Warhammer 40,000/7th Edition Tactics/Imperial Guard/Elysian Drop Troops

Why Play Elysian drop troops

Because Flyers are OP. Do you remember, how much rage does induct Necron ability to take flyers as dedicated transport? With Elysians you could take Valkyries as transport. And you have flyers in both FA and HS slots. Anything not mounted on Valkyries or Vendettas could deep strike. And all your troops are badass elite paratroopers IN SPACE. This comes for a cost though, as you have literally zero tanks, and all your infantry cost slightly more then regular guard.

Unit Analysis

HQ

• Company Command Squad: Much like regular CCS, except you can't take Astropath and Master of Ordnance. Note that Valkyrie haven't command vehicle rule, so you need to disembark or grav-shute to give orders. Always give homing beacon to your company commander - with so much deep strikeing and grav-shuting around it's priceless.

• Lord Commissar: Again not much different from vanila, except he could deep strike and take homing beacon.

• Long Range ground scannerThis thing is weird. For 50 pts you get single guardsman model, which can fuck up enemy infiltrators or grant one of your squads rerolls to hit. But it only works on 4+ and scanner himself is like paper thin. If you want rerolls to hit it's always better to take allied Space Wolf runepriest with divination.

Elites

• Storm Trooper Squad: Those guys are very underrated, mainly due to their price and small number of special weapons available to them. Consider this: for 15 points more than a Veteran Squad, you get half a squad of non-scoring infantry with a rerollable deep strike, access to two meltas, AP3 guns all around (Strength 3 still, mind), Frag and Krak grenades, and 4+ saves that can buy chimeras and give them to Special Weapons Squad (which can't buy their own). Right off the bat you can see both the negatives and positives, and it's up to you to play up the advantages while covering the downfalls. If you're facing a gun line army, deep strike behind it and kill their fire support. If you need them to, they can scout or outflank, instead. They may be expensive but when it comes down to it, if you take even one infantry platoon, (so, almost always - unless you go full mech) then you might want at least a squad of these guys. Do remember that since they are likely to fight alone and without any support from Independent Character traits, they can get stomped in an assault as easily as a basic guardsman, and unless you sink points into them, you won't have many Stormtroopers in the squad to begin with. At the worst, they'll mess with your opponent's battle plan.

• Drop Sentinels Deep. Srtiking. Multimeltas. They are as paper-thin as regular sentinels and would eventually die, but not before taking some enemy tanks and/or monster with them. They also could be taken as part of infantry platoon, and take Valkyrie Sky Tallon as dedicated transport.

Troops

• Drop Infantry Platoon: Again, much like regular platoon, except deep strikes and Valkyries dedicated transpor option. You also could take one more HWT, and one Drop Sentinel squadron as part of platoon.

• Veteran Squad: Unlike regular veterans, Elysian ones can not take specialties (so no carapace, melta-bombs or camo-cloaks), and can take only one special wapon, but hey are slightly cheaper and can take their own Commissar. Despite their point cost dropped and deepstrike/Valkyrie with only one special weapon they are not near as good as vanilla ones.

Dedicated transports

• Valkyrie Assault Carrier: This is the main reason you should play Elysians. It's fast flyer with beefy 12/12/10 armor and decent armament. There is nothing to say about this bird besides "take it".

• Valkyrie Sky Talon: Cheaper and slightly worse variant of Valkyrie, used as transport for drop sentinels and tauroses. Worth mention, it counts as heavy support, which comes to play in Big Guns Never Tie type of missions. As Taurises could outflank, and sentinels could deep strike, you should run your Sky Talon empty most of the time.

Fast Attack

• Tauros: Dirt cheap buggies with twin heavy flamers 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 the same cost. 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. One upside to the Tauros is the fact that they can take homing beacons, so if you're running a drop troop army like Elysians, these are good to take. 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.
  • Alternate Take: The Tauros Venator is a damned fine fire-support unit. Being fast, and coming with 2 Hunter-Killer missiles as part of the bargain, it can act as a fire-support annoyance for targetting vulnerable rear armor or for sniping a pesky independent character. Lascannons and high mobility make for a fine combination too - if you exploit the max range of the Lascannons, something is going to get cooked in short order. Keep it away from enemy fire and use its mobility and range, and you'll find it hilariously good at taking out specific targets.

• Vendetta Gunship Squadron: 3 twin-linked Lascannons. This is quite possibly the best unit in all of Warhammer 40k at this point. Carries Guardsmen. Outflanks. Relatively cheap. Comes in squadrons of up to three. There is no better option for fielding mobile anti-tank than this behemoth. Use Vendettas when the enemy fields Vehicles or Masses Monstrous Creatures - especially if they can fly as well.

• Cyclops remote control demolition vehicle: Sick joke. Sure, it could deliver some pie plate of hate, but both operators and Cyclops are extremely vulnerable, and would always die before they could do their gob.

Heavy Support

• Sentry gun battery No. Just no. While cheap it's immobile, BS2 and all your other HS choices are flat out better.

• Vulture Gunship: 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: 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: 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?

Fortifications

• Aegis Defense Lines: .
• Skyshield Landing Pad: .
• Imperial Bastion: .
• Fortress of Redemption: .

Tactics

Pretty simple: put anything on Vlkyrie or Vendetta, max Heavy support with other flyers and don't forget to leave some of your troops on the ground (preferably inside or behind bastion) to prevent turn one autolose. Do not forget do insure your life and health, because your opponent would try to kill you the moment he see fucktonn of flyers you could deploy on the battlefield.