O.K. Folks, on my first post I covered the basics of the Infantry platoon and then the Platoon Command Squad itself, so this time I will be covering the next part of the troop choice.
The Infantry Squad
So first the basics, the squad consists of 9 regular guardsmen and 1 sergeant, with a single troop choice you are forced to take 2 of these at minimum up to a max of 5. The squads themselves have the normal option of trading 2 guys for a heavy weapons team, but unlike the Vet Squad you can only have 1 special weapon. Each squad can also be assigned krak grenades, a vox caster, a commissar, and a chimera and based on what you plan on doing with said squads will highly influence if you indeed want to take any or none of these.
From what I have seen at Adepticon as well as our own shop the majority of players either enjoy tossing large numbers of Infantry squads together with a commissar and a vox caster together with the combined squad special rule, and perhaps a special weapon or two and using them as a large squad objective holder, with stubborn. Perhaps taking some chimera's from them to stuff the heavy weapons teams into for their own protection, or the special weapons teams at that. The second method is to give each squad a special weapon and heavy weapon, load them into chimera's and have at it, giving the enemy lots of targets to choose from but none a large priority, often causing confusion.
My own method varies slightly from these as I prefer to to grab a medium sized combined squad, maybe 2-3 squads, give them some heavy weapons, a commissar, a vox caster, special weapons and then power weapons to the Sgt.'s and commissar and give them orders as i see fit, mostly to provide a screen of losable men to protect my tanks and the heavy weapons teams I have hiding behind them on the ground (why i leave them on the ground i will cover in their section of posts.)
A fun method, one that is expensive in points, but highly amusing is to run 5 squads, each with a Grenade Launcher, Krak Grenades, Commissar with PW, Sgt. with PW, one vox with 5 Ministorum Priests with shotguns and Eviscerators..... Those along (with the Plat. Comm. Squad) is 935 points of pure fun, but highly ineffective bliss.... I mean common... 60 guys? 15 of which have power weapons of some sort? That is indeed amusing.
Overall the Infantry Squad is quite the varied prankster, able to take orders and deal out tons of lasgun to lascannon firepower. The possibilities for competitive play, and theme for your armies are nearly endless, plus the added bonus of an impressive amount of models to show off.
Until next time, burn some heretics, kill some mutants, and do it as always...
FOR THE EMPEROR!
I think even for close combat blobs you should give them some special / heavy weapons. Autocannons are probably the best all around choice, but you can always go for dirt cheap mortars or the more destructive lascannons. I like a combo of a blob or two plus some melta vets in chimeras. Oh yeah, don't forget the commissar.
ReplyDeleteI do say to include the regular commissar with the blob, along with GL or Flamers preferably if you are going to assault. Heavy weapons all depend on hat you plan on doing with them. The melta vets idea is of course good, but that is on Veteran Squads tactics... which i covered for that particular troop choice in an earlier post. which you should of course check out!
ReplyDeletearent the fireing points of a chimera off the back 45 degrees? or can u seriously fire 6 guys out of the back hatch? If thats the case i will continue to stand by the fact that this codex is entirely well to rounded compared to every other codex out there. Guard is broken no offense.
ReplyDeleteIn other words, CO has a hard time beating them.
ReplyDeleteIf i wanted to play and never have a chance of loosing id play guard.....But i enjoy the game and choose not too.
ReplyDeleteYou have 5 firing points that have to come from the back half of the chimera. which means 5 weapons can fire but they must be measured from the hatch in the back.
ReplyDeleteGuard is most definately beatable. If you are referring to the Inquisitor cheese that is out there, that is not the guard codex being cheesy, its the other codex in use that is. After all Space marines can use the dude too. I mean can you imagine a space wolves player with long fangs with that guy?
I loose frequently enough, but I do count the vast majority of my wins as me being a better tactical player than the one across from me, or the luck of the dice. No offense to those I have beaten often, very few codex's cant beat guard, the one i think has the hardest time is Orcs suprisingly enough, perhaps that is more due to the lack of orcy players at our store, every other codex there are things I am deathly afraid of.
Guard Armies are very balanced from what i have seen. You can really exploit weakness in an unbalanced list so this can appear to be cheese, when in actuality you are punishing the cheese.
ReplyDeleteGuard has weight of numbers which orcs also have. This is why I think orcs can be very scary for a guard army especially when they close the distance, which they are adept at doing.
Guard codex is amazing, bottom line. It's almost always been a great codex in every edition.
ReplyDeleteThe inquisitor cheese is especially bad in guard codex because there are so many units available to shoot whatever is coming in. I can rapid fire my 2 plasmaguns and las cannon or shoot my exterminator's 5 plasma blasts at the sternguard or I can shoot 3 meltas (oh these are on BS 4 guys too, btw) at the dread that has to show me its back armor in order to shoot the tank it wants to pop. Marines can't do that without sacrificing the unit. With guard they just sit in their pill box shooting a las cannon and waiting for that dread to show up and smoke it with 2 melta shots and a las for 165 points versus marines that have to sit in their rhino for 230 points for 1 less melta.
Also, what are marines guarding?!? IG's inquisitor is sitting back there protecting the artillery. Are the marines really worried something bad is going to happen to that whirlwind?? OHES NOES!
This is just an opinion but Guard is the best codex, hands down. Every slot is amazing, their stuff is cheap, troops have bs4, chimera's are AV 12 front and have 2 36" range weapons, 5 guys can shoot out of the top, they drop ordnance like its hot, they have fast skimmers that have 3 TL lascannons that hold 12 angry, melta weilding vets with melta bombs and demo charges.
I'm stopping my rant. I could continue. I'll match 1:1 on useful units with any codex and still have stuff to talk about after any codex has run out.
They have Marbo, how can you argue that. I should have just typed that, Marbo, end of discussion(ADHD inspired soap box preach).