Warhammer 40,000/7th Edition Tactics/Imperial Guard

This page is in need of cleanup. Srsly. It's a fucking mess.

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This is the previous Edition's Imperial Guard tactics. The 8th Edition Tactics are here while the 6th Edition Tactics are here.

"Last one alive, lock the door!"
--The Soldier

Why Play Imperial Guard

When recruits are inducted into the Imperial Guard, they are given four things. Their regulation flashlight (commonly referred to by the troops as "lasguns" for some reason), their regulation cardboard box (which certain regiments have taken to cutting up and wearing into battle, calling it "flak armor"), a large stack of toilet paper (which the recruiters refer to as the "Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer"), and the regulation extra large wheelbarrow that allows them to cart their Dead out of battle.

From a gameplay perspective, the Imperial Guard army is a flexible force known for having either hordes of cheap infantry to blast the heretic swine, waves of tanks to flatten the bastards, or a medium in between. The army is easy to learn while having a lot of options and tactics being discovered frequently (melta veterans in Chimeras are not the sole option in the Guard army after all). That's why you play the Imperial Guard.

Additionally, you are one of most powerful armies in Apocalypse, and the standard by which all other apocalypse armies are measured. You are absolutely spoiled for Forge World choices with everything from the dinky little Lightning Fighter to the unholy death machine that is the Imperator Class Titan.

Another win is the Escalation expansion for regular 40k. IG can now take one Baneblade or one of its variants. No Fortress of Arrogance however. But hey, with the most Lords of War choices out of all the armies AND you don't have to pay Forge World prices, why argue?

Special Rules

Orders

This is the signature feature of Guard armies; At the start of your Shooting Phase, your Commanders can issue Orders to non-vehicle Guard units within 12"; choose an Order, and make a Leadership Check to determine whether the Order is successfully issued. If successful, that unit immediately performs a specific action, usually with a secondary buff. (do note that you can't Order a unit multiple times in the same turn of course...) Orders make Guard one of a small number of armies capable of "double-buffing" their army; that unit of Conscripts may look unassuming, but when they throw down a wall of Prescience-boosted Lasgun shots via First Rank Fire, Second Rank Fire your opponent will not be laughing!

There are two special rules for rolling doubles of certain kinds on the ordered unit's leadership test:

• Inspired Tactics: Roll 2D6 like you would for any Orders test. On a double one, all Orders for the rest of the turn automatically pass.
• Incompetent Command: Roll 2D6. On a double six, you cannot issue orders for the rest of your turn. It is not pretty when a blob squad fails to issue remaining orders when Genestealers/Boyz/melee deathstar units are bearing down on you.

Note that some Orders can only be issued by Senior Oficers. The orders are as follows:

• Bring it Down! (Senior Officer) - The ordered must shoot at an enemy Monstrous Creature/Vehicle, gaining Tank Hunters/Monster Hunters in the process.
• Fire on my Target! (Senior Officer) - The ordered unit must fire at an enemy unit, with their weapons gaining Ignore's Cover. Flush out enemy units from Ruins, or wipe out enemy Bikers without them getting a Jink Save; Irony is beating Ravenwing Black Knights at the Plasma game. This ability is at a premium.
• Get Back in the Fight! (Senior Officers Only) - Lets you basically get a squad that's falling back or gone to ground to instantly regroup. If the unit was falling back, it does not make a 3" move like it normally would.
• First Rank, FIRE! Second Rank, FIRE! - Your most frequently issued order, Rank Fire basically gives your Guardsmen an additional shot if they are using Lasguns or Hot-Shot Lasguns. There are few things that match the expression of the opponent's face when you get to roll 40+ dice at the same time (150 tops or 28 with Hotshots) which means that regardless of BS and Strength 3, the enemy is in the sea of possible pain. Use with combined squads or conscript blobs for max hilarity, and don't forget to ask your opponent if you can borrow his dice. Make sure you use this on the biggest squad with highest LD that is within range (Rapid OR Max, doesn't matter) of an important target, and don't ever use this on Veterans unless everyone else is useless. Wasteful order are Heresy.
• Move! Move! Move! - The targeted squad must Run, and chooses the highest result of three dice when doing so. For example, you want to run with a big blob and contest an objective? Your odds of making it within 3" are now better.
• Smite at Will! - The Targeted Squad makes a shooting attack with the Split Fire special rule. Useful if you forgot to make a separate Heavy Weapon Squad with a specialized weapon set.
• Forwards, for the Emperor! - The Targeted Squad makes a shooting attack and must immediately Run after making it. This ability is surprisingly versatile, as it allows you do perform Bounding Overwatch,
• Suppressive Fire! - The Targeted Squad makes a shooting attack with the Pinning special rule. This order is generally unreliable, but sometimes every little bit helps.
• Take Aim! - The Targeted Squad makes a shooting attack with the Precision Shots special rule. With 7th edition, it has been clarified to need a 6 to land a precision shot. Useful for piling up large amounts of wounds on a sergeant or model with a special weapon you don't want near your stuff, or pick out Chariot drivers in case someone was playing Daemons and thought that seeker cavalcade was a good idea.

Warlord Traits

1. Grand Strategist: d3 units of the primary detachment can Outflank.
2. Old Grudges: Choose one codex; warlord and unit have Preferred Enemy against units of said codex. Pask starts with this one.
3. Draconian Disciplinarian: Friendly Astra Militarum units within 12" of the warlord don't have to test after 25% of casualties. Yarrick starts with this trait.
4. Implacable Determination: Warlord and his unit have Relentless. Straken starts with this.
5. Bellowing Voice: Warlord can give Orders; if he could already do so, their range is boosted to 18 inches.
6. Master of Command: Warlord can give Orders; if he could already do so, he can use an extra Order each turn.

Overall, not bad. A bit of a toss up between this and the Command list if you're trying to buff your units, which is the case with most Guard HQs. Tank Commanders, however, only get this list and only roll a d3 on it, but that's okay - on a tank, all three of the available traits are pretty solid buffs.

Tactical Objectives

1. Armored Assault: Get a VP if an enemy unit was completely destroyed during your turn by a unit with the Tank unit type.
2. Fix Bayonets!: Get a VP if you successfully charge in your turn.
3. Strength in Unity: 1 VP for successfully issuing three orders, d3 VP for successfully issuing six or more.
4. Hold Your Ground: Score a VP if half your units, rounding up, are in your deployment zone.
5. Overwhelming Numbers: Score 1 VP for controlling more objectives than your opponent, d3 VP for controlling three or more.
6. Storm of Fire: Score 1 VP for destroying an enemy unit in the shooting phase. D3 if you kill three units, and d3+3 for killing six or more.

Fighter Aces

In Skies of Death, you now have a bonus rule allowing you to pay 35 points for one of 3 special traits for any Flyer or FMC (FGC is still debatable, but you don't have any of those so don't worry about it). The Tempestus can use the same traits, so their Valkyries can be just as handy as yours.

1. Covert Deployment - Arrive from any edge when arriving from reserves. Great for a surprise drop.
2. Defensive Flyer - +1 Front Armor. Jivin'.
3. Inspiring Presence - Fellow models within 12" of a Fighter Ace with the same codex gain Fearless. Save those Guardsmen, bring them to the front.

Equipment

Heirlooms of Conquest

Note that only an unnamed Company Commander from a Company Command Squad or an unnamed Lord Commissar can buy heirlooms and you are limited to one of each Heirloom per army, and only 1 relic may be taken by a model.

• The Emperor's Benediction: This Lord Commissar-only MC Bolt Pistol has Precision Shot to make him better at BLAMming certain enemies from range as well as being as strong as a Heavy Bolter. With BS5 on a Lord-Commissar, the master-crafted rule means it is almost guaranteed to hit something. Also, it's a 5 point upgrade. On an aggressive Lord-Commissar this GLORIOUS HEAVY SNIPER PISTOL OF THE EMPEROR is basically an auto-include, but if the squad he's attached to is gonna be mostly sitting back and shooting the higher range and rapid fire of the (free!) boltgun should probably be considered instead (though one could argue that babysitting the shooty units is a job for a junior commissar and a waste of a Lord).
• The Tactical Auto-Reliquary of Tyberius: CCS only, 25 points. If the bearer issues an order and rolls doubles for the Ld test, and succeeds, he gains Inspired Tactics for that turn. But if it's a double 1, you lose its benefits for the rest of the game (the order you rolled double 1s on still counts as Inspired Tactics). Seeing how broken orders can be, especially with the new Cadian Battlegroup granting 3D6 discard highest result, this is troll-tastic.
• Laurels of Command: CCS only. Giving friendly units within 6" the ability to choose whether or not they pass a morale test is good. Having those same units make a pinning test if the bearer dies is not. Hide out of sight like a bitch, and you won't ever worry about getting killed. In summary: costs as much as a Priest, has a 6" range, makes everybody panic if the bearer dies. Hmmm... no.
• The Blade of Conquest: Lord Solar Macharius's personal sword is AP 3, S+1, and master-crafted. It costs as much as a power fist, while not being that much better than a power axe, since you generally won't be hitting first with your I3. Again, costs as much as a Hatred+Fearless, war hymn giving Priest which will fare you 10x better in close combat. You're investing quite a lot into a Lord Commissar/Company Commander who is doubled out by S6 or higher. Keep scrolling.
• The Deathmask of Ollanius: It may look creepy as hell, but you will use it anyway because it gives you a 4+ invulnerable save, Fear, and It Will Not Die. Also, using it is, in-universe and out, keeping the story of Ollanius Pius alive. However, given the fact that you already have a 5++, and IWND on a T3 character doesn't make much difference, it's not an auto-take.
• Kurov's Aquila: CCS only. The user and all friendly units within 6" have Preferred Enemy and the bearer can reroll one failed Leadership test per turn. That means Template and blast template overspill. Whoops.
  • Just remember you can't give orders while embarked (unless in a Chimera, but the PE isn't emitted while embarked, period.). Also, it's 60 points, the same price as a bare bones CCS. It is the most expensive of the heirlooms, and you should only take it if you're running a Plasma heavy list (it's not like your list isn't point-sinking anyway).
  • To get the most out of this item, consider blobbing your squads and making a line with basic guardsmen from the main blob to the edge of the aquila range and concentrating big guns around the CCS: this way you are pretty much extending your preferred enemy field to almost your whole army. Can get hilarious when, say, you have 8 squads with plasmas and 3 squads of 3 punishers with preferred enemy.

Special Issue Wargear

Solid choices overall for the Imperial Guard, this is the list Lord Commissars and Company Commanders may take from in addition to the Heirlooms of Conquest.

• Camo Gear +1 to Cover Saves, 6+ Cover in the open. Stacks with Stealth, Shrouded, Going to Ground, intervening models, etcetera. It's not very expensive at 5 points, so is usually an auto take. The Company Command Squad except for the Commander can take this at like 2 points per model.
• Carapace Armor - While a step up by granting a 4+, being 5 per model makes it a rather pricey method, so ignore the idea unless you absolutely need a team on the field. Of course, Company Command Squads except for the Company Commander get it at a discount price, so there is indeed that to consider.(15pts for 10 vet's carapace isn't that bad- especially for taking objectives)
• Krak Grenades - Because Guardsmen aren't Space Marines they have to shovel out an extra points to get these things. A squad of Guardsmen with these can glance AV12 (and have a reasonable chance to penetrate AV10) and below to death in a heartbeat though! Lord Commissars start out with these by default, be mindful of that.
• Melta bombs - 5 points for a S8 AP1 Armorbane attack on a vehicle or Monstrous Creature. Both Company Commanders, Lord Commissars, and Sergeants/Veteran Sergeants get these. If you're taking a Priest with your blobs, it's recommended you take these to deter any Walkers/MCs your opponent will inevitably throw at you to slow them down. Also makes Knights think twice before they come to stomp on you.

Armor and Invulnerable

• Flak Armor - The basic cardboard armor with an excellent and manly 5+ save.
• Carapace Armor - See Special Issue Wargear above.
• Power Armor - The standard MEQ 3+ Armor Save. Only Techpriests have it. Straken also has a 3+ Armor save but his wargear say he has Flak armor, when all he has is an Adamantium bionic right arm...and abs of steel. Yes, that's why his Flak Armor is 3+!
• Refractor Field - 5+ Invulnerable Save. Company Commanders, Lord Commissars, and Primaris Psykers get these. Colonel "Iron Hand" Straken and Creed also have this by default.
• Rosarius - 4+ Invulnerable Save. Only the Ministorum Priest gets this.

Ranged Equipment

This is the gear Commanders, Commissars, and Veteran/normal sergeants can take from.

• Bolt Pistol - At 1 point, this is almost universally a better choice than the Laspistol your guys come with. It allows your guy to keep his multiple attacks while getting 1 S4 AP5 shot. Compare that to S3 AP- and you're jumping for this. However since Guard tend to abhor Melee, weigh carefully against its big brother below. Commissars and Lord Commissars get these by default.
• Boltgun - Yeah, now we're talking! The primary small-arm of Space Marines is also available to Imperial Guard sergeants, Commissars, Lord Commissars and Platoon/Company Commanders. It costs the same as the pistol variant. So 1 measly point for rapid fire S4 AP5 shots. Not much, but far surpasses the crappy pistol-sized Flashlight your Sarge usually comes with. [Lord] Commissars can swap out their Pistols with this for free. If you don't mind losing the extra attack, adding to a unit's ranged Dakka is never a bad idea.
• Plasma Pistol - Guaranteed to wreck the shit of a TEQ who gets too close. However, unlike Space Marines, Guardsmen lack the good saves unless you get Carapace Armor, so Gets Hot! is more likely to kill Guardsmen. Also costs as much as 3 normal guardsmen, and the exact same cost as its rifle counterpart. How about no.
• Shotguns - Not to be confused with the Space Marine Shotgun (which has bolter Strength), the regular old shotgun is available to Imperial Guard veterans and Company Commanders, and has the Range, Strength, and AP of a laspistol with Assault 2. Basically, your Commander is trading an extra attack for an extra shot, your Vets are trading single shot range for the ability to assault after shooting. Probably too situational in use and too marginal in effect to be worth it, especially compared to the other available weapon options, unless you're planning something very specific.

Special Weapons

Often taken alongside lasguns for extra firepower, one can be taken per squad. Command Squads can take up to 4 of these. Veterans and Special Weapon squads can take 3 of these. Both Tempestus Scions and Rough Riders can take 2 of these.

Heavy

• Sniper Rifle: Always wounds on 4s and is AP6. It's the cheapest option at 2 points, but with mediocre BS Ratlings can do it much better because they can run after shooting which Guardsmen cannot do. Also, thanks to 7th Edition Sniper Rifles no longer have Rending or pinning. However rolls of 6 to-wound are still AP2, and the weapon is S4 when resolved against vehicles. Not good unfortunately, but with some luck you can find your guardsmen shooting down a terminator and earn 5 times his points back (7-point model kills 35 point model). It's good idea to equip your PCS with these since they are going to sit with their thumbs up their asses behind their platoon anyway, but then again, flamers can at least offer some kind of defense via WoD. Can't be taken by Rough Riders or Tempestus Scions.

Salvo and Rapid Fire

• Hot-shot Volley Gun: Exclusive to Stormtrooper units, the Volley Gun is Salvo 2/4 and AP3 but is S4 so it's good if you're using the Stormtroopers as a defensive fire base or for camping on an objective with them.
• Plasma Gun: Your primary anti-TEQ gun. However, unlike Space Marines, Guardsmen lack the good saves unless you get Carapace Armor, so Gets Hot! is more likely to kill Guardsmen; on the other hand, you get more guardsmen so the real cost is the loss of the gun. In a vet squad, these are brutal. I've seen a single squad of guardsmen rip apart 2 carnifexes in 2 turns. THEY have been overrun! Just make sure to give your Veterans/Command Squads Carapace Armor.

Assault

• Flamer: Guaranteed to wreck the shit of mass infantry (Orks, I'm looking at you). It doesn't roll to hit so the 1 option a basic infantry squad can use better while veterans usually can take much more effective gear to capitalize on BS4. Also allows for some very painful Overwatch. Minimum of one should be taken in multi-squad blob.
• Heavy Flamer: Only Platoon/Company Command Squads and Veterans can take them but I'll leave this here. S5 AP4 template weapon which makes Orks and Tyranids cry as their infantry fall like a house of cards in the wind. As with the flamer, superior BS of CCS and Veterans is wasted here unless you have a specific plan for them (like anticipating hordes, and lots of them). The Heavy Flamer takes up one of your 3 special weapons choices nowadays, so it stands as an effective niche choice. However, it is a powerful "surprise barbecue" choice if you kit your PCS with heavy flamer and flamers and drop them from a vendetta among enemy infantry.
• Grenade Launcher: Basically a smaller, lighter missile launcher, grenade launchers can throw boltgun-ranged pain at both blobs and light armor with either an S3 AP6 blast frag grenade or an S6 AP4 krak grenade. A good all-rounder choice for infantry squads that either need to stay mobile, or if you're just not sure exactly what they're going to be going up against.
• Meltagun: As with all Imperium Armies, it's your close range anti-tank or anti-TEQ if you don't have plasma. Always remember to check if the vehicle is 6" away so you can use the melta rule (Roll 2D6 for vehicle damage if you're within 1/2 the gun's range, applies to Multi-melta too).
• Demolition Charge: It's Special Weapons team exclusive or comes with the Demolitions Doctrine. Pricey and powerful; it's an S8 AP2 large blast, and one of the few sources of high-AP blasts that isn't artillery or plasma. Used to soften up tanks with the Demolitions doctrine, since strangely enough it's an Assault weapon, so you can get stuck in with meltabombs afterwards; also, it's not specified as a grenade, even though it does have 'throw' range, meaning if you give a special weapons squad 3 of them they can use them all at once. Hilarious if it scatters back onto the user's squad. Also, it's expensive as shit at 10x the cost of a sniper rifle.

Heavy Weapons

Can be taken by Heavy Weapon teams, so 3 in a Heavy Weapon Squad, and 1 per Command/infantry/Veterans squad on the table. You can stick the Heavy Weapons in with normal squads since a HWS is pretty fragile for its points value.

• Mortars - A S4 AP6 Blast with Barrage so it's good for killing things out of line of sight and it has a solid range. Effective at taking out footslogging infantry like Orks, Tyranids and Daemons. Unfortunately, the Wyvern is literally 5 points more than a full Heavy Weapon Squad of 3 Mortars, and does the same job with Twin-link and Shred. Meaning it is almost three times as effective per point value. At least Mortars don't take up a Heavy Support slot.
• Heavy Bolter - It's good at anti-infantry in general but against light tanks the Autocannon serves you better (in fact, statistically, the Autocannon is better against everything T5+ (T3 if Instant Death matters) and only 16% less effective against T4. Also it's available on every vehicle you have, and doesn't have particularly good range, which is a problem for fragile HW squads. Decent in infantry blobs, but look elsewhere for Weapons teams.
• Autocannon - Costs as much as a heavy bolter at the same AP without the extra shot. However, S7 means it's great at wounding infantry and stands a fair chance at penetrating light vehicles. Well rounded and versatile option that often finds a home in Imperial Guard lists; better than a lascannon against AV12 and down, and, as noted above, better than a heavy bolter against T5+ and T3 when Instant Death matters.
• Missile Launcher - The most versatile of the heavy weapons choices, on the surface at least. Can choose between an S4 AP6 blast or an S8 AP3 single shot. Infantry or vehicles will suffer! A bit 'jack of all trades, master of none' though; S8 will struggle vs heavy vehicles, and S4 AP6 is lousy against anything better than GEQ, meaning you're better off settling for autocannons or lascannons unless you're fighting other guard often.
  • Flakk Missiles - For extra points you can get missiles with the skyfire rule. But don't do it since they're too expensive. Just take more Autocannons or a Hydra.
• Lascannon - The Lasgun's big brother. It's your main source of long ranged anti-tank, as it is in the Space Marine Codex. This is probably your go-to heavy weapon, alongside the Autocannon. 48 inches of S9 AP 2.
• Multi-Melta: Surprisingly can be taken by Forgeworld Drop Sentinels, and by Servitors. It's a 24" melta.
• Plasma Cannon: Available to Servitors, Sentinels, and as a potentially expensive sponson on the Leman Russ. Costs the same as a Plasma Gun (and Pistol...) for an S7 AP2 blast that can get hot. Still useful to take out clumped squads of Space Marines.

Melee Weapons

Usually this is not where you want your Guardsmen to be since they're I3, S/T3 and with 1 attack, but being an Imperium army they too get access to Imperium-standard gear. Company/Platoon Commanders, and any types of Sergeants and/or Commissars can take these, except for the hunting lance. They're just here because why not?

• Power Weapons - Comes in standard Axe, Lance, Sword, and Maul forms. Honestly, if you're looking here, you should probably grab an Axe. At I3, you're probably striking last already and having S4 and AP2 will probably serve you well. Can be funny taking a bunch in a combined squad.
• Power Fists - Despite how expensive it is after a price hike, Power Fists are usually the better options since I3 means a majority of armies strike before your guys do. But, weigh carefully against Power Axes. 10 points extra for S6, or slightly cheaper at S4 and have an extra attack? A reasonably important thing to remember is that on guardsmen fists provide much lower utility, as strength 6 has a much harder time punching through vehicles than strength 8 and you don't even get the chance to instant death T4 characters, so think hard about taking them. Be warned, non-Veteran Sergeants can't take these.
• Force Weapons - Primaris Psyker only. Comes in 3 flavors: Axe, Sword, or Staff. All grant the Psyker the Force power so he can charge it up before hopefully trying to instant-death someone. The Staff is probably the best choice to go with because S+2 makes up for AP4. The Force Axe allows you to strike at S+1 AP2 and you generally won't be hitting first at I3 so unwieldy isn't as much a downside to ignoring all armor. The Force Sword being only S:User in spite of AP3 seems like the worst choice, but if you get Iron Arm or Hammerhand, it becomes oh so much more attractive. At least Primaris Psykers get any one of these for free.
• Hunting Lances - Rough Riders get these by default, single use EXPLOSION lances which let them strike at S+2, Initiative +2 and AP3 but good luck getting into close combat in the Dakka days of 40k with such a fragile unit. Would be better if you weren't forced to give them to the whole squad, presumably driving up the cost of the bastards in front who are just going to die anyway.

Standards

Banners/Flags for your army. Have a parade before you drown your enemy in fire. Technically considered Special-Issue Wargear by the codex, but can only be taken by specific squads. Funnily only available to units that don't need them.

• Platoon Standard - Platoon Command Squad and Militarum Tempestus Command Squad only. Counts as causing an additional wound in close combat for the purpose of calculating assault results. Nigh useless, as either Command Squad cannot be reliably equipped for Assault, (Partially true. Normal PCS can have any member grab a Laspistol+Chainsword for 2 attacks/model base, not any better off in CC to be frank) nor will you be reliably winning close combat with a PCS/MTCS, even with the help of a blob Infantry Squad loaded for bear. Keep your points, spend on bodies and guns.

• Regimental Standard - Company Command Squad only. In addition to the Platoon Standard rules, the Regimental Standard also creates a 12" re-rollable Morale/Pinning/Fear test bubble. Useful for the Morale test re-roll, and could win you a sweeping advance or two with a Straken CCS. May give you overlapping results with a Lord Commissar, Kurov's Aquila, or the Draconian Disciplinarian Warlord Trait.

Other

• Vox-Caster
  • Failed Leadership tests for orders issued to a unit with a vox-caster can be re-rolled, provided the officer’s unit also has a vox-caster. An officer may not use a vox-caster’s ability on his own unit.
• Desert Raiders (Forge World) - Not so much of an item as an upgrade for command squads and infantry. It allows you to emulate the Tallarn Desert Raiders by getting Move Through Cover and re-roll 1s to-hit on shooting, but may never take Carapace. This is a cool idea if not expensive at 20 per unit, as it allows you to hop around cover like no tomorrow while pissing off anything without Ignores Cover. Take plasma guns and laugh as you'll die of gets hot less often than a space marine.
  • Alternate take: Get a 50 man blob, give them all desert raiders, and laugh as your soldiers are almost as good as veterans in shooting and moves through cover, allowing even more FRFSRF!

Vehicle Equipment

On top of the standard dozer blade, smoke launchers, extra armour and pintle mounted weapons, the guard also got some neat new wargear for vehicles.

• Smoke Launchers: A one use, instant 5+ cover save vehicles can use instead of shooting. Good for Rhinos, but in a Guard army, unless you’re using the Strike and Shroud! order or being targeted by something you can’t shoot back at, you probably won’t use it much. Smoke Launchers are available from the vehicle wargear list, but most Guard vehicles already have them, so unless you want to use them twice, this is only really relevant to the Taurox, Sentinel, and Hellhound.
• Augur Array: Basically prevents deep striking units from scattering around the vehicle. Considered how little the guard has in the way of deep striking units and the cost of the equipment, this can be a pass. If you do take it, put it on a vehicle that has good armor or can move fast. Useful if you have a deep strike heavy ally detachment or you play LOTS of Scions in your list.
• Camo netting: Gives the vehicle a +1 to cover saves. Useful on just about everything. Put on a Leman Russ to maximize the survivability of tank. Also note that cover save is no longer restricted to just staying still. Note that it stacks both with Stealth and Shrouded, meaning that Psychic mindfuckery can lead you to 3+ cover on open ground. It also stacks with the 5+ cover save from the smoke launchers, giving you a 50% chance of the shots missing. Must have for all your vehicles, no excuses.
• Enclosed Crew Compartment: A must for your arty. Makes open-topped vehicles no longer open-topped. Your Basilisk is no longer one hit by a missile launcher! ...Wait why did you have your Basilisk out in the open? Stuff it behind rocks ASAP!
• Fire Barrels: This is a neat piece of wargear. Basically gives the vehicle a one time use flamer against charging units. At the low cost of 10 points, the barrels will generally not disappoint, although the lack of Soul Blaze is interesting. Sentinels can't take them. Meh on the longer ranged Leman Russes. Autoinclude on Hellhounds (specifically if you opt for Heavy Flamer) and other Hellhound variants.
• Hunter-Killer Missile: This is basically a one shot krak missile with unlimited range at ten points. This is useful since its an alpha-strike option for mech/tank guard that needs some additional long range firepower to take out enemies vehicles. In fifth edition it helped established Imperial guard as king of mechanized armies since it could potentially destroy enemy MEHTAL BAWKS at turn one. Now it's often overlooked option since it shoots only ONCE at guards mediocre ballistic skill, and the thing you would like to target the most, has a cover save (damn those jink saves) with AV12, meaning to reliably destroy it you would need around 20 missiles. That said it is still viable option for flanking Sentinels or Chimeras to take out other key transport or MC, and can give short range Russes something to do for turn one. Pask gets better mileage out of it than anyone else, with his BS4, preferred enemy and reroll to pen.
• Recovery Gear: For 5 points, you get a 1 in 6 chance to make a vehicle no longer immobilized. Take it, do not even argue. Watch your opponent's face when your Demolisher tank he just immobilized comes back into action. Use with tech priest to get a second (if not worse) chance to get the vehicle moving again. With how many vehicles the guard has, a 1 in 6 chance is better then no chance. Be warned that it does not restore a Hull Point. Still useful if you have some points to spare and can't plug in a Techpriest with a couple of Servitors.
• Relic Plating: 3 points for Adamantium Will, protecting your tanks from annoying Technomancy psychic powers like Subvert Machine, Machine Curse, Fury of Mars, or Machine Flense. Except that only one vehicle DOES receive the rule - but RAW, other vehicles get to benefit from it as well. Still a auto-include on any mechanized unit that you're sinking points into, particularly LR squadrons with Pask or a generic tank commander. If vehicles are used in squadrons, best to give all tanks the upgrade. Having the squadron rely on one vehicle to have Adamantium Will is risky, as that tank will be automatically singled out for attacks.
• Pintle Weapons: Though not an auto-include, the pintle weapons do need to be noted. For 5 points, most vehicles (meaning everything but sentinels) can take either a storm bolter or a heavy stubber. Avoid getting the storm bolter. Heavy stubbers have an extra attack, longer range, and cost just the same as a storm bolter. Yes, storm bolters have better AP, but is AP5 really worth more over range and number of attack? Also, pintles are only really worth having on Chimeras and Leman Russes. Putting a pintle weapon on a Basilisk or Emperor forbid, a Deathstrike missile launcher is a waste of points. The only reason you would put a pintle on those vehicles is to avoid losing the main weapon to weapon destroyed rolls. If that is the case, just take camo netting instead.
• Mine Plough: - Dozer Blade on steroids. Not only does it help passing dangerous terrain on any speed, it also allow you to smash a few unlucky soldiers with tank shock. Though, its nowhere near destroyer blades or the (formerly, Defrollas got nerfed in 7th) almighty defrolla, with S2 and only D3+1 hits. Costs different points for different vehicles: 10 points for Chimera; 15 points for Hellhound, Devil Dog, and Bane Wolf; 10 for Leman Russ and variants; 5 for the Hydra, Atlas, and Trojan.

Unit Analysis

HQ

• Company Command Squad: This squad provides leadership to the many. It orders around those who can order around others. This unit gets orders. It gets an ample selection of gear, and some nice buff bodies. This includes a 20pt large blast, penalize the enemy reserve rolls and bonuses to your own. This unit can have its leader switched out with other named leaders with awesome powers and gear. Simply because most other HQ choices lack the capability to survive on their own, either due to lack of invulnerable save and/or relatively weak statline in comparison to HQs of other factions, this should be your HQ of choice. If you want to kit out one, do note that the Company Commander buys his equipment (Krak grenades, carapace armor, camo gear) separately from the veterans, and for a different - more expensive - price. Do not skip this because it may invalidate your army list. Also NEVER forget buying camo gear for the commander! You can attach the following to your Command Squad:
  • Officer of the Fleet: An Officer of the Fleet lets you manipulate Reserves, provided you pass a Leadership check (on a measly Leadership 7); should you pass, you can either add +1 to your Reserve rolls or subtract one from your opponent's rolls. Generally considered inefficient, since Guard armies tend towards jamming the board instead of starting off it.
  • Astropath: 25 points for a one-wound ML 1 Psyker, that only has access to Telepathy (and incidentally is the only Guard Psyker with it). The Astropath's main draw is that he lets your Command Squad throw out an extra Psychic Shriek.
    • • Errata Update: With the new FAQ, Psychic Shriek now autohits (it lacks a profile, so isn't actually an attack; simply channel the power and the target is affected, no to-hit roll necessary), even against flyers, making this guy an incredibly cost-effective little beast if you want to REALLY ruin some MC's day. He can scream flyrants off the board (though you'll need to toss some SERIOUS dice at them to beat that 4+ DtW), and even do some damage to Wraithknights.
  • Master of Ordnance: This guy is like a tiny Basilisk. Once per turn he is able to call down a Basilisk-type attack on the enemy, always subject to scatter - 3D6" and "only" 2D6" when scoring a hit - through you can still substract his BS if you have LoS. Not very good unfortunately, but can be fun for spamming pie plates unless you want to have a Primaris Psyker them with prescience - which is a viable option, but you are bound to resent the inflated point cost and hassle of it all (Prescience does not work on weapons which do not roll to hit, as it is not worded as granting Twin-Linked) This is incorrect per page 33 of the BRB, which states that if a model has the ability to re-roll its rolls To Hit and chooses to do so after firing a Blast weapon, the player re-rolls both the scatter dice and the 2d6, so it not being granted Twin-Linked doesn't matter. However, since the bombardment has an unlimited range, if you place Master of Ordnance ANYWHERE, it can be used to troll Ork and Tyranid swarms with a Strength 9 plate of instant death (which can now ignore cover with orders), since it's likely to land on something or other. If the Master of Ordinance wants to put the big guns on something else, the Order "Smite At Will!" provides split fire to allow him to do so. Again, once in close-combat or perhaps, if your Company Command Squad gets dismounted or shot at, just push him in front of a bullet. He's useless if there's nothing to shoot at or if you have to run around since it can't be fired on the move. Something worth considering is dropping an Inquisitor with a Psyoccolum into the squad. Use the Master of Ordinance to snipe Psykers, reducing the scatter by 10 when having LoS will help make up for the poor accuracy.
    • Alternate Take: Without Ballistic Skill manipulation or twin-linking, even with LoS you've got about a 5.5% chance to score a direct hit on what you were aiming at, with around a 13% of just hitting your target at all with LoS. Feeling lucky? No, you're not, so if you're going to take this guy make sure you have a way of making him pay off.

