Starting a Guard army

[xxxxDMANxxxx]

Hello everyone, I'm curious as to what would be a good way to start an Imperial Guard army. I loved the allied one they did with the Space Wolves recently in the white dwarf. I don't want a WAAC army. I like the Cadians but I own a Space Wolves army and was wanting something that keep with the fluff of running with them. I want to keep them nice and fluffly. I impulse bought a Company Command Squad with the codex I just don't know where to go from there. Any thoughts would help greatly..... Thanks

[imperialpower]

If you like Cadians then you could buy the Cadian hostile enviroment conversion kits off FW so they would suit a colder battle field, as to what to get just go with what you like the look of there is no point in having a great playing army if you don't like the models but you can't go wrong with plently of Leman russ battle tanks which would go with your Space wolfs nicely

[Kawauso]

If you're allying with IG, I see three things you might want to take advantage of:
Flyers
Tanks
Massed Infantry

Flyers would be particularly useful for Space Wolves, and the Valkyrie and Vendetta are both pretty fantastic - especially the Vendetta. At 130 points each it would be pretty easy to take a squadron of 2 at most point sizes as your allied FA slot.

IG have some great tanks, no surprise, so allying to take advantage of that doesn't hurt either. If you need AA, grab a hydra. If you want more options on a heavy platform, grab a Russ (might work especially well with your Space Wolves...hmm, maybe mine need to ally with IG...), if you want heavy artillery, grab a basilisk or two. If you want to get really good bang for your buck, it's hard to go wrong with a Manticore.

Space Wolves don't have trouble putting lots of boot on the ground, but IG are probably the kings of this. Their infantry squads in their platoons are 5 points/model, so it's pretty easy to flood the board with a bunch of inexpensive scoring units, and they can take a variety of weapons in a couple of different ways, depending on how you want to go about doing it.

Whichever way you go, I think the best way to go about doing it at ~2k points would be to make sure your allied detachment doesn't exceed 500-700 points, otherwise it's really going to start hurting your main army.




I've been looking at allies a lot lately, planning a traitor guard detachment for my Thousand Sons whenever they get a new codex. Like you, I don't want to be WAAC - I want them to be fun, but I also want them to be effective and offer something that Thousand Sons are not likely to have easy access to on their own. I don't know if it will be helpful to show you what I've come up with for my army, but here goes:

Traitor Guard Allied Detachment for Tzeentch-Aligned Chaos Marines

HQ:
Primaris Psyker - 70pts

Troop:
Infantry Platoon- 395pts
Platoon Command Squad-
Medi-Pack, Vox Caster, 2x Plasma Gun, Chimera w/ Turret Autocannon
Infantry Squad-
Vox Caster, Flamer, Chimera w/ Turret Autocannon
Infantry Squad-
Vox Caster, Flamer, Chimera w/ Turret Autocannon

Heavy Support:
Manticore Rocket Launcher- 160pts

Total: 625pts.

As you can see, this detachment gives me a couple of different things: a decent number of bodies at a reasonable price, a good deal of armour saturation with 4 vehicles, a cheap psyker with access to a ton of the new lores and access to a very solid long-range support platform.

Fluff-wise it makes perfect sense for a rogue guard detachment led by a sorcerer of some sort to come to the aid of Tzeentch-aligned marines, as well.

For 625 points it's pretty reasonable, and it gives me a bit of wiggle room if I want to play around with some upgrades or weapon options here or there (though I think what I have will do just fine). I plan on treating the guardsmen as more-or-less expendable (that's how the chaos marines would view them, I think), and using the core of the detachment as its own small strike force. With 3 vehicles and a half-decent amount of firepower/psychic power amongst 3 scoring squads, they should be able to secure an objective on their own and draw some fire away from the more valuable Thousand Sons/chaos marines. That's the plan, at least. While they do that, the Manticore can provide long-range support pretty much wherever it's needed...I see this thing being pretty beastly with the changes to the rules for blast templates.

Anyway...hopefully that glimpse into how I plan on forming a similar detachment for a marine army will give you something to think about for your own. :)

[Chris*ta]

If you're talking about modelling them, those SW allies were pretty simple: Cadians, with heads off the SW sprue and also from various Empire Kits.

In terms of purchasing, for Cadian infantry, you're probably best off buying the Battleforce box, at least if you want to use/can trade/sell the Sentinel.

As for the heads, I imagine you still have a pile left over from your Space Wolves. You could buy from a bitz place, or maybe trade with an Empire player you know. It might also be worth looking at some of the Warriors of Chaos Marauders heads, especially the ones on horses, as I recall them having a bunch of appropriate heads, IMO.

If it's okay for you to use non-GW bits, I'd consider the Wargames Factory greatcoat guard, as they make sense for the whole Fenris-is-a-bit-chilly thing. Though you may want to change the arms and heads. Links:
http://wargamesfactory.com/webstore/alien-suns/shock-troops-sci-fi-greatcoat-troopers
http://wargamesfactory.com/webstore/alien-suns/shock-troop-heavy-weapons-1

[Iceman]

While I agree with both Imperialpower and Chris*ta's suggestions for customizing your army to match your Space Wolves, I have different thoughts for the composition of the IG allies.

A Psyker makes perfect sense for Thousand Sons. However, you already have Command Squad and that works perfectly fine. My suggestion would be to minimize the points you spend on the mandatory HQ and 2 troops so you can spend points on the IG cool stuff that the Space Wolves don't have such as Valkyrie/Vendettas and Leman Russ tanks. One way to do this is to outfit the Command Squad with a standard Chimera (maybe swap the hull heavy bolter for a hull heavy flamer) and then getting 2 Veteran Squads and outfit them with Plasma or Meltaguns (personally I prefer meltaguns because in my experience the plasmaguns are more likely to kill their firer than the enemy). Once you have done that, one option is to get two Vendettas and put the Veteran Squads in them as embarked troops. Another option is to spend 30 points each on the Veteran squads to give them one of the various upgrades that allow them to deploy on their own. Of course, you can always just outfit them with Chimeras and then buy a standard Leman Russ tank. It all depends on how much you want to spend on your allied force.

The thing with IG is that like Stalin said in WWII "Quantity has a quality of its own" it doesn't really pay to try and put lots of upgrades on your units such as med-packs and vox casters. You are better off providing minimum upgrades to carry out their mission and using the points you save to buy another unit.

[robrodgers46]

I look at allies as filling in the blanks in my main army or adding special abilities that enhance what I have. For example, when I add Space Wolves to my IG I run a Rune Priest for the Divination spells and some Grey Hunters in Razorbacks essentially as vets who can fight in CC if necessary. For the reverse, my SW don't have a flyer or decent big templates, so I run a Primaris Psyker, one unit of vets with 3x melta, a Vendetta and an LRBT. For models you are pretty much stuck with Cadians, but just by painting you can get a lot of variety in their appearance.

bb

[Chris*ta]

For models you are pretty much stuck with Cadians, but just by painting you can get a lot of variety in their appearance.

bb

I wouldn't say you're stuck with Cadians.
Assuming you limit yourself to GW. And assuming you want to represent the PDF-like guys from Fenris, rather than just some random IG regiment temporarily attached to the SW, you've still got some options.

I'd start by including a bunch of the "hairy" heads from Warhammer, but if you want to get creative, you could use Cadians, or any of several lines from Warhammer, depending on how you envision these guys and what environment you want to represent them fighting in.

When the SW are deployed to a jungle world, you can guarantee their allies won't be all rugged up!

There's also a big argument about how advanced/civilised or feral/tribal the SW's human friends should actually look.