Sunday 12 December 2010

Mobility and the Midfield: IG List idea

I’m loving Imperial Guard.
I get to run all kinds of different tanks and units.
I’ve even managed to squeeze in 11 Av12 hulls in at 1500 points.

Yup. 11.

My current list has a massive range of tools and utilisations. It is quite literally a swiss army knife.
Check it out here.
Back? Sweet. As you can see it has all kinds of units fulfilling differing roles and with inbuilt redundancy etc.
There are no problems with it other than mobility…


But, I hear you say, it’s a great list and it’s fully meched up…but the Hydra needs to be static to be at its maximum efficiency.

The Colossus also stays static in order to lob shots um, well, wherever.

Now, this is only 2 units. The rest of the force piles forward and supports each other with additional fire, blocking, board control etc.

I’m picky though.

I want everyone single point of my army working hard and working hard all the time.

I do not want to have to move my Hydra 6” and only fire one cannon for a turn. Worse, I definitely do not want it NOT firing for a turn because it has to move 12”.

Or the Colossus, having to shift to get out of 24” so it can fire, or even worse…it actually survives past T3/4 and then the situation becomes massively galling as it can’t fire at units that have crossed the midfield line!

I, of course, am completely comfortable with losing units. So is the army.

This is part of my list design, and in my humble opinion, should be part of everyone’s list design. Every unit is minimally costed. Per threat, not per unit, we spent no more than 100 points.
No death stars.
No super elite, pimped, blinged up units.
Just death in budget format.

This way, when I lose a unit, it is no big deal.

So back on track.
 2 units that are incredibly useful, but not 100% what I am enjoying with the guard army.

What do I like?
 Hard to kill, shooting, synergy.

Synergy is the key to this post. I want everything complementing everything.
I want the whole army rolling on you and forcing you into incredibly hard targeting decisions.

So I have come up with this:

CCS    HQ x5 3xPlasma, Chimera ML, HF  
Vet Squad x10, 3 x Meltagun Chimera - ML, HF
Vet Squad x10            , 3 x Meltagun Chimera - ML, HF
Vet Squad x10            , 3 x Flamer Chimera - ML, HF
Vet Squad x10            , 3 x Grenade Launcher Chimera - ML, HF
Vet Squad x10            , 3 x Grenade Launcher Chimera - ML, HF
Hellhound x1  Inferno Cannon, HMM          
Hellhound x1  Inferno Cannon, HMM          
Leman Russ Demolisher x1, Demolisher Cannon, HHF       
Leman Russ Demolisher x1, Demolisher Cannon, HHF

1500 on the nose.

Damn dangerous if you ask me.

But I am asking you? What do you guys think?

I am loving both Hellhounds and Demolishers at the minute and think that by having two…I’m putting all kinds of crazy hurt out there on the battlefield.

I have 5 troop units. 2 Melta vets, 2 midfield suppression units (grenade launchers) and a dedicated flame unit.

I have 10 hulls, 2 at Av14, but not at Land Raider cost.

Literally tonnes of Multilaser S6 goodness. Heavy flamers galore, including my current FAVOURITE unit in the world…2 Hellhounds!

2 x S10…. 4 separate Melta units, plasma…

 I’m thinking actually that flamer unit wants to be another grenade launcher unit.

So lets link in this post to the Deployment in Action series to demonstrate its strength.

Capture and Control, Spearhead.

Instead of leaving a unit behind to claim and cover the back to units in the list mentioned originally, I can place my objective aggressively in the midfield and move my whole army up to take the opponents.
So deployment would look like this: 

Visually, we can see the strength of the list here. No backfield target for those pesky and deadly wolf scouts…no concerns over outflanking units.
No units not bringing their firepower to bear as we’ll be steaming forward first turn.
Yes, I’ll need to work on keeping my parking lot a bit more spread out vs S10 templates, but that kinda goes without saying.

So what do we think guys? Strong? Weak in some unforeseen areas?

Let me know what y’all think! (on a side note, it’s a sad day when I field no autocannons! Lol)                                       

9 comments:

  1. 1) swap the plasma onto a vet squad so it can camp objectives. the command squad wants to be moving forward to suicide things with twin linked melta (i only just realised i was getting this wrong in my own lists)

    2) i am not convinced by units of vets with nothing but three grenade launchers. they just dont pack that much of a punch.

    3) i have all the models to run this list. this makes me happy.

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  2. 1) But...I don't want to camp. Mobility bro, mobility. I think the multiple melta units save the need for TL'ing, whereas if I need a dedicated heavy inf/MC,light transport killer...I want it killing the target rather than myself...