• Lord Commissar: Lord Commissar is a Independent buffed out Commissar, the key ability of him makes everyone around him LD10 and Stubborn. And that is awesome. The main issue is that he is a kill point himself and he takes away a slot of HQ for more Company Command Squads. Let it not be said that he doesn't have his own uses, though. You want a blob-platoon to do REALLY well? Bind 'em into one giant squad, put a Lord Commissar in there and run it all over the place killing everything in sight. Seriously. 30 guys means 3 Sergeants with Power Weapons, 60+ attacks on the charge and a Lord Commissar with a Power Weapon as gravy. Combined Squad of 50 lead by Lord Commissar is likely to make the opponent cry. It's also Stubborn, so watch your friends complain about how the squad is still coming at them despite missing half of the guys once in it. If you're feeling particularly threatened, stick him in the middle of a Combined Squad so he will never be shot at (except by Snipers and Precision shots. Also, Independent Character grants 2+ LoS! just in case...), and you can ignore challenges in favor of a slightly less potent Leadership of generic Commissars in the squad - particularly useful, as unlike Chaos Champions and such, you will lack the capability to take damage that will easily go through your armor (Initiative 3 forcing you to take first hits doesn't help much, either). For this same reason, using Lord Commissar to keep Conscript Squads useful is not a good idea due to lack of distraction sergeants and poor Ld. Just be aware that he can't be Warlord if you've taken any Company Command Squads. If you consider taking him - Priest buffs better and you can buy two instead of one LC. So, yeah, just take the Priest.
  • Tactical Note: He's the only Independent Character you have, aside from an Enginseer, that can take Meltabombs. With his WS5, he's probably the man to use them with, since per the new FAQ you get the one grenade per phase. Give him a power fist and stick him in a squad of Ogryns/Bullgryns to give them some sorely-needed Anti-Tank and AP2; he can generally be relied upon to hit, and at S6 he'll reliably wound anything short of the tougher Monstrous Creatures...which is what the Meltabomb is for. In addition, being an Independent Character, he's harder to snipe out of his blob, and is the cheapest option for an HQ if you want to build an army on a budget.
  • Important notes regarding Summary Execution! - Firstly, Summary Execution allows you to automatically count as passing your leadership test, *after* you have used up any re-rolls you maybe entitled to when you fail a moral/pinning/fear check. So a Regimental Standard works wonders by staving this ability off a little longer. However, now when you use it, you have to roll a d6 - on a 1-2, your opponent gets to choose who gets BLAMed instead of you. It's not a pretty sight when you accidentally execute the guy with the meltagun right when a tank is bearing down on you.

• Tank Commander: The Tank Commander is a whole bucket of fun for mechanized armies. You buy a normal Leman Russ squad (detailed in the Heavy Support Section) save for buying a minimum of two tanks in the squadron (because the commander needs an underling), and for the cost of a Platoon Command Squad, the whole squad counts as an HQ slot and one of the tanks now has a Commander, thus becoming BS 4 and a Character (note that this does NOT confer Look Out, Sir!).
  • Tank Orders: Note that RAW, Tank Orders are not actually Orders. At the start of the Shooting phase, the Tank Commander may issue a Tank Order his own unit. This is similar to a Leadership Check (Roll 2d6 and get equal or less than 9), but RAW is not actually a Leadership Check. This notably means that you do not benefit from any Warlord Traits that boost Leadership, nor the Cadian Battlegroup's ability to roll 3d6-drop highest when taking Orders. The Tank Orders in question are:
    • Full Throttle! - Tank commander's unit moves Flat Out, moving 6+d6 (ignoring the limitation from being Heavy vehicles). Nice if some unit ended up catching your tanks by surprise and you need to get out of there fast.
    • Gunners, Kill on Sight! - Tank Commander's unit shoots and the Tank commander must shoot at a different target from the rest of the unit. Pretty much Split-Fire, but for tanks. Has potential. Useful for Punisher Pask with Vanquisher wingmen so you don't waste its lascannon and armorbane cannon on infantry or light armor.
    • Strike and Shroud! - Tank Commander's unit makes a shooting attack, and then all vehicles that have not used their smoke launchers previously must use their smoke launchers. Useful if you haven't used your smokes, and enemy has caught your unit off-guard but you don't want to sacrifice your shooting for 4+ cover.
  • Analysis: For Tank-based armies, he can actually be a points saver. If you were planning on taking a Leman Russ of any kind and did not wish to pay for the mandatory HQ choice of either a Lord Commissar or Command Squad, the Tank Commander effectively fulfills the HQ tax for a mere 30 points, and unlike a baseline command squad or Commissar, that 30 points is going to be useful. In addition, his boosted BS is much better used in a Tank that uses regular shooting rather than relying on a blast template, as he only reduces deviation by 1 inch which still means at least 3 inches of deviation on average, while on a per-shot weapon, he will give you 1/6th more hits due to now hitting on a 3+. With just the Punisher Cannon, he is statistically able to get 3 more hits than a regular Punisher Russ, which helps against everything except flyers; snapshots don't care about your BS4. If you took Pask, however, Preferred Enemy does help.
    • Due to the Cadian Battle Group only requiring 1 Command Choice to be a legal formation, and because the Tank Commander can alone be legal for that, you can now field a Tank Commander (and by extension any squadron of 2 or 3 Leman Russes) without using up a slot anywhere else. For CAD-based armies, this is a godsend as you lose nothing from not being part of another detachment while being able to free up your HS slots with superior Leman Russes. Note that doing this means you don't actually get any of the Cadian Battle Group's special rules (as they all either reference units in that detachment, Company Command Officers, or Lasguns, none of which the Tank Commander is or has). Excellent choice for some Battle Brother armies who benefit from taking Guard tanks but otherwise would rather not pay the tax for an infantry platoon or veteran squad that comes with an Allied Detachment.
  • Loadout: The improved BS on the Tank Commander means you will want Sponsons to take advantage; although you could run a trio of Heavy Bolters, in practice anti-infantry is something you should have throughout your army anyway, whether via Wyverns or a mass of Lasguns. Plasma usually means explosions and thus is generally not worth taking unless you have easy access to Preferred Enemy (read: are running a Steel Host); this usually means that Multimelta Sponsons are your best choice, while the hull Lascannon completes the ensemble. As a result, you want to avoid an Ordnance turret, and preferably take a direct-fire one. This means that practically, the Vanquisher and Exterminator Autocannon are your main choices; if you wish to use a Punisher, then you're best-served with taking Pask instead.

Special Characters

• Commissar Yarrick: Awesome, fluffy man. Costs quite a bit but far less than what he cost in 5th ed codex, making him fairly cheap for what he brings. Very close combat oriented. He can come back from the dead... a lot. He has some nifty gadgets. He has a Stormbolter for shooting up stuff before charging, comes with Preferred Enemy: Orks, and confers it to any unit he joins. Yarrick also has a reputation of being nasty as crap in close combat; he can take on Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka one-on-one and have a fighting chance of coming out on top. He's got an official Power klaw, a decent WS, he's got Eternal Warrior and his come back from the dead bullshit, and is a senior officer. Additionally, his Baleful Eye (counts as an Heirloom) now acts like a hotshot laspistol, and he carries a power field for a much-needed 4+ invulnerable save (also an Heirloom). However, he is no longer Fearless (and doesn't get Stubborn in return) and can be overrun in close combat with some bad Ld rolls. But if he is your warlord he has the Draconian Disciplinarian warlord trait, negating somewhat the loss of the Fearless rule. Furthermore, he can now issue orders like an officer. However, as per the FAQ rough draft for Imperial Guard, Yarrick cannot be the warlord if there's another model in the army with the Senior Officer special rule, but to get around that you take Creed as well, as he has a different rule. He can also Summarily Execute (not that it fits his fluff, but whatever), so use that to your advantage as well. If you take Yarrick, you'd better take him as a warlord. Otherwise he ends up as an expensive Commissar with few of the perks of a Commissar.
  • A good unit to place Yarrick in is the Platoon command squad. Give the squad a medipack and vox caster, and watch as Yarrik spews orders and keeps on fighting. Adding the standard and las pistols is nice, but not necessary. I say this because Yarrick is good in both defensive and offensive builds. Do you have him sit back and issue orders, protecting himself if attacked, or do you have him charge forward into assault, ripping enemies to shreds? Either way, Yarrick with a platoon command squad will please.
• Ursarkar E. Creed: For a decent point cost, one Company Commander may be upgraded to Creed. Creed is pretty nifty for a couple of things now, although he can't do his classic Tactical Genius-ing any longer (at least, not without the right Warlord Trait). Instead, he can issue 3 orders per turn, AND gets two Warlord Traits (which he can roll on two different charts for), AND rerolls all failed orders. His two hotshot laspistols now mean that he benefits from Gunslinger. Do note that since a roll cannot be rerolled more than once, his special rule prevents him from benefiting from vox-casters. Thus, if you have no other officer in your army (full vet or mechanized), from his cost of 80 can be deducted the cost of all the vox-casters you would have taken, making him fairly cheap in this configuration.
  • Sergeant Kell: Kell now can only be used by a force that already contains Creed and acts more like a bodyguard than a support unit. He can still allow units to use his leadership (8 - useful when trying to order squads without leaders that wouldn't otherwise benefit from a commissar, like special/heavy weapon teams, Conscripts, or ratlings) in an Order test and he now automatically succeeds LoS! rolls if the wound is allocated to him instead of another member in the unit (i.e. Creed). He can also auto-pass Glorious Interventions (which he must perform when possible). His cost includes a Regimental banner,a power fist and power sword, and 2 wounds.
• Colonel "Iron Hand" Straken: The new Codex gave Straken a couple of nice buffs with Monster Hunter and Smash he can now hold his own against armored units and MCs, and all units within 6 inches of him gain Furious Charge and Counter-Attack. (Keep a few Ogryns or Bullgryn near him to make the most of this bubble.) With 3+1 attacks basic, at S6, I3 and AP2: Straken makes Hammernators crap their metal pants. Of course, he is unlikely to survive unless his squad is optimized for such an occasion, so it would be a good idea to have 3-4 Melta Guns (being able to bring down some terminators before an assault far outclasses the extra attack from the pistol), a Ministorum Priest, and Nork Deddog to accompany him. Alternatively with Implacable Determination, his command squad has Relentless (allowing Relentless Snipers/ Plasma Gunners or a Relentless Lascannon/ Autocannon for some dakka then charge action, or better yet, a master of ordnance for a Baslisk blast before charging!) This way, you can charge most CC units and get away with it. Eldar, Dark Eldar and Necrons may give you trouble though. Also, you may have to bite your tongue if you come up against a squad full of power weapons, i.e Grey Knights, Howling Banshees, Incubi. Instead, pull back, shoot them to pieces, and then throw a pie plate on top of them because otherwise, you'll be forced to challenge them and he's not gonna survive that. Don't forget you can always measure their threat distance to be sure.
• Nork Deddog: Nork is one o' da smartest Ogryns. He and da commanda have a bond. When he dies, he attacks every bad guy trying to hurt the commander. If your command squad is going to be in the fray of battle, take this somewhat expensive body guard. Now gets along well with Commissars (although using Summary Execution in a CCS is a VERY bad idea) to the point they can never execute him. Now he also gets FnP, HoW, Stubborn, and can sacrifice his regular attacks (including the ones he gets when he dies) to perform a headbutt that has a profile of S+3, AP3, and Concussive. Yes, this means he can now ID a Space Marine Captain. Like Kell, he also has to make Glorious Interventions and automatically passes them. However due to majority unit toughness his toughness is essentially 3 so don't expect great things from him, except if you expected him to not die from S6 shot.
• Knight Commander Pask: The Guard's tank ace has some new tricks that give whatever tank he's riding in a bigger boost than that of a basic Tank Commander. Pask's tank can reroll to penetrate armour, and it also gains additional bonuses depending on the tank:
  • Leman Russ, Vanquisher, Demolisher, and Eradicator can reroll to-hit rolls. In the case of all but the Vanquisher, this will be the scatter dice.
  • Exterminator and Punisher gain Rending. A rending Punisher ( 20 S5 shots, benefitting from Pask even more if he's warlord) with him is so popular it is known as a Pasknisher.
  • Executioner gains an alternate firing profile: 36" S7 AP2, Heavy 1, Large blast, Blind, Gets Hot!
  • Just be warned, what ever his Tank is, make sure he is used. If you search forums and all the Facebook groups and shit there is a 99.9% chance that it has Pask as the warlord in army lists. He's an extra 40 points on top of the points you already paid for a generic Tank Commander, plus the Russes you must buy. He'll bloat the cost of a squad so it cannot be emphasized enough; make sure you get your point's worth!!!
  • Friendly reminder! When in a Vanquisher, firing against an AV14 opponent, pask has a 72% chance of doing damage to it.
  • Murder machine that he is, FAQ has restricted Pask's inclusion in formations. He can only be taken if a formation specifically says he can be taken in it; since there aren't any that say this at the moment, in practice this means he'll only show up in CAD's, Ally detachments, and as the Battle Group Command choice in a Cadian Battlegroup.
• General Myndoras Odon (Forge World): Patton of 40k, updated in the new Doom of Mymaera. Killed a bunch of Eldar on some ice ball then died next campaign when his transport flipped (Patton died in a car crash after the war). Now costs 55 to replace a senior officer in a command squad, but at least the squad is now fully customisable. He's sorta a poor man's Creed. With the same standard orders, the same Ld & can give up to 3 orders per turn. He's not a tactical genius but he re-rolls Seize the Initiative if he's the army warlord. To further compare him to Creed, despite being armed with a power fist he is only wearing flak armour, so he's far less likely to survive a game than Creed too, but he's still a flat upgrade to a regular company commander, just be aware that's 55 points for an extra order and a power fist, when you already had the commander in your squad. If you have points to spare, give whatever you plan to order a vox. Oh & he can take a dedicated Chimera or VALKYRIE! Take the Valk & let some vet/spec wep squad jack it. Take him as one CCS & Creed/Kell in another for two massive order bubbles with bubbles of re-roll morale/pinning.
  • There's a slight rules collision with him; he has the same special rule as Creed, Supreme Commander, but the FW's version only allows him to issue two more orders (up to three, somehow), and lacks the "is a Senior Officer" and "can re-roll any failed orders" parts. If you go by RAW, he's worthless, if you don't, then he's a cheaper Creed with a predetermined Trait in place of Tactical Genius.
• Colonel 'Snake' Stranski (FW - IA1, 2°E): Mechanised, scoring Company Command Squad. 225 points for the Colonel, 4 vets and their Chimera (Heavy Flamer turret, hull mounted Heavy Bolter, extra armour) and, as above, you can't choose the upgrades for the squad or transport (Med-pack, vox operator and 2 meltaguns). The Colonel has a nice little rule - when firing from the Chimera, his 2 plasma pistols count as Twin-Linked. He also doesn't block models from using the Chimera's fire points by using the top hatch...but that's back from when Chimeras had 5 firing points, so... (albeit his CCS's 2 meltaguns should mean this is aimed to let them all shoot...but FW).
  • Note: It's IA, his rules are outdated as hell. He can't issue Orders because he doesn't have the 'Voice of command' rule (but he's a CCS, assume he has it). His WT 'Scoring' means nothing in 7th Edition, it'd become 'Objective Secured' at best. So, if your opponent feels he's being lenient enough to let you use FW and says he won't concede anymore then he has no Warlord Trait and can't issue Orders, being completely dependent on gentlemant agreements.

Regimental Specialists

0-3 of each of these units that don't take up any slots. All are independent characters (except the Commissar, see below). All of them are effective as unit buffers and all of them are as cheap as chips for what they do. If you take an allied detachment of the Guard, they might be worth consideration since they can fill roles that would otherwise be taken up by HQ choices such as a librarian or a techmarine. Note that Imperial Agents supersedes a lot of these rules, as allying in the Agents versions via the Enginseer Congregation, Psykana Division, and Ministorum Delegation is better in almost every way, with all having expanded special rules and wargear options. The main disadvantages relate to normal Battle Brother issues of not being able to start inside allied transports, and detachment limits if you're playing in a group that uses old ITC-hammer restrictions.

• Primaris Psyker: Can upgrade to Mastery Level Two, comes with free force weapon, cheap and adds +1 to a Squad's Deny rolls. What's not to like? Keep in mind that the new Force Staff rules make the Psyker strike at Strength 5, with AP 4, and with Concussive Force (Power Maul rules). Gone are Lightning Arc and Nightshroud making him even more of a support character. He can take from Pyromancy, Biomancy, Telekinesis, Daemonology and now he gets access to Divination. With the Guard's capacity for enormous blobs of dudes, this guy's buffs can go a long way. Gets executed in case of Perils of the Warp if there is a Commissar(-lord/Yarrick) in the same squad, so no FnP save and the fact he has 2 wounds ( His stats are surprisingly good, maybe because GW forgot to change them with the step down from the HQ FoC slot ? ) won't save him. Also, don't forget he's Ld 9. If you fancy using Heavy Weapon Teams, but hate how often they ignore your orders, just attach and enjoy.
  • Tactical Thought: Your two best disciplines are likely going to be Divination and Telekinesis. Divination grants Prescience, which is amazing for Guard (BS3 gets the biggest bonus from twin linking - a whopping 25% improved chance to hit - which you can apply to entire squadrons of vehicles, or a 50-man blob of lasguns & heavy weapons), along with some other neat tricks, while Telekinesis grants some nice offensive stuff and Assail, which helps keep enemies out of melee (note that Strikedown does not require an unsaved wound to work; you channel the power and the bad guys are slowed, regardless of damage dealt).

• Ministorum Priest: These guys are your cheap unit buffers. They are Zealots (Fearless and Hatred) and they can use war hymns in the assault phase to additionally augment their unit (reroll to wound, reroll failed saves, or grants the Preacher Smash, which is hilarious, albeit for the most part impractical). Rerolling Saves in assault is really handy in fact, since re-rolling 5+ saves is nearly equivalent to power armour, anything without a Power Weapon (Orks without Choppas / Berserkers without Chainaxes) will find the Guardsmen tough to shift. The hymns now affect Ogryns - and bullgryns. These guys are best used in offensive units, since Fearless does prevent you from going to ground (don't put them in a blobs hiding in cover with objective or units behind aegis lines). Don't rely too heavily on those hymns, because he can only choose one hymn at the beginning of the Assault Phase and the war hymns are tested on his Ld7. Comes with a Laspistol, but can upgrade to a Plasma gun for a few extra points or an Autogun for free. Unless you care about the Priest getting an extra attack in Close Combat along with an hymn, adding to the unit's ranged dakka isn't a bad idea. The wording on the upgrade never says replace so you keep the pistol.
  • Tactical Thought: Ministorum priests are also no-brainers if you plan on sticking Space marine/Grey Knight ally characters (like Khaldor Draigo or ML3 GK Librarian) since the armor and wound reroll and the zealot melee reroll bonuses carry over to Battle Brothers (so you'd end up with rerollable 2+, rerollable 3++ (, S10 rerollable hits with Instant Death and metric buttload of wounds in case something big lands and your blob takes twat-ton of hits)
  • Imperial Agents Alternative: With the Ministorum Delegation your priests get Shield of Faith (6+ Invuln Save and Adamantium Will) via the formation, and the added options of bolt pistols, boltguns, melta bombs, and access to the Sororitas Ranged, Melee, and Ecclesiarchy Relics wargear lists.

• Techpriest Enginseer: Costs like a Terminator, stats like a Guardsman. The Techpriest Enginseer has Power Armor, an Axe and Servo Arm, but you are not using the Techpriest for holding the line. Rather, the Techpriest has three main uses.
  • Awaken the Machine Spirit grants Power of the Machine Spirit to a nearby Guard vehicle within 12". This lets the Leman Russ function with both Sponsons and an Ordnance turret, but the other benefit is letting otherwise-slow Guard vehicles (meaning the Taurox) get better flank shots, or to get around targeting restrictions with squadroned vehicles. Worst comes to worst, an extra 6" inches on a Chimera's Heavy Flamer can dislodge an enemy unit. The main thing to note is even with 12" range, most Guard vehicles are slow enough to keep up with, while Forward For the Emperor can be useful in a pinch to let the Techpriest run after buffing. Note as per the FAQ that this does not combowombo with Manticores.
  • Blessing of the Omnissiah lets a Techpriest attempt to repair a vehicle, either for a Hull Point, destroyed weapon, or Immobilization. This tends to be worse than the first option for three reasons: This requires the Techpriest to be in base-to-base contact with the vehicle being repaired, there's a chance it can fail, and your opponent will generally focus-fire vehicles to ensure their destruction beforehand. Furthermore, for the cost of two Techpriests and accompanying servitors, you could just buy more vehicles. Where this ability really comes into play though? Super-Heavies. Between their improved armor, hull points, and immunity to Immobilization or destroyed weapons, a Baneblade or allied Knight might actually survive long enough to be an eligble repair target.
  • The third option is to add them as a budget character for a combined Guard squad. One could do worse, as they do add +1 Leadership to a unit, which will help with Orders. This is a tertiary choice compared to taking a Priest or Commissar, which only really comes up when playing around with Formations.
  • Servitors: Well-armored and start with servo-arms (which operate identically as powerfists but at AP 1, which are actually viable since they also increase the Techpriest's chances at repairing shit. A cheap way to put some plasma cannons onto the field. But there's a catch- if the Servitor squad doesn't have a Techpriest in it, the Servitors have a 50-50 chance of being unable to move, shoot, or assault that turn (though they will still fight if already locked in close combat).
  • Fun thing, take servitors with plasmacannons and use the order Fire on my target to get 2 S7 AP2 Ignores Cover blasts, it's fun against heavily armored gloryboys and ruin camping blueberry scum!
  • Trojan Support Vehicle (Forge World): This ammo carrier can be purchased as the Techpriest's dedicated transport. It has cardboard armor despite being built on a Chimera chassis, and is armed with only a hull-mounted heavy bolter, but that's not the point. The point is that it can bestow the Preferred Enemy (Everyone!) rule to a single tank or artillery model within 6". This works best with things which pack a lot of dakka - like a Leman Russ Punisher. Also good for re-rolling gets hot on plasma Russes. As a happy consequence of Preferred Enemy applying to a whole unit in 7th (which the 6th edition Trojan didn't take into account), you can effectively pay 10 points a model for PE on a tank squadron.
  • If you do not plan on giving your techpriests orders or Trojan Support Vehicles, then consider taking them as detachments from the Imperial Agents codex. Per detachment, you are getting a techpriest with servitor options. What this nets you are the Canticles of the Omnissiah which while nothing to lose your mind over, can do marvelous things like allowing re-roll to hits in shooting and melee as well as buffing cover saves and strength. Something to consider if you are taking techpriests anyway.

• Commissar: Not exactly 0-3 like the other advisors, nor are they Independent characters, however you get one per Company or Platoon Command squad in your army for 25pts. He can be attached to pretty much any squad other than Ratlings or Psykers but has to stay there for the entire battle. He grants the squad Stubborn (so don't bother with Ogryns) and can OPT to summarily execute a squad member to automatically pass a Ld test after rolling for one. Only problem is you have to roll a D6. On a 3+, you choose, 1 or 2, your opponent chooses. Not great if this happens to a squad with one melta-gun when a land raider full of terminators is bearing down on them. The freedom to put them in any unit you like gives you the flexibility to add a little melee / morale boost to any squad that you might not put a different advisor in. Don't forget that Commissars can swap their bolt pistol out for a bolter at no extra point cost. Unless you want your Commissar getting an extra attack in melee, adding to the squad's ranged dakka isn't a terrible idea. On the other hand, he can take a Power Fist, making him a surprisingly mean melee fighter.
  • Challenge Buckets For the same point cost you can grab an inquisitor to retain the morale bonus (not quite as good though) and will get a character with better armor, a higher initiative and an additional attack. He also gets discounts on power swords and plasma pistols allowing you to kit him out for cheaper. Just food for thought when facing melee heavy and challenge heavy lists.
  • Tactical Note: Unlike Priests, your other go-to blob buffer, Commissars are a) not Independent Characters, and b) don't have a 4++ save, making them a lot more vulnerable to enemy Precision Shot attacks. If you can only afford one Regimental Specialist for your blob, and you don't intend on them taking cover, go for the Priest, every time. He'll survive Precision Shots 11/12 times, vs the Commissar, who'll do it...2/3 times (which drops to 1/2 if the shooter has AP5 weaponry...which they will).

Troops

All Imperial Guard Troop Choices are so versatile, you can write whole separate articles on tactics for any bit of the following alone which we eventually will at this rate!

• A note on Sergeants: Every Infantry and Veteran Squad of ten men, with the sad exception of Conscripts, replaces the tenth man with a Sergeant. Sergeants have slightly higher Leadership and an extra attack and eschew the army's preferred longarm (in this case a lasgun) for a pistol-CCW combo. Like many squad leaders, they are also Characters, meaning that a 50-man blob with an attached Regimental Specialist actually has six Characters instead of one; this is useful for challenges, since for the most part you want to keep your Priest out of close combat with that Ork Warboss. Also note that guard sergeants are apparently selected not just for their ability to not piss themselves at the first sign of trouble, but also for their aptitude in melee; Sergeants get two attacks base, which usually goes to three with their pistol-CCW combo. On the charge, they have four; this makes them surprisingly mean if you kit them out with power weapons and make sure they actually get into melee.

• Infantry Platoon: The backbone of the Imperial Guard army, the Infantry Platoon is akin to having a mini-Force Organization Chart inside a single Troops Choice. Beyond a mandatory Platoon Command Squad and two Infantry Squads, an Infantry Platoon can include up to three additional Infantry Squads, up to three Special Weapon Squads, up to five(!) Heavy Weapon Squads, and a Conscript Squad on top!
  • Platoon Command Squad: The Platoon Squad is a weaker Company Command Squad in that they are only BS 3 instead of 4 and cannot take Advisors, Camo or Carapace. Furthermore, the Platoon Commander can issue a single Order but does NOT have Senior Officer. Remember that their main advantage is they can be kept relatively cheap, free your Company Command Squad to issue the bigger orders and that they can serve in a pinch as a pseudo-Special Weapon Team, providing a cheap concentration of Flamers or Grenade Launchers (or Sniper Rifles if you're feeling cute).
  • Infantry Squad: (2-5) The basic Guardsman squad gives you nine Guardsmen with Lasguns, and a Sergeant with Pistol and Melee Weapon. With cardboard armor and shots that miss half the time, the basic Guard squad does not amount to much. However, their real strength lies in the Combined Squads special rule, letting multiple Infantry Squads from the same Platoon join together into a single larger unit of up to 50 models; this lets them benefit more from Blessings, Orders, attached Commissars and Priests, and the many other ways that they can be buffed. Assuming two squads can get into rapid-fire range, a single First Rank Fire/Second Rank Fire order would provide 56 lasgun shots, for a whole lot of diddly.
    • Loadout: An Infantry Squad can take a Special Weapon and a Heavy Weapon; Heavy Weapons become more attractive in larger combined squads, since they let a unit maintain a larger coherency chain with heavy weapons in the backfield as the main line advances. That said, due to their BS 3 and inefficiency with Split Fire, the Autocannon/Grenade Launcher is the 'most' efficient option for this unit. For one, the Autocannon and Grenade Launcher cost the same as a single Plasma Gun, will not blow up in the hands of your troopers, and they can become a credible threat against Rhinos&Razorbacks via Bring It Down. A more assault-oriented unit can skip the Heavy Weapons, and just give the Sergeants Power Axes; Unwieldy doesn't hurt as much with base Initiative 3, and Sergeants become surprisingly effective murder machines when assisted by a Priest with Battle Hymns. Finally, it 'is' possible to spend a point to replace a Sergeant's laspistol with a Boltgun, which can help with adding just a little bit of extra punch to your unit.
  • Conscripts: (0-1) Conscripts are tied with Grots for being the cheapest non-Forgeworld models in the game point-wise. 3 points gives you a Guardsman with reduced Weapon Skill, Ballistic Skill and Leadership, such that they NEED a Character with good Leadership attached to them should you wish to do much with them. However, being able to field 50 models for every 30 regular Guardsmen has its own advantages, whether you wish to use them as mobile cover, or as a throwaway assault screen.
  • Choosing a Character: Since Conscripts don't get any loadout options, the main choice you face with them is which character to attach to them. In general, the Priest is the best choice for this unit, since Fearless removes their main weakness to being routed, while Zealot and War Hymns can make them somewhat-threatening in melee. An honorable mention should instead go to the Commissar for smaller squads, on account of having better Leadership, and retaining the ability to Go to Ground on account of Stubborn. Though a Techpriest "can" raise their Leadership to 8, his melee profile is not strong enough compared to the buffs provided by a Priest, and he lacks the Stubbornness.
  • Alternate Tactic: Take 50 of them plus a Commissar for 175 points. Don't use them as much for shooting, try to get them as fast as possible close to the biggest, meanest close combat unit the enemy has. Now just sit in front of them. Charging into them means taking 100 lasgun shots in Overwatch (where their shitty Ballistic skill doesn't matter) and spending several turns punching through them. If the opponent doesn't take the bait, throw a frag grenade and charge in. Take two squads with Commissars for 350 points. They will quickly earn their points back tying up those nasty CC threats.
    • • Building on that alternate tactic above: Having experimented with this I find this is a very effective tactic, especially when up against melee deathstar formations like the Lucifer Armoured Task Force with 48 Assault Terminators. However I would recommend switching out the Commissars for Priests and attaching the Commissars to your Infantry Squads. The reasons being that, firstly, Ministorum Priests will make the unit straight up fearless, good for melee roadbumps and you don't have to bother with the execution. Secondly, you are far, far more likely to be issuing orders to the Infantry Squads rather than the Conscripts. The Priest is an upgrade to Conscript LD but not Infantry Squad LD, where Commissars improve the LD of both, and by switching these around you thereby ensure that both units have better order reliability and that the buffs in question are proportional to their value, as here the Conscripts are only roadbumps. Finally, with the Commissar in the Infantry Squad you can still go to ground in a pinch. Do so behind your conga line of Priest-led Conscripts for a nice cover save if need ever be.
    • Alternate Tactic 2: Make them into deathstar. Add allied Liberius Concave with tigrus and 2 terminator Librarians, add 2 Primaris Psykers, 3 Ministorium Priests and here you go: invisible 50 man squad that hits 100 S3 attacks on charge, rerolling hits (zealot), rerolling wounds (prayer), haves 2+ rerollable save (terminator armor hit allocation plus prayers), 3++ rerollable save, 4+ FNP (biomancy) and Rending (Misfortune). There are few melee units that are more deadly than Conscripts. Beware tarpit walkers with AV13 though, they can be problematic but there are few of them, and even fewer that could not be taken out with ranged weapons fire.
    • Alternate Tactic 3: You don't have to sink 700+ points into them as suggested above. Take 50 conscripts, add 2 ministorum priests and a single white scars character. My preference is for a techmarine on a bike. At 285 points, think of them as a multi-purpose tool. They can bubble wrap, tarpit, throw a ton of dakka at FMCs or light infantry, or (my favorite) hit and run right into an opponent's backfield with the techmarine's servo arm ready to swing at some sweet rear armor. Think of them as a delivery system. And also consider attaching a Xenos inquisitor with some wacky grenades. You want your opponent shooting at them - if they're shooting at conscripts they're killing 3-point models instead of shooting something else, and all your independent characters can just jump ship onto another squad.
  • Heavy Weapon Squad: (0-5) This is where the awesome firepower comes from. Some don't like them because they die rather quickly if they are in front of the Squad. (AND WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU HAVE THEM THERE?) This can be solved by putting them in ruins or other such cover. But if you buy Heavy Weapon Squad instead of putting heavy weapons in your Infantry Squad, they can target big things and not waste the lasgun fire. On top of this, there is a split fire order to get around this restriction. Lascannons are nice here. Missile Launchers on the surface are good, but Autocannons do their job better due to not scattering and being able to take orders better with more quantity meaning you have 6 shots at S7 instead of 3 shots at S8, and if you need it for anti Armor, Lascannons are universally better for that job anyways. Autocannons are universally good, great for giving Monstrous Creatures and MEQs a hard time (your opponent can only make so many armor saves when your guns wound on 2s for the latter and the former isn't known for fantastic armor) and can put up a good fight against your average transport (especially if you can get a side or rear hit in) and if you kit out a whole HWS with them, they put out enough shots to not make a basic Guardsman's BS3 too terrible and actually have a chance at damaging AV13 with a few lucky hits. In fact the only one that isn't that good to take here is the heavy bolter which not only is already provided by almost every vehicle you can field, costs the same as the Autocannon, and while it does give an extra shot, it has a foot less range and is two strength lower than the autocannon. They'd be worthwhile if they were only 5 points, but they aren't, so pass. They are slower than Sentinels, but they are cheap for what they do (per-model), can be modified to engage any threat, and don't take up an important Force Organization slot by themselves. Don't forget that you can give them a normal commissar or PP and pass checks for those tasty and delicious orders. Also with prescience or BRING IT DOWN order, a full lascannon or Autocannon squad can reliably bring down flyers from the sky. If you are indeed using some combined with orders to boost them, you might as well take a Company standard because they will have to pass a Ld7 ( Unless you stick a PP with them, but it quickly gets expensive ) morale check with their first loss ( Don't be fooled by W2 : Most things that will target you will Instant Death T3 ).
    • Alternate Tactic: For the commander on a budget, look to the new Cadian Heirlooms of Conquest for a little gem called Volkov's Cane. for 10 points, orders to units within 6" fail only on a double 6. Your Ld 7 squad now has an effective Leadership of 11! Combine with a Regimental Standard (for a combined upgrade value of 25 points), and the HWS tests on an effective Leadership value of 10/11 on every test that matters. They'll listen, they won't run, and they'll do their job properly.
    • Don't take flakk missiles if you weren't going to take a missile launcher normally. They are only slightly better than a group of autocannons against flyers (a squad of autocannons averages 1 hit, flakk missiles 1.5), at a cost of 45 points extra points. That's only 5 points short of a primaris to add on and make those autocannons twin-linked (averaging around 2 hits) and more able to receive orders. Take a Hydra tank instead.
  • Special Weapon Squads: (0-3) A distraction. Six models, three which must take Special Weapons. They lack the Ballistic Skill, ablative wounds or Carapace that Veterans get, meaning this unit has two main uses: As a throwaway piece-trading unit, or as a cheap objective holder. 45 points gets three flamers or Grenade Launchers, or the option exists to give them up to three Demolition Charges, tripling their base price. However, little can compare to three S8 AP 2 Large Blasts causing havoc in the enemy backfield. As they do not get a Sergeant or Vox-Caster, they do not take well to Orders, so plan accordingly. Note that they overlap a lot in cost and loadout choice with the Platoon Command Squad, but are less flexible.
• Sabre Gun Platforms (Forge World): These guys can replace Heavy Weapon Teams in your platoon. They cost more, but with twin-liked guns they are also deadlier, have skyfire/interceptor, and being artillery, they can endure absurd amount of enemy shooting. On the other hand, they are immobile (but can somehow scout move), and die like bitches when charged by ANYTHING (even Fіre Warriors). Sabre platforms require careful positioning, because of their zero mobility, but they are great source of anti-air and fire support. ALWAYS take a second guardsman for each gun: your enemy can and will outflank Sabres to shoot down lightly armored crew instead of T7/W2/Sv3+ guns.
• Veteran Squad: Key to most mech lists. Slightly superior to regular guard due to a higher BS of 4 and have an even better selection of gear and options. Stick them in chimeras and try to see where Lady Luck will take them. Only downside to this choice is that you only have six troop choices if you go full Vet before reaching 2000 points (with 60 points for a stock squad, it's a point which can be reached very easily). You could also do the smart thing and mix 2-3 Veteran Squads with an Infantry Platoon, giving you unholy amounts of Melta (Veterans), Chimeras, and bodies everywhere (Everyone). They're generally less specialised than storm troopers, but they score with Objective Secured benefits and can get much more gear. Always take at least two. If you want to make Tyranids players cry more than they already do, take 3 squads, footslog them, and give them each 2 Flamers and a Heavy Flamer; give the other 6 vets shotguns and take the Forward Sentries doctrine, setting them up as assault screens. Your opponent will think twice about sending Genestealers (or, Emperor Forbid, Hormagaunts) anywhere near you. You can also swap out two vets for a single heavy weapons team, so if you love your lascannons and autocannons but hate how often they miss when taken in an infantry platoon, you can stick them here so long as you don't mind wasting lasgun fire. But that's why you have an order that gives a unit Split Fire, isn't it?
  • Note about 6th: Doctrines became even cheaper. If you didn't include them before you have no excuse now.
  • Speaking of Doctrines, let's review the choices!
    • Grenadiers: Gives the Veterans Carapace Armor (4+ Save) for 15 points. Increases survivability. Don't even argue, just take it if you're going Mech or using them offensively. Auto-include, however, if you're taking Plasma with your Veterans since 4+ save ensures you don't die if your gun explodes nearly as often.
    • Forward Sentries: For 10 points the squad has Camo gear, which increases their cover save, and snare mines, which cause any enemies charging them to make a disordered charge (so no extra attacks and no furious charge, anathema to Orks, Blood Angel, and Khorne units, they'll die brutally but better them than your 300 point Leman Russ Squadron). Good for for defensive playstyles, holding objectives while maximising your cover saves, and most importantly screening units. You may have to bite your tongue the moment your opponent brings Ignores Cover weaponry.
    • Demolitions: The entire squad gets melta bombs. Remember that only one model can use a Meltabomb per Assault Phase, but having the entire squad carry them means they are safe from having a single model 'sniped out'. Furthermore, the squad gains a single Demolition Charge for additional carnage against a close-up enemy unit.
  • Gunnery Sergeant Harker: One Veteran Squad can take Harker, and his old buffs have been completely altered. Harker prevents his unit from using the Grenadiers doctrine, making his unit lack the survivability to exploit its massive firepower since Bolters will negate their save. The only thing you're getting is a 55pt relentless Heavy Bolter that has Heavy 3 Rending and a very slightly buffed Sergeant - +1 WS/S and Krak grenades, though using Krak means he doesn't fire his RENDING Heavy Bolter - which could make for a good frontline Veteran Squad if it wasn't for their lack of a better save than the average 5pts guardman. The one thing that made him just about playable in the old codex was his ability to have veterans that infiltrated and get a 2+ cover save in ruins with forward sentries. In this codex, he has lost this rule completely and swapped his feel no pain for rending - total waste of points.
    • Note: you can nearly take an entire heavy weapons squad of Heavy Bolters or Autocannons for his points cost (Harker hits 2 shots per turn, Heavy Bolter squad hits 4.5, Autocannons statistically have 3 hits but are almost guaranteed to wound). This is better in any circumstance unless playing a list with no platoons.
    • Another Note: If you are the type to use fortifications, nothing is stopping you from using the forward sentries doctrine with Harker. Take him, another Heavy Weapon Team, 3 Snipers, Forward Sentries and park behind an Aegis using one of your remaining 4 vets as the gunner. 3+ Cover, 2 Heavy weapons (3 if you bought one for the ADL), and the safetly of range. Whats not to love?

