot of shot volume for the cost.

=====Heavy Support=====
*'''Cyclops Demolition Vehicle:'''Funnier than when other Regiments take it because unlike them, you can drop this right next to the enemy.  You can't drop it close enough to actually threaten them, since it won't explode past 6 inches and you'll be more than 9 inches away, but it's still a very disquieting 60 point ball of worry - and, of course, if you drop it next to some enemy ''melee'' units, they ''really'' won't want to deal with it themselves.
*'''Elysian Heavy Weapons Squad:''' Like Vanilla counterpart, but you gain deep strike, so they become even better. You lose lascannons and autocannons compared to vanilla guard, but with deep strike, you get some free positioning without resorting to transports. Mortars are for blobs and missile launchers deal with armour and monsters. Heavy bolters are meh since tarantulas do the job of two heavy bolter teams but for the double, the wounds, better toughness, and armour save, for three points cheaper in exchange for having to shoot the closest infantry squad, though you were probably using the turret as a distraction anyway. "Move and fire" order combos well, giving you assault missile launchers or mortars. Parking these squads in cover will do worlds of good for them as all three weapons have decent enough range. These will be common as infantry squads lost heavy weapons and vets will be used to deliver melta/plasma/flamers into close quarters environments, where heavy weapons will be a tad out of place.
**Weapon selection should be Missile Launchers for Anti-Tank, Mortars for Anti-GEQ and Heavy Bolters for Anti-MEQ and TEQ.
**Mortars are dirt cheap, missile launchers are not. While most opponents will cringe at the idea of throwing their precious shooting at mortar squads (especially when they are hunkered down) engaging missile launchers is a much more palatable activity. From my experience mixing squads to contain 1 missile launcher and 2 mortars seem to work best. Mortars try to deploy out of line of sight while the missile team try to be minimally exposed. Once you start taking fire you can remove the mortars first (or the missile launcher if you have no need for krak missiles). It makes the missiles more cost effective as far as resilience goes.
*'''Tarantula Battery:''' Astoundingly cheap, and while you can't give it orders, you ''can'' drop it right next what you want it to shoot.  It will take the movement penalty to shooting the turn you drop it, of course, but so would a dropped heavy weapons team.  The sheer number of twin heavy bolter turrets you can simply drop in your enemy's way is fantastic. These things pack a lot of T5 wounds, providing excellent anchors and speed bumps for whatever your enemy throws at you. Naturally, bait your opponent, then clean house with your dedicated firepower. They are small and ''love'' cover.

=====Flyers=====
Your flyers are all very tanky, due to Airborne and Hard to Hit, so they are ideal anchors (aside from their cost) - stick them on the table during deployment to soak up and avoid enemy fire, and get ready to surprise your enemy with presents containing violence.

*'''Avenger Strike Fighter:'''
*'''Lightning Strike Fighter:'''
*'''Thunderbolt Heavy Fighter:''' Slight callout here, as it's your only 15 wound plane and has a 6+ regen, so it's definitely your tankiest plane.
*'''Valkyrie:'''
*'''Valkyrie Sky Talon:''' Fewer options than a basic Valkyrie and you can't take them in squads, but they can transport either a Tauros or 2 Drop Sentinels. Previously you could spam these guys alone, however with their new points increase valks are generally better value.  It should be noted that you ''can'' use these to shove Heavy Flamer sentinels down your opponent's throat..... but since your sentinels already have both Scout and Aerial Drop, it seems dubious that it would be worth the points.  Also works on Heavy Flamer Tauroses, of course, but..... ''why''?
**If you're planning on taking Multi-Laser and Rocket Pod Valkyries, take Heavy Bolter and Rocket Pod Sky Talons instead. For 2 points less they will kick out an average of 10 Heavy Bolter shots, and a Heavy Bolter is better than a Multi-Laser point-for-point.
*'''Vendetta:'''
*'''Vulture:'''

====Tactics====
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