    2) umm...actually, from quite a bit of experience now of running GL in Vets...yeah there not incredible...but they are 5pts. Thats the key.

    My static Autocannon, 3 GL, ML Chimera guys are too....static. Without the Auto, the unit still has 6 S6 per turn on the move at 30"...suppression of transports, wounding Mc's and fragging troops.

    you are right though to a degree. Not immense, you get what you pay for... better than lasguns.

    3) I only need the 2nd Demolisher and 2nd Hellhound...both of which Father Christmas should be bringing... this makes me happy too... ;)

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  3. Grenade Launchers aren't 5pts, they're 170pts- you have buy the Vet squad and Chimera with them. THAT is the real cost; the opportunity cost of taking a better gun instead.

    Guard aren't a midfield army- Marines simply do it better. However, they can be perfectly fine at holding the midfield, I just don't think this is the way to do it. You don't actually have a lot of scoring units, since Vets aren't any tougher than normal Guardsmen.

    Demolishers are a pretty mediocre unit. I never really am impressed by them, since a regular Russ does pretty much all the same things for fewer points and with longer range, but I suppose if you like them...

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  4. Wassup Pup.

    GrenVet are 140 points.

    With regard to Marines doing it better, agreed. But I'm running Guard here. Simply dismissing it in favour of another Codex is not massively useful bro.

    The marines I see around me are a mix of (pure mech/MSU) Vanilla and Wolves, and frankly with Marines running in numbers of 5 - 8, after they've been demeched...I'm confident the boys can gun down a couple of squads per turn.

    If Guard can hold the midfield...HOW you would do it?

    You talk about Opportunity Cost. But by taking 5 scoring units (out of a max 6)and then moving down to 3-4...I'm losing the opportunity to score, to survive due to fragile troops...

    In your opinion then, is the first list - the one I've been running, simply better?

    oh, Demolishers! Mediocre? Puppy, that makes me a sad panda... Heavy flamer, S10 Ap1 large blast. Av14,13,11... its immense. Moving and shooting everything if needed and I am crazy enough to do it (screw scatter)if I have a target.

    It is a monstrous psychological threat too. yes, I know its what melta is for... but I know this too and can do something about it no?

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  5. i'm afraid i also agree that guard struggle to hold the midfield. i tried a couple of lists like this long ago and i got outfought at close range and in combat. right now, the problem is that you have no mid/high strength long range firepower, and that just wont cut it with guard.

    i actually agree about the opportuniy cost of grenade launchers without an autocannon in the squad. for only 15 points more, you can have 3 more meltaguns. chimeras die when they get close to things, and the the men inside are just too squishy for a protracted fight. however, i think puppy is entirely wrong about demolishers. they are one of the best units in the codex. they scare the hell out of people, and justifiably, as they can dish it out and take it like nothing else.

    if you are determinied to try and take the midfield with guard, i would be tempted to only try it with a massive counterattack force. for that you need to change those GL's for flamers or meltas, keep the demolishers, have something that CAN camp your objectives, and possibly take some demo charges.

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  6. hmm...so stick to the original list? I can change up the Gl vets for flamer vets easily enough and still have suppression fire from the chimera's...
    With regard to camping on objectives, what if I were to simply place in the midfield already...then I can camp but in an overtly aggressive manner.

    I am more than willing to admit defeat on this one from a truly competitive point of view, but I just have this image in my head that I'm struggling to shake...! lol.

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  7. Images and paper lists and even vassal will never truely show a game until playtested on the field, and Ill have to agree, holding mid-field is insane for a guard polayer. hell, id love it if you did that to me as a wolf player. If I go first, bam move up and melta, if you slightly back, move up pop smoke and wait. If you deploy like that and get first, I go reserve, or hide behind LOS/bloicking terrain. The point of guard imo is the fact that it should take you soo long to get to them (hence why daemons do well against guatd) that they put a lot of firepower, and counter anything you push towrsds them.

    Just my oppinion.

    Another tourney if you lads are interested, me and the Bton boys might be down if we all have the time off:

    http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?t=285606

    Alex

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  8. great. i know a load of guys from london who are going to this (all of whom suck, incidentally :P). i also have friends in Southhampton we could stay with. basically, i'm going :)

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  9. @Alex. Yeah I'm fighting something of a losing battle on this one, my edited list on the main tab is my current set up, but I really want to give it a go...

    @Atreides...if your locals can put both you and I up...that'd be awesome and I'm in...

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