Dedicated transports

• Chimera: This is the gem of the MEHTAL BAWKS world. It makes the Guard competitive at high end play. Heavy Bolter Snap firing with Multilaser? This has become the hate machine it was supposed to be. But nothing stops you from Snap Firing Multilaser with Flamethrower. Or use Hunter-Killers to demolish enemy vehicles. Saw a small price increase and got a new rule Lasgun Arrays: 6 models can use the 2 arrays to fire lasgun shots regardless of the chimera's movements (they can still only fire snap shots in case of crew shaken/stunned) using the transport's BS, with each array able to fire independently from the other or the Chimera itself. Still amazing. Other points of this fine vehicle:
  • Good value (point-wise). You can spam them, get lots and lots of multilasers (it will please you), and a solid wall of AV12 metal in front.
  • Makes otherwise-slow Guardsmen mobile.
  • You can fire all your important shit (special weapons, which is, Melta and Plasma) out the top hatch, but only 2 models can fire according to new rules. Letting you fry while staying safe from retaliation. Heck, Commanders can even give orders measured from any point of the Chimera's hull (p. 39).
  • They also count as tanks, meaning that once your troops are in position, you can tank shock the enemies off the point and even crush some Ork vehicles and scare off the mobs.
  • Forge World blessed us with two extra turret weapon options - TL Heavy Bolter and... Autocannon! Rejoice!

• Taurox A new metul bawks. It's got 11/10/10 (With armor like that, it's more like a glass bawks. Thankfully it can reroll Dangerous Terrain, so that your troops might still have some chance to actually get to where they're needed), but it comes standard with BS3 Twin linked Autocannons while being 15 points cheaper than a Chimera. Don't use it for your command squads because it isn't a command vehicle.
  • Mobile fire support: Use Taurox as a Autocannon HWT for your squad if you want to keep your squad moving, and use the taurox as mobile cover once your squad has left the bawks (Interfering models give 5+ cover save, combine with Camo net vets for 4+ cover on open ground)
  • Two fire points on each side, so a total of 4 making it good for vets after all. They are also not a tank or a fast vehicle (except Taurox Prime, which is limited to Stormies ONLY). Instead, give it to every squad, so they all have a cheap box to block enemy movement and an Autocannon to support them. If Chimera's goal is to get you closer to the enemies so you can hit them with a sword, Taurox is a wonderful fire support unit. Also, it only allows for 10 models to be transported, so you cannot have ICs accompanying the squad.
  • Alternative take: These are excellent little vehicles for melta-vets to spring out of. With it's small profile, it can hide behind a few chimera or hellhounds as it rushes towards the enemy, and still fire the autocannon over the top of them. Once in range, the melta vets can either stay in the metul bawks to use it's FOUR side fire points to fire 3 meltas and a demo charge against large targets like super-heavies, or jump out of the side doors to gain an extra 2 inches of move distance on what would be possible from a chimera's rear door. This lets them get close enough to take full advantage of that 6" melta range more quickly.

• Taurox Prime The more dakka version of Taurox (appropriate, considering it looks like an ork battlewagon). Comes default with a weaker version of Leman Russ Gun (S7, AP4, blast). Can be upgraded to be a LR Punisher's weaker brother (10 shots at S4), or be armed with a Missile Launcher that shoots twice. Also comes with a twin-linked volley gun (which can be replaced by a TL autocannon). Can only be taken by new Stormies, but comes with a BS4 out of the box and it's Fast (Move at Combat Speed means it fires all weapons at full BS, Cruising Speed fire 2 weapons at full BS, but it'll only have more than 2 weapons if you take a storm bolter pintle). More expensive than its Guardsman-friendly brother, but can be worth the points, if you need to plug in a point hole in your list, and you just can't fit a Leman Russ.

Elites

• Ogryn Squad: Big meaty man-things with pretty awesome assaulting guns. And we do mean big; these meatheads are some of the toughest infantry in the game, in terms of toughness score and wound count; they're almost as tough as Hive Guard, only with one more wound a man, and at 10 points less a model. Assaulty wall of meat that crumples most things it collides with, including blobs and tarpits. Lovable to the end, which will be soon, seeing as these guys are a firing magnet, lack a good armor save, and usually don't fit into Chimeras - expect them to footslog if you take a full squad. Keep them the fuck away against anything that could Instant-Death them (which isn't much; they can power through anything short of S10), and get them into melee as soon as possible. However, even there they might have some problems against opponents like Necron Warriors, but at least they will be keeping them busy and away from glancing your Leman Russ tanks into scrap. Your priests' war hymns work on Ogryn, so attaching one can potentially grant Ogryn rerolls to wound, rerolls to save, or smash for the preacher. This makes a high toughness squad tougher (a reroll of a 5+ save is a 44.4..% pass, more or less the same as a 4+ [50.0%]) though it easily negated as it's ignored by AP5 and is only rerollable in assault. For a relatively cheap preacher it could go some way towards improving some of the issues with Ogryn - namely lack of AP close combat weaponry. Leave them at home against the Tau as pulse rifles will devour them, ignoring their saves and wounding them on 4s and Tau overwatch will ensure they'll never get to assault.
  • Also worth noting are the special rule changes. On the one hand, Ogryn are still Stubborn (Not Bad) and they've gained Hammer of Wrath but they're now Very Bulky and have lost Furious Charge (Fuck). This means that Ogryn can't gib T3 models on the charge anymore. It also means that Ogryn can't use transports reliably. If you know you will be up against Tau, NEVER bring Ogryn. They will be shot to pieces and with no cost effective way of getting them to charge Tau, Ogryn just can't kill them like they used to.
  • If you do want to take Ogryn, it's best to take a squad of 4 Ogryn, fit them behind and ready to embark into a Chimera you jacked from a Platoon Infantry Squad and rush them towards the enemy, hopefully through some cover. Drop the Ogryn next to their goal, torch the designated squad/secondary squad that supports your designated target, and let the Ogryns crumple their way through. With toughness 5, most infantry weapons will have hard time wounding, provided they do hit (which can be a godsend against Tau). Remember that once you win the combat, Ogryn can be fired at, so try using the Chimera to catch bullets.
  • Or have a ten Ogryn blob with 2 Primaris Psykers (Biomancy and/or Divination) and watch them kick the enemy's ass so hard, that their grandchildren are gonna feel it. Mind you, at such a point cost it's likely that the enemy could do quite a bit of damage before you get to them.
  • Odd tactic: use Creed to get a reliable outflank warlord trait and have them come in on the side of the table. Have your big meaty squad park in, or near, some terrain where some shooty squad will likely be sitting, and shoot them up with some solid S5 shots. Sure you'll suffer from return fire, but you've already done some damage to begin with and you're likely to survive, especially if you have a cover save. Next turn you can charge what's left of the squad you shot at and push forward.
  • Interestingly enough, Straken now gives units within 6" of him Furious Charge, meaning that you can still gib T3 models on the charge so long as they're close enough. To really apply this tactic you need both squads to be reasonably intact and for them both to be near each other. To put it bluntly, one of two things will happen: both squads will die horrible deaths or both squads will charge your opponent's front lines and wreck shit up (Even Space Marines will struggle to save the many S6/4 wounds you can inflict doing this) A risky tactic, but one that can catch people off guard.
• Bullgryn Squad: The Ogryn Squad's more melee-oriented relatives if equipped with mauls and brute shields or mobile cover with grenade launchers and slabshields. Enhanced with a 4+ armor save and comes with Hammer of wrath, relentless, and very bulky. Their slabshields gives +1 to cover for anything behind them and improves their armor save by one if they are in b2b with another model from the unit. Mobile Aegis line. Use them to give your advancing armor column, which of course has camo netting, a 3+ cover (Taking into account the expendable guardsmen you require) and screen incoming enemies. The power maul version is for smashing skulls and the Brute Shields give the Bullgryns a 5+ Invulnerable Save (FAQ removed the close combat only restriction) and the ability to re-roll Hammer of Wrath hits. Right now the Maul/Shield combo appears to be the better option if you're willing to pay the extra points per Bullgryn.
  • With our new access to divination, this squad can become quite the melee deathstar they should be! Take a 6 man bullgryn squad, add a cheap priest and a ML2 primaris psyker and roll on divination. Bam, for 380 points, you have a fearless, 3+ armour (when stacked), hopefully 4+ invul save unit with 24 T5 wounds, puts out 25 S5 attacks on the charge, that rerolls hits and can either reroll armour and invul saves or wounds. This unit in combat will NOT die if kept away from Str 10 atacks.
  • Alternate take: Bullgryns with the default items have a 3+ default save when in base contact with another Slabshield Bullgryn, the same as Space Marines. Only AP2 weapons can hope to shift them in close combat when a 3+ is combined with Toughness 5. For extra cheese, simply keep two Bullgryns with the default kit, and upgrade the rest to the BruteMaul combo. Then your screening Bullgryns can take the hits and roll the easy 3+'s, and when in combat your S7 Bullgryns can take over and punish enemy deathstars. Just beware of pie plates and power klaws!
  • Counterpoint: There's two major things wrong with Bullgryns, and Ogryns too. While they can deal with their own lack of armor pretty well (they get a big pile of wounds apiece and need s10 to be killed in one hit), they can only ever get AP4 (excepting attached characters like a Commissar with a Power Fist). This forces them to power through 3+ and better saves with sheer wound count, which at 4 attacks on the charge per man isn't necessarily impossible, but will result in a lot of trouble against TEQ. Also, they have no anti-tank options at all. With s7 at best and no vehicle-effective AP, they'll struggle against walkers (most of which are AV 12 and 13), and AV14 rear armor units like Land Raiders and Monoliths are completely immune to them. Make no mistake, they're as pricey as Terminators but they cannot go toe-to-toe with them; point them at crowds and light vehicles only.
  • Alternate Take: You can compensate for their lack of good AP with attached characters (and in 7th edition this is stupidly easy; Inquisition, anyone?), but they're not supposed to be 'pointed' at anything. Bullgryns are a unique type of unit in 40k: a defensive melee unit. Their job isn't to wreck the enemy in close quarters, it's to keep them from charging your tanks and flimsier infantry, and to draw fire away from them. Their sheer toughness and wound count, combined with the slabshield armor save, means it'll take pretty much anti-tank weaponry to shift them in significant numbers, and that's anti-tank weaponry NOT going into the Demolisher/Medusa you're creeping up the field behind them, and if the enemy decides to prioritize the tank instead, it enjoys a 3+ cover save with camo netting.
    • Also note that because of the way the Slabshield's rule is written, it stacks with any and all cover effects. Thus, putting your Bullgryns behind an Aegis Line and a line of tanks with camo netting behind them (or similar, really any unit that can take camo of some type) results in a unit with...well, let's count them out. Aegis grants a 4+. Camo adds 1. Slabshield adds 1. That's right. A 2+ cover save. Pricey, but between the save and the dedicated melee unit screening them from enemy close combat troops, your tanks will not die. Moreover the height of a Guard Tank's turret allows them to shoot back without the slabshield working both ways (or just use Barrage weapons).
• Ratling Squad: Your dedicated snipers. Bump up the squad to 10 BS4 Sniper Rifles for 100 points, and you'll get a pretty good payoff. By simple statistics, you should land at least 6 shots, and at least one AP 2 shot and 1 wound that you can choose to allocate to priority targets. Use this to take out high-point, low-numbered enemy squads. Despite what AP6 may make you think, shooting Gaunts and Grots is just a waste of time. To lessen the problem of T2, place ratlings into Ruins for a 3+ (with stealth) cover save, but try to have them cover as much firing area as possible. Don't send them into close combat - despite what I4 may make you think, they don't have a Close Combat Weapon, so their pistol does not give them an additional attack. Place them on a second floor of a ruined building and laugh how enemy keeps scattering off harmlessly into the air. They can also run after shooting, so you can run them from cover to cover. Ratlings do have another usage other then just snipers. Placed these halflings on a aegis defense line or Bastion. Their BS skill of 4 is pretty average for the weapons they will be manning. More importantly, is their cost. At 30 points for a three man squad with BS 4, this is practically a steal. Granted you won't be using much of their running ability. All and all, ratlings can a good cheap way of taking out sergeants and other models with weapons you don't want near (or far) from your forces.
  • For 100 points, 10 ratlings have BS4 and sniper Rifles. This makes them powerful monstrous creature killers. No matter the target's, toughness, these little hobbits will always wound on a 4. Multi wound you say? 10 ratlings with that ballistic skill and sniperweapons are bound to shave off some wounds. And if things go south, simply shoot and run.
  • Another fun trick is to stick a Primaris Psyker (or other psyker you need protected) in the squad, then plop them in ruins. Your Psyker can hand out blessings, such as the all-important Prescience, to nearby vehicle squadrons, and the Ratlings can cover-tank for him with a 2+ GtG save! You can do the same thing with Veterans & the Forward Sentries doctrine, but this is cheaper (unless you want 8 Ratlings or more) and more weapon-efficient, since it gets you more sniper rifles.
• Wyrdvane Psykers: Wyrdvane Psykers are a "utility" unit with an awkward amount of utility. A ML 1 Brotherhood of Psykers, they can roll on the Biomancy, Divination, Pyromancy, Telekinesis and Daemonology disciplines. As a ML 1 Psyker unit, this means they always know the Primaris and one random power. Keep them out of melee: Although they have a pistol/ccw combo, WS and S2 make them fold fast!
  • Wyrdvanes are generally in an awkward position, especially since they compete with the Primaris Psyker whom has access to the same Disciplines, while having better WS/BS, a Force Weapon, being able to hide in a unit and being 10 points cheaper. The main advantage the Wyrdvanes have is that they get more wounds per point, and so you can afford to lose a model or two to Perils. However, they really gain most their mileage from their Formation.
• Tempestus Platoon: They've got the same stats, but now come in platoons, if you so choose. For 1 Elite slot you can get up to 4 squads, that's a lot of boots on the table!
  • Tempestus Scions (1-3): AKA, Storm Trooper Squad. They lost infiltration, but kept deep strike and move through cover and they got 4 points cheaper. And they can take orders. Yeah. First Rank Fire, Second Rank Fire with hot-shot lasguns. Hell yes. (Adam Troke future proofed it.) They can take more special weapons too! Also, now can take a power fist, but at an increased cost and the troopers no longer carry pistols and CCWs with their lasguns, making them less viable for CC. They can take a Chimera, a Taurox, or a Taurox Prime. Now these guys are one of the best at capturing enemy back field objectives, just like their fluff, but a Taurox Prime makes them fast (if you need that for a Deep Striking shooty unit) and gives them a hell of a punch. But it'll cost you. Cost you plenty. A Veteran Squad is 7.5 points per pop with Grenadier doctrine while a Scion squad is 12 per dude plus 10 extra for deep strike. Aside from the Hotshot lasgun, they have comparable statline but the vets can take a heavy weapon, 3 special weapons and a voxcaster plus objective secured. That's nearly 5 points per head for deep strike and move through cover with vastly inferior upgrade options (and ap3 HS-lasguns which can really hurt if you manage to wound with them). Worth it? Depends but remember that you're essentially a GEQ that is only 2 points cheaper than a MEQ. But even so, your more likely to inflict greater casualties then the same amount of Bolter armed MEQs on anything with armor that's 4+ or better.
  • Tempestus Command Squad (0-1): Like Platoon Command Squad, but with stormtroopers: can issue Junior Officer orders in a 12" bubble, but also Deep Strike, Move Through Cover and has BS4 and Carapace Armour AND can pack four special weapons (but cannot increase it's size). They can also get the same options as a Platoon Command Squad (Medic, Voxcaster, Platoon Standard). May give stormies the support they always lacked or threaten dug up units with four meltas/plasmas. Also, the Tempestor Prime (Stormtrooper Captain) strikes at Initiative four and any Ld tests for Stormtroopers are taken on his Ld9 within 12" of the CS. Has potential.
  • At the end of the day, however, it's usually a better choice to take your scions as an Allied detachment instead of an FoC choice. In exchange for the 'tax' of taking a Tempestus Command Squad (with the associated Militarum Tempestus Order list) you get Objective Secured on the Scions you were going to take normally anyway, AND you free up an Elite slot for other stuff. In short, if you're going to take more than a single squad of scions, do it in a separate detachment. Keep in mind though: Scions taken in a separate detachment can only take Tempestus Scion orders from their own command squad, while Scions taken as an elites choice can receive orders from your CCS, and that includes the orders that Tempestus Scions can't issue.
• Sly Marbo: In an interesting twist of Fate, GW's brought back a fan favorite... a month before 8th edition drops and invalidates his datasheet. Still, we're happy! Sly Marbo takes 25 points as his fee for hanging with your gay-ass army list. He's faster than a normal Guardsman (WS/BS/I5), and comes with some special tools to get the job done. His Ripper Pistol is a Sniper Pistol with AP3 (because fuck Mary Sues in pauldrons), and he also gets a Poisoned 2+ Envenomed Blade. He comes with Frag Grenades, Krak Grenades, and Meltabombs. Special-rules wise, he has Fearless, Fleet, Hit & Run, Feel No Pain (as though that matters when he's getting doubled out with anything S6 or better), Move Through Cover, and Stealth. He must always be placed in Reserves and may be placed up to 1" away from an enemy model. Also, he can immediately enter ongoing reserves upon consolidating, sweeping a unit, or using H&R to get out of combat and can set up within 18" of his previous location when he left the field. More importantly he can make 3 pieces of terrain dangerous terrain for the enemy (which is why you include him in your army). His Ld 7 is not much of an issue due to Fearless, but is an issue if he deals with attacks that force a leadership test. Also, his blade is AP-, so you better hope he hits on that 2+. Lastly his CQC ability is hindered by the fact that nothing can assault out of reserves. (It is rumored that this is why GW is making 8th edition.) Much like old Marbo, you want to use this guy as a melee suicide attacker to ruin some expensive squad's day before dying gloriously. If he draws the fire of even one unit for one turn, he's made his points back. If you want him to more reliably survive, have him go after lone small model count objective campers.

Sly Marbo

Points	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld	Sv	Type	Composition
25	5	5	3	3	2	5	4	7	5+/5+++	Infantry (Character)	1 (Unique)

Forge World

• Hades Breaching Drill (Forge World): Recent update hit it hard. No more S10 goodness, no more melta cutter shots, and if it fails to wreck a vehicle or the building its popping from under, it would just die. You can no longer ride vets (and therefore score objectives with them) using Hades - it comes with its own shotgun-armed veteran team, and they even cannot charge from the hole it leave behind. On the bright side, Hades is no longer lumbering, meaning it actually can ram something, and it gets Chimera armor instead of Rhino.
• Field Artillery (Forge World): There are two kinds of Artillery units in the Guard arsenal: small squad-sized units whose job it is to deal with a specific enemy very, very well, and larger, platoon-sized units whose job it is to deal with everything, though not perfectly. Field Artillery falls into the former category. They're immobile, dirt cheap, durable, and eat blobs for breakfast. Heavy mortars are what you expect them to be - stronger mortars with bigger blasts. Like the ones on the Griffon, but without Accurate Bombardment. Quad guns on the other hand spam enormous amounts of weaker anti-infantry blasts with extra -1Ld for the pinning test penalty (for total -2). 12 S5 blasts would kill a ton of bugs/orks/other guard (especially under «fire on my target»), and have a good chance to pin down heavier infantry (like, say, terminators). Take them to nostalgia about the passed times of Thudd Guns.
  • Tactical Note: The choice between taking these and a squadron of Wyverns is largely down to you; Wyverns offer a weaker base profile but get rerolls on everything, making them better against most targets (except other vehicles, since the heavy mortar's ordnance power can punch through the side armor on some units; the Wyvern doesn't reroll vs AV). On the other hand, as vehicles, they're vulnerable to assault and high-AP weaponry, whereas your artillery crew are just vulnerable to assault and tend to stick around if given cover, given their high shooting toughness. In terms of actual money, however, the Wyvern is by far the easier option; as a Forge World model, Field Artillery will gouge you.
• Salamander Command Vehicle (Forge World): Fast scouting open-topped vehicle with Chimera armor. It can burn some infantry with flamers, but it's not a Hellhound - the main reason to use the command Salamander is it's ability to reduce enemy cover save by one. This works great with heavy tank/artillery lists.
• Atlas Recovery Tank (Forge World): Basically a Leman Russ tractor - this thing is designed to tow immobilized tanks and help Techpriests in their field repairing attempts. Towing is fun but mostly useless, but double repair rolls per turn is good in a heavy mech list. Also the "transport" rule have been removed from the Atlas in FAQ. So no cheap AV 14 transport for primaris psyker.

Fast Attack

Imperial Guard have a surprising amount of options, including a large selection of flyers. With Imperial Armor:Aeronautica, the IG is the most flyer-happy army in the game, with only the Orks seriously threatening their title. Fliers can be divided into two categories: "Gunships" and "Jetplanes" - Gunships get a beefy AV of 12, Hover Mode and Vector Dancer USRs, while jet planes get supersonic. In 40k games it is best to stick with gunships as the extra mobility of Jetplanes mainly comes into play only in abnormally large or apocalypse maps. For information on how this selection interacts with the new Death From the Skies book, see the Tactics section.

• Scout Sentinel Squadron: With such weak armor, most likely they are going to die on the second turn. Fun choice of weapons. Key part here is that they have Scout - so three Sentinels outflanking from the side or scouting into cover blasting away, causing havoc in the enemy ranks, is a good idea. But still - they are going to die. They are open topped. They are going to die. They have 10 armor. They are going to die. They have two Hull Points. They are going to die. But they may as well take a tank or two down with them. If you want to be insane, having Heavy Flamers all around can result in hilarious infantry murder. Otherwise, most of the time you'll take them as a 40 point autocannon on legs since they are cheap and effective against most things.

• Armored Sentinel Squadron: Armored Heavy Weapons Team, except you can move around and fire, unlike Heavy Weapon Teams. Plus you can take 2 Sentinels with lascannons for a single Heavy Weapons squad with 3 lascannons. Can do decent in close combat, stomping on or bogging down the enemy. Now this works only with fearless units without krak grenades or other S6+ weapons (like, say Thousand Sons, gaunts, or Ork boys without klawnob). Even better choice of awesome weapons when compared to Scout Sentinels, such as plasma cannons - though, you can overheat and lose one of the two Hull Points you have, making you even more dangerously paper-thin. Use Lascannon against vehicle, Rocket Launcher or Autocannon if you can't decide what you want to do with them. Never hurts to take Hunter-Killers in case you end up fighting vehicles. Take in threes so they can be generally more efficient in anything you want them to do. Officially made amazing (150 points for three Armoured Sentinels with Plasma Cannons.)
  • Amazing when going for an army with lots of vehicles as they are both a cheap way to bring devastating weapons on the field ( You may lack in number of weapons if using a lot of vehicles ) and will inevitably need AV to be taken down, AV that will be crucial to your opponent. They have the same AVs as Chimeras and will offer a tough choice to your opponent as to which they should take down.
  • Grab full squadron of of them. Don't buy any upgrades, multilasers are everything they need. If you use them this way, don't buy them anything (maybe HKM to piss off your opponent and focus his attention on them). Camo netting only makes them more expensive, while they are here to be a cheap (as in 120 points cheap) annoyance and disstraction. Set them on flank and send to hunt down enemy obsec units. One of two things will happen: Enemy player does ignore them, so you can pepper his transports and units with 9 S6 shots OR Enemy player doesn't ignore them, and dedicates this sweet S6/7 weaponry after them, wasting a turn or three. Don't forget to change front Sentinel so squad as a whole can survive a bit longer. These little shits are anoying as without some high strength guns they WILL stay there, and focusing them with such is quite a dilemma when you got Leman Russ, Basilisk, or angry Chimeras bearing down on you.
  • Forge World allow both scout and armored Sentinels to take Multiple Rocket Pods. Big frak blasts does horrible things to infantry blobs, but with 24" range it's too risky even on armored.

• Rough Rider Squad[1]: Guardsmen on Horseback, Rough Riders are generally not worth their points in 7th for many reasons. Their selling points are that they're Cavalry, and they can take Hunting Lances. However, between their low attacks and weapon skill as well as suffering inevitable casualties during Overwatch, they tend to bounce off targets more often than not. Do not even dare to engage Terminators or units with Defensive Grenades, for it will end badly for you. In short, Rough Riders are a fairly bad unit in general.
  • Despite this, should you still wish to use Rough Riders then they do have things that other units cannot do. For one, they can replace two of their Hunting Lances with Special Weapons (meaning Flamers), giving Guard access to 12-inch flamers which normally require Hellhounds or a Techpriest. With proper conga-line shenanigans, they can maintain range to benefit from Forwards For the Emperor, letting them move 12", flame a target, then run back while benefiting from Fleet. However, a minimum-sized unit with two flamers costs the same as a Wyvern, which is far superior in terms of durability, range, and killing. However, what the Rough Riders provide is a distraction and unit for capping objectives.

