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

===Imperial Guard===
[[File:Why_Guards_like_Knights.jpg|250px|thumb|left|A little pic worth a thousand words...]] The most competitive option, if tournament lists are anything to go by. Wherever you find the armies of the Imperium, you'll find the Guard in support. That, or you can paint them up in the same colours as your Knight and say that they're his household retainers.

The low cost of Guardsmen means you can bring a decent number of bodies on the cheap, but thanks to the changes made by 9th ed, the loyal 32 now COST you CP to bring along. A battalion will now cost you 3CP to bring along, but allows you to bring up to 60 giant brass-balled guardsmen, on top of various other elites/tanks/officers. If you're going in on the Guard, you should make sure it's worth your while, as the barebones loyal 32 can be easily victimized by deep striking claw/shield vanguard vets, and a dozen other push threats, which can slip past knights relatively easily, and beat the stuffing out of knights on the primary. 

Basic guardsmen with orders can spit out a surprising amount of firepower and can be used to screen, clear chaff, or camp on objectives. Scions are reasonably effective infantry that can be used for deep-striking/grav-chuting in plasma for some high mobility tacticoolness. IG artillery is also great: Mortar heavies weapon teams (HWTs) or Wyverns for anti-horde; Lascannon HWTs, Basilisks, or Manticores for anti-vehicle. Keep in mind that HWTs, although a great bargain, are extremely fragile. As for infantry, keep 'em cheap, dump them on an objective, and hope the enemy ignores them. Guard also has access to cheap psykers in the Astropaths and Primaris Psykers for Deny the Witch and support powers. Furthermore, Guard can bring Techpriests as Elites which is helpful for keeping your Knights alive. Guard armor can be useful as well, sporting weapons that are comparable to many of the weapons the Knights can take, allowing you to specialize your knights more if you so choose. Leman Russes can carry battle and plasma cannons along with a variety of hull- and sponson-mounted weapons to threaten a variety of targets. Hellhounds have GEQ-munching 16" flamer cannons that can negate hit penalties. 

Sir Hektur is an especially good pick for infantry-heavy Guard; he reduces the chances of them fleeing after a failed morale test, and if Canis Rex is destroyed he'll have plenty of screening units to hide behind.

Another important thing: Guard is one of the few armies that doesn't lose anything by bringing you as an ally right now besides CP, and the ability most of their units have to auto-wound on an unmodified hit roll of 6 has drastically improved their competitiveness (while still not fixing all the other glaring issues with their hilariously out of date codex).