40k Army Summaries

[Colonel Voss]

Codex Imperial Guard

The Hammer of the Emperor. This army is the army of the regular humans. They come from a million different worlds to fight for the Emperor from all walks of life, from the wind blasted deserts to the massive hives and the steaming jungles. The Imperial Guard is diverse with two separate plastic lines and several old pewter lines as well as two forge world lines for a player to choose from not to mention the option of custom making your own feral or feudal world armies by kit bashing fantasy and 40k together. Add in that you can make you own camouflage scheme and you have limitless choices.

The first thing to get your mind around with the Imperial guard is size. Where other armies run on the squad and individual armor units with leaders who may be upgraded to have a bodyguard, the Imperial guard is larger scale. For the guard, the platoon (2-5 squads with heavy and special weapon squads attached and a command squad) is the norm for the foot soldiers. Tanks can come in squadrons of up to three. And most leaders are always apart of a command squad that can be given a variety of different options.

The average soldier is nothing special. In fact most enemies will be stronger, faster, tougher, and what not. The guard makes up for that in numbers. I usually field over 100 soldiers (company strength about) and still have plenty of points for armor. Speaking of armor, the Imperial Guard is every treadheads dream come true. The guard has the widest selection of tanks in a variety of forms. You have the main battle tanks based on the venerable Leman Russ, artillery batteries based on the Basilisk and it's like, chemical and pyro warfare based on the hellhound as well as specialist tanks such as the anti-aircraft hydra, and the massive deathstrike missile. The guard also comes with it's own airpower squadrons in the form of Valkyries. Add in specialist units such as the hulking bruisers known as Ogryn, battle psycker squads, elite storm troopers and even penal legionaries and the guard's unit choice is very wide indeed. Add in special leaders such as priests, and commissars to ensure that your units stand and fight (cowards are executed on the spot) and the guard is truly a diverse army to posses.

However, the guards unique order system and the sheer size of it's army means that your turn will take a long time. A 2,000 point game for an experienced player will usually run smooth enough and a veteran can make it go by very fast, but a new player will bog down so much that it might be wise to invest in a pine box in case the opponent dies of old age before you are halfway through the shooting phase. Also due to its size, a guard army can be hard to maneuver and cumbersome to wield. This army is not about finesse, but about a sledgehammer smashing through the enemy. As your guard are always outclasses man per man, expect high casualties and remember that there are always more waiting to fill their place. Even tanks will go up on a regular basis as the enemy finds their soft rear easy pickings. The greatest drawback though is cost. The Imperial Guard is one of if not the most expensive armies there is to collect and a time consuming project to paint.

So to sum up;

Strengths;
-Average human, easy to associate with
-Wide variety of units and the ability to make your own color scheme and back story for you unit, wide selection of models and ability to kitbash new armies using some fantasy lines
-Horde army, mass infantry and armor working together
-primarily a shooting army but with close combat capable units and abilities if done right
-Tank lovers playground

Weaknesses
-Cost, very expensive to built and time consuming to paint
-command rules and size of the army makes for slow turns for those not use to the game and/or IG
-size of army and slower speed than some makes the army somewhat unwieldy and cumbersome
-high casualty army, nearly everyone else is somehow better than your men. armor has fragile weaksides and even your characters are weaker