• Hellhound Squadron: The Hellhound tank variants give you access to Fast Tanks. This has a lot of advantages, as you use them for movement-blocking, tank-shocking, or simply blasting enemies to oblivion. A low profile makes finding cover for it relatively easy, though cover-hugging isn't exactly the best use of this tank. There are three variants, each with a unique turret weapon, and the choice of hull-mounted Heavy Bolter, Heavy Flamer, or Multi-melta. Also, now with 7th Edition, Template weapons passing over fire points on buildings or touching an Open Topped vehicle inflict D6 randomly allocated wounds that are resolved at the strength and AP of the template weapon to units embarked in those transports. Now a must include if you want a cup of your Dark Eldar or Ork opponent's tears.
  • The standard Hellhound is a very handy infantry-killer. If they're not Marine-equivalents (and even they will be hurting once the wounds pile up and they start failing saves) they will die. What's that? You opponent has Rangers/Heavy Weapons Teams/snipers holed up in a building somewhere giving your commanders and high-value units a hard time? The Inferno Cannon laughs at cover. The range of the IC means that you can expect them to hit enemy infantry starting on turn 1 (move 12", fire 12", cover another 8" with flame template). Run in support of longer-ranged anti-tank weapons for popping enemy transports, Hellhounds can also serve to finish off units from disembarked vehicles. In 7th edition fast vehicles can now fire 2 weapons at full BS at cruising speed, so enjoy the possibilities of hull weaponry combinations. Using a Company Commander with Grand Strategist warlord trait to outflank a squadron of these is hilarious against horde armies. Do it - that's an order.
  • The Banewolf sacrifices the extra range of the Hellhound's template for its own poisoned AP3 flamer template. Banewolves will kill any infantry short of Terminators or similarly well-armored units. Their armor and speed give them unparalleled ability to be used for flushing enemy infantry from cover. This said and done, this may be the one variant you can afford to specialize; having a hull mounted flamer gives you the chance to throw two really mean flame-templates. This tank is the epitome of offence over defense - on one hand it can destroy an entire SM tactical squad in one turn. If there is an independent character in the squad, force them to take all the hits for the squad by attacking from their side, melting them alongside anyone else who "Look Out Sir" into their own gooey death. On the other hand - it can easily be put down by a Lascannon head-on. They are well known for making Tyranid and Chaos daemon players cry as you gib their monstrous creatures with as much ease as their cannon fodder.
  • The Devil Dog is the last one out, eschewing a short-range flamer, for a Melta Cannon, a blast weapon with the Melta rule. These tanks are great for sending into the center of an enemy armored formation and intimidating your opponent into breaking up, lest he find himself losing multiple tanks! Alternatively, assuming one has reliable long-ranged anti-tank, the Devil Dog can be used for finishing off survivors of destroyed enemy transports. Add a hull-mounted Heavy Flamer, and the Devil Dog can flush troops out of cover (though not as efficiently as the Banewolf). While not a flashy vehicle, it gets the job done. Probably the best variant for most games that includes vehicles on both sides. Alternatively, replace the hull heavy bolter for a multi-melta for some insurance tank busting.

• Valkyrie Assault Carrier Squadron: (Attack Flyer) Goddamnit, why don't you have one (because it's inferior to Vendetta, below)? Valkyrie seems like a relatively expensive flying Chimera, but it is well worth it. It has BY DEFAULT Extra Armor in its profile, which means the bad bitch can never be stunlocked. If you keep your Valkyries zooming around the table, it's rare for them to die. Keep them alive to support your armor with a hard-hitting blast from its Multiple Rocket Pods. Valkyries eat infantry and shit brass and work best with Stormtroopers or Veteran Squads, deep-striking the squad in the most annoying place possible, and then flying off to rain hell on the enemy. Unfortunately, it's totally outclassed for anti-infantry by the Hellhound. That said, it does upgrade (sort of) to the...
• Vendetta Gunship Squadron: As of the new book, the points cost of the Vendetta went up, so it isn't the glorious auto-include it used to be. Its transport capacity also dropped to 6 because while you could clearly fit as many in there as you could a Valkyrie, the Machine Spirits will sodomize you if you do so (in the fluff the space is taken up by the power cells and cabling of the Lascannons but Forgeworld was just too lazy to also make an interior upgrade for the Vendetta). In the end, it's still basically a flying Predator. Will you still use it? Depends on how you like your anti-air. There are a few tricks you can pull with the reduced transport capacity, though: see the Tactics section for details.
  • • It should be noted that both the Valkyrie and the Vendetta can take a pair of Heavy Bolter side sponsons. In most cases, these heavy bolters will rarely be used. In both aircraft, the Heavy Bolters give some protection on the sides. With Valkyries, the sponsons add an extra bit of anti infantry firepower. On Vendettas, the Heavy Bolters add weapons that can be disabled in place of the Lascannons. In either case, Heavy Bolter sponsons are not auto include for either craft.

Forge World

• Drop Sentinel Squadron: (Forge World) Scout Sentinels lack of survivability with Armored Sentinel point cost. Why? Because they can deepstrike! Or for even more hate, ride on Sky Talon Valkyrie. Skip all weapon choices and take Multimelta - Scout Sentinels and Tauroses are better at killing things with fire.

• Tauros (Forge World): Dirt cheap buggies with a heavy flamer and Scout USR. If you want to scout flamer sentinels to ruin someone’s day, this guys would do it much better, for they are faster and deadlier for only +5 pts each. Though, don’t expect them to survive any longer: with AV10 all-round, open-topped and only two Hull Points, they are dead men riding. The Tauros can be upgraded to a Tauros Venator, adding two extra wheels, +1 front armor and a twin-linked Multilaser or Lascannon. You are likely to be able to trick enemies into running after you, while you are blasting a Lascannon at them. Then you die because even AV11 is still laughable.

• Centaur Carrier Squadron (Forge World): Fast small transports, they can fit only 5 men inside each, and are designed to quickly move immobile artillery and it's crew through the field. Thanks to them being open topped these are your only assault transports outside of the LoW slot, and are dirt cheap too, unfortunately Ogryn squads won't fit so you probably won't ever use these for assault. Sadly,you don't need to move your artillery carriage that often and keeping a squadron of towing machines totally compromise a whole point of cheap ordnance.

• Salamander Recon Squadron (Forge World): Fast scouting tanks, they comes with AV12/10/10, Autocannon and HB. Being Fast, they can fire both on cruising speed, so a squadron of them can threaten any light vehicle in great range. Being Scout and Fast they as well as AV12 they can do Sentinel job - but unlike sentinels they are better riding in the open rather then wandering through terrain.

• • Valkyrie Sky Talon (Forge World): Dedicated flying transport for Tauroses and Drop Scout Sentinels. For 70 pts each they are cheapest fliers in the entire game, and they don't even take any force chart slots, as they are treated as dedicated transports. Swap their rockets for MRLs, and mow down infantry. Just remember, that you probably should not deploy them with their cargo inside.
  • Vulture Gunship (Forge World):Essentially a 40k Apache Gunship, comes with strafing run USR, nose mounted heavy bolter, and 4 wing pylons that are divided into two sets of 2 pylons that give space for one twin-linked weapon (one pylon on each side) and one set of missiles. This machine is very modular, able to adapt to ANY situation; Green Tide getting you down? Well, instead of two twin-linked weapons, you can actually attach a twin-linked punisher cannon! The ammo boxes do take up the other missile pylons, but twin-linked and BS4 against ground targets means 18 shots hit instead of Leman Russes 10 (on average without Pask). I would personally recommend buying spending too much on all possible weapons and not gluing them in place - maybe use magnets or some other such method, just make sure you can change the Vulture's armament easily to ensure it is never left wanting in a battle. Because the main strength of the Vulture is its adaptability.
  • Thunderbolt Fighter (Forge World): The Imperium's standard for Fighter craft, this workhorse of the Imperial Small Craft Fleet is meant to be able to do any job asked of it, whether it be bombing, ground attack, interception, or air superiority. But it is a bit pricey, and properly kitted Vendetta or Vulture could do ONE of it's jobs better. But this neglects the true strength of the Thunderbolt, sheer immediate versatility, while the Vulture can claim to be versatile, it's likely going to be kitted out to do one role on the battlefield, while a Thunderbolt can do four simultaneously. But the place where Thunderbolts really shines is in Apocalypse, where they are the bane of superheavy fliers (be wary of Harridans, they'll laugh at your Autocannons and the Lascannons are at best only going to take one wound off.)
  • Lightning Fighter (Forge World): A nippy little air fighter, it defines the trope of "fragile speedster" with a small armament, paper-thin armor and only two HP. It is supposed to the cheaper and longer ranged companion of the Thunderbolt, carrying more missiles to compensate for a fewer number of guns to allow it to (briefly) pack the same amount of firepower, it does however, has serious survivability issues, and even the Big Shootas on an Ork Bomma will send one crashing down. And of course once it blows it's missile load it's firepower drops dramatically, but hey - do you expect this thing to last for much more than one turn? (Alternate take) This fighter once again suffers from people not realizing it's purpose on a battlefield. It's not designed to be a knock down-drag out fighter, it's meant to zip in, kill something, and zip out. In order to do this, it has a few special rules that help it in it's job, specifically Deep Strike, Flare and Chaff launchers, and Agile. If an enemy flyer is giving you grief, deep strike this guy right behind it. Since it is a flyer, it ignores all models and terrain below it (and thus, can't mishap due to terrain or enemy models), so typically you will get a shot on the enemy's rear armor with Sky strikes (TL against flyers thanks to heat seeking), the autocannon, and your lascannon (TL). A solid 4 shots at 7 and 1 at 9 is usually enough to force an enemy flier to jink (rendering it mostly useless) and could quite easily kill it. If not, you are in the perfect position to A: Fly off the board and try again or B: dogfight with the knowledge that 90% of fliers don't have rear or side facing weapons (unless they have vector dancer, then all you have to worry about is snap shots). In your defense, you have the 3+ agile jink save, and a one use 4+ invul against missile weapons (take that seeker missiles!). While it's true you are vulnerable to lucky shots or bad rolls, everyone in the game is. This little guy just happens to have a better shot at survival than most.

• • Aquila Lander (Forge World): Who the hell designed this piece of shit? For 15 points less than Valkyrie you get an all around worse transport flyer with pathetic armor, weak guns and a claustrophobic transport capacity of 7,but also supersonic. It could be taken as dedicated transport for a Company Command Squad, but without the "Command Vehicle" rule there is no reason to do so. Conversely, can be used as a very immersive (expensive) objective marker, along with the Arvus Lighter below, for an 'evacuation' scenario or similar.
  • Arvus Lighter (Forge World): Oh, you thought the Aquila was a piece of shit? Meet the Arvus: No armor. No weapons. No supersonic. And no fucking role on the battlefield - it is quite literally the worst flier in the whole of 40k. It looks pretty however, so it's likely meant to be more of a shelf-warmer/display piece than anything you would actually bring onto the battlefield. Again, can also be used as a pretty objective marker for specific scenarios involving having to get people/objects off-planet.

• Mukaali Rough Rider Squad: (Forgeworld) Objectively better Rough Riders for two main reasons: 1: they have Toughness 4 which means that they have a 50% chance of surviving being punched by a space marine rather than a crappy 33% chance that normal rough riders get. and 2: they have two wounds each, which practically doubles their survivability on anything S7 or less. Of lesser note, they do have a S5 Hammer of Wrath attack which means that charging is with them is slightly improved, they fall back shorter distances, which will rarely factor into anything and their Initiative is lowered to 2, but that means nothing since Hunting Lances always strike at I5. They still suffer the same downsides as regular rough riders though, such as paper-thin armour that won't help against the majority of weapons out there and their hunting lances only work once, so they still have no use after the very first charge. Their cost is appropriate for 2-wound cavalry though, just don't build your strategies around them, they will still die against any half-decent melee unit.

Heavy Support

• Leman Russ Squadron: The Leman Russ is your big tank. Each tank is a Heavy Vehicle, with Front Armor 14 and Side Armor 13; as a result they are remarkably resilient against conventional anti-tank, though they're still vulnerable to melee, D, Haywire and Grav so keep them protected! Fundamentally, the main difference between each tank is its turret, and whether it has rear armor 11 or 10.
  • Leman Russ Battle Tank: Though it comes in many flavors, the basic tank is the most useful. With its S8 AP3 72" gun and thick armor, it is good against anything for decent points. This is your runner-and-gunner, your go-to tank, and the majority of your Leman Russ pool at any time should be these. Kit 'em out with heavy bolters all around, since you are going to be forced to snap fire non-cannon weapons, so up the volume of fire. Or save the points and leave it bare-bones. With only AP3 and relatively weak strength as far as Guard ordnance goes, its main job nowadays is to smoke MEQ and Necrons from across the field, which puts it in competition with the Basilisk. Your choice if the loss of Barrage and the extra armor is worth the 25 point difference.
  • Leman Russ Exterminator: Armed with a 4 shot twin-linked Autocannon means this thing is death incarnate for 4+ armour and light vehicles. Kit it with 3 extra Heavy Bolters for beautiful infantry shredding, or turn it into a true jack-of-all-trades with a set of multi-meltas and a lascannon. If you feel like it, add Pask - and watch it destroy Predators and Falcon grav tanks with ease, while standing a chance to glance rendingly penetrate Land Raiders (!). It's also the only Russ that can semi-competently do AA duty; while nearly twice the points and not as long-ranged as a Hydra, it's got much better armor, isn't open-topped, and isn't hindered by the lack of the Interceptor special rule (so it can shoot at things on the ground, where majority of enemy forces usually are). It doesn't have Skyfire or a Targeting Computer, so it may be lacking in roles usually occupied by Hydra, but you will still put a big dent on anything you do end up hitting.
  • Leman Russ Vanquisher: A Melta (which always provides +1d6 armor penetration) with a devastating range. Thus a bit costly for 1 shot at BS3. Not very useful really considering the amount of melta you should already have, if you use it primarily against vehicles. However, it can be made a beast! If you want to get the most out of this tank, some way of giving it BS 4 is a must, if only to remove the unreliability of the main gun. This can be done through either giving this tank to a tank commander or putting it in the Emperor's Fist formation from Mont'ka. Give it a Lascannon as well as Plasma Sponson - and you get a unit perfectly fit to fight against heavy infantry AND tanks, turning the Vanquisher into a reliable source of AP 2 and long-range tank-killing goodness. Combine with Pask for further murder. Suddenly you have guaranteed preferred enemy, ensuring he and his buddy don't cook themselves with plasma and giving the hull gun a further accuracy boost. More importantly, he essentially gives the V-cannon twinlinked and tank hunter. Nightmarish for vehicles and sure to put a hell of a dent in most monstrous creatures. Don't forget to take a Heavy Stubber to remove that last wound off the enemy Trygon. (why the regular russ doesn't carry different types of rounds is anyone's guess)
  • Leman Russ Eradicator: Kind of a Hellhound that hits worse, is slower but better armored. And you can add a Lascannon for versatility. Strange tank that has a weaker version of Battle Cannon that eats your enemies' cover saves. Consider for Cities of Death games or when fighting cover-camping Tau/Eldar. Can be useful for gunline enemies hiding behind fortifications as well. Now at 120 points making it cheapest Russ off them all. (If you're thinking of taking this for shooting horde units behind cover, scroll down and take a look at the Wyvern. In exchange for 2 less S and AP and a smaller blast, you get 4 shots that reroll to hit and to wound). However, the Eldar Fast Vehicled and Bikes will suffer dearly if they get hit - Eradicators make Dark Eldar cry (as they at best get a 5++ to protect themselves).
  • Leman Russ Demolisher: For +20 pts. to the basic Russ you get a cannon that lays waste of everything on the battlefield and immunity vs S4 melee units - though sometimes 24" is too close to the enemy. The Demolisher is tried and true, and should ALWAYS lead the armored charge into the enemy. Works great alone, works even better in threes. You don't really need to upgrade it, since fucking DEMOLISHER CANNON doesn't get much assistance from other weapons, but being able to finish off the scattered survivors by hail of ill-aimed gunfire can also be useful.
  • Leman Russ Punisher: Shares the cons but only few of the pros with the Demolisher (it does keep the additional back armor, which helps). Heavy 20 may sound cool, but on average, you end up with 10 S5 hits with no AP (making it difficult to even glance vehicles to death, but why would you target vehicles anyway?), and only 24" range so while you do demolish what ever you shoot at, you're now within Melta/assault range. Everything except Grots is butchered better with the cheaper and better ranged Battle Tank. However, unlike most Russes, it gets better if you sink the points in it: Add a tank commander, and now 13 and 1/3 of those shots hit. Have a psyker and divination nearby, and that goes up to 17 and 7/9ths hits with a commander, 15 without. Add Pask and now you have rending and the ability to reroll penetration, meaning it is easy to glance AV 12 to death. Add on a full triple Heavy Bolter set and a Heavy Stubber, and the machine will reduce to dust anything, from Terminator Squads to full-size Ork Mobs every turn, and will stop 'Nidzilla in it's tracks through sheer dice output. Well, that or you'll be killed by the enemies anti-tank and waste 250 points on something the rest of your army should be doing anyway. Also, by far the coolest looking Russ.
    • Can also be a fun choice against fliers, if much less cost-effective than the Hydra or Fortifications' Emplacements. When driven by Pask the Punisher becomes an extremely versatile machine, able to successfully engage just about anything, and on average, glance most things AV14 to death.
    • Mathhammer- Target: 5 man Terminator Squad. Battle Cannon, 3 hits on a good roll? 2.5 wounds. ~40% of a kill. Punisher cannon. 10 hits. 6.66 Wounds, 1.11 kills. Demolisher would likely score 1.6 kills, .8 vs Storm Shield Termies. T6, 3+ Monsterous Creature: Battle cannon, 1 hit, .83 unsaved wounds. Punisher, 10 hits, 3.333 wounds, 1.11 unsaved wounds. Blob of GEQ in cover. Battle Cannon, 5 hits? 7 if it's dense? 4.1-5.8 wounds. ~3.2 unsaved. Punisher 8.33 wounds, 5.55 unsaved. Battle Cannons and Demolishers will out perform it vs Vehicles perhaps (At least without Pask), against marines in the open (And if that was a common target, everyone would love Rubric Marines, and yes, in the open. 5 marines with a 5+ cover save will suffer more casualties from a Punisher than a Battle Cannon), and non-jinking MEQ Bikers, but against most everything else the Punisher lives up to it's name BEFORE boosts. The Punisher benefits far more from BS boosts than a battle cannon. Just keep that in mind.
  • Leman Russ Executioner: Not quite as god tier as it once was because the main cannon now has Gets Hot (since the Techpriests on Ryza got drunk and forgot how to make good Plasma weapons that don't overheat one day during the hangover), but still capable of chucking down sizeable amounts of Anti-TEQ hate. However it's now only 155 points, a significant reduction from the last book. Pair with Pask for a blinding plasma blast (see Pask above) for even more hate (though this is ill advised, given your HQ will easily bloat itself up to (and possibly past) 500 points since Tank Commanders must take a Squadron of Russes with them) All that said, while no longer the auto-include Russ anymore that it was in the last book, it is still capable of making TEQ heavy armies weep. To be taken with caution as part of a healthy balanced diet of Russes.
    • Important Note: You'll get that re-roll from Pask and vehicles get a 4+ 'save' to resist the lost hull point from a 'Gets Hot' result which should make this Russ more survivable. Keep this in mind, because your Executioner is statistically likely to Get Hot by the end of turn 2; with the extra roll the tank can go 4 turns without glancing itself (this drops to just over 2 if you took sponsons). Twin-Linking is still helpful, of course.
    • Alternative take: Use Executioner as Tank Commander's co-tank. If you take Pask as the main tank, you get to reroll "Gets Hot" results due to having preferred enemy (Final GW FAQ confirms this), so it rerolls 1's for to hit and to wound rolls. Also due to S7 you wound basically everything with 2+, making it rerollable if you fail any wound rolls.
    • Alternative 2: Add Trojan with Techpriest to the mix, giving everyone within 12" bubble Preferred enemy. See above, except for your whole heavy ordnance. Ouch!

• Leman Russ Conqueror Squadron (Forge World): It's kinda light version of Leman Russ Battle Tank - Conqueror turret cannon comes with less range and less blast radius, but it is heavy and has in-built co-axial storm bolter to boost accuracy in the short range firefights. And unlike regular Lemans it's not heavy, meaning it is not slow as hell. Overall not a good choice, unless you have a lot of BLoS terrain pieces in the table. Though, due to its speed and non-ordnance nature of main gun it totally rock in Cities of Death missions, where regular Ruses tend to stuck in deployment zones doing nothing.
  • Second Opinion: Siege of Vraks updated this to 7th making it 35 points cheaper and fast. Cheap surprise carniflex that can charge forward to eat troops or act as mobile cover. Very fun to use. Infuriatingly only available to Kriegers by RAW. Ally them in or convince your opponent to let you use them in a mainline Guard army.

• Leman Russ Annihilator Squadron (Forge World): Another "non-heavy" Leman - this time with twin-lascannon turret. Just like his Predator namesake tend to be overpriced for what it do. Only superior to the LR Vanquisher against MC's, and in that case it actually loses out to the Exterminator, which is much better against everything else. Leave the lascannons on your hull, they don't belong in the turret.

• Destroyer Tank Hunter Squadron (Forge World): IMMA CHARGIN MAH LAZOR! Ordnance 60" twin-linked lascannon seems tempting, but like LR Annihilator it's just too expensive. Just take Basilisk instead - its tank busting is almost the same, backed with indirect fire and ability to rape infantry blobs. Has a slight advantage over the Vanquisher against all armor values except 14, and is more durable (though significantly less flexible) than a Medusa with breacher shells.

• • Alternate Take: It's 25 points more expensive than the Vanquisher and 35 more than the basilisk, but it's small (for a tank), and it's probably the most reliable long-range anti-tank the Guard has. Against AV14 it has a 41% chance of doing damage without any support; most other long-range Guard ordnance has MUCH worse than this due to BS3 (The Vanquisher, for example, has a 36% chance if you include BS), and you'll need to pay 50 points for a Primaris Psyker to compensate for that. The only way to get more effective AT (equal or greater damage at equal or greater accuracy) for LESS is to either take a Medusa Siege Gun artillery carriage and attach a Primaris Psyker rolling on divination (150 for one gun with no extra crew), or take Rapier batteries (132 for three guns with extra crew), and in either case you lose range and mobility (the Medusa will cap out at 48" with Bastion Breacher shells, and the Rapier caps out at 36"). Something to consider if you're fighting enemy armor at long range.
    • Counterpoint: It's only a good idea if you want to run PURE guard. Otherwise it loses out to an allied Vindicare Assassin; he's 10 points cheaper, can snap up 3+ cover saves in terrain (while the Destroyer can only get them by the 25% rule and must buy camo netting to get a save that good), more effective against armor (he has a 46% chance to damage AV14 and a better chance than the Destroyer to hurt anything else), MUCH more effective against things that aren't armor, and ignores cover saves. 7th edition is ally edition; USE them!

• Thunderer Siege Tank Squadron (Forge World): It's a Leman Russ chassis with a hull-mounted demolisher cannon. Unlike LR Demolisher it has no front/side sponsons (which, thanks to Ordnance, you probably weren't using anyway), and the lack of that turret weighing it down means it's also NOT heavy - meaning you can move it 12" and even flat out another 6" to get round two shot. Obviously this is your Vindicator, and like all IG vehicles its all around better then the SM analog: it's slightly smaller (important for vehicles, since you want that cover save), has access to camo netting, and has better armor on every facing (including the rear, since it's a siege tank chassis; enjoy plowing through piles of S4 models laughing like the treadhead you are).
  • Tactical Note: Any player who knows what a pain in the ass a Vindicator is will put an enormous amount of firepower towards bringing this tank down, since it's more dangerous in literally every way that matters. As with all Russes, don't let it get flanked (AV11 is nice but won't save you from a squad of Sternguard with combi-meltas), and get it in close early so it can do its job and make back its points. Also note that since its front armor is 14, it can ram at S8, while the Vindicator only rams at S7, making Thunderer rams dangerous to anything AV13 and worse. Any penetrating hit that doesn't also immobilize you will cost you that demolisher shot, so be prepared to do so.
• Ordnance Battery: "Infantry win firefights. Tanks win battles. Artillery wins wars," or so the old saying goes. The Imperial Guard is noted for being able to bring really big guns to the battlefield, their firepower able to remove small sections of the opponent from the playing field. This said and done, the Imperial Guard artillery units are slow (sometimes outright static) and fragile for their cost due to being Open-Topped, a drawback which becomes increasingly noted should one wish to take artillery in a Squadron (and with the exception of the Griffon, Ordnance has the same cost issues with squadron up vehicles); this said, one can remove the Open-Topped Status. Artillery in itself will not make a Guard army due to its fragile nature, but they provide excellent firepower should the rest of the army be able to protect them. On a side note, almost all artillery tanks can replace their hull-mounted heavy bolter with a heavy flamer for free. While this is more of a choice with tanks like the Russ and Chimera, on Artillery tanks you should almost always go with the flamer. If enemies are close enough that you have to resort to the secondary weapons, a heavy bolter with guardsmen BS isn't going to save you against much of anything, but a heavy flamer shot to the face will ruin just about anybody's day. There are numerous artillery-pieces available, including the following:
  • Basilisk: Jokingly called the penis-enlargement gun by veteran Guard Players, the Basilisk is noted for having a really big gun. This gun is also known for being long-ranged, having the option for direct or indirect fire, and having AP 3 (meaning it can kill Marines in the open, or pummel Crisis Suits). However, having the worst minimum-range requirements has the potential to often relegate the Basilisk as a direct-fire weapon, a task the Medusa tends to do better in most cases for a marginal upgrade in cost; this said, the Basilisk's direct-fire does have a longer range than the Medusa. Unless it's apocalypse, you don't need more than 36" though, so get a Medusa, or a Leman Russ Battle Tank, which can do the same or even better job, considering that either way, you are dropping S8 AP3 Big Blast at the enemy within '72 at most. Now in new codex earthshaker cannon has a range of 36-240" enabling you to hit kids at the next table.
    • Tactical Note: Like many Guard heavy support units, the Basilisk needs support to really shine. Give it twin-linking with a Primaris Psyker (or the Emperor's Wrath formation, see below) and Ignore Cover from the same and suddenly it's the most dangerous unit on the field, able to delete entire squads of anything that's not TEQ/MC. 3 of these with an ML2 psyker is the same price as the Leman Russ squadron you'd get otherwise, and you get better strength and two powers from the Divination table.
    • The choice between the Earthshaker cannon versus the Medusa cannon, both as Artillery units and self-propelled guns, became a bit more complicated in 7th Edition; as the Earthshaker is a Barrage weapon and Medusa is not. Barrage weapons determine cover saves and wound allocation from the blast marker's hole, even when firing directly, and Multiple Barrages scatter tighter than separate Large Blasts. This means the Earthshaker cannon has more chances to snipe a particular model, deny cover saves to enemy vehicles and monsters (tip: use the Tank/Monster Hunters order on a full Earthshaker artillery battery and watch parking lots and Nidzillas explode), and more chances to hit other enemy units even when one of its blast markers scatters than the Medusa cannon, and it can also fire indirectly, so it has more utility.
    • praise the Emperor, with formations now available in regular games the issues normally faced by the Basilisk are removed by the direct fire support battery, and even better, it can be fielded as a good old squadron of three (or you can take five but really who would do that)
  • Colossus: (Forgeworld IA:1) Games Workshop has a checkered history when it comes to Marine-Killer weapons. Their emphasis on certain units being designed for killing Marines in the open, has lead to horridly inflexible units like Vespids, Flash Gitz, Thousand Sons, and now the Colossus. At first glance, the Colossus looks like a fun gun. With the ability to ignore cover, and Marine Power Armor saves, it will utterly devastate Marines should it land properly. On the other hand, having a wide minimum range and the inability to fire directly means the Colossus falters against a lot of Marine Armies. With the exception of some foot-slogging Space Wolf armies, many Marine armies are very fast, and noted either for operating as a mechanized army, fighting by Drop Pods, speeding forth towards your lines on Bikes, deepstriking in by Jump Packs, or otherwise excelling at fighting at short range. While the Colossus can be used for indirect-combat if kept isolated from the rest of the battleline with an infantry unit or two to watch over it, it isn't too popular in tournament armies for this reason.
    • Tactical Note: Much of the above gets completely turned on its head if you take the Colossus as part of a Death Korps Siege regiment. Kriegers use supercharged shells in their Colossi, giving them more explosive-no, probably not, it's more likely an errata error of some kind, but Death Korps Colossi have S8 instead of S6. So it's effectively a slightly weaker Basilisk with better minimum range and Ignores Cover, though it still can't fire directly.
  • Griffon: (Forgeworld IA:1) The cheapest artillery-piece the Guard get, the Griffon is also the most accurate on most accounts; the ability to reroll Scatter Dice is a handy ability in most cases. Like the Colossus, the Griffon is unable to fire directly, yet its shorter minimum range makes it more usable against rapidly advancing armies. Should a player wish to take a Griffon (or a pair of them, which isn't as point-intensive as squadding other artillery), they work as part of a handy one-two combo for finishing off infantry from a destroyed transport, or in support of Hellhound-equivalents being used to Tank-shock enemy infantry into clustered formations.
    • Tactical Note: Due to the way Barrage weapons are resolved in 7th edition, using a Griffon in a squadron of heavier artillery pieces, such as Basilisks or Colossi allows you to fire 'tracer shots', improving the accuracy of your other artillery pieces . Open a shooting attack with the Griffon, and twin-link the shot if it doesn't go where you want it. Then fire the big guns, and scatter them off your precision-guided mortar shell.
  • Medusa: (Forgeworld IA:1) A pure direct-fire weapon, noted for having Strength 10 and AP 2, the Medusa is arguably the most popular form of Ordnance on account of its raw firepower. While having the same issues with accuracy most blast weapons have, whatever it hits will suffer on account of it. For those who wish to trade accuracy and flexibility for raw tank-busting firepower, the regular firing mode can be replaced with Siege Shells, turning the Medusa into a heavy tank hunter. With an AP 1 blast template, and the normal Ordnance bonus replaced by rolling 2d6 for armor penetration, the potential to kill enemy vehicles is incredible, and the threat of losing multiple vehicles to a well-placed shot does a lot to intimidating opponents into spreading their vehicles out. This said, like with the Devildog's Melta Cannon, the accuracy issues inherent with the Medusa mean it tends to work best in support of, rather than being the primary source, of ranged anti-tank.
    • Tactical Note: The Medusa also has the shortest range of the Imperial artillery pieces: a piddling 36", leaving it out-ranged by man-portable lascannons. Keep this in mind when throwing out those S10AP2 blasts of doom; you'll be a lot more likely to suffer counter-battery fire with such poor range and the need to direct-fire.

• Heavy Artillery Carriage Battery (Forge World): This is artillery variants of the Basilisk and Medusa and in 7th edition, artillery is awesome (until someone charges it). They are immobile and need crew, which can be killed (though, they use gun's Toughness 7 against enemy shots, so unless they get charged they're liable to stick around), but they are also cheap. And for being non-vehicles, they can take orders. Earthshakers and Medusas with "Bring it down!" and "Fire on my target!" could make for miracles on the battlefield if used properly. Or die pointlessly, if used incorrectly. Oh, and don't forget that they only have ld7 with no Sergeant or Commissar options, so you NEED a Lord-Commissar, Primaris Psyker (which is maybe the best option, since he can try to twin-link the battery with Divination; also the only way to move the battery without towing due to Levitation) or Creed/Kell to make them listen to your orders most of the time. You can also buy Camo Netting, but beware of Rules Lawyer: by RAW, camo netting only works on vehicles. Then plop the whole battery behind an Aegis line and get that sweet 3+ save.
  • Tactical Note: These guys can be beastly if you kit them out properly and support them. A trio of these, with their combined crew of 12, is 225 points, and is a 24-wound unit. With max crew the unit has 36 wounds and is under 300 points-and they're still T7 in shooting. A skeleton-crew battery with a Primaris psyker to buff leadership and roll on Divination is 275, and a nearby CCS in a chimera makes a combined total of 400 points even, for a unit that can drop 3 twin-linked, cover-ignoring S9AP3 Ordnance Barrage pieplates anywhere on all but the largest of Apoc boards. Anything short of Terminators will be pasted in short order by these guys, and as long as you keep them out of melee they'll stick around to deliver pain for the whole game, and if you toss in some meltavets in a Chimera the whole FoC can be a 550-point Allied Detachment to support any Imperial Army. Hammer of the Emperor indeed.

• Hydra Flak Tank: The tank offers 2 Twin Linked Hydra Auto Cannons [72" range S7 AP4 Heavy 2 Skyfire] and a hull mounted Heavy Bolter (or HV Flamer) on an Open Topped Chimera frame. For 5 bolt pistols more than a Chimera. There is contention as to whether Skyfire is a benefit or not within the community to a degree that boils down to differences in local meta. It is good at hitting Flyers and FMCs, Average at hitting Skimmers, and bad at hitting everything else [4 TL BS 1 = 1.22 hits]. No longer ignores Jink. Extended [72"] Range is nice for 2 out of 3 deployments.
  • Tactical Thought: Combined with an Techpriest a single hydra [total points 110] can have a nearly guaranteed chance [avg 1.5 hits] of forcing grounding tests on two enemy FMCs. Seeing that each said test should fail roughly 1/3 of the time and the fact that a 72" turret weapon can aim nearly anywhere on the board gives this unit some use.
    • Counterpoint: You need an unsaved wound to force a grounding test, and most FMC's that you actually need to bring down, such as Flyrants, have a 3+ armor save, which takes your 1.5 hits...to 0.5 wounds. This doesn't make the hydra useless; you simply can't afford to split fire with it.

