Editing Warhammer 40,000/9th Edition Tactics/Apocalypse (section)

==Infantry, what’s the Point?==
The humble guardsman. Armed with the humble lasgun, flak armour and balls the size of space marine pauldrons, they boldly walk out into the galaxy and... die horribly.

The world of 40K is not kind to the humble guardsman (or anyone for that matter), but for anyone on the apocalypse battlefields without a toughness value of 5 or higher and some kind of invulnerability save, life is very short. Even space marines, with a stat line in normal tabletop which is considered reasonable is instantly vaporised by the weapons at this scale.

This begs the question. What is the point of infantry in apocalypse?

And this is a valid question. Yes, you may feel like an 11 year old again looking at the models for land raiders and carnifexs and think “those are awesome! I’ll have just those!” But in a world where a guardsman has a 31% chance of surviving most shots (aka, being hit and wounded on a 2+ with no save) and have a 1.3% chance of doing any damage, why would you bother?

There are a few reasons why the humble guardsman, or even the (not so mighty) space marine, have a place in your army:
*'''Objectives:''' Every model can (technically) hold an objective. However, a warlord Titan and a guardsman both count as the same number of models when holding an objective. That number being 1.
:Why that is is unknown, but unless you can use your knight to sit on an objective in such a way to prevent anyone else getting within 3” you’re out of luck. There’s also the issue that objective secured is a thing, so that previously mentioned guardsman can out objective (if that’s a thing) ten imperial knights.
:Now, that guardsman has to survive against those ten knights, but 9th edition has dialled back the melee power of superheavies and vehicles in general, so a unit of guardsman has a good chance of surviving long enough to win objectives.