• Wyvern Suppression Tank: BLOB ARMIES BEWARE! The new tank for 6th edition. Shoots two twin-linked Stormshard Mortars: 48" Str 4 AP6, Heavy 2 with Blast, Barrage, Ignores Cover, and Shred. That's right, rerolls to hit AND wound. And for even more fun, they can come in squadrons of 1-3! The cherry on top? They're dirt cheap. Gaunts/Boyz Beware!
  • Tactical Thought: Before thinking the Wyvern is only useful against blobs, remember what this tank brings to the field. A single tank fires 4 blast templates that are twin-linked and shred. Even with their saves, MEQs will have to roll real well to not lose a large number of troops. A well spread out MEQ Squad will probably lose 2-3 wounds per tank, making the Wyvern redeem its point cost by turn two. Also barrage, what it does is focus all blasts from a single unit (that is 12(!) blasts with reroll to wound and to hit from 3 wyverns) in a small area. Go ahead and force some unlucky squad to take a fuckton of potential wounds (remember, it's a blast weapon so more like 60 potential wounds if Small Blasts cover 5 models per blast) with Look out sir! for their leader, with some luck you can snipe enemy commander on turn 1. Many say broken. I say fantastic. Even TEQ will shudder at having to roll potentially 40 saves.
    • Counterpoint:No, I'm not about to argue this isn't good. In fact, the Wyvern is the meanest, most cost-effective unit in the IG codex right now. But it can be a pain to use; large numbers of blast attacks, with rerolls for everything, mean it's easy to lose track of what attack you're making, how many wounds your opponent has to roll for what unit, et cetera. Bring a notepad if you have an entire battery of these things; you'll need it.

• Manticore Launcher Tank: Mixed-bag. Good for the points, bigger blast range than hell, but can't deal with marines, and has an infuriatingly long minimum range. Drop it back by your Basilisks or Heavy Weapons, since it's not gonna do any good at the front lines. Good points are simple: They're not open-topped, compared to artillery. They have HUGE blast ranges and they can virtually ensure that you're going to be making people spread out their firepower - great for you to focus on one group at a time. Downsides are just as bad as the upsides, though. Limited ammo CAN be a problem (rarely, either because either the Manticore or the enemy ends up demolished; if your manticore has fired all four rockets, have it tank shock everything in sight, because it has already won). If enemy is spreading their units out, it causes you to lose a lot of rocket's effectiveness. Seriously, it can only shoot 4 out of 5-6 turns (if your opponent is stupid enough to let it do its thing, but at an event you can't always guarantee playing against Orks). Overlooked a lot, but can be powerful on those first few crucial turns. On a high note, Manticores DEMOLISH Necron Warrior elements or Ork/Nid/Guard blobs; with the new Necron codex, hitting Necrons with Instant Death-level attacks is invaluable for suppressing their Reanimation Protocols.
  • Alternate Take: Consider throwing your Storm Eagle rockets at enemy Super-Heavy vehicles. The D3 shots and large pie plates (combined with a large target) means you're going to hit on average 2 or so times; 3 if you're lucky. S10 Ordnance will reliably glance and even penetrate AV14; with AP4 the vehicle damage roll won't do anything, but that doesn't matter, because you've brought that Necron monolith to half HP in one shooting attack. What other armies hope to do with precision shooting, melta-style weapons and other high-BS low-AP trickery, the Guard accomplish with simple overwhelming firepower!
  • Forgeworld finally allow to squadron Manticores up to 3. Not like it's always a wise decision, as squadron must fire at one target, which can lead to overkill.
  • Standard Storm Eagle rockets now can be swapped for Manticore Missiles and Sky Eagle Rockets - both come with 15 pts discount. First are the massive S9 AP2 7" blasts of pure rape, which is almost as devastating as Medusa, have Basilisk range, and one of the few 7"-blasts outside of Apocalypse. Second are crunch wise long range twin-linked ordnance lascannons - great for busting heavily armored flyers, otherwise almost invulnerable to Hydra fire.

• Deathstrike: The Deathstrike Missile Launcher tends not to be taken in a lot of tournament builds, being viewed as too unreliable a weapon. Its main selling point is that it (eventually) fires a Strength 10 AP 1 APOCALYPTIC BLAST (y'know, the type of thing you would expect from a Titan), ignoring cover, and operating at full Strength against any and all vehicles caught in the explosion; should it go off, it has a high chance of devastating the opponent. On the other hand, it's chances of properly firing are random at best, it won't be firing on turn 1, and the Deathstrike is a one-shot weapon. It mostly gets used either for casual games on account of this unreliability, as a gamble, or for psyching the opponent out into spreading his forces out. But if you're a favored champion of the dice gods, received the blessing of Admiral Awesome, the benediction of Lady Luck and have balls of ceramite, you might just hilariously wipe half of your opponent's forces early in the game. In 2k+ games, combine 3 Deathstrikes with 4 units of Demo Charge-packing Special Weapon Squads in Vendettas, and watch your enemy's face drop as he realizes the the might of pie plates - as he has to deal with either 3 nukes or 12 S9 AP2 large blasts + 12 twin linked Lascannons on turn 2 at the earliest. Unless you get first turn of course, in which case he has to deal with 3 nukes having already been hit by 12 large blasts. And from then on, it only gets better...

• Gun Platforms: Short was our rejoicing with unstunnable and durable automated artillery - now they are back to AV10-round 2HP immobile vehicles, and suddenly all stops buying Hydra Platforms. Though there is still saving grace - platforms got cheaper camo-netting, so they can be nearly as tough as they was before if parked in thick cover or behind fortifications.
  • Earthshaker Artillery Platform (Forge World): Cheaper Basilisks. Good as long as they are away from enemy, but if you don't feel enough tactical foresight to keep enemy in distance, stick with old mobile Basilisks.
  • Hydra Flak Platform (Forge World): No more interceptor, so this is just more fragile immobile discounted Hydra. Low model height now become a big problem, as it would cause LoS problems, and when now you need to keep platforms in cover, you can not solve LoS problem just by putting platforms on top of the hill.
  • Manticore Rocket Platform (Forge World): Unlike Regular Manticores, this comes stock with Manticore Missiles, and can only swap them for Sky-Eagles. Unlike the Hydra platform, it's still viable, since it comes with the biggest discount, at 75 points; less than half the price of the tank-mounted version. Use them to spam 7" blasts of hell; it's even worth it to hide them behind Bastion/Aegis lines for camo net improved cover saves.

• Tarantula Sentry Gun Battery (Forge World): - You get a battery of three immobile twin linked Heavy Bolters, with the option to add three more and swap them for a Multi-melta for free, or pay for TL assault cannons or TL Lascannons. Being automated, you have very little control over what they actually do in the battle, they select their own targets based on pre-set criteria, you basically just get to choose at deployment what their arcs are: 360 degrees but at 18" range, or 90 degrees at 36" range, so you're rarely going to be blasting things across the table with these things. Unlike gun platforms they remain to be automated artillery, but got their toughness lowered to 6. Overall a terrible choice, as while cheap it packs very little firepower yo don't even control, and competes with much more potent choices for HS slot.

• Rapier Carrier Battery (Forge World):- The Heavy Support version of the lascannon, which means four of them strapped together. This IS the shit. Cheap in both points and money, it is treated as artillery with the extremely bulky rule now, making them Toughness 7 in shooting. Between extra crew and some good cover, they will stick around. No sticking them in Chimeras, though; only Infantry units can embark inside transports (even superheavies) and the Rapier is an artillery unit. But that doesn't matter, since as non-vehicles they can accept orders, like 'Bring It Down!' (Ordnance isn't a reroll; enjoy your 4 chances at armor pen per shot) and 'Fire on My Target!' (which, combined with AP2, sends your hapless opponent straight to invuln/FNP saves). And the best part? The Rapier is twin-linked making it a decent ad-hoc anti-air weapon (3 of these will average 1.167 hits, which at S9 AP2 Ordnance will hurt anythig that flies) Remember: Ordnance may fire snapshots, as long its not a template/blast weapon. Downsides include (relatively) short range and a chance of exploding when one of the guns is destroyed, but at 40 points and £30, why in the name of Slaanesh's self-removing pants are you not taking at least one? You want to reliably kill tanks?! Knock yourself out.
  • Alternate Take: With 7th edition in full swing, many armies have codices dripping with high-toughness Monstrous Creatures, and though on the face of it the Rapier appears to be designed for anti-tank work, it does not underperform against MC's, either. A battery of them will reliably inflict at least one wound on everything short of T10 (though this drops to T8 if the target has a 5+ FNP), and with orders you can ignore cover, denying that manbarbie his toe-on-ruins bullshit (or, if he's in the open, give them Shred and average 1.28 wounds a turn instead of 0.96). And if he swings the D at you? Congrats, you killed two guardsmen (less, if you put them behind cover). The squad can have six, and can lose half of those before they actually start losing firing capability. Just keep them out of melee.

• Sentinel Power Lifter Squadron (Forge World): Assault sentinels... wooo! They are the cheapest of all sentinels and come with basically close-combat autocannons. Funny and fluffy, but it's not really worth spending HS slot on them.
  • Alternate Take: There's many, many ways to get around FOC limitations these days due to formations, so let's look at these boys on their merits alone. They're S7AP4 models with 2 attacks (as stated above, essentially an autocannon in melee) and AV 10/10/10, with I3. Not a dreadnought. Not even close. But you shouldn't expect them to be, because they're 30 points a model. 3 of these can put the pain on GEQ hordes for a bargain. Or course, you have to get them into melee first.

• Cyclops demolition squad (Forge World): Small kamikaze remote controlled tanks. They count as infantry (but extremely bulky), so you can put yo tanks in yo tanks, to play mech while yo play mech. For extra lulz find some homerules for Capitol Imperialis and put Chimera with Cyclops in it into Capitol. Not like it's a valid strategy - Cyclops are fragile and their operators are even more fragile (thank god, you can hide them inside Chimera). If you get lucky, enjoy suicide-bombing a cover-ignoring Basilisk shell into some Space marine squad, but otherwise stick with more conventional big guns.

• Avenger Strike Fighter (Forge World): Your dedicated AtG Jet Plane with a tasty Strafing Run rule. It comes stock with an absolutely useless defensive rear-mounted Heavy Stubber (can help knock a flying monster out of the sky tho...), two Lascannons, and the AVENGER BOLT CANNON, which is basically half of a VULCAN MEGABOLTER. This means it packs SEVEN Megabolter and two Lascannon shots at BS4 for only 150 pts, to ruin the day of anything with less than AV14 or a 2+ armour save. And if it's not enough, you could fit additional guns, missiles or bombs under it's wings. Do you really need any other reason to buy it? (It's also a sexy model on the table.)
  • Tactical Thought: Like all Imperial AtG attack aircraft that haven't been updated in two editions, it still has Deep Strike, so plop it behind that enemy tank you're so worried about and chew him a new asshole with 7 S6 shots, 2 S9 shots, and whatever else you felt like strapping on, all at BS4. Then jink your way through a turn of enemy shooting, and supersonic your way off the board to do it all again in a turn. Guard rule the skies, and this is why.

Fortifications

Here are the general tactics for fortifications.

• Aegis Defense Lines: In case you forgot to get a Hydra or chose to actually get Anti Air with an Interceptor rule, Aegis will help you out with the annoying fliers. Always choose the flak gun (it's statistically better against everything, and the model comes with the kit, anyway), and always have your Platoon Commander fire it so you don't waste his BS4 on a las weapon. In addition, you get a nice piece of cover for Guardsmen, which you can use as a forward assault base of sorts, or to hide behind (argue with your opponents that your Leman Russ gets a cover save as well). Pretty cheap point-wise, and can be a good choice if you want to have some basic foothold without turning into Gunline Guard. Combined with "Get back in the fight" orders and GTG for 2+ cover guardsmen.
  • Tactical Note: While we're on the subject of orders, if you hold off on that interceptor shot, you can order the unit firing the flak cannon, turning those 4 S7 shots into something really mean. Against FMC's and anything with better than a 4+ save, you're better off ordering 'Bring it Down', since he'll never jink anyway. With a BS4 shooter this will statistically guarantee a grounding test. Against vehicles, 'Bring it Down' can serve the purpose of scaring your opponent into jinking, since 4 BS4 shots with rerolls on everything is capable of putting out a lot of pain. Remember that if that gunship spends the entire game jinking and zooming around the field, it's not a serious threat.
• Skyshield Landing Pad: On one hand, you practically give your Guardsmen an Invulnerable Save(!) - on the other, you don't have many units that can Deep Strike. Could be worth it, if you have some Deep Striking allies. Park your basilisks or manticores on it, or alternatively a deathstrike missile launcher if you feel your trollface isn't getting enough use. The Aegis defence line also provides an awesome forward base that you can load with heavy weapons team for instant 4+ cover and never have to move!
  • With the "Ready For Take-Off" upgrade ( Only 5 points ), this becomes a very good fortification that is probably a must have if you planned to use it and a Vendetta. Deploy the Vendetta(s) in it ( In Hover mode for the first turn ) and don't move it/them : You got yourself AV12 4+ Invuln Twin-Linked full-BS lascannons all around with a very good LOS. Next turn ( It is quite unlikely a Vendetta has been taken down by now ), zoom out and do Vendetta stuff as you would normally. This gets you a guaranteed 2nd turn Vendetta for the "cost" of having it sitting on the landing pad with a 4+ invulnerable save on first turn, during which it will still be able to fire its payload at full BS. If you plan on taking Vendettas but don't like spending points on reserve roll trickery ( Which puts you on par with Skavens concerning reliability ) you can easily rationalise incorporating that Skyshield into your army ( Park your officers, heavy weapons teams, tanks, artillery on it, whatever : 4++ is GOOD - AV14 4++ isn't going anywhere ) for a fine piece of fortification that will act as an excellent Vendetta force multiplier.
• Imperial Bastion: Ridiculously cheap, can mount a Quad Gun that can pop transports and flyers, gets 4 free heavy bolters which can be legally placed all on one facing, gives your men the advantage of height and cover, and if you play air cavalry the Comms upgrade is a must, letting you modify your reserve rolls by +1. Place Veterans inside and use it to overlook most of the battlefield, while the rest of your army is moving about/shattering your enemy's sky.
• Fortress of Redemption: Expensive both in points and actual kit price, this huge model doesn't exactly bristle with guns as you would expect. But now, you are able to dominate everything on the table - tanks will be sniped with the '96 twin-linked lascannon, fliers will be decimated by BS4 AA guns (you did garrison Veterans in there, right?), and everything else will have to eat Heavy Bolters. And that thing launches Missiles (fragstorm and krakstorm pieplates). Oh, and all Imperial units get various buffs and saves, meaning that this thing is the ultimate say in the world of Gunline Guard. On the negative side, this thing turns the field into a giant clusterfuck the moment at least one of it's sections breaks apart.
• Imperial Strongpoint: Can't decide whether you want the Imperial Bastion or Aegis Defense Line? Why not take both. With the Stronghold Assault expansion, you can take both and more. For just one Fortification slot, you get a required Aegis Defense Line, a Imperial Bastion, a optional Skyshield Landing Pad, optional Honoured Imperium, and options to include more of the listed. For IG gunline armies, this is beautiful. This is basically the poor man's Fortress of Redemption. The major problem though is the standard Guardsman's ballistic skill. With all this heavy ordnance, you want to get as many BS4 Vets as possible to man these guns. Also, don't expect to move that far. With most of your cover and weapons unmovable, you will just have to wait for the enemy to reach you.
• Honoured Imperium: Ok, no. While it might be nice to place a giant statue or church rubble and receive Stubborn for your Guard and Imperial Allies, think about your choice. For your ONE fortification choice, you would take one statue that CANNOT fire back over fortifications THAT CAN FIRE BACK! And while fearless is nice for guard, units have to be within 2 inches to even benefit from the Stubborn rule. Best used with gun-line guard and even then you will have the problem of blast templates. You do get a 3+ cover save if behind the fortification, but chances are you are using the giant statue that breaks LOS making the cover save basically unnecessary. Use your points on a Commissar. If you are truly wanting to use this fortification, then go all in and get the Imperial Strongpoint. In fact, if you want Stubborn, get a Commissar!
  • This might be slightly useful with vehicles, if you have a predator positioned just right that you don't ever plan on moving for example, otherwise you will never use this cover save ever.
• Plasma Obliterator: Oh my...a simple building at AV14 all around, but has a Plasma Obliterator which fires a 7" Massive Blast at S7 AP2. Want to obliterate its point cost in heavy infantry? Look no further. However, it still gets hot (luckily since it's a fortification it gets a 4+ save against it), and it has a new rule called Plasma Overheat which means if it takes a glancing hit due to Gets Hot! a unit embarked takes D3 randomly allocated wounds (just as with classic gets hot! allow saves). You'd think a building the size of a Bastion would have an external cooling system to prevent this fucking rule...still, at 230 points it's quite an expensive Fortification, but oh man will this thing melt hordes, regardless of how good their save is. Just do yourself a favour an keep it occupied at all times, lest it being taken by the enemy or it starts firing with automated fire. Believe me the last thing you want is a 7" blast of fiery plasma death going off and scattering about anywhere near your units.
• Promethium Relay Pipes: 4+ Cover save, like the Aegis but with a special bonus, if a model is armed with a Flamer weapon then it becomes Torrent if a non-vehicle model's within 2" of a pipe, by plugging into a valve and spewing out more burning fuel than usual. Using it for Cover does have the slight inconvenience of the pipes venting an explosion and causing 1d6 S4AP5 hits on the unit taking cover, 1/6th of the time the unit makes its Cover save (meaning 1/6th of the time a shot hits the pipe). This could be be quite distressing for T3 5+ Guardsmen squads if the 1d6 hit happens to roll high.
  • Tactical Note: You can bypass the problem of taking cover behind flammables by buying a few barricades and having your men take cover behind those, with the pipe behind them (the rule specifies that the unit is only at risk if its using the pipe for its cover save). This not only allows them to take the 4+ cover save with impunity, it also gives them some protection against flanking.
• Void Shield Generator: Big ol' AV12 bubble to hide behind and shoot with impunity. 50pts. Want two more layers? 100pts. Goody gumdrops.
• Void Relay Network: 3 layers of AV12 bubbles not good enough for you? How about 9 layers? Plus 1 to 3 Promethium Relay Pipes to provide your squads with flamers some cover when the void shields inevitably collapse? Might be good for a gunline though the points inevitably add up.
• Munitorum Armoured Container Cache: GWs newest Fortification is actually a collection of seperate objects. Namely 1 container 4 ammo boxes and 3 fuel drums, which all need to be placed within a 12" radius but other than that can be placed any way you like. The ammo boxes give the standard 5+ cover save and rerolls of 1s within 2". The fuel drums work similar to the pipelines except they only give a 5+ cover save but you also only risk 1D3 S4AP5 hits. They also give the same torrent upgrade to any non-vehicle Flamer weapon within 2". The containers are big armoured containers (duh) you can hide behind but not inside. They can take two optional Storm Bolters that can both be fired by any unit in base contact. The first time any unit has base contact with a container you roll a D6 just as with Mysterious Objectives. The Containers can in fact also be used as Mysterious Objectives. In both cases they use the following table. 1: you take 1d6 S4AP6 hits, 2: Nothing (better luck next time); 3: every Armies of the Empire unit within 6" gets +1 Ld, 4: all Assault and Rapid Fire weapons within 6" get +1S (this includes the containers own Storm Bolters), 5: 4+ invul. for every model within 6", 6: a single use orbital strike that scatters 4D6 on an arrow.
  You can take up to two additional Muntorum Armoured Container Caches at 40 points each with this fortification. Each cache can then be set-up seperately.
  • For 40-120 points this is a nice collection of buffs and cover, which can be spread over quite an area. The rerollable 1s are a godsend for static squads with gets hot, like Plasma Devastators.

Lords of War

Thanks to the Escalation rules and Forge World, Guard have more Lord of War choices than any other army. Most of these can be found in Imperial Armor, Volume One (2nd edition), and they start at the surprisingly cheap price of 235 points (though by no means do they stop there...this is the army that allows you to take Imperial titans). You can still only take one per Combined Arms Detachment, so choose wisely.

Malcador family

These are the Guard's entry-level super-heavies. They're cheap enough that you could reasonably bring one to a 1850-point game, and you (probably) won't even lose any friendships over it.

• Malcador: At first glance, the vanilla Malcador doesn't seem to stack up well against a Leman Russ. You're spending 50% more for similar armament and less armor; worse, the battle cannon is in a weird limited-traverse casemate, and the sponsons can't train forward. Sure, it's got twice the hull points, but still, why would you buy this stupid thing?
  You'd buy it because it's a super-heavy, dumbass. It can fire each of its guns at different targets with full BS, it can't be immobilized, and Rams/Tank Shocks are terrifying. It also ignores most of the Vehicle Damage Table, and an Explodes! roll just strips more hull points instead. It's also cheap enough to fit into reasonably-sized games where you'd usually forget you even HAVE a Lord of War slot.

• Malcador Defender: Instead of a Battle Cannon, has a bunker on the top with five Heavy Bolters all around and a Demolisher Cannon in the hull.

• Malcador Annihilator: Has a twin-linked Lascannon turret weapon, and a hull-mounted Demolisher Cannon. May feel a bit schizophrenic despite seeming like a mainly anti-vehicle platform.

• Malcador Infernus: Take a Malcador, throw out the turret, and give it a Titan-sized Inferno Cannon. It's a GIANT flamethrower tank, like a Hellhound on steroids. Back in the day, the Solar Auxilia knew how to make this bad boy fire Torrents; in modern times, the Adeptus Mechanicus has, appropriately, forgotten what 'torrent' means. Undaunted, the tank's machine spirit steps up its game and performs better than a Torrent weapon; instead of using the Torrent rule, the weapon's description instructs you to place the enormous S7 AP3 Hellstorm template up to 18" from the gun's muzzle, with the wider end no closer than the narrow end. AP3 not good enough for you? Swap it out for the chemical variant for the same Hellstorm attack but at AP2 with Poisoned 2+. This thing is a nightmare for your opponent, but will justifiably draw fire due to its lower-than-a-Russ armor values. If you can maneuvre it well, however, it will earn its relatively low points cost back in a heartbeat. Also has sponson weapon options, which are good for finishing up the burned up squads.

• Valdor Tank Hunter: Like a smaller Shadowsword, or specifically, like a bigger Destroyer Tank Hunter. It has a massive laser cannon. Has a single sponson mounted awkwardly on one side, firing arcs make it only useful for self-defense. Suffers slightly from the Vanquisher Syndrome of not being able to target enough things fast enough and having only has BS3. It does possess primary weapon D3 which vastly increases chances of successful penetration (Or Primary weapon 1 if you go by IAA rather than IAIG2nd), and AP1 highly increases chance of of the enemy vehicle being destroyed outright.
• Minotaur Artillery Tank: Basilisk on crack. Carries two Basilisk cannons on a Malcador hull. Don't ask why. Ask: "Why not?" Its blast is 7" and twin-linked with the drawback of being unable to fire directly (meaning 24" minimum range always). Also is built backwards meaning it has higher rear armour than on its front or sides, perhaps one of the few examples of Imperial technology which implies retreat is a valid tactic.

Macharius family

A step up from the Malcador, and not quite so full of weird quirks. About twice as expensive as a Russ, but you could make a reasonable argument that they're twice as powerful.

• Macharius Heavy Tank: Comparable to the Malcador, except with moar gunz. Standard Macharius has two sponsons and a MASSIVE. BLAST. BATTLE. CANNON. Unlike the Malcador, the Macharius has a full 360-degree traverse, so it can fire in any direction from its position. Also has hull-mounted twin linked heavy Stubbers in the front. If you somehow can afford a 50 pts increase you should seriously consider buying the Macharius Vanquisher below instead, as it can fire in exactly the same way PLUS it can also fire like a twin-linked Vanquisher.

• Macharius Vanquisher: TWIN. LINKED. VANQUISHER. CANNONS. Also has sponsons on either side. Hull-mounted Heavy Stubbers also. Hilarious anti-tank firepower. It can fire either like a twin-linked Vanquisher or like a 7" blast battle cannon; making it by far the most versatile of the Macharius variants.

• Macharius Vulcan: Mother of god. For ultimate cheese, get a Stormlord with Vulcan Mega Bolter, and get a couple of these to roll with it. This Macharius has a Vulcan Mega Bolter on its turret, plus the sponsons and hull Heavy Stubbers. Removes Tyranid players from the Apocalypse games in the radius of a few miles.

• Macharius Omega: A Macharius assault tank, basically. Has no turret for its PLASMA BLASTGUN. There are no hull-mounted heavy stubbers but it can take autocannon sponsons. It is also an open topped vehicle and therefore more vulnerable to enemy fire. The main gun can either fire 3 plasma pie plates at 60" or one massive 7" blast at S9 and 72" but at the risk of Meltdown (like Gets Hot but with D3 Glancing hits/wounds). Burns through bio-titans and monstrous creatures like they're nothing. Also great of taking out squadrons of medium/light armour or hordes of TEQs.

• Gorgon Assault Carrier: The ultimate party bus. The Gorgon can transport entire platoons instead of just a single squad. Has two twin-linked Heavy Stubber turrets on the very back, and has the option of either sponson-mounted weapons (four of 'em, two forward and two rearward) or a one-shot mortar array. It's tough as nails; AV14 on the front and sides, and the solid ceramite prow gives you a 4+ invuln on the front facing. In short, this thing will NOT be killed from the front. But not so fast - the rear plate is AV10, and the Gorgon is Open-Topped (with no fire points...no, really, you can't fire out of it), so if it gets caught in melee it's pretty much scrap metal. It's also the only IG Assault Transport aside from the Centaur Tractor (by RAW, anyway; see below), by virtue of being Open-Topped. Pack two 8-man squads of Bullgryn into it and add a Priest to each; the Gorgon has the capacity to transport fifty models, and can disembark two at once. Then scratch your head in wonder at what sort of game could possibly require fifteen hundred points worth of melee and transportation.

• CRASSUS ARMORED ASSAULT TRANSPORT: Picks up where the Gorgon slacked off. Has two Heavy Bolters (which you should replace with better guns) on its nose, sponsons with more bolters and it's completely closed. Carrying capacity of 35 (compare to Gorgon's 50). It's pretty much the IG's equivalent of a Land Raider (it costs exactly the same point-wise), and in grand Guard tradition, the CRASSUS ARMOURED ASSAULT TRANSPORT is more powerful, more durable (in terms of hull points, but not in terms of armor; the rear armor is still the Guard Super-Heavy standard of 12), can carry more than three times as many models, and is generally better at its job. This is how you get your Ogryn into melee; with all the transport capacity, you can fit a full squad (with up to five additional characters), or, since it's a Super-Heavy, a squad of five and a squad of six, both with Ministorum Priests. Get stuck in!
  • Note: The one advantage the Land Raider has over this sexy beast is that it's been updated in the last two editions, so it actually knows what the Assault Transport rule is. The CRASSUS ARMORED ASSAULT TRANSPORT doesn't specifically have the rule, and unlike the Gorgon it's not Open-Topped and thus doesn't have it by default, so by RAW your boys can't charge right out of the door, but come on. Do I need to write the name a fourth time? Discuss this with your opponent, of course.

• Praetor Armored Assault Launcher: CRASSUS ARMORED ASSAULT TRANSPORT with its transport capacity replaced with a huge rocket launcher. Like the Minotaur is a super-Basilisk, the Praetor is a super-Whirlwind. Its backside houses a Multiple-Rocket Launcher, armed with one of three types of ammunition; in all modes it fires two twin-linked Primary Weapon missiles per turn. You're required to choose armament at the game start, but this is after all the models are on the table, allowing you to choose the best loadout to counter your opponent, making the Praetor very versatile. Facing the Flying Circus? Load Pilum SAM's and introduce them to the dirt. Lots of blobs? Load Firestorm missiles and eat cover saves for breakfast with a side of your opponent's tears. Enemy Super-Heavies got you down? The Foehammer is ready to smack a bitch up. It also has two sponsons on the nose, just in case.

• Dominus Armored Siege Bombard: Another Crassus-with-huge-gun. This time it packs a battery of three giant mortars on its back, which could fire a S10 AP3 pieplate on the move or three of them while static. This thing is mean; compared to a Basilisk, it has better minimum range (and unlike a Colossus, has no restriction against firing within it; presumably the mortars can be aimed straight up), better strength, and is much more durable; if kept still, it's more cost-effective than an entire battery of Basilisks, and this is probably the only place in 40k you'll see that written. Worth noting, there is no model of this thing, nor is there any official art; get kitbashing!

Baneblade family

Thoroughly awesome, but very pricey, at least in terms of points. Ironically, they cost less money than the smaller super-heavies because you get them from GW instead of Forge World.

• Baneblade: The Baneblade is one of the most feared tanks the Imperium (and Chaos posers) have to offer. Sporting a Baneblade cannon (which shits out 10"wide lascannon pie plates at six feet), co-axial Autocannon, Demolisher Cannon, two Lascannons, three twin-linked heavy bolters, optional pintle mounts, AND optional Hunter-killer missile, its a rolling fortress of death. Comes standard with nine hull points, AV14 front, AV13 side, and AV12 rear armor. Can be commandeered by a Commissar to REALLY motivate your troops. With 7th edition, IG players can take one Baneblade or one of its variants.
  • Fortress of Arrogance: This special Baneblade gets to cart Yarrick's ass along for a hefty 940 pts (even counting the old man's cost), which he can embark and disembark like an open-topped vehicle without any of the damage penalties. It's armed with lascannon sponsons, a Hunter-Killer, heavy bolters on the sponsons and hull, and a storm bolter (For Yarrick to shoot out the single firing point). In addition, this is made for Ork stomping by halving Ork charge ranges while giving all Guard units within 12" of him Ld10.
  • Baneblade 212 "Arethusa": A special Baneblade from IA1, this is a BS4 Baneblade with a co-axial autocannon with the main cannon, TL Heavy Bolters with the Demolisher cannon, two sponsons with Lascannons and TL Heavy Bolters, and a pintle heavy bolter (yes, heavy bolter; herr Weissman doesn't believe in anything less than AP4). While the ability to ignore Shaken and Stunned on a 4+ is nice (though the new 7th ed 'Invincible Behemoth' rule makes it redundant), the main gift is the ability to make one weapon TL every turn, which with BS4 makes it irresistible (this stacks with the Co-Axial rule on the autocannon, which Arethusa, having its own statline, retains). Seriously, the only caveat is that you can't use it on stuff that's already twin-linked, so that means a twin-linked Demolisher and A TWIN-LINKED BANEBLADE CANNON. It's 75 points more than a plain one, but DAMN if it doesn't make you moist. Play it using the shorter Mars-Pattern FW model for more easily-acquired cover saves for extra fun.

• Hellhammer: Baneblade without the Baneblade cannon. The Hellhammer cannon is shorter ranged and has a smaller template, but better strength and AP, and it ignores cover. But why take this when the Stormsword right down the corner is so much better? Well, unlike all of the other Baneblade variants, the Hellhammer has a turret. The extra flexibility offered by being able to engage any target while keeping the thicker armor pointed towards the main threat could swing your decision.
  • Traitor's Bane: the king of Hellhammers, found in Warzone: Pandorax, this is a Catachan superheavy. On top of all the usual Hellhammer kit it comes with two extra sponson guns with lascannons as a matter of course and all heavy flamers are "Synched", which are still twin-linked, but are also S6 AP3, so when this tank gets close to things short of TEQ they are all dead. As an added bonus, it is a Stealth Tank!!! Which gives it a 6+ cover save when not in cover, and when against aircraft or flying creatures it gets Shrouded instead!

• Banehammer: Holds great potential for fun in trolling Mech armies with it's Tremor cannon. With a 60" range and S8 AP3, the Tremor cannon may not seem like much - but that's when it's special rule "Earthshock" comes in. All surviving models under its 7" blast gets caught within a shockwave zone which forces them to immediately take a dangerous terrain test after the normal damage from the blast is doled out. Not the best super heavy to take, but is fun. Shoot it at hordes or any large clusters of enemy models. It can also cart around 25 models, 10 of which can fire from the troop bay.

• Banesword: Designed especially to reach out and ruin someone's day. With a range of 180" on it's main cannon (called the Quake Cannon) as well as S9 AP3, and 10" Blast, someone is going to have a really bad day. And for shits and giggles, you can kill that annoying Tau player's army 2 tables over, instead of wasting the shots of your Deathstrike Missiles. In previous versions, the Quake Cannon was a Barrage weapon, making this variant the largest artillery piece a Guard player could field without resorting to titans. Sadly it's lost that magic, but kept the minimum range, so it's not the best choice for a super-heavy; you're probably better off bringing an entire battery of Basilisks (which ends up being cheaper...).

• Stormsword: Best at street fighting and siege warfare, what this bad boy lacks in range (a sort of pathetic (for Apocalypse) range of 36") is made up for in firepower. Its cannon launches a shell that packs roughly the same destructive power as a Deathstrike Missile's plasma warhead; an enormously painful S10 AP1 10" blast primary weapon shot which denies cover saves and instagibs vehicles on a 5+ (which goes to 3+ vs those annoying drop pods). It will also turn anything with less than T6 or Eternal Warrior inside out. So, in other words, it's a great way to say "Screw you!" to that annoying Vindicare Assassin, who is camping in the ruins. The blast template is in fact so huge that it is actually physically incapable of missing it's original target with its main cannon - which is awesome. Firing this thing once can wipe it's cost in units off of the gameboard, which is even more awesome. Pretty much everything you love about the Leman Russ Demolisher is taken up to eleven on this baby. If you can get these guys in range, they will never fail to impress with the incredible amounts of destruction they will unleash upon the enemy.

• Doomhammer: This super heavy isn't sure if it's supposed to be a scary ass tank or dedicated transport... so it does a decent job as both. With a transport capacity of 25 models, it certainly isn't too shabby, especially with it's fire points (well, fire point, really) allowing 10 models to blast away from it. Its primary cannon (named the Magma Cannon - yeah, it's the Volcano Cannon's baby brother) has a range of 60" and is S10 AP1 5" blast. So yeah... Something caught between a Stormsword, Stormlord and a Shadowsword. For a jack of all trades, this is a decent choice (the Baneblade is probably better at it, but it can't transport people).

• Shadowsword: Much alike the Baneblade, but instead of a turret and hull weapon, mounts a huge Volcano Cannon (yes, it is as powerful as it sounds). The Volcano Cannon stats are simple: 120" S:D AP2 5" blast. Yup. It is the Titan Killer and is possibly one of the most useful Baneblade-based vehicles, due to the combination of power and it's massive ten-foot range. Only Vortex Deathstrike missiles and titans can send the D farther afield than this baby. Can trade a pair of lascannons for targeters to boost its BS by one (not so useful, since you're shooting a blast weapon, and most of the time you'll be aiming at such a large target that you'll only miss on an 11-12" scatter anyway). This is a very useful unit, especially when combined with lots of tanks in a non-apocalypse game, because it becomes the king of distraction carnifexes in this configuration : 120" range D weapon, 9 HP, rather cheap by Baneblade variant standards, and needs heavy firepower to bring down; even in melee, krak grenades will only barely damage it. For just over 1000 points, you can get yourself 3 Demolisher russes and this baby : Either your opponent focuses the russes and gets blown off the table ( If you bought the targeters, it has over 50% chance to hit its initial target, almost certainly bringing it down with Strength D), or he/she tries to get the Shadowsword and gets in range of the Demolisher cannons, and that deepstriking unit not being that useful as they will strike against AV12 backed by 9 HP and most likely suffer a nasty retaliation.

• Stormblade (FW): Taking the Shadowsword chassis and sticking the Plasma Cannon from a Titan on it. They call it a Plasma Blastgun, but that sounds pathetic; what it does, however, is not. The gun allows for two firing modes: Rapid and Full (power, presumably). Rapid gives you 2 shots at 72", S8 AP2 with a 7" Blast, and Full drops it down to 1 shot with 96" range S10 AP2 Apocalyptic Blast; either way, anything without an invuln save will melt. All attacks are Primary Weapon, so enemy vehicles will feel the pain, too. Also one of the few sources of plasma these days that won't Get Hot; Mars builds shit right.

• Stormlord: It's a Doomhammer chassis with more transport capacity and a Vulcan Mega bolter instead of a Magma cannon (Yes, the Mega Bolter is as insane as it sounds: Imagine a Vulcan Minigun with Heavy Bolters for each barrel), the Mega Bolter is: 60" S6 AP3 Heavy 15, AND if the Stormlord doesn't move, it can fire at two different targets or twice at the same target! However, the most lulzy thing about this beast is that it can transport FORTY models. Don't get too worried about this, as the rules say it only counts as open topped ONLY for embark/disembark purposes, so you can not ally with some nasty melee units like assault terminators and get an awesomely massive charge out of it, sadly. However, up to twenty models can fire from the top-bay on the top, so you can also count this as a mobile firebase for your shooty infantry, though moving the tank still counts as movement for your units (though pivoting doesn't, when you want to point that Vulcan cannon at stuff).

Marauder family

The Imperial Navy will occasionally lend the Guard a hand with these big-assed bombers.

• Marauder Bomber: Flying Fortress of 40k. Imagine the massive bombers that dropped massive amounts of bombs on cities during the Second World War - the Marauder is basically the same thing, but with much bigger and less dinky and useless guns (for the setting). It also happens to share the same name as one too. It's not good for its point cost though, even in apocalypse. Those bombs just don't hurt tanks, and that's something you need to be able to kill. Does come with the ability to switch out the heavy bomb payload for two Hellstorm Bombs, big Inferno templates full of Str7 Ap3 goodness. Useful for when that annoying guy brings a whole company of Space Marines and you want them to DIE NOW. Unfortunate side effect is the tiny payload size. Oh well. As per new Apoc rules super heavy tend to explode in hilariously high range (with D strengths in the 5" epicenter) you can just keep this thing zooming above enemy forces and dare him to kill it.
• Maurauder Destroyer Heavy Attack Plane. While the standard Maurauder is the Imperium's B-17 (if thats a B-17, I would love to the imperium's lancaster. imagine a bouncing demolisher shell!!!), this one is the AC-130. Regardless, with a load out like this it's more akin to the bastard forbidden love child of a Manticore and a Hydra flak tank that's trying too hard, since it's armed with eight massive hellstrike missiles on the wings and three twin-linked autocannons in its nose. In addition to bombing, this sucker flies in and strafes anything unlucky to be on the ground, with hellstorm of fire, and then flies away. Better than the bomber in every way (looks, armor values, possession of actual AA mounted guns and glorious bombing runs).

Titans

TITANIC GOD-MACHINES OF PURE RAPE. They pack awesome firepower on ungodly durable platforms, but hell they are expensive. One thing you should remember: Titans are NOT indestructible. Despite being TITANS they are quite fragile for such point cost. Their void shield could soak a lot of anti-tank shooting, but they work only against shots from 12" and more, not anywhere near close combat. KEEP YOUR TITANS AS FAR FROM ENEMY AS POSSIBLE - a lot of things could kill them if they come close enough. Meltaguns are problem. Hummershield/chainfist terminators are big problem. Warscythe Lychguards are a massive problem. Daemon lords and Revenant Titans with swords are death. Wraithknights and Imperial Knights will chop you into little bits of metal confetti. Hell, I once saw a single veteran squad with meltabombs grav-shuted near a Reaver titan and kill it in one turn. Also, keep in mind that all titan weapons (except Mega Bolter) are blasts, so they cannot hurt fliers (not even Manta - snapshots or not, blasts cannot hit flyers, guess that's why the Tau used aircraft as their main anti-titan weapons).

• Warhound Scout Titan: Buy three!!! Make three (if you want your titan to look stupid)!!! Can equip two arm weapons: Give it two Turbo-Laser Destructors and watch the fireworks as it kills everything else on the field.
• Reaver Battle Titan: Buy Make one! Gets two reaver-class arm weapons and one warhound-class carapace weapon or giant Rocket Launcher/Vortex Missile on its back.
• Warlord Battle Titan: BUY ONE (if you want your titan to look stupid) shut up, it's awesome!!! OR SCRATCH BUILD TO SAVE YOURSELF $2500USD (or buy it from China)!!! One of these will obliterate its cost in, say, Predator Annihilators or Baneblades, without a single scratch. It mounts two of the Reaver's weapons on its back and two of its own weapons on its arms, which pack more range and fire more shots each turn.
• Imperator Battle Titan:If you play against one of these, just give up... I mean, the other Titans scale up by adding on guns, but this God-Machine carries six carapace weapons (use the Warlord's weapons for that, there's no point using the Warhound's), it has two arm weapons - and even it's weakest arm gun will at the least let out 6 strength 8 AP3 shots. There is no safe place against it, its weapon's range allows it to hit anything 36" away and beyond. Even if the enemy team fills every square inch of the board with anti-tank weapons, this thing will come out on top without taking so much as a glancing hit to it's armor, with all the void shields they need to get through first. Load up on Laser Blasters for the carapace and Vengeance Cannons for arms and this can let loose an insane TWENTY-SIX destroyer shots. You still should beware close combat monsters and meltahouses - with minimum fire range of 36" Imperator cannot shoot down any approaching TEQ's, scarab swarms, or those overpowered deepstriking corsair Fire Dragons (unless you put some good fire support units into his leg-bastions, which you really should). You will never get a model for this thing, not in a thousand years, but you can proxy one, just ask your two meter (seven foot) pal over and get him to cosplay. And remember - chicks dig giant robots You're not fooling anyone Princeps. FUCK YOU I CAN TRY!

Note that Tau have some really nasty Apocalypse fliers which are due for an update soon and already seem designed to destroy anything you can field (which they kind of were in fluff). See [[2]] for details. Counter with Praetor Armoured Launcher using Pilums

Supplements

Cadia: A Codex Astra Militarum Supplement

Taking content from 'The Red Waaagh!', 'Warzone Damocles: Mont'ka' and 'Echoes of War: Last Step Backwards', this book gives the Cadians both a Decurion and some special tools for a Cadia-themed army, which is one of the most common themed IG armies. Do note that the only named characters available for a Cadian army are Creed, Kell and Pask.

Cadian Warlord Traits

The detachment can use this table, or the ones in the main rulebook, OR the one in the IG codex. However, a Tank Commander can't use this table because his entry restricts him to only use the IG one (and even then, he only rolls a D3). Also, the decurion doesn't grant a reroll of WTs, so be prepared for anything. However you can still name a sergeant in your blob a warlord and have zealot +1BS, making a bombardment or giving an order.

1. Master Orator: Warlord gains Zealot. This is why there are no options for Priests in the Battlegroup. This is the one your Lord Commissars want, but Chain of Command would mean you took no CCSs at all, and the Decurion is made for those anyway. And CCSs shouldn't be in melee anyway. Overall, actual Priests would have been better.
2. Dead-eye Shot: Warlord gets +2 BS, his unit gets +1 BS. CCS's Veterans hitting on 2s? Yes please! Can be awesome with that 50 man squad, but Commanders aren't ICs, having a Commissar as warlord is too restrictive and making a random sgt the warlord is asking for trouble.
3. Artillery Veteran: Warlord gets a ONE use artillery bombardment, like a Master of Ordnance. Because of the scatter you absolutely need line of sight.
4. Unflappable Stoicism: aka Draconian Disciplinarian. Cadian units within 12" of warlord don't take morale tests for suffering 25% or more casualties.
5. Above the Thundering Gun: Warlord can give Orders; if he could already do so, he can issue one more command each turn - Don't you love Creed's WT is having 2 WTs, as well as +1 order?.
6. Staunch Traditionalist: Cadian characters must issue and accept challenges and can re-roll failed to hit and to wound in challenges. Comboes nicely with most of your heirlooms - It'd see good use in a combined squad led by a LORD Commissar (who doesn't need to be the warlord here), the sgts "sacrificing" themselves for him in challenges against multiwound characters so he can battle a weakened adversary. You still suck on melee though.

Heirlooms of Cadia

Not overpriced bullshit like regular heirlooms (I'm looking at you, Kurov's Aquila, which is worth its points only in a mechanised plasma party of veterans). In fact, the detachment can take heirlooms from both this and the regular IG table (p.166 Mont'Ka and p.87 of the supplement), which is good since some players could find some of these relics a little too CC oriented to their taste.

• Wrath of Cadia: It's a super-cheap laspistol that always wounds on a 4+, while forcing armor saves taken against hits from this weapon to always fail if they roll under a 4. Wielded by a Lord Comissar, this means any non-vehicle/fortification will take a wound...20% of the time. So, not amazing, but for 5 points, it's a fun bit of fluff. A good way to represent the prodigious laspistol skills of someone like Ciaphas Cain or Commissar LORD Bernn.
• Celeritas: Not your average MC CCW. In a challenge, character gets +4 invulnerable save, and for each successful save made by the wielder in a challenge it can make an auto hit with Rending, even if character dies from failed saves at the same time. Dirt cheap, it's an auto include. Combine this with a way of rerolling to wound and you're settled. Keep in mind that you still need a 6 to Rend, even with the autohit, so don't expect this to make your nameless Lord Commissar come out on top with Abbadon. Do expect to leave the armless freak with a few less wounds than he started.
• Volkov's Cane: Here's the mean one, for 10 points. A Company Commander-exclusive AP4 CCW with Concussive...yay. But the real boon is that, when ordering a unit within 6", the Ld test will only fail on a double 6. That's akin to Ld11, which is epic. Stick this on the Company Commander babysitting your heavy weapons to make them almost as killy as Centurion Devastators (!!).
• Kabe's Herald: Give to a Tank Commander to allow any other Leman Russ squadrons within 12" to benefit from his orders as if they were part of his unit (if the TC orders "Gunners, Kill on Sight!" the affected squadrons get Split Fire). So, this 20 point relic behaves almost as well as 60 points' worth of Tank Commanders or more (mind your cohesion and BS3)...as long as the bearer doesn't get wrecked and you lose all of it. When bolstered with a few tank teams, it becomes the most unfair relic ever (Punisher overkill can quickly get you outmaneuvered, spread the firepower!), and sees even better use in the Emperor's Fist formation. Combined with "Strike and Shroud!" would triple the markerlights those Tau would need to spend, so give them Camo netting.
  • RAW, this Relic may be even better than it appears. See, a Tank Order is not an Order, and thus does not have the same restriction that a unit cannot receive more than one Tank Order. However, nothing prevents Kabe's Herald from affecting another Commander's squadron, for a Leman Russ Squadron is a Leman Russ Squadron. It would be a That Guy interpretation, but if Pask is dangerous, imagine Pask getting to fire twice.
• The Iron Left: Cadia's version of Straken. An S+2 AP3 Power Sword bionic arm. Hits harder (but slower) than a Space Marine for the price of an actual Power Fist. Can be useful against anything slower than a marine (read: not against much things). Buy a proper powerfist instead. Hey, they can't all be great.
• Standard of the Lost 113th: A buffed Regimental Standard. At the start of the movement phase, the bearer can plant the standard so that any Cadian units within 18" gain Fearless, but after planting, his unit cannot move, run, or charge for the rest of the game. This is a massive gamble, and the price tag is more than likely to turn away a few heads, especially given how many other ways Guard have to compensate for their lousy leadership, but it's also a massive area of effect. Place it on the center of the map to cover the most important third of it.

Formations

Cadian Battle Group Detachment (Warzone Damocles: Mont'Ka)

The Imperial Guard now get a Decurion-style Detachment of their very own. Unlike those that have come before, the Cadian Battle Group leans heavily on its chain of command, as your 1 Command choice is both your unlocking choice and your limitless choice. Each Battle Group Command Formation you take unlocks up to 3 Core choices, so cannon fodder or tanks, which in turn grant you up to another 3 Auxiliary Choices. Your Battle Group Command Company Commanders can shout faster and louder than most Company Commanders, issuing up to three orders and doubling their command range to 24" when commanding units from the Battle Group. On top of that, all orders issued by any officer in the detachment to any unit in the detachment is always tested on 3d6 drop highest, which certainly works on Creed (in fact, ANY officer, including PCS ones). To add onto this, everyone re-rolls 1s to Hit with Lasguns and Hot-shot Lasguns, because years of live-fire drills make Cadians better shots.

Your Command choice has to be this:

Battle Group Command (1+)

Note: You theoretically have an unlimited number of command choices. As hilarious as an entire army of plasma or melta spewing CCS is, an unlimited number of BS4 Punisher or Exterminator Leman Russ tanks can be even more trollsy.

• A Company Command Squad, optionally with Creed and/or Kell. Note that only this squad benefits from the BGC Command Benefit (3 orders at 24"); the other CCSs do not.
  • A note on Relics: As you can see on the table below, while the TART benefits any CCS, added to a BGC CCS it raises your odds of Inspired Tactics to greater than 1 in 5; unfortunately, because the BGC benefit drastically increases your odds of double ones, it also means you are far more likely to lose your TART. Remember that it costs 25 points, and make your decision accordingly; Volkov's Cane is better, at only 10 points, out to 6 inches, but only out to 6 inches.
• A Tank Commander, which may be Pask.
• A single Lord Commissar. Nothing too fancy, but remember that the Lord Commissar is a valid Order target and will propagate orders out to any unit he is attached to, due to a combination of the wording of the rules on orders and the FAQ clarifying that a mixed Faction unit has every Faction of every unit member. This means you can ally a BGC into any Imperium army, strap the LC to any unit you want to buff, and have the CCS issue that unit orders! In addition, both the LC and the CCS have access to the relics list; aside from the obvious, if you brought Cawl or Celestine, there are some choice options you may want to strap to your LC to get them into the unit.

Order Probabilities

Modifiers	LD	Success	Inspired Tactics			Incompetent Command
			TART Retained	Tart Lost	Total
Base	7	58.33%	02.78%
	8	72.22%
	9	83.33%
	10	91.67%
Battle Group Command (BGC)	7	80.56%	07.41%			00.46%
	8	89.35%
	9	94.91%
	10	98.15%
Volkov's Cane (VC)	7	97.22%	02.78%
	8
	9
	10
Tactical Auto-Reliquary of Tyberius (TART)	7	58.33%	05.56%	02.78%	08.33%	02.78%
	8	72.22%	08.33%		11.11%
	9	83.33%
	10	91.67%	11.11%		13.89%
BGC + TART	7	80.56%	10.65%	07.41%	18.06%	00.46%
	8	89.35%	13.89%		21.30%
	9	94.91%
	10	98.15%	15.74%		23.15%
BGC+VC	7	99.54%	07.41%
	8
	9
	10

Core(0-3 per Command)

• Emperor's Shield Infantry Company: Made up of 3 Emperor's Shield Infantry Platoons (see the Auxiliary section) plus a Company Command Squad, which means 170 Guardsmen and 3-27 Sentinels, along with whatever support units you want from the Infantry Platoon entry in the Codex. Man, that's a lot of dudes: 900 pts bare bones. In addition to the buffs from the Emperor's Shield Platoon (see below), this formation's CCS can order any number of units from the same formation to FRF!SCF! on a single order. Before you start ordering all your units at once keep in mind two things: the ordered units must shoot at the same target, and 300 S3 BS3 shots that reroll ones only translate into ~19 MEQ wounds, is that the best use of +750 pts of infantry? 40 guardsmen in rapid fire range can deliver enough dakka to delete a 10 marine squad - there's no prize for overkill after all.

• Emperor's Fist Armoured Company: A Tank Commander (not Pask) leading 3 Russ squads, and 1-3 Enginseers. The TC has a 12" aura of BS 4 for his Russes, and Enginseers keep things running by forcing Pens on Russes within 6" to be rolled twice and have the lower applied, no "keep the last result" bullshit. The more Russes run things over, the stronger the buffs gets: Toughness units are more likely to run (-1Ld per Tank after the first when resolving Tank Shock), while enemy armour crumples the same (+1 to ramming Str for each subsequent ramming Tank, which is great, as this will buff your S8 ram to S10.) That is, if you manage to ram using these lumbering behe-WHAT YOU CANNOT CRUSH WITH WORDS YOU CAN CRUSH WITH IMPERIAL TANKS. No transport provisions for the Enginseers but they don't need that, because Russes can't move more than 6", and the bonus works near Enginseers, not near transports carrying them. Still, their Trojan DTs from IA1 are always useful because it's a cheap way of giving your tanks Preferred Enemy.
  • If you're on a budget or want to fill up on more Auxiliary formations take note this is the cheaper Core choice: 670 minimum, but a Kabe's Herald would be recommended so those Tank Orders aren't wasted, plus the compulsory Command formation takes the cost up to 750 pts, much more manageable than the ESIC's 1005 pts without anything better than S3 (plus 3 Sentinels, ugh).

Auxiliaries (0-3 per Core)

• Emperor's Shield Infantry Platoon: 1 Infantry Platoon (5 Infantry squads minimum, no DTs) supported by 1-3 Sentinel units, either Scout or Armoured. The platoon has Move through Cover within 9" of the Sentinels and the PCS can issue "Fire and Advance!", making them shoot while counting as stationary, which is ultimately a reverse, more reliable version of 'Forwards, for the Emperor!'. He can issue this for free, meaning he still has an order left for a 'FRF!SRF!' or something.
  • On Regimental Specialists in the Cadian Battle Group: FAQ states that Ministorum Priests, Primaris Psykers and Enginseers can't be added to formations, while the Commissar unit entry states "You may include on Commissar for every [CCS] or [PCS] in your army." Exception proves the rule, where the exclusion of Commissars in that FAQ of specialists implies that they can be added per their usual 1 per CCS/PCS rule.
• Infantry Platoon: Regular Infantry Platoon, to make ends meet, which is an important thing. If you want to use more than one Commissar or Conscript squad while still having some points for Russes this could be it. Otherwise pay the ESIP's "+1 Sentinel & +3 Infantry squads" tax and get the bonuses.
• Superheavy Support Element: Baneblade Variants. Or Lots of Baneblade variants, via Emperor's Fury Super-Heavy Company (did Baneblades just become legal for tournaments?).
• Emperor's Fury Super-Heavy Company: IT IS THE BEEEHNBLEDS! 3 Baneblades (or its variants), plus an attending Enginseer, who gains +2 to his repair rolls. If the enemy is hit by 3 Primary weapons it tests Ld on 4D6 unless it has gone to ground, and enemies within 12" of the formation move as if they were in difficult terrain, for they cannot withstand the sheer awesomeness of so much imperial armour. And that's all. Yeap, those special rules suck, because if something is hit by 3 Baneblades, it's probably dead or fearless anyway; the real reason this formation exists is so you can have 3 baneblades in your army (or AS an army, since as a Decurion-style detachment all choices within the Cadian Battlegroup are formations on their own). Now this is where you want a transport so your lone, unprotected Engie doesn't slow the formation (Superheavies move up to 12"). A Trojan can confer PE to a vehicle. It won't matter much on Primary weapons, but those other 12 barrels will notice it.
• Emperor's Blade Assault Company: Aka "The MechVet" formation. A Company Command Squad joins 3 Veteran Squads (all four units mounted in Chimeras or Tauroxes) and 1-3 Hellhound Squadrons (of any kind). They get PE against enemies within 6" of an objective, and the infantry gets Objective Secured, your only source of it. PE makes this formation scream "Plasma Vets!", although with Hellhound support it can also lend itself to melta or flamer spam. All in all, a sound alternative to Emperor's Shields, and a formation worth running standalone. I came, I saw, I burned.
• Emperor's Spear Aerial Company: 3 Valkyrie or Vendetta squads in any combination, so the entire formation rolls as one squad for reserves. Also, at the start of Movement they can declare a Low Altitude drop, where they lose Jink and have to test dangerous terrain when flying over obstacles 3" high, but units disembarking through Grav Chutes won't scatter. Sadly, thanks to the recent FAQs and Errata, you can no longer put your battle brothers in these.
• Ogryn Auxilla: 1 Commissar leading 2 Ogryn squads and 2 Bullgryn squads, that gain Fearless while within 12" of the Commissar, and they inflict HoW at S7 if they charge a squad who has been succesfully charged by another Ogryn/Bullgryn of this formation. Leading with Slabshield Bullgryn makes this nasty. Remember though that Ogryns and Bullgryns are still overpriced. Are you ready to pay that much for a footslogging mob almost every dedicated melee unit will crush?
  • Alternate Take: While most dedicated melee units will crunch these guys in CC, the ogryms/bullgryns have some pretty decent anti infantry firepower, especially the ripper guns. If this whole group (in bare minimum numbers) manages to get a turn of shooting in before CC, you'll still inflict roughly 9 wounds on MEQ's. And then they'll charge you, then the enemy melee unit will have to deal with the other 3 squads charging in retaliation next turn.
  • 1 word: Gorgon Even with being open-topped, this is the perfect set of units to go riding around it, for those times when you just want to crush something.
• Emperor's Wrath Artillery Company: 1 CCS in a Chimera or Taurox commanding 2 chosen artillery units (Basilisk, Hydra, Wyvern) and 1 unit of either Manticores or Deathstrikes, and supported by 1-3 Enginseers. The CCS can issue "Smite at Will", "Suppressive Fire" and "Fire on my target" to the vehicles of the formation (they count as Ld8). Furthermore, the formation gains Twin-linked against an enemy unit spotted (in line of sight, within 18") by a friendly unit with a Vox caster. This is one of the best formations in the whole book. Twin-linked Ignores Cover Basilisks, anyone? Maybe Jink ignoring Hydras if you're going against a flyer-heavy list, but meh, bring moar Basilisks.
  • Alternate Take: Your CCS can only issue two orders, so a good setup for this formation might be a squadron of wyverns and a squadron of basilisks. The basilisks and the manticore get orders and twin-linking, while the wyverns happily beat everything they see into dust without the need for support. Or you can order them to have pinning. Because that's totally better than a twin-linked, cover-ignoring manticore.
• Emperor's Talon Recon Company: 6-12 Sentinels of either flavor. They all gain Outflank, and PE against a unit chosen at the start of your first turn for the whole game. Furthermore, one Sentinel becomes a Character that can issue "Take Aim!", "Forwards, for the Emperor!", or "Move! Move! Move!" to units from the Formation, at Ld 8.
  • Alternate Take: A fast nuisance is a good nuisance. Also, with "F,ftE!" they become akin to Crisis Suits with JSJ, but more resilient. Not to mention they can Outflank and put the hurt on their PE target, or pummel it with HK Missiles at any range. For a fun twist that no one expects, you can make the command sentinel your warlord ,and due to him gaining the character keyword, he can have a trait. That's right, with the cadian detachment rules you can have a BS 5 Sentinel and BS 4 escorts.
• Psykana Division: 1 Primaris Psyker leading 3 Wyrdvane units "supported" by 1-3 Commissars. The Primaris knows any powers known by Wyrdvanes of the same division within 12", and receives +1 to his mastery level for each 5 Wyrdvane models in the same distance, until the end of your psychic phase. This doesn't cause him to generate more powers, but does generate more charges. Scared by their attached Commisars, the Wyrdvanes harness charges on a 2+, but if they fail the psychic test, one Wyrdvane model is blammed (mutant AND incompetent!). If they Peril, one of them is blammed BEFORE the peril actually manifests, which is nice. Outright means that when combined with Daemonology, you can get free warp charges AND harness them on 2+, ignoring perils.
• Militarum Tempestus Platoon: Vanilla Tempestus Platoon. Just don't. They'd do better in an Allied detachment, where they get OS and MT orders. Only take it if you can't take second detachments.
  • Alternate Take: Umm, in order to take them as allies, you'd have to run an HQ and at least a troop of them. While a cheap commissar isn't bank breaking, it's still a waste of points and an easy kill at best. This formation is just a simple way to pop in a deepstriking melta squad or three, or some extra-accurate Hotshot rounds if you're feeling saucy. Don't forget that the Imperial Guard Scion Platoons DO NOT need a Command Squad or Commissar. Take a cheap squad for popping expensive enemy targets. And don't forget they can be issued AM orders (and the 24" Order range means you might actually get to order them), so feel free to ignore jinks with those deepstriking meltas.

Castellans of the Imperium

Found in Gathering Storm: Fall of Cadia, this detachment skirts the line between using no force org, and being battle forged. Basically, take Imperial Guard, Sisters of Battle, Space Marines (Vanilla Space Marines with Black Templars mind you),Imperial Knights, Assassins, and Militarum Tempestus. Then build the army around the units in there different unit organizations. Ok, so its not that clear cut. The detachment basically lists what units (by name) can be used in what position. In the case of the Guard, they offer up cheap units to fill the troop choice, as well as some nasty vehicles in heavy support. Lets not forget Lord of War as well. However, Elite and Fast attack force org are contested with Space Marine standard. That being said, the detachment does list Vendettas in Fast Attack. Aside from giving open reign with you army construction, the detachment gives you some other nice benefits.

• Hatred for all. Yep, everyone in the detachment gains hatred. Even better, if you fill out the force org chart, all the units gain Zealot instead.
• Chenkov fun. Yep, if a troop unit is destroyed, it has the chance to be in on-going reserves. Add in that you have no upper limit on the number of troops you may take, and you have some combat staying power. Just hope its not a kill point battle.
• Build a Imperial Crusade. Basically, take what you want to create the perfect army that you always wanted.

The detachment has some problems, though.

• Points cost. You think getting that Zealot is cheap? You are wrong. Three Lord of War Choices ain't cheap. Not to mention the number of heavy support, HQ, elite, and fast attack choices you need to fill out that Force Org.
• Multiple armies. For this detachment, you need at least two of the armies listed. So if you are starting out, this is not the detachment for you.
• LARGE!! This Detachment is large if you plan on filling it out. Having all those books, rules, and units can be daunting.
• Restrictions. Sorry, unless later FAQed, no Forgeworld for you (Except Vendettas, long story). Except that from Forgeworld Emails, all of their 'dreadnoughts' count as Dreadnoughts for the purposes of formations(just remember that the Leviathan's Relic of Darkness rule means that he can't claim the formation benefits, even if you put him in there). In addition, all of their Badab War Characters count as their respective type for formations. Sevrin Loth is a Librarian, while Captain Tarnus Vale is a Captain. That being said, units in armies such as Space Wolves, Dark Angels, Blood Angels, and the like cannot be taken in this detachment.

Tactical Note: A lot of the short comings of this formation can be overcome, very simply. For 10 meltaguns take Inquisitor Coteaz as one of your HQ choices. Bam. You've not only fulfilled the "two armies rule", all of your non-vehicles model are also ObSec. Furthermore, as a Guard player specifically, any Commissar or Militarum Tempestus squad can fulfill the second army rule for this detachment, so the argument that this detachment isn't for new players is weaker for new Guard players. If you do decide to do this, consider having Chaplain Grimaldus as the second HQ and make him your Warlord, since his WT gives your entire detachment LD 10.

Dataslate Formations

• Armoured Shield (Start Collecting!) - Requires a commissar, infantry squad, and Leman Russ tank. Russ Gives a +4 cover to infantry in this formation, if they are within 6 inches of the Russ. While its not as game breaking as other formations, this formation does allow you to run a pseudo Tank company. Just take multiples of this formation. Now to be fair, you will have access to dedicated transports (Infantry Squadron has the option of 2 Dedicated Transports). Not to mention, these are regular guard, not Vets. So no 3+ cover saves with forward sentries. Also, the formation specifies One Russ, not a squadron. Still, 4+ is pretty good, plus the commissar means these apes won't be falling back without a fight. Have the Russ do most of the heavy lifting when it comes to fighting. Use the guardsmen to keep units from assaulting the Russ.
• Catachan Ambush Patrol (Apocalypse) - An Infantry Platoon and 1-3 Vet Platoons, preferably all modeled as Catachans.
  • They all get Shrouded until such a point where they either move through cover, shoot, or charge, when they lose it. They also make anyone who charges them through difficult terrain to make dangerous terrain. In short, they're still redshirts, with a little better use when camping.

• 'Emperor's Fist' Tank Company (Apocalypse) - A Leman Russ leads three full Leman Russ Squadrons. Tank Commander optional.
  • All the Squads are Armoured Spearheads of their own, making each one get a leader. Also, the lone russ gets BS4 and can give it to anyone within 12" of him. The last rule is the ability to let them roll Thunderblitz if more than two of them all ram/tank shock the same guy before rolling anything else once per turn.

• Emperor's Talons' Recon Company (Apocalypse) - A lone Scout Sentinel leads 3 full squadrons of Sentinels of any other make.
  • Like the formation above, the lone one acts as leader with BS4 and Stealth, and anyone within 12" of him gets both of these, helping survival slightly. Also, they get Preferred Enemy against one enemy when they deploy.

• 'Emperor's Wrath' Artillery Company (Apocalypse) - A Chimera leads three full Ordinance Squadrons full of either Colossi or Basilisks.
  • When the Arty is within 6" of the Chimera, they can exchange their shots for a single 24-240" S9 AP3 Ordinance X (X being the number of Colossi or Bassies firing), Apocalyptic, Cover-ignoring, Pinning blasts. It's a risky measure, but it does make big blasts.

• 'Imperial Shield' Infantry Company (Apocalypse) - A CCS commands 3+ Infantry platoons.
  • At the end of each break, every company can regain d3 casualties up to their starting strength. In short, it's a weaker form of Chenkov at the command of this group. Then again, this is pretty much how normal people play the AM.

• Lord Castellan's Supreme Command (Apocalypse) - Creed and Kell join a CCS with two guards, an Astropath, an Officer of the Fleet, and a Master of Ordinance in an Imperial Bastion and laugh it up.
  • This thing is essentially like a Dawn Of War HQ on board. Creed can order anyone on the field (ANYONE), Ordinance can make d3+1 bombardments each time he shoots, and they get two assets each break.

• Sanctioned Psyker Battle Elite (Apocalypse) - A Primaris Psyker controls 4+ regular Battle Psykers (Replace with Wyrdvanes?).
  • This formation gives one thing: A unique Warp Charge 3 power called Temporal Distort. It's a power with 36" range that can either bar enemies from charging or add +6 to an ally's run and +2d6 to their charge. It's...a useful power, especially for support.

• 'Steel Fury' Baneblade Company (Apocalypse) - 3-5 BANEBLAAAADES!
  • When in Arrowhead pattern, they gain a Combined Fire Bonus (Measured by how many Baneblades shot their main cannon at a target) when rolling vehicle damage. Rest assured that any non-superheavy in their way will DIE.
  • When in Broadsword Pattern, anyone stupid enough to charge them must take a Morale test, with a -1 bonus for each Baneblade in formation.

• Vortex Deathstrike Missile (Apocalypse): This may or may not have been errata'd into the Warzone Pandorax version (see below), but firing one of these off will lead to an ass-kicking even a titan would be jealous of. Literally, nothing in the game hits as hard as this. It's a Deathstrike missile launcher with the plasma warhead replaced with the 40k version of a nuke: a vortex warhead. While being fragile in the extreme, unable to go off in turn 1, having to take a lord commissar, an entire infantry platoon, and a 200-point tax on top of that to keep it safe, and being a single shot wonder, it is still completely worthwhile. A 10" blast of fuck you that will remove anything it touches. No, no saves of any kind. No, you don't get Reanimation Protocols. No, you don't get Eternal Warrior. If it's not flying, a Super-Heavy or Gargantuan creature, it's gone, and even baneblades and bio-titans will be seriously ass-fucked when this says hello. And the cherry on top? The sheer size of the template makes it very good at hitting what it's aiming for; if you're direct-firing, anything with a base the size of a large blast template or bigger is impossible to miss; even firing blind (full scatter) you have a 50% chance of hitting the point you were aiming at.Take only if you think your balls are as brazen as an imperial guardsman

Warzone Armageddon

• 'Imperial Vengeance' Armoured Company (Apocalypse) - A CCS and 3 Infantry Platoons (each with a PCS and two Infantry squads), all with Chimeras.
  • An economical formation with economical uses. The men get Stubborn and Counter-Attack within 12" of an objective, and any friendly vehicles within 12" of the CCS Chimera can move 12" Flat-Out on open ground.

• Armageddon Stompa Hunters (Apocalypse) - 3-5 Armoured Sentinels. That's models, not squads.
  • When in Arrowhead pattern, these Sentinels can elect to aim at a superheavy and fire twice at them,giving up the ability to fire the next turn. They also get bonuses on superheavies by giving all Armoured Sentinels within 12" of the lead Sentinel +1 on all pen rolls against superheavies.

Warzone Damocles

• Hellstorm Squadron (Apocalypse) - 3-5 Hellhounds, and only Hellhounds.
  • Combining these hounds together gives them the option to replace their shots with their cannons with a single ID hellstorm template so long as it's within 12" and within the lead Tank's LoS. It's pretty clear from this that they're here to murderize entire blobs, and they're all gonna die.

• Steel Phalanx Tank Squadron (Apocalypse) - 3-5 Leman Russes of any sorts can join this group.
  • The ability to make squads out of all these Russes lets them roll Thunderblitz if more than two of them all ram/tank shock the same guy before rolling anything else once per turn. But we all know that the odds of this being your reason for taking this isn't that high. You just want all that glorious Dakka together. The Emp's First is a better one by far.

• 'Rain of Fire' Direct Support Battery (Apocalypse) - 3-5 Basilisks. Sense a pattern here?
  • First off, this gives you rerolls on the scatter die, which is always a plus. However, in doing so, the Basilisks now have no minimum range and half the max range, making them meant for close range fire, making the reroll on scatter a blessing when your army tends to rely on blobs of doom. This is a strong formation for Bassies, since half of twenty feet isn't really a serious loss; they'll still reach across all but the largest of Apoc boards.

Warzone Pandorax

• Deathstrike Vortex Missile Battery (Apocalypse) - 3-5 Deathstrikes are armed up with vortex warheads.
  • The formation is unusual in that they can only fire one single-use missile (A 12-960" Ordinance 1 S:D AP1 Large Blast Vortex) a turn starting with turn 2, with the option to save missiles for another turn. Smell that D...and at intercontinental ranges, too! But these babies carry a major risk: if the vehicle gets a weapon destroyed, its warhead goes off and the vehicle blows up immediately, replacing the model with a Vortex as if it were fired on the vehicle.

• 'Emperor's Mercy' Commissariat Squad (Apocalypse) -A Lord Commissar gets a retinue of 3+ lesser Commissars.
  • As is fitting for Commissars, they all get fearless, since they do not want to blam themselves. They also ups the Aura of Command to 12", giving everyone within it Furious Charge and Hatred. But if someone does fail morale within 12" of the group, they get to blam someone, just like they were within the unit. It's a very helpful command squad.

• Xerxes Airborne Support Wing (Apocalypse) - 3-5 Valkyries are grouped in, all with Multi-Missile Pods in exchange for any transport capacity.
  • In exchange for their transport capacities, at least two of the Valkyries can combine their shots into one Heavy X 72" S4+X AP6 Apocalyptic Barrage (X being the number of participating Valkyries), meant for melting hordes everywhere. IF you've got 5 Valkyries participating, the barrage goes off at strength 9, making it effective against light and medium vehicles, too.

Sanctus Reach - The Red Waaagh!

• The Steel Host - A Tank Commander goes leading three Russ squadrons and a Hydra.
  • This is more meant for ranged Russes, but the ability to confer Preferred Enemy to anyone within 12" of the Commander is a good gift no matter what you equip.
  • Alternate Take: This formation allows you to take 12 battle tanks and 3 Hydras, all in a very legal non-Apocalypse formation. In other words, consider this formation an army list for an armoured company that doesn't need Forge World.

• Rampart Detachment - A PCS leads two 5-manlet Bullgryn squads.
  • Plain and simple, this is a force with major defense, with Fearless, Fear, Counter-Attack, and +1 to cover for anyone covered even partially by the formation and their meaty shields. Meaning anything behind a unit of badass space ogres with those manly shields get a 3+ cover save, extra camo cloak trolling gives you a 2+!
  • Tactical Note: Since most of the Guard's big stuff is either a) not infantry, or b) not mobile, this formation doesn't seem so great on paper. But then you note that the wall protects friendly infantry. This opens up the entire Imperial armed forces as potential benefactors of that meaty 3+ cover save. Sneak in some Stealth or Shrouding for a 2+ on any Imperial infantry unit. 7th edition is ally edition.

Allies

With 7th edition rules, any Imperium army can ally perfectly with Guard. Every single Space Marine (all variants) and Sisters of Battle unit is available to back up your Guard, and Eldar, Tau, Orks, and Chaos (in case you're feeling heretical) can be used as well, but no one likes them. You can also ally with Necrons if you're don't care about logic and just want to make opponents cry at the amount of firepower you're going to put out every turn.

Battle Brothers

Every army of the Imperium, which is as follows:

• Blood Angels - Nice because you can get death company to go rip people's head off while they're at it. Stick a Sanguinary Priest in there for FNP for your guardsmen. Mephiston can do everything your army can't. Love it.
• Grey Knights: If all you want is tough marines, Deathwing Termies (from the Dark Angels) are probably better since they're more gun-tastic anyway, after CC has been nerfed so much over the past 2 editions. However, value is found with an excellent beat-stick to save your asses in case it comes to assault. Also, Hammerhand on a squad of Guardsmen from a Librarian, who should also be armed with a Nemesis Daemonhammer, coupled with Force. Any monster will think twice before charging your blob.
• Dark Angels - BS2 Overwatching, Stubborn, green SPEHS MUHREENS that can stand in front of your gunline and force the enemy to charge them first and get shot to shit by the Angelic Dakka. Their Terminators and Bikes are still the best in their categories ever.
  • SWEET MERCIFUL EMPRAH, AZRAEL Ahem, if you're feeling particularly trolltastic, you can attach Azrael to a 50-man blob of guardsman for 50 4++ invul saves fearless, and either Furious Charge or Feel No Pain within 3" of an Objective. Then just grab some deathwing termies (or ravenwing if you're kinky like that) and deepstrike them behind enemy lines, and watch the madness ensue. Throw in a psyker with prescience for rerolls to hit, or better yet a priest to reroll the 4++, giving you better saves than storm shields and making your opponent weep bitter tears. This cheese has officially upped Dark Angels to the number one allies for IG (in this writer's opinion at least).
  • Throw in a priest with some Deathwing you don't plan to deepstrike (at least without a drop pod) for a cheap set of rerolls. A bit fragile, but they are much cheaper and provide better buffs than a chaplain.
  • Can be done with any Marine list, but I'll put this here. With 7th edition, Battle Brothers can take allied transports. You can fit 5 Ogryns/Bullgryns and one priest in a land raider crusader--with all the fun that only an assault vehicle can offer. Inquisition get access to Land Raiders too, so if you want, do it with them as allies.
• Space Wolves - If you don't mind the yiffing, they've got some nice firepower to add in the form of Longfangs. Grey Hunters/Thunder Wolves are a nice option too with counter-attack to save your gunline's ass when it comes to close combat.
• Space Marines - The new book gives you loads of new options. Librarians now have Divination, and the new Gladius Strike Force looks insane.
  • The Skyhammer Formation absolutely drips with cheese. Combine with Elysian Allies for Deepstrike upon Deepstrike insanity.
  • Fun thing to try with non-Imperial Fist Devastators: pop a Primaris Psyker with them. Have him cast Divination, and then order "Bring it Down!", since Monster/Tank Hunter applies to everyone in the unit if a single model has it. Watch as light-medium Tanks and Monstrous Creatures go pop, and if you have Lascannons, even Land Raiders melt (explosively) like butter in a furnace.
  • Bring the Libraius Conclave formation for some utter, utter cheese. Casting loads of powers on a 2+? Yes please. Have some 4++, rerolling, full BS Overwatch, Invisible 50 man guard blob.
  • Techmarines can be better than Guard Techpriests, especially if they're Iron Hands and tooled up with a Servo-Harness. Put one on a bike and he can keep up with tanks, and the combination of T5, W2, 2+, 6+ FNP and Jink should keep him alive to keep your tanks alive.
• Skitarii - Brand new Adeptus Mechanicus robot soldiers. You bring armored support, they bring the 4+ save infantry with excellent weapons, for cheap too. These guys can also make great use of your Chimeras and other armored transports, something that the Skitarii codex has none of. Also the Skitarii can be very effective in melee, where the Guard usually aren't.
• Cult Mechanicus - Like the Skitarii, the Martian death robot army lacks transports which you can provide. Also artillery, large blast templates and air cover. So what do they bring then? The HQ Techpriest Dominus is essentially one of your 0-3 enginseers on steroids. Taking a mechanized army? A tank army? Bring him. He will please you with his repair on 2+ ability and his ability to fire two weapons. The real cheese comes with the formations. Many of them are excellent and have something to offer the Guard. The Cohort Cybernetica can pack so many heavy phosphor blasters that those cover camping jinking space elves look like disco balls. The Tau turn blue(r) with envy as you steal their markerlight shenanigans. MEQ barbecue is also on the cards as each Kastelan fires 6 S6AP3 shots, half of which are twin-linked. Bring an Elimination Maniple, add some Divination and drink the tears of your opponents as you fry their TEQs with cover ignoring plasma or crunch their vehicles with heavy grav cannons.

However, the best source now has to be new Inquisition. Why?

• You only need to take an Inquisitor minimum in the detachment, it may as well be like selecting special and generic characters from this Codex.
• Have a ton of absurdly useful goodies, including:
  • Servo Skulls that prevent the enemy from scouting or infiltrating within 12 inches, as well as reducing scatter on your pie plates by D6 when shooting at units within 12" of them. Only 3 points each.
  • The Liber Heresius, which can give your blob hilarious shit like splitfire, counterattack, hatred, fear, or scout, though only once per USR.
  • The Psyoccolum for giving an ENTIRE UNIT OF 50 GUARDSMEN/CONSCRIPTS BS10 when shooting at units with Psykers inside, so say fuck you to Joe Schmoe with the Daemon Prince or the faggot with Spiritseers.
  • Ordo Xenos Inquisitor, equipped with a conversion beamer. He can benefit from the split fire orders when attached to a guardsmen squad, meaning that you are free to make full use of the S10 AP1 blast. He gives them stubborn and they can use his Ld 10 for orders, so he basically acts as a commissar as well. Spend another 30 points, and he is a primaris psyker with +1 ld, too. Overall, he can kick some serious ass.
  • In fact, all the Ordo Inquisitors are Commissar-primaris psyker combos, but better, more customizable, and cheap.
• The henchmen selection is mental and incredibly varied, allowing for a warband that pumps out enough firepower to drop jaws. Up to 3 Servitors with Multi Meltas, a Jokaero Weaponsmith, 3 SW Acolytes, and priests that can also take various shit like combi-weapons, meltabombs and Eviscerators!
• Spam divination inquisitors, with a full allotment of primaris psykers, and say fuck my shitty BS. Followup with 2-3 Land Raiders filled to the brim with crusaders and/or (definitely and) death cult assassins, with a priest or 2 for shits and giggles (and eviscerators) and rush them forward. Suddenly the other player has stopped focusing on that rerolling gunline full of inquisitors and psykers and is worried about getting hatefucked by a bunch of death-cultists.

People who can't give you divination but might be worth a look:

• Sisters of Battle: Cool, but tricky. Acts of faith are always fun. Their priests are better than yours (well, can get more shinies, anyway), and Dominions make tanks cry. You can give their Exorcists Divination buffs, or attach a Primaris Psyker and use some orders to make their basic infantry hit hard. (Ignore Cover or Pinning, re-roll to hit from Divination, re-roll 1s to wound from Faith - infantry rapetrain with no brakes.)
• Knights: Nothing much to say except yes. You've already got the firepower to back it up, meaning you can send your knight into the center of your enemy's formation to crush things in CC.
  • Alternatively run an oathsworn detachment of Knight Crusaders and surround them with meatshields. For the cost of a stock Land Raider, you can field 50 guardsmen. For the cost of a Leman Russ you can field 50 conscripts. For a minimium-sized terminator squad in a tin can, you can have a screen of 100 bodies plus their overworked platoon commander. Bring blobs supported by shooty knights and watch your opponent's eyes go very, very wide.
• Officio Assassinorum: While not an official army, this dataslate gives the guard some specialized killers. Vindicares have the range and firepower to pick off specific threats (Hidden Powerfists, Nobs, Priests), Callidus to pop out, Culexus for anti psyker killing, and Eversor for just plain killing.

There is a very, very unfriendly way to do allies: from the FAQ on Forgeworld, any type of Guard can ally with each others with Battle Brother level, which means Codex Guard can now allies with Death Korps of Krieg: Siege Regiments, Death Korps of Krieg: Assault Brigade or Elysian Drop Troops and as well as... Death Korps of Krieg: Armoured Battle Group and Armoured Battle Group to get a maximum of 8 more tanks! Use this as your advantage so you can field bunch of artilleries in your Codex IG FOC while another bunch of tank in your ally ABG FOC in high point battles. Beware this may result in a loss of friends in your local community.

Allies of Convenience

• Cheldar: The Kraftworld Mozarelldar are better than ever! They can get powers your psykers can't give you (Telepathy better than Astropaths) but they can't come within an inch of you and you can't benefit from warlord traits. Good for providing very fast threats like Jetbikes, Wraithguard with D weapons in a Wave Serpent and, worst of all, the dreaded Munster (now a Gorgonzolean creature) called the Wraithknight.

• Genestealer Cults: Provide you with melee units like Genestealers that could solve your problems with such, especially if Cult ambush goes well. That being said, if you are running other Armies with the cults, remember that they will be operating at CtA level.

Desperate Allies

• Tau: Not much reason here to be honest. Youre not exactly lacking for shooting, and Tau cant offer CQC abilities or psychics. Now Crisis suits and Riptides can be fun, but theres better options than the bluies.

• Dark Eldar: Meet the emo cousins of your Ally of Convenience. Poison weapons are cool, as well as Dark Lances. Don't use them for line holding, they at best get a 5+ with a Feel No Pain. Also, they're very speedy and very scary. Maybe take them for a hammer and anvil type of attack, your guard can hold the line until turn 6 when the Deldar get the full power of power from pain making them very scary especially when you think about combat drugs. Imagine a swarm of jetbikes with rage, furious charge, feel no pain, fearless and whatever you get from combat drugs. Give them cluster caltrops and you get 3 strength 4 attacks on the charge, plus cluster caltrop attacks plus combat drug effects (plus strength or plus attack if you are lucky). think about deploying wyches and incubi into the mess of combat with all the power from pain.

Come the Apocalypse

• Orks: Assault monsters! Best used by shuffling them up the board as a good distraction while your Arty and tanks blow the enemy to pieces as they try and kill the Green tide. Remember you must deploy at least 12" apart and can't come within 6" of them without having to stop and quiver, wondering if the Ork Warboss changed his mind and wants to test his Powerklaw on your metal box. In all honesty though, make sure the Orks are wiped out before they get into Close Combat, otherwise the Guardsmen can't shoot the enemy and you've nullified the Guard's main strength.
• Necrons: Put out so much Anti-tank firepower that your Opponent's tears will satiate your thirst for days.
• Tyranids: Like Orks, your big shooty units cover their advance but ensure they die just before getting into Assault while the Guardsmen pound the enemy into dust, but you can't come within 6" of them without stopping, like a worse version of One Eye open.
• Chaos Space Marines: These guys have many fun options, but Blood Angels and Space Wolves do everything these guys do, and better, while allied at the Battle Brothers level.
• Chaos Daemons: Yep. That's right. You can ally with Chaos while staying 6" away while the Daemons spawn utter clusterfucks. Extra lols if you "allied" the daemons with few squads of Malefic Daemonology Wyrdvane Psykersquads acting as mediums.

Tactics

Tactics for the Imperial Guard have been expanded upon through out the years resulting in a plethora of different stratagems. First to explain a few of the different rules of the IG and their different uses. As well as some army compositions and strategies.

• General Tips: Guard are a shooty army, with an emphasis on top-down command and high-strength, long-range firepower. You will find a few ways to run melee in the codex, but for the most part they're more expensive and less reliable than equivalent units from other codices, and your HQs (with a few exceptions) are comparatively weak, built more to support the rest of the army than fight it out in the front. Your real strength is in turning the battle into a straight slugfest in any way you can, because you WILL win that slugfest - no army puts out more hurt at greater range than the Guard.

Army variants

• Blob Guard: Blob Guard is a rather simple concept: Have more bodies than your opponent has bullets. The fact is, IG has access to grunts that can be as cheap as 3 points (Conscripts, lots of conscripts). You will overwhelm them in model count, in deaths a turn, in shots fired, you will have at least twice as many Heavy Weapons as they will. All of their Anti-Tank weaponry that was meant to take out the 150 point Leman Russ? It killed a few guardsmen with lasguns, good job. The problems that come with such an awesome army composition is the lack of speed and how effective the enemy Anti-Infantry weaponry will be against you. A decent thousand point list might consist of 2 20 man Combined Squads with a Commissar and Priest each, about 9 or so Heavy Weapon Units, and your three or so Command Squads (2 Platoon Command/1 Company Command) loaded out with Special Weapons. Works best in a Cities of Death games: All that cover, all those cover saves, your men will live a bunch longer, and confound the enemy to no end.
• Gunline: This is a sub-list of Blob guard because of the way Infantry Platoons work; you need to take a PCS and a 20-man blob to get access to those delicious Heavy Weapon Squads. Kit out a CCS with a Chimera, regimental standard and some way of improving the effectiveness of his orders (options include Creed + Kell, a Lord Commissar, Volkov's Cane, et cetera; pick your poison), and plop said chimera behind an Aegis line along with at least two HWS's, usually with lascannons or autocannons. With 'Bring it down!' and 'Fire on my target!' your BS3 guardsmen become seriously dangerous; six cover-ignoring/tank-hunting lascannons can put out a lot of pain. Combine that delicious 2+ GtG save with 'Get back in the fight!' to keep your fragile dudes alive and shooting, and prioritize enemy cover-ignoring assets for maximum effectiveness.
  • Warning: New FAQ specifies that a unit (and therefore their AoE buffs) are not on-field if they're embarked on a transport. While the Company Commander doesn't give a shit (the Chimera specifically specifies he can issue orders while embarked), this doesn't bode well for your Regimental Standard. You'll have to rely on Commissars, Lord Commissars, and other morale trickery if you don't want to disembark your CCS and make them vulnerable to decapitation strikes.
  • Alternate Take - The Embedded Gunline: Heavy Weapon squads are powerful, but flimsy; a single S6 or better hit can have the squad making morale rolls not to turn tail and run, and without a sergeant they have only a 60% chance to make the roll without help. Besides buffing the squad, the alternative solution is to embed the heavy weapons in your infantry blob instead. A 30-man blob with those 3 autocannons you were GOING to put into a HWS can turn any infantry in range into pancake batter, and keep their heavy guns alive, both in a ranged firefight and in melee (with a Commissar, 30 attacks can give even space marines second thoughts about charging you, and if you bought flamers they have to eat a Wall of Death to get into melee). Swell the blob to 50 and you get 5 heavy weapons, all in a single unit, and unlike the HWS they can take a vox-caster to improve your chance of getting off that order. Add in a Primaris Psyker rolling on the Divination table and you can get off 5 twin-linked, cover-ignoring/tank-hunting lascannon shots a turn; even a Land Raider will have trouble surviving that kind of pain. The one downside to this is that you're going to be wasting a lot of firepower if you have more than one kind of target in range. Even Smite at Will! won't save you; the Split Fire rule only allows one model to shoot at a different target, so 4 of your lascannons are going to be popping grots while only 1 actually points at that wartrukk bearing down on you.
  • Alternate Take 2 - The Forge World Gunline: If you're not going to use your Heavy Support slots for tanks (which you can fit into the HQ slot now, thanks to Tank Commander), or were going to take formations for that anyway, you can bypass the 'blob tax' by taking Guard artillery units. Heavy Mortars, Quad guns, Heavy Artillery Carriages, and the mighty Rapier Laser Destroyer are all options, and in 7th edition they're tough as nails in shooting. Special note goes to the Rapier, which is actually cheaper than taking a squad of lascannons with an attached Primaris Psyker, and has Ordnance too, which can be combined with 'Bring it down!' for a jaw-dropping four penetration attempts...per shot. Sure, they can't move too good (or at all if you took Earthshaker carriages without any towing vehicles), and they're still squishy as always in assault, and you'll need to sacrifice your arm, your leg, and your wallet upon the altar of Forge World to get the models, but the taste of your opponent's tears when you wipe his units off the board from across the board might just be worth it.
• Mech Guard: Mech explores the wonders of armored vehicles. The core of the army would be a Company Command Squad and 2 squads of Vets, all in Chimeras. And the rest would consist of anything from Leman Russ tanks to Vendettas, to artillery, Fast Attack choices, or more troops in Chimeras. There are few sublists:
• Tanks Strong: Leman Russes. Leman Russes of all kinds, everywhere. If it exists, there is a Leman Russ created specifically to murder the ever-living shit out of it. Punishers and Exterminators reap infantry blobs. Vanquishers remove tanks from the battle. Eradicators make cover useless. Executioners melt terminators into slag. Demolishers and Battle Tanks are omnivorous in their diet of destruction. Oh, and you can mix and match tanks within their respective squadrons. All squadron members must shoot the same target, remember, so kit them accordingly!! If you want to, add Pask to any of the squadrons for instant HQ. Remember to point your front armor towards the opponent, don't get flanked, don't get too close to melta, and enjoy removing parts of the enemy army every turn. You can keep at least one Heavy Support slot for the sake of Hydras, or if you're feeling ballsy, just rely on the Aegis Defense line.
• The Rolling Fortress: The capstone of a mechanized army is a Baneblade variant, but if your opponent has any sense he's going to be focusing that machine with everything he's got. So why not make it almost invincible? Take a Doomhammer or Stormlord (Which you want should depend on whether you want crowd-mulching power or a bit more anti-tank), and pack in three enginseers, all attached to a squad of four servitors. Then load up an entire platoon's worth of heavy weapons teams; lascannons, autocannons, and missile launchers are all options. All nine of your heavy weapons can fire out of the back of the tank (they're single models) and the combined three squads and the enginseer team takes up...drumroll please...twenty-five slots. Now you have a super-heavy, AV14/13/12, 9HP tank with a main gun, five twin-linked heavy bolters, four lascannons, another NINE heavy weapons (which can, in batteries of 3, fire at different targets), and to put the cherry on top, the whole thing regenerates 3 HP a turn. (Don't worry if your opponent says a roll of 1 is always a failure, no matter what; BRB states this is for saves, and the only other roll that has this restriction - Feel no Pain - has a specific FAQ ruling saying so) Springing for the Stormlord nets you the capacity and fire points for another two squads of heavy weapons and three gun servitors for a combined total of twenty-seven guns, on a nearly invincible armored platform. Even D-weapons will have trouble bringing you down. The entire bag will run you just over 900 points (which goes to 965 if you sprang for more lascannons, and more than that with the Stormlord), but it'll take mountains of punishment and deal it out in equal measure. This trick works with any Super-Heavy Transport and anyone who can repair vehicles from inside, but Guard can do it best with their Baneblades' high numbers of fire points and transport capacity, as well as their Techpriests (The Dominus Techpriest is better at it, but as an Allied unit he has to start disembarked).
• Flight of the Valkyries/Vendettas:

You will confuse your opponent when he realizes that on turn one, you will have little more than a Company Command Squad/Tank Commander and Veterans in Chimeras. Maybe you'll shoot an Artillery Strike during your turn. But that doesn't matter. Because, once the second turn comes in, you roll that die, look at your opponent, smirk, and turn on the music. Vendettas and Valkyries come in squadrons, unlike most other flyers, and you roll for squadrons on one die; the Master of the Fleet, an Aegis Comms Array, and Primaris Psyker with Divination can all help you with the roll. They can't be mixed, unfortunately, so you have to pick either Valks or Vendettas, and with the amount of AAA these days you must make your flyers count; don't send a flyer onto the board with an empty hold.

• • On Transport Capacity: The Vendetta's reduced transport capacity may have a few new players scratching their heads. You'll want to get the most out of that plane, but 6 models is a really odd number. Fortunately, Guard is ever a versatile army and offers a few possibilities, and more than one of them are viable!
  • Company Command Squad (5 models): Load up with plasma, melta, or flamers and ruin someone's day. Orders make you extra killy, especially since they're Senior Officer orders. However, this is also probably the priciest thing to stuff into the plane; even four flamers is 80 points, and you could do the same thing with a PCS, see below. You're sending a senior officer to die; make it count!
  • Tempestus Scions: Yeah, they can deep strike on their own, but the fewer times you roll for reserves, the less your forces are staggered out, and their Move Through Cover ability prevents casualties from a bad drop. Besides that, you get all the benefits of Scion BS and armor, and if you brought the Command Squad, they can throw out an order, too. Sadly you can't do this with Codex Scions, since as Battle Brothers they can't use Vendettas, but otherwise a decent option.
  • Platoon Command Squad (5 models): Cheaper than a CCS by a good margin, but has some downsides: you don't get Senior Officer orders, you don't get BS4, and you have to have an Infantry platoon somewhere else in your army. As far as command squads go, this is the 'budget' option; give them 3 flamers, a heavy flamer, and a copy of the Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer, and kick 'em out the door.
  • Special Weapons Squad (6 models): This is most likely what the Vendetta's new carrying capacity was designed for. 6 men, 3 lasguns, 3 special weapons, no regrets. The cheapest way to drop a lot of flamer templates on an unsuspecting blob, but if you're willing to shell out the points, give them all Demolition Charges. The Demo Charge is not a grenade, so it's not limited to one per shooting phase. This also means it scatters 2d6"-BS, so there's a good chance your heroic troopers will blow themselves sky-high, but hey, they're Guardsmen. They're used to it.
  • Cyclops Demolition Vehicle ('2' models):***A subtle option from Forge World. The Cyclops is Extremely Bulky, so with its operator it counts as 6, making it air-droppable - once. Pray you don't fuck up the scatter roll, run this bomb on treads into close quarters during the shooting phase (it can be ordered, so 'Move! Move! Move!' can help you here), and then set it off during the Assault phase. Then, when your opponent sputters about Assault Transports, remind him that the Cyclops didn't charge anything - it's a bomb, it can explode whether it's in close combat or not. Good for mulching anything that's not TEQ. There is no official ruling on whether or not the explosion allows cover saves, though; the closest you'll find is the ITC FAQ, which also allows a bunch of other bullshit, so discuss it with your opponent beforehand.
  • Death from the Skies: Valkyries face some changes (and one non-change change). First off, the non-change is that you can now take them in a Flyer Wing of up to four planes per Fast Attack Slot, that deploy all at once (which, sadly, means that the Guard trick of rolling for three planes at once in reserves is no longer unique), but don't need to maintain Coherency during the game (not that that's a bad idea). So now your paratrooper drops don't end up deleting each other, and do what they're supposed to, e.g.: grab objectives quickly, which brings us to change number 2: when taken as part of an Air Superiority Detachment, they, being Transports with the Hover subtype, gain Objective Secured. Gunships on station, anyone? Like most things Guard, Valks have a fairly average Agility of 3, meaning that you have a fair chance of getting in those Break Turns and performing OK in a Dogfight. Pursuit, however, is a stinking 1, so Flat Out moves aren't as satisfying as cooler planes, and Engagement is where you truly lack style, but at least you go before Bombers. Choice of Attack Pattern and Wing Leader Abilities can vastly improve the performance of your aircraft. As Attack Flyers, their Wing bonuses are as follows:
  • Vigilance Attack Pattern: Just a basic BS and Jink booster for your Wing Leader, at the cost of flying in a diagonal line with both planes flying in the same direction in loose coherency. The other formations give you more to work with, but if you really want to get Air Superiority on the cheap, the bonuses to your Wing Leader aren't a bad deal.
  • Vehemence Pattern: Makes your flying buses Tank Hunters. With 3 Vendettas this is terrifying. Nothing that flies can survive 9 twin-linked Lascannons that re-roll armor pen; even AV14 will take 3 HP worth of damage, and with AP2 the potential for explosion threatens even Land Raiders and Monoliths.
  • Intolerance Pattern: An extension of Vigilance, adding a third plane to the slash and giving them all Ignores Cover against ground targets. You want this for Valks with lotsa dakka, and your Vendettas can punch through Jink saves.
  • Unmerciful Pattern: Your 3-plane conga line of death, making your Valks marginally faster by doubling their Pursuit value for Flat-Out purposes, and letting you fire 4 weapons with each plane (not really relevant, as you only get 3 unless you spring for Heavy Bolter sponsons) while making a Flat-Out move, at the cost of having to attack the same Ground Target. Each plane after the first adds 1 to it's BS when shooting at the same target, so consider the potential of this for countering Invisibility and other forced Snap-shooting scenarios.
  • Indomitable Pattern: Basically 3 Attack Patterns in 1, granting the benefits of the Vigilance, Vehemence and Intolerance Patterns to your larger flying V. Like most of the big Patterns, this one works best with a mixed loadout.
  • Omniscience Pattern: Probably the most straightforward HERESY!*BLAM* simple Pattern in the book, where you line up all your planes abreast, pick what ever unit your opponent brought extra of, and shoot them until their all dead with a tasty Preferred Enemy bonus. Wash, rinse, repeat. Wasted on Multiple Rocket Pods, but great for getting the most out of Hellstrikes and Lascannon.
  • Fortitude Pattern: Form up in a tight box and get a 4++, It Will Not Die and Interceptor. Great for Transporting HVTs, but the Interceptor is wasted on a Flyer without turrets.
  • Forge World picks up where GW left off and has errata'd the Vendetta in, bringing it into line with the Valkyrie. It has the same Pursuit and Agility values as its lighter-armed brother.
• Vets Meltaspam: Put Vets in Chimeras. Give them Meltas. Fill up Force Organization chart under Troops. Do same with Company Command Squads and Storm Troopers. Despite what you may think, you shouldn't really use Gunships for this, since you can't employ the melta drive-bys with them. Unless you predict really high value target with flying transport, in which case take vendetta and put your other CCS in it, loaded up with more meltas. This can be suprisingly cheap; A chimera with a dozer blade carrying a vet squad with two meltaguns is 150 points. For dealing with TEQ and nids, give your vets carapace armor and plasma guns instead, bringing the cost per box to 170 points.
  • Alternate Take: Your vets won't be getting out of the Chimera unless they need to sit on an objective for the rest of the game or something's gone wrong, so give a thought to filling that third special weapon slot with a heavy flamer. For the same price as a meltagun, the squad suddenly has some serious cover hate, and can overwatch for the Chimera with improved effectiveness (a bolter in the hands of your sergeant can also help here, for just one point), giving that horde of gaunts trying to swarm your metal box some trouble. Then, when they bring down the transport anyway, disembark into a nice favorable position, remind your opponent that he can't consolidate after attacking a vehicle, and burn him alive.
• Hammer and Anvil: This army is what the majority of pure IG armies will actually look like; a mix. This is fielding a combination of large and small units, infantry and tanks, artillery and aircraft. As they say, hit from the air, sea, and ground. A list in this category looks like a combination of other types of lists mashed together: a CCS with at least one infantry blob to order around, a few Veterans in Chimeras, and a smattering of heavy support; Leman Russes, either with or without the Tank Commander upgrade, a Wyvern, a Manticore, et cetera; a Vendetta might join the fun carrying a Special Weapons squad (or other stuff, see above). Guard are an army with a lot of viable options at low point levels, and at higher point levels these options stack together very well. With 7th edition and the advent of Allied and Formation detachments, armies like this have become less prevalent, but that doesn't mean they don't work.
• Plasma Spam: Three squads of two Executioners all with plasma cannon sponsons and you're looking at 30 plasma cannon shots a turn. If you're playing 1500 points you'll have enough room for two squads of vets and a command squad with some upgrades (Hint: Kurov's Aquila fits very nicely here. If you throw that command squad in a chimera and keep your Executioners fairly close you can go from loosing 2.5 hullpoints a turn on average to Gets Hot to less than one.) If you run 1850 you can throw in two more Executioners or two squads of three armored sentinels, with plasma cannons of course. Hell, throw a Techpriest with some plasma servitors in there for shits and giggles. Fuck it give those vets some plasma guns. You're already making every Grey knight player fall to their knees in agonizing pain. Max you're looking at 38 plasma cannon shots under 2000 points. Only thing you're missing is anti AV 14, which can be solved by switching those hull mounted heavy bolters for lascannons.
• My Maneaters got lost on the way to Age of Sigmar: Space Ogres are cool and due to being able to take them in high squad numbers you can build a list around them (not a particularly competitive one though). Take a tank commander as HQ along with a squad of Leman Russ Vanquishers with Lascannons, camo Veterans as troops to camp objectives, some Rapier Laser Batteries in HS, and Ogryn's, lots of big fucking Ogryn's! With 3 Elite slots you can fill the majority of your list with ogryn's, though bare in mind that bullgryn's don't have a lot to provide cover for so Power maul/ Vanilla Ogres are best. The tables have turned, your Guardsmen serve Ogryn now! Use your Vanquishers and Laser Batteries to snipe off any Vindicators or S10 blasts in general and to pop transports so your Ogres can get to the supple manflesh that hides inside. A 5-man strong Ogryn squad can put out 40 S5 hits from shooting and charging into combat, so even if your squad get whittled down you can still stomp most tiny humans you encounters and even against TEQ, assuming they have powerfists/thunderhammers and the same unit size, you're ogres will 'statistically' kill 3 of them without losing a single ogre. Don't try this shit again Tau though, with the amount of high strength low AP shooting they innately get you will get your arse handed to you. Can be hillarious against a marine Grav list though. Also, you'll want to add some Psykers and Priests. You need atleast 1 Psykers for Divination on the vanquisher squad, and a Priest in each Ogryn squad you take is a pretty good idea.
• FUCK YOU AND YOUR LOGIC: This is for all those who have played all or most of the above styles. What you want to do is what you normally wouldn't do, that only just falls short of effective. Then with the last 200 points that you so kindly spared, you have spammed cavalry. Why? Because fuck you and this game. Remember to play this if it works.

The Enemies of Man

Here, we'll talk about what tactical and list-building considerations you'll need to make with regards to your opponent. You won't always know who you're fighting, or what they're bringing to the fight, but when you do, make sure to capitalize on it!

At present, this list is incomplete. Feel free to add to it!

• Necrons: The tinheads are a hard sell if you like tanks. Their uncharacteristic toughness and ability to eat through Hull Points like popcorn makes a mechanized army a bad idea. However, their lack of range (with a few exceptions, such as the Doomsday Ark) and difficulty with cover saves (they only have a few really good ways around it) makes infantry-heavy armies a reliable alternative. In addition, their Reanimation protocols can be suppressed with high-strength artillery, such as the Leman Russ (Battle Tank and Demolisher, though you REALLY should be wary of getting within two feet of a necron blob with any vehicle), Basilisk, and Manticore/Deathstrike. The Wyvern isn't strong enough to suppress RP, but works around it with sheer wound count. Keep your artillery behind your infantry, keep your infantry in cover, and buy lots of camo netting; your AV won't save you, but your cover saves will!
  • Your high-strength Ordnance weapons pull double duty against Necrons thanks to their Reanimation Protocols and Quantum Shielding. Both are powerful defensive abilities that fold easily before heavy enough ordnance; the RP thanks to the above-mentioned Instant Death effect and Quantum Shielding which pops if you manage to penetrate it (meaning a penetration roll of 14). S9 Ordnance/Tank Hunters (Lascannon w/orders) has a 55.5% chance to do so, and S10 Ordnance a 75% chance.
  • There are several Necron formations and detachments that grant an army-wide buff to Reanimation Protocols; Decurion, for example. Make no mistake, this is bad news - it makes every infantry unit, and some vehicles and Monstrous Creatures, 16% tougher against everything you throw at it. You will never table a Decurion army, and you will need to prioritize your firepower to have control of the game. Bring as much cheese as you can to fight this; your opponent certainly is.
• Space Marines: Main things to beware of: Drop pods, Thunderfire Cannons, Vindicators, and Land Raiders.
  • The Drop pod can put a squad of meltaguns right behind your tanks, where their armor's weakest; as long as there's one in enemy reserve, keep an eye on the space BEHIND your precious Leman Russes. Keep them hull-down against terrain and other obstacles to force the enemy to work through their much heavier front and side armor, or space out your force to invalidate the flank entirely; a drop pod can't mishap unless it scatters off the board, so be wary.
  • The Thunderfire Cannon can chew through your infantry with terrifying speed, and will ususally enjoy a 3+ cover save thanks to its Techmarine operator. In addition, it's Toughness 7 in shooting; a tough nut to crack. Lascannons, Basilisks, and Battle Cannons are all recommended, hopefully with some orders/divination trickery to beat that cover save. If you somehow get close enough, you can also kill it in melee; the techmarine is tougher than a guardsman, but he's not tougher than ten guardsmen.
  • The Vindicator's danger comes from the fact that it's AV13 on the front, automatically passes Dangerous Terrain tests with its Siege Shield, and packs a Demolisher Cannon, which can reliably punch through the front armor on a Leman Russ, and turn everything else you can field to paste. Put them down before they put YOU down. Also note their side armor is MUCH weaker than their front (full profile 13/11/10) so make use of your long range and mobility. Barrage weapons work too, since they also hit side armor.
  • Finally, the Land Raider, which isn't dangerous on its own but is invariably carrying some sort of melee deathstar that'll eat your poor troopers alive. Immobilize or destroy it at the first opportunity, then rain hell on whatever comes out. Unless it's an Ares or other assault-gun-type variant, in which case kill it. Kill it now.
  • Grey Knights: An Inquisition Chamber Militant force which relies on their psychic prowess, and their monstrous close combat ability. What hits them hard is that they are even more expensive and elite than regular marines, and each loss counts. The presence of a Plasma-wielding Veteran squad in a Chimera would ruin their day, as well as any massed AP2 fire. Against Paladins, bring Meltaguns or a Leman Russ Demolisher to Instant-death the two-wound bastards. In spite of this, beware their psychic powers, especially Cleansing Flame (dear lord, keep Purifiers at an arm's length) and Vortex of Doom, for both respectively eat infantry and tanks alive.
  • Dark Angels: Like Grey Knights, they bring elite and expensive Terminators, while they have the best bikers in the imperium. Bring Plasma to deal with their inefficiently expensive deathwing and make sure you can get ignores cover on your plasma guns so their Bikers with re-rollable cover saves become fish in a barrel.
  • Blood Angels: The Red Marines of go-fast were built to take on the Guard with their Blitzkrieg tactics. The Lucifer strike force can grant a Land Raider Redeemer with 2 Flamestorm cannons the Fast Vehicle rule. Kiss goodbye to your infantry squads. Their Baal Predators can also do it naturally. Their basic marines get angry when you kill half of their squads, and the survivors will effortlessly curbstomp entire platoons in one round of combat. Again, bringing Plasma weapons against MEQ is key.
  • Space Wolves: Longfangs are pretty brutal with their ability to split-fire, but the biggest threats are the Thunderwolf Cavalry or the Wulfen. A Leman Russ Demolisher will hopefully make quick work of the T5 W2 Thunderwolves, but watch out for the Wulfen! If the Wulfen get into close combat, your units are dead and are too stupid to realize it. Keep wulfen at an arm's length and get them!
• Imperial Knights: Oh, God-Emperor, what did you do to piss him off? Unless you have Lords of War of your own, a Knight in most casual games is a rarity, and multiple Knights is almost unheard of. That being said, don't be intimidated. In spite of their size and fearsome D melee weapons, Knights have middling initiative and average attack and WS stats. Throw enough men with meltabombs at them and they will Crumple. It'll be a lot of men, though; even a crusader hits at S10AP2 in melee and gets the pie-plate-dropping Stomp ability, so you'll take a beating bringing it down. Alternatively, hit them with anti-tank guns from two directions. the Ion Shield can only cover one facing per phase, so simultaneous attacks from multiple sides can work around it. Slugging it out at range, however, will expose you to the Knight's guns, which are powerful and long-ranged. Avoid using armour against Knights if you can - their weapons are geared towards fighting things as big and nasty as they are (your Russes' AV14 won't help you when your foe can pick up the tanks and throw them). Finally, remember the shield doesn't work in melee. The bigger they are, the harder they...explode, taking a good chunk of your army with them. But hey, at least you killed one!
• Tyranids: The bugs have a couple of glaring weaknesses that you can exploit quite easily; first, their lack of really good ranged anti-tank weaponry; the Heavy Venom Cannon and Impaler Cannon are hard to field and can't reliably punch through the front plate of a Leman Russ, The Rupture Cannon has poor AP, and the Zoanthrope's powers are short-ranged and must be correctly channeled first. Second, Synapse. Synapse creatures usually have multiple wounds, but with a couple of exceptions they don't reach into the truly difficult-to-kill area of Toughness 6; your tanks and heavy artillery can cut the head off the encroaching swarm from across the board, while flamers, heavy flamers, and rank fire can keep the scuttling masses out of melee. Also, always bring AA! A Tyranid player that doesn't field a Flyrant is doing it wrong, and that winged terror can wreak havoc on your back line. Hydras, Aegis Quad-Guns, and your friendly every day Vendetta can keep the skies clear.
  • Genestealer Cults: Where the hell did THEY come from!? Like Tyranids, they rely on cover saves. Unlike Tyranids, they like keeping a bit of a distance so they can return to the shadows and infiltrate onto key objectives. Even worse, their Cult Ambush gives them some serious mobility, including the possibility of popping up within 3" of a unit and assaulting the turn they arrive. I think I don't need to explain how deadly that can be to instantly tie up a Guard squad, and considering their Acolytes are I4, so even though they're as squishy as you are they are faster, and have rending even if they did not take any close combat weapons. Use large blobs to bubble-wrap your important stuff, and bring that ignores cover to the table via the Leman Russ Eradicator, "Fire on my Target!" orders, and Wyverns.
    • A useful trick to help you here is an allied Inquisitor, specifically one Torquemada Coteaz. In addition to being a cheap ML2 psyker and melee beatstick (and his high LD is good, too), he has the ability 'I've been Expecting You', which allows him (and his attached unit) to make an off-turn, full-BS shooting attack against any unit that arrives from reserves within 12" of him. Unlike other anti-reserves trickery this ability doesn't limit itself to Deep Strike or Outflank; it works if you show up near Torquemada, regardless of how. Combine with a 50-man lascannon gunline and watch that 3" Cult Ambush evaporate in a torrent of las-fire. And the cherry on top? He can do this an unlimited number of times!
    • Another potentially useful trick is to take a bare-bones unit of Conscripts and wrap them around your Infantry Platoon or other useful stuff. Unlike the above, the Conscripts will fold the moment the enemy charges them - and that's the point. Now that squad of Genestealers is right in the open within rapid fire range of your 50-man gunline. 'Light 'em up!
• Tau: Beware the markerlight, my son! The BS boosted, the cover save denied! By far your biggest threat against any Tau player is his markerlights. Most Tau weaponry is AP5 and better, so without your cover saves your troopers will drop like flies. Identify the sources of markerlights and focus them down. Like you, the Tau love cover; get some Orders out and deny them their saves (or, if you fancy some blueberry tears, bring along a Wyvern). Battlesuits are your other major threat, especially the Riptide; massed lascannons, meltaguns, and plasma can wear them down, or a tarpit of troopers with meltabomb-wielding sergeants can overwhelm them. Tau are one of the very few armies you're generally better than in melee. You'll have a hard time getting into melee, but when it happens, make the most of it!
  • If you're willing to fight cheese with cheese, Riptide spam is handily countered by an allied Armored Battlegroup. The Company Command Vanquisher can take Beast Hunter shells, which are AP2 and inflict Instant Death as a USR; Toughness 6 or no, nothing short of a Stormsurge can take a canister of weapons-grade acid. A co-axial heavy stubber can help you hit, and ABG tank orders can help you deal with cover saves. Give it some cover, camo netting, and a Thunderer Siege Tank as its Troops choice, and the ABG Vanquisher can make back its points in blueberry tears in one or two shots.
• Orks: Play the ranged game against the Greenskins because melee is going to hurt like a rancid beast. Orks tend to come in two flavours (which often are mixed to some degree): infantry and mechanized. **Against most foot-slogging orks, you want to take volume of shots, blasts, and templates. Anything that can force pinning/leadership/morale tests will help you immensely because mob rule is an ork opponent's greatest friend. Ap 1-3 tend to not be necessary unless your foe is feeling moxious and rolling with mega armour. If mega armour does happen to grace the battlefield, melta and lascannons work better than plasma because Instant Death from doubling toughness not only makes multi-wounds useless but also negates any FnP Painboys can give. If you find yourself in a position where a mob of boyz are preparing to charge, weigh the possibility of how much damage you can do in shooting vs how much you can do in charging them instead. Orks thrive on the first round of assaults and denying them those boons via a preemptive charge can be a very risky but worthwhile maneuver to save your other units.
  • Ork vehicles tend to be rather cheap and soft or hideously expensive and decently armoured. There'll be times when you will think your dedicated anti-armour is overkill and you'd be right. The only vehicles with AV higher than 12 are the (m/g)orkanauts' front and side 13 and the battlewagon's front 14. Their flyers are universally AV 10 all around, so a couple of Hydras will do the job beautifully.
  • One of the Orks' most glaring weaknesses, besides being a melee army in a shooting game, is that their ability to deal with high AV vehicles is pretty much limited to melee. Their reliably highest strength guns are 8 with a few variable strength guns that tend not to be taken due to their unreliability. Powerklaws and tankbusta bombs will pose the most dangerous threat to your tanks, but be forewarned that a mob of boyz can wreck most of your vehicles with a fortunate charge against the rear armour. Tankbustas may pose a threat through sheer volume of strength 8 shots they can bring, so deal with them accordingly. Their Lootas have the chance to do horrible things to your lighter armour since they field autocannons en masse. If you can manage to nix their anti-armour early, then the rest of the game should be nothing but a clean up job. That's assuming you are using a mech-list.
• Dark Eldar: "Fire at my target" on anti-tank and FRFSRF on lasguns are your best friends here. All Dark Eldar vehicles are squishy, but your basic weapons are S3, so no reliable glancing the Marines enjoy. Buy Aegis and do not leave cover for three reasons: both basic Warriors with Splinter Racks and Venoms are capable of inflicting too many casualties on your infantry, most of DE infantry lack Assault Grenades (even Incubi), allowing Guardsmen to strike before them and DE have a lot of Haywire, low AP meltas, lances etc Guard vehicles are vulnerable to. Forget all the jokes about Wyches gathering dust on the shelves - they ARE bad news and with some AP5 weapons they pack can munch even through Combined Squad, especially with a good roll on drugs. If your opponent's playing Covens, you're fucked, because lasguns can't even scratch T7, so best tactics is bringing Psykers with you and give them Force Axes (but you'll wound Taloses and Cronoses on 6's, sooo) or bring a small allied detachment of either Inquisition or Grey Knights with Nemesis Hammer IC to hide in your 50-man blob and introduce those monstrosities to Force ID, that utterly ignores both their armor and FNP saves. ALternative - a great number of ranged firepower, but those fuckers are really durable.
• Chaos Space Marines: They play like their 30k Legionary counterparts, but they're much more schizophrenic in that they're both choppy and shooty but cannot commit to one path at once. However, in spite of the fact that they can be overrun, it is much more likely they'll overrun you. Take any AP3 or AP2 you can, and make sure to take an Aegis Quad gun or a Vendetta since the infamous Heldrake will fly on and threaten your infantry and rear AV with its infamous S6 torrent Bale flamer. Chaos Space Marines now often come in specific legions, similar to Space Marine Chapter Tactics. Here's what each legion in particular brings, alongside their designated Cult units:
  • Alpha Legion: Hordes of cultists and infiltrators galore. You will have a tough time finding the Warlord due to their "kill current warlord and that random champion's the new general" special rule. Get Flamers and ignores cover to deal with the cultist spam.
  • Black Legion: Vanilla Chaos with a bit more of an elite spin on their army. Armless jokes and failure jokes aside, Abaddon the Despoiler is a horrific beatstick and will carve through everything you can throw at him.
  • Crimson Slaughter: Possessed spam out the ass. Also they lack VotLW so forcing pinning tests through orders can help.
  • Death Guard: Tough as nails with universal +1T and Feel No Pain on all their infantry units. The catch is, they're very slow. Take advantage of that and kite them from a distance, then take the objectives at the last minute.
  • Emperor's Children: A cross between World Eaters and Death Guard in that they're even better in close combat and can be durable as hell thanks to natural 6+ FnP (improved to 4+ with Icon of Excess). Noise Marines are perhaps the biggest threat to your army in the entire Chaos Space Marines Codex since they ignore cover like no tomorrow. Sonic blasters and Doom Sirens pulverize blobs while the S8 Blastmasters do nasty things to tanks. Hit them with Meltaguns and Battlecannons to get around that Feel No Pain quickly!
  • Night Lords: Raptor spam with a penchant for Night fighting and forcing fear tests with a -2 modifier to your leadership. Take searchlights and Ignores Cover to get around the stealth bonuses, and Commissars and Priests are vital to mitigate that -2Ld on Fear tests.
  • Thousand Sons: Very expensive, but good lord they pack a psychic punch! Their AP3 bolters are kind of irrelevant since regular bolters would ignore a guardsman's armor anyway. But that's not what makes the 1K sons a threat; they all have 4+ Invulnerable saves base, your anti-MEQ sources will have to pull double-time in order to eliminate them. Also, Magnus the Red is probably the only named character that can do more damage to you than Abaddon can.
  • Word Bearers: Possessed spam out the ass, with bonuses to using Daemons as allies or to summon through Daemonology. Take some Psykana divisions running Sanctic to counter-act the Daemons. Who needs Grey Knights anyway?
  • World Eaters: Make no mistake, Khorne is still very much relevant. If they get into close combat with you, be prepared to sell yourself dearly. Keep them at arm's length, blow up their transports, and shower them with Plasma guns and Battle Cannons.
• Chaos Daemons: "A Daemon...they have a daemon!!!" Chaos Daemons are perhaps the Imperial Guard's biggest challenge in that all your high-strength shooting can be nullified by the natural Invulnerable saves gracing the army. Like Tyranids, they field big monsters in the form of Greater Daemons, and their entire army is quasi-fearless across the board. A few universal units to watch out for: Furies, Soul Grinders, and Daemon Princes. The former since in spite of their shit stats they're still quasi-fearless and can force Fear on you. Soul Grinders are a cross between Dreadnoughts and Leman Russes, being a walker that can take a terrifying main gun (Phlegm Bombardment's a Battle Cannon with 1/2 the range, and the Warp Flamer is nasty against infantry). Daemon Princes are scary for the obvious reasons. Here's how you handle specific chaos god units:
  • Khorne: Kill them, ASAP. These guys hit extremely hard on the charge, and come with Power Swords by default. Lock them down and flame them. On the other hand, Fleshhounds of Khorne and Bloodcrushers are really fast and tough multi-wound thickies, but S8+ shooting from Meltaguns,Battle Cannons, Earth Shaker cannons, and/or Lascannons will Instant-Death them. Bloodthirsters are terrifying, but it must be on the ground in order to do anything. Bring anti-air like Vendettas/Hydras/Quad guns and then throw as many bullets at it as you can.
  • Nurgle: These guys are slow, but they're tough and rely on Cover saves due to Daemon of Nurgle's shrouded bonus. Get cover-ignoring weapons out there as fast as you can! Beware of the Great Unclean One and its T7 statline, your lasguns cannot even touch it.
  • Tzeentch: Psychic power spam par excellence. They cannot fire off that annoying Flickering Fire when locked in combat so this may be one of the few groups of Daemons you want to move up and charge into. Fair warning, it will quickly turn into a battle of attrition as Pink Horrors split into Blue Horrors who split into Brimstone Horrors. Their big unit, the Lord of Change, is a powerful flying sorcerer. Bring that AA and shoot it down.
  • Slaanesh: Terrifyingly quick and terrifyingly powerful. They're even more squishy than Khorne Daemons and cannot easily ignore your armor saves, but with Rending a deep-striking unit of Daemonettes will tear apart your tanks in short order. Bring some flamers to pile on those saves. Their Keeper of Secrets is surprisingly cheap and mobile for a T6 Monstrous Creature, and will kick your shit in if it closes the gap.

What to buy

Always start out with what 1̶d̶4̶c̶h̶a̶n̶ literally everyone recommends, 1 HQ 2 Troop Choices, that is, a Company Command Squad or a Lord Commissar (The Power Fist Commissar will suffice for cheap HQ) and 2 separate Squads kitted out as Veterans. However, bundles are your best friend, namely the battle force Defence Force. This gives you two squads of 10 and a leader pack, as well as heavy weapons and a Leman Russ which can be customized into any 4 of its variations and a Chimera. This will be helpful if you are going blob or mech. You can make them vets for a quick 500pt army. You can even save the heavy weapons for vehicle modifications later when you buy tanks if you go for mech. Next thing would most likely be another Leman Russ and another Chimera if going mech, and another defence force if you are going blob. If you truly want to go mech though, the Steel Host set gives you 5 Leman Russ Battle Tanks, 1 Hydra Flak Tank and 2 Leman Russ Demolishers if you're willing to sell your arm, leg, kidney, and testicle. Also, the cheap 5-man Guardsmen packs are great for building a 50-man horde (Conscripts anyone?)! The Armored Fist bundle gives you a discount price for a mechanized Squadron of Veterans too.

Also if you dip, or one of your friends dip, ask them for the metal lids to the tobacco containers. These are the exact size of the heavy weapons base. Making it extremely easy to take advantage of all the heavy weapons in the pack. Just use the bending knee for the dude shooting, and put the other dude as a standing man. Green stuff some sandbags or a wall to take place of the tripod stand.

As far as organizing your army, you ought to know better that you don't have to pimp out every platoon FULL of men. Usually, two large Platoons decked out will do the job, BUT you can take smaller platoons in order to get more Junior officers on to the table for more orders. That all said, let's calculate the body count if you spammed every slot.

HQ: CCSx2 (18 models; Commissar, Chimera, and all Advisors: Officer of the Fleet, Astropath and Master of Ordnance which are MANDATORY)
Priest x3
Enginseer x3 (With 15 servitors 5 each. Give two per Enginseer plasma cannons. Because you can.)

Primaris Psyker(ML-2) x3

Elites: 3x FULL Militarum Tempestus platoons, plus Taurox Primes for all. Bitches (117 models)

Troops: 6x FULL Infantry platoons (6x5-man PCS + Chimeras, 30x10-man Infantry squads + Chimeras, 30x6-man Heavy squads (it's two guys on one base, be glad I'm not counting the gun model), 18x6-man Special squads, 6x50-man Conscript squads, and 6x Commissars. 960 models, bitch)

Fast: 3x Rough Rider squads (30 models)

Heavy Support: 9x Leman Russ EXECUTIONERS WITH FULL PLASMA-SPONSONS (STFU. You want them)

Grand total: 1,158 models, INCLUDING Chimeras. Yes. You can have one-thousand models on the table. THIS IS THE GUARD. OUR INFANTRY ARE BLOBS.

But unless you're a millionaire or you've been in the Guard since 2nd edition, you aren't pulling this off. ALSO IT COSTS ~13,870 POINTS TO FIELD ALL THIS SHIT JESUS AAAND you're looking at $7,500+ USD(2015) for all this shit. Start buying lottery tickets if you want to even think about doing something like this.

Ideal generalized army list that you should start with:

HQ: 1x CCS

TROOPS: 2 Infantry Platoons of two Infantry Squads each

When playing Maelstrom:

FAST ATTACK: Scout Sentinel x2, Valkyrie and Hellhounds if you wish.

or

When playing standard:

HEAVY SUPPORT: your choice flavor of Leman Russ

This way, you have fast stuff to grab objectives during Maelstrom, but if you're playing standard missions you have some good backup fire to take out anyone trying to touch your infantry. Once your army has reached this point, start looking at where you want to go with it. You'll have a decent base for starting the typical MechVet army that is shining right now. If you want to get Leman Russes, get three, split between two Battlecannons and a Demolisher. Max out melta. It's the best thing in the game currently. Just do it.

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Warhammer 40,000 Tactics Articles (10th Edition)

General Tactics	General Weapons Terrain
Imperium	Space Marines (Black Templars, Blood Angels, Dark Angels, Deathwatch, Space Wolves) Grey Knights
	Adeptus Mechanicus Adeptus Titanicus Imperial Knights Imperial Guard Sisters of Battle
	Adeptus Custodes & Sisters of Silence Imperial Agents (Inquisition, Rogue Traders, etc.)
Chaos	Chaos Space Marines (Death Guard Thousand Sons World Eaters)
	Chaos Daemons Chaos Knights Chaos Titans
Eldar	Eldar (Craftworlds, Corsairs, Harlequins, Ynnari) Dark Eldar
Necrons	Necrons
Orks	Orks
Tau	Tau
Tyranids	Tyranids Genestealer Cults
Votann	Leagues of Votann

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<tab name="9th">

Warhammer 40,000 Tactics Articles (9th Edition)

General Tactics	General Movement Psychic Fortifications Tactical Terrain Weapons Apocalypse
Imperium	Space Marines (Blood Angels Dark Angels Deathwatch Space Wolves) Grey Knights
	Adeptus Mechanicus Adeptus Titanicus Imperial Knights Imperial Guard Sisters of Battle
	Adeptus Custodes & Sisters of Silence Inquisition Officio Assassinorum Rogue Traders
Chaos	Chaos Space Marines (Death Guard Thousand Sons World Eaters)
	Chaos Daemons Chaos Knights Renegades and Heretics
Eldar	Craftworld Eldar Dark Eldar Harlequins Ynnari
Necrons	Necrons
Orks	Orks
Tau	Tau
Tyranids	Tyranids Genestealer Cults
Votann	Leagues of Votann

</tab>

<tab name="8th">

Warhammer 40,000 Tactics Articles (8th Edition)

General Tactics	General Movement Psychic Fortifications Apocalypse
Imperium	Space Marines Blood Angels Dark Angels Deathwatch Grey Knights Space Wolves
	Talons of the Emperor (Custodes and Sisters of Silence) Adeptus Mechanicus
	Adeptus Ministorum (Sisters of Battle and minor factions) Adeptus Titanicus
	Imperial Knights Imperial Guard Inquisition Officio Assassinorum
Chaos	Chaos Space Marines (Death Guard Thousand Sons)
	Chaos Daemons Chaos Knights Renegades and Heretics
Eldar	Eldar Dark Eldar Harlequins
Necrons	Necrons
Orks	Orks
Tau	Tau
Tyranids	Tyranids Genestealer Cults

</tab>

<tab name="7th">

Warhammer 40,000 Tactics Articles (7th Edition)

General Tactics	General Movement Psychic Fortifications
Imperium	Space Marines (Siege Assault Vanguard) Blood Angels Dark Angels Deathwatch Grey Knights Space Wolves
	Adeptus Custodes Cult Mechanicus Skitarii Adeptus Sororitas
	Imperial Knights Inquisition Officio Assassinorum
	Imperial Guard (Armoured Battlegroup Death Korps of Krieg Assault Brigade Death Korps of Krieg Siege Regiment Elysian Drop Troops D-99)
Chaos	Chaos Space Marines Khorne Daemonkin Chaos Daemons Renegades and Heretics
Eldar	Eldar Dark Eldar Harlequins Corsairs
Necrons	Necrons
Orks	Orks Ork Dred Mob
Tau	Tau
Tyranids	Tyranids Genestealer Cults

</tab>

<tab name="6th">

Warhammer 40,000 Tactics Articles (6th Edition)

General Tactics	General Movement Psychic Fortifications
Imperium	Space Marines Blood Angels Dark Angels Grey Knights Space Wolves
	Adeptus Sororitas Inquisition
	Imperial Guard (Armoured Battlegroup Death Korps of Krieg Assault Brigade Death Korps of Krieg Siege Regiment Elysian Drop Troops) Militarum Tempestus
Chaos	Chaos Space Marines Chaos Daemons Renegades and Heretics
Eldar	Eldar Dark Eldar Corsairs
Necrons	Necrons
Orks	Orks Ork Dred Mob
Tau	Tau
Tyranids	Tyranids

</tab>

<tab name="All">

Warhammer 40,000 Tactics Articles (All)

General Tactics	General (8th) Movement (8th 7th) Psychic (8th 7th 2nd) Fortifications (8th 7th) Tactical Terrain Apocalypse (8th)
Imperium (8th)	Space Marines (8th 7th 6th 5th 4th 3rd) Blood Angels (8th 7th) Dark Angels (8th 7th) Deathwatch (8th 7th) Grey Knights (8th 7th 6th 5th 3rd, AKA Daemonhunters) Space Wolves (8th 7th 6th 5th)
	Talons of the Emperor (Custodes and Sisters of Silence) (8th 7th) Adeptus Mechanicus (8th 7th) Adeptus Ministorum (Sisters of Battle and minor factions) (8th 7th 6th 3rd, AKA Witch Hunters) Adeptus Titanicus (8th)
	Imperial Knights (8th 7th) Imperial Guard (8th 7th 6th 5th 3rd) Inquisition (8th 7th 6th) Officio Assassinorum (8th 7th)
Chaos	Chaos Space Marines (8th 7th 6th 5th) Death Guard (8th) Khorne Daemonkin - 7th Edition Thousand Sons (8th) Chaos Daemons (8th 7th) Chaos Knights (8th) Renegades and Heretics (8th 7th 6th)
Eldar	Eldar (8th 7th 6th 5th) Dark Eldar (8th 7th 6th 5th 3rd Revised) Harlequins (8th 7th)
Necrons	Necrons (8th 7th 6th 5th 4th)
Orks	Orks (8th 7th 6th 5th 3rd) Ork Dred Mob - 7th edition (6th 5th) Ork Kult of Speed - 3rd edition Feral Orks - 3rd edition
Tau	Tau (8th 7th 6th 5th)
Tyranids	Tyranids (8th 7th 6th 5th) Genestealer Cults (8th 7th)

</tab>

</